THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ii&llK li'-.f /^ i \- VA^' ^.00/^ LYRICAL POEMS LYRICAL POEMS BV FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE LATE FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE. OSKdKD MACMILLAN AND CO. 1871 ALL BIGHTS RESERVED "Ertyjos" t"^ krkpov crofjiu? to re TraAat to re vvv ouSe yap fx^cxToy dpfWjTwv €7re(oi' TTi'Aas i^evpelv. IIIINTEU BY ROIIKUT MAC'I-EnOSE, AYR. '^\^6 Ji CONTENTS DEDICA TION Page I ^rtok citirst MEL USINE ALCESTIS A MAIDEN'S FRA VERS A STORY OF NAPLES 5 40 42 ^ook (Sfconii A SONG OF LIFE EUGENIA REINE D' AMOUR NOW AND EVER LOVE'S LANGUAGE THE IRRECOVERABLE A SONG OF THE YEARS A SONG OF SPRING AND AUTb E UTOPIA THE HEREAFTER MN 775436 61 63 65 68 70 71 73 75 76 77 VI COA'l^ENTS TO A CHILD . SPRING .... THRENOS PAST AND PRESENT THE LINNET IN NOVEMBER THE GOLDEN LAND IN THE VALLEY OF THE GRA MIDNIGHT A T GENE I 'A . A NIGHT yOURNEV A DEATH. BED THE SISTERS . THE THREE AGES . BRECON BRIDGE THE OLD YEAR MARGARET WILSON A VERY SIMPLE STORY . THE DA YS LONG PA S T . A SONG OF AGE . . NDE CHARTREUSE THE ANCIENT AND MODERN MUSES SURSUM . . TO A PAINTER PRO MORTUIS TWO GRAVES AT ROME . WILLIAM WORDSWORTH CONTENTS ELEGY IN MEMORY OF PERCY, EIGHTH VISCOU STRANGFORD .... MEMORIAL VERSES ON CHARLES DICKENS EL IZA BE TH A T TIL B UR \ MENTANA THE NOBLE REVENGE AT L YME REGIS NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1871 THE ESQUILINE FIELD A MOTHER'S LAMENT QUIA DILEXIT MULTUM THE COTTAGE HOME THE TOWN TO A SPRING-HEAD IN SOUTH WALES IN HIGH SAVOY TO FIDELE THE REIGN OF LA W NATURE AND MAN THE VOICES OF NA TURE ArXftTfi GEO . VOX DEI VENI CREA TOR NT VII Page 138 141 144 149 03 I5S 161 165 167 169 176 1 78 186 18S 200 204 210 §ook Jirtnrth HIC JACET THE DESIRE 215 21S vm CONTENTS CASTELROVINATO . RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD IBYCUS AND CLEORA — 1 The Voyage . 2 A Meeting 3 Anticipations 4 Invocation 5 A Supplication 6 Unrest . T At Midnight 8 Vox Clamantis 9 Last Prayer . lo Farexvell FROM SAPPHO FROM ALKMAN FROM SIMONIDES . AN A THENIAN SONG Paci: 220 222 228 232 237 239 241 244 246 249 255 256 257 258 NOTES 261 TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF FREE ATHENS Where a7-e the flaicless form, The sweet propriety of measured phrase. The words that clothe the idea, ?iot disguise, Horizo/is pure fiom haze. And calm clear vision of Hellenic eyes ? Strength ever veiVd by grace ; The mind's anat07ny implied, not shown; No gaspings for the vague, no fruitless fires ; — Yet, heard 'neath all, the tone Of those far realms to which the soul aspires. Upon life's field they look'd With fearless gaze, trusting their sight, — the 'while Conscious the God^s whole scherne they could not sec; But smiled a ma?ily smile. And the sane song spoke the hearVs sanity. l<^ A That imfantastic strain, Void of ic'cak fever a?id self-conscious cry, — Truth bold and pure iti her own Jiakedness, — What modern hand can try, Tracing the delicate line Hivixt More arid Less 1 Yet as 7vho, aiming high, Must aim far o'er the mark that he can gain, —(9 shining City of the Maiden Shrine: — / name thee not in vain, If these late Northern lays be ki?i to thine. , Jan. 1871. 5600 k Jirst MEL USINE Here, as one sits on the sand, So brimming and smooth comes the sea, That 'tis ahiiost the same to be here, And within its bosom to be ; — Glassily Hsping, lisping low, lisping amorously : — A wash of crystal runs up And freshens the pebbled shore. And can hardly float the drift, Or turn the light sea-weed o'er. The Sun, like an aged king, — Aged, yet still in his might, — Has one more half hour of glory His wealth on the world to fling, A golden path to the west and the lands beyond the night. 6 MELUSINE 2 The wild sharp rocks around Grow wilder against the sky, As the fisherman sees at his feet A film of green go by ; Fringed, as the work of a girl, and folded curiously. Careless, he picks from the brine ; Careless, he drops from his sight ; When lo ! between him and the sun, What flashes as light in light? What maiden, what gray-green eyes. Pale gleam of golden hair, Pale as gold pure from the mine, Lips eager with fear and surprise; — What deep-sea maiden, what pearl and wonder of Ocean, is there? 3 His heart leapt high as he look'd ; For oft had he heard men say How the royal girls of the deep Beneath their green heaven play. Fairer than any we see in the sun-light of common day. ME LU SINE 7 And the love of Kathleen in her pride, And the smile of Kathleen in her glee, Faded and fell from his heart As he looked on the maid of the sea : ' 'Tis not I have a crown of gold, Nor a palace on earth for my Love ; But I clasp her with human love ; With a man's blood my heart is bold ; The sun of the sea-world is dim to the merest star-light above.' 4 With tears, large tears, she pray'd him The green-fringed fillet restore. That she might go under the seas To her home and her girlhood once more, The central calm of the deep, however earth's tem- pests roar. But the blood was strong at his heart, And he ask'd and denied so long. That, whether o'ermaster'd by love Or sense of incurable wrong, She bent to the passionate prayer. She gave ear to the name of wife ; 8 MELUSINE Within his cottage to dwell, Having part in liuman care, And changing for earthly things her birthright of Ocean life. From the happy kingdom Without sun or snow, Frost or rain or tempest, Melusine must go. t5^ There no night comes near them, Nor the gloom of storms ; But their emerald heaven Glows with blazing fonns. "■■a There the gray sea-serpent From the liquid skies Leans his hair}^ forehead And his searching eyes. There the forest corals Stretching thousand hands, Burn with flowers of rul)y On the silver sands. ME LU SINE O'er the windless level Purple shadows flow » Where, in their dim heaven, Monsters flash and go. Souls of wave-whelm'd seamen There white arms caress : Whilst their friends bemoan them, Lapt in happiness. Day runs into day, as One who draws no breath Through a year of visions ; Neither life nor death : — As when storms are silent In their summer cave. All the plains of Ocean Are one siniile wave : — o Neither life nor death, but Deeper calm between. Deeper peace than Eden's Ah ! for Melusine ! lo MELUSINE I The happy days go by ; The life of earth is bless'd, where, by the mere, The cottage sees its second self below So still, so clear, That calm itself has no more to bestow. Gray mountains all around Immoveable ; green meadows bosom'd high, Haunted with solitude ; the clinking bell Far off, yet nigh, \\Tiere the still herds like spots of shadow dwell 3 Lush aspens by the lake ; Lake-level pastures ; and the hidden nook "Where, o'er worn boulders arrowy breaking by, The clear brown brook Makes stillness stiller with its one sweet cry : — 4 Gray mountains all around ; Above, the crystal azure, perfect, pale; MELUSINE II As if a skirt of Eden's heaven forgot Arch'd o'er the vale, Guarding a peace beyond earth's common lot. 5 All these things, day by day, So wrought on her, though fairy-bom and wild, — As the soft handling of the mother steals Into the child, Till it becomes the gentleness it feels, — That from the seas her heart Tum'd landward to that cottage-life : — the kine, The garden, the low bee-hive bench, the trough Of hustling swine, The colt that neigh'd beholding her far off. Rarely her steps were set To that small village by the bay, where he Follow'd his craft, and with some inborn sense Of courtesy Kept from her eyes the nets and cordage, whence 12 MELUSINE 8 He drew their food. But she, ^V■hen heat of summer spoii'd tlic chase afloat, Would lead him to the lake, and grasp the oar Of some small boat That lay there, and push merrily from the shore. 9 But in the midmost mere's Deep crystal, pure, invisible, where the keel Hung like a bird o'er some sheer mountain glen, A light would steal Into her eyes, a passionate tone : — and then lO Quick tears : till now she seized Her oar, and breathless made the land, and wild Ran in, and leant above her firstborn's cot. And slowly smiled, As when one sees a face too long forgot. AlELUSINE ,-, Queen of the crystalline lake, Lift thy lilied head on high; Lift thy pearl-wreathed arms, and take One who weeps, and knows not why To her home 'neath Ocean green Bear the long-sought Melusine. V/here thy silver palace shines, Where the secret caverns be, Spar-wall'd labyrinthine mines Winding to the central sea; Where the Avaves await their Queen, Cany thou fair Melusine. All our merry maids are dumb, All our grottoes gloom'd with night ; Coral groves of crimson bloom. Missing her, are bare and white ; All our pearls have lost their sheen. Changed to tears for Melusine. Queen of the crystalline lake. Lift thy lilied head on high ! 14 MEL US I NE All beneath the seas awake Wild lament, and tear, and sigh, As soft snows with rain between, For the love of Melusine. O Man, who, in the foolish heart of pride, Holds himself born of the superior kind, And boasts his crude half-knowledge, coarse and blind. Scorning the smaller footsteps at his side, And narrower scale of less-experienced mind : — While Nature, working in her unspoil'd child, Oft gives an insight better than the lore That he attains, plying tlie j)lough and oar, Or 'mong the blunted souls by lust defiled, Or smooth-worn by the world, and rounded o'er. 3 For She, foreseeing Avhat we lose by life, Is born afresh in every babe, and new : — ME LU SINE 15 And most men raze her stamp, and prove untrue ; But the girl's heart is less with self at strife, And keeps till night some drops of dawning's dew. 4 So Melusine, when again she saw the cot, And touch'd her babe, and lull'd its yearning cries, Felt all the mother at her bosom rise. And took the colour of her earthly lot, And that wild music faded from her eyes. 5 Then pass'd forth on the common household ways ; Making base things by her sweet service sweet, Letting the year in one long present fleet. As though the past at will she could efface, And all to-morrows would to-day repeat. And all things round unchanged, unchangeable Appear'd : the mountains ; the green slopes on high ; The trees ; the sunny pastures of the kye ; The lake that kept its crystal secrets well ; And the clear streamlet with its long sweet cr}-. 1 6 MELUSINE 7 Only the babe grew, lovelier in his growth ; Pacing the earthen floor with solemn feet ; Then, with quick turns, and cries of laughter sweet; Then, the loud, sturdy steps of sunburnt youth, Till her brave fisher-boy stood forth complete. 8 Also a gray-eyed girl, who smiled and went Just as the little words that Melusine Alone could follow, came her lips between ; O'er whom, with folded hands, the mother bent Weekly ; one small green mound in churchyard green. 9 Thus fared she many years : and though by right Born Queen beneath the waves, so graciously She set herself to all, whate'er might be, Of duty, that no maid through Erin bright W'as wifelier in her low estate than she. lo One morn the boy, now capable and strong, Cried, ' Mother, I would with my father go : MELUSINE 17 Why warn me from the waves, and speak of woe And perils that to seamen's toil belong? I am a man ; and a man's life must know.' II — Once more she stroked the hair, so often stroked In golden childhood, kiss'd so often then, — And said, 'Go forth, my child, now man 'mongst men; Go, prosper:' — then 'neath smiles her fear she cloak'd. Sighing ' 'Tis Nature's cry : I strove in vain.' 12 So they went forth, the seaman and his son. She sate, and pray'd a prayer, and took her wheel ; And though to the green grave half bent to steal. Thought ' 'Twill but make me feel the more alone ;' And with soft fingers fed the flying reel. Higher the sun went up in windless blue, Such calm as almost is akin to fear; A blaze shot skyward from the crystal mere ; The very gnat that humm'd her chamber through Was comfort, — solitude press'd in so near. i8 MEL US LYE Through the fimall open casement stream'd the noise Of utter silence, audible, intense. She rose and look'd out on the lake ; and thence The cry as of a child came ; a child's voice ; Once heard : — then, utter silence, blank, intense. 15 And all things round michanged, unchangeable, Appear'd : the lone gray hills ; the perfect sky ; The trees ; the sunny j)astures of the kye ; The lake in sapphire beauty mirror-still ; And the clear streamlet with its long sweet cry. 16 To the small churchyard and the mound of green She look'd; and a white flame above it burn'd, That went before her eyes, where'er she turn'd. And then a change fell on sweet Melusine, And her whole heart toward the lost infant yearn'd. And that fair landsca]:)e round, so still, so fair. Was hateful in its fiiirness : — the pure sky, MELUSINE 19 The mountains in their gray uns\Tnpathy, The presences within the silent air, Mock'd her. And, as one who himself must fly, 18 She tum'd, and 'gainst the wall she set her eyes, Cr}ing ' My baby ' I : nor spoke other word ; Nor could she pray, nor look around ; nor heard The sudden roar and menace of the skies, Nor how the lake through its dim depths was stirr'd :- Nor how the seas were calling to the shore With outstretch'd angry arms and thunder voice, Wracking whole fleets in pride like riven toys ; And deep beneath the riot and uproar, The flute-clear paean of a wild Rejoice! 20 But she lay long ; and all those vanish'd days Of the lost treasure came within her breast : The throes, the glory when her girl she press'tl ; The smile that first broke o'er the passive face ; I'he gracious limbs, the warm, the oft-caress'd : 20 ME LU SINE 21 The little hands that hid the face in play ; The shout of pride, half cry, half triiimi)li sweet, AVhen first alone upon the trembling feet ; The lisp, that makes the mother's heart so gay, When once the doubtful lips her name repeat : — 22 The flower, the lamb, the baby Melusine : — . And then she knew not what she was, nor where : But struck blind hands out in her blind despair. Pierced by that saddest, last, Such things have been — ; And where beside the cradle, stripj/d and bare, 23 An old sea-basket lay, her fingers sought Some faded thing, some relic torn and small. Dear though long hid from touch and sight of all, Which for the little one those hands had wrought In days that God himself could not recall. 24 — Ah, Melusine 1 ah mother now no more I For what she sought, her passion seeks in \-ain : MELUSINE 2 1 Another relic 'tis she sees again, — The amulet which her youthful forehead bore When at her will she clove the vassal main. 25 There, since that sunset hour when in the bay She bade farewell to all she once had been, Had slept the magic of the fillet green ; As dormant till some city's destined day, The earthquake lurks within its cave unseen. 26 With that, upon her all her youth rush'd in As the great wave when Etna heaves the sea ; The long long years on earth pass'd utterly. As night's sad dreams, at first awakening, Break up to shreds, and fade, and we are free. 27 So, long pent Nature had at last her way ! And Melusine leapt back to her early lot. Seeking the bay, since youth unseen, forgot, And headlong plunged, — where in the surf they lay, A seaman and his son, — and knew them not. 2 2 MELUSINE 28 — Then Nature, like the deep sea, closed o'er all, — Souls, passions, little lives : no bead of air, No ripple : — as yestreen, the vale was fair Next day, next century : nor does aught recall What in old time was loved and sufter'd there. 29 Her's Avas the last word; and the landscape took The impassive shadow of her quiet sway. Still round the vale the mountains keep their gray Long watch, above the mere and arrowy brook, And the free herds in their lone pastures stray. She has resumed her own ; and there is rest. All trace of what was once has now gone by ; Save where the cottage-gable, bare and high, Poor forlorn mimic of the mountain crest. Cuts its gray slope against the calm clear sky. 23 ALCESTIS ARGUMENT Admetus, son of Phere's and Clymene, and King of Pherae in Thessaly, has married Alcestis, daughter to Pelias and Anaxibia of lolkos, a city on the stream Anauros under Mount Pelion, at the head of the gulf of Pagasa. Admetus is claimed by the Fates for early death, unless one of his family will die for him, according to the terms obtained at his marriage by Apollo. His parents refuse ; whereupon Alcestis dies for him. But Persephone- Kora, Queen of the world below, moved by the self-sacrifice of Alcestis, restores her to life. Another version describes her as recovered from Death by Herakles. The intervention of Persephone appearing to be the older and nobler form of the myth (although against the authority of Euripides), has been here preferred. It is not known how this point was dealt with in the Admetus of Soplwcles. ' Twelve years have gonCj twelve happy, happy years, Since I, the Queen, on lion-harness'd car, From Pelias' house was by Admetus brought ; Who with his wife so graciously has wrought That my own girlhood seems already far : ' But comes again in this my maiden child, And this bright son, high Pherae's future king. 24 ALCESTIS Why then, when all things are of gladsomeness, Crouch ye with ashes crown'd and ash\- dress? What weight of silent sadness do ye bring? 3 ' We have been happy : but the gods, I know, Love in their might to stain man's happiness, Clouding with wormwood drops the wine of life. With what dumb message then your lips are rife Speak ; Joy, not pain, is by delay made less.' 4 To whom the spokesman of the household throng : — ' O Queen, O worship of Thessalian eyes Since, clothed in morning's gifts, divinely fair. Thou cam'st ; we know how thou wilt greatly bear What thou wilt greatly hear without disguise. 5 ' Men bid some drape themselves before they fall ; But thou art ever equal to tliy fate, Robed in all seemliness, lady complete. So thus our woe we lay before thy feet, And how thou may'st redeem the ruin'd state. ALCESTIS 25 6 ' Against thy lord the blue-eyed lord of Death His glance has set : nor is there any aid By which the head of Thessaly should live Save this ; that of the household one should give A life for his, unbought and unafraid. 7 ' For when Admetus from lolkos fair In that strange car, across the meadows green, First brought thee, in thy wedding-rites the name Of Artemis, forgotten, wrought her shame ; And by the genial couch the indignant Queen 8 ' Coil'd a foul ring of snakes, and on his head Sign'd a prophetic sign of early death. But, for the lo\e he bore Admetus young, Apollo from the Fates this promise wrung, That they would take such ransom for his breath. 