wmm: POEMS POEMS ALFRED TENNYSON, POET LAUREATE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. L A NEW EDITION. BOSTON: TICK NOR AND FIELDS, MDCCCLXII. It is my wish that with Messrs. Ticknoe And Fields alone the right of publishing my books in America should ALFRED TENNYSON. ISliis Edition contains "In Memoriam " and "Maud," with all the additional Poems CONTENTS OF VOLUME THE FIRST. Page GIARIBEL ..... o .3 LILIAN d ISABEL 7 MARIANA 10 TO 15 MADELINE 17 SONG. THE OWL 20 SECOND SON&. TO THE SAME 21 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS 22 ODE TO MEMORY 30 SUNG 36 ADELINE 38 A CHARACTER 42 VI CONTENTS. THE FOET 4i THE poet's mind 48 THE DTINS SWAN 50 A DIRGE 53 LOVE AND DEATH 56 THE BALLAD OF ORIANA 57 CIRCUMSTANCE . . • 62 THE MERMAN 63 THE MERMAID 65 SONNET TO J. M. K 68 THE LADY OF SHALOTT 72 MARIANA IN THE SOUTH 80 ELEANORE 85 THE miller's DAUGHTER 92 FATIMA 103 CENONE 106 THE SISTERS 119 TO 122 THE PALACE OF ART 123 LADY CLARA VERE DE VERB 139 THE MAT queen: , 143 NEW tear's ETE 147 CONCLUSION 152 CONTENTS. VU Page THE L0T0S-KATEI13 158 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN 167 MARGARET 186 THE BLACKBIRD 190 THE DEATH OF THE OLD TEAR 192 TO J. S 195 " YOU ASK ME WHY, THOUGH ILL AT EASE " 200 "OF OLD SAT FREEDOM ON THE HEIGHTS" 202 " LOVE THOU THY LAND WITH LOVE FAR-BROUGHT " . . . . 204 THE GOOSE 209 THE EPIC 213 MORTE D'ARTHUR 215 THE gardener's DAUGHTER 228 DORA 240 AUDLEY COURT 247 WALKING TO THE MAIL 251 ST. SIMEON STYLITES 256 THE SEA-FAIRIES 265 THE DESERTED HOUSE 267 EDWIN MORRIS; OR, THE LAKE 269 TO , AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS 276 TO E. L., ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE 278 " COME NOT WHEN I AM DEAD " 280 THE EAGLE ; A FRAGMENT 280 IN MEMORIAJI 281 TO THE QUEEN. Revered, beloved, — you that hold A nobler ofiBce upon earth Than arms, or power of brain, or birth, Could give the warrior kings of old, Victoria, — since your Royal grace To one of less desert allows This laurel greener ft'ora the brows Of him that uttered nothing base ; And should your greatness, and the care That yokes with empire, yield you time To make demand of modern rhyme. If aught of ancient worth be there ; Then — while a sweeter music wakes, And through wild March the throstle calls, Where, all about your palace-walls. The sun-lit almond-blossom shakes — ; TO THE QUEEN. Take, Madam, this poor book of song ; For, though the faults were thick as dust In vacant chambers, I could trust Tour kindness. May you rule us long. And leave us rulers of your blood As noble till the latest day ! May children of our children say, " She wrought her people lasting good ; " Her court was pure ; her life serene ; God gave her peace ; her land reposed ; A thousand claims to reverence closed In her as Mother, Wife and Queen ; " And statesmen at her council met Who knew the seasons, when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet, By shaping some august decree. Which kept her throne unshaken stiU, Broad-based upon her people's will. And compassed by the inviolate sea." March, 1851. POEMS. CLARIBEL. A MELODY. Where Claribel low-lieth The breezes pause and die, Letting the rose-leaves fall : But the solemn oak-tree sigheth, Thick-leaved, ambrosial, With an ancient melody Of an inward agony, Where Claribel low-lieth. At eve the beetle boometh Athwart the thicket lone : At noon the wild bee hummeth About the mossed headstone : CLAHIBEL. At midnight the moon cometh And looketh down alone. Her song the lintwhite swelleth, The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth, The fledgling throstle lispeth, The slumbrous wave outwelleth, The babbling runnel crispeth, The hollow grot replieth Where Claribel low-lieth. LILIAN Airy, fairy Lilian, Flitting, fairy Lilian, When I ask her if she love me, Claps her tiny hands above me, Laughing all she can ; She '11 not tell me if she love me, Cruel little Lilian. When my passion seeks Pleasance in love-sighs, She, looking through and through me Thoroughly to undo me. Smiling, never speaks : So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple, From beneath her gathered wimple Glancing with black-beaded eyes, Till the lightning laughters dimple The baby-roses in her cheeks ; Then away she flies. Prithee weep, May Lilian ! Gayety without eclipse Wearieth me. May Lilian : Through my very heart it thrilleth When from crimson-threadec^ lips Silver-treble laughter trilleth : Prithee weep, May Lilian. Praying all I can, If prayers will not hush thee. Airy Lilian, Like a rose-leaf I will crush thee, Fairy Lilian. ISABEL. Ei(ES not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed With the clear-pointed flame of chastity, Clear without heat, undying, tended by Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane Of her still spirit ; locks not wide dispread, Madonna-wise on either side her head ; Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity, Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood. Revered Isabel, the crown and head. The stately flower of female fortitude, Of perfect wifehood and pure lowlihead. The intuitive decision of a bright And thorough-edged intellect to part Error from crime ; a prudence to withhold ; The laws of marriage charactered in gold Upon the blanched tablets of her heart ; A love still burning upward, giving light To read those laws ; an accent very low In blandishment, but a most silver flow Of subtle-paced counsel in distress, Right to the heart and brain, though undescried, Winning its way with extreme gentleness Through all the outworks of suspicious pride ; A courage to endure and to obey ; A hate of gossip parlance, and of sway, Crowned Isabel, through all her placid life, The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife. The mellowed reflex of a winter moon ; A clear stream flowing with a muddy one. Till in its onward current it absorbs With swifter movement and in purer light The vexed eddies of its wayward brother : A leaning and upbearing parasite. Clothing the stem, which else had fallen quite, With clustered flower-bells and ambrosial orbs Of rich fruit-bunches leaning on each other — Shadow forth thee : — the world hath not another (Though all her fairest forms are types of thee, And thou of God in thy great charity) Of such a finished chastened punty. MARIANA. " Mariana in the moated grange." — Measure for Measure. With blackest moss the flower-plots Were thickly crusted, one and all : The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the peach to the garden-wall. The broken sheds looked sad and strange ; Unlifted was the clinking latch ; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, " My life is dreary. He Cometh not," she said ; She said, " I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead ! " MARUNA. 11 Her tears fell with the dews at even ; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, "Wlien thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, " The night is dreary, He cometh not," she said ; She said, " I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead ! " III. Upon the middle of the night. Waking she heard the night-fowl crow : The cock sung out an hour ere light : From the dark fen the oxen's low- Came to her : without hope of change, In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn. Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange. 12 She only said, " The day is dreary He Cometh not," she said ; She said, " I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead ! " rv. About a stone-cast from the wall A sluice with blackened waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small. The clustered marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook ahvay, All silver-green with gnarled bark : For leagues no other tree did mark The level waste, the rounding gray. She only said, " My life is dreary, He Cometh not," she said ; She said, " I am aweary, aweary, 1 would that I were dead ' " V. A nd ever when the moon was low, And the shrill winds were up and away, In the white curtain, to and fro, She saw the gusty shadow sway. MARIAN. But when the moon was very low, And wild winds bound within their cell, The shadow of the poplar fell Upon her bed, across her brow. She only said, " The night is drearj^ He Cometh not," she said ; She said, " I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead ! " VI. All day within the dreamy house The doors upon their hinges creaked ; The blue fly sung i' the pane ; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked, Or from the crevice peered about. Old faces glimmered through the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without. She only said, " My life is dreary, He Cometh not," she said ; She said, " 1 am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead I " 13 14 vn. The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, The slow clock ticking, and the sound Which to the wooing wind aloof The poplar, made, did all confound Her sense ; but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping toward his western bower. Then, said she, " I am very dreary, He will not come," she said ; She wept, " I am awearj"^, aweary, O God ! that I were dead ! " TO Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scom, Edged with sharp laughter, cuts atwain The knots that tangle human creeds, The wounding cords that bind and strain The heart until it bleeds, Ray-fringed eyelids of the morn Roof not a glance so keen as thine : If aught of prophecy be mine, Thou wilt not live in vain. Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit ; Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow : Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now With shrilling shafts of subtle wit. Nor martyr-flames nor trenchant swords Can do away that ancient lie : A gentler death shall Falsehood die. Shot throuofh and through with cunning words 16 Weak Truth, a-leaning on her crutch, Wan, wasted Truth, in her utmost need. Thy kingly intellect shall feed, Until she be an athlete bold, And weary with a finger's touch Those writhed limbs of lightning speed ; Like that strange angel which of old, Until the breaking of the light, Wrestled with wandering Israel, Past Yabbok brook the lingering night, And heaven's mazed signs stood still In the dim tract of Penuel. MADELINE. Thou art not steeped in golden languors, No tranced summer calm is thine, Ever varying Madeline. Through light and shadow thou dost rangej Sudden glances, sweet and strange, Delicious spites, and darling angers. And airy fonns of flitting change. Smiling, frowning, evermore, Thou are perfect in love-lore. Revealings deep and clear are thine Of wealthy smiles : but who may know Whether smile or frown be fleeter ? Whether smile or frown be sweeter, Who may know ? 18 MADELINE. Frowiis perfect-sweet along the brow Light-glooming over eyes divine, Like little clouds sun-fringed, are thine, Ever varying Madeline. Thy smile and frouii are not aloof From one another, Each to each is dearest brother ; Hues of the silken sheeny woof Momently shot into each other. All the mystery is thine ; Smiling, fro^\^^ing, evermore, Thou art perfect in love-lore, Ever varying Madeline. A subtle, sudden flame. By veering passion fanned. About thee breaks and dances ; When I would kiss thy hand, The flush of angered shame O'erflows thy calmer glances, And o'er black brows drops down A sudden-curved frown : But when I turn away, Thou, willing me to stay, MADELINE. 19 Wooest not, nor vainly wranglest , But, looking fixedly the while, All my bounding heart entanglest In a golden-netted smile ; Then in madness and in bliss, If my lips should dare to kiss Thy taper fingers amorously, Again thou blushest angerly; And o'er black brows drops down A sudden-curved frown. SOI^G. — THE OWL. When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring- sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round ; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown liay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay. Twice or thrice his roundelay ; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. SECOND SONG, TO THE SAME. Thy tiiwhits are lulled, I wot, Thy tuwhoos of yesternight, Which upon the dark afloat, So. took echo with delight, So took echo with delight. That her voice, untuneful gro^^m Wears all day a fainter tone. I would mock thy chaunt anew ; But I cannot mimic it ; Not a whit of thy tuwhoo. Thee to woo to thy tuwhit, Thee to woo to thy tuwhit, With a lengthened loud halloo, Tuwhoo. tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o. RECOLLECTIONS THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. When the breeze of a joyful da^^Ti blew free In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flowed back with me, The forward-flowing tide of time ; And many a sheeny summer-mom, AdoAvn the Tigris I was borne, By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold. High-walled gardens green and old ; True Mussulman was I and sworn, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 23 n. Anight my shallop, rustling through The low and bloomed foliage, drove The fragrant, glistening deeps, and clove The citron-shadows in the blue : By garden porches on the brim, The costly doors flung open wide, Gold glittering through lamplight dim, And broidered sofas on each side : In sooth it was a goodly time. For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. III. Often, where clear-stemmed platans guard The outlet, did I turn away The boat-head do^^'^l a broad canal From the main river sluiced, where all The sloping of the moon-lit sward Was damask-work, and deep inlay Of braided blooms unmown, which crept Adown to where the waters slept. A goodly place, a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of sfood Haroun Alraschid. 24 RECOLLECTIONS OF IV. A motion from the river won Ridged the smooth level, bearing on My shallop through the star-strown calm, Until another night in night I entered, from the clearer light, Imbowered vaults of pillared palm. Imprisoning sweets, which, as they clomb Heavenward, were stayed beneath the ilome Of hollow boughs. — A goodly time. For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Still onward ; and the clear canal Is rounded to as clear a lake. From the green rivage many a fall Of diamond rillets musical. Through little crystal arches low Down from the central fountain's flow Fallen silver-chiming, seemed to shake The sparkling flints beneath the prow. A goodly place, a goodly time, For it was m the golden prime Of jrood Haroun Alraschid. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 25 VI. Above through many a bowery turn A walk with vary-colored shells Wandered engrained. On either side All round about the fragrant marge From fluted vase, and brazen urn, In order, eastern flowers large Some dropping low their crimson bells Half-closed, and others studded wide With disks and tiars, fed the time With odor in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. VII. Far off", and where the lemon-grove In closest coverture upsprung. The living airs of middle night Died round the bulbul as he sung Not he : but something which possessed The darkness of the world, delight. Life, anguish, death, immortal love, Ceasing not, mingled, unrepressed, Apart from place, withholding time, But flattering the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. VOL. I. 3 *26 RECOLLECTIONS OF Black the garden-bowers and grots Sliunbered: the solemn palms were ranged Above, unwooed of summer wind : A sudden splendor from behind Flushed all the leaves with rich gold-gre>^n And, flowing rapidly between Their interspaces, counterchanged The level lake with diamond-plots Of dark and bright. A lovely tm^e, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Dark-blue the deep sphere overhead, Distinct with vivid stars inlaid, Grew darker from that under-flame : So. leaping lightly from the boat, With silver anchor left afloat. In mai^vel whence that glory came Upon me, as in sleep I sank In cool soft turf upon the bank. Entranced with that place and time. So worthy of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 27 X. Thence through the garden I was drawn - A realm of pleasance, many a mound, And many a shadow-chequered laAvn Full of the city's stilly sound, And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round The stately cedar, tamarisks, Thick rosaries of scented thorn. Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks Graven with emblems of the time, In honor of the golden prime Of srood Haroun Alraschid. With dazed vision unawares From the long alley's lattice shade Emerged, I came upon the great Pavilion of the Caliphat. Right to the carven cedarn doors, Flung inward over spangled floors, Broad-based flights of marble stairs Ran up with golden balustrade, After the fashion of the time. And humor of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. 28 EECOLLECTIONS OF xn. The fourscore windows all alij^ht As with the quintessence of flame, A million tapers flaring bright From twisted silvers looked to shame The hollow-vaulted dark, and streamed Upon the mooned domes aloof In inmost Bagdat, till there seemed Hundreds of crescents on the roof Of night new risen, that marvellc is time. To celebrate the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. XIII. Then stole I up, and trancedly Gazed on the Persian girl alone, Serene with argent-lidded eyes, Amorous, and lashes like to rays Of darkness, and a brow of pearl Tressed with redolent ebony, In many a dark delicious curl. Flowing beneath her rose-hued zone ' The sweetest lady of the time, Well worthy of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. , THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. 29 XIV. Six columns, three on either side, Pure silver, underpropt a rich Throne of the massive ore, from which Down-drooped, in many a floating fold, Engarlanded and diapered With inwrought flowers, a cloth of gold. Thereon, his deep eye laughter-stirred With merriment of kingly pride. Sole star of all that place and time, I saw him — in his golden prime, The good Haroun Albasciiid ! ODE TO MEMORY. Thou who stealest fire, From the fountains of the past, To glorify the present ; oh, haste, Visit my low desire ! Strengthen me, enlighten me ! I faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of memory. n. Come not as thou camest of late, Flinging the gloom of yesternight On the white day ; but robed in softened light Of orient state. Whilome thou camest with the morning mist, Even as a maid, whose stately brow The dew-impearled winds of dawn have kissed, When she, as thou, ODE TO MEMORY. 31 Stays on her floating locks the lovely freight Of overflowing blooms, and earliest shoots Of orient green, giving safe pledge of fruits, Which in wintertide shall star The black earth with brilliance rare. Whilome thou earnest with the morning nnst, And with the evening cloud, Showering thy gleaned wealth into my open- breast, (Those peerless flowers which in the rudest wind Never grow sere. When rooted in the garden of the mind, Because they are the earliest of the year.) Nor was the night thy shroud. In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest Thou leddest by the hand thine infant Hope. The eddying of her garments caught from thee The light of thy great presence ; and the cope Of the half-attained futurity, Though deep, not fathomless. Was cloven with the million stars that tremble O'er the deep mind of dauntless hifancy. Small thought was there of life's distress; 32 ODK TO MEMORY. For sure she deemed no mist of earth could dull Those spirit-thrilling eyes so keen and beautiful .• Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres, Listening the lordly music flowing from The illimitable years. strengthen me, enlighten me ! 1 faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of memory. rv. Come forth, I charge thee, arise, Thou of the many tongues, the myriad eyes ! Thou comest not with shows of flaunting vines Unto mine inner eye, Divinest memory ! Tliou wert not nursed by the waterfall Which ever sounds and shines A pillar of white light upon the wall Of purple cliffs, aloof descried : Come from the woods that belt the gray hill-sidi', The seven elms, the poplars four. That stand beside my father's door. And chiefly from the brook that loves To purl o'er matted, cress and ribbed sand. ODE TO MEMORY. 33 Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, Drawnng into his nan'ow earthen um, In every elbow and turn, The filtered tribute of the rough woodland. ! hither lead thy feet ! Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds, Upon the ridged wolds, When the first matin-song hath wakened loud Over the dark dewy earth forlorn, What time the amber morn Forth gushes from beneath a low-hung cloud. V. Large dowries doth the raptured eye To the young spirit present When first she is wed ; And like a bride of old In triumph led. With music and sweet showers Of festal flowers. Unto the dwelling she must sway. Well hast thou done, great artist Memory, In setting round thy first experiment 34 ODE TO MEMORY. With royal frame-work of wrought gold ; Needs must thou dearly love thy first essay, And foremost in thy various gallery Place it, where sweetest sunlight falls Upon the storied walls ; For the discovery And newness of thine art so pleased thee, That all which thou hast drauTi of fairest Or boldest since, but liglitly weighs With thee unto the love thou bearest The first-bom of thy genius. Artist-like, Ever retiring thou dost gaze On the prime labor of thine early days : No matter what the sketch might be ; Whether the high field on the bushles.s Tike, Or even a sand-built ' Ige Of heaped hills that mound the sea. Overblown with murmurs harsh, Or even a lowly cottage whence we see Stretched wide and wild the waste enormous marsh, Where from the frequent bridge, Like emblems of infinity, The trenched waters run from sky to sky; Or a garden bowered close With plaited alleys of the trailing rose, ODE TO MEMORY. Loiig allej's falling down to twilight grots, Or opening upon level plots Of crowned lilies, standing near Purple-spiked lavender : Whether in after liie retired From brawling stoniis, From weary wind, With youthful fancy reinspired, We may hold converse with all forms Of the many-sided mind, And those whom passion had not blinded, Subtle-thoughted, myriad-minded, My friend, with you to live alone, Methinks were better than' to own A crown, a sceptre, and a throne. strengthen me, enlighten me ! 1 faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of memory. 35 SONG. A SPIRIT haunts the year's last hours, Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers : To himself he talks ; For at eventide, listening earnestly, At his work you may hear him sob and sigh In the walks ; Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers : Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chiJly; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. n. The air is damp, and hushed, and close, As a sick man's room when he taketh reposf An hour before death ; SONG. 31 My ^ery heart faints and my whole soul grieves At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves, And the breath Of the fading edges of box beneath, And the year's last rose. Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly • , Heavily hang^ the hollyhock. Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. ADELI^'E. Mystery of mysteries, Faintly smiling Adeline, Scarce of earth nor all divine, Nor unhappy, nor at rest, But beyond expression fair, With thy floating flaxen hair; Thy rose-lips and full blue eyes Take the heart from out my breast. Wherefore those dim looks of thine, Sliadowy, dreaming Adeline ? Whence that aery bloom of thine. Like a lily which the sun Looks through in his sad decline, And s. rose-bush leans upon, 30 Thou that faintly smilest still, As a Naiad in a well, Looking at the set of day. Or a phantom two hours old Of a maiden past away. Ere the placid lips be cold? Wherefore those faint smiles of thine, Spiritual Adeline ? What hope or fear or joy is thine ? Who talketh with thee, Adeline ? For sure thou art not all alone : Do beating hearts of salient springs Keep measure with thine own ? Hast thou heard the butterflies What they say betwixt their wiiii^s ? Or in stillest evenings With what voice the violet woos To his heart the silver dews ? Or when little airs arise, How the merry bluebell rings To the mosses underneath ? Hast thou looked upon the breath Of the lilies at sunrise ? 10 WTierefore that faint smile of thine, Shadowy, dreaming Adeline ? Some honey-converse feeds thj mind, Some spirit of a crimson rose In love with thee forgets to close His curtains, wasting odorous sighs All night long on darkness blind. What aileth thee ? whom waitest thuu With thy softened, shadowed brow, And those dew-lit eyes of thine, Thou faint smiler, Adeline ? Lovest thou the doleful wind When thou gazest at the skies ? Doth the low-tongued Orient Wander from the side o' the mom, Dripping with Sabsean spice On thy pillow, lowly bent With melodious airs lovelorn. Breathing light against thy face, Wliile his locks a-dropping twinod Round thy neck in subtle :ing Make a carcanet of rays And ye talk together still, In the language wherewith Spring Letters cowslips on the hill ? Hence that look and smile of thine. Spiritual Adeline. 41 A CHARACTER With a half-glance upon the sky At night he said, " The wanderings Of this most intricate Universe Teach me the nothingness of things." Yet could not all creation pierce Beyond the bottom of his eye. II. He spake of beauty : that the dull Saw no divinity in grass, Life in dead stones, or spirit in air ; Then looking as 't were in a glass, He smootl'.ed his chin and sleeked his hair. And said the earth was beautiful. A CHARACTER. 43 in. He spake of virtue : not the gods More purely, when they wish to charm Pallas and Juno sitting by : And with a sweeping of the arm, And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye, Devolved his rounded periods. ■^ IV. Most delicately hour by hour He canvassed human mysteries. And trod on silk, as if the winds Blew his o\vn praises in his eyes, And stood aloof from other minds In impotence of fancied power. V. With lips depressed as he were meek, Himself unto himself he sold : Upon himself himself did feed: Quiet, dispassionate, and cold. And other than his form of creed. With chiselled features clear and sleek. THE POET. The poet m a golden clime was born, With golden stars above ; Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love. He saw through life and death, through good and ill He saw through his OAvn soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An open scroll, Before him lay : with echoing feet he threaded The secret'st walks of fame : The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed And winged with flame, 4S THE FOET. Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongtie, And of so fierce a flight, From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung, Filling with light And vagrant melodies the winds which bore Them earthward till they lit ; Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field-flower, The fruitful wit, Cleaving, took root, and springing forth anew Where'er they fell, behold, Like to the mother plant in semblance, grew A flower all gold, And bravely furnished all abroad to fling The winged shafts of truth, To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring Of Hope and Youth. So many minds did gird their orbs with beams, Though one did fling the fire. Heaven flowed upon the soul in many dreams Of high desire. 46 THE POET. Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world Like one great garden showed, And through the wreaths of floating dark upcuried. Rare sunrise flowed. And Freedom reared in that august sunrise Her beautiful bold brow, When rites and forms before his burning eyes Melted like snow. There was no blood upon her maiden robes Sunned by those orient skies ; But round about the circles of the globes Of her keen eyes And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame Wisdom, a name to shake All evil dreams of power — a sacred name. And when she spake, Her words did gather thunder as they ran, And as the lightning to the thunder Which follows it, riving the spirit of man, Making earth wonder, THE POET. 47 So was their meaning to her vvords. No sword Of wrath her right arm whirled, But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word She shook the world. THE POET'S MIND. Vex not thou the poet's mind With thy shallow wit : Vex not thou the poet's mind ; For thou can'st not fathom it Clear and bright it should be ever, Flowing like a crj'stal river ; Bright as light, and clear as wind. Dark-browed sophist, come not anear ; All the place is holy ground ; Hollow smile and frozen sneer Come not here. Holy water will I pour . Into every spicy flower THE poet's mind. 49 Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around. The flowers would faint at your cruel cheer. In your eye there is death, There is frost in your breath Which would blight the plants. Where you stand you cannot hear From the groves within The wild-bird's din. In the heart of the garden the merry bird chaunts, It would fall to the ground if you came in. In the middle leaps a fountain Like sheet lightning, Ever brightening With a low melodious thunder ; All day and all night it is ever drawn From the brain of the purple mountain Which stands in the distance yonder : It springs on a level of boweiy lawn, And the mountain draws it from Heaven above. And it sings a song of undying love ; And yet, though its voice be so clear and full, y^ou never would hear it — your ears are so dull ; So keep where you are : you are foul with sin; It would shrink to the earth if you came in. THE DYING SWAN The plain was grassy, wild and bare, Wide, wild, and open to the air. Which had built up everyAvhere An under-roof of doleful gray. With an inner voice the river ran, Adown it floated a dying swan, Which loudly did lament. It was the middle of the day. Ever the weary wind went on, And took the reed-tops as it went. Some blue peaks in the distance rose, And white against the cold-white sky Shone out their crovvTiing snows. THE DVING SWAN. 51 One willow over the river wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh ; Above in the wind was the swallow, Chasing itself at its own wild will, And far through tne marish green and still The tangled water-courses slept, Shot over with purple, and green and yellow. The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow : at first to the ear ^ The warble was low, and full and clear ; And floating about the under-sky, Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear; But anon her awful jubilant voice, With a music strange and manifold, Flowed forth on a carol free and bold : As when a migluy people rejoice With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold, And the tumult of their acclaim is rolled Through the open gates of the city afar. To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star. And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds, A.n'1 the willow-branches hoar and dank, 62 THE DYING SWAN. And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds, And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank, And the silvery marish-flowers that throng The desolate creeks and pools among, Were flooded over with eddying song. A DIRGE. Now is done thy long day's work ; Fold thy palms across thy breast, Fold thine arms, turn to thy rest. Let them rave. Shadows of the silver birk Sweep the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. n. Thee nor carketh care nor slander ; Nothing but the small cold worm Fretteth thine enshrouded form. Let them rave. Light and shadow ever wander O'er the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. 54 A dirctE. Thoxa wilt not turn upon thy bed ; Chaunteth not the brooding bee Sweeter tones than cahimny ? Let them rave. Thou wilt never raise thine head From the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. rv. Crocodiles wept tears for thee ; The woodbine and eglatere Drip sweeter dews than traitor's tear. Let them rave. Rain makes music in the tree O'er the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. V. Round thee blow, self-pleached deep, Bramble-roses, faint and pale, And long purples of the dale. Let them rave. A DIRGE, 55 These in every shower creep Through the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. VI. The gold-eyed kingcups fine, The frail bluebell peereth over Rare broidry of the purple clover. Let them rave. Kings have no such couch as thnie. As the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. VII. Wild words wander here ntul there ; God's great gift of speech abused Makes thy memory confused — But let them rave. The balm-cricket carols clear In the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. LOVE AND DEATH. What lime the mighty moon was gathering light, Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise, And all about him rolled his lustrous eyes ; When, turning round a cassia, full in view Death, walking all alone beneath a yew, Ana talking to himself, first met his signt : "You must begone," said Death ; " these walks are mine. Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight ; Yet ere he parted said, " This hour is thine ; Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath, So in the light of great eternity Life eminent creates the shade of death ; The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall, But 1 shall reijxu forever over all." TIIK BALT, AD OF ORlANA My heart is wasted with my woe, Oriana, Tiiere is no rest for me below Oriana. When the long dun wolds are rlLbcd with snow, And loud the Norland whirlwinds blo"^ Oriana, Alone I wander to and fro, Oriana. Ere the light on dark was growing, Oriana, At midnight the cock was crowing, Oriana : 58 THE BALLAD OF ORIANA. Winds were blowing, waters flowing, We heard the steeds to battle going, Oriana ; Aloud the hollow bugle blowing Oriana. In the yew-wood, black as night, Oriana, Ere I rode into the fight, Oriana, While blissful tears blinded my sight, By star-shine and by moon-light, Oriana, I to thee my troth did plight, Oriana. She stood upon the castle wall, Oriana : She watched my crest among them all, Oriana : She saw me fight, she heard me call, When forth there stept a foeman tall, Oriana, Atween me and the castle wall, Oriana. 'fHE BALLAD OF ORIANA. 59 The bitter arrow went aside, Oriana : The false, false arrow went aside, Oriana : The damned arrow glanced aside, And pierced thy heart, my love, my bride, Oriana ! Thy heart, my life, my love, my bride, Oriana ! ! narrow, narrow was the space, Oriana. Loud, loud rung out the bugle's brays, Oriana. O ! deathful stabs were dealt apace. The battle deepened in its place, Oriana ; But I was down upon my face, Oriana. They should have stabbed me where I lay, Oriana ! How could I rise and come away, Oriana ? 60 THE BALLAD OF ORIANA. How could I look upon the day ? They should have stabbed me where I lay, Oriana — They should have trod me into clay, Oriana. ! breaking heart that will not break, Oriana ; ! pale, pale face so sweet and meek, Oriana. Thou smilest, but thou dost not speak, And then the tears run down my cheek, Oriana : What wantest thou ? whom dost thou seek, Oriana ? I cry aloud : none hear my cries, Oriana. Thou comest atween me and the skies, Oriana. I feel the tears of blood arise Up from my heart unto my eyes, Oriana. Within thy heart my arrow lies, Oriana. THE BALLAD OF ORIANA. 