Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF , 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 <> 
 
 X 
 
 fr/
 
 SERBELLONI.
 
 Serbelloni 
 
 BY 
 
 J. W. GILBART-SMITH 
 
 j^ 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO. 
 I, Paternoster Square, E.C. 
 1887
 
 pp 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ^t- 
 
 / :S 
 
 ARGUMENT 
 
 BOOK I.— RESTING. 
 
 Lyrics 
 
 of 
 Rest. 
 
 A 
 
 Lyric- 
 Sequence < 
 of 
 
 Nature. 
 
 A Lyric- 
 Sequence 
 of Life. 
 
 L A Song of Como . . . . 
 IL A Song of Serbelloni 
 IIL A Song of Two Cadenabbias 
 IV. A Song of Rest . . . . 
 V. A Song of Night and Memory 
 VL A Song of Contrast . 
 
 BOOK II.— QUESTIONING. 
 
 L A Song of Pines (The Cathedral 
 of Nature) 
 II. A Song of Nature 
 III. A Song of Dawn in Nature 
 IV. A Song of God in Nature. 
 V. A Song of Man in Nature 
 VI. A Song of Nature in Man 
 VII. A Song of Trinity in Nature 
 I VIII. A Song OF Revolution in Nature 
 
 BOOK III.— SEARCHING. 
 
 I. A Song of the Seeker 
 II. A Song of the Singer 
 
 III. A Song of Failure 
 
 IV. A Song of Lethargy . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 
 8 
 
 15 
 18 
 
 32 
 25 
 
 37 
 44 
 49 
 SI 
 54 
 58 
 61 
 
 67 
 
 73 
 84 
 
 93 
 98 
 
 i n^64'i2
 
 A Lyric- 
 Sequence ^ 
 
 of Light. 
 
 Lyrics 
 of 
 
 Effort. 
 
 ». 
 
 BOOK IV.— ATTAINING. 
 
 P.\GE 
 
 L A Song of the Voice ... 105 
 
 IL A Song of Finding . . .112 
 
 in. A Song of Receiving . , . 122 
 
 IV. A Song of Aspiration . . .128 
 
 V. A Song of Singing (The Psalm 
 
 of Nature) . . . .136 
 
 BOOK v.— FULFILLING. 
 
 I. A Song of Interlude . . 141 
 
 II. A Song of My Heart and I . 144 
 
 III. A Song of Sacrifice . . • i53 
 
 IV. A Song of Eventide . . .161 
 V. A Song of Bellagio ... 165 
 
 VI. A Song of Farewell . . .172 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 A. To Books I. and V. Como 
 
 B. To Book I., Song III. Counterparts 
 
 C. To Book I., Song VI. Contrast 
 
 D. To Book II., Song VI. Trinity in Nature . 
 
 E. To Book IV., Song IV. The Voice . 
 
 F. To Book IV. (in general). Unity in Nature 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 i 
 
 iii 
 iv 
 
 vi 
 . viii 
 
 X
 
 These strains, 
 
 That emulously seek 
 
 Continuance of the Golden Chain 
 
 By elder sages woven into Song, 
 
 To such as love 
 
 The Ministry of Nature 
 Teacher of our race : 
 
 Unto my fellowkind 
 In all good fellowship 
 I diffidently give. 
 
 r
 
 SEQUENCE OF BOOKS. 
 
 The Sequence of Books marks Five Epochs 
 of Intellectual Energy. The soul, experienced in 
 the strain of Life, renews its strength in Resting ; 
 thence entering the Questioning stage it is em- 
 boldened for Seeking, Attaining, and even some- 
 times FnlfiUing.
 
 ARGUMENT 
 
 BOOK I.— RESTING. 
 
 I. — A Song of Como. 
 
 Two friends, who met at Milan, part after spending some 
 time at Cadenabbia ; one, remaining in Italy, recalls da3's 
 and scenes on the lake, localities connected with their stay : 
 Cadenabbia, Bellagio, Serbelloni, etc. 
 
 II.— A Song of Serbelloni. 
 
 Serbelloni— the height above Bellagio, commanding the 
 lakes of Como and Lecco — awakes ancient poetic associations. 
 
 III. — A Song of Two Cadenabbias. 
 
 A Lyric of "Counterparts" — suggested hi' the exquisite 
 reflection of shore and sky on calm water. 
 
 IV. — A Song of Rest. 
 
 The necessity for rest is satisfied by the beauty and repose 
 of the scene, but, in 
 
 v. — A Song of Night and Memory. 
 
 A vision of Memory, who wakes and weeps by night, 
 reminds him that there are recollections which only death can 
 still. 
 
 Vf. — A Song of Contrast. 
 
 The friend who has left returns to the surroundings of active 
 life in modern England, an atmosphere of toil, ambition, and 
 struggle ; yet there is also work for him who remains with 
 Nature.
 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 BOOK II.— QUESTIONING. 
 
 I.— A Song of Pines.— (The Cathedral of Nature.) 
 
 At first he listens in silence to voices in what are to him 
 aisles of ministering song — soothed, strengthened, and en- 
 couraged by subdued light and restful shadow : 
 
 II.— A Song of Nature. 
 
 And, mid the Italian scenery, where Nature is most winning, 
 would inquire whether she can tell him nothing of her deeper 
 
 life? 
 
 What is Nature ? What relation does her distinctive existence 
 bear to God, and what to man ? 
 
 He feels that she, by her ministering instincts, supplies some 
 link between the human soul and the Divine Spirit : she, that 
 has been through the ages a source of spiritual and of physical 
 life. 
 
 III.— A Song of Dawn. 
 
 He sings of the gradual beginnings of Light : 
 
 IV.— A Song of God in Nature. 
 
 And of how Nature in her wealth of Universal Power, 
 Beauty, Law, Glory, Life, and Continuity, types attributes of 
 Divinity. 
 
 v.— A Song of Man in Nature. 
 
 She is also replete with laws of life similar in many respects 
 to those found within the human mind : instanced in the 
 Torrent. 
 
 VI. — A Song of Nature in Man. 
 
 Again, in human life, when directly influenced by her, there 
 is something of nature's own calm and oirit : the poet, also
 
 ARGUMENT. xi 
 
 brought near to her by his work, would share in this her 
 blessing. 
 
 VII. — A Song of Trinity in Nature. 
 
 He is drawn to give her precedence of man : 
 
 For : — I. Frequently parabled by our Lord, she is an unwritten 
 scripture. II. Having a separate existence from the life of man, 
 she never takes a law from him, but from God. III. Though 
 man fell, she fulfils her original mission. 
 
 But, though thus before him, and continuous where he is 
 finite, her power to help him is limited. Her patient con- 
 tinuance and unceasing development, through suffering, dormant 
 energy, etc., may encourage him to endure. But life flags 
 without light. So, however knowledge of Nature may soothe, 
 man's aspirations cannot find satisfaction in spiritual darkness. 
 
 VIII. — A Song of Revolution in Nature. 
 
 A IjT-ic of Darkness. N.\TURE is not LIGHT, though she 
 may be its messenger. 
 
 BOOK III.— SEEKING. 
 
 I. — A Song of the Seeker. 
 
 Therefore, finding Nature insufficient for his need, he de- 
 termines upon a fresh start, 
 
 and seeks from his own consciousness and experience, rather 
 than from external life, to find that which shall satisfy the soul. 
 He still recognises Nature as his teacher, not remembering when 
 he did not look to her for guidance and companionship ; however 
 others deny, misunderstand, ridicule, or misinterpret her. 
 
 He would examine :— How ?— When ?— and Why ?— she 
 speaks to him, so that he might see whether others miss her 
 strengthening influences— by fault of their own ? by innate
 
 xii ARGUMENT. 
 
 defect ? by failure on the part of Nature to make herself 
 plainly understood ? or by her unwillingness to speak gener- 
 ally ? 
 
 II. — A Song of the Singer. 
 
 Re-living his life, the Poet inquires what his own soul 
 knows. He therefore retraces the stream of thought, feeling, 
 and experience down which his life has hitherto floated. He 
 notes all that touched sensation, sense, or song, — Love, Rest, 
 Ambition, Pleasure, Storm, Sunshine, Sympathy, Doubt, 
 Despair, and Death. 
 
 III.— A Song of Failure. 
 
 He has come to no conclusion when at length the barque of 
 Retrospect strands at the beginning of the Stream of personal 
 existence. None of his questions are answered. That he and 
 his soul exist together is all he knows. Contemplating the 
 knowledge of others, he finds that they also make little progress, 
 from age to age, from one period of individual learning to 
 another. Hence there is no more light in EXPERIENCE than 
 he has already found in Nature. 
 
 IV. — A Song of Lethargy. 
 
 Thus stranded, without link with God, or aid from Nature, 
 and intangibl}^ restricted in establishing relationship with 
 other souls ; shackled by his own instincts and forced to submit 
 to the limitations of dimly-divined Destiny ; — the Seeker 
 abandons the search for Spiritual Life, and falls into hopeless 
 apathy.
 
 ARGUMENT. xiii 
 
 BOOK IV.— ATTAINING. 
 
 I. — A Song of the Voice. 
 
 Like two famishing after shipwreck, the Seeker and his Soul 
 
 are scarcely conscious of rescue. Yet a Presence is felt, — a 
 
 Voice heard, — which proclaims itself their friend, born in 
 
 man, the pioneer of the unconscious soul to earth, and the 
 
 Associate of Nature. 
 
 The Voice is most distinct in denying that he is Soul or 
 Instinct. Nor is he Conscience: for Conscience is the result of 
 action, and requires the presence or influence of wrong. 
 
 After the manner of friendship, the Voice is a medium of 
 intercourse between the Soul, — to whom he is akin, and his own 
 Associate, — Universal Nature. 
 
 II. — A Song of Finding. 
 
 The Voice emphasises the value of the teaching of Nature* 
 
 * Answering the questions asked in the Song of the Seeker : 
 
 Questions. Answers. 
 
 I _i WTipn ' ^ „ I- — '. First in childhood. 
 
 ii, How .' f XT "' °y means of our inner 
 
 iiii Why ? and ( '"'"J'; °'' spiritual life. 
 
 iv To whom ) '^ ' iii, As to the kinsman of 
 
 her Associate. 
 
 iv, To all equally. 
 
 II.- Why do not all hear II.— Because their want of 
 
 her? or hearing, fail to com- sympathy or perception, and 
 prehend ? neglect of facilities for friend- 
 
 ship, have chilled her fuller con- 
 fidences. 
 
 III.— What does she teach .? III.— Those know her who 
 
 love her ; and to those who 
 know her she reveals "the secret 
 of her kinship with the sky."
 
 XIV 
 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 and reminds the Seeker that, as every part of Nature has its 
 use, so Universal Nature must also fulfil some end, being 
 herself but means towards the Infinite. Thus, in accompanying 
 her, we receive fresh revelations from divine heights. 
 
 III. — A Song of Receiving. 
 
 So the Seeker learns that there is a link between the Spirit 
 of God, the Unity of Nature, and the Soul of man. Ad- 
 dressing him with whom is found this knowledge of the 
 triple relationship, the Seeker in turn declares that the VOICE 
 is greater and less than he seems. 
 
 Claim of the Voice. 
 
 I. (In the Song of the 
 Voice) :— Merely to be the As- 
 sociate of Nature, and the 
 cicerone of the Soul, 
 
 II. (In the Song of Find- 
 ing) the Voice as sprung from 
 the Infinite of God and the 
 Finite of man, claimed the 
 i^inatt power of spirit to 
 know spiritual life. 
 
 Kecognition by the 
 Seeker. 
 
 I. Greater, \nt\\3.\.x\\e Seeker 
 recogTiises that the Voice is 
 a manifestation of the Uni- 
 versal Spirit, which is to the 
 Soul of Man what Universal 
 Nature is to the earth. 
 
 II. Less, in so much as 
 though it is indeed sometimes 
 a part of God yet it is not in- 
 finite, but controlled by the 
 Supreme, and unable to pass 
 from its appointed orbit. 
 
 Again, with regard to man, it 
 is only influential, — i, when 
 he strives to hear ; ii, when he 
 has capacity to penetrate the 
 symbol of revelation ; iii, when 
 he has courage to obey. 
 
 If these conditions be ful- 
 filled, theji also it is lustre from 
 the Eternal Light, such, indeed, 
 as was shed in Transftgura- 
 tioji upon the Perfect Man. 
 
 The song concludes by affirming that : — The feet which 
 follow this Spirit as it moves onward through the domain of 
 Nature will even unconsciously catch and carry with them 
 the divine seed of plenty.
 
 ARGUMENT. xv 
 
 IV. — A Song of Aspiration. 
 
 The Seeker rejoices in this new personal perception of the 
 living Spirit which moves in and with Nature, to whom his 
 own soul is knit by love and instinct. More than ever enrap- 
 tured by its manifestations, with reverent pleading he entreats 
 it to appease his longings for light, and to be his comrade and 
 guide until the day break. 
 
 v.— A Song of Singing (The Psalm of Nature). 
 
 This, then, the Message heard in the Cathedral of Nature 
 (see "Song of Pines") : 
 
 " Whereof these Songs — remembered from her lays." 
 
 BOOK v.— FULFILLING. 
 
 1- — A Song of Interlude. 
 
 Returning across the lake, the rhythm of the oars suggests a 
 lyric of effort. 
 
 11.— A Song of my Heart and I. 
 
 Looking upward, he sees the cloud-veiled summits of the 
 distant Alps. Life and Death are full of seeming contradic- 
 tions, and nearest the Light the ahitude stands oftentimes 
 darkened and lone. 
 
 III. — A Song of Sacrifice. 
 
 In which is enjoined the necessity of self-abnegation. 
 
 IV. — A Song of Eventide. 
 
 Rest comes at Eve. Bells are heard chiming across the lake. 
 The sun sets : moon and stars appear : the nightingale wakes : 
 and once more in the shadow there is song.
 
 xvi ARGUMENT. 
 
 V. —A Song of Bellagio. 
 
 Imagining himself for the moment in other lands, the singer 
 visions how he would recall the exquisite loveliness of the 
 scene. If Then he should seek the fairest earthly Paradise, 
 to Como would he return, with its snowy Alps, blue skies, and 
 verdant shores ; and to Cadenabbia, his place of rest. In his 
 dream he would lament that earth could no further enhance 
 such beauty : whereon, in guise of a dove needing shelter. 
 Love descends, ennobling life, and inspiring a purer 
 unselfishness of man's spirit ; his dream accounts this vision 
 of happiness complete. 
 
 VI. — A Song of Farewell. 
 
 " These, musing on, O Friend ! remember me : 
 If not else blest, thrice fortunate in this ; 
 If I be linked with memories dear to thee 
 Of heights, sky-crowned, and depths, whose radiancy 
 In glassing Heaven images its bliss." 
 
 He bids farewell to scenes wherein he found happiness and rest.
 
 BOOK I.— RESTING. 
 
 B
 
 A SONG OF COMO.* 
 
 I, 
 
 Say, when thou cleavest the dissevering sea, 
 
 And Gaul faints in the horizon, and the shore 
 Of Albion gleams in welcoming for thee, 
 Wilt thou have musings in thine heart for me. 
 And the sweet lake we twain have glided o'er ? 
 
 II. 
 
 Bright shone the sun the morning that we met ; 
 
 And calm the sky which rimmed Milano's towers; 
 And all the wearyings of life and fret, 
 Fevered in hope or frenzied in regret, 
 
 Were lost within a maze of golden hours : 
 
 * Note A . 
 
 B 2
 
 A SONG OF COMO. 
 
 III. 
 And soft the shadowed stiUness in the fane 
 
 That overlooks the city's length of days, 
 And rich the light which struggling through the stain 
 Of azure, gold, and crimson-tinted pane, 
 
 Flooded the pave with rivulets of rays ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Let memory turn to these — if not to me ! 
 
 To sunny Como's rhythmical outpour 
 That, brightly shadowless and sorrow-free, 
 Buries its pain in depths of melody, 
 
 And rolls the requiem on from shore to shore r 
 
 V. 
 To Cadenabbia, which the Soul of Rest, 
 
 World-worn and weary, fashioned with delight 
 And hid, as happy birds conceal their nest. 
 Mid bower and glade beside the water's breast. 
 
 And hills that shield the secret of her flight.
 
 A SONG OF COMO. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Let summer winds remind thee in their sigh 
 
 Of Alps snow-crowned, and rills that downward 
 break 
 Loosed like a silver hawser from on high 
 To link the tide's blue with the azure sky, 
 
 And moor Heaven like a shallop on the lake : 
 
 VII. 
 Of unmolested mornings on the deep ; 
 
 When, emulous for her awaiting brood, 
 The eagle leaves her solitary steep 
 And, circling downward, swooping in her sweep. 
 
 Bears to her young their life-expiring food : 
 
 VIII. 
 Or, from his eyrie fastness on the height, 
 
 The sudden shadow of the treacherous hawk 
 Scares back the truant song-bird — whose keen flight 
 Scatters the may in flower-flake, pure and white 
 
 As driven snow, on mossy knoll and walk :
 
 A SONG OF COMO. 
 
 IX. 
 Of water quivering with the weight of sky 
 
 That slumbers on its breast ; of suns that scan 
 Earth's loveliness, and feast a radiant eye 
 On glassy deeps and massy steeps, so high 
 
 They seem the columns which support heaven's 
 span : 
 
 X. 
 
 Of sweet Bellagio across the tide, 
 
 Pale 'neath the passion of the noonday-ray. 
 
 That wooed us over to her green hill-side ; 
 
 Up stairway streets bright-tinted with the pride 
 Of the town's mart of silken fabrics gay : 
 
 XI. 
 
 Or, through the little street that rims the shore, 
 'Neath archways which invite us into shade ; 
 Whence vistas, framed in granite round and o'er. 
 Content the eye, until their serried store 
 Makes an art-gallery of the dim arcade :
 
 A SONG OF COMO. 
 
 XII. 
 Of pines that chaplet Serbelloni's brow, 
 
 And crown her guardian of each sister-lake ; 
 Lecco — where oft we sped the pHant prow : 
 And Como — where I Hnger lonely now . — 
 
 Yet more beloved and cherished for thy sake.
 
 A SONG OF SERBELLONI. 
 
 I. 
 
 Sweet Serbelloni ! throned upon the shore, 
 
 Estranged and all but severed from the land ! 
 As some lone alchemist, thine eyes explore 
 The treasuries of Nature's boundless store. 
 Yielded ungrudgingly to thy demand. 
 
 II. 
 
 Beneath thy gaze the ceaseless ripples glide, 
 And evermore the snowy summits pay 
 
 Involuntary tribute to the tide. 
 
 Now shallowed by the shade, now amplified 
 By sunny summer's influencing ray.
 
 A SONG OF SERBELLONI. 
 
 III. 
 And all things seem as they have ever been ; 
 
 Th' impending year approaches as the past, 
 And one bleak winter leaves as bare a scene 
 For Spring, with the same sympathetic mien, 
 
 To vivify, as that which left thee last : 
 
 IV. 
 
 The soul that passes from thy wistful gaze 
 Appears to thee as myriads that have crept 
 
 Into the chill unreverencing haze; 
 
 And yet o'er the undifferencing days 
 
 The pinions of relentless change have swept. 
 
 V. 
 
 Thou seest no more the fabled deities 
 
 That erst inspired the stately Latin race ; — 
 
 Jove, Hebe, Ceres, dear to scenes as these, — 
 
 Calliope, whose lyric melodies 
 
 Would oft restrain swift Dian from the chase
 
 lo A SONG OF SERBELLONI. 
 
 VI. 
 For them rich tapestries of green were fraught 
 
 With pine and palm, with olive, bay, and broom ; 
 And quaint design of daisies interwrought ; 
 And bloom of banskia-roses backward caught 
 
 In cypress, as stars mesht in a cloud's gloom. 
 
 VII. 
 Here Pan beguiled the solitude with .song ; 
 
 Till, yonder, on the precipice's rim. 
 The serried trees that clamber in a throng 
 Bend downward, and their shadows steal along 
 
 Like gnomes of night to lie in wait for him. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And where the nymphs consort in midnight dance 
 
 The bare brown space attests the nimble feet 
 And pliant limbs that, racing dawn's advance, 
 Heed not the moon's admonitory glance 
 In the pursuit of love and joyance sweet.
 
 A SO AG OF SERBELLONI. n 
 
 IX, 
 
 Secure within the unmolesting night 
 
 The glow-worm, emulous of heaven's gleam afar. 
 Fulfils its lowly ministry of light ; 
 And fireflies, in their tremulous delight, 
 
 Falter as sparks wind-fluttered from a star ! 
 
 X. 
 
 Here apt Apollo found that earth was fair, 
 
 And dreamt new music for the deathless choirs. 
 
 Melodious fantasies of soul and air, 
 
 Whereby he climbed, as 'twere by step and stair. 
 And rungs of ladders, tuned as strings of lyres. 
 
 XI. 
 Nor is the spirit of his music lost, — 
 
 The sense of song floats downward from Time's 
 flight ; 
 As, when the autumn chills the year with frost, 
 The scent of summer, like a feather tost 
 
 From her spent pinions, flutters o'er the night.
 
 12 A SONG OF SERBELLONI. 
 
 XII. 
 These paths precipitous above the deep 
 
 The Great have trod : — here Pliny oft would feed 
 His storied mind, viewing beneath the steep 
 His natal shore, or lingering there, would reap 
 
 Records for unborn centuries to read. 
 
 XIII. 
 Here, too, has disappeared in mellow sound 
 
 The echoed step of Virgil passing hence, — 
 Music which soared above yon Alpine bound, 
 And after ebbing onward the world round 
 
 Floods back in melodised mellifluence : 
 
 XIV. 
 Here loved he Nature, and within her home 
 
 Timing his breath to that which thrilled her 
 breast, 
 His lyre resounded in the halls of Rome, 
 And ceased not echoing when by the foam 
 Of easeful Napoli he sank to rest.
 