9 ' Now, therefore, think what may be done.' Thus they : But she bow'd down her head, and spoke no word, 26 ALCESTIS Drawing her children closer to the knee ; Nor check'd the silver current of their glee, Nor by their hands' petitioning was stirr'd. lO And as the waters o'er some drowning head Close, in green mist, and press upon the life, And in one flash all that the man has been Starts out, as mountain-tracts by lightning seen. And he sinks flat, and t^uits an idle strife : — ' II So her young days upon her soul came back: — lolkos : the white walls : the purple crest Of Pelion hung above them, whence a cry Of clanging eagles vex'd the summer sky, And loosen'd crags scarr'd the dark mountain breast : — 12 And how Apollo o'er the purple crest Came with the morn, and sent his golden beam Slant on the dancing waves : and how she fear'd. That day, when by the eclipse his locks were shear'd, ITntil the God shot forth a sword-like gleam : — ALCESTIS 27 13 She heard the crystal ripplings of the brook That first allured her baby feet to try Its mountain coolness, till she reach'd the sea, And the warm waves came laughing o'er her knee, Kissing the foir child oft and amorously : — 14 And how o'er all that inland ocean, barr'd From Aphetae to Oh'zon, the great hill Flung his green shadow, and the sea-nymphs play'd, And call'd her to their revel, undismay'd : — Then, with what subterfuge of maiden skill 15 When first Admetus to lolkos came, She veil'd the traitor trembling, that proclaim'd Love and Love's lord ; and how she look'd her heart, And Anaxibia took her daughter's part, And the strange chariot bore her, unashamed, 16 Over the meadows green, by Pagasae, And the corn reddening on the Dotian plain, 28 ALCESTIS And the blue cornflowers loose amid the com, And the lark scattering in the crystal morn His unremittent gush of silver rain : 17 And how the watchful eyes of her young lord Flash'd, when at hand the tall white towers they know Of Pherae : and the sweetness of the way : And how great Ossa north in shadow lay Like the foreboding of a coming woe, 18 But distant : and, ' O Gods, avert it now From him and these,' she cried, ' if not from me ; Through love of whom, forgetful, on his head He brought this summons to the youthful dead.' Then a touch woke her from that reverie, 19 And the King stood at height and fronted her: And the sad secret of eacli other's eyes Each read, and in tlie breathing of a breath Each heart devour'd the bitterness of death, And knew itself and saw without disguise. ALCESTIS 20 29 Then she, the last faint hope to end at once,— For Hfe is sweet, and httle faces plead For mother's love, and anchor her to life, — ' Pheres or Clymene,' whisper'd, ' or thy wife ' ? But he, her latter accents without heed 21 Hearing, and hearing not, in deaf despair, Cried ' O my father and my mother ! old In years, but not in honour, who could choose Their dregs of life, the days that none can use Nor glory in, nor aught of joy behold, 22 ' Before the younger life, that they had borne : And hand their son to death before his due. And lay the head of Thessaly in dust, And leave these, orphans, with a dull we must ; Life is so sweet ; the grave so near in view ! 23 ' Parents 1 Not parents ! I abjure the name : Those ne'er begot, or they had loved me more, 30 ALCESTIS Me, and the land, and gods of Thessaly, And Hellen our first ancestor, and thee, And those whom in the couch thy peril bore. 24 ' They should have ta'en the tatter of their days And with it pieced my purple robe of youth ; Keeping for me the word Apollo gave, ^Vhen in my house he eani'd his bread, a slave, Won from the stern Fates by celestial ruth. 25 ' As the young larch-plant upon Pelion's side Lifts his green si)ire and goes on high with joy, ITiey should have let me live the life of man : But now to the dark house and shadows wan, Where wit is vain and strength has no employ, 26 ' (Save through one sacrifice that may not be) I go.' Then she, with prayerful earnest eyes, Her incense offering on the altar threw ; Which hiss'd into white wreaths, and pass'd from view, 'And such,' she said, 'the law of sacrifice. ALCESTIS 31 27 ' We do not what we see, but what \\'e know : Whither ascend our prayer and gift, is hid : And who his Hfe lays down at their command, Following the motion of a hidden hand, Him the just gods to their high banquet bid. 28 ' Yet life is sweet, and sweet to see the sun, And love is sweet, and sight of these, and thee : To clasp the little limbs, the pure, the fine, To kiss them o'er and o'er and call them mine, And dress and dance the darhngs on the knee: 29 ' To scan the blue depth of the stainless eyes ; The wonder of the waxing frame to see ; To watch the unconscious words take form and life ; The wayward fancies of the future wife, The young assertion of the man to be. ' Ah, yet it must be I Love ! and I submit. Which is more precious, few or many years ? 32 ALCESTIS For what is most so, to the gods we give. And few the hours tliy parents liave to Hve : Their thread already straight between the shears. 31 * So let them move the last faint steps in peace Down the long avenue of well-spent days. But thou — it must not be that thou should'st die ! Thessalia's shining head ; tlie people's eye ; 'Twixt gods and men throned in a middle place. 32 ' He too will need the pillar of the house, This gallant boy, high Pherae's future king ; And this fair girl, whom one I ne'er sliall see Will come with gifts and prayers to claim of thee, And in her eyes a daughter's tears will si:)ring : 'And she will think of one who is no more. Nor thinks of her nor thee nor anything, Going with downcast eyes and captive treatl Through the dim garden of the happy dead, Where summer ne\er comes, nor voice of spring, ALCESTIS , 33 34 'Nor frost nor sun; but the dim rose-red glow Of autumn dyes the insuperable hill : Nor past nor future are, nor wish nor vow ; But the white silence of the eternal Now Wipes out the thought of joy, and fear of ill : 35 ' The realm of the dread Maid, Deme'ter's child, Who gathers all, and gives none back again : — And she is here ! and I am not !— farewell ' : — Then on the altar steps gently she fell; And, as a snow-wreath touch'd by April's rain, 36 The pure into the unseen, death-dissolved, Melted inaudibly. Then Admetus knelt. And kiss'd the hands, first chill'd in ebbing life, And veil'd his eyes before the vanish'd wife : — And through the land the shock of sorrow felt 37 Trembled in one long groan and Titan cry : And the Sun cloak'd himself in wan eclipse c 34 ALCESTIS And through the streets they ran with flying hair, Disfeatured in their grief: but she lay there, Nor changed the beauty of the perfect lips. 38 Then her son came, and look'd upon her face Crying ' O Queen, thrice-honour'd in thy fate ! Thou hast done well, mother, in dying thus ; Thou hast done well: but who Avill comfort us? O mother, thou hast left us desolate ! 39 ' Ay me, for golden hours with thee have fled : What summer converse by the fragrant pine ; AVhat evening silences of mere delight. While zenith moonbeams bathed the terrace white ; What ruby sunsets 'neath the jocund vine ! ' 40 Also her daughter, from the altar-top Strewing her golden hair with ashes hoar, ' Fair in thy life, and fairer in thy death ! But who will stay me when Love takes my breath. Or give me courage in my child-bed sore? ALCESTIS 35 'And how, my father, will it be with thee, "VVlien on the throne thou art in golden state, And hast not her who at thy side did stand, Missing the accustom'd voice and smile and hand : — O mother, thou hast left us desolate ! ' 42 But the King veil'd his face, and knelt apart, ■ Being weigh'd down with thought of what had been; The wedding chamber and the serpents' hiss ; The genial hour that made Alcestis his ; The gleaming ocean and the meadows green : 43 And the first smile, the oft remembered. When to lolkos in bright youth he came, And she behind a column of the hall Blush'd like the full-ripe apple ere it fall, And bow'd her face ashamed for that sweet shame. 44 — -O Life, ill-balanced in its restlessness ! That from the days of youth looks on to age. 36 ALCESTIS And from the hoary years tliinks boyhood bliss. Nor learns that only when it is, it is, Nor in the present finds its heritage ! 45 O prized so little when with us thou wast. What golden haze breathes out from thee afar. What spell transfiguring the lost hours of youth ? What gracious glamour hides the better truth/ As the heart wills, not as the blood, we are? 46 — As he who whilst the side-long vase ran clear, Dream'd down whole years in fancy : so the King From manliootl to old age went in one day Immeasurably long, as there he lay, And knew each several moment by its sting. 47 But when the people round him murmur' d. Time! ' Time is enough,' he cried, ' if Time mean Death.' Then a fir voice came on his inward ear, ' Thou hast thy wish, Admetus : I am here ' : — And lie look'd up, and drew a passionate breath : ALCESTIS -,7 48 And at his side, lo ! the dread Maid, divine Persephone', crown'd with harvest's golden ear, And eyes too dreadful to be look'd upon. And by her stands the gracious form of one Only the less divine, as less austere, 49 Clad in bright bridal robe, and bridal veil : And, as the presence of the Gods divine Opens the eye of man and sharpens, he Knew her at once, though veil'd, crying "Tis she :' And clasp'd her hand, and once again said ' Mine, 50 ' My one of all the world ! my all in one ! Whence art thou come and how deliver'd, say, Alcestis ... if my own Alcestis . . . tell ! ' — But she stood silent: — and a terror fell. As when a sudden spectre at mid-day 51 Meets us, and we at first have thought it man. — Then, last, the maiden Queen, Persephone' : 38 ALCESTIS ' I, it was, I, quelling the lord of death, Restored Alcestis to warm human breath : I only : doubt not : touch her : it is she. 52 ' She, the young worship of thy youthful days, The changeless pole-star of thy shifting life ; She, who was all, and gave up all to thee ; Honour'd above all women that shall be ; 'Mongst all perfections the most perfect wife. 53 A wealth of gifts God grants tlie race of man. And each gift has its own peculiar price ; Strength, courage, wisdom, love, and loveliness : Yet one the smiles of God supremely bless; — The heroic beauty of self-sacrifice. 54 ' O weak who stand in fancied strength alone ! Strong but wlien brothers' hands are held in brothers' ! The Fates at Fame's far-shining trojjhies laugh : — What glories equal that plain epitaph A'^ot for Jiimsclf was /lis first t/ioitg/it, but otJiers 1 ALCESTIS 55 ' To lose oneself for one more dear than self ! For others' love one's own love to lay down O privilege that the Gods might envy men, As o'er the flawless walls of heaven they lean, And watch a mortal win a nobler crown ! 56 ' Look on her ! touch her ! hold thy very own ! As the new life its red rose o'er her flings; Yet life not wholly what she knew before: These tender feet have tried the further shore, These lips the savour of celestial things. 57 ' Henceforth, live worthy of one such as this ! But now, three mornings' sacrifice prepare, Ere she resumes her gracious human ways : — To walk together many perfect days, Until together my repose ye share.' 39 40 A MAIDEN'S PRA VERS Leave the flower alone, In the maidens' place From her childhood grown ! Leave the flower alone In her maiden grace. She is but a child With a childish smile; Meadow-sweet and wild ; She is but a child ! Leave her yet awhile. Artemis my Queen Guard and grace thy flower; Bend with arrows keen O'er the maidens' bower, Artemis my Queen ! A MAIDEN'S PRAYERS 41 II Aphrodite Queen Take thy suppUant's part In the lonesome hour; With thy hand of power Staunch the bleeding heart, Aphrodite Queen. Come as once thou cam'st To the Lesbian maid ; Quit thy daedal throne, Clasp thy wonder-zone. In thy smile array'd Come as once thou cam'st. Aphrodite, Queen Of the tell-tale eye. Of the brimming heart, Take thy votary's part. Take me, or I die. Aphrodite Queen ! 42 A STORY OF NAPLES. A NCI EN REGIME Against the long quays of Naples The long waves heave and sink, And blaze in emerald showers, And melt in pearls on the brink. But as towards Pausilippo By Margellina we go, The crimson breath of the mountain Makes blood in the ripples below. A stone lies there in the pavement, With a square cut into the stone ; And our feet will carelessly cross it Like a tliousand more, and pass on. A STORY OF XAPLES 43 4 But one clothed in widow's clothing Like a veil'd Vestal stands, And from that slab in the pavement "Warns with imperious hands. 5 Smiling the sentinels watch us ; A smile and a sneer in one; And that lordly woman bends her, And wipes the dust from the stone. ' What secret is in that service Which she does like a thing divine ? Why guards she the stone from footsteps, Like a priestess guarding a shrine ? ' As a wild thing stabb'd by the hunters She turn'd on us quickly and rose; ' O ye who pass and behold me, Wliy ask ye my grief of foes? 44 ^ STORY OF NAPLES 8 ' It is enough to have bome them : It is enough to have lost : My sons ! My fair foir children ! Silence beseemeth most. 9 ' Nor any woe like my woe Since the Just One was crucified. And his Mother stood and beheld him, And could not die when he died.' lO With that again slie bow'd her, And levell'd her head with the stone. And in the high noon silence We heard the mountain groan. II As whom a magic circle Traced round holds prisoner, We stood and watch'd her kneeling, And could not speak nor stir. A STORY OF NAPLES 12 Then from her feet unbended She slowly rose to her height, Through tlie worn robe appearing Like a queen in her own despite. She knotted her hands behind her In a knot of bloodless gray, As if so her lips unaided Alone her story should say. Like the keen thrilling music Blown from a tongue of flame. Through her lips that whisper'd stor}' With a thin clear calmness came. 'In this square of dust-choked socket A beam was set last year; And the scaffold shot forth above it The gliding axe to rear. 45 46 -4 STOJn' OF NAriES i6 'Witii gaunt grim poles in order, As when men a palace build : — 'Tis the house of King Death, this palace ! With headsmen for courtiers fill'd. * I come at day-break often, And call it up in my brain : I see the steel uplifted; I see it f.ill again. i8 ' Sirs, 'twas a morn like this morn. So white and lucid and still ; Only the scowl of thunder Sat on the face of the hill. 19 * The steel like the star of morning Hung silver-glittering on high : — It fell like the star of morning By God's hand struck from the sky. 47 A STORY OF NAPLES 20 ' It rose with a gleam of crimson, And sank again as it rose : — And I stood here as one standing To watch the death of his foes. 21 'And your eyes may Avell look wonder That mine look'd on that thing of hell I And unask'd ye know already Who died when lead-like it fell. 22 ' Yes ! They were fair as the morning, Those two young sons of my youth ; Stamp'd with the stamp of Nature From boyhood soldiers of truth. 23 ' Soldiers of truth and of Italy ; Her blood was quick in their veins. As they writhed 'neath the lies that bound them. The canker-poisonous chains. 48 A .STOJiY OF NAPLES 24 'The coarse-lipp'd Austrian tyrant Our serf-kings holding in pay, Keeps Italy weak and sunder'd, For the greater ease of his sway. ' In the farce they name our country A boot towards Africa thrust : 'Tis a boot Avith an iron heel, then, To tread her own self in the dust. 26 'The priest-king haunts in the centre The eternal ruin of Rome; The German tramples the Lombard ; And here, — is the Bourbon home. 27 ' They saw these things, my fair ones ! 'ilie beauty, the curse, and the woe : The beauty that seems of hea\en ; The curse, pit-black from below. A STORY OF NAPLES 49 28 ' O Italy, mother of nations Like her own fair sea-nymph's brood, Who turn and rend their mother, — Children by name, not blood ! 29 ' A dubious intricate quarrel Broke from the court of the North ; And on some mission of order From Trent the columns push'd forth. ' They came down by Garigliano ; At Teano their halt they call'd. When the pomegranates were as carbuncles, And the stream-pools as emerald. 31 ' A cry went up from our people, Volunteering by fifties to go ; And the king must come forth and lead them Against his ally the foe. D CO A STORY OF NATLES 32 ' E'en in the palace recesses The gold-laced conscience was stirr'd ; — But the calmer confessor-wisdom In season whisper'd a word. ' Sirs, from your land of freedom Ye cannot fathom our land ! — They march out by Pausilippo That flame-faced patriot band. 34 'The second son of a second Cousin of the blood at their head ; — Our gay volunteers to conquest O 1 they were right royally led ! 35 ' But what, diink you, was the conquest To which they were march'd along, And the deep rich oily Tc Daim By the barytone canon sung ? J S7VRY OF NAPLES 51 ' — Where the road turns under Teano, Half behind the pomegranate close, Red faced and stalwart-fashion'd, Point-blank tliey came on their foes. 37 * Who should hold back the lions When the prey to their hands is given ? Each poised his musket and shouted As if at the sight of Heaven. 38 'And when that royal field-marshal With a Ha/f/ fell back to the rear, Who could rein-in their onset. Or sever prudence from fear? 39 ' Or care how the royal columns Ebb'd slowly behind away, While the best young blood of the city Unaided rush'd to the fray? A STORY OF NAPLES 40 ' Ah ! thrice-bless'd wlio fell forward Before the Tyrolean gun, And gasp'd out their life in crimson, Beneath the crimson sun ! 41 * O that I must live to say it, And live to say it in vain — My sons ! My own two fair ones I Better had ye been slain. * I saw them go forth at morning ; I saw them not at night : And yet they return'd to the city As captives captured in flight. 43 'Sirs, the gold-laced thing in the palace With a bestial instinct dim Knew that the soldiers of freedom Must be foes in heart to him. A STORY OF NAPLES 53 44 ' I said, the ways of the Bourbon Ye could not understand ! — They were carted hither as rebels For a broken word of command. 45 ' They had gone onward as lions When Royalty mutter'd Withdraw: And their lives at once lay forfeit At the lawless feet of the law. 46 • In the black Castel del Uovo They lodged them side by side; And between them, — a Tyrolese soldier For order and peace to provide. 47 ' That square above is the window, Notch'd on the white wall stone;' — We look'd ; and again in the silence We heard the mountain groan. 