61 cursed hand ! oh cursed blow ! Oriana ! happy thou that liest low, Oriana ! All night the silence seems to flow Beside me in my utter woe, Oriana. A weary, weary way I go, Oriana. When Norland winds pipe down the sea, Oriana, 1 walk, I dare not thinlc of thee, Oriana. Thou liest beneath the greenwood tree, I dare not die and come to thee, Oriana. I hear the roaring of the sea, Oriana. CIRCUMSTANCE. Two children in two neighbor villages Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas; Two strangers meeting at a festival ; Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall ; Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease j Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-to^^ er, Washed with still rains and daisy-blossomed ; Two children in one hamlet born and bred ; So runs the round of life from hour to hour. THE MERMAN, Who would be A merman bold Sitting alone, Singing alone Under the sea, With a cro\vn of gold, On a throne ? I would be a merman bold ; I would sit and sing the whole of the da}^ ; I would fill the sea-halls with a voice of power But at night I would roam abroad, and play With the mermaids in and out of the rocks, Dressing their hair with the white sea-flower ; And holding them back by their flowing locks, I would kiss them often under the sea. And kiss them again till they kissed me Laughingly, laughingly; 64 THE MERMAN. And then we would wander away, away To the pale-green sea-groves straight and high, Chasing each other merrily. There would be neither moon nor star ; But the wave would make music above us afar — Low thunder and light in the magic night — Neither moon nor star. We would call aloud in the dreamy dells, Call to each other and whoop and cry All night, merrily, merrily ; They would pelt me with starry spangles and shells, Laughing and clapping their hands between, All night, merrily, merrily ; But I would throw them back in mine Turkis and agate and almondine : Then leaping out upon them unseen, I would kiss them often under the sea. And kiss them again till they kissed me Laughingly, laughingly. O ! what a happy life were mine Under the hollow-hung ocean green ! Soft are the moss-beds under the sea ; We would live merrily, merrily. THE MERMAID Who would be A mermaid fair, Singing alone, Combing her hair Under the sea, In a golden curl With a comb of pearl, On a throne ? I would be a mermaid fair ; I would sing to myself the whole of the day ; With a comb of pearl I Avould comb my hair ; And still as I combed I would sing and say, " Who is it loves me ? who loves not Uie ? " I would comb my hair till my ringlets would iai 66 THE MERMAID. Low adown, low adown, From under my starry sea-bud crown Low adown and around, And I should look like a fountain of gold Springing alone With a shrill inner sound, Over the throne In the midst of the hall ; Till that great sea-snake under the sea From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps Would slowly trail himself sevenfold Round the hall where I sate, and look ia at the gate With his large calm eyes for the love of me. And all the mermen under the sea Would feel their immortality Die in their hearts for the love of me. But at night I would wander away, away, I would fling on each &ide my low-flowing locks. And lightly vault from the throne and play With the mermen in and out of the rocks ; We would run to and fro, and hide and seek, On the broad sea-wolds i' the crimson shells, Whose silvery spikes are nighest the sea. But if any came near, I would call, and shriek, And adow n the steep like a wave I would leap THE MERMAID. From the diamond ledges that jut from the dells ; For I would not be kissed by all who would list, Of" the bold merry mennen under the sea ; They would sue me, and woo me, and flatter me, In the purple twilights under the sea ; But the king of them all would carry me, Woo me, and win me, and many me. In the branching jaspers under the sea ; Then all the diy pied things that be In the hueless mosses under the sea Would curl round my silver feet silently. All looking up for the love of me. And if I should carol aloud, from aloft All things that are forked, and horned, and soft, Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea. All lookinjj down for the love of me. SONNET TO J.M.K My hope and heart is with thee — thou wilt be A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest To scare church-harpies from the master's feast ; Our dusted velvets have much need of thee : Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws, Distilled from some worm-cankered homily; But spurred at heart with fieriest energy To embattail and to wall about thy cause With iron-worded proof, hating to hark The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone Half God's good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark. POEMS. (PUBLISHED 1832.) THE LADY OF SHALOTT. PART I. On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky And through the field the road runs by To many-towered Camel ot ; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below, The island of Shalott. Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Through the wave that runs forever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. 72 THE LADY OF SHALOTT. Four gray walls, and four gray towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott. By the margin, willow-veiled, Suae the heavy barges trailed By slow horses ; and unbailed, The shallop flitteth silken-sailed, Skimming down to Camelot : But who hath seen her wave her hand ? Or at the casement seen her stand ? Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott ? Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly, Down to towered Camelot : And by the moon the reaper weary, Piling sheaves in uplands airj'. Listening, whispers " 'T is the fairy Lady of Shalott." THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 73 PART IT. There she weaves by night and day A magic web with colors gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily. And little other care hath she. The Lady of Shalott. And moving through a mirror clear That hangs before ner all the year Shadows of the world appear. There she sees the highway near Winding down to Camelot : There the river eddy whirls, And there the surly village-churls. And the red cloaks of market-girls, Pass onward from Shalott. Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad VOL. t. 6 74 THE LADY OF SHALOTT. Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad, Or long-haired page in crimson clad, Goes by to towered Camelot ; And sometimes through the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two : She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often through the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights. And music, went to Camelot : Or when the moon was overhead. Came two young lovers lately wed ; " I am half-sick of shadows," said The Lady of Shalott. PART III. A BOW-SHOT from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley sheaves. THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 75 The sun came dazzling through the leaves, And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot. A redcross Imight forever kneeled To a lady in his shield, That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott. The gemmy bridle glittered free, Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy. The bridle bells rang merrily As he rode down to Camelot : And from his blazoned baldric slung A mighty silver bugle hung, And as he rode his armor rung, Beside remote Shalott. All in the blue unclouded weather Thick-jewelled shone the saddle-leather, The helmet and the helmet-feather Burned like one burning flame together, As he rode down to Camelot. As often through the purple night, 76 THE LADY OF SHALOTT. Below the starry clusters bright, Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over still Shalott. His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed , On burnished hooves his war-horse trode , From underneath his helmet flowed His coal-black curls as on he rode. As he rode down to Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flashed into the crj^stal mirror, " Tirra lirra," by the river Sang Sir Lancelot. She left the web, she left the looni, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She looked down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide ; The mirror cracked from side to side ; " The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott. THE LADY OF SHALOTT PART IV, In the stormy east-wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining Over towered Camelot ; Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat, And round about the prow she wrote The Lady of S/ialolt. And down the river's dim expanse — Like some bold seer in a trance. Seeing all his own mischance — With a glassy countenance Did she look to Camelot. And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain, and down she lay ; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott. Lying, robed in snowy white That loosely flew to left and right — . 78 THE LADY OF SHALOIT. The leaves upon her falling light — Through the noises of the night She floated down to Camelot And as the boat-head wound along The willow^' hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott. Heard a carol, moui-nful, holy. Chanted loudly, chanted lowly. Till her blood was frozen slowly. And her eyes were darkened wholly, Turned to towered Camelot ; For ere she reached upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died. The Lady of Shalott. Under tower and balcony, By garden-wall and gallery, A gleaming shape she floated by, A corse between the houses high. Silent into Camelot. Out upon the wharfs they came. THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 79 Knight and burgher, lord and dame, And round the prow they read her name, The Lady of Shalott. Who is this ? and what is here ? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer ; And they crossed themselves for fear, All the knights at Camelot : But Lancelot mused a little space ; He said, " She has a lovely face ; God in his mercy lend her grace. The Lady of Shalott." MARIANA IN THE SOUTH. With one black shadow at its feet, The house through all the level shines, Close-latticed to the brooding heat, And silent in its dusty vines : A faint-blue ridge upon the right, An empty river-bed before, And shallows on a distant shore. In glaring sand and inlets bright. But " Ave Mary," made she moan, And " Ave Mary," night and morn, And " Ah," she sang, " to be all alone, To live forgotten, and love forlorn." II. She, as her carol sadder grew, From brow and bosom slowly down Through rosy taper fingers drew Her streaming curls of deepest brown MARIANA IN THE SOUTH. 81 To left and right, and made appear, Still-lighted in a secret shrine, Her melancholy eyes divine, The home of woe without a tear. And " Ave Mary," was her moan, " Madonna, sad is night and morn ;" And " Ah," she sang, " to be all alone, To live forgotten, and love forlorn." III. Till all the crimson changed, and past Into deep orange o'er the sea, Low on her knees herself she cast, Before Our Lady murmured she ; Complaining, " Mother, give me grace To help me of my weary load." And on the liquid mirror glowed The clear perfection of her face. " Is this the form," she made her moan, " That won his praises night and mom ' ' And " Ah," she said, " but I wake alone I sleep forgotten, I wake forlorn," 6 82 MARIANA IN THE SOUTH. IV. Nor bird would sing', nor lamb would bleat, Nor any cloud would cross the vault. But day increased from heat to heat, On stony drought and steaming salt ; Till now at noon she slept again, And seemed knee-deep in mountain grass. And heard her native breezes pass. And runlets babbling down the glen. She breathed in sleep a lower moan, And murmuring, as at night and morn, She thought, " My spirit is here alone, Walks forgotten, and is forlorn." V. Dreaming, she knew it was a dream : She felt he was and was not there. She woke : the babble of the stream Fell, and without the steady glare Shrank the sick olive sere and small. The river-bed was dusty white ; And all the furnace of the light Struck up against the blinding wall. MAKIA^NA IN THE SOUTH. 83 She whispered, with a stifled moan More inward than at night or morn, " Sweet Mother, let me not here alone Live forgotten, and die forlorn." VI. And, rising, from her bosom drew Old letters, breathing of her worth, For " Love," they said, "must needs be true, To what is loveliest upon earth." An image seemed to pass the door, To look at her with slight, and say, " But now thy beauty flows away, So be alone for evermore." " cruel heart," she changed her tone, " And cruel love, whose end is scorn, Is this the end to be left alone, To live forgotten, and die forlorn ! " vn. But sometimes in the falling day An image seemed to pass the door, To look into her eyes and say, " But thou shalt be alone no more." S4 MARIAJ^A m THE SOUTH. And flaming downward over all From heat to heat the day decreased, And slowly rounded to the east The one black shadow from the wall. " The day to night," she made her moan, " The day to night, the night to mom. And day and night I am left alone, To live forgotten, and love forlorn." vra. At eve a dry cicala sung, There came a sound as of the sea ; Backward the lattice-blind she flung. And leaned upon the balcony. There all in spaces rosy-bright Large Hesper glittered on her tears. And deepening through the silent spheres, Heaven over Heaven rose the night. And weeping then she made her moan, " The night comes on that knows not rnori When I shall cease to be all alone, To live forgotten, and love tbriorn." ELEANORE, Tuv dark eyes opened not, Nor first revealed themselves to English air For there is nothing here, Which, from the outward to the inward brought, Moulded thy baby thought. Fur off from human neighborhood. Thou wert born, on a summer niorti, A mile beneath the cedar- wood. Thy bounteous forehead was not fanned With breezes from our oaken glades, But thou wert nursed in some delicious land Of lavish lights, and floating shades : And flattering thy childish thought The oriental fairy brought. At the moment of thy birth, ft(i E LEAN ORE. From old well-heads of haunted rills, And the hearts of purple hills, And shadowed coves on a sunny shore, The choicest wealth of all the earth, Jewel or shell, or starry ore. To deck thy cradle, Eleilnore, Or the yellow-banded bees, Through half-open lattices Coming in the scented breeze, Fed thee, a child, lying alone, With whitest honey in fairy gardens culled - A glorious child, dreaming alone. In silk-soft folds, upon yielding down, With the hum of swarming bees Into dreamful slumber lulled. Who may minister to thee ? Summer herself should minister To thee, with fruitage golden-rinded On golden salvers, or it may be. Youngest Autumn, in a bower Grape-thickened from the light, and blinded With many a deep-hued bell-like flower ELEANORE. 87 Of fragrant trailers, when the air Sleepeth over all the heaven, And the crag that fronts the Even, All along the shadowing shore, Crimsons over an inland mere, Eleanore ! How may full-sailed verse express, How may measured words adore The full-flowing harmony Of thy swan-like stateliness, Eleanore ? The luxuriant symmetry Of thy floating gracefulness, Eleanore ? Every turn and glance of thine, Every lineament divine, Eleanore, And the steady sunset glow, That stays upon thee ? For in thee Is nothing sudden, nothing single ; Like two streams of incense tree From one censer, in one shrine. Thought and motion mingle. Mingle ever. Motions flow 8S ELEANORE. To one another, even as thou^-h They were modulated so To an unheard melody, Which lives about thee, and a sweep Of richest pauses, evermore Drawn from each other mellow-deep ; Who may express thee, EleiUiore ? I stand before thee, Eleiinore ; 1 see thy beauty gradually unfold. Daily and hourly, more and more. I muse, as in a trance, the while Slowly, as from a cloud of gold, Comes out thy deep ambrosial smile. I muse, as in a trance, whene'er The languors of thy love-deep eyes Float on to me. I would I were So tranced, so rapt in ecstasies. To stand apart, and to adore, Gazing on thee for evermore, Serene, imperial Eleiinore! Sometimes, with most intensity Gazing, I seem to see Thought folded over thought, smiling asleep. ELEANORE. 89 Slowly awakened, grow so full and deep In thy large eyes, that, overpowered quite, I cannot veil, or droop my sight, But am as nothing in its light : As though a star, in inmost heaven set. Even while we gaze on it. Should slowly round his orb, and slowly grow To a full face, there like a sun remam Fixed — then as slowly fade again, And draw itself to what it was before ; So full, so deep, so slow. Thought seems to come and go In thy large eyes, imperial Eleanore. As thunder-clouds that, hung on high. Roofed the world with doubt and fear, Floating through an evening atmosphere, Grow golden all about the sky ; In thee all passion becomes passionless, Touched by thy spirit's mellowness. Losing his fire and active might In a silent meditation. Falling into a still delight. And luxury of contemplation : 90 ELEANORE. As waves that up a quiet cove Rolling slide, and lying still Shadow forth the banks at will ; Or sometimes they swell and move, Pressing up against the land, With motions of the outer sea : And the self-same influence Controlleth all the soul and sense Of Passion gazing upon thee. His bow-string slackened, languid Love, Leaning his cheek upon his hand, Droops both his wings, regarding thee, And so would languish eveiTnore, Serene, imperial Eleanore. But when I see thee roam, with tresses unconfined, While the amorous, odorous wind Breathes low between the sunset and the moon Or, in a shadowy saloon, On silken cushions half reclined ; I watch thy grace ; and in its place My heart a charmed slumber keeps, While I muse upon thy face ; And a languid fire creeps ELEANORE. 91 Through my veins to all my frame, Dissolvingly and slowly : soon, From thy rose-red lips my name Floweth ; and then, as in a swoon, With dinning sound my ears are rife. My tremulous tongue faltereth. I lose my color, I lose my breath, I drink the cup of a costly death, Brimmed with delirious draughts of warniest life. I die with my delight, before I hear what I would hear from thee ; Yet tell my name again to rne. I ivould be dying evermore, So dying ever, Eleanore. THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. I SEE the wealthy miller yet, His double chin, his portly size. And who that knew him could forget The busy wrinkles round his eyes ? The slow wise smile that, rouna aoout His dusty forehead drily curled. Seemed half- within and half-without, And full of dealings with the world ? In yonder chair I see him sit, Three fingers round the old silver cup - I see his gray eyes twinkle yet At his own jest — gray eyes lit up With summer lightnings of a soul So full of summer warmth, so glad, So healthy, sound, and clear and whole. His memory scarce can make me sad. THE miller's DAnGHTER. 93 Yet fill my glass : give me one kiss : My own sweet Alice, we must die. There 's somewhat in this world amiss Shall be unriddled by and by. There 's somewhat flows to us in life, But more is taken quite away. Pray, Alice, pray, my darling wife, That we may die the self-same day. Have I not found a happy earth ? I least should breathe a thought of pain. Would God renew me from my birth I 'd almost live my life again. So sweet it seems with thee to walk, And once again to woo thee mine — It seems in after-dinner talk Across the walrmts and the wine — To be the long and listless boy Late left an orphan of the squire. Where this old mansion mounted high Looks down upon the village spire : For even here, where I and you Have lived and loved alone so long, Each morn my sleep was broken through By some wild skylark's matin song. 94 THE miller's daughter. And oft I heard the tender dove In firry woodlands making moan ; But ere I saw your eyes, my love, I had no motion of my own. For scarce my life with fancy played Before I dreamed that pleasant dream — • Still hither thither idly swayed Like those long mosses in the stream. Or from the bridge I leaned to hear The milldam rushing down with noise, And see the minnows everywhere In crystal eddies glance and poise, The tall flag-flowers, where they sprung Below the range of stepping stones, And those three chestnuts near, that hung In masses thick with milky cones. But, Alice, what an hour was that, When, after roving in the woods, ('T was April then,) I came and sat Below the chestnuts, when their bnJs Were glistening to the breezy blue ; And on the slope, an absent fool, I cast me dowTi, nor thought of you, But angled in the higher pool. THE miller's daughter. 9o A love-song I had somewhere read, An echo from a measured strain, Beat time to nothing in the head From some odd corner of the brain. It haunted me, the morning long. With weary sameness in the rhymes, The phantom of a silent song. That went and came a thousand times. Then leapt a trout. In lazy mood I watched the little circles die ; They past into the level flood, And there a vision caught my eye ; The reflex of a beauteous form, A glowing arm, a gleaming neck, As when a sunbeam wavers Avarm Within the dark and dimpled beck. For you remember, you had set, That iiforning, on the casement's edge A long green box of mignonette, And you were leaning from the ledge : And when I raised my eyes, above They met with two so full and bright — Such eyes I I swear to you, my love, That these hav^e never lost their lijrht. 96 THE MILLER'S DAUGHTEIJ, I loved, and love dispelled the fear That I should die an early death : For love possessed the atmosphere, And filled the breast with purer breatri. My mother thought. What ails the boy ? For 1 was altered, and began To move about the house with joy. And with the certain step of man. I loved the brimming wave that swam Through quiet meadows round the mill. The sleepy pool above the dam, The pool beneath it never still, The meal-sacks on the whitened floor, The dark round of the dripping wheel, The very air about the door Made misty with the floating meal. And oft in ramblings on the wold, When April nights began tc^blow, And April's crescent glimmered cold, I saw the village lights below ; I knew your taper far away, And full at heart of trembling hope, From off the wold I came, and lay Upon the freshly-flowered slope. THE miller's daughter. 97 The deep brook groaned beneath the mill ; And " by that lamp," I thought, " she sit^ ! " The white chalk-quarry from the hill Gleamed to the flying moon by fits. " that I were beside her now ! O will she answer if I call ? O would she give me vow for vow, Sweet Alice, if I told her all ? " Sometimes I saw you sit and spin ; And, in the pauses of the wind, Sometimes I heard you sing within ; Sometimes your shadow crossed the blind ; At last you rose and moved the light. And the long shadow of the chair Flitted across into the night, And all the casement darkened there. But when at last I dared to speak, The lanes, you know, were white with May ; Your ripe lips moved not, but your cheek Flushed like the coming of the day ; And so it was — half-sly, half-shy. You would, and would not, littl ■ one ! Although I pleaded tenderly. And you and I were all alone. 98 THE miller's daughter. And slowly was my mother brought To yield consent to my desire : She wished me happy, but she thought I might have looked a little higher ; And I was young — too young to wed : " Yet must I love her for your sake ; Go fetch your Alice here," she said : Her eyelid quivered as she spake. And down I went to fetch my bride : But, Alice, you were ill at ease ; This dress and that by turns you tried. Too fearful that you should not please. I loved you better for your fears, I knew you could not look but well ; And dews, that would have fall'n in tears, I kissed away before they fell. I watched the little flutterings, The doubt my mother would not see ; She spoke at large of many things, And at the last she spoke of me ; And turning looked upon your face, As near this door you sat apart, And rose, and, with a silent grace Approaching, pressed you heart to heart. THE miller's daughter. 99 Ah, well — but sing the foolish song I gave you, Alice, on the day When, ann in arm, we went along, A pensive pair, and' you were gay With bridal flowers — that I may ser m, As in the nights of old, to lie Beside the mill-wheel in the stream, While those full chestnuts whispei by. It is the miller's daughter, And she is grown so dear, so dear, That I would be the jewel . That trembles at her ear : For, hid in ringlets day and night, I 'd touch her neck so warm and white And I would be the girdle About her dainty, dainty waist, And her heart would beat against me In sorrow and in rest : And I should know if it beat right, I 'd clasp it round so close and light. And I would be the necklace. And all day long to fall and rise Upon her balmy bosom, Willi her laughler or hor sighs, lUO THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. And I would lie so liglil, so light, I scarce should he unclasped at night. A trifle, sweet ! which true love spells — True love interprets — right alone. His light upon the letter dwells, For all the spirit is his ovra. So, if I waste words now, in truth You must blame Love. His early rage Had force to make me rhyme in youth, And makes me talk too much in age. And now those vivid hours are gone, Like mine own life to me thou art, Where Past and Present, wound in one, Do make a garland for the heart : So sing that other song I made. Half-angered with my happy lot, The day, when in the chestnut shade I found the blue Forget-me-not. Love that hath us in the net, Can he pass, and we forget ? THE miller's daughter. 101 Many suns arise and set. Many a chance the years beget. Love the gift is Love the debt. Even so. Love is hurt with jar and fret. Love is made a vague regret. Eyes with idle tears are wet. Idle habit links us yet. What is love ? for we forget : Ah, no ! no ! Look through mine eyes with thine. True vvife, Round my true heart thine arms entwine ; My other dearer life in life, Look through my very soul with thine ! Untouched with any shade of years, May those kind eyes forever dwell ! They have not shed a many tears, Dear eyes, since first I knew them well. Yet tears they shed : they had their part Of sorrow : for when time was ripe, The still aflfection of the heart Became an outward breathing type, 102 THE MILLER S DAUGHTEK. That into stillness past again, And left a want unknown before ; Although the loss that brought us pain, That loss but made us love the more, W ith farther lookings on. The kiss, The woven arms, seem but to be Weak symbols of the settled bliss, The comfort, I have found in thee : But that God bless thee, dear — who wrought Two spirits to one equal mind — With blessings beyond hope or thought. With blessings which no words can find. Arise, and let us wander forth To yon old mill across the wolds ; For look, the sunset, south and north, Winds all the vale in rosy folds. And fires your narrow casement glass, Touching the sullen pool below : On the chalk-hill the bearded grass Is dry and dewless. Let us go. F A T 1 M A O Love, Love, Love ! withering might ! O sun, that from thy noonday height Shudderest when I strain my sight, Throbbmg through all thy heat and light, Lo, falling from my constant mind, Lo, parched and withered, deaf and blind I whirl like leaves in roaring wind. Last night I wasted hateful hours Rolow the city's eastern towers : 1 tliirsted for the brooks, the showers : 1 rolled among the tender flowers : 1 crushed them on my breast, my inouih I looked athwart the burning drouth Of that Ions: desert to the south. 104 FATIMA. m. Last night, when some one spoke his name, From my swift blood that went and came A thousand little shafts of flame Were shivered in my narrow frame. Love, O fire ! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew. Before he mounts the hill, I Imow He Cometh quickly : from below Sweet gales, as from deep gardens, blow Before hirii, striking on my brow. In mj'' dry brain my spirit soon, Down-deepening from swoon to swoon, Faints like a dazzled morning moon. V. The wind sounds like a silver wire, And from beyond the noon a fire Is poured upon the hills, and m'gher The skies stoop down in their desire ; And, isled in sudden seas of light, My heart, pierced through with fierce delight. Bursts into blossom in his sight. FATIMA. 105 VI. My whole soul waiting silently, All naked in a sultry sky, Droops blinded with his shining eye : I will possess him or will die. I will grow round him in his place, Grow, live, die looking on his face Die, dying clasped in his embrace. (ENONE. There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling through the cloven ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea. Behind the valley topmost Gargarus Stands up and takes the morning ; but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Tioas and Ilion's columned citadel. The crown of Troas. Hither came at noon Mournful (Enone, wandering forlorn Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills. 107 Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck Floated her hair or seemed to float in rest. She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine, Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff. " mother Ida, many-fountained Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. For now the noonday quiet holds the hill : The grasshopper is silent in the grass : The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, and the cicala sleeps. The purple flowers droop : the golden bee Is lily-cradled : I alone awake. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love. My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, A.nd I am all aweary of my life. " mother Ida, many fountained Ida, Dear niolher Ida, harken ere I die. Hear me O Earth, hear me O Hills, O Caves, That house the cold crowned snake ! O inoautain brooks. I am the daughter of a River-God ; Hear me, for I will speak, and build up all 108 CENONE My sorrow with my song, as yonder walls Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed, A cloud that gathered shape : for it may be^ That, while I speak of it, a little while My heart may wander from its deeper woe. " mother Ida, many-fountained Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. I waited underneath the dawning hills, Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark, And de^^'y-dark aloft the mountain pine : Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris, Leading a jet-black goat white-horned, white-hooved, Came up from reedy Simois all alone. " mother Ida, harken ere I die. Far-ofT the torrent called me from the cleft : Far up the solitary morning smote The streaks of virgin snow. With down-dropt eyes I sat alone : white breasted like a star Fronting the dawn he moved ; a leopard sldn Drooped from his shoulder, but his sunny hair Clustered about his temples like a God's ; And his cheek brightened as the foam-bow brightens (ENONE. 109 Wterj. the wind blows the foam, and all my heart V^Vent forth to embrace him coming ere he came. " Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. He smiled, and opening out his milk-white palm Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold, That smelt ambrosially, and while I looked And listened, the full-flowing river of speech Came down upon my heart. " ' My own QEnone, Beautiful-browed CEnone, my own soul, Behold this fruit, whose gleaming rind engraven " For the most fair," would seem to award it thine, As lovelier than whatever Oread huunt The knolls of Ida, loveliest in all grace Of movement, and the charm of married brows.' " Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. He prest the blossom of his lips to mine. And added, ' This was cast upon the board. When all the full-faced presence of the Gods Ranged in the halls of Peleus ; whereupon Rose feua, with question unto whom 't were due : no But light-foot Iris brought it yester-eve, Delivering that to me, by common voice Elected umpire. Here comes to-day Pallas and Aphrodite, claiming each This meed of fairest. Thou, within the cave Behind yon whispering tuft of oldest pine, Mayst well behold them unbeheld, unheard Hear all, and see thy Paris judge of Gods.' " Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. It was the deep midnoon : one silvery cloud Had lost his way between the piney sides Of this long glen. Then to the bower they came, Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower, And at their feet the crocus brake like fire, Violet, amaracus, and asphodel, Lotos and lilies : and a wind arose. And overhead the wandering ivj and vine. This way and that, in many a wild festoon Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs With bunch and berry and flower through and throug! " O mother Ida, harken ere I die. On the tree-tops a crested peacock lit, 11] And o'er him flowed a golden cloud, and leaned Upon him, slowly dropping fragrant dew. Then first I heard the voice of her, to whom Coming through Heaven, like a light that grows Larger and clearer, with one mind the Gods Rise up for reverence. She to Paris made Proffer of royal power, ample rule Unquestioned, overfloAving revenue Wherewith to embellish state, ' from many a vale And river-sundered champaign clothed with corn, Or labored mines, undrainable of ore. Honor,' she said, ' and homage, tax and toll, From many an inland town and haven large, Mast-thronged beneath her shadowing citadel In glassy bays among her tallest towers.' " O mother Ida, harken ere I die. Still she spake on, and still she spake of power, ' Which in all action is the end of all ; Po\A:;r fitted to the season; wisdom-bred And throned of wisdom — from all neighbor crowns Alliance and allegiance, till thy hand Fail from the sceptre-stafF. Such boon from me, From me. Heaven's Queen, Paris, to thee king-boni. 1 2 (ENONE. A shepherd all thy life, but yet king-born, Should come most welcome, seeing men, in power Only, are likest Gods, who have attained Rest in a happy place and quiet seats Above the thunder, with undying bliss, In knowledge of their own supremacy.' " Dear mother Ida, harken ere 1 die. She ceased, and Paris held the costly fruit Out at arm's-length, so much the thought of power Flattered his spirit ; but Pallas where she stood Somewhat apart, her clear and bared limbs O'erthwarted with the brazen-headed spear Upon her pearly shoulder leaning cold. The while, above, her full and earnest eye Over her snovz-cold breast and angry cheek Kept watch, waiting decision, made reply. " ' Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Vet not for power, (power of herself Would come uncalled for,) but to live by law. Acting the law we live by without fear ; And because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.' OENONE. 113 " Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die, Again she said : ' I woo thee not with gifts. Sequel of guerdon could not alter me To fairer. Judge thou me by what I am. So shalt thou find me fairest. Yet, indeed, If gazing on divinity disrobed, Thy mortal eyes are frail to judge of fair. Unbiased by self-profit, oh ! rest thee sure That I shall love thee well and cleave to thee, So that my vigor, wedded to thy blood. Shall strike within thy pulses, like a God's, To push thee forward through a life of shocks. Dangers, and deeds, until endurance grow Sinewed with action, and the full-groAATi will, Circled through all experiences, pure law, Commeasure perfect freedom.' " Here she ceased, And Paris pondered, and I cried, ' Paris, Give it to Pallas ! ' but he heard me not, Or hearing would not hear me, woe is me ! 114 " mother Ida, many-fountained Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Idalian Aphrodite beautiful, Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells, With rosy slender fingers backward drew From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat And shoulder : from the violets her light foot Shone rosy-white, and o'er her rounded form Between the shadows of the vine-bunches Floated the glowing sunlights, as she moved. " Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. She with a subtle smile in her mild eyes. The herald of her triumph, drawing nigh, Half-whispered in his ear, ' I promise thee The fairest and most lovmg wife in Greece.' She spoke and laughed : I shut my sight for fear Bat when I looked, Paris had raised his ar.u, And I beheld great Here's angry eyes. As she withdrew into the golden cloud, And I was left alone within the bower; And from that time to this I am alone, And I shall be alone until I die. CENONE. 115 " Yet, mother Ida, harken ere I die. Fairest — why fairest wife ? am I not fair ? My love hath told me so a thousand times. Methinks I must be fair, for yesterday, When I past by, a wild and wanton pard, Eyed like the evening star, with playful tail Crouched fawning in the weed. Most loving is she Ah me, my mountain shepherd, that my arms Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest Close, close to thine in that quick-falling dew Of fruitful kisses, thick as Autumn rains Flash in the pools of whirling Simois. " mother, hear me yet before I die. They came, they cut away my tallest pines, My dark tall pines, that plumed the craggy ledge High over the blue gorge, and all between The sno^vy peak and snow-white cataract Fostered the callow eaglet — from beneath Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn The panther's roar came muffled, while I sat Low in the valley. Never, never more Shall lone CEnone see the iiiorning mist Sweep through them ; never see them overlaid 116 With narrow moon-lit slips of silver cloud, Between the loud stream and the trembling stars. " mother, hear me yet before I die. I wish that somewhere in the ruined folds, Among the fragments tumbled from the glens, Or the dry thickets, I could meet with her. The Abominable, that uninvited came Into the fair Pele'ian banquet-hall, And cast the golden fruit upon the board. And bred this change ; that I might speak my mind. And tell her to her face how much I hate Her presence, hated both of Gods and men. " O mother, hear me yet before I die. Hath he not sworn his love a thousand times. In this green valley, under this green hill, Even on this hand, and sitting on this stone ? Sealed it with kisses ? watered it with tears ? O happy tears, and how unlike to these ! O happy Heaven, how canst thou see my face ? O happy earth, how canst thou bear my weight ? O death, death, death, thou ever-floating cloud. There are enough unhappy on this earth ; fENONE. 117 Pass by the happy souls, that love to live : I pray thee pass before my light of life, And shadow all my soul, that I may die. Thou weighest heavy on the heart w^ithin, Weigh heavy on my eyelids : let me die. " mother, hear me yet before I die. I will not die alone, for fiery thoughts Do shape themselves within me more and more, Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills, Like footsteps upon wool. I dimly see My far-off doubtful purpose, as a mother Conjectures of the features of her child Ere it is born : her child I — a shudder comes Across me : never child be born of me, Unblest, to vex me with his father's eyes ! " mother, hear me yet before I die. Hear me, O earth. I will not die alone. Lest their shrill happy laughter come to me Walking the cold and starless road of Death Uncomforted, leaving my ancient love With the Greek woman. I will rise and ffo 118 Down into Troy, and ere the stars come forth Talk with the wild Cassandra, for she says A fire dances before her, and a sound Rings ever in her ears of armed men. What this may be I know not, but I know That, wheresoe'er I am by night and day, All earth and air seem only burning fire." THE SISTERS We were two daughters of one race : She was the fairest in the face : The wind is blowing in turret and tree. They were together, and she fell ; Therefore revenge became me well. O the Earl was fair to see ! She died : she went to burning flame : She mixed her ancient blood with shame. The wind is howling in turret and tree. Whole weeks and months, and early and late. To win his love I lay in wait. the Earl was fair to see ! 