 A SONG OF SERBELLONL 13 
 
 XV. 
 Here, too, successor to that innate love, 
 
 The later bard that sang sweet Windermere 
 Unloosed his muse that, like his favorite dove,* 
 Soared for interpretations from above 
 
 Of thought which Nature cloistered in her seer. 
 
 XVI. 
 The soul of greatness cannot disappear, 
 
 'Tis but the lesser intellects are lost : 
 The poets speak athwart the ebbing year ; 
 As songs across the tide serenely clear 
 
 They charm us onward over waves uncrossed ! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Here in this solitude I feel the power — 
 
 The noiseless strength of spirit-sympathy : 
 O little seed, that sometime shall be flower, 
 O little tendril, clinging to Song's bower. 
 Ye shall not droop for negligence of me ! 
 
 * " I heard a stock-dove sing or say 
 
 His homely tale this very day 
 
 Of serious faith and inward glee ; 
 
 That was the song — the song for me."— Wordsworik.
 
 14 A SONG OF SERBELLONI. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 For one chill touch irreparably destroys 
 
 The perfect symphony ! One soulless hand 
 
 Will mar the myriad tones the lute employs ; 
 
 0}ie voice will jar a thousand vocal joys, 
 
 And break the spell none other could withstand ! 
 
 XIX. 
 
 What good there is we suffer not to sleep — 
 
 Let evil slumber, let all good awake ! 
 For who shall lead us onward o'er the deep, 
 If they that KNOW are suffered not to keep 
 Immortal watches by the waves we break?
 
 A SONG OF TWO CADENABBIAS.* 
 
 I. 
 
 A Song of double unity in one : 
 
 A Song of subtle singleness in twain : 
 
 A Song of similarity begun 
 
 In diverse difference — as from the sun 
 
 Shadow and light which jointly rise and reign. 
 
 II. 
 
 A Song of Cadenabbias, sole and twain ; — 
 One in the mirror of yon radiant realm, 
 
 The other on the margin of its strain, 
 
 Watching the days glide through the skies' domain 
 On wheels of joy, as water from life's helm. 
 
 * Note B.
 
 1 6 A SONG OF TWO CADENABBTAS. 
 
 III. 
 O Dual-unity ! O Unit-twin ! 
 
 'Twixt sound of silence and resoundless sighs, 
 Thou standest where the confine-skies begin, 
 Unsummoned thence, — as 'twere that men might win 
 
 A gleam of happy heaven in thine eyes ! 
 
 IV. 
 O step, time-keeping to that sister's feet. 
 
 From whose calm tread nor dust nor jar is 
 riven ! 
 O beating breath, that thrills her breathless beat ! 
 O sweet, re-echoed by a soundless sweet, 
 
 Thou on the earth, she on the tides of heaven ! 
 
 V. 
 
 O joyous soul, that hast, for similar 
 
 One in whose smile immortal lustre beams ; 
 
 Whose brow is coroneted star by star ; 
 
 Whose zone is bound and belted bar on bar 
 With lunar rays gemmed by a planet's gleams !
 
 A SONG OF TWO CADENABBIAS. 17 
 
 VI. 
 
 O happy soul ! that hast before thine eyes 
 
 The mirrored consummation of thy hopes : 
 Life's distant bourne in beauty of fair skies. 
 Wherein thy severed self awaits thy rise — 
 Impatient on imperishable slopes ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 O blest duplicity of single heart ! 
 
 O similar dissimilar employ, 
 Part of thee throned within the light, and part 
 Sunk in the shadow — as thou ofttimes art, 
 
 With cloud between thee and thy kindred joy \ 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Yet, gentle One, that still art Twain in one, 
 Smile on, that knowest o'er the darkness lies 
 
 A golden glory centred in the sun ! 
 
 Upraise thy reverencing eyes, that shun 
 No shade sobeit first to see the skies ! 
 
 C
 
 A SONG OF REST. 
 
 I. 
 
 Sweet soul of Rest, in which my soul is merged, 
 
 As if its pulses in thy clasp were tamed, 
 And its life-current aimed as thine is urged 
 By calm contentment, rhythmically surged, — 
 Duplicate joy by mirroring tides proclaimed 
 
 11. 
 
 Still heart of Rest, to which mine thrills, sad-souled 
 For e'en as one that hath not of her own 
 
 Finds mingled pleasure and heart-pain to hold 
 
 Another's infant in her fond enfold. 
 
 So I, to view thy joys, to me unknown !
 
 A SONG OB REST. 19 
 
 III. 
 Envious oft to hear them softly name 
 
 Thee mother, benefactor, guardian, friend ; 
 Each one a part and partner of thy fame, 
 A lesser self of thee, a smaller same. 
 
 Whom diverse destinies of use distend. 
 
 IV. 
 Such are the waves that revel on thy breast, 
 
 The solitudes which murmur in thine ears 
 The longing loves inimical to rest. 
 And such the songster-birds whose vocal quest 
 
 Invades the quiet confines of the spheres : 
 
 V. 
 Such are the buds which delicately grow. 
 
 Flower of thine age, that, wearied with restraint, 
 Upraise mute hands to signal back the snow ; 
 Who, spell-bound by their roseate life and blow. 
 
 Sits on the hills responsive to their plaint : 
 
 C 2
 
 20 A SONG OF REST. 
 
 VI. 
 And such, the winds whose fondhng fingers curled 
 
 Thy gentle love-locks ere they rose and ranged 
 From out thy clasp into the world-wide world,- - 
 Whom clouds, sweet shallops of the sky, sail-furled. 
 
 Restore to thee indelibly unchanged. 
 
 VII. 
 To thee I come from distant scenes that jarred, 
 
 And in the jading fevered my soul's thrill. 
 And raised a tumult in my heart, ill-starred 
 For visions happy which oft soothe a bard 
 
 Wearied with chords cadenced beyond his skill. 
 
 VIII. 
 Ah ! who can measure the strong influence 
 
 Of loyal sympathy thou art to me ? 
 Or price the timely balm which salves the sense 
 Of failure weakness, shade, and dissonance. 
 
 My heart s disheartenment acquires in thee ?
 
 A SONG OF REST. 
 
 21 
 
 IX. 
 
 To drain thine easeful medicine of mind, 
 
 To thee, sweet scenes, I come, — as long ago ; — 
 Whose taste is sweet of song-sweet, soul-enshrined. 
 Mingled with scent of bloom-sweet and spring-wind, 
 To thee I come, whose voice is soft and low ; 
 
 X. 
 
 Whose speech is chimed to my soul's quietude, 
 Whose words are timed to my heart's latent 
 thought ; 
 Whose calm surroundings deck the solitude 
 With nothing uncongenial to my mood, — 
 Lo ! this is love, and other love is nought !
 
 A SONG OF NIGHT and MEMORY. 
 
 I. 
 
 Crimson from Monte Crocione's crest 
 The ebbing life-blood of the day ran red, 
 
 When Night, that nurtures Memory at the breast^. 
 
 Leaving her nursling, hastened on the quest 
 Of mantlings to enshroud the newly dead. 
 
 11. 
 
 Up tortuous footways stealthily she climbs 
 
 As one accustomed to the Alpine art : 
 Till, as San Giovanni's belfry chimes 
 Three couplets and a half of ringing rhymes, 
 Memory wakes, and, sobbing, thrills my heart. 
 ******
 
 A SONG OF NIGHT AND MEMORY. 23 
 
 III. 
 
 Alas, the Memory, that, waked in woe, 
 Breaks into wails and weariful outpour 
 
 Of tears, upon whose unimpeded flow 
 
 Drifts back the passion of a long-ago, 
 
 In frenzy flung from life's rock-fretted shore ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 O lips that murmur in the eve anew ! 
 
 O gaze depressed whereon life's shadows sit ! 
 O lashes dim with griefs perpetual dew ! 
 O flowerless hands which in the passing through 
 
 Catching the cypress-grove are stained by it ! 
 
 V. 
 
 Then whisper I : " What wouldst thou ?" and again : — 
 " Wherefore, O Sweet ! are these thy sad tears 
 wept? 
 For lo ! as one that lists a desolate strain. 
 Is straightway strung to the same pitch of pain, 
 So my heart's chord by that heart-sigh is swept :
 
 24 A SONG OF NIGHT AND Af EMORY. 
 
 VI. 
 
 "O sorrowing Sweet ! What wouldest thou ?" I cry : — 
 
 " For thy heart's wail awakens woe in mine, 
 And, roused by sorrow, sigh responds to sigh : 
 And, raising thee, thy tear bedews mine eye. 
 
 And, kissing thee, my cheek is moist with thine : 
 
 VII. 
 
 " And my heart thrills with every throb thine hast : 
 
 For all the fair lands that around me lie. 
 Are dusk with clouds uprising from the past, 
 And no beam pierces them, however cast 
 
 In strength of silvery starlight from the sky : 
 
 VIII. 
 " Sweet songs soon wane, but wailing notes abide. 
 
 And my heart echoes thy disconsolate grief: 
 As if regret within me woke and sighed ; 
 As if a dead love from the black grave cried, 
 
 And I, — O God ! — was nerveless in relief!"
 
 A SONG OF NIGHT AND MEMORY. 25 
 
 IX. 
 
 Then Night, returning, whispered: "Know not ye 
 
 This Memory is the child of sorrowing Love ; 
 Begot of passion, born of Constancy, 
 And in the shadow fed and nursed by me 
 
 'Neath the faint glimmer of pale stars above ? 
 
 X. 
 
 " And the sun's rising shadows its mute gaze : 
 As, at the dawn, the drooping shores of lakes 
 
 Conceive and bring forth humid wraiths of haze : 
 
 And melodies of recollected lays 
 
 Bring tears — as rain from clouds which sound 
 awakes : 
 
 XL 
 
 " And its low laughter fails in languid pain. 
 As a sweet song that sinks in minor keys : 
 And all the unknown language of its strain 
 Is murmurously shadowed with refrain 
 
 Of sudden sobs, like surge of swooning seas :
 
 26 A SONG OF NIGHT AND MEMORY. 
 
 XIL 
 " As if the dead joy it hath sometimes seen 
 
 Lives in the life by that dead life begot : 
 It, — as a wakeful spectre of the e'en 
 Choosing for anguish to molest the scene, 
 
 Where it was erewhile joyous, — haunts the spot." 
 
 XIII. 
 Then I : " O fond Night ! whose caress is prest 
 
 Within the locks of love that languisheth, 
 And whose soft arms entwine griefs riven breast, 
 Hast thou no cure to work this Memory rest ? " . . 
 
 Then — weeping — she: "Such know not I, — save 
 
 Death ! " 
 
 ****** 
 
 XIV. 
 Out from the Tremezzina's still lagoon. 
 
 The gentle breeze sweeps onward, sorrow-free. 
 And wakes the lake from its lethargic swoon 
 To list the strain which nightingales commune 
 
 In liquid cataracts of melody. . . .
 
 A SONG OF CONTRAST. 
 
 I. 
 
 And thou art far and farther than my dreams, 
 
 Friend ! that wast sharer of this calm content ! 
 Dim is the vista since the dawning beams 
 Were blotted out by cloaking clouds and seams 
 Of an incessant rain the morn you went. 
 
 II. 
 
 Wilt thou not dream of gentle Nature oft, 
 Shut in the city's ever songless sound ? 
 Lost to all sense of skies and white clouds soft 
 In smoke of furnace languishing aloft. 
 And murky mist uprising from the ground ?
 
 28 A SONG OF CONTRAST. 
 
 III. 
 Tramp of dull feet upon the riven road ; 
 
 Crash of wild wheels, and clash of clanging steel ; 
 Labour that forces Life to bear its load, 
 Driving it onward with perpetual goad 
 
 And conquering — howsoe'er the spent brain reel ? 
 
 IV. 
 These, which untune the ear inured to song. 
 
 Shall jar the chords that Nature richly blent ; 
 Till, stifled by the surging of the throng, 
 The soul forgets its ancient rhythm erelong, 
 
 Fevered by fierce Ambition's discontent : 
 
 V. 
 Brain that is whetted 'gainst the grinding year 
 
 Grudges its edge to luxury of thought ; 
 Keen in the carving of a great career. 
 Or weaponed 'gainst the wolf of want whose fear 
 Stalks linked with ghosts of dismal death un- 
 sought.
 
 A SONG OF CONTRAST. 29 
 
 VI. 
 
 Throughout the city, soiled palms everywhere, 
 
 And miry feet throughout the populous land ; 
 But the pale brow attests the pulse of care, 
 Of yearning hope and oftentimes despair 
 
 Which thrill the courage of the toil-stained hand. 
 
 VII. 
 The people cry ; and there is woe and want 
 
 Within the city's mansioned affluence : 
 Whilst putrid squalor totters to its haunt 
 Wealth flashes by ; or in a palace gaunt 
 
 Luxury rots the feeling from each sense : 
 
 VIII. 
 The people cry ; for there IS want and woe 
 
 And hunger in the midst of wasted wealth ; 
 There's more of viand in one vapid show, 
 More substance in one banquet's overflow 
 
 Than would suffice to keep a herd in health :
 
 30 A SONG OF CONTRAST. 
 
 IX. 
 
 And this is certainty, though some scarce know : 
 
 And some forget, that have been somewhen told : 
 And some, remembering, deem it must be so : 
 And some, remembering, feel a passing throe : 
 And some, remembering, physic want withgold: — 
 
 X. 
 
 Which last, however gracious, works no cure ; 
 
 The cities which accumulate most wealth 
 Not only, — in aggrandisement, — secure 
 The overplus, which leaves the poor more poor, 
 
 But taint their last sad capital of health. 
 
 XL 
 
 Wherefore what use is medicine of gold ? 
 
 " The poor ye shall have alway," as was said : 
 Frame any scheme which fancy can unfold. 
 It shall be ever as it was of old — 
 
 Want ceases not save only with its dead.
 
 A SONG OF CONTRAST. 31 
 
 XII. 
 Ye may instruct, enfranchise, elevate 
 
 The mass as Law, Right, Charity, demand ; 
 Ye only shift the burden fraught by fate ; 
 Some must possess the places they vacate, — 
 
 "The poor shall never perish from the land !" 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Less little wealth than little intellect 
 
 Engenders poverty ; could we divide 
 All we possess, the abler would collect 
 The riches by the empty-headed wreckt, 
 Since fools and pelf are never long allied ! 
 
 XIV. 
 The justness of demand adjusts supply ; 
 
 There is a balance in existing things 
 Which Time disturbs but cannot stultify ; 
 The very seraphs needs must serve on high, 
 
 And man is soothed by angel-ministerings.
 
 3-2 A SONG OF CONTRAST. 
 
 XV. 
 The universal problem of distress 
 
 Is only solved by solacing its throe ; 
 There's more humanity in one caress, 
 More sympathy in one true hand's impress 
 
 Than all the parliaments of realms bestow ! 
 
 XVI. 
 There is in toil an honest nobleness, 
 
 The greater since it is no prince's gift. 
 But rather in itself hath power to bless. 
 Cheer, soothe, inspirit, dignify, impress, 
 
 The princeliness which profits by its thrift. 
 
 XVII. 
 Less feeling y^r than feeling with each lot. 
 
 Wise statesmen energise broad sympathies ; 
 And learn — by the advantages begot 
 Of wealth and intellect and station — what 
 
 The million feel who are not born to these:
 
 A SONG OF CONTRAST. 33 
 
 XVIII. 
 Thus by a comprehensive knowledge fired, 
 
 They h'ght and spread the glowing influence 
 That warms another to an aim desired, — 
 For from one spark a thousand are inspired 
 
 And one soul's fervour makes a score intense ; 
 
 XIX. 
 
 And thine shall win thee record in the schools. 
 Thoughts, efforts, aims, and energies of man ! 
 The crowd soon follows him that strongly rules : 
 The greater moulds the lesser into tools 
 With which to shape the purposes of Plan. 
 
 XX. 
 
 But for thy cost, the haunts of men demand 
 
 The heart which Nature fondly \\-ould beseech : 
 Yet haply I that clasp her friendly hand, 
 Loving her best in this bright southern land. 
 May grasp some lesson worthy of life's reach.* 
 
 * Note C. 
 
 D
 
 NOTES TO BOOK I. IN APPENDIX. 
 
 A. CoMO. 
 
 B. Counterparts. 
 
 C. Contrast : the Poetic Interpretation 
 
 OF Nature.
 
 BOOK II.— OUESTIONING. 
 
 D 2
 
 A SONG OF PINES. 
 
 1. 
 
 There is a grove to which I ofttimes climb, — 
 (Hung as a cloak above a verdant vale), 
 
 Whose swinging branches beat the measured time 
 
 Of many a reverie's unuttered rhyme, 
 And lift to music e'en its deepest wail: 
 
 II. 
 A grove wherein such shadow seems to cling 
 
 As though, perchance, the migratory night 
 In cruising hence from dawn's pursuing wing 
 Had cast an oar— snapped in the feathering — 
 
 To float adown returning tides of light :
 
 38 A SONG OF PINES. 
 
 III. 
 
 A dusky grove, wherein is never gloom, 
 
 Only the cloistered atmosphere of Song ; 
 And such a sanctity as fills the room 
 Wherein sage counsels sift the seed of bloom 
 Which flowers in legislative light erelong. 
 
 IV. 
 Here have I dwelt unlonely, though alone : 
 
 Unseparate, though dissevered from my kind : 
 For there is voice in every varying tone 
 Of the grove's music answering to mine own, 
 And changeless concord of sweet heart and 
 mind. 
 
 V. 
 
 There was a time I knew not of the balm 
 
 That lay within that shelter of tall trees : 
 Methought 'twas gloomy when 'twas only calm, 
 Mcthought 'twas sighing when 'twas butthe psalm, — 
 The happy psalm — of sylvan symphonies :
 
 A SONG OF PINES. 39 
 
 VI. 
 But, drawing nearer on a golden morn 
 
 Whose glitter was discordant to my gloom, 
 I said : Lo, better is the light foresworn 
 In shade than beams which, pointed as a thorn, 
 Pierce through the petals of my heart's shut 
 bloom ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 For there is gloom that is not always grim, 
 
 Yea, there is shadow tempered of its shade ; 
 A cloud whose pinion hath an outer rim 
 Of golden downiness which is not dim — 
 Bright as a flower unfolded in arcade. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Wherefore I entered, and the soul of me 
 
 Drank draughts of stillness, as from out a cup ; 
 
 And all the light, which first I vaguely see. 
 
 Pointed with unobtrusive radiancy. 
 
 And gently drew my vision on and up :
 
 40 A SONG OF PINES. 
 
 IX. 
 
 And I grew easeful — even as when blinds 
 
 Darken the chamber of the sick until 
 The tremulous frame be strengthened for the winds 
 And fervid gleams which 'stablish healthier minds — 
 And in the solace of the shadow, still : 
 
 X. 
 
 And as that sufferer in his shaded room — 
 
 With conscious eyes beholding everything 
 That passes round him, presaging no gloom 
 From the hushed step, nor prescience of his doom 
 From sighs and gusts of bated whispering, — 
 
 XI. 
 
 Lies still ; content from sleepless hour to hour 
 Rather to speak in vision than in word, 
 
 Regaining effort by no use of power, 
 
 And gradually unfolding as a flower 
 Those sweeter senses which are seen not heard :
 
 A SONG OF PINES. 41 
 
 XII. 
 So I ! . . . For thou to me, O grove wast this : — 
 
 To my distress — a cover of soft shade ; 
 To my depression — hushed sound, as a kiss 
 Sheltered in shadow : To my heart — the bh'ss 
 Of rest ; and to my spirit's plumage frayed 
 
 XIII. 
 
 And tempest-fluttered — strains which fondled o'er 
 And round its rufflement caressed away 
 
 And gathered into song the thrill it bore. 
 Till in me there was nothing but sweet store 
 Of cadence — easeful as a lover's lay : 
 
 XIV. 
 And long and late was I content to lie 
 
 Upon the threshold of a mightier song 
 Than fairest visions e'er could vivify — 
 Yielding of all I had, my heart's full sigh, 
 
 Wherefrom the throe of grief was lost erelong.
 
 42 A SONG OF PINES. 
 
 XV. 
 Then, entering closer, I was fain to sit 
 
 Within the very aisles of shapely song : 
 Where the light fell as through a casement lit 
 With green pane of the leaf, and over it 
 
 Azure of skies and white clouds in a thronsf : 
 
 XVI, 
 And here and there the crimson of sered leaves 
 
 And ruddiness of cones that turn to red ; 
 Fringed with deep blackness as it were the eaves 
 Which cast a shadow swayed as the branch heaves 
 
 Or as the sun moves downward to his bed : 
 
 XVII. 
 
 And odor of ripe cones beneath the sun 
 
 Made incense, which the ministering boughs 
 Swung to and fro as censers one by one : 
 Whilst the breeze stole, as 'twere a sorrowing nun 
 Up through secluded aisles and moaned her 
 vows
 
 A SONG OF PINES. 
 
 43 
 
 XVIII. 
 Here, long unanswering, I was e'en as they, 
 
 That silent seek the sacred edifice 
 To list the litanies that others pray, 
 And rise on anthems as they roll away, 
 
 And peradventure steal some share of bliss.
 
 A SONG OF NATURE. 
 
 I. 
 
 In me — upon this unfrequented hill 
 
 Which overlooks calm Lecco — there arise 
 Thoughts that enquire of mountain, vale and rill 
 The hidden purpose which they each fulfil : 
 The sweet interpretation of their sighs? 
 
 II. 
 
 Then to my plaint ere ever it was told 
 
 There rose responses in the whispering trees : — 
 
 " We are the Voice of Nature ! For behold ! 
 
 Hers is a mission mighty, manifold 
 
 And multifarioiis through all centuries ! "
 
 A SONG OF NA TURE. 45 
 
 III. 
 Nature ! made beautiful without the aid, 
 
 Taint, teaching, touch, or ministry of man : 
 All that she hath no hand of his hath made ; 
 Wind, wood, and water, cavern and cascade. 
 
