H' THE WORKS OF TENNYSON THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE WORKS OF TENNYSON WITH NOTES BY THE AUTHOR EDITED WITH MEMOIR BY HALLAM, LORD TENNVSON THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1916 All rights reserved REPLACING Copyright, 1892, 1893, By MACMILLAN & CO. Copyright, 1897, 1907, 1908, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Copyright, 1913, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913. Reprinted October, 1916. Norfajool) T&xn% J. B. Cashing Co. — Berwick «fe Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. CONTENTS. Life and Work Tennyson Alfred Lord To THE Queen Notes . 879 JUVENUJA . . . . . . Claribel Notes Nothing will Die Notes . All Things will Die .... Notes Leonine Elegiacs Notes Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind Notes The Kraken Notes Song Lilian Notes Isabel Notes Mariana Notes To .....'. Notes Madeline Notes Song — The Owl Notes Second Song — To the Same . Recollections of the Arabian Nights Notes Ode to Memory Notes . . . . . Song Notes A Character Notes The Poet Notes The Poet's Mind ..... 14 Notes a79' 2 879 3 880 3 880 3 880 5 880 6 6 880 6 880 9 881 9 9 881 11 881 12 13 882 Juvenilia continued — The Sea-Fairies 14 Notes 882 The Deserted House . . . .15 Notes 882 The Dying Swan 15 Notes A Dirge Notes Love and Death Notes The Ballad of Oriana Notes Circumstance Notes The Merman Notes The Mermaid Notes Adeline .... Notes .... Margaret .... Notes .... Rosalind .... Notes .... Eleanore .... Notes .... 'My life is full of weary days' Notes .... 'When in the darkness over me' Notes .... Early Sonnets 1 . Sonnet to Notes 2. Sonnet to J. M. K. Notes 3- Ivi55^&45 Mine be the strength of spirit' ... 4. Alexander ... Notes 5. Buonaparte . Notes 6. Poland Notes 7. ' Caress 'd or chidden' Notes 882 16 883 17 883 17 883 18 883 18 883 19 883 20 883 20 883 21 883 22 883 23 884 24 884 24 24 884 24 884 24 24 884 25 884 25 884 25 CONTENTS. PAGE Juvenilia — Early Sonnets continued — 8. 'The form, the form alone is elo- quent' 25 Notes 884 9. 'Wan sculptor, weepest thou' . 26 Notes 884 10. 'If I were loved, as I desire to be' 26 Notes 884 11. The Bridesmaid .... 26 Notes 884 The Lady of Shalott, and other Poems : The Lady of Shalott . . . .27 Notes 88s Mariana in the South . . . .29 Notes 88s The Two Voices 30 Notes 88s The Miller's Daughter .... 36 Notes 886 Fatima 38 Notes 887 Q^PQPe 391 Not^ 887I The Sisters 43 Notes 888 To ...... 43 The Palace of Art . . . .43 Notes 888 Lady Clara Vere de Vere ... 48 Notes 891 The May Queen 49 Notes 891 New Year's Eve . . . . . 50 Notes 891 Conclusion 51 Notes 891 yhy Lotos-E aters S3V - Notes ~ 891I Choric Song 53 Notes 891 A Dream of Fair Women . . .55 Notes 892 The Blackbird 60 Notes 894 The Death of the Old Year ... 60 Notes 894 To J. S 61 Notes 894 On a Mourner 62 Notes . . ... ^95 'You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease' 63 Notes 89s 'Of old sat Freedom on the heights' . 63 Notes 89s 'Love thou thy land' .... 63 Notes 895 PAGE The Lady of Shalott, etc., continued — England and America in 17S2 . . 6s Notes 895 The Goose 65 Notes 89s English Idyls and other Poems: The Epic Notes . Morte d'Arthur Notes The Gardener's Daughter; or, the tures Notes Dora Notes Audley Court Notes Walking to the Mail Notes Edwin Morris; or, . Notes St. Simeon Stylites Notes The Talking Oak Notes Love and Duty Notes The Golden Year Notes Ulvsses . Notes ^ithonus the Lake Jotes Locksley Hall ISiOies Godiva . Notes The Day-Dream Notes Prologue The Sleeping Palace The Sleeping Beauty The Arrival The Revival Notes The Departure Notes Moral L'Envoi Notes Epilogue Notes Amphion Notes St. Agnes' Eve Notes Sir Galahad Notes CONTENTS. PAGE j:dward Gray io8 Notes 902 Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue . 108 Notes 902 Lady Clare m Notes 903 The Captain 112 Notes .903 The Lord of Burleigh . . . .113 Notes 903 The Voyage 114 Notes 904 Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere . . iiS Notes 904 A Farewell 116 Notes 904 The Beggar Maid 116 Notes 904 The Eagle 116 Notes 904 'Move eastward, happy earth, and leave' 116 ^Notes 904 * Come not, when I am dead ' . . .119 Notes 904 The Letters 117 Notes 904 The Vision of Sin 117 Notes 904 To , after reading a Life and Letters 120 Notes 905 To E. L., on his Travels in Greece . .121 Notes ....... 905 'Break, break, break' . . . .121 Notes 90s The Poet's Song 121 Notes 905 Enoch Arden, and other Poems: Enoch Arden 122 Notes 90s The Brook 136 Notes . 906 Aylmer's Field 139 Notes 906 Sea Dreams 1S2 Notes . . -. . . . 908 Lucretius 157 Notes 908 The Princess; a Medley . . .161 Notes 909 Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington 212 Notes 919 The Third of February, 1852 . . .216 Notes . 920 The Charge ol the Light Brigade . . 217 Notes 921 PAGE Ode sung at the Opening of the Interna- tional Exhibition 217 Notes 921 A Welcome to Alexandra . . . .218 Notes 921 A Welcome to Her Royal Highness Marie Alexandrovna, Duchess of Edinburgh 219 Notes 921 The Grandmother . . . . .220 Notes . . . . . . .922 Northern Farmer. Old Style . . .223 Notes 922 Northern Farmer. New Style . .22s Notes 922 The Daisy 227 Notes 922 To the Rev. F. D. Maurice . " . .229 Notes 922 WiU 229 Notes 922 In the Valley of Cauteretz . . .229 Notes 922 In the Garden at Swainston . . .230 Notes 922 The Flower 230 Notes 922 Requiescat 230 Notes . . - . . • .923 The Sailor Boy 230 Notes 923 The Islet 231 Notes 923 Child-Songs 231 Notes 923 I. The City Child . . . -231 Notes 923 3. Minnie and Winnie . . . -231 Notes 923 The Spiteful Letter 232 Notes 923 Literary Squabbles 232 Notes 923 The Victim 232 Notes 923 Wages 233 Notes 923 The Higher Pantheism . . • -234 Notes 923 The Voice and the Peak . . . .234 Notes 923 'Flower in the crannied wall' , . .23s Notes 923 A Dedication 235 Notes 923 Experiments : Boadicea . . . . • • 235 Notes . >,^ .. _ . • - • 923 Vlll CONTENTS. PAGR Experiments conlinued — In Quantity . . . ' . .237 Notes 924 Specimen of a Translation of the Iliad in Blank \'erse 238 Notes 925 The Window; or, the Song of the Wrens : The Window 239 Notes 925 Pn the Hill 239 At the Window . . . . . 239 Gone 239 Winter 239 Spring 240 The Letter 240 No Answer 240 The Answer 240 Ay 241 When 241 Marriage Morning .... 241 In Memoriam A. H. H 241 Notes 92s Maxjd : A Monodrama . . . .281 Notes 940 Idylls of the King. In Twelve Books : Dedication 302 Notes 945 The Coming, of Arthur .... 303 Notes 946 The Round Table . . . .311 Notes 948 Gareth and Lynette . . . .311 Notes 948 The Marriage of Geraint . . .335 Notes 951 Geraint and Enid 347 Notes 953 Balin and Balan 362 Notes 954 Merlin and Vivien 373 Notes 9SS Lancelot and Elaine . . 1 .388 Notes 956 The Holy Grail 410 Notes 957 Pelleas and Ettarre .... 425 Notes 961 The Last Tournament . . . .435 Notes 961 Guinevere 447 Notes ...... 963 The Passing of Arthur .' . . . 458 Notes . . . . . . . 964 To the Qu3en 466 Notes 965 PAGE The Lover's Tale . . . .467 Notes 96s To Alfred Tennyson, my Grandson . 490 Ballads and other Poems: The First Quarrel 490 Notes 966 Rizpah 492 Notes . . . • . . . 966 The Northern Cobbler . . . .494 Notes 966 The Revenge : A Ballad of the Fleet . 497 Notes 966 The Sisters 499 Notes 967 . The Village Wife; or, the Entail . . 504 Notes 968 In the^Children's Hospital . . . 507 Notes 968 Dedicatory Poem to the Princess Alice . 508 Notes 968 The Defence of Lucknow . . . 509 Notes 968 Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham . 511 Notes 968 Columbus 514 Notes ....*. 969 The Voyage of Maeldune . . .518 Notes ...... 969 De Profundis : The Two Greetings . . . .521 Notes 970 The Human Cry . . . .522 Notes 972 Sonnets : Prefatory Sonnet to the 'Nineteenth Century' , 522 Notes 972 To the Rev. W. H. Brookfield . .522 Notes 972 Montenegro 523 Notes 972 To Victor Hugo 523 Notes 973 Translations, etc. : Battle of Brunanburh . . . .523 Notes 973 Achilles over the Trench . . .525 Notes ...... 973 To the Princess Frederica of Hanover on her Marriage 526 Notes 973 Sir John Franklin 526 Notes 973 To Dante 526 Notes, 973 CONTENTS, PAGE TlRESIAS, AND OTHER POEMS : Notes 973 To E. Fitzgerald 526 Notes 974 Tiresias 527 Notes 974 The Wreck 53© Notes 974 Despair 533 Notes 975 The Ancient Sage .... 536 Notes 975 The Flight S40 Notes 976 To-morrow 543 Notes 976 The Spinster's Sweet-Arts . . . 545 Notes 976 Locksley Hall Sixty Years after . . 548 Notes 977 Prologue to General Hamley . .556 Notes 977 The Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava 556 Notes 977 Epilogue 557 Notes 978 ToVirgU 558 Notes 978 The Dead Prophet . . . -559 Notes 978 Early Spring 560 Notes 979 Prefatory Poem to my Brother's Sonnets 560 Notes 979 Frater Ave atque Vale . . . .561 Notes 979 Helen's Tower 561 Notes 979 Epitaph on Lord Stratford de Redcliffe . 562 Notes 979 Epitaph on General Gordon . . .562 Notes ...... 079 Epitaph on Caxton .... 562 Notes ...... 979 To the Duke of Argyll .... 562 Notes 979 Hands all Round 562 Notes 980 Freedom 563 Notes 980 To H. R. H. Princess Beatrice . . 563 Notes 980 The Fleet 564 Notes 980 Opening of the Indian and Colonial Ex- hibition by the Queen .... 564 Notes 088 PAGE Tiresias, and other Poems, continued — Poets and their Bibliographies . . 565 Notes 983 To W. C. Macready . . . .565 Queen Mary 569 Notes 981 Harold 636 Notes 984 Becket 676 •' Notes 986 The Cup 730 Notes 990 The Falcon 746 Notes 991 The Promise of May . . . .756 Notes 991 Demeter, and other Poems: To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava . 781 Notes 993 On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria . • . 782 Notes 993 To Professor Jebb 783 Notes . . . . . . 993 Demeter and Persephone . . . 783 Notes 993 Owd Roa 785 Notes 994 Vastness 788 Notes 994 The Ring 790 Notes 994 Forlorn 797 Notes 994 Happy 798 Notes 994 To Ulysses 802 Notes 994 To Mary Boyle . . . . .803 Notes 995 The Progress of Spring .... 804 Notes 995 Merlin and The Gleam .... 806 Notes 995 Romney's Remorse .... 807 Notes ...... 996 Parnassus 810 Notes 996 By an Evolutionist . . . . 8io Notes 996 Far — far — away .... 8n Notes 997 Politics 8n Notes . . . . . .997 CONTENTS. Demeter, and other Poems, continued — Beautiful City 8ii Notes 997 The Roses on the Terrace . . .812 Notes 997 The Play 812 Notes 997 On One who affected an Effeminate Manner 812 Notes . . . . . . 997 To One who ran down the English . 812 Notes . . . . . .997 The Snowdrop 812 Notes 997 The Throstle . . . . .812 Notes 997 The Oak 812 Notes 997 In Memoriam — William George Ward . 813 Notes 997 The Foresters 814 Notes 997 The Death of OEnone, and other Poems : June Bracken and Heather . . .851 Notes 1000 To the Master of Balliol . . .851 The Death of (Enone . . . .851 Notes 1000 St. Telemachus 853 Notes looi Akbar's Dream 854 Notes looi The Bandit's Death . . . .859 Notes I002 The Church-warden and the Curate . 860 Notes 1002 Charity 862 Notes 1002 Kapiolani 863 Notes 1002 The Dawn 864 Notes 1003 The Making of Man . . . .865 Notes 1003 The Dreamer 865 Notes I003 The Death of (Enone, and other Poems, continued — Mechanophilus 865 Notes 1003 Riflemen form ! 866 Notes 1003 The Tourney 866 Notes 1003 The Bee and the Flower . . .867 The Wanderer 867 Poets and Critics . . . .867 Notes 1003 A Voice spake out of the Skies . . 867 Notes 1003 Doubt and Prayer .... 867 Notes ...... 1003 Faith 868 Notes 1003 The Silent Voices . . . .868 Notes . . ... . . 1003 God and the Universe . . . 868 Notes 1003 The Death of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale 868 Notes 1003 Crossing the Bar Notes Additional Poems : *I, Loving Freedom for Herself ' Life of the Life within my Blood ' To . . The Hesperides Song of the Three Sisters The Statesman The Little Maid The Ante-Chamber Three Poems omitted from monam The Grave To A. H. H. . The Victor Hours Havelock Jack Tar Me- 869 1003 873 873 873 873 873 87s 875 876 876 876 877 877 877 877 Notes 879 Index to the First Lines loii Index to 'In Memoriam' 10x5 Ind£x to Songs 1017 LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.^ SOMERSBY. My father was born on August 6, 1809, at the Rectory of Somersby in Lincolnshire, the fourth son of a family of eight sons and four daughters. The parish doctor said of him when a week old — Here's a leg for a babe of a week ! and he would be bound There was not his Uke that year in twenty parishes round. The Tennysons trace their descent through a long hne of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire squires and yeomen from John Tenison of Holderness (1343), and according to Burke are the co-representatives with the Lords Scarsdale of the ancient family of d'Eyncourt. My father's grandfather and two of his uncles sat in Parhament. His father. Dr. Tennyson, Vicar of Somersby, was a distinguished-looking man, cultivated, and fond of languages and science. He was a competent scholar in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and Syriac, and something of a poet, a painter, and a musician. By the right of primogeniture he ought to have inherited a considerable fortune, but his father disinherited him in favour of his younger son Charles Tennyson, and made him take Holy Orders, for which he had no vocation, and this unfitness plunged him at times into deep fits of melancholy. He was a man of the highest truth and honour, and inspired his neighbours with a certain sense of fear, though he was a genial and brilliant conversationaKst. His children were all by nature poets, and Leigh Hunt aptly described them as "a nest of nightingales." When Alfred was a boy, one of his earliest recollections was his grand- mother reading to him '(The_Prisoner of ChiUony" She used to say, "All Alfred's poetry comes from me." This brood of "nightingales" hved 1 [This_ preface to the poems is naturally an abridgment of my Memoir of my father, with here and there some few facts added, illustrating his character or the methods of hi"^ work. The commentaries ani notes are for the most part those which he himself jotted down or bade me jot 40 wn for posthumous publication, — - T.J xi xii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON remote from towns in the lonely heart of the country. It was a time of storm and stress in Europe, but they only caught dim echoes of the great storm, and "that w^orld-earthquake, Waterloo." "According to the best of my recollection," writes my father, "when HE was about eight years old, I covered two sides of a slate with ijrhomsonian blank verse in praise of flowers Zor my brother Charles, who was a year older than I was, Thomson therrbeing the only poet I knew. Before I could read I was in the habit on a stormy day of spreading my arms to the wind, and crying out^I hear a voice that's speaking in the ^\^nd ' and the words 'far, far away' had always a strange charm for me. IVbout ten or eleven JPope's Homer's Iliad ^became a favourite of mineTand I wrote hundreds and hundreds of Unes in the regular Popeian metre, nay even could improvise them, so could my two elder brothers, for my father was a poet and could write regular metre very skilfully." The note continues — "My father once said to me, 'Don't write so rhythmically, break your lines occasionally for the sake of variety.' "'Artist first, then Poet,' some writer said of me. I should answer, 'Poeta tiascitur non fiV ; indeed, 'Poeta nascitur c^ j^/.' LL-Suppose L.was nearer thirty than twenty before I was anything of an artist. At about twelve and onwards I wrote an epic of about six thousand~iines _d la Walter Scott, — full of battles, dealing too with sea and mountain • scenery, — with Scott's regularity of octosyllables and his occasional varieties. Though the performance was very likely worth nothing, I never felt myself more truly inspired. I wrote as much as seventy lines at one time, and used to go shouting them about the fields in the dark. All these early efforts have been destroyed, only my brother-in-law, Edmund Lushington, begged for a page or two of the Scott poem. Some- what later (at fourteen) I wrote a Drama in blank verse, which I have still, and other things. It seems to me I wrote them all in perfect metre." These poems of uncommon promise made my grandfather say with pardonable pride, "If Alfred die one of our great poets will have gone," and at another time, "I should not wonder if Alfred were to revive the greatness of his relative, William Pitt." When Alfred was seven he went to the grammar school at Louth, the little to^ship on the banks of the river Ludd, but he hated the constraint. H« left school in 1820 and returned to Somersby, where his father taught him and his brother Charles until they went to Cambridge. They read the great authors, — the ancient classics, and Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Bacon, Hooker, Bunyan, Addison, Burke, Goldsmith, The Arabian Nights, Malory's Morte D'ArthuA The earHest letter from him that has survived was addressed to his Aunt Marianne Fytche. It is an amusing piece of precocity for a boy of twelve years old. LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON- xill SOMERSBY. My dear Aunt Marianne — When I was at Louth you used to tell me that you should be obliged to me if I would write to you and give you my remarks on works and authors. I shall now fulfil the promise which I made at that time. Going into the library this morning, I picked up "Sampson Agonistes," on which (as I think it is a play you hke) I shall send you my remarks. The first scene is- the lamentation of Sampson, which possesses much pathos and sublimity. This passage, Restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone. But rush upon me thronging, and present Times past, what once I was, and what am now, puts me in mind of that in Dante, which Lord Byron has prefixed to his "Corsair," "Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice, Nella miseria." His complaint of his blindness is particularly beautiful, O loss of sight, of thee I most complain ! Blind among enemies ! O worse than chains. Dungeon or beggary, or decrepit age ! Light, the prime work of God," to me is extinct, And all her various objects of delight Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased Inferior to the vilest now become Of man or worm ; the vilest here excel me : They creep, yet see ; I, dark in light, exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong. Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day ! O first created beam, and thou great Word, "Let there be light !" and light was over all. — I think this is beautiful, particularly O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon. After a long lamentation of Sampson the Chorus enters, saying these words : This, this is he. Softly awhile ; Let us not break in upon him : O change beyond report, thought, or beUef ! See how he lies at random, carelessly di fused. If you look into Bp. Newton's notes, you will find that he informs you that "this beautiful application of the word 'diffused' is borrowed from the Latin." It has the same meaning as temerc in one of the Odes of Horace, Book the second, Sic temere, et rosa Canos odorati capillos. xiv LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON of which this is a free translation, "Why lie we not at random, under the shade of the platain (sub platano) , having our hoary head perfumed with rose water ? " To an English reader the metre of the Chorus may seem unusual, but the difficulty will vanish, when I inform him that it is taken from the Greek. In line 1333 there is this expression, "Chalybean tempered steel." The Chalybes were a nation among the ancients very famous for the making of steel, hence the expression " Chalybean," or peculiar to the Chalybes: in line 147 "the Gates of Azzur"; this probably, as Bp. Newton observes, was to avoid too great an alliteration which the " Gates of Gaza" would have caused, though (in my opinion) it would have rendered it more beautiful : and (tliough I do not affirm it as a fact) perhaps Milton gave it that name for the sake of novelty, as all the world knows he was a great pedant. I have not, at present, time to write any more ; perhaps I may continue my remarks in another letter to you, but (as I am very volatile and fickle) you must not depend upon me, for I think you do not know any one who is so fickle as — Your affectionate nephew, A. Tennyson. Byron, who is mentioned in this letter, was worshipped by my father in his boyhood. He told me that when Byron died he felt stunned and "as if the world had been darkened " for him ; and he could only rush out into the wood and carve on the sandstone rock, "Byron is dead." In his old age he ULed to say, "Byron is too much depreciated now, but he has such force that he will come into his own again. '^ Through these early years my father made many friends among the^incolnshire fa'rmers, labourers, and j&sher folk. "Like Wordsworth on the mountains," said FitzGerald, "Alfred too, when a lad abroad on the wold, sometimes of a night with the shepherd, watched not only the flock on the greensward, ^ but also ' the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas.' Two of his eariiest lines were The rays of many a rolling central star Are flashing earthward, have not reached us yet." \ The Lincolnsliire folk were apt in the early part of the nineteenth century to be uncouth and mannerless. A type of rough independence was my grandfather's coachman, who, blamed for not keeping the harness clean, rushed into the drawing-room, flung the whole harness on the floor, and roared out "Clean it yourself, then." Again, the Somersby cook was a decided character, and "Master Awlfred" heard her in some rage against her master and her mistress exclaim: "If you raked out Hell with a small-tooth comb, you weant find their likes," a phrase which long Ungered in my father's memory. In the poem of "Isabel" he more or less described his mother,^ "a remarkable and saintly woman." She devoted herself entirely to her husband and children, and to the poor of the parish. * Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche. LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xv Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charit}'-, The intuitive decision of a bright And thorough-edged intellect to part Error from crime. She earnestly looked forward to the time when Alfred would become "not only a great poet but a great and good man." ~ He inherited from her a spirit of reverence, humour, love of animals, and extreme sensitiveness. This sensitiveness contrasted remarkably with his great physical strength and his downright bluntness. ''.All the Tennysons are black-blooded," he would say, for his father's melancholy preyed upon them all more or less through life. As a child, in the middle of the black night he would rush forth, fling himself on the graves in the little church- yard — asking God to let him soon be beneath the sod. But his strongest characteristic was his love of Nature, to which he always turned for comfort. Everywhere in Nature he heard a voice — he saw everywhere above Life and Nature "the gleam." Over the mountain, On human faces, And all around me. Moving to melody, Floated the Gleam. r Ti The charm and beauty of the brook at Somersby haunted him. He aelighted to recall the rare richness of the bowery lanes; the wooded hollow of Holy Well; the cold springs flowing from the sandstone rocks, the flowers, the mosses, and the ferris. He loved this land of quiet villages, "ridged wolds," large fields, gray hill-sides, "tufted knolls," noble ash-trees. He had a passion for the "waste enormous marsh," the "heaped lulls that bound the sea," the boundless shore at Mablethorpe, and the thunderous breakers. FitzGerald writes: "I used to say Alfred never should have left old Lincolnshire, where there were not only such good seas, but also such fine lull and dale among 'the Wolds' which he was brought up in, as people in general scarce thought on."~^ My Uncle Charles told how, on the afternoon of the publication of fEe Poems by Two Brothers in 1826, my father and he hired a carriage with some of the money earned, and driving, along foiirteen miles over the wolds and the marsh to Mablethorpe, "shared their triumph with the winds and waves." The following fragment, written on revisiting Mablethorpe, is a notable sample of his descriptive style : — xvi LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON Mablethorpe. Here often when a child I lay reclined : I took delight in this fair land and free ; Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind, And here the Grecian ships all seem'd to be. And here again I come, and only find The drain-cut level of the marshy lea, Gray sand-banks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind, Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea. And this simile in The Last Tournament is also taken from what he often saw there : as the crest of some slow-arching wave, Heard in dead night along that table-shore, Drops flat, and after the great waters break Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves. Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud. From less and less to nothing. Cambridge and Arthur Hallam. In 1827 Frederick Tennyson, the eldest brother, went to Trinity College, and was joined there in the following year by Charles and Alfred. My father felt the confinement of his life after the free country, and a want of inspiration and sympathy in the teaching provided by the college authorities. He writes : I am sitting owl-like and solitary in my rooms (nothing between me and the stars but a stratum of tiles). The hoof of the steed, the roll of the wheel, the shouts of drunken Gown and drunken Town come up from below with a sea-like murmur. I wish to Heaven I had Prince Hussain's fairy carpet to transport me along the deeps of air to your coterie. Nay, I would even take up with his brother Aboul-something's glass for the mere pleasure of a peep. What a pity it is that the golden days of Faerie are over ! What a misery not to be able to con- solidate our gossamer dreams into reality ! . . . When, my dearest Aunt, may I hope to see you again ? I know not how it is, but I feel isolated here in the midst of society. The country is so disgustingly level, the revelry of the place so monotonous, the studies of the University so uninteresting, so much matter of fact. None but dry-headed, calculating, angular little gentlemen can take much delight in A + B, etc. I have been seeking "Falkland" here for a long time without success. Those beautiful extracts from it, which you showed me at Tealby, haunt me incessantly ; but wishes, I think, like telescopes reversed, seem to get their objects at a greater distance. "I can tell you nothing of his college days," writes Edward Fitz- Gerald to a friend, " for I did not know him till they were over, though I LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xvii had seen him two or three times before : I remember him well, a sort of Hyperion.' With his poetic nature and warmth of heart, he soon made his way. Fanny Kemble, who used to visit her brother John, said of him when at college, "Alfred Tennyson was our hero, the great hero of our day." Another friend describes him as "six feet high, broad-chested, strong- limbed, his face Shakespearian, with deep eyehds, his forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, his head finely poised, his hand the admira- tion of sculptors, long fingers with square tips, soft as a child's but of great size and strength. What struck one most about him was the union of strength with refinement." In later years he confessed that he owed much to Cambridge. At Somersby he had studied nature, there he was able to study his fellow- men. His friends were many, scholars and poets, Arthur Hallam, Trench, Brookfield, Milnes, Spring-Rice, Merivale, Lushington, Blakesley, Spedding, Thompson, and others. When my father first came into the dining-hall at Trinity, Thompson said at once, "That man must be a poet !" There was in all these young fellows, keen intellectual energy, imaginative generosity, and public spirit. They called aloud for liberty and toleration. VThe star of Byron, which had shone brightly in m.y father's boyhood, had serf Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, and Wordsworth were in the ascendant. "Byron and Shelley," my father wrote, "however mistaken they were, did yet give the world another heart and new pulses" by their fiery lyrical genius. "If Keats had lived," he added, "he would have been the greatest of us." Wordsworth he looked on "as the greatest poet on the whole since Milton. Blank verse, indeed, is the finest possible vehicle for thought in Shakespeare as well as in Milton, '7 Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset. A society of young Cambridge men, to which my father and most of his friends belonged, called "The Apostles," was then said to be "waxing daily in religion and radicalism." They not only debated on politics but, read Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Bentham, Descartes and \ Kant, and discussed such questions as the Origin of Evil, the Derivation of Moral Sentiments, Prayer, and the Personality of God. Among the Cam- bridge papers I find a remarkable sentence on "Prayer" by Hallam : With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from motions in my own heart ? Why should you distinguish them or how do you know there is any distinction ? Is God less God because He acts by general laws when He deals v/ith the common elements of nature ? . . . That fatal mistake xviii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON which has embarrassed the philosophy of mind with infinite confusion, the mistake of setting value on a thing's origin rather than on its character, of assuming that composite must be less excellent than simple, has not been slow to extend its deleterious influence over the field of practical religion. My father — after perhaps reading Cuvier, or Humboldt — seems " to have propounded in some college discussion the theory that "the develop- ment of the human body might possibly be traced from the radiated, vermicular, molluscous and vertebrate organisms." The question of surprise put to him on this proposition was, "Do you mean that the hiunan brain is at first like a madrepore's, then like a worm's, etc. ? but this cannot be, for they have no brain." At this time, with one or two of his more literary friends, he took a great interest in the work which Hallam had undertaken, a translation from the Vita Nuova of Dante, with notes and prefaces. For this task Hallam, who in 1827 had been in Italy with his parents, and had drunk deep of the older Italian literature, says that he was perfecting himself in German and Spanish, and was proposing to plunge into the Florentine historians and the medieval Schoolmen. He wrote to my father: "I expect to glean a good deal of knowledge from you concerning metres which may be serviceable as well for my philosophy in the notes as for my actual handiwork in the text. - I purpose to discuss considerably about poetry in general, and about the ethical character of Dante's poetry." My father said of his friend: "Arthur Hallam could take in the most abstruse ideas with the utmost rapidity and insight, and had a marvellous power of work and thought, and a wide range of knowledge. On one occasion, I remember, he mastered a difficult book of Descartes at a single sitting." On June 6, 1829, the announcement was made that my father had\ won the Chancellor's prize medal for his poem in blank verse on "Timbuctoo." Out of his "horror of publicity," as he said, he gave it to his friend Merivale for declamation in the Senate House. To win the prize in anything but rhymed heroics was an innovation. My grandfather had desired him to compete, so unwillingly he patched up an old poem on "The Battle of Armageddon," and came out prizeman over Milnes, Hallam, and others. His friends remarked that he had from the first a deep insight into character, and would often turn upon them with a terse and some- \ times grim criticism when they thought him far away in the clouds, as for instance: "There is a want of central dignity about him, he excuses himself," or "That is the quick decision of a mind that sees half the truth." They also pronounced him to be an unusually fine literary critic, and a man of deep thought and infinite humour. His first volume of Poems, chiefly Lyrical was published in 1830. Arthur Hallam criticised \ LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xix it in the Englishman's Magazine, and his enthusiasm was worthy of his true and unselfish friendship. Hallam was, according to my father, "as near perfection as mortal man can be." "If ever man was born for great things," Kemble wrote to his sister Fanny, "he was. Never was a more powerful intellect joined to a purer and holier heart ; and the whole illuminated with the richest imagination, with the most sparkling yet the kindest wit." In this connection I may quote the following note received by me (June 1913) from the present Master of Trinity : It must have been earl}^ in 1886 that I was a guest at Trinity Lodge. After breakfast, one Sunday, Dr. Thompson and I were talking about the Very distin- guished group of his contemporaries, and in particular of the Arthur Hallam of "In Memoriam." I remember saying to Dr. Thompson in substance — I cannot recall my exact words — "Are you able to say, not from later evidence, but from your recoUection of what j^ou thought at the time, which of the two friends had the greater intellect, Hallam or Tennyson?" "Oh, Tennyson !" he said at once with strong emphasis, as if the matter was not open to doubt. Arthur Hallam was often at Somersby and became engaged to my father's sister Emily. \Together my father and he visited the Pyrenees, and held a secret meeting with the leaders of a conspiracy against the tyrant. King Ferdinand of Spain. It was there in the Pyrenees that my father wrote part of "CEnone." Such descriptive hues as these are based upon the Pyrenean scenery : [ There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars / The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea. \ "Before I pass on from 'CEnone,'" Arthur Sidgwick writes, "I may ad3 a word or two on Tennyson's classical poetry generally, and his debt to the great ancient masterpieces. He was perhaps not exactly a scholar in what I may call the narrow professional sense; but in the broadest and truest sense he was a. great scholar. In all Tennyson's classic pieces, 'CEnone,' 'Ulysses,' 'Demeter,' 'Tithonus,' the legendary subjects, and in the two historic subjects, 'Lucretius' and 'Boadicea' the classical tradition is there with full detail, but by the poet's art it is transmuted. ^ 'CEnone' is epic in form, the rest are brief monodramas : the material is all ancient, and in many subtle ways the spirit ; the handling is modern and original. In translations, too few, Tennyson can only be called consummate.''^ — 7 XX LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON In February 183 1 Dr. Tennyson fell ill and summoned my father home from Cambridge, and in March he was found leaning back in his chair, having passed away suddenly and peacefully. The Tennysons, however, did not leave Somersby Rectory until 1837. Hallam still continued to visit them and read Dante, Tasso, and Petrarch with my father and his sister Emily. My father managed all the affairs of the family. His extraordinary common-sense was notable throughout his life, and was frequently commented on by his Cambridge con- temporaries. In 1832 Hallam and he went a tour up the Rhine, and my father published his second volume, Poems by Alfred Tennyson. Some critics saw that a new and true poet had come among them, and Emerson praised the volume in America. Of "The Lady of Shalott," vhich is "not far below the high-water mark of symbolic poetry," ^ Hallam wrote, "The more I read it the more I like it."'y'Of the "Lotos-Eaters" Merivale said to Thompson, "I have converted li^ my readings both my brother and your friend Richardson to faith in the 'Lotos-Eaters.'" "Mariana in the South," written in the South of France, especially delighted Hallam. "The Palace of Art," my father notes, "is the embodiment of my own behef that the godlike life is with man and for man, and that Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters that never can be sundered without tears.'^A Among the'^ems often quoted by Trench and his other friends at this time was "Anacaona," which, however, was not published by him in his collected works. Anacaona. A dark Indian maiden, Warbling in the bloom'd liana, Stepping lightly flower-laden, By the crimson-eyed anana, Wantoning in orange groves Naked, and dark-limb'd, and gay, Bathing in the slumbrous coves, In the cocoa-shadow'd coves. Of sunbright Xaraguay, Who was so happy as Anacaona, The beauty of Espagnola, The golden flower of Hayti ? In the purple island, Crown'd with garlands of cinchona, Lady over wood and highland, The Indian queen, Anacaona, 1 Sir Alfred Lyall. LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxi Dancing on the blossomy plain To a woodland melody : Playing with the scarlet crane, The dragon-fly and scarlet crane, Beneath the papao tree ! Happy, happy was Anacaona, The beauty of Espagnola, The golden flower of Hayti ! Naked, without fear, moving To her Areyto's mellow ditty, Waving a palm branch, wondering, loving, Carolling "Happy, happy Hayti !" She gave the white men welcome all, With her damsels by the bay ; For they were fair-faced and taU, They were more fair-faced and tall, Than the men of Xaraguay, And they smiled on Anacaona, The beauty of Espagnola, The golden flower of Hayti ! Following her wild carol She led them down the pleasant places. For they were kingly in apparel, Loftily stepping with fair faces. But never more upon the shore Dancing at the break of day, In the deep wood no more, — By the deep sea no more, — No more in Xaraguay Wander'd happy Anacaona, The beauty of Espagnola, The golden flower of Hayti ! Christopher North criticised the volume of 1832 sharply in Blackwood: "Alfred is the greatest owl ..." The Quarterly ridiculed the poems pitilessly. My father was depressed by these unfavourable reviews. As Jowett notes: "Tennyson experienced a great deal of pain from the attacks of his enemies. I never remember his receiving the least pleasure from the commendation of his friends." Of flatterers he used to say, "Flattery makes me sick." Friendly criticism of a sane critic hke Spedding or Hallam was much more to him than the praise or dispraise of the multitude. "I think it wisest," he writes to Henry van Dyke, "for a man to do his work in the world as quietly and as well as he can, without much heeding tl;ie praise or dispraise." Hallam urged him to find amusement in those "hair-splitting critics who are the bane xxii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON of good art." "To raise the many," he continued, "to his own real point of view, the artist must employ his energies and create energy in others." The general estimation in which the Quarterly was then held was echoed by an old Lincolnshire squire who assured my father that "the Quarterly was the next book to God's Bible." His friends felt that he had begun to base his poetry more on the broad and common interests of the time and of universal humanity, but their commendation did not much comfort him, and he thought of leaving England to live in Jersey, Italy, or the South of France. Hallam urged him to pubHsh "The Lover's Tale," ^ which had been written in 1828, but he thought it had too many crude thoughts and lines. Of this poem and "Timbuctoo" my father said, "Neither is imitative of any poet, and as far as I know nothing of mine after 'Timbuctoo' was imitative. As for being original, nothing can be said which has not been said before in some form or another." / I Then came a crushing grief, the death of Hallam at Vienna on September I 15, 1833. "The Two Voices" or "Thoughts of a Suicide" was begun under the cloud of this overwhelming sorrow. But such a great friendship and such a loss helped to reveal him to himself. "Alfred," writes one of his friends, "although much broken in spirits, is yet able to divert his thoughts from gloomy brooding, and keep his hand in activity." A still, small voice spake unto me, "Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be ? " Then to the still small voice I said, "Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made." // c My poem of 'Ulysses,'" so his own words teU us, "gives my thought more simply than 'In Memoriam' of the need of going forward and brav- ing the difhculties of life." His behef in God, his strong sense of duty, and his own power made him devote himself to workT^ The following is a list of the week's work which he drew up : Monday — History, German. Tuesday — Chemistry, German. Wednesday — Botany, German. Thursday — Electricity, German. Friday — Animal Physiology, German. Saturday — Mechanics. Sunday — Theology. Next week — ItaHan in the afternoon. Third week — Greek ; and in the evenings Poetry, Racine, MoHere, etc. "Perpetual idleness," he would say, "must be one of the punishments in Hell." Now and then, when he could save a little hoard, he went to London to visit his friends in their homes. One of his troubles at this time was that he was pestered by applications from the editors of magazines and annuals for poems. For example, Milnes wrote to him in 1835 asking 1 This poem, founded on one of Boccaccio's tiiles (1827), was pirated in 1S79, and so he published it with a sequel "The Golden Supper." LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxiii for a contribution to an annual edited by Lord Northampton. He sent the f ollomng answer : December 1836. Dear Richard — As I live eight miles from my post-town and only correspond there'ivith about once a week, you must not wonder if this reaches you somewhat late. Your former brief I received, though some six days behind time, and stamped with the post-marks of every httle market-town in the country, but I did not think it demanded an immediate answer, hence my silence. That you had promised the Marquis I would \vrite for him something exceeding the average length of "Annual compositions" ; that you had promised him I would write at all : I took this for one of those elegant fictions with which you amuse your aunts of evenings, before you get into the small 'hours when dreams are true. Three summers back, provoked by the incivihty of editors, I swore an oath that I would never again have to do with their vapid books, and I brake it in the sweet face of Heaven when I wrote for Lady AVhat's-her-name Wortley. But then her sister wrote to Brookfield and said she (Lady W.) was beautiful, so I could not help it. But whether the Marquis be beautiful or not, I don't much mind ; if he be, let him give God thanks and make no boast. To \vrite for people with prefixes to their names is to milk he-goats; there is neither honour nor profit. Up to this moment I have not even seen The Keepsake: not that I care to see it, for the want of civility decided me not to break mine oath again for man nor woman, and how should such a modest man as I see my small name in collocation vath the great ones of Southey, Wordsworth, R. M. M., etc., and not feel myself a barndoor fowl among peacocks ? Good-bye. — Believe me always thine, A. T. Milnes was angry at the refusal, and my father answered him banter- ingly again : Jan. 10, 1837. Why what in the name of all the powers, my dear Richard, makes you run me down in this fashion ? Now is my nose out of joint, now is my tail not only curled so tight as to Hft me off my hind legs like Alfred Crowquill's poodle, but fairly between them. Many sticks are broken about me. I am the ass in Homer. I am blown. What has so jaundiced your good-natured eyes as to make them mistake harmless banter for insolent iroiiy: harsh terms applicable only to who, big as he is, sits to all posterity astride upon the nipple of hterary dandyism, and "takes her milk for gall" ? "Insolent irony" and "piscatory vanity," as if you had been writing to St. Anthony, who converted the soft souls of salmon ; but may St. Anthony's fire consume all misapprehension, the spleen-bom mother of fivefold more evil on our turnip-spheroid than is malice aforethought. Had I been writing to a nervous, morbidly-irritable man, down in the world, stark-spoiled with the staggers of a mismanaged imagination and quite opprest by fortune and by the reviews, it is possible that I might have halted to find expressions more suitable to his case ; but that you, who seem at least to take the world as it comes, to doff it, and let it pass, that you, a man every way prosperous and talented, should have taken pet at my unhappy badinage made me lay down my pipe and stare at the fire for ten minutes, till the stranger fluttered up the chimney ! You wish that I had never written that passage. So do I, since it seems to ^ve given xxiv LIFE -AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON such offence. Perhaps you Hkewise found a stumbHng-block in the expression "vapid books," as the angry inversion of four commas seems to intimate. But are not Annuals vapid? Or could I possibly mean that what you or Trench or De Vere chose to write therein must be vapid? I thought you knew me better than even to insinuate these things. Had I spoken the same things to you laughingly in my chair, and with my own emphasis, you would have seen what they really meant, but coming to read them peradventure in a fit of indigestion, or with a slight matutinal headache after your Apostolic symposium, you subject them to such misinterpretation as, if I had not sworn to be true friend to you till my latest death- ruckle, would have gone far to make me indignant. But least said soonest mended ; which comes with peculiar grace from me after all this verbiage. You judge me rightly in supposing that I would not be backward in doing a really charitable deed. I will either bring or send you something for your Annual. It is very problematical whether I shall be able to come and see you as I proposed, so do not return earlier from your tour on my account ; and if I come, I should only be able to stop a few days, for, as I and all my people are going to leave this place very shortly never to return, I have much upon my hands. But whether I see you or no — Believe me always thine affectionately, A. Tennyson. I have spoken with Charles. He has promised to contribute to your Annual} Frederick will, I daresay, follow his example. See now whether I am not doing my best for you, and whether you had any occasion to threaten me with that black "Anacaona" and her cocoa-shod coves of niggers. I cannot have her strolling about the land in this way: It is neither gopd for her reputation nor mine. When is Lord Northampton's book to be published, and how long may I wait before I send anything by way of contribution ? In the end "O that 'twere possible" (on which "Maud" was after- wards founded) was sent to Lord Northampton. FitzGerald also notes that in this year Alfred wrote a poem on the Queen's accession, "the burden being 'Here's a health to the Queen of the Isles.'" One stanza I have heard my father repeat : That the voice of a satisfied people may keep A sound in her ears hke the sound of the deep, Like the sound of the deep when the winds are asleep ; Here's a health to the Queen of the Isles. London and Emily Sellwood. Some time about 1835 he had written the following, hitherto unpub- lished, fragment on "Semele," ^ which seems to me too fine to be lost : 1 The Tribute. 2 Semele was beloved by Zeus. Hera (Juno), being jealous of her, visited her in the guise of her old nurse, and persuaded her to ask Zeus to appear to her in the same majesty as he appeared to Hera. Zeus warned Semele of the danger of her request. But she insisted on seeing him in the majesty of his godhead. He accordingly came to her as the god of thunder, and she was burnt up by his lightnings. Zeus, however, I LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON ' xxv Semele. I wish'd to see Him. Who may feel His light and love ? He comes. The blast of Godhead bursts the doors, His mighty hands are twined About the triple forks, and when He speaks The crown of sunlight shudders round Ambrosial temples, and aloft. Fluttering thro' Elysian air, His green and azure mantles float in wavy Foldings, and melodious thimder Wheels in circles. But thou, my son, who shalt be born When I am ashes, to delight the world — Now with measured cymbal-clash Moving on to victory ; Now on music-rolling orbs, A sliding throne, voluptuously Panther-drawn, To throbbings of the thunderous gong. And melody o' the merrily-blowing flute ; Now with troops of clamorous revellers, Merrily, merrily, Rapidly, giddily, Rioting, triumphing Bacchanalians, Rushing in cadence, All in order, Plunging down the viney valleys — In 1837 the Tennyson family left Somersby and established themselves at High Beech in Epping Forest. A little later a life-like portrait is drawn of my father by Carlyle, with whom he was particularly intimate, and of whom he said once to Gladstone, "Carlyle is a poet, to whom Nature has denied the faculty of verse" : Alfred is one of the few British and foreign figures (a not increasing number, I think) who are and remain beautiful to me, a true human soul, or some authentic approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say " Brother ! " However, I doubt he will not come (to see me) ; he often skips me, in these brief visits to town ; skips everybody, indeed ; being a man solitary and sad, as certain men are, dwelling in an element of gloom, carr3-ing a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing into Cosmos. ... He had his breeding at Cambridge, saved her child, Dionysus (Bacchus), with whom she ^was pregnant. After a while this son of hers took her from the lower world up to Olympus, where she became immortal, and was named Thyone. xxvi • LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON as if for the Law or the Church ; being master of a small annuity on his father's decease, he preferred clubbing with his mother and some sisters, to live unpromoted and write poems. In this way he lives still, now here, now there; the family always within reach of London, never in it ; he himself making rare and brief visits, lodging in some old comrade's rooms. I think he must be under forty, not much under it. One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dusky hair ; bright, laughing, hazel eyes ; massive aquiline face — most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe ! We shall see what he will grow to. Among his friends were now numbered Rogers, Carlyle, Thackeray, Dickens, Savage Landor, Maclise, Leigh Hunt, Tom Campbell, Forster, W. E. Gladstone. Of aU London he liked Fleet Street most. He delighted in "the central roar." ''This is the place where I should like to live," he would say, infinitely preferring it to the stuccoed houses of the West End. One day in 1842 FitzGerald records a visit to St. Paul's with him, when he observed : "Merely as an inclosed space in a huge city this is very fine," and when they got out under the heavens into the midst of the "central roar," "This is the Mind, that is a mood of it." While in London he often lodged in 60 Lincoln's Inn Fields, or at 2 Mitre Court in the Temple, dining out at the Cock Tavern. From High Beech the Tennysons migrated to Tunbridge Wells, thence to Boxley, Maidstone, near his favourite sister Cecilia, who married a year later the great Greek scholar, Edmund Lushington. In 1838 he took a tour to Torquay, where he wrote "Audley Court." In 1839 he visited Wales, Mablethorpe, Aberystwith, Bourne- mouth — in 1 840 Warwick, and Coventry, where "Lady Godiva" was written. In 1840 he also went to Mablethorpe and Yorkshire. Nature in her different aspects in these and other different places gave him inspiration, as shown again and again in the poems themselves. The years spent in strenuous labour and self-cultivation, and his quasi-engagement to Emily Sell wood, daughter of Henry Sell wood of Berkshire, and niece of Sir John Franklin, had braced htm for the struggle of Hfe. He would arrange his material which he had "in profusion, and give as perfect a volume as he could to the world." "I felt certain of one point," he said; "if I meant to make any mark at all it must be by shortness, for the men before me had been so diffuse, and most of the big things except King Arthur had been done." "One night," writes Aubrey de Vere, "after he had been reading aloud several of his poems, all of them short, he passed one of them to me and said, 'What is the matter with that poem?' I read it and answered, 'I see nothing to complain of.' He laid his fingers LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxvii on two stanzas of it, the third and fifth, and said, 'Read it again.' After doing so I said, 'It has now more completeness and totality about it, but the two stanzas you cover are among the best.' 'No matter,' he said, 'they make the poem too long-backed, and they must go at any sacrifice. Every short poem,' he remarked, 'should have a definite shape like a curve — sometimes a single, sometimes a double one — assumed by a severed tress or the rind of an apple when flung on the floor.' " The first time he had met Emily SeUwood was at Somersby in 1830, when he saw her suddenly in Holy Well Wood walking with Arthur Hallam, and said to her, "Are you a Dryad or an Oread wandering here?" But the "eternal lack of pence" prevented them marrying until 1850. Up to 1840, however, they corresponded, and subjoined are some fragments of the beautiful letters which he wrote to her : — "The light of this world is too full of refractions for men ever to see one another in their true positions. The world is better than it is called, but wrong and foolish. The whole framework seems wrong, which in the end shall be found right." "Bitterness of any sort becomes not the sons of Adam, still less pride, for they are in that talk of theirs for the most part but as children babbling in the market- place." "The far future has been my world always." "I shall never see the Eternal City, nor that dome, the wonder of the world; I do not think I would live there if I could, and I have no money for touring." " Mablethorpe. I am not so able as in old years to commune alone with Nature. I am housed at Mr. Wildman's, an old friend of mine in these parts : he and his wife are two perfectly honest Methodists. When I came I asked her after news, and she replied: 'Why, Mr. Termyson, there's only one piece of news that I know, that Christ died for all men.' And I said to her: 'That is old news, and good and new news ' ; wherewith the good woman seemed satisfied. I was half- yesterday reading anecdotes of Methodist ministers, and liking to read them too . . . and of the teaching of Christ, that purest light of God." "That made me count the less of the sorrows when I caught a glimpse of the sorrowless Eternity." "A good woman is a wondrous creature, cleaving to the right and the good in all change ; lovely in her youthful comeliness, lovely all her life long in comeliness of heart." ^^ London. There is no one here but John Kemble, with whom I dined twice; he is full of burning indignation against the Russian policy and what he calls the moral barbarism of France; likewise he is striving against what he calls the 'mechanic influence of the age, and its tendency to crush and overpower the spiritual in man,' and indeed what matters it how much man knows and does if he keep not a reverential looking upward ? He is only the subtlest beast in the field." xxviii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON "We must bear or we must die. It is easier perhaps to die, but infinitely less noble. The immortality of man disdains and rejects the thought, the immortahty of man to which the cycles and the aeons are as hours and as days." Throughout his life he always held up this ideal of true love — To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her ; for indeed I know Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man. But teach high thought, and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame. And love of truth, and all that makes a man. The Two Volumes of 1842 and "The Princess" The year 1842 saw the publication of two volumes of poems, some old and re-touched, some new, among them several English Idylls which im- mediately raised him to the front rank of poets. Among the new poems were "The Gardener's Daughter," "Dora," "Locksley Hall," "The Morte d' Arthur," "Love and Duty," "St. Agnes' Eve," "Sir Galahad," "Launcelot and Queen Guinevere," "The Vision of Sin," "Break, Break." The handling of these later poems is much lighter and freer, the interest more varied, deeper and purer; there is more humanity with less imagery, a closer adherence to truth, a greater reliance for effect upon the simplicity of Nature. The Quarterly Review passed from its mood of hostility to one of admiration. Rogers sent his blessing. Of all the criticisms that which pleased him most was a letter from Carlyle : Cheyne Road, Chelsea, December 7, 1842. Dear Tennyson — Wherever this find you, may it find you well, may it come as a friendly greeting to you. I have just been reading your Poems ; I have read certain of them over again, and mean to read them over and over till they become my poems : this fact, with the inferences that lie in it, is of such emphasis in me, I cannot keep it to myself, but must needs acquaint you too with it. If you knew what my relation has been to the thing called English "poetry" for many years back, you would think such fact almost surprising ! Truly it is long since in any English Book, Poetry, or Prose, I have felt the pulse of a real man's heart as I do in this same. A right vahant, true fighting, victorious heart; strong as a lion's, yet gentle, loving, and full of music : what I call a genuine singer's heart ! There are tones as of the nightingale ; low murmurs as of wood-doves at summer noon ; everywhere a noble sound as of the free winds and leafy woods. The sunniest glow of life dwells in that soul, chequered duly with dark streaks from night and Hades : LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxix evei^-^'here one feels as if all were filled with yellow glowing sunlight, some glorious golden Vapour, from which form after form bodies itseh ; naturally, golden forms. In one word, there seems to be a note of "The Eternal ^Melodies " in this man, for which Jet all other men be thankful and joyful ! Your " Dora " reminds me of the Book of Ruth; in the "Two Voices," which, I am told, some re\aewer calls "trivial moraUty," I think of passages in Job. For truth is quite as true in Job's time and Ruth's as now. I know you cannot read German : the more interesting is it to trace in your " Summer Oak " a beautiful kindred to something that is best in Cjoethe; I mean his "Mullerin" (Miller's Daughter) chiefly, with whom the very Mill-dam gets in love, though she proves a flirt after all, and the thing ends in satirical lines ! Very strangely, too, in the "Vision of Sin" I am reminded of my friend Jean Paul. This is not babble, it is speech ; true deposition of a volunteer witness. And so I say let us all rejoice somewhat. And so let us aU smite rhythmically, all in concert, "the sounding furrows," and sail forward with new cheer "beyond the sunset," whither we are bound — It may be that the gulfs will wash us down, It may be we shall touch the happy Isles And see the great Achilles whom we knew. These lines do not make me weep, but there is in me what would fill whole Lachr>Tnatories as I read. But do you, when you return to London, come down to me and let us smoke a pipe together. With few words, with many, s>x with none, it need not be an ineloquent pipe ! Farewell, dear Tennyson; may the gods be good to you. With very great sincerity (and in great haste), I subscribe myself — Yours, T. Carlyle, - During the period preceding the publication of these volumes he saw many old and made many new friends — among them Charles Kingsley, Frederick Robertson, Aubrey de Vere, Coventry Patmore, Robert Brown- ing, Frederick Pollock. Aubrey de Vere gives an accoimt of a visit made at that time to Wordsworth : Alfred Tennyson's largeness of mind and of heart was touchingly illustrated by his reverence for Wordsworth's poetry, notwithstanding that the immense merits which he recognised in it were not, in his opinion, supplemented by a proportionate amount of artistic skill. He was always glad to show reverence to the "old poet," not then within ten years of the age at which the younger one died. "Words- worth," he said to me one day, "is stajnng at Hampstead in the house of his friend Mr. Hoare ; I must go and see him ; and you must come with me. ^Mind you do not tell Rogers, or he will be displeased at m^ being in London and not going to see him." We drove up to Hampstead and knocked at the door, and the next moment it was opened by the poet of the world, at whose side stood the poet of the moimtains. Rogers' old face, which had encountered nearly ninety years, seemed to double the numbers of its wrinkles as he said, not angrily, but very drily: "Ah, you do not come up the hill to see me !" During the visit it was with Tennj^son that the bard of Rydal held discourse, while the recluse of St. James' Place, whom "that angle" especiaUy delighted, conversed with me. As XXX LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON we walked back to London through grassy fields not then built over, Tennyson complained of the old poet's coldness. He had endeavoured to stimulate some latent ardours by telling him of a tropical island where the trees, when they first came into leaf, were a vivid scarlet; — "Every one of them, I told him, one flush all over the island, the colour of blood ! It would not do. I could not inflame his imagination in the least ! " During the preceding year I had had the great honour of passing several days at Rydal Mount with Wordsworth, walking on his mountains, and listening to him at his fireside. I told him that a young poet had lately risen up. Wordsworth answered that he feared from the little he had heard that if Crabbe was the driest of poets, the young aspirant must have the opposite fault. I replied that he should judge for himself, and without leave given,. recited to him two poems by Tennyson, viz. "You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease," and "Of old sat Freedom on the heights." Wordsworth listened with a gradually deepening attention. After a pause he answered, "I must acknowledge that these two poems are very solid and noble in thought. Their diction also seems singularly stately." The new publications, however, did not bring him wealth. In 1844 a physician near Beech Hill, Dr. Allen, with whom the Tennyson family had become acquainted, either conceived or adopted the idea of wood- carving by machinery. He inspired the Tennysons with so great an enthusiasm for it, that by degrees he persuaded my father to give him the money' for which, wearied by a careless agent, he had sold his little estate in Grasby, Lincolnshire, and even the £500 left him as a legacy by Arthur HaUam's aunt. Not merely this, however, — since, but for my father's intervention apparently, all the property of such of the family as were at Beech HiU would have merged in tlijs philanthropic undertaking ; so fascinating was the prospect of oak panels and oak furniture carved by machinery, thus brought by its cheapness within the reach of the multitude. The confidence my father had placed in the "earnest-frothy" Dr. AUen proved to be misplaced. The entire project collapsed; my father's worldly goods were all gone, and a portion of the property of his brothers and sisters. Then followed a season of real hardship and self- sacrifice and many trials for my father and mother, since marriage seemed to be farther off than ever. So severe a hypochondria set in upon him that his friends despaired of his life. "I have," he writes, "drunk one of those most bitter draughts out of the cup of life, which go near to make men hate the world they move in." My uncle, Edmund Lushington, in 1844 generously insured Dr. Allen's life for part of the debt due to my father; the Doctor died in January 1845. His friends procured my father a civil list pension, chiefly through the intervention of Carlyle and Henry HaUam. He recovered his health and set to work again, and in 1847 pubhshed "The Princess," the "herald melody" of the higher education of women, although perhaps in this progressive age the then progressive views expressed there may seem to LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxxi some now somewhat old-fashioned. Andrew Lang writes: "On reading 'The Princess' afresh one is impressed, despite old familiarity, ^\ith the extraordinary influence of its beauty. Here are, indeed, the best words best placed, and that curious felicity of style, which makes every Hne a marvel, and an eternal possession. It is as if Tennyson had taken the advice which Keats gave to SheUey, 'Load every rift \nth ore.'" As for the various characters of the poem, they give all possible views of women's higher education, and as for the Princess Ida, the poet who created her considered her as one of the noblest of his creations. Woman must train herself to do the large work that Ues before her even though she may not be destined to be wife or mother, cultivating her understanding, not her memory only. Her imagination in its highest phases, her inborn spirituaHty and her sjnnpathy Ynih all that is pure, noble, and beautiful, rather than mere social accompUshments ; then and then only will she further the progress of humanity, then and then only will men continue to hold her in reverence. For simple rhythm and word and vowel music he considered his "Come down, O Maid," mostly written in Switzerland (1846), as among his most successful blank verse : Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height : What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang) In height and cold, the splendour of the hills ? But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease To gUde a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, To sit a star upon the sparkhng spire ; And come, for Love is of the valley, come, For Love is of the valley, come thou do'v\Ti ^ ^ And find him ; . . . ... let the torrent dance thee down To find him in the valley ; let the wdld Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, That Hke a broken purpose waste in air : So waste not thou ; but come ; for all the vales Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth Arise to thee ; the children call, and I Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound. Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet ; Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms. And murmuring of innumerable bees. Two versions of "Sweet and Low" were made and were sent to Emily Sellwood to choose which should be pubHshed. The unpubhshed version runs thus : xxxii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON Bright is the moon on the deep, Bright are the cHffs in her beam, ^ . Sleep, my Httle one, sleep ! Look, he smiles, and opens his hands, He sees his father in distant lands, And kisses him there in a dream, Sleep, sleep. Father is over the deep. Father will come to thee soon, Sleep, my pretty one, sleep ! Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the West, * Under the silver moon. Sleep, sleep ! The letters which he received then show that these songs added in 1850 — ''As thro' the land at eve we went," "Sweet and low," "The splendour falls," "Tears, idle tears," "Thy voice is heard thro' roUing drums," "Home they brought her warrior dead," "Ask me no more" — had especially moved the great heart of the people. The following notes on the poem were left by my father : — In the Prologue the "Tale from mouth to mouth" was a game which I have more than once played when I was at Trinity College, Cambridge, with my brother undergraduates. Of course, if he "that inherited the tale" had not attended very carefully to his predecessors, there were contradictions; and if the story were historical, occasional anachronisms. In defence of what some have called the too poetical passages, it should be recollected that the poet of the party was requested to "dress the tale up poetically," and he was full of the "gallant and heroic chronicle." Some of my remarks on passages in the "Princess" have been published by Dawson of Canada, who copied them from a letter which I wrote to him criticizing his study of the "Princess." The child is the link through the parts as shown in the songs which are the best interpreters of the poem. Before the first edition came out, I deliberated with myself whether I should put songs between the separate divisions of the poem ; again I thought that the poem would explain itself, but the pubhc did not see the drift. The first song I wrote was named "The Losing of the Child." The child is sitting on the bank of the river and playing with flowers ; a flood comes down ; a dam has been broken thro' — the child is borne down by the flood; the whole village distracted; after a time the flood has subsided ; the child is thrown safe and sound again upon the bank ; and there is a chotus of jubilant women. After the publication of "The Princess" he went for tours in Cornwall and Ireland. He mixed with many classes of Irish, and often spoke of them "as not only feudal but oriental, loving those in authority to have the iron hand in the silken glove." LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON- xxxiii Marriage, "In Memoriam," and Farringford. / / The year 1850 was the golden year of my father's Kfe. He pubhshed "In Memoriam," at which he had worked through seventeen years. He had written the following section within two months of Arthur Hallam's death: "Fair ship, that from the ItaHan shore." The poem appeared w^hout his name. The critics blundered. One declared that "much shallow art was spent on the tenderness shown to an Amaryllis of the Chancery Bar." Another that "these touching Hnes evidently come from the full heart of the widow of a military man." Throughout "In Memoriam" my father muses on the problems of Life, Death, Knowledge, and Rehgion, and expresses his firm faith in the love of God, in the] "Christ that is to be," in Free-will, and in the life after death of the human soul. On such high subjects as "the blessing of honest behef, the blessing also of 'honest doubt,' the supreme majesty of veracity and every form of truth, the grandeur of the Creator's hving energy in the Universe, as part by part revealed by science, in whose multipHed and advancing triumphs the poet personally exulted; again, in the sacredness and the perfect beauty of human love, wedded and unwedded, brotherly and sisterly, filial and parental, on such high themes — who, I ask, since Dante, has written, I do not say with more piety or more tenderness, but with more manhness and more power ? " ^ He once said to Tyndall, who agreed .with liim. "No evolutionist is able to explain the mind of man, or how any possible change of physiological tissue can produce conscious thought." As to the different forms of Christianity, he observed with Sara Coleridge that "the w^hole logical truth is not the possession of any one party, that it exists in fragments among the several parties, and that much of it is yet to be developed." "Forsitan uno itinere non protest perveniri ad tam grande secretum." He expressed his conviction that "Christianity with its divine Morality, without the central figure and life of Christ, the Son of Man, would become cold"; that this passionate "creed of creeds had done infinitely more for our poor common hiunanity than any preceding rehgion or philosophy." According to Jowett "it w^as in the spirit of an old saint or mystic, and not of a modern rationaUst, that Tennyson habitually thought and felt about the nature of Christ. Never did the sHghtest shadow of ridicule or profaneness mix itself up \vith the apphcations which he made of Scripture, although he was quite aware that there w'ere many points on which he differed widely from the so-called Evangehcal, or High-Church world, and he always strove to keep rehgion free from the taint of ridicule." "What 'In Memoriam' did for us," writes Professor Henry Sidgwick, "for me at least, was to impress on 1 The Master of Trinity (April 1913). xxxiv LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON us the ineffaceable and ineradicable conviction that humanity will not and cannot acquiesce in a godless world. If the possibility of a godless world is excluded, the faith thus restored is for the poet un- questionably a form of Christian faith : there seems to him, then, no reason for doubting that ' the sinless years that breathed . beneath the Syrian blue,' and the marvel of the life continued after the bodily death, were a manifestation of the 'immortal love' which by faith we embrace as the essence of the Divine Nature.'' "I do not know," Stopford Brooke says, "in any of the earlier poems, not even in 'Maud,' anything on a higher range of passionate imagination and breathing more of youthful ardour weighted with dignity of thought than a song like this : Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks. Or take this other where the loveliness of Nature is met and received with joy by that receptive spirit of delight in a sensuous impression which a young man feels; and where the depths of the feehng has wrought the short poem into an intensity of unity : each verse linked like bell to bell in a chime to the verse before it, and all swinging into a triumphant close : sweUing as they go from thought to thought, and finally rising from the landscape of the earth to the landscape of infinite space. Can anything be more impassioned and yet more solemn ! It has the swiftness of youth, and the nobleness of manhood's sacred joy : Sweet after showers, ambrosial air. That rollest from the gorgeous gloom Of evening over brake and bloom And meadow, slowly breathing bare The round of space, and rapt below Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood. And shadowing down the horned flood In ripples, fan my brows and blow The fever from my cheek, and sigh The full new life that feeds thy breath Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death, 111 brethren, let the fancy fly From belt to belt of crimson seas On leagues of odour streaming far, To where in yonder orient star A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.' "Vision after vision of Nature, each of a greater beauty and sentiment than its predecessor, succeed one another, and each of them is fitted to a corresponding exaltation of the emotions of the soul. Take 'Calm and LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxxv stiJl night on yon great plain,' 'By night we h'nger'd on the lawn/ and the storm (he loved tempestuous days) : The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd, The cattle huddled on the lea ; And wdldly dash'd on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world." "It must be remembered," my father notes, "that 'In Memoriam' is a| poem, not an actual biography. It is founded on our friendship, on the engagement of Arthur Hallam to my sister, on his sudden death at Vienna, just before the time fixed for their marriage, and on his burial at Clevedon Church. The poem concludes with the marriage of my youngest sister Cecilia. It was meant to be a kind of Divina Commedia, ending with happiness. The sections were written at many different places, and as the phases of our intercourse came to my memory and suggested them. I did not write them with any view of weaving them into a whole, or for pubhcation, tmtil I found that I had written so many. The different moods of sorrow as in a drama are dramatically given, and my conviction that fear, doubts, and suffering will find answer and rehef only through faith in a God of love. ' I ' is not always the author speaking of himself, but the voice of the human race speaking through him. After the death of A. H. H. the divisions of the poem are made by First Xmas Eve (Section xxvtq.), Second Xmas (Lxxvm.), Third Xmas Eve (civ. and cv., etc.). I myseK did not see Clevedon till years after the burial of A. H. H, Jan. 3, 1834, and then in later editions of 'In Memoriam' I altered the word 'chancel,' which was the word used by Mr. Hallam in his Memoir, to 'dark church.' As to the locaHties in which the poems were written, some were written in Lincolnshire, some in London, Essex, Gloucestershire, Wales, any^vhere where I happened to be. ''And as for the metre of 'In Memoriam' I had no notion till 1880 that Lord Herbert of Cherbury had written his occasional verses in the same metre. I beheved myself the originator of the metre, until after 'In Memoriam' came out, when some one told me that Ben Jonson and Sir PhiHp Sidney had used it." With this year of 1850 came to him at once glory, fame, and competence, and the joy and peace of marrying, at Shiplake on the Thames (June 13), the wife for whom he had so long waited. "The peace of God came into my hfe when I married her." And let me quote here from my Memoir about her, although as a son I cannot allow myself full utterance. "It was she who became my father's adviser in Hterary matters; 'I am proud of her intellect,' he wrote. With her he always discussed what he was working at ; she transcribed his poems ; to her and to no one else he referred for a final criticism before pubKshing. She, \\ith her 'tender, spiritual nature,' xxxvi LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON and instinctive nobility of thought, was always by his side, a ready, cheerful, courageous, wise, and sympathetic counsellor. It was she who shielded his sensitive spirit from the annoyances and trials of life, answering (for example) the innumerable letters addressed to him from all parts of the world. By her quiet sense of humour, by her selfless devotion, by 'her faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven,' she helped him also to the utmost in the hours of his depression and of his sorrow; and to her he wrote two of the most beautiful of his shorter lyrics, 'Dear, near and true,' and the dedicatory Hues which prefaced his last volume, 'The Death of CEnone.'" Five months after his marriage my father was offered the poet-laureate- ship by the Queen, for the Prince Consort had read "In Memoriam" and dehghted in it. Curiously enough the night before the offer came he dreamt that the Prince had kissed him on the cheek, and that he had remarked, "Very kind, but very German." He took a day to consider the offer, and at the last wrote two letters, one accepting and one refusing, and determined to make up his mind after consulting with his friends. He hated being thrust forward before the public. One evening at Bath House Milnes had wished to introduce him to the Duke of Wellington. "No," said he, "why should the great Duke be bothered by a poor poet like me?" When he had been officially proclaimed poet-laureate he complained that he was thenceforward inundated with letters, that he could not possibly answer them all, but at any rate, in many an instance, his correspondence bears witness to his open-hearted kindness and liberality. Moxon asked him to pubHsh a fresh volume of poems. The seventh edition of collected poems appeared in 185 1 with the dedication to the Queen : Rever'd, beloved — O you that hold A nobler office upon earth Than arms or power of brains or birth Could give the warrior Kings of old. A little later were pubHshed National Songs, "Rise, Britons,! Rise," "The Third of February," "Hands aU Round." One of the \ deepest desires of his life was to help the reaHsation of the ideal of an Empire by the most intimate union of every part of our British Empire. He beheved that every part so united would, with a heightening of individuahty to each member, give such strength, greatness, and stabihty to the whole as would make our Empire a faithful and fearless leader in all that is good throughout the world. Dr. Warren writes : English of the English, emphatically a national poet, he was at the same time cosmopolitan in his sympathies,^ and no modern English poet is so well known 1 For example he felt deep sympathy with Poland and Montenegro. His sonnets entitled "Poland" and "Montenegro "-have been translated over and over again in LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxxvii abroad, as the translations of Morel, of Freiligrath, Strodtmann, Feis and others, of Saladino Saladini and D. Vicente De Arana, or the remarkable recent book of Dr. Roman Dyboski on Tennyson's Language attd Style, may testify. At his centenary, his work received, in such articles as those of M. Emile Faguet, M. Firmin Roz, and M. Auguste Filon, a recognition in France yet more striking than that in England. So, again, no Enghsh poet of recent times has met with so much attention across the seas, notably from writers like Stedman, Genung and Van Dyke in the United States, and Dr. S. Dawson and others in our own colonies. Husband and wife set up housekeeping at Warninglid, Sussex, looking on the South Downs ; next year they went to Chapel House, Twickenham, where I was born. Their first child had been born dead. At the time my father wrote : It was Easter Sunday, and at his birth I heard the great roll of the organ, of the uplifted psalm (in the chapel adjoining the house) . Dead as he was I felt proud of him. To-day when I write this down the remembrance of it rather overcomes me : but I am glad that I have seen him, dear little nameless one that hast hved tho' thou hast never breathed, I, thy father, love thee and weep over thee, tho' thou hast no place in the Universe, Who knows? It may be that thou hast. . . . God's will be done. My father and mother later took a tour in Italy, and the poem of the "Daisy" was written to commemorate it. In 1852 he published his great "Ode on the Death of the Duke of WeUington." He also attended a levee at Court in the Court suit that Wordsworth wore, and first became acquainted with his true friend of later years, the Duke of Argyll. "I am so glad to know you," said the Duke. "You won't find much in me after all," was the blunt rejoinder. In 1853 they entered into the occupation of Farringford in the Isle of Wight as their permanent home. When they had first "gazed from the drawing-room window out through the distant wreath of trees towards a sea of Mediterranean blue, with rosy capes beyond, the down on the left rising above the foreground of undulating pai-k, golden-leaved elms and chestnuts, and red-stemmed pines," they agreed that they must if possible have that view to live with. On taking up their abode there they at once settled to a country Kfe, looking after their farm and garden, and tending the poor and sick of the village. His Love of Children. "Maud." The years spent at Farringford were the happiest of my father's life. In March 1854 another son, Lionel, was born. Of babies he would say: dififerent languages, and have been published and republished in these two countries; and the Montenegrins have more than once placed wreaths on his grave in Westminster Abbey. For a Polish appreciation see Mme. Modjeska's Memories and Impressions, pp. 397-8. xxxviii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON "There is something gigantic about them. The wide-eyed wonder of a babe has a majesty in it which as children they lose. They seem to be prophets of a mightier race." To his own children he was devoted, took part in their pastimes and amusements, and was their constant companion. I remember his" emphatic recitation in those far-off years of "Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre, Mironton, mironton, mirontaine," of "Si le roi m'avait donne Paris sa grand' villa," of "Ye Mariners of England," and of "The Burial of Sir John Moore," and my father's words spoken long ago still dwell with me, "A truthful man generally has all virtues." He taught us to appreciate beauty in Nature and in Art. Drama, simple music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, aU had their message for him. The first Latin I learned from him was Horace's fons Bandusiae, and the first Greek the beginning of the Iliad} Before this he liked to make us learn and repeat ballads, and simple poems about Nature, but he would never teach us his own poems, or allow us to get them by heart. In the summer as children we generally passed through London to Lincolnshire, and he would take us for a treat to Westminster Abbey, the Zoological Gardens, the Tower of London, the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum, or the National Gallery. The last he much deHghted in, and would point us out the various excellences of different masters ; he always led the way first of all to the "Raising of Lazarus" by Sebastian del Piombo, and to Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne." A favourite saying of his was, "Make the fives of children as beautiful and happy as possible." He occasionally traveUed in the summer, visited his. friends or enter- tained them in his own house. With FitzGerald he began to learn Persian in order to read Hafiz in the original. F. D. Maurice among others came, and my father welcomed him to his home in the weU-known poem : Come, when no graver cares employ, Grodfather, come and see your boy : Your presence will be sun in winter, Making the little one leap for joy. 1 See article by H. G. Dakyns in Tennyson and His Friends. LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xxxix Should all our churchmen foam in spite , At you, so careful of the right, Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight : Where, far from noise and smoke of town, I watch the twihght falling brown All round a careless-order'd garden Close to the ridge of a noble down. The first important poem which was written at Farringford was "The Charge of the Light Brigade," then (1855) "Maud, or the Madness" — called now the most passionate of love poems, although at first denounced as too morbid and too melancholy to be tolerated. "This poem is a little Hamlet, the history of a morbid poetic soul, under the bhghting influence of a recklessly speculating age. He is the heir of madness, an egotist -with the makings of a cynic, raised to sanity by a pure and holy love which elevates his whole nature, passing from the height of triumph to the lowest depths of misery, driven into madness by the los3 of her whom he has loved, and, when he has at length passed through the fiery furnace, and has recovered his reason, giving himself up to work for the good of mankind through the unselfishness born of his great passion." My father pointed out that even Nature at first presented itself to the man in sad \dsions. And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air. The "blood-red heath," too, is an exaggeration of colour, and his suspicion that all the world is against him is as true to his nature as the mood when he is "fantastically merry." "The peculiarity of this poem," my father added, "is that different phases of passion in one person take the place of different characters." The writing of "Maud" was largely due to that friend of friends, Sir John Simeon. Looking through a volume of manuscripts one day at Farringford Sir John came upon the lyric : O that 'twere p)ossible After long grief and pain To find the arms of my true love Round me once again ! When I was wont to meet her In the silent woody places By the home that gave me birth. We stood tranced in long embraces Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter Than anything on earth. xl LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON ''Why do you keep those beautiful Hues unpublished?" he said. My father told him that the poem had appeared years before in The Tribute, but that it was really intended to be part of a dramatic poem. Sir John gave him no peace until he had woven a story round these Hues, and so "Maud" came into being. I shall never forget his last reading of it at Aldworth on August 24, 1892. He was sitting in his high-backed chair, fronting a southern window, which looks over the groves and yellow corn-fields of Sussex toward the long fine of south downs that stretches from Arundel to Hastings (his high-domed Rembrandt-like head outlined against the sunset-clouds seen through the western window). His voice, low and calm in every-day life, capable of delicate and manifold inflection, but with "organ tones" of great power and range, thoroughly brought out the drama of the poem. From the proceeds of the sale of "Maud" he was enabled to com- plete the purchase of . Farringf ord. In 1854 he visited Glastonbury and Wells, in 1855 the New Forest and Oxford where he was made a D. C. L., in 1856 Wales, in 1858 Norway, in 1859 Portugal, in i860 Cornwall, and in 1861 the Pyrenees, where he wrote "All along the Valley," in memory of his sojourn in the VaUey of Cauteretz with Arthur Hallam more than thirty years before. "The Idylls of the King." In 1859 he brought out his first four "Idylls of the King" — "Enid," "Vivien," "Elaine," and " Guinevere," — which aroused as much enthusiasm as "Maud" had provoked resentment. Ten thousand copies were sold in the week of pubUcation. Thackeray sends a letter to him : Reading the lines ("Blow, bugle, blow") which only one man in the world could have written, I thought about the horns of Elfland blowing in full strength, and Arthur in gold armour and Guinevere in gold hair, and all those heroes and knights and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray lakes in which you have made me live. They seem like facts to me, since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a month was-it?) when I read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I don't like somehow to disturb it, but the delight and gratitude ! Some of his friends, however, like Ruskin, complained that "so great power ought not to be spent on visions of things past but on the Hving present," and that they felt "the art and the finish a fit tie more than they liked to feel it." Swinburne, himself "a reed through which all things blow into music," although dissatisfied with the "scheme" of the "Idylls," admired their "exquisite magnificence of style." And Edward FitzGerald wrote: "I feel how pure, noble, and holy your work is, and whole phrases, lines, and sentences will abide with me, and, I am sure, with men after me." "I believe," my father said to me, "the existence of King Arthur LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xli (500 A.D.) is more or less mythical." He is mentioned in the Welsh Bards of the seventh century as "the leader." In the twelfth century Geoffrey of Monmouth collected the legends about him as a European conqueror in his History of the Britons, and translated them from Celtic into Latin, Wace translated them into French, and added the story of the Round Table. "My meaning in the 'Idylls of the King' was spiritual. I took the legendary stories of the Round Table as illustrations. Arthur was allegorical to me. I intended J;o represent him as the Ideal of the Soul of Man coming in contact with the warring elements of the flesh." He continued, "Poetry is Uke shot silk with many glancing colours. Every reader must find his own interpretation accord- ing to his abiUty, and according to his sympathy with the poet." He notes, "The personal drift of the Idylls is clear enough. The whole is a dream of man coming into practical fife and ruined by one sin (the guilty love of Launcelot and of Guinevere). Birth is a mystery and Death is a myster}'-, and in the midst hes the table-land of Hfe, and its struggles and performances. It is not the history of one man or of one generation, but of a whole cycle of generations. The vision of Arthur as I have drawn him came upon me when while little more than a boy I first Hghted upon Malory." He has made the old legends his own, restored the ideahsm, and infused into them a spirit of modern thought and an ethical signifi- cance, setting his characters in a rich and varied landscape; as indeed, otherwise, these archaic stories would not have appealed to the modern world at large. There is no more reason why he should follow Malory's version than that Malory should be true to Walter Map. He felt himself justified, in always having pictured Arthur in his parable as the ideal man, by such passages as this from Joseph of Exeter: "The old world knows not his peer, nor wiU the future show us his equal : he alone towers over other kings, better than the past ones and greater than those that are to be." "Undoubtedly," Sir Alfred Lyall wTites, "the figure of Arthur — representing a warrior-king endowed with the qualities of unselfishness, clemency, generosity, and noble trustfulness, yet betrayed by his wife and his familiar friend, forgiving her and going forth to die in a last fight against treacherous rebels — has a grandeur and a pathos that might well affect a gravely emotional people. Moreover, the poem is a splendidly illuminated Morahty." The coming of Arthur is on the night of the New Year : when he is wedded "the world is white with May": on a summer night the vision of the Holy Grail appears: and the "Last Tournament is in the following autumn-tide." Guinevere flies through the mists of autumn, and Arthur's death takes place at midnight in midwinter. The form of the "Coming of Arthur" and of the "Passing" is purposely more xlii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON archaic than that of the other Idylls. In 1832 had appeared the first of the Arthurian poems in the form of a lyric, "The Lady of Shalott" (another version of the story of Launcelot and Elaine), and this was followed in 1842 by the other lyrics ''Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere," "Sir Galahad." The 1842 volume also contained the "Morte d' Arthur," written about 1835. In 1869 my father published the "Coming of Arthur," "The Holy GraQ," and "Pelleas and Ettarre," the volume containing also the well-known poems, "Lucretius," "a masterly study of the great Roman sceptic,"^ and the second "Northern Farmer"; in 1871 "The Last Tournament," in 1872 "Gareth and Lynette," and in 1885 "Balin and Balan." Thus he completed the "Idylls of the King" in twelve books. The poem regarded as a whole gives his innermost being more fully perhaps, though not more truly, than "In Memoriam." In "Gareth" the "joy of life in steepness overcome". And victories of ascent " Hves in the eternal youth of goodness. But in the later "Idylls " the allowed sin not only poisons the spring of life in the sinner, but spreads its poison through the whole community. In some natures, even among those who would "rather die than doubt," it breeds suspicion and want of trust in God and man. Some loyal souls are wrought to madness against the world. Others, and some among the highest intellects, become the slaves of the evil which is at first half-disdained. Tender natures sink under the blight, that which is of the highest in them working their death. And in some, as faith dechnes, religion turns from practical goodness and hoHness to superstition : This madness has come on us for our sin. These seek rehef in selfish spiritual excitement, not remembering that man's duty is to forget self in the service of others, and to let visions come and go, and that so only will they see "The Holy Thing." In the Idyll of "Pelleas and Ettarre," selfishness has turned to open crime; it is "the breaking of the storm"; nevertheless Pelleas stUl honours his sacred vow to the King and spares the wrong-doers. Whereas in "The Last Tourna- ment" the wrong-doer "suffers his doom," and "is cloven thro' the brain." We have here the deadly proof of the kinship of all wilful sin, murder fotiowing adultery in closest relation of cause and consequence, — the prelude of the final act of the tragedy which culminates in the temporary triumph of evil, the confusion of the moral order, closing in the great "Battle of the West." When my father wrote the dedication of "The Idylls or Epylls of the ICing" to the Prince Consort after his death, the Queen invited him to visit her. He was much affected by his interview. He told how she stood pale and statue-like before him speaking jn a 1 Andrew Lang. LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xliii quiet, unutterably sad voice. "There was a kind of stately innocence about her." She said many kind things to him, such as: "Next to the Bible 'In Memoriam' is my comfort." She talked of Hallam, and of Macaulay, of Goethe, and of Schiller in connection with the Prince, and observed that he was so hke * the picture of Arthur Hallam in "In Memoriam," even to his blue eyes. My father suggested that he thought that the Prince would have made a great King ; she answered, "He always said that it did not signify whether he did the right thing or did not, so long as the right thing was done." As will be seen from the letters between my father and the Queen in my Memoir of my father there was a very real friendship between them. After another interview, November 1883, he wrote to her Majesty, "During our conversation I felt the touch of that true friendship which binds human beings together, whether they be Kings or cobblers." "Enoch Arden," Aldworth, and the Plays. My father now wrote more Enghsh Idylls, "The Idylls of the Hearth." The story of Enoch Arden the fisherman, who after years of exile comes home to find his wife married to another, was given him by the sculptor Woolner. At one time of his life he lodged for many months with fisher- men in their cottages by the sea. He loved the sea as much as any sailor, and knew all its moods whether on the shore or in mid-ocean. Hence some of his most successful poems were "Enoch Arden," "The Revenge," "Break, Break," "The SaQor Boy," "The Voyage," "Sea Dreams." "Enoch Arden" is the most popular of his poems on the Continent. In the volume of 1864 were included "Aylmer's Field," "Tithonus," "The Northern Farmer," "The Flower," "The Grandmother." Edward FitzGerald, after reading "The Northern Farmer," wrote : I read on till the "Lincolnshire Farmer" drew tears to my eyes. I was got back to the substantial rough-spun Nature I knew ; and the old brute, invested by you with the solemn Humour of Humanity, Hke Shakespeare's Shallow, became a more pathetic phenomenon than the knights who revisit the world in your other verse. It may be noted that this study of character set the fashion throughout Great Britain and America of drawing character-sketches in rough-hewn ballads. During the summer of 1864 he visited Brittany. In 1865 he visited Waterloo and Weimar and Dresden, in 1866 Marlborough, in 1867 Dorset- shire and South Devon, in 1868 Tintern Abbey and South Wales. In 1869 he took a tour in Switzerland. In 187 1 he went to North Wales, in 1872 to Paris and Grenoble, in 1873 to the Italian Lakes, and in 1874 xliv LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON to the Pyrenees, which he had last seen in 1861. These tours spurred him on to work, as is shown by the numerous poems written during those years. Meanwhile, he received numberless guests, Garibaldi, Owen, TyndaU, Huxley, Tourgenieff the Russian novelist, Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands, Longfellow, Ge(3rge Eliot, Gladstone, Jenny Lind, Bradley, Montagu Butler, Lady Franklin, Palgrave, Jowett, and the Duke of Argyll. Of Garibaldi he spoke with enthusiasm: ''He is marvellously simple, but in worldly matters he seems to have the divine stupidity of a hero." He wrote his impressions of the man as follows to the Duke of Argyll : — Did you hear Garibaldi repeat any Italian poetry ? I did, for I had heard that he himself had made songs and hymns ; and I asked him, " Are you a poet ? " "Yes," he said quite simply, whereupon I spouted to him a bit of Manzoni's great ode, that which Gladstone translated. I don't know whether he relished it, but he began immediately to speak of Ugo Foscolo, and quoted, with great fervour, a fragment of his "I Sepolcri," beginning with "II navigante che veleggio," etc. and ending with "Delle Parche il canto," which verses he afterwards wrote out for me : and they certainly seem to be fine, whatever the rest of the poem may be. I have not yet read it but mean to do so, for he sent me Foscolo's Poesie from London; and in return I sent him the "Idylls of the King," which I do not suppose he will care for. What a noble human being ! I expected to see a hero and I was not disappointed. One cannot exactly say of him what Chaucer says of the ideal knight, "As meke he was of port as is a maid"; he is more majestic than meek, and his manners have a certain divine simplicity in them, such as I have never witnessed in a native of these islands, among men at least, and they are gentler than those of most young maidens whom I know. He came here and smoked his cigar in my little room and we had a half hour's talk in English, tho' I doubt whether he understood me perfectly, and his meaning was often obscure to me. I ventured to give him a little advice: he denied that he came with any political purpose to England, merely to thank the English for their kindness to him, and the interest they had taken in himself and all Italian matters, and also to consult Ferguson about his leg. Stretching this out he said, "There's a campaign in me yet." When I asked if he returned thro' France, he said he would never set foot on the soil of France again. I happened to make use of this expression, "That fatal debt of gratitude owed by Italy to Napoleon." " Gratitude," he said ; "hasn't he had his pay? his reward? If Napoleon were dead I should be glad, and if I were dead he would be glad." These are slight chronicKngs, but I thought you would like to have them. He seemed especially taken with my two little boys. He now began to study Hebrew with a view to making a metrical version of "Job." One day he asked Jowett to give him a Uteral transla- tion of one of the verses. "But I can't read Hebrew," said Jowett. "What!" he exclaimed, "you the Priest of a great religion and can't read your own sacred books." On April 23, 1868, Shakespeare's LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xlv birthday, he and his friend, Sir John Simeon, laid the foundation of his house, Aldworth, in Sussex, which he afterwards always inhabited in the summer to avoid the stream of tourists who invaded him in the Isle of Wight. We read in my mother's Journal his expression of a wish that, if ever the shields on the mantelpiece in his study were emblazoned, they should be emblazoned with arms or devices representing the great modern poets, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, and Words- worth, and if there had been another shield he would have added MoUere. Aubrey de Vere wrote of the new home : The second home was as well chosen as the first. It lifted England's great poet to a height from which he could gaze on a large portion of that English land which he loved so well, see it basking in its most affluent summer beauty, and only bounded by the "inviolate sea." Year after year he trod its two stately terraces with men the most noted of their time, statesmen, warriors, men of letters, science and art, some of royal race, some famous in far lands, but none more welcome to him than the friends of his youth. Nearly all of those were taken froni him by degrees ; but many of them stand successively recorded in his verse. The days which I passed there yearly with him and his were the happiest days of each year. They will retain a happy place in my memory during whatever short period my life may last ; and the sea murmurs of Freshwater will blend with the sighing of the woods around Aldworth, for me, as for many more worthy, a music, if mournful, yet full of consolation. In 1872 some prominent poKticians were advocating the breaking of the connection between Great Britain and Canada. My father was roused to indignation, and wrote in his "Epilogue to the Idylls of the King": And that true North, whereof we lately heard A strain to shame us "keep you to yourselves; So loyal is too costly ! friends — your love Is but a burthen ; loose the bond, and go." Is this the tone of empire ? here the faith That made us rulers ? this, indeed, her voice And meaning, whom the roar of Hougoumont Left mightiest of all peoples under heaven ? The following letter from Lord Dufferin (February 25, 1873) tells of the happy effect these words had in Canada : — The assertion that their connection with Great Britain weakens their self- confidence or damps the ardour of Canadian Nationality is a pure invention. Amongst no people hav^e I ever met more contentment with their general condition, a more legitimate faith in all those characteristics which constitute their nationality, or a firmer faith in the destinies in store for them. Your noble words have struck responsive fire from every heart; they have been published in every newspaper, and have been completely effectual to heal the wounds occasioned by the senseless language of the Times. xlvi LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON In 1874 he and Sir James Knowles founded the Metaphysical Club, the object of the Society being that those who were ranged on the side of Faith should meet and discuss with those ranged on the side of Unfaith. During one of the prehminary meetings, a propos of some angry discussion, my father said humorously, "Modern science at all events ought to have taught men to separate hght from heat," and this was adopted as the rule of the Society. At this time he was elected an Honorary FeUow of Trinity College, Cambridge. "Queen Mary," the first play of what he called his "historical trilogy" ("Harold," "Becket," and "Queen Mary"), was begun about 1873 and pubhshed in 1875. "This trilogy of plays,'^ he noted, "portrays the making of England." In "Harold" (1876), that "Tragedy of Doom," we have the great conflict between Danes, Saxons, and Normans for supremacy, the awakening of the Enghsh people and clergy from the slumber into which they had for the most part fallen, and the forecast of the greatness of our composite race. In "Becket" (printed 1879, published 1884) the struggle is between the Crown and the Church for predominance, a struggle which continued for many centuries. In "Mary" are described the final downfall of Roman CathoHcism in England, and the dawning of a new age ; for after the era of priestly domination comes the era of the freedom of the individual. "In 'The Foresters'" (1892), he notes, "I have sketched the state of the people in another great transition period of the making of England, when the barons sided with the people and eventually won for them the Magna Charta." To begin pubHshing plays for the stage after he was sixty-five years of age was thought to be a hazardous experiment. He had, however, always taken the liveliest interest in the theatre; and he bestowed infinite trouble on his dramas. He was quite alive to the fact that for him to attempt dramatic work would be at first unpopular, since he was then mainly regarded as an Idyllic, or as a Lyric, poet. But Spedding, a first- rate Shakespearian scholar, George H. Lewes, George EHot, and Irving admired his plays and encouraged him to persevere in spite of all dis- couragement, especially praising the faithful and subtle dehneation of character and the "great dramatic moments." He felt that he had the power; and even at the age of fourteen he had written plays which were extraordinary for a boy, full of vivid contrasts and striking scenic effects. To meet the conditions of the modern theatre my father studied many modern plays. He had also refreshed his mind with reading "Job" in the Hebrew, for which he had the highest admiration, and the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles, which were to him full of reality and moral beauty. All his life he enjoyed discovering the causes of historical and social movements, and had a strong desire to reverse unfair judgments, and an eager dehght in the analysis of human motive. "Queen Mary," LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xlvii ''The Cup," ''The Falcon," "Becket," and "The Foresters" were aU more or less successful on the stage, and it seems to me that some oi his finest work is to be found in them. "Becket" is, as my father recognised, "loosely constructed," but Irving wrote that it was "a finer play than ' King John,' " and said that it was a mistake to imagine that he "had made" "Becket," for this drama, especially the closing act, was "an inspiration." That and "The Cup" were two of Irving's four great popular triumphs. For a while, indeed, original poetic drama was restored by the poet and the actor to the English stage. It was interesting to my father to learn the' impression made by "Becket" upon Roman CathoUcs. He first asked the opinion of his neighbour at Freshwater, W. G. Ward. He could not have asked a more candid, truth-speaking critic than this "most generous of all Ultra- montanes," who was deeply versed not only in the spirit and doctrine of his own Church, but also in the modern French and English drama. Ward Hstened patiently, though convinced "that the whole play would be out of his fine." At the end of the play he broke out: "Dear me ! I did not expect to enjoy it at all. It is splendid ! How wonderfully you have brought out the phases of his character as Chancellor and Archbishop! Where did you get it all?" Struggle for power under one guise or another has doubtless been among the most fruitful sources of theme for tragedy. During many centuries, as we know, "spiritual power," clothed in earthly panoply, seemed to most men to be the one embodiment of the Divine Power. What struck those who saw the play on the stage was the clear and impressive manner in which he had brought out Becket's feehng that in accepting the Archbishopric he had changed masters, that he was not simply advanced to a higher service of the same liege lord, but that he had changed his former lord paramount, whose fiery self-will made havoc of his fine intellect, for one of higher degree ; and had become a power distinct from, and it might be antago- nistic to, the king. His Life in the Country. At this period of his life my father would tramp over hill and dale, with his crook-handled stick, accompanied by my brother, myself, or a friend, and by a dog, not caring if the weather were fair or foul, every now and then stopping in his rapid walk to give point to an argument or to an anecdote. When alone with me he would often chant a poem that he was composing, and add fresh fines. There was the same keen eye as of old for strange birds or flowers, and, as of old, the same love of fair landscape. If a tourist were seen coming towards him he would flee; for many would recognise from a distance his broad-brimmed mde-awake (the kind of hat that Carlyle, Sir Henry Taylor, and others of his contemporaries wore) xlviii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON and his short blue cape with velvet collar, and would deliberately make for him in order to put some question. His hours were quite regular. He breakfasted at eight, lunched at two, dined at seven. At dessert, if alone, he would read to himself, or if friends were in the house he would sit with them for an hour or so, and entertain them with varied talk. He worked chiefly in the morning over his pipe, or in the evening after his pint of port, also over his pipe. Rare books or books with splendid bindings he never cared for; yet he treasured his first edition of Spenser's Faerie Queene, and his second edition of Paradise Lost. He would read over and over again his favourite authors, and his deHght was genuine when he came across a new author who ''seemed to have some- thing in him." He was fond of simple music — Beethoven's songs, and EngHsh, Scotch, and Irish ballads. He was not unfrequently abstracted in mood for days while he was composing, which made him appear brusque to strangers, but alone with his family he was never so happy as when engaged on a great subject. His very directness and simpUcity, moreover, caused him sometimes to be misunderstood. With strangers, doubtless, he was shy at first, owing mostly to his short-sight, though none could be more genial when he thawed. No one could have beeM more tolerant of or more* gracious to dull people ; and out of his imaginative large-hearted- ness he usually invested every one with higher qualities than he or she possessed. As Jowett observed, ''He would sit by a very commonplace person, telling stories with the most high-bred courtesy, endless stories not too high or too low for everyday conversation." Frederick Locker thus describes the lighter side of his nature: "Balzac's remark that ' dans tout homme de genie il y a un enfant ' may find its illustration in Tennyson. He is the only grown-up human being that I know of who habitually thinks aloud. His humour is of the dryest, it is admirable. . . . He tells a story excellently, and has a catching laugh. There are people who laugh because they are shy or disconcerted, or for lack of ideas . . . only a few because they are happy or amused, or perhaps triumphant. Tennyson has an entirely natural, and a very kindly laugh." He had the passion of a scientist for facts. His talk travelled over a vast range of subjects, his dignity and repose of manner, his low musical voice, and the power of his magnetic eye keeping the attention riveted. With the country-folk he loved to converse ; especially seeking out the poor old men, from whom he always tried to ascertain their thoughts upon death and the future life. His afternoons he generally spent on one of our smaller lawns, sur- rounded by birch and different sorts of pine and fir and cypress, after the fashion of separate green parlours. Here he would read the daily papers or some book to my mother lying out in her sofa chair, or would receive friends from the neighbourhood, or would talk to guests staying in the house. LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON xlix Friends, the Peerage, Lionel's Death. My mother was seriously ill in 1875, and I was summoned home froi4 Cambridge. I became my father's secretary, and stayed with hinj continuously until his death. In 1876 we visited Edward FitzGerald at Woodbridge, and Gladstone at Hawarden, We found Edward FitzGerald in his garden at Little Grange among his papers, and he and my father talked of the old days. They reverted, of course, to their favourite Crabbe, my father laying stress on his ''sledge-hammer hues," and Fitz- Gerald teUing how he (Crabbe), when a chaplain in the country, felt an irresistible longing to see the sea, mounted a horse suddenly, rode thirty miles to the coast, saw it, and rode back comforted. They also referred to Thackeray, whose work my father called "so dehcious, so mature"; while Fitz said of him, "I hardly dare take down Thackeray's early books, they are so great, it is like waking the thunder." At Hawarden the conversation between my father and Gladstone ranged over Dante, "Harold," Gladstone's late speech about remitting the income-tax, modern morality, the force of public opinion, the evils of materiahsm, and the new Biblical criticism. When we were in London, Ruskin, Browning, and Renan visited us, and we paid a visit to Lord Russell at Pembroke Lodge. "The craven fear of being great" my father felt was among the besetting sins of certain EngHsh statesmen, and in reply to this Lord Russell cried aloud that there must be no niggardUness with regard to armaments. They were both convinced that "if our colonies could be welded mth the United Kingdom into one Imperial whole, we should be able to stand alone." General Gordon, to whom my father's poems were after- wards a comfort and delight in those last days at Khartoum, came to lunch with us. Having learnt that we had no guests he gHded spirit-Hke into the dining-room where we were already seated. Going up straight to my father he said in a solemn voice, "Mr. Tennyson, I want you to do something for the young soldiers. You alone are the man who can do it. We want train- ing-homes for them all over England." In consequence the Gordon Home was initiated by my father after Gordon's death and in his memory. Two or three times we met George EUot in town, and my father told her that the flight of Hetty in Adam Bede and Thackeray's gradual breaking down of Colonel Newcome were the two most pathetic things in modern prose fiction. We often saw Carlyle. My father would observe, "Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle on the whole enjoyed Ufe together, else they would not have chaffed one another so heartily." One day I remember Carlyle putting his hands on Alfred, my brother Lionel's son, and saying solemnly "Fair fall thee, Httle man, in this world and the next." During 1877 my brother visited Victor Hugo in Paris, and my father addressed to him the sonnet "Victor in Drama, Victor in Romance."^ To which Hugo repHed, "I 1 He admired Alfred de Mu35et as an artist more than Victor Hugo. 1 LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON believe in Divine Unity. I love all the peoples, and admire your noble poetry." In 1878 my father renewed his acquaintance with Ireland, going to Westport, Gal way, and Killarney. In 1879 my uncle, Charles Tennyson Turner, died. The death of this favourite brother profoundly affected my father; he began to hear ghostly mysterious voices all round him. Dr. Andrew Clark ordered him abroad, so we journeyed in June 1880 to Venice, and the journey did in effect restore his health: while at Sirmio, Catullus's "all-but-island," he wrote the touching lines "Frater Ave atque Vale" At the close of 1880 he published Ballads and Other Poems, which had a large sale, "Rizpah" and "The Revenge" and "The Defence of Lucknow" being among the most popular of his poems. Then came in 1881 and 1883 the deaths of his old friends Spedding and FitzGerald. Gone into the darkness, that full light Of friendship ! Past in sleep away By night into the deeper night ! The deeper night ? A clearer day Than our poor twilight dawn on earth. In 1 88 1 he strongly advocated the federation of Austraha, and wrote to the Australian statesman. Sir Henry Parkes : "I always feel with the Empire, and I read with great interest of these first steps in Federation." He looked forward to Austrahan Federation as the prelude to some sort of Imperial Federation. Previously he had written to Mr. Dudley Adams of Sydney: "Perhaps some day one of the dreams of my life may be realised, and England and her colonies be as truly one Empire as the counties of England are one kingdom, the aims of the Empire still higher than those of the kingdom. But this will not be in my own time, I fear. The strife of party must have outworn itself, and the faith of the world have shaped itself into one great simple creed before the Great Sequel." In 1883 we cruised with Gladstone in the Pembroke Castle to Copen- hagen — thousands of people lining the shore as we steamed off from Barrow, and cheering for "Gladstone" and "Tennyson." The friends agreed not to talk on poHtics, about which they disagreed, and the conversation often fell on Dante, Goethe, Milton, Shakespeare, and the English poets and prose writers. "No one," said Gladstone, "since ^Eschylus could have written The Bride of Lammermoor." My father was incHned to think Old Mortality Scott's greatest novel. Goethe's songs in Wilhelm Meister he would recite with highest admiration. "Read the exquisite songs of Burns," he would say, — "in shape each of them has the perfec- tion of the berry, in light the radiance of the dewdrop." Of Gray he said: "Gray in his limited sphere is great, and has a wonderful ear." The following he held to be "among the most Hquid lines in any language": LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TEX AY SON li Though he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion That the Theban eagle bear, Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air. During the voyage Gladstone urged upon him to accept a peerage, laying stress on the nobility and insight of his political and historical poems, and on the greatness of "Guinevere" and of "In Memoriam." He was very unwilling to do so. In the end he consented for the sake of literature. Moreover, he was grateful to the Queen, who desired that he should belong to what he regarded as "the greatest Upper Chamber in the world." He looked upon it as foremost in debating power, a stable, wise, and moderating influence in these changeful democratic days. He wrote: "By Gladstone's advice I have consented to take a peerage, but for my own part I shall regret my simple name all my life." On March II, 1884, he took his place on the cross-benches, for he said he "could not pledge himself to Party, which is made too much of a god in these days." He was in favour of reasonable innovation, and there was no reaUyj Liberal movement in which he was not in the forefront. Like Burke, hq had a strong belief in the common-sense and poHtical moderation of th^ British people, but he did not hesitate to express his opinion that "stagna- tion is more dangerous than revolution." Mr. Arthur Sidgwick notes about his political views : It is easy to idealize freedom, revolution, or war ; and the ancients found it easy to compose lyrics on kings, athletes, warriors, or other powerful persons. From the days of Tyrtaeus and Pindar to Byron, Shelley, and Swinburne, one or other of these themes has been the seed of song. But the praise of ordered liberty, of settled government, of political moderation, is far harder to ideahze in poetry. ItV has been the peculiar aim of Tennyson to be the constitutional, and in this sense the national, poet : and it is his peculiar merit and good fortune to have succeeded in giving eloquent and forcible expression to the ideas suggested by these aims. Oh yet, if Nature's evil star Drive men in manhood, as in youth, To follow flying steps of Truth Across the brazen bridge of war — If New and Old, disastrous feud. Must ever shock, like armed foes, And this be true, till Time shall close, That Principles are rain'd in blood ; Not yet the wise of heart would cease To hold his hope thro' shame and guilt. But with his hand against the hilt Would pace the troubled land, like Peace ; Hi LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON Not less, tho' dogs of Faction bay, Would serve his kind in deed and word, Certain, if knowledge bring the sword. That knowledge takes the sword away. The last couplet seems to me — where all is powerful and imaginative — to be a master stroke of terse and pointed expression. It would be hardly an exaggeration to say that it sums up human history in regard to one point — namely, the disturb- ing and even desolating effect of the new Political Idea, until its triumph comes, bringing a higher and more stable adjustment, and a peace more righteous and secure. His first vote was given for the Extension of the Franchise. He writes to Gladstone : Aldworth, July 1884. I did not write more fully knowing how overwhelmed you are with business and anxiety, but you have found time to write to me notwithstanding, and I must answer, and you must read my answer or not as you can and will. Here is some- thing of my creed. The nation is one and include* all ranks of people. I take for granted that both Houses are equally anxious to do justice to all. Certainly the House of Peers has the prior claim to confidence, being the older of the two, and it would be a base abdication, if it forewent its right and. its duty to reconsider an all-important question. The Extension of Franchise I hold to be matter of justice ; the proper time for bringing forward the question, matter of opinion. Whether this was the proper time or not — Extension I now hold to be an accomplished fact. But I think that at this time, and at all times, redistribution is necessarily an integral part of a true Franchise Bill. For instance, whether the towns are to dominate and absorb the country votes, or the country votes to have their due weight, whether loyal North Ireland is to be overridden by disloyal South, seem to me all-important facts in the true representa- tion of the country. (A Franchise Bill, I take it, is intended to facilitate the choice of those supposed to be best fitted to understand the needs and the claims of the people, and to devise means for satisfying them.) If you solemnly pledge yourselves that the Extension Bill shall not become law before redistribution has been satisfactorily settled, I am quite willing to vote with you, and in proof I come up to- town notwithstanding gout. My wife is very grateful for your letter, but will not of course trouble you with a reply. — Ever yours, Tennyson. I am oppressed with gout, and therefore beg you will excuse my employing my daughter-in-law's hand. On November 14 he forwarded the following lines to the. Prime Minister : — LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON liii Steersman, be not precipitate in thine act Of steering, for the river here, my friend, Parts in two channels, moving to one end — This goes straight forward to the cataract : That streams about the bend ; But tho' the cataract seem the nearer way, Whate'er the crowd on either bank may say, Talie thou the "bend," 'twill save thee many a day. Gladstone eventually acted in accordance with the hopes my father had expressed, and the Franchise Bill was read a second time, without a division. He published his volume, Tiresias and Other Poems, at the end of 1885. Of his autobiographical poem, "The Ancient Sage," dealing, like the "De Profundis," with the deeper problems of human life, he wrote: "The whole poem is very personal. Those passages about 'Faith' and the 'Passion of the Past' were more especially my own personal feelings." The reception of his poem, "To Virgil," gratified him much, as he liked it himself. The year 1886 brought on us a great grief in the death of my brother Lionel on his voyage home from India. He said, "The thought of Lionel's death tears me to pieces, he was so full of promise, and so young." December of this year also saw the publication of "The Promise of May," and of the second part of "Locksley Hall" (dated 1887). The following lines were written about my brother Lionel : — Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt, being true as he was brave ; Good, for Good is Good, he follow'd, yet he look'd beyond the grave ! Truth for Truth, and Good for Good ! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just — Take the charm "For ever" from them, and they crumble into dust. His MS. note on the poem is : A dramatic poem, and the Dramatis Personae are imaginary. Since it is so much the fashion in these days to regard each poem and story as a story of the poet's life or part of it, may I not be allowed to remind my readers of the possi- bility, that some event which comes to the poet's knowledge, some hint flashed from another mind, some thought or feeling arising in his o\vn, or some mood coming — he knows not whence or how — may strike a chord from which a poem evolves its life, and that this to other eyes may bear small relation to the thought, or fact, or feehng to which the poem owes its birth, whether the tenor be dramatic, or given as a parable ? Such lines as these, however, gave his own belief : Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find, Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind. liv LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON In 1888 he had a serious attack of gout, from which he recovered with difficulty. On his eightieth birthday (1889) he received numberless congratulatory letters and telegrams. '*I don't know what I have done," he said, "to make people feel Hke that towards me, except that I have kept my faith in Immortality." Speaking of Alexander Smith's line "Fame, fame, thou art next to God," he would observe, "Next to God — next to the Devil, say I. Fame might be worth having if it helped us to do good to a single mortal, but what is it? merely the pleasure of hearing oneself talked of up and down the street." During this year he published his Demeter and Other Poems. The general tone of criticism was to the effect that "Merlin and the Gleam," and "Demeter," and above all "Crossing the Bar," were wonderful productions for a man of fourscore years, and rivalled some of the best of his older poems. "Who is the Pilot in 'Crossing the Bar'?" my father was repeatedly asked. "The Divine," he answered. "The Pilot has been on board all the time, but in the dark I have not seen Him." He was incHned to think that the seven of his own best lyrics wpre, "All along the Valley," "Courage, poor Heart of Stone," "Break, Break, Break," "The Bugle Song," "Ask me no more," "Crossing the Bar," and the blank-verse lyric, "Tears, idle Tears" ; and that his finest simile was — Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might. Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. "In his latest poems," writes Henry Butcher, "we may miss some- thing of the early rapture of liis lyric songs, but he is still himself and unmistakable, and had he written nothing but the lines 'To Virgil' and Crossing the Bar,' he would have surely taken rank among the highest. Towards the end of his hfe the moral and religious content of the poems becomes fuUer with his deeper sense of the grandeur and pathos of man's existence." Death of Browning. My Father's Last Work and Days. On the day of the publication of Demeter and Other Poems my father heard of the death of Robert Browning : "so loving and appreciative that one cannot but mourn his loss as a friend and as a poet, and one feels that one has lost a mine of great thoughts and pure feeHngs, and much else besides." My father said something of this sort about his poetry : "He never greatly cares about the glory of words or beauty of form. He seldom attempts the marriage of sense with sound, although he shows a spontaneous fehcity in the adaptation of words to ideas and feeHngs." My father loved Browning and was loved by him. They have now emerged from the inevitable posthumous ecHpse. They were both LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON Iv imaginative thinkers and creators, noble teachers, holding, in the estimation of their contemporaries, high and honoured rank in the glorious company of great English poets. I never heard talk so brilliant, so deep, so full of imagery as when these two friends talked together. Each had a noble faith in God, and in the purpose of Hfe ; and in each this faith finds a great utter- ance. Their poetic methods, however, were widely different. For example, "Tennyson," Sir Alfred Lyall says, "employed his wonderful image-making power to illustrate some mental state of emotion, avaihng himself of the mysterious relation between man and his environment, whereby the outer in- animate world is felt to be the resemblance and reflection of human moods." Browning, on the other hand, was constantly propounding moral and intellectual riddles on these "human moods" and the human environ^ ment. As my father expressed it, "Browning has a great imagination. He has a genius for an intricate sort of dramatic composition, and foj analyzing the human mind in intricate situations." Unlike Browning my father acted strictly on his rule that *'the artist is known by his self- limitation." "Only the concise and perfect work," he thought, "would last." He was sometimes in the habit of chronicling in four or five words or more whatever might strike him as a picture, and weaving a poem about this, carrying this poem in his head until it was perfect — or some^ times "the poem would come" — his words — in one breath of im.piration. "Hundreds of hnes," as he said, " have been blown up the chimney with my pipe smoke, or have been written down and thrown into the fire as not being perfect enough." He dehghted in throwing off impromptu verses in various metres. Sir Richard Jebb writes as follows about his metrical power : — As a metrist, he is the creator of a new blank verse, different both from the Elizabethan and from the iMiltonic. He has known how to modulate it to every theme, and to elicit a music appropriate to each ; attuning it in turn to a tender and homely grace, as in "The Gardener's Daughter"; to the severe and ideal majesty of the antique, as in "Tithonus"; to meditative thought, as in "The Ancient Sage " or "Akbar's Dream"; to pathetic or tragic tales of contemporary life, as in "Aylmer's Field" or "Enoch Arden"; or to sustained romantic narrative, as in the "Idylls." No English poet has used blank verse with such flexible variety, or drawn from it so large a compass of tones; nor has any maintained it so equably on a high level of excellence. In lyric metres Tennyson has invented much, and has also shown a rare power of adaptation. Many of his lyric measures are wholly his own ; while others have been so treated by him as to make them virtually new. At the Tennyson centenary celebration by the British Academy (1909) Lord Curzon said of him: "He (Tennyson) is at least these things — a great artist, a great singer, a great prophet, a great patriot, and a great Englishman." If I may venture to speak of his special influence upon the Ivi LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON world, my conviction is that its main and enduring qualities are his power of expression, his range of imagination, the perfection of his work- manship, his strong common-sense, the high purport of his life and work, his truthfulness, his humiHty, his humour, and his broad, open-hearted, and helpful sympathy. The death of the Irish poet AUingham took away from us yet another friend. My father often repeated AUingham's last words: "I see such things as you cannot dream of." In 1890 the great portrait of my father which hangs in the hall of Trinity College, Cambridge, was painted by G. F. Watts at Farringford ; and in June of that year he worked at his Lincolnshire poem "The Church- warden and the Curate," heartily laughing over the humorous passages. Sir Norman Lockyer visited us, and he said of my father, "His mind is saturated with astronomy ; since Dante there has never been so great a scientific poet." In 1891 he was working at his "Akbar," and wrote his majestic hymn to the Sun while cruising in a friend's yacht. The philo- sophers of the East had a great fascination for him, and he felt that the Western religions might learn much from them of spirituality. He took much interest in preparing his "Foresters, or Robin Hood" for the stage.^ It proved to be a great success in America — an old-world woodland play, "a pastoral without shepherds," and was published in April 1892. In 1 89 1 and 1892 he still took long walks at Farringford and Aldworth with the President of Magdalen, Jowett, the Bishop of Ripon, Arthur Coleridge, Stanford, Dakyns, Henry Butcher, Jebb, and others, talking to them vigorously on all sorts of topics, but I heard him quote more than once, "The wan moon is setting behind the white wave, and time is setting for me, oh !" On a day in June (1892), on one of his daily walks at Farringford, he suddenly felt very tired, a thing unusual with him, and sat down. It was one of the first signs of his failing strength, though as he walked up the garden he cheered up again, and pointed out the splendour of the flowers. On June 29 he partook of the Communion with my mother and said : It is but a communion, not a mass ; No sacrifice, but a life-giving feast — impressing upon the rector (Dr. Merriman) that he could not partake of it except in that sense. He said: "My most passionate desire is to have a clearer vision of God," and "It is impossible to imagine that the Almighty will ask you, when you come before Him in the next life, what your particular form of creed was : but the question will rather be, ' Have you been true to yourself, and given in My Name a cup of cold water to one of these Httle ones ? ' " On June 30 we left Farringford for Aldworth. My father at first took LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON Ivii his regular walks of two or three miles over Blackdown, but the walks dwindled gradually, and he sat more and more in his summer-house. On his eighty- third birthday he quoted from Bacon, "It is Heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in Charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth." In September he looked over the proofs of his last- volume The Death of (Enone and Other Poems, many of which had been written during this last year, and which my wife had copied out for the press. On the 28th he complained of great weakness. He read Job and St. Matthew. On Tuesday, October 4, he called out, "Where is my Shakespeare? I must have my Shakespeare." Then he said, "I want the blinds up, I want to see the sky and light." He repeated, "The sky and light !" He asked me, "Have I not been walking with Gladstone in the garden, and showing him my trees ? " On the day before his death he talked to the doctor about death: "What a shadow this life is, and how men cling to what is after all but a small part of the great world's life." Then the doctor told him (for his interest was always keen " in the lot of lowly men ") of an incident that had happened lately. "A villager, ninety years old, was dying, and had so much pined to see his old bed-ridden wife once more that they carried her to where he lay. He pressed his shrunken hand upon her hand, and in a husky voice said to her, 'Come soon,' and soon after passed away himself." My father murmured "True Faith"; and the tears were in his voice. Suddenly he gathered himself together and spoke one word about himself to the doctor, "Death?" The doctor bowed, and he said, "That's well." Later he exclaimed, "I have opened it." I cannot tell whether he spoke to my mother, referring to the Shakespeare opened by him at Hang there like fruit, my soul, Till the tree die, which he always said were among the tenderest Unes in Shakespeare ; or whether these hues from one of his own last poems of which he was fond were running through his head — Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great, Nor the myriad world. His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate. During the evening the full moon flooded the room and the great landscape outside with Ught ; and we watched in solemn stillness. He passed away at 1.35 a.m. on Thursday, October 6, his hand resting on his Shakespeare, and I spoke over him his own prayer, "God accept him ! Christ receive him ! " because I knew that he would have wished it. He was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey on October 12, next to Robert Browning and in front of the Chaucer monument. The great Iviii LIFE AND WORK OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON^ crowd round the Abbey and the funeral service with its two anthems, "Crossing the Bar" and "The Silent Voices," rising above the vast congregation, will be long remembered. Every day for weeks after multitudes thronged by the new-made grave in a never-ceasing proces- sion. The tributes of sympathy which we received from many countries and from all classes and creeds were not only remarkable for their universahty, but for their depth of feehng. Against the pillar near his grave has been placed the fine bust of him by Woolner. His wife survived him four years, and is buried in the quiet church- yard at Freshwater. Dear, near and true, no truer Time himself Can prove you, the' he make you evermore Dearer and nearer. TENNYSON. (The best-known portraits of my father are by Laurence, Watts, Herkomer, and Millais. The best photographs are a half-length by Mayall, a profile by Mrs. Cameron, and two three-quarters by Barraud done in his eightieth year.) TO THE QUEEN. Revered, beloved — O you that hold A nobler offi.ce upon earth Than arms, or potver of brain, or birth Could give the warrior kings of old, Victoria, — since your Royal grace To one of less desert allows This laurel greener from the brows Of him that uttered nothing base ; And should your greatness, and the care That yokes zvith empire, yield you time To make demand of modern rhyme If aught of ancient worth be there ; Then — while a sweeter music wakes. And thro' wild March the throstle calls. Where all about your palace-walls The sun-lit almond-blossom shakes — Take, Madam, this poor book of song; For thd* the faults were thick as dust In vacant chambers, I could trust Your kindness. May you rule us long. And leave us rulers of your blood As noble till the latest day I May children of otir children say, * She wrought her people lasting good ; ' Her court tvas pure ; her life serene ; God gave her peace ; her land repoied , A thousand claims to reverence closed In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen ; * And statesmen at her council met Who knezv the seasons when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet * By shaping some august decree. Which kept her throne unshaken still. Broad-based upon her people's will, < And compass* d by the inviolate sea.' March, 1851. 6 JUVENILIA. CLARIBEL. A MELODY. I. Where Claribel low-lieth The breezes pause and die, Letting the rose-leaves fall : But the solemn oak-tree sigheth, ' Thick-leaved, ambrosial. With an ancient melody Of an inward agony, Where Claribel low-lieth. II. At eve the beetle boometh Athwart the thicket lone : At noon the wild bee hummeth About the moss'd headstone : At midnight the moon cometh, And looketh down alone, /Her song the lintvi^hite swelleth, / The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth, The callow throstle lispeth, The slumbrous wave outwelleth, The babbling runnel crispeth, The hollow grot replieth Where Claribel low-lieth. NOTHING WILL DIE. When will the stream be aweary of flowing Under my eye? When will the wind be aweary of blowing Over the sky? When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting? When will the heart be aweary of beating? And nature die? Never, oh ! never, nothing will die; The stream flows, The wind blows, The cloud fleets, The heart beats, Nothing will die. Nothing will die ; All things will change Thro' eternity. 'Tis the world's winter; Autumn and summer Are gone long ago; Earth is dry to the centre, But spring, a new comer, A spring rich and strange, Shall make the winds blow Round and round, Thro' and thro', Here and there, Till the air And the ground Shall be fiU'd with life anew. The world was never made; It will change, but it will not fade. So let the wind range; For even and morn Ever will be Thro' eternity. Nothing was born; Nothing will die; All things will change. ALL THINGS WILL DIE — LEONINE ELEGIACS. ALL THINGS WILL DIE. Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing Under my eye ; Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing Over the sky. One after another the white clouds are fleeting; Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating Full merrily; Yet all things must die. The stream will cease to flow; The wind will cease to blow; The clouds will cease to fleet; The heart will cease to beat; For all things must die. All things must die. Spring will come never more. Oh ! vanity ! Death waits at the door. . See ! our friends are all forsaking The wine and the merrymaking. We are call'd — we must go. Laid low, very low, In the dark we must lie. The merry glees are still; The voice of the bird Shall no more be heard, Nor the wind on the hill. Oh ! misery ! Hark ! death is calling While I speak to ye, The jaw is falling. The red cheek paling, The strong limbs failing; Ice with the warm blood mixing; The eyeballs fixing. Nine times goes the passing bell : Ye merry souls, farewell. The old earth Had a birth. As all men know, Long ago. And the old earth must die. . So let the warm winds range. And the blue wave beat the shore; For even and morn Ye will never see Thro' eternity. All things were born. Ye will come never more, For all things must die. LEONINE ELEGIACS. Low-flowing breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm'd in the gloaming : Thro' the black-stemm'd pines only the far river shines. Creeping thro' blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes, Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall. Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerly; the grasshopper caroUeth clearly; Deeply the wood-dove coos; shrilly the owlet halloos; Winds creep; dews fall chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly : Over the pools in the burn water- gnats murmur and mourn. Sadly the far kine loweth : the glimmer- ing water outflovveth : Twin peaks shadow'd with pine slope to the dark hyaline. Low-throned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her breast. The ancient poetess singeth, that Hes- perus all things bringeth. Smoothing the wearied mind : bring me my love, Rosalind. Thou comest morning or even; she Cometh not morning or even. False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind? SUPPOSED CONFESSIONS OF A SECOND-RATE SENSITIVE MIND. God ! my God ! have mercy now. 1 faint, I fall. Men say that Thou Didst die for me, for such as me, Patient of ill, and death, and scorn, And that my sin was as a thorn Among the thorns that girt Thy brow. Wounding Thy soul. — That even now, In this extremest misery CONFESSIONS OF A SENSITIVE MIND. Of ignorance, I should require A sign ! and if a bolt of fire Would rive the slumbrous summer noon While I do pray to Thee alone, Think my belief would stronger grow ! Is not my human pride brought low? The boastings of my spirit still? The joy I had in my freewill All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown ? And what is left to me, but Thou, And faith in Thee? Men pass me by; Christians with happy countenances — And children all seem full of Thee ! And women smile with saint-like glances Like Thine own mother's when she bow'd Above Thee, on that happy morn When angels spake to men aloud, And Thou and peace to earth were born. Goodwill to me as well as all — I one of them : my brothers they : Brothers in Christ — a world of peace And confidence, day after day; And trust and hope till things should cease, And then one Heaven receive us all. How sweet to have a common faith ! To hold a common scorn of death ! And at a burial to hear The creaking cords which wound and eat Into my human heart, whene'er Earth goes to earth, with grief, not fear. With hopeful grief, were passing sweet ! Thrice happy state again to be The trustful infant on the knee ! Who lets his rosy fingers play About his mother's neck, and knows Nothing beyond his mother's eyes. They comfort him by night and day; They light his little life alway; He hath no thought of coming woes; He hath no care of life or death; Scarce outward signs of joy arise, Because the Spirit of happiness And perfect rest so inward is; And loveth so his innocent heart. Her temple and her place of birth, Where she would ever wish to dwell. Life of the fountain there, beneath Its salient springs, and far apart. Hating to wander out on earth, Or breathe into the hollow air, Whose chillness would make visible Her subtil, v/arm, and golden breath. Which mixing with the infant's blood. Fulfils him with beatitude. Oh ! sure it is a special care Of God, to fortify from doubt, To arm in proof, and guard about With triple-mailed trust, and clear Delight, the infant's dawning year. Would that my gloomed fancy were As thine, my mother, when with browc Propt on thy knees, my hands upheld In thine, I listen'd to thy vows. For me outpour'd in holiest prayer — For me unworthy ! — and beheld Thy mild deep eyes upraised, that knew The beauty and repose of faith. And the clear spirit shining thro'. Oh ! wherefore do we grow awry From roots which strike so deep? why • dare Paths in the desert? Could not I Bow myself down, where thou hast knelt. To the earth — until the ice would melt Here, and I feel as thou hast felt? What Devil had the heart to scathe Flowers thou hadst rear'd — to brush the de-.' From thine own lily, when thy grave Was deep, my mother, in the clay? Myself? Is it thus? Myself? Had I So little love for thee? But why Prevail'd not thy pure prayers? Why pray To one who heeds not, who can save But will not? Great in faith, and strong Against the grief of circumstance Wert thou, and yet unheard. What if Thou pleadest still, and seest me drive Thro' utter dark a full-sail'd skiff, Unpiloted i' the echoing dance Of reboant whirlwinds, stooping low Unto the death, not sunk ! I know At matins and at evensong. That thou, if thou wert yet alive. In deep and daily prayers would'st strive To reconcile me with thy God. Albeit, my hope is gray, and cold At heart, thou wouldest murmur still — ' Bring this Iamb back into Thy fold, My Lord, if so it be Thy will.' Would'st kJA me I must brook the rod And chastisement of human pride; CONFESSIONS OF A SENSITIVE MIND— THE KRAKEN That pride, the sin of devils, stood Betwixt me and the light of God ! That hitherto I had defied And had rejected God — that grace Would drop from his o'er-brimming love, As manna on my wilderness. If 1 would pray — that God would move And strike the hard, hard rock, and thence, Sweet in their utmost bitterness, Would issue tears of penitence Wliich would keep green hope's life. Alas! I think that pride hath now no place Nor sojourn in me. I am void, Dark, formless, utterly destroyed. Why not believe then ? Why not yet Anchor thy frailty there, where man Hath moor'd and rested? Ask the sea At midnight, when the crisp slope waves After a tempest, rib and fret The broad-imbased beach, why he Slumbers not like a mountain tarn? Wherefore his ridges are not curls And ripples of an inland mere? Wherefore he moaneth thus, nor can Draw down into his vexed pools All that blue heaven which hues and paves The other? I am too forlorn. Too shaken : my own weakness fools My judgment, and my spirit whirls, Moved from beneath with doubt and fear. ' Yet,' said I, in my morn of youth, The unsunn'd freshness of my strength, When I went forth in quest of truth, * It is man's privilege to doubt. If so be that from doubt at length. Truth may stand forth unmoved of change. An image with profulgent brows. And perfect limbs, as from the storm Of running fires and fluid range Of lawless airs, at last stood out This excellence £-nd solid form Of constant beaut^'. For the Ox Feeds in the herb, and sleeps, or fills The horned valleys all about. And hollows of the fringed hills In summer heats, with placid lows Unfearing, till his own blood flows About his hoof. And in the flocks The lamb rejoiceth in the year, And raceth freely with his fere, And answers to his mother's calls From the flower'd furrow. In a time. Of which he wots not, run short pains Thro' his warm heart; and then, from whence He knows not, on his light there falls A shadow; and his native slope, Where he was wont to leap and climb. Floats from his sick and filmed eyes. And something in the darkness draws His forehead earthward, and he dies. Shall man live thus, in joy and hope As a young lamb, who cannot dream. Living, but that he shall Uve on? Shall we not look into the laws Of life and death, and things that seem. And things that be, and analyse Our double natuire, and compare All creeds till we have found the one, If one there be? ' Ay me ! I fear All may not doubt, but everywhere Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God, Whom call I Idol? Let Thy dove Shadow me over, and my sins Be unremember'd, and Thy love Enlighten me. Oh teach me yet Somewhat before the heavy clod Weighs on me, and the busy fret Of that sharp-headed worm begins In the gross blackness underneath. O weary life ! O weary death ! O spirit and heart made desolate ! O damned vacillating state ! THE KRAKEN. Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth : faintest sunlights flee About his shadowy sides : above him swell Huge sponges of millennial growth and height; And far away into the sickly light. From many a wondrous grot and secret cell Unnumber'd and enormous polypi SONG— LILIAN— ISABEL. Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green. There hath he lain for ages and will lie Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the sur- face die. SONG. The winds, as at their hour of birth, Leaning upon the ridged sea. Breathed low around the rolling earth With mellow preludes, * We are free.' The streams through many a lilied row Down-carolling to the crisped sea, Low-tinkled with a bell-like flow Atween the blossoms, ' We are free.' LILIAN. Airy, fairy Lilian, Flitting, fairy LiHan, When I ask her if she love me, Claps her tiny hands above me, Laughing all she can; She'll not tell me if she love me. Cruel little Lilian. II. When my passion seeks Pleasance in love-sighs. She, looking thro' and thro' me Thoroughly to undo me. Smiling, never speaks : So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple, FVom beneath her gathered wimple Glancing with black-beaded eyes. Till the lightning laughters dimple The baby-roses in her cheeks; Then away she flies. III. Prythee weep. May Lilian ! Gaiety without eclipse Wearieth me. May Lilian: Thro' my very heart it thrilleth When from crimson-threaded lips Silver-treble laughter trilleth : Prythee weep. May Lilian. Praying all I can. If prayers will not hush thee, Airy Lilian, Like a rose-leaf I will crush thee, Fairy Lilian. ISABEL. Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed With the clear-pointed flame of chastity, Clear, without heat, undying, tended by Pure vestal thoughts in the trans- lucent fane Of her still spirit ; locks not wide-dispread. Madonna-wise on either side her head; Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity. Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood. Revered Isabel, the crown and head. The stately flower of female fortitude. Of perfect wifehood and pure lowli head. II. The intuitive decision of a bright And thorough-edged intellect to part Error from crime; a prudence to withhold; The laws of marriage character'd in gold Upon the blanched tablets of her heart; A love still burning upward, giving light To read those laws; an accent very low In blandishment, but a most silver flow Of subtle-paced counsel in distress, Right to the -heart and brain, tho* unde- scried, Winning its way with extreme gentle- ness Thro' all the outworks of suspicious pride; ISABEL — MARIANA. A courage to endure and to obey; A hate of gossip parlance, and of sway, Crown'd Isabel, thro' all her placid life, The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife. The mellow'd reflex of a winter moon; A clear stream flowing with a muddy one. Till in its onward current it absorbs With swifter movement and in purer light The vexed eddies of its wayward brother: A leaning and upbearing parasite, Clothing the stem, which else had fallen quite With cluster'd flower-bells and am- brosial orbs Of rich fruit-buiiches leaning on each other — Shadow forth thee: — the world hath not another (Tho' all her fairest forms are types of thee, And thou of God in thy great charity) Of such a finish'd chasten'd purity. ' Mariana in the moated grange.' Measure for Measure. With blackest moss the flower-plots Were thickly crusted, one and all: The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the pear to the gable-wall. The broken sheds look'd sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. (She only said, ' Mv life is dreary, He Cometh not,' she said; She said, ' I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead ! ' Her tears fell with the dews ^t even; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; f She could not look on the sweet heaven. Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky. She drew her casement curtain by. And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, ' Th^jjight is dreary, He cometh not,' she said; She said, ' I am aweary, aweary I would that I were dead 1 ' Upon the middle of the night. Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: The cock sung out an hour ere light: From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her : without hope of change. In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn. Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange. She only said, * Xitfi-da^is dreary, He cometh not,' she said; She said, ' I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead ! ' About a stone-cast from the wall A sluice with blacken'd waters slept. And o'er it many, round and small. The cluster'd marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway, All silver-green with gnarled bark: P'or leagues no other tree did mark The level waste, the rounding gray. She only said, ' My life is dreary. He cometh not,' she said; She said, ' I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead ! ' And ever when the moon was low, And the shrill winds were up and away. In the white curtain, to and fro. She saw the gusty shadow sway. But when the moon was very low. And wild winds bound within their cell. The shadow of the poplar fell Upon her bed, across her brow. She only said, * The nigh t is dreary. He cometh not,' she satd; She said, * I am aweary, aweary, I wrould that I were dead ! * All day within the dreamy house. The doors upon their hinges creak'd; The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd. Or from the crevice peer'd about. Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors. Old voices called her from without. MARIANA — MADELINE. She only said, * My life is dreary, He Cometh not,' she said; She said, *J api avvpary. aweary, I would that I were dead ! ' The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, The slow clock ticking, and the sound Which to the wooing wind aloof The poplar made, did all confound Her sense; but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping toward his western bower. Then, said she, * I am ve ry dreary. He will not come,' she said; She wept, * I am aweary, aweary, Oh God. \^^^ T wi^re dead!' TO Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn, Edged with sharp laughter, cutsatwain The knots that tangle human creeds, The wounding cords that bind and strain The heart until it bleeds, Ray-fringed eyelids of the morn Roof not a glance so keen as thine : If aught of prophecy be mine. Thou wilt not live in vain. II. Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit; Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow: Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now With shrilling shafts of subtle wit. Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords. Can do away that ancient lie; A gentler death shall Falsehood die, Shot thro' and thro* with cunning words. Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch, Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need. Thy kingly intellect shall feed. Until she be an athlete bold. And weary with a finger's touch Those writhed limbs of lightning speed; Like that strange angel which of old, Until the breaking of the light, Wrestled with wandering Israel, Past Yabbok broke the livelong night, And heaven's mazed signs stood still In the dim tract of Penuel. MADELINE. Thou art not steep'd in golden languors, No tranced summer calm is thine. Ever varying Madeline. Thro' light and shadow thou dost range. Sudden glances, sweet and strange, Delicious spites and darhng angers. And airy forms of flitting change. II. Smiling, frowning, evermore. Thou art perfect in love-lore. Revealings deep and clear are thine Of wealthy smiles : but who may know Whether smile or frown be fleeter? Whether smile or frown be sweeter, Who may know? Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow Light-glooming over eyes divine, Like little clouds sun-fringed, are thine, Ever varying Madeline. Thy smile and frown are not aloof From one another, Each to each is dearest brother; Hues of the silken sheeny woof Momently shot into each other. All the mystery is thine; Smiling, frowning, evermore, Thou art perfect in love-lore, Ever varying Madeline. A subtle, sudden flame. By veering passion fann'd. About thee breaks and dances: When I would kiss thy hand, The flush of anger'd shame- O'erflows thy calmer glances, And o'er black brows drops down A sudden-curved frown : But when I turn away, Thou, willing me to stay, Wooest not, nor vainly wranglest; SONG: THE OWL— THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. But, looking fixedly the while, All my bounden heart entanglest In a golden-netted smile; Then in madness and in bliss, If my lips should dare to kiss Thy taper fingers amorously. Again thou blushest angerly; And o'er black brows drops down A sudden-curved frown. SONG — THE OWL. When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb. And the whirring sail goes round. And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. II. When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay. And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay. Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits. The white owl in the belfry sits. SECOND SONG. TO THE SAME. Thy tuwhits are luU'd, I wot. Thy tuwhoos of yesternight. Which upon the dark afloat, So toG.r echo with delight. So took echo with delight, That her voice untuneful grown. Wears all day a fainter tone. II. I would mock thy chaunt anew; But I cannot mimic it; Not a whit of thy tuwhoo, Thee to woo to thy tuwhit. Thee to woo to thy tuwhit, With a lengthen'd loud halloo, Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free - In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flow'd back with me. The forward-flowing tide of time; And many a sheeny summer-morn, Adown the Tigris I was borne, By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold. High-walled gardens green and old; True Mussulman was I and sworn. For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Anight my shallop, rustling thro' The low and bloomed foliage, drove The fragrant, glistening deeps, and clove The citron-shadows in the blue : By garden porches on the brim. The costly doors flung open wide. Gold glittering thro' lamplight dim, And broider'd sofas on each side : In sooth it was a goodly time. For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Often, where clear-stemm'd platans * guard The outlet, did I turn away The boat-head down a broad canal From the main river sluiced, where all The slopihg of the moon-lit sward Was damask-work, and deep inlay Of braided blooms unmown, which crept Adown to where the water slept A goodly place, a goodly time. For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. A motion from the river won Ridged the smooth level, bearing on My shallop thro' the star-strown calm, Until another night in night I enter'd, from the clearer light, Imbower'd vaults of pillar'd palm. Imprisoning sweets, which, as they clomb Heavenward, were stay'd beneath the dome RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. Of hollow boughs. — A goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Still onward; and the clear canal ' Is rounded to as clear a lake.. From the green rivage many a fall Of diamond rillets musical, Thro' little crystal arches low Down from the central fountain's flow Fall'n silver-chiming, seemed to shake The sparkling flints beneath the prow. A goodly place, a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Above thro' many a bowery turn A walk with vary-colour'd shells Wander'd engrain'd. On either side All round about the fragrant marge From fluted vase, and brazen urn In order, eastern flowers large, Some dropping low their crimson bells Half-closed, and others studded wide With disks and tiars, fed the time With odour in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Far off, and where the lemon grove In closest coverture upsprung. The living airs of middle night * Died round the bulbul as he sung; Not he : but something which possess'd The darkness of the world, delight, Life, anguish, death, immortal love. Ceasing not, mingled, unrepress'd, Apart from place, withholding time, But flattering the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Black the garden-bowers and grots Slumber'd : the solemn palms were ranged Above, unwoo'd of summer wind : A sudden splendour from behind Flush'd all the leaves with rich gold- green. And, flowing rapidly ' etween Their interspaces, counterchanged The level lake wit. diamond-plots Of dark and bright. A lovely time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Dark-blue the deep sphere overhead. Distinct with vivid stars inlaid, Grew darker from that under-flame : So, leaping lightly from the boat. With silver anchor left afloat. In marvel whence that glory came Upon me, as in sleep I sank In cool soft turf upon the bank. Entranced with that place and time. So worthy of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Thence thro' the garden I was drawn — A realm of pleasance, many a mound. And many a shadow-chequer'd lawn Full of the city's stilly sound. And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round The stately cedar, tamarisks. Thick rosaries of scented thorn. Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks Graven with emblems of the time, In honour of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. With dazed vision unawares From the long alley's latticed shade Emerged, I came upon the great Pavilion of the Caliphat. Right to the carven cedarn doors, Flung inward over spangled floors. Broad-based flights of marble stairs Ran up with golden balustrade. After the fashion of the time, And humour of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. The fourscore windows all alight As with the quintessence of flame, A million tapers flaring bright From twisted silvers look'd to shame The hollow-vaulted dark, and stream'd Upon the mooned domes aloof In inmost Bagdat, till there seem'd Hundreds of crescents on the roof Of night new-risen, that marvellous time To celebrate the golden prime Of good Hr.roun Alraschid. Then stole I up, and trancedly Gazed on the Persian girl alone, Serene with argent-lidded eyes Amorous, and lashes like to rays Of darkness, and a brow of pearl ODE TO MEMORY. IZ Tressed with redolent ebony, In many a dark delicious curl, Flowing beneath her rose-hued zone; The sweetest lady of the time, Well worthy of the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. Six columns, three on either side. Pure silver, underpropt a rich Throne of the massive ore, from which Down-droop'd, in many a floating fold, Engarlanded and diaper'd With inwrought flowers, a cloth of gold. Thereon, his deep eye laughter-stirr'd With merriment of kingly pride, Sole star of all that place and time, I saw him — in his golden prime, The Good Haroun Alraschid. ODE TO MEMORY. ADDRESSED TO . I. Thou who stealest fire. From the fountains of the past. To glorify the present; oh, haste, Visit ray low desire ! Strengthen me, enlighten me ! I faint in this obscurity. Thou dewy dawn of memory. II- Come not as thou camest of late, Flinging the gloom of yesternight On the white day; but robed in so.ften'd light Of orient state. Whilome thou camest with the morning mist. Even as a maid, whose stately brow The dew-impearled winds of dawn have kiss'd, When she, as thou, Stays on her floating locks the lovely freight Of overflowing blooms, and earliest shoots Of orient green, giving safe pledge of fruits. Which in wintertide shall star The black earth with brilliance rare. Whilome thou camest with the morning mist. And with the evening cloud, Showering thy gleaned wealth into my open breast (Those peerless flowers which in the rudest wind Never grow sere, When rooted in the garden of the mind, Because they are the earliest of the year). Nor was the night thy shroud. In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest Thou leddest by the hand thine infant Hope. The eddying of her garments caught from thee The light of thy great presence ; and the cope Of the half-attain'd futurity, Tho' deep not fathomless. Was cloven with the million stars which tremble O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy. Small thought was there of life's distress; For sure she deem'd no mist of earth could dull Those spirit-thrilling eyes so keen and beautiful : Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres. Listening the lordly music flowing from The illimitable years. strengthen me, enlighten me ! 1 faint in this obscurity. Thou dewy dawn of memory. IV. Come forth, I charge thee, arise. Thou of the many tongues, the myriad eyes ! Thou comest not with shows of flaunting vines Unto mine inner eye, Divinest Memory ! Thou wert not nursed by the waterfall Which ever sounds and shines A pillar of white light upon the wall Of purple cliffs, aloof descried : Come from the woods that belt the gray hill-side, 12 ODE TO MEMORY— SONG. The seven elms, the poplars four That stand beside my father's door, And chiefly from the brook that loves To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand, Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, Drawing into his narrow earthen urn, In every elbow and turn. The filter'd tribute of the rough woodland, O ! hither lead thy feet ! Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds. Upon the ridged wolds, "When the first matin-song hath waken'd loud Over the dark dewy earth forlorn. What time the amber morn Forth gushes from beneath a low-hung cloud. Large dowries doth the raptured eye To the young spirit present When first she is wed ; And like a bride of old In triumph led. With music and sweet showers Of festal flowers. Unto the dwelling she must sway. Well hast thou done, great artist Memory, In setting round thy first experiment With royal frame-work of wrought gold; Needs must thou dearly love thy first essay. And foremost in thy various gallery Place it, where sweetest sunlight falls Upon the storied walls; For the discovery And newness of thine art so pleased thee. That all which thou hast drawn of fairest Or boldest since, but lightly weighs With thee unto the love thou bearest The first-born of thy genius. Artist-like, Ever retiring thou dost gaze On the prime labour of thine early days : No matter what the sketch might be; Whether the high field on the bushless Pike, Or even a sand-built ridge Of heaped hills that mound the sea, Overblown with murmurs harsh. Or even a lowly cottage whence we see Stretch'd wide and wild the waste enor- mous marsh. Where from the frequent bridge. Like emblems of infinity, The trenched waters run from sky to sky; /Or a garden bower'd close With plaited alleys of the trailing rose. Long alleys falling down to twilight grots. Or opening upon level plots Of crowned lilies, standing near Purple-spiked lavender : Whither in after life retii-ed From brawling storms. From weary wind. With youthful fancy re-inspired, We may hold converse with all forms Of the many-sided mind. And those whom passion hath not blinded, Subtle-thoughted, myriad-minded. My friend, with you to live alone. Were how much better than to own A crown, a sceptre, and a throne ! strengthen me, enlighten me ! 1 faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of memory. SONG. A SPIRIT haunts the year's last hours Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers : To himself he talks; For at eventide, listening earnestly, At his work you may hear him sob and sigh In the walks; Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers : Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. The air is damp, and hush'd, and close. As a sick man's room when he tr'-^*- repose A CHARACTER— THE POET. 13 An hour before death ; My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves, And the breath Of the fading edges of box be- neath, And the year's last rose. Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i* the earth so chilly; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. A CHARACTER. With a half-glance upon the sky At night he said, * The wanderings Of this most intricate Universe Teach me the nothingness of things.' Yet could not all creation pierce Beyond the bottom of his eye. He spake of beauty : that the dull Saw no divinity in grass, Life in dead stones, or spirit in air; Then looking as 'twere in a glass, He smooth'd his chin and sleek'd his hair, And said the earth was beautiful. He spake of virtue : not the gods More purely when they wish to charm Pallas and Juno sitting by : And with a sweeping of the arm, And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye. Devolved his rounded periods. Most delicately hour by hour He canvass'd human mysteries. And trod on silk, as if the winds Blew his own praises in his eyes, And stood aloof from other minds In impotence of fancied power. With lips depress'd as he were meek. Himself unto himself he sold : Upon himself himseif did feed : Quiet, dispassionate, and cold, And other than his form of creed, With chisell'd features clear and sleek. THE POET. The poet in a golden clime was born. With golden stars above; Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love. He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill. He saw thro' his, own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An gpen scroll. Before him lay: with echoing feet he threaded The secretest walks of fame : The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed And wing'd with flame. Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue, And of so fierce a flight, From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung, Filling with light And vagrant melodies the winds which bore Them earthward till they lit; Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field flower, The fruitful wit Cleaving, took root, and springing forth • anew Where'er they fell, behold, Like to the mother plant in semblance, grew A flower all gold, And bravely furnish'd all abroad to fling The winged shafts of truth. To throng with stately blooms the breath- ing spring Of Hope and Youth. So many minds did gird their orbs with beams, Tho' one did fling the fire. Heaven flow'd upon the soul in many dreams Of high desire. THE POET'S MIND — THE SEA-FAIRIES. Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the II. world Like one great garden show'd, Dark-brow'd sophist, come not anear; And thro' the wreaths of floating dark All the place is holy ground; upcurl'd, Hollow smile and frozen sneer Rare sunrise flow'd. Come not here. Holy water will I pour And Freedom rear'd in that august sun- Into every spicy flower rise Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around. Her beautiful bold brow, The flowers would faint at your cruel When rites and forms before his burning cheer. eyes In your eye there is death, Melted like snow. There is frost in your breath • Which would blight the plants. There was no blood upon her maiden Where you stand you cannot hear robes From the groves within Sunn'd by those orient skies ; The wild-bird's din. But round about the circles of the In the heart of the garden the merry bird globes chants. Of her keen eyes It would fall to the ground if you came And in her raiment's hem was traced in in. In the middle leaps a fountain flame Like sheet lightning, Wisdom, a name to shake Ever brightening All evil dreams of power — a sacred With a low melodious thunder; name. All day and all night it is ever drawn And when she spake. From the brain of the purple moun- Her words did gather thunder as they tain Which stands in the distance yonder : ran, It springs on a level of bowery lawn. And as the lightning to the thunder And the mountain draws it from Heaven Which follows it, riving the spirit of man, above, Making earth wonder. And it sings a song of undying love; And yet, tho' its voice be so clear and So was their meaning to her words. No full, sword You never would hear it; your ears are Of wrath her right arm whirl'd. so dull; But one poor poet's scroll, and with his So keep where you are : you are foul with word sin; She shook the world. It would shrink to the earth if you came in. THE POEl'S MIND. THE SEA-FAIRIES. I. Slow sail'd the weary mariners and Vex not thou the poet's mind saw. With thy shallow wit : Betwixt the green brink and the running Vex not thou the poet's mind; foam. For thou canst not fathom it. Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms Clear and bright it should be ever. prest Flowing like a crystal river; To little harps of gold; and while they Bright as light, and clear as wind. mused THE DESERTED HOUSE— THE DYING SWAN. IS Whispering to each other half in fear, Shrill music reach'd them on the middle sea. Whither away, whither away, whither away? fly no more. Whither away from the high green field, and the happy blossoming shore? Day and night to the billow the fountain calls : Down shower the gambolling waterfalls From wandering over the lea : Out of the live-green heart of the dells They freshen the silvery-crimson shells, And thick with white bells the clover-hill swells High over the full-toned sea : O hither, come hither and furl your sails, Come hither to me and to me : Hither, come hither and frolic and play; Here it is only the mew that wails; We will sing to you all the day : Mariner, mariner, furl your sails. For here are the blissful downs and dales, And merrily, merrily carol the gales. And the spangle dances in bight and bay. And the rainbow forms and flies on che land Over the islands free; And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand; Hither, come hither and see; And the rainbow hangs on the poising wave. And sweet is the colour of cove and cave. And sweet shall your welcome be : O hither, come hither, and be our lords. For merry brides are we : We will kiss sweet kisses, and speak sweet words : O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten With pleasure and love and jubilee : O listen, listen, your eyes shall glisten When the sharp clear twang of the golden chords Runs up the ridged sea. Who can light on as happy a shore All tlie world o'er, all the world o'er? Whither away? listen and stay : mariner, mariner, fly no more. THE DESERTED HOUSE. I. Life and Thought have gone away Side by side, Leaving door and windows wide ; Careless tenants they ! All within is dark as night: In the windows is no light; And no murmur at the door. So frequent on its hinge before. Close the door, the shutters close, Or thro' the windows we shall see The nakedness and vacancy _ Of the dark deserted house. IV. Come away : no more of mirth Is here or merry-making sound. The house was builded of the earth. And shall fall again to ground. Come away : for Life and Thought Here no longer dwell; But in a city glorious — A great and distant city — have bouglit A mansion incorruptible. Would they could have stayed with us ! THE DYING SWAN. The plain was grassy, wild and bare, Wide, wild, and open to the air. Which had built up everywhere An under-roof of doleful gray. With an inner voice the river ran, Adown it floated a dying swan, And loudly did lament. It was the middle of the day. Ever the weary wind went on, And took the reed-tops as it went. Some blue peaks in the distance rose, And white against the cold-white sky, i6 THE DYING SWAN— A DIRGE. Shone out their crowning snows. One willow over the river wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh; Above in the wind was the swallow, Chasing itself at its own wild will, And far thro' the marish green and still The tangled water-courses slept, Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow. III. The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow : at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear; And floating about the under.-sky, Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear But anon her awful jubilant voice. With a music strange and manifold, Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold As when a mighty people rejoice With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold, And the tumult of their acclaim is roU'd Thro' the open gates of the city afar. To the shepherd who watcheth the even- ing star. And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds, And the willow-branches hoar and dank, And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds. And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank. And the silvery . marish-flowers that throng The desolate creeks and pools among. Were flooded over with eddying song. A DIRGE. I. Now is done thy long day's work; Fold thy palms across thy breast. Fold thine arms, turn to thy rest. Let them rave. Shadows of the silver birk Sweep the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. Thee nor carketh care nor slander; Nothing but the small cold worm Fretteth thine enshrouded form. Let them rave. Light and shadow ever wander O'er the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. III. Thou wilt not turn upon thy bed; Chaunteth not the brooding bee Sweeter tones than calumny? Let them rave. Thou wilt never raise thine head From the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. IV. Crocodiles wept tears for thee ; The woodbine and eglatere Drip sweeter dews than traitor's tear. Let them rave. Rain makes music in the tree O'er the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. Round thee blow, self-pleached deep. Bramble roses, faint and pale. And long purples of the dale. Let them rave. These in every shower creep Thro' the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. The gold-eyed kingcups fine ; The frail bluebell peereth over Rare broidry of the purple clover. Let them rave. Kings have no such couch as thine^ As the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. VII. Wild words wander here and there s God's great gift of speech abused Makes thy memory confused : But let them rave. LOVE AND DEATH— THE BALLAD OF OKI ANA. 17 The balm-cricket carols clear In the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave. LOVE AND DEATH. What time the mighty moon was gather- ing light Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise, And all about him roU'd his lustrous eyes; When, turning round a cassia, full in view. Death, walking all alone beneath a yew, And talking to himself, first met his sight : * You must begone,' said Death, * these walks are mine.' Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight; Yet ere he parted said, 'This hour is thine : Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree Stands in the sun and shadows all be- neath, So in the light of great eternity Life eminent creates the shade of death; The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall. But I shall reign for ever over all.' THE BALLAD OF ORIANA. My heart is wasted with my woe, Oriana. There is no rest for me below, Oriana. When the long dun wolds are ribb'd with snow. And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow, Oriana, Alone I wander, to and fro, Oriana. Ere the light on dark was growing, Oriana, At midnight the cock was crowing, Oriana : Winds were blowing, waters flowing. We heard the steeds to battle going, Oriana ; Aloud the hollow bugle blowing, Oriana. In the yew-wood black as night, Oriana, Ere I rode into the fight, Oriana, While blissful tears blinded my sight By star-shine and by moonlight, Oriana, I to thee my troth did plight, Oriana. She stood upon the castle wall, Oriana : She watch'd my crest among them all, Oriana : She saw me fight, she heard me call, When forth there stept a foeman tall, Oriana, Atween me and the castle wall, Oriana. The bitter arrow went aside, Oriana : The false, false arrow went aside, Oriana : The damned arrow glanced aside, And pierced thy heart, my love, my bride, Oriana ! Thy heart, my life, my love, my bride, Oriana ! Oh ! narrow, narrow was the space, Oriana. Loud, loud rung out the bugle's brays, Oriana. Oh ! deathful stabs were dealt apace, The battle deepen'd in ics place, Oriana; But I was down upon my face, Oriana. They should have stabb'd me where I lay, Oriana ! How could I rise and come away, Oriana? How could I look upon the day? They should have stabb'd me where I lay, .Oriana — They should have trod me into clay, Oriana. O breaking heart that will not break, Oriana ! i8 CIRCUMSTANCE— THE MERMAN. pale, pale face so sweet and meek, Oriana ! Thou smilest, but thou dost not speak, And then the tears run down my cheek, Oriana : What wantest thou? whom dost thou seek, Oriana? 1 cry aloud : none hear my cries, Oriana. Thou comest atween me and the skies, Oriana. I feel the tears of blood arise Up from my heart unto my eyes, Oriana. Within thy heart my arrow lies, Oriana. O cursed hand ! O cursed blow ! Oriana ! happy thou that liest low, Oriana ! All night the silence seems to flow Beside me in my utter woe, Oriana. A weary, weary way I go, Oriana. ' When Norland winds pipe down the sea, Oriana, 1 walk, I dare not think of thee, Oriana. Thou liest beneath the greenwood tree, I dare not die and come to thee, Oriana. I hear the roaring of the sea, Oriana. CIRCUMSTANCE. Two children in two neighbour villages, Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas; Two strangers meeting at a festival; Two lovers whispered by an orchard wall; Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease; Two graves grass-green beside a gray church -tower, Wash'd with still rains and daisy blos- somed; Two children in one hamlet born and bred; So runs the round of life from hour to hour. THE MERMAN. Who would be A merman bold, Sitting alone. Singing alone Under the sea, With a crown of gold, On a throne ? I would be a merman bold, I would sit and sing the whole of the day; I would fill the sea-halls with a voice of power; But at night I would roam abroad and play With the mermaids in and out of the rocks, Dressing their hair with the white sea- flower; And holding them back by their flowing locks I would kiss them often under the sea, And kiss them again till they kiss'd me Laughingly, laughingly; And then we would wander away, away To the pale-green sea-groves straight and high. Chasing each other merrily. III. There would be neither moon nor star; But the wave would make music above us afar — Low thunder and Hght in the magic night — Neither moon nor star. We would call aloud in the dreamy dells, Call to each other and whoop and cry All night, merrily, merrily; They would pelt me with starry spangles and shells, THE MERMAID. 19 Laughing and clapping their hands be- Would slowly trail himself sevenfold tween, Round the hall where I sate, and look in All night, merrily, merrily: at the gate But I would throw to them back in mine With his large calm eyes for the love of Turkis and agate and almondine : me. Then leaping out upon them unseen And all the mermen under the sea I would kiss them often under the sea. Would feel their immortality And kiss them again till they kiss'd me Die in their hearts for the love of me. Laughingly, laughingly. Oh ! what a happy life were mine III. Under the hollow-hung ocean green ! Soft are the moss-beds under the sea; But at night I would wander away. We would live merrily, merrily. away, I would fling on each side my low- flowing locks, THE MERMAID. And lightly vault from the throne and play With the mermen in and out of the I. rocks; Who would be We would run to and fro, and hide and A mermaid fair, seek, Singing alone, On the broad sea-wolds in the crimson Combing her hair shells. Under the sea, Whose silvery spikes are nighest the In a golden curl sea. With a comb of pearl, But if any came near I would call, and On a throne? shriek, And adown the steep like a wave I II. would leap From the diamond-ledges that jut from I would be a mermaid fair; the dells; I would sing to myself the whole of the For I would not be kiss'd by all who day; would list, With a comb of pearl I would comb my Of the bold merry mermen under the hair; sea; And still as I comb'd I would sing and They would sue me, and woo me, and say. flatter me, 'Who is it loves me? who loves not In the purple twilights under the sea; me?' But the king of them all would carry I would comb my hair till my ringlets me. would fall Woo me, and win me, and marry me, Low adown, low adown. In the branching jaspers under the From under my starry sea-bud crown sea; Low adown and around, Then all the dry pied things that be And I should look like a fountain of In the hueless mosses under the sea gold Would curl round my silver feet silently. Springing alone All looking up for the love of me. With a shrill inner sound. And if I should carol aloud, from aloft Over the throne All things that are forked, and horned, In the midst of the hall; and soft Till that great sea-snake under the sea Would lean out from the hollow sphere From his coiled sleeps in the central of the sea. deeps All looking down for the love of me. 20 ADELINE — MAR G ARE T. ADELINE. Mystery of mysteries, Faintly smiling Adeline, Scarce of earth nor all divine, Nor unhappy, nor at rest, But beyond expression fair With thy floating flaxen hair; Thy rose-lips and full blue eyes Take the heart from out my breast. Wherefore those dim looks of thine, Shadowy, dreaming Adeline ? Whence that aery bloom of thine, Like a lily which the sun Looks thro' in his sad decline, And a rose-bush leans upon. Thou that faintly smilest still. As a Naiad in a well, Looking at the set of day. Or a phantom two hours old Of a maiden past away. Ere the placid lips be cold? Wherefore those faint smiles of thine, Spiritual Adeline ? What hope or fear or joy is thine? Who talketh with thee, Adeline? For sure thou art not all alone. Do beating hearts of salient springs Keep measure with thine own? Hast thou heard the butterflies What they say betwixt their wings? Or in stillest evenings With what voice the violet woos To his heart the silver dews? Or when little airs arise. How the merry bluebell rings To the mosses underneath? Hast thou look'd upon the breath Of the lilies at sunrise? Wherefore that faint smile of thine. Shadowy, dreaming Adeline? Some honey-converse feeds thy mind, Some spirit of a crimson rose In love with thee forgets to close His curtains, wasting odorous sighs All night long on darkness blind. What aileth thee? whom waitest thou With thy soften'd, shadow'd brow. And those dew-lit eyes of thine, Thou faint smiler, Adeline? Lovest thou the doleful M'ind When thou gazest at the skies? Doth the low-tongued Orient Wander from the side of the morn, Dripping with Sabsean spice On thy pillow, lowly bent With melodious airs lovelorn, Breathing Light against thy face. While his locks a-drooping twined Round thy neck in subtle ring Make a carcanet of rays. And ye talk together still. In the language wherewith Spring Letters cowslips on the hill? Hence that look and smile of thine, Spiritual Adeline. MARGARET. O SWEET pale Margaret, O rare pale Margaret, What lit your eyes with tearful power, Like moonlight on a falling shower? Who lent you, love, your mortal dower Of pensive thought and aspect pale, Your melancholy sweet and frail As perfume of the cuckoo-flower? From the westward-winding flood, From the evening-lighted wood. From all things outward you have won A tearful grace, as tho' you stood Between the rainbow and the sun. The very smile before you speak. That dimples your transparent cheek, Encircles all the heart, and feedeth The senses with a still delight Of dainty sorrow without sound, Like the tender amber round, Which the moon about her spreadeth, Moving thro' a fleecy night. MARGARET— ROSALIND. 21 You love, remaining peacefully, To hear the murmur of the strife, But enter not the toil of life. Your spirit is the calmed sea. Laid by the tumult of the fight. You are the evening star, alway Remaining betwixt dark and bright : LuU'd echoes of laborious day Come to you, gleams of mellow light Float by you on the verge of night. III. What can it matter, Margaret, What songs below the waning stars The lion-heart, Plantagenet, Sang looking thro' his prison bars? Exquisite Margaret, who can tell The last wild thought of Chatelet, Just ere the falling axe did part The burning brain from the true heart. Even in her sight he loved so well ? IV. A fairy shield your Genius made And gave you on your natal day. Your sorrow, only sorrow's shade, Keeps real sorrow far away. You move not in such solitudes. You are not less divine, But more human in your moods, Than your twin- sister, Adeline. Your hair is darker, and your eyes Touch'd with a somewhat darker hue, And less aerially blue, But ever trembling thro' the dew Of dainty-woeful sympathies. O sweet pale Margaret, O rare pale Margaret, Come down, come down, and hear me speak : Tie up the ringlets on your cheek : The sun is just about to set. The arching limes are tall and shady, And faint rainy lights are seen. Moving in the leavy beech. Rise from the feast of sorrow, lady. Where all day long you sit between Joy and woe, and whisper each. Or only look across the lawn, Look out below your bower-eaves. Look down, and let your blue eyes dawn Upon me thro' the jasmine-leaves. ROSALIND. My Rosalind, my Rosalind, My frolic falcon, with bright eyes. Whose free delight, from any height of rapid flight. Stoops at all game that wing the skies, My Rosalind, my Rosalind, My bright-eyed, wild-eyed falcon, whither, Careless both of wind and weather. Whither fly ye, what game spy ye, Up or down the. streaming wind? II. The quick lark's closest-caroll'd strains. The shadow rushing up the sea. The lightning flash atween the rains. The sunlight dtiving down the lea, The leaping stream, the very wind. That will not stay, upon his way, To stoop the cowslip to the plains, Is not so clear and bold and free As you, my falcon Rosalind. You care not for another's pains. Because you are the soul of joy, Bright metal all without alloy. Life shoots and glances thro' your veins, And flashes off a' thousand ways, Thro' lips and eyes in subtle rays. Your hawk-eyes are keen and bright, Keen with triumph, watching still To pierce me thro' with pointed light; But oftentimes they flash and glitter Like sunshine on a dancing rill. And your words are seeming-bitter. Sharp and few, but seeming-bitter From excess of swift delight. Come down, come home, my Rosalindj My gay young hawk, my Rosalind : Too long you keep the upper skies; Too long you roam and wheel at will; But we must hood your random eyes, That care not whom they kill. ELEANORE. And your cheek, whose brilliant hue Is so sparkling-fresh to view, Some red heath-flower in the dew, Touch'd with sunrise. We must bind And keep you fast, my Rosalind, Fast, fast, my wild-eyed RosaUnd, And clip your wings, and make you love : When we have lured you from above, And that delight of frolic flight, by day or night. From North to South, We'll bind you fast in silken cords, And kiss aw^y the bitter words From off your rosy mouth. ELEANORE. Thy dark eyes open'd not, Nor first reveal'd themselves to English air, For there is nothing here. Which, from the outward to the inward brought, Moulded thy baby thought. Far off from human neighbourhood, Thou wert born on a summer morn, A mile beneath the cedar-wood. Thy bounteous forehead was not fann'd With breezes from our oaken glades, But thou wert nursed in some delicious land Of lavish lights, and floa^^ng shades : And flattering thy childish thought The oriental fairy brought, At the moment of thy birth, From old well-heads of haunted rills, And the hearts of purple hills, And shadow'd coves on a sunny shore, The choicest wealth of all the earth, Jewel or shell, or starry ore, To deck thy cradle, Eleanore. Or the yellow-banded bees, Thro' half-open lattices Coming in the scented breeze, Fed thee, a child, lying alone. With whitest honey in fairy gar- dens cuU'd — A glorious child, dreaming alone, In silk-soft folds, upon yielding down, With the hum of swarming bees Into dreamful slumber lull'd. III. Who may minister to thee-. Summer herself should minister To thee, with fruitage golden-rinded On golden salvers, or it may be, Youngest Autumn, in a bower Grape- thicken'd from the light, and blinded With many a deep-hued bell-like flower Of fragrant trailers, when the air Sleepeth over all the heaven. And the crag that fronts the Even, All along the shadowing shore, Crimsons over an inland mere, Eleanore ! IV. How may full-sail'd verse express. How may measured words adore The full-flowing harmony Of thy swan-like stateliness, Eleanore? The luxuriant symmetry Of thy floating gracefulness, Eleanore? Every turn and glance of thine, Every lineament divine, Eleanore, And the steady sunset glow. That stays upon thee? For in thee Is nothing sudden, nothing single; Like two streams of incense free From one censer in one shrine. Thought and motion mingle, Mingle ever. Motions flow To one another, even as tho' They were modulated so To an unheard melody, Which lives about thee, and a sweep Of richest pauses, evermore Drawn from each other mellow-deep; Who may express thee, Elean^^e? I stand before thee, Eleanore; I see thy beauty gradually unfold, ELEANORE. 