120 THE SISTERS. in. 1 made a feast ; I bade him come : I won his love, I brought him home. The wind is roaring in turret and tree. And after supper, on a bed, Upon my lap he laid his head : O the Earl was fair to see ! IV. I kissed his eyelids into rest : His ruddy cheek upon my breast. The wind is raging in turret and tree. I hated him with the hate of hell, But I loved his beauty passing well. O the Earl was fair to see ! V. I rose up in the silent night : I made my dagger sharp and bright. The wind is raving in turret and tree. As half-asleep his breath he drew. Three times I stabbed him through and througli O the Earl was fair to see ! THE SISTEKS. 121 VI. I curled and combed his comely head, He looked so grand when he was dead. The wind is blowing in turret and tree. I wrapt his body in the sheet, And laid him at his mother's feet. O the Earl was fair to sec ! ,. I. 9 TO WITH THE FOLLOWINa FOBM. I SEND you here a sort of allegory, (For you will understand it,) of a soul, A sinful soul possessed of many gifts, A spacious garden full of flowering weeds, A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain. That did love Beauty only, (Beauty seen In all varieties of mould and mind,) And Knowledge for its beauty ; or if Good. Good only for its beauty, seeing not That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge, are three sistet»< That dote upon each other, friends to man, Living together under the same roof, And never can be sundered without tears. THE PALACE OF ART. 123 And he that shuts liove out, in turn shall be Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie Howling in outer darkness. Not for this Was common clay ta'en from the common earth, Moulded by God, and tempered with the tears Of angels to the perfect shape of man. THE PALACE OF ART. I BUILT my soul a lordly pleasure-house. Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. I said, " Soul, make merry and carouse, Dear soul, for all is well." A huge crag-platform, smooth as buniislud brass, I chose. The ranged ramparts bright From level meadow-bases of deep grass Suddenly scaled the light. 124 THE PALACE OF ART. Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf The rock rose clear, or winding stair. My soul would live alone unto herself In her high palace there. And " while the world runs round and round," I said, " Reign thou apart, a quiet king, Still as, while Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade Sleeps on his luminous ring." To which my soul made answer readily : " Trust me, in bliss I shall abide In this great mansion, that is built for me, So royal-rich and wide." * * * # • * * # Four courts I made, East and West, South and North, In each a squared lawn, wherefrom The golden gorge of dragons spouted forth A flood of fountain-foam. And roimd the cool green courts there ran a row Of cloisters, branched like mighty woods. Echoing all night to that sonorous flow Of spouted fountain-floods. THE PALACE OF ART. 125 And round the roofs a gilded gallery That lent broad verge to distant lands, Far as the wild swan wings, to where the sky Dipt down to sea and sands. From those four jets four currents in one swell Across the mountain streamed below In misty folds, that floating as they fell Lit up a torrent-blow. And high on every peak a statue seemed To hang on tiptoe, tossing up A cloud of incense of all odor steamed From out a golden cup. So that she thought, " And who shall gaze upon My palace with unblinded eyes. While this great bow will waver in the sun, And that sweet incense rise ? " For that sweet incense rose and never failed, And, while day sank or mounted higher, The light aerial gallery, golden-railed, Burnt like a fringe of fire. 126 THE PALACE OF ART. Likewise the deep-set windows, stained and trared. Would seem slow-flaming crimson fires From shadowed grots of arches interlaced, And tipt with frost-like spires. * * # * # * * # Full of long-sounding corridors it was, That over-vaulted grateful gloom, Through which the livelong day my soul did pass, Well-pleased, from room to room. Full of great rooms and small the palace stood. All various, each a perfect whole From living Nature, fit for every mood And change of my still soul. For some were hung with arras green and blue. Showing a gaudy siynmer-morn, Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blew His wreathed bugle-horn. One seemed all dark and red — a tract of sand. And some one pacing there alone, Who paced forever in a glimmering land. Lit with a low large moon. THE PALACE OF ART. 127 One showed an iron coast and angry waves. You seemed to hear them climb and fall And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves, Beneath the windy wall. And one, a full-fed river winding slow By herds upon an endless plain. The ragged rims of thunder brooding low, With shadow-streaks of rain. And one, the reapers at their sultry toil. In front they bound the sheaves. Behind Were realms of upland, prodigal in oil, And hoary to the wind. And one, a foreground black with stones and slags, Beyond a line of heights, and higher All barred with long white cloud the scornful crags, And highest, snow and fire. And one, an English home — gray twilight poured On dewy pastures, dewy trees, Softer than sleep — all things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace. 12S THE PALACE OF AET. Nor these alone, but every landscape fair, As fit for every mood of mind, Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stem, was there, Not less than truth designed. « « • * * * * * Or the maid-mother by a crucifix. In tracts of pasture sunny-warm. Beneath branch-work of costly sardonyx Sat smiling, babe in arm. Or in a clear-walled city on the sea. Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily ; An angel looked at her. Or thronging all one porch of Paradise, A group of Houris bowed to see The dying Islamite, with hands and eyes That said, we wait for thee. Or mythic IJther's deeply-wounded son In some fair space of sloping gxeens Lay, dozing in the vale of Avalon, And watched by weeping queens. THE PALACE OF AKT. 129 Or hollowing one hand against his ear, To list a footfall, ere he saw The wood-nymph, stayed the Tuscan king to hear Of wisdom and of law. Or over hills with peaky tops engrailed, And many a tract of palm and rice, The throne of Indian Cama slowly sailed A summer fanned with spice. Or sweet Europa's mantle blew unclasped From off her shoulder backward borne : From one hand drooped a crocus : one hand grasped The mild bull's golden horn. Or else flushed Ganymede, his rosy thigh Half-buried in the Eagle's down, Sole as a flying star shot through the sky Above the pillared town. Nor these alone : but every legend fair Which the supreme Caucasian mind Carved out of Nature for itself, was there, Not less than life, designed. * « # * * * « « 130 THE PALACE OF ART, Then in the towers I placed great bells that swunj^. Moved of themselves, with silver sound ; And with choice paintings of wise men I hung The royal dais round. For there was Milton like a seraph strong, Beside him Shakspeare bland and mild ; And there the world-worn Dante grasped his song And somewhat grimly smiled. And there the Ionian father of the rest ; A million wrinkles carved his skin ; A hundred winters snowed upon his breast, From cheek and throat and chin. Above, the fair hall-ceiling stately-set Many an arch high up did lift. And angels rising and descending met With interchange of gift. Below was all mosaic choicely planned With cycles of the human tale Of this wide world, the times of every land So wrought, they will not fail. THE PALACE OF ART. 131 The people here, a beast of burden slow, Toiled onward, pricked with goads and stings ; Here played, a tiger, rolling to and fro The heads and crowns of kings ; Here rose, an athlete, strong to break or bind All force in bonds that might endure. And here once more like some sick man declined. And trusted any cure. But over these she trod : and those great bells Began to chime. She took her throne : She sat betwixt the shining Oriels, To sing her songs alone. And through the topmost Oriels' colored flame Two godlike faces gazed below : Plato the wise, and large-browed Verulam, The first of those who know. And all those names, that in their motion were Full-welling fountain-heads of change, Betwixt the slender shafts were blazoned fair In diverse raiment strange : 132 THE PALACE OF ART. Through which the lights, rose, amber, emerald, blue, Flushed in her temples and her eyes. And from her lips, as mom from Memnon, drew Rivers of melodies. No nightingale delighteth to prolong Her low preamble all alone, IMore than my soul to hear her echoed song Throb through the ribbed stone ; Singing and murmuring in her feastful mirth, Joying to feel herself alive. Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible earth, Lord of the senses five ; Communing with herself: " All these are mine, And let the world have peace or wars, 'T is one to me." She — when young night divine Crowned dying day with stars, Making sweet close of his delicious toils — Lit light in wreaths and anadems. And pure quintessences of precious oils In hollowed moons of gems, THE PALACE OF ART. 133 To mimic heaven ; and clapt her hands and cried, " I marvel if my still delight In this great house so royal-rich, and wide, Be flattered to the height. " From shape to shape at first within the womb The brain is modelled," she began, " And through all phases of all thought I come Into the perfect man. " All Nature widens upward. Evermore The simpler essence lower lies : More complex is more perfect, owning more Discourse, more widely wise." Then of the moral instinct would she prate, And of the rising from the dead, As hers by right of full-accomplished Fate ; And at the last she said : •' I take possession of men's minds and deeds I live in all things great and small. [ sit apart holding no forms of creeds, But contemplating all." 134 THE PALACE OF ART. Full oft the riddle of the painful earth Flashed through her as she sat alone, But not the less held she her solemn mirth, And intellectual throne Of full-sphered contemplation. So three years She throve, but on the fourth she fell. Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears, Struck through with pangs of hell. Lest she should fail and perish utterly, God, before whom ever lie bare The abysmal deeps of Personality, Plagued her with sore despair. When she would think, where'er she turned her sight, The airy hand confusion wrought. Wrote " Mene, mene," and divided quite The kingdom of her thought. Deep dread and loathing of her solitude Fell on her, from which mood was bom Scorn of herself ; again, from out that mood liaughter at her self-scorn. THE PALACE OF ART. 135 " What ! is not this my place of strength," she said. " My spacious mansion built for me, Whereof the strong foundation-stones were laid Since my first memory ? " But in dark corners of her palace stood Uncertain shapes ; and unawares On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood. And horrible nightmares, And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame, And, with dim fretted foreheads all, On corpses three-months-old at noon she came, That stood against the wall. A spot of dull stagnation, without light Or power of movement, seemed my soul. Mid onward-sloping motions infinite Making for one sure goal. A still salt pool, locked in with bars of sand ; Left on the shore ; that hears all night The plunging seas draw backward trom the land Their moon-led waters white. 136 THE PALACE OF ART. A Star that with the choral starry dance Joined not, but stood, and standing saw The hollow orb of moving Circumstance Rolled round by one fixed law. Back on herself her serpent pride had curled. " No voice," she shrieked in that lone hall, *' No voice breaks through the stillness of this world : One deep, deep silence all ! " She, mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame, Lay there exiled from eternal God, Lost to her place and name ; And death and life she hated equally, And nothing saw, for her despair, But dreadful time, dreadful eternity, No comfort anywhere ; Remaining utterly confused with fears, And ever worse with growing time. And ever unrelieved by dismal tears, And all alone in crime : THE PALACE OF ART. 137 Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round With blackness as a solid wall, Far off she seemed to hear the dully sound Of human footsteps fall. As in strange lands a traveller walking slow, In doubt and great perplexity, A little before moon-rise hears the low Moan of an unknown sea ; And knows not if it be thunder or a sound Of stones thrown down, or one deep cry Of great wild beasts ; then thinketh, " I have founci A new land, but I die." She howled aloud, " I am on fire within. There comes no murmur of reply. What is it that will take away my sin. And save me lest I die ? " So when four years were wholly finished, She threw her royal robes away. " Make me a cottage in the vale," she said, " Where I may mourn and pray. VOL. I. 10 138 THE PALACE OF ART. " Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are So lightly, beautifully built : Perchance I may return with others there When I have purged my guilt." LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Of me you shall not win renown ; You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired : The daughter of a hundred Earls, You are not one to be desired. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, I know you proud to bear your name ; Your pride is yet no mate for mine, Too proud to care from whence I came. Nor would I break for your sweet sake A heart that dotes on truer charms. A simple maiden in her flower Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms. 140 LADY CLARA VERB DE VERE. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Some meeker pupil you must find, For were you queen of all that is, I could not stoop to such a mind. You sought to prove how I could love, And my disdain is my reply. The lion on your old stone gates Is not more cold to you than I. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, You put strange memories in my head. Not thrice your branching limes have blown Since I beheld young Laurence dead. your sweet eyes, your low replies : A great enchantress you may be ; But there was that across his throat Which you had hardly cared to see. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, When thus he met his mother's view, She had the passions of her kind, She spake some certain truths of you. Indeed, I heard one bitter word That scarce is fit for you to hear ; Her manners had not that repose Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vero LADY CLARA VERB DE VERE, 141 Lady Clara Vere de Vere, There stands a spectre in your hall : The gxiilt of blood is at your door : You changed a wholesome heart to gal' You held your course without remorse, To make him trust his modest worth, And, last, you fixed a vacant stare. And slew him with your noble birth. Trast me, Clara Vere de Vere, From yon blue heavens above us bent The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'T is only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, « And simple faith than Norman blood. I know you, Clara Vere de Vere : You pine among your halls and towers , The languid light of your proud eyes Is wearied of the rolling hours. In glowing health, with boundless wealth, But sickening of a vague disease. You know so ill to deal with time, You needs must play such pranks as these 142 LADY CLAEA VERB DE VERE. Clara, Clara Vere de Vere, If Time be heavy on your hands, Are there no beggars at your gate, Nor any poor about your lands ? ! teach the orphan-boy to read, Or teach the orphan-girl to sew. Pray Heaven for a human heart, And let the foolish yeoman go. THE MAY QUEEN I. You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear; To-morrow 'ill be the happiest time of all the glad New- year; Of all the glad New-year, mother, the maddest, men-iest day; For I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be Queen o' the May. n. There's many a black, black eye, they say, but none so bright as mine ; There 's Margaret and Mary, there 's Kate and Caroline ; But none so fair as little Alice in all the land, they say ; So I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be Queen o' the May. 144 THE MAY QUEEN. m. I sleep so sound all night, mother, that I shall nevei wake, tf you do not call me loud when the day begins to break : But I must gather knots of flowers, and buds and garlands gay, For I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be Queen o' the May. IV. As I came up the valley, whom think ye should I see. But Robin leaning on the bridge beneath the hazel-tree ^ He thought of that sharp look, mother, I gave him yesterday, — But I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be Queen o' the May. V. He thought I was a ghost, mother, for I was all in white, And I ran by hun without speaking, like a flash of ligiit. They call me cniel -hearted, but I care not what they say. For I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be Queen o' the May. THE MAY QUEEN. 145 VI. They say he 's dying all for love, but that can never be . They say his heart is breaking, mother — what is that to me? There 's many a bolder lad 'ill woo me any summer day, And I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be Queen o' the May. VII. Little Effie shall go with me to-morrow to the green, And you '11 be there, too, mother, to see me made the Queen : For the shepherd lads on every side 'ill come from far away. And I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be Queen o' the May. vm. The honeysuckle round the porch has woven its wavy bowers. And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers ; And the wild marsh-marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray. And I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be Queen o' the May. 146 THE MAY QUEEN. tx. The night-winds come and go, mother, upon the meadow- grass. And the happy stars above them seem to brighten as they pass ; There will not be a drop of rain the whole of the livelong day. And I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be Queen o' the May. X. All the valley, mother, 'ill be fresh and green and still, And the cowslip and the crowfoot are over all the hill. And the rivulet in the flowery dale 'ill merrily glance and play, For 1 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I 'm to be Queen o' the May. XI. So you must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear. To-morrow 'ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year : To-morrow 'ill be of all the year the maddest, merriest day, For I 'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I m to be Queen o' the May. NEW YEAR'S EVE. If you 're waking call me early, call me early, mother dear, For I would see the sun rise upon the glad New-year. It is the last New-year that I shall ever see, Then you may lay me low i' the mould, and think no more of me. n. To-night I saw the sun set : he set and left behind The good old year, the dear old time, and all my peace of mind ; And the New-year's coming up, mother, but I shall never see The blossom on the blackthorn, the leaf upon the tree. 148 NEW yeae's eve. m. Last May we made a crown of flowers : we had a merry day ; Beneath the hawthorn on the green they made me Queen of May ; And we danced about the May -pole and in the hazel copse, Till Charles's Wain came out above the tall white chimney-tops. rv. There 's not a flower on all the hills : the frost is on the pane : I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again : I wish the snow would melt and the sun come out on high: I long to see a flower so before the day I die. V. The building rook 'ill caw from the windy tall elm-tree, And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea, And the swallow 'ill come back again with summer o'er the wave, But I shall lie alone, mother, within the mouldering grave. NEW year's eve. 149 VI. Upon the chancel-casement, and upon that grave of mine, In the early, early morning the summer sun 'ill shine, Before the red cock crows from the farm upon the hill. When you are warm-asleep, mother, and all the world is still. vn. When the flowers come again, mother, beneath the waning light You '11 never see me more in the long gray fields at night ; When from the dry dark wold the summer airs blow cool On the oat-grass and the sword-grass, and the bulrush in the pool. VIII. Vou '11 bury me, my mother, just beneath the hawthorn shade, A nd you '11 come sometimes and see me where I am lowly laid. I shall not forget you, mother, I shall hear you when you pass. With your feet above my head in the long and pleasani grass. 150 NEW year's eve. IX. I have been wild and wayward, but you '11 forgive me now; You '11 kiss me, my own mother, upon my cheek and brow; Nay, nay, you must not weep, nor let your grief be wild, You should not fret for me, mother, you have another child. X. If I can I '11 come again, mother, from out my resting- place ; Though you '11 not see me, mother, I shall look upon your face ; Though I cannot speak a word, I shall hearken what you say, And be often, often with you when you think I 'm far away. XI. Good-night, good-night, when I have said good -night forevermore. And you see me carried out from the threshold of the door; Don 't let Effie come to see me till my grave be growing green : She '11 be a better child to you than ever I have been. NEW yeak's eve. 151 xn. She '11 find my garden-tools upon the granary floor : Let her take 'em : they are hers : I shall never garden more : But tell her, when I 'm gone, to train the rose-bush that I set About the parlor-window and the box of mignonette. xni. Good-night, sweet mother: call me before the day is bom. All night I lie awake, but I fall asleep at mom ; But I would see the sun rise upon the glad New-year, So, if you 're waking, call me, call me early, mother dear. CONCLUSION. I. I THOUGHT to pass away before, and yet alive I am ; And in the fields all round I hear the bleating of tlie lamb. How sadly, I remember, rose the morning of the year ! To die before the snowdrop came, and now the violet 's here. n. sweet is the new violet, that comes beneath the skies, And sweeter is the young lamb's voice to me that cannot rise, And sweet is all the land about, and all the flowers that blow. And sweeter far is death than life to me that long to g'o. CONCLUSION. 153 m. It seemed so hard at first, mother, to leave the blessed sun, A.nd now it seems as hard to stay; and yet. His will be done ! But still I think it can't be long before I find release ; And that good man, the clergyman, has told me words of peace, rv. blessings on his kindly voice and on his silver hair ! And blessings on his whole life long, until he meet me there ! O blessings on his kindly heart and on his silver head ! A thousand times I blest him, as he knelt beside my bid. V. He showed me all the mercy, for he taught me all the sin. Now, though my lamp was lighted late, there 's One will let me in : Nor would I now be well, mother, again, if that could be, For my desire is but to pass to Him that died fo" me. VOL. I. 11 l54 CONCLUSION. VT. I did not hear the dog howl, mother, or the death-watch beat. There came a sweeter token when the night and morning meet : But sit beside my bed, mother, and put your hand m mine, And Effie on the other side, and I will tell the sign. VII. All in the wild March-morning I heard the angels call ; It was when the moon was setting, and . the dark was over all ; The trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll, And in the wild March-morning I heard them call my soul. Vlll. For lying broad awake I thought of you and Effie dear; 1 saw you sitting in the house, and I no longer here ; With all my strength I prayed for both, and so I feh resigned, A nd up the valley came a swell of music on the wind. CONCLUSION. 155 JX. I thought that it was fancy, and I listened in my bed. And then did something speak to me — I know noi what was said ; For great delight and shuddering took hold of all my mind, And up the valley came again the music on the wind. X. But you were sleeping ; and I said, " It 's not for them : it 's mine." And if it comes three times, I thought, I take it for a sign. And once again it came, and close beside the window- bars. Then seemed to go right up to Heaven and die among the stars. XI. So now I think my time is near. I trust it is. I know The blessed music went that way my soul will have to go. And for myself, indeed, I care not if I go to-day, But, Effie, you must comfort her when I am past away 156 CONCLUSION. xn. And say to Robin a kind word, and tell him not to fret ; There 's many worthier than I would make him happy yet. If I had lived — I cannot tell — I might have been his wife; But all these things have ceased to be, with my desire of life. yiii , look ! the sun begins to rise, the heavens are in a glow; He shines upon a hundred fields, and all of them I Icnow. And there I move no longer now, and there his light may shine — Wild flowers in the valley for other hands than mine. xrv. O sweet and strange it seems to me, that ere this day is done The voice that now is speaking may be beyond the sun — Forever and forever with those just souls and true — And what is life, that we should moan ? why make we such ado ? CONCLUSION. 157 XV. Forever and forever, all in a blessed home — And there to wait a little while till you and Effie come — To lie within the light of God, as 1 lie upon your breast — And the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. THE LOTOS-EATERS. I. " Courage ! " he said, and pointed toward the land ; " This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land, In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon ; And like a dowmward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. n. A land of streams ! some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go ; And some through wavering lights and shadows bro\ve, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming nver seaward flow From the inner land : far off, three mountain-tops. THE LOTOS-EATERS. 159 Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flushed : and, dewed with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. m. The charmed sunset lingered low adown In the red West : through mountain clefts the dale Was seen far inland, and the yellow down Bordered with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow, set with slender galingale ; A land where all things always seemed the same ! And round about the keel with faces pale, Dark faces pale against that rosy flame. The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came. Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores ; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave ; And deep-asleep he seemed, yet all awake. And music in his ears his beatins: heart did maki; 160 THE LOTOS-EATERS. V. They sat them down upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore ; And sweet it was to dream of Father-land, Of child, and wife, and slave ; but evermore Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, " We will return no more ; " And all at once they sang, " Our island home Is far beyond the wave ; we will no longer roam." CHORIC SONG. 1. There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass ; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes ; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. THE LOTOS-EATEKS. 161 Here are cool mosses deep, And through the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. Why are we weighed upon with heaviness. And utterly consumed with sharp distress. While all things else have rest from weariness ? All things have rest : why should we toil alone, We only toil, who are the first of things. And make perpetual moan. Still from one sorrow to another thrown : Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings. Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm ; Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings, " There is no joy but calm ! " W hy should we only toil, the roof and crown of th ing - Lo ! in the middle of the wood. The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud With winds upon the branch, and there 162 THE LOTOS-EATERS. Grows green and broad, and takes no care, Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon Nightly dew-fed ; and turning yellow Falls, and floats adown the air. Lo ! sweetened with the summer light. The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, Drops in a silent autumn night. All its allotted length of days, The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Vaxilted o'er the dark-blue sea. Death is the end of life ; ah ! why Should life all labor be ? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are diimb. Let us alone. What is it that will last ? AU things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil ? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave ? THE LOTOS-EATERS. 163 AIJ things have rest, and ripen toward the grave, In silence ripen, fall and cease : Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful ease ! 5. How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream ! Ta dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height ; To hear each other's whispered speech ; Eating the Lotos, day by day. To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray : To lend our hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of mild-minded melancholy; To muse and brood and live again in memory, With those old faces of our infancy Heaped over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass ! Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And dear the last embraces of our wives 1*54 THE LOTOS-F.A.TERS. And their warm tears : but all hath suffered change ; For surely now our household hearths are cold : Our sons inherit us : our looks are strange : And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes, over-bold Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Before them of the ten-years' war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle ? Let what is broken so remain. The Gods are hard to reconcile : 'T is hard to settle order once again. There is confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain on pain. Long labor unto aged breath, Sore task to hearts worn out with many wars, And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars. But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly. How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly,) With half-dropt eyelids still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly THE LOTOS-EATERS. 165 His waters from the purple hill — To hear the dewy echoes calling Fi-om cave to cave through the thick-twined vine — To hear the emerald-colored water falling Through many a woven acanthus-wreath divine ! Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine, 8. The Lotos blooms below the flowery peak : The Lotos blows by every winding creek : All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone : Through every hollow cave and alley lone Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown. We have had enough of action, and of motion we. Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-foun- tains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, in the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled 166 THE LOTOS-EATERS. Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world ; Wliere they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of Avi-ong, Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are stronr ; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the han'^est with enduring toil. Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil ; Till they perish and they suffer — some, 't is whis- pered — down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Suiely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more. A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN, 1 READ, before my eyelids dropt their shade, " The Legend of Good Women" long ago Sung by the morning star of song, who made His music heard below ; n. Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still. III. And, for a while, the knowledge of his art Held me above the subject, as strong gales Hold swollen clouds from raining, though my heart, Brimful of those wild tales, 16S A DREAM OF FAIB, WOMEN. IV. Charged both mine eyes with tears. In every land I saw, wherever light illumineth, Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand The downward slope to aeath. V. Those far-renowned brides of ancient song Peopled the hollow dark, like burning stars, And I heard sounds of insult, shame and wrong. And trumpets blown for wars ; VI. And clattering flints battered with clanging hoofs ; And I saw crowds in columned sanctuaries ; And forms that passed at windows and on roofs Of marble palaces ; vn. Corpses across the threshold ; heroes tall Dislodging pinnacle and parapet Upon the tortoise creeping to the wall ; Lancers in ambush set ; A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 169 And high shrine-doors burst through with heated blasts That run before the fluttering tongues of fire ; White surf wind-scattered over sails and masts, And ever climbing higher ; IX. Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates, Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes. Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates. And hushed seraglios. X. So shape chased shape as swift as, when to land Bluster the winds and tides the self-same way, Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level sand, Tom from the fringe of spray. XI. I started once, or seemed to start, in pain, Resolved on noble things, and strove to speak, A.S when a great thought strikes along the brain. And flushes all the cheek. 170 A DREAM OF FAIE WOMEN. zn. And once my arm was lifted to hew down A cavalier from off his saddle-bow, That bore a lady from a leaguered town ; And then, I know not how, All those sharp fancies, by down-lapsing thought Streamed onward, lost their edges, and did creep Rolled on each other, rounded, smoothed, and brought Into the gulfs of sleep. XIV. At last methought that I had wandered far In an old wood : fresh-washed in coolest dew. The maiden splendors of the morning star Shook in the steadfast blue, XV. Enormous elm-tree boles did stoop and lean Upon the dusky brushwood underneath Their broad curved branches, fledged with clearest green New from its silken sheath. A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 171 The dim red morn had died, her journey done, And with dead lips smiled at the twilight plain. Half-fallen across the threshold of the sun. Never to rise again. There was no motion in the dumb dead air, Not any song of bird or sound of rill ; Gross darkness of the inner sepulchre Is not so deadly still xvm. As that wide forest. Growths of jasmine turned Their humid arms festooning tree to tree. And at the root through lush green grasses burned The red anemone. xvs.. 1 knew the flowers, I knew the leaves, 1 knew The tearful glimmer of the languid dawn On those long, rank, dark wood-walks drenched in dew Leadinsf from lawn to lawn. 172 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. zz. The smell of violets, hidden in the green, Poured back into my empty soul and frame The times when I remember to have been Joyful and free from blame. XXI. And from within me a clear under-tone Thrilled through mine ears in that unblissful clime, " Pass freely through ! the wood is all thine own, Until the end of time." xxu. At length I saw a lady within call, Stiller than chiselled marble, standing there ; A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair. XXIII. Her loveliness \vith shame and with surprise Froze my swift speech ; she turning on my face The star-like sorrows of immortal eyes, Spcke slowly in her place. A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 173 XXIV. " 1 had great beauty : ask thou not my name : No one can be more wise than destiny. Many drew swords and died. Where'er I came I brought calamity." XXV. " No marvel, sovereign lady ! in fair field, Myself for such a face had boldly died," 1 answered free, and turning I appealed To one that stood beside. XXVI. But she, with sick and scornful looks averse, To her full height her stately stature draws ; " My youth," she said, "was blasted with a curse This woman was the cause. " 1 was cut off from hope in that sad place, Which yet to name my spirit loathes and fears My father held his hand upon his face : I, blinded with my tears, 174 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. XXV 111. " Still strove to speak : my voice was thick with sighs As in a dream. Dimly I could descry The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes, Waiting to see me die. XXIX. " The high masts flicker' d as they lay afloat ; The crowds, the temples, waver' d, and the shore ; The bright death quiver'd at the victim's threat ; Touch'd ; and I knew no more." XXX. Whereto the other with a downward brow : " I would the white cold heavy-plunging foam, Whirled by the wind, had rolled me deep below, Then when I left my home." XXXI. Her slow full words sank through the silence drear, As thunder-drops fall on a sleeping sea : Sudden I heard a voice that cried, " Come here, That I may look on thee." A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 175 XXXII. 