 In rich perfection of unpurposed plan ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 The centuries glide on, her seasons glow. 
 
 Yet hath she substance for all human need : — 
 
 Blossom, that cheers us with its odorous blow ; 
 
 Sunlight, that warms the current of life's flow. 
 And fires the germ yet latent in the seed. 
 
 V. 
 The bees, — her deft handmaiden messengers, — 
 
 Uplift the flower's lid and perfume her breath ; 
 And all she hath, not only ministers 
 To her delight, but, symbolized, avers 
 
 The hidden mysteries of birth and death.
 
 46 A SONG OF NA TURE. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The joyous songbirds raise her soHtude 
 
 From weariness of silence else too still ; 
 And, soaring skyward in rapt interlude 
 Of sunny hours, swoon downward, — soul-imbued 
 With sense of song sweeter than earth could 
 thrill : 
 
 VII. 
 
 Her swallows bring the summer to the spring 
 And point the period of the waning year ; 
 
 Warning her of revengeful winter's sting 
 
 By twittered choruses upon the wing ; 
 
 Or, skimming waveward, herald the cloud's tear: 
 
 VIII. 
 The imitative lake reflects her form 
 
 And, bound in her caresses, breathes its vows : 
 The very ringing roundels of the storm. 
 And the still sighs of southern breezes warm, 
 
 Are plagiarised from her .^olian boughs :
 
 A SO AG OF NA TURE. 47 
 
 IX. 
 
 And with the morn her smile inspires the beams ; 
 
 And through the noon her influence fills the air ; 
 And in the evening her sweet presence seems 
 The glad precursor of angelic dreams 
 
 Our spirits rise and rapturously share : 
 
 X. 
 
 Nightly, as if the messenger of God, 
 
 She, following, soothes the stricken sun's 
 descent : 
 To her God is no Stranger — for her sod 
 Treasures the impress of the Feet that trod 
 
 Creative through chaotic firmament. 
 
 XI. 
 Thus, by unbroken commune with the skies 
 
 Her Soul is teacher to the soul of men ; 
 And never is she silent to the sighs 
 Which crave her inexhaustible supplies, 
 
 Nor wearied in well-doing anywhen.
 
 48 A SONG OF NA TURK. 
 
 XII. 
 Knowledge of books, save such as sing of her, 
 
 Or of the destiny of noble days, 
 Makes not a man so rich a minister 
 In touch with them that aim and them that err. 
 
 As Nature makes of him who loves her ways. 
 
 XIII. 
 Whence learn of her — since she, than all ye know 
 
 Lives truer to God's purpose ! Man, erst near, 
 Soon crumbled from the lofty to the low ; 
 But Nature even as created so 
 
 In rich progression fills her primal sphere : 
 
 XIV. 
 And lo ! her utmost being binds and blends 
 
 The link betwixt the Human and Divine : — 
 For with one hand she touches the world's ends, 
 And with the upraised other she defends 
 
 The very gate of heaven from man's design.
 
 A SONG OF DAWN IN NATURE. 
 
 I. 
 
 If God descended to the earth, His Light 
 
 Would scarce seem brighter than theburst of Dawn, 
 When, radiant o'er Varenna's marble height, 
 It overwhelms the lowering mists of night 
 
 And spreads the gleaming banners of the morn : 
 
 II. 
 If God descended to the earth, the soul 
 Could scarce be more celestially uplit 
 Than is the world when all its clouds unroll 
 And vanish, — voiceless in the sun's control, — 
 And the warm breath of heaven quickens it : 
 
 E
 
 50 A SONG OF DAWN IN NATURE. 
 
 III. 
 If God descended o'er the earth, the land 
 
 Would scarce seem nearer heaven than when the 
 Day 
 Creeps through the lintels of the gates that stand 
 Crimson, with beams of gold across them spanned, 
 And bound until God's Hand unbar the way : 
 
 IV. 
 If Earth ascended Heavenward in its Night, 
 It were no heaven to be thus home-borne : 
 For our seared souls would be betrayed by blight 
 Of partial darkness and imperfect light, 
 
 And, swooning back, would cry : — " GOD ! give 
 us Dinvn /" 
 
 V. 
 Wherefore, as first, the unbound brow of nignt ; 
 
 And then, the gradual gleam as of a gem ; 
 And then, Morn's coronal of lustre brignt : 
 So must our souls be diademed with light, 
 
 Ere even Heaven itself were Heaven to them !
 
 A SONG OF GOD IN NATURE. 
 
 I. 
 
 As in the offspring some similitude 
 
 Betrays the sire, — so oftentimes recur 
 In gentle Nature's ever-varying mood 
 
 Some tone, expression, teaching, — soul-imbued, 
 
 Which speak of Him Whose love created her : 
 
 11. 
 
 Grandeur of joy that wakes the world to song ; 
 
 Glory of light which fills the vacant air ; 
 Grief of bowed shadow round the spent years' 
 
 wrong ; 
 Gloom of majestic thunder rolled along ; 
 
 Gleam of lit wrath that blasts and lays life bare : 
 
 E 2
 
 52 A SONG OF GOD IX XA TURE. 
 
 III. 
 Sigh of the wind crc yet the pent clouds fall ; 
 
 Solace of song which wakens after rain ; 
 Surge of regret in the wave's broken call ; 
 Sheen of the sky that silvers the sun's pall ; 
 
 Sound of sweet rapture riven from life's pain : 
 
 IV. 
 Radiance of promise in the heaven-lit-bow ; 
 
 Rapture of hope flushed over the day's birth ; 
 Robe of white purity that falls in snow ; 
 Ripeness of autumn, gleaming with death-glow ; 
 
 Rescue of grain, — home-garnered from the earth ! 
 
 V. 
 
 Earth's ripeness, gathered 'neath the reaper's blade, 
 
 Gleaned for glad granaries, rich in golden hue : 
 Where part abides, and part within the glade 
 Awaits the spring to summon it from shade, — 
 The resurrection of old life in new :
 
 A SONG OF GOD IN NATURE. 53 
 
 VI. 
 Nor is this truth beyond our reason's range, — 
 
 The risen life is no unwonted thing ; 
 Germs burst to growth by means of this death- 
 change ; 
 If the dead rose not it were passing strange, 
 Since even Nature rises with the spring! 
 
 VII. 
 A dance of death — the dead leaves twirl and race ; 
 
 The iEons, passing, blind our eyes with dust ; 
 Our Systems spread, as boughs that interlace 
 And lose themselves in undiscovered space, — 
 
 But Wisdom leans upon the arm of Trust ! 
 
 W
 
 A SONG OF MAN IN NATURE. 
 
 I. 
 
 And there arc types of things invisible 
 
 In the seen glories of the wood and wave, 
 And troublous tides that, like our passions, swel 
 The surging breast with joys it dare not tell, 
 And hopes too sweet, too exquisite to crave :- 
 
 II. 
 
 The torrent — conscious of exalted birth, — 
 
 Has caught the spirit of a lofty strain, 
 And, leaping to enrich the heart of earth 
 Tells us : — True ministry hath room for mirth 
 However much fulfilled in paths of pain !
 
 A SONG OF MAN IN NATURE. 55 
 
 III. 
 
 And oftentimes its rapid feet will race 
 The golden moment's sun-inspired delight ; 
 
 But, as a boy untutored to the chase 
 
 Pales in the unpremeditated pace, 
 
 Its fretted limbs droop pallid in mid-flight : 
 
 Yet e'en the mists, which darken and depress 
 
 The distant goal its birth looked proudly o'er, 
 But add new volume to the eagerness 
 Which swells the swifter for each sun the less, 
 And floods the fuller for each cloud the more : 
 
 V. 
 
 So, ever earnest in its firm belief, 
 
 Hope triumphs most that is the more deprest ; 
 Its gladness gains a lustre from its grief: 
 And bliss, made sweeter as it seems more brief, 
 
 By every pang is worthier of the quest !
 
 S6 A SONG OF MAN IN NATURE. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And sometimes hushed in still lagoons of ease, 
 It draws fresh inspiration from the sky, 
 
 The which 'twill harmonize in melodies 
 
 For lowly vales and solitary leas 
 
 And banks o'er which the plaintive willows sigh: 
 
 See how the willow watches o'er the stream, 
 
 Her unbound tresses curtaining his bed ; 
 Content to share Ambition's restless dream, 
 And, though dissevered, satisfied to seem 
 Part of the life from which her life is fed : 
 
 VIII. 
 Thus Life and Labour summon Love alway, 
 
 And Love, responsively, enriches each : 
 The swallow flits with summer's dying ray. 
 But true hearts summer even mid decay, 
 
 And winter holds them sacred from his reach ;
 
 A SOA^G OF MAN IN NATURE. 
 
 57 
 
 IX. 
 
 There is a loftiness in love like this 
 
 That adds new fervour to the soul's belief : — ■ 
 
 Love yields not only life's too finite bliss 
 
 But teaches us by similes to wis 
 
 If love be heaven, — earth's love is Heaven's fief.
 
 A SONG OF NATURE IN MAN, 
 
 I. 
 
 Yea, Nature's teaching thrills the soul anew : 
 
 There is a meaning in her every mood ; 
 And glimpses of far Heaven glimmer through 
 Each rift that silvers the cloud's lowering hue 
 And gilds the land in bright solicitude : 
 
 II. 
 
 Whence falls fair light which loosens and unbinds 
 
 Our shadowed faith, with lustre as of God : 
 For He uplifts the shadow from our minds, 
 Typed in the dawn, when earth, awakening, finds 
 His feet have swept night's tear-drops from the 
 sod !
 
 A SONG OF NATURE IN MAN. 59 
 
 III. 
 
 Teachings which elevate the thoughts of men : 
 
 For who consorts with holy Nature long 
 But from the world turns back to her again 
 For joyauncc more enduring, — yielded when 
 'Twere vain to seek the solace of the throng ? 
 
 IV. 
 The races which are fostered in her sphere 
 
 By her more simple influence blest 
 Are earth's nobility: — The mountaineer 
 Who braves the havoc of the frozen year ; 
 
 The huntsman calm amid his life's unrest ; 
 
 V. 
 
 The lonel}' fisherman that on his task, 
 
 Mute as the dead, glides on from weir to weir ; 
 And he who barbs the monsters as they bask, 
 Or lures them in the midnight from the mask 
 Of gloomy deeps with torchlight 'neath the spear;
 
 6o A SONG OF NA TURE IN MAN. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And he that tends the innocence of flowers ; 
 
 And such as cHmb the breaker's eminence ; 
 And they that guard the flock through midnight 
 
 hours, 
 Learned in the sky, prophetic of its showers, 
 
 Deterred not by the winter's violence ; 
 
 VII. 
 And he that sings the beauty of fair climes, 
 
 For love of Nature callous to the thronsf. 
 And in rapt vigil recompensed at times 
 If e'en one echo of her accent chimes 
 
 Within the chords love-woven into song !
 
 A SONG OF TRINITY IN NATURE.* 
 
 I. 
 
 I hold God First ; and, ranging Thence, I brook 
 No neighbouring second other than His Word 
 
 Whereof is Nature — for the Christ oft took 
 
 From her a parable as from a book ; 
 
 And Man and the immortal soul is third. 
 
 II. 
 
 And as the lesser emulates the great 
 So Nature (as I sang) looks up to God 
 
 To find in Him a law to imitate ; 
 
 But not to man — for sooth ! 'twere neath her state 
 To stoop from skies to image dust and sod. 
 
 * See Appendix, Note D.
 
 62 A SONG OF TRIXITY IN NATURE. 
 
 Ill, 
 
 Yet, though unimitative of his mind, 
 
 She, like Messiah, sometimes takes en her 
 Man's immaterial instincts — thus to find 
 A temporal cqualncss with human-kind 
 The better to become man's minister. 
 
 IV. 
 
 For he that teaches hath a stronger hold 
 On them in pupilage in that he shows 
 That he the same is tempted, but controlled 
 By the conclusion which his creeds unfold ; — 
 Himself the instance of the truth he knows : 
 
 V. 
 Thus, gentle Nature ! lead me into Light : 
 
 For thou hast drooped in shadow of despair 
 And swift reaction, when with darkened sight 
 We blindly grope along the vacant night 
 
 And clutch at phantoms in the empty air :
 
 A SONG OF TRINITY IN NATURE. 63 
 
 VI. 
 Thou too hast felt the pallor of the noon 
 
 Sicken in fever of the flushing eve ; 
 Hast known the languor of the midnight swoon, 
 And the white chill which numbs the dying moon, 
 
 And palls- — which spindles of the sunrise weave : 
 
 VII. 
 Hast seen thy heart unlevelled in an hour ; 
 
 And the bright disc uprooted from life's day ; 
 The petals reft and riven from the flower ; 
 The branches bruised and broken in the bower, 
 
 And the leaves scattered mid the sodden hay : 
 
 VIII. 
 Hast crushed thy heart with an unnamed regret 
 
 The accustomed name none mention in thy walls: 
 Where once 'twas as a word in music set 
 That sped melodiously from fret to fret 
 
 The fond familiar roaming through thy halls.
 
 64 A SONG OF TRINITY IN NA TURE. 
 
 IX. 
 
 (O linger not to mark the clouds steal by ! 
 
 There's little wisdom in all knowledge here ! 
 Stay not to watch the flickering planets die ; — 
 The heart stands still that numbers its own sigh 
 
 And the eyes chill that count the brimming tear !) 
 
 X. 
 
 My spirit lookcth e'en as thine for Light ; 
 
 Dispel the mists surrounding me and thee ! 
 The pulses slacken in the vapoury night, 
 And doubt lies on my being like a blight 
 
 And tarnishes immortal trust in me. 
 
 XI 
 
 Lead me to Light ! for thou canst sympathise 
 With the soul's hunger and incessant strain 
 
 Of wending sunward with unshaded eyes ; 
 
 Lead me ! for thou art elder, and more wise 
 Perchance in pathways devious from life's pain.
 
 A SONG OF TRINITY IN NA TURE. 65 
 
 XII. 
 Lead me to Light ! — for oft-times I despond : 
 
 Lend me thine arm — I stumble in the gloom. 
 (Christ! when mine hour hath come O be Thou fond 
 To this poor faith that visions Thee beyond 
 
 The shade of life's indissoluble doom !) 
 
 XIII. 
 Lead me O Friend ! for upward are the stars 
 
 That seraphs trim to pioneer our eyes 
 Above the cloud-wraith's intersected bars, 
 Which^ swinging, break the thunderbolt that jars 
 
 The voiceless calm of visionary skies. 
 
 XIV. 
 Lead me to Light ! howbeit through the shade, 
 
 O thou that knowest of the Stygian shore ! 
 Take thou mine hand that I no more dismayed 
 May walk where 'bove the stars God's light is laid 
 
 Like beams of gold across a jewelled floor.
 
 66 A SONG OF TRINITY IN NA TURK. 
 
 XV. 
 Lead me as one that seest the sun's deathbed : 
 
 Shout ! as a fiery herald whose report 
 Is : — "Victory! Victory! Death and Shamearedead 
 Weariness vanquished ! Dissolution fled ! 
 
 And God the Victor in Life's vassal fort I" 
 
 XVI. 
 Lead me to God I for thou art meaningless 
 
 Except thou type the larger Wisdom here ; 
 Enfold my soul in thy great soul's caress 
 Till in thy lofty all my lowliness 
 
 Immerged commingles with God's mightier sphere. 
 
 XVII. 
 Lead me to God ! for there all light is sweet ; 
 
 Lead me, O love ! that mine awakened eyes 
 May daily view more surely, more complete, 
 His Wisdom lead the knowledge of Life's feet ; — 
 
 For knowledge soothes, but Wisdom satisfies.
 
 A SONG OF REVOLUTION IN 
 NATURE. 
 
 I. 
 
 O isle of crimson in a sea of cloud 
 
 Flying a ruddy pennon of distress ! 
 Whilst o'er the Alp-tops, ship-like in a shroud 
 Of hurricane shadow, rise the thunders loud — 
 
 Like cannon from an ironclad in stress : 
 
 II. 
 
 O little isle of crimson in a sea 
 
 Of night and tempest-tide of tears ! O sweet, 
 Compass thy heart with courage fearlessly, 
 For on the heavens there is no light but thee 
 
 Save in the west — sparks from the sun's swift feet. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 A SONG OF REVOLUTION IN NATURE. 
 
 III. 
 
 O glimmering darkness creeping from the east, 
 
 Like an incoming tide of billows black 
 Whose waves have lashed themselves into a yeast 
 Of fire-fringed passion, tarry thou at least 
 Till the belated sun escape the wrack : 
 
 IV. 
 Tarry at least until the day is done. 
 
 For it was bright throughout a golden course ; 
 Blight not a race so lustrefully run ; 
 Lash not the feet of the reproachless sun 
 
 With thy mad mutinous billows, passion-hoarse 
 
 V. 
 Thou hast the night, the unpresumptuous night, 
 
 On whom to wreak thy desolating will ; 
 Wherein thy waves shall riot with the light 
 Of tremulous stars transfixed with pale affright. 
 
 And the aged moon, outwitted by thy skill.
 
 A SONG OF REVOLUTION IN NATURE. 69 
 
 VI. 
 Thou heedest not, but tramplest on his track, 
 
 Mad with the frenzy of an aimless ire ; 
 Now, by thy bolt his corse lies charred and black ! 
 Not all thy gleams can ever summon back 
 
 Light to that orb which closed in glittering fire ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 My God ! how drear ! . . . The shepherd's lowly 
 glow 
 
 Flickers in darkness as expiring death ! 
 Deeper and swifter, Storm ! thy billows flow : 
 Woe on the hills and in the valleys woe ! 
 
 And through my heart the tumult of thy breath ! 
 
 ^ tP ^ ^ ^ "TC 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Lo, when light comes shall it in truth be Light ! 
 
 After the rainfall rusts the lightning's gleam, 
 After the javelins of the sunrise smite 
 The unresisting bosom of the night. 
 
 After the darkness — Waking? Sleep? or Dream?
 
 70 A SONG OF REVOLUTION IN NATURE. 
 
 IX. 
 Within a star this shuddering counsel lies ; — 
 
 " An ample wind shall kiss the feet of God ; 
 Electric rain shall stream from Heaven's eyes ; 
 Then shall the seed of Revolution rise 
 
 In flower of Freedom thro' the loosened sod
 
 BOOK III.— SEARCHING.
 
 A SONG OF THE SEEKER. 
 
 I. 
 
 I cannot tell when first 'twas mine to find 
 
 Life's fair delight in land and sky and sea ; 
 1 know not when mine eye to them was blind, 
 Nor when the unconscious mirror of the mind 
 Impressed and centred Nature's life in me : 
 
 II. 
 
 I know not when, but deem it must be long 
 
 Since first my soul drew fulness in the breath 
 Of world-wide winds, and solace from the song 
 Of birds, and reveries from the innocent throng 
 Of brooding flowers, for now I know 'twere death
 
 74 
 
 A SONG OF THE SEEKER. 
 
 III. 
 
 To be without the sweet companionship 
 
 Of things men deem inanimate !....! know 
 
 Of the soul's song escaped with silent lip ; 
 
 I know of sweetness which no bee would sip, 
 And bloom that winters where no weed could 
 blow : 
 
 IV. 
 
 I know of voices wherein all my soul 
 
 Finds full expression : — forests bound and bent 
 
 In groaned dejection 'neath the thunder's roll ; 
 
 Of billows bursting from the wind's control 
 In petulant dissonance of discontent : 
 
 V. 
 I know of some great Soul which when it speaks 
 
 The little soul of me thrills through and through, 
 Even as when a great wind nears the creeks 
 The tiny ripples, curved in silver streaks, 
 
 Lean up to list the lips they may not view :
 
 A SONG OF THE SEEKER. 75 
 
 VI. 
 
 I know the silence of the crimson west 
 
 When stihness lives betrayed by breaths of sound ; 
 When not a note, save of the bower-glade's best 
 And most harmonious, dare disturb the rest 
 
 And sleep of night which twilight curtains round : 
 
 VII. 
 And of the murmurous music of bound brooks — 
 
 Congenial when the half-imprisoned soul 
 Stealthily wanders from distraining nooks, 
 And, in the open, mirrors the fair looks 
 
 Of stars that clamber through the clouds' control : 
 
 VIII. 
 I know of things whereof 'twere hard to tell 
 
 The method and the meaning of their balm, 
 Save that they melodise me with a spell 
 And by a magic sympathy repel 
 
 My grosser moods from their euphonious calm !
 
 76 A SONG OF THE SEEKER. 
 
 IX. 
 
 But how or when I know not : nor can guess ; 
 
 Nor should I question what my heart acquires 
 Except that gradually less and less 
 I can unto the casual crowd confess 
 
 This inner life which Nature's love inspires : 
 
 X. 
 
 For all her mystic beauty, which to me 
 
 Symbols some crowning loveliness of creed, 
 Some smile at, saying : — " Eyes are sharp that see 
 In symbols things that are not nor shall be, — 
 Fools follow myths rather than none should lead !" 
 
 XL 
 For men deface, — but build not when destroyed : 
 
 They takeoursomething and they leave us nought: 
 (Forgetting Nature hath no room for void. 
 And e'en the savage by some hope is buoyed 
 
 Be it a stone or sun in silver wrought :)
 
 A SONG OF THE SEEKER. 77 
 
 XII. 
 To whom I say : — " The Negative demeans 
 
 The brain created for the Positive : 
 Belief in Nothing staggers since it leans 
 On Nothing, but belief in Something screens 
 
 Its weakness on the breast that bade it live." 
 
 XIII. 
 And some, — to whom unguardedly I go, — 
 
 Who cry : — " We know her not ; and verily 
 If she were worth the knowing We should know !" 
 Turn all my heart back on my heart's o'erflow, 
 
 Till my tears surge as an imprisoned sea. 
 