54 A STORY OF NAPLES 'Sirs, for this king my husband In youth laid his own Hfe down ! And I prayed their lives might be spared me, Their palace pass to the crown. 49 * How should I do but ask it ? — Yet better not to have ask'd, Had I seen 'ncath a face of mercy Hell's particular malice mask'd. 50 ' Ye have heard how between two mothers King Solomon judged of old : — But how between her two children Could a mother such judgment hold ? 5^ ' One life, they said, was given me ; And I was to choose the one : — The message came at even, And I sat till the night was done : — A STORY OF NAPLES 55. 52 *And I know not how they went by me, The long long day and the night; Only within my forehead ^ Was a burning spot of light : — 53 'And a cry Aly brother! my brother! Why art thou taken from vie ? choice unjitst and cruel ! Would that I had died for thee '. 54 ' I could not answer the message ; 1 could not think nor pray: Only I saw within me That burning spot alway. 55 ' Poison and glare together, Like the wormwood star of Saint John, It sat within my temples, Throbbing and smouldering on. 56 A STORY OF NAPLES ' Then once with odour and freshness As of fields in summer rain, The vision of their sweet childhood Was borne on my aching brain. 57 'Bent over one book together I saw the fair heads of the twain ; And they read how in Roman battle Brother by brother was slain. 58 ' And their heads are closer together, Their hands clasp o'er and o'er. As they swear that death the divider Shall only unite them more. 59 ' — Toll! toll! and again! A bell broke forth in the air : And I look'd out on the morning; And the morning was still and fair. A STORY OF NAPLES 60 'A black flag hung from the castle, "Where the thin bare flagstaff stands. And I thought to go up to the castle, With that bitter choice in my hands. 61 ' A timid crowd was pressing And bore me along the street ; And I saw the tall scaffold standing Upon these flags at our feet. 62 ' I saw the steel descending As a star runs down from the sky : — — Why should I tell the story? Ye know it as Avell as I ! 63 ' — The axe took both as I waver'd Upon that choice accursed ! Now am I wholly childless — I know not which is worst. 57 58 A STORY OF NAPLES 64 ' My sons ! My fair fair children ! 1 know not where they He : — Only I know that together They died, — and I could not die.' — A fork of flame from Vesuvius Througli his black cone went on high; ■ And a cloud branch'd out like a pine-tree Wiih thunders throned in the sky. 66 The crimson breath of the mountain Made blood in the ripples below : — But shc' stood gray as marble, In Niobean woe : — 67 And like a Roman matron O'er her face she folded the veil, \Vith a more fix'd composure Than we \\\\o heard her tale. ^ook Scronb A SONG OF LIFE Tis the same sun and stars, my Love, That o'er our parents shone Through the brief beauty of their day, And when we also are as they Will yet shine on, shine on : — Then mid the roses let us sing, As mid the roses they did \ For life will bring no second spring "V^Hien summer once is faded. 'Tis the same sun and stars, my Love, That saw their childish glee; And rising still, and setting still, So smiling, and so shouting, will Their children's children see : — Then mid the roses let us sing, As mid the roses they did ; For life will bring no second spring \\Tien summer once is faded. (iZ A SO.VG OF LIFE 'Tis the same sun and stars, my Love, That saw them., worn and gray, Smile bright and brave on instant Death: — And who, that breathes our human breat'n, Would bear to live lor aye ? — Then mid the roses let us sing, As mid the roses they did ; For life will bring no second spring When summer once is faded. ^3 EUGENIA What pearl of price within her lay I could not know when first I met her So little studious for herself, Almost she ask'd we should forget her : As the rose-heart at prime of dawn, Herself within herself withdrawn : And yet we felt that something there Was fairer than the fairest fair. I mark'd her goings through the day. Intent upon her maiden mission : The manners moulded on the mind ; The flawless sense, the sweet decision : So gracious to the hands she task'd. She seem'd to do the thing she ask'd : And then I knew that something there Was fairer than the fairest fair. Her eyes spoke peace; and voice and step The message of her eyes repeated ; 64 EUGENIA Truth lialo-bright about her brows, And Faith on the fair forehead seated : — And hps where Candour holds his throne, And sense and sweetness are at one : I look and look ; and something there Is fairer than the fairest fair. As some still upward-gazing lake Round which the mountain-rampart closes, Crystalline bright and diamond pure, In azure depth of peace reposes ; And Heaven comes down with all its grace To find itself within her face ; And the heart owns that something there Is fairer than the fairest fair. ' O just and faithful child of God ! Thrice happy he,' I cried, ' who by her Finds in her eyes the home of home. Reads in her smile his heart's desire ; The smile of beauty from above, Of equable and perfect love !' 1 sigh'd — she smiled; and something there Was fairer than the fairest fair. 65 REINE D' AMOUR Close as the stars along the sky The flowers were in the mead, The purple heart, and golden eye, And crimson-flaming weed : — And each one sigh'd as ' I went by, And touch'd my garment green, And bade me wear her on my heart And take her for my Queen Of Love, — And take her for my Queen. And one in virgin white was drest With lowly gracious head ; And one unveil'd a burning breast V\\\\\ Love's omi ardour red : 66 REINE D' AMOUR All rainbow bright, with laughter light, They flicker'd o'er the green, Each whispering I should pluck her there And take her as my Queen Of Love, — And take her as my Queen. But sudden at my feet look'd up A little star-like thing. Pure odour in pure perfect cup, That made my bosom sing. 'Twas not for size, nor gorgeous dyes. But her own self, I ween, Her own sweet self, that bade me stoop And take her for my Queen Of Love, — And take her for my Queen. Now all day long and every day Her beauty on me grows, And holds with stronger sweeter sway Than lily or than rose ; HEINE D'AMOUR 67 And this one star outshines by far All in the meadow green ; — And so I wear her on my heart And take her for my Queen Of Love, — And take her for my Queen. 68 NOJV AuVB EVER Ask what you will, my own and only Love : . For, to love's service true, Your least wish swa}S me as from worlds above, And I yield all to you, Who are the only She, And in one girl all womanhood to me. — Yet some things e'en to thee I cannot yield ! As that one gift, by which On the still morning in the wood-side fieUl Thou mad'st existence rich, Who wast the only She, And in one girl all womanhood to me. We had talk'd long ; and then a silence came ; And in the topmost firs NOW AND EVER 69 To his nest the white do\-e floated hke a flame : And my lips dosed on hers Who was the only She, And in one girl all womanhood to me. Since when my heart lies by her heart, — nor now Could I 'twixt hers and mine, Nor the most love-skill'd Angel, choose ; — So thou In vain would'st ask for thine 1 — Who art the only She, And, in one girl, all Avomanhood to me. 70 LOVE'S LANG UA GE Their little language the children Have, on the knee as they sit ; And only those who love them Can find the key to it. The words thereof and the grammar Peqjlex the logician's art ; But the heart goes straight with the meaning, And the meaning is clear to the heart. So thou, my Love, hast a language That, in little, says all to me : — But the world cannot guess the sweetness Which is hidden with Love and thee. 71 THE IRRECOVERABLE Eugenia, ere our favourite field Gave us its beauty first to view, Think of the thousand days that went Before the charm we knew, Or dream'd how much of joy the path might yield: This tender slope of constant green. — This sea, that, deepening through the trees, Shows like a sky beneath the sky,— This home of utter peace Lay patient in its grace, untrod, unseen. Yet when we felt the green recess Our souls with its calm beauty seize, At once it spoke itself our own ; While in the heart of peace A peace more deep disclosed i*s blissfulness. 72 THE IRRECOVERABLE — Eugenia ! Mine at last 1 my own ! Home of tlie peace earth cannot give In her most perfect perfectness ! "\Miat fate was mine to Hve Those many years of Paradise unknown ? As music sleeping in the strings Till by a touch awaken'd, lay The blessedness of life with thee ; And day died after day In hopeless chase of vain imaginings. And if at last the fiivourite scene Gave its green beauty to the view, — And if at last I clasp'd thee mine, — Yet can I not subdue The sigh for what was not, yet might have been. It is the mystery of our lot : — Though past Hope's inmost hoping rich, E'en in Love's very heart, to weep The years of dearth, through which We might have been blest, and we knew it not. A SONG OF THE YEARS I'hou art mine for ever, dearest, thou art mine for ever, Since that hour when in the meadow we two sat together ; Long ago, ah ! not so long,— all in the meadow lonely, Thou by me and I by thee, my one true-love, my only. Tenderly and truly, dearest, tenderly and truly We two loved each other then, though each then loved but newly : Only then -we knew not what we now know well and dearly : But has love with knowledge grown, does nearness bind m.ore nearly? 74 A SOA'G OF THE YEARS Ah ! that young devotion, though to memory f:ur and tender, To the love of many years its beauty must surrender : — By the pangs and tears, the smiles and sweetness known together, Thou art mine for ever, dearest, thou art mine for ever. 75 A SONG OF SPRING AND A UTUMN In the season of white wild roses We two went hand in hand : But now in the ruddy autumn Together ah-eady we stand. O pale pearl-necklace that wander'd O'er the white-thorn's tangled head ! The white-thorn is turn'd to russet, The pearls to purple and red ! On the topmost orchard branches It then was crimson and snow ; Where now the gold-red apples Burn on the turf below. And between the trees the children In and out run hand in hand ; And, with smiles that answer their smiling, We two together stand. 76 E UTOPIA There is a garden where liUes And roses are side by side ; And all day between them in silence The silken butterflies glide. I may not enter the garden, Though I know the road thereto; And morn by morn to the gateway I see the children go. They bring back light on their faces ; But they cannot bring back to me What the lilies say to the roses, Or the songs of the butterflies be. 77 THE HEREAFTER Sigh not, fair Mother, as thou seest The httle nursery at thy feet; Three golden heads together bent Like statesmen o'er some scheme profound and sweet Convened in their more gracious Parhament. Sigh not, if o'er thy faithful heart Keen shadows of the future go ; The tortures dormant in the frame; The woes of want and Avrong; the sterner woe Of souls that start, and own a hidden shame. Fenced from the frosty gales of ill Man slips through life unmade, unbraced : — As honey from the flint-rock shed Wrong bravely borne, the bnmt of pain well faced, Rain in soft blessings on the gallant head. 7 8 THE HEREAFTER Endure ! Endure ! — Life's lesson so Is written large in sea and earth : And He who gives us wider scope Than the dumb things that struggle from their birth. Sets in our sky a star of higher hope. And with more joy than one who treads The road with never-swerving strength, His future-piercing eyes survey Those who, wide-roving, to the fold at length Trace with thorn-redden'd feet their final way. — Then sigh not, if the smiling band Their unforcthoughtful brightness keep, And garner sunbeams for the day When those dear stainless eyes may yearn to weep The natural drops that cannot force their way. He who has made us, and foresees Our tears, to thy too-anxious gaze The long Hereafter gently spares : — Only his Love shines forth, through all their days Pledged to the children of so many prayers. 79 TO A CHILD If by any device or knowledge The rosebud its beauty could know. It would stay a rosebud for ever, Nor into its fulness grow. And if thou could'st know thy own sweetness, O little one, perfect and sweet ! Thou would'st be child for ever; Completer whilst incomplete. So SPRING First-Spring walks in the woods, Sits as king in the valleys : Cowslip-crown'd-and-anemone, Starr'd with white lilies. Burns on level and upland, Miles of meadowy splendour ; Breathes his haze on the orchard. Rosily tender. Sweet Spring that in tlie blackbird Speakest, and in the thrushes, And e'en on the life-lorn hillside Com'st to the bushes ; In this fulness of love Why had tliou left me lonely? Touch me with life, sweet Spring, Me, me only. 8i THRENOS Star-crowTi'd citadels, golden isles in a violet sea, Heart-stir and music of Hope, the gleam of a glor\- to be : , Dreams and devotions of youth \ — but youth has departed. O the exultation and spirit of vague desire! Tremblings of liquid da^vn ; horizons of lucid fire ! Something we gain with age : but youth has departed. River and race and game, gay leaping of brook and hedge : Peril on happy heights, and pleasure nearest the edge : Something we gain as we live : but youth has departed. 82 Til RENOS Fairest of fair ones, seen or unseen, yet ahvay mine : Thine was my waking and dreaming, all joy and all sorrow thine : The real has come as we live ; but the vision departed. Yes, the real is better; — and yet the vision was best ! Having nothing, and yet, by fliith, of all things possess'd : Both we ought to have kept : but youth has departed. Faces we could not see too much : the heart on the lip : Feet that might stray and stumble ; but friendship that could not trip : Wisdom may come : but the faces of youth have departed. Yes, the music I hear of the future, comes flaunting and fast ; Cold and tuneless it sounds before the cry of the past : Voices and friends of youth, wh\' have ye departed? THRENOS H — Little voices, I hear them, the old old chase pursuing ; In the happy children the world its childhood renewing We see your day, and are glad : but youth has departed. Little ones, in your eyes the dawn is lucid and gray; Rosy-finger'd ye come, and golden-hair'd as the day ; Come, and Avith you bring him, the mourn'd, the departed. 84 . PAST AND PRESENT As I hear the breath of the mother To the breath of the child at her feet Answer in even whispers, When night falls heavy and sweet: Sleep puts out silent fingers, And leads me back to the roar Of the dead salt sea that vomits Wrecks of the past ashore. I see the lost Love in beautj- Go gliding over the main : I feel the ancient sweetness, 'I'he worm and the wormwood again. PAST AND PRESENT 85 Earth all one tomb lies round me, Domed with an iron sky: And God himself in his power, God cannot save me! I cry. With the cry I wake; — and around me The mother and child at her feet Breathe peace in even whispers ; And the night falls heavy and sweet. 86 THE LINNET TV NOVEMBER Late singer of a sunless day, I know not if with pain Or pleasure more, I hear thy lay Renew its vernal strain. As gleams of youth, when youth is o'er, And hare the summer bowers, Thy song brings back the years of yore. And unreturning hours. So was it once I So yet again It never more will be ! Vet sing ; and lend us in th)- strain A moment's vouth with thee ! 87 THE GOLDEN LAXD O sv.eet September in the valley Carved through the green hills, sheer and straight, Where the tall trees crowd round and sally Down the slope sides, with stately gait And sylvan dance : and in the hollow Silver voices ripple and cr}^ Follow, O follow ! Follow, O follow! — and we follow Where the white cottages star the slope. And the white smoke Avinds o'er the hollow, And the blythe air is quick Avith hope ; lill the Sun whispers, O remember ! You have but thirty davs to run, O sweet September ! — O sweet September, where the valley Leans out wider and sunny and full. 88 THE GOLDEN LAND And the red cliffs dip their feet and dally With the green billows, green and cool ; And the green billows archly smiling, Kiss and cling to them, kiss and leave them. Bright and beguiling: — Bright and beguiling, as She who glances Along the shore and the meadows along, And sings for heart's delight, and dances Crown'd with apples, and ruddy, and strong :- Can we see thee, and not remember '^I'hy sun-brown cheek and hair sun-golden, O sweet September? 89 IN THE VALLEY OF THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE Torrent under lofty beeches, under larches cresting high, Wanderer by the wandering stranger slipping softly, surely, by : Born among Savoyan snows, and where Saint Bruno, hid with God, Far from kindly human love, the road of tears and rapture trod : Joining then the valley-streamlet, then the golden- green Isere, Then, where Rhone's broad currents to the blue their lordly burden bear : go /-V VALLEY OF GRAND CHARTREUSE - — Torrent under lofty beeches, under larches cresting high, Thou art southward set, and southward all thy waters strain and fly : — Sunny South, — o'er slope and summit the gray mist of olive spread ; Terrace high o'er terrace climbing, lines of wli.ite, vine-yarlanded : o"- — Ah, another vision calls me, calls me to the northern isle, Voices from beyond the mountain : smiles that dim the sun's own smile : And I set my soul against thee, water of the southern sea : — Thine are not the currents toward the haven where my heart would be. 91 MIDNIGHT A T GENE VA The azure lake is argent now Beneath the pale moonshine : I seek a sign of hope in heaven : Fair Polestar ! thou art mine. A thousand other beacons blaze : I follow thee alone Beyond the shadowy Jura range, The Jura, and the Rhone ; Beyond the purpling vineyards trim Of sunny Clos Vougeot; Beyond where Seine's brown waves beneath The Norman orchards go ; Till, where the silver waters wash The white-wall'd iiorthern isle, My heart outruns these laggart limbs To the long-sigh'd-for smile: 92 A NIGHT JOURNEY A flash of steam, a dash of light Through the black centre of the night, With shriek and whirlwind goes the train Across the slopes of sweet Touraine. And o'er fair Europe's shadowy face A hundred more their errand trace. And Night surveys them, calm and free, To her as little as to me. But from that one of all that roll, A vision lightens on the soul. Where Love is on her way to bring Love's sweetness to the sorrowing. Through year-long hours of hope and woe She sits and waits, till dawning show The stately terraces that crown The level waves of broad Garonne. A NIGHT JOURNEY 93 Her heart is gone before her there, And sees the room and empty chair, And one who on the death-bed lies, And prays to see her ere she dies. — O Love, that sits so white and still ! I think and think upon her, till My heart is with her heart again, Crossing the slopes of sweet Touraine. 