1 turning saw, throned on a flowery rise, One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled ; A queen with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes Brow-bound with burning gold. XXXIII. She, flashing forth a haughty smile, began : " 1 governed men by change, and so I swayed All moods. 'T is long since I have seen a man. Once, like the moon, I made XXXIV. " The ever-shifting currents of the blood According to my humor ebb and flow. I have no men to govern in this wood : That makes my only woe. XXXV. " Nay — yet it chafes me that I could not bend One will; nor tame and tutor with mine eye That dull cold-blooded Csesar. Prithee, friend, Where is Mark Antony ? 176 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. XXXVI. " The man my lover, with whom I rode sublime On Fortune's neck : we sat as God by God : The Nilus would have risen before his time And flooded at our nod. XXXVII. " We drank the Lybian Sun to sleep, and lit Lamps which outburned Canopus. O my life In Egypt ! O the dalliance and the wit, The flattery and the strife, XXX vm. " And the wild kiss, when fresh from war's alarms, My Hercules, my Roman Antony, My mailed Bacchus leapt into my arms, Contented there to die ! " And there, he died ; and when I heard my name Sighed forth with life I would not brook my fear Of the other : with a worm I balked his fame. What else was left ? — look here ! " A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 177 XL. (With that she tore her robe apart, and half The polished argent of her breast to sight Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a laugh, Showing the aspick's bite :) XLI. " I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found Me lying dead, my crown about my brows, A name forever ! — lying robed and crowned, Worthy a Roman spouse." XLn. Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest range Struck by all passion, did fall down and glance From tone to tone, and glided through all change Of liveliest utterance. When she made pause I knew not for delight ; Because with sudden motion from the ground She raised her piercing orbs and filled with light The interval of sound. 178 A DEEAM OF FAIR WOMEN. Still with their fires Love tipt his keenest darts ; As once they drew into two burning rings All beams of Love, melting the mighty hearts Of captains and of kings. XLV. Slowly my sense undazzled. Then I heard A noise of some one coming through the lawn, And singing clearer than the crested bird, That claps his wings at dawn. " The torrent brooks of hallowed Israel From craggy hollows pouring, late and soon, Sound all night long, in falling through the dell. Far-heard beneath the moon. " The balmy moon of blessed Israel Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine All night the splintered crags that wall the dell With spires of silver shine." A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 179 XL VIII. As one that museth where broad sunshine laves The lawn by some cathedral, through the door Hearing the holy organ rolling waves Of sound on roof and floor XLIX. Within, and anthem sung, is charmed and tied To where he stands, — so stood I, when that flow Of music left the lips of her that died To save her father's vow ; L. The daughter of the warrior Gileadite, A maiden pure ; as when she went along From Mizpeh's towered gate with welcome light. With timbrel and with song. LI. My words leapt forth : "Heaven heads the count of crimen With that wild oath." She rendered answer high : " Not so, nor once alone ; a thousand times I would be born and die. 50 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. Ln. " Single I grew, like some green plant, whose root Creeps to the garden water-pipes beneath. Feeding the flower : but ere my flower to fruit Changed, I was ripe for death, Lin. " My God, my land, my father — these did move Me from my bliss of life, that Nature gave, Lowered softly with a threefold chord of love Down to a silent grave. LIV " And I went mourning, * No fair Hebrew boy Shall smile away my maiden blame among The Hebrew mothers,' — emptied of all joy, Leaving the dance and song, LV. " Leaving the olive-gardens far below, Leaving the promise of my bridal bower, The valleys of grape-loaded vines that glow Beneath the battled tower. A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 181 LVI. " The light white cloud swam over us. Anon We heard the lion roaring from his den ; We saw the large white stars rise one by one, Or, from the darkened glen, LVII. " Saw God divide the night with flying flame, And thunder on the everlasting hills. I heard Him, for He spake, and grief became A solemn scorn of ills. " When the next moon was rolled into the sky, Strength came to me that equalled my desire. How beautiful a thing it was to die For God and for my sire ! LIX. " It comforts me in this one thought to dwell, That I subdued me to my father's will ; Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell, Sweetens the spirit still. 182 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. LX. " Moreover, it is written that my race Hewed Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer On Arnon unto Minneth." Here her face Glowed, as I looked at her. She locked her lips : she left me where I stood : " Glory to God," she sang, and past afar, Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood. Toward the morning-star. Lxn. Losing her carol I stood pensively. As one that from a casement leans his head, When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly, And the old year is dead. LXIII. " Alas ! alas ! " a low voice, full of care, Murmured beside me ; " Turn and look on me I am that Rosamond, whom men call fair, If what I was I be. A DEEAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 183 " Would I had been some maiden coarse and poor ! O me ! that I should ever see the light ! Those dragon eyes of angered Eleanor Do hunt me, day and night." LXV. She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and trust : To whom the Egyptian : " O, you tamely died ! You should have clung to Fulvia's waist, and thrust The dagger through her side." LXVI. With that sharp sound the white dawn's creeping beams. Stolen to my brain, dissolved the mystery Of folded sleep. The captain of my dreams Ruled in the eastern sky. Morn broadened on the borders of the dark, Ere 1 saw her who clasped in her last trance Her murdered father's head, or Joan of Arc, A light of ancient France ; 184 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. LXVin. Or her, who knew that Love can vanquish Death, Who kneeling, with one arm about her king. Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath. Sweet as new buds in Spring. LXIX. No memory labors longer from the deep Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep To gather and tell o'er LXX. Each little sound and sight. With what dull pain Compassed, how eagerly I sought to strike Into that wondrous track of dreams again ! But no two dreams are like. LXXI. As when a soul laments, which hath been blest, Desiring what is mingled with past years, In yearnings that can never be exprest By signs or groans or tears ; A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 185 Because all words, though culled with choicest art. Failing to give the bitter of the sweet, Wither beneath the palate, and the heart Faints, faded by its heat. roL. I. 13 MARGARET. O SWEET pale Margaret, O rare pale Margaret, WTiat lit your eyes with tearful power, Like moonlight on a falling shower ? Who lent you, love, your mortal dower Of pensive thought and aspect pale, Your melancholy, sweet and frail As perfume of the cuckoo-flower ? From the westward-winding flood. From the evening-lighted wood, From all things outward you have won A tearful grace, as though you stood Between the rainbow and the sun. The very smile before* you speak, That dimples your transparent cheek, Encircles all the heart, and feedeth The senses with a still delight MARGARET, IS'7 Of dainty sorrow without sound, Like the tender amber round, Which the moon about her spreadeth, Moving through a fleecy night. You love, remaining peacefully, To hear the murmur of the strife, But enter not the toil of life. Your spirit is the calmed sea, Laid by the tumult of the fight. You are the evening star, alway Remaining betwixt dark and bright : Lulled echoes of laborious day Come to you, gleams of mellow light Float by you on the verge of night. What can it matter, Margaret, What songs below the waning stars The lion-heart, Plantagenet, Sang looking through his prison bars ? Exquisite Margaret, who can tell The last wild thought of Chatelet, Just ere the falling axe did part The burning brain from the true heart, Even in her sight he loved so well ? 188 MARGARET. A fairy shield youi Genius made And gave you on your natal day Your sorrow, only sorrow's shade, Keeps real sorrow far away. You move not in such solitudes, You are not less divine, But more human in your moods. Than your twin-sister, Adeline. Your hair is darker, and your eyes Touched with a somewhat darker hue, And less aerially blue, but ever trembling through the dew Of dainty-woful sympathies. sweet pale Margaret, rare pale Margaret, Come down, come down, and hear me speak ; Tie up the ringlets on your cheek : The sun is just about to set. The arching limes are tall and shady, And faint, rainy lights are seen. Moving in the leavy beech. Rise from the feast of sorrow, lady, Where all day long you sit between Joy and woe, and whisper each. MARGARET. 189 Or only look across the lawn, Look out below your bower-eaves, Look down, and let your blue eyes dawn Upon me through the jasmine-leaves. THE BLACKBIRD. Blackbird ! sing me something well : While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may'st warble, eat and dwell. The espaliers and the standards all Are thine ; the range of lawn and park : The unnetted blackhearts ripen dark, All thine, against the garden wall. Yet, though I spared thee kith and kin. Thy sole delight is, sitting still, With that gold dagger of thy bill To fret the summer jennetin. A golden bill ! the silver tongue, Cold February loved, is dry : Plenty corrupts the melody That made thee famous once, when young : THE BLACKBIRD. 191 And in the sultry garden-squares, Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse, I hear thee not at all, or hoarse As when a hawker hawks his wares. Take warning ! he that will not sing While yon sun prospers in the blue, Shall sing for want, ere leaves are new, Caught in the frozen palms of Spring. DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. Fttll knee-deep lies the winter snow, And the winter winds are wearily sighing Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow, And tread softly and speak low, For the old year lies a-dying. Old year, you must not die ; You came to us so readily, You lived with us so steadily, Old year, you shall not die. n. He lieth still : he doth not move : He will not see the dawn of day. He hath no other life above. He gave me a friend, and a true true-love, And the New-year will take 'em away. THE DEATH 01- THE OLD YEAR. 193 Old year, you must not go ; So long as you have been with us, Such joy as you have seen with us, Old year, you shall not go. He frothed his bumpers to the brim ; A jollier year we shall not see. But though his eyes are waxing dim, And though his foes speak ill of him. He was a friend to me. Old year, you shall not die ; We did so laugh and cry with you, I 've half a mind to die with you, Old year, if you must die. rv. He was full of joke and jest. But all his merry quips are o'er. To see him die, across the waste His son and heir doth ride post-haste, But he '11 be dead before. Every one for his own. The night is starry and cold, my friend, And the New-year, blithe and bold, my friend, Comes up to take his own. 194 THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. V. How hard he breathes ! over the snow I heard just now the crowing cock. The shadows flicker to and fro : The cricket chirps : the light bums low : 'T is nearly twelve o'clock. Shake hands, before you die. Old year, we '11 dearly rue for you : What is it we can do for you ? Speak out before you die. VI. His face is growing sharp and thin. Alack ! our friend is gone. Close up his eyes : tie up his chin : Step from the corpse, and let him in That standeth there alone. And waiteth at the door. There 's a new foot on the floor, my friend. And a new face at the door, my friend, A new face at the door. To J. S. The wind, that beats the mountain, blows More softly round the open wold, And gently comes the world to those That are cast in g-entle mould. And me this knowledge bolder made, Or else I had not dared to flow In these words toward you, and invade Even with a verse your holy woe. HI. 'T is strange that those we lean on most. Those in whose laps our limbs are nurseJ. Fall into shadow, soonest lost : Those we love first are taken first. 196 TO J. s. IV. God gives us love. Something to love He lends us ; but, when love is grown To ripeness, that on which it throve Falls off, and love is left alone. V. This is the curse of time. Alas ! In grief I am not all unlearned ; Once through mine own doors Death did pass ; One went, who never hath returned. VI. He will not smile — not speak to me Once more. Two years his chair is seen Empty before us. That was he Without whose life i had not been. Your loss is rarer ; for this star Rose with you through a little arc Of heaven, nor having wandered far, Shot on the sudden into dark. TO J. s. 197 I knew your brother : his mute dust I honor, and his living worth : A man more pure and bold and just Was never bom into the earth. IX. I have not looked upon you nigh, Since that dear soul hath fallen asleep. Great Nature is more wise than I : I will not tell you not to weep. z. And though my own eyes fill with dew. Drawn from the spirit through the brain, I will not even preach to you, "Weep, weeping dulls the inward pain." XI. Let Grief be her own mistress still. She loveth her own anguish deep More than much pleasure. Let her will Be done — to weep or not to weep. 193 XII. I will not say " God's ordinance Of Death is blo\vn in every wind ; " For that is not a common chance That takes away a noble mind. xm. His memory long will live alone In all our hearts, as mournful light That broods above the fallen sun, And dwells in heaven half the night. XIV. Vain solace ! Memory standing near Cast do^vn her eyes, and in her throat Her voice seemed distant, and a tear Dropt on the letters as I wrote. XV. I wrote I know not what. In truth, How should I soothe you anyway, Who miss the brother of your youth ? Yet something I did wish to say : TO J. s. 199 For he too was a friend to me : Both are my friends, and my true breast Bleedeth for both ; yet it may be That only silence suiteth best. XVII. Words weaker than your grief would make Grief more. 'T were better I should cease Although myself could almost take The place of him that sleeps in peace : xvm. Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace : Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul, While the stars burn, the moons increase, And the great ages onward roll. XDC. Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet. Nothing comes to thee new or strange. Sleep full of rest from head to feet ; Lie still, dry dust, secure of change. You ask me, why, though ill at ease, Within this region I subsist, Whose spirits falter in the mist, And languish for the purple seas * It is the land that freemen till. That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land where, girt with friends or foes, A man may speak the thing he will ; A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent : Where faction seldom gathers head, But by degrees to fulness wrought, The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and space to work and spread. 201 Should banded unions persecute Opinion, and induce a time When single thought is civil crime, And individual freedom mute ; Though Power should make from land to land The name of Britain trebly great — Though every channel of the State Should almost choke with golden sand - Yet waft me from the harbor-mouth, Wild wind ! I seek a warmer sky, And I will see before I die The palms and temples of the South. I. 14 Of old sat Freedom on the heights, The thunders breaking at her feet : Above her shook the starry lights : She heard the torrents meet. Within her place she did rejoice, Self-gathered in her prophet-mind. But fragments of her mighty voice Came rolling on the wind. Then stept she down through town and field To mingle with the human race, And part by part to men revealed The fulness of her face — Grave mother of majestic works. From her isle-altar gazing down. Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks, And, King-like, wears the crown : 203 Her open eyes desire the truth. The wisdom of a thousand years Is in them. May perpetual youth Keep dry their light from tears ; That her fair form may stand and shine, Make bright our days and light our drearriS. Turning to scorn with lips divine The falsehood of extremes ! Love thou thy land, with love far brought From out the storied Past, and used Within the Present, but transfused Through future time by power of thought. True love turned round on fixed poles, Love that endures not sordid ends, For English natures, freemen, friends, Thy brothers and immortal souls. But pamper not a hasty time. Nor feed with crude imaginings The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings, That every sophister can lime. Deliver not the tasks of might To weakness, neither hide the ray From those, not blind, who wait for day, Though sitting girt with doubtful light. 205 Make knowledge circle with the winds ; But let her herald, Reverence, fly Before her to whatever sky Bear seed of men and growth of minds. Watch what main-currents draw the years ; Cut Prejudice against the grain : But gentle words are always gain : Regard the weakness of thy peers : Nor toil for title, place, or touch Of pension, neither count on praise : It grows to guerdon after-days : Nor deal in watchwords overmuch ; Not clinging to some ancient saw : Not mastered by some modem term ; Not swift nor slow to change, but firm : And in its season brmg the law ; That from Discussion's lip may fall With Life, that, working strongly, binds Set in all lights by many minds, Tf close the interests of all. 206 For Nature also, cold and warm, And moist and dry, devising long, Through many agents making strong. Matures the individual form. Meet is it changes should control Our being, lest we rust in ease. We all are changed by still degrees, All but the basis of the soul. So let the change which comes be free To ingroove itself with that, which flies, And work, a joint of state, that plies Its office, moved with sympathy. A saying hard to shape in act ; For all the past of Time reveals A bridal dawn of thunder-peals, Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact. Even now we hear with inward strife A motion toiling in the gloom — The Spirit of the years to come Yearning to mix himself with Life. 207 A slow-developed strength awaits Completion in a painful school ; Phantoms of other forms of rule, New Majesties of mighty States — The warders of the growing hour, But vague in vapor, hard to mark ; And round them sea and air are dark With great contrivances of Power. Of many changes, aptly joined, Is bodied forth the second whole. Regard gradation, lest the soul Of Discord race the rising wind : A wind to pufF your idol-fires, And heap their ashes on the head ; To shame the boast so often made, That we are wiser than our sires, O yet, if Nature's evil star Drive men in manhood, as in youth. To follow flying steps of Truth Across the brazen bridge of war — 208 If New and Old, disastrous feud, Must ever shock, like armed foes, And this be true, till Time shall close, That Principles are rained in blood ; Not yet the wise of heart would cease To hold his hope through shame and guilt, But with his hand against the hilt, Would pace the troubled land, like Peace ; Not less, though dogs of Faction bay, Would serve his kind in deed and word, Certain, if knowledge bring the sword, That knowledge takes the sword away — Would love the gleams of good that broke From either side, nor veil his eyes : And if some dreadful need should rise, Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke : To-morrow yet would reap to-day. As we bear blossom of the dead ; Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay. THE GOOSE. I KNEW an old wife lean and poor. Her rags scarce held together ; There strode a stranger to the door And it was windy weather. He held a goose upon his arm, %e uttered rhyme and reason " Here, take the goose, and keep you warm, It 8 a stormy season." III. She caWht the white goose by the leg, A goAe — 't was no great matter. The goo^ let fall a golden egg With cfckle and with clatter. 210 THE GOOSE. IV. She dropt the goose, and caught the pelf, And ran to tell her neighbors ; And blessed herself, and cursed herself, And rested from her labors. V. And feeding high, and living soft, Grew plump and able-bodied ; Until the grave churchwarden doffed. The parson smirked and nodded. VI. So sitting, served by man and maid, She felt her heart grow prouder : But ah ! the more the white goosfi V»i. It clacked and cackled louder. VII. It cluttered here, it chuckled therf; It stirred the old wife's mettle She shifted in her elbow-chair. And hurled the pan and kett3. THE GOOSE. 211 VIII. " A quinsy choke thy cursed note ! " Then waxed her anger stronger. " Go, take the goose, and wring her throat, 1 will not bear it longer." Then yelped the cur, and yawled the cat ; Ran Gaffer, stumbled Gammer. The goose flew this way and flew that. And filled the house with clamor. z. As head and heels upon the floor They floundered all together, There strode a stranger to the door, And it was windy weather: XI. He took the goose upon his arm. He uttered words of scorning ; " So keep you cold, or keep you warm. It is a stormy morning." 912 THE GOOSE. xu. The wild wind rang from park and plain, And round the attics rumbled, Till all the tables danced again, And half the chimneys tumbled. XIII. The glass blew in, the fire blew out. The blast was hard and harder. Her cap blew off, her gown blew up, And a whirlwind cleared the larder • And while on all sides breaking loose Her household fled the danger. Quoth she, " The Devil take the goose, And God forget the stranger ! " THE EPIC At Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve, — The game of forfeits done — the girls all kissed Beneath the sacred bush and past away — The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall, The host and I, sat round the wassail-bowl, Then half-way ebbed : and there we held a talk, How all the old honor had from Christmas gone. Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games In some odd nooks like this ; till I, tired out With cutting eights that day upon the pond. Where, three times slipping from the outer edge, I bumped the ice into three several stars. Fell in a doze ; and half-awake I heard The parson taking wide and wider sweeps. Now harping on the church-commissioners. Now hawking at Geology and schism ; Until I woke, and found him settled down Upon the general decay of faith 214 THE EPIC. Right through the world — " at home was little lelt, And none abroad : there was no anchor, none, To hold by." Francis, laughing, clapt his hand On Everard's shoulder, with " I hold by him." " And I," quoth Everard, " by the wassail-bowl." " Why yes," I said. " we knew your gift that way At college : but another which you had, I mean of verse, (for so we held it then,) What came of that ? " "You know," said Frank, "he hung His epic of King Arthur in the fire ! " And then to me demanding why ? " O, sir. He thought that nothing new was said, or else Something so said 't was nothing — that a truth Looks freshest in the fashion of the day : God knows : he has a mint of reasons : ask. It pleased me well enough." " Nay, nay," said Hall, " Why take the style of those heroic times ? For nature brings not back the Mastodon, Nor we those times ; and why should any man Remodel models ? these twelve books of mine Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing worth. Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt." " But I," Said Francis, " picked the eleventh from this iiearth, And have it : keep a thing, its use will come. 1 hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes." MORTE D'ARTHUR. 215 He laughed, and 1, though sleepy, like a horse That hears the corn-bin open, pricked my ears ; For I remembered Everard's college fame When we were Freshmen : then at my request He brought it ; and the poet, little urged, But with some prelude of disparagement, Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, Deep-chested music, and to this result. MORTE D'ARTHUR. So all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea ; Until King Arthur's table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonness about their Lord, King Arthur : then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him. Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights. And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land. 216 MORTE D'akTHUR. On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was f\ill. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : " The sequel of to-day unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep — the men I loved. I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were. 1 perish by this people which I made, — Though Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more — but let what will be, be, 1 am so deeply smitten through the helm That without help I cannot last till morn. Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur, Which was my pride : for thou remeniberest how In those old days, one summer noon, an arm Rose up from out the bosom of the lake, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, Holding the sword — and how I rowed across And took it, and have worn it, like a King : And, wheresoever I am sung or told In aftertime, this also shall be known : MOETE d'ARTHUR, 217 But now delay not : take Excalibur, A.nd fling him far into the middle meer : Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word." To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere : " It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus, Aidless, alone, and smitten through the helm. A little thing may harm a wounded man. Yet I thy best will all perform at full. Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word." So saying, from the ruined shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men. Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake- There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon. Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran fortn And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt: For all the haft twinkled with diamond studs. Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long That both his eyes were dazzled, as ho stood This way and tliat dividing the swift mind, VOL. 1. 15 218 MORTE d'aRTHUR, In act to throw ; but at the last it seemed Better to leave Excalibur concealed There in the many-knotted waterfiags, That whistled stitr and dry about the marge So strode he back slow to the wounded King. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : " Hast thou performed my mission which I gave ? What is it thou hast seen ? or what hast heard ? " And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : " I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag." To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale ; " Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name, Not rendering true answer, as beseemed Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight : For surer sign had followed, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the meer. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word.'' Then went Sir Bedivere the second time. Counting the deAvy pebbles, fixed in though t ; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, How curiously and strangely chased, he smote His palms together, and he cried aloud. MORTE d'aRTHUR. 219 " And if indeed I cast the brand away, Surely a precious thing, one worthy note. Should thus be lost forever from the earth, Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. What good should follow this, if this were done ? What harm, undone ? deep harm to disobey, Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey then, if a king demand An act unprofitable, against himself? The king is sick, and knows not what he does. What record, or what relic of my lord Should be to aftertime, but empty breath And rumors of a doubt ? but were this kept, Stored in some treasure-house of mighty Icings, Some one might show it at a joust of arms. Saying, ' King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake. Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills.' So might some old man speak in the aftertime To all the people, winning reverence. But now much honor and much fame were lost.' So spake he, clouded with his own conceit, And hid Excalibur the second time, And so strode back slow to the wounded King 220 MOUTE d'arthur. Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily : " What is it thou hast seen ? o-r what hast heard ? " And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : " I heard the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds." To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath : " Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue. Unknightly, traitor-hearted ! Woe is me ! "Authority forgets a dying king, Laid widowed of the power in his eye That bowed the will. I see thee what thou art. For thou, the latest left of all my knights, In whom should meet the offices of all, Thou wouldst betray me for the preciuus hilt; Either from lust of gold, or like a girl Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, And the third time may prosper, get thee hence : But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, I will arise and slay thee with my hands." Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged Among the bulrush-beds, and clutched the t^word. And strongly wheeled and threw it. 'J' he great brand Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon. MORTE D ARTHUR. 221 A.nd flashing romid and round, and whirled in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the northern sea. So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur : But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him Tliree times, and drew him under in the meer. And lightly went the other to the King. Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath : " Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen! " And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere : " Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, Not though I live three lives of mortal men. So great a miracle as yonder hilt. Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him ; But when I looked again, behold an arm, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, That caught him by the hilt, and brandished him Three times, and drew him under in the meer." And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard : 222 MOKTK D'AKTHUR. " My end draws nigh ; 'tis time that I were gone. Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, And bear me to the margin ; yet I fear ftly wound hath taken cold, and I shall die." So saying, from the pavement he half rose, Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm, And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere Remorsefully regarded through his tears, And would have spoken, but he found not words, Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands. And rising bore him through the place of tombs. But, as he walked. King Arthur panted liard, Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed When all the house is ruute. So sighed the King, Muttering and murmuring at his ear, " Quick, quick I I fear it is too late, and I shall die." But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge, Clothed with his breath, and loolcing, as he walked, Larger than human on the frozen hills. He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right MOKTE d'arthur. 223 The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels — And on a sudden, lo ! the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon. Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge, Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, Beneath them ; and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream — by these Three Queens with crowns of gold — and from them rose A cry that shivered to the tingling stars, And, as it were one voice, an agony Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes, Or hath come, since the making of the world. Then murmured Arthur, " Place me in the barge," And to the barge they came. There those three Queens Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept. But she that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap. And loosed the shattered casque, and chafed his hands, And called him by his name, complaining loud. And dropping bitter tears against his brow Striped with dark blood : for all his face was white And colorless, and like the withered moon 224 MORTE d'arthctr. Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east ; And all his greaves and cuisses dashed with drops Of onset ; and the light and lustrous curls — That made his forehead like a rising sun High from the dais-throne — were parched with dust Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, Mixed with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. So like a shattered column lay the King ; Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest, From spur to plume a star of tournament, Shot through the lists at Camelot, and charged Before the eyes of ladies and of kings. Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere, " Ah ! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go ? Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes ? For now I see the true old times are dead. When every morning brought a noble chance, And every chance brought out a noble knight. Such times have been not since the light that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole Round Table is dissolved Which was an image of the mighty world ; And I, the last, go forth companionless. And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds." And slowly answered Arthur from the barge : MORTE D ARTHUR. 225 " The old order chang-eth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself : what comfort is in me ? I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure ! but thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou seest — if indeed I go — (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) To the island-valley of the Avilion ; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea. Where I will heal me of my grievous wound." 226 MORTE d'arthur. So said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan, That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the meer the wailing died away. Here ended Hall, and our last light, that long Had winked and threatened darkness, flared and fell ; At which the Parson, sent to sleep with sound, And waked with silence, grunted " Good ! " but we Sat rapt: it was the tone with which he read — Perhaps some modern touches here and there Redeemed it from the charge of nothingness — Or else we loved the man, and prized his work ; I know not : but we sitting, as I said. The cock crew loud : as at that time of year The lusty bird takes every hour for dawn : Then Francis, muttering, like a man ill-used, There now — that 's nothing! " drew a little back, And drove his heel into the smouldered log. That sent a blast of sparkles up the flue : MORTE d'arthur. 22T And so to bed ; where yet in sleep 1 seemed To sail with Arthur under looming shores, Point after point, till on to dawn, when dreams Begin to feel the truth and stir of day, To me, methought, who waited with a crowd, There came a bark that, blowing forward, bore King Arthur, like a modern gentleman Of stateliest port ; and all the people cried, " Arthur is come again : he cannot die." Then those that stood upon the hills behind Repeated — " Come again, and thrice as fair ;" And, further inland, voices echoed — " Come With all good things, and war shall be no more." At this a hundred bells began to peal, That with the sound I woke, and heard indeed The clear church-bells ring in the Christmas morn. THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER; THE PICTURES. This morning is the morning of the day When I and Eustace from the city went To see the Gardener's Daughter ; I and he, Brothers in Art ; a friendship so complete Portioned in halves between us, that we grew The fable of the city where we dwelt. My Eustace might have sat for Hercules ; So muscular he spread, so broad a breast. He, by some law that holds in love, and draws The greater to the lesser, long desired A certain miracle of symmetry, A miniature of loveliness, all grace Summed up and closed in little ; — Juliet, she So light of foot, so light of spirit — oh, she THE gardener's DAUGHTER. 