 XIV. 
 And some with the Hellenic aim confest 
 
 Find a voluptuous rapture in the brow 
 The shapely features, and the snowy breast 
 Of Nature, and essay no further quest 
 
 Than Beauty as a god : to whom they bow
 
 78 A SONG OF THE SEEKER. 
 
 XV. 
 And in her groves make sacrifice of Song 
 
 And the sweet firstlings of ambrosial flowers : 
 Whereto they say the south-wind speeds along 
 With odours aromatic, incense strong 
 
 As aught that o'er the shrined Madonna towers 
 
 XVI. 
 And when these priests (for e'en the acolytes 
 
 Are poets in this Beauty-Ministry) 
 For weariness descend the vocal heights, 
 The very song-birds raised the strain in flights 
 
 More lofty than the longing eye can see : 
 
 XVII. 
 And others, and they are by no means few, 
 
 Ignore her teaching, saying : — " Sooth ! we see 
 Nothing beneath the broad expanse we view !" 
 (And place her as a servant in the pew 
 
 Of worship's universal ministry :)
 
 A SONG OF THE SEEKER. 79 
 
 XVIII. 
 " She tends," they say, " with pasturage and drink 
 
 Our peaceful flocks that summer 'neath her care 
 She is the husbandman that by the brink 
 Of rivers raises roofs of leaves to link 
 
 Sequestered shade from the sun's vacant stare : 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " She is but as a menial in the halls 
 
 Of man — a servitor whose ceaseless lot 
 
 Is to be servile to incessant calls 
 
 And upright 'neath intolerable thralls 
 And, at the banquet of the soul, forgot. 
 
 XX. 
 
 *' Of her and of her Poesie high-wrought 
 
 We have no need — sound in an empty shell ; 
 We, in supremacy of loftier thought, 
 Can well afford to leave her strains unsought ; 
 That hold good prose can image life as well."
 
 8o A SONG OF THE SEEKER. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 And with a calm complacency apprize 
 The ancient high-born lineage of Song 
 
 As less and secondary to the rise 
 
 Of mushroom growths of intellect which buys 
 Its day of gold, and dies forgot erelong. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Lo ! these be they that lose a great delight ! 
 
 And though perchance intent on ampler things 
 It yet shall be, that, ere they reach God's height, 
 Their souls will havetoX&diVn howglad — how bright— 
 
 This self-same sense of Song on golden strings. 
 
 XXIII. 
 To whom I say : — " O for a hand to sweep 
 
 The pure Song-essence from a thousand strings 
 That all the electric Soul of Song might leap 
 Into melodious flash of meaning deep 
 
 And fire the heart with Nature's ministerings !"
 
 A SONG OF THE SEEKER. 8i 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 To whom I say : — " O that all eyes would see 
 The beauties which ten thousand orbs forsware ! 
 
 for a light to burst the gloom, and free 
 The vapour of all spirit-apathy ! 
 
 O for perpetual freshness in the air !" 
 
 XXV. 
 To whom I say : — " Lo ! it is sweet in sooth 
 
 To know full surely that she is full sweet : 
 And that the everything I wist of truth 
 And gracious gentleness of good in youth 
 
 Was learnt of her, — an infant at her feet ! 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " But where we met, or whether kith or kin 
 In bond of blood, as now in spirit's spell, 
 
 1 know not : — Nay, nor if her heart did win 
 My heart, or that my spirit entered in 
 
 At her heart's casement . . . Nay . . I cannot tell ! 
 
 G
 
 82 A SOXG OF THE SEEKER. 
 
 XXVII. 
 But to the soul by which my heart is fired, — 
 
 The soul that tencleth me and ministers, 
 I sighed : — "Come ! let us seek the link desired, 
 The spot and circumstances which conspired 
 
 To merge my life's vitality in hers. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 " For e'en as twain that journey through the day, 
 
 Wisting a sudden ravishment of sound. 
 Will stand awhile, then straight retrace their way 
 To find the fountain of that liquid lay, 
 
 So would we seek Life's source of joy unfound. 
 
 XXIX. 
 " Ah me ! God knows how surjsly save for fate 
 
 I too had lost what thousand others miss : 
 Wherefore, I prithee, let us estimate 
 Why some are glad, and some are desolate ? 
 
 Why some are given and some denied her bliss ?
 
 A SONG OF THE SEEKER. 
 
 83 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " Thus seeking, peradventure we shall find 
 
 Whether she speaks save only where she choose ? 
 
 Or, whether, if appealing to each mind, 
 
 She be invisible ? or else men blind 
 
 That, losing, know not even what they lose ?" 
 
 G 2
 
 A SONG OF THE SINGER. 
 
 I. 
 
 Then did we launch upon the wave and glide 
 Down my life's wake —by secrecies of shade 
 And open interludes of summer-tide, 
 By tributary rills, by green hill-side 
 
 And shelving shores that slumber in arcade. 
 
 II. 
 
 And much, long-lost upon the stream of time, 
 
 In part, reviewed I rescue for mine own : 
 A.S one from scarce a cadence of a chime 
 Re-echoes as of old the perfect rhyme. 
 And finds a memory in every tone :
 
 A SOJVG OF THE SINGER. 85 
 
 III. 
 This, I remember : yonder, well I know : 
 
 And there, lo ! such and such a thing befell : 
 And here, O gladness ! happy years ago 
 I anchored from the wide world's onward flow 
 
 And rested me with love a joyous spell ! 
 
 IV. 
 Rested, as one whom labour leads to rest. 
 
 Yet, ere repose be possible, must find 
 The nook familiar that awaits his quest ; — 
 For twain must yearn ere ever 07ie is blest, 
 
 But, in that blessing, tzvain are intertwined ! 
 
 V. 
 It well may be that God, to educate 
 
 The soul for its bright heritage above. 
 Commissions some from the celestial state 
 To soothe, console, ennoble, elevate 
 
 Our life's probation, — and their name is Love !
 
 85 A SOJVG OF THE SINGER. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And some enrich us with a gift more prized, 
 
 And some more beautiful, and some more good : 
 
 But mine was sweetest, — the fond idoHsed 
 
 Ideal of my heart's devotion, — guised 
 As woman in all perfect womanhood ! 
 
 VII. 
 Whom may God love ! — since hers was love from 
 God: 
 Whose heart God soothe ! — that gave hers 
 sympathy : 
 Whose feet God guide ! — as her step on the sod, 
 Loosening the earth on which she lightly trod, 
 Unbound the germ and bade it flower for me. 
 
 VIII. 
 Yea, it is sweet to let the world glide by, 
 
 As one unconscious of its fevered thrill ; 
 Timing existence only to love's sigh. 
 And finding life's fair sunlight in the eye 
 
 That sparkles back the joys our own instill :
 
 A SONG OF THE SINGER. 87 
 
 IX. 
 How bright the scenes delight of love makes fair ! 
 
 How populous e'en the stilly solitude 
 When the ideal of the heart is there ! 
 How calm the hour congenial spirits share ! 
 
 When even Time flits — fearing to intrude ! 
 
 X. 
 Rapt eventides, borne nightward on the wing 
 
 Of calm content ! nights, that in slumber wait 
 Within the shadow for the opening 
 Of heaven's portals ! dawns, which downward bring 
 
 The earliest echoes from the unbarred gate ! 
 
 XI. 
 When the glad lark, heaven's acolyte of song, 
 
 Soars for the sunbeam that awakens me. 
 What time the pattering of the dew falls strong 
 From bower and brae to rouse the songster-throng, — 
 
 Revel of all notes singable set free !
 
 88 A SOXG OF THE SINGER. 
 
 XII. 
 
 And here was storm ; and yonder, rain and heat 
 
 Borne to the water on the swallow's wings ; 
 Where, from the sun, I lingered in retreat, 
 As oft within the shadow of the sweet 
 
 We lose the light of more ennobling things : 
 
 XIII. 
 For now. Ambition, like a fitful breeze 
 
 Would thrill th' accustomed quiet of my heart. 
 And rouse my life from its inglorious ease 
 To vision ampler aims and energies 
 
 Which some day I might shape or share in part 
 
 XIV. 
 Dream of the yonder, which like dawning light 
 
 Creeps round the snowy summit of the soul, 
 And silently descending on the night, 
 Severing the shadow with a sickle bright. 
 
 Prepares the path where cars of progress rolL
 
 A SONG OF THE SINGER. 89 
 
 XV. 
 
 For the soul's shadowland incessant yearns 
 
 For light ; and, when night's interluding sleep 
 Soars from the rested eyelid, it upturns 
 An anxious gaze unto the morn, and learns 
 
 How life were death save sunlight crown the steep : 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The bud would droop ! the summer leaf decay ! 
 
 The fountains in their tremulous pallor freeze ! 
 In baffled search for dawn's inspiring ray 
 The birds would fret their song-pent souls away, 
 
 And Death would be man's friend — sole friend 
 he sees ! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 This, save for light ! . . "Wherefore, O Soul !" I say : — 
 
 " Small marvel that we sleep away the night, 
 Small marvel that Heaven's self inspires dismay. 
 Since shade of Death enshrouds the gate of Day : 
 Or that our longing litanies crave for light ! "
 
 90 A SONG OF THE SINGER. 
 
 XVIII. 
 And now, we chance on shallows by the brim 
 
 And my Soul crieth :— " Dost thou recollect 
 How the fiend led and we nigh followed him ?" 
 For many a reef lay sunken neath the rim 
 
 And on the shore the bones of thousands wreckt. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 And here, bleak trees, struggling in wilderness, 
 
 Besought no boon save only barren life : 
 Whence a great longing rose in me to bless 
 The human heart of hunger and distress. 
 
 And fill the hands upraised in famished strife. 
 
 XX. 
 
 And thus, an ampler purpose in me stirred, 
 
 And first I sang, as one that fain must thrill : 
 The unmelodious pipings of a bird, — 
 A fledgling that, while wistful to be heard. 
 If one should list grows tremulously still.
 
 A SONG OF THE SINGER. 91 
 
 XXI. 
 
 For in me surged a sudden fount of song 
 
 Which, welling, brake the surface-calm of speech, 
 And in a current carried it along, 
 And, leaping onward into rivulets strong. 
 
 Rushed toward the rhythm which racing rivers 
 reach. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 And the Soul in me said : — " The rich have ears 
 
 For sweet refrain, ballad and song sublime, 
 And quick pulsation for unreal tears : 
 But, for tJiy Song, O sing the surge of years 
 Which beats upon the barren shore of Time ! 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " That, peradventure, some that list shall learn 
 There is in life a pathos yet more sweet 
 
 Than rhyme from imagery can ever turn ; 
 
 And in the struggle of pure souls that yearn 
 A nobler nerve than fires the knightly feat."
 
 92 A SONG OF THE SINGER. 
 
 XXIV. 
 But, oft alas ! as waters whelmed in shade, 
 
 My heart grew chill and sang no more aloud, 
 Despairing of the minstrelsy it made : — 
 For even hope, that heavenward winged for aid, 
 
 Soared not beyond the shelter of a cloud. 
 
 XXV. 
 Till here, this self-same stream beneath our prow 
 
 Unrolled a picture to my soul grief-riven, 
 Wherein were azure floods of sky, and now 
 Islands of cloud white-cliffed, and said : — " See how 
 Earth's depths of gloom may raise thy heart to 
 Heaven !" 
 
 XXVI. 
 Whereof we spake not, but my Soul and I 
 
 Made record as we breasted the year's wake 
 Of all the vistas which we glided by. 
 That we at last might each to each supply 
 
 Links for the chain 'twas labour's love to make.
 
 A SONG OF FAILURE. 
 
 I. 
 
 Discouraged and nigh daunted, lo ! we strand 
 
 At the wave's utmost Hmits, even where 
 Life's stream, a tiny rill, ascends the land : 
 So that our shallop, foundered on the sand, 
 Needs must abide in restless anchorage there. 
 
 II. 
 Then to my Soul I looked and she on me, 
 
 And I was silent and she spake in sighs, 
 As each from each discerned intuitively 
 Here w^as the end save only infancy. 
 
 And the unknowable which in it lies :
 
 94 A SONG OF FAILURE. 
 
 III. 
 For who can scale the ladder of young days 
 
 To break away the darkness from the height 
 Where gleams the secret disc of primal rays? 
 Or from high Heaven wrench away the haze 
 
 Which blots our recollection from the light? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Then said my Soul : — " Here thou and I first met 
 
 In actual converse and concurrent speech : 
 But yonder as a black gulf round us set 
 The young beginnings of existence fret 
 
 The high research we twain essayed to reach." 
 
 V. 
 Whereon I, almost w^eeping, said : — " God knows 
 
 That for advantage of the human soul 
 I sought to probe this question to the close : 
 Finding the Whence of individual throes, 
 
 And if they ever throbbed in our control :
 
 A SONG OF FAILURE. 95 
 
 VI. 
 " And did conspire with Time's long course to cope ; 
 
 Deeming that somewhere on the stream of life 
 The Quest should loom, and round each shelving 
 
 slope 
 Exclaimed : — Lo ! peradventure here, we hope, 
 Lies the long-sought with mutinous oars in 
 strife ! — 
 
 VII. 
 
 " And now our scanty knowledge kens no more 
 
 Than that my soul and I emerged as one 
 From out the bourn of some forgotten shore, 
 And that we lived together, making store 
 Of such frail wisdom as lies 'neath the sun : 
 
 VIII. 
 " For knowledge runs in cycles as the hare 
 
 Starting from self, it back to self returns : 
 And howsoe'er the course be fleet and fair 
 There comes a time when darkly we're aware 
 
 His very instincts shackle him that learns !
 
 96 A SONG OF FAILURE. 
 
 IX. 
 
 " Still, e'en one step in furtherance of the sage, 
 
 We say, we know that knowledge only shews 
 That we know nothing, }-et 'twas page by page 
 Of this know-nothing knowledge, age on age. 
 That proves to man the little that he knows : 
 
 X. 
 
 " And proving little, since we could not prove ; 
 
 And seeing less, in that we cannot see ; 
 And, being bounden in a narrow groove 
 Which only deeper depths of Death remove. 
 
 We grope within Life's shadow, crying : — ' We 
 
 XI. 
 " ' See nothing definitely, though we learn and learn ; 
 
 And knowledge ends in vagueness of intent. 
 And for the wage of labour that we earn 
 Only the smouldering of the flame we burn ; 
 
 And dazing half-light of bewilderment !"
 
 A SONG OF FAILURE. 
 
 97 
 
 XII. 
 " This then, the End of all we would attain, 
 
 This, the completion of an ample dream ; — 
 A little breath that feeds a mighty strain, 
 A mighty heart that thrills a little gain, 
 
 And things intangible within Hope's gleam !" 
 
 H
 
 A SONG OF LETHARGY. 
 
 I. 
 
 O dim East ! how immeasurably deep 
 
 With an illimitable loneliness 
 Thy shining shadows round our spirits creep : 
 Wherefrom light dies as from a wave's ebb-sweep, 
 
 Surged into lethargy of soul-distress. 
 
 II. 
 
 O dim East, how incalculably far 
 
 Thou standest from the crimson of the West ! 
 Yet not, in sooth, more distant than souls are — 
 Youth newly born, — uprising like yon star, 
 
 And age decreasing, as yon sun in rest.
 
 A SONG OF LETHARGY. 
 
 99 
 
 III. 
 Each knows not each ; nor one the other's strain, 
 
 The other's passion, pleasure, or distress ; 
 Calm pulse of peace, or frenzied pang of pain, 
 Which mark an epoch in Birth's loss or gain 
 
 And Death's new sovereignty, or — Nothingness ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 How shall we know ? Can the dim East arise 
 
 And overlook the boundaries of the West ? — 
 Bending adown the balustrading skies 
 Scorched with the fever of day's dying sighs 
 And red with regal raiment laid at rest ? 
 
 V. 
 
 How can we know ? for all our souls are set 
 
 In separate grooves of choiceless destiny : ' 
 Wherein the friction of my spirit's fret 
 Inflames not thine, nor doth thy fever whet 
 A similar keenness in the soul of me. 
 
 H 2
 
 loo A SONG OF LETHARGY. 
 
 VI. 
 How can we know ? for our pent spirits speak 
 
 In thrills we share not neither can control, 
 Whose voice is like the little winds that streak 
 The surface-soul : — less heard than seen ; and weak- 
 
 Howbeit breaths of the world's mighty soul 1 
 
 VII. 
 O friend ! it is not altogether vain 
 
 To know the Nothingness of all we know : 
 Since wisdom, sparing of all futile strain, 
 Forbears to grasp at that she cannot gain, 
 
 Content with these her rightful realms below. 
 
 VIII. 
 We may not know ! But yonder in the West 
 
 Lies that to which we severally tend ! 
 This well we know, but whether it be best 
 To seek or not to seek that finite quest. 
 
 We know not, — even whilst we onward wend.
 
 A SONG OF LETHARGY. loi 
 
 IX. 
 
 Nay ! where we are, there tarry we, — until 
 
 The curtain lift, or we be summoned thence : 
 We are but units bound in sovereign Will ; — 
 Birds, that in fretting bruise their breasts, and chill 
 Another's gladness into dissonance. 
 
 X. 
 
 Then, 'neath the Nothing of the hoped-for-All, — 
 
 The shade misleading of delusive light, — 
 The lethargy of an unlifted pall, — 
 We drooped, and an intolerable thrall 
 
 Bound up our senses, and we swooned in night.
 
 BOOK IV.— ATTAINING.
 
 A SONG OF THE VOICE. 
 
 I. 
 Then, as when shipwrecked on a starless sea 
 Twain that survive the ruthless hurricane's 
 strife 
 Insensate die of famine gradually 
 At sound of succour break from lethargy, — 
 So spake a voice recalling us to Life. 
 
 II. 
 And as that twain, by shade of midnight — blind 
 
 And by spent languor — dull to comprehend, 
 Discern not in those welcome accents kind 
 The tones of a familiar; so our mind 
 
 Failed in that VOICE to recognise a Friend :
 
 io6 A SONG OF THE VOICE. 
 
 III. 
 And knew not till the glad pulse madly leapt 
 
 From out that deathly lethargy of life ; 
 Knew not that one drew nearer as we wept, 
 Knew not that one drew closer as we crept 
 
 Into the sliding shadow of soul-strife ; 
 
 IV. 
 And with outstretched hands constrained us back, 
 
 Inspiriting us as a sweet matin-bell 
 That hails the sunrise trembling on the track 
 Of night, — till straightway o'er the gloomy wrack 
 
 Our souls grew brighter with each accent's swell 1 
 
 V. 
 Then spake the Voice : — " Lo ! I am even he 
 
 Born in you at the solemn hour of birth ; 
 Companioned as a cicerone in thee 
 And pioneering, ere thine eyes could see. 
 
 The passage of the Heaven-born Soul to earth :
 
 A SONG OF THE VOICE. 107 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Being all other than the Soul, — for I 
 
 Spake in you ere the Soul had power of tongue, 
 Or ever learnt earth's language, save to sigh 
 That it could neither question nor reply, 
 
 Dormant and unconfessed as songs unsung : 
 
 VII. 
 " And I, — ere yet your reason could conceive 
 
 Or thought leap up to greet mine utterance, — 
 Spake in you, and by instinct did achieve 
 That doing wrong thine infant eyes should grieve 
 
 And doing right grow wide with radiance : 
 
 VIII. 
 " And this is more unquestionably true 
 
 In that experience verifies the truth — 
 That, never human lips proclaimed in you 
 The use of senses which within you grew, 
 
 Nor knowledge of the right, — well-known in youth:
 
 io8 A SONG OF THE VOICE. 
 
 IX. 
 
 " Nor did the Soul at this same early age, 
 
 Nor yet the Heart, and least of all the Mind, 
 
 Reach all at first th' admonitory stage : 
 
 But I was ever with thee to presage, 
 
 However dimly, right and wrong in kind. 
 
 X. 
 
 " And living with thee I was e'en thy friend. 
 
 And all companionable to thy ways : 
 We dwelt in concord, as two lovers wend 
 With mutual will to cherish and defend, 
 
 Though this one leads and that one but obeys : 
 
 XT. 
 
 *' And, as befalls in true companionship, 
 
 The friends of each are mutually known, 
 And this one's hand is held in welcoming grip 
 Of that one's other comrade, so my lip 
 
 Named thee to Nature ere thy soul had grown
 
 A SONG OF THE VOICE. 109 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Who, seeking thee, was winning to thy ways ; 
 
 And thou didst laugh within her loveHness, 
 Gazing with infant wonder in thy gaze 
 At the big depths of ocean, and the rays 
 
 That gambol with the willow's gleaming tress : 
 
 XIII. 
 " And life grew large to thee ere thou couldst gauge 
 
 The mightier intention of thy sphere ; 
 Or knew thyself a speck upon the page 
 Of chronicles, dusky with an age on age 
 
 Of dust raised by the ^on's charioteer : 
 
 XIV. 
 " Small dust that gleams a moment in the sun 
 
 Seeming a thing so magically fair ! 
 But dull and charmless when the day is done, — 
 Drooped to its native clay all men shall shun 
 
 And leave it in the depths to sodden there !
 
 no A SONG OF THE VOICE. 
 
 XV. 
 " Small dust that on the impulse of a thought — 
 
 The veriest breath or segment of a sigh — 
 Up from its innate lowliness is caught 
 Faltering toward heaven, till backward thrust un- 
 sought, 
 Inherently unfitted for the sky ! 
 
 XVI. 
 " Men call me Conscience : but I am not he : 
 
 For conscience rather serves within the soul 
 Than lives in outward larger sovereignty 
 Over the mind and spirit born in thee : 
 
 Moreover, it seems somewhat in control 
 
 XVII. 
 " Of action ; for the deed suggests its voice 
 
 Which otherwise were silent, and it needs 
 Some active influence, rather wrong for choice, 
 Before it speaks, for when men do rejoice 
 
 For joy of right, it scarcely even heeds :
 
 A SONG OF THE VOICE. in 
 
 XVIII. 
 " Moreover, as was written years of yore, 
 
 * Either accusing or excusingly,' 
 Its thought finds utterance mainly to deplore 
 Some ill it knew but censured not before. 
 