94 A DEATH- BED At length the gusts of anguish cease ; The cahn of coming death Smiles from the eyes in settled peace, Restores the rhythmic breath. Such brightness now is round her cast, Such joy for angels fit, As if the gate of Heaven were past Without her knowing it. Tike golden sands the moments go ; Each, sparkling light with love, Heaps up tlie nearing death below, Steals from the life above. .•/ DEATH-BED 95 O love that cannot be repair'd Whate'er the future bring I Irrevocable instants, spared To plant the deeper sting ! O dread alternative of woe At sight of one so dear ! We cannot bear that she should go, Yet may not wish her here ! Ah yet the golden moments spare That slip and sparkle thus 1 The heavenly voices call her there ; But she is more to us. 96 THE SISTERS One sleeps where the Biscayan phies Their changeless shadow shed : The eternal green of English hills Is round the sister's bed. — O well the rustling pine-tree-tops With the low lulling sea May chaunt the litanies of peace Life could not give to thee ! — And well for thee, the central warmth And brightness of the hearth, So lie by these familiar hills, And in thv native earth. THE SISTERS 97 Yet while our requiem thus we bring, Ye are not where ye are ; And on this cast-off heap of clay Your spirits smile from far. O sister souls ! the blue sea strives To sunder you in vain : In life, in death, your hearts were one : Now ye are one again. 98 THE THREE AGES On the eve of the blessed birthda}- The child in its cot is awake; And thinks how the stars are raining Sweet gifts for Christmas' sake. On the eve of the marriage morrow The bride is unquiet by night; And the arrows of sunrise pierce her With indefinite shy delight. ^g And Age lies sleepless and yearnim For child and mother afar ; But the light that shines on their faces Is farther than sun or star. — O broken arc and unmeaning, Though the fragments are so sweet, If the curve be not one hereafter, And the circle of love complete ! 99 BRECON BRIDGE Low to himself beneath the sun While soft his dusky waters run, With ripple calm as infant's breath, An ancient song Usk murmureth By the bridge of Aberhonddu. 'Tis not of deeds of old, the song, Llewellyn's fate, or Gwalia's wrong : But how, while we have each our day And then are not, he runs for ave. He sees the baby dip its feet Within his limpid waters sweet : And hears when youth and passion speak What strikes to flame the maiden's cheek. 1 oo BRECON BRIDGE Then, manhood's colours tamed to gray, With his fair child the father gay: And then Old Age, who creeps to view The stream his feet in boyhood knew. From days before the iron cry Of Roman legions rent the sky, Since man with wolf held brutish strife, Usk sees the flow and ebb of life. As mimic whirlpools on his face Orb after orb, each other chase, And gleam and intersect and die, Our little circles eddy by. But those fair waters run for aye While to himself, Where'er they stray. All footsteps lead at last to Death, His ancient song, Usk murmureth By the bridge of Aberhonddu. lOI THE OLD YEAR Into the dismal abysses "UTiere outworn centuries lie Pass not, old Year, old Friend; Pass not, we pray thee, and die. Now thou art bow'd and white-hair'd We behold thee in truth what thou art; An arm'd man planted between us And him of the bitter dart. — There is gain from desire defeated, And a gem in the heart of woe : But to . leave the little faces, To leave the heart's darling, and go ; — This is the sorest evil Of evils under the sky, That makes us chill at the noontide. And shudder as night goes by. I02 THE OLD YEAR — O King, whilst thou hast ruled us We have murmur'd beneath our lot : Now we know that under thy sceptre We were safe, and we knew it not. Minutes of fugitive pleasure, Pearls in the year's diadem, — Days of delight, all golden, They are gone, and we sigh not for them :— P.ut thine heir, the new king, we know not ; Nor whether his shield be of proof To guard us against the arrows Of that other who watches aloof, With a smile from his ambush dartiny The glance of a patient eye, Jn wait to bear us to the darkness Where Arthur and Alfred lie. I03 MARGARET WILSON Four children at their Uttle play Across the iron-furrow'd way ; Joyous in all the joy of May. Three, babies; and one, Margaret, In charge upon the others set To lift and soothe them if they fret. The sky is blue: the sun is bright; The little voices, pure and light, Make music as they laugh outright. The noiseless weight of giant wheels Amongst them in a moment steals, And death is rolling at their heels. She ran with one to reach the side, And reach'd it, and look'd back, and spied. Where the dark wheels right towards them slide, I04 MARGARET WILSON The other two, that were forgot, Playing by Death, and knowing not ; — And drew them to the narrow spot Between the rails and platform-side. Safe nestling down ; — but as they glide The wheel-rods struck her, and she died. By those she died for there she lay, Nor any word could Margaret say, But closed her eyes, and pass'd awa}-. — My little heroine ! though I ne'er Can look upon thy features fair. Nor kiss the lips that mangled were : Too small a thing from Fame to have A portion with the great and brave, And unknown in thy lowly grave: Yet thy true heart, and fearless faith, And agony of love in death God saw, and he remembereth. I05 A VERY SIMPLE STORY i%th "Jan.: \Uh Ap^il, 1870 'Fifty years and more, Love, We have been together: Gone through frost and fire. Tears and tearless weather. Now the ^Master's message Bids our hands dissever ; But will it be long, Love, Ere they are together, Together, Love ! Once again together?' Then she closed his eyelids, Saying' 'Now and ever!' Went about her household; ' Will he come ? O never : ' io6 .'/ VERY SIMPLE STORY Till Death join'd the hands, that Lately he bade .se\er. Now two hearts united Beat in one for ever ; For ever, Love ! One henceforth for ever. I07 THE DAYS LONG PAST O days long past ! When night is deep Ye oft wage war with holy sleep, And to some spectral region far Bear the sick soul your prisoner. Before us in procession slow The dim pathetic faces go, Cr)dng, 'Why scorn our weakness thus? Thy present soon will be like us ! ' First-childhood, with pale gold around His brows and wither'd ash-leaves bound, And in his azure-faded eyes The morning-star of Paradise. '3 First-faith, with rosy limbs, to whom God every night was in the room, And o'er our heads bade slumber creep With touch of hands more soft than sleep. io8 THE DA YS LONG PAST First-love, with buoyant gestures still'd, And eyes of promise unfulfill'd, And trembling on his Hps the while The sunset of the ancient smile. And other presences between, And visions rather felt than seen, ^Vith tears upon their garments' hem, So dear, I may not look on them. — Once more ! O once more ! — But they go Silent, nor any Io\-e-sign show. I know the lost are lost; and then In gloomier gloom night falls again. I09 A SONG OF AGE Summer is gone, and Autumn Is red on the corn and heavy ; Yet skies are sweet and clear As in the youthful year, The forests full and leafy. But in the Northern cloud Sits Winter dark and rude, And Summer's golden glory "VVlio will remember In the long, long, dismal hours, In the days of December ? The morning hopes of childhood, The visions pure and tender, To the broader day of youth, To the keen high light of truth And reason we surrender : — no ^ SONG OF AGJi But as we toucli the goal Black winter numbs the soul, And manhood's gleam of glory Who will remember In the long, long, dismal hours, In the days of December? Ah ! were such life life only, Better not be, than be thus ! To see through this brief day Hope fall from hope away And to blank Nothing leave us ! O still our vague unrest, God's voice within the breast ! For in God's eternal Summer Who will remember The long, long, dismal hours. And the days of December ? Mooh uhirb THE ANCIENT AND MODERN MUSES The monument outlasting bronze Was promised well by bards of old; The lucid outline of their lay Its sweet precision keeps for aye, Fix'd in the ductile language-gold. But we who work with smaller skill, And less refined material mould, — This close conglomerate English speech, . Bequest of many tribes, that each Brought here and wrought at from of old, Residuum rough, eked out by rhyme Barbarian ornament uncouth, — Our hope is less to last through Art Than deeper searching of the heart. Than broader range of utter'd truth. H 1 14 THE ANCIENT AND MODERN MUSES One keen-cut group, one deed or aim Athenian Sophocles could show, And rest content : — but Shakespeare's stage Must hold the glass to every age, — A thousand forms and passions glow Upon the world-wide canvass. So With larger scope our art we ])ly ; And if the crown be harder won, Diviner rays around it run. With strains of fuller harmony. "5 SURSUM On the gray granite spire Alone with the sharp air, and glancing skies, The callow bird unfilm'd his fervent eyes, And, like a cry, sent a moist glance of fire Onward and upward. Too slight those untried wings To buoy his soaring from the nest as yet : But on the zenith sun his sight is set, And miles above the earth his heart he flings. Onward and upward. His dizzy birthplace height To the young eagle heart seems all too low To swoop from, on the vale, where feeding go Dim cattle-specks : his home is with the light, Onward and upward. ii6 SURSUM Hour of heroic dreams ! — But when the day of might has come at length. And the brown wings thrill with elastic strength. Forth to the golden goal of youth he streams. Onward and upward ! Then, without haste or stay, Alone, unfriended, on that silent height, Through the keen torrents of eye-searing light. Through realms of blazing frost, he beats his way Onward and upward. And the great hills afar Melt down beneath the clouds, one misty plain ; Whence, through the rift, with eyes that skyward strain. The shepherd sees him moving like a star Onward and upward. 117 TO A PAINTER Friend, in whom ancient stems of note, The Mowbray and Fitzalan, meet, ■\Vho work'd their walls and held their own Since first the shatter'd English throne Gave the stern Noniian surer seat; Wild days of castle-buttress'd crag, And long-roof'd abbey in the dell, Blue flash of steel-clad war, with gay Pennons toss'd foam-like o'er the fray, And woodland visionary cell, And the fresh face of holy Art : — ^Another task our times pursue I 1 8 TO A PAINTER Than Europe in her youthful age ! Yet from tlie past our heritage Descends; we are not wholly new. Nature and Man, two streams from one, Feed us with knowledge ; and her powers Pass into us, and brace tlie mind : Yet most we owe to wliat our kind Has done or thought in earlier hours ; For heart to heart speaks closest, best. Nor has man higher task than he Who from old treasures flung away Creates new beauty for to-day, And heirlooms for the far to-be. Then at thy noble function toil. Thine own, not what the ancients tried ; Let the pure form in clearness grow, The happy tints contrasting glow, 'i'ill all be fix'd and glorified. TO A PAINTER 119 A narrow field the men of old With heaven's own hues and forms inlaid ; Their's, the strict end to teach the soul : Our's, free from outward-set control, To face all nature, unafraid. That partial range of perfect skill Enlarge to fit our wider aim, And through the pleased eye touch the lieart; Scaling the hard-won heights of Art, And adding honour to thy name. I20 PRO MORTUIS What should a man desire to leave ? A flawless work ; a noble life : Some music harmonized from strife, Some finisli'd thing, ere the slack hands at eve Drop, should be his to leave. One gem of song, defying age ; A hard-won fight ; a well-work'd farm ; A law, no guile can twist to harm ; Some tale as our lost Thackeray's, bright, or sage As the just Hallam's page. Or, in life's homeliest, meanest spot, With temperate step from year to year PRO MORTUIS 121 To move \A\\\m. his little sphere, Leaving a pure name to be known, or not, — This is a true man's lot. He dies: he leaves the deed or name, A gift for ever to his land, In trust to Friendship's prudent hand. Bound 'gainst all adverse shocks to guard his fame, Or to the world proclaim. But the imperfect thing, or thought,— The crudities and yeast of youth. The dubious doubt, the twilight truth, The work that for the passing day was wrought, The schemes that came to nought. The sketch half-way 't^vixt verse and prose That mocks the finish'd picture true. The quarry whence the statue grew. The scaffolding 'neath which the palace rose. The vague abortive throes ,22 PRO MORTUIS And fever-fits of joy or gloom : — In kind oblivion let them be ! Nor has the dead worse foe than he Who rakes diese sweepings of the artist's room, And piles them on his tomb. Ah. 'tis but litde that the best, Frail children of a fleeting hour. Can leave of perfect fruit or flower '. Ah, let all else be graciously supprest When man lies down to rest 1 123 nVJ GRA VES AT ROME Saints and Caesars are here, Bishops of Rome and the world, Rulers by love and by fear : — Those who in puq^le and gold Prank'd and lorded it here; Those who in sackcloth and shame Elected their limbs to enfold, Scornful of pleasure and fame : — Ah, they had their reward ! There is something else that I seek On the flowery sward, By the pile of Cestius, here ! Is it but two stones like the rest Fondly preserving a name Elsewhere unheeded of fame, Set here by love, and left To gather gray, like the rest? — Psha ! 'Tis the fate of man ! J 24 TWO CRA VES A T ROME We are wretched, we are bereft Of all that gave life its plan, The sunbeam and treasure of yore ; We lay it in earth, and are gone ; Then, as before. We laugh and forget, like tlie rest. A transient name on the stone, A transient love in the heart ; We have our day, and are gone : — — But it is not so with these ! There is life and love in the stone ;- Names of beauty and light Over all lands and seas They have gone forth in their miglit Warmer and hiirher beats The general heart at the words Shelley and Keats : — There is life and love in the stone ! He with the gleaming eyes And glances gentle and wild, The angel eternal child; His heart could not throb like ours, Tiro GRA VES AT ROME He could not see with our eyes Dimm'd with the duhiess of earth, BUnd with the bondage of hours ; Yet none with diviner mirth Hail'd what was noble and sweet : The blood-track'd journey of life, The way-sore feet None have watch'd with more human eyes. And he who went first to the tomb — Rejoice, great souls of the dead ! For none in that earlier Rome Took a bolder and lordlier heart To the all-receiving tomb : No richer more equable eye. No tongue of more musical art Conversed with the Gods on high. Among all the minstrels who made Sweetness 'tween Etna and Alp : Nor was any laid With such music and tears in the tomb. ' — What seek ye, my comrades, at Rome ? To see and be seen at the gay 125 I2{ r^VO GRA VES A T ROME Meet oa the Appian way, Or within the tall palace at eve To dance out your season at Rome ? To muse on the giants of old, In the Forum at twilight to grieve? It is more that these ruins enfold ! Warmer and higher beats The Englishman's heart at the words, Shelley and Keats ! And here is the heart of our Rome. 127 WILLI A M WORDS WOR Til Gentle and grave, in simple dress, And features by keen mountain air Moulded to solemn ruggedness, The man we came to see sat there : Not apt for speech, nor quickly stirr'd Unless when heart to heart replied ; A bearing equally removed From vain display or sullen pride. The sinewy frame yet spoke of one Known to the hillsides : on his head Some five -and -seventy winters gone Their crown of perfect white had shed : — As snow-tipp'd summits toward the sun In calm of lonely radiance press, Touch'd by the broadening light of death With a serener pensiveness. 128 WILLIAM WORDSWORTI O crown of venerable age ! O brighter crown of well-spent years ! The bard, the patriot, and the sage, .The heart that never bow'd to fears ! That was an age of soaring souls ; Yet none with a more liberal scope Survey'd the sphere of human things ; None with such manliness of hope. Others, perchance, as keenly felt, As musically sang as he; To Nature as devoutly knelt, Or toil'd to serve humanity : But none with those ethereal notes, That star-like sweep of self-control ; The insight into worlds unseen, The lucid sanity of soul. The fever of our fretful life, The autumn poison of the air, The soul with its own self at strife, He saw and felt, but could not share : With eye made clear by pureness, pierced The life of INIan and Nature through ; WILLIAM WORDSWORTH And read the heart of common things, Till new seem'd old, and old was new. To his own self not always just, Bound in the bonds that all men share, — Confess the failings as we must. The lion's mark is always there ' Nor any song so pure, so great, Since his, who closed the sightless eyes, Our Homer of the war in Heaven, To wake in his own Paradise. — O blaring trumpets of the world ! O glories, in their budding sere 1 O flaunting roll of Fame unfurl'd ! Here was the king — the hero here ! It was a strength and joy for life In that great presence once to be; That on the boy he gently smiled, That those white hands were laid on me. 129 130 ELEGY IN MEMORY OF PERCY, EIGHTH VISCOUNT STRANGFORD : Died gik Jati., i86g, aged 43 years One Statesman the less, — one friend the poorer, — While the year from its cradle comes lusty and gay; In its strength and its youth we seem'd younger and surer; Death said 'Ye are mine ! — lo, I call one : — obey!' Could'st thou not take one ripe for the reaping, Spare to our love the true-hearted and brave; Lightning of insight, and brightness unsleeping ; Wit ne'er too trenchant, nor wisdom too grave? Thirty years more, in our blindness we reckon'd, This heart, all his graces and gifts, were our own : One came between in a moment and beckon'd, And he rose in silence and follow'd alone :— ELEGY 131 FoUow'd alone from the house where we knew him Into the darkness that eye cannot trace : — Thither the heart will oft strain and pursue him, Glimpses and hints of a vanishing face. Thirty years more, should the friends who deplore him Meet, as in days without foresight or fear, Vacant one place in our hearts will be for him, One voice be listen'd for . . . Ah ! he is here ! - — Nevermore, O, nevermore ! — and the gladness Drops from our eyes and our voices away; Hopes that are memories; smiles that are sadness; — Love should be never, or be Love for aye ! Youth with his radiance leaves us, and slowly Shadow-wing'd night hovers nearer above ; Light after light from our heaven fades wholly, Blankness where shone the star-faces of love. Oft the dear image arising before us Deep in our hearts will rekindle the pain ; Oft will his presence in secret be o'er us. We who his like will not look on again. 