229 To me myself, for some three careless moons, The summer pilot of an empty heart Unto the shores of nothing ! Know you not Such touches are but embassies of love, To tamper with the feelings, ere he found Empire for life ? but Eustace painted her, And said to me, she sitting with us then, " When will you paint like this ? " and I replied, (My words were half in earnest, half in jest,) " 'T is not your work, but Love's. Love unperceived. A more ideal Artist he than ail. Came, drew your pencil from you, made those eyes Darker than darkest pansies, and that hair More black than ashbuds in the front of March." And Juliet answered laughing, " Go and see The Gardener's daughter : trust me, after that, You scarce can fail to match his masterpiece." And up we rose, and on the spur we went. Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love. News from the humming city comes to it In sound of funeral or of marriage bells ; And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear The windy clanging of the minster clock ; Although between it and the garden lies 230 THE gardener's daughter ; A league of grass, washed by a slow broad stream, That, stirred with languid pulses of the oar, Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on. Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge Crowned with the minster-towers. The fields between Are de^V}^-f^esh, browsed by deep-uddered kine, And all about the large lime feathers low, The lime a summer home of murmurous wings. In that still place she, hoarded in herself, Grew, seldom seen : not less among us lived Her fame from lip to lip. Who had not heard Of Rose, the Gardener's daughter ? Where was he, So blunt in memory, so old at heart, At such a distance from his youth in grief. That, having seen, forgot ? The common mouth, So gross to express delight, in praise of her Grew oratory. Such a lord is Love, And Beauty such a mistress of the world. And if I said that Fancy, led by Love, Would play with flying forms and images. Yet this is also true, that, long before I looked upon her, when I heard her name My heart was like a prophet to my heart, And told me I should love. A crowd of hopes. OR. THE PICTURES. 2.31 That sought to sow themselves like winged seeds, Bora out of everj'thing I heard and saw. Fluttered about my senses and my soul ; And vague desires, like fitful blasts of balm To one that travels quickly, made the air Of Life delicious, and all kinds of thought, That verged upon them, sweeter than the dream Dreamed by a happy man, when the dark East, Unseen, is brightening to his bridal morn. And sure this orbit of the memory folds Forever in itself the day we went To see her. All the land in flowery squares, Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind, Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud Drew downward : but all else of Heaven was pure Up to the Sun, and May from verge to verge, And May with me from head to heel. And now. As though 't were yesterdaj?', as though it were The hour just flown, that mom \vith all its sound, (For those old Mays had thrice the life of these,) Rings in mine ears. The steer forgot to graze, And, where the hedge-row cuts the pathway, stood, Leaning his horns into the neighbor field. And lowing to his fellows. From the woods Came voices of the well-contented doves. 232 THE gardener's daughter; The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy, Hut shook his song together as he neared His happy home, the ground. To left and right, The cuckoo told his name to all the hills ; The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm ; The redcap whistled ; and the nightingale Sang loud, as though he were the bird of day. And Eustace turned, and smiling said to me, " Hear how the bushes echo ! by my life, These birds have joyful thoughts. Think you they sing Like poets, from the vanity of song ? Or have they any sense of why they sing ? And would they praise the heavens for what they have ? " And I made answer, " Were there nothing else For which to praise the heavens but only love, That only love were cause enough for praise." Lightly he laughed, as one that read my thouLrbt, And on we went ; but ere an hour had passed, We reached a meadow slanting to the North ; Down which a well-worn pathway courted us To one green wicket in a private hedge ; This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk Through ciowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned ; And one warm gust, full-fed with perfume, blew Beyond us, as we entered in the cool. OR, THE PICTURES. 233 The garden stretches southward. In the midst A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade. The garden-glasses shoi>3, and momently The twinkling laurel scattered silver lights. " Eustace," I said, " this wonder keeps the house." He nodded, but a moment afterw^ards He cried, " Look ! look ! " Before he ceased I turned, And, ere a star can wink, beheld her there. For up the porch there grew an Eastern rose, That, flowering high, the last night's gale had caught, And blo\Am. across the walk. One arm aloft — Gowned in pure white, that fitted to the shape — Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood. A single stream of all her soft brown hair Poured on one side : the shadow of the flowers Stole all the golden gloss, and, wavering Lovingly lower, trembled on her waist — Ah, happy shade ! — and still went wavering down, But, ere it touched a foot that might have danced The greensward into greener circles, dipt, And mixed with shadows of the common ground ! But the full day dwelt on her brows, and sunned Her violet eyes, and all her Hebe-bloom, And doubled his own warmth against her lips. And on the bounteous wave of such a breast vo< ' 16 234 THE gardener's daughter ; As never pencil drew. Half light, half shade, She stood, a sight to make an old man young. So rapt, we neared the house ; but she, a Rose In roses, mingled with her fragrant toil. Nor heard us come, nor from her tendance turned Into the world without ; till close at hand, And almost ere I knew mine own intent, This murmur broke the stillness of that air Which brooded round about her : "Ah, one rose, One rose, but one, by those fair fingers culled, Were worth a hundred kisses pressed on lips Less exquisite than thine ! " She looked : but all Suffused with blushes — neither self-possessed Nor startled, but betwixt this mood and that, Divided in a graceful quiet — paused, And dropt the branch she held, and turning, wound Her looser hair in braid, and stirred her lips For some sweet answer, though no answer cat.ne ; Nor yet refused the rose, but granted it. And moved away, and left me, statue-like. In act to render thanks. I, that whole day, Saw her no more, although I lingered there OR, THE PICTURES. 235 Till every daisy slept, and Love's white star Beamed through the thickened cedar in the dusk. So home we went, and all the livelong way With solemn gibe did Eustace banter me. " Now," said he, " will you climb the top of Art. You cannot fail but work in hues to dim The Titianic Flora. Will you match My Juliet ? you, not you, — the Master, Love, A more ideal Artist he than all." So home I went, but could not sleep for joy, Reading her perfect features in the gloom. Kissing the rose she gave me o'er and o'er. And shaping faithful record of the glance That graced the giving — such a noise of life Swarmed in the golden present, such a voice Called to me from the years to come, and such A length of bright horizon rimmed the dark. And all that night I heard the watchmen peal The sliding season : all that night I heard The heavy clocks knoUing the drowsy hours. The drowsy hours, dispensers of all good, O'er the mute city stole with folded wings, Distilling odors on me as they went To greet their fairer sisters of the East. Love at first sight, first-bom and heir to all, 236 THE gardener's daughter; Made this night thus. Henceforward squall nor storm Could keep me from that Eden where she dwelt. Light pretexts drew me : sometimes a Dutch love For tulips ; then for roses, moss or musk, To grace my city-rooms ; or fruits and cream Served in the weeping elm ; and more and more A word could bring the color to my cheek ; A thought would fill my eyes with happy dew ; Love trebled life within me, and with each The year increased. The daughters of the year, One after one, through that still garden passed : Each garlanded vnth her peculiar flower Danced into light, and died into the shade ; And each in passing touched with some new grace Or seemed to touch her, so that day by day, Like one that never can be wholly knoAvn, Her beauty grew ; till Autumn brought an hour For Eustace, when I heard his deep " I will," Breathed, like the covenant of a God, to hold From thence through all the worlds : but I rose up Full of his bliss, and following her dark eyes. Felt earth as air beneath me, till I reached The wicket-gate, and found her standing there. There sat we down upon a garden mound, OR, THE PICTURES. 237 Two mutually enfolded ; Love, the third, Between us, in the circle of his anus Enwound us both ; and over many a range Of waning lime the gray cathedral towers, Across a hazy glimmer of the west. Revealed their shining windows : from them clashed The bells ; we listened ; with the time we played ; We spoke of other things ; we coursed about The subject most at heart, more near and near, Like doves about a dovecote, wheeling round The central wish, until we settled there. Then, in that time and place, I spoke to her, Requiring, though I knew it was mine own. Yet for the pleasure that I took to hear. Requiring at her hand the greatest gift, A woman's heart, the heart of her I loved ; And in that time and place she answered me, And in the compass of three little words. More musical than ever came in one. The silver fragments of a broken voice, Made me most happy, lisping " I am thine ! " Shall I cease here ? Is this enough to say That my desire, like all strongest hopes. By its own energy fulfilled itself. Merged in completion ? Would you learn at full 238 THE gardener's daughter; How passion rose through circumstantial grades Beyond all grades developed ? and indeed I had not staid so long to tell you all, But while I mused came Memory with sad eyes, Holding the folded annals of my youth ; And while I mused, Love with knit brows went by, . And with a flying finger swept my lips. And spake, " Be v^dse : not easily forgiven Are those, v.Iio ^cLting wide the doors, that bar The secret bridal chambers of the heart. Let in the day." Here, then, my words have end. Yet might I tell of meetings, of farewells — Of that which came between, more sweet than each, In whispers, like the whispers of the leaves That tremble round a nightingale — in sighs Which perfect Joy, perplexed for utterance, Stole from her sister Sorrow. Might I not tell Of difference, reconcilement, pledges given, And vows, where there was never need of vows, And kisses, where the heart on one wild leap Hung tranced from all pulsation, as above The heavens between their fairy fleeces pale Sowed all their mystic gulfs with fleeting stars , Or while the balmy glooming, crescent-lit, Spread the light haze along the river-shores, OR, THE PICTURES. 239 And in the hollows ; or as once we met Unheedful, though beneath a whispering rain Nio'ht slid down one lonof stream of siffhinw wind, And in her bosom bore the baby, Sleep. But this whole hour your eyes have been intent On that veiled picture — veiled, for what it holds May not be dwelt on by the common day. This prelude has prepared thee. Raise thy soul. Make thine heart ready with thine eyes : the time Is come to raise the veil. Behold her there. As I beheld her ere she knew my heart. My first, last love ; the idol of my youth, The darling of my manhood, and, alas ! Now the most blessed memory of mine age. DORA. With farmer Allan at the farm abode William and Dora. William was his son, And she his niece. He often looked at them, And often thought *' I '11 make them man and wife." Now Dora felt her uncle's will in all, And yearned towards William ; but the youth, because He had been always with her in the house, Thought not of Dora. Then there came a day When Allan called his son, and said, " My son : I married late, but I would wish to see My grandchild on my knees before I die : And I have set my heart upon a match. Now therefore look to Dora ; she is well To look to ; thrifty too beyond her age. She is my brother's daughter : he and I Had once hard words, and parted, and he died [n foreign lands ; but for his sake I bred DORA. 241 His daughter Dora : take her for your wife ; For I have wished this man'iage, night and day, For many years." But William answered short ; " I cannot marry Dora ; by my life, I will not marry Dora." Then the old man Was wroth, and doubled up his hands, and said : " You will not, boy ! you dare to answer thus ! But in my time a father's word was law, And so it shall be now for me. Look to 't ; Consider, William : take a month to think. And let me have an answer to my wish ; Or, by the Lord that made me, you shall pack, And nevermore darken my doors again ! " But William answered madly ; bit his lips. And broke away. The more he looked at her The less he liked her ; and his ways were harsh ; But Dora bore them meekly. Then before The month was out he left his father's house. And hired himself to work within the fields ; And half in love, half spite, he wooed and wed A laborer's daughter, Maiy Morrison. Then, when the bells were ringing, Allan called His niece and said : " My girl, I love you well ; But if you speak with him that was my son. Or change a word with her he calls his wife. My home is none of yours. My will is law." a 42 DORA. And Dora promised, being meek. She thought, " It cannot be : my uncle's mind will change ! " And days went on, and there was bom a boy To William ; then distresses came on him ; And day by day he passed his father's gate, Heart-broken, and his father helped him not. But Dora stored what little she could save, And sent it them by stealth, nor did they know Who sent it ; till at last a fever seized On William, and in harvest-time he died. Then Dora went to Mary. Mary sat And looked with tears upon her boy, and thought Hard things of Dora. Dora came and said : " I have obeyed my uncle until now, And I have sinned, for it was all through me This evil came on William at the first. But, Mary, for the sake of him that 's gone, And for your sake, the woman that he chose, And for this orphan, I am come to you : You know there has not been for these five years So full a harvest : let me take the boy. And I will set him in my uncle's eye Among the wheat ; that when his heart is glad Of the full harvest, he may see the boy, And bless him for the sake of him that 's gone." And Dora took the child, and went her way 243 Across the wheat, and sat upon a mound That was unsown, where many poppies grew. Far off the farmer came into the field And spied her not ; for none of all his men Dare tell him Dora waited with the child ; And Dora would have risen and gone to him, But her heart failed her ; and the reapers reaped, And the sun fell, and all the land v/as dark. But when the morrow came, she rose and took The child once more, and sat upon the mound ; And made a little wreath of all the flowers That giew about, and tied it round his hat To make him pleasing in her uncle's eye. Then when the farmer passed into the field He spied her, and he left his men at work, And came and said, " Where were you yesterday ? Whose child is that ? What are you doing here ? " So Dora cast her eyes upon the ground. And answered softly, " This is William's child ! " " And did I not," said Allan, " did I not Forbid you, Dora ? " Dora said again : " Do with me as you will, but take the child And bless him for the sake of him that 's gone ! " And Allan said, " I see it is a trick Got up betwixt you and the woman there. I must be taught my duty, and by you ! 244 DORA. You knew my word was law, and yet you dared To slight it. Well — for I will take the boy ; But go you hence, and never see me more." So saying, he took the boy, that cried aloud And struggled hard. The wreath of flowers fell At Dora's feet. She bowed upon her hands. And the boy's cry came to her from the field. More and more distant. She bowed down her head, Kemembering the day when first she came, And all the things that had been. She bowed down And wept in secret ; and the reapers reaped, And the sun fell, and all the land was dark. Then Dora went to Mary's house, and stood Upon the threshold. Mary saw the boy Was not with Dora. She broke out in praise To God, that helped her in her widowhood And Dora said, " My uncle took the boy ; But, Mary, let me live and work with you : He says that he will never see me more." Then answered Maiy, " This shall never be, That thou shouldst take my trouble on thyself : And, now I think, he shall not have the boy, For he will teach him hardness, and to slight His mother ; therefore thou and I will go, And I will have my boy, and bring him home ; And I will beg of him to take thee back ; noRA. 245 But if he will not take thee back again, Then thou and I will live within one house, And work for WiUiani's child, until he grows Of age to help us." So the women kissed Each other, and set out and reached the farm. Tlie door was off the latch : they peeped and saw The boy set up betwixt his grandsiie's knees. Who thrust him in the hollows of his arm, And clapt him on the hands and on the cheeks. Like one that loved him ; and the lad stretched out And babbled for the golden seal, that hung From Allan's watch, and sparkled by the fire. Then they came in ; but when the boy beheld His mother, he cried out to come to her : And Allan sat him down, and ]\Iary said : " Father ! — if you let me call you so — I never came a-begging for myself, Or William, or this child ; but now I come For Dora . take her back ; she loves you well. Sir, when William died, he died at peace With all men ; for I asked him, and he said. He could not ever rue his marrying me. — 1 had been a patient wife : but, Sir, he said That he was wrong to cross his father thus : 246 DORA. ' God bless him ! ' he said, ' and may he never know The troubles I have gone through ! ' Then he turned His face and passed — unhappy that I am ! But now^, Sir, let me have my boy, for you Will make him_ hard, and he will learn to slight His father's memory ; and take Dora back, And let all this be as it was before," So Mary said, and Dora hid her face By Mary. There was silence in the room ; And all at once the old man burst in sobs : — *' I have been to blame — to blame ! I have killed my son ! I have killed him — but I loved him — my dear son ! May God forgive me ! — I have been to blame. Kiss me, my children ! " Then they clung about The old man's neck, and kissed him many times. And all the man was broken vdth remorse ; And all his love came back a hundredfold ; And for three hours he sobbed o'er William's child, Thinking of William. So those four abode Within one house together ; and as years Went forward, Mary took another mate ; But Dora lived unmarried till her death. AUDLEY COURT, " The Bull, the Fleece are crammed, and not a room For love or money. Let us picnic there At Audley Court." I spoke, while Audley feast Hummed like a hive all round the narrow quay, To Francis, with a basket on his arm, To Francis just alighted from the boat. And breathing of the sea. "With all my heart," Said Francis. Then we shouldered through the swam And rounded by the stillness of the beach To where the bay runs up its latest horn. We left the dying ebb that faintly lipped The flat red granite ; so by many a sweep Of meadow smooth from aftermath we reached The grifFm-guarded gates, and passed through all The pillared dusk of sounding sycamores. And crossed the garden to the gardener's lodge. 248 AUDLEY COURT. With all its casements bedded, and its walls And chimneys muffled in the leafy vine. There, on a slope of orchard, Francis laid A. damask napkin wrought with horse and hound, Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home, And, half-cut-down, a pasty costly-made, WTiere quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay, Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks Imbedded and injellied ; last, with these, A flask of cider from his father's vats. Prime, which I knew ; and so we sat and eat And talked old matters over : who was dead. Who married, who was like to be, and how The races went, and who would rent the hall : Then touched upon the game, how scarce it was This season : glancing thence, discussed the farm, The fourfield system and the price of grain ; And struck upon the corn-laws, where we spiil, And came again together on the king With heated faces ; till he laughed aloud ; And, while the blackbird on the pippin hung To hear him, clapt his hand in mine and sang — " ! who would fight and march and countennarcli Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field. And shovelled up into a bloody trench ^^here no one knows ? but let me live mv life. AUDLEY COURT. 249 " O ! who would cast and balance at a desk, Perched like a crow upon a three-legged stool, Till all his juice is dried, and all his joints Are full of chalk ? but let me live my life. " Who 'd serve the state ? for if I carved my name Upon the cliffs that guard my native land. I might as well have traced it in the sands ; The sea wastes all : but let me live my life. " O ! who would love ? I wooed a woman once, But she was sharper than an eastern wind. And all my heart turned from her, as a thorn Turns from the sea : but let me live my life." He sang his song, and I replied with mine : I found it in a volume, all of songs. Knocked do\vn to me, when old Sir Robert's pride, His books — the more the pity, so I said — Came to the hammer here in March — and this — I set the words, and added names I knew. " Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, sleep, and dream of me : Sleep, Ellen, folded in thy sister's arm, And sleeping, haply dream her arm is mine. " Sleep, Ellen, folded in Emilia's arm ; Emilia, fairer than all else but thou, For thou art fairer than all else that is. "Sleep, breathing health and peace upon her breast VOL. I l"? 250 AITDLEY COURT. Sleep, breathing love and trust a.gain-^l her lip : 1 go to-night : I come to-morrow moni. " 1 go, but 1 return : 1 would 1 were The pilot of the darkness and the dream. Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, love, and dream of me. So sang we each to either, Francis Hale, The farmer's son who lived across the bay, My friend ; and I, that having wherewithal, And in the fallow leisure of my life. Did what I would ; but ere the night we rose And sauntered home beneath a moon, that, just In crescent, dimly rained about the leaf Twilights of airy silver, till we reached The limit of the hills ; and as we sank From rock to rock upon the glooming quay, The tovm was hushed beneath us : lower dowrv The bay was oily -calm ; the harbor-buoy With one green sparkle ever and anon Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart. WALKING TO THE MAIL. Jokn. I 'm glad I walked. How fresh the meadows look Above the river, and, but a month ago. The whole hill-side was redder than a fox. Is yon plantation where this byway joins The turnpike ? James. Yes. Joh7i. And when does this come by ? James. The mail ? At one o'clock. John. What is it now ? James. A quarter to. John. Whose house is that I see Beyond the watermills ? James. Sir Edward Head's : But he 's abroad : the place is to be sold. John. O, his. He was not broken. James. No sir, he, Vexed with a morbid devil in his blood That veiled the world with jaundice, hid his face From all men, and commercing with himself, 252 WALKING TO THE BIAIL. He lost the sense that handles daily life — That keeps us all in order more or less — And sick of home, went overseas for change. John. And whither ? James. Nay, who knows ? he 's here and there But let him go ; his devil goes with him, As well as with his tenant, Jocky Dawes, John. What's that? James. You saw the man but yesterday : He picked the pebble from your horse's foot. His house was haunted by a jolly ghost, That rummaged like a rat. No servant staid : The farmer vext packs up his beds and chairs, And all his household stuff; and with his boy Betwixt his knees, his wife upon the tilt, Sets forth, and meets a friend who hails him, " What ! You 're flitting! " " Yes, we 're flitting," says the ghost, (For they had packed the thing among the beds.) " well," says he, "you flitting with us too — Jack, turn the horses' heads and home again." John. He left his wife behind; for so I heard. Jamjes. He left her, yes. I met my lady once : A woman like a butt, and harsh as crabs. John. yet but I remember, ten years back — 'T is now at least ten years — and then she was — You could not lisfht upon a sweeter thing: WALKING TO THE MAIL. 253 A body slight and round, and like a pear In growing, modest eyes, a hand, a foot Lessening in perfect cadence, and a skin As clean and white as privet when it flowers. James. Ay, ay, the blossom fades, and they that loved At first like dove and dove were cat and dog. She was the daughter of a cottager, Out of her sphere. What betwixt shame and pride, New things and old, himself and her, she soured To what she is : a nature never kind ! Like men, like manners : like breeds like, they say. Kind nature is the best : those manners next That fit us like a nature second-hand ; Which are indeed the manners of the great, John. But I had heard it was this bill that past, And fear of change at home, that drove him hence. James. That was the last drop in the cup of gall. I once was near him when his bailiff brought A Chartist pike. You should have seen him wince As from a venomous thing : he thought himself A mark for all, and shuddered, lest a cry Should break his sleep by night, and his nice eyes Should see the raw mechanic's bloody thumbs Sweat on his blazoned chairs ; but, sir, you know That these two parties still divide the world — Of those that want, and those that have : and still 254 WALKING TO THE MAIL. The same old sore breaks out from age to age With much the same result. Now I myself, A Tory to the quick, was as a boy Destructive, when I had not what I would. I was at school — a college in the South : There lived a flayflint near ; we stole his fruit. His hens, his eggs ; but there was law for us ; We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. She, With meditative grunts of much content, Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud. By night we dragged her to the college tower From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow, And on the leads we kept her till she pigged. Large range oi prospect had the mother sow, And but for daily loss of one she loved, As one by one we took them — but for this — As never sow was higher in this world — Might have been happy : but what lot is pure ? We took them all, till she was left alone Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine. And so returned unfarrowed to her sty. John. They found you out ? James. Not they. John. Well — after all — What know we of the secret of a man ? WALKING TO THE MAIL. 255 His nerves were wrong. What ails us who are sound, That we should mimic this raw fool the world, Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites, As ruthless as a baby with a worm, ' As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows To Pity — more from ignorance than will. But put your best foot forward, or I fear That we shall miss the mail : and here it comes With five at top : as quaint a four-in-hand As you shall see — three pyebalds and a roan. ST. SIMEON STYLITES Although I be the basest of mankind, From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin, Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet For troops of devils, mad Avith blasphemy, I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold Of saintdom, and to clamor, mourn and sob, Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer, Have mercy. Lord, and take away my sin. Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God, This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years, Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs, In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold, In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps, A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud, Patient on this tall pillar I have borne Eain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow ; And 1 had hoped that ere this period closed Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest, Denying not these weather-beaten limbs The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm. O take the meaning, Lord : I do not breathe. ST. SI5IKOX STYLITES. 257 Not whisper, any murmur of complaint. Pain heaped ten-hundred-fold to this, were still Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear. Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crushed My spirit flat before thee. Lord, Lord, Thou knowest I bore this better at the first, For I was strong- and hale of body then ; And though my teeth, which now are dropt away, Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard Was tagged with icy fringes in the moon, I drowned the whoopings of the owl with sound Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw An angel stand and watch me, as I sang. Now am I feeble grown : my end draws nigh — ■ I hope my end draws nigh : half deaf I am, So that I scarce can hear the people hum About the column's base, and almost blind, And scarce can recognize the fields I know. And both my thighs are rotted with the dew, Yet cease I not to clamor and to cry, While my stifl" spine can hold my weary head. Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone, Have mercy, mercy : take away my sin . O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul. Who may be saved ? who is it may be saved ? 258 ST. SIMEON STYLITES. Who may be made a saint, if T fail here ? Show me the man hath suffered more than I. For did not all thy martyrs die one death ? For either they were stoned, or crucified, Or burned in fire, or boiled in oil, or sawn In twain beneath the ribs ; but I die here To-day, and whole years long, a life of death. Bear witness, if I could have found a way (And heedfully I sifted all my thought) More slowly-painful to subdue this home Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate, I had not stinted practice, oh my God ! For not alone this pillar-punishment, Not this alone I bore : but while I lived In the white convent down the valley there, For many weeks about my loins I wore The rope that haled the buckets from the well, Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose ; And spake not of it to a single soul, Until the ulcer, eating through my skin, Betrayed my secret penance, so that all My brethren marvelled greatly. More than this I bore, whereof, oh God, thou knowest all. Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee, I lived up there on yonder mountain side. My right leg chained into the crag, I lay ST. SIMEON STYLITES. 259 Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones ; Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist, and twice Blacked with thy branding thunder, and sometimes Sucking the damps for drink, and eating not, Except the spare chance-gift of those that came To touch my body and be healed, and live : And they say then that I worked miracles, Whereof my fame is loud amongst mankind. Cured lameness, palsies, cancers. Thou, oh God, Knowest alone whether this was or no. Have mercy, mercy ; cover all my sin ! Then, that I might be more alone with thee, Three years I lived upon a pillar high Six cubits, and three years on one of twelve ; And twice three years I crouched on one that rose Twenty by measure ; last of all, I grew Twice ten long weary, weary years to this. That numbers forty cubits from the soil. I think that I have borne as much as this — Or else I dream — and for so long a time, If I may measure time by yon slow light, And this high dial, which my sorrow crowns — So much — even so. And yet I know not well, For that the evil ones come here, and say, " Fall down, oh Simeon : thou hast suffered long 260 ST. SIMEON STYLITES, For ages and for ages ! " Then they prate Of penances I cannot have gone through, Perplexing me with lies ; and oft I fall, Maybe for months, in such blind lethargies. That Heaven, and Earth, and Time are choked. But yet Bethink thee. Lord, while thou and all the saints Enjoy themselves in heaven, and men on earth House in the shade of comfortable roofs. Sit with their wives by fires, eat wholesome food, And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls, 1, 'tween the spring and downfall of the light, Bow down one thousand and two hundred times, To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the Saints ; Or in the night, after a little sleep, I wake : the chill stars sparkle ; I am wet With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost. I wear an undressed goatskin on my back ; A grazing iron collar grinds my neck ; And in my weak, lean arms I lift the cross, And strive and wrestle with thee till I die : O mercy, mercy ! wash away my sin ! O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am ; A sinful man, conceived and born in sin : 'T is their ov/n doing ; this is none of mine ; Lay it not to me. Am I to blame for this. ST. SIMEON STYLITES. 261 That here come those that worship me ? Ha ! ha ! They think that I am somewhat. What am I ? The silly people take me for a saint, And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers ; And Ij in truth (thou wilt bear witness here) Have all in all endured as much, and more Than many just and holy men, whose names Are registered and calendared for saints. Good people, you do ill to kneel to me. What is it I can have done to merit this ? [ am a sinner viler than you all. It may be I have wrought some miracles. And cured some halt and maimed ; but what of that ? It may be, no one, even among the saints. May match his pains with mine ; but what of that ? Yet do not rise : for you may look on me. And in your looking you may kneel to God. Speak ! is there any of you halt or maimed ? [ think you know I have some power with Heaven From my long penance : let him speak his wish. Yes, I can heal him. Power goes forth from me. They say that they are healed. Ah, hark ! they shout " St. Simeon Stylites." Why, if so, God reaps a harvest in me. O my soul, God reaps a harvest in thee. If this be, Can I work miracles and not be saved ? 262 ST. SIMEON STYLITES. This is not told of any. They were saints. It cannot be but that I shall be saved ; V^ea, crowned a saint. They shout, " Behold a saint I And lower voices saint me from above. Courage, St. Simeon ! This dull chrysalis Cracks into shining wings, and hope ere death Spreads more and more and more, that God hath now Sponged and made blank of crimeful record all My mortal archives. O my sons, my sons, I, Simeon of the pillar, by surname Stylites, among men ; I, Simeon, The watcher on the column till the end ; I, Simeon, whose brain the sunshine bakes ; 1, whose bald brows in silent hours become Unnaturally hoar with rime, do now From my high nest of penance here proclaim That Pontius and Iscariot by my side Showed like fair seraphs. ■ On the coals I lay, A vessel full of sin : all hell beneath Made me boil over. Devils plucked my sleeve ; Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me. 1 smote them with the cross ; they swarmed again, in bed like monstrous apes they crushed my chest. They flapped my light out as I read : I saw Their faces grow between me and rny book : ST. SIMEON STYLITES. 