 Thus rather following than leading thee. 
 
 XIX. 
 " But / am leader unto such as call, 
 
 Equally potent in the right as wrong ; 
 With power depending not upon the thrall 
 Of either actual or threatened fall, 
 
 But rather in all blamelessness more strong. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " Wherefore I bring you, for all purity 
 
 Unto the pure in action, soul, and speech, 
 Whereof is Nature, 'neath whose boundless sea, 
 Shine the white pearls which ^ons hid for thee, 
 Radiant in luminous halls that wait thy reach."
 
 A SONG OF FINDING.* 
 
 I. 
 
 Then I unto the Voice : " This seems too much 
 
 Of truth to comprehend ; for many live 
 With Nature .... in incessant touch 
 Of heart and feeling, yet she leads not such 
 Into the rest thou sayest she can give ? 
 
 II. 
 
 " They know not more with Nature for their guide 
 
 Than doth the crowd oblivious of her lot ! 
 Prithee, thus seeking, wherefore have they sighed 
 Vainly for that thou sayest she'll confide 
 
 To such as seek with search that doubteth not ?" 
 
 See Appendix, Note F.
 
 A SONG OF FINDING. 113 
 
 III. 
 Whereon the Voice made answer unto me : — 
 
 " Far other is it than at first ye feared, — 
 That Nature speaks to some and not to thee ; 
 For unto all she yearneth equally ; 
 
 And this is true, — as formerly appeared — 
 
 IV. 
 
 " That, many introduced to Nature feel 
 Rather the passion of the heart and eye 
 
 Than of the soul ; wherefore she doth conceal 
 
 What she to a familiar would reveal 
 
 Touching her secret kinship with the sky : 
 
 V. 
 
 " Of them thou knowest ; so it seemeth best 
 
 To rather speak of what she is to those 
 Who lean in loving silence on her breast — 
 Where knowledge finds an intellectual rest 
 And wisdom which is ripened in repose. 
 
 I
 
 114 A SONG OF FINDING. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Lo ! I that unto thee am more than sound — 
 Yea, more than the melHfluence of speech, — 
 Proclaim no partial mission, but am found 
 In each and all and every spirit round 
 The belted Zone's interminable reach ! 
 
 VII. 
 " I speak of things that are, and yet shall be : 
 
 I cast the cover from the days to come : 
 I drag the dawn from out your destiny : 
 Life's secrecies, unseen by you, I see : 
 
 And Death unto my summons is not dumb ! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " Through my persuasion Nature comes to thee,- 
 Firstly my friend and then the friend of all : 
 
 And with impartial instinct equally 
 
 Makes visible to such as seek to see 
 
 The purport of the years that round us fall :
 
 A SONG OF FINDING. 115 
 
 IX. 
 " Tis thine to enter her wide open doors 
 
 Which greet the kistre and the balminess 
 Of morn whose golden sunbeam treads the floors : 
 The olden-time familiar, whose rare stores 
 
 Of salient sunniness her lips caress. 
 
 X. 
 
 " Thine to behold her ceaseless sacrifice, 
 Within whose giving richer gifts accrue ; 
 
 Ye are as infants whom her breasts entice ; 
 
 Ye are as fondlings, whom she would suffice, 
 Howbeit faint for that she yields to you. 
 
 XI. 
 "Thine to believe that by her affluence, 
 
 And through the innate destiny she hath, 
 Ye may attain as she by slow suspense 
 Of sure conclusion up to the Immense, 
 Disheartened not by a circuitous path : 
 
 I 2
 
 ii6 A SONG OF FINDING. 
 
 XII. 
 " Thine to partake the wealth she proffers those 
 
 Who help the heedless or disheartened crowd : 
 Deterred not — howsoever much she knows 
 That many grains are sown for one that grows 
 
 Within the hearts that worshipTruth,head-bowed : 
 
 XIII. 
 " Wise to destroy when slaying is all-wise 
 
 And the reprieving would increase life-strife ; 
 Wise the surrender of her best supplies, 
 Propitiating fate with sacrifice 
 
 And death used instrumentally for life : 
 
 XIV. 
 '' Dimly discerning that in death of all 
 
 She hath there reigns the universal law 
 Of life m death ; and from the seeming fall 
 The liberated rising from all thrall 
 
 Of age, of seared decrepitude and flaw :
 
 A SONG Of FINDING. 117 
 
 XV. 
 
 " And, in the seeing spiritually, view 
 
 How this self-sacrifice were incomplete 
 Save that the living took advantage due 
 To them by death, to stablish and renew 
 Themselves in life, more exquisitely sweet ; 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " For e'en the very flames that gleam and glow 
 
 Inherit life and lustre from the fall 
 Which marked some vast primaeval overthrow : 
 Whereof such parables divinely show 
 
 The Sacrifice of One is life to all. 
 
 XVII. 
 " And evermore she leads you to proceed 
 
 Throughout the sweet gradations of the yea r, 
 From thought long dormant in the latent seed , 
 To germ, to blossom, and to fruit decreed, 
 
 To fill the granaries of some vast sphere ;
 
 ii8 A SONG OF FINDING. 
 
 XVIII. 
 " She leads, and leading, guides through Law to 
 Light ; 
 Her garments loosened that her limbs may ply- 
 Up the wide staircase to her mansion's height, 
 By spiral tiers of touch, and sound, and sight, 
 And strong soul-senses wakeful to her cry : 
 
 XIX. 
 " This then, the answer to thy plaint, in part — 
 
 Nature hath universal truth for each : 
 Each spirit is untrammelled at the start. 
 Though, loving with the soul as well as heart, 
 Some creep more near and catch the soul oi 
 speech : 
 
 XX. 
 
 " And, living closer, fond affection links 
 Their several energies in one delight : 
 Till every thought each relatively thinks 
 Is knit in pilgrimage, that by deep brinks 
 Essays the heights that bound the Infinite :
 
 A SONG OF FINDING. 119 
 
 XXI. 
 " Whose loftiest summit is the lord of all 
 
 High altitudes the human soul may reach, 
 For the Beyond no mortal may forestall ; 
 Where failure lies and a predestined fall 
 
 Which bars the high conclusion we beseech : 
 
 XXII. 
 " Which high conclusion, be it surely known, 
 
 Is never less than the relationship 
 Existing 'twixt the Deity alone 
 And these our spirits ; — This, divinely shown. 
 
 Inspires the soul and wakens its mute lip : 
 
 XXIII. 
 " Whence follows this : — That, somewhen it was 
 thine 
 To learn of Nature, in her lofty ways 
 That lead the human up to the Divine 
 By symbol eloquent within the line 
 Of all she is : for plainly she betrays
 
 I20 A SONG OF FINDING. 
 
 XXIV. 
 " A motive in each action most minute : — 
 
 Nothing she doth or hath is objectless : 
 All that she ever sows is sown for fruit : 
 Yea, and her very silence is not mute 
 
 In stablishing her spirit's onward stress \ 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " And surely if that every part of her 
 Exist with visible purport, it were true 
 
 With even greater surety to aver 
 
 That she herself is also minister 
 
 Unto some End as yet concealed from view : 
 
 XXVI. 
 " For, if each part of her is quick with aim. 
 
 And, if no portion of her loss is void. 
 And if the sequence of these parts the same 
 Build up the full fulfilment of her frame, 
 
 Why not that frame itself be thus employed ?
 
 A SONG OF FINDING. 121 
 
 XXVII. 
 " And if that frame be sequence to an end, 
 
 And since all end is greater than the means, — 
 So must the purpose whereunto she'll tend 
 Be loftier than the sphere her arms defend, 
 
 Vast heights which God's celestial lustre screens 1 
 
 XXVIII. 
 "Yea, this I KNOW, for I, the Voice, am sprung 
 
 From the predestined Evermore of man : 
 But this_;j/^ know not, — save as flashes flung 
 From flints of reason, — for what bard hath sung 
 
 The Laws of Being and of finite plan ?"
 
 A SONG OF RECEIVING. 
 
 I. 
 
 Voice-in-Light ! O Light that is in Voice 
 O Being voidless though invisible ! 
 
 1 inly feel thee, — having never choice 
 But in thy coming straightway to rejoice, 
 
 And in thy going to grow sad and chill. 
 
 II. 
 All that is soul within us yearns to thine 
 
 As if the selfsame spirit quickened each : 
 Within thy strength all weaknesses of mine, — 
 ^ons of earth in instants of Divine — 
 
 Crumble away whilst thou art by to teach.
 
 A SONG OF RECEIVING. 123 
 
 III 
 I hold thee less and greater than thou seem ; 
 
 Less in that thou art only VOICE in me, 
 And cannot wholly lead me : Thou art gleam 
 Of brightness rather than the actual beam — 
 
 An echo rather than full harmony : 
 
 IV. 
 With power constrained, for thou thyself art part 
 
 Of lavv^, and movest in a bounden range, — 
 A golden orb controlled and shaped at start 
 By the Supreme, and circling to man's heart 
 
 On lines whose limits thou canst never change : 
 
 v^ 
 And yet I hold thee greater than thou say, 
 
 That ofttimes art an echoed Infinite, 
 Part of unseen circumference whose sway 
 Attracts the spiritual from our clay 
 
 In evolution hid from human sight.
 
 124 A SONG OF RECEIVING. 
 
 VI. 
 1 hold thee greater, for at times thy speeech 
 
 Is savoured with imperishable TRUTH : 
 Phrase goodlier than human wit could reach, 
 Reason devise, or even spirit teach : — 
 
 Words steeled in sinews of immortal youth. 
 
 VII. 
 Seeming as 'twere a portioned part of GOD : 
 
 Even as Abraham greeted unawares ; 
 Or as of old ascended from the sod 
 What time the Burning-Bush inspired the rod 
 
 Which guided Israel up from Egypt's snares 
 
 VIII. 
 A part of God which daily we may lose : 
 
 As, Moses, losing, lost full leadership ; 
 By hesitancy, which is slow to choose, 
 Or by self-consciousness which would refuse 
 
 Language God deems sufficient for our lip :
 
 A SONG OF RECEIVING. 125 
 
 IX. 
 
 For verily it rests with us alone 
 
 How much of the High Infinite we hold : 
 As he, if but in touch with the Unknown, 
 Had recognised and risen to Its tone — 
 Since fear deserts the spirit love makes bold. 
 
 X. 
 
 And if in touch then instant to proceed — 
 
 Nobly, — without irrelevant excuse 
 On whatsoever mission is decreed : 
 For surely none are called save there be need, 
 
 And such as are should deem themselves of use ; 
 
 XI. 
 
 Undoubtingly, — for since we cannot know 
 
 The mighty End how judge the lesser means? — 
 Content to pass from Him that bade us go, 
 Less conscious of ourselves than of the glow 
 Within whose Glory the Immortal screens.
 
 126 A SONG OF RECEIVING. 
 
 XII. 
 
 We waste our days in valleys of despair : 
 
 We chase void phantoms downward from the light, 
 Losing the radiance, and the accents fair, 
 The love, the leadership, uplifted where 
 
 Man's footsteps totter onward to God's height. 
 
 XIII. 
 And when upon the unfrequented steep 
 
 A sudden lustre breaks the loneliness, 
 A sudden summons makes the spirit leap, 
 We are not ready or perchance we sleep — 
 
 And only vision joys we might caress : 
 
 XIV. 
 Joys which make beautiful the temporal years, 
 
 With rich discovery of use in all : 
 And yet more beautiful, their several spheres ; 
 In that they lead by wide progressive tiers 
 
 Up to the finite purpose they forestall !
 
 A SOiYG OF RECEIVING. 127 
 
 XV. 
 What Nature hath for earth, tkoii. hast for me : 
 
 Thy path wends by a sudden growth of sweet, 
 The arid waste is hid in radiancy 
 Of bloom and verdure ; for the following thee 
 
 Catches the seed of plenty in our feet. 
 
 XV r. 
 Thou art the Finite of the Infinite! 
 
 The End and Aim of all things measureless ! 
 The radiant summit of the golden light 
 That crowned the CHRIST transfigured to God's 
 sight — 
 The glory which enshrined His lowliness.
 
 A SONG OF ASPIRATION. 
 
 I. 
 
 O Spirit- Voice, I follow thee afar ; 
 
 O Sound-in-Distance spanning the world wide 1 
 O close Disseverance, set as a pale star 
 In purple skies wherein no sunbeams are, — 
 
 Until Day break, and thou no more art guide ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Thee do I follow — for I know thee just, 
 
 As conscious of the shackles that I wear, 
 Which trailing 'neath me catch the mire and dust 
 Upon the world's broad labyrinth of lust, 
 Ambition, pleasure, passion, and despair.
 
 A SONG OF ASPIRATION. 129 
 
 III. 
 I doubt thee not, though ofttimes thou art hid ; 
 
 Forget thee not, though sometimes thou art still ; 
 Deny thee not, though ever I am chid ; 
 Reproach thee not, though never am I bid 
 
 Up to the breadth of bliss thy pinions fill : 
 
 IV. 
 I hear thee in the voices of the trees, 
 
 And in the skylark's effervescing note : 
 Thy spirit shapes the cadence of the breeze, 
 Wakeful within the moaning of wild seas, 
 
 And placid where the swans serenely float : 
 
 V. 
 Thou hast broad gardens verdant with sweetbriar, 
 
 And breath of lily fills thine ample shrine, 
 Where pleasure of the red rose flames to fire, 
 And paeonies and poppies flash desire 
 In the convolvuli's convulsed entwine. 
 
 K
 
 I30 . A SONG OF ASPIRATION. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The rapturous rush of water sings of thee ; 
 
 Thine aim is imaged in progressive waves 
 That loiter not until at length they be 
 Merged in the vast of an unmeasured sea 
 
 To blend their minors with immortal staves. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I cannot wander onward through the day 
 Without a myriad tokens of thy life ; 
 
 Nor see the sunset abdicate his sway ; 
 
 Nor the young moon-queen race the eve away 
 And signal back her star-court as in strife ; 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Nor hear the cricket that so wondrous small 
 
 A.sserts himself in note so wondrous large ; 
 Nor the unwearied winds that drive or drawl 
 Their ceaseless courses round this earthern ball- 
 Evolved in ether — eddied by Time's barge ;
 
 A SONG OF ASPIRATION. 131 
 
 IX. 
 Nor feel the influence of the racing years^ — 
 
 Their summers flushed with hurrying away, 
 Their autumns sallow-faced with gloomy fears, 
 Their winters stained with unproductive tears, 
 
 Their springs that, tide-like, struggle into spray ; 
 
 X. 
 
 O Voice ! O Presence ! I can neither see 
 
 Earth's ever-wondrous marvelments sublime, 
 Nor heed their accents, murmurous in me, 
 Nor feel their influence, but I know 'tis thee, — 
 Thou Multiform ! — whose span outreaches time. 
 
 XI. 
 
 And I am greater in that Thou art friend. 
 
 Exalted, — elevated for a space ; 
 Until such time as thou dost reascend 
 When wearily, despondingly I wend, 
 
 And, e'en tear-blinded, find my lowly place. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 A SONG OF ASPIRATION. 
 
 XII. 
 I doubt thee not, — though all around be dim, 
 When the storm's dripping drift away life's 
 bloom ; 
 Though winter-rain lie rusty on the rim 
 Of wreaths long-coveted ; yea, though clouds brim 
 My spirit's mansion, bright shall be thy room 
 
 XIII. 
 And ever sacred to thy welcome tread, 
 
 None other step than thine shall enter in ; 
 My bosom shall be pillow to thy head, 
 And thou shalt sing to me till night hath led 
 
 Her wailing winds away, and day begin. 
 
 XIV. 
 Thy place is stablished, — thy repose is set 
 
 Beside the hearth where cedar logs are lit, 
 Whereby are beakers which no lips have met 
 And the elixirs that divinely whet 
 
 The thirst of generous good whilst soothing it.
 
 A SONG OF ASPIRATION. 133 
 
 XV. 
 Come to me in the silence of the night, 
 
 When every earthly utterance forsakes 1 
 Come to me ! guised in mystic planet-light, 
 Or as a starbeam silvering in midflight 
 
 The vast wide world of shadow it awakes : 
 
 XVI. 
 And I shall rise and open wide the door. 
 
 As one unlatching to the noiseless love 
 Of shapely feet that scarcely touch the floor ; 
 And in the opening, lo ! around and o'er. 
 
 Thy light shall spread and circle me above. 
 
 XVII. 
 Thus shalt thou come, and I shall kiss thy feet 
 
 And serve thee with endearments of delight. 
 For in thy loss my life were incomplete 
 As, in thy finding, life is all things sweet. 
 
 And in thy love illimitably bright.
 
 134 A SONG OF ASPIRATION. 
 
 XVIII. 
 And gentle night shall seem a silver day 
 
 Too sweet, too exquisite, to lose in sleep, 
 Whither thou lookest shall be bright with ray, 
 So shall I try to meet thy eyes and say : — 
 
 " Deny me not a draught of radiance deep !" 
 
 XIX. 
 
 For light is the elixir of the soul ; 
 
 Wherefore I whisper: — " Let me drink to-night ;" 
 For I am thirsting even past control 
 And, unappeased, would rather Lethe roll 
 
 Its ripples round my lips, than bear this blight ! 
 
 XX. 
 
 " O satisfy me ! for howbeit clay 
 
 I hold within me that which knows thee sweet, 
 A Spirit-Sense that calls thee kin alway. 
 And, in thine influence^ stablished 'neath thy sway, 
 
 Finds wings which lift life's bruised and stumb- 
 ling feet.
 
 A SONG OF ASPIRATION. 
 
 135 
 
 XXI. 
 " Yea, would I drink, and in the drinking be 
 
 Raised over men and angels of the air ; 
 For I would steal and blend thy beams in me. 
 And make me wings wherewith I should be free 
 
 And sail with thee through aerial regions rare."
 
 A SONG OF SINGING. 
 
 I. 
 
 O strong contagion of the Soul of Praise ! 
 
 Anthems of ocean : litanies of lakes : 
 Psalms of the solitude whose raptures raise 
 The bowing bosoms of responsive braes ; 
 
 Ye thrill the reverence that in me wakes ! 
 
 II. 
 Far in the distance droops the jar of pain 
 
 The moan — the groan whose stifling leaves us 
 spent ; 
 And all the slow sad surges which retain 
 The soul in bondage from its yearned-for gain 
 Of unmolested havens of content.
 
 A SONG OF SINGING. 137 
 
 III. 
 I feel no more the gnawing agonies 
 
 Which chill the heart what time they fire the brain ; 
 Whose sigh — whose tear — like spray from wind- 
 washed seas 
 Dashes the leaf from life's glad summer trees 
 And sears the stem with an enduring stain. 
 
 IV. 
 
 For in that grove's Cathedral-choir of Song 
 
 Some latent soul within me all unheard 
 And slumbrous unsuspected in me long, 
 Broke from her covert and with pinion strong 
 Floated upon the music as a bird. 
 
 V. 
 
 And as the culver with the branch of peace, 
 So came she back and solaced all my days 
 With melody ; and craved no more release 
 But bode with me — an echo loath to cease : 
 
 Whereof these Songs — remembered from her lays.
 
 See APPENDIX. 
 
 Notes E.— The Voice. 
 
 ,, F. — Unity in Nature.
 
 BOOK v.— FULFILLING.
 
 A SONG OF INTERLUDE. 
 
 I. 
 
 The happy birds upon the air 
 
 Have broken into spells of song ; 
 And, mounting through the morning glare, 
 Renew the strains which languish there 
 From some that sang the whole night long. 
 
 II. 
 Thus the high pedigree of praise 
 
 Links Age with Age and man with man ; — 
 For when one wearies in his lays 
 Another kindred soul will raise 
 
 The faltering cadence he began.
 
 142 A SONG OF INTERLUDE. 
 
 III. 
 
 Now round yon cape of willow-trees 
 A shallop races with the wind ; 
 
 But soon deserted by the breeze, 
 
 Disconsolate in tamer seas, 
 She frets in stillness unresigned. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But the enduring steersman leaves 
 The useless rudder, and by force 
 Impels the oar, until she heaves 
 And, thrilling every nerve, achieves 
 Her long premeditated course. 
 
 V. 
 So falls it e'en to him most blest 
 
 With happy circumstance of fate, — 
 When traitorous fortune spurns the quest 
 Himself must shape and speed the rest, 
 
 And, whilst propelling, steer his freight.
 
 A SONG OF INTERLUDE. 143 
 
 VI. 
 A fern that threaded dews of night 
 
 Discoloured pearls upon a cord, 
 When dawn rose, scattering from his height 
 Unnumbered diamonds of light. 
 
 She loosed and cast them on the sward. 
 
 VII. 
 Thus we, with unformed knowledge, prize 
 
 As goodly, in the lesser glow, 
 A rapture worthless in the eyes 
 Of heaven, when to it we rise 
 
 And contrast what earth's joys bestow.
 
 A SONG OF MY HEART AND I. 
 
 I. 
 Returning westward — where the lake is wide 
 
 And dim Menaggio fronts Varenna's shore — 
 A bird's song, rising like a vocal tide 
 Against our voyage from the yonder side, 
 
 Allays our speed until its burst is o'er : 
 
 II. 
 
 We drift and, drifting, hearken to its strain ; — 
 
 Clear depths around, and twinklings of the wave 
 High overhead the luminous skies' domain, 
 And summits whose unblemished breasts retain 
 The last fond flush departing daylight gave :
 
 A SONG OF MY HEART AND I. 145 
 
 III. 
 Then, as the melody makes swift ascent 
 
 Into the easeful anchorage of Space, 
 Within the stillness after song is spent 
 I stole a chord which Song in silence blent 
 
 And woke a strain which slept in its embrace : 
 
 IV. 
 Singing unto mine Heart: — "Thine ears have heard 
 
 Innumerable ministerings of song, 
 Hast thou no strain which like yon soaring bird 
 Pants ever upward till it be interred 
 
 Within the light to which its lays belong ?" 
 