132 ELEGY World that in blatant success has its pleasure, Little it knows of the soul that was here ; Judgment with learning allied in full measure, Mind of the statesman, and eye of the seer. On our horizon as danger is growing 'Were he but here!' the heart whispers, and sighs: Now, where earth's knowledge seems hardly worth knowing. He may not teach the new lore of the skies. Faithful and true !— Affection unsleeping. Wisdom mature, ere thy summer had flown ; — • Ah, in tky youth thou wast ripe for the reaping; He who had lent thee, now calls back his own. Tender and true ! — One look more as we leave thee Silent and cold in the bloom of thy day ; One more adieu ere the Master receive thee; — Love that has once been, is Love for aye. 133 MEMORIAL VERSES ON CHARLES DICKENS jfune I, 1870 They arose and heard he was gone ; And a thrill of electric pain Smote through each Enghsh breast, World-wide from East to West, That we never should hear him again. And wherever the English speech, Binding the nations in one. Like a river round earth has roll'd Its girdle of stubborn gold, A splendour fell from the sun. 34 ' MEMORIAL VERSES 3 The spell that on millions at once Work'd laughter and tears at his will : The glory of genius that flamed O'er the landscape his fancy had framed ; The voice of the charmer is still. The flame of that generous wrath Which wither'd the oppressor is cold, — The champion of all who endure, The voice of the voiceless and poor, The heart that could never grow old. 5 Yes ! From the whole world's sky .We knew 'twas a star that had fled When the lightnings that circle the earth. Mute flashes of sadness and mirth. Told East and West, 'He is dead.' 6 — How should we measure it, Fame? How balance diffusion and weight? MEMORIAL VERSES 135 How discern if the years far away Will re-echo the shout of to-day, ' Great in the ranks of the great ' ? 7 — Twice in our centur}-, twice Only, that cry has been heard By a nation's unison swell'd, ' All bosoms his magic has held. And his name is a household word.' 8 Our fathers that unison heard In youth, as we hear it now, When, toward his own country-side led By the spirit within him, the head Of ' the whole world's darling ' lay low. 9 And loud-tongued dispensers of fame, Judges with envy-dim eye, Said 'The tale and the legend were gay Manufactures well wrought for the day, And his spell with the day would go by.' 136 MEMORIAL VERSES 10 Not so ! The wild Past that he loved, The heroic adventure and strife, Lake, glen, that we never may see, In the light of that witchery, Glow yet with the fulness of life. II Lord of Romance and the North ! Whilst Melrose in twilight is gray. Whilst Eildon the triple pride Of his crest lifts over Strathclyde, In the hearts of men is thy sway. 12 There only is durable reign ! — Auroral flashings of wit ; Touches of tragical might Fraught with such strange delight That we cannot fathom it ; Wonders of ex(]uisite art ; Beauty that earth cannot give ; MEMORIAL VERSES 137 The spell that lays bare the dim, gray Caves of the soul to the day; — In their magic awhile we may live. 14 But the fame that the whole world's heart In its golden girdle shall bind, Must have root in a richer soil, And its lamp be made bright with the oil Of love for all humankind. 15 And the work must not only be true. But intense with the passion of truth, The hatred of coldness and lie ; To the nobler nature must cry, That shall merit eternal youth. 16 And the verse that will never grow old With a life-blood current must roll, In the music of heaven have part, — The cry of the heart to the heart And the song of the soul in the soul. ^38 ELIZABETH AT TILBURY . Ajituiiiii, 1588 Let them come, come never so proudly, O'er the green waves in tall array; Silver clarions menacing loudly, ' All the Spains ' on their pennons gay ; High on deck of their gilded galleys Our light sailers they scorn below :— We will scatter them, plague, and shatter them, Till their flag hauls down to the foe ! For our oath we swear By the name we bear By England's Queen and England free and fair,— Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death : God save Elizabeth ! Sidonia, Recalde, and Leyva Watch from their bulwarks in swarthy scorn : Lords and Princes by Philip's favour : We by birthright are noble born 1 ELIZABETH A T TILBUR V 139 Freemen born of the blood of freemen, Sons of Cressy and Flodden are we : We shall sunder them, fire, and plunder them, — English boats on the English sea ! And our oath we swear By the name we bear By England's Queen and England free and fair, — Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death : God save Elizabeth ! Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins and Howard, Raleigh, Cavendish, Cecil and Brooke, Hang like wasps by the flagships tower'd, Sting their way through the thrice-piled oak :— Let them range their seven-mile crescent. Giant galleons, canvass wide ! Ours will harry them, board, and carry them. Plucking the plumes of the Spanish pride. For our oath we swear By the name we bear. By England's Queen and England free and fair, — Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death : God save Elizabeth ! 140 E LIZ ABE Til A T TILB UK Y — Has God risen in wrath and scatter'd, Have his tempests smote them in scorn ? Past the Orcades, dumb and tatter'd, 'Mong sea-beasts do they drift forlorn? We were as Hons hungry for battle ; God has made our battle his own I God has scatter'd them, sunk, and shatter'd them Give the glory to him alone ! While our oath we swear By the name we bear, By England's Queen and England free and fair, — Her's ever and her's still, come life, come death : God save Elizabeth ! 141 MENTANA Nov., 1867 Lion-hearts of young Italy ! Field where none died in vain ! Beardless boys and famine-gaunt Corpses along the plain, — Did not enough of ye die On the field where none died in vain, Lion-hearts of young Italy ! Field where death was victory, Blood that gush'd not in vain When the deadly rifle of France Crash'd with its iron rain; 'Neath the pine-dotted slopes of Tivoli The triumph is with the slain, Lion-hearts of young Italy ! 142 MENTANA Noble error, if error, To make their fatlierland one ! — Through her five-and-twenty centuries Rome counts no worthier son. Than he who led them to die Where death and triumph were one,- Lion-hearts of young Italy ! For the blood of Mentana To the blood of Thermopylae calls, And the blood of Marathon answers. Not in vain, not in vain he falls Who stakes his life on the die When the voice of Freedom calls, Lion-hearts of young Italy ! Passionate instinct for truth. Children and heroes in one, Reason higher than reason, Light from beyond the sun : — Did not enough of ye die To knit your country in one, Lion-hearts of young Italy ? MENTANA 143 Pity not them as they lie Crown'd with the fortunate dead ; Pity not them, but the foe, — For the precious drops that they shed Sow but the seed of victory ! Pity the foe, not the dead. Lion-hearts of young Italy ! Yours, to be gallant and true, Yours, for your country to die. Yours to be Men of Mentana, Highly esteem'd 'mong the high : — Theirs, to look on at your victory ! For did not enough of ye die. Lion-hearts of young Italy? Brief the day of November, Long to the remnant that fought ; Boys too young for the battle. Naked and hunger-distraught : — No, not too young to die. Falling where each one fought, Lion-hearts of young Italy ! 144 THE NOBLE REVENGE ODE TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1869 O bright and single moment, when The clouds above us part, and men Behold some golden goal on high Shine graspable within the farthest sky : — Onward and upward ! Then they close On the dull laggard's eye, and bar advance, And bid him doze : — His chance he had, and lost it : But others have their chance ! It may be, in some doubtful fight. Courage to see and choose tlie right; Or, leading some assault past hope, THE NOBLE REVENGE 145 To tread with even stejD the gun-crown'd slope; Or 'gainst some giant falsehood's head Before the whole world to stand forth, alone, And strike it dead; Or, for some wrong wrought on us, By pardon to atone. And e'en in England's later years Of unstrung nerves and foolish fears, While hoarse-lung'd prophets trade in woe, And grumblers echo with // must be so, And every grinning gossip's glass Perks up for spots, not light, the sun to view, — O'er that mean mass Some few have dared to tower, And greatly hope and do. And often so It is with nations ; As when one fair land Saw, North and South, her bright-arm'd mjTiads stand, Saw herself rent in twain by matricidal hand : K 146 THE NOBLE REVENGE Though both were gallant, though High deeds 011 either side were wrought, Yet one for self, and one for mankind fought And when war's lurid cloud From the clear skies had pass'd, The golden eye of life From heaven shone bold and free On white-robed Victory, And the Right won at last. — But she, the mother-land, that erst Those swarms in her full hive had nursed, Watch'd, sneering, the enormous fight, Or wish'd the drones success, with blinded spite, Or hail'd with jealous pettiness Each bloody field that drank her rivals' strength And left them less ; Till, in the cause that triumj)h'd, She acquiesced at length. So most who wrote, and most who spoke :- But underneath that servile yoke THE NOBLE REVENGE 147 The dumb, deep-beating, genuine heart Of England would not crouch, but smiled apart, Knowing the Right at last must be : — Nor waver'd in her faith while the long march Swept towards the sea; Nor when fair Freedom's martyr, The headstone of your arch Fell, for his work below was done : — England has no nobler son ! Now, by his blood, and by his name. She calls you to be worthy of your fame : Another trial-hour is now; Now o'er the main she looks with eager glance And bended brow : — Our chance we had, and lost it ! But you have yet your chance ! O men who won ! O other larger England, saved, and free Forget the error past, past jealousy ! With your true blood our true blood beats across the sea. 148 THE NOBLE REVENGE Let what is done, be done ; 'Wvt two great hearts in one unite ; Revenge our blindness by your clearer sight. Victors in freedom's fight, Another conflict see, An upward-flashing path To win a new renown, — Crown'd with the greater crown Of inagnanimitv ! 149 AT LYME REGIS September, 1870 Calm, azure, marble sea As a fair palace pavement largely spread, Where the gray bastions of the eternal hills Lean over languidly, Bosom'd with leafy trees, and garlanded ! Peace is on all I view ; Sunshine and peace ; earth clear as heaven one hour ; Save where the sailing cloud its dusky line Ruffles along the blue, Brush'd by the soft wing of the silent shower. 15° AT L YME REGIS In no profounder calm Did the great Spirit over ocean brood, Ere the first hill his yet unclouded crest Rear'd, or the first fair palm Doubled her maiden beauty in the flood. Yet if the sapphire veil That rounds the verge were rent aside, what fast Flashings of flame blood-red, and blood-red smoke, What crash of steel-tipp'd hail. Across this calm what horror would be cast ! Here, in her ancient home. Peace, sovran set since Commons warr'd with King : — There, the fair plains where none has lived his life Unvex'd by din of drum, Or clash of arms, or panic hurrying. Here, Nature's gentlest hues : — There, on the dinted field a crimson stream. River of death, once life, corrupts the turf; And the pure natural dews Breathe rank and lurid 'mid the charnel steam. AT L YME REGIS 1 5 1 Here, in God's acre, death Smooths a green couch of rest for the white head : — There, stack'd in piles of tortured tlesh, the youngv Gasping a quick, hot breath, Envy the gentler portion of the dead. I see the dark array As a long snake unroll itself, and thrust Against a wall of flame ; then decompose, Arrested in mid way ; Writhing at first; now motionless in dust. Unswerving files ! ye went Right on the gaping mouths of hail and fire. For God and Fatherland, — as they, whose lives. Through glorious error spent. At Balaklava made the world admire ! Or a beleaguer'd town The floods of war out all around surveys, And holds on with stout heart, though the dread bomb In her mid streets rains down. And wolf-gaunt famine prowls through all her ways. '52 AT L YME REGIS Or the red ranks of France, Wall'd three-fold round by those grim Northern bands, ■Holding their blood cheap, and their land, how dear ! Thrice and thrice more advance : — In vain !— Fate bars tliem with relentless hands. -Fair France ! Great Germany ! What less than demon impulse, rage for ill. Could taint the natural love of man for man With hellish savagery. Its selfish aims through ruin to fulfil? Was it for this your hands Master'd each kindly trade, each art of life? The mind explored all knowledge, and the wit Flash'd wisdom througli all lands ; And all to glut the cannon and the knife? Not when earth soaks with gore, And man on man halloos the fiendish chase, Send forth your red-cross knights to nurse tlie dead But going out before, Staunch the mad jealousy of race 'gainst race. AT LYME REGIS 153 The boast of brotherhood, The pride of science, progress, skill, and wealth, Shame us : — for each hard-conquer'd gain, the world Rolls back its weary road, And the kind makes no step to higher health. He who against the slope Heaved the returning rock, and heaved again, Was man's true ancestor : — Ourselves to know ; — In hope to work 'gainst hope; — This is the sole advance the Fates ordain. Peace ! — in the very word There seems a blessing : — Peace ! From thoughts too deep Turn to fair Nature's teachings, and the calm, By fretful man unstirr'd, Her gentle laws in even current keep. No fruitless strife she holds ; No jealous war for bare supremacy ; But Order binds the elements, and Love By strong attraction folds All atoms in one golden unity. 154 AT L\ 'ME RE CIS Nor fair Utopian plan Nor false horizons lure her from her road; Where Fate says ' Yield,' she yields ; and what she would Changing for what she can, Transmutes all evil into final good. God's way he best discerns Who tracks it, frankly bold, yet calm with awe : To whom, tlirough strife, and seeming waste, and death, The night of Nature, burns The central star of Reason and of Law. 155 ^^JF YEAR'S DAY, 1871 A\'e have look'd for thee long;— and behold thee, Ice at the heart, tear frozen on tear ; Snowdrifts and sorrow the robes that enfold thee, O bitter New Year 1 Thou art come ; and the light of thy morning Lurid arises and baleful and drear ; Blood-stain'd the world; skies ruthless and scorning, O bitter New Year 1 Oft of science and peace they have told us ; Songs of advance too loud in our ear : War and red ravin and hatred enfold us In the bitter New Year ! 1-6 NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1 87 1 Thou art come : and the breath of thy coming Scorches with carnage and freezes with fear ; Flame at thy hps, but flame icy and numbing, O bitter New Year ! For the mother is cold by the cradle, Babes in the bosom shrivell'd and sere ; Brides at the bridal for silver have sable In the bitter New Year. And the young men of France in the trenches, Old men and infants are stift" on the bier : — Yet the brave heart of the land never blenches In the bitter New Year ! From the fields of defeat and betrayal Once more, when all appear'd lost, they are here ; Once more enrank'd for thy dreadful assayal, O bitter New Year ! They may go like the thousands before them, Dying for France, the down-trodden, the dear : Yet on their deathbed her glory is o'er them In the bitter New Year. NE W YEAR'S DAV, 1S71 157 * Though the furnace be seven-fold heated, Forth will she leap, resplendent and clear : Purged of her dross, though forlorn and defeated In the bitter New Year ! Till renew'd in the strength of her splendour. Purer and prouder her face she will rear : And thou for each burden a blessing wilt render, O bitter New Year ! 