263 With colt-like whinny and with hoggish whine They burst my prayer. Yet this way was left, And by this way I 'scaped them. Mortify Your flesh, like me, with scourges and with thorns ; Smite, shrink not, spare not. If it may be, fast Whole Lents, and pray. I hardly, with slow steps — ^^ ith slow, faint steps, and much exceeding pain — Have scrambled past those pits of fire, that still .Sing m mine ears. But yield not me the praise : God only through his bounty hath thought fit. Among the powers and princes of this world. To make me an example to mankind, Which few can reach to. Yet 1 do not say But that a time may come — yea, even now. Now, now, his footsteps smite the threshold stairs Of life — I say, that time is at the doors When you may worship me without reproach ; For I will leave my relics in your land. And you may carve a shrine about my dust. And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones, When I am gathered to the glorious saints. While I spake then, a sting of shrewdest pain Ran shrivelling through me, and a cloudlike change, In passing, with a grosser film made thick These heavy, homy eyes. The end ! the end ! Surely the end ! What 's here ? a shape, a shade, 264 ST. SIMEON STYLITES. A flash of light. Is that the angel there That holds a crown ? Come, blessed brother, come. 1 know thy glittering face. I waited long ; My brows are ready. What ! deny it now ? ^ay, draw, draw, draw nigh. So I clutch it. Christ I 'T is gone : 't is here again ; the crown ! the crown ! So now 't is fitted on and grows to me, And from it melt the dews of Paradise, Sweet ! sweet ! spikenard, and balm, and frankincense. Ah ! let me not be fooled, sweet saints : I trust That 1 am whole, and clean, and meet for Heaven. Speak, if there be a priest, a man of God, Among you there, and let him presently Approach, and lean a ladder on the shaft, And climbing up into my airy home, Deliver me the blessed sacrament ; For by the warning of the Holy Ghost, I prophesy that I shall die to-night, A quarter before twelve. But thou, oh Lord, Aid all this foolish people ; let them take Example, pattern : lead them to thy light. THE SEA-FAIRIES. Slow sailed the weary mariners, and saw, Betwixt the green brink and the running foam, Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest To little harps of gold ; and, while they mused, Whispering to each other half in fear, Shrill music reached them on the middle sea. Whither away, whither away, whither away ? fly no more. Whither away from the high green field, and the happy blossoming shore ? Day and night to the billow the fountain calls; Down shower the gambolling waterfalls From wandering over the lea : Out of the live-green heart of the dells They freshen the silvery-crimson shells. And thick with white bells the clover-hill swells High over the full-toned sea : O hither, come hither, and furl your sails. Come hither to me and to me i VOL. I. 18 266 THE SEA-FAIKIES. Hither, come hither, and frolic and play; Here it is only the mew that wails ; We will sing to you all the day : Mariner, mariner, furl your sails, For here are the blissful downs and dales, And merrily, merrily carol the gales. And the spangle dances in bight and bay, And the rainbow forms and flies on the land Over the islands free ; And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand,* Hither, come hither and see ; And the rainbow hangs on the poising wave. And sweet is the color of cove and cave, And sweet shall your welcome be ; O hither, come hither, and be our lords, For merry brides are we ! We will kiss sweet kisses, and speak sweet words : O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten With pleasure and love and jubilee ! O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten When the sharp, clear twang of the golden chords Runs up the ridged sea ! Who can light on as happy a shore All the world o'er, all the world o'er ? Whither away ? listen and stay : mariner, mariner, fly no more. THE DESERTED HOUSE. > 1. Life and Thought have gone away- Side by side, Leaving door and windows wide : Careless tenants they . 2. All within is dark as night : In the windows is no light ; And no murmur at the door, So frequent on its hinge before. 3. Close the door, the shutters close, Or through the windows we shall see The nakedness and vacancy Of the dark, deserted house. 268 THE DESERTED HOUSE. 4. Come away ; no more of mirth Is here or merry-making sound. The house was builded of the earth, And shall fall again to ground. 5. Come away ; for Life and Thought Here no longer dwell ; But in a city glorious — A great and distant city — have bought A mansion incorruptible. Would they could have stayed with us ' EDWIN MORRIS; OR, THE LAKE. ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake, My sweet, wild, fresh three quarters of a year, My one Oasis in the dust and drouth Of city life ! I was a sketcher then ; See here, my doing : curves of mountain, bridge, Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built When men knew how to build, upon a rock, With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock ; And here, new-comers in an ancient hold, New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires, Here lived the Hills, — a Tudor-chimneyed bulk Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers. me ! my pleasant rambles by the lake With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull, The curate ; he was fatter than his cure. But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names, Long learned names of agaric, moss and fern, 270 EDWIN MORRIS ; Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks, Who taught me how to skate, to row, to swim, Who read me rhymes elaborately good, His own, — I called him Crichton, for he seemed All-perfect, finished to the finger nail. And once I asked him of his early life, And his first passion ; and he answered me ; And well his words became him : was he not A full-celled honeycomb of eloquence Stored from all flowers ? Poet-like he spoke : " My love for Nature is as old as I ; But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that, And three rich sennights more, my love for her. My love for Nature and my love for her, Of different ages, like twin-sisters grew. Twin-sisters differently beautiful. To some full music rose and sank the sun. And some full music seemed to move and change With all the varied changes of the dark, And either twilight and the day between ; For daily hope fulfilled, to rise again Revolving toward fulfilment, made it sweet To walk, to sit, to sleep, to wake, to breathe." Or this or something like to this he spoke. Then said the fat-faced curate. EdwarH H'llL OR, THB LAKE. 271 '* I take it, God made the woman for the man, And for the good and increase of the world. A pretty face is well, and this is well, To have a dame indoors that trims us up, And keeps us tight ; but these unreal ways Seem but the theme of writers, and, indeed. Worn threadbare. Man is made of solid stuff. I say, God made the woman for the man. And for the good and increase of the world." " Parson," said I, " you pitch the pipe too low ; But I have sudden touches, and can run My faith beyond my practice into his ; Though if, in dancing after Letty Hill, I do not hear the bells upon my cap, I scarce hear other music ; yet say on. What should one give to light on such a dreaui ? " I asked him half-sardonically. " Give ? Give all thou art," he answered, and a light Of laughter dimpled in his swarthy cheek ; " I would have hid her needle in my heart, To save her little finger from a scratch No deeper than the skin ; my ears could hear Her lightest breaths ; her least remark was worth The experience of the wise. I went and came ; 272 EDWIN morris; Her voice fled always through the summer land , I spoke her name alone. Thrice-happy days ! The flower of each, those moments when we met, The crown of all, we met to part no more." Were not his words delicious, I a beast To take them as I did ? but something jarred ; Whether he spoke too largely ; that there seemed A touch of something false, some self-conceit, Or over-smoothness ; howsoe'er it was, He scarcely hit my humor, and I said : " Friend Edwin, do not think yourself alone Of all men happy. Shall not Love to me, As in the Latin song I learnt at school, Sneeze out a full God-bless-you right and left ? But you can talk ; yours is a kindly vein ; I have, I think, — Heaven knows, — as much within Have, or should have, but for a thought or two, That, like a purple beech among the greens, Looks out of place ; 't is from no want in her : It is my shyness, or my self-distrust. Or something of a wayward modern mind Dissecting passion. Time will set me right." So spoke I, knowing not the things that were. Then said the fat-faced curate, Edward Bull : OR, THE LAKE. 273 " God made the woman for the use of man, And for the good and increase of the world." And I and Edwin laughed ; and now we paused About the windings of the marge to hear The soft wind blowing over meadowy holms And alders, garden-isles ; and now we left The clerk behind us, I and he, and ran By ripply shallows of the lisping lake, Delighted with the freshness and the sound. But, when the bracken rusted on their crags, My suit had withered, nipt to death by him That was a God, and is a lawyer's clerk, The rentroll Cupid of our rainy isles, 'T is true we met ; one hour I had, no more , She sent a note, the seal an Elle vous suit, The close " Your Letty, only yours ; " and this Thrice underscored. The friendly mist of morn Clung to the lake. I boated over, ran My craft aground, and heard with beating heart The Sweet-Gale rustle round the shelving keel ; And out I stept, and up I crept ; she moved, Like Proserpine in Enna, gathering flowers ; Then low and sweet I whistled thrice ; and she. She turned, we closed, we kissed, swore faith, I breathed In some new planet ; a silent cousin stole 274 EDWIN MORRIS ; Upon us and departed. " Leave," she cried, " leave me ! " " Never, dearest, never ; here I brave the worst ; " and while we stood like fools Embracing, all at once a score of pugs And poodles yelled within, and out they came. Trustees and aunts and uncles. " What, with him ! " Go " (shrilled the cotton-spinning chorus), " him ! " 1 choked. Again they shrieked the burthen " Hiia ! " Again with hands of wild rejection, " Go ! — Girl, get you in ! " She went, — and in one month They wedded her to sixty thousand pounds, To lands in Kent and messuages in York, And slight Sir Robert with his watery smile And educated whisker. But for me. They set an ancient creditor to work : It seems I broke a close with force and arms ; There came a mystic token from the king To greet the sheriff, needless courtesy ! I read, and fled by night, and flying turned ; Her taper glimmered in the lake below ; 1 turned once more, close-buttoned to the storm ; So left the place, left Edwin, nor have seen Him since, nor heard of her, nor cared to hear. Nor cared to hear ? perhaps ; yet long ago I have pardoned little Letty ; not indeed, OR, THE LAKE. 275 It may be, for her own dear sake, but this, She seems a part of those fresh days to me ; For, in the dust and drouth of London life. She moves among my visions of the lake, While the prime swallow dips his wing, or then While the gold-lily blows, and overhead The light cloud smoulders on the summer crag. TO , AiTER READING A LIFE AISTD LETTERS. -•- " Corsed be he that moves my bones." Shakspeare's Epitaph, You might have won the Poet's name, If such be worth the winning now, And gained^ a laurel for your brow Of sounder leaf than I can claim ; But you have made the wiser choice, A life that moves to gracious ends Through troops of unrecording friends, A deedful life, a silent voice ; And you have missed the irreverent doom Of those that wear the Poet's crown ; Hereafter neither knave nor clown Shall hold their orgies at your tomb. TO . 277 For now the Poet cannot die, Nor leave his music as of old, But round him, ere he scarce be cold, Begins the scandal and the cry : " Proclaim the faults he would not show ; Break lock and seal ; betray the trust ; Keep nothing sacred ; 't is but just The many-headed beast should know." Ah, shameless ! for he did but sing A song that pleased us from its worth ; No public life was his on earth. No blazoned statesman he, nor king. He gave the people of his best ; His worst he kept, his best he gave. My Shakspeare's curse on clown and knave Who will not let his ashes rest ! Who make it seem more sweet to be The little life of bank and brier. The bird that pipes his lone desire And dies unheard within his tree, Than he that warbles long and loud And drops at Glory's temple-gates, For whom the carrion vulture waits To tear his heart before the crowd ! TO E. L., ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls Of water, sheets of summer glass, The long divine Penei'an pass, The vast Akrokeraunian walls, Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair, With such a pencil, such a pen. You shadow forth to distant men, I read and felt that I was there : And trust me while I turned the page, And tracked you still on classic grouml, I grew in gladness till I found My spirits in the golden age. For me the torrent ever poured And glistened, — here and there alone The broad-limbed Gods at randon thrown By fountain-urns ; — and Naiads oared TO E. L. 279 A glimmering shoulder under gloom Of cavern pillars ; on the swell The silver lily heaved and fell ; And many a slope was rich in bloom, From him that on the mountain lea By dancing rivulets fed his flocks, To him who sat upon the rocks. And fluted to the morning sea. 280 Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou would'st not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry ; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime, I care no longer, being all unblest ; Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie : Go by, go by. THE EAGLE, A FRAGMENT. He clasps the crag with hooked hands ; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls ; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. IN MEMORIAM Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy fiice, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing w^here we cannot prove ! Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; Thou madest Life in man and brute ; Thou madest Death ; and lo ! thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made. Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : Thou madest man, he knows not why ; He thinks he was not made to die ; And thou hast made him : thou art just. VOL. I. 19 282 IN MEMOKIAM. Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, tho'u : Oui" wills are ours, we know not how ; Our wills are ours, to make them thine. Our little systems have their day; Tney have their day and cease to be ; They are but broken lights ol" thee, And thou, oh Lord, art more than they. We have but faith : we cannot know ; For knowledge is of things we see ; And yet we trust it conies from thee, A beam in darkness ; let it grow. Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well. May make one music, as before. But vaster. We are fools and slight ; We mock thee when we do not fear : But help thy foolish ones to bear ; Help thy vain v/orlds to bear thy light. IN MEMOKIAM. 283 Forgive what seemed my sin in me ; What seemed my worth since I began ; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, oh Lord,- to thee. Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair. I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved. Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Confusions of a wasted youth ; Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise. 1849. IN MEMORIAM A. H. H. OBHT irocccxxxin. IN MEMORIAM. 285 1 HELD it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things. But who shall so forecast the years, And find in losi a onhi to match ? Or reach a hand through time to catch The far-off interest of tears ? Let Love clasp Grief, lest both be drowned, Let darkness keep her raven gloss ; Ah ! sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with death, to beat the ground, Than that the victor Hours should scorn The long result of love, and boast : " Behold the man that loved and lost, But all he was is overworn." 286 IN MEMOKIAM. Old Yew, which graspest at the stones That name the under-lying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head; Thy roots are wrapped about the bones. The seasons bring the flower agam, And bring the firstling to the flock ; And in the dusk of thee, the clock Beats out the little lives of men. O, not for thee the glow, the bloom, Who changest not in any gale ! Nor branding summer suns avail To touch thy thousand years of gloom. And gazing on the sullen tree. Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, I seem to fail from out my blood And grow incorporate into thee. IN jMemoriam. 287 III. O SORROW, cruel fellowship! O Priestess in the vaults of Death ! sweet and bitter in a breath, What whispers from thy lying- lip? " The stars," she whispers, " blindly run ; A web is woven across the sky ; From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun : " And all the phantom, Nature, stands, — With all her music in her tone, A hollow echo of my own, — A hollow form with empty hands." And shall I take a thing so blind. Embrace her as my natural good ; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind ? IN MEilORIAM. IV. To Sleep I give my powers away ; My will is bondsman to the dark ; I sit within a helmless bark, And with my heart I muse, and say : "O heart, how fares it with thee now, That thou shouldst fail from thy desire, Who scarcely darest to inquire What is it makes me beat so low ? " Something it is which thou hast lost, Some pleasure from thine early years. Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, That grief hath shaken into frost ! Such clouds of nameless trouble cross All night below the darkened eyes ; With morning wakes the will, and cries, " Thou shall not be the fool of loss ! " IN MEMORIAM. 289 V. I SOMETIMES hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel : For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies ; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I '11 wrap nie o'er. Like coarsest clothes against the cold ; But that large grief which these infold Is given in outline and no more. 290 IX MEMOKI.VJr. VI, One writes, that " Other friends remain," That " Loss is common to the race," - And common is the commonplace. And vacant chaff well meant for grain. That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more : Too common ! Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break. O father, wheresoe'er thou be. That pledgest now thy gallant son ; A shot, ere half thy draught be done, Hath stilled the life that beat from thee. O mother, praying God will save Thy sailor, while thy head is bowed, His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave. IN MEMORIAJI. 291 Ye know no more than I who wrought At that last hour to please him well ; Who mused on all I had to tell, And something written, something thought ; Expecting still his advent home ; And ever met him on his way With wishes, thinking, here to-day, Or here to-morrow will he come. O, somewhere, meek unconscious dove, That sittest 'ranging golden hair ; And glad to find thyself so fair, Poor child, that waitest for thy love ! For now her father's chimney glows In expectation of a guest ; And thinking " this will please him best," She takes a ribbon or a rose ; For he will see them on to-night ; And with the thought her color burns ; And, having left the glass, she turns Once more to set a ringlet right ; 292 IN MEMOKIAM. And, even when she turned, the curse Had fallen, and her future lord Was drowned in passing through the foid, Or killed in falling from his horse. O, what to her shall be the end ? And what to me remains of good ? To her, perpetual maidenhood, And unto me, no second friend. IN MEMOEIAM. 293 vn. Dark house, by which once more I stand, Here in the long unlovely street. Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasped no more, — Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here ; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly through the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day. 294 IK MEilOKIAM. VIU. A HAPPY lover who has come To look on her that loves him well, Who lights, and rings the gateway beJ, And learns her gone, and far from home. He saddens, all the magic light Dies off at once from bower and hall, And all the place is dark, and all The chambers emptied of delight. So find I every pleasant spot In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street, For all is dark, where thou art not. Yet as that other, wandering there In those deserted walks, may find A flower beat with rain and wind, Which once she fostered up with care ; IN MEMORIAM. 295 So seems it in my deep regret, my forsaken heart, with thee, And this poor flower of poesy, \Miich, little cared for, fades not yet. But since it pleased a vanished eye, 1 go to plant it on his tomb. That if it can it there may bloom, Or dying there at least may die. 296 IN ME-MORIAM. IX. Fair ship, that from the Italian shore Sailest the placid ocean plains, With my lost Arthur's loved remains, Spread ttiy full wings, and waft him o'er ! So draw him home to those that mourn, In vain ; a favorable speed Ruffle thy mirrored mast, and lead Through prosperous floods his holy urn ! All night no ruder air perplex Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, through early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks ! Sphere all your lights around, above ; Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow ; Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now. My friend, the brother of my love ! XN MEMOKIAM. 297 My Arthur ! whom I shall not see Till all my widowed race be run ; Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me ! VOL. I. 20 298 IN MKMORIAM. I HEAR the noise about thy keel ; I hear the bell struck in the night ; I see the cabin-window bright ; I see the sailor at the wheel. Thou bringest the sailor to his wife ; And travelled men from foreign lands ; And letters unto trembling hands ; And, thy dark freight, a vanished life. So bring him : we have idle dreams : This look of quiet flatters thus Our home-bred fancies : oh, to us, The fools of habit, sweeter seems To rest beneath the clover sod, That takes the sunshine and the rains. Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God, IN MEMORIAM. 299 Than if with thee the roaring- wells Should gulf him fathom deep in brine ; And hands so often clasped in mine Should toss with tangle and with shells. 300 IN MEMORIAM. XI. Calm is the mom, without a sound, Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only through the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground : Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze, And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold : Calm and still light on yon great plain, That sweeps, with all its autumn bowers, And crowded farms and lessening towers, To mingle with the bounding main : Calm and deep peace in this wide air. These leaves that redden to the fall ; And in my heart, if calm at all, If any calm, a calm despair : IN MEMOKIAM. 301 Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep. 302 i:n memobiam. xn. Lo ! as a dove when up she springs, To bear through Heaven a tale of woe Some dolorous message knit below The wild pulsation of her wings ; Like her 1 go : I cannot stay ; I leave this mortal ark behind, A weight of nerves without a mind. And leave the cliffs, and haste away O'er ocean mirrors rounded large, And reach the glow of southern skies, And see the sails at distance rise. And linger weeping on the marge, And saying, " Comes he thus, my friend ? Is this the end of all my care ? " And circle moaning in the air r " Is this the end ? Is this the end ? " IN MKMORIAM. 303 And forward dart again, and play About the prow, and back return To where the body sits, and learn That I have been an hour away. f me:moktam. 'T IS well, 't is something, we may stand Where he in English earth is laid. And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land. 'T is little ; but it looks in truth As if the quiet bones were blest Among familiar names to rest, And in the places of his youth. Come, then, pure hands, and bear the head That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep ; And come, whatever loves to weep, And hear the ritual of the dead. Ah ! yet, even yet, if this might be, I, falling on his faithful heart, Would, breathing through his lips, impart The life that almost dies in me : IN MEMOKIAM. 315 That dies not, but endures with pain, And slowly forms the firmer mind, Treasuring the look it cannot find, The words that are not heard agam. 31f3 IN JIEMORIAM. XIX. The Danube to the Severn gave The darkened heart that beat no more ; They laid him by the pleasant shore, And in the hearing of the wave. There twice a day the Severn fills, The salt sea-water passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills. The Wye is hushed nor moved along; And hushed my deepest grief of all, When, filled with tears that cannot fall, 1 brim with sorrow drowning song. The tide flows down, the wave again Is vocal in its wooded walls : My deeper anguish also falls, And I can speak a little then. IN MEMORIAL. 317 The lesser griefs, that may be said, Tliat breathe a thousand tender vows, Are but as servants in a house Where lies the master newly dead ; Who speak their feeling as it is, And weep the fulness from the mind : " It will be hard," they say, " to find Another service such as this." My lighter moods are like to these, That out of words a comfort win ; But there are other griefs within, And tears that at their fountain freeze ; For by the hearth the children sit Cold in that atmosphere of Death, And scarce endure to draw the breath, Or like to noiseless phantoms flit ; 318 IN MEJIOKIAM. But open converse is there none, So much the vital spirits sink To see the vacant chair, and think, "How good! how kind! and he is gone. IN MEMOKIAM. ol'J Xil. I SING to him that rests below, And, since the grasses round me wave, I take the grasses of the grave. And make them pipes whereon to blow. The traveller hears me now and then, And sometimes harshly will he speak : " This fellow would make wealcness weak, And melt the waxen hearts of men." Another answers, " Let him be ; He loves to make parade of pain, That with his piping he may gain The praise that comes to constancy." A third is wroth : " Is this an hour For private sorrow's barren sotig, When more and more the people throng Tlie chairs and thrones of civil power ? 320 IN MEMOKI.VM. " A time to sicken and to swoon, When science reaches forth her arms To feel from world to world, and charms Her secret from the latest moon ? " Behold, ye speak an idle thing : Ye never knew the sacred dust ; 1 do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing. And unto one her note is gay, For now her little ones have ranged : And unto one her note is changed. Because her brood is stolen away. IX il EM OKI AM. 321 The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Through four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to snow. And we with singing cheered the way. And crowned with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad at heart from May to May. But where the path we walked began To slant the fifth autumnal slope. As we descended, following Hope, There sat the Shadow feared of man ; Who broke our fair companionship. And spread his mantle dark and cold ; And wrapped thee formless in the fold, And dulled the murmur on thv lin; 322 rx MKMuii'.v;!. And bore thee where I could not see Nor follow, though I walk in haste ; And think that, somewhere in the waste, The Shadow sits and waits for me. IN M.EM;)UIAM. 323 xxm. Now, sometime? xn my sorrow shut, Or breaking into song by fits ; Alone, alone, to where he sits. The Shadow cloaked from head to foot, Who keeps the keys of all the creeds, I wander, often falling lame, And looking back to whence 1 came, Or on to where the pathway leads ; And crying, How changed from where it ran Through lands where not a leaf was dumb But all the lavish hills would hum The murmur of a happy Pan : When each by turns was guide to each. And Fancy light from Fancy caught, And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought, Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech : S24 IN MEMORIAM. And all we met was fair and good, And all was good that Time could bring, And all the secret of the Spring Moved in the chambers of the blood : And many an old philosophy On Argive heights divinely sang, And round us all the thicket rang To many a flute of Arcady. IX -MEMORIAM. 325 xxrv. And was the day of my delight As pure and perfect as I say ? The very source and fount of Day Is dashed with wandering isles of night. If all was good and fair we met, This earth had been the Paradise It never looked to human eyes Since Adam left his garden yet. And is it that the haze of g^rief Hath stretched my former joy so great ? The lovmess of the present state, That sets the past in this relief? Or that the past will always win A glory from its being far ; And orb into the perfect star We saw not, when we moved therein ? 326 IN MEMOlvlA.M. XXV. I KNOW that this was Life, — the track Whereon with equal feet we fared ; And then, as now, the day prepared The dady burden for the back. But this it was that made me move As light as carrier-birds in air : I loved the weight I had to bear, Because it needed help of Love ; Nor could 1 weary, heart or limb, When mighty Love would cleave iu twain The lading of a single pain. And part it, giving half to him. IN MEMORIA-M. 327 XXVI, Still onward winds the dreary way : I with it ; for I long to prove No lapse of moons can canker Love, Whatever fickle tongues may say. And if that eye which vvatches guilt And goodness, and hath power to see Within the green the mouldered tree, And towers fallen as soon as built, — 0, if indeed that eye foresee, Or see, (in Him is no before,) In more of life true life no more, And Love the indifference to be, So might I find, ere yet 'the morn Breaks hither over Indian seas. That Shadow waiting vvitli the keys, To cloak me from my proper scorn. 328 IX MEMORIAM. xxvu. I ENVY not, in any moods, The captive void of noble rage, The linnet bom within the cage, That never knew the summer woods : I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time. Unfettered by the sense of crime, To whom a conscience never wakes ; Nor, what may count itself as blest, The heart that never plighted troth, But stagnates in the weeds of sloth. Nor any want-begotten rest. 1 hold it true, whate'er befall ; I feel it, when 1 sorrow most ; 'T is better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. IN MEMORIAM. 329 XXVIll. The time draws near the birth of Christ : The moon is hid ; the night is still ; The Christmas bells from hill to hill Answer each other in the mist. Four voices of four hamlets round, From far and near, on mead and moor, Swell out and fail, as if a door Were shut between me and the sound : Each voice four changes on the wind, That now dilate, and now decrease. Peace and good-will, good-will and peace. Peace and good-will, to all mankind. This year I slept and woke with pain, I almost wished no more to wake, And that my hold on life would break Before F heard those bplls again : L. I. 22 330 IN MEMOKIAM. But they my troubled spirit rule, For they controlled me when a boy -, They bring me sorrow touched with joy, The merry, merry bells of Yule. IN MEMOEIAM. 331 With such compelling cause to grieve As daily vexes household peace, And chains regret to his decease, How dare we keep our Christmas eve ; Which brings no more a welcome guest To enrich the threshold of the night With showered largess of delight, lu dance and song and game and jest. Yet go, and while the holly-boughs Entwine the cold baptismal font, Make one wreath more for Use and Wont That guard the portals of the house ; Old sisters of a day gone by, Gray nurses, loving nothing new ; Why should they miss their yearly due Before their time ? They too will die. 332 IN MEMORIAM. XXX. With trembling fingers did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth ; A rainy cloud possessed the earth, And sadly fell our Christmas eve. At our old pastimes in the hall We gambolled, making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute Shadow watching all. We paused : the winds were in the beech : We heard them sweep the ^v^nter land ; And in a circle hand in hand Sat silent, looking each at each. Then echo-like our voices rang ; We sung, though every eye was dim, A merry song we sang with him Last year : impetuously we sang : IN MEJIOHIAM. 333 We ceased : a gentler feeling crept Upon us : surely rest is meet : " They rest," we said, " their sleep is sweet," And silence followed, and we wept. Our voices took a higher range ; Once more we sang : " They do not die, Nor lose their mortal sympathy. Nor change to us, although they change ; " Rapt from the fickle and the frail, With gathered power, yet the same, Pierces the keen seraphic flame From orb to orb, from veil to veil. " Rise, happy morn ! rise, holy morn ! Draw forth the cheerful day from night : Father ! touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was bom." 334 IN MEMOlilAiM. TTTT . When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, And home to Mary's house returned, Was this demanded, — if he yearned To hear her weeping by his grave ? " Where wert thou, brother, those four days ? " There lives no record of reply, Which, telling what it is to die, Had surely added praise to praise. From every house the neighbors met, The streets were filled with joyful sound ; A solemn gladness even crowned The purple brows of Olivet. Behold a man raised up by Christ ! The rest remaineth unrevealed ; He told it not; or something sealed The lips of that Evangelist IN MEMOKIAIM. 335 XXXU. Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, Nor other thought her mind admits But, he was dead, and there he sits, And he that brought him back is there. Then one deep love doth supersede All other, when her ardent gaze Roves from the living brother's face, And rests upon the Life indeed. All subtle thought, all curious fears, Borne down by gladness so complete, She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears. Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, Whose loves in higher love endure ; What souls possess themselves so pure, Or is there blessedness like theirs ? 336 IX MEMORIAM. xxxni. THOU that after toil and storm Mayst seem to have reached a purer air. Whose faith has centre everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself to form, Leave thou thy sister, when she prays, Her early Heaven, her happy views ; Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse A life that leads melodious days. Her faith through form is pure as thine, Her hands are quicker unto good. O, sacred be the flesh and blood To which she links a truth divine ! See, thou that countest reason ripe In holding by the law within, Thou fail not in a world of sin, And e'en for want of such a type. IN MEMORIAM. 3:57 xxxrv. My own dim life should teach me this, That life shall live forever more, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is ; This round of green, this orb of flame. Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks In some wild Poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim. What then were God to such as I ? 'T were hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use A little patience ere I die. 'T were best at once to sink to peace, Like birds the charming serpent draws. To drop head-foremost in the jaws Of varant darkness, and to cease. 338 IN MEMOKIAM. XXXV. Yet if some voice that man could trust Should murmur from the narrow house : The cheeks drop in ; the body bows ; Man dies : nor is there hope in dust : Might I not say, yet even here, But for one hour, oh Love, 1 strive To keep so sweet a thing alive ? But I should turn mine ears and hear The meanings of the homeless sea, The sound of streams that, swift or slow, Draw down Ionian hills, and sow The dust of continents to be ; And Love would answer, with a sigh, " The sound of that forgetful shore Will change my sweetness more and more. Half dead to know that I shall die," IN ME.MORTAM. 339 O me ! what profits it to put An idle case ? If Death were seen At first as Death, Love had not been, Or been in narrowest working shut. Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape Had bruised the herb and crushed the grape, And basked and battened in the woods. 340 IN MEMOUIAM. XXXVI. Though truths in manhood darkly join, Deep-seated in our mystic frame, We ^iield all blessing to the name Of Him that made them current coin ; For wisdom dealt with mortal powers, Where "ruth in closest words shall fail. When TiLUii embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors. And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought ; Which he may read that binds the sheaf, Or builds the house, or digs the grave, And those wild eyes that watch the wavp In roarinsfs round the coral reef. IX MEMOKIAM. 341 Urania speaks with darkened brow : " Thou pratest here where thou art least; This faith has many a purer priest, And many an abler voice, than thou ; " Go down beside thy native rill, On thy Parnassus set thy feet, And hear thy laurel whisper sweet About the ledges of the hill." And my Melpomene replies, A touch of shame upon her cheek ■ " I am not worthy but to speak Of thy prevailing mysteries; " For I am but an earthly Muse, And owning but a little art To lull with song an aching heart. And render human love his dues ; 342 IN MEMOEIAM. " But brooding on the dear one dead. And all he said of things divine, (And dear as sacramental wine To dying lips is all he said,) " I murmured, as I came along, Of comfort clasped in truth revealed ; And loitered in the master's field, And darkened sanctities with song." IN MEMOBIAM. 343 XXX VIU, With weary steps I loiter on, Though always under altered skies The purple from the distance dies, My prospect and horizon gone. No joy the blowing season gives, The herald melodies of spring, But in the songs I love to sing A doubtful gleam of solace lives. if any care for what is here Survive in spirits rendered free, Then are these songs I sing of thee INot all ungrateful to thine ear. 344 IX MEMOUIAM. XXXIX. Could we forget the widowed hour, And look on Spirits breathed away, As on a maiden in the day When first she wears her orange-flower! When crowned with blessing she doth rise To take her latest leave of home, And hopes and light regrets that come Make April of her tender eyes ; And doubtful joys the father !no\'e, And tears are on the mother's face. As parting, with a long embrace, She enters other realms of love ; Her ofRce there to rear, to teach, Becoming, as is meet and fit, A link among the days, to knit The generations each with each; IN MEMOKIAM. 