 V. 
 
 To which my Heart saith : "Yea, but there are some, 
 And many, who have richer notes than I ; 
 
 And oftentimes despondency will dumb, 
 
 Or desolating callousness benumb, 
 
 The warm breath which incites the Muse's sigh !" 
 
 L
 
 146 A SONG OF MY HEART AND I. 
 
 VI. 
 
 I said unto mine Heart : — " Be not afraid ! 
 
 Confront the ills thou canst not all control ; 
 For as yon Alp outlives the long decade, 
 Bearing the shadow of perpetual shade 
 
 In purity, so even with the soul." 
 
 VII. 
 
 But my Heart answered : — " Nay, but some are high, 
 
 And live in elevation of high deeds : 
 And o'er the cloud they ofttimes view the sky, 
 And grasp with stainless hands the beams that ply 
 From the sun's nighness to their upraised needs." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Then I : — " O envy not ! none know the weight 
 
 Of loftier aims, and energies that lift 
 Beseeching eyes to Heaven's high estate, 
 Save such as bear the burthen of this fate. 
 
 For these are they that catch the shadow's drift.
 
 A SONG OF MY HEART AND I. 147 
 
 IX. 
 
 " I've seen a summit darkened week by week, — 
 
 Whelmed in a blinding agony of gloom 
 Wherein was never voice of Song, nor streak 
 Even of starlight, and the vulture's beak 
 Gnawed at its vitals, as it were a tomb : 
 
 X. 
 
 " And e'en its tear froze as a daggering dart 
 To frenzy its own passion ; and the rude 
 
 And lacerating elements scarred its heart ; 
 
 And when at length the winter did depart 
 
 Spring brought no bloom to deck its solitude : 
 
 XI. 
 
 " But all the while the little vales below 
 And every lesser summit of small hills 
 Were lustreful with a perennial glow : 
 And song succeeded cadence in a flow 
 Fed by illimitable vocal rills." 
 
 L 2
 
 148 A SONG OF MY HEART AND I. 
 
 XII. 
 " Then," said my heart, " 'twere best in levelment 
 
 Of mind and soul to grasp life's lower fruit : 
 Conserving the calm tenor of content, 
 With feelings strung as suits their several bent 
 
 Lest life be jarred, as tension jades the lute." 
 
 XIII. 
 " Not so," I said, " Contentment fits the soul 
 
 Of lunacy, of ignorance, or love : 
 But Greatness comprehends a grander goal ; 
 Whose winning lieth part in our control 
 
 And part beyond — which yet we climb above ; 
 
 XIV. 
 " For happiness lies not in aimless ease — 
 
 (As the Hellenic Sage hath truly said) — 
 The shallop frets that fronts unbreezeful seas, 
 But with a wind her swift activities 
 
 Laugh back the wave, and gain the port, toil-sped
 
 A SONG OF MY HEART AND I. 149 
 
 XV. 
 
 "Aims fill the hour that otherwise were void — 
 
 For else the brain would rot in lethargy : 
 And being less impoverished as employed 
 Thought flutters up — a songster overjoyed 
 To use the wing created to be free : 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " Made musical by ministering thrills 
 
 Of that bright Spirit-sense of which we sang, 
 Sweet Voice-in-silence when the midnight chills 
 The chords of life, or wing of sorrow stills 
 Some slender string with desolating clang : 
 
 XVII. 
 ^' Made musical in knowing that the range 
 
 Of spirit- life is vaster than we deem ; 
 Melodious, as a skylark in the change 
 Of marshy meads for altitudes unstrange 
 
 To the inherence of his happy dream :
 
 150 A SONG OF MY HEART AND I. 
 
 XVIII. 
 " Using all bright external charm to cheer 
 
 And stimulate this Spirit-sense of Soul, 
 Whose inmost thrill is harmonised to hear 
 The outer utterance of accents clear 
 
 Which guide immortal Being to its goal : 
 
 XIX. 
 " Let the immortal beauty of the Good, 
 
 And good enduring in the Beautiful, 
 Reign sovereign in our spirit's solitude, 
 That all the blemished populace be withstood — 
 
 Awed by a majesty none durst annul : 
 
 XX. 
 
 " Let Love tune tenderness within life's strain. 
 
 Chorus our songs in parallels of tone, 
 Caress away the minors from its pain, 
 Incite its drooping heavenward again 
 
 For loan of bliss Heaven lends to Love alone.
 
 A SONG OF MY HEART AND J. 151 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " And let all Song be gracious in our ears : — 
 Sweet is the lute — as they that tune it know ! 
 
 Wherefore sing on — albeit no one hears ! 
 
 'Tis not the influence but the utterance cheers 
 The heart whose thrill awakes the minstrel's throe ! 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " O little songs which Nature's spell hath wrung 
 
 From out the music of the World's great heart ! 
 O little strains which my full soul hath sung 
 And set to chords immemorably strung 
 By Nature's sweet imaginative art ! 
 
 XXIII. 
 "O Songs in Silence, which upon my breath — 
 
 My breath which is the ebbing life of me — 
 Have floated from me, whether ye find death 
 In some chill heart or home in one that saith 
 
 " Glad are the echoes which Song's feet awake !"
 
 152 A SONG OF MY HEART AND 1. 
 
 XXIV. 
 " I sing ye since 'tis ever good to sing : — 
 
 Dull is the heart that silences its joy ! 
 Cold is the soul that cannot sometimes ring 
 A chime of sympathy or welcoming 
 
 To speed another's respite or employ !"
 
 A SONG OF SACRIFICE. 
 
 I. 
 
 Then silence stole upon my heart of hearts 
 As after skirmish of the wind and wave 
 The full-tide plenitude no more imparts, 
 But rather turns and thrills to the wind's darts ; 
 So surged my heart to all she gained and gave 
 
 II. 
 
 Musing, — as swayed by each conflicting claim — 
 
 " Life is a paradoxical distress ! 
 Since there's no happiness without an aim, 
 Happy-that-seems is happy but in name : 
 
 Whilst happy aims must forsware happiness.
 
 154 A SONG OF SACRIFICE. 
 
 III. 
 
 Musing : — " Alas ! but life is short and long : 
 
 Easy and difficult ; sunny and sad ; 
 With contraries inexplicably strong : — 
 Wrong coiled in Right : and Right unvvreathed 
 from Wrong : 
 
 Folly in wits ; and wisdom with the mad : 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Hatred in love, — since they that love us most 
 
 Smile to our jest, yet ridicule the tear 
 Whose spring is yearning for the distant coast 
 Their longings touch not : — they the first to toast 
 A triumph fallen to their aimless sphere ! 
 
 V. 
 
 " And to complete the paradox, this thing 
 Which we misnomer LiFE in sooth is death : 
 
 And he whom we call DEATH is one whose wing 
 
 Is only dusk with soil of travelling 
 To raise the Life-elixir to our breath.
 
 A SONG OF SACRIFICE. 155 
 
 VI. 
 Musing : — " In narrow boundaries of good 
 
 The feet of life to finite purpose tend : 
 And howsoe'er sweet bower and dreamy wood 
 Decoy our courage they must be withstood — 
 
 Lest strength desert us ere we reach the End. 
 
 VII. 
 " Peace look we not for, — save the peace that's pent 
 
 In the Achieving or the Would-achieve : 
 Solace we seek not — save in the content 
 Exhaled in every sigh of hope we vent : — 
 
 For few there be who sow for them that weave !" 
 
 VIII. 
 To which an inner instinct made reply : — 
 
 (A secret spring which, rising neath the deep 
 Of my heart's deadness, ebbed away its sigh 
 And in a current of white waves and high 
 
 Uplit the surface-gloom with heavenward leap.)
 
 156 A SONG OF SACRIFICE. 
 
 IX. 
 " The days of visible sacrifice are sped, 
 
 But evermore the principle survives ; 
 Not now we come with oxen garlanded, 
 Not now the altar kindled 'neath the dead. 
 
 But in oiirselvcs we wreath the perfect lives. 
 
 X. 
 
 " I hold it sure that whoso lives to wield 
 
 A healthy actual influence in Thought, 
 Or in more physical energies afield, 
 Must need accustom heart and soul to yield 
 The Ever- Wo2ild unto the Ever- Ought. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " The Woiild is passing easy to attain. 
 
 Since all our preference labours in its hire. 
 The Ought — which is the thing the soul should gain, 
 Is struggled-for against the mutinous strain 
 Of our own selves, and oft against desire.
 
 A SONG OF SACRIFICE. 157 
 
 XII. 
 
 " And being in itself more hard to reach 
 
 Than the indulgences which ceaseless lie 
 About our path, (as falls the ripened peach 
 With wanton boast of beauty to beseech 
 
 The gaze that else had heedless passed it by), 
 
 XIII. 
 " It needs a closer and more stedfast aim, 
 
 Since of a truth however much at birth 
 We know the right, we seldom love its name, 
 Nor hath it influence as wrong can claim. 
 
 Nor favours to accentuate its worth : 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " Thence this is sure, that such as seek to gain 
 
 High things must firstly fit themselves to live 
 Concordantly with highness, and to train 
 Their instincts till they scarcely feel the strain, 
 As athletes who would be superlative.
 
 158 A SONG OF SACRIFICE. 
 > 
 
 XV. 
 " And this is more imperatively true 
 
 Since some by right of birth have wealth or wit, 
 (The many noble and the sovereign few ;) 
 But none are born with goodness as their due, 
 
 Nor can the pure their purity transmit : 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " But minds we have, and with them intellect, 
 And with the intellect the power to prove ; 
 And there are written records circumspect, 
 And tomes Divine with saintly wisdom deckt 
 Which circumscribe the spirit's onward move. 
 
 XVII. 
 " But all were nothing save we be intent 
 
 To win the heights of the attainable ; 
 The soul must be consistent in its bent, — 
 One weakly link and lo the chain is rent, 
 
 And one small moment crowns a year with hell !
 
 A SONG OF SACRIFICE. 159 
 
 XVIIT. 
 
 " Wherefore, first knowledge of ourselves, that we 
 
 Should be equipped for all we would withstand ; 
 And then the watchfulnesss with wit to see 
 'Neath the disguise the foe that binds the free ; 
 Or leads them into ambush with false hand. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " And sure discrimination lest we lose 
 
 All sense of taste by living on the sweet. 
 Far less suspicious of the charms w^e choose, 
 Than e'en of those we scornfully refuse, 
 
 Since they first fall that deem themselves complete." 
 
 XX. 
 Then spake mine heart : — "The higher life that aims 
 
 At loftier things is sacrifice always : 
 Even as Abram, — severed from acclaims 
 On the hill's silence, whets the blade that maims 
 
 His own heart's happiness with that it slays.
 
 i6o A SONG OF SACRIFICE. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " For even weary we must onward wend ; 
 
 Since never yet was spirit nobly great 
 That would not speed its mission to the end 
 However much the hostile pathways rend 
 
 The bleeding feet which follow lofty Fate 
 
 XXII. 
 " And doubtless it achieves a sweeter joy, 
 
 As loftier ridges catch the purer light : 
 But yet the very distance needs destroy 
 All concord with dissimilar employ, — 
 
 To leave it lonely on a luminous height !"
 
 A SONG OF EVENTIDE. 
 
 I. 
 Now, o'er the intervening waters dumb, 
 
 Bellagio's belfry, weary of the day, 
 Chimes clamorously for the night to come : 
 Whilst the sun's going hushes the earth's hum, 
 
 And spells the fever of life's strain away : 
 
 II. 
 And twilight falls,— like prayer that softens all 
 
 Vain longing, loving, striving, and despair : 
 Twilight, that lays on labour's restless thrall 
 An easeful shade ; and over life, the pall 
 That hides the dust of hopes no longer fair. 
 
 M
 
 1 62 A SONG OF EVENTIDE. 
 
 III. 
 But whilst the ministering sun's intent 
 
 On climbing the high ranges to uplight 
 The gloom of some yet slumbrous continent, 
 The glory of a lesser light is blent, 
 
 Vice-regal o'er the wide domain of night. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Yet not before the land is hushed for her, — 
 
 Respectful to her dignified estate 
 The breezes barely whisper as they stir, 
 The birds are stilled, with scarcely one demur, 
 
 And the stars trim their beacons as they wait : 
 
 V. 
 
 Now comes the moon ! and lo ! the nightingale 
 Makes music of her sovereignty of light, 
 
 And serenades the slumber of the vale ; 
 
 Whilst, all too rapt for speech, the woods exhale 
 Soft odorous sighs of greeting at the sight.
 
 A SONG OF EVENTIDE. \b'- 
 
 VI. 
 And of the night ! how shall I sing of it ? 
 
 God ! thy stars must blazon its delight 
 Upon the page whereon earth's joys are writ ! 
 And all the generous joyaunce they have lit 
 
 Let the pure plumes of angel-pinions write ! 
 
 VII. 
 See ! how the water, ruffled by the air, 
 
 Grows luminous, — as if by light o'ercast 
 From the bright seraph-ministers of prayer ; 
 Whose wings with strong infection of things fair 
 
 Turned the black waves to silver as they passed ! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 How can I sleep for boding when I wake 
 
 1 may have missed the flutter of a song 
 Down-faltering like a feather in the wake 
 Of jubilant choirs ; or, on the listening lake, 
 
 The mirrored forms of some seraphic throng ? 
 
 M 2
 
 i64 A SONG OF EVENTIDE. 
 
 IX. 
 O for one hour of unmolested flight 
 
 That I might waft my pinions o'er Life's shade ; 
 And, soaring upward, pulsed with wild delight, 
 Surmount the deep recesses of the night 
 
 And enter into daylight undismayed !
 
 A SONG OF BELLAGIO. 
 
 I. 
 
 Bellagio ! if ever in my after-dreams 
 
 The spirit of fond nightly counsels fair 
 Should seek a scene wherein all beauty seems 
 The dimmer pencillings of perfect gleams, 
 Lo, I, in following, shall find tJiee there ! 
 
 II. 
 
 And in a vision I shall see thy shore : 
 
 And by the marge the tinted sails of ships : 
 And on the prow the silken bales, and o'er 
 The mizenmast the bannered cross that bore 
 The curse of bondage from Italia's lips :
 
 J 66 A SONG OF BELLAGIO. 
 
 III. 
 
 And at the helm, the stedfast form of him 
 Who calculates the pulses of the prow : 
 And by the idle rowlocks them that trim 
 The loosened bosom of the sail, and limb 
 
 The amorous wind to murmur there love's vow. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Triumphant she, what time his lips prevail : 
 
 And while he tarries, tremulous with bliss ; 
 But, frail thy faltering, O sad love-sick sail. 
 When the fleet ardours of his passion fail. 
 And thy breast heaves to his departing kiss ! 
 
 V. 
 Alas ! the drooped dejection when he goes ; 
 
 The nerveless apathy ; the anguish mute; 
 The utter loneliness of life that knows 
 The bitterest bitterness is that which grows 
 
 And cankers in the sweetness of love's fruit.
 
 A SONG OF BELLAGIO. 167 
 
 VI. 
 And, in the vision, mine enraptured eyes 
 
 Would note the exquisite colour of the hills — 
 Olive and sycamore ; — and pine, that lies 
 Twixt Giovanni's silken industries 
 
 And the bright bay which Melzi's palace fills : 
 
 VII. 
 
 Should watch the skies — bluer than aught that be, 
 Save such, methinks, which mid the fulsome fume 
 Of grim Vesuvius by far Napoli 
 Seem azure isles engulphed in sullen sea. 
 Or turquoise studded in enamel gloom : 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And, breeze-companioned, skirt the southern side ; 
 
 Or with an odorous western wind for pard, 
 Compass the water's narrowy width of tide 
 To sweet Carlotta's marble staircase wide. 
 
 Sung by the gentle Transatlantic Bard,
 
 1 68 A SONG OF BELLAGIO. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Where files of plane surmount the entrance-flight 
 
 Tethered with trelissed banksians stedfastly : 
 And on the upward slope azaleas — bright 
 With sunny springtide's prodigal delight, 
 And rhododendrons flushed with ecstasy. 
 
 X. 
 
 Here [in the halls where Cupid woos his love, 
 
 Perfect in passion marble-white and pure ; 
 Where Psyche yearns toward him that bends above, 
 And through the lattice croons the culver dove — 
 " Let sovereigns die but sovereign love endure !"] 
 
 XI. 
 My spirit murmurs, emulous of all 
 
 The affluence which glad light and love bestow, 
 " Lo there is frailty, failure here, and fall 
 In aught that aims at Beauty save it call 
 
 And thrill as these to some responsive throe."
 
 A SONG OF BELLAGIO. 169 
 
 XII. 
 And straightway feels the vision incomplete, 
 
 And leaning up toward Heaven, sighs, — "Bright 
 land 
 Satiety of earth lies neath the sweet 
 For lack of Heaven !" . . . 
 
 . . Then, flurried sound and beat 
 Of sudden wings tumultuously fanned, 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Flutters the solemn silence of the stars ! 
 
 And one descendeth to me as a bird 
 That has been loosened from bright golden bars. 
 But loves not liberty nor the rough jars 
 
 And strain of toil perpetually stirred 
 
 XIV. 
 Then knew I surely Love had floated down 
 
 On winds desirous of content, and I 
 Enfolding her unto my heart did crown 
 Her brow with kisses, and passionately drown 
 
 Her breath with kisses, — sparing but love's sigh .
 
 I70 A SONG OF BELL AGIO. 
 
 XV. 
 And all her smile became as wealth in me ; 
 
 Gold grew unlustreful : the lengthy lands — 
 Where the contented corn nods drowsily 
 Surged like the slow swell of a soulless sea — 
 
 Reckoned as nothing to my heart's demands : 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Glitter of fame was nothing save for her, 
 
 A thing of nought, — a firefly on the sea ; 
 And olden joys seemed blotted out with blur 
 Of barrenness beneath those eyes that stir 
 Love's flame to sudden surge of sparks in me. 
 
 XVII. 
 Existence with a lengthened growth of wing 
 
 Soared from the plain of pleasure's low delight ; 
 And, mounting heavenward, straight began to sing 
 As if the sunbeams were a golden string 
 
 Swept by the joyous pinions of her flight
 
 A SONG OF BELLAGIO. 171 
 
 XVIII. 
 ■' L et me arise and trebly bless," I said, 
 
 " All humankind and species for her sake, 
 Yea, for the precious sake of her who led 
 My life from apathy, and fondly fed 
 
 The heart of me, let all things good awake ! 
 
 XIX. 
 " That men may see how good it is to love, 
 
 And how man's grosser instincts 'neath the ray 
 And passionate fervour of its fire may prove 
 In porcelain purity the far remove 
 
 Which love effects and fashions e'en from clay !" 
 
 XX. 
 
 Then, sweet Bellagio, when mine angel-dove 
 
 Nestling beside me saith : — " To thee I'm given 
 In answer to thy dream-plaint heard above," 
 The enraptured dream-soul in me sighs — " With love 
 Call not this clime Bellagio but Heaven !"
 
 A SONG OF FAREWELL. 
 
 I. 
 
 I breathe Farewell ! Not knowing if again 
 
 Mine eyes shall sparkle to thy sunny smile : 
 Not knowing if with yon moon's splendid wane 
 The light of thee shall pass from my life's strain — 
 In shade completed an unbroken while. 
 
 II. 
 
 The stars abide, as other gleams I know 
 
 Will cast a fitful radiance on my dreams : 
 But ah ! there trembles in each lesser throe 
 The fashion of some sweet First-passion's glow 
 Till the eye weeps that tears may dull its gleams.
 
 A SONG OF FAREWELL. 173 
 
 III. 
 Shall I be happy knowing thou art fair 
 
 In other eyes when I am far away ? 
 Or were I happier knowing that black care 
 Sat on the clouds, and mesmerized thee there 
 
 Until thy lips grow pallid, thy smile grey, 
 
 IV. 
 And thine eyes dimmed in searching after light : 
 
 Sighing, — " If love were here then were I lit !" 
 And weeping, — " Nay, he cometh not to-night : 
 And, Oh ! there rise no morrows to my sight. 
 
 For Care sits 'neath the sun and shadows it" 
 
 V. 
 Nay ! Be thou blest in all that makes thee glad : 
 
 I knew thee joyous, let me dream thee so ! 
 Since if I came and found thee ever sad, 
 Knowing thee not, my heart would deem me mad, 
 
 And I should weep for very weight of woe.
 
 1/4 A SONG OF FAREWELL. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Yield thou the joys for which thy life was given, 
 
 Thou that art Nature's messenger of peace ; 
 That whom thou seest weary and grief-riven, 
 Exiled from home, or homeless wanderer driven 
 From land to land and finding no release, 
 
 VII. 
 
 Thou mayest bless with bounties of soft sighs : 
 
 That in thy life the self of grief be lost : 
 As one's own form no longer will arise 
 Within the glass we gaze on with sad eyes 
 If but one breath of love be on it tost. 
 
 ****** 
 
 VIII. 
 Farewell ! Farewell ! for me, far distant seas : 
 
 Forthee, — sweet tides with Heaven on thy breast- 
 God knows how much thy love hath done to ease 
 My being, — and He grudges not to these 
 
 Poor human instincts to be blest with rest!
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A. 
 
 NOTE TO SONG OF COMO. 
 
 In these days it is scarcely more necessary to speak of the 
 localities than of the loveliness of Lake Como. 
 
 There are larger— perhaps more beautiful — lakes known to the 
 thousands who travel : yet the very name of Como carries with 
 it that attractiveness which is its especial charm. 
 
 The allusions in the text (however inadequate, as all words must 
 be, to express such experience of beauty, ) will, I trust, be found 
 accurate by those who treasure sunny memories of the lakes of 
 Lombardy ; but to those who have never visited Como the 
 allusions in the various songs may be made more intelligible by 
 a few prose details — the principal features mentioned in the text 
 are emphasised with italics. 
 