158 THE ESQUILINE FIELD Rome, B.C. lo Beneath the Servian rampart, Where the air should be pure and sweet, The dead-man's field of the Citv Lies at the Romans' feet. Afar it gleams like a chalk-pit ; But, walking above, you may see Vast acres of bones that whiten The gloomy Esquiliae. There, the lash and the workhouse over, The corpse of the swarthy slave They toss to corrupt and crumble, Not worth its faggot and grave. THE ESQUILINE FIELD 159 There, no longer fit to be noticed In her master's amorous hour, The Hmbs of the httle handmaiden Lie stark in frost and shower. There the sighs of murder'd infants That hardly look'd on the sun, With the sighs of the coarse reed grasses Creep faintly and blend into one. From Africa, Gaul, and Britain, From Dacia and Asia they came, Each a perfect human creature. To toil and fetters and shame. Torn from the distant village. Torn from their natural air, To know nought of life but the burden, And die and be cast out there. And the elegant throng on the rampart Essence in hand goes by. When the whiff of the charnel sickens The nose of Society. i6o THE ESQUILINE FIELD But a social reform is coming, For Maecaenas will buy the place, And set it out in foir gardens, And the dead-man's field efface : — And fashion will frisk and simper. And acknowledge the charming spot : — But the bones and the souls that own'd them, I say, will they be forgot ? The souls disfeatured and ruin'd, Bodies ground down to waste. To form a broad foundation For comfort and wealth and taste ? And Vienna, London, and Paris, Have they such a field to show ? — How can you? — Culture and Science Manage things better, we know. i6i A MOTHER'S LAMENT With the cottage girls and the poor It often is so, they say : Yet 'tis to each mother as much As if she were the only such Whose daughter has wander'd astray. She troubled and pain'd me oft ; Yet I loved her beyond them all, Fanciful ever and wild, My dark-eyed gipsy child, Dark-hair'd and nut-brown and tall. They say she loved notice and dress ; There was nothing to make me amazed 1 6 2 A MO THEM'S LAMENT Perhaps it was vanity there ; For her looks an overcare, An overcare to be praised. Yet no such sweet temper as her's, No smiles like her's in the place; When she garnish'd the cottage out, Or carried the youngest about, And she with her mere child's face ! And I guarded her all I could; But what can be done by the poor? She went from her home far away, Where respite was none, night or day, Nor comfort within the door. Yet if she had had her chance, She would have been gentle and good ; Have kept a pure maiden breast, By respect for herself repressed The dance of the youthful blood. A MOTHER'S LAMENT 163 But praise, on her simple looks, And gold, on her wearisome life Where never a happiness came, Like sunbeams fell : — and the shame Was hid in some whisper of 'wife.' I know not if she believed, For she was only a child; She took his base jewels for true; She could not keep out of his view, And turn'd unsettled and wild. And jest and lust and the pride Of conquest urged on the suit; Half force, half folly :— but O The shame of advantage, so Won on a child by a brute ! And he had his play and his laugh. And pass'd on to his pleasures elsewhere But she— where she hides her head, t64 ^ MOTHER'S LAMENT And if with the hving or dead, To think I cannot dare. She dares not come back, nor knows For her face how I linger and yearn Whatever there be, I forgive, — O one hour, to tell if you live, Only one hour, return ! — If ever the child has her chance She may yet be honest and good. God will pity the lost, and exact From the tempter the price of his act ; For upon his head is her blood. i65 QUIA DILEXIT MULTUM Yes ! she is outcast from the world ; The decent crowd of rich and good With scorn or silence pass her by, Or bid her search the streets for food: Yet, when the jewels are made up, She shall be ransom'd, yet; For she has loved him more than all, And he will not forget. 'Tis not he does not prize the pure, Or disesteems the holy heart, Or judges each the same as all, Or fails to take his liegemen's part : But that he sees us as we are With calm of perfect eyes ; Reads sorrow hid in eager mirth, And smiles beneath our sighs. 1 6 6 Q UIA D I LEX IT MUL TUM The pitfalls set around the poor, The impulse of this human blood, The hunger-hounds that tear the flesh, Unshared, unfelt, are known of God ; How very shame disarms the girl, — Hell hard by heaven in love, — The weight upon the weaker heap'd, — Are all confess'd above. Ah ! strange such things on earth should be ! Ah ! little arc of the great whole That our dim eyes can measure here. Harsh judgments of the happy soul ! The woman's heart in her yet lives, And shall be ransom'd, yet; For she has loved him more than all. And he will not forget. 167 THE COTTAGE HOME Clothed in a cloud of green woodbine, Its feet yA\ki the red rose bound, It stands like a fairy creature On its own dear fairy ground : 'Neath eave-brow'd casements the martin With a cry dips into his nest : The turf breathes white from the gable, And all breathes sweetness and rest : — But they clear the cottages off on this estate ; And for picturesqueness without, within there is gloom ; For it is not sweet when four boys and three girls and the parents Must herd in a single room. Girt with a fringe of fair forest As a cup with vine-leaves bound, The valley lies like a fragment Of Paradise lost and found : — I 68 THE COTTAGE HOME Safe from the talons of tempest, From all that can ravage and blot, It smiles to its smiling heaven In the peace that the world knows not. — But they clear the cottages off on this estate ; And from the choke and heat of the fever-smit room, Where nine are stabled and one is groaning in shame, There rises a reek of gloom. O blot unatoned-for by beauty ! Fair face, — and Death laughing below ! O dumb endurance of lifetimes, O dim degradation and woe ! In the breast of the rose is a canker, A tear in the heart of the dew. Where Nature has all her sweetness, And man is a blur on the view ! For they clear the cottages off on this estate : And the ragged peak of the window-dismantled room. As an eyeless skull where the vermin burrow and shriek, Stares now like a sign of doom. 169 THE TOWN 'Smoke, wealth, and noise,' the Roman's list. Exhaust not all the city yields ; The mid-day glare : the hush of night : The breath of fields Blown through dim blue-air'd streets at earliest light. There the last shout of parting friends Hoarse from their wine, and hot retreats. Joins the fresh chorus they troll forth Who know the streets But as the place where labour has its worth. They care not how the glooms of eve Behind each dawn their ambush make, 170 THE TOWN Nor for the narrow toilsome round, Ache upon ache, Till the bent limbs crawl to the nameless mound. There some poor wanderer of the ways Through nursery casement hears the cry Of restless childhood ; and her heart Sickens to die At thought how Such thou wast ; and this thou art. Then the cool bathes her face, and hope And love of life, their strength regain. And the tide rises in the ways, And the full main Of being swells beneath the climbing rays. The barefoot children on the roads Shout in slirill hunger playing; weeds Toss'd random on the waste : while wealth Her darling leads Through the fenced paths of happiness and health. THE TOWN 171 And one is on the chase of gold, And one for bread he cannot find ; For love, for lust, for foe, for friend : And each is blind, Save where his impulse leads, and inner end. So death and life, and wealth and want, O'er the long pavements of the town Fling light with darkness : whilst on high The sun casts down The calm observance of his golden eye. 172 TO A SPRING-HEAD IN SOUTH WALES Child of the rock ! not chill as those That from the sapphire glacier go, Yet marble-fresh to lips and brows That dip within thy lucid flow, And rise with quicken'd strength, and inward glow : — Like thee the wise, — with equal glance Watching the fever of the day, The boasts of premature advance, The groans of ciuerulous dismay,— Hot hopes, weak fears, with temperate draughts allay. TO A SPRING-HEAD IN SOUTH WALES 173 — E'en thus with pure unswerving force Thine unremittent waters go ; And all around thy cradle-source The ferns their green embroidery throw, And the lush grasses net themselves below : — And from the homestead in the glen A girl her hollow pitcher brings, And loads with liquid crystal : — then Above her head the weight she swings, And down the vale her even carol rings. 174 IN HIGH SA VO V Nature's fair, fruitless, aimless world Men take and mould at will : Scoop havens from the wasteful sea ; Tame heaths to green fertihty, And grind their roadway through the hill. Another aspect now she dons, Changed by the hands of men :— What harvest plains of golden hope ! What vineyards on the amber slope ! What lurid forge-lights in the glen ! Yet still some relics she reserves Of what was all her own : — Keeps the wild surface of the moor, Or, where the glacier-torrents roar, Reigns o'er gray piles of wrinkled stone. IN HIGH SA VO Y 175 And though man's daily strengthening sway Contracts her precinct fair, Yet round smooth sweeps of vine-set land Her vaporous ranks of summit stand As ghosts in morning's silent air : — Or on vast slopes, unplough'd, untrod, She vindicates her right; Green billows of primaeval copse, Tossing a myriad spiry tops 'Neath the full zenith-flood of light : — Or where, — whilst o'er Rhone's azure lake Heaven's azure stainless lies, — From the White Mount the white clouds strike As if volcano-born, or like The smoke of some great sacrifice. 1/6 TO FIDELE Care not, if in her lucid course Unveiling intermediate laws, And ever-flowing streams of force, And analysing all to one, Science or seeks or shuns the Cause. Care not, if searching History pour Her blaze on what of old was writ, Or if the text revered of yore Resign the sole and special place Blind human love imposed on it. On all we know with gracious smiles The great Omniscience looks : nor cares If ill or well we sum the miles 'Twixt earth and sun ; nor how the strife Of real and ideal fares. TO FIDELE 177 But the high heart, the noble aim, The fair soul speaking in the face, In the divine true portion claim : — And oft to those who own him least The ]^Iaster comes with special grace. Then fear not, if the jangling sects Announce each other fool or knave : Nor let thy central peace be vext When pulpit-fulminations blaze. Or fervid Nature-prophets rave. But pray thy prayer and keep thy creed In modest majesty of soul : — 'Tis the pure hand and heart They heed \Vho mark the fallen sparrow's cry, And are the Infinite they control. M 178 THE REIGN OF LA W The dawn goes up the sky Like any other day; And these have only come To mourn Him wliere he lay. ' We ne^er hai'c seen the law Ra'ersed, ^neath which zee lie ; Exceptions none are found. And wJicn we die, we die. Resigned to fact we wander hither ; We ask no more the zvhence and whitJier. '■Wxin questions I from the first Put, and no answer found. He binds us zcith the chain Wherewith himself is bound. THE REIGN OF LAW 179 From west to east the eaiih Unrolls her primal ciirTe ; The sun himself were voc'd Did she one furlong swerve : The myriad years have w/mTd her hither. But tell not of the whence and whither. 3 ' We knozv but what we see — Like cause, and like event ; One constant force runs on Transmuted, but unspettt: From her own laws the mind Infers a conscious plan ; Deducing from %uithin God's special thought for nuin : The natural choice that brought us hither Is silent on the whence and whither. 4 ' If God there be, or Gods, Without our science lies; We cannot see or touch. Measure, nor analyse. ' 1 8 o THE REIGN OF LA /^ Life is but what we live. We know but what 7C'e knoiv. Closed i/T these bounds alone Whether God be, or no: The se/f-moved force that bore us hither Reveals no whence, and hints no whither. 5 '■Ah, which is likelier truth. That laiii should hold its way. Or, for this one of all, Life reassert her sway ? Like any other morn The sipi goes up the sky ; No crisis marks the day ; For when we die, tve die. IVo fair fond hope allures us hither : The buo is dumb on whence and whithcrl — Then, Avherefore are ye come ? Why watch a worn-out corse? Why weep a ripple past Down tlie long stream of force? THE REIGN OF LAW 1 8 1 If life is that which keeps Each organism whole, No atom may be traced Of what he thought the soul : It had its temi of passage hither, But knew no whence, and knows not whither. 7 The forces that were Christ Have ta'en new forms and fled ; The common sun goes up ; The dead are with the dead. 'Twas but a phantom life That seem'd to think and will. Evolving self and God By some subjective skill ; That had its day of passage hither, But knew no whence, and knows no whither. 8 If this be all in all ; Life, but one mode of force ; Law, but the plan which binds The sequences in course ; ) 82 THE REIGX OF LA W All essence, all design Shut out from mortal ken : - — We bow to Nature's fate, And drop tlie st}'le of men I The summer dust the wind wafts hither Is not more dead to whence and whither. 9 — But if our life be life. And thought, and will, and love Not vague unrhythmic airs That o'er wild harp-strings move ; If consciousness be aught Of all it seems to be, And souls are something more Than lights that gleam and flee ; Though dark the road that leads us tliidier, The heart must ask its whence and whither. lO To matter or to force The All is not confined ; Beside the law of things Is set the law of mind ; THE REIGN OF LA IV 1 83 One speaks in rock and star, And one within the brain, In unison at times, And then apart again; And both in one have brought us hither That we may know our whence and whither. II The sequences of law AVe learn through mind alone ; 'Tis only through the soul That aught we know is known : — With equal voice she tells Of what we touch and see \\'ithin these bounds of life, And of a life to be ; Proclaiming One who brought us hither. And holds the keys of whence and whither. 12 O shrine of God that now IMust learn itself with awe I O heart and soul that move Beneath a living law ! i84 THE REIGN OF LA \V That which seem'd all the rule Of Nature, is but part; A larger, deeper law Claims also soul and heart. The force that framed and bore us hither Itself at once is whence and whither. We may not hope to read Nor comprehend the whole Or of the law of things Or of the law of soul : Amonc: the eternal stars Dim perturbations rise ; And all the searchers' search Docs not exhaust the skies ; He who has framed and brought us hither Holds in his hands the whence and whither. He in his science plans What no known laws foretell ; The wandering fires and fix'd Alike are miracle : THE REIGN OF LAW 185 The common death of all, The life renew'd above, Are both within the scheme Of that all-circling love ; The seeming chance that cast us hither Accomplishes his whence and whither. 15 Then, though the sun go uj) His beaten azure way, God may fulfil his thought And bless his world to-day ; Beside the law of things The law of mind enthrone, And, for the hope of all, Reveal Himself in One ; Himself the way that leads us thither, The All-in-all, the Whence and Whither. i86 NATURE AND MAN The trees in their greenest ; The sunimer-still'd voice of the stream, In the pause of the nightingale Heard as fiir off in a dream ; Deep meadows, where Iris Her scarf has flung down in her mirth, 'V\niile Heaven, one sapphire, With a bhie smile closes on earth :— Here in Nature's aloneness, What need. Shepherd, of thee ? Why this blot, this intrusion Of poor humanity ? With the forces around thee Thou would'st hold contention in vain ; A\'ith the music of Nature Idly thou matchest thy strain. NA TURE AND MAN 1 8 7 — Ah no, 'tis another Lesson the landscape must give : 'Tis but in the mirror Of mind these pageantries hve : When the eye that beholds them Is closed, the radiance dies ; P'rom the trees the greenery, The sapphire goes from the skies : — To his ear the streamlet To his ear only may sing ; O'er his hand the crystal Run cool, as he dips it therein : — O Nature, we know thee Alone as thou art to the soul : While we know that we only Are as atoms that float in the Whole. i88 THE VOICES OF NATURE Wearied with the golden glare, With the noise of worldly things, Take us to tliy larger air, To the shadow of thy w'ings ! In the wild with Nature lonely Listening for thy message only. — In the meadows, in the vales, In the greenness of the grove ; Where the snowy sea-bird sails, Blue below and blue above ; Where the echoes pause to hear us, More tlian wliat we know is near us. THE VOICES OF NATURE 189 3 Living light along the dim Verge, where summer dawning breaks ; Slopes of rock on hill-sides grim ; Mid-day sun on silent lakes \ Homeless cry of breezes roaming ; Movements in the hazy gloaming; 4 Emerald rents in icy streams; Walls of sea, from mountain tops Caught afar in violet gleams ; Sighings of the midnight copse ; Peaks in fierce contortions riven, Menacing the quiet heaven; — 5 O, a hidden life, we cry, Lurks beneath this eyeless mask ! Soul of Nature, thou art nigh ; Speak ' — we hear !— Li vain we ask : She is mute to man's appealing, Heartless 'neath the show of feeling. I go THE VOICES OF NATURE 6 What in Nature is our share, Blind 'mid all her loveliness,— This inexorable fair, — This unconscious awfulness ? What lies hid behind her seeming, Felt, not seen, in fitful gleaming? When the glare of day is past, And the thousand ancient eyes Open on us in the vast, To the heart their influence flies ; And the sea of worlds around us To a nothing seems to bound us. 8 Far beyond Orion bright Cloud on cloud the star-haze lies ; Million years bear down the light Eartlvvard from those ghost-like eyes. As a little thing beholding Man his long career unfolding. THE VOICES OF NA TURE 9 And the silver ways of heaven Wmd hke rivers o'er the sky, Till the regent moon, with even Pace, unveils her majesty ; O'er some dusky ridge appearing. Boat of heaven through heaven steering. lO — Who is man, and what his place, Anxious asks the heart, perplex'd In this recklessness of space. Worlds with worlds thus intermix'd : What has he, this atom creature, In the infinitude of Nature ? II — Morning comes, where, eastward spread, Cloudy curtains fold the day, Till the Dawn quits Tithon's bed, Till the bold sun rends his way : Then to climb the zenith golden, All that lives, as his, beholding. 191 192 THE VOICES OF XA TURE 12 In thyself well might'st thou trust, God of ancient days, O Sun ! All thy sequent stars the dust From thy whirling car-wheels spun All that lies within thy seeing From thy golden smile has being. Who the ages can recount Since the vaporous ring of earth, Floating from the central fount, Orb'd together at the birth, Or since, in the warmer ocean. Life in her first cell had motion ? 14 As beyond the furthest star Star-clouds swini in golden haze, So, in long procession, far Passes life beyond our gaze : Myriad stars and systems o'er us ; Myriad layers of life before us. THE VOICES OF NATURE 193 15 Through the mollusc, through the worm, Life reveals her gradual plan ; Form developing to form, Till the cycle stays with man, — Feeblest born and last in season, Yet sole child and heir of reason. 16 Is this all, the heart once more Asks, if, — after ages gone. Slow upheavals, shore on shore. Years on years condensed in stone, Weary steps of voiceless story. Life in us attain'd her glory. If, through long-evolving choice, Man attain'd his dizzy place. Poised 'twixt two infinities, Endless time, and boundless space, What is he, this atom creature, Wavering in the abyss of Nature ? N 194 THE VOICES OF NATURE i8 — In the early days of life Nature's law seem'd chaos wild ; Earth with Deity was rife; Man, the Gods' own care and child, His own soul in all things seeing, Deem'd himself the crown of being. 19 Wider his horizons grown, Man acknowledges his place ; Sees his dot of life alone In the vast of time and space : Blind mechanic forces round him On all sides conspire to bound him : — 20 All creation save himself Seems by changeless law to flow : He, like some poor childish elf Where huge engines groan and go ; 'Mid the ponderous systems turning No place left for him discerning :— THE VOICES OF NATURE 21 Then, in wonderment and fear At the Whole he dimly grasps, To the senses bounds his sphere. Life as his sole portion clasps ; All that passes man's exploring As of no avail ignoring : — 22 Sweeps aside, as vague or vain, All of spiritual source ; Soul, a function of the brain ; God, a metaphor for Force : So, half pride of heart, half humbly. Sits and waits his future dumbly. — Voice of Nature in the heart. Waken us to braver things ! Teach how all at which we start From the mind's own magic springs Born within that inward mirror. Ghosts we raise we flee in terror. 