0-15 And, doubtless, unto thee is given A life that bears immortal fruit In such great offices as suit The full-grown energies of heaven. Ay me, the difference I discern ! How often shall her old fireside Be cheered with tidings of the bride ! How often she herself return, And tell them all they would have told. And bring her babe, and make her boast, Till even those that missed her most Shall count new things as dear as old ! But thou and I have shaken hands, Till growing winters lay me low ; My paths are in the fields 1 know. And thine in undiscovered lands. VOL. I. 23 346 IN MEMORIAM, XL. Thy spirit, ere our fatal loss, Did ever rise from high to higher ; As mounts the heavenward altar-tire, As flies the lighter through the gross. But thou art turned to something strange, And I have lost the links that bound Thy changes ; here upon the ground ; No more partaker of thy change. Deep folly ! yet that this could be, — That 1 could wing my will with might To leap the grades of life and light. And flash at once, my friend, to thee : For though my nature rarely yields To that vague fear implied in death ; Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath, The bowlings from forgotten fields ; IN MEMORIAM. 347 Yet oft, when sundown skirts the moor, An inner trouble I behold, A spectral doubt which makes me cold, That I shall be thy mate no more, Though following with an upward mind The wonders that have come to thee, Through all the secular to be, But evermore a life behind. 348 IN MEMORIAM. XLI. I VEX my heart with fancies dim : He still outstripped me in the race ; It was but unity of place That made me dream 1 ranked with him. And so may Place retain us still, And he the much-beloved again, A lord of large experience, train To riper growth the mind and will : And what delights can equal those That stir the spirit's iimer deeps, When one that loves, but knows not, reaps A truth from one that loves and knows ? IN MEJIOKIAM. 349 XUI. If Sleep and Death be truly one, And every spirit's folded bloom Through all its intervital gloom In some long trance should slumber on, Unconscious of the sliding hour, Bare of the body, might it last, And silent traces of the past Be all the color of the flower : So then were nothing lost to man ; But that still garden of the souls In many a figured leaf enrolls The total world since life began : And love would last as pure and whole As when he loved me here in Time, And at the spiritual prime Rewaken with the dawning soul. 350 IN MEMOKIAJI. XLIU. How fares it with the happy dead ? For here the man is more and more j But he forgets the days before God shut the doorways of his head. The days have vanished, tone and tint, And yet perhaps the hoarding sense Gives out, at times, (he knows not whence,) A little flash, a mystic hint ; And in the long, harmonious years (If Death so taste Lethean springs) May some dim touch of earthly things Surprise thee ranging with thy peers. If such a dreamy touch should fall, O, turn thee round, resolve the doubt, My guardian angel will speak out In that high place, and tell thee all. IN ME.MORIAM. 351 XLIV. The baby new to earth and sky, What time his tender palm is pressed Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that " this is 1 : " But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of " I," and " me," And finds " I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch : " So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may oeo-m, As through the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined. This use may lie in blood and breath, Which else were fruitless of their due. Had man to learn himself anew Beyond the second birth of Death. 352 IN MEMORIAM. We ranging down this lower track, The path we came by, thorn and flower. Is shadowed by the growing hour, Lest life should fail in looking back. So be it : there no shade can last In that deep dawn behind the tomb, But clear from marge to marge shall bioor The eternal landscape of the past ; A lifelong tract of time revealed ; The fruitful hours of still increase : Days ordered in a wealthy peace, And those five years its richest field. O Love! thy province were not large, A bounded field, nor stretching far, Look also, Love, a brooding star, A rosy warmth from marge to marge. IN MEMOKIAM. 353 That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging in the general Soul, Is faith as vague as all unsweet : Eternal form shall still divide The eternal soul from all beside ; And I shall know him when we meet: And we shall sit at endless feast, Enjoying each the other's good ; What vaster dream can hit the mood Of Love on earth ? He seeks at least Upon the last and sharpest height, Before the spirits fade away, Some Mnding-place, to clasp and say, " Farewell ! We lose ourselves in liffht." 354 IN MEMOKIAil. XLVn. If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, Were taken to be such as closed Grave doubts and answers here proposed, Then these were such as men might scorn : Her care is not to part and prove ; She takes, when harsher moods remit. What slender shade of doubt may flit, And makes it vassal unto love : And hence, indeed, she sports with words ; But better serves a wholesome law, And holds it sin and shame to draw The deepest measure from the chords : Nor dare she trust a larger lay, But rather loosens from the lip Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away. IN MEMORIAM. 355 XLVIII. From art, from nature, from the schools, Let random influences glance, Like light in many a shivered lance That breaks about the dappled pools : The lightest wave of thought shall lisp, The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe, The slightest air of song shall breathe, To make the sullen surface crisp. And look thy look, and go thy way, But blame not thou the winds that make The seeming-wanton ripple break, The tender-pencilled shadow play. Beneath all fancied hopes and fears, Ay me ! the sorrow deepens down. Whose muffled motions blindly drown The bases of my life in tears. 356 IN MEJIORIAM. XLEX. Be near me when my light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves pticl< And tingle ; and the heart is sick, A.nd all the wheels of Being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frame Is racked with pangs that conquer trust, And time, a maniac, scattering dust, And life, a Fury, slinging flame. Be near me when my faith is diy, And men the flies of latter spring. That lay their eggs, ana sting and sing, And weave their petty cells and die. Be near me when I fade away, To point the term of human strife. And on the low, dark verge of life. The twilight of eternal day. IN MEMOEIAM. 357 Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side ? Is there no baseness we would hide ? No inner vileness that we dread ? Shall he for whose applause I strove, I had such reverence for his blame, See with clear eye some hidden shame, And 1 be lessened in his love ? I wrong the grave with fears untrue : Shall love be blamed for want of faith ? There must be wisdom with great Death ; The dead shall look me through and through. Be near us when we climb or fall : Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours With larger, other eyes than ours, To make allowance for us all. ;i,>S IN MEMORIAL. LI, I CANNOT love thee as I ought, For love reflects the thing beloved ; My words are only words, and moved Upon the topmost froth of thought. " Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song," The Spirit of true love replied ; " Thou canst not move me from thy side, Nor human frailty do me wrong. " What keeps a spirit wholly true To that ideal which he bears ? What record ? not the sinless years That breathed beneath the Syrian blue ; " So fret not, like an idle girl, That life is dashed with flecks of sin. Abide : thy wealth is gathered in. When Time hath sundered shell from pearl." IN MEMOEIAM. 359 IJI. How many a father have I seen, A sober man, among his boys, Whose youth was full of foolish noise, Who wears his manhood hale and green ! And dare we to this doctrine give, That had the wild oat not been sown, The soil, left barren, had not grown The grain by which a man may live ? O, if we held the doctrine sound For life outliving heats of youth. Yet who would preach it as a truth To those that eddy round and round ? Hold thou the good : define it well : For fear divine philosophy Should push beyond her mark, and be Procuress to the Lords of Hell. 360 IN MEMORIAM. LIU. 0, YET we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt and taints of blood ; That nothing walks with aimless feet ; That not one life shall be destroyed. Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete ; That not a worm is cloven in vain ; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain. Behold ! we know not anything ; I can but trust that good shall fall At last, — far off, — at last, to all, And every winter change to spring. IN MEMORIAM. 361 So runs my dream : but what am 1 ? An infant crying in the night : An infant crying for the light : And with no language but a cry, 24 362 IN ME-MORIAM. LIV. The wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave, — Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul ? Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams ? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life ; That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds, And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear ; I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs, That slope through darkness up to God ; IN MEMORIAM. 363 1 Stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all. And faintly trust the larger hope. 364 IN MEMORIAM. " So careful of the type ? " but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, " A thousand types are gone I care for nothing, all shall go. " Thou makest thine appeal to me : I bring to life, I bring to death : The spirit does but mean the breath : I know no more." And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed, And love Creation's final law, — Tho'igh Nature. red in tooth and claw With ra -ne shrieKec/ agamst his creed, — IN MEMORIAM. 366 Who loved, who suffered countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or sealed withm the iron hills ? No more ? A monster, then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime. Were mellow music matched with him. life as futile, then, as frail ! for thy voice to soothe and bless ! What hope of answer, or redress ? Behind the veil, behind the veil. 366 IN MEMOKIAM. LVI. Peace, come away : the song of woe Is after all an earthly song : Peace, come away ; we do him wrong To sing so wildly ; let us go. Come, let us go ; your cheeks are pale, But half my life I leave behind ; Methinks my friend is richly shrined, But I shall pass ; my work will fail. Yet in these ears, till hearing dies, One set slow bell will seem to toll The passing of the sweetest soul That ever looked with human eyes. I hear it now, and o'er and o'er. Eternal greetings to the dead ; And "Ave, Ave, Ave," said, " Adieu, adieu," forevermore ! Il\ MEMORIAM. 367 Lvn. In those sad words I took farewell ! Like echoes in sepulchral halls, As drop by drop the water falls In vaults and catacombs, they fell ; And, falling, idly broke the peace Of hearts that beat from day to day. Half-conscious of their dying clay. And those cold crypts where they shall cease. The high Muse answered : " Wherefore grieve Thy brethren with a fruitless tear ? Abide a little longer here, And thou shalt take a nobler leave." 368 IN MEilOEIAM. LvnL He passed ; a soul of nobler tone : My spirit loved and loves him yet, Like some poor girl whose heart is set On one whose rank exceeds her own. He mixing with his proper sphere, She finds the baseness of her lot ; Half jealous of she knows not what, And envying all that meet him there. The little village looks forlorn ; She sighs amid her narrow days, Moving about the household ways, In that dark house where .^he was born. The foolish neighbors come and go, And tease her till the day draws by ; At night she weeps, " How vain am 1 1 How should he love a thing so low ? " IN ME.MOKIAM. oG9 ux. If, in thy second state sublime, Thy ransomed reason change replies With all the circle of the wise, The perfect flower of human time ; And if thou cast thine eyes below. How dimly charactered and slight, How dwarfed a growth of cold and night, How blanched with darkness, must I grow ! Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore, Where thy first form was made a man ; I loved thee. Spirit, and love, nor can The soul of Shakspeare love thee more. 370 IN MEMORIA-M. LX. Though if an eye that 's downward cast Could make thee somewhat blench or fail, So be my love an idle tale, And fading legend of the past ; And thou, as one that once declined. When he was little more than boy, On some unworthy heart with joy, But lives to wed an equal mind ; And breathes a novel world, the while His other passion wholly dies, Or in the light of deeper eyes Is matter for a flying smile. IN MEMORIAM. 371 ua. Yet pity for a horse o'erdriven, And love in which my hound has part, Can hang no weight upon my heart, In its assumptions up to heaven ; And I am so much more than these, " As thou, perchance, art more than I, And yet I spare them sympathy, And I would set their pains at ease. So mayst thou watch me where 1 weep, As, unto vaster motions bound, The circuits of thine orbit round A higher height, a deeper deep. 372 IX MEMOKIAM. Lxn. Dost thou look back on what hath been, As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began, And on a simple village green ; Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance. And breasts the blows of circumstance. And grapples with his evil star ; Who makes by force his merit known. And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees. And shape the whisper of the throne ; And moving up from high to higher, Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope The pillar of a people's hope, The centre of a world's desire ; IN MEMORIAM. 373 V Yet feels, as in a pensive dream, When all his active powers are still, A distant dearness in the hill, A secret sweetness in the stream, The limit of his narrower fate, While yet beside its vocal springs He played at counsellors and kings, With one that was his earliest mate ; Who ploughs with pain his native lea. And reaps the labor of his hands, Or in the furrow musing stands : " Does my old friend remember me ? " 374 IN MEMOKIAM. LXm. Sweet soul ! do with me as thou wilt ; I lull a fancy trouble-tost With " Love 's too precious to be lost. A little grain shall not be spilt." And in that solace can 1 sing, Till out of painful phases wrought There flutters up a happy thought, Self-balanced on a lightsome wing ; Since we deserved the name of friends, And thine effect so lives in me, A part of mine may live in thee, And move thee on to noble ends. IN MEMOKIAM. 375 LXIV. YocT thought my heart too far diseased ; You wonder when my fancies play, To find me gay among the gay, Like one with any trifle pleased. The shade by which my life was crossed, Which makes a desert in the mind, Has made me kindly with my kind, And like to him whose sight is lost ; Whose feet are guided through the land, Whose jest among his friends is free, Who takes the children on his nnee, And winds their curls about his hand ; He plays with threads, he beats his chair For pastime, dreaming of the sky ; His inner day can never die. His night of loss is always there. 376 IX MEMORIAX. ISY, "When on my bed the moonlight falls I know that in thy place of rest, By that broad water of the west There comes a glory on the walls : Thy marble bright in dark appears, As slowly steals a silver flame Along the letters of thy name, And o'er the number of thy years. The mystic glory swims away ; From off my bed the moonlight dies And closing eaves of wearied eyes I sleep till dusk is tipped in gray : And then I know the mist is drawn A lucid veil from coast to coast, And in the chancel like a ghost Thy tablet glimmers to the davsm. IN MEMOEIAM. 377 LXVI. When in the down I sink my head. Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times mv breatn ; Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Death, Nor can I dream of thee as dead : I walk as ere 1 walked forlorn, When all our path was fresh with dew, And all the bugle breezes blew Reveillee to the breaking mom. But what is this ? I turn about, I find a trouble in thine eye. Which makes me sad, I know not why, Nor can my dream resolve the doubt: But ere the lark hath left the lea I wake, and I discern the truth ; [t IS the trouble of my youth That ioolish sleep transfers to thee. '67 S IN MEMOKIAM. LXVII. I DREAMED there would be Spring no more, That Nature's ancient power was lost : The streets were black with smoke and frost, They chattered trifles at the door. I wandered from the noisy town, 1 found a wood with thorny bougtis ; I took the thorns to bind my brows, I wore them like a civic crown. I met with scoffs, 1 met with scorns, From youth and babe and hoary hairs : They called me in the public squares The fool that wears a crown of thorns. They called me fool, they called me child : I found an angel of the night : The voice was low, the look was bright, He looked upon my crown and smiled : IN MEMORIAM. 379 He reached the glory of a hand, That seemed to touch it into leaf: The voice was not the voice of grief; The words were hard to understand. 380 IN MEMOEIAM. LXVIII. I CANNOT see the features right, When on the gloom I strive to paint The face I know ; the hues are faint, And mix with hollow masks of night : Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought, A gulf that ever shuts and gapes, A hand that points, and palled shapes In shadowy thoroughfares of thought ; And crowds that stream from yawning doors, And shoals of puckered faces drive ; Dark bulks that tumble half alive, And lazy lengths on boundless shores : Till all at once, beyond the will, I hear a wizard music roll, And through a lattice on the soul Looks thy fair face, and makes it still. IN MEMORIAM, 381 LXIZ. Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance And madness, thou hast forged at last A night-long Present of the Past In which we went through summer France. Hadst thou such credit with the soul ? So bring an opiate treble-strong. Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong, That thus my pleasure might be whole ; While now we talk, as once we talked Of men and minds, the dust of change, The days that grow to something strange, In walking as of old we walked Beside the river's wooded reach. The fortress, and the mountain ridge. The cataract flashing from the bridge. The breaker breaking on the beach. 382 IN MEMORIAM. LXX. RisEST thou thus, dim dawn, again, And howlest, issuing out of night, With blasts that blow the poplar white, And lash with storm the streaming pane ? Day, when my crowned estate begun To pine in that reverse of doom, Which sickened every living bloom. And blurred the splendor of the sun ; Who usherest in the dolorous hour With thy quick tears that make the rose Pull sideways, and the daisy close Her crimson fringes to the shower ; Who mightst have heaved a windless flame Up the deep East, or, whispering, played A checker-work of beam and shade From hill to hill, yet looked the same. IN MEMORIAM. 383 As wan, as chill, as wild, as now ; Day, marked as with some hideous crime, When the dark hand struck down through time. And cancelled nature's best : but thou, Lift as thou mayst thy burthened brows Through clouds that drench the morning star, And whirl the ungarnered sheaf afar. And sow the sky with flying boughs, And up thy vault with roaring sound Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day ; Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray, And hide thy shame beneath the ground. 384 IN MEMOKIAM. LXXI. So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be. How know 1 what had need of thee, For thou wert strong as thou wert true ? The fame is quenched that I foresaw. The head hath missed an earthly wreath I curse not nature ; no, nor death. For nothing is that errs from law. We pass : the path that each man trod Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds : What fame is left for human deeds In endless age ? It rests with God. O hollow wraith of dying fame. Fade wholly, while the soul exults. And self-infolds the large results Of force that would have forged a name. IN MEMORIAM. 385 LXXII. As sometimes in a dead man's face. To those that watch it more and more, A likeness hardly seen before Comes out, — to some one of his race : So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, I see thee what thou art, and know Thy likeness to the wise below. Thy kindred with the great of old. But there is more than I can see, And what I see I leave unsaid, Nor speak it, knowing Death has made His darkness beautiful with thee. 386 IN MEMOKIAM. LXXIII. I LEAVE thy praises unexpressed In verse that brings myself relief, And by the measure of my grief I leave thy greatness to be guessed ; What practice, howsoe'er expert, In fitting aptest words to things, Or voice the richest-toned that sings, Hath power to give thee as thou wert ? I care not, in these fading days. To raise a cry that lasts not long, And round thee with the breeze of song To stir a little dust of praise. Thy leaf has perished in the green, And, while we breathe beneath the sun, The world which credits what is done Is cold to all that might have been. IN MEMORIAM. 387 So here shall silence guard thy fame ; But somewhere, out of human view, Whate'er thy hands are set to do Is wrought with tumult of acclaim. 388 IN MEJIORIAM. LXXIV. Take wings of fancy, and ascend, And in i moment set thy face Where all the starry heavens of space Are sharpened to a needle's end ; Take wings of foresight ; lighten through The secular abyss to come. And lo ! thy deepest lays are dumb Before the mouldering of a yew ; And if the matin songs, that woke The darkness of our planet, last, Thine own shall wither in the vast. Ere half the lifetime of an oak. Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain ; And what are they when these remain The ruined shells of hollow towers ? IN MEMORIAM. 389 LXXV. What hope is here for modem rhyme To him, who turns a musing eye On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie Foreshortened in the tract of time ? These mortal lullabies of pain May bind a book, may line a box, May serve to curl a maiden's locks ; Or, when a thousand moons shall wane, A man upon a stall may find, And, passing, turn the page that tell? A grief, — then changed to something else, Sung by a long forgotten mind. But what of that ? My darkened ways Shall ring with music all the same ; To breathe my loss is more than fame. To utter love more sweet than praise. 390 IN MEMOEIAM. LXXVI. Again at Christmas did we weave The holly round the Christmas heurtli, The silent snow possessed the earth, And calmly fell our Christmas eve ; The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost, No wing of wind the region swept, But over all things brooding slept The quiet sense of something lost. As in the winters left behind. Again our ancient games had place, The mimic pictures breathing grace, And dance and song and hoodman-blind. Who showed a token of distress ? No single tear, no type of pain : O sorrow, then can sorrow wane ? O grief, can grief be changed to less ? IN MEMORIAM. 391 O last regret, Kegret can die ! No, — mixed with all this mj^stic frame, Her deep relations are the same, But with long use her tears are dry. 392 IX MEJIOKIAil. LXXVTI. " More than my brothers are to me," — Let this not vex thee, noble heart ! I know thee of what force thou art, To hold the costliest love in fee. But thou and I are one in kind, As moulded like in nature's mint ; And hill and wood and field did print The same sweet forms in either mind. For us the same cold streamlet curled Through all his eddying coves ; the same All winds that roam the twilight came In whispers of the beauteous world. At one dear knee we proffered vows, One lesson from one book we learned, Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turned To black and brown on kindred brows. IN MEMORIAM. 393 And so my wealth resembles thine, But he was rich where I was poor, And he supplied my want the more As his unlikeness fitted mine. 26 394 IN ME.MOKIAil. LXXVIII. If any vague desire should rise, That holy Death, ere Arthur died, Had moved me kindly from his side. And dropped the dust on tearless eyes ; Then fancy shapes, as fancy can, The grief my loss in him had wrought, A grief as deep as life or thought, But stayed in peace with God and man. I make a picture in the brain ; I hear the sentence that he speaks ; He bears the burthen of the weeks, But turns his burthen into gain. His credit thus shall set me free ; And, influence-rich to soothe and save, Unused example from the grave, Reach out dead hands to comfort me. IN MEMOB.IAM. b95 Lxxnc. Could 1 have said while he was here, " My love shall now no further range, There cannot come a mellower change. For now is love mature in ear." Love, then, had hope of richer store : What end is here to my complaint ? This haunting whisper makes me faint, " More years had made me love thee more." But Death returns an answer sweet : " My sudden frost was sudden gain, And gave all ripeness to the grain, It might have drawn from after-heat." ?96 IN iMEMORIAM. LXXX. I "WAGE not any feud with Death For changes wrought on form and face ; No lower life that earth's embrace May breed with him can fright my faith. Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks ; And these are but the shattered stalks Or ruined chrysalis of one. Nor blame I Death, because he bare The use of virtue out of earth ; I know transplanted human worth Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. For this alone on Death I wreak The wrath that garners in my heart ; He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak. IN MEMOKIAM. 397 LXXXI. Dip down upon the northern shore, O sweet new year, delaying long'; Thou doest expectant nature wrong. Delaying long, delay no more. What stays thee from the clouded noons, Thy sweetness from its proper place ? Can trouble live with April days. Or sadness in the summer moons ? Bring orchis, bring the fox-glo^e spire, The little speedwell's darling blue , Deep tulips dashed with fiery dew Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. thou, new year, delaying long, Delayest the sorrow in my blood. That longs to burst a frozen bud, And flood a fresher throat with song. VJS IN MEilOKIAM. Lxxxn. When I contemplate, all alone, The life that had been thine below. And fix my thoughts on all the glow To which thy crescent would have grown ; I see thee sitting cro^vned with good, A central warmth diffusing bliss In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss. On all the branches of thy blood ; Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine ; For now the day was drawing on, When thou shouldst link thy life with one Of mine own house, and boys of thine Had babbled " Uncle " on my knee ; But that remorseless iron hour Made cypress of her orange-flower, Despair of Hope, and earth of thee. IN MEMOKIAIM. 39S I seem to meet their least desire, To clap their cheeks, to call them mine. I see their unborn faces shine Beside the never-lighted fire. I see myself an honored guest, Thy partner in the flowery walk Of letters, genial table-talk. Or deep dispute, and graceful jest : While r.ow thy prosperous labor fills The lips of men with honest praise, And sun by sun the happy days Descend below the golden hills With promise of a morn as fair ; And all the train of bounteous hours Conduct, by paths of growing powers, To reverence and the silver hair ; Till slowly worn her earthly robe, Her lavish mission richly wrought, Leaving great legacies of thought, Thy spirit should fail from off the globe ; 400 IN MEMORIAM. What time mine own might also flee, As linked with thine in love and fate, And, hovering o'er the dolorous strait To the other shore, involved in thee, Arrive at last the blessed goal, And he that died in Holy Land Would reach us out the shining hand, And take us as a single soul. What reed was that on which I leant ? Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake The old bittei ness again, and break The low beginnings of content? IN MEMOKIAM. 401 Lxxxm. This truth came borne with bier and pall, I felt it, when 1 sorrowed most, 'T is better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all O true in word, and tried in deed, Demanding, so to bring relief To this which is our common grief, What kind of life is that I lead ; And whether trust in things above Be dimmed of sorrow, or sustained, And whether love for him have drained My capabilities of love ; Your words have virtue such as draws A faithful answer from the breast. Through light reproaches, half expressed, And loyal unto kindly laws. 402 IN MEMOEIAM. My blood an even tenor kept, Till on mine ear this message falls, That in Vienna's sacred walls God's finger touched him, and he slept. The great Intelligences fair That range above our mortal state, In circle round the blessed gate, Received and gave him welcome there ; And led him through the blissful climes, And showed him in the fountain fresh All knowledge that the sons of flesh Shall gather in the cycled times. But I remained, whose hopes were dim, Whose life, whose thoughts, were little worth. To wander on a darkened earth, Where all things round me breathed of him. friendship, equal-poised control, O heart, with kindliest motion warm, sacred essence, other form, O solemn ghost ! crowned soul ! IN MEMOB.IAM. . 403 Yet none could better know than I How much of act at human hands The sense of human will demands, By which we dare to live or die. Whatever way my days decline, 1 felt and feel, though left alone. His being working in mine own, The footsteps of his life in niitie ; A life that all the Muses decked With gifts of grace that might express All-comprehensive tenderness. All-subtilizing intellect : And so my passion hath not swerved To works of weakness, but I find An image comforting the mind. And in my grief a strength reserved. Likewise the imaginative woe, That loved to handle spiritual strife, Diffused the shock through all my life. But in the present broke the blow. 404 • IN MEMOKIAM. My pulses therefore beat again For other friends that once 1 met ; Nor can it suit me to forget The mighty hopes that make us men. I woo your love : I count it crime To mourn for any overmuch ; I, the divided half of such A friendship as had mastered Time ; Which masters Time indeed, and is Eternal, separate from fears. The all-assuming months and years Can take no part away from this : But Summer on the steaming floods, And Spring that swells the narrow brooks, And Autumn with a noise of rooks. That gather in the waning woods, And every pulse of wind and wave Recalls, in change of light or gloom, My old affection of the tomb, And my prime passion in the grave : IN MEMORIAM. 405 My old affection of the tomb, A part of stillness yearns to speak : " Arise, and get thee forth and seek A friendship for the years to come. " I watch thee from the quiet shore ; Thy spirit up to mine can reach ; But in dear words of human speech We two communicate no more." And I, " Can clouds of nature stain The starry clearness of the free ? How is it ? Canst thou feel for me Some painless sympathy with pain ? " And lightly does the whisper fall : " 'T is hard for thee to fathom this ; 1 triumph in conclusive bliss, And that serene result of all." So hold I commerce with the dead ; Or so methinks the dead would say ; Or so shall grief with symbols play, And piiung life be fancy-fed. 4U6 IN MEMOKIAM. JN DW looking to some settled end, That these things pass, and I shall prove A meeting somewhere, love with love, I crave your pardon, oh my friend ; if not so fresh, with love as true, I, clasping brother-hands, avei I could not, if 1 would, transfer The whole 1 felt for him to you. For which be they that hold \part The promise of the golden hours ? First love, first friendship, equal powers That marry with the virgin heart. Still mine that cannot but deplore, That beats within a lonely place, That yet remembers his embrace, But at his footstep leaps no more. My heart, though widowed, may not rest Quite in the love of what is gone, But seeks to beat in time with one That warms another living- breast. IS MEMORIAM. 407 Ah ! take the imperfect gift I bring, Knowing the primrose yet is dear, The primrose of the later year, As not unlike to that of Spring. 408 IN XIEMORIAM. LXXXIV. Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, That rollest from the gorgeous gloom Of evening over brake and bloom And meadow, slowly breathing bare The round of space, and rapt below Through all the dewy-tasselled wood, And shadowing down the homed flood In ripples, fan my brows and blow The fever from my cheek, and sigh The full new life that feeds thy breath Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death, 111 brethren, let the fancy fly From belt to belt of crimson seas, On leagues .of odor streaming far, To where, in yonder orient star, A hundred spirits whisper " Peace." IN MEMOEIAM. 409 LXXXV. 1 PASSED beside the reverend walls In which of old I wore the gown ; I roved at random through the town, And saw the tumult of the halls ; And heard once more in college fanes The storm their high-built organ? make, And thunder-music, rolling, shake The prophets blazoned on the panes ; And caught once more the distant shout, The measured pulse of racing oars Among the willows ; paced the shores And many a bridge, and all about The same gray flats again, and felt The same, but not the same ; and last, Up that long walk of limes I passed. To see the rooms in which he dwelt. VOL. J 410 IX MEilORIAM. Another name was on the door : 1 lingered ; all within was noise Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys That crashed the glass, and beat the floor ; Where once we held debate, a band Of youthful friends, on mind and art, And labor, and the changing mart, And all the framework of the land ; When one would aim an arrow fair, But send it slackly from the string ; And one would pierce an outer ring, And one an inner, here and there ; And last, the master-bowman, he Would cleave the mark. A willing ear We lent him. Who, but hung to hear The rapt oration flowing free From point to point with power and grace, And music in the bounds of law, To those conclusions when we saw The God within him light his face, lift M£.MOillAM. -iii And seem to lift the form, and glow In azure orbits heavenly-wise ; And over those ethereal eyes The bar of Michael Angelo. 412> IN MEMOUIAM- LXXXVl. Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, Rings Eden through the budded quicks, O, tell me where the senses mix, 0, tell me where the passions meet. Whence radiate : fierce extremes employ Thy spirits in the dusking leaf. And in the midmost heart of grief Thy passion clasps a secret joy : And I, — my harp would prelude woe, — I cannot all command the strings ; The glory of the sum of things Will flash along the chords and go. IV MTlArORIAM. 413 Lxxrvii. Witch-elms, that counterchange the floor Of this flat lawii with dusk and bright ; And thou, with all thy breadth and height Of foliage, towering sycamore ; How often, hither wandering down, My Arthur found your shadows fair, And shook to all the liberal air The dust and din and steam of town ! He brought an eye for all he saw ; He mixed in all our simple sports ; They pleased him, fresh from brawling court? And dusky purlieus of the law. O joy to him, in this retreat, Immantled in ambrosial dark, To drink the cooler air, and mark The landscape winking through the heat ! 414 IN MEMOAlAX. O sound to rout the brood of cares, The sweep of scythe in morning dew The gust that round the garden flew. And tumbled half the mellowing pears ! bliss, when all in circle drawn About him, heart and ear were fed, To hear him, as he lay and read The Tuscan poets on the lawn : Or in the all-golden afternoon A guest, or happy sister, sung, Or here she brought the harp, and flung A ballad to the brightening moon : Nor less it pleased, in livelier moods, Beyond the bounding hill to stray. And break the livelong summer day With banquet in the distant woods ; Whereat we glanced from theme to theme, Discussed the books to love or hate, Or touched the changes of the state, Or threaded some Socratic dream ; IN MEMOKIAM. 415 But if I praised the busy town, He loved to rail against it still, For " ground in yonder social mill, We rub each other's angles down, " And merge," he said, " in form and gloss The picturesque of man and man." We talked : the stream beneath us ran, The wine-flask lying couched in moss, Or cooled within the glooming wave, And last, returning from afar, Before the crimson-circled star Had fallen into her father's grave, And brushing ankle-deep in flowers, We heard behind the woodbine veil The milk that bubbled in the pail, And buzzings of the honeyed hours. 416 . IN MEMOEIAM. LXXXVIII. He tasted love with half his mind, Nor ever drank the inviolate spring Where nighest heaven, vv^ho first could fling This bitter seed among mankind ; That could the dead, whose dying eyes Were closed with wail, resume their life, They would but find in child and wife An iron welcome when they rise : 'T was well, indeed, when warm with wine. To pledge them with a kindly tear : To talk them over, to wish them here. To count their memories half divine ; But if they came who passed away, Behold their brides in other hands : The hard heir strides about their lands, And vvill not yield them for a day. IN 3VIEM0RIAM, 417 Vea, though their sons were none of these, Not less the yet-loved sire would make Confusion worse than death, and shake The pillars of domestic peace. Ah dear, but come thou back to me : Whatever change the years have wrought, I find not yet one lonely thought That cries against my wish for thee. ^18 IN MEMOKIAM. Lxxxrx. When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, And rarely pipes the mounted thrush ' Or underneath the barren bush Flits by the sea-blue bird of March ; Come, wear the form by which I know Thy spirit in time among thy peers ; The hope of unaccomplished years Be large and lucid round thy brow. When summer's hourly-mellowing change May breathe with many roses sweet Upon the thousand waves of wheat, That ripple round the lonely grange ; Come ; not in watches of the night, But where the sunbeam broodeth warm, Come, beauteous in thine after form, And like a finer light in light. IN MEMOHIAM. 