 Like a Greek A, the lake is divided into three parts. It is 
 where these divisions meet round the richly-wooded height of 
 Sekbelloni that the scene of the poem is laid. 
 
 Beneath our feet lies Bellagio, opposite to Cadenabbia on the 
 western shore. Northward the eye traces the united waters till 
 lost amid the hills which front the distant summits of the snow- 
 crowned Alps. Of near mountains Monte Crocione, Monte Primo, 
 and the Marble Hill over Varenna, are most conspicuous. The
 
 ii APPENDIX. 
 
 village of San Giovanfti, situated southward from Bellagio, faces 
 the Treniezzina — a walk undulating with the shore from Ti-emezzo 
 to Cadenabbia by the Vdla Carlotta (wherein is Canova's Cupid 
 and Psyche). 
 
 Of this district Pliny was a native, and Virgil has celebrated 
 its beauty in song. Nor is it without interest in our present con- 
 nection to remark that Italy has always been linked with the 
 Literature of England : in her learned centres were preserved those 
 studies of form which caused Song to linger still when her creative 
 sway had practically passed to other lands ; and a long chain 
 of English poets, from Surrey to the Brownings, have felt her personal 
 influence strong to develop poetic faculty. Not alone as in the Daisy 
 — our present laureate's foreign sketch — do men still pass, as he 
 
 went, 
 
 " From Como when the light was grey 
 And in my head for hilf the day 
 
 The rich Virgilian rustic measure 
 Of Lari Maxurae all the way. . . ." 
 
 but new songs have sprung into being under the Italian skies, or 
 trace their origin to inspiration thence brought home. 
 
 Wordsworth was perceptibly influenced by his study of the 
 Georgics in his productive years, consoled by feeling himself in 
 touch with Virgil across the centuries, when the array of English 
 talent was against him whom it but recognised by ridicule. He twice 
 vi-iited this lake, once before he really knew himself, and again in 1820 
 before others had any practical ideas of his power, though indeed 
 his best work was done for ever. 
 
 Surely he has well described in prose what I may call the Lake- 
 Feeling, — in words equally applicable to the Lakes of Lombardy 
 as to the waters of Windermere : — 
 
 . . . . " The presence of a lake is indispensable to exhibit to per- 
 fection the beauty of one of these days ; and (one) . . . must have 
 experienced, while looking on the unruffled waters, that the 
 imagination by their aid is carried into recesses of feeling other- 
 wise impenetrable. The reason of this is, that the Heavens are not
 
 APPENDIX. iii 
 
 only brought down into the bosom of the earth, but that the earth 
 is mainly looked at and thought of through the medium of a purer 
 element. ... It may happen that the figure of one oj ike larger 
 birds — a raven or a heron — is crossing silently among the reflected 
 clouds, while the voice of the real bird, from the elements aloft, 
 gently awakens in the spectator the recollection of appetites and 
 instincts, pursuits and occupations, that deform and agitate the 
 world, yet have no power to prevent Nature from putting on an 
 aspect capable of satisfying the most intense cravings for the tran- 
 quil, the lovely, and the perfect, to which man, the ncblest of he 
 creatures, is subject." 
 
 B. 
 
 NOTE TO SONG OF TWO CADENABBIAS. 
 
 Since I wTote this Lyric the following passage was shown to me : 
 " Each Leaf or Flower-form has a counterpart, usually so unlike 
 itself in appearance that no resemblance can be detected by the eye, 
 but governed by the same mathematical formula applied inversely." 
 (^Symbolical Methods of Study, p. 49.) 
 
 This song may be taken in three ways :— simply, as it was first 
 written, as a sketch of one of the most soothing effects of lake 
 scenery, its mysterious loveliness of reflection, and, as a suggestion 
 of the restful power of sympathy : also, it preludes the harmonies 
 attempted to be struck in later Songs,— that, since all that man 
 knows in this life is dual, the Finite has relations to the Infinite, 
 earth is linked to Heaven. 
 
 N
 
 iv APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE TO SONG OF CONTRAST. 
 
 " Grasp some lesson worthy of life's reach. " 
 
 There are very few even among well-informed people who know 
 or who really seem to believe one of the most evident truths in the 
 history of human progress. The truth is — that Poetry has a 
 practical Influence on national life ; and that, in proportion as a 
 writer has the power and the insight of the poet he is called to work 
 important as and perhaps as durable as that of the politician 
 or any other wielder of social forces. 
 
 For an example of how poetry has led the leaders of the busiest 
 century that the world has seen, we have simply to trace backward 
 almost any new movement until we find it opposed with bitterness 
 or scorned as revolutionary or absurd when originally theorised in 
 the writings of a poet who perceived that its time was ripe. Speak- 
 ing on this subject, Mr. Matthew Arnold once observed, that : 
 
 " If it is said that Goethe professes in this way to have deeply 
 influenced but few persons, and those persons poets, one may 
 answer that he could have taken no better way to secure in the end 
 the ear of the world. . . Nevertheless, the process of liberation 
 though sure, is undoubtedly slow." 
 
 The whole question might well occupy a volume, and even " the 
 Defence of Poesie" in regard to the interpretation of NATURE is far 
 too lengthy to enter upon here. Referring my younger readers 
 (among other aids in study of the poets at first hand), to Professor 
 Shairp's excellent little volume. The Poftic Interpretation of Nature, 
 to Mr. Stopford Brooke's suggestive Lectures, entitled Theology in
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 t'le English Poets, to Mr. FrederLk M/crs' Life of Wo7-dsworth, 
 etc., etc. — I would again quote from our late laureate. 
 
 The first passage gives his theory of the poetic office. It was 
 written eighty years ago. Now, scarcely a day passes when in 
 Speech, article, or biography the influence of Wordsworth is not 
 asserted. This is a letter written when he might well have 
 despaired of himself, and of the value of all he wTOte ; yet 
 among the then despised poems are some which his country now 
 considers standard creations of the century. 
 
 Addressing Lady Beaumont, in 1807, he says: "At present, lei 
 me confine myself to my object, which is to make you, my dear 
 'riend, as easy as myself with respect to the poems. Trouble no^ 
 yourself upon their present reception. Of what moment is that 
 compared with what I trust is their destiny? — To console the 
 afflicted, to add stmrhine to daylight by m aking the happier happier : 
 TO TEACH THE YOUNG AND THE GRACIOUS OF EVERY AGE TO SEE, 
 TO THINK AND TO FEEL, and therefore to become more actively and 
 securely virtuous : this is their office, which I trust they will 
 faithfully perform, long after we (that is all that is mortal of us), are 
 mouldered in our graves."* 
 
 Let me now give the conclusion of Professor Shairp's little book, 
 as bearing upon the importance of the poetry of Nature. 
 
 "And Wordsworth alone, adding the philosopher to the Poet, has 
 speculated widely and deeply on the relation in which Nature stands to 
 the soul of man, and on the truths suggested by this relation. In that 
 relation and along the line of thoughts which radiate from it, is to 
 be found the true interpretation of Nature, — that interpretation 
 which the soul of vifin still craves, after Science has said its last 
 
 word, This interpretation, however, is a truth which can onl}' 
 
 be apprehended by the moral imagination : that is, the imagination 
 filled with moral light, and which will commend itself only to the 
 most thoughtful men in their most feeling moods. It is not likely 
 ever to be vindicated by logical processes, or tabulated in scientific 
 
 ' The italics are mine. — J. W. G.-S. 
 
 N 2
 
 ^■\ APPENDIX. 
 
 registers. Not the less for that zV is a vital truth, attesting itself, as 
 all vital truths do, by the harmony it brings into all otir thoughts, — 
 by the response it finds in the inner man." 
 
 Notwithstanding that this " is a truth which can only be appre- 
 hended bj' the moral imagination," and that the imagination, even 
 at its fullest and ripest, falls short of utterance, I have not been 
 disheartened in attempting an audible interpretation of much that 
 is silently familiar to many in the teachings of nature, feeling 
 convinced that the Sphere of Poetry, always inclusive of the 
 Beautiful in Religion, Nature and Science, is as comprehensive 
 of practical effect as of spiritual insight ; and, that further, the 
 Poetry of Nature (though it ma)' seem, and is, in production almost 
 unconscious), demands severe toil, as it claims the highest faculties 
 of those who seek to hear and to interpret the music of those 
 Universal Harmonies. 
 
 However great Wordsworth may be — especially as a pioneer, — 
 there is much to be done in time by those who have power ; the 
 world is larger, and man's universe is yet more noble, since the 
 beginning of the centtu-y's discoveries in the realms over which 
 poetry must assert her manorial rights. 
 
 The philosophy of the Unconscious is claiming these riches : so 
 far as its assertions are true they are best utilised, so far as they are 
 false they are better negatived and counteracted, by the Poetry of 
 the Conscious. 
 
 D. 
 
 NOTE TO SONG OF TRINITY IN NATURE. 
 
 In Roget's Thesaurus I find that " Trinity is hardly ever used 
 except in a theological sense." Nevertheless, there is no other 
 single word convenient for the purpose of expressing a triple 
 thought, — a triad of ideas, — which meets the thinker at the outset of 
 his quest of knowledge. At once he is confronted with Mystery
 
 APPENDIX. vii 
 
 which his mind refuses either to acknowledge as limited or la 
 understand as illimitable — the Absolute or the Infinite ; then, in 
 regarding Nature, if he sees nothing else, by intuition and ex- 
 perience he knows that her work — (which he personifies as her Being) 
 — is continuous ; further, he feels himself limited on all hands bj' 
 what proceeds from the other two forces, as he supposes, and, 
 except in possible relationship either to the Infinite or to the Con- 
 tinuous, he must recognise himself as finite. 
 
 Thus, as symbols wherewith to perform this operation of thought 
 these three terms, the Infinite, the Continuous, and the Finite, (or 
 God, Nature, and Man), must be taken as equal ; whereas what 
 is signified by such symbols can by no possibility be considered as 
 even comparable. Therefore the use of the word Trinity is justifi- 
 able in this connection. 
 
 The Sequence of Questioning (from the Song of Pines to the 
 Song of Revolution), so far as lyrical limitations and my present 
 strength will allow, suggests what may be found in Natiu^e ; teachings 
 which perhaps justify the higher Pantheism of some, teachings cer- 
 tainly of Law and of Order ; intellectual pleasure ; influence 
 strengthening individual minds ; and, as the concluding Ljn-ic of 
 Darkness indicates, the certainty that, in the most violent convulsion 
 of established rule, vitality ever regenerates itself for new eras, and 
 cannot be destroyed although individual type be doomed. Much 
 more than this Nature — as NATURE — cannot teach. 
 
 It may be thought that this too readily yields ground to those who 
 deny that there is any spiritual world. Yet men have lost the 
 strongest position by not blowing up weaker outworks, and there 
 are many truths which a logician abandons to his adversary with the 
 greatest benefit to his own argument. 
 
 Whatever his theological leanings, no one but acknowledges the 
 mental acutene ss of Cardinal Newman ; he has said : That " It 
 is a great question whether Atheism is not as philosophically con- 
 sistent with the phenomena of the physical world taken by them- 
 selves (that is, apart from psychological phenomena, apart from 
 moral considerations, apart from the moral principles by which they
 
 viii APPENDIX. 
 
 must be interpreted, apart from that idea of God which wakes up in 
 the mind under the stimulus of intellectual training) as the 
 doctrine of a creative and governing Power." 
 
 It is for such reasons that the Sequence of Nature ends with 
 Storm, at once destructive and restorative, and this is why (in the 
 Poem and in Philosophy), he who feels that there is a Trinity in 
 Nature, is not satisfied until he has questioned not only the Con- 
 tinuous, but the Finite, and, if it may be, the Infinite Itself. 
 
 NOTE TO THE SONG OF THE VOICE. 
 
 It would be impossible within the limits of a note to give the full 
 theory which is suggested in the lyric of The VOICE. I can only 
 indicate its place : — Following the leaders of what may be classed 
 as the Platonic school of thought (we have no good general term 
 for this tendency of the intellect), many minds are convinced of the 
 existence of a spiritual world. Naturally, — though aware of the 
 incompleteness of such a method, per se, — thinkers have attempted 
 to analyse the structure of their own minds to find data for personal 
 conviction. 
 
 They recognise the instincts of Hereditary Faculty, further knowing 
 these to be modified by time, circumstance and education ; they 
 receive the teaching of Experience, and listen for its reflex action of 
 Conscience ; they accept the conclusive powers of trained and 
 exercised Reason ; they feel the mysterious productive forces of 
 Imagination and of Intellect ; but — perhaps in direct proportion to 
 the greatness of their own genius — these thinkers have been deeply 
 impressed with a sense that, suppletnentingzW these media of know- 
 ledge, there is a " Non-Ego" which is in some way leader to the 
 responsive souls of men. This leader teaches as no human being
 
 APPENDIX. ix 
 
 can or does teach ; arrives at results within the worker's mind which 
 transcend reason and antedate experience ; is assured of absolute 
 right and wTong ; appears to use and dominate natural gifts, and 
 in the words of the English Platonist More, seems " To know better 
 what we would be at than we do ourselves." To cite what men 
 have said on this recognised Influence would be to recount the 
 treasures of the world of thought ; for they have spoken 
 
 "As if the self-same spirit quickened each." 
 
 Song of Receiving,. 
 
 In one sense, therefore, the thought of this IjTic, and of the rest 
 of this Sequence, is not novel : (what of metaphysical thought ever 
 was .'') Yet I believe that the form in which it came to me is new 
 to English Poetry, and perhaps some day it may again be presented 
 in other guise. 
 
 Since writing the Song of the Voice., I have been reminded that 
 Miss Barrett, when working in conjunction with R. H. Home, 
 author of the " farth'ng epic" Orion, (a book which has since been 
 bought by the guinea) proposed that they should together write a 
 drama to be entitled Psyche Apocalypte. Before much more than 
 the skeleton had been constructed, the poetess had a severe illness. 
 Her marriage followed. The notes, etc., were afterwards published 
 with her letters, but the work itself was left incomplete. 
 
 Naturally this memorandum of an uncreated poem cannot be 
 said to prove anything, but, having independently visioned the 
 thought of what to me is a VoiCE, — (to others perhaps a Presence,) — 
 1 was gratified to obser\-e some coincidence between my own con- 
 ception and the inchoate idea of one so sensitive to finest spiritual 
 feeling as the gifted author of " Sonnets from the Portuguese." 
 
 "My idea," writes Miss Barrett, "the terror attending spiritual 
 consciousness — the man's soul to the man— -is something which has 
 not, I think, been worked hitherto, and seems to admit of a certain 
 grandeur and wildness in the execution. 
 
 "The awe of this soul-consciousness breaking into occasional lurid 
 " heats through the chasms of our conventionalities has struck me 
 in my own self-observation, as a mystery of nature very grand in it-
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 self, — and quite a distinct mystery front Conscience. Conscience 
 has to do with action (every thought being spiritual action), and 
 not with abstract existence. There are moments when we are 
 startled at the footsteps of our own being, more than at the thunders 
 of God. 
 
 " Is it impracticable, too shadowy, too mystic, for working 
 dramatically ? . . . 
 
 "Oh, yes ! of course you must often have SEEN Psyche in Visions 
 
 of the Night when deep thought falls upon men !" she says again : 
 
 (the italics being hers.) And this is a fragment of the proposed 
 
 description of her Over-soul, as Emerson would call it, perhaps ? 
 
 " It is some emanation from myself 
 Yet stands apart from me.'' * 
 
 The start was similar, but the dramatic poem, fully mapped out by 
 
 the two authors, would have stretched different wings over diverse 
 
 angles of thought to those of my lyric-sequence of Light. 
 
 NOTE (GENERAL) TO BOOK IV. UNITY IN 
 
 NATURE. 
 
 In continuance of the NOTE to the VOICE, in contrast to the 
 negative teaching of that to Trinity in Nature, and, in con- 
 sideration of the Sequence of the Fourth Book, — I think that it 
 may be well to treat as a whole that which is expressed in its 
 verse. 
 
 ' This was the germ of 7ny thought, — for many days not followed out : — 
 There stirred a voice in me that was not soul, 
 
 And yet was something more than Soul in me : 
 Nor was it intellect shaped^ in control 
 Of narrow schools or rivalries that roll 
 Contentious saws of reason gratingly.
 
 APPENDIX. xi 
 
 The Book asserts the existence of a Spirit-Sense through whose 
 medium we may attain that Knowledge towards which Nature and 
 Experience taken alone cannot guide us. This Lyric-Sequence 
 contains not Songs of Dissonance, but of Harmony. The title im- 
 plies that some answer is given to previous questionings : its 
 scope is that of the Seeker satisfied,— so far as man may be 
 satisfied. 
 
 Whilst these songs are passing through the press. Professor 
 Max Miiller, in the Contemporary Revieiv, (November 1886), ex- 
 amines this very subject, (The words italicised by me especially 
 illustrate the Arqument, p. viii, where the second claim of the 
 Voice is summed up in the expression, sprung from the Infinite of 
 Gody and the Finite of Man ^ 
 
 The line of thought is as follows:— How do we test, how are we assured of 
 Right and Beauty? We do know; we can test: men err— Man knows. Men 
 canonise the evil ; the world knows truth : fashion may decree the prevalence of 
 the ugly, but nothing can bury the Beautiful, or banish it from human recognition • 
 How is this ? 
 
 " Is not the Beautiful without us, or, is it not rather 
 within us ? . . . We have a touchstone for discovering the 
 Good. Whatever is unselfish is Good. But that applies to 
 moral beings, — to men and women only, — not to Nature at 
 large. And, — though nothing can be beautiful, whether in 
 the acts of men, or in the works of Nature, except that 
 which in some sense or other is good, everything that is 
 good is also beautiful. What then is that something which 
 added to the good makes it beautiful, that heavenly grace, 
 that deaiTiaiv X°i-P^^ which the gods alone can shed over the 
 head and shoulders of men ? . . . Some say that what we 
 call the Beautiful is the Good, as seen through the 
 golden veils of Maya : others hold that what we call Good 
 is the Beautiful, hidden in the Holy of Holies, but seen 
 
 BY THE true PRIEST IN THE GLORY OF NATURE, AND 
 HEARD BY THE TRUE PROPHET IN THE STILL SMALL VOICE 
 OF THE HEART. ... It is a great myster)'. It is so to
 
 xii APPENDIX. 
 
 us as it was to Plato. . . . Nor do we all recollect the 
 same ideal — some poor creatures remember none at all — and 
 where we see glimpses of the Beautiful others see nothing 
 but what is pleasing and sweet. The ideal therefore of what 
 is beautiful is within us, that is all we know ; how it came 
 there we shall never know. It is not of this life, else 
 WE COULD define IT, BUT IT UNDERLIES THIS LIFE, 
 ELSE WE COULD NOT FEEL IT. Sotnefjmes it meets us like 
 a sfuile of Nature : sometimes like a glance of God." 
 
 Thus, as the Songs describe, we have a mysterious power of per- 
 ception which seems to find the point whence it is possible to focus 
 the three forces in one vision. Poetry uses her pinions to arrive at 
 this height. In this sense Poetry is taken as the highest spiritual 
 power — the final means whereby any branch of Knowledge attains 
 its point.* 
 
 * As this passage stood at first, a few day.s ago, it contained these words : Poetry 
 with her wings has often attained that to which Science must afterwards cut steps in 
 the hard rock. This, I knew, would stem extravagant to many, so I struck it out. 
 But between penning and printing my attention was drawn to a passage strangely 
 illustrating much that is contained in these notes, in a country paper, the York- 
 shire Vi'cc-kly Post of November 25 ; — " The first of the series of lectures for the 
 penple in connection with the Yorkshire College was delivered on Monday, in the 
 Chemical Lecture Theatre, by Professor Green, on " The Birth and Growth of 
 Worlds." There was a large attendance. 
 
 Professor Green, starting with these lines of Shelley's, 
 
 ' Worlds on worlds are rolling ever from creation to decay, 
 Like the bubbles on a river — sparkling, bursting, borne away.' 
 
 said that here was a revelation for those who listened for the first time to the truth 
 which had inspired such words. 
 
 He spoke of the new discoveries of science, and said that many would be 
 inclined to exclaim : — ' Oh, this is a poet's dream.' It was the dream of one who, 
 if there ever was a poet, was a poet, and whose science inspired his poetic utter- 
 ance. What made a poet ? Was it a command of majestic and sensuous lan- 
 guage ; an ear and an eye quick to catch everything that was musical and every- 
 thing that was lively in man and nature ; a deep sympathy with his fellow-men ; 
 an unwearying play of fancy ? It was all those, and many gifts besides. But 
 there was one thing that more than all was essential, and that more than all 
 marked off the poet from the human crowd, and that was that he had been able 
 to approach somewhat ne;irer than common mortals to that ineffable science of 
 light from w hence all knowledge came. Hence it arose that he was above the 
 average level of the men of his day, .saw things which were hidden even from the 
 wise and prudent, and which would not be recognised as truths till after he was 
 gone. So much that he sang was by his contemporaries set down as a wild dream, 
 an exuberant fancy ; but the generations that followed found it to be a sober 
 truth. Th; poet's inspiration did not very often concern itself with the concrete
 
 APPENDIX. xiii 
 
 Arrived at this point of view, what does man perceive ? At 
 present his footing is too precarious to allow of exact observation. 
 Yet men who have attained from thence to glimpse the Infinite 
 seem to agree that not only are there great laws unified throughout 
 the Universe of which more is generally known at each epoch, but 
 that there are divine Harmonies therein, to which, alone of all 
 Nature, man seems to have power to attune himself, but of which 
 the perception is personal and to a great extent incommunicable. 
 
 In the physical world an instance may be given : (the oldest and 
 simplest is the best :) — Fire is a good servant, and a bad master : 
 man cannot change its destructive powers yet he makes fire through 
 its certain result serve his personal ends. Thus, as signified in the 
 Song of Finding (confined simply to placing himself in com- 
 munion with Nature), man partakes in all that she has, when 
 he knows how to do whatever her master-forces can effect. 
 By watching and adapting himself to her ways, he learns that he 
 can or will be able to meet the most immutable Law so as 
 practically to control it. And a spirit-sense — far removed from the 
 adaptive power of animals,— guides the discoverer — if, perhaps, not 
 altogether the applier— of her secrets. 
 