195 196 THE VOICES OF NATURE 24 Tliy whole universe is less Tlian one atom-grain of thought ; Forms of man's own consciousness, Space and Time o'erwhehii him not: Feeblest born and last in season, Yet sole child and heir of reason. 25 Conscious in his heart alone, Nature reads herself in Man : ( )nly here has freedom, known, Bound elsewhere by changeless plan : Elsewhere, blind instinctive being; Here alone is seen and seeing. 26 Now, on all we touch and see. As progressive truth evolves, Science lays her high decree, Matter into Force resolves; Force by other force replaces ; Points to one that all embraces : THE VOICES OF NATURE 197 27 As though every star that shines, All this universe we see, Space through all her wide confines, Modes of one vast force might be ; Sole, within itself abiding, Though 'neath myriad faces hiding. 28 Call her law, this wondrous whole, Call her force, — the heart of man Hears the voice within the soul Dominant o'er Nature's plan ; Laws of mind their echo finding In the laws on atoms binding. 29 — Voice of Nature in the heart, Narrow though our science, though Here we only know in part, Give us faith in what we know ! To a fuller life aspiring. Satisfy the heart's desiring : — 198 THE VOICES OF NATURE Tell us of a force, behind Nature's force, supreme, alone : Tell us of a larger mind Than the partial power we own : Tell us of a Being wholly Wise and great and just and holy : — 31 Toning down the pride of mind To a wiser humbleness, Teach the limits of mankind, Weak to know, and prompt to guess, On the mighty shores that bound us Childlike gathering trifles round us : — 32 Teach how, yet, what here we know To the unknown leads the way, As the light that, faint and low. Prophesies consummate day; How the litde arc before us Proves the perfect circle o'er us : — THE VOICES OF NATURE 199 00 How the marr'd unequal scheme That on all sides here we meet, Either is a lawless dream, Or must somewhere be complete ;- Where or when, if near, or distant,' Known but to the One Existent. 34 — He is. We meanwhile repair From the noise of human things To the fields of larger air. To the shadow of his wings : Listening for his message only In the wild with Nature lonely. 200 AFNOTfi 0En Ask not what next shall be When \\c have shuffled off This so fomiliar flesh, This mortal coil and slough. The snake renews his youth, And flames again in spring ; The swallow from the sea Floats back on annual wing. The year-long day of Earth Sets in her snowy tomb; But spring by spring comes back Resurgent in her bloom. Yet ask not what shall be When once our course is run ! No lesson lies for us In bird, or snake, or sun. AFNfiTO 0Ei2 20 1 He, if his being be Such as our sense can own, He, whatsoe'er he is, Unseen, unreach'd, unknown : In space and air and sun. Sky, and the stars of it, Aether and nebula. He hath no message writ : Not where beyond Orion Heave seas of stellar spray ; Not in the chasms of night That rend the IMilky Wa}^ : Not in the realms of life. In beast, or bird, or tree ; Graved on no mountain top. Dredged from no depths of sea. With glass and steel we search The secret human form ; We find no presage there, No future but the worm : 202 ArXSiTfi GE12 From Nature's inmost heart The final film withdraw ; Eternal silence reigns, Bound in eternal law. Force merges into Force ; The atom seeks its kind ; The elements are one, And each with all combined. I Ah ! man has vainly sought him In outward things and dead ; He was not in the woods, Nor on the mountain-head : In tempest or in calm, In forces or in laws, In proofs of wise design, In first or -final cause. In thine own being, thine. Nor elsewhere, search for his ; Not outer heaven or earth : Within he speaks and is. No voice can speak his voice ; No words his essence tell : Felt beyond feeling's verge, Inner, ineffable. Enough, to know him here, Far, near, within, around : — The heavenly treasure flies Before the touch of sound. In silence hold thy faith. Unspeakable, alone : The unknown future lies Hid in the God Unknown. 203 204 vox DEI I trod the bitter streets, that bear aUke The steps of want and wealth, success and woe : Man's work, yet stern to man, as some frore peak Of granite-cloaking snow ; Refugeless though secure ; enduring ; bleak. They pass, these souls beneath the mask of man, Veil'd each from each, in moving prisons pent : — "WHience come and whither going, who should say? But each pursues intent A common impulse, and a various way. Ah not alone along the streets, O men, Whence come, and 7uhithcr going ! — Is this all, The things we feel and see ; the petty past That each one can recall, The petty future that our eyes forecast ? vox DEI 20c; — Within the holy haunts of ancient hills, Or some cool meadow by Kephisus stream, The fair philosophies of old were born ; And, blending truth with dream, Breathed the soul's freshness and the light of morn. Well suits the tenour of the stony streets The townbred science of our senile day, To cell and current chasing down the soul, — Far as she dares, the sway Of fate and matter broadening o'er the whole. Is this enough, to sink into the sum ( )i the vague being of ' collective Man ? ' Enough, to toil and learn and wed and rear, And make life all we can, A first-class animal our highest sphere ? Is it true science by 'stern fact' to bound The knowable ? From the heart the heart to screen? \\\ 'certainties of sense' to dwell alone, Scorning all things unseen, Ignoring all experience save our own ? 2o6 vox DEI Pride's limitations maskVl in modesty '. Better the scream of atheist despair, The servile ritual of the fetish shrine, Than that complacent air, That ceremonial bow to the Divine ! Ah ! something more the suffering multitude Than Fate's ' inexorable logic ' need ! Than acquiescence in the ' sum of things ' ! Nor does their deathbed heed The doubtful aid the nature-prophet brings. To see right done at last ; Good all in all ; To love and to be loved unendingly ; Once more the long-lost faces recognize; — The heart's instinctive cry Such UN lie dim it/is only satisfies. O mockery, o'er the beasts by Faith, by Love, By Hope, to rise, and Knowledge, — and be trod All into clay at last, beneath the frown Of an ironic God Lifting man high, more deeply to cast down ! vox DEI 207 Yet has he not, God H\-ing in the heart, (Though by man's partial science veil'd from man, Or by dark clouds of passionate despair,) Hid all his mystic plan, Or left us of his being unaware. O deep assurance that the \vrongs of life Will find their perfect guerdon ! That the scheme So broken here, will elsewhere be fulfill'd ! Hope not a dreamer's dream I Love's long last yearnings satisfied, not stiU'd ! O message of the mind not less assured Than that which at her gate the senses lay And she interprets : Oracles of the soul Of more .imperial sway Than aught that Nature brings us from the Whole, And higher essence : From the mind herself Inly developed : Born again as fair In every child on life's stern struggle thrown, As when Man's godlike air First startled Earth her new-found king to own ! 2oS I'OX DEI — I trod of late the bitter streets, that bear The steps of want and wealth impassively; Where men like heartless puppets come and go ; Business and Vanity, And selfish scheming, and well-acted woe. ^Vllat heaven-sent impulse of humanity, On these chill ruthless pavements can be bred ? What plant of grace, methought, could here have root? Shroud-like the skies and dead ; And God and holy Nature quite shut out. — It was a child of eight who swept the way Where mine cross'd her's that morning; hunger-white ; Clad in rags not her own : yet keeping still Something of childhood's light ; Blithe at her task, not wholly tamed to ill. Hardly she dared to ask the bread I gave, And took as one misdoubting her delight : — Then eyed the store a moment, and in haste Folding her treasure tight, With little fingers bound it at her waist. vox DEI 209 ' 'Twas brought from home,' I said, ' she need not fear ' : And bade her eat, and as she turn'd to flee Held her ; ' she must be hungry ' ; but 'twas vain : She heard a stronger plea, The baby voices crying in their pain By the black fire-less hearth, unsatisfied. ' 77iey must have some! the childre?i wa?it it so'.' — Her tears were nigh; her whole heart homeward bent — ' A^70 woiihi you let me go ' ? — And God was with the little feet that went. o 2IO VENI CREATOR O Thou who, as our knowledge grows In the world's latter days, The more thou seem'st to clear the sky, The more dost hide thy face : — As ever-widening search reveals The depth and breadth of ill Scourging mankind through all the past. And sweeping o'er us still : As Science, forging day by day Her close-link'd chain, withdraws The once-felt touches of thy hand For dumb organic laws : As fears of change, and fears of doubt. Unnerve the o'er-wrought mind, Enfeebled 'mid its added strength, 'Mid all its seeing, blind : — VEy I CREATOR 211 The wider wisdom thou hast giv'n Yet is not wliolly gain ; The truer vision scathes our sight ; We cannot see thee plain. Enlarge our hearts and purge our eyes To bear thy nearer hght ! The world's young ignorance is o'er : Make us to know thee right. ^ook JPourth HIC JACET 1852 Where she Hes low — where she Hes low The great world and its clamours sleep : The low soft winds above her creep, With sighing whispers through the grass, And shake the tearful flowers that blow- Where she lies low. The ghostly height of ancient walls, Gray watchmen o'er the couch of death, Stand shrouded in the marish breath, Till first the stealthy dawn strikes through. And smites them with a silvery glow Where she lies low. But ever, ever higher yet. Blithe reveller on pinion strong, The lark pours out himself in song ; 2i() IIIC JACET Then wearied on licr turf lie drops, And folds his speckled wings in woe Where she lies low. — The earlli transfigures her in light : The living sun is whirl'd on high : — O golden day I O happy sky ! () bright satiety of bliss ! Ye mock the settled shades of woe Where she lies low. And childhood seats her on the turf, And shares the noontide meal with joy : (lirl smiles to girl: boy laughs to boy: — They go : — the robin quits the bush, And treads the careless tiowers that grow- Where she lies low. And Evening crimsons through the blue; And as a bride with cheeks aflame, Day dyes her face in happy shame, And blushes at her own delight : — But lengthening shades of twilight flow Where she lies low. HIC JACET 217 O irony of joyless joy ! Pale azure of the heartless sky I O cold keen stars, unmoved on high : O all bright things, your glory veil ! There is but one deep night of woe Where she lies low. Is there no pity in the sun, No note of grief in childly mirth ? Is there no echo from the earth ? Is there no answer in the sky? No hint from Heaven that willVl it so, Where she lies low ? —Where she lies low— where she lies low, There is the hush of holy sleep : The dewy flowers in silence weep : There is no place for voice or cry : It is the utter heart of woe Where she lies low. :i8 THE DESIRE At dawn from flower to flower The footless soul on fairy pinions went : Paternity seem'd in eacli several hour, And joys came quicker than an infant's breath; The wish scarce framed, the cry scarce upward sent. Ere the Desire cometh. Heaven's gate to youth is wide; No vain prayer empty-hand with shame returns ; God suffers not his children be denied ; Youth's highest lavish visions far beneath Their sweet fulfilment, when the bosom burns And the Desire cometh! Why then, my God, when less Advancing years implore, and deeper cries, Should'st thou give least? Why this scant haste to bless THE DESIRE 219 When blessings are thrice blest ? Why license Death Love's hand to wither, as we touch the prize And the Desire cometh ? He, the Compassionate, Past hope, when all seem'd taken, grants us more, And on drear earth flings open Heaven's own gate. Immortal love dawns o'er horizon Death : A glory of lost faces fills the door, And the Desire cometh. 220 CASTE LR O VINA TO The death-flag darkens on the tower, The shadow blots the wall : They wail within my lady's bower, They groan along the hall : — The hope of all that knightly house In hottest strait of battle slain, — His true-love flung upon the corse. And kissing his gray lips in vain, — The young hope of that castle tower Lies low beneath the wall ; So well to wail within the bower. And groan along the hall. The festal flag is on the tower, The sunbeam gilds the wall ; Why should they wail Avithin the bower. Why groan within the hall? The daughter of the house to-day Her beauty veils in bridal dress : CASTELRO VINA TO 221 To others yields her lands and name, To others yields her loveliness — For Love is lord of keep and tower, And climbs the castle wall :— At eve they sing within the bower, And dance athwart the hall. There is no flag upon the tower, No shadow on the wall : The chestnut vaults my lady's bower, The green snake haunts the hall. A thousand years— a thousand years — The hearth is cold ; the race has fled : And rather will the years return Than any spell restore the dead. — So well the wind should waste the tower, The lichen fret the wall ; The chestnut burgeon in the bower, The green snake in the hall. 2 2 2 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD I love the gracious littleness Of Childhood's foncied reign : The narrow chambers and the nooks That all its world contain : The fairy landscapes on the walls And half-imagined faces : The stairs from thoughtless steps fenced off, The landing loved for races : — By stranger feet the floors are trod That still in thought I see : But the golden days of Childhood May not return to me. I love the little room where first On infant reason broke The knowledge we had seen before The place in which we woke : RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD 22 Where first we link'd a happy eve To an all-sunny morning, Nor in that rigid chain of time Read any note of warning. Why are the years together forged And bound by Fate's decree, If the golden days of Childhood May not return to me ? I love the broken plaything ghosts That once were living joys : Th' extemporized delight we snatch'd From toys that were not toys : The hands that nursed our infant limbs, And bade us 'sleep in clover'; The lips we shall not kiss again That kiss'd us oft and over : — These relics of the past I prize, Though faint and rare they be : For the vanish'd days of Childhood May not return to me. • I love the swing that shook between The jaw-bones of the whale : o 2 24 RECOLLECTIOXS OF CIHLDIIOOD The hollow rockhig garden-boat Fit haunt for feast and tale : The mat-roofd cabin where we crouch'd And scorn'd the storm together : Th' initials flourish'd on the beech To tell our loves for ever : That half we wish'd and half we fear'd Another's eyes might see : — — Ah, that the da}^s of Childhood May ne'er return to me ! I love the lawn — the scene of high Hellenic bulrush fights : Where Homer's heroes, known through Pope, Gave names to childly knights : Where after-life was shadow'd out In feats of happy daring, Till each went oft' the field with joy The victor-trophies sharing : To count the shatter'd darts that lay, The dints that scarr'd the tree — — Ah, that the days of Childhood May ne'er return to me I RECOLLECTIOXS OF CHILDHOOD I love the palaces we built, The fancied brick or stone : The forts for happy snowball siege, And conquest lightly won : — The mimic puppet shows we framed To act some Shakespeare story. Where Rome and Forres were set forth, And Caesar fell in glory : Where all was false and all was true The moment might decree. — — Ah, that the days of Childhood May ne'er return to me I I love the foolish words — that love Recorded as they fell : The verj^ faults that then we wept, The follies prized too well : — Alas for loss that Time has wrought : For joys, from grief that borrow; For sorrows that we cannot weep, And sins that bring no sorrow ! Where is that unremorseful woe, That unreflecting glee? — p 225 2 26 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD Alas ! the days of Childhood May ne'er return to me. I love the timid soul that blush'd Before an elder's look : Yet from its equals in the game No tyranny could brook : — That spoke undaunted truth, no veils Of Custom interposing : Nor fear'd its weakness and its strength To open hearts disclosing. I love the very strife that left Our souls for love more free : For the truthful days of Childhood May ne'er return to me. — Alas for hands that then we clasp'd ; For merry tripping feet; For daily thoughtless welcomings, And partings but to meet ! The shout, the song, the leaj), the race : The light of happy faces : The voice, the eyes of vanish'd love ; The youthful fond embraces. RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD — I hoard the thought of things that were, And ne'er again shall be : For the loving days of Childhood May not return to me. —But O blithe little ones — that dance, And bid me join your play : How can I share your blessedness ? How can I turn away? — Your's are the gleam of azure eyes, The light of happy faces : — The hurried breath of eager joy, The proffer'd pure embraces : — What can I then but take the gift. The love you lavish free? — — In you the days of Childhood May yet return to me. 227 228 IBYCUS AND CLE OR A '^K^n fxtv a'L ts Kuotoi/tai fxaXios? apaofxi-vni f>oav iK TTOTUfiibv, 'iva TrapSrtvwv Kijiro^ UKVpa-roi, a'i T oLvavSricti av^oixtvcu cTKupoiaiv ixj)' tpvKJiv olvapioi'i Sl(i\i^oi&iv, i/ioi 6' "Epos ovbi-ixlav KUTUKoiTO'i iopav — • I T//E VOYAGE AVhite star of the green and distance-hazy coast, And is it Limnocrene that I view? Before this rediscovery of the lost Scarce can I tell if truth herself be true : — O glad i)rophetic warmth that cheers the brain, Deceive me not again; But let this oracle be without alloy, IBYCUS AND CLEORA 229 Void of some second sense, some heart of pain ; In boyhood's land to be once more a boy, Nor joy by her retreating footsteps own, This, Hoi)e, I ask alone ! O wild west wind that sigh'st to touch the bay, O cloven furrow ot