23 Daily and hourly, more and more. I muse, as in a trance, the while Slowly, as from a cloud of gold, Comes out thy deep ambrosial smile. I muse, as in a trance, whene'er The languors of thy love-deep eyes Float on to me. I would I were So tranced, so rapt in ecstasies. To stand apart, and to adore, Gazing on thee for evermore, Serene, imperial Eleanore ! VI. Sometimes, with most intensity Gazing, I seem to see Thought folded over thought, smiling asleep, Slowly awaken'd, grow so full and deep In thy large eyes, that, overpower'd quite, i cannot veil, or droop my sight. But am as nothing in its light : As tho' a star, in inmost heaven set, Ev'n while we gaze on it, . Should slowly round his orb, and slowly grow To a full face, there like a sun remain Fix'd — then as slowly fade again, And draw itself to what it was before ; So full, so deep, so slow. Thought seems to come and go In thy large eyes, imperial Eleanore. As thunder-clouds that, hung on high, Roofd the world with doubt and fear, Floating thro' an evening atmosphere, Grow golden all about the sky; In thee all passion becomes passionless, Touch'd by thy spirit's mellowness. Losing his fire and active might In a silent meditation. Falling into a still delight. And luxury of contemplation As waves that up a quiet cove Rolling slide, and lying still Shadow forth the banks at will: Or sometimes they swell and move, Pressing up against the land, With motions of the outer sea : And the self-same influence ControUeth all the soul and sense Of Passion gazing upon thee. His bow-string slacken'd, languid Love, Leaning his cheek upon his hand, Droops both his wings, regarding thee, And so would languish evermore. Serene, imperial Eleanore. VIII. But when I see thee roam, with tresses unconfined. While the amorous, odorous wind Breathes low between the sunset and the moon; Or, in a shadowy saloon. On silken cushions half reclined; I watch thy grace; and in its place My heart a charmed slumber keeps. While I muse upon thy face; And a languid fire creeps Thro' my veins to all my frame, Dissolvingly and slowly : soon From thy rose-red lips MY name Floweth; and then, as in a swoon. With dinning sound my ears are rife. My tremulous tongue faltereth, I lose my colour, I lose my breath, I drink the cup of a costly death, Brimmed with delirious draughts of warm- est life. I die with my delight, before I hear what I would hear from thee; Yet tell my name again to me, I would be dying evermore. So dying ever, Eleanore. i. My life is full of weary days. But good things have not kept aloof. Nor wander'd into other ways : I have not lack'd thy mild reproof, Nor golden largess of thy praise. And now shake hands across the brink Of that deep grave to which I go : Shake hands once more : I cannot sink So far — far down, but I shall know Thy voice, and answer from below. EARLY SONNETS. When in the darkness over me The four-handed mole shall scrape, Plant thou no dusky cypress-tree, Nor wreathe thy cap with doleful crape. But pledge me in the flowing grape. And when the sappy field and wood Grow green beneath the showery gray. And rugged barks begin to bud, And thro' damp holts new-flush'd with May, Ring sudden scritches of the jay. Then let wise Nature work her will, And on my clay her darnel grow; Come only, when the days are still. And at my headstone whisper low. And tell me if the woodbines blow. EARLY SONNETS. TO . As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood. And ebb into a former life, or seem To lapse far back in some confused dream To states of mystical similitude; If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair, Ever the wonder waxeth more and more. So that we say, * All this hath been before, All this hath been, I know not when or where.' So, friend, when first I look'd upon your face. Our thought gave answer each to each, so true — Opposed mirrors each reflecting each — That tho' I knew not in what time or place, Methought that I had often met with you, And either lived in cither's heart and speech. TO J. M. K. My hope and heart is with thee — thou wilt be A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest To scare church-harpies from the master's feast; Our dusted velvets have much need of thee : Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws, Distill'd from some . worm-canker'd homily ; But spurr'd at heart with fieriest energy To embattail and to wall about thy cause With iron-worded proof, hating to hark The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone Half God's good sabbath, while the worn- out clerk Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a thron? Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark. Mine be the strength of spirit, full and free. Like some broad river rushing down alone. With the selfsame impulse wherewith he was thrown From his loud fount upon the echoing lea: — Which with increasing might doth for- ward flee By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle, And in the middle of the green salt sea Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile. Mine be the power which ever to its sway Will win the wise at once, and by degrees May into uncongenial spirits flow; Ev'n as the warm gulf-stream of Florida Floats far away into the Northern seas The lavish growths of southern Mexico, IV. ALEXANDER. Warrior of God, whose strong right arm debased The throne of Persia, when her Satrap bled At Issus by the Syrian gates, or fled Beyond the Memmian naphtha-pits, dis- graced EARLY SONNETS, For ever — thee (thy pathway sand- erased) Gliding with equal crowns two serpents led Joyful to that palm-planted fountain-fed Ammonian Oasis in the waste. There in a silent shade of laurel brown Apart the Chamian Oracle divine Shelter'd his unapproached mysteries : High things were spoken there, unhanded down; Only they saw thee from the secret shrine Returning with hot cheek and kindled eyes. V. BUONAPARTE. He thought to quell the stubborn hearts of oak, Madman ! — to chain with chains, and bind with bands That island queen who sways the floods and lands From Ind to Ind, but in fair daylight woke, When from her wooden walls, — lit by sure hands, — With thunders, and with lightnings, and with smoke, — Peal after peal, the British battle broke. Lulling the brine against the Coptic sands. We taught him lowlier moods, when El- sinore Heard.the war moan along the distant sea. Rocking with shatter'd spars, with sud- den fires Flamed over : at Trafalgar yet once more We taught him : late he learned humility Perforce, like those whom Gideon school'd with briers. VI. POLAND. How long, O God, shall men be ridden down, And trampled under by the last and least Of men? The heart of Poland hath not ceased To quiver, tho' her sacred blood doth drown The fields, and out of every smouldering town Cries to Thee, lest brute Power be in- creased. Till that o'ergrown Barbarian in the East Transgress his ample bound to some new crown : — Cries to Thee, ' Lord, how long shall these things be ? How long this icy-hearted Muscovite Oppress the region?' Us, O Just and Good, Forgive, who smiled when she was torn in three; Us, who stand now, when we should aid the right — A matter to be wept with tears of blood ! VIL Caress'd or chidden by the slender hand, And singing airy trifles this or that. Light Hope at Beauty's call would perch and stand. And run thro' every change of sharp and flat; And Fancy came and at her pillow sat. When Sleep had bound her in his rosy band. And chased away the still-recurring gnat, And woke her with a lay from fairy land. But now they live with Beauty less and less, For Hope is other Hope and wanders far, Nor cares to lisp in love's delicious creeds; And Fancy watches in the wilderness, Poor Fancy sadder than a single star. That sets at twilight in a land of reeds. VIII. The form, the form alone is eloquent ! A nobler yearning never broke her rest Than but to dance and sing, be gaily drest. And win all eyes with all accomplish- ment : Yet in the whirling dances as we went. My fancy made me for a moment blest To find my heart so near the beauteous breast That once had power to rob it of content. A moment came the tenderness of tears. The phantom of a wish that once could move, A ghost of passion that no smiles re- store — For ah ! the slight coquette^ she cannot love. 26 EARLY SONNETS. And if you kiss'd. her feet a thousand years, Siie still would take the praise, and care no more. IX. Wan Sculptor, weepest thou to take the cast Of those dead lineaments that near thee lie? sorrovvest thou, pale Painter, for the past, In painting some dead friend from memory? Weep on : beyond his object Love can last : His object lives : more cause to weep have I : My tears, no tears of love, are flowing fast, No tears of love, but tears that Love can die. 1 pledge her not in any cheerful cup. Nor care to sit beside her where she sits — A.h pity — hint it not in human tones. But breathe it into earth and close it up With secret death for ever, in the pits Which some green Christmas crams with weary bones. If I were loved, as I desire to be, What is there in the great sphere of the earth, And range-of evilbetween death and birth. That I should fear, — if I were loved by thee? All the inner, all the outer world of pain Clear Love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine, As I have heard that, somewhere in the main. Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine. 'Twere joy, not fear, claspt hand-in-hand with thee. To wait for death — mute — careless of all ills. Apart upon a mountain, tho' the surge Of some new deluge from a thousand hills Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge Below us, as far on as eye could see. XI. THE BRIDESMAID. BRIDESMAID, ere the happy knot was tied, Thine eyes so wept that they could hardly see; Thy sister smiled and said, ' No tears for me ! A happy bridesmaid makes a happy bride.' And then, the couple standing side by side. Love lighted down between them full of glee, And over his left shoulder laugh'd at thee, 'O happy bridesmaid, make a happy bride.' And all at once a pleasant truth I learn'd, For while the tender service made thee weep, 1 loved thee for the tear thou couldst not hide. And prest thy hand, and knew the press return'd, And thought, * My life is sick of single sleep : ^ O happy bridesmaid; make a happy bride ! ' THE LADY OF SHALOTT. 27 THE LADY OF SHALOTT AND OTHER POEMS. THE LADY OF SHALOTT. PART I. On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-tovver'd Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below, The island of Shalott. Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Thro' the wave that runs for ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls, and four gray towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott. By the margin, willow-veil'd Slide the heavy barges trail'd By slow horses; and unhail'd The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd Skimming down to Camelot : But who hath seen her wave her hand? Or at the casement seen her stand? Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott? Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley. Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly, Down to tower'd Camelot : And by the moon the reaper weary. Piling sheaves in uplands airy, Listening, whispers ' 'Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.' PART II. There she weaves by night and day A magic web with colours gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be> And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott. And moving thro' a mirror clear That hangs before her all the year, Shadows of the world appear. There she sees the highway near Winding down to Camelot: There the river eddy whirls, And there- the surly village-churls, And the red cloaks of market girls, Pass onward from Shalott. Sometimes a troop of damsels glad. An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad, Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad, Goes by to tower'd Camelot : And sometimes thro' the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two ! She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often thro' the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and Hghts And music, went to Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed; * I am half sick of shadows,' said The Lady of Shalott. 28 THE LADY OF SHALOTT. PART III. A BOW-SHOT from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley-sheaves, The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot, A red- cross knight for ever kneel'd To a lady in his shield, That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott. The gemmy bridle glitter'd free. Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy. The bridle bells rang merrily As he rode down to Camelot : And from his blazon'd baldric slung A mighty silver bugle hung. And as he rode his armour rung, Beside remote Shalott. All in the blue unclouded weather Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather, The helmet and the helmet-feather Burn'd like one burning flame together. As he rode down to Camelot. As often thro' the purple night. Below the starry clusters bright. Some bearded meteor, trailing light. Moves over still Shalott. His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd; On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode; From underneath his helmet flow'd His coal-black curls as on he rode. As he rode down to Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flash'd into the crystal mirror, * Tirra lirra,' by the river Sang Sir Lancelot. She left the web, she left the loom. She made three paces thro' the room. She saw the water-lily bloom. She saw the helmet and the plume. She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me,' cried The Lady of Shalott. PART IV. In the stormy east-wind straining. The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complainr ing, Heavily the low sky raining Over tower'd Camelot; Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat. And round about the prow she wrote The Lady of Shalott. And down the river's dim expanse Like some bold seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance — With a glassy countenance Did she look to Camelot. And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott. Lying, robed in snowy white That loosely flew to left and right — The leaves upon her falling light — Thro' the noises of the night She floated down to Camelot : And as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among. They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott. Heard a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly. And her eyes were darken'd wholly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot. For ere she reach'd upon the tide The first house by the water-side. Singing in her song she died. The Lady of Shalott. Under tower and balcony. By garden-wall and gallery, A gleaming shape she floated by. Dead-pale between the houses high, Silent into Camelot. Out upon the wharfs they came, Knight and burgher, lord and dame, And round the prow they read her name, T'he Lady of Shalott. MARIANA IN THE SOUTH. 29 Who is this? and what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they cross'd themselves for fear, All the knights at Camelot : But Lancelot mused a little space; He said, ' She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott.' MARIANA IN THE SOUTH. With one black shadow at its feet, The house thro' all the level shines. Close-latticed to the brooding heat. And silent in its dusty vines : A faint-blue ridge upon the right. An empty river-bed before, And shallows on a distant shore, In glaring sand and inlets bright. But ' Ave Mary,' made she moan. And * Ave Mary,' night ^nd morn, And ' Ah,' she sang, ' to be all alone. To live forgotten, and love forlorn.' She, as her carol sadder grew, From brow and bosom slowly down Thro' rosy taper fingers drew Her streaming curls of deepest brown To left and right, and made appear Still-lighted in a secret shrine, Her melancholy eyes divine. The home of woe without a tear. And 'Ave Mary,' was her moan, * Madonna, sad is night and morn,' And * Ah,' she sang, ' to be all alone. To live forgotten, and love forlorn.' Till all the crimson changed, and past Into deep orange o'er the sea. Low on her knees herself she cast, Before Our Lady murmur' d she; Complaining, ' Mother, give me grace To help me of my weary load.' And on the liquid mirror glow'd The clear perfection of her face. * Is this the form,' she made her moan, 'That won his praises night and morn? ' And 'Ah,' she said, 'but I wake alone, I sleep forgotten, I wake forlorn.' Nor bird would sing, nor lamb would bleat. Nor any cloud would cross the vault, But day increased from heat to heat. On stony drought and steaming salt; Till now at noon she slept again. And seem'd knee-deep in mountain grass, And heard her native breezes pass. And runlets babbling down the glen. She breathed in sleep a lower moan. And murmuring, as at night and morn. She thought, ' My spirit is here alone, Walks forgotten, and is forlorn.' Dreaming, she knew it was a dream : She felt he was and was not there. She woke : the babble of the stream Fell, and, without, the steady glare Shrank one sick willow sere and small. The river-bed was dusty- white; And all the furnace of the light Struck up against the blinding wall. She whisper'd, with a stifled moan More inward than at night or morn, ' Sweet Mother, let me not here alone Live forgotten and die forlorn.' And, rising, from her bosom drew Old letters, breathing of her worth, For 'Love,' they said, *must needs be true, To what is loveliest upon earth.' An image seem'd to pass the door, To look at her with slight, and say ' But now thy beauty flows away, So be alone for evermore.' ' O cruel heart,' she changed her tone, ' And cruel love, whose end is scorn, Is this the end to be left alone, To live forgotten, and die forlorn? ' But sometimes in the falling day An image seem'd to pass the door, To look into her eyes and say, ' But thou shalt be alone no more.' And flaming downward over all From heat to heat the day decreased, And slowly rounded to the east The one black shadow from the wall. 'The day to night,' she made het moan. 30 THE TWO VOICES. 'The day to night, the night to morn, And day and night I am left alohe To live forgotten, and love forlorn.' At eve a dry cicala sung, There came a sound as of the sea; Backward the lattice-blind she flung. And lean'd upon the balcony. There all in spaces rosy-bright Large Hesper glitter'd on her tears. And deepening thro' the silent spheres Heaven over Heaven rose the night. And weeping then she made her moan, 'The night comes on that knows not morn, When I shall cease to be all alone. To live forgotten, and love forlorn.' THE TWO VOICES. A STILL small voice spake unto me, * Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?' Then to the still small voice I said: ' Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made.' To which the voice did urge reply : ' To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie. * An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk : from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. * He dried his wings : like gauze they grew; Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of Ught he flew.' I said, ' When first the world began, Young Nature thro' five cycles ran. And in the sixth she moulded man. ' She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast.' Thereto the silent voice replied : ' Self-blinded are you by your pride : Look up thro' night : the world is wide. 'This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse. ' Think you this mould of hopes and fear* Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres?' It spake, moreover, in my mind : ' Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the windj Yet is there plenty of the kind.' Then did my response clearer fall : ' No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all.' To which he answer'd scofhngly : ' Good soul ! suppose I grant it thee, Who'll weep for thy deficiency? ' Or will one beam be less intense, When thy peculiar difference Is cancell'd in the world of sense? ' I would have said, 'Thou canst not know,' But my full heart, that work'd below, Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow. Again the voice spake unto me : 'Thou art so steep'd in misery. Surely 'twere better not to be. ' Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Nor any train of reason keep : Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep.' I said, ' The years with change adv^-^ce : If I make dark my countenance, I shut my life from happier chance. ' Some turn this sickness yet might take, Ev'n yet.' But he : ' What drug can make A wither'd palsy cease to shake?' I wept, ' Tho' I should die, I know That all about the thorn will blow In tufts of rosy-tinted snow; THE TWO VOICES. 'And men, thro' novel spheres of thought Still moving after truth long sought, Will learn new things when I am not.' *Yet,' said the secret voice, 'some time, Sooner or later, will gray prime Make thy grass hoar with early rime. * Not less swift souls that yearn for light. Rapt after heaven's starry flight, Would sweep the tracts of day and night. * Not less the bee* would range her cells. The furzy prickle tire the dells, The foxglove cluster dappled bells.' I said that ' all the years invent; Each month is various to present The world with some development. ' Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Tho' watching from a ruin'd tower How grows the day of human power?' 'The highest-mounted mind,' he said, * Still sees the sacred morning spread The silent summit overhead. * Will thirty seasons render plain Those lonely lights that still remain, Just breaking over land and main? * Or make that morn, from his cold crown And crystal silence creeping down, Flood with full daylight glebe and town ? ' Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set In midst of knowledge, dream'd not yet. 'Thou hast not gain'd a real height, Nor art thou nearer to the light. Because the scale is infinite. ' 'Twere better not to breathe or speak. Than cry for strength, remaining weak. And seem to find, but still to seek. * Moreover, but to seem to find Asks what thou lackest, thought resign'd, A healthy frame, a quiet mind.' I said, ' When I am gone away, " He dared not tarry," men will say, Doing dishonour to my clay.' ' This is more vile,' he made reply, 'To breathe and loathe, to live and sigh. Than once from dread of pain to die. ' Sick art thou — a divided will Still heaping on the fear of ill The fear of men, a coward still. ' Do men love thee? Art thou so bound To men, that how thy name may sound Will vex thee lying underground? * The memory of the wither'd leaf In endless time is scarce more brief Than of the garner'd Autumn-sheaf. 'Go, vexed Spirit, sleep in trust; The right ear, that is fiU'd with dust, \ Hears little of the false or just.' ' ' Hard task, to pluck resolve,' I cried, ' From emptiness and the waste wide Of that abyss, or scornful pride ! 'Nay — rather yet that I could raise One hope that warm'd me in the days While still I yearn'd for human praise. ' Wheri, wide in soul and bold of tongue, Among the tents I paused and sung, The distant battle flash'd and rung. ' I sung the joyful Psean clear. And, sitting, burnish'd without fear The brand, the buckler, and the spear — ' Waiting to strive a happy strife. To war with falsehood to the knife, And not to lose the good of life — 'Some hidden principle to move. To put together, part and prove. And mete the bounds of hate and love — ' As far as might be, to carve out Free space for every human doubt, That the whole mind might orb about — J 32 THE TWO VOICES. ' To search thro' all I felt or saw, The springs of life, the depths of awe, And reach the law within the law : ' At least, not rotting like a weed, But, having sown some generous seed, Fruitful of further thought and deed, * To pass, when Life her light withdraws. Not void of righteous self-applause, Nor merely in a selfish cause — ' In some good cause, not in mine own, To perish, wept for, honour'd, known. And like a warrior overthrown; ' Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears. When soil'd with noble dust, he hears His country's war-song thrill his ears : * Then dying of a mortal stroke. What time the foeman's line is broke. And all the war is roU'd in smoke. * Yea ! ' said the voice, ' thy dream was good. While thou abodest in the bud. It was the stirring of the blood. * If Nature put not forth her power About the opening of the flower, Who is it that could live an hour? * Then comes the check, the change, the . fall, :! Pain rises up, old pleasures pall, i There is one remedy for all. ' Yet hadst thou, thro' enduring pain, Link'd month to month with such a chain Of knitted purport, all were vain. . * Thou hadst not between death and birth ' Dissolved the riddle of the earth. \ So were thy labour little-worth. ' That men with knowledge merely play'd I told thee — hardly nigher made, Tho' scaling slow from grade to grade; . * Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind, ' Named man, may hope some truth to find, That bears relation to the mind. * For every worm beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late and soon Spins, toiling out his own cocoon. * Cry, faint not : either Truth is born Beyond the polar gleam forlorn, Or in the gateways of the morn. ' Cry, faint not, climb: the summits slope Beyond the furthest flights of hope. Wrapt in dense cloud from base to cope. * Sometimes a little corner shines. As over rainy mist inclines A gleaming crag with belts of pines. * I will go forward, sayest thou, I shall not fail to find her now. Look up, the fold is on her brow. * If straight thy track, or if oblique, Thou know'st not. Shadows thou dost strike, Embracing cloud, Ixion-like; . * And owning but a little more Than beasts, abidest lame and poor, Calling thyself a little lower ' Than angels. Cease to wail and brawl ! Why inch by inch to darkness crawl? There is one remedy for all.' * O dull, one-sided voice,' said I, '\ ' Wilt thou make everything a lie, \ To flatter me that I may die ? * I know that age to age succeeds. Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, A dust of systems and of creeds. * I cannot hide that some have striven. Achieving calm, to whom was given The joy that mixes man with Heaven : * Who, rowing hard against the stream, Saw distant gates of Eden gleam. And did not dream it was a dream; * But heard, by secret transport led, Ev'n in the charnels of the dead, The murmur of the fountain-head — THE TWO VOICES. 33 ' Which did accomplish their desire, Bore and forebore, and did not tire, Like Stephen, an unquenched fire. * He heeded not reviling tones. Nor sold his heart to idle moans, Tho' cursed and scorn'd, and bruised with stones : ' But looking upward, full of grace. He pray'd, and from a happy place God's glory smote him on the face.' The sullen answer slid betwixt:^ * Not that the grounds of hope were fix'd. The elements were kindlier mix'd.' I said, * I toil beneath the curse. But, knowing not the universe, I fear to slide from bad to worse. ' And that, in seeking to undo One riddle, and to find the true, I knit a hundred others new : * Or that this anguish fleeting hence, Unmanacled from bonds of sense. Be fix'd and froz'n to permanence : * For I go, weak from suffering here : Naked I go, and void of cheer : What is it that I may not fear? ' * Consider well,' the voice replied, * His face, that two hours since hath died; Wilt thou find passion, pain or pride ? * Will he obey when one commands ? Or answer should one press his hands He answers not, nor understands. * His palms are folded on his breast : There is no other thing express'd But long disquiet merged in rest. ' His lips are very mild and meek : Tho' one should smite him on the cheek. And on the mouth, he will not speak. * His little daughter, whose sweet face He kiss'd, taking his last embrace. Becomes dishonour to her race — * His sons grow up that bear his name, Some grow to honour, some to shame, — But he is chill to praise or blame. * He will not hear the north-wind rave, \ Nor, moaning, household shelter crave I From winter rains that beat his grave, j ' High up the vapours fold and swim : About him broods the twilight dim : The place he knew forgetteth him.' ' If all be dark, vague voice,' I said, 'These things are wrapt in doubt and dread, Nor canst thou show the dead are dead. * The sap dries up ; the plant declines. A deeper tale my heart divines. Know I not Death? the outward signs? * I found him when my years were few; A shadow on the graves I knew, And darkness in the village yew. * From grave to grave the shadow crept : In her still place the morning wept : Touch'd by his feet the daisy slept. * The simple senses crown'd his head : " Omega ! thou art Lord," they said, " We find no motion in the dead." * Why, if man rot in dreamless ease. Should that plain fact, as taught by these. Not make him sure that he shall cease? * Who forged that other influence. That heat of inward evidence. By which he doubts against the sense? ' He owns the fatal gift of eyes, That read his spirit blindly wise. Not simple as a thing that dies. * Here sits he shaping wings to fly : His heart forebodes a mystery: He names the name Eternity. ' That type of Perfect in his mind In Nature can he nowhere find. He sows himself on every wind. 34 THE TWO VOICES. ' He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend, And thro' thick veils to apprehend A labour working to an end. 'The end and the beginning vex His reason : many things perplex, With motions, checks, and counterchecks. ' He knows a bsiseness in his blood At such strange war with something good. He may not do the thing he would. * Heaven opens inward, chasms yawn. Vast images in glimmering dawn, Half shown, are broken and withdrawn. ' Ah ! sure' within him and without, Could his dark wisdom find it out, There must be answer to his doubt, * But thou canst answer not again. With thine own weapon art thou slain, Or thou wilt answer but in vain. ' The doubt would rest, I dare not solve. In the same circle we revolve. Assurance only breeds resolve.' As when a billow, blovi'n against. Falls back, the voice with which I fenced A little ceased, but recommenced. * Where wert thou when thy father play'd In his free field, and pastime made, A merry boy in sun and shade? ' A merry boy they call'd him then. He sat upon the knees of men In days that never come again. ' Before the little ducts began To feed thy bones with lime, and ran Their course, till thou wert also man : * Who took a wife, who rear'd his race, Whose wrinkles gather'd on his face. Whose troubles number with his days : j \ ' A life of nothings, nothing-worth, ; From that first nothing ere his birth j/| To that last nothing under earth ! ' * These words,' I said, * are like the rest; No certain clearness, but at best A vague suspicion of the breast : * But if I grant, thou mightst defend The thesis which thy words intend — That to begin implies to end; ' Yet how should I for certain hold, Because my memory is so cold, That I first was in human mould? * I cannot make this matter plain. But I would shoot, howe'er in vain, A random arrow from the brain. * It may be that no life is found, Which only to one engine bound Falls off, but cycles always round. * As old mythologies relate. Some draught of Ixthe might await The slipping thro' from state to state. * As here we find in trances, men Forget the dream that happens then, Until they fall in trance again, ' So might we, if our state were such As one before, remember much. For those two likes might meet and touch. * But, if I lapsed from nobler place, Some legend of a fallen race Alone might hint of my disgrace; ' Some vague emotion of delight In gazing up an Alpine height. Some yearning toward the lamps of night; * Or if thro' lower lives I came — Tho' all experience past became Consolidate in mind and frame — * I might forget my weaker lot; For is not our first year forgot? The haunts of memory echo not. * And men, whose reason long was blind, From cells of madness unconfined. Oft lose whole years of darker mind. THE TWO VOICES. 35 ' Much more, if tirst I floated free, As naked essence, must I be Incompetent of memory : * For memory dealing but with time, And he with matter, could she climb Beyond her own material prime? " Moreover, something is or seems, That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams — ' Of something felt, like something here; Of something done, I know not where; Such as no language may declare.' The still voice laugh'd. ' I talk,' said he. Not with thy dreams. Suffice it thee Thy pain is a reality.' 1^ But thou,' said I, * hast missed thy mark, Who sought'st to wreck my mortal ark. By making all the horizon dark, * Why not set forth, if I should do This rashness, that which might ensue With this old soul in organs new? * Whatever crazy sorrow saith. No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly long'd for death. * 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant. Oh life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want.' I ceased, and sat as one forlorn. Then said the voice, in quiet scorn, ' Behold, it is the Sabbath morn.' And I arose, and I released The casement, and the light increased With freshness in the dawning east. Like soften'd airs that blowing steal. When meres begin to uncongeal, The sweet church bells began to peal. ' On to God's house the people prest : r- Passing the place where each must rest. Each enter'd like a welcome guest. One walk'd between his wife and child, With measured footfall tirm and mild. And now and then he gravely smiled. The prudent partner of his blood Lean'd on him, faithful, gentle, good, Wearing the rose of womanhood. And in their double love secure, The little maiden walk'd demure. Pacing with downward eyelids pure. These three made unity so sweet. My frozen heart began to beat, Remembering its ancient heat. I blest them, and they wander'd on : I spoke, but answer came there none : The dull and bitter voice was gone. A second voice was at mine ear, A little whisper silver-clear, A murmur, ' Be of better cheer.' As from some blissful neighbourhood, A notice faintly understood, ' I see the end, and know the good.' A little hint to solace woe, A hint, a whisper breathing low, * I may not speak of what I know.' Like an yEolian harp that wakes No certain air, but overtakes Far thought with music that it makes : Such seem'd the whisper at my side : * What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?' I cried. * A hidden hope,' the voice replied : So heavenly-toned, that in that hour From out my sullen heart a power Broke, like the rainbow from the shower, To feel, altho' no tongue can prove. That every cloud, that spreads above And veileth love, itself is love. And forth into the fields I went, And Nature's living motion lent The pulse of hope to discontent. THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. I wonder'd at the bounteous hours, The slow result of winter showers : You scarce could see the grass for flowers. I wonder'd, while I paced along : The woods were fill'd so full with song, There seem'd no room for sense of wrong; And all so variously wrought, I marvell'd how the mind was brought To anchor by one gloomy thought; And wherefore rather I made choice To .commune with that barren voice. Than him that said, ' Rejoice ! Rejoice ! ' THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. I SEE the wealthy miller yet, His double chin, his portly size. And who that knew him could forget The busy wrinkles round his eyes? The slow wise smile that, round about His dusty forehead drily curl'd, Seem'd half-within and half-without, And full of dealings with the world? In yonder chair I see him sit, Three fingers round the old silver cup — I see his gray eyes twinkle yet At his own jest — gray eyes lit up With summer lightnings of a soul So full of summer warmth, so glad. So healthy," sound, and clear and whole, His memory scarce can make me sad. Yet fill my glass : give me one kiss : My own sweet Alice, we must die. There's somewhat in this world amiss Shall be unriddled by and by. There's somewhat flows to us in life, But more is taken quite away. Pray, Alice, pray, my darling wife. That we may die the self-same day. Have I not found a happy earth? I least should breathe a thought of pain. Would God renew me from my birth I'd almost live my life again. So sweet it seems with thee to walk. And once again to woo thee mine — It seems in after-dinner talk Across the walnuts and the wine — To be the long and listless boy Late-left an orphan of the squire, Where this old mansion mounted high Looks down upon the village spire : For even here, where I and you Have lived and loved alone so long. Each morn my sleep was broken thro' By some wild skylark's matin song. And oft I heard the tender dove In firry woodlands making moan; But ere I saw your eyes, my love, I had no motion of my own. For scarce my life with fancy play'd Before I dream'd that pleasant dream — - Still hither thither idly sway'd Like those long mosses in the stream. Or from the bridge I lean'd to hear The milldam rushing down with noise. And see the minnows everywhere In crystal eddies glance and poise, The tall flag-flowers when they sprung Below the range of stepping-stones. Or those three chestnuts near, that hung In masses thick with milky cones. But, Alice, what an hour was that. When, after roving in the woods ('Twas April then), I came and sat Below the chestnuts, when their buds Were glistening to the breezy blue; And on the slope, an absent fool, I cast me down, nor thought of you, But angled in the . igher pool. A love-song I had somewhere read, An echo from a measured strain. Beat time to nothing in my head From some odd corner of the brain. It haunted me, the morning long. With weary sameness in the rhymes. The phantom of a silent song, That went and came a thousand times. Then leapt a trout. In lazy mood I watch'"', the little circles die* THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER. 37 They past into the level flood, And there a vision caught my eye; The reflex of a beauteous form, A glowing arm, a gleaming neck, As when a sunbeam wavers warm Within the dark and dimpled beck For you remember, you had set, That morning, on the casement-edge A long green box of mignonette. And you were leaning from the ledge And when I raised my eyes, above They met with two so full and bright — Such eyes ! I swear to you, my love. That these have never lost their light. I loved, and love dispell'd the fear That I should die an early death : For love possess'd the atmosphere, And fili'd the breast with purer breath. My mother thought, ' What ails the boy? ' For I was alter'd, and began To move about the house with joy, And with the certain step of man. I loved the brimming wave that swam Thro' quiet meadows round the mill, The sleepy pool above the dam, The pool beneath it never still, The meal-sacks on the whiten'd floor. The dark round of the dripping wheel. The very air about the door Made misty with the floating meal. And oft in ramblings on the wold. When April nights began to blow. And April's crescent glimmer'd cold, I saw the village lights below; I knew your taper far away. And full at heart of trembling hope From off" the wold I came, and lay Upon the freshly-flower'd slope. The deep brook groan'd beneath the mill; And 'By that lamp,' I thought, 'she sits ! ' The white chalk-quarry from the hill Gleam'd to the flying moon by fits. * O that I were beside her now ! O will she answer if I call? O would she give me vow for vow, Sweet Alice, if I told her all? ' Sometimes I saw you sit and spin; And, in the pauses of the wind, Sometimes I heard you sing within. Sometimes your shadow cross'd the blind. At last you rose and moved the light, And the long shadow of the chair Flitted across into the night, And all the casement darken'd there. But when at last I dared to speak, The lanes, you know, were white with may, Your ripe lips moved not, but your cheek Flush'd like the coming of the day; And so it was — half-sly, half-shy. You would, and would not, little one ! Although I pleaded tenderly. And you and I were all alone. And slowly was my mother brought To yield consent to my desire : She wish'd me happy, but she thought I might have look'd a little higher; And I was young — too young to wed : * Yet must I love her for your sake; Go fetch your Alice here,' she said : Her eyelid quiver'd as she spake. And down I went to fetch my bride : But, Alice, you were ill at ease; This dress and that by turns you tried. Too fearful that you should not please. I loved you better for your fears, I knew you could not look but well; And dews, that would have fall'n in tears, I kiss'd away before they fell. I watch'd the little flutterings. The doubt ray mother would not see; She spoke at large of many things. And at the last she spoke of me; And turning look'd upon your face. As near this door you sat apart. And rose, and, with a silent grace Approaching, press'd you heart to heart Ah, well — but sing the foolish song I gave you, Alice, on the day When, arm in arm, we went along, A pensive pair, and you were gay 38 THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER — FATIMA. With bridal flowers — that I may seem, As in the nights of old, to lie Beside the mill-wheel in the stream, While those full chestnuts whisper by. It is the miller's daughter, And she is grown so dear, so dear, That I would be t4ie jewel That trembles in her ear: For hid in ringlets.day and night, I'd touch her neck so warm and white. And I would be the girdle About her dainty dainty waist. And her heart would beat against me, In sorrow and in rest: And I should know if it beat right, I'd clasp it round so close and tight. And I would be the necklace. And all day long to fall and rise Upon her balmy bosom, With her laughter or her sighs, And I would lie so light, so light, I scarce should be unclasp'd at night. A trifle, sweet ! which true love spells — True love interprets — right alone. His light upon the letter dwells, For all the spirit is his own. So, if I waste words now, in truth You must blame Love. His early rage Had force to make me rhyme in youth, And makes me talk too much in age. And now those vivid hours are gone, Like mine own life to me thou art, While Past and Present, w-ound in one, Do make a garland for the heart : >jo sing that other song I made, Half-anger'd with my happy lot, fhe day, when in the chestnut shade I found the blue Forget-me-not. Love that hath us in the net. Can he pass, and we forget? Many suns arise and set. Many a chance the years beget. Love the gift is Love the debt. Even so. Love is hurt with jar and fret. Love is made a vague regret. Eyes with idle tears are wet. Idle habit links us yet. What is love? for we forget: Ah. no! no! Look thro' mine eyes with thine. True wife, Round my true heart thine arms entwine My other dearer life in life. Look thro' my very soul with thine ! Untouch'd with any shade of years, May those kind eyes for ever dwell! They have" not shed a many tears. Dear eyes, since first I knew them well. Yet tears they shed : they had their pan Of sorrow : for when time was ripe, The still affection ©f the heart Became an outward breathing type, That into stillness past again. And left a want unknown before; Although the loss had brought us pain. That loss but made us love the more. With farther lookings on. The kiss, The woven arms, seem but to be Weak symbols of the settled bliss. The comfort, I have found in thee : But that God bless thee, dear — • who wrought Two spirits to one equal mind — With blessings beyond hope or thought. With blessings which no words can find. Arise, and let us wander forth, To yon old mill across the wolds; For look, the sunset, south and north, Winds all the vale in rosy folds, And fires your narrow casement glass, Touching the sullen pool below: On the chalk-hill the bearded grass Is dry and dewless. Let us go. FATIMA. O Love, Love, Love ! O withering might ! O sun, that from thy noonday height Shudderest when I strain my sight, Throbbing thro' all thy heat and light, Lo, falling from my constant mind, Lo, parch'd and wither'd, deaf and blind, I whirl like leaves in roaring wind. Last night I wasted hateful hours Below the city's eastern towers : FA TIM A — CE ATONE. 39 I thirsted for the brooks, the showers : I roll'd among the tender flowers : I crush'd them on my breast, my mouth; I look'd athwart the burning drouth Of that long desert to the south. Last night, when some one spoke his name, From my swift blood that went arid came A thousand little shafts of flame Were shiver' d in my narrow frame. Love, O fire ! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul thro' My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew. Before he mounts the hill, I know He Cometh quickly : from below Sweet gales, as from deep gardens, blow Before him, striking on my brow. In my dry brain my spirit soon, Down-deepening from swoon to swoon. Faints like a dazzled morning moon. The wind sounds like a silver wire. And from beyond the noon a fire Is pour'd upon the hills, and nigher The skies stoop down in their desire; And, isled in sudden seas of light, My heart, pierced thro' with fierce delight. Bursts into blossom in his sight. My whole soul v/aiting silently, All naked in a sultry sky. Droops blinded with hie shiaing eye : I 7vif/ possess him or will die. 1 will grow round him in his place, Grow, live, die looking on his face. Die, dying clasp' d in his embrace. CENONE. There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen. Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine. And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine In catara rf after r.qff^tji,r,t t" ^n firj*. - Behind the valley topmost Gargarus Stands up and takes the morning : but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel. The crown of Troas. Hither came at noon Mournfu l (T'.nnnp, wandering forlor n Of Pa ris, once her playmate on the hills. Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck Floated her hair or seem'd to float in rest. She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine. Sang to the stillness, till the mountain- shade Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff". * O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, barken ere I die . For now the noonday quiet holds the hill : The grasshopper is silent in the grass: The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead. The purple flower droops: the golden bee _ Is lily-cradled : I alone awake. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love. My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, ., And I am all aweary of my life. ' O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, r)et.r mothP^ THa, V>ai;ken ere T die. Hear me, O Earth, hear me, O Hills, O Caves That house the cold crown'd snake ! O mountain brooks, I am the daughter of a River- God. Heai; me. for I will speak, and'build up all My sorrow -^v^th ipy song , as yonder walls Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed, A cloud that gather'd shape : for it may b e T hat, while I speak of it. a little while Mj^ hpcrfr ]j.ay wanrlpr frnm its dee.pef WS£. 40 CENONE. *0 mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear m^tWr t^]^. Y'^r^-'^'^ ere I waited underneath the dawning hills. Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark, And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine : Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris, Leading a jet-black goat white-horn'd, white-hooved. Came up from reedy Simois all alone. *0 mnfhpr T/jp, hflr^^f n ere J die. Far-off the torrent call'd me from the cleft : Far up the solitary morning smote The streaks of virgin snow. With down- dropt eyes I sat alone : white-breasted like a star Fronting the dawn he moved; a leopard skin Droop'd from his shoulder, but his sunny hair Cluster'd about his temples like a God's : And his cheek brighten'd as the foam-bow brightens When the wind blows the foam, and all my heart Went forth to embrace him coming ere he came. ~"* Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. He smiled, and opening out his milk- white palm Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold, That smelt ambrosially, and while I look'd And listen'd, the full-flowing river of speech Came down upon my heart. ' " My own CEnone, Beautiful-brow'd CEnone, my own soul, Behold this fruit, whose gleaming rind ingrav'n ' For the most fair .* would seem to award it thine, As lovelier than whatever Oread haunt The knolls of Ida, loveliest in all grace Of movement, and the charm of married brows." * Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. He prest the blossom of his lips to mine. And added '* This was cast upon the board. When all the full-faced presence of the Gods Ranged in the halls of Peleus: where- upon Rose feud, with question unto whom 'twere due : But Hght-foot Iris brought it yester-eve. Delivering that to me, by common voice Elected umpire, ii££e_comes to-day. This r^^tj^ ed of^ fair est. Thou, within the cave Behind yon whispering tuft of oldest pine, Mayst well behold them unbeheld, un- heard TJfar q|1, and saf' fhy PanV jnrign of Gads." * Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. It was the deep midnoon : one silvery cloud Had lost his way between the piney sides Of this long glen. Then to the bower they came, Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower. And at their feet the crocus brake like fire, Violet, amaracus, and asphodel. Lotos and lilies : and a wind arose, And overhead the wandering ivy and vine. This way and that, in many a wild festoon Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs With bunch and berry and flower thro' and thro'. * O mother Ida, harken ere I die. On the tree-tops a crested peacock lit, And o'er him flow'd a golden cloud, and lean'd Upon him, slowly dropping fragrant dew. Then first I heard the voice of her, to whom Coming thro' Heaven, like a light that grows Larger and clearer, with one mind the Gods Rise up for reverence, .^hptr^ ^pjf<;^^r^(^ Proffer of roval power, a mple rule Unquestion'd, overflowing revenue Wherewith to embellish state, " from many a vale And river-sunder'd champaign clothed with corn, CENONE. 41 Or labour'd mine undrainable of ore. Honour," she sa id, '* and ^omag e, tax and toll, From many an inland town and haven large, Mast-throng'd beneath her shadowing citadel In glassy bays among her tallest towers," ' O mother Ida, harken ere I die. Still she spake on and still s he spake of powe r, " Which ni all action ]< ; tViP end of all; P nTi-nr fiftrirl fn thf^ cpigop ; wjgrlnm. bred And throaed-oLaisdom — from all neigh- bour crowns Alliance and allegiance, till thy hand Fail from the sceptre-stafF, Such boon from me. From me. Heaven's Queen, Paris, to thee king-b orn, A shepherd all thy life but yet king-born, Should come most welcome, seeing men, in power Only, are likest gods, who have attain'd Rest in a happy place and quiet seats Above the thunder, with undying bliss In knowledge of their own supremacy." * Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. She ceased, and Paris held the costly fruit Out at arm's length, so much the thought of power Flatter'd his spirit; b ut Pallas where she stood So mewhat apar t, her clear and bared limbs O'erthwarted with the brazen-headed spear Upon her pearly shoulder leaning cold, 'ihe while, above, her full and earnest eye Over her snow-cold breast and angry cheek Kept watch, waiting decision, made repl^. * ** Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self- control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law, Acting m^ law we live by without fear; And because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of conse- quence." * Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Again she said : " I woo thee not with gifts. Sequel of guerdon could not alter me To fairer. Judge thou me by what I am, So shalt thou find me fairest. Yet, indeed If gazing on divinity disrobed Thy mortal eyes are frail to judge of fair, Unbias'd by self-profit, oh ! rest thee sure. That I shall love thee well and cleave to thee. So that my vigour, wedded to thy blood, Shall strike within thy pulses like a God's, To push thee forward thro' a life of shocks, Dangers, and deeds, until endurance grow Sinew'd with action, and the full-grown will. Circled thro' all experiences, pure law, Commeasure perfect freedom." * Here she ceas'd. And Paris ponder'd, and I cried, *' O Paris, Give it to Pallas ! " but he heard me not, Or hearing would not hear me, woe is me ! * O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Tjaljin Aphr!?dit^ h^""^^*'"^ Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells, With rosy slender fingers backward drew From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat And shoulder : from the violets her light foot Shone rosy-white, and o'er her rounded form Between the shadows of the vine-bunches Floated the glowing sunlights, as she moved. 42 CENONE. * Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. She with a subtle smile in her mild eyes, The herald of her triumph, drawing nigh Half-whisper'd in his ear, " I^ promi se thee The fairest and most l oving wife in QjXfii^e." She spoke and laugh'd : I shut my sight for fear: But when I look'd, Paris had raised his arm, And I beheld great Here's angry eyes. As she withdrew into the golden cloud, And I was left alone within the bower ; And from that time to this I am alone, And I shall be alone until I die. * Yet, mother Ida, harken ere I die. Fairest — why fairest wife ? am I not fair? My love hath told me so a thousand times. Methinks 1 must be fair, for yesterday. When I past by, a wild and wanton pard. Eyed like the evening star, with playful tail Crouch'd fawning in the weed. Most loving is she? Ah me, my mountain shepherd, that my arms Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest Close, close to thine in that quick-falling dew Of fruitful kisses, thick as Autumn rains Flash in the pools of whirling Simois. * O mother, hear me yet before I die. They came, they cut away my tallest pines, My tall dark pines, that plumed the craggy ledge High over the blue gorge, and all between The snowy peak and snow-white cataract Foster'd the callow eaglet — from beneath Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn The panther's roar canie muffled, while I sat Low in the valley. Never, never more Shall lone CEnone see the morning mist Sweep thro' them; never see them over- laid With narrow moon -lit slips of silver cloud, Between the loud stream and the trem- bling stars. * O mother, hear me yet before I die. I wish that somewhere in the ruin'd folds. Among the fragments tumbled from the glens. Or the dry thickets, I could meet with her The Abominable, that uninvited came Into the fair Peleian banquet-hall. And cast the golden fruit upon the board, And bred this change; that I might speak my mind. And tell her to her face how much I hate Her presence, hated both of Gods and men. * O mother, hear me yet before I die. Hath he not sworn his love a thousand times, In this green valley, under'this green hill, Ev'n on this hand, and sitting on this stone? Seal'd it with kisses? water'd it with tears? O happy tears, and how unlike to these ! O happy Heaven, how canst thou see my face ? O happy earth, how canst thou bear my weight ? death, death, death, thou ever-floating cloud, There are enough unhappy on this earth; Pass by the happy souls, that love to live : * 1 pray thee, pass before my light of hfe, And shadow all my soul, that I may die. Thou weighest heavy on the heart within, Weigh heavy on my eyelids : let me die. * O mother, hear me yet before I die. I will not die alone, for fiery thoughts Do shape themselves within me, more and more. Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear Dead sounds at night come from the in- most hills. Like footsteps upon wool. I dimly see My far-off doubtful purpose, as a mother Conjectures of the features of her child Ere it is born : her child ! — a shudder THE SISTERS— THE PALACE OF ART. 43 Across me : never child be born of me, Unblest, to vex me with his father's eyes ! ' O mother, hear me yet before I die. Hear me, O earth. I will not die alone, Lest their shrill happy laughter come to me Walking the cold and starless road of Death Uncomforted, leaving my ancient love With the Greek woman. I will rise and go D own into Troy, a nd ere the stats come Talk with the wild ^flfii?'^^'' , for sne says A fire dances before her, and a sound Rings ever in her ears of armed men. What this may be I know not, but I know That, wheresoe'er I am by night and day, All earth and air seem only burning fire.* THE SISTERS. We were two daughters of one race : She was the fairest in the face : The wind is blowing in turret and tree. They were together, and she fell; Therefore revenge became me well. O the Earl was fair to see ! She died : she went to burning flame : She mix'd her ancient blood with shame. The wind is howling in turret and tree. Whole weeks and months, and early and late. To win his love I lay in wait : O the Earl was fair to see ! I made a feast; I bade him come; I won his love, I brought him home. The wind is roaring in turret and tree. And after supper, on a bed, Upon my lap he laid his head : O the Earl was fair to see ! I kissed his eyelids into rest : His ruddy cheek upon my breast. The wind is raging in turret and tree. I hated him with the hate of hell, But I loved his beauty passing well. O the Earl was fair to see ! I rose up in the silent night : I made my dagger sharp and bright. The wind is raving in turret and tree. As half-asleep his breath he drew, Three times I stabb'd him thro' and thro*. O the Earl was fair to see ! I curl'd and comb'd his comely head, He look'd so grand when he was dead. The wind is blowing in turret and tree. I wrapt his body in the sheet, And laid him at his mother's feet. O the Earl was fair to see ! TO . WITH THE FOLLOWING POEM. I SEND you here a sort of allegory, (For you will understand it) of a soul, A sinful soul possess'd of many gifts, A spacious garden full of flowering weeds, A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain, That did love Beauty only (Beauty seen In all varieties of mould and mind), And Knowledge for its beauty; or if Good, Good only for its beauty, seeing not That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters That dote upon each other, friends to man, Living together under the same roof, And never can be sunder'd without tears. And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie. Howling in outer darkness. Not for this Was common clay ta'en from the common earth Moulded by God, and temper'd with the tears Of angels to the perfect shape of man. THE PALACE OF ART. I BUILT my soul a lordly pleasure-house, Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. I said, * O Soul, make merry and carouse, Dear soul, for all is well.' 44 THE PALACE OF ART. A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish'd brass I chose. The ranged ramparts bright From level meadow-bases of deep grass Suddenly scaled the light. Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf The rock rose clear, or winding stair. My soul would live alone unto herself In her high palace there. And 'While the world runs round and round,' I said, * Reign thou apart, a quiet king. Still as, while Saturn whirls, his stedfast shade Sleeps on his luminous ring.' To which my soul made answer readily : 'Trust me, in bliss I shall abide In this great mansion, that is built for me, So royal-rich and wide.' Four courts I made, East, West and South and North, In each a squared lawn, wherefrom The golden gorge of dragons spouted forth A flood of fountain-foam. And round the cool green courts there ran a row Of cloisters, branch'd like mighty woods, Echoing all night to that sonorous flow Of spouted fountain-floods. And round the roofs a gilded gallery That lent broad verge to distant lands. Far as the wild swan wings, to Avhere the sky Dipt down to sea and sands. From those four jets four currents in one swell Across the mountain stream'd below 'In misty folds, that floating as they fell Lit up a torrent-bow. And high on every peak a statue seem'd To hang on tiptoe, tossing up A cloud of incense of all odour steam'd P'rom out a golden cup. So that she thought, * And who shall gaze upon My palace with unblinded eyes. While this great bow will waver in the sun, And that sweet incense rise?' For that sweet incense rose and never fail'd, And, while day sank or mounted higher, The light aerial gallery, golden-rjiil'd, Burnt like a fringe of fire. Likewise the deep-set windows, stain'd and traced. Would seem slow-flaming crimson fires From shadow'd grots of arches interlaced, And tipt with frost-like spires. * * * * * * * * Full of long-sounding corridors it was, That over-vaulted grateful gloom. Thro' which the livelong day my soul did pass, Well-pleased, from room to room. Full of great rooms and small the palace stood. All various, each a perfect whole From living Nature, fit for every mood And change of my still soul. For some were hung with arras green and blue. Showing a gaudy summer-morn. Where with puff 'd cheek the belted hunter blew His wreathed bugle-horn. One seem'd all dark and red — a tract of sand, And some one pacing there alone, Who paced for ever in a glimmering land, Lit with a low large moon. One show'd an iron coast and angry waves. You seem'd to hear them climb and fall And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves. Beneath the windy wall. THE PALACE OF ART. 45 And one, a full-fed river winding slow By herds upon an endless plain, The ragged rims of thunder brooding low, With shadow-streaks of rain. And one, the reapers at their sultry toU. In front they bound the sheaves. Be- hind Were realms of upland, prodigal in oil, And hoary to the wind. And one a foreground black with stones and slags. Beyond, a line of heights, and higher All barr'd with long white cloud the scornful crags. And highest, snow and fire. And one, an English home — gray twi- light pour'd On dewy pastures, dewy trees. Softer than sleep — all things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace. Nor these alone, but every landscape fair, As fit for every mood of mind. Or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern, was there Not less than truth design'd. Or the maid-mother by a crucifix. In tracts of pasture sunny-warm, Beneath branch-work of costly sardonyx Sat smiling, babe in arm.. Or in a clear-wall'd city on the sea, Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily; An angel look'd at her. Or thronging all one porch of Paradise A group of Houris bow'd to see The dying Islamite, with hands and eyes That said, We wait for thee. Or mythic Uther's deeply-wounded son In some fair space of sloping greens Lay, dozing in the vale of Avalon, And watch'd by weeping queens. Or hollowing one hand against his ear. To list a foot-fall, ere he saw The wood-nymph, stay'd the Ausonian king to hear Of wisdom and of law. Or over hills with peaky tops engrail'd, And many a tract of palm and rice. The throne of Indian Cama slowly sail'd A summer fann'd with spice. Or sweet Europa's mantle blew unclasp'd. From off her shoulder backward borne : From one hand droop'd a crocus : one hand grasp'd The mild bull's golden horn. Or else flush'd Ganymede, his rosy thigh Half-buried in the Eagle's down. Sole as a flying star shot thro' the sky Above the pillar'd town. Nor these alone : but every legend fail Which the supreme Caucasian mind Carved out of Nature for itself, was there, Not less than life, design'd. Then in the towers I placed great bells that swung. Moved of themselves, with silver sound; And with choice paintings of wise men I hung The royal dais round. For there was Milton like a seraph strong. Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild ; And there the world-worn Dante grasp'd his song. And somewhat grimly smiled. And there the Ionian father of the rest; A million wrinkles carved his skin; A hundred winters snow'd upon his breast, From cheek and throat and chin. Above, the fair hall-ceiling stately-set Many an arch high up did lift, And angels rising and descending met With interchange of gift. Below was all mosaic choicely plann'd With cycles of the human tale 46 THE PALACE OF ART. Of this wide world, the times of every land So wrought, they will not fail. The people here, a beast of burden slow, Toil'd onward, prick'd with goads and stings; Here play'd, a tiger, rolling to and fro The heads and crowns of kings; Here rose, an athlete, strong to break or bind All force in bonds that might endure, And here once more like some sick man declined, And trusted any cure. But over these she trod : and those great bells Began to chime. She took her throne : She sat betwixt the shining Oriels, To sing her songs alone. And thro' the topmost Oriels' coloured flame Two godlike faces gazed below; Plato the wise, and large-brow'd Verulam, The first of those who know. And all those names, that in their motion were Full-welling fountain-heads of change. Betwixt the slender shafts were blazon'd fair In diverse raiment strange : Thro' which the lights, rose, amber, emerald, blue, Flush'd in her temples and her eyes. And from her lips, as morn from Memnon, drew Rivers of melodies. No nightingale delighteth to prolong Her low preamble all alone. More than my soul to hear her echo'd song Throb thro' the ribbed stone; Singing and murmuring in her feastful mirth. Joying to feel herself alive, Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible earth, Lord of the senses five; Communing with herself: * All these are mine. And let the world have peace or wars, 'Tis one to me.' She — when young night divine Crown'd dying day with stars, ^ Making sweet close of his delicious toils — Lit light in wreaths and anadems. And pure quintessences of precious oils In hollow'd moons of gems. To mimie heaven; and clapt her hands and cried, * I marvel if luy still delight In this great house so royal-rich, and wide, Be flatter'd to the height. 'O all things fair to sate my various eyec! shapes and hues that please me well! silent faces of the Great and Wise, My Gods, with whom I dwell ! ' O God-like isolation which art mine, 1 can but count thee perfect gain. What time I vi^atch the darkening droves of swine That range on yonder plain. * In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin, They graze and wallow, breed and sleep; And oft some brainless devil enters in, And drives them to the deep.' Then of the moral instinct would she prate And of the rising from the dead. As hers by right of full-accomplish'd Fate ; And at the last she said : * I take possession of man's mind and deed. I care not what the sects may brawl. 1 sit as God holding no form of creed. But contemplating all.' * * * * * * * * Full oft the riddle of the painful earth Flash'd thro' her as she sat alone. Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth, And intellectual throne. THE PALACE OF ART. 47 And so she throve and prosper'd : so three years She prosper'd : on the fourth she fell, Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears, Struck thro' with pangs of hell. Lest she should fail and perish utterly, God, before whom ever lie bare The abysmal deeps of Personality, Plagued her with sore despair. When she would think, where'er she turn'd her sight The airy hand confusion wrought. Wrote, * Mene, mene,' and divided quite The kingdom of her thought. Deep dread and loathing of her solitude Fell on her, from which mood was born Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood Laughter at her self-scorn. ♦ What ! is not this my place of strength,' she said, * My spacious mansion built for me, Whereof the strong foundation-stones were laid Since my first memory?* But in dark corners of her palace stood Uncertain shapes; and unawares On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood, And horrible nightmares, And hollow shades, enclosing hearts of flame, And, with dim fretted foreheads all. On corpses three-months-old at noon she came, That stood against the wall. A spot of dull stagnation, without light Or power of movement, seem'd my soul, 'Mid onward-sloping motions infinite Making for one sure goal. A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand, Left on the shore; that hears all night The plunging seas draw backward from the land Their moon-led waters white. A star that with the choral starry dance Join'd not, but stood, and standing saw The hollow orb of moving Circumstance RoU'd round by one fix'd law. Back on herself her serpent pride had curl'd. *No voice,' she shriek'd in that lone hall, 'No voice breaks thro' the stillness of this world : One deep, deep silence all ! ' She, mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame. Lay there exiled from eternal God, Lost to her place and name; And death and life she hated equally, And nothing saw, for her despair, But dreadful time, dreadful eternity. No comfort anywhere; Remaining utterly confused with fears. And ever worse with growing time. And ever unrelieved by dismal tears. And all alone in crime : Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round With blackness as a solid wall, Far off she seem'd to hear the dully sound Of human footstens fall. uii sue 3CC111 Li lu iicai lllC Of human footsteps fall. As in strange lands a traveller walking slow. In doubt and great perplexity, A little before moon-rise hears the low Moan of an unknown sea; And knows not if it be thunder, or a sound Of rocks thrown down, or one deep cry Of great wild beasts; then thinketh, *I have found A new land, but I die.' She howl'd aloud, * I am on fire within. There comes no murmur of reply. 48 LADY CLARA VERB BE VERE. What is it that will take away my sin, And save me lest I die ? ' So when four years were wholly finished, She threw her royal robes away. ' Make me a cottage in the vale,' she said, * Where 1 may mourn and pray. ' Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are So lightly, beautifully built : Perchance I may return with others there When I have purged my guilt.' LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Of me you shall not win renown : You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired :- The daughter of a hundred Earls, You are not one to be desired. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, I know you proud to bear your name. Your pride is yet no mate for mine. Too proud to care from whence I came. Nor would I break for your sweet sake A heart that dotes on truer charms. A simple maiden in her flower Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Some meeker pupil you must find, For were you queen of all that is, I could not stoop to such a mind. You souf^ht to prove how I could love. And my disdain is my reply. The lion on your old stone gates Is not more cold to you than I. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, You put strange memories in my head. Not thrice your branching limes have blown Since I beheld young Laurence dead. Oh your sweet eyes, your low replies : A great enchantress you may be ; But there was that across his thrOat Which you had hardly cared to see. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, When thus he met his mother's view, She had the passions of her kind, She spake some certain truths of you. Indeed I heard one bitter word That scarce is fit for you to hear; Her manners had not that repose Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, There stands a spectre in your hall : The guilt of blood is at your door : You changed a wholesome heart to gall. You held your course without r^ yiorse. To make him trust his modest worth, And, last, you fix'd a vacant stare. And slew him with your noble birth. Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, From yon blue heavens above us bent The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets. And simple faith than Norman blood. I know you, Clara Vere de Vere, You pine among your halls and towers : The languid light of your proud eyes Is wearied of the rolling hours. In glowing health, with boundless wealth. But sickening of a vague disease, You know so ill to deal with time, You needs must play such pranks as these. Clara, Clara Vere de Vere, If time be heavy on your hands, Are there no beggars at your gate, Nor any poor about your lands? Oh ! teach the orphan-boy to read. Or teach the orphan-girl to sew, Pray heaven for a human heart, And let the foolish yeoman go. THE MAY QUEEN. 49 THE MAY QUEEN. You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear; To-morrow 'ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year; Of all the glad New-year, mother, the maddest merriest day; For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. There's many a black black eye, they say, but none so bright as mine; There's Margaret and Mary, there's Kate and Caroline : But none so fair as little Alice in all the land they say, So I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. I sleep so sound all night, mother, that I shall never wake, If you do not call me loud when the day begins to break : But I must gather knots of flowers, and buds and garlands gay, For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. As I came up the valley whom think ye should I see, But Robin leaning on the bridge beneath the hazel-tree? He thought of that sharp look, mother, I gave him yesterday, But I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. He thought I was a ghost, mother, for I was all in white, And I ran by him without speaking, like a flash of light. They call me cruel-hearted, but I care not what they say, For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. They say he's dying all for love, but that can never be : They say his heart is breaking, mother — what is that to me? There's many a bolder lad 'ill woo me any summer day. And I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. Little Effie shall go with me to-morrow to the green, And you'll be there, too, mother, to see me made the Queen; For the shepherd lads on every side 'ill come from far away, And I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. The honeysuckle round the porch has wov'n its wavy bowers. And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers; And the wild marsh-marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray, And I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. The night-winds come and go, mother, upon the meadow-grass, And the happy stars above them seem to brighten as they pass; There will not be a drop of rain the whole of the livelong day. And I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. All the valley, mother, 'ill be fresh and green and still. And the cowslip and the crowfoot are over all the hill. And the rivulet in the flowery dale 'ill merrily glance and play. For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May, £ 50 THE MAY QUEEN. So you must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear, To-morrow ^ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year : To-morrow 'ill be of all the year the maddest merriest day, For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. NEW-YEAR'S EVE. If you're waking call me early, call me early, mother dear, For I would see the sun rise upon the glad New-year. It is the last New-year that I shall ever see, Then you may lay me low i' the mould and think no more of me. To-night I saw the sun set : he set and left behind The good old year, the deai- old time, and all my peace of mind; And the New-year's coming up, mother, but I shall never see The blossom on the blackthorn, the leaf upon the tree. Last May we made a crown of flowers: we had a merry day; Beneath the hawthorn on the green they made me Queen of May; And we danced about the may-pole and in the hazel copse, Till Charles's Wain came out above the tall white chimney-tops. There's not a flOwer on all the hills : the frost is on the pane : I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again : I wish the snow would melt and the sun come out on high : I long to see a flower so before the day I die. The building rook 'ill caw from the windy tall elm-tree, And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea. And the swallow 'ill come back again with summer o'er the wave. But I shall lie alone, mother, within the mouldering grave. Upon the chancel-casement, and upon that grave of mine, In the early early morning the summer sun 'ill shine, Before the red cock crows from the farm upon the hill. When you are warm-asleep, mother, and all the world is still. When the flowers come again, mother, beneath the waning light You'll never see me more in the long gray fields at night; When from the dry dark wold the summer airs blow cool On the oat-grass and the sword-grass, and the bulrush In the pooL You'll bury me, my mother, just beneath the hawthorn shade. And you'll come sometimes and see me where I am lowly laid. I shall not forget you, mother, I shall hear you when you pass, With your feet above my head in the long and pleasant grass. I have been wild and wayward, but you'll forgive me now; You'll kiss me, my own mother, and forgive me ere I go; Nay, nay, you must not weep, nor let your grief be wild. You should not fret for me, mother, you have another child, THE MAY QUEEN. 51 If I can I'll come again, mother, from out my resting-place; Tho' you'll not see me, mother, I shall look upon your facej Tho' I cannot speak a word, I shall harken what you say, And be often, often with you when you think I'm far away. Goodnight, goodnight, when I have said goodnight for evermore, And you see me carried out from the threshold of the door; Don't let Effie come to see me till my grave be growing green : She'll be a better child to you than ever I have been. She'll find my garden-tools upon the granary floor : Let her take 'em: they are hers: I shall never garden more; But tell her, when I'm gone, to train the rosebush that I set About the parlour-window and the box of mignonette. Goodnight, sweet mother : call me before the day is bom. All night I lie awake, but I fall asleep at morn ; But I would see the sun rise upon the glad New-year, . So, if you're waking, call me, call me early, mother dear. CONCLUSION. I THOUGHT to pass away before, and yet alive I am ; And in the fields all round I hear the bleating of the lamb. How sadly, I remember, rose the morning of the year ! To die before the snowdrop came, and now the violet's here. O sweet is the new violet, that comes beneath the skies. And sweeter is the young lamb's voice to me that cannot rise. And sweet is all the land about, and all the flowers that blow. And sweeter far is death than life to me that long to go. It seem'd so hard at first, mother, to leave the blessed sun, And now it seems as hard to stay, and yet His will be done ! But still I think it can't be long before I find release ; And that goad man, the clergyman, has told me words of peace. O blessings on his kindly voice and on his silver hair ! And blessings on his whole life long, until he meet me there! blessings on his kindly heart and on his silver head ! A thousand times I blest him, as he knelt beside my bed. He taught me all the mercy, for he show'd me all the sin. Now, tho' my lamp was lighted late, there's One will let me in : Nor would I now be well, mother, again if that could be, For my desire is but to pass to Him that died for me. 1 did not hear the dog howl, mother, or the death-watch beat. There came a sweeter token Vhen the night and morning meets But sit beside my bed, mother, and put your hand in mine, And Effie on the other side, and I will tell the sign. 52 • THE MAY QUEEN. All in the wild March-morning I heard the angels call; It was when the moon was setting, and the dark was over all; The trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll, And in the wild March-morning I heard them call my soul. For lying broad awake I thought of you and Effie dear; I saw you sitting in the house and I no longer here; With all my strength I pray'd for both, and so I felt resigned, And up the valley came a swell of music on the wind. I thought that it was fancy, and I listen'd in my bed, And then did something speak to me — I know not what was said; For great delight and shuddering took hold of all my mind, And up the valley came again the music on the wind. But you were sleeping; and I said, * It's not for them : it's mine.* And if it come three times, I thought, I take it for a sign. And once again it came, and close beside the window-bars. Then seem'd to go right up to Heaven and die among the stars. So now I think my time is near. I trust it is. I know The blessed music went that way my soul will have to go. And for myself, indeed, I care not if I go to-day. . But, Effie, you must comfort her when I am passed away. And say to Robin a kind word, and tell him not to fret; There's many a worthier than I, would make him happy yet. If i had lived — I cannot tell — I might have been his wife; But all these things have ceased to be, with my desire of life. O look ! the sun begins to rise, the heavens are in a glow; He shines upon a hundred fields, and all of them I know. And there I move no longer now, and there his light may shine — Wild flowers in the valley for other hands than mine. O sweet and strange it seems to me, that ere this day is done The voice, that now is speaking, may be beyond the sun — For ever and for ever with those just souls and true — And what is life, that we should moan? why make we such ado? For ever and for ever, all in a blessed home — And there to wait a little while till you and Effie come — To lie within the light of God, as I lie upon your breast — And the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest THE LOTOS-EATERS, 53 * Courage ! ' he said, and pointed toward the land, *This mounting wave will roll us shore- ward soon.' j In the afternoon they came unto a land ' In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon. Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. |A land of streams ! some, like a down- ward smoke. Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke. Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land : far off, three moun- tain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flush'd : and, dew'd with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. The charmed sunset linger'd low adown In the red West : thro' mountain clefts the dale Was seen far inland, and the yellow down Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow, set with slender galingale ; A land where all things a lways se gm'd ±hp «;a]X[P \ And round about the keel with faces pale. Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, j ri ii l i iil il -^yPf] mplar.rh'^fly I.OtOg-eat^T ^ came. ^ Branches they bore of that enchanted stem. Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave ; And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake, JAnd music in his ears his beating heart did make. They sat them down upon the yellow sand. Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And ^weet it was to dream of Fatherlan d. Qf rhj M. and w ife, and slave; hnf pvpr. more Mngf wpary seem'd the sea, weary the oar. Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, * We will return no rrinr p; ' And all at once they sang, * Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.' CHORIC SONG. There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a glearfiing pass; Music that gentiier on the spirit lies. Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep. And thro' the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. Why are we weigh'd upon with heavi- ness, And utterly consumed with sharp dis- tress, 54 THE LOTOS-EATERS. While all things else have rest from weariness? All things have rest : why should we toil alone, We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown : Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings. Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm ; Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, ' There is no joy but calm ! ' Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? III. Lo ! in the middle of the wood. The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud With winds upon the branch, and there Grows green and broad, and takes no care, Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow Falls, and floats adown the air. Lo ! sweeten'd with the summer light. The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mel- low. Drops in a silent autumn night. All its allotted length of days. The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. Hateful is the dark-blue sky. Vaulted o'er the dark -blue sea. Death is the end of life; ah, why Should life all labour be? Let us done. Time driveth onward fast. And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil ? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climliing wave? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence; ripen, fall and cease : Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease. V. How sweet it were, hearing the down- ward stream. With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream ! To dream and dream, like yonder amber light. Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other's whisper'd speech; Eating the Lotos day by day. To watch the crisping ripples on thp beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray; To lend our hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of mild-minded melan- choly; To muse and brood and live again in memory. With those old faces of our infancy Heap'd over with a mound of grass. Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass! VI. Dear is the memory of our wedded lives. And dear the last embraces of our wives And their warm tears : but all hath suf- fer'd change: For surely now our household hearths are cold : Our sons inherit us : our looks are strange : And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes over-bold Have eat our substance, and the min- strel sings Before them of the ten years' war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain. The Gods are hard to reconcile : 'Tis hard to settle order once again. There is confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Long labour unto aged breath, THE LOTOS-EATERS— A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 55 Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars. But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly) With half-dropt eyelid still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly His waters from the purple hill — To hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine — To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine ! Only to hear and see the far-off spark- ling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine. The Lotos blooms below the barren peak : The Lotos blows by every winding creek : All day the wind breathes low with mel- lower tone : Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown. We h mra . hTd fnV"g^ "f ariinn^ and of motLou-w£, RoU'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills hke Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world : Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands. Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands. Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an an- cient tale of wrong. Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil. Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil. Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer — some, 'tis whisper'd — down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, : Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more SAveet than toil, the shore Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; Oh r^st ye, brother m ariners, we will not wander more. A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. I READ, before my eyelids dropt their shade, * The Legend of Good Women,^ long ago Sung by the morning star of song, who made His music heard below; Dan Chaucer, the first v/arbler, whose sweet breath Prelucied those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still. x\nd, for a while, the knowledge of his art Held me above the subject, as strong gales Hold swollen clouds from raining, tho' my heart, BrimfiU of those wild tales. 56 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. Charged both mine eyes with tears. In As when a great thought strikes along every land the brain, I saw, wherever light illumineth, And flushes all the cheek. Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand The downward slope to death. And once my arm was lifted to hew down A cavalier from off his saddle-bow. 1 hose far-renowned brides of ancient song That bore a lady from a leaguer'd town; Peopled the hollow dark, like burning stars, And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and And then, I know not how. - All those sharp fancies, by down-lapsing wrong, thought And trumpets blown for wars; Stream'd onward, lost their edges, and did creep And clattering flints batter'd with clang- Roll'd on each other, rounded, smoothed, ing hoofs; and brought And I saw crowds in column' d sanctu- Into the gulfs of sleep. aries ; And forms that pass'd at windows and on At last methought that I had wander'd far roofs In an old wood : fresh-wash 'd in coolest Of marble palaces; dew The maiden splendours of the morning star Corpses across the threshold; heroes tall Shook in the stedfast blue. Dislodging pinnacle and parapet Upon the tortoise creeping to the wall; Enormous elm-tree-boles did stoop and Lances in ambush set; lean Upon the dusky brushwood underneath And high shrine-doors burst thro' with Their broad curved branches, fledged with heated blasts clearest green. That run before the fluttering tongues New from its silken sheath. of fire ; White surf wind-scatter'd over sails and The dim red morn had died, her journey masts. done. And ever climbing higher; And with dead lips smiled at the twi- light plain. Squadrons and squares of men in brazen Half-fall'n across the threshold of the sun, plates, Never to rise again. Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes, There was no motion in the dumb dead air, Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron Not any song of bird or sound of rill; grates, Gross darkness of the inner sepulchre And hush'd seraglios. Is not so deadly still So shape chased shape as swift as, when As that wide forest. Growths of jasmine to land turn'd ' Bluster the winds and tides the self- Their humid arms festooning tree to same way. tree. Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level And at the root thro' lush green grasses sand, burn'd Torn from the fringe of spray. The red anemone. I started once, or seem'd to start in pain. I knew the flowers, I knew the leaves, I Resolved on noble things, and strove knew to speak, The tearful glimmer of the languid dawn A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 57 On those long, rank, dark wood-walks drench'd in dew, Leading from lawn to lawn. The smell of violets, hidden in the green, Pour'd back into my empty soul and frame The times when I remember to have been Joyful and free from blame. And from within me a clear under-tone Thrill'd thro' mine ears in that unbliss- ful clime, 'Pass freely thro' : the wood is all thine own, Until the end of time.' At length I saw a lady within call. Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there; A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair. Her loveliness with shame and with sur- prise Froze my swift speech : she turning on my face The star-like sorrows of immortal eyes, Spoke slowly in her place. * I had great beauty : ask thou not my name : No one can be more wise than destiny. Many drew swords and died. Where'er I came I brought calamity.' * No marvel, sovereign lady : in fair field Myself for such a face had boldly died,' I answer'd free; and turning I appeal'd To one that stood beside. But she, with sick and scornful looks averse, To her full height her stately stature draws; * My youth,' she said, 'was blasted with a curse : This woman was the cause. * I was cut off from hope in that sad place. Which men call'd Aulis in those iron years : My father held his hand upon his face; I, blinded with my tears, * Still strove to speak : my voice was thick with sighs As in a dream. Dimly I could descry The stern black-bearded kings with wolf- ish eyes, Waiting to see me die. 'The high masts flicker'd as they lay afloat; The crowds, the temples, waver'd, and the shore; The bright death quiver'd at the victim's throat; Touch'd; and I knew no more.' Whereto the other with a downward brow: • I would the white cold heavy-plung- ing foam, Whirl'd by the wind, had roU'd me deep below. Then when I left my home.' Her slow full words sank thro' the silence drear, As thunder-drops fall on a sleeping sea : Sudden I heard a voice that cried, * Come here, That I may look on thee.' I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise, One sitting on a crimson scarf unroll'd ; A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes. Brow-bound with burning gold. She, flashing forth a haughty smile, began : * I govern 'd men by change, and so I sway'd All moods. 'Tis long since I have seen a man. Once, like the moon, I made •The ever-shifting currents of the blood According to my humour ebb and flow. I have no men to govern in this wood: That makes my only woe. * Nay — yet it chafes me that I could not bend One will; nor tame and tutor with mine eye 58 A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. That dull cold-blooded Csesar. Prythee, From tone to tone, and glided thro' all friend, change Where is Mark Antony? Of Uveliest utterance. * The man, my lover, with whom I rode When she made pause I knew not foi sublime delight; On Fortune's neck: we sat as God by Because with sudden motion from the God: ground The Nilus would have risen before his She raised her piercing orbs, and fiU'd time with light And flooded at our nod. The interval of sound. * We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and Still with their fires Love tipt his keenest lit darts; Lamps which out-burn'd Canopus. As once they drew into two burning ray life rings In Egypt ! the dalliance and the wit, All beams of Love, melting the mighty The flattery and the strife, hearts Of captains- and of kings. * And the wild kiss, when fresh from war's alarms, Slowly my sense undazzled. Then I My Hercules, my Roman Antony, heard My mailed Bacchus leapt into my arms, A noise of some one coming thro' the Contented there to die ! lawn. And singing clearer than the crested * And there he died : and when I heard bird my name That claps his wings at dawn. Sigh'd forth with, life I would not brook my fear *The torrent brooks of hallo w'd Israel Of the other : with a worm I balk'd his From craggy hollows pouring, late and fame. soon, What else was left? look here ! ' Sound all night long, in falling thro' the dell, Far-heard beneath the moon. (With that she tore her robe apart, and half The polish'd argent of her breast to * The balmy moon of blessed Israel sight Floods all the deep-blue gloom with Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a beams divine : laugh, All night the splinter'd crags that wall Showing the aspick's bite.) the dell With spires of silver shine.' *I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found As one that museth where broad sunshine Me lying dead, my crown about my laves brows, The lawn by some cathedral, thro' the A name for ever! — lying robed and door crown'd. Hearing the holy organ rolling waves Worthy a Roman spouse.' Of sound on roof and floor Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest Within, and anthem sung, is charm'd and range tied Struck by all passion, did fall down To where he stands, — so stood I, and glance when that flow A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. 5? Of music left the lips of her that died We saw the large white stars rise one by To save her father's vow; one. Or, from the darken'd glen, The daughter of the warrior Gileadite, A maiden pure; as when she went * Saw God divide the night with flying along flame. From Mizpeh's tower'd gate with wel- And thunder on the everlasting hills. come light, I heard Him, for He spake, and grief With timbrel and with song. became A solemn scorn of ills. My words leapt forth : * Heaven heads the count of crimes • When the next moon was roil'd into With that wild oath.' She render'd the sky, answer high : Strength came to me that equall'd my 'Not so, nor once alone; a thousand desire. times How beautiful a thing it was to die I would be born and die. For God and for my sire ! 'Single I grew, like some green plant, * It comforts me in this one thought to whose root dwell, Creeps to the garden water-pipes be- That I subdued me to my father's neath. will; Feeding the flower; but ere my flower to Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell. fruit Sweetens the spirit still. Changed, I was ripe for death. * Moreover it is written that my race •My God, my land, my father — these Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from did move Aroer Me from my bliss of life, that Nature On Arnon unto Minneth.' Here her gave, face Lower'd softly with a threefold cord of Glow'd, as I look'd at her. love Down to a silent grave. She lock'd her lips ; she left me where I stood : * And I went mourning, " No fair Hebrew 'Glory to God,' she sang, and past boy afar. Shall smile away my maiden blame Thridding the sombre boskage of the among wood. The Hebrew mothers " — emptied of all Toward the morning-star. joy, Leaving the dance and song. Losing her carol I stood pensively. As one that from a casement leans his '- Leaving the olive-gardens far below. head. Leaving the promise of my bridal When midnight bells cease ringing sud- bower. denly. The valleys of grape-loaded vines that And the old year is dead. . glow Beneath the battled tower. * Alas ! alas ! ' a low voice, full of care. Murmur'd beside me : ' Turn and look *The light white cloud swam over us. on me: Anon I am that Rosamond, whom men call We heard the lion roaring from his fair, den; If what I was I be. 6o A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN—THE BLACKBIRD. * Would I had been some maiden coarse and poor ! O me, that I should ever see the light ! Those dragon eyes of anger'd Eleanor . Do hunt me, day and night.' She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and trust : To whom the Egyptian : * Oh, you tamely died ! You should have clung to Fulvia's waist, and thrust • The dagger thro' her side.' With that sharp sound the white dawn's creeping beams, Stol'n to my brain, dissolved the mystery Of folded sleep. The captain of my dreams Ruled in the eastern sky. Morn broaden'd on the borders of the dark, Ere I saw her, who clasp'd in her last trance Her murder'd father's head, or Joan of Arc, A light of ancient France; Or her who knew that Love can vanquish Death, Who kneeling, with one arm about her king, Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath. Sweet as new buds in Spring. No memory labours longer from the deep Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep To gather and tell o'er Each little sound and sight. With what dull pain Compass! d, how eagerly I sought to strike Into that wondrous track of dreams again ! But no two dreams are like. As when a soul laments, which hath been blest, Desiring what is mingled with past years. In yearnings that can never be exprest By sighs or groans or tears; Because all words, tho' cull'd with choicest art, 'Failing to give the bitter of the sweet, Wither beneath the palate, and the heart Faints, faded by its heat. THE BLACKBIRD. O BLACKBIRD ! sing me something well : While all the neighbours shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thoumay'st warble, eat and dwell. The espaliers and the standards all Are thine; the range of lawn and park : The unnetted black-hearts ripen dark, All thine, against the garden wall. Yet, tho' I spared thee all the spring, Thy sole delight is, sitting still, With that gold dagger of thy bill To fret the summer jenneting. A golden bill ! the silver tongue, Cold February loved, is dry : Plenty corrupts the melody That made thee famous once, when young : And in the sultry garden-squares, Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse, I hear thee not at all, or hoarse As when a hawker hawks his wares. Take warning ! he that will not sing While yon sun prospers in the blue, Shall sing for want, ere leaves are new, Caught in the frozen palms of Spring. THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. FuT>L knee-deep lies the winter snow. And the winter winds are wearily sigh- ing: THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR— TO J. S. 6i Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow Step from the corpse, and let him in And tread softly and speak low, That standeth there alone, For the old year lies a-dying. And waiteth at the door. Old year, you must not die; There's a new foot on the floor, my You came to us so readily. friend, You lived with us so steadily, And a new face at the door, my Old year, you shall not die. friend, A new face at the door. He lieth»still : he doth not move : He will not see the dawn of day. He hath no other life above. TO J. S. He gave me a friend, and a true true-love. And the New-year will take 'em away. The wind, that beats the mountain, blows Old year, you must not go; More softly round the open wold. So long as you have been with us, And gently comes the world to those Such joy as you have seen with us. That are cast in gentle mould. Old year, you shall not go. And me this knowledge bolder made. He froth'd his bumpers to the brim; Or else I had not dared to flow A jollier year we shall not see. In these words toward you, and invade But tho' his eyes are waxing dim. Even with a verse your holy woe. And tho' his foes speak ill of him, He was a friend to me. 'Tis strange that those we lean on most, Old year, you shall not die; Those in whose laps our limbs are We did so laugh and cry with you. nursed, I've half a mind to die with you, Fall into shadow, soonest lost : Old year, if you must die. Those we love first are taken first He was full of joke and jest. God gives us love. Something to love But all his merry quips are o'er. He lends us ; but, when love is grown To see him die, across the waste To ripeness, that on which it throve His son and heir doth ride post-haste. Falls off, and love is left alone. But he'll be dead before. Every one for his own. This is the curse of time. Alas ! The night is starry and cold, my In grief I am not all unlearn'd; friend. Once thro' mine own doors Death'did pass; And the New-year blithe and bold, One went, who never hath return'd. my friend, Comes up to take his own. He will not smile — not speak to me Once more. Two years his chair is How hard he breathes ! over the snow seen I heard just now the crowing cock. Empty before us. That was he The shadows flicker to and fro : Without whose life I had not been. The cricket chirps : the light burns low : Tis nearly twelve o'clock. Your loss is rarer; for this star Shake hands, before you die. Rose with you thro' a little arc Old year, we'll dearly rue for you : Of heaven, nor having wander'd far What is it we can do for you? Shot on the sudden into dark. Speak out before you die. I knew your brother : his mute dust His face Is growing sharp and thin. I honour and his living worth : Alack ! our friend is gone. A man more pure and bold and just ■ Close up his eyes : tie up his chin : Was never born into the earth. 62 TO /. S.— ON A MOURNER. I have not look'd upon you nigh, Since that dear soul hath fall'n asleep. Great Nature is more wise than I : I will not tell you not to weep. And tho' mine own eyes fill with dew, Drawn from the spirit thro' the brain, I will not even preach to you, * Weep, weeping dulls the inward pain.' Let Grief be her own mistress still. She loveth her own anguish deep More than much pleasure. Let her will Be done — to weep or not to weep. I will not say, * God's ordinance Of Death is blown in every wind; ' For that is not a common chance That takes away a noble mind. His memory long will live alone In all our hearts, as mournful light That broods above the fallen sun, And dwells in heaven half the night. Vain solace ! Memory standing near Cast down her eyes, and in her throat Her voice seem'd distant, and a tear Dropt on the letters as I wrote. I wrote I know not what. In truth. How should I soothe you anyway, "Who miss the brother of your youth? Yet something I did wish to say : For he too was a friend to me : Both are my friends, and my true breast Bleedeth for both ; yet it may be That only silence suiteth best. Words weaker than your grief would make Grief more. 'Twere better I should cease Although myself could almost take The place of him that sleeps in peace. Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace : Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul, While the stars burn, the moons increase, And the great ages onward roll. Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet. Nothing comes to thee new or strange. Sleep full of rest from head to feet; Lie still, dry dust, secure of change, ON A MOURNER.' Nature, so far as in her lies, Imitates God, and turns her face To every land beneath the skies. Counts nothing that she meets with base, But lives and loves in every place; Fills out the homely quickset-screens, And makes the purple lilac ripe. Steps from her airy hill, and greens The swamp, where humm'd the drop- ping snipe, With moss and braided marish-pipej III. And on thy heart a finger lays. Saying, * Beat quicker, for the time Is pleasant, and the woods and ways Are pleasant, and the beech and lime Put forth and feel a gladder clime.' And murmurs of a deeper voice, Going before to some far shrine, Teach that sick heart the stronger choice; Till all thy life one way incline With one wide Will that closes thine. And when the zoning eve has died Where yon dark valleys wind forlorn. Come Hope and Memory, spouse and bride. From out the borders of the morn. With that fair child betwixt them born. VI. And when no mortal motion jars The blackness round the tombing sod, LOVE THOU THY LAND. 63 Ihro' silence and the trembling stars Comes Faith from tracts no feet have trod, And Virtue, like a household god VII. Promising empire; such as those Once heard at dead of night to greet Troy's wandering prince, so that he rose With sacrifice, while all the fleet Had rest by stony hills of Crete. You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease. Within this region I subsist, Whose spirits falter in the mist, And languish for the purple seas. It is the land that freemen till. That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land, where girt with friends or foes A man may speak the thing he will; A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent : Where faction seldom gathers head. But by degrees to fullness wrought, The strength of some diftusive thought Hath time and space to work and spread. Should banded unions persecute Opinion, and induce a time When single thought is civil crime, And individual freedom mute; Tho' Power should make from land to land The name of Britain trebly great — Tho' every channel of the State Should fill and choke with golden sand — Yet waft me from the harbour-mouth, Wild wind ! I seek a warmer sky, And I will see before I die The palms and temples of the South. Of old sat Freedom on the heights, The thunders breaking at her feet : Above her shook the starry lights : She heard the torrents meet. There in her place she did rejoice, Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind, But fragments of her mighty voice Came rolling on the wind. Then stept she down thro' town and field To mingle with the human race. And part by part to men reveal'd The fullness of her face — Grave mother of majestic works, P>om her isle-altar gazing down, Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks, And, King-like, wears the crown : Her open eyes desire the truth. The wisdom of a thousand years Is in them. May perpetual youth Keep dry their light from tears; That her fair form may stand and shine, Make bright our days and light our dreams. Turning to scorn with lips divine The falsehood of extremes ! Love thou thy land, with love far-brought From out the storied Past, and used Within the Present, but transfused Thro' future time by power of thought. True love turn'd round on fixed poles. Love, that endures not sordid ends. For English natures, freemen, friends, Thy brothers and immortal souls. But pamper not a hasty time. Nor feed with crude imaginings The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings That every sophister can lime. Deliver not the tasks of might To weakness, neither hide the ray From those, not blind, who wait day, Tho' sitting girt with doubtful light. foi LOVE THOU THY LAND. Make knowledge circle with the winds; But let her herald, Reverence, fly Before her to whatever sky Bear seed of men and growth of minds. Watch what main-currents draw the years : Cut Prejudice against the grain: But gentle words are always gain: Regard the weakness of thy peers : Nor toil for title, place, or touch Of pension, neither count on praise : It grows to guerdon after-days : Nor deal in watch-words overmuch : Not clinging to some ancient sawr; Not master'd by some modern term; Not swift nor slow to change, but firm: And in its season bring the law; That from Discussion's lip may fall With Life, that, working strongly, binds — Set in all lights by many minds, To close the interests of all. For Nature also, cold and warm, And moist and dry, devising long, Thro' many agents making strong, Matures the individual form. Meet is it changes should control Our being, lest we rust in ease. We all are changed by still degrees, All but the basis of the soul. So let the change which comes be free To ingroove itself with that which flies. And work, a joint of state, that plies Its office, moved with sympathy. A saying, hard to shape in act; For all the past of Time reveals A bridal dawn of thunder-peals, Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact. Ev'n now we hear with inward strife A motion toiling in the gloom — The Spirit of the years to come Yearning to mix himself with Life. A slow-develop'd strength awaits Completion in a painful school; Phantoms of other forms of rule. New Majesties of mighty States — The warders of the growing hour. But vague in vapour, hard to mark; And round them sea and air are dark With great contrivances of Power. Of many changes, aptly join'd, Is bodied forth the second whole. Regard gradation, lest the soul Of Discord race the rising wind; A wind to puff your idol-fires. And heap their ashes on the head; To shame the boast so often made. That we are wiser than our sires. Oh yet, if Nature's evil star Drive men in manhood, as in youth. To follow flying steps of Truth Across the brazen bridge of war — If New and Old, disastrous feud. Must ever shock, like armed foes. And this be true, till Time shall close. That Principles are rain'd in blood; Not yet the vyise of heart would cease To hold liis hope thro' shame and guilt. But with his hand against the hilt. Would pace the troubled land, like Peace; Not less, tho' dogs of Faction bay, Would serve his kind in deed and word, Certain, if knowledge bring the sword That knowledge takes the sword away — Would love the gleams of good that broke From either side, nor veil his eyes : And if some dreadful need should rise Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke : To-morrow yet would reap to-day. As we bear blossom of the dead : Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed Raw Haste, half-sister to Decay. ENGLAND AND AMERICA IN 1782— THE GOOSE. 65 ENGLAND AND AMERICA IN. 1 782. O THOU, that sendest out the man To rule by land and sea, Strong mother of a Lion-line, Be proud of those strong sons of thine Who wrench'd their rights from thee ! What wonder, if in noble heat Those men thine arms withstood, Retaught the lesson thou hadst taught, And in thy spirit with thee fought — Who sprang from English blood ! But Thou rejoice with liberal joy, Lift up thy rocky face. And shatter, when the storms are black, In many a streaming torrent back, The seas that shock thy base ! Whatever harmonies of law The growing world assume, Thy work is thine — The single note From that deep chord which Hampden smote Will vibrate to the doom. THE GOOSE. I KNEW an old wife lean and poor, Her rags scarce held together; There strode a stranger to the door. And it was windy weather. He held a goose upon his arm. He utter'd rhyme and reason, ' Here, take the goose, and keep you warm. It is a stormy season.' She caught the white goose by the leg, A goose — 'twas no great matter. The goose let fall a golden egg With cackle and with clatter. She dropt the goose, and. caught the pelf, And ran to tell her neighbours; And bless'd herself, and cursed herself, And rested from her labours. And feeding high, and living soft. Grew plump and able-bodied; Until the grave churchwarden dofPd, The parson smirk'd and nodded. So sitting, served by man and maid. She felt her heart grow prouder : But ah ! the more the white goose laid It clack'd and cackled louder. It clutter'd here, it chuckled there; It stirr'd the old wife's mettle : She shifted in her elbow-chair, And hurl'd the pan and kettle. * A quinsy choke thy cursed note ! ' Then wax'd her anger stronger. *Go, take the goose, and wring her throat, I will not bear it longer.' Then yelp'd the cur, and yawl'd the cat; Ran Gaffer, stumbled Gammer. The goose flew this way and flew that, And fiU'd the house with clamour. As head and heels upon the floor They flounder'd all together, There strode a stranger to the door, And it was windy weather : He took the goose upon his arm. He utter'd words of scorning ; * So keep you cold, or keep you warm, It is a stormy morning,' The wild wind rang from park and plain, And round the attics rumbled. Till all the tables danced again, And half the chimneys tumbled. The glass blew in, the fire blew out, The blast was hard and harder. Her cap blew off, her gown blew up, And a whirlwind clear'd the larder : And while on all sides breaking loose Her household fled the danger. Quoth she, * The Devil take the goose, And God forget the stranger ! ' 66 THE EPIC. ENGLISH IDYLS AND OTHER POEMS. THE EPIC. At Francis Allen's on the Christmas- eve, — The game of forfeits done — the girls all kiss'd Beneath the sacred bush and past away — The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall, The host, and I sat round the wassail- bowl. Then half-way ebb'd : and there we held a talk. How all the old honour had from Christ- mas gone, Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out With cutting eights that day upon the pond. Where, three times slipping from the outer edge, I bump'd the ice into three several stars, Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard The parson taking wide and wider sweeps. Now harping on the church-commis- sioners. Now hawking at Geology and schism; Until I woke, and found him settled down Upon the general decay of faith Right thro' the world, ' at home was little left, And none abroad : there was no anchor, none, To hold by.' Francis, laughing, clapt his hand On Everard's shoulder, with ' I hold by him.' ' And I,' quoth Everard, ' by the wassail- bowl.' *Why yes,' I said, *we knew your gift that way At college : but another which you had, I mean of verse (for so we held it then), What came of that? ' * You know,' said Frank, * he burnt His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books ' — And then to me demanding why? * Oh, sir. He thought that nothing new was said, or else Something so said 'twas nothing — that a truth Looks freshest in the fashion of the day: God knows : he has a mint of reasons : ask. It pleased 77ie well enough.' ' Nay, nay,' said Hall, ' Why take the style of those heroic times? For nature brings not back the Masto- don, Nor we those times; and why should any man Remodel models? these twelve books of mine Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing- worth. Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt.' ' But I,' Said Francis, * pick'd the eleventh from this hearth And have it ; keep a thing, its use will come. I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.' He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like a horse That hears the corn-bin open, prick'd my ears; For I remember'd Everard's college fame When we were Freshmen: then at my request He brought it; and the poet little urged, But with some. prelude of disparagement, Reiid, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, Deep-chested music, and to this result. MORTE n ARTHUR. MORTE D'ARTHUR. So all day long the noise of battle roll'd Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until King Arthur's table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord, King Arthur : then, because his wound was deep. The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, , Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights. And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere : ' The sequel of to-day unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep — the men I loved. I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds. Walking about the gardens and the halls Of famelot, as in the days that were. I perish by this people which I made, — Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more — but let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm That without help I cannot last till morn. Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur, Which was my pride : for thou remem- berest how In tliose old days, one summer noon, an arm Rose up from out the bosom of the lake. Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonder- ful, Holding the sword — and how I rovv'd across And took it, and have w^orn it, like a king : And, wheresoever I am sung or told In aftertime, this also shall be known : But now delay not: take Excalibur, And fling him far into the middle mere : Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word.' To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere : ' It is not meet. Sir King, to leave thee thus. Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm. A little thing may harm a wounded man. Yet I thy best will all perform at full, Watch what 1 see, and lightly bring thee word.' So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept And in the moon athwart the place of tombs. Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed rock. Came on the shining levels of the lake. There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon. Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt: For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks. Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood, This way and that dividing the swift mind. In act to throw : but at the last it seem'd * Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd There in the many-knotted waterflags. That whistled stiff, and dry about the marge. So strode he back slow to the wounded King. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedi- vere: ' Hast thou perform'd my mission which I gave? What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?' 68 MORTE D' ARTHUR. And answer made the bold Sir Bedi- vere: • 1 heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag.' To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale : *Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name. Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight : P^or surer sign had follow'd, either hand. Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This v^ a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word.' Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, How curiously and strangely chased, he smote His palms together, and he cried aloud, * And if indeed I cast the brand away. Surely a precious thing, one worthy note. Should thus be lost for ever from the earth, Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. What good should follow this, if this were done? What harm, undone? deep harm to dis- obey. Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey, then, if a king de- mand An act unprofitable, against himself ? The K'-ig is sick, and knows not what he . oes. Wha*: record, or what relic of my lord Should be to aftertinfe, but empty breath And rumours of a doubt? but were this kept. Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings, Some one might show it at a joust of arms. Saying, " King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake. Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills." So might some old man speak in the aftertime To all the people, winning reverence. But now much honour and much fame were lost.' So spake he, clouded with his own conceit, Atid hid Excalibur the second time. And so strode back slow to the wounded King. Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily : * What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard? ' And answer made the bold Sir Bedi- vere: * I heard the water lapping on the crag. And the long ripple washing in the reeds.' To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath: ' Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, Unknightly, traitor-hearted ! Woe is me ! Authority forgets a dying king. Laid widow'd of the power in his eye That bow'd the will. I see thee- what thou art, For thou, the latest-left of all my knights. In whom should meet the offices of all. Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt; Either from lust of gold, or like a girl Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, And the third time may prosper, get thee hence: But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, I will arise and slay thee with my hands.' Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran. And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged Among the bulrush-beds, and clutch'd the sword. Arid strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch, MORTE n ARTHUR. 69 Shot like a streamer of the northern mom, Seen where the moving isies of winter shock By night, with noises of the northern sea. So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur: But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonder- ful, And caught him by the hilt, and bran- dish'd him Three times, and drew him under in the mere. And lightly went the other to the King. Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath: *Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?' And answer made the bold Sir Bedi- vere : * Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die. Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men, So great a miracle as yonder hilt. Then with both hands I flung him, wheel- ing him; But when I look'd again, behold an arm, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonder- ful, That caught him by the hilt, and bran- dish'd him Three times, and drew him under in the mere.' And answer made King Arthur, breath- ing hard: '^My end draws nigh; 'tis time that I were gone. Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight. And bear me to the margin ; yet I fear My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die.' So saying, from the pavement he half rose. Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm. And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes As in a picture. Him Sir Bevidere Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears. And would have spoken, but he, found not words; Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee. O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands, And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs. But, as he walk'd. King Arthur panted hard, Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed When all the house is mute. So sigh'd the King, Muttering and murmuring at his ear, ' Quick, quick ! I fear it is too late, and I shall die.' But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge, Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd. Larger than human on the frozen hills. He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him, like a goad. Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and- right The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels — And on a sudden, lo ! the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon. Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge, Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, Beneath them ; and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms Black -stoled, black-hooded, like a tlream — by these Three Queens with crowns of gold — and from them rose A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars, And, as it were one voice an agony Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes. Or hath come, since the making of the world. Then murmur'd Arthur, * Place me in the barge,' 70 MORTE D' ARTHUR. And to the barge they came. There those three Queens Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept. But she, that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap. And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, And call'd him by his name, complaining loud, V And dropping bitter tears against his brow Striped with dark blood : for all his face was white And colourless, and like the wither'd moon Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east ; And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops Of onset ; and the light and lustrous curls — That made his forehead like a rising sun High from the dais- throne — were parch'd with dust ; Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. So like a shatter'd column lay the King ; Not like that Arthur M'ho, with lance in rest, From spur to plume a star of tournament, Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged Before the eyes of ladies and of kings. Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere, * Ah ! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are dead. When* every morning brought a noble chance, And every chance brought out a noble knight. Such times have been not since the light that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole round table is dissolved Which was an image of the mighty world ; And I, the last, go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds.' And slowly answered Arthur from the barge : ' The old order changeth, yielding place to new. And God fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within Himself make pure ! but thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things aiC wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and^ day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou seest — if indeed I go — (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) To the island-valley of Avihon; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snoWj Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard- lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with sum- mer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.' So said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full- breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death. Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull MORTE D' ARTHUR— THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER. 71 Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the wailing died away. Here ended Hall, and our last light, that long Had wink'd and threaten'd darkness, flared and fell : At which the Parson, sent to sleep with sound. And waked with silence, grunted * Good ! ' but we Sat rapt : it was the tone with which he read — Perhaps some modern touches here and there Redeem'd it from the charge of nothing- ness — Or else we loved the man, and prized his work ; I know not : but we sitting, as I said, The cock crew loud ; as at that time of year The lusty bird takes every hour for dawn : Then Francis, muttering, like a man ill- used, * There now — that's nothing!' drew a little back. And drove his heel into the smoulder'd log, That sent a blast of sparkles up the flue : And so to bed ; where yet in sleep 1 seem'd To sail with Arthur under looming shores, Point after point ; till on to dawn, when dreams Begin to feel the truth and stir of day, To me, methought, who waited with a crowd. There came a bark that, blowing forward, bore King Arthur, like a modern gentleman Of stateliest port ; and all the people cried, * Arthur is come again : he cannot die.' Then those that stood upon the hills behind Repeated — * Come again, and thrice as fair ; ' And, further inland, voices echo'd — 'Come With all good things, and war shall be no more.' At this a hundred bells began to peal, That with the sound I woke, and heard indeed The clear church-bells ring in the Christmas-morn. THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER; OR, THE PICTURES. This morning is the morning of the day, When I and Eustace from the city went To see the gardener's daughter; I and he, Brothers in Art ; a friendship so complete Portion'd in halves between us, that we grew The fable of the city where we dwelt. My Eustace might have sat for Her- cules; So muscular he spread, so broad of breast. He, by some law that holds in love, and draws The greater to the lesser, long desired A certain miracle of symmetry, A miniature of loveliness, all grace Summ'd up and closed in little; — Juliet, she So light of foot, so light of spirit — oh, she To me myself, for some three careless moons. The summer pilot of an empty heart Unto the shoresof nothing! Knowyounot Such touches are but embassies of love, To tamper with the feelings, ere he found Empire for life? but Eustace painted her, And said to me, she sitting with us then, • When will j£>M paint like this?' and I replied, (My words were half in earnest, half in jest,) * 'Tis not your work, but Love's. Love, unperceived, A more ideal Artist he than all, Came, drew your pencil from you, made those eyes Darker than darkest pansies, and that hair More black than ashbuds in the front of March.' And Juliet answer'd laughing, * Go and see The gardener's daughter : trust me, after that, You scarce can fail to match his master* piece.' 