419 xc. If any vision should reveal Thy likeness, I might count it vain, As but the canker of (he brain ; Yea, though it spake and made appeal To chances where our lots were cast Together in the days behind, I might but say, I hear a wind Of memory murmuring the past. Yea, though it spake and bared to view A fact within the coming year ; And though the months, revolving neat, Should prove the phantom-warning true, They might not seem thy prophecies, But spiritual presentiments. And such refraction of events As often rises ere they rise. 420 IN MEMOKIAM. XCI. 1 SHALL not see thee. Dare 1 say No spirit ever brake the band That stays him from the native land Wliere first he walked when clasped in clay ? No visual shade of some one lost, But he, the Spirit himself, may come Where all the nerve of sense is numb ; Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost. 0, therefore from thy sightless range With gods in unconjectured bliss, O, from the distance of the abyss Of tenfold-complicated change, Descend, and touch, and enter ; hear The wish too strong for words to name ; That in this blindness of the frame My Ghost may feel that thine is near. IN MEMOKIAM. 421 xcn. How pure at h«art and sound in head. With what divine affections bold, Should be the man whose thought would hold An hour's communion with the dead. In vain shalt thou, or any, call The spirits from their golden day, Except, like them, thou too canst say My spirit is at peace with all. They haunt the silence of the breast. Imaginations calm and fair. The memory like a cloudless air, The conscience as a sea at rest : But when the heart is full of din, And doubt beside the portal waits, They can but listen at the gates, And hear the household jar within. 422 I^ MEMOKIAM. xcm. By night we lingered on the lawn, For under foot the herb was dry ; And genial warmth ; and o'er the sky The silvery haze of summer drawn ; And calm that let the tapers burn Unwavering : not a cricket chirred : The brook alone far off was heard, And on the board the fluttering urn : And bats went round in fragrant skies, And wheeled or lit the filmy shapes That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes And woolly breasts and beaded eyes ; While now we sang old songs that pealed From knoll to knoll, where, couched at ease, The white kine glimmered, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field. IN MEMORIAM. 423 But when those others, one by one. Withdrew themselves from me and night, And in the house light after light Went out, and 1 was all alone, A hunger seized my heart ; I read Of that glad year which once had been. In those fallen leaves which kept their gretm, The noble letters of the dead : And strangely on the silence broke The silent-speaking words, and strange Was love's dumb cry defying change To test his worth ; and strangely spoke The faith, the vigor, bold to dwell On doubts that drive the coward back, And keen through wordy snares to track Suggestion to her inmost cell. So word by word, and line by line. The dead man touched me from the past, And all at once it seemed at last His living soul was flashed on mine. 424 IN TVIEMOKIAM. And mine in his was wound, and whirled About empyreal heights of thought, And came on that which is, and caught The deep pulsations of the world, Ionian music measuring out The steps of Time, — the shocks of Chance, — The blows of Death. At length my trance Was cancelled, stricken through with doubt. Vague words ! but ah, how hard to frame In matter-moulded forms of speech. Or even for intellect to reach Through memory that which I became : Till now the doubtful dusk revealed The knolls once more where, couched at ease, The white kine glimmered, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field : And sucked from out the distant gloom, A breeze began to tremble o'er The large leaves of the sycamore, And fluctuate all the still perfume ; IN MEMOEIAM. 42o And gathering- freshiier overhead, Rocked the full-foliaged ehns, and swung The heavy-folded rose, and flung 'file lilies to and fro, and said " The dawm, the dawn," and died away ; And East and West, without a breath, Mixed their dim lights, like life and death. To broaden into boundless day, L. I. 28 42G IN MEMOKIAM, XCIV. Yor say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. I know not : one indeed I knew In many a subtile question versed, Who touched a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true : Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. He fought his doubts and gathered strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them : thus he came at lenoch IN MEMOKIAM. 427 To find a stronger faith his own; And Power was with him in the night, Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone, But in the darkness and the cloud, As over Sinai's peaks of old, While Israel made their gods of gold. Although the tem-pest blew so loud. 428 IN MEMOKIAM. XCV. My love ha? talked with rocks and trees, He finds on misty mountain-ground His own vast shadow glory-crowned, He sees hhnself in all he sees. Two partners of a married life, — I looked on these and thought of thee In vastness and in mystery, And of my spirit as of a wife. These two, — they dwelt with eye on eye. Their hearts of old have beat in tune. Their meetings made December June, Their every parting was to die. Their love has never passed away ; The days she never can forget Are earnest that he loves her yet, Whate'er the faithless people say. IN MEMORIAM. 429 Her life is lone, he sits apart, He loves her yet, she will not weep. Though, rapt in matters dark and deep, He seems to slight her simple heart. He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, He reads the secret of the star, He seems so near and yet so far. He looks so cold : she thinks him kind. She keeps the gift of years before, A withered violet is her bliss ; She knows not what his greatness is , For that, for all, she loves him more. For him she plays, to him she sings Of early faith and plighted vows ; She knows but matters of the house, And he, he knows a thousand things. Her faith is fixed and cannot move. She darkly feels him great and wise, She dwells on him with faithful eyes, " I cannot understand : I love." 430 IN MEMORIAM, XCVI. You leave us ; you will see the Rhine, And those fair hills I sailed below, When I was there with him ; and go By summer belts of wheat and vine To where he breathed his latest breath, That City. All her splendor seems No livelier than the wisp that gleams On Lethe in the eyes of Death. Let her great Danube rolling fair Enwind her isles, unmarked of me : I have not seen, I will not see Vienna : rather dream that there, A treble darkness, evil haunts The birth, the bridal; friend from friei Is oftener parted, fathers bend Above more graves, a thousand wants IX MEMOEIAM, 431 Gnar at the heels of men, and prey By each cold hearth, and sadness flings Her shadow on the blaze of kings ; And yet myself have heard him say, That not in any mother town With statelier progress to and fro The double tides of chariots flow By park and suburb ur-der brown Of lustier leaves ; nor more content, He told me, lives in any crowd, When all is gay with lamps, and loud With sport and song, in booth and tent, Imperial halls, or open plain ; And wheels the circled dance, and breaks The rocket molten into flakes Of crimson or in emerald rain. 432 IN MEMOEIAM. xcvn. RisEST thou thus, dim dawn, again, So loud with voices of the birds, So thick with lowings of the herds, Day, when I lost the flower of men ; Who tremblest through thy darlding red On yon swollen brook that bubbles fast By meadows breathing of the past, And woodlands holy to the dead ; Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves A song that slights the coming care. And Autumn laying here and there A fiery finger on the leaves; Who wakenest with thy balmy breath To myriads on the genial earth. Memories of bridal, or of birth, And unto myriads more, of death. IN MEMOKIAM. 433 O, wheresoever those may be, Betwixt the slumber of the poles, To-day they count as kindred souls ; They know me not. but mourn with me. 434 IX MEM OBI AM. XCVIII. I WAKE, 1 rise ; from end to end, Of all the landscape underneath I find no place that does not breathe Some gracious memory of my friend : No gray old grange, or lonely fold. Or low morass and whispering reed, Or simple stile from mead to mead, Or sheepwalk up the windy wold ; Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw That hears the latest linnet trill, Nor quarry trenched along the hill, And haunted by the wrangling daw; Nor runlet tinkling from the rock Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves To left and right through meadowy curves, That feed the mothers of the flock ; IN MEMORIAM. 435 But each has pleased a kindred eye, And each reflects a kindh'er day ; And, leaving these, to pass away, 1 think once more he seems to die. 436 IN MEMOKIAM. xcrx. Unwatched the garden bough shall swaj'^, The tender blossom flutter down, Unloved that beech will gather brown, This maple burn itself away ; Unloved, the sunflower, shining fair, Ray round with flames her disk of seed, And many a rose-carnation feed With summer spice the humming air; Unloved, by many a sandy bar. The brook shall babble down the plain, At noon, or when the lesser wain Is twisting round the polar star ; Uncared for, gird the windy grove, And flood the haunts of hern and crake; Or into silver arrows break The sailing moon in creek and cove; IN- JIEMORIAM. 437 Till from the garden and the wild A fresh association blow, And year by year the landscape grow Familiar to the stranger's child; As year by year the laborer tills His wonted glebe, or lops the glades ; And year by year our memory fades From all the circle of the hills. 438 IN MEMORIAM. We leave the well-beloved place Where first we gazed upon the sky ; The roofs that heard our earliest cry Will shelter one of stranger race. We go, but ere we go from home, As down the garden-walks I move, Two spirits of a diverse love Contend for loving masterdom. One whispers, " Here thy boyhood sung Long since its matin song, and heard The low love-language of the bird In native hazels tassel-hung." The other answers, " Yea, but here Thy feet have strayed in after hours With thy lost friend among the bowers. And this hath made them trebly dear." IN MEMORIAM. 439 These two have striven half the day, And each prefers his separate claim, Poor rivals in a losing game, That will not yield each other way. I turn to go : iny feet are set To leave the pleasant fields and farms ; They mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret. 440 IN JIE.MOUIAM. CI. On that last night before we went From out the doors where I wa:> bred, I dreamed a vision of the dead, Which left my after morn content. Methouqht 1 dwelt within a hall, And maidens with me; distant hills From hidden summits fed with rills A river sliding by the wall. The hall with harp and carol rano-. They sang of what is wise and good And graceful. In the centre stood A statue veiled, to which they sang ; And which, though veiled, was known to me, The shape of him 1 loved, and love Forever : then flew in a dove. And brought a summons from the sea : IN mem:oeiam. 441 And when they learnt that I must go, They wept and wailed, but led the way To where a little shallop lay At anchor in the flood below ; And on by many a level mead, And shadowing bluff that made the bank>, We glided, winding under ranks Of iris, and the golden reed ; And still, as vaster grew the shore, And rolled the floods in grander space, The maidens gathered strength and grace. And presence lordlier than before ; And I myself, who sat apart And watched them, waxed in every limb ; I felt the thews of Anakim, The pulses of a Titan's heart ; As one would sing the death of war, And one would chant the history Of that great race, which is to be, And one the shaping of a star* VOL. I. 2y 442 IX MEMOEIAM. Until the forward-creepinof tides Began to foam, and we to draw From deep to deep, to where we saw A great ship lift her shining sides. The man we loved was there on deck, Rut thrice as large as man he bent To greet us. Up the side I went, And fell in silence on his neck : Whereat those maidens, with one mind, Bewailed their lot ; I did them wrong : " We served thee here," they said, " so long, And wilt thou leave us now behind ?" So rapt I was, they could not win An answer from my lips, but he Replying, " Enter likewise ye And go with us : " they entered in. And while the wind began to sweep A music out of sheet and shroud, We steered her toward a crinisnn cioud Tnat landlike slept along the deep. IN MEMORIAM 143 CII. The time draws near the birth of Chnst; The moon is hid, the night is still : A single church below the hill Is pealing, folded in the mist. A smgle peal of bells below, That wakens at this hour of rest A single murmur in the breast, That these are not the bells I know. Like strangers' voices here they sound, In lands where not a memory strays, Nor landmark breathes of other days. But all is new, unhallowed ground. 444 IN MEMOEIAM. cm. This holly by the cottage-eave, To-night, ungathered, shall it stand : We live within the stranger's land, And strangely falls our Christmas eve. Our father's dust is left alone And silent under other snows : There in due time the woodbine blows, The violet comes, but we are gone. No more shall wayward grief abuse The genial hour with mask and mime ; For change of place, like growth n{ time, Has broke the bond of dying use. Let cares their petty shadows cast, By which our lives are chiefly proved, A little spare the night I loved, And hold it solemn to the past. TM MEilOKIAM. 445 But let no footstep beat the floor, Now bowl of wassail mantle warm : For who would keep an ancient form Through which the spirit breathes no more ? Be neither song, nor game, nor feast, Nor harp be touched, nor flute be blown ; No dance, no motion, save alone What lightens in the lucid east Of rising worlds by yonder wood. Long sleeps the summer in the seed ; Run out your measured arcs, and lead The closing cycle rich in good. 446 IN MEMOKIAM. CIV. RiKG out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light . The year is dying in the night ; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. King out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow : The year is going, let him go ; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind. For those that here we see no more Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out ? slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife ; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. IN MEMOBIAM. 447 Ring out the want, the care, the sin. The faithless coldness of the times ; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes. But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood. The civic slander and the spite ; Ring in the love of truth and right. Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease. Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ; Ring out the thousand wars of old. Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ringf in the Christ that is to be. 448 IN MEMORIAM. CV. It is the day when he was bom, A bitter day that early sank Behind a purple-frosty bank Of vapor, leaving night forlorn. The time admits not flowers or leaves To deck the banquet. Fiercely fiiea The blast of North and East, and ice Makes daggers at the sharpened eaves, And bristles all the brakes and thorns To yon hard crescent, as she hangs Above the wood which grides and clangs Its leafless ribs and iron horns Together, in the drifts that pass, To darken on the rolling brine That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine. Arrange the board and brim the glass ; IN MEMOKIAM. 449 Briag in great logs and let them he, To make a solid core of heat ; Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat Of all things even as he were by : We keep the day. With festal cheer, With books and music, surely we Will drink to him, whate'er he be, And sing the songs he loved to hear. 450 IN MEMOEIAM. 1 WILL not shut me from my kind ; And, lest 1 stiffen into stone, I will not eat my heart alone, Nor feed with sighs a passing wind : What profit lies in barren faith, And vacant yearning, though with might To scale the heaven's highest height, Or dive below the wells of Death ? What find I in the highest place, But mine own phantom chanting hymns ? And on the depths of death there swims The reflex of a human face. 1 '11 rather take what fruit may be Of sorrow under human skies : 'T is held that sorrow makes us wise. Whatever wisdom sleep with thee. IN MEMORIAM. 451 Heart-affluence in discursive talk From household fountains never dry ; The critic clearness of an eye, That saw through all the Muses' walk ; Seraphic intellect and force To seize and throw the doubts of man ; Impassioned logic, which outran The hearer in its fiery course ; High nature amorous of the good, But touched with no ascetic gloom ; And passion pure in snowy bloom Through all the years of April blood ; A love of freedom rarely felt, Of freedom in her regal seat Of England, not the schoolboy heat, The blind hysterics of the Celt ; 452 IN MEMORIAM. And manhood fused with female grace In such a sort, the child would twine A trustful hand, unasked, in thine, And find his comfort in thy face ; All these have been, and thee mine eyes Have looked on : if they looked in vain, My shame is greater who remain, Nor let thy wisdom make me wise. IK MEMORIAM. 453 cvni. Thv converse- drew us with delight, The men of rathe and riper years : The feeble soul, a haunt of fears, Forgot his weakness in thy sight. On thee the loyal-hearted hung, The proud was half disarmed of pride, Nor cared the serpent at thy side To flicker with his treble tongue. The stern were mild when thou wert by. The flippant put himself to school And heard thee, and the brazen fool Was softened, and he knew not why ; While 1, thy dearest, sat apart, And felt thy triumph was as m]ne ; And loved them mors, that they were thine, The graceful tact, the Christian art • 464 TX MEMOKIAM. Not mine the sweetness or the skill, But mine the love that will not tire, And, bom of love, the vague desire That spurs an imitative will. IN MEMORIAM. 455 CIX. The churl in spirit, up or down, Alonjt the scale of ranks, through all To who may grasp a golden ball By l)lood a king, at heart a clown ; The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil His want in forms for fashion's sake, Will let his coltish nature break At seasons through the gilded pale : For who can always act? but he, To whom a thousand memories call. Not being less but more than all The gentleness he seemed to be, So wore his outward best, and joined Each office of the social hour To noble manners, as the flower And native growth of noble mind; 456 IX MEMORIAM. Nor ever narrowness or spite, Or villain fancy fleeting by, Drew in the expression of an eye Where God and Nature met in light, And thus he bore without abuse The grand old name of gentleman Defamed by every charlatan, And soiled with all ignoble use. IX MEMORIAM. 457 ex. High wisdom holds my wisdom less, That I, who gaze with temperate eyes On glorious insufficiencies, Set light by narrower perfectness. But thou, that fiUest all the room Of all my love, art reason why I seem to cast a careless eye On souls, the lesser lords of doom. For what wert thou ? some novel power Sprang up for ever at a touch, And hope could never hope too much, In watching thee from hour to hour, Large elements in order uiov-ght, And tracts of calm from tempest made, And world-wide fluctuation swayed In vassal tides that followed thouo-ht. VOL. I. oU 458 IX MEMOEIAM. cn. 'T IS held that sorrow makes us wise : Ye. now much wisdom sleeps with thee Which not alone had guided me, But served the seasons that may rise ; For can I doubt who knew thee keen In intellect, with force and skill To strive, to fashion, to fulfil, — I doubt not what thou wouldst have been : A life in civic action warm, A soul on highest mission sent, A potent voice of Parliament, A pillar steadfast in the storm. Should licensed boldness gather force, Becoming, when the time has birth, A lever to uplift the earth And roll it in another course, IN MEMOBIAM. 459 With many shocks thai come and go, With agonies, with energies, With overthrowings, and with cries, And undulations to and fro. 460 IN MEMOEIAM. cxn. Who loves not knowledge ? Who shall rail Against her beauty ? May she mix With men and prosper ! Who shall fix Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. But on her forehead sits a fire : She sets her forward countenance And leaps into the future chance, Submitting all things to desire. Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain, — She cannot fight the fear of death. What is she, cut from love and faith, But some wild Pallas from the brain Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst All barriers in her onward race For power. Let her know her place ; She is the second, not the first. IN MEMOKIAM. 461 A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain ; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child ; For she is earthly of the mind, But wisdom heavenly of the soul. friend, who earnest to thy goal So early, leaving me behind, I would the great world grew like thee. Who grewest not alone in power And knowledge, but from hour lo hour In reverence and in charity. 462 I>' MEMORIAM. CXIII. Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow. * Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song. . Now dance the lights on lawn and lea. The flocks are whiter down the vale, And milkier every milky sail On winding stream or distant sea ; Where now the seamew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam, and fly The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood ; that live their lives IN MEMORIAM. 463 From land to land ; and in my breast Spring wakens too ; and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest. 464 IN MEMORIAH. CXTV. Is it, then, regret for buried time That keenlier in sweet April wakes, And meets the year, and gives and takes The colors of the crescent prime ? • Not all ; the songs he stirring air, The life re-orient but of dust. Cry through the sense to hearten trust In that which made the world so fair. Not all regret ; the face will shine Upon me, while I muse alone ; The dear, dear voice that I have known Will speak to me of me and mine : Yet less of sorrow lives in me For days of happy commune dead ; Less yearning for the friendship fled, Than some strons: bond which is to be. IN MEMORIAM. 465 O DAYS and hours, your work is this, To hold me from my proper place, A little while from his embrace, For fuller gain of after bliss : That out of distance might ensue Desire of nearness doubly sweet ; And unto meeting, v.'hen we meet. Delight a hundredfold accrue, For every grain of sand that runs, And every span of shade that steals, And every kiss of toothed wheels, And all the courses of the suns. 466 IN MEMORIAM. CXVI. Contemplate all this work of time, The giant laboring in his youth ; Nor dream of human love and truth, As dying Nature's earth and lime ; But trust that those we call the dead Are breathers of an ampler day For ever nobler ends. They say, The solid earth whereon we tread In tracts of fluent heat began. And grew to seeming-random forms. The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at the last arose the man ; Who throve and branched from clime to clinif The herald of a higher race, And of himself in higher place, If so he t3'pe this work of time IN MEMORIAM. 407 Within himself, from more to more ; And, crowned with attributes of woe Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears; And dipped in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks of doom To shape and use. Arise ana fly The reeling Faun, the sensual feast ; Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die. 408 IN MEMOEIAM. crvii. Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, not as one that weeps 1 come once more ; the city sleeps ; 1 smell the meadow in the street ; I hear a chirp of birds ; I see Betwixt the black fronts long withdrawn A light-blue lane of early dawn, And think of early days and thee, And bless thee, for thy lips are bland, And bright the friendship of thine eye ; And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh 1 take the pressure of thine hand. IN MEMOEIAM. 469 CXVIII. I TRUST I have not wasted breath : I think we are not wholly brain, Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain. Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death , Not only cunning casts in clay: Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men, At least to me ? 1 would not stay. Let him, tlie wiser man who springs Hereafter, up from childhood shape His action like the greater ape, But 1 was bom to other things. 470 IN MEMOEIAM. CXIX. Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun, And ready, thou, to die with him. Thou watchest all things ever dim And dimmer, and a glory done : The team is loosened from the wain, The boat is drawn upon the shore ; Thou listenest to the closing door. And life is darkened in the brain. Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night. By thee the world's great work is heard Beginning, and the wakeful bird; Behind thee comes the greater light : The market-boat is on the stream, And voices hail it from the brink ; Thou hear'st the village hammer clink, And seest the moving of the team. IX MEMORIAL. 471 Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name For what is one, the first, the last, Thou, like my present and my past, Thy place is changed , thou art the same. 472 MKMORIAM. cxx. O, WAST thou with me, dearest, then, While 1 rose up against my doom, And strove to burst the folded gloom, To bare the eternal Heavens again, To feel once more, in placid awe, The strong imagination roll A sphere of stars about my soul, In all her motion one with law ? If thou wert with me, and the grave Divide us not, be with me now, And enter in at breast and brow. Till all my blood, a fuller wave. Be quickened with a livelier breath, And like an inconsiderate boy, As in the former flash of joy, I slip the thoughts of life and death ; I2T MEIU^U&IAM. 473 And all the breeze of Fancy blows, And every dew-drop pamts a bov ; The wizard lightnings deeply g\ if, And every thought breaks out a roso L. I. 551 474 IM MEMOBIAM. There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen I There where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea. The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands, They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go. But in my spirit will 1 dwell. And dream my dream, and hold it true ; For though my lips may breathe adieu, 1 cannot think the thing farewell. IN MEMOBIAM. 476 CXXII, That which we dare invoke to bless ; Our dearest faith, our ghastliest doubt ; He, They, One, All ; within, without ; The Power in darkness whom we guess ; I found Him not in world or sun. Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye ; Nor through the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun : If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, 1 heard a voice, " Believe no more," And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the Godless deep ; A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered, " 1 have felt." 476 IN MEMOHIAM. No, like a child in doubt and fear : But that blind clamor made me wise ; Then was I as a child that cries, But, crying, knows his father near; And what I seem beheld again What is, and no man understands ; And out of darkness came the hands That reach through nature, moulding men. IN MEMORIAM. 477 CXXIU. Whatever 1 have said or sung, Some bitter notes my harp would give, Yea, though there often seemed to live A contradiction on the tongue, Yet Hope had never lost her youth ; She did but look through dimmer eyes ; Or Love but played with gracious lies, Because he felt so fixed in truth : And if the song were full of care, He breathed the spirit of the song; And if the words were sweet and strong, He set his royal signet there : Abiding with me till I sail To seek thee on the mystic deeps, And this electric force, that keeps A tliousand pulses dancing, fail. 478 IN MEMORIAM. cxxur. Love is and was my Lord and King, And in his presence I attend To hear the tidings of my friend, Which every hour his couriers bring. Love is and was my King and Lord, And will be, though as yet I keep Within his court on earth, and sleep Encompassed by his faithful guard. And hear at times a sentinel That moves about from place to place, And whispers to the vast of space Among the worlds, that all is well. IN MEMORIAM. 479 CXXV. And all is well, though faith ami form Be sundered in the night of fear ; Well roars the storm to those that hear A deeper voice across the storm, Proclaiming social truth shall spread. And justice, e'en though thrice again The red fool-fury of the Seine Should pile her barricades with dead. But woe to him that wears a crown, And him, the lazar, in his rags : They tremble, the sustaining crags ; The spires of ice are toppled down. And molten up, and roar m flood ; The fortress crashes from on high, The brute earth lightens to the sky. And the vast JEon sinks in bloc^d, 480 IN MEMORIAL. And compassed by the fires of Hell, While thou, dear spirit, happy star, O'erlook'st the tumult from afar, And smilest, knowiiirr ail is well. IN MEMORIAM. 481 CXXVI. The love that rose on stronger wings, Unpalsied when he met with Death, Is comrade of the lesser faith That sees the course of human things. No doubt, vast eddies in the flood Of onward time shall yet be made, And throned races may degrade ; Yet, oh ye ministers of good, Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear, If all your office had to do With old results that look like new, If this were all your mission here, To draw, to sheathe a useless sword. To fool the crowd with glorious lies. To cleave a creed in sects and cries, To change the bearing of a word. 182 IN MEMORIAM. To shift an arbitrary power, To cramp the student at his desk, To make old baseness picturesque And tuft with grass a feudal tower ; Why then my scorn might well descend On you and yours. I see in part That all, as in som«i piece of art, Is toil cooperant to an ei d. IX MEMOBIAM. 483 CXXVII. Dear friend, far off, my lost desire, So far, so near, in woe and weal ; 0, loved the most when most I feel There is a lower and a higher ; Known and unknown, human, divine ! Sweet human hand and lips and eye, Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, Mine, mine, forever, ever mine ! Strang-e friend, past, present, and to be, Loved deeplier, darklier understood ; Behold I dream a dream of good And mingle all the world with thee. 484 IN MEMORIAM. cxxvm. Thy voice is on the rolling air ; I hear thee where the waters run •, Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair. What art thou, then ? I cannot guess ; But though I seem in star and flower To feel thee, some diffusive power, 1 do not therefore love thee less : My love involves the love before ; My love is vaster passion now ; Though mixed with God and Nature thou, 1 seem to love thee more and more. Far off thou art, but ever nigh ; I have thee still, and I rejoice : 1 prosper, circled with thy voice ; I shall not lose thee, though I die. IN MEMORIAM. 485 CXXIX. O LIVING will that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock, Flow through our deeds and make them pure, That we may lift from out the dust A voice as unto him that hears, A cry above the conquered years To one that with us works, and trust With faith that comes of self-control The truths that never can be proved Until we close with all we loved, And all we flow from, soul in soul. IN MEMOBIAM. 487 TRITE and tried, so well and long, Demand not thou a marriage lay ; In that it is thy marriage day Is music more than any song. Nor have I felt so much of bliss Since first he told me that he loved A daughter of our house ; nor proved Since that dark day a day like this ; Though I since then have numbered o'er Some thrice three years : they went and came, Remade the blood and changed the frame, And yet is love not less, but more ; No longer caring to embalm In dying songs a dead regret, But like a statue soliil-set, And moulded in colossal calm. 488 IN MEMORIAM. Regret is dead, but love is more Than in the summers that are flown, For I myself with these have grown To something greater than before ; Which makes appear the songs 1 made As echoes out of weaker times, As half but idle brawling rhymes. The sport of random sun and shade. But where is she, the bridal flower, That must be made a wife ere noon ? She enters, glowing with the moon Of Eden on its bridal bower : On me she bends her blissful eyes And then on thee ; they meet thy look, And brighten like the star that shook Betwixt the palms of paradise. O, when her life was yet in bud, He too foretold the perfect rose. For thee she grew, for thee she grows Forever, and as fair as good. IN JIEMORIAM. 489 And thou art worthy ; full of power ; As gentle ; liberal-minded, great, Consistent ; wearing all that weight Or learning lightly like a flower. But now set out : the noon is near, And I must give away the bride ; She fears not, or with thee beside And me behind her, will not fear : For I that danced her on my knee, That watched her on her nurse's arm, That shielded all her life from harm, At last must part with her to thee ; Now waiting to be made a wife. Her feet, my darling, on the dead ; Their pensive tablets round her head, And the most living words of life Breathed in her ear. The ring is on. The "wilt thou" answered, and again The "wilt thou" asked, till out of twain Her sweet " I will" has made ve one. VOL. I. 32 490 IN MEMOKIAM. Now sign your names, which shall oe read Mute symbols of a joyful mom By village eyes as yet unborn ; The names are signed, and overhead Begins the clash and clang that tells The joy to every wandering breeze ; The blind wall rocks, and on the trees The dead leaf trembles to the bells. happy hour ! and happier hours Await them. Many a merry face Salutes them, — maidens of the place, That pelt us in the porch with flowers. happy hour ! behold the bride With him to whom her hand I gave. They leave the porch, they pass the grave That has to-day its sunny side. To-day the grave is bright for me. For them the light of life increased Who stay to share the morning feast, Wlio rest to-night beside the sea. nf MEMOKIAII. 491 Let all my genial spirits advance To meet and greet a whiter sun ; My drooping memory will not shun The foaming grape of eastern France. it circles round, and fancy plays, And hearts are warmed and faces bloom, As drinking health to bride and groom, We wish them store of happy days. Nor count me all to blame if I Conjecture of a stiller guest. Perchance, perchance, among the rest, And, though in silence, wishing joy. But they must go ; the time draws on. And those white-favored horses wait ; They rise, but linger, it is late ; Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone. A shade falls on us like the dark From little cloudlets on the grass, But sweeps away as out we pass To range the woods, to roam the park, 492 IN MEMORIAM. Discussing how their courtship grew, And talk of others that are wed, And how she looked, and what he said, And back we come at fall of dew. Again the feast, the speech, the glee, The shade of passing thought, the wealth Of words and wit, the double health. The crowning cup, the three times three. And last the dance ; — till I retire : Dumb is that tower which spake so loud, And high in heaven the streaming cloud, And on the downs a rising fire : And rise, oh moon, from yonder down, Till over down and over dale All night the shining vapor sail And pass the silent-lighted town. The white-faced halls, the glancing rills, And catch at every mountain head, And o'er the friths that branch and spread Their sleeping silver through the hills ; IN mejMORIam. 493 And touch with shade the bridal doors, With tender gloom the roof, the wall, And breaking let the splendor fall To spangle all the happy shores By which they rest, and ocean sounds, And, star and system rolling past, A soul shall draw from out the vast And strike his being into boimds, And, moved through life of lower phase, Result in man, be born and think, And act and love, a closer link Betwixt us and the crowning race Of those that, eye to eye, snail look On knowledge ; under whose command Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand Is Nature like an open book ; No longer half-akin to brute. For all we thought and loved and did, And hoped, and suffered, is but seed Of what in them is flower and fruit ; 494 IN MEMORIAM. Whereof the man, that with me trod This planet, was a noble type Ajjpearing ere the times were ripe, That friend of mine who lives in God, That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves. THE EXD. THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. iillill Hilin II pi ii!i;:')i / i-\.il..'i i'.!tHiHII»ia 'mi I 'til n ■ iji;!!!