the volant bark, O faithful rudder love-straight to the mark, Stretch all your speed and close this long delay :- — For all ye can and more My spirit leaps on Leuconnese before — ■ The land I seem'd to quit, yet there alway : From Cleora to Cleora Is the limit of my way. I dwelt in exile long and far from Thee : I sought a solace fitted for my need : ' 'Twas no peculiar curse was laid on me ; ' Some Providence that wills the heart should bleed. ' Patient submissiveness meet ransom bears, ' Pure wisdom comes thro' tears. • The close makes all things clear to waiting eyes, ' Fix'd on that crown beyond the mist of years : ' Enough ! Man may not read the mysteries : 230 IBYCUS AND CLEORA ■ Submit ; nor waste thyself on idle grief, ' For Action is relief.' — O -wild west wind, O truer-hearted breeze, Is there no yearning in thy length of sighs ? Can holy Nature her own lore despise, Yielding her aims before such sophistries? Teach me to prize one so; Then bid me turn aside the nearing prow From what I seem'd to quit, yet there alvvay From Cleora to Cleora Is the limit of my way. And I have drunk experience to the lees, Have waked vain nights with mindful solitude, Fretting the days on action's vanities, And call'd Forgetfulness my final good : From Friendship's hand Lethaean goblets quaff d, And laugh'd with those that laugh'd. 1 ask'd the heart resign'd and full submission, Tlie flower of Patience on Love's tomb engraff' d : But sorrow from despair takes no remission : Patience, where Love in trance unconscious breathes, Amaranthine garlands wreathes. IBYCUS AND CLEORA 231 And as when summers hour and Enna bloom Enfranchised from dim Hell Proserpine springs, So love shakes free the cerement-cnunpled wings, Knowing afar Cleora's voice : — I come — - I come to claim thee now, Striking the conscious shore v/ith trembling prow- The shore I seem'd to quit, yet there alway : — From Cleora to Cleora Is the limit of my way. 232 IBYCUS AND CLEORA II A MEETING What is this silence when I meet thee, Dear, And after such delay? Is soul to soul for words too nearly near; Or are we still apart; Cleora, say ? The tender hand my boyhood press'd I take, That thro' some fifteen years Its young proportion keeps : I cannot speak : But gaze on that dear pledge Time more endears. Ah Love — And has love grown with growing years ? In that dumb moment's show The question of a life with many fears Perusing glances ask : And better so. IBYCUS AND CLEORA 233 There are no mortal words for such request : Nor could I, Darling, more Than by the voiceless pleading of the breast, By the heart's crimson tears, Thy pity implore : By all that changeless love to promise thee For more than life may dare : By all the burden thou hast laid on me, Having no other hope But this despair : — Not so, the scornful world and custom say : Submit : be blithe as we. I take the tenour of the common day : To common themes the tongue Again is free. But ever and anon some transient tone, Some glance at where thou art — And mid the jocund throng I stand alone, And in my all the world - May claim no part. ■34 IBYCUS AISTD CLEORA How will it be, I ask'd me as I came, With her I left so fliir ? — The music of thy beauty is the same ; 'Tis tlie bright voice of yore Heard on the stair. Dearest : And hast no little word for ease : No hint of kindlier strain ? And owns the tender heart no tenderness : Canst thus endure to give Painless, such pain ? Ah Child—, ah dearer than aught else on earth, So far off and so near :— Spare him a little who so knows thy worth, But finds no words to say How thou art dear. IBYCUS AND CLEORA 235 III ANTICIPA TIONS Sweet Spring, blind quiverings in the breast, And vague emotions fired along the blood ; — I know the secret fount of this unrest, This vital vernal flood. Deep in her Demiurgic gloom Nature, that heeds not oft her children's moan, From th' alchemic and life-encradling tomb Feels sometimes for her own. She bids the balmier hours return. And the glad Zephyr imps his crumpled wing ; The rubies of her crown dilating burn When she proclaims it Spring. i:^6 IBYCUS AND CLEORA She in Cleora's breast, her child, The hving ruby swells with vital fire ; Fluttering the gentle heart with visions wild And unexplain'd desire. Me also, Mother, yet again « By thine inspiring to new hope beguiled, — By this rewaking of the sleepless pain, Compassionate thy child ! Sweet Spring, responsive to my breast, Hope's quicken'd tide that fires along the blood, Bring the dear kiss of peace for this unrest And sympathetic flood. IBYCUS AND CLEORA 2 J/ IV INVOCATION Low on thy suppliants, Us, even us, Bend thy pure eyeHds, Lady of Amathus. Zeus in white majesty Lords it on high ; Pallas with wisdom Arches the sky. Phoebus each morning Climbs to his throne; Nightly fair Artemis Walketh alone. >^8 IBYCUS AND CLEOKA Yet to thy suppliants, Us, even us, Turn thee and smile, Lady of Amathus : On the great Presences Idly we call : Thou, Aphrodite', Greater than all. Come with the sweetness Love knoweth well, All thine, only thine, Utter, ineffable. Smile on thy suppliants, Us, even us ; Smile as of yore, Lady of Amathus ! IBYCUS AND CLEORA 239 A SUPPLICATION As a child on mother's face Looks a longing lingering gaze ; He has ask'd a boon and knows not If she gives or if bestows not : So I to Thee : so my soul hangs on thine, Waiting thy whisper and the doom of life : Life in one word, Cleora mine. As sweet lilies to the blue, Downcast 'neath Aurora's dew, When Apollo bids, lift up Tears within each timid cup : So I to thee when doubt one moment flies. Uplift the glance that trembles as it dwells ; Thy face my Heaven ; God in thine eyes. 240 IBYCUS AND CLEORA And as mariners that view Typho's dark wing shroud the bhie, Silent thro' the rifted veil Bid the gracious azure hail ; So where thy crystal casement-quarrels gleam The voiceless lips a prayerful suppliance send; Bidding my love Wake in thy dream. In his day of sore distress, Child, thy child, Cleora, bless : Heaven mine, thro' clouded skies Rain the grace of starry eyes. Life's -first last hope to thee I thus consign, Summ'd in one venture, bosom'd in one word ; One word sigh-short, — Cleora mine. IBYCUS AND CLEOKA :4i VI UNREST In strange unrest from room to room I glide : A spell is on me : I must find her now : I have a word to speak, that on my brow Is writ in lines of flame, And to all else what I for her would hide Betrays my shame. My moody silence \ATong'd her yester-eve: Methbught for pride the gift she so refused Her young confused blush I more confused With words of foolish haste My penitence my heart's-ease should receive Ere day be past. 2.[2 IBYCUS AND CLEORA In Love's own inmost bower does she dream ? Or is her footstep on the wahiut stair ? I track the sounds : I know the passionate air, Tlie song of yesterniglit, ' Bells in the valley, flowers by the stream ' : They guide me right : — Through rushen-rustling hall I follow, follow, Through lucent-paved and pillar'd corridor, By grape-heap'd altar-niche and vine-hung door, And lawnward 'neath the glade : Where with one high lament and laughter hollow Those accents fade. () balmy dusk and crown'd with Love's own star ! I see the star : I cannot see my Love : I cry Repentance to the ringing grove : ' Unheard she scorns thy cry ; ' Love's quick ear to Love's footstep beats from far' The Nymphs reply. IBYCUS AND CLEORA 243 I turn from those drear omens of mistrust : A casement flashes on the palace-wall : I hear her sliding lattice softly fall : Love's star I see no more : The cloud comes weaving o'er the sky with gust And scornful roar. 244 IB YC US AND CLEORA VII A T MIDNIGHT I dare not bid Time speed his pace : I dare not bid him hnger : Fate lifts the scale and holds my life Poised on her even finger. ^&^ — Why, my heart, this idle beating? Fate is deaf to thine entreating : Time holds on his equal way : Calm thee, calm thee, till the day. I dare not bid the Dawn awake : I know not what slie bears me : My all is in her rosy hands : In providence she spares me. IBYCUS AND CLEORA 245 — Yet O Name of liope, Aurora ! By my sunny-hair'd Cleora, By thyself I thee implore Dawn on such suspense no more I dare not watch the paling Night, Or Dawn's advances number : My life is in my Darling hid, And slumbers with her slumber. — Yet as midnight music streaming Hear Love's voice within thy dreaming . Hear my heart within thy heart ; ' All I am for life thou art.' I dare not bid thee wake, my fate By those fair lips disclosing : Thy utter sweetness folds me round, In Love's own heart reposing. — Why, my heart, then, why this beating ? Sleep bars Love to thine entreating : Night fulfils her long delay : Wait the promise and the Day. 246 IBYCUS AND CLEORA VIII VOX CLAMANTIS When that long yew-tree shade That grows toward each man from his falling sun Shall touch me into darkness, undismay'd, Rejoiced my sands are run : Come then, Cleora, come, Come unregretful in thy prime of May, Relentless of the havoc and the doom Thou on my life didst lay. And let thy rosy feet Tread the rare spike-grass o'er a new-heap'd mound, And look Truth face to face, and say "Tis meet That he such rest hath found. IBYCUS AND CLEORA 247 'There was no other choice. His soul's desire for Ufe I might not yield, Nor set thine own to fraudful smiles and voice When the heart's lips were seal'd. ' I may not now deplore The death-dried fountain of wan wasted tears ; The feet that yet would try the perilous shore, The chase of fruitless years. * Ah, not unwarn'd he strove ! All wiser whisperings hush'd, all help repell'd : What moment's hope was giv'n, what lure to love ? What anodyne withheld? * It could not but be so. The might of Gods contends with Fate in vain : Rest, hidden dust, assoil'd from earthly woe, And that forgotten pain.' Then if, as sages say, The soul, resolved into some vaster life. Heeds not what passes o'er its moulder'd clay, A-rest from hope and strife : 24S IBYCUS AND CLEORA If these dark powers that bind ( )ur individual selves to nerve and vein, 'I'his fond remembrance, this fore-glancing mind O'er-running present pain : If it be Death untwines Tliis thread of consciousness the Genius spun, And as the fainting flower on earth declines The All resume the One : — O Love, I pray thy feet May stir my dust to fresh access of pain I My soul recorporate in the sindon-sheet Its ancient self retrain : -o" And from that gloom beloAV Some voice be felt, some last appealing plea : ' Better to feel the gnawing w-orm, as now, Than not remember thee.' Till some reluctant sigh, Some love of love, that holds her yet so dear. Dim the blue wonder of Cleora's eye, And bless me with a tear. IBYCUS A .YD CLEORA 249 IX LAST PR A YER And when returning from the place of death With something from my grave reflected on thee, Thy Httle Sister, laughing thro' lost breath. Tells thee some baby jest, some young surprise, Let not that memor}'' quit all hold upon thee, But smile with quiet eyes : And touch the happy head, and turn aside To some white shrine, and pray God's peace may find me : That in heaven's dew Lethaean drops may glide And pierce the sod and touch th' unrestful head : Ending the life-long pangs thou hast assign'd me, Thy lover midst the dead. 25° JBYCUS AND CLEORA The prayer I cannot pray — no more to be ; Thro' mute aeonian glooms no more adore her :■ — Then take these fooHsh rhymes, faint hints of thee, And read them o'er and say, ' 'Twas his request : — ' Cleora's self has barr'd him from Cleora, ' And so has wrought him rest.' IB YC US A ND CLE OR A 251 X FAREWELL Call her once more, once more. Cleora ! Cleora ! The rein'd horse darkens the palace door There is yet one prayer unheard One little word : Farewell, Cleora. I have sought her in vain the day Thro' chamber and garden : A thousand sighs for utterance pray, And the roses know them well But they may not tell The tale to Cleora. And the mounting rooks to the sky The farewell are tellin 252 IBYCUS AND CLE OR A And the ^^''est is red at tlie passionate cry But I must whisper it low Ere yet I go, — Farewell to Cleora. So, little one, call her once more, Call Sister Cleora : And run to the horse by the garden door And stroke him with song and shout ; Whilst I weep out My soul to Cleora. There is a hand in my hand : A gaze on my gazing : A something passes as there we stand : But no one word can we say : Must we for aye Part, and so, Cleora ? A thousand thoughts thro' the breast Run riot and terror : IBYCUS AND CLE OR A 253 A thousand sum them in one request : One word for Love ere I go : But 'tis not so, Not so, Cleora. A hand in my hand; an eye Too tender in sadness : The silence of Love that could not die Yet knows thou wilt ne'er be mine :— Yet ever thine For ever, Cleora ! Whilst even crimsons the west And homeward birds clamour : Whilst I lie in that long unrest And dream in the grave of thee — So must it be, Ever, Cleora. And" West is one ruby red, And homeward birds clamour : 254 JBYCUS AND CLEORA And the dying sun enhaloes tliy head And O could tlic tliought of thee Having been, not be, For ever, Cleora ! — We met in silence : and o'er Our parting was silence. Call her no more, no more: — I have no words can say For aye, for aye Farewell, Cleora. 255 FROM SAPPHO High lift the beams of the chamber. Workmen, on high ; Like Are's in step comes the Bridegroom ; Like him of the song of Terpander, Like him in majesty. — O fair — - O sweet ! As the sweet apple blooms high on the bough, High on the highest, forgot of the gatherers : So Thou : — Yet not so : nor forgot of the gatherers ; High o'er their reach in the golden air, — O sweet — O fair ! 256 FROM ALKMAN Sleep mountain-tops and ravines, Sleep headland and torrent ; Sleep what dark earth bears on her bosom, Green leaves and insects; Beasts in the den and bees in their families Monsters in depths of the violet sea : Sleeps every bird, Folding the long wings to slumber. FROM SIM ONI DBS There is a song, That on high rocks, bright, inaccessible, Girt with the circHng dance; her holy throng, Doth Virtue dwell : — Nor on that throne Seen of all human kind : by him alone, Heart-pierced in soul-corroding toil, and so To height of perfect Manhood climbing slow : — By him alone. R 258 AN ATHENIAN SONG : IX HOXOUR OF HARMODIUS AND ARISTOGEITOS' Myrtle-wreathed my sword I wave, As of vore tlie brothers brave. When the tyrant sank, and ye (lave fair Athens Hberty. Loved Harmodius ! art not dead To the blessed isles hast sped : Where Achilles fleet and fair And the son of Tydeus are. Myrtle-wreathed my sword I wave, As of ^•ore the brothers brave A X A THE XI A X SOXG 259 'Mid the sacrificial crew By the slirine Hipparchus slew. Aye on earth your names will shine, Brothers brave, beloved, divine ; Since the tyrant sank, and ye Gave fair Athens libertv. N OTES PAGE 24 Clothed ill rnoniiiigs gifts. 'Hovs 'iyovua. Sdpa. — Euripides; Alccstis, I. 289. PAGE 27 That inland ocean. The Gulf of Pagasa, nearly closed towards the south by the singular isthmus which stretches between the old towns Olizon and Aphetae. PAGE 34 But ivho li'ill stay me, ^c. Ov yap ere />i-)yT7;p ovre vi'/x<^eL'cret iroTe OiV ir TOKOicrt, a-occri 6ap(7VV€L, tckvov. — Alcestis, 1. 317-8. PAGE 61 A Song of Life. For two or three phiases in these stanzas I am indebted to an Ode of great beauty by Ronsard : — a poet who merits more honour than, since his own time, he has received from his countrymen or from foreigneis. 262 A'OTES PAGE 72 In hopc'li'ss chase ar'c: MeTa/xwvta 6i]p€VMV uK'/3«i'Tot9 iX—unv. — Pindar: ri'f/iia III. PAGE 80 For ' Why had thou' reaJ ' ]\ hy hast thou: PAGE 87 The Golden Land. I have licre attempted to describe the valley of the Axe, just above and below Axniouth. PAGE 99 Brecon B^-idge. Brecon, placed where the Honddu joins the Usk, has hence its native name, Aberhonddu (pronounced Aberhoiiddy). Lle- wellyn, the last independent Prince of Wales, was killed in Breconshire. PAGE 103 Margaret Wilson. ' A noble instance of self-sacrifice was witnessed at Newcastle on Sunday (May 31). While four children were playing on the railway near the station an engine and tender came up. One little fellow ran for the platform, and his example was followed by his elder sister. Looking back, however, she saw that the other two children were in imminent danger. She returned to them, and drew them to her side, between the rails and the ))latforni. As the engine passed, the connecting-rod struck her NOTES 263 down, and she died in a few moments. The children she had so nobly protected escaped almost unhurt. The name of this heroic little maiden was Margaret Wilson, daughter of a miner.' — Daily A^eics, June 3, 1868. PAGE 117 To a Painter. Modern Art falls into three periods, or 'moments' : — The strictly 'mediaeval,' when the object was almost wholly to aid the religious movement which followed the definite establishment of European civilization after the Norman conquests in France, Eng- land, and Italy : — The ' renaisance,' when the object was partly to replace the Christian cycle of representations by motives taken from Graeco-Roman life and legend, partly to bring land- scape and common life within the range of art : — The 'modern' (due mainly to the great English painters of the eighteenth century), when the tentative attempts of the previous age were systematized in the distinct aim to extend painting to all subjects, whether belonging to the sphere of man or of nature, which can be represented by the limited powers of Art. It appears obvious that (however the balance may lie between the relative perfection reached in each period), the latter, modern, or English, idea is the only true conception of Art : which, it will be observed, embraces all the preceding aims, while it refuses to assign an exclusive pre-eminence to any of them. Readers w ho may be interested in the view here set forth will find it treated with more detail in the Quarterly Revirat for April, 1870 ; article upon Sir C. Eastlake. PAGE 120 Pro Mortiiis. Almost all modern English poets have suffered more or less injury from neglect of that decent reverence for the dead which 264 NOTES forbids the sacrilege of iniblishing imperfect works and tentative phrases : — tiie ' secrets of tlie study ' which a great artist is always most anxious to keep from puljlic view. PACE 129 A^or any song so fiire &^c. This criticism is intended to cover the whole range of poetry since Milton's (so far as I am acquainted with it), in Europe, not less than in England. PAGE 135 Lond-tongucd dis/ieiiscis of fame. See the reviews of Scott by Lord Jeffrey, Mr. Carlylc,