72 THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER; And up we rose, and on the spur we went. Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love. News from the humming city comes to it In sound of funeral or of marriage bells; And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear The windy clanging of the minster clock; Although between it and the garden lies A league of grass, wash'd by a slow broad stream, That, stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar. Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on. Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge Crown'd with the minster-towers. The fields between Are dew7-fresh, browsed by deep-udder'd kine, And all about the large lime feathers low, The lime a summer home of murmurous wings. In that still place she, hoarded in herself. Grew, seldom seen; not less among us lived Her fame from lip to lip. Who had not heard Of Rose, the gardener's daughter? Where was he. So blunt in memory, so old at heart. At such a distance from his youth in grief, That, having seen, forgot? The common mouth, So gross to express delight, in praise of her Grew oratory. Such a lord is Love, And Beauty such a mistresc: of the world. And if I said that Fancy, led by Love, Would play with flying forms and images. Yet this is also true, that, long before I look'd upon her, when I heard her name My heart was like a prophet to my heart. And told me I should love. A crowd of hopes, That sought to sow themselves like winged seeds. Born out of everything I heard and saw, Flutter'd about my senses and my soul; And vague desires, like fitful blasts of balm To one that travels quickly, made the air Of Life delicious, and all kinds of thought. That verged upon them, sweeter than the dream Dream' d by a happy man, when the dark East, Unseen, is brightening to his bridal morn. And sure this orbit of the memory folds For ever in itself the day we went To see her. All the land in flowery squares. Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind, Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud Drew downward : but all else of heaven was pure Up to the Sun, and May from verge to verge. And May with me from head to heel. And now, As tho' 'twere yesterday, as tho' it were The hour just flown, that morn with all its sound, (For those old Mays had thrice the life of these,) Rings in mine ears. The steer forgot to graze. And, where the hedge-row cuts the pathway, stood. Leaning his horns into the neighbour field. And lowing to his fellows. From the woods Came voices of the well-contented doves. The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy. But shook his song together as he near'd His happy home, the ground. To left and right. The cuckoo told his name to all the hills; The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm; The redcap whistled; and the nightingale Sang loud, as tho' he were the bird of day. And Eustace turn'd, and smiling said to me, * Hear how the bushes echo ! by my life, These birds have joyful thoughts. Think you they sing Like poets, from the vanity of song? Or have they any sense of why they sing? And would they praise the heavens for what they have?' And I made answer, ' Were there nothing else For which to praise the heavens but only love. OR, THE PICTURES. 73 That only love were cause enough for praise.' Lightly he laugh'd, as one that read my thought, And on we went; but ere an hour had pass'd, We reach'd a meadow slanting to the North ; Down which a well-worn pathway courted us To one green wicket in a privet hedge; This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk ThiO' crowded lilac-ambush triiply pruned; And one warm gust, full-fed with per- fume, blew Beyond us, as we enter'd in the cool. The garden stretches southward. In the midst A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade. The garden- glasses glanced, and mo- mently The twinkling laurel scatter'd silver lights. * Eustace,' I said, ' this wonder keeps the house.' He nodded, but a moment afterwards He cried, ' Look ! look ! ' Before he ceased I turn'd, And, ere a star can wink, beheld her there. For up the porch there grew an Eastern rose, That, flowering high, the last night's gale had caught. And blown across the walk. One arm aloft — Gown'd in pure white, that fitted to the shape — Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood, A single stream of all her soft brown hair Pour'd on one side : the shadow of the flowers Stole all the golden gloss, and, wavering Lovingly lower, trembled on her waist — Ah, happy shade — and still went w,aver- iyg down, But, ere it touch'd a foot, that might have danced The greensward into greener circles, dipt. And mix'd with shadows of the common ground ! But the full day dwelt on her brows, and sunn'd Her Violet eyes, and all her Hebe bloom. And doubled his own warmth against her lips. And on the bounteous wave of such a breast As never pencil drew. Half light, half shade, She stood, a sight to make an old man young. So rapt, we near'd the house ; but she, a Rose In roses, mingled with her fragrant toil. Nor heard us come, nor from her ten- dance turn'd Into the world without ; till close at hand. And almost ere I knew mine own intent, This murmur broke the stillness of that air Which brooded round about her : ' Ah, one rose, One roae, but one, by those fair fingers cull'd. Were worth a hundred kisses press'd on lips Less exquisite than thine.' She look'd : but all Suffused with blushes — neither self-pos- sess'd Nor startled, but betwixt this mood and that. Divided in a graceful quiet — paused, And dropt the branch she held, and turn- ing, wound Her looser hair in braid, and stirr'd her lips For some sweet answer, tho' no answer came. Nor yet refused the rose, but granted it, And moved away, and left me, statue-like, In act to render thanks. I, that whole day, Saw her no more, altho' I linger'd there Till every daisy slept, and Love's white star Beam'd thro' the thicken'd cedar in the dusk. So home we went, and all the livelong way With solemn gibe did Eustace banter me. 'Now,' said he, 'will you climb the top of Art. You cannot fail but work in hues to dim The Titianic Flora. Will you match 74 THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER. My Juliet ? you, not you, — the Master, Love, A more ideal Artist he than all.' So home I went, but could not sleep for joy, Reading her perfect features in the gloom, Kissing the rose she gave me o'er and o'er. And shaping faithful record of the glance That graced the giving — such a noise of life Swarm'd in the golden present, such a voice Call'd to me from the years to come, and such A length of bright horizon rimm'd the dark. And all that night I heard the watchman peal The sliding season : all that night I heard The heavy clocks knolling the drowsy hours. The drowsy hours, dispensers of all good. O'er the mute city stole with folded wings. Distilling odors on me as they went To greet their fairer sisters of the East. Love at first sight, first-born, and heir to all. Made this night thus. Henceforward squall nor storm Could keep me from that Eden where she dwelt. Light pretexts drew me; sometimes a Dutch love For tulips : then for roses, moss or musk, To grace my city rooms; or fruits and cream Served in the weeping elm; and more and more A wo'-d could bring the colour to my cheek; A thought would fill my eyes with happy dew; Love trebled life within me, and with each The year increased. The daughters of the year, One after one, thro' that still garden pass'd; Each garlanded with her peculiar flower Danced into light, and died into the shade; And each in passing touch'd with some new grace Or seem'd to touch her, so that day by day. Like one that never can be wholly known, Her beauty grew; till Autumn brought an hour For Eustace, when I heard his deep * I will,' Breathed, like the covenant of a God, to hold From thence thro' all the worlds : but I rose up Full of his bliss, and following her dark eyes Felt earth as air beneath me, till I reach'd The wicket-gate, and found her .standing there. There sat we down upon a garden mound. Two mutually enfolded; Love, the third, Between us, in the circle of his arms Enwound us both; and over many a range Of waning lime the gray cathedral towers, Across a hazy glimmer of the west, Reveal'd their shining windows: from them clash'd The bells; we listen'd; with the time we play'd, We spoke of other things; we coursed about The subject most at heart, more near and near. Like doves about a dovecote, wheeling round The central wish, until we settled there. Then, in that time and place, I spoke to her. Requiring, tho' I knew it was mine own, Yet for the pleasure that I took to hear. Requiring at her hand the greatest gift, A woman's heart, the heart of her I loved ; And in that time and place she answer'd me, And in the compass of three little words, More musical than ever came in one. The silver fragments of a broken voice. Made me most happy, faltering^ * I am thine.' Shall I cease here ? Is this enough to say That my desire, like all strongest hopes, By its own energy fulfill'd itself, Merged in completion ? Would you learn at full THE GARDENER'S DAUGHTER — DORA. 75 How passion rose thro' circumstantial grades Beyond all grades develop'd ? and indeed I had not staid so long to tell you all, But while I mused came Memory with sad eyes. Holding the folded annals of my youth ; And while I mused, Love with knit brows went by. And with a flying finger swept my lips, And spake, * Be wise : not easily forgiven Are those who, setting wide the doors that bar The secret bridal chambers of the heart. Let in the day,' Here, then, my words have end. Yet might I tell of meetings, of fare- wells — Of that which came between, more sweet than each. In whispers, like the whispers of the leaves That tremble round a nightingale — in sighs Which perfect Joy, perplex'd for utter- ance. Stole from her sister Sorrow. Might I not tell Of difference, reconcilement, pledges given, And vows, where there was never need of vows. And kisses, where the heart on one wild leap Hung tranced from all pulsation, as above The heavens between their fairy fleeces pale Sow'd all their mystic gulfs with fleeting stars; Or while the balmy glooming, crescent-lit, Spread the light haze along the river- shores, And in the hollows; or as once we met Unheedful, tho' beneath a whispering rain Night slid down one long stream of sigh- ing wind. And in her bosom bor*^ the :aoy. Sleep. But this whole hour your eyes have been intent On that veil'd pictui«- — veil'd, for what it holds May not be dwelt on by the common day. This prelude has prepared thee. Raise thy soul; Make thine heart ready with thine eyes : the time Is come to raise the veil. Behold her there, As I beheld her ere she knew my heart. My first, last love; the idol of my youth, The darling of my manhood, and, alas ! Now the most blessed memory of mine age. DORA. With farmer Allan at the farm abode William and Dora. William was his son. And she his niece. He often look'd at them. And often thought, * I'll make them man and wife.' Now Dora felt her uncle's will in all. And yearn'd toward William; but the youth, because He had been always with her in the house, Thought not of Dora. Then there came a day When Allan call'd his son, and said, * My son : I married late, but I would wish to see My grandchild on my knees before I die : And I have set my heart upon a match. Now therefore look to Dora ; she is well To look to; thrifty too beyond her age. She is my brother's daughter : he and I Had once hard words, and parted, and he died In foreign lands; but for his sake I bred His daughter Dora : ' take her for your wife ; For I have wish'd this marriage, night and day, For many years.' But William ar.swer'd short : *I cannot marry Dora; by my life, I will not marry Dora.' Then the old man Was wroth, and doubled up his hands, and said : ' You will not, boy ! you dare to answer thus ! But in my time a father's word was law, And so it shall be now for me. Look to it ; Consider, William : take a month to think. 76 DORA. And let me have an answer to my wish; Or, by the Lord that made me, you shall pack, And never more darken my doors again.' But William answer'd madly; bit his lips, And broke away. The more he look'd at her The less he liked her; and his ways were harsh ; But Dora bore them meekly. Then before The month was out he left his father's house, And hired himself to work within the fields; And half in love, half spite, he woo'd and wed A labourer's daughter, Mary Morrison. Then, when the bells were ringing, Allan call'd His niece and said : * My girl, I love you well; But if you speak with him that was my son. Or change a word with her he calls his wife, My home is none of yours. My will is law.' And Dora promised, being meek. She thought, * It cannot be : my uncle's mind will change ! ' And days went on, and there was born a boy To Vv^illiam; then distresses came on him; And day by day he pass'd his father's gate, Heart-broken, and his father help'd him not. But Dora stored what little she could save, And sent it them by stealth, nor did they know Who sent it; till at last a fever seized On William, and in harvest time he died. Then Dora went to Mary. Mary sat And look'd with tears upon her boy, and thought Hard things of Dora. Dora came and said : ' I have obey'd my uncle until now, And I have sinn'd, for it was all thro' me This evil came on William at the first. But, Mary, for the sake of him that's gone. And for your sake, the woman that he chose, And for this orphan, I am come to you : You know there has not been for these five years So full a harvest : let me take the boy, And I will set him in my uncle's eye Among the wheat; that when his heart is glad Of the full harvest, he may see the boy, And bless him for the sake of him that's gone.' And Dora took the child, and went her way Across the wheat, and sat upon a mound That was unsown, where many poppies grew. Far off the farmer came into the field And spied her not; for none of all his men Dare tell him Dora waited with the child; And Dora would have risen and gone to him, But her heart fail'd her; and the reapers reap'd, And the sun fell, and all the land was dark. But when the morrow came, she rose and took The child once more, and sat upon the mound; And made a little wreath of all the flowers That grew about, and tied it round his hat To make him pleasing in her uncle's eye. Then when the farmer pass'd into the field He spied her, and he left his men at work, And came and said: 'Where were you yesterday? Whose child is that? What are you doing here?' So Dora cast her eyes upon the ground, And answer'd softly, 'This is William's child ! ' * And did I not,' said Allan, ' did I not Forbid you, Dora? ' Dora said again : 'Do with me as you will, but take the child. And bless him for the sake of him that's gone ! ' DORA. 77 And Allan said, ' I see it is a trick Got up betwixt you and the woman there. I must be taught my duty, and by you ! You knew my word was law, and yet you dared To slight it. Well — for I will take the boy; But go you hence, and never see me more.' So saying, he took the boy, that cried aloud And struggled hard. The wreath of flowers fell At Dora's feet. She bowed upon her hands. And the boy's cry came to her from the field, More and more distant. She bow'd down her head. Remembering the day when first she came, And all the things that had been. She bow'd down And wept in secret; and the reapers reap'd, And the sun fell, and all the land was dark. Then Dora went to Mary's house, and stood Upon the threshold. Mary saw the boy Was not with Dora. She broke out in praise To God, that help'd her in her widow- hood. And Dora said, * My uncle took the boy; But, Mary, let me live and work \yith you : He says that he will never see me more.' Then answer'd Mary, ' This shall never be, That thou shouldst take my trouble on thyself: And, now I think, he shall not have the boy. For he will teach him hardness, and to slight His mother; therefore thou and I will go, And I will have my boy, and bring him home; And I will beg of him to take thee back : But if he will not take thee back again, Then thou and I will live within one house, And work for William's child, until he grows Of age to help us.' So the women kiss'd Each other, and set out, and reach'd the farm. The door was off the latch: they peep'd, and saw The boy set up betwixt his grandsire's knees, Who thrust him in the hollows of his arm, And clapt him on the hands and on the cheeks, Like one that loved him: and the lad stretch'd out And babbled for the golden seal, that hung From Allan's watch, and sparkled by the fire. Then they came in : but when the boy beheld His mother, he cried out to come to her : And Allan set him down, and Mary said: 'O Father! — if you let me call you so — I never came a-begging for myself. Or William, or this child; but now I come For Dora : take her back; she loves you well. Sir, when William died, he died at peace With all men; for I ask'd him, and he said He could not ever rue his marrying me — 1 had been a patient wife : but. Sir, he said That he was wrong to cross his father thus: '* God bless him ! " he said, " and may he never know The troubles I have gone thro' ! " Then he turn'd His face and pass'd — unhappy that I am ! "But now. Sir, let me have my boy 'cr you Will make him hard, and he will learn to slight His father's memory; and take Dora back. And let all this be as it was before.' So Mary said, and Dora hid her face By Mary. There was silence in the room; And all at once the old man burst in sobs : — ' I have been to blame — to blame. I have kill'd my son. 78 AUDLEY COURT. I have kill'd him — but I loved him — my dear son. May God forgive me ! — I have been to blame. Kiss me, my children.' Then they clung about The old man's neck, and kiss'd him many times. And all the man was broken vv'ith re- morse; And all his love caire back a hundred- fold; And for three hours he sobb'd o'er Will- iam's child Thinking of William. So those four abode Within one house together; and as years Went forward, Mary took another mate; But Dora lived unmarried till her death. AUDLEY COURT. *The Bull, the Fleece are cramm'd, and not a room For love or money. Let us picnic there At Audley Court.' I spoke, while Audley feast Humm'd like a hive all round the narrow quay, To Francis, with a basket on his arm. To Francis just alighted from the boat, And breathing of the sea. * With all my heart,' Said Francis. Then we shoulder'd thro' the swarm. And rounded by the stillness of the beach To where the bay runs up its latest horn. We left the dying ebb that faintly lipp'd The flat red granite; so by many a sweep Of meadow smooth from aftermath we reach'd The griffin-guarded gates, and pass'd thro' all The pillar'd dusk of sounding sycamores, And cross'd the garden to the gardener's lodge. With all its casements bedded, and its walls And chimneys muffled in the leafy vine. There, on a slope of orchard. Francis laid A damask napkin wrought with horse and hound, Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt ot home, And, half-cut-down, a pasty costly-made. Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay. Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks Imbedded and injellied; last, with these, A flask of cider from his father's vats, Prime, which I knew; and so we sat and eat And talk'd old matters over; who was dead. Who married, who was like to be, and how The races went, and who would rent the hall : Then touch'd upon the game, how scarce it was This season; glancing thence, discuss'd the farm. The four-field system, and the price of grain; And struck upon the corn-laws, where we split, And came again together on the king With heated faces; till he laugh'd aloud; And, while the blackbird on the pippin hung To hear him, clapt his hand in mine and sang — ' Oh ! who would fight and march and countermarch. Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field, And shovell'd up into some bloody trench Where no one knows? but let me live my life. * Oh ! who would cast and balance at a desk, Perch'd like a crow upon a three-legg'd stool. Till all his juice is dried, and all his joints Are full of chalk? but let me live my life. * Who'd serve the state ? for if I carved my name Upon the clifTs that guard my native land, I might as well have traced it in the sands ; The sea wastes all : but let me live my life. *0h! who would love? I woo'd a woman once, .But she was sharper than an eastern wind, AUDLEY COURT— WALKING TO THE MAIL. 79 And all my heart turn'd from her, as a thorn Turns from the sea; but let me live mv life.' He sang his song, and I replied with mine: I found it in a volume, all of songs, Knock'd down to me, when old Sir Robert's pride, His books — the more the pity, so I said — Came to the hammer here in March — and this — I set the words, and added names I knew. ' Sleep, Ellsn Aubrey, sleep, and dream of me : Sleep, Ellen, folded in thy sister's arm. And sleeping, haply dream her arm is mine. 'Sleep, Ellen, folded in Emilia's arm; Emilia, fairer than all else but thou, For thou art fairer than all else that is. * Sleep, breathing health and peace upon her breast: Sleep, breathing love and trust against her lip: I go to-night : I come to-morrow morn. * I go, but I return : I would I were The pilot of the darkness and the dream. Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, love, and dream of me.' So sang we each to either, Francis Hale, The farmer's son, who lived across the bay, My friend; and I, that having where- withal, And in the fallow leisure of my life A rolling stone of here and everywhere. Did what I would; but ere the night we rose And saunter'd home beneath a moon, that, just In crescent, dimly rain'd about the leaf Twilights of airy silver, till we reach'd The limit of the hills; and as we sank From rock to rock upon the glooming quay, The town was hush'd beneath us : lower down The bay was oily calm; the harbour- buoy. Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm, "With one green sparkle ever and anon Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart. WALKING TO THE MAIL. John. I'M glad I walk'd. How fresh the meadows look Above the river, and, but a month ago, The whole hill-side was redder than a fox. Is yon plantation where this byway joins The turnpike? James. Yes. John. And when does this come by? James. The mail? At one o'clock. John. What is it now? James. A quarter to. John. Whose house is that I see? No, not the County Member's with the vane : Up higher with the yew-tree by it, and half A score of gables. James. That? Sir Edward Head's: But he's abroad : the place is to be sold. John. Oh, his. He was not broken. James. No, sir, he, Vex'd with a morbid devil in his blood That veil'd the world with jaundice, hid his face From all men, and commercing with himself. He lost the sense that handles daily life — That keeps us all in order more or less — And sick of home went overseas for change, . John. And whither? James. Nay, who knows? He's here and there. But let him go; his devil goes with him, As well as with his tenant, Jocky Dawes. John. What's that? James. You saw the man — on Mon- day, was it ? — There by the humpback'd willow; half stands up And bristles; half has fall'n and made a bridge; And there he caught the younker tickling trout — Caught in Jlagrante — what's the Latin word ? — Delicto : but his house, for so they say. Was haunted with a jolly ghost, that • shook 8o WALKING TO THE MAIL. The curtains, whined in lobbies, tapt at doors, And rummaged like a rat: no servant stay'd : The farmer vext packs up his beds and chairs, And all his household stuff; and with his boy Betwixt his knees, his wife upon the tilt. Sets out, and meets a friend who hails him, ' What ! You're flitting ! ' * Yes, we're flitting,' says the ghost (For they had pack'd the thing among the beds). * Oh well,' says he, ' you flitting with us too — Jack, turn the horses' heads and home again.' John. He left his wife behind; for so I heard. James. He left her, yes. I met my lady once : A woman like a butt, and harsh as crabs. John. Oh yet but I remember, ten years back — 'Tis now at least ten years — and then she was — You could not light upon a sweeter thing : A body slight and round, and like a pear In growing, modest eyes, a hand, a foot Lessening in perfect cadence, and a skin As clean and white as privet when it flowers. James. Ay, ay, the blossom fades, and they that loved At first like dove and dove were cat and dog. She was the daughter of a cottager, Out of her sphere. What betwixt shame and pride. New things and old, himself and her, she sour'd To what she is : a nature never kind ! Like men, like manners : like breeds like, they say : Kind nature is the best : those manners next That fit us like a nature second-hand; Which are indeed the manners of the great. John. But I had heard it was this bill that past, And fear of change at home, thac drove him hence. James. That was the last drop in the cup of gall. I once was near him, when his bailiff brought A Chartist pike. You should have seen him wince As from a venomous thing : he thought himself A mark for all, and shudder'd, lest ?, cry Should break his sleep by night, and his nice eyes Should see the raw mechanic's bloody thumbs Sweat on his blazon'd chairs; bm, sir, you know That these two parties still divide the world — Of those that want, and those that have : and still The same old sore breaks out from age to age With much the same result. Now I myself, A Tory to the quick, was as a boy Destructive, when I had not what I would. I was at school — a college in the South : There lived a flayflint near; we stole his fruit. His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us ; We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. She, With meditative grunts of much content. Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud. By night we dragg'd her to the '"'^Uege tower From her warm bed, and up the cork- screw stair With hand and rope we haled the groan- ing sow. And on the leads we kept hcj. iiU bfie Pigg'd. Large range of prospect had the mother sow. And but for daily loss of one she loved As one by one we took them — but for this — As never sow was higher in this world — Might have been happy : but what lot is pure? EDWIN MORRIS; OR, THE LAKE. 8i We took them all, till she was left alone Upon her tower, the N:obe of swine. And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty. John. They found you out? James. Not they. John. Well — after all — W^hat know we of the secret of a man? His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are sound, That we should mimic this raw fool the world, Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites. As ruthless as a baby with a worm, As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows To Pity — more from ignorance than will. But put your best foot forward, or I fear That we shall miss the mail : and here it comes With five at top : as quaint a four-in-hand As you shall see — three pyqbalds and a roan. EDWIN MORRIS; OR, THE LAKE. O ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake, My sweet, wild, fresh three quarters of* a year. My one Oasis in the dust and drouth Of city life ! I was a sketcher then : See here, my doing : curves of mountain, bridge, Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built When men knew how to build, upon a rock With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock : And here, new-comers in an ancient hold. New-comers from the Mersey, million- aires. Here lived the Hills — a Tudor-chimnied bulk Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers. O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull The curate; he was fatter than his cure. But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names, G Long learned names of agaric, moss and fern. Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks, Who taught me how to skate, to row, to swim. Who read me rhymes elaborately good. His own — I call'd him Crichton, for he seem'd All-perfect, finish'd to the finger nail. And once I ask'd him of his early life. And his first passion; and he answer'd me; And well his words became him : was he not A full-cell'd honeycomb of eloquence Stored from all flowers? Poet-like he spoke. / * My love for Nature is as old as I ; But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that, And three rich sennights more, my love for her. My love for Nature and my love for her, Of different ages, like twin-sisters grew, Twin-sisters differently beautiful. To some full music rose and san^ the sun, And some full music seem'd to move and change With all the varied changes of the dark, And either twilight and the day between; For daily hope fulfill'd, to rise again Revolving toward fulfilment, made it sweet To walk, to sit, to sleep, to wake, to breathe.' Or this or something like to this he spoke. Then said the fat-faced curate Edward Bull, *I take it, God made the woman for the man. And for the good and increase of the world. A pretty face is well, and this is well, To have a dame indoors, that trims us up. And keeps us tight ; but these unreal ways Seem but the theme of writers, and in- deed Worn threadbare. Man is made of solid stuff. 82 EDWIN MORRIS: OR, THE LAKE. I say, God made the woman for the man, And for the good and increase of the world.' * Parson,' said I, 'you pitch the pipe too low : But I have sudden touches, and can run My faith beyond my practice into his: Tho' if, in dancing after Letty Hill, I do not hear the bells upon my cap, I scarce have other music : yet say on. What should one give to light on such a dream? ' I ask'd him half-sardonically. 'Give? Give all thou art,' he answer'd, and a light ^ Of laughter dimpled in his swarthy cheek; *I would have hid her needle in my heart. To save her little finger from a scratch No deeper than the skin : my ears could hear Her lightest breath; her least remark was worth The experience of the wise. I went and came; Her voice fled always thro' the summer land; I spoke her name alone. Thrice-happy days ! The flower of each, those moments when we met, The crown of all, we met to part no more.' Were not his words delicious, I a beast To take them as I did? but something jarr'd; Whether he spoke too largely; that there seem'd A touch of something false, some self- conceit. Or over-smoothness : howsoe'er it was. He scarcely hit my humour, and I said : 'Friend Edwin, do not think yourself alone Of all men happy. Shall not Love to me, As in the Latin song I learnt at school. Sneeze out a full God-bless-you right and left? But you can talk : yours is a kindly vein : I have, I think, — Heaven knows, — as much within; Have, or should have, but for a chought or two. That like a purple beech among the greens Looks out of place : 'tis from no want in her: It is my shyness, or my self-distrust. Or something of a wayward modern mind Dissecting passion. Time wir set me right.' So spoke I knowing not the tljings that were. Then said the fat-faced curate, Edward Bull: 'God made the woman for the use of man. And for the good and increase of the world.' And I and ^dwin laughed; and now we paused About the windings of the marge to hear The soft wind blowing over meadowy holms And alders, garden-isles; and now we left The clerk behind us, I and he, and ran By ripply shallows of the lisping lake. Delighted with the freshness and the sound. But, when the bracken rusted on their crags. My suit had wither'd, nipt to death by him That was a God, and is a lawyer's clerk, The rentroll Cupid of our rainy isles. 'Tis true, we met; one hour I had, no more : She sent a note, the seal an Elle vous suit. The close, * Your Letty, only yours ; ' and this Thrice underscored. The friendly mist of morn Clung to the lake. I boated over, ran My craft aground, and heard with beat« ing heart The Sweet-Gale rustle round the shelving keel; And out I stept, and up I crept: she moved, ST. SIMEON STYLITES. 83 Like Proserpine in Enna, gathering flowers : Then low and sweet I whistled thrice; 'and she, She turn'd, we closed, we kiss'd, swore faith, I breathed In some new planet : a silent cousin stole Upon us and departed : ' Leave,' she cried, •^ O leave nie ! ' * Never, dearest, never : here I brave the worst : ' and while we stood like fools Embracing, all at once a score of pugs And poodles yell'd within, and out they came Trustees and Aunts and Uncles. * What, with him ! Go ' (shrill'd the cotton-spinning chorus) ; * him ! ' I choked. Again they shriek'd the burthen — * Him ! ' Again with hands of wild rejection * Go ! — Girl, get you in ! ' She went — and in one month They wedded her to sixty thousand pounds, To lands in Kent and messuages in York, And slight Sir Robert with his watery smile And educated whisker. But for me, They set an ancient creditor to work : It seems I broke a close with force and arms: There came a mystic token from the king To greet the sheriff, needless courtesy ! I read, and fled by night, and flying turn'd : Her taper glimmer'd in the lake below : I turn'd once more, close-button'd to the storm ; So left the place, left Edwin, nor have seen Him since, nor heard of her, nor cared to hear. Nor cared to hear? perhaps: yet long ago I have pardon'd little Letty; not indeed, It may be, for her own dear sake but this. She seems apart of those fresh days to me; For in the dust and drouth of London life She moves among my visions of the lake. While the prime swallow dips his wing, or then While the gold-lily blows, and overhead The light cloud smoulders on the summer crag. ST. SIMEON STYLITES. Altho' I be the basest of mankind, From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin. Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy, I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and sob. Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer, Have mercy. Lord, and take away my sin. Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God, This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years. Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs. In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold. In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps, A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud. Patient on this tall pillar I have borne Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow; And I had hoped that ere this period closed Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest. Denying not these weather-beaten limbs The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm. O take the meaning. Lord : I do not breathe. Not whisper, any murmur of complaint. Pain heap'd ten-hundred-fold to this, were still Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear, Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd My spirit flat before thee. O Lord, Lord, Thou knowest I bore this better at the first. For I was strong and hale of body then; And tho' my teeth, which now are dropt away, ST. SIMEON STYLITES. Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard Was tagg'd with icy fringes in the moon, I drown'd the whoopings of the owl with sound Of pious hymns and psalms, and some- times saw An angel stand and watch me, as I sang. Now am I feeble grown; my end draws nigh; I hope my end draws nigh : half deaf I am, So that I scarce can hear the people hum About the column's base, and almost blind, And scarce can recognise the fields I know; And both my thighs are rotted with the dew; Yet cease I not to clamour and to cry. While my stiff spine can hold my weary head, Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone, Have mercy, mercy : take away my sin. O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul, Who may be saved? who is it may be saved ? Who may be made a saint, if I fail here? Show me the man hath suffer'd more than I. For did not all thy martyrs die one death ? For either they were stoned, or crucified. Or burn'd in fire, or boil'd in oil, or sawn In twain beneath the ribs; but I die here To-day, and whole years long, a life of death. Bear witness, if I could have found a way (And heedfuUy I sifted all my thought) More slowly-painful to subdue this home Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate, I had not stinted practice, O my God. For not alone this pillar-punishment. Not this alone I bore : but while I lived In the white convent down the valley there, For many weeks about my loins I wore The rope that haled the buckets from the well, Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose ; And spake not of it to a single soul, Until the ulcer, eating thro' my skin, Betray'd my secret penance, so that all My brethren marvell'd greatly. More than this I bore, whereof, O God, thou knowest all. Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee, I lived up there on yonder mountain side. My right leg chain'd into the crag, I lay Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones; Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist, and twice Black'd with thy branding thunder, and sometimes Sucking the damps for drink, and eating not. Except the spare chance-gift of those that came To touch my body and be heal'd, and live : And they say then that I work'd miracles, Whereof my fame is loud amongst man- kind, Cured lameness, palsies, cancers. Thou, OGod, Knowest alone whether this was or no. Have mercy, mercy ! cover all my sin. Then, that I might be more alone with thee. Three years I lived upon a pillar, high Six cubits, and three years on one of twelve ;' And twice three years I crouch'd on one that rose Twenty by measure; last of all, I grew Twice ten long weary weary years to this, That numbers forty cubits from the soil. I think that I have borne as much as . this — Or else I dream — and for so long a time. If I may rneasure time by yon slow light, And this high dial, which my sorrow crowns — So much — even so. And yet I know not well, For that the evil ones come here, and say, ' Fall down, O Simeon : thou hast suffer'd long For ages and for ages ! ' then they prate Of penances I cannot have gone thro'. Perplexing me with lies; and oft I fall. Maybe for months, in such blind lethargies That Heaven, and Earth, and Time are choked. But yet Bethink thee, Lord, while thou and all the saints ST. SIMEON STYLITES. 85 Enjoy themselves in heaven, and men on earth House in the shade of comfortable roofs, Sit with their wives by fires, eat whole- some food, And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls, I, 'tween the spring and downfall of the light, Bow down one thousand and two hundred times, To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the saints; Or in the night, after a little sleep, I wake : the chill stars sparkle; -I am wet With drenching dews, or stiff with crack- ling frost. I wear an undress'd goatskin on my back; A grazing iron collar grinds my neck; And in my weak, lean arras I lift the cross. And strive and wrestle with thee till i die : mercy, mercy ! wash away my sin. O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am; A sinful man, conceived and born in sin : 'Tis their own doing; this is none of mine; Lay it not to me. Am I to blame for this. That here come those that worship me ? Ha! ha! They think that I am somewhat. What am I? The silly people take me for a saint, And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers : And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness here) Have all in all endured as much, and more Than many just and holy men, whose names Are register'd and calendar'd for saints. Good people, you do ill to kneel to me. What is it I can have done to merit this? 1 am a sinner viler than you all. It may be I have wrought some miracles. And cured some halt and maim'd; but what of that? It may be, no one, even among the saints. May match his pains with mine; but what of that? Yet do not rise; for you may look on me, And in your looking you may kneel to God. Speak ! is there any of you halt or maim'd? I think you know I have some power with Heaven From my long penance : let him speak his wish. Yes, I can heal him. Power goes forth from me. They say that they are heal'd. Ah, hark ! they shout * St. Simeon Stylites.' Why, if so, God reaps a harvest in me. O my soul, God reaps a harvest in thee. If this be, Can I work miracles and not be saved? This is not told of any. They were saints. It cannot be but that I shall be saved; Yea, crown'd a saint. They shout, * Behold a saint ! ' And lower voices saint me from above. Courage, St. Simeon ! This dull chrysalis Cracks into shining wings, and hope ere death Spreads more and more and more, that God hath now Sponged and made blank of crimeful record all My mortal archives. O my sons, my sons, I, Simeon of the pillar, by surname Stylites, among men ; I, Simeon, The watcher on the column till the end; I, Simeon, whose brain the sunshine bakes; I, whose bald brows in silent hours become Unnaturally hoar with rime, do now From my high nest of penance here pro- claim That Pontius and Iscariot by my side Show'd like fair seraphs. On the coals Hay, A vessel full of sin : all hell beneath Made me boil over. Devils pluck'd my sleeve, Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me. I smote them with the cross; they swarm'd again. In bed like monstrous apes they crush'd my chest : 86 ST. SIMEON STYLITES— THE TALKING OAK. They flapp'd my light out as I read : I saw Their faces grow between me and my book; With colt-like whinny and with hoggish whine They burst my prayer. Yet this way was left, And by this way I 'scaped them. Mortify Your flesh, like me, with scourges and with thorns; Smite, shrink not, spare not. If it may be, fast Whole Lents, and pray. I hardly, with slow steps, With slow, faint steps, and much exceed- . ing pain. Have scrambled past those pits of fire, that still Sing in mine ears. But yield not me the praise : God only thro' his bounty hath thought fit. Among the powers and princes of this world, To make me an example to mankind, Which few can reach to. Yet I do not say But that a time may come — yea, even now. Now, now, his footsteps smite the thresh- old stairs 'Of life — I say, that time is at the doors When you may worship me without re- proach ; For I will leave my relics in your land. And you may carve a shrine about my dust, And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones. When I am gather'd to the glorious saints. While I spake then, a sting of shrewd- est pain Ran shriveUing thro' me, and a cloudlike change. In passing, with a grosser film made thick These heavy, horny eyes. The end ! the end ! Surely the end ! What's here? a shape, a shade, A flash of light. Is that the angel there That holds a crown? Come, blessed brother, come. I know thy glittering face. I waited long; My brows are ready. What ! deny it now? Nay, draw, draw, draw nigh. So I clutch it. Christ ! 'Tis gone: 'tis here again; the crown! the crown ! So now 'tis fitted on and grows to me, And from it melt the dews of Paradise, Sweet ! sweet ! spikenard, and balm, and frankincense. Ah ! let me not be fool'd, sweet saints : I trust That I am whole, and clean, and meet for Heaven. Speak, if there be a priest, a man of God, Among you there, and let him presently Approach, and lean a ladder on the shaft. And climbing up into my airy home, Deliver me the blessed sacrament; For by the warning of the Holy Ghost, I prophesy that I shall die to-night, A quarter before twelve. But thou, O Lord, Aid all this foolish people; let them take Example, pattern : lead them to thy light. THE TALKING OAK. Once more the gate behind me falls; Once more before my face I see the mould er'd Abbey-walls, That stand within the chace. Beyond the lodge the city lies. Beneath its drift of smoke; And ah ! with what delighted eyes I turn to yonder oak. For when my passion first began. Ere that, which in me burn'd. The love, that makes me thrice a man, Could hope itself return'd; To yonder oak wicnin the field I spoke without restraint, And with a larger faith appeal'd Than Papist unto Saint. THE TALKING OAK. 87 For oft I talk'd with him apart. Strait-laced, but all-too-full in bud And told him of my choice, For puritanic stays : Until he plagiarised a heart, And answer'd with a voice. • And I have shadow'd many a group Of beauties, that were born Tho' what he whisper'd under Heaven In teacup-times of hood and hoop. None else could understand; Or while the patch was worn; I found him garrulously given, A babbler in the land. * And, leg and arm with love-knots gay. About me leap'd and laugh'd But since I heard him make reply The modish Cupid of the day, Is many a weary hour; And shrill'd his tinsel shaft. 'Twere well to question him, and try If yet he keeps the power. * I swear (and else may insects prick Each leaf into a gall) Hail, hidden to the knees in fern, This girl, for whom your heart is sick. Broad Oak of Sumner-chace, Is three times worth them all; Whose topmost branches can discern The roofs of Sumner-place ! * For those and theirs, by Nature's law. Have faded long ago; Say thou, whereon I carved her name, But in these latter springs I saw If ever maid or spouse. Your own Olivia blow. As fair as my Olivia, came To rest beneath thy boughs. — •From when she gamboll'd on the greens * Walter, I have shelter'd here A baby-germ, to when Whatever maiden grace The maiden blossoms of her teens The good old Summers, year by year Could number five from ten. Made ripe in Sumner-chace : * I swear, by leaf, and wind, and rain. ' Old Summers, when the monk was fat, (And hear me with thine ears,) And, issuing shorn and sleek. That, tho' I circle in the grain Would twist his girdle tight, and pat Five hundred rings of years — The girls upon the cheek, * Yet, since I first could cast a shade. * Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's-pence, Did never creature pass And number'd bead, and shrift. So slightly, musically made, Bluff Harry broke into the spence So light upon the grass : And turn'd the cowls adrift : ' For as to fairies, that will flit * And I have seen some score of those To make the greensward fresh, Fresh faces, that would thrive I hold them exquisitely knit. When his man-minded offset rose But far too spare of flesh.' To chase the deer at five; hide thy knotted knees in fern, *And all that from the town would And overlook the chace; stroll. And from thy topmost branch discern Till that wild wind made work The roofs of Sumner-place. In which the gloomy brewer's soul Went by me, like a stork : But thou, whereon I carved her name, That oft hast heard my vows. 'The slight she-slips of loyal blood. Declare when last Olivia came And others, passing praise. To sport beneath thy boughs. 88 THE TALKING OAK. • yesterday, you know, the fair That round me, clasping each in each. Was holden at the town; She might have lock'd her hands. Her father left his good arm-chair. And rode his hunter down. * Yet seem'd the pressure thrice as sweet As woodbine's fragile hold, ' And with him Albert came on his. Or when I feel about my feet I look'd at him with joy : The berried briony fold.' As cowslip unto oxlip is, So seems she to the boy. O muffle round thy knees with fern, And shadow Sumner-chace ! ' An hour had past — and, sitting straight Long may thy topmost branch discern Within the low-wheel'd chaise. The roofs of Sumner-place ! Her mother trundled to the gate Behind the dappled grays. But tell mCj did she read the name I carved with many vows • But as for her, she stay'd at home. When last with throbbing heart I came And on the roof she went. To rest beneath thy boughs? And down the way you use to come, She look'd with discontent. ' O yes, she wander'd round and round These knotted knees of mine, * She left the novel half-uncut And found, and kiss'd the name she Upon the rosewood shelf ; found, She left the new piano shut : And sweetly murmur'd thine. She could not please herself. * A teardrop trembled from its source. * Then ran she, gamesome as the colt. And down my surface crept. And livelier than a lark My sense of touch is something coarse. She sent her voice thro' all the holt But I believe she wept. Before her, and the park. * Then flush'd her cheek with rosy light, * A light wind chased her on the wing, She glanced across the plain; And in the chase grew wild, But not a creature was in sight: As close as might be would he cling She kiss'd me once again. About the darling child : * Her kisses were so close and kind, * But light as any wind that blows That, trust me on my word, So fleetly did she stir, Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind, The flower, she touch'd on, dipt and rose, But yet my sap was stirr'd : And turn'd to look at her. * And even into my inmost ring *And here she came, and round me A pleasure I discern'd, play'd, Like those blind motions of the Spring, And sang to me the whole That show the year is turn'd. Of those three stanzas that you made About my " giant bole; " * Thrice-happy he that may caress The ringlet's waving balm — * And in a fit of frolic mirth The cushions of whose touch may press She strove to span my waist : The maiden's tender palm. Alas, I was so broad of girth. I could not be embraced. * I, rooted here among the groves But languidly adjust ' I wish'd myself the fair young beech My vapid vegetable loves That here beside me stands, With anthers and with dust : THE TALKING OAK. 89 For ah ! my friend, the days were brief Whereof the poets talk, When that, which breathes within the leaf, Could slip its bark and walk. * But could I, as in times foregone, From spray, and branch, and stem, Have suck'd and gather'd into one The life that spreads in them, * She had not found me so remiss; But lightly issuing thro', I would have paid her kiss for kiss. With usury thereto.' O flourish high, with leafy towers. And overlook the lea. Pursue thy loves among the bowers But leave thou mine to me. O flourish, hidden deep in fern, Old oak, I love thee well; A thousand thanks for what I learn And what remains to tell. * 'Tis little more : the day was warm; At last, tired out with play. She sank her head upon her arm And at my feet she \^y. * Her eyelids dropp'd their silken eaves. I breathed upon her eyes Thro' all the summer of my leaves A welcome mix'd with sighs. * I took the swarming sound of life — The music from the town — The murmurs of the drum and fife And lull'd them in my own. * Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip. To light her shaded eye; A second flutter'd round her lip Like a golden butterfly; * A third would glimmer on her neck To make the necklace shine; Another slid, a sunny fleck, From head .to ankle fine. = Then close and dark my arms I spread. And shadow'd all her rest — Dropt dews upon her golden head, An acorn in her breast. * But in a pet she started up. And pluck'd it out, and drew My little oakling from the cup, And flung him in the dew. * And yet it was a graceful gift — I felt a pang within As when I see the woodman lift His axe to slay my kin. * I shook him down because be was The finest on the tree. He lies beside thee on the grass. O kiss him once for me. * O kiss him twice and thrice for me. That have no lips to kiss. For never yet was oak on lea Shall grow so fair as this.' Step deeper yet in herb and fern, Look further thro' the chace. Spread upward till thy boughs discerr The front of Sumner-place, This fru'.t of thine by Love is blest, That but a moment lay Where fairer fruit of Love may rest Some happy future day. I kiss it twice, I kiss it thrice. The warmth it thence shall win To riper life may magnetise The baby-oak within. But thou, while kingdoms overset, Or lapse from hand to hand. Thy leaf shall never fail, nor yet Thine acorn in the land. May never saw dismember thee, Nor wielded axe disjoint. Thou art the fairest-spoken tree From here to Lizard-point. O rock upon thy towery-top All throats that gurgle sweet ! All starry culmination drop Balm-dews to bathe thy feeti 90 THE TALKING OAK— LOVE AND DUTY. All grass of silky feather grow — And while he sinks or swells The full south-breeze around thee blow The sound -of minster bells. The fat earth feed thy branchy root, That under deeply strikes ! The northern morning o'er thee shoot, High up, in silver spikes ! Nor ever lightning char thy grain, But, rolling as in sleep. Low thunders bring the mellow rain, That makes thee broad and deep ! And hear me swear a solemn oath. That only by thy side Will I to Olive plight my troth. And gain her for my bride. And when my marriage morn may fall, She, Dryad-like, shall wear Alternate leaf and acorn-ball In wreath about her hair. And I will work in prose and rhyme, And praise thee more in both Than bard has honour'd beech or lime. Or that Thessalian growth. In which the swarthy ringdove sat. And mystic sentence spoke; And more than England honours that, Thy famous brother-oak. Wherein the younger Charles abode Till all the paths were dim, And far below the Roundhead rode. And humm'd a surly hymn. LOVE AND DUTY. Of love that never found his earthly close. What sequel ? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts ? Or all the same as if he had not been? Not so. Shall Error in the round of time Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law. System and empire ? Sin itself be found -The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun? And only he, this wonder, dead, become Mere highway dust? or year by yeav alone Sit brooding in the ruins of a life, Nightmare of youth, the spectre of him- self? If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all. Better the narrow brain, the stony heart, The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days, The long mechanic pacings to and fro. The set gray life, and apathetic end. But am I not the nobler thro' thy love? O three times less unworthy ! likewise thou Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years, The Sun will run his orbit, and the Moon Her circle. Wait, and Love himself will bring The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit Of wisdom. Wait : my faith is large in Time, And that which shapes it to some perfect end. Will some one say. Then why not ill for good? Why took ye not your Pastime? To that man My work shall answer, since I knew the right And did it; for a man is not as God, But then most Godlike being most a man. — So let me think 'tis well for thee and me — Ill-fated that I am, what lot is mine Whose foresight preaches peace, my heart so slow To feel it! For how hard it seem'd to me, •When eyes, love-languid thro' half tears would dwell One earnest, earnest moment upon mine. Then not to dare to see ! when thy low voice. Faltering, would break its syllables, to keep LOVE AND DUTY— THE GOLDEN YEAR. 91 My own full-tuned, — hold passion in a leash, And not leap forth and fall about thy neck. And on thy bosom (deep desired relief!) Rain out the heavy mist of tears, that weigh'd Upon my brain, my senses and my soul ! For Love himself took part against himself To warn us off, and Duty loved of Love — O this world's curse — beloved but hated — came Like Death betwixt thy deav embrace and mine, And crying, ' Who is this? behold thy bride,' She push'd me from thee. If the sense is hard To alien ears, I did not speak to these — No, not to thee, but to thyself in me : Hard is my do^m and thine: thou knowest it all. Could Love part thus? was it not well to speak. To have spoken once? It could not but be well. The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good, The slow sad hours that bring us all things ill, And all good things from evil, brought the night In which we sat together and alone. And to the want, that hoUow'd all the heart. Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye, That burn'd upon its object thro' such tears As flow but once a life. The trance gave way To those caresses, when a hundred times In that last kiss, which never was the last, Farewell, like endless welcome, lived and died. Then follow'd counsel, comfort, and the words That make a man feel strong in speaking truth; Till now the dark was worn, and overhead The lights of sunset and of sunrise mix'd In that brief night; the summer night, that paused Among her stars to hear us; stars that hung Love-charm'd to listen : all the wheels of Time Spun round in station, but the end had come. O then like those, whp clench their nerves to rush Upon their dissolution, we two rose, There — closing like an individual life — In one blind cry of passion and of pain. Like bitter accusation ev'n to death. Caught up the whole of love and utter'd it, And bade adieu for ever. Live — yet live — Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing all Life needs for life is possible to will — Live happy; tend thv flowers; be tended - by My blessing ! Should my Shadow cross thy thoughts Too sadly for their peace, remand it thou For calmer hours to Memory's darkest hold. If not to be forgotten — not at once — Not all forgotten. Should it cross thy dreams, O might it come like one that looks con- tent, With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth. And point thee forward to a distant light. Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heart And leave thee freer, till thou wake refresh'd Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown Full quire, and morning driv'n her plow of pearl Far furrowing into light the mounded rack, Beyond the fair green field and eastern THE GOLDEN YEAR. Well, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote : It was last summer on a tour in Whales : Old James was with me : we that day had been 92 THE GOLDEN YEAR. Up Snowdon; and I wish'd for Leonard there, And found him in Llanberis: then we crost Between the lakes, and clamber'd half way up The counter side; and that same song of his He told me; for I banter'd him, and swore They said he lived shut up within himself, A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days, That, setting the how much before the hozv, Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech, * Give, Cram us with all,' but count not me the herd! To which 'They call me what they will,' he said : * But I was born too late : the fair new forms. That float about the threshold of an age, Like truths of Science waiting to be caught — Catch me who can, and make the catcher crown'd — Are taken by the forelock. Let it be. But if you care indeed to listen, hear These measured words, my work of yestermorn. * We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move; The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun; The dark Earth follows wheel'd in her ellipse; And human things returning on them- selves Move onward, leading up the golden year. *Ah, tho' the times, when some new thought can bud, Are but as poets' seasons when they flower. Yet oceans daily gaining on the land, Have ebb and flow conditioning their march. And slow and sure comes up the golden year. 'When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, But smit with freer light shall slowly melt In many streams to fatten lower lands, And light shall spread, and man be liker man Thro' all the season of the golden year. 'Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens? If all the world were falcons, what of that? The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the eagle. Happy days Roll onward, leading up the golden year. ' Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the Press ; Fly happy with the mission of the Cross; Knit land ta land, and blowing haven- ward With silks, and fruits, and spices, cleai of toll, Enrich the markets of the golden year. ' But we grow old. Ah ! when shall all men's good Be each man's rule, and universal Peace Lie like a shaft of liglat across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea. Thro' all the circle of the golden year?' Thus far he flbw'd, and ended; where- upon *Ah, folly!' in mimic cadence answer'd James — * Ah, folly ! for it lies so far away, Not in our time, nor in our children's time, 'Tis like the second world to us that live; 'Twere all as one to fix our hopes on Heaven As on this vision of the golden year.' With that he struck his staff against the rocks And broke it, — James, — you know him, — old, but full Of force and choler, and firm upon his feet. And like an oaken stock in winter woods, O'erflourish'd with the hoary clematis : Then added, all in heat : ' What stuff is this ! Old writers push'd the happy season back, — The more fools they, — we forward: dreamers both : You most, that in an age, when every hour UL YSSES. 93 Must sweat her sixty minutes to the death, Live on, God love us, as if the seedsman, rapt Upon the teeming harvest, should not plunge His hand into the bag : but well I know That unto him who works, and feels he works, This same grand year is ever at the doors.' He spoke; and, high above; I heard them blast The steep slate-quarry, and the great echo flap And buffet round the hills, from bluff to bluff. -^ ULYSSES . It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. y y.; ^nnot rer fvyr anH fo f evpr when I mov e. H«w dnll it i'7 tq.paus e, t o make an e nd. To rust unburnish'd, n^*^ ^^ gVijiie in use ! As tho' to breathe were hfe. LiFe piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains : but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself. And t his gray spirit yearning in desire To fnlW knnwipfjge like a sinkinfr star. BpyonH the UtlUPfl*^^ bnnnri of liiim>>n thought. This is rpy gonj mine own Telem^-chus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-^ Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged p<" "plfj ?nd i-hro' soft d^''^'^'* Subdue them to the useful and the good . Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods. When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail : There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners. Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me — That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads — xou_and I arp old : Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes a ll : but something ere the end, Some work of noble note^ may yet be done. Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks : The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs : the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 94 TITHONUS. 'Tjs_nnt, t-Q Q late \ o s^ek g newer wor ld. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for mv purpose holds T p sail beyon d the s unset and the bat hs nf nil frVio wn^tf^rn gtar« :^, ^ i p HI T die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:" It maybe we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are no JL Jiow thf if g»'-'""ghVi wh^ph I'n o ld da ys Move d earth and heave n; i-fiat whiV.Vf wp One equal temper of heroic hearts, 1V[p rlp iirwnlr hy Hf n e and fate, bu t strong in wil l To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, * lyfan rnmps and tills the field and lie s beneat h. And after many a summer dies the swan. lyrp nT]ly cruel immojJ Lalitv Con Slime s : I wither slowly in thine arms. Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream The ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn. Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man — So glorious in his beauty and thy choice, Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem'd To his great heart none other than a God! T a<;L-!d fj iee. *Give ^p immf^|-)-cilitp ' Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile. Like wealthy men who care not how they give. But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their wills, And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me, And t ho' they could not end me. left m e To dwell in presence of imm^^-fal youth, TmmnrtaVage be?jjdr i^yrr.'-"-'-^^ y^"<-V^ And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love, Thy beauty, make amends, tho' even now, Close over us, the silver star, thy guide, Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears To hear me ? T.et me go : take back th v *Why should a man desire in any way To vary from the kindly race of men. Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance Where all should pause, as is most meet for all ? A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes A glimpse of that dark world where I was born. Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure. And bosom beating with a heart renew'd. Thy cheek begins to redden thro' the gloom, Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine, Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise, And shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes, And beat the twilight into flakes of fire. Lo ! ever thus thou growest beautiful In silence, then before thine answer given Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek. Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears. And make me tremble lest a saying learnt, TIT HON us — LO CKSLE Y HALL. 95 In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true ? •The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.' Ay me ! ay me ! with what another heart In days far-off, and with what other eyes I used to watch — if Ibehethatwatch'd — The lucid outline forming round thee; saw The dim curls kindle into sunny rings; Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood Glow with the glow that slowly crimson'd all Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay, Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy- warm With kisses balmier than half-opening buds Of April, and could hear the lips that kiss'd Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet. Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing, While Ilion like a mist rose into towers. Yet hold me not for ever in thine East : How can my nature longer mix with thine ? Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam Floats up from those dim fields about the homes I Of happy men that have the power to die. And grassy barrows of the happier dead. I Release me, and restore me to the ground; Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave : Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn; II earth in earth forget these empty courts, •And thee returning on thy silver wheels. LOCKSLEY HALL. Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn : Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn. 'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall; Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts. And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts. Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West. Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid. Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time; When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed ; When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed : When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see; Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. — 96 LOCKSLEY HALL. In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove; In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young, ' And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung. And I said, ' My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me, Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.' On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light. As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night. And she turn'd — her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs — All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes — Saying, ' I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong ; ' Saying, ' Dost thou love me, cousin ? ' weeping, * I have loved thee long.- Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring. And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fullness of the Spring. Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships, And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips. O my cousin, shallow-hearted ! O my Amy, mine no more ! O the dreary, dreary moorland ! O the barren, barren shore ! Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung, Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue ! Is it well to wish thee happy? — having known me — to decline On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine ! Yet it shall be : thou shalt lower to his level day by day. What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathise with clay. As the husband is, the wife is : thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down. He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse. What is this? his eyes are heavy : think not they are glazed with wine. Go to him : it is thy duty : kiss him : take his hand in thine. LOCKSLEY HALL. 97 It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought : Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought. He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand — Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand ! Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace, RoU'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace. Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth! Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth ! Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule ! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool ! Well — 'tis well that I should bluster ! — Hadst thou less unworthy proved — Would to God — for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved. Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit? I will pluck it from my bosom, tho' my heart be at the root. Never, tho' my mortal summers to such length of years should come As the many-winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery home. Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind? Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind? I remember one that perish'd : sweetly did she speak and move : Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love. Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore? No — she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore. Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things. Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof. Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall. Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep, . To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep. Thou shalt hear the ' Never, never,' whisper'd by the phantom years, And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears; And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain. Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow : get thee to thy rest again. Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry. 'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry. 98 LOCKSLEY HALL. Baby lips will laugh me down : my latest rival brings thee rest. Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast. O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due. Half is thine and half is his : it will be worthy of the two. O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart. 'They were dangerous guides the feelings — she herself was not exempt — Truly, she herself had suffer'd ' — Perish in thy self-contempt ! Overlive it — lower yet — be happy! wherefore should I care? I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair. What is that which I should turn to, Hghting upon days like these? Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys. Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow. I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do? I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground, When the ranks are roU'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound. But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels, And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels. Can 1 but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page. Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age ! Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life; Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field, And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn; And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men : Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new : That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do: For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew hrom the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue; LOCKS LEY HALL, 99 Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm; Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe. And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. So I triumph'd ere my passion sweeping thro' me left me dry, Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye; Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint: Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from' point to point: Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher, Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire. Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns. What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys, Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's? Knowledge comeS, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast. Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest. Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn. They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn : Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string? I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a thing. Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's pain = Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain : Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine. Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine — Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat; Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd; — I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward. Or to burst all links of habit — there to wander far away, On from island unto island at the gateways of the day. Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies. Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise. 100 LOCKSLEY HALL. Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag; Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree — Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea. There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind. In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind. There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing space; I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race. Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run, Catch the wild goatby the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun; Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks, Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books — Fool, again the dream, the fancy ! but I know my words are wild, But I count the gray barbarian lo^yer than the Christian child. I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains. Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains ! Mated with a squalid savage — what to me were sun or clime? I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time — I that rather held it better men should perish one by one. Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon ! / Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range, Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change. Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day : Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun : Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun, O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set. Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet. Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall ! Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall. Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt. Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt. Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow; For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go. GODIVA. lOI GODIVA. I tvaited fo7' the train at Coventry; I hung zvith grooms and porters on the bridge. To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped The city's ancient legend into this : — Not only we, the latest seed of Time, New men, that in the flying of a wheel Cry down the past, not only we, that prate Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well, And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she Did more, and underwent, and overcame, The woman of a thousand summers back, Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled In Coventry : for when he laid a tax Upon his town, and all the mothers brought Their children, clamouring, ' If we pay, we starve ! ' She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode About the hall, among his dogs, alone. His beard a foot before him, and his hair A yard behind. She told him of their tears, And pray'd him, * If they pay this tax, they starve.' Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed, 'You would not let your little finger ache For such as these /" — ' But I would die,' said she. He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul: Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear; * Oh ay, ay, ay, you talk ! ' — * Alas ! ' she said, ' But prove me what it is I would not do.' And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand, He answer'd, ' Ride you naked thro' the town. And I repeal it; ' and nodding, as in scorn. He parted, with great strides among his dogs. So left alone, the passions of her mind. As winds from all the compass shift and blow, Made war upon each other for an hour, Till pity won. She sent a herald forth, And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all The hard condition; but that she would loose The people : therefore, as they loved her well. From then till noon no foot should pace the street, No eye look down, she passing; but that all Should keep within, door shut, and win- dow barr'd. Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt. The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath She linger'd, looking like a summer moon Half-dipt in cloud ; anon she shook her head, And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee; Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid From pillar unto pillar, until she reach'd The gateway; there she found her pal- frey trapt In purple blazon'd with armorial gold. Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity : The deep air listen'd round her as she rode. And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout Had cunning eyes to see : the barking cur Made her cheek flame : her palfrev's foot- fall shot Light horrors thro' her pulses : the blind walls Were full of chinks and holes; and over- head Fantastic gables, crowding, stared : but she Not less thro' all bore up, till, last, she saw The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field ' I02 THE DAY-DREAM. Gleam thro' the Gothic archway in the wall. Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity : And one low churl, compact of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come, Boring a little auger-hole in fear, Peep'd — but his eyes, before they had their will, Were shrivell'd into darkness in his head, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense mis- used; And she, that knew not, pass'd : and all at once. With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hun- dred towers, One after one : but even then she gain'd Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd, To meet her lord, she took the tax away And built herself an everlasting name. THE DAY-DREAM. PROLOGUE. O Lady Flora, let me speak : A pleasant hour has pass'd away While, dreaming on your damask cheek, The dewy sister-eyelids lay. As by the lattice you reclined, I went thro' many wayward moods To see you dreaming — and, behind, A summer crisp with shining woods. And I too dream'd, until at last Across my fancy, brooding warm, The reflex of a legend past, And loosely settled into form. And would you have the thought I had. And see the vision that I saw. Then take the broidery-frame, and add A crimson to the quaint Macaw, And I will tell it. Turn your face. Nor look with that too-earnest eye — The rhymes are dazzled from their place And order'd words asunder fly. THE SLEEPING PALACE. The varying year with blade and sheaf Clothes and reclothes the happy plains. Here rests the sap within the leaf, Here stays the blood along the veins. Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl'd. Faint murmurs from the meadows come, Like hints and echoes of the world To spirits folded in the womb. Soft lustre bathes the range of urns On every slanting terrace-lawn. The fountain to his place returns Deep in the garden lake withdrawn. Here droops the banner on the tower. On the hall-hearths the festal fires, The peacock in his laurel bower. The parrot in his gilded wires. III. Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs: In these, in those the life is stay'd. The mantles from the golden pegs Droop sleepily : no sound is made, Not even of a gnat that sings. More like a picture seemeth all Than those old portraits of old kings. That watch the sleepers from the wall. IV. Here sits the Butler with a flask Between his knees, half-drain'd; and there The wrinkled steward at his task, The maid-of-honour blooming fair; The page has caught her hand in his: Her lips are sever'd as to speak : His own are pouted to a kiss : The blush is fix'd upon her cheek. V. Till all the hundred summers pass, The beams, that thro' the Oriel shine, Make prisms in every carven glass, And beaker brimm'd with noble wine Each baron at the banquet sleeps. Grave faces gather'd in a ring. THE DAY-DREAM. 103 His state the king reposing keeps. He must have been a jovial king. All round a hedge upshoots, and shows At distance like a little wood ; Thorns, ivies, woodbine, mistletoes, And grapes with bunches red as blood; All creeping plants, a wall of green Close-matted, bur and brake and briar, And glimpsing over these, just seen. High up, the topmost palace spire. VII. When will the hundred summers die. And thought and time be born again, And newer knowledge, drawing nigh, Bring truth that sways the soul of men? Here all things in their place remain, As all were order'd, ages since. Come, Care and Pleasure, Hope and Pain, And bring the fated fairy Prince. THE SLEEPING BEAUTY. Year after year unto her feet. She lying on her couch alone. Across the purple coverlet, The maiden's jet-black hair has grown, On either side her tranced form Forth streaming ff om a braid of pearl : The slumbrous light is rich and warm, And moves not on the rounded curl. The silk star-broider'd coverlid Unto her limbs itself doth mould Languidly ever ; and, amid Her full black ringlets downward roU'd, Glows forth each softly-shadow'd arm With bracelets of the diamond bright : Her constant beauty doth inform Stillness with love, and day with light. She sleeps : her breathings are not heard In palace chambers far apart. The fragrant tresses are not stirr'd That lie upon her charmed heart. She sleeps : on either hand upswells The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest: She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells A perfect form in perfect rest. THE ARRIVAL. I. All precious things, discover'd late. To those that seek them issue forth; For love in sequel works with fate, And draws the veil from hidden worth. He travels far from other skies — His mantle ghtters on the rocks — A fairy Prince, with joyful eyes, And lighter-footed than the fox. n. The bodies and the bones of those That strove in other dayi to pass. Are wither'd in the thorny close. Or scatter'd blanching on the grass. He gazes on the silent dead : 'They perish'd in their daring deeds.' This proverb flashes thro' his head, ' The many fail : the one succeeds.* in. He comes, scarce knowing what he seeks : He breaks the hedge: he enters there : The colour flies into his cheeks : He trusts to light on something fair ; For all his life the charm did talk About his path, and hover near With words of promise in his walk. And whisper'd voices at his ear. IV. More close and close his footsteps wind: The Magic Music in his heart Beats quick and quicker, till he find The quiet chamber far apart. His spirit flutters like a lark. He stoops — to kiss her — on his knee. * Love, if thy tresses be so dark. How dark those hidden eyes must be!' I04 THE DAY-DREAM. THE REVIVAL. A TOUCH, a kiss ! the charm was snapt. There rose a noise of striking clocks, And feet that ran, and doors that clapt, And barking dogs, and crowing cocks; A fuller light illumined all, A breeze thro' all the garden swept, A sudden hubbub shook the hall. And sixty feet the fountain leapt. II. The hedge broke in, the banner blew, The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd. The fire shot up, the martin flew, The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd. The maid and page renew'd their strife. The palace bang'd, and buzz'd and clackt. And all the long-pent stream of life Dash'd downward in a cataract. III. And last with these the king awoke, And in his chair himself uprear'd, And yawn'd, and rubb'd his face, and spoke, ' By holy rood, a royal beard ! How say you? we have slept, my lords. My beard has grown into my lap.' The barons swore, with many words, 'Twas but an after-dinner's nap. * Pardy,' return'd the king, * but still My joints are somewhat stiff or so. My lord, and shall we pass the bill I mention'd half an hour ago?' The chancellor, sedate and vain. In courteous words return'd reply : But dallied with his golden chain, And, smiling, put the question by. THE DEPARTURE. And on her lover's arm she leant. And round her waist she felt it fold. And far across the hills they went In that new world which is the old : Across the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, And deep into the dying day The happy princess follow'd him. II. * I'd sleep another hundred years, O love, for such another kiss; ' * O wake for ever, love,' she hears, ' O love, 'twas such as this and this.' And o'er them many a sliding star, And many a merry wind was borne, And, stream'd thro' many a golden bar. The twilight melted into morn. III. ' O eyes long laid in happy sleep ! ' ' O happy sleep, that lightly fled ! ' * O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep ! ' ' O love, thy kiss would wake the dead ! ' And o'er them many a flowing range Of vapour buoy'd the crescent-bark. And, rapt thro' many a rosy change. The twilight died into the dark. ' A hundred summers ! can it be? And whither goest thou, tell mewhere? ' * O seek my father's court with me. For there are greater wonders there.' And o'er the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day, Thro' all the world she follow'd him. MORAL. I. So, Lady Flora, take my lay. And if you find no moral there. Go, look in any glass and say, What moral is in being fair. Oh, to what uses shall we put The wild weed-flower that simply blows ? And is there any moral shut Within the bosom of the rose? II. But any man that walks the mead. In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find, THE DAY-DREAM— AMPHION 105 According as his humours lead, A meaning suited to his mind. And liberal applications lie In Art like Nature, dearest friend; So 'twere to cramp its use, if I Should hook it to some useful end. L'ENVOI. You shake your head. A random string Your finer female sense offends. Well — were it not a pleasant thing To fall asleep with all one's friends; To pass with all our social ties To silence from the paths of men; And every hundred years to rise And learn the world, and sleep again; To sleep thro' terms of mighty wars. And wake on science grown to more, On secrets of the brain, the stars. As wild as aught of fairy lore ; And all that else the years will show, The Poet-forms of stronger hours. The vast Republics that may grow. The Federations and the Powers; Titanic forces taking birth In divers seasons, divers climes; For we are Ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times. So sleeping, so aroused from sleep Thro' sunny decads new and strange. Or gay quinquenniads would we reap The flower and quintessence of change. Ah, yet would I — and would I might ! So much your €yes my fancy take — Be still the first to leap to light That I might kiss those eyes awake ! For, am I right, or am I wrong, To choose your own you did not care; You'd have my moral from the song, And I will take my pleasure there : And, am I right or am I wrong, My fancy, ranging thro' and thro', To search a meaning for the song, • Perforce will still revert to you; Nor finds a closer truth than this All-graceful head, so richly curl'd, And evermore a costly kiss The prelude to some brighter world. For since the time when Adam first Embraced his Eve in happy hour. And every bird of Eden burst In carol, every bud to flower, "What eyes, like thine, have waken'd hopes. What lips, like thine, so sweetly join'd? Where on the double rosebud droops The fullness of the pensive mind; W^hich all too dearly self-involved. Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me; A sleep by kisses undissolved, That lets thee neither hear nor see : But break it. In the name of wife, And in the rights that name may give. Are clasp'd the moral of thy life. And that for which I care to live. EPILOGUE. So, Lady Flora, take my lay. And, if you find a meaning there, O whisper to your glass, and say, * What wonder, if he thinks me fair?' What wonder I was all unwise. To shape the song for your delight Like long-tail'd birds of Paradise That float thro' Heaven, and cannot light? Or old-world trains, upheld at court By Cupid-boys of blooming hue — But take it — earnest wed with sport. And either sacred unto you. AMPHION. My father left a park to me, But it is wild and barren, A garden too with scarce a tree, And waster than a warren : Yet say the neighbours when they call, It is not bad but good land, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great In days of old Amphion, io6 AMPHION. And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, Nor cared for seed or scion ! And had I lived when song was great, And legs of trees were limber, And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, And fiddled in the timber ! Tis said he had a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation. Wherever he sat down and sung He left a small plantation; Wherever in a lonely grove •He set up his forlorn pipes, The gouty oak began to move, And flounder into hornpipes. The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, And, as tradition teaches. Young ashes pirouetted down Coquetting with young beeches; And briony-vine and ivy-wreath Ran forward tp his rhyming, And from the valleys underneath Came little copses climbing. The linden broke her ranks and rent The woodbine wreaths that bind her. And down the middle, buzz ! she went With all her bees behind her : The poplars, in long order due, With cypress promenaded. The shock-head willows two and two By rivers gallopaded. Came wet-shod alder from the wave. Came yews, a dismal coterie; Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave Poussetting with a sloe-tree : Old elms came breaking from the vine. The vine stream'd out to follow. And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine From many a cloudy hollow. And wasn't it a sight to see. When, ere his song was ended, Like some great landslip, tree by tree, The country-side descended; And shepherds from the mountain-eaves Look'd down, half-pleased, half-fright- en'd. As dash'd about the drunken leaves The random sunshine lighten'd ! Oh, nature first was fresh to men, And wanton without measure; So youthful and so flexile then. You moved her at your pleasure. Twang out, my fiddle I shake the twigs! And make her dance attendance; Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs, And scirrhous roots and tendons. 'Tis vain ! in such a brassy age I could not move a thistle; The very sparrows in the hedge Scarce answer to my whistle; Or at the most, when three-parts-sick With strumming and with scraping, A jackass heehaws from the rick. The passive oxen gaping. But what is that I hear? a sound Like sleepy counsel pleading; O Lord ! — 'tis in my neighbour's ground, The modern Muses reading. They read Botanic Treatises, And Works on Gardening thro' there, And Methods of transplanting trees To look as if they grew there. The wither'd Misses ! how they prose O'er books of travell'd seamen. And show you slips of all that grows From England to Van Diemen. They read in arbours dipt and cut, ^ And alleys, faded places, By squares of tropic summer shut And warm'd in crystal cases. But these, tho' fed with careful dirt, Are neither green nor sappy; Half-conscious of the garden-squirt. The spindlings look unhappy. Better to me the meanest weed That blows upon its mountain, The vilest herb that runs to seed Beside its native fountain. And I must work thro' months of toil, And years of cultivation, Upon my proper patch of soil To grow my own plantation. I'll take the showers as they fall, I will not vex my bosom : Enough if at the end of all A little garden blossom. ST. AGNES' EVE— SIR GALAHAD. 107 ST. AGNES' EVE. Deep on the convent-roof the snows Are sparkling to the moon : My breath to heaven hke vapour goes : May my soul follow soon ! The shadows of the convent-towers Slant down the snowy sward, Still creeping with the creeping hours That lead me to my Lord : Make Thou my spirit pure and clear As are the frosty skies, Or this first snowdrop of the year That in my bosom lies. As these white robes are soil'd and dark, To yonder shining ground; As this pale taper's earthly spark, To yonder argent round; So shows my soul before the Lamb, My spirit before Thee; So in mine earthly house I am, To that I hope to be. Break up the heavens, O Lord ! and far, Thro' all yon starlight keen. Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star, In raiment white and clean. He lifts me to the golden doors; The flashes come and go; All heaven bursts her starry floors, And strows her lights below, And deepens on and up ! the gates Roll back, and far within For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, To make me pure of sin. The sabbaths of Eternity, One sabbath deep and wide — A light upon the shining sea — The Bridegroom with his bride ! SIR GALAHAD. My good blade carves the casques of men. My tough lance thrusteth sure. My strength is as the strength of ten. Because my heart is pure. The shattering trumpet shrilleth high. The hard brands shiver on the steel. The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly, The horse and rider reel : They reel, they roll in clanging lists, And when the tide of combat stands, Perfume and flowers fall in showers. That lightly rain from ladies' hands. How sweet are looks that ladies bend On whom their favours fall ! For them I battle till the end. To save from shame and thrall : But all my heart is drawn above, My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine : I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine. More bounteous aspects on me beam. Me mightier transports move and thrill; So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer A virgin heart in work and will. When down the stormy crescent goes, A light before me swims, Between dark stems the forest glows, I hear a noise of hymns : Then by some secret shrine I ride; I hear a voice but none are there; The stalls are void, the doors are wide. The tapers burning fair. Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer sw ings. And solemn chaunts resound between. Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres I find a magic bark; I leap on board : no helmsman steers : I float till all is dark. A gentle sound, an awful light ! Three angels bear the holy Grail : With folded feet, in stoles of white. On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision ! blood of God ! My spirit beats her mortal bars. As down dark tides the glory slides, And star-like mingles with the stars. When on my goodly charger borne Thro' dreaming towns I go. The cock crows ere the Christmas morn. The streets are dumb with snow. The tempest crackles on the leads, And, ringing, springs from brand and mail; io8 EDWARD GRAY. But o'er the dark a glory spreads, And gilds the driving hail. I leave the plain, I climb the height; No branchy thicket shelter yields; But blessed forms in whistling storms Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields. A maiden knight — to me is given Such hope, I know not fear; I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven That often meet me here. I muse- on joy that will not cease, Pure spaces clothed in living beams, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odours haunt my dreams; And, stricken by an angel's hand. This mortal armour that I wear, This weight and size, this heart and eyes, Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air. The clouds are broken in the sky. And thro' the mountain-walls A rolling organ-harmony Swells up, and shakes and falls. Then move the trees, the copses nod, Wings flutter, voices hover clear : ' O just and faithful knight of God ! Ride on ! the prize is near.' So pass I hostel, hall, and grange; By bridge and ford, by park and pale, All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide, Until I find the holy Grail. EDWARD GRAY. Sweet Emma Moreland of yonder town Met me walking on yonder way, 'And have you lost your heart?' she said; *And are you married yet, Edward Gray?' Sweet Emma Moreland spoke to me : Bitterly weeping I turn'd away : * Sweet Emma Moreland, love no more Can touch the heart of Edward Gray. * Ellen Adair she loved me well, Against her father's and mother's will: To-day I sat for an hour and wept, By Ellen's grave, on the windy hill. ' Shy she was, and I thought her cold ; Thought her proud, and fled over the sea; Fill'd I was with folly and spite, When Ellen Adair was dying for me. ' Cruel, cruel the words I said ! Cruelly came they back to-day : "You're too slight and fickle," I said, "To trouble the heart of Edward Gray,'^ •^ There I put my face in the grass — Whisper'd, " Listen to my despair : I repent me of all I did : Speak a little, Ellen Adair ! " ' Then I took a pencil, and wrote On the mossy stone, as I lay, " Here lies the body of Ellen Adair; And here the heart of Edward Gray ! " * Love may come, and love may go. And fly, like a bird, from tree to tree; But I will love no more, no more, Till Ellen Adair come back to me, ' Bitterly wept I over the stone : Bitterly weeping I turn'd away : There lies the body of Ellen Adair ! And there the heart of Edward Gray ! ' WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE. MADE AT THE COCK. O PLUMP head-waiter at The Cock, To which I most resort. How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock. Go fetch a pint of port : But let it not be such as that You set before chance-comers, But such whose father-grape grew fat On Lusitanian summers. No vain libation to the Muse, But may she still be kind. And whisper lovely words, and use Her influence on the mind. To make me write my random rhymes. Ere they be half-forgotten; Nor add and alter, many times. Till all be ripe and rotten. IVILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE. 109 I pledge her, and she comes and dips This earth is rich in man and maid; Her laurel in the wine, With fair horizons bound : And lays it thrice upon my lips, This whole wide earth of light and These favour'd lips of mine; shade Until the charm have power to make Comes out a perfect round. New lifeblood warm the bosom, High over roaring Temple-bar, And barren commonplaces break And set in Heaven's third story. In full and kindly blossom. 1 look at all things as they are, But thro' a kind of glory. I pledge her silent at the board; Her gradual fingers steal And touch upon the master-chord Head-waiter, honour'd by the guest Of all I felt and feel. Half-mused, or reeling ripe, Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, The pint, you brought me, was the best And phantom hopes assemble; That ever came from pipe. And that child's heart within the man's But tho' the port surpasses praise, Begins to move and tremble. My nerves have dealt with stiffer. Is there some magic in the place? Thro' many an hour of summer suns, Or do my peptics differ? By many pleasant ways. Against its fountain upward runs For since I came to live and learn. The current of my days : No pint of white or red I kiss the lips I once have kiss'd; Had ever half the power to turn The gas-light wavers dimmer; This wheel within my head, And softly, thro' a vinous mist, Which bears a season'd brain about, My college friendships glimmer. Unsubject to confusion, Tho' soak'd and saturate, out and out. I grow in worth, and wit, and sense. Thro' every convolution. Unboding critic-pen. Or that eternal want of pence. For I am of a numerous house, Which vexes public men. With many kinsmen gay. Who hold their hands to all, and cry Where long and largely we carouse For that which all deny them — As who shall say me nay : Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry, Each month, a birth-day coming on, And all the world go by them. We drink defying trouble, Or sometimes two would meet in one, Ah yet, the' all the world forsake. And then we drank it double; Tho' fortune clip my wings. I will not cramp my heart, nor take Whether the vintage, yet unkept, Half-views of men and things. Had relish fiery-new, Let Whig and Tory stir their blood; Or elbow-deep in sawdust, slept. There must be stormy weather; As old as Waterloo; But for some true result of good Or stow'd, when classic Canning died, All parties work together. In musty bins and chambers. Had cast upon its crusty side Let there be thistles, there are grapes; The gloom of ten Decembers. If old things, there are new; Ten thousand broken lights and shapes. The Muse, the jolly Muse, it is ! Yet glimpses of the true. She answer'd to my call, Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme, She changes with that mood or this, We lack not rhymes and reasons. Is all-in-all to all : As^n this whirligig of Time She lit the spark within my throat. We circle with the seasons. To make my blood run quicker. WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE. Used all her fiery will, and smote Her life into the liquor. And hence this halo lives about The waiter's hands, that reach To each his perfect pint of stout, His proper chop to each. He looks not like the common breed That with the napkin dally; I think he came like Ganymede, From some delightful valley. The Cock was of a larger egg Than modern poultry drop, Stept forward on a firmer leg. And cramm'd a plumper crop; Upon an ampler dunghill trod, Crow'd lustier late and early, Sipt wine from silver, praising God, And raked in golden barley. A private life was all his joy, Till in a court he saw A something-pottle-bodied boy That knuckled at the taw : He stoop'd and clutch'd him, fair and good. Flew over roof and casement : His brothers of the Weather stood Stock-still for sheer amazement. But he, by farmstead, thorpe and spire. And foUow'd with acclaims, A sign to many a staring shire Came crowing over Thames. Right down by smoky Paul's they bore. Till, where the street grows straiter, One fix'd for ever at the door, And one became head-waiter. But whither would my fancy go? How out of place she makes The violet of a legend blow Among the chops and steaks ! 'Tis but a steward of the can, One shade more plump than common; As just and mere a serving-man As any born of woman. I ranged too high : what draws me down Into the common day ? Is it the weight of that half-crown. Which I shall have to payi For, something duller than at first, Nor wholly comfortable, I sit, my empty glass reversed. And thrumming on the table : Half fearful that, with self at strife, I take myself to task ; Lest of the fullness of my life I leave an empty flask : For I had hope, by something rare To prove myself a poet : But,, while I plan and plan, my hair Is gray before I know it. So fares it since the years began, Till they be gather'd up; The truth, that flies the flowing can. Will haunt the vacant cup : And others' follies teach us not. Nor much their wisdom teaches; And most, of sterling worth, is what Our own experience preaches. Ah, let the rusty theme alone ! We know not what we know. But for my pleasant hour, 'tis gone; 'Tis gone, and let it go. 'Tis gone : a thousand such have slipt Away from my embraces, And fall'n into the dusty crypt Of darken'd forms and faces. Go, therefore, thou ! thy betters went Long since, and came no more; With peals of genial clamour sent From many a tavern-door, With twisted quirks and happy hits, From misty men of letter^; ' The tavern-hours of mighty wits — Thine elders and thy betters. Hours, when the Poet's words and looks Had yet their native glow : Nor yet the fear of little books Had made him talk for show; But, all his vast heart sherris-warm'd, He flash'd his random speeches. Ere days, that deal in ana, swarm'd . His literary leeches. LADY CLARE. So mix for ever with the past, Like all good things on earth ! For should I prize thee, couldst thou last, At half thy real worth? I hold it good, good things should pass: With time I will not quarrel : It is but yonder empty glass That makes me maudlin-moral. Head-waiter of the chop-house here, To which I most resort, I too must part : I hold thee dear For this good pint of port. For this, thou shalt from all things suck Marrow of mirth and laughter; And wheresoe'er thou move, good luck Shall fling her old shoe after. But thou wilt never move from hence, The sphere thy fate allots: Thy latter days increased with pence Go down among the pots : Thou battenest by the greasy gleam In haunts of hungry sinners. Old boxes, larded with the steam Of thirty thousand dinners. We fret, we fume, would shift our skins, Would quarrel with our lot; Thy care is, under polish'd tins, To serve the hot-and-hot; To come and go, and come again, Returning like the pewit, And watch'd by silent gentlemen, That trifle with the cruet. Live long, ere from thy topmost head The thick-set hazel dies; Long, ere the hateful crow shall tread The corners of thine eyes : Live long, nor feel in head or chest Our changeful equinoxes. Till mellow Death, like some late guest, Shall call thee from the boxes. But when he calls, and thou shalt cease To pace the gritted floor, And, laying down an unctuous lease Of life, shalt earn no more; No carved cross-bones, the types of Death, Shall show thee past to Heaven : But carved cross-pipes, and, underneath, A pint-pot neatly graven. LADY CLARE. It was the time when lilies blow, And clouds are highest up in air, Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his cousin, Lady Clare. I trow they did not part in scorn : Lovers long-betroth'd were they: They two will wed the morrow morn : God's blessing on the day ! * He does not love me for my birth, Nor for my lands so broad and fair; He loves me for my own true worth, And that is well,' said Lady Clare. In there came old Alice the nurse. Said, ' Who was this that went from thee?' * It was my cousin,' said Lady Clare, * To-morrow he weds with me.' * O God be thank'd ! ' said Alice the nurse, 'That all comes round so just and fair : Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands, And you are not the Lady Clare.' * Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse? ' Said Lady Clare, * that ye speak so wild?' * As God's above,' said Alice the nurse, * I speak the truth : you are my child. *The old Earl's daughter died at my breast; I speak the truth, as I live by bread ! I buried her like my own sweet child. And put my child in her stead.' ' Falsely, falsely have ye done, O mother,' she said, *if this be true, To keep the best man under the sun So many years from his due.' *Nay now, my child,' said Alice the nurse, * But keep the secret* for your life. LADY CLARE— THE CAPTALN. And all you have will be Lord Ronald's, When you are man and wife.' * If I'm a beggar born,' she said, * I will speak out, for I dare not lie. Pull off, pull off, the brooch of gold. And fling the diamond necklace by.' *Nay now, my child,' said Alice the nurse, * But keep the secret all ye can.' She said, * Not so : but I will know If there be any faith in man.' 'Nay now, what faith?' said Ahce the nurse, * The man will cleave unto his right.' ' And he shall have it,' the lady replied, * Tho' I should die to-night.' ' Yet give one kiss to your mother dear ! Alas, my child, I sinn'd for thee.' ' O mother, mother, mother,' she said, * So strange it seems to me. ' Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear, My mother dear, if this be so. And lay your hand upon my head, And bless me, mother, ere I go.' She clad herself in a russet gown. She was no longer Lady Clare : She went by dale, and she went by down, With a single rose in her hair. The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought Leapt up from where she lay, Dropt her head in the maiden's hand, And follovv'd her all the way. Down slept Lord Ronald from his tower : * O Lady Clare, you shame your worth ! Why come you drest like a village maid. That are the flower of the earth ? ' * If I come drest like a village maid, I am but as my fortunes are : I am a beggar born,' she said, * And not the Lady Clare.' * Play me no tricks,' said Lord Ronald, * For I am yours in word and in deed. Play me no tricks,' said Lord Ronald, ' Your riddle is hard to read.' O and proudly stood she up ! Her heart within her did not fail : She look'd into Lord Ronald's eyes. And told him all her nurse's tale. He laugh'd a laugh of merry scorn : He turn'd and kiss'd her where she stood : * If you are not the heiress born, And I,' said he, * the next in blood — * If you are not the heiress born, And I,' said he, ' the lawful heir, We two will wed to-morrow morn, And you shall still be Lady Clare.' THE CAPTAIN. A LEGEND OF THE NA\T. He that only rules by terror Doeth grievous wrong. Deep as Hell I count his error. Let him hear my song. Brave the Captain was : the seamen Made a gallant crew, Gallant sons of English freemen, Sailors bold and true. But they hated his oppression. Stern he was and rash ; So for every light transgression Doom'd them to the lash. Day by day more harsh and cruel Seem'd the Captain's mood. Secret wrath like smother'd fuel Burnt in each man's blood. Yet he hoped to purchase glory. Hoped to make the name Of his vessel great in story, Wheresoe'er he came. So they past by capes and islands, Many a harbour-mouth. Sailing under palmy highlands Far within the South. On a day when they were going O'er the lone expanse, In the north, her canvas flowing. Rose a ship of France. Then the Captain's colour heighten'd- Joyful came his speech ; THE LORD OF BURLEIGH. 13 But a cloudy gladness lighten'd She replies, in accents fainter, In the eyes of each. 'There is none I love like thee.' * Chase,' he said : the ship flew forward, He is but a landscape-painter, And the wind did blow; And a village maiden she. Stately, lightly, went she Norward, He to lips, that fondly falter, Till she near'd the foe. Presses his without reproof: Then they look'd at him they hated. Leads her to the village altar. Had what they desired : And they leave her father's roof. Mute with folded arms they waited — ' I can make no marriage present : Not a gun was fired. Little can I give my wife. But they heard the foeman's thunder Love will make our cottage pleasant, Roaring out their doom; And I love thee more than life.' All the air was torn in sunder, They by parks and lodges going Crashing went the boom, See the lordly castles stand : Spars were splinter'd, decks were shat- Summer woods, about them blowing, ter'd, Made a murmur in the land. Bullets fell like rain; From deep thought himself he rouses, Over mast and deck were scatter'd. Says to her that loves him well, Blood and brains of men. 'Let us see these handsome houses Spars were splinter'd; decks were Where the wealthy nobles dwell.' broken : So she goes by him attended, Every mother's son — Hears him lovingly converse. Down they dropt — no word was Sees whatever fair and splendid spoken — Lay betwixt his home and hers; Each beside his gun. Parks with oak and chestnut shady. On the decks as they were lying, Parks and order'd gardens great, Were their faces grim. Ancient homes of lord and lady. In their blood, as they lay dying. Built for pleasure and for state. Did they smile on him. All he shows her makes him dearer : Those, in whom he had reliance Evermore she seems to gaze For his noble name, On that cottage growing nearer. With one smile of still defiance Where they twain will spend theii Sold him unto shame. days. , Shame and wrath his heart confounded, but she will love him truly ! Pale he turn'd and red. He shall have a cheerful home; Till himself was deadly wounded She will order all things duly, Falling on the dead. When beneath his roof they come. Dismal error ! fearful slaughter ! Thus her heart rejoices greatly, "Years have wander'd by. Till a gateway she discerns Side by side beneath the water With armorial bearings stately, Crpw and Captain lie; And beneath the gate she turns; There the sunlit ocean tosses Sees a mansion more majestic O'er them mouldering, Than all those she saw before : And the lonely seabird crosses Many a gallant gay domestic With one waft of the wing. Bows before him at the door. And they speak in gentle murmur, When they answer to his call. THE LORD OF BURLEIGH. While he treads with footstep firmer. Leading on from hall to hall. In her ear he whispers gaily. And, while now she wonders blindly, ' If my heart by signs can tell, Nor the meaning can divine, Maiden, I have watch'd thee daily. Proudly turns he round and kindly. And I think thou lov'st me well. ' * All of this is rnine and thine,' 114 THE VOYAGE. Here he lives in state and bounty, Lord of Burleigh, fair and free, iVot a lord in all the county Is so great a lord as he. All at once the colour flushes Her sweet face from brow to chin : As it were with shame she blushes, And her spirit changed within. Then her countenance all over Pale again as death did prove : But he clasp'd her like a lover, And he cheer'd her soul with love. So she strove against her weakness, Tho' at times her spirit sank: Shaped her heart with woman's meekness To all duties of her rank : And a gentle consort made he. And her gentle mind was such That she grew a noble lady, And the people loved her much. But a trouble weigh'd upon her, And perplex'd her, night and morn, With the burthen of an honour Unto which she was not born. Faint she grew, and ever fainter. And she murmur'd, ' Oh, that he Were once more that landscape-painter. Which did win my heart from me ! ' So she droop'd and droop'd before him, Fading slowly froni his side : Three fair children first she bore him, Then before her time she died. Weeping, weeping late and early. Walking up and pacing down. Deeply mourn'd the Lord of Burleigh, Burleigh-house by Stamford-town. And he came to look upon her. And he look'd at her and said, * Bring the dress and put it on her. That she wore when she was wed.' Then her people, softly treading, Bore to earth her body, drest In the dress that she was wed in, That her spirit might have rest. THE VOYAGE. We left behind the painted buoy That tosses at the harbour-mouth; And madly danced our hearts with joy. As fast we fleeted to the South : How fresh was every sight and sound On open main or winding shore ! We knew the merry world was round, And we might sail for evermore. Warm broke the breeze against the brow, Dry sang the tackle, sang the sail : The Lady's-head upon the prow Caught the shrill salt, and sheer'd the gale. The broad seas swell'd to meet the keel, And swept behind ; so quick the run, We felt the good ship shake and reel, We seem'd to sail into the Sun ! How oft we saw the Sun retire. And burn the threshold of the night, Fall from his Ocean-lane of fire. And sleep beneath his pillar'd light ! How oft the purple-skirted robe Of twilight slowly downward drawn, As thro' the slumber of the globe Again we dash'd into the dawn ! IV. New stars all night above the brim Of waters lighten'd into view; They climb'd as quickly, for the rim Changed every moment as we flew. Far ran the naked moon across The houseless ocean's heaving field. Or flying shone, the silver boss Of her own halo's dusky shield; The peaky islet shifted shapes, High towns on hills were dimly seen, We past long lines of Northern capes And dewy Northern meadows green. We came to warmer waves, and deep Across the boundless east we drove. Where those long swells of breaker sweep The nutmeg rocks and isles of clove. VI. By peaks that flamed, or, all in shade, Gloom'd the low coast and quivering brine With ashy rains, that spreading made Fantastic plume or sable pine; SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE. By sands and steaming flats, and floods Of mighty mouth, we scudded fast, And, hills and scarlet-mingled woods Glow'd for a moment as we past. VII. O hundred shores of happy climes, How swiftly stream'd ye by the bark ! At times the whole sea burn'd, at times With wakes of fire we tore the dark; At times a carven craft would shoot From havens hid in fairy bowers, With naked limbs and flowers and fruit, But we nor paused for fruit nor flowers. For one fair Vision ever fled Down the waste waters day and night, And still we follow'd where she led, In hope to gain upon her flight. Her face was evermore unseen. And fixt upon the far sea-line; But each man murmur'd, ' O my Queen, I follow till I make thee mine.' IX. And now we lost her, now she gleam'd Like Fancy made of golden air. Now nearer to the prow she seem'd Like Virtue firm, like Knowledge fair. Now high on waves that idly burst Like Heavenly Hope she crown' d the sea, And now, the bloodless point reversed, She bore the blade of Liberty. And only one among us — him We pleased not — he was seldom pleased : He saw not far : his eyes were dim : But ours he swore were all diseased. * A ship of fools,' he shriek'd in spite, *A ship of fools,' he sneer'd and wept. And overboard one stormy night He cast his body, and on we swept. XI. And never sail of ours was furl'd. Nor anchor dropt at eve or morn; We lov'd the glories of the world. But laws of nature were our scorn. For blasts would rise and rave and cease, But whence were those that drove the sail Across the whirlwind's heart of peace. And to and thro' the counter gale? XII. Again to colder climes we came. For still we follow'd where she led : Now mate is blind and captain lame. And half the crew are sick or dead; But, blind or lame or sick or sound, We follow that which flies before : We know the merry world is round. And we may sail for evermore. SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE. A FRAGMENT. Like souls that balance joy and pain. With tears and smiles from heaven again The maiden Spring upon the plain Came in a sun-lit fall of rain. In crystal vapour everywhere Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between, And far, in forest-deeps "unseen. The topmost elm-tree gather'd green From draughts of balmy air. Sometimes the linnet piped his song : Sometimes the throstle whistled strong : Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along, Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong : By grassy capes with fuller sound In curves the yellowing river ran. And drooping chestnut-buds began To spread into the perfect fan, Above the teeming ground. Then, in the boyhood of the year. Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere Rode thro' the coverts of the deer, With blissful treble ringing clear. She seem'd a part of joyous Spring A gown of grass-green silk she wore. Buckled with golden clasps before; A light-green tuft of plumes she bore Closed in a golden ring. Ii6 A FAREWELL— THE BEGGAR MAID— THE EAGLE. Now on some twisted ivy-net, Now by some tinkling rivulet, In mosses mixt with violet Her cream-white mule his pastern set : And fleeter now she skimm'd the plains Than she whose elfin prancer springs By night to eery warblings. When all the glimmering moorland rings With jingling bridle-reins. As fast she fled thro' sun and shade, The happy winds upon her play'd, Blowing the ringlet from the braid : She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd The rein with dainty finger-tips, A man had given all other bliss. And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips. A FAREWELL. Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea. Thy tribute wave deliver : No more by thee my steps shall be. For ever and for ever. Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea, A rivulet, then a river : No where by thee my steps shall be. For ever and for ever. But here will sigh thine alder tree. And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee. For ever and for ever. A thousand suns will stream on thee, A thousand moons will quiver; But not by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever. THE BEGGAR MAID. Her arms across her breast she laid; She was more fair than words can say : Bare-footed came the beggar maid Before the king Cophetua. In robe and crown the king stept down. To meet and greet her on her way; * It is no wonder,' said the lords, * She is more beautiful than day.* As shines the moon in clouded skies, She in her poor attire was seen : One praised her ankles, one her eyes. One her dark hair and lovesome mien. So sweet a face, such angel grace. In all that land had never been : Cophetua sware a royal oath : ' This beggar maid shall be my queen ! ' THE EAGLE. FRAGMENT. He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. Move eastward, happy earth, and leave Yon orange sunset waning slow : From fringes of the faded eve, O, happy planet, eastward go; Till over thy dark shoulder glow Thy silver sister-world, and rise To glass herself in dewy eyes That watch me from the glen below. Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly borne. Dip forward under starry light. And move me to my marriage-morn, And round again to happy night. Come not, when I am dead. To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave. To trample round my fallen head. And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest : THE LETTERS— THE VISION OF SIN. 117 Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where Hie: Go by, go by. THE LETTERS. Still on the tower stood the vane, A black yew gloom'd the stagnant air, I peer'd athwart the chancel pane And saw the altar cold and bare. A clog of lead was round my feet, A band of pain across my brow; * Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall meet Before you hear my marriage vow.' I turn'd and humm'd a bitter song That mock'd the wholesome human heart. And then we met in wrath and wrong. We met, but only meant to part. Full cold my greeting was and dry; She faintly smiled, she hardly moved; 1 saw with half-unconscious eye She wore the colours I approved. She took the little ivory chest, With half a sigh she turn'd the key. Then raised her head with lips comprest, And gave my letters back to me. And gave the trinkets and the rings. My gifts, when gifts of mine could please ; As looks a father on the things Of his dead son, I look'd on these. She told me all her friends had said; I raged against the public liar; She J:alk'd as if her love were dead. But in my words were seeds of fire. 'No more of love; your sex is known I never will be twice deceived. Henceforth I trust the man alone. The woman cannot be believed. 'Thro' slander, meanest spawn of Hell — And women's slander is the worst, And you, whom once I lov'd so well. Thro' you, my life will be accurst.' I spoke with heart, and heat and force, I shook her breast with vague alarms — Like torrents from a mountain source We rush'd into each other's arms. VI. We parted : sweetly gleam'd the stars. And sweet the vapour-braided blue. Low breezes fann'd the belfry bars. As homeward by the church I drew. The very graves appear'd to smile. So fresh they rose in shadow'd swells. * Dark porch,' I said, ' and silent aisle. There comes a sound of marriage bells.' THE VISION OF SIN. I HAD a vision when the night was late : A youth came riding toward a palace-gate. He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown. But that his heavy rider kept him down. And from the palace came a child of sin, And took him by the curls, and led him in. Where sat a company with heated eyes, Expecting when a fountain should arise : A sleepy light upon their brows and lips — As when the sun, a crescent of eclipse. Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and capes — Suffused them, sitting, lying, languid shapes. By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine, and piles of grapes. II. Then methought I heard a mellow sound. Gathering up from all the lower ground; Narrowing in to where they sat assembled Low voluptuous music winding trembled, Wov'n in circles : they that heard it sigh'd, Panted hand-in-hand with faces pale. Swung themselves, and in low tones re- plied; ii8 THE VISION OF SIN. Till the fountain spouted, showering wide Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail; Then the music touch'd the gates and died; Rose again from where it seem'd to fail, Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale; Till thronging in and in, to where they waited, As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale, The strong tempestuous treble throbb'd and palpitated; Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound, Caught the sparkles, and in circles. Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes, Flung the torrent rainbow round : Then they started "from their places, Moved with violence, changed in hue, Caught each other with wild grimaces, Half-invisible to the view, Wheeling with precipitate paces To the melody, till they flew, Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces, Twisted hard in fierce embraces, Like to Furies, like to Graces, Dash'd together in blinding dew : Till, kill'd with some luxurious agony The nerve-dissolving melody Flutter'd headlong from the sky. And then I look'd up toward a mountain- tract, That girt the region with high cliff and lawn: I saw that every morning, far withdrawn Beyond the darkness and the cataract, God made Himself an awful rose of dawn, Unheeded : and detaching, fold by fold, From those still heights, and, slowly drawing near, A vapour heavy, hueless, formless, cold. Came floating on for many a month and year. Unheeded : and I thought I would have spoken, And warn'd that madman ere it gfew too late: But, as in dreams, I could not. Mine was broken, When that cold vapour touch'd the pal- ace gate. And link'd again. I saw within my head A gray and gap-tooth'd man as lean as death. Who slowly rode across a wither'd heath. And lighted at a ruin'd inn, and said : IV. ' Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin ! Here is custom come your way; Take my brute, and lead him in, Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay. * Bitter barmaid, waning fast ! See that sheets are on my bed; What ! the flower of life is past : It is long before you wed. * Slip-shod waiter, lank and sour, ^ At the Dragon on the heath ! Let us have a quiet hour, Let us hob-and-nob with Death. * I am old, but let me drink ; Bring me spices, bring me wine; I remember, when I think, That my youth was half divine. * Wine is good for shrivell'd 'lips, When a blanket wraps the day, When the rotten woodland drips, And the leaf is stamp'd in clay. * Sit thee down, and have no shame. Cheek by jowl, and knee by knee : What care I for any name? What for order or degree? * Let me screw thee up a peg : Let me loose thy tongue with wine : Callest thou that thing a leg? Which is thinnest? thine or mine? 'Thou shalt not be saved by works: Thou hast been a sinner too : Ruin'd trunks on wither'd forks, Empty scarecrows, I and you ! ^ * Fill the cup, and fill the can : Have a rouse before the morn : Every moment dies a man. Every moment one is born. THE VISION OF SIN. 119 ' We are men of ruin'd blood ; Therefore comes it we are wise. Fish are we that love the mud, Rising to no fancy-flies. * Name and fame ! to fly sublime Thro' the courts, the camps, the schools, Is to be the ball of Time, Bandied by the hands of fools. * Friendship ! — to be two in one — Let the canting liar pack ! Well I know, when I am gone. How she mouths behind my back. * Virtue ! — to be good and just — Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell. ' O ! we two as well can look Whited thought and cleanly life As the priest, above his book Leering at his neighbour's wife. 'Fill the cup, and fill the can : Have a rouse before the morn : Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born. * Drink, and let the parties rave : They are fill'd with idle spleen; Rising, falUng, like a wave, For they know not what they mean. ' He that roars for liberty Faster binds a tyrant's power; And the tyrant's cruel glee Forces on the freer hour. ' Fill the can, and fill the cup : All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up. And is lightly laid again. * Greet her with applausive breath, Freedom, gaily doth she tread ; In her right a civic wreath, In her left a human head. 'No, I love not what is new; She is of an ancient house : And I think we know the hue Of that cap Upon her brows. ' Let her go ! her thirst she slakes Where the bloody conduit runs, Then her sweetest meal she makes On the first-born of her sons. 'Drink to lofty hopes that cool — Visions of a perfect State : Drink we, last, the pubHc fool. Frantic love and frantic hate. 'Chant me now some wicked stave, Till thy drooping courage rise, And the glow-worm of the grave Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes. VFear not thou to loose thy tongue; Set thy hoary fancies free; What is loathsome to the young Savours well to thee and me. 