 But, further the Song of Receiving attempts to indicate that 
 
 objects of sense. Knowledge and truth and virtue were his theme. He busied 
 himself more with the hidden mysteries of the hidden life of man. But every 
 now and then there arose before him the vision of some great physical tnith 
 hitherto unapprehended or only dimly guessed at by science. That he bodied 
 forth, it might be in somewhat obscure poetic diction. Little heed was paid to 
 wl.at he said. It might be that he himself scarcely realised the full meaning of 
 his own words. They stood like the response of an oracle which the faithless 
 laughed to scorn, but for the accomplishment of which the faithful were content 
 to wait. And in the fulness of time the accomplishment came, when the slow and 
 painstaking labours of the .scientific investigator demonstrated to the world at 
 large what was to the poet a flash of inspiration. It was to a poet that a truth in 
 botany, whicli might be said to give a unity to that science, was revealed. It was 
 a poet who foresaw all the triumph which steam had realised, and some which it 
 had not yet compassed. Were Shelley's lines, which he had quoted, in any way a 
 case in point .' Had science confirmed his inspired utterance ? As yet science 
 could scarcely be said to have done as much as tha', but it had gone a long way 
 towards it. Shellev knew nothing of the scientific truths which he (Professor 
 Green) was about io tell 'hem ; but h had nearly hit the mark. It was not 
 absolutely certain that Shelley's view was right, but he went a great way towards 
 the tiuth, and the balance of probability in favour of its being true was very large 
 indeed."
 
 xiv APPENDIX. 
 
 the world of Nature has its spiritual counterpart. This is no new 
 idea. The following passage puts the argument very pithily. 
 
 Professor Bowen (of Harvards, U.S.) translated it from a com- 
 mentator on Schelling : — 
 
 " Matter and mind exhibiting the same conflict of opposed 
 forces, must themselves be capable of Union in a higher 
 identity. There is the same Absolute in Nature as in mind, 
 and their harmony is no mere reflection of thought. If you 
 maintain that it is we who only transfer this idea to Nature, 
 then never upon your soul has any dream dawned of what, 
 for us, Nature is, and should be. Nature shall be the 
 visible soul, and soul the invisible Nature. Nature appears 
 thus as the counterpart of mind. . . . For this reason there 
 is something symbolical in every thing organic. . . . The 
 whole system of the Universe, therefore is a species of 
 organisation, formed from a centre outward, and rising ever 
 from lower to higher stages." 
 
 Now, if the spiritual Life has anything within it corresponding 
 to the ^Physical Universe, man's relation to both must be 
 identical, and the functions of the Spirit-sense acting in the same 
 manner would produce a similar result : firstly, of theoretical 
 Harmony; secondly, of practical Helpfulness. Therefore, addressing 
 the Spirit-sense (in its personal manifestation, the Vqice), the 
 Seeker is justified in exclaiming : — 
 
 " What Nature has for earth thou hast for me !" 
 
 So it is indicated that where man finds himself in harmony with 
 the Spiritual World (in proportion to personal capacity, courage, 
 and self-control), he becomes able to derive from it the same kind 
 of power in all things pertaining to human relations with its life, as 
 he who knows Physical Law is able to exercise in the spheres 
 comprehended in the Universe of matter. Thus, it shows the 
 secret of those capable of governing other minds in the realms of 
 thought — (it being allowed that such power is of itself r\t\'OcitT good 
 nor evil — ) : we call those who use this Spirit-sense for such pur-
 
 APPENDIX. XV 
 
 poses, Prophets, Teachers, Leaders, etc. ; — and as we hear their 
 words we recognise that — with all their imperfection of vision and 
 of expression, and with our deficiency of comprehension — these men 
 do speak the things that they have seen and know as existent. 
 
 The Song of Aspiration is the natural cry of the soul which 
 thus has found — not attainment, not final rest, but — at once by con- 
 trast a sense of imperfection, and a certainty that (though veiled in 
 mystery, parabled through Nature, symbolised by man's intellect), 
 for the soul of man there is light, and that the path of progress has 
 no finite end. 
 
 In this way Book IV shows : firstly, Nature as the physical aid 
 to human energy — no private instructor, but a demonstrator of 
 Law ; secondly, that, though continuous she is felt to be finite and 
 imperfect with the Perfect and the Infinite '■'■beyond"; thirdly, that she 
 appears to have a Counterpart in a Spiritual world of which those 
 7uost likely to know inform us ; and, finally, that, at one point not 
 removed from her sphere, there seems to be a centre where some per- 
 ceive a Vision of God, Nature, and Man, in perfect harmony of 
 thought.
 
 MR. GILBART-SMITWS POEMS. 
 
 MY LADYE AND OTHERS.* 
 
 A FEW OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 "The sentiments are sometimes illumined by a flash of bright 
 and surpassing fancy ; there is something satirical, something philo- 
 sophical, something Arcadian in them : they are not much, if at 
 all, inferior to the early productions of many distinguished poets, 
 and there is no saying to what height the author may attain, when 
 the lady who is to inspire his more mature lays reveals herself and 
 begins her duties. Under her fostering care he may become more 
 famous, in his respective branches of composition, than Juvenal, 
 Lucretius, and Theocritus ; or, to come nearer home, than Thomas 
 Moore, on whose lines, rather than on those of any ancient classic, 
 one would imagine that he must be fashioned." — Illustrated London 
 News. 
 
 " It was not necessary for this book to be produced, as it has been, 
 with an elegance of type and binding, — remarkable even in this 
 age of costly publication — for it to achieve success. It possesses 
 greater merits far than those of mere quaint typography and artistic 
 covering. These detract rather than enhance its merit, for perhaps 
 not a few will be led to think that the contents are the least 
 important part of the work. Indeed, the ' sunflower' upon the 
 binding is rather alarming. That glorious flower, so loved by great 
 artists, and especially by one of the greatest England has produced 
 — Mulready — has of late, as the emblem of an objectionable and 
 
 * Field and Tuer, 50, Leadenhall Street, E.G.
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 morbid band of poetasters, been rendered only too ridiculous ; and 
 many will confess that a certain misgiving has crept over them when 
 first they saw this book, not but that it is really both quaint and 
 elegant, but there has come over the majority a wholesome feeling, 
 akin to absolute terror, at the mere sight of anything approaching 
 sestheticism. Fortunatel}', however, Mr. Gilbart-Smith's poetry is 
 manly and unaffected, and in no way even faintly suggestive of the 
 unpleasant nonentities to which we have been but too much accus- 
 tomed. Without making any boastful assertion of his attachment 
 to Christianity, this New Poet is to be immediately congratulated 
 upon the profoundly religious tone of his work. His reverence for 
 God and Christ and for the forms and morality of Christianity are 
 not unnecessarily prominent ; but, as did the great poets of old, 
 whenever it is natural for him to mention directly the Deity, or to 
 allude to Him, Mr. Gilbart-Smith does so with sincere reverence. 
 This is, indeed, a great quality just now, when oiu- poets either 
 glory in their sesthetical sentimentality or injure religion by 
 rendering her ridiculous by their patronising airs and weak affec- 
 tations. Admirabl)- conceived, worthy even of the author of the 
 ' Rape of the Lock,' is the charming satire ' Beauty at a Dinner 
 Party,' (p. 12 quoted). One of the early poems in the book 
 entitled ' Weary,' is of high merit. It contains some noteworthy 
 lines. The following, for instance (p. 6 quoted). Two poems, one 
 to ' Toledo' and the other to ' Cadix,' remind, without suggesting any 
 trace of imitation, the reader of Lord Byron. The interior of the 
 magnificent Cathedral at Toledo is thus beautifully described (pp. 
 91, 92, and 93 quoted)." — Morning Post (2nd notice). 
 
 " He possesses culture and has also a considerable mastery over 
 varied forms of metre." — The Scotsman. 
 
 " We have seen many points to admire in this delicious volume 
 of verse." — Public Opinion. 
 
 "The writer has poetical talent." — Daily News. 
 
 " This is a volume to gladden the eye of the genuine book-lover. 
 Mr. Gilbart-Smith's poems show a keen observation and a varied
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. in 
 
 power, which not only make them well worth attention, but give 
 promise of better things to come from the same quarter. We expect 
 to hear of this writer again. — The Queen. 
 
 "In these days of morbid and pseudo- esthetic verse and verse- 
 making, it is a treat to come across such a little volume. . . . 
 The work of a true poet, and of one who promises to take a very 
 high rank in English literature. Not only is the author free from 
 the usual affectations of the day, but, without being what is called 
 'a religious poet,' his verses breathe, when occasion demands, an 
 honest, manly faith which does not meddle with the ' honest doubts' 
 of which we have heard so much for the last quarter of a century, 
 and of which we are most heartily tired. (Alpine Fragment,' 
 quoted pp. 94 and 95). Among others we have marked — all of very 
 high excellence — are 'Ye Sleeper," 'Isabel,' 'The Poet's Recom- 
 pense,' 'The Bee and I,' 'Death,' 'A Voice from the Dead,' 'My 
 Love is like a Daisy,' which we must ask the reader to compare 
 with the dedication we have quoted, and a poem called 'Sympathy,' 
 which we must give entire (pp. 109 and 1 10). In strong contrast to 
 these is the longest and one of the first poems in the volume, entitled 
 'Beauty at a Dinner Party : a Satire by the Cynic,' which is hardly 
 equalled by anything of its kind in the language (pp. 16 and 22 
 quoted). The work is exceedingly well printed and "got up ;" the 
 binding and ornaments leave nothing to be desired, and it is 
 altogether one of the most striking volumes we have seen for long. '' 
 — Liverpool Albion. 
 
 "A less expensive publication would have brought these clever 
 satires within the reach of a larger public, and we almost grudge 
 their restriction to the wealthy few. The burlesque of the super- 
 sensual school is excellent. Nothing could well be funnier than the 
 burlesque of would-be satirists contained in ' Beauty at a Dinner 
 Party." This latter in its affectation of a certain affected vein of 
 pseudo-morality is one of the cleverest things we have seen for some 
 time, and Mr. Gilbart-Smith is to be congratulated on a genuine 
 success. ' ' — Graphic.
 
 iv OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 THE LOVES OF VANDYCK:* 
 
 A TALE OF GENOA. 
 
 " Mr. Gilbart- Smith, in a poem entitled * The Loves of Vandyck,' 
 has made a very successful attempt to revive the romantic school of 
 poetry. For some years past, those v^riters who were not capable 
 of producing melodious verse, decreed that to be dry and often ur. 
 intelligible should be considered the highest aims of the poet. This 
 author's good taste has induced him to follow the natural bent of his 
 talent, which furnishes him with verses full of melody and bright 
 fancy ; his thoughts, often very beautiful, are clothed in exquisite 
 rhyme. . . . The poem, founded on a romantic episode in the 
 life of Vandyck, tells of a festival given in the palace of the cele- 
 brated Sofronisba, Marchesa Lomellini, a bel esprit, where Vandyck 
 saw the fair Paola Marchesa Brignole-Sale, whose stern lord was 
 absent on an embassy into Spain. Mr. Gilbart-Smith introduces a 
 charming song, which will give an idea of his m.anner of treating 
 other than narrative verse (' Ah ! fly with me. Sweetest.'). . . . 
 Fair Paola's truant husband returns, his jealousy is excited by a 
 treacherous friend, and the loves of Vandyck and the beautiful 
 Marchioness terminate tragically. There is much beauty and 
 passion in the author's verse ; it will make its mark. It is so 
 musical as to be assured of a cordial reception from a numerous 
 public, who will look forward with pleasure to a future verse story 
 from the same gifted writer." — Morning Post. 
 
 "There is always ease and freedom in this writer's rhyme." — 
 Academy. 
 
 "In various forms, but with equal success, the poetic faculty of 
 this author has already been manifested. As a satirist, as a good- 
 humoured mocker of affected satire, as a finished sonneteer, as a ripe 
 « Kegan, Paul, Trenxh & Co., i Paternoster Square.
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 and scholarly metaphysician, as a writer of plaintive and tuneful 
 love ditties, as a classic whose verses reflect the moods, now of 
 Theocritus, now of Anacreon, now of Moschus and Bion, and 
 agreeably indicate a returning bent towards the English pastoral 
 poetry which faintly lingered to the early days of Leigh Hunt, and 
 then fled like a dream of old fields. Mr, Gilbart-Smith is always 
 himself, always delightfully natural, always free from taint or tinge 
 of affectation. By evidence not to be traced in the texture of his 
 firm and polished verse, but otherwise afforded, the author of the 
 graceful little book now before us appears to be young. Promise 
 and fruition, like the orange flower and the full-orbed ripeness on a 
 single bough, are seldom presented at once ; but the double offering 
 is here. The subject of the historical or legendary poem is happily 
 chosen and as happily treated." — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 "A pleasant metrical story from the accomplished pen of Mr. 
 Gilbart-Smith. . . . A graceful and charmingly written poem." 
 
 — Pictorial World. 
 
 *' A marked improvement on former efforts. The author has the 
 rare gift of full command over the octosyllable measure in which he 
 has elected to write, and avoids the monotony to which it is so 
 dangerously liable by a frequent and ju licious use of the terzett. The 
 poem is musical and deserving of praise, while the romantic story 
 will be new to most readers. The best part is the pitiful episode of 
 Paola. " — Graphic. 
 
 "One of the sweetest lyrics of the season." — Galignani's Mes- 
 senger. . 
 
 " Mr. Gilbart- Smith's legend is not the only love story told of the 
 great painter, whose fondness for Anna Von Ophem, a Flemish 
 maiden, though belonging to an earlier date, is more authentic, 
 better known, and in its way quite romantic. The writer of the 
 small volume before us is known for his smooth and beautiful verse, 
 and there are passages here fully equal to his reputation. One 
 uniform measure is not adopted, the leading metre being varied by 
 the introduction of some charming lyrical passages," — Queen.
 
 vi OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 THE LOG O' THE 'NORSEMAN.'* 
 
 Small crown 8?'<?, cloth, bevelled boards, ^s. 
 
 " Mr. J. W, Gilbart- Smith, of whose poetic faculty and feeling 
 undeniable evidence was afforded by his ' Loves of Vandyck,' as 
 well as by the preceding volume, ' My Ladye and Others,' comes 
 again before the critics and lovers of lyric verse, with a book of 
 travel in Southern Europe, such as, in these days of railways and 
 steamboats, may be recommended as a companion to any tourist in 
 danger of lapsing into the dull commonplace thoughts frequently 
 attendant on those modem methods of moving from place to place. 
 It was once the fashion for ramblers in the South to take as a manual 
 of geographic beauty, no less than of epicurean philosophy and deep 
 poetic insight. Lord Byron's nobly descriptive epic, ' Child e 
 Harold ;' . . . nor will Mr. Gilbart-Smith's delightful string of 
 sonnets, songs, and lyrics suffer by comparison in these practical 
 respects with the striking stanzas of Byron. Pisa, Florence, Rome, 
 and Naples ; Vesuvius and Pompeii ; Mount Etna, Syracuse, 
 Albania, and Corfu, are each in turn the subject of numbers hon- 
 ourable alike to the cultured traveller and the born poet." — Daily 
 Telegraph. 
 
 "From Marseilles round the Mediterranean, with excursions in- 
 land to Rome and other Italian cities. , . . Mr. Gilbart-Smith has 
 a genuine poetic gift. . . . Instinct with that subtle power which 
 distinguishes the poet from the herd of versifiers that infest 
 literature now-a-days. He rings the changes from grave to gay, and 
 
 * Keg.\n, Paul, Trench & Co, i. Paternoster Square, E.G.
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. vii 
 
 those who take him for their guide, philosopher, and friend through 
 the cities and places he has visited, will have no reason to regret their 
 choice. " — Scotsman. 
 
 " There is some good poetry in ' The Log o' the " Norseman." ' 
 Some fine descriptive stanzas and genuine ballads, which are rare 
 indeed in modern poetry, are very noticeable. Mr. Gilbart- Smith 
 has given us some graphic sketches of the Riviera, Genoa, Pisa, 
 Florence, Rome, and Naples ; but he is, perhaps, at his best in his 
 reflections at Pompeii." — Globe. 
 
 "A dexterous and fluent rhyming guide to the sunny South." — 
 World. 
 
 "The marked advance made by Mr. Gilbart-Smith in his charm- 
 ing poem, the 'Loves ofVandyck,' is still more manifest in his 
 latest work, ' The Log o' the " Norseman." ' In form and style of 
 versification it recalls Lord Byron's 'Childe Harold,' without, how- 
 ever, bearing any trace of plagiarism. Some graceful and 
 appropriate lines, however, refer to the death of the late Duke of 
 Albany, the poet having been at Cannes at the time of the decease 
 of the lamented Prince. . . . The finest parts of this descriptive 
 poem, difficult to surpass in vigour and beauty, are the stanzas on 
 Pompeii . . . powerful and pathetic in an unusual degree. The 
 satiric portions of Mr. Gilbart-Smith's work are equally successful. 
 . . . His verse is always natural, yet polished." — Mortiing Post. 
 
 " The idea of the book is to some extent indicated by its title. 
 The ' Norseman' lies first at Marseilles, and subsequently gives the 
 poet opportunities of moralising upon the associations called up by 
 other Mediterranean towns. The descriptive stanzas are interspersed 
 with sonnets, songs, and lyrics that impart a pleasant variety to the 
 book, and send the reader back with renewed zest to the main 
 narrative, if so it may be called. Mr. Gilbart-Smith is strong in 
 descriptive power, and paints the gambling scenes at Monte Carlo 
 with the same force as the ruins of Pompeii. . . . But the author 
 is as pertinent in his satire as powerful in description. . . . Unless 
 we are much mistaken, it cannot be more than six years since he
 
 viii OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 was an undergraduate at Christ Church, and even then labouring 
 under the cruel suspicion of being a versifier. At that time he was 
 oneof a group who held forth upon the floor of the famous Union 
 with a fluency worthy of the days when W. E. Gladstone himself 
 was its president. Even then his utterances were characterised 
 by a vein of satire that made his uprising a signal for general 
 applause among those who loved a lively sitting. Of that group 
 one or two are already in Parliament. . . , a few like Mr. Gilbart- 
 Smith are willing to persuade the world that the progress of 
 Radicalism in Oxford does not prevent the abode of their alma 
 mater from being what Dr. Johnson called his own college, Pem- 
 broke, 'anest of singing birds,' and 'The Logo' the "Norseman"' 
 will, we think, go towards substantiating this belief." — Yorkshire 
 Post. 
 
 " The previous reputation of this poet as a modem minnesinger, 
 entitled to take high rank amongst his compeers, is abundanily 
 confirmed and enlarged by the present beautiful volume, which 
 describes a yachting tour to the Riviera, Italy, and Albania. . . . 
 In satire and pathos alike he is facile pri7tceps, and in his bright 
 flashes of fancy he need not fear comparison with Moore himself. 
 He presents us with many beautiful thoughts in exquisitely 
 melodious verse, and both have evidently sprung from an instinctive 
 love of nature and a quick insight into the lessons of cities silently 
 slumbering in the ruins of a bygone age. Now and again he varies 
 the leading metre by introducing some charming lyrics and sonnets, 
 every one of which would be worth quoting at full length. His 
 song to the gentle ' Nataline di Napoli' and ' Little Maiden' are 
 two of the gems of the book." — GalignanVs Messenger. 
 
 "Contains many high thoughts expressed in flowing verse. . . . 
 He writes his impressions in stanzas modelled upon the metre of 
 'Childe Harold,' interspersed with occasional songs and lyrics; 
 and, although he thereby tacitly challenges comparison with a 
 masterpiece of one of our greatest poets, the reader who gives him 
 patient perusal will be inclined to forgive the apparent presumption." 
 — Queen.
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. ix 
 
 '* Mr. Gilbart-Smith gives us here another volume of Byronic 
 verse. . . . The author is quieter, maturer, and saner than in some 
 earlier books. The ' Log' is a series of descriptive and reflective 
 poems of travel, interspersed v/ith sonnets and lyrics, and strung 
 together into a work of continuous interest." — Academy. 
 
 " ' The Log o' the Norseman" ' is undeniably romantic ; it is 
 written in verse, of a very finished description, and fulfils to a great 
 extent the prophecies made concerning Mr. Gilbart-Smith. He 
 has won his spurs as a recognised poet ; his verses are polished, 
 and are — a strangely rare quality at the present time — poetical. 
 The Queen has accepted a copy of the work." — Court yournal. 
 
 BALLAD 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 WEEKES & CO,, 14, HANOVER STREET, REGENT, STREET. 
 
 "HER STILL SLUMBER/' 
 
 Words and Music by J. W. GILBART-SMITH, M.A., 
 Christ Church, Oxford. 
 
 "Avery pathetic and effective song for a baritone or contralto voice is 'Her 
 Still Slumber,' poetrj' and music by J. W. Gilbart-Smith, M.A." — Graphic. 
 
 POST FREE EIGHTEEN PENCE. 
 
 THIRD EDITION.
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 NEW SONG 
 
 Published by HOLLTS & CO., EBURY STREET, S.W. 
 
 "LOST VOICES." 
 
 Music by Lord Henry Somerset. 
 Words (in memory of Sir Arthur Bateman-Scott, Bart.) 
 
 BY 
 
 J. W. GILBART-SMITH. ^ 
 
 whiting and co., printers, 
 
 beaufort house, 30 and 32, sardinia street, 
 
 Lincoln's inn fields, London.
 
 f
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 'orm L9-75m-7,'61 (0143784)444
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 370 021 
 
 PR 
 Diills
 
 ■■S#Sg^'«!ag*??^^?^^;Si*!fe^«<^^^^^^^^