'Change, reverting to the years, When thy nerves could understand What there is in loving tears. And the warmth of hand in hand. * Tell me tales of thy first love — April hopes, the fools of chance; Till the graves begin to move, And the dead begin to dance. ' Fill the can, and fill the cup : All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up. And is lightly laid again. ' Trooping from their mouldy dens The chap-fallen circle spreads: Welcome, fellow-citizens. Hollow hearts and empty heads ! * You are bones, and what of that ? Every face, however full. Padded round with flesh and fat, Is but modell'd on a skull. ' Death is king, and Vivat Rex ! Tread a measure on the stones. Madam — if I know your sex, From the fashion of your bones. THE VISION OF SIN. ' No, I cannot praise the fire In your eye — nor yet your lip : All the more do I admire Joints of cunning workmanship. ' Lo ! God's likeness — the ground-plan — Neither modell'd, glazed, nor framed Buss me, thou rough sketch of man, Far too naked to be shamed ! ' Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance, While we keep a little breath ! Drink to heavy Ignorance ! Hob-and-nob with brother Death ! 'Thou art mazed, the night is long. And the longer night is near : What ! I am not all as wrong As a bitter jest is dear. * Youthful hopes, by scores, to all, When the locks are crisp and curl'd; Unto me my maudlin gall And my mockeries of the world. ' Fill the cup, and fill the can : Mingle madness, mingle scorn ! Dregs of life, and lees of man : Yet we will not die folorn.' The voice grew faint: there came a further change : Once more uprose the mystic mountain- range : Below were men and horses pierced with worms. And slowly quickening into lower forms; By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross. Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss. Then some one spake : * Behold ! it was a crime Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time.' Another said: 'The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal blame.' And one : ' He had not wholly quench'd • his power; A little grain of conscience made him sour.' At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, * Is there any hope ?' To which an answer peal'd from that high land. But in a tongue no man could understand ; And on the ghmm^ring limit far with- drawn God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. TO , AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS. * Cursed be he that moves my bones.' Shakespeare^ s Epitaph. You might have won the Poet's imme, If such be worth the winning now. And gain'd a laurel for your brow Of sounder leaf than I can claim ; But you have made the wiser choice, A life that moves to gracious ends Thro' troops of unrecording friends, A deedful life, a silent voice : And you have miss'd the- irreverent doom Of those that wear the Poet's crown ' Hereafter, neither knave nor clown Shall hold their orgies at your tomb. For now the Poet cannot die, Nor leave his music as of old, But round him ere he scarce be cc\*^ Begins the scandal and the cry: ' Proclaim the faults he would not show: Break lock and seal : betray the trust : Keep nothing sacred : 'tis but just The many-headed beast should know,' Ah shameless ! for he did but sing A song that pleased us from its worth; No public life was his on earth. No blazon'd statesman he, nor king. He gave the people of his best : His worst he kept, his best he gave. My Shakespeare's curse on clown and knave Who will not let his ashes rest ! Who make it seem more sweet to he The little life of bank and brier. TO E. L., ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE. 121 The bird that pipes his lone desire And dies unheard within his tree, Than he that warbles long and loud And drops at Glory's temple-gates, For whom the carrion vulture waits To tear his heart before the crowd ! TO E. L., ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE. Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls Of water, sheets of summer glass. The long divine Peneian pass. The vast Akrokeraunian walls, Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair, With such a pencil, such a pen. You shadow forth to distant men, I read and felt that I was there : And trust me while I turn'd the page. And track'd you still on classic ground, I grew in gladness till 1 found My spirits in the golden age. For me the torrent ever pour'd And glisten'd — here and there alone The broad-limb'd Gods at random thrown By fountain-urns; — and Naiads oar'd A glimmering shoulder under gloom Of cavern pillars; on the swell The. silver lily heaved and fell; And many a slope was rich in bloom From him that on the mountain lea By dancing rivulets fed his flocks To him who sat upon the rocks, And fluted to the morning sea. Break, break, break. On thy cold gray stones, O Sea ! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O well for the fisherman's boy. That he shouts with his sister at play ! O well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay ! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still I Break, break, break. At the foot of thy crags, O Sea ! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me. THE POET'S SONG. The rain had fallen, tTie Poet arose, He pass'd by the town and out of the street, A light wind blew from the gates of the sun. And waves of shadow went over the wheat. And he sat him down in a lonely place. And chanted a melody loud and sweet, That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud. And the lark drop down at his feet. The swallow stopt as he hunted the fly. The snake slipt under a spray, The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak. And stared, with his foot on the prey, And the nightingale thought, * I have sung many songs. But never a one so gay, For he sings of what the world will be When the years have died away.' 122 ENOCH ARDEN. ENOCH ARDEN AND OTHER POEMS. ENOCH ARDEN. Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm ; And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands; Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf In cluster; then a moulder'd church; and higher A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill; And high in heaven behind it a gray down With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood, By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes Green in a cuplike' hollow of the down. Here on this beach a hundred years ago, Three children of three houses, Annie Lee, The prettiest little damsel in the port. And Philip Ray the miller's only son. And Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad Made orphan by a winter shipwreck, play'd Among the waste and lumber of the shore. Hard coils of cordage, swarthy fishing- nets, Anchors of rusty fluke, and boats up- drawn ; And built their castles of dissolving sand To watch them overflow'd, or following up And flying the white breaker, daily left The little footprint daily wash'd away. A narrow cave ran in beneath the cliff: In this the children play'd at keeping house. Enoch was host one day, Philip the next, While Annie still was mistress; but at times Enoch would hold possession for a week : * This is my house and this my little wife.' 'Mine too,' said Philip, 'turn and turn about:' When, if they quarrell'd, Enoch stronger- made Was master : then would Philip, his blue eyes All flooded with the helpless wrath of tears. Shriek out, * I hate you, Enoch,' and at this The little wife would weep for company, And pray them not to quarrel for her sake. And say she would be little wife to both. But when the dawn of rosy childhood past. And the new warmth of life's ascending sun Was felt by either, either fixt his heart On that one girl; and Enoch spoke his love. But Philip loved in silence; and the girl Seem'd kinder unto Philip than to him; But she loved Enoch; tho' she knew it not, And would if ask'd deny it. Enoch set A purpose evermore before his eyes, ^ To hoard all savings to the uttermost. To purchase his own boat, and make a • home For Annie : and so prosper'd that at last A luckier or a bolder fisherman, A carefuller in peril, did not breathe For leagues along that breaker-beaten coast Than Enoch. Likewise had he served a, year On board a merchantman, and made himself Full sailor; and he thrice had pluck'd a life From the dread sweep of the down- streaming seas : And all men look'd upon him favour- ably : ENOCH ARDEN. 123 And ere he touch'd his one-and-twentieth May He purchased his own boat, and made a home For Annie, neat and nestlike, halfway up The narrow street that clamber'd toward the mill. Then, on a golden autumn eventide, The younger people making holiday. With bag and sack and basket, great and small. Went nutting to the hazels. Phihp stay'd (His father lying sick and needing him) An hour behind; but as he climb'd the hill, Just where the prone edge of the wood began To feather toward the hollow, saw the pair, Enoch and Annie, sitting hand-in-hand, His large gray eyes and weather-beaten face All-kindled by a still and sacred fire, That burn'd as on an altar. Philip look'd, And in their eyes and faces read his doom; Then, as their faces drew together, groan'd, And slipt aside, and like a wounded life Crept down into the hollows of the wood ; There, while the rest were loud in merry- making. Had his dark hour unseen, and rose and past Bearing a lifelong hunger in his heart. So these were wed, and merrily rang the bells. And merrily ran the years, seven happy years, Seven happy years of health and com- petence. And mutual love and honourable toil; With children; first a daughter. In him woke. With his first babe's first cry, the noble wish To save all earnings to the uttermost. And give his child a better bringing-up Than his had been, or hers; a wish re- new'd, When two years after came a boy to be The rosy idol of her solitudes, While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas. Or often journeying landward ; for in truth Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean- spoil In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales, Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down, Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp, And peacock-yewtree of the lonely Hall, Whose Friday fare was Enoch's minister- ing. Then came a change, as all things human change. Ten miles to northward of the narrow port Open'd a larger haven : thither used Enoch at times to go by land or sea; And once when there, and clambering on a mast In harbour, by mischance he slipt and fell: A limb was broken when they lifted him; And while he lay recovering there, his wife Bore him another son, a sickly one : Another hand crept too across his trade Taking her bread and theirs : and on him fell, Altho' a grave and staid God-fearing man, Yet lying thus inactive, doubt and gloom. He seem'd, as in a nightmare of the night, To see his children leading evermore Low miserable lives of hand-to-mouth. And her, he loved, a beggar: then he pray'd * Save them from this, whatever comes to me.' And while he pray'd, the master of that ship Enoch had served in, hearing his mis- chance, Came, for he knew the man and valued him. Reporting of his vessel China-bound, And wanting yet a boatswain. Would he go? There yet were many weeks before she sail'd, Sail'd from this port. Would Enoch have the place? And Enoch all at once assented to it. Rejoicing at that answer to his prayer. 124 ENOCH ARDEN. So now that shadow of mischance appear'd No graver than as when some little cloud Cuts off the fiery highway of the sun, And isles a light in the offing: yet the wife — When he was gone — the children — what to do? Then Enoch lay long-pondering on his plans ; To sell the boat — and yet he loved her well — How many a rough sea had he weather'd in her ! He knew her, as a horseman knows his horse — And yet to sell her — then with what she brought Buy goods and stores — set Annie forth in trade With all that seamen needed or their wives — So might she keep the house while he was gone. Should he not trade himself out yonder? go This voyage more than once? yea twice or thrice — As oft as needed — last, returning rich. Become the master of a larger craft. With fuller profits lead an easier life. Have all his pretty young ones educated, And pass his days in peace among his own. Thus Enoch in his heart determined all: Then moving homeward came on Annie pale, Nursing the sickly babe, her latest-born. Forward she started with a happy cry, And laid the feeble infant in his arms; Whom Enoch took, and handled all his limbs. Appraised his weight and fondled father- like, But had no heart to break his purposes To Annie, till the morrow, when he spoke. Then first since Enoch's golden ring had girt Her finger, Annie fought against his will : Yet not with brawling opposition she, But manifold entreaties, many a tear, Many a sad kiss by day by night renew'd (Sure that all evil would come out of it) Besought him, suppUcating, if he cared For her or his dear children, not to go. He not for his own self caring but her, Her and her children, let her plead in vain; So grieving held his will, and bore it thro'. For Enoch parted with his old sea friend, Bought Annie goods and stores, and set his hand To fit their little streetward sitting-room With shelf and corner for the goods and stores. So all day long till Enoch's last at home. Shaking their pretty cabin, hammer and axe, Auger and saw, while Annie seem'd to hear Her own death-scaffold raising, shrill'd and rang. Till this was ended, and his careful hand, — The space was narrow, — having order'd all Almost as neat and close as Nature packs Her blossom or her seedling, paused; and he, Who needs would work for Annie to the last. Ascending tired, heavily slept till morn. And Enoch faced this morning of fare- well Brightly and boldly. All his Annie's fears. Save, as his Annie's, were a laughter to him. Yet Enoch as a brave God-fearing man Bow'd himself down, and in that mystery Where God-in-man is one with man-in- God, Pray'd for a blessing on his wife and babes Whatever came to him : and then he said : * Annie, this voyage by the grace of God ENOCH ARDEN. 125 Will bring fair weather yet to all of us. Keep a clean hearth and a clear fire for me, For I'll be back, my girl, before you know it.' Then lightly rocking baby's cradle, * and he, This pretty, puny, weakly little one, — Nay — for I love him all the better for it- God bless him, he shall sit upon my knees And I will tell him tales of foreign parts. And make him merry, when I come home again. Come, Annie, come, cheer up before I go.' Him running on thus hopefully she heard, And almost hoped herself; but when he turn'd The current of his talk to graver things In sailor fashion roughly sermonizing On providence and trust in Heaven, she heard. Heard and not heard him; as the village girl, Who sets her pitcher underneath the spring, Musing on him that used to fill it for her. Hears and not hears, and lets it overflow. At length she spoke: *0 Enoch, you are wise; And yet for all your wisdom well know I That 1 shall look upon your face no more.' * Well then,' said Enoch, * I shall look on yours. Annie, the ship I sail in passes here (He named the day); get you a seaman's glass, Spy out my face, and laugh at all your . fears.' But when the last of those last moments came, * Annie, my girl, cheer up, be comfoYted, Look to the babes, and till I come again Keep everything shipshape, for I must go. And fear no more for me; or if you fear Cast all your cares on God ; that anchor holds. Is He not yonder in those uttermost Parts of the morning? if 1 flee to these Can I go from Him? and the sea is His, The sea is His : He made it.' Enoch rose. Cast his strong arms about his drooping wife, And kiss'd his wonder-stricken little ones; But for the third, the sickly one, who slept After a night of feverous wakefulness. When Annie would have raised him Enoch said, 'Wake him not; let him sleep; how should the chfld Remember this? ' and kiss'd him in his cot. But Annie from her baby's forehead dipt A tiny curl, and gave it : this he kept Thro' all his future; but now hastily caught His bundle, waved his hand, and went his way. She, when the day, that Enoch men- tion'd, came, Borrow'd a glass, but all in vain : perhaps She could not fix the glass to suit her eye; Perhaps her eye was dim, hand tremulous; She saw him not : and while he stood on deck Waving, the moment and the vessel past. Ev^n to the last dip of the vanishing sail She watch'd it, and departed weeping for him; Then, tho' she mourn'd his absence as his grave, Set her sad will no less to chime with his. But throve not in her trade, not being bred To barter, nor compensating the want By shrewdness, neither capable of lies, Nor asking overmuch and taking less, And still foreboding * what would Enoch say? ' For more than once, in days of difficulty And pressure, had she sold her wares for less 126 ENOCH ARDEN. Than what she gave in buying what she sold: She fail'd and sadden'd knowing it; and thus, Expectant of that news which never came, Gain'd for her own a scanty sustenance, And lived a life of silent melancholy. Now the third child was sickly-born and grew Yet sicklier, tho' the mother cared for it With all a mother's care : nevertheless. Whether her business often call'd her from it, Or thro' the want of what it needed most, Or means to pay the voice who best could tell What most it needed — howsoe'er it was. After a lingering, — ^ ere she was aware, — Like the caged bird escaping suddenly. The little innocent soul flitted away. In that same week when Annie buried it, Philip's true heart, which hunger'd for her peace (Since Enoch left he had not look'd upon her). Smote him, as having kept aloof so long. * Surely,' said Philip, ' I may see her now. May be some little comfort; ' therefore went, Past thro' the solitary room in front. Paused for a moment at an inner door, Then struck it thrice, and, no one opening, Enter'd; but Annie, seated with her grief, Fresh from the burial of her little one, Cared not to look on any human face. But turn'd her own toward the wall and wept. Then Philip standing up said falteringly, * Annie, I came to ask a favour of you.' He spoke; the passion in her moan'd reply, * Favour from one so sad and so forlorn As I am ! ' half abash'd him; yet unask'd. His bashfulness and tenderness at war, He set himself beside her, saying to her : * I came to speak to you of what he wish'd, Enoch, your husband : I have ever said You chose the best among us — a strong man: For where he fixt his heart he set his hand To do the thing he will'd, and bore it thro'. And wherefore did he go this weary way, And leave you lonely? not to see the world — For pleasure? — nay, but for the where- withal To give his babes a better bringing-up Than his had been, or yours : that was his wish. And if he come again, vext will he be To find the precious morning hours were lost. And it would vex him even in his grave. If he could know his babes were running wild Like colts about the waste. So, Annie, now — Have we not known each other all our lives? I do beseech you by the love you bear Him and his children not to say me nay — For, if you will, when Enoch conies again Why then he shall repay me — if you will, Annie — for I am rich and well-to-do. Now let me put the boy and girl to school : This is the favour that I came to ask.' Then Annie with her brows against the wall Answer'd, * I cannot look you in the face; I seem so foolish and so broken down. When you came in my sorrow broke me down; And now I think your kindness breaks me down; But Enoch lives; that is borne in on me : He will repay you : money can be repaid ; Not kindness such as yours.' And Philip ask'd * Then you will let me, Annie?' There she turn'd, She rose, and fixt her swimming eyes upon him. And dwelt a moment on his kindly face, Then calling down a blessing on his head ENOCH ARDEN. [27 Caught at his hand, and wrung it pas- sionately, And past into the little garth beyond. So lifted up in spirit he moved away. Then Philip put the boy and girl to school, And bought them needful books, and every way, Like one who does his duty by his own, Made himself theirs; and tho' for Annie's sake, Fearing the lazy gossip of the port, He oft denied his heart his dearest wish, And seldom crost her threshold, yet he sent Gifts by the children, garden-herbs and fruit. The late and early roses from his wall, Or conies from the down, and now and then. With some pretext of fineness in the meal To save the offence of charitable, flour From his tall mill that whistled on the waste. But Philip did not fathom Annie's mind : Scarce could the woman when he came upon her. Out of full heart and boundless gratitude Light on a broken word to thank him with. But Philip was her children's all-in-all; From distant corners of the street they ran To greet his hearty welcome heartily; Lords of his house and of his mill were they; Worried his passive ear with petty wrongs Or pleasures, hung upon him, play'd with him And call'd him Father Philip. Philip gain'd As Enoch lost; for Enoch seem'd to them Uncertain as a vision or a dream, Faint as a figure seen in early dawn Down at the far end of an avenue, Going we know not where: and so ten years. Since Enoch left his hearth and native land. Fled forward , and no news of Enoch came. It chanced one evening Annie's chil- dren long'd To go with others, nutting to the wood, And Annie would go with them; then they begg'd For Father Philip (as they call'd him) too : Him, like the working bee in blossom- dust, Blanch'd with his mill, they found; and saying to him, ' Come with us, Father Philip,' he de- nied; But when the children pluck'd at him to go. He laugh'd, and yielded readily to their wish, For was not Annie with them? and they went. But after scaling half the weary down. Just where the prone edge of the wood began To feather toward the hollow, all her force Fail'd her; and sighing, * Let me rest' she said : So Philip rested with her well-content; While all the younger ones with jubilant cries Broke from their elders, and tumultuously Down thro' the whitening hazels made a plunge To the bottom, and dispersed, and bent or broke The lithe reluctant boughs to tear away Their tawny clusters, crying to each other And calling, here and there, about the wood. But Philip sitting at her side forgot Her presence, and remember'd one dark hour Here in this wood, when hke a wounded life He crept into the shadow: at last he said. Lifting his honest forehead, * Listen, Annie, How merry they are down yonder in the .vood. Tired, Annie ? ' for she did not speak a word. 28 ENOCH ARDEN. 'Tired?' but her face had fall'n upon her hands; At which, as with a kind of anger in him, * The ship was lost,' he said, ' the ship was lost ! No more of that! why should you kill yourself And make them orphans quite?' And Annie said, ' I thought not of it : but — I know not why — Their voices make me feel so solitary.' Then Philip coming somewhat closer spoke : ' Annie, there is a thing upon my mind. And it has been upon my mind so long, That tho' I know not when it first came there, I know that it will out at last. O Annie, It is beyond all hope, against all chance, That he who left you ten long years ago Should still be living; well then — let me speak : I grieve to see you poor and wanting help : I cannot help you as I wish to do Unless — they say that women are so quick — Perhaps you know what I would have you know — I wish you for my wife. I fain would prove A father to your children : I do think They love me as a father : I am sure That I love them as if they were mine own; And I believe, if you were fast my wife, That after all these sad uncertain years. We might be still as happy as God grants To any of his creatures. Think upon it : For I am well-to-do — no kin, no care. No burthen, save my care for you and yours : And we have known each other all our lives, And I have loved you longer than you know.' Then answer'd Annie; tenderly she spoke : You have been as God's good angel in our house. God bless you for it, God reward you for it, Philip, with something happier than my- self. Can one love twice? can you be ever loved As Enoch was? what is it that you ask?' ' I am content,' he answer'd, ' to be loved , A httle after Enoch.' ' O,' she cried, Scared as it were, ' dear Philip, wait a while : If Enoch comes — but Enoch will not come — Yet wait a year, a year is not so long : Surely I shall be wiser in a year : wait a little ! ' Philip sadly said, 'Annie, as I have waited all my life 1 well may wait a little.' ' Nay,' she cried, * I am bound : you have my promise — in a year : Will you not bide your year as I bide mine?' And Philip answer'd, ' I will bide my year.' Here both were mute, till Philip glan- cing up Beheld the dead flame of the fallen day Pass from the Danish barrow overhead; Then fearing night and chill for Annie, rose And sent his voice beneath him thro' the wood. Up came the children laden with their spoil ; Then all descended to the port, and there At Annie's door he paused and gave his hand, Saying gently, ' Annie, when I spoke to you. That was your hour of weakness. I was wrong, I am always bound to you, but you are free. ' Then Annie weeping answer'd, ' I am bound.' She spoke; and in one moment as it were, While yet she went about her household ways, Ev'n as she dwelt upon his latest words, ENOCH ARDEN. [29 That he had loved her longer than she knew, That autumn into autumn flash'd agani, And there he stood once more before her face, Claiming her promise. * Is it a year .-* ' she ask'd. ' Yes, if the nuts,' he said, ' be ripe again : Come out and see.' But she — she put him off — So much to look to "— such a change — a month — Give her a month — she knew that she was bound — A month — no more. Then Philip with his eyes Full of that lifelong hunger, and his voice Shaking a little like a drunkard's hand, 'Take your own time, Annie, take your own time.' And Annie could have wept for pity of him; And yet she held him on delayingly With many a scarce-believable excuse, Trying his truth and his long-sufferance, Till half-another year had slipt away. By this the lazy gossips of the port, Abhorrent of a calculation crost. Began to chafe as at a personal wrong. Some thought that Philip did but trifle with her; Some that she but held off to draw him on; And others laugh'd at her and Philip too. As simple folk that knew not their own minds. And one, in whom all evil fancies clung Like serpent eggs together, laughingly Would hint at worse in either. Her own son Was silent, tho' he often look'd his wish ; But evermore the daughter prest upon her To wed the man so dear to all of them And Uft the household out of poverty; And Philip's rosy face contracting grew Careworn and wan; and all these things fell on her Sharp as reproach. At last one night it chanced That Annie could not sleep, but ear- nestly Pray'd for a sign, ' my Enoch, is he gone ? ' Then compass'd round by the blind wall of night Brook'd not the expectant terror of her heart, Started from bed, and struck herseh a light. Then desperately seized the holy Book, Suddenly set it wide to find a sign, Suddenly put her finger on the text, ' Under the palm-tree.' That was noth- ing to her : No meaning there : she closed the Book and slept : When lo ! her Enoch sitting on a height, Under a palm-tree, over him the Sun : ' He is gone,' she thought, ' he is happy, he is singing Hosanna in the highest : yonder shines The Sun of Righteousness, and these be palms Whereof the happy. people strowing cried " Hosanna in the highest ! " ' Here she woke, Resolved, sent for him and said wildly to him, ' There is no reason why we should not wed,' * Then for God's sake,' he answer'd, ' both our sakes, So you will wed me, let it be at once.' So these were wed and merrily rang the bells. Merrily rang the bells and they were wed. But never merrily beat Annie's heart. A footstep seem'd to fall beside her path, She knew not whence; a whisper on her ear, She knew not what; nor loved she to be left Alone at home, nor ventured out alone. What ail'd her then, that ere she enter'd, often Her hand dwelt lingeringly on the latch, Fearing to enter: Philip thought he knew : Such doubts and fears were common to her state. 130 ENOCH ARDEN. Being with child : but when her child was born, Then her new child was as herself re- nevv'd, Then the new mother came about her heart, Then her good Philip was her all-in-all, And that mysterious instinct wholly died. And where was Enoch? prosperously sail'd The ship ' Good Fortune,' tho' at setting forth The Biscay, roughly ridging eastward, shook And almost overwhelm'd her, yet unvext She slipt across the summer of the world, Then after a long tumble about the Cape And frequent interchange of foul and fair, She passing thro' the summer world again. The breath of heaven came continually And sent her sweetly by the golden isles. Till silent in her oriental haven. There Enoch traded for himself, and bought Quaint monsters for the market of those times, A gilded dragon, also, for the babes. Less lucky her home-voyage: at first indeed Thro' many a fair sea-circle, day by day. Scarce-rocking, her full-busted figure- head Stared o'er the ripple feathering from her bows : Then foUow'd calms, and then winds variable. Then baffling, a long course of them; and last Storm, such as drove her under moon- less heavens Till hard upon the cry of ' breakers ' came The crash of ruin, and the loss of all But Enoch and two others. Half the night, Buoy'd upon floating tackle and broken spars, These drifted, stranding on an isle at morn Rich, but the loneliest in a lonely sea. No want was there of human suste- nance, Soft fruitage, mighty nuts, and nourish ing roots; Nor save for pity was it hard to take The helpless life so wild that it was tame. There in a seaward-gazing mountain- gorge They built, and thatch'd with leaves of palm, a hut, Half hut, half native cavern. So the three. Set in this Eden of all plenteousness, Dwelt with eternal summer, ill-content. For one, the youngest, hardly more than boy, Hurt in that night of sudden ruin and wreck, Lay lingering out a five-years' death-in- life. They could not leave him. After he was gone. The two remaining found a fallen stem; And Enoch's comrade, careless of him- self. Fire-hollowing this in Indian fashion, fell Sun-stricken, and that other lived alone. In those two deaths he read God's warn- ing * wait.' The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns And winding glades high up like ways to heaven. The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes. The lightning flash of insect and of bird. The lustre of the long convolvuluses That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows And glories of the broad belt of the world, All these he saw; but what he fain had seen He could not see, the kindly human face, Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean- fowl. The league-long roller thundering on the reef. ^ENOCH ARDEN, The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, As down the shore he ranged, or all day long Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail : No sail from day to day, but every day I'he sunrise broken into scarlet shafts Among the palms and ferns and preci- pices; The blaze upon the waters to the east; The blaze upon his island overhead; The blaze upon the waters to the west; Then the great stars that globed them- selves in heaven, The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again The scarlet shafts of sunrise — but no sail. There often as he watch'd or seem'd to watch, So still, the golden lizard on him paused, A phantom made of many phantoms moved Before him haunting him, or he himself Moved haunting people, things and places, known Far in a darker isle beyond the line; The babes, their babble, Annie, the small house. The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lanes, The peacock-yewtree and the lonely Hall, The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chiU November dawns and dewy-glooming downs. The gentle shower, the smell of dying leaves. And the low moan of leaden-colour'd Once likewise, in the ringing of his ears, Tho' faintly, merrily — far and faraway — He heard the pealing of his parish bells; Then, tho' he knew not wherefore, started up Shuddering, and when the beauteous hateful isle Return'd upon him, had not his poor heart Spoken with That, which being every- where Lets none, who speaks with Him, seem all alone, Surely the man had died of solitude. Thus over Enoch's early-rsilvering head The sunny and rainy seasons came and went Year after year. His hopes to see his own. And pace the sacred old familiar fields, Not yet had perish'd, when his lonely doom Came suddenly to an end. Another ship (She wanted water) blown by baffling winds. Like the * Good Fortune,' from her des- tined course, Stay'd by this isle, not knowing where she lay: For since the mate had seen at early dawn Across a break on the mist-wreathen isle The silent water slipping from the hills. They sent a crew that landing burst away In search of stream or fount, and fiU'd the shores With clamour. Downward from his mountain gorge Stept the long-hair'd long-bearded soli- tary. Brown, looking hardly human, strangely clad. Muttering and mumbling, idiotlike it seem'd, With inarticulate rage, and making signs They knew not what: and yet he led the way To where the rivulets of sweet water ran; And ever as he mingled with the crew. And heard them talking, his long- bounden tongue Was loosen'd, till he made them under- stand'; Whom, when their casks were fiU'd they took aboard : And there the tale he utter'd brokenly, Scarce-credited at first but more and more. E32 ENOCH ARDEN. Amazed and melted all who listen'd to it : And clothes they gave him and free pas- sage home; But oft he work'd among the rest and shook His isolation from him. None of these Came from his country, or could answer him, If question'd, aught of what he cared to know. And dull the voyage was with long delays. The vessel scarce sea- worthy; but ever- more His fancy fled before the lazy wind Returning, till beneath a clouded moon He like a lover down thro' 'all his blood Drew in the dewy meadowy morning- breath Of England, blown across her ghostly wall : And that same morning officers and men Levied a kindly tax upon themselves, Pitying the lonely man, and gave him it : Then moving up the coast they landed him, Ev'n in that harbour whence he sail'd before. There Enoch spoke no word to any one, But homeward — home — what home ? had he a home? His home, he walk'd. Bright was that afternoon, Sunny but chill; till drawn thro' either chasm, Where either haven open'd on the deeps, Roll'd a sea-haze and whelm'd the world in gray; Cut off the length of highway on before, And left but narrow breadth to left and right Of wither'd holt or tilth or pasturage. On the nigh-naked tree the robin piped Disconsolate, and thro' the dripping haze The dead weight of the dead leaf bore it down : Thicker the drizzle grew, deeper the gloom; Last, as it seem'd, a great mist-blotted light Flared on him, and he came upon the place. Then down the long street having slowly stolen. His heart foreshadowing all calamity. His eyes upon the stones, he reach'd the home Where Annie lived and loved him, and his babes In those far-off seven happy years were born; But finding neither light nor murmur there (A bill of sale gleam'd thro' the drizzle) crept Still downward thinking * dead or dead to me ! ' Down to the pool and narrow wharf he went, Seeking a tavern which of old he knew,, A front of timber-crost antiquity, So propt, worm-eaten, ruinously old, He thought it must have gone; but he was gone Who kept it; and his widow Miriam Lane, With daily-dwindling profits held the house; A haunt of brawling seamen once, but now Stiller, with yet a bed for wandering men. There Enoch rested silent many days. But Miriam Lane was good and garru- lous. Nor let him be, but often breaking in. Told him, with other annals of the port, Not knowing — Enoch was so brown, so bow'd, So broken — all the story of his house. His baby's death, her growing poverty. How Philip put her little ones to school. And kept them in it, his long wooing her, Her slow consent, and marriage, and the birth Of Philip's child : and o'er his counte- nance No shadow past, nor motion : any one, ENOCH ARDEN, 133 Regarding, well had deem'd he felt the tale Less than the teller : only when she closed, ' Enoch, poor man, was cast away and lost,' He, shaking his gray head pathetically, Repeated muttering * cast away and lost; ' Again in deeper inward whispers ' lost ! ' But Enoch yearn'd to see her face again ; ' If I might look on her sweet face again And know that she is happy.' So the thought Haunted and harass'd him, and drove him forth. At evening when the dull November day Was growing duller twilight, to the hill. There he sat down gazing on all below; There did a thousand memories roll upon him. Unspeakable for sadness. By and by The ruddy square of comfortable light. Far-blazing from the rear of Philip's house. Allured him, as the beacon-blaze allures The bird of passage, till he madly strikes Against it, and beats out his weary life. For Philip's dwelling fronted on the street, The latest house to landward; but be- hind, With one small gate that open'd on the waste, Flourish'd a little garden square and wall'd : And in it throve an ancient evergreen, A yewtree, and all round it ran a walk Of shingle, and a walk divided it : But Enoch shunn'd the middle walk and stole Up by the wall, behind the yew; and thence That which he better might have shunn'd, if griefs Like his have worse or better, Enoch saw. For cups and silver on the burnish'd board Sparkled and shone; so genial was the hearth : And on the right hand of the hearth he saw JPhilip, the slighted suitor of old times. Stout, rosy, with his babe across his knees; And o'er her second father stoopt a girl, A later but a loftier Annie Lee, Fair-hair'd and tall, and from her lifted hand Dangled a length of ribbon and a ring To tempt the babe, who rear'd his creasy arms. Caught at and ever miss'd it, and they laugh'd ; And on the left hand of the hearth he saw The mother glancing often toward her babe. But turning now and then to speak with him, Her son, who stood beside her tall and strong, And saying that which pleased him, for he smiled. Now when the dead man come to life beheld His wife his wife no more, and saw the babe Hers, yet not his, upon the father's knee, And all the warmth, the peace, the happiness. And his own children tall and beautiful, And him, that other, reigning in his place, Lord of his rights and of his children's love, — Then he, tho' Miriam Lane had told him all, Because things seen are mightier than things heard, Stagger'd and shook, holding the branch, and fear'd To send abroad a shrill and terrible cry. Which in one moment, like the blast of doom. Would shatter all the happiness of the hearth. He therefore turning softly like a thief, Lest the harsh shingle should grate under foot. And feeling all along the garden-wall. 134 ENOCH ARDEN. Lest he should swoon and tumble and be found, Crept to the gate, and open'd it, and closed, As lightly as a sick man's chamber-door, Behind him, and came out upon the waste. And there he would have knelt, but that his knees Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug His fingers into the wet earth, and pray'd. ' Too hard to bear ! why did they take me thence? O God Almighty, blessed Saviour, Thou That didst uphold me on my lonely isle. Uphold me, Father, in my loneliness A little longer ! aid me, give me strength Not to tell her, never to let her know. Help me not to break in upon her peace. My children too ! must I not speak to these ? They know me not. I should betray myself. Never: No father's kiss for me — the girl So like her mother, and the boy, my There speech and thought and nature fail'd a little. And he lay tranced; but when. he rose and paced Back toward his solitary home again. All down the long and narrow street he went Beating it in upon his weary brain, As tho' it were the burthen of a song, ' Not to tell her, never to let her know.' He was not all unhappy. His resolve Upbore him, and firm faith, and ever- more Prayer from a living source within the will. And beating up thro' all the bitter world. Like fountains of sweet water in the sea. Kept him a living soul. * This miller's wife,' He said to Miriam, * that you spoke about, Has she no fear that her first husband lives ? ' * Ay, ay, poor soul,' said Miriam, ' fear enow ! If you could tell her you had seen him dead, Why, that would be her comfort; ' and he thought 'After the Lord has call'd me she shall know. I wait His time,' and Enoch set himself, Scorning an alms, to work whereby to live. Almost to all things could he turn his hand. Cooper he was and carpenter, and wrought To make the boatmen fishing-nets, or help'd At lading and unlading the tall barks, That brought the stinted commerce of those days; Thus earn'd a scanty living for himself: Yet since he did but labour for himself. Work without hope, there was not life in it Whereby the man could live; and as the year RoU'd itself round again to meet the day When Enoch had return'd, a languor came Upon him, gentle sickness, gradually Weakening the man, till he could do no more. But kept the house, his chair, and last his bed. And Enoch bore his weakness cheerfully. For sure no gladlier does the stranded wreck See thrb' the gray skirts of a lifting squall The boat that bears the hope of life approach To save the life despair'd of, than he saw Death dawning on him, and the close of all. For thro' that dawning gleam'd a kind- lier hope On Enoch thinking, * after I am gone. Then may she learn I lov'd her to the last.' He call'd aloud for Miriam Lane and said, ' Woman, I have a secret — only swear, Before I tell you — swear upon the book Not to reveal it, till you see me dead.' * Dead,' clamour'd the good woman, ' hear him talk ! ENOCH ARDEN. 135 I warrant, man, that we shall bring you round.' * Swear,' added Enoch sternly, * on the book.' And on the book, half-frighted, Miriam swore. Then Enoch rolling his gray eyes upon her, 'Did you know Enoch Arden of this town? ' 'Know him?' she said, * I knew him far away. Ay, ay, I mind him coming down the street; Held his head high, and cared for no man, he.' Slowly and sadly Enoch answer'd her : 'His head is low, and no man cares for him. I think I have not three days more to live ; I am the man.' At which the woman gave A half-incredulous, half-hysterical cry. * You Arden, you ! nay, — sure he was a foot Higher than you be.' Enoch said again, * My God has bow'd me down to what I am; My grief and solitude have broken me; Nevertheless, know you that I am he Who married — but that name has twice been changed — I married her who married Philip Ray. Sit, listen.' Then he told her of his voyage, His wreck, his lonely life, his coming back. His gazing in on Annie, his resolve, And how he kept it. As the woman heard. Fast flow'd the current of her easy tears. While in her heart she yearn'd incessantly To rush abroad all round the little haven, Proclaiming Enoch Arden and his woes; But awed and promise-bounden she for- bore, Saying only, ' See your bairns before you go! Eh, let me fetch 'em, Arden,' and arose Eager to bring them down, for Enoch hung A moment on her words, but then replied : 'Woman, disturb me not now at the last. But let me hold my purpose till I die. Sit down again ; mark me and understand. While I have power to speak. I charge you now. When you shall see her, tell her that I died Blessing her, praying for her, loving her; Save for the bar between us, loving her As when she laid her head beside my own. And tell my daughter Annie, whom I saw So like her mother, that my latest breath Was spent in blessing her and praying for her. And tell my son that I died blessing him. And say to Philip that I blest him too; He never meaiit us any thing but good. But if my children care to see me dead. Who hardly knew me living, let them come, I am their father; but she must not come, For my dead face would vex her after-life. And now there is but one of all my blood Who will embrace me in the world-to-be. This hair is his : she cut it ofif and gave it. And I have borne it with me all these years. And thought to bear it with me to my grave; But now my mind is changed, for I shall see him. My babe in bliss : wherefore when I am gone. Take, give her this, for it may comfort her : It will moreover be a token to her, That I am he.' He ceased; and Miriam Lane Made such a V()luV)le answer promising all. That once again he roli'd his eyes upon her Repeating all he wish'd, and once again She promised. Then the third night after this, While Enoch slumber'd motionless and pale. And Miriam watch'd and dozed at inter- vals, There came so loud a calling of the sea. That all the houses in the haven rang. He woke, he rose, he spread his arms abroad Crying with a loud voice ' A sail ! a sail 1 I am saved ; ' and so fell back and spoke no more. '36 THE BROOK. So past the strong heroic soul away. A.nd when they buried him the Httle port Had seldom seen a costlier funeral. THE BROOK. Here, by this brook, we parted; I to the East And he for Italy — too late — too late : One whom the strong sons of the world despise; For lucky rhymes to him" were scrip and share, And mellow metres more than cent for cent; Nor could he understand how money breeds, Thought it a dead thing; yet himself could make The thing that is not as the thing that is. had he lived ! In our schoolbooks we say. Of those that held their heads above the crowd, They flourished then or then; but life in him Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd On such a time as goes before the leaf, When all the wood stands in a mist of green, And nothing perfect : yet the brook he loved, For which, in branding summers of Bengal, Or ev'n the sweet half- English Neilgherry air 1 panted, seems, as I re-listen to it, Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy. To me that loved him; for *0 brook,' he says, "■ O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme, • Whence come you? ' and the brook, why not? replies. I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down. Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go. But I go on for ever. * Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out. Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge. It has more ivy; there the river; and there Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet. I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed and mallow. I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go. But I go on for ever. * But Philip chatter'd more than brook or bird; Old Philip ; all about the fields you caught His weary daylong chirping, like the " dry High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer grass. I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing. And here and there a lusty trout. And here and there a grayling. And here and there a foamy flake Upon me, as I travel With many a silvery waterbreak Above the golden gravel, And draw them all along, and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever. THE BROOK. 137 * O darling Katie Willows, his one child ! A. maiden of our century, yet m<3st meek; A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse; Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand; Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell Divides threefold to show the fruit within. ' Sweet Katie, once I did her a good turn, Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed, James Willows, of one name and heart with her. For here I came, twenty years back — the week Before I parted with poor Edmund; crost By that old bridge which, half in ruins then. Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam Beyond it, where the waters marry — crost, Whistling a random bar of Bonny Doon, And push'd at Philip's garden-gate. The gate. Half-parted from a weak and scolding hinge. Stuck; and he clamour'd from a case- ment, " Run " To Katie somewhere in the walks below, " Run, Katie ! " Katie never ran : she moved To meet me, winding under woodbine bowers, A little flutter'd, with her eyelids down, Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon. 'What was it? less of sentiment than sense Had Katie; not illiterate; nor of those Who dabbling in the fount of Active tears. And nursed by mealy-mouth'd philan- thropies. Divorce the Feeling from her mate the " Deed. * She told me. She and James had quarrell'd. Why? What cause of quarrel? None, she said, no cause; James had no cause : but when I prest the cause, I learnt that James had flickering jeal- ousies Which anger'd her. Who anger'd James? I said. But Katie snatch'd her eyes at once from mine, And sketching with her slender pointed foot Some figure like a wizard pentagram On garden gravel, let my query pass Unclaim'd, in flushing silence, till I ask'd If James were coming. "Coming every day," She answer'd, " ever longing to explain. But evermore her father came across With some long-winded tale, and broke him short; And James departed vext with him and her." How could I help her? "Would I — was it wrong?" (Claspt hands and that petitionary grace Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke) *' O would I take her father for one hour. For one half-hour, and let him talk to me! " And even while she spoke, I saw where James Made toward us, like a wader in the surf, Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow- sweet. • O Katie, what I suffer'd for your sake ! For in I went, and call'd old Philip out To show the farm : full willingly he rose : He led me thro' the short sweet-smelling lanes Of his wheat-suburb, babbling as he went. He praised his land, his horses, his machines; He praised his ploughs, his cows, his hogs, his dogs; He praised his hens, his geese, his guinea- hens; His pigeons, who in session on their roofs Approved him, bowing at their own deserts: Then from the plaintive mother's teat he took Her blind and shuddering puppies, nam- ing each, And naming those, his friends, for whom they were : 38 THE BROOK. Then crost the common into Darnley chase To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse and fern Twinkled tlie innumerable ear and tail. Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech, He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said : "That was the four-year-old I sold the Squire." And there he told a long long-winded tale Of how the Squire had seen the colt at grass. And how it was the thing his daughter wish'd, And how he sent the bailiflf to the farm To learn the price, and what the price he ask'd. And how the bailiff swore that he was mad, But he stood firm; and so the matter hung; He gave them line : and five days after that He met the bailiff at the Golden Fleece, Who then and there had offer'd some- thing more. But he stood firm; and so the matter hung; He knew the man; the colt would fetch its price ; He gave them line : and how by chance at last (It might be May or April, he forgot. The last of April or the first of May) He found the bailiff riding by the farm, And, talking from the point, he drew him in, And there he mellow'd all his heart with ale. Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand. 'Then, while I breathed in sight of haven, he, Poor fellow, could he help it? recom- menced. And ran thro' all the coltish chronicle, Wild Will, Black Bess, Tantivy, Tallyho, Reform, White Rose, Bellerophon, the Jilt, Arbaces, and Phenomenon, and the rest, Till, not to die a listener, I arose. And with me Philip, talking still; and so We turn'd our foreheads from the falling sun. And following our own shadows thrice as long As when they follow'd us from Philip's door, Arrived, and found the sun of sweet con- tent Re-risen in Katie's eyes, and all things well. I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers. I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance. Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeam dance Against my sandy shallows. I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses; And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river. For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever. Yes, men may come and go; and these are gone. All gone. My dearest brother, Edmund, sleeps, Not by the well-known stream and rustic spire, But unfamiliar Arno, and the dome Of Brunelleschi; sleeps in peace : and he, Poor Philip, of all his lavish waste of words Remains the lean P. W. on his tomb : I scraped the lichen from it : Katie walks By the long wash of Australasian seas Far off, and holds her head to other stars, And breathes in April-autumns. All are gone.' So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a stile In the long hedge, and rolling in his mind Old waifs of rhyme, and bowing o'er the brook A tonsured head in middle age forlorn, AYLMER'S FIELD. 139 Mused, and was mute. On a sudden a low breath Of tender air made tremble in the hedge The fragile bindweed-bells and briony rings; And he look'd up. There stood a maiden near, Waiting to pass. In much amaze he stared On eyes a bashful azure, and on hair In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell Divides threefold to show the fruit within : Then, wondering, ask'd her, 'Are you from the farm ? ' * Yes,' answer'd she. ' Pray stay a little : pardon me; What Clo they call you?' 'Katie.' 'That were strange. What surname?' 'Willows.' 'No!' * That is my name.' 'Indeed!' and here he look'd so self- perplext, That Katie laugh'd, and laughing blush'd, till he Laugh'd also, but as one before he wakes, Who feels a glimmering strangeness in his dream. Then looking at her : ' Too happy, fresh and fair. Too fresh and fair in our sad world's best bloom, To be the ghost of one who bore your name About these meadows, twenty year?, ago.' ' Have you not heard? ' said Katie, ' we came back. We bought the farm we tenanted be- fore. Am I so like her? so they said on board. Sir, if you knew her in her English days. My mother, as it seems you did, the days That most she loves to talk of, come with me. My brother James is in the harvest- field : But she — you wiii be welcome — O, come in!' AYLMER'S FIELD. 1793. Dust are our frames; and, gilded dust, our pride Looks only for a moment "whole and sound ; Like that long-buried body of the king, Found lying with his urns and ornaments, Which at a touch of light, an air of heaven, Slipt into ashes, and was found no more. Here is a story which in rougher shape Came from a grizzled cripple, whom I saw Sunning hiniself in a waste field alone — Old, and a mine of memories — who had served, Long since, a bygone Rector of the place, And been himself a part of what he told. Sip Aylmer Aylmer, that almighty man. The county God — in whose capacious hall, Hung with a hundred shields, the family tree Sprang from the midriff of a prostrate king — Whose blazing wyvern weathercock'd the spire. Stood from his walls and wing'd his entry- gates And swang besides on many a windy sign — Whose eyes from under a pyramidal head Saw from his windows nothing save his own — What lovelier of his own had he than her, His only child, his Edith, whom he loved As heiress and not heir regretfully? But * he that marries her marries her name ' — This fiat somewhat soothed himself and wife. His wife a faded beauty of the Baths, Insipid as the Queen upon a card; Her all of thought and bearing hardly more Than his own shadow in a sickly sun. 140 AYLMER'S FIELD. A land of hops and poppy-mingled corn, Little about it stirring save a brook ! A sleepy land, where under the same wheel The same old rut would deepen year by yeaui Where almost all the village had one name; Where Aylmev followed Aylmer at the Hall And Averill Averill at the Rectory Thrice over; so that Rectory and Hall, Bound in an immemorial intimacy. Were open to each other; tho to dream That Love could bind them closer well had made The hoar hair of the Baronet bristle up With horror, worse than had he heard his priest Preach an inverted scripture, sons of men Daughters of God; so sleepy was the land. And might not Averill, had he will'd it so, Somewhere beneath his own low range of roofs, Have also set his many-shielded tree? There was an Aylmer-Averill marriage once. When the red rose was redder than itself, And York's white rose as red as Lancas- ter's, With wounded peace which each had prick'd to death. ' Not proven,' Averill said, or laughingly, 'Some other race of Averills' — prov'n or no. What cared he? what, if other or the same? He lean'd not on his fathers but himself. But Leolin, his brother, living oft With Averill, and a year or two before Call'd to the bar, but ever call'd away By one low voice to one dear neighbour- hood. Would often, in his walks with Edith, claim A distant kinship to the gracious blood That shook the heart of Edith hearing him. Sanguine he was : a but less vivid hue Than of that islet in the chestnut-bloom Flamed in his cheek; and eager eyes, that still Took joyful note of all things joyful, beam'd Beneath a manelike^mass of rolling gold, Their best and brightest, when they dwel*: on hers, Edith, whose pensive beauty, perfect else. But subject to the season or the mood. Shone like a mystic star between the less And greater glory varying to and fro, We know not wherefore; bounteously made, And yet so finely, that a troublous touch Thinn'd, or would seem to thin her in a day, A joyous to dilate, as toward the Hght. And these had been together from the first. Leolin's first nurse was, five years after, hers: So much the boy foreran; but when his date Doubled her own, for want of playmates, he (Since Averill was a decad and a half His elder, and their parents underground) Had tost his ball and flown his kite, and roll'd His hoop to pleasure Edith, with her dipt Against the rush of the air in the prone swing. Made blossom-ball or daisy-chain, ar- ranged Her garden, sow'd her name and kept it green In living letters, told her fairy-tales, Show'd her the fairy footings on the grass. The little dells of cowslip, fairy palms, The petty marestail forest, fairy pines, Or from the tiny pitted target blew What look'd a flight of fairy arrows aim'd All at one mark, all hitting: make-be- lieves For Edith and himself: or else he forged, But that was later, boyish histories Of battle, bold adventure, dungeon, wreck, Flights, terrors, sudden rescues, and true love AYLMER'S FIELD. I4\ Crown'd after trial; sketches rude and faint, But where a passion yet unborn perhaps Lay hidden as the music of the moon Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightin- gale. And thus together, save for college-times Or Temple-eaten terms, a couple, fair As ever painter painted, poet sang, Or Heaven in lavish bounty moulded, grew. And more and more, the maiden woman- grown. He wasted hours with Averill; there, when first The tented winter-field was broken up Into that phalanx of the summer spears That soon should wear the garland; there again When burr and bine were gather'd; lastly there At Christmas; ever welcome at the Hall, On whose dull sameness his full tide of youth Broke with a phosphorescence charming even My lady; and the Baronet yet had laid No bar between them : dull and self- involved, Tall and erect, but bending from his height With half-allowing smiles for all the world, And mighty courteous in the main — his pride Lay deeper than to wear it as his ring — He, like an Aylmer in his Aylmerism, Would care no more for Leolin's walking with her Than for his old Newfoundland's, when they ran To loose him at the stables, for he rose Twofooted at the limit of his chain, Roaring to make a third: and how should Love, Whom the cross-lightnings of four chance-met eyes Flash into fiery life from nothing, follow Such dear familiarities of dawn ? Seldom, but when he does, Master of all. So these young hearts not knowing that they loved, Not she at least, nor conscious of a bar Between them, nor by plight or broken ring Bound, but an immemorial intimacy, Wander'd at will, and oft accompanied By Averill : his, a brother's love, that hung With wings of brooding shelter o'er her peace. Might have been other, save for Leo- lin's — Who knows? but so they wander'd, hour by hour Gather'd the blossom that rebloom'd, and drank The magic cup that fiU'd itself anew. A whisper half reveal'd her to herself For out beyond her lodges, where the brook Vocal, witii here and there a silence, ran By sallowy rims, arose the labourers' homes, A frequent haunt of Edith, on low knolls That dimpling died into each other, huts At random scatter'd, each a nest in bloom. Her art, her hand, her counsel all had wrought About them : here was one that, sum- mer-blanch'd. Was parcel-bearded with the traveller's- joy In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad; and here The warm-blue breathings of a hidden hearth Broke from a bower of vine and honey- suckle : One look'd all rosetree, and another wore A close-set robe of jasmine sown with stars : This had a rosy sea of gillyflowers About it ; this, a milky-way on earth, Like visions in the Northern dreamer's heavens, A lily-avenue climbing to the doors; One, almost to the martin-haunted eaves A summer burial deep in hollyhocks; Each, its own charm; and Edith's every- where; And Edith ever visitant with him. He but less loved than Edith, of her poor: 142 AYLMER'S FIELD. For she — so lowly-lovely and so loving, Queenly responsive when the loyal hand Rose from the clay it work'd in as she past, Not sowing hedgerow texts and passing by, Nor dealing, goodly counsel from a height That nwKes the .lowest hate it, but a voice Of comfort and an open hand of help, A splendid presence flattering the poor roofs Revered as theirs, but kindlier than themselves To ailing wife or wailing infancy Or old bedridden palsy, — was adored; He, loved for her and for himself. A grasp Having the warmth and muscle of the heart, A childly way with children, and a laugh Ringing like proven golden coinage true. Were no false passport to that easy realm. Where once with Leolin at her side the girl, Nursing a child, and turning to the warmth The tender pink five-beaded baby-soles. Heard the good mother softly whisper ' Bless, God bless 'em : marriages are made in Heaven.' A flash of semi-jealousy clear'd it to her. My lady's Indian kinsman unannounced With half a score of swarthy faces came. His own, tho' keen and bold and sol- dierly Sear'd by the close ecliptic, was not fair; Fairer his talk, a tongue that ruled the hour, Tho' seeming boastful : so when first he dash'd Into the chronicle of a deedful day, Sir Aylmer half forgot his lazy smile Of patron ' Good ! my lady's kinsman ! good ! ' My lady with her fingers interlock'd. And rotatory thumbs on silken knees, Call'd all her vital spirits into each ear To listen : unawares they flitted off, Busying themselves about the flowerage That stood from out a stiff brocade in which. The meteor of a splendid season, she, Once with this kinsman, ah so long ago, Stept thro' the stately minuet of those days : But Edith's eager fancy hurried with him Snatch'd thro' the perilous passes of his life: Till Leolin ever watchful of her eye. Hated him with a momentary hate. Wife -hunting, as the rumour ran, was he: I know not, for he spoke not, only shower'd His oriental gifts on every one And most on Edith : hke a storm he came, And shook the house, and like a storm he went. Among the gifts he left her (possibly He flow'd and ebb'd uncertain, to return When others had been tested) there was one, A dagger, in rich sheath with jewels on it Sprinkled about in gold that branch'd itself Fine as ice-ferns on January panes Made by a breath. I know not whence at first, Nor of what race, the work; but as he told The story, storming a hill-fort of thieves He got it; for their captain after fight, His comrades having fought their last below, Was climbing up the valley; at whom he shot : Down from the beetling crag to which he clung Tumbled the tawny rascal at his feet. This dagger with him, M'hich when now admired By Edith whom his pleasure was to please, At once the costly Sahib yielded to her. And Leolin, coming after he was gone, Tost over all her presents petulantly : AYLMER'S FIELD. 143 ^nd when she show'd the wealthy scab- bard, saying ' Look what a lovely piece of workman- ship ! ' Slight was his answer, ' Well — I care not for it : ' Then playing with the blade he prick'd his hand, * A gracious gift to give a lady, this ! ' * But would it be more gracious,' ask'd the girl, * Were I to give this gift of his to one That is no lady ? ' ' Gracious ?. No,' said he. * Me ? — but I cared not for it. O par- don me, I seem to be ungraciousness itself.' * Take it,' she added sweetlv, ' tho' his gift; For I am more ungracious ev'n than you, I care not for it either; ' and he said ' Why then I love it : ' but Sir Aylmer past, And neither loved nor liked the thing he heard. The next day came a neighbour. Blues and reds They talk'd of : blues were sure of it, he thought : Then of the latest fox — where started — kili'd In such a bottom : * Peter had the brush, My Peter, first : ' and did Sir Aylmer know That great pock-pitten fellow had been caught ? Then made his pleasure echo, hand to hand. And rolling as it were the substance of it Between his palms a moment up and down — The birds were warm, the birds were , warm upon him; We have him now : ' and had Sir Ayl- mer heard — Nay, but he must — the land was ring- ing of it — This blacksmith border-marriage — one they knew — Raw from the nursery — who could trust a child? That cursed France with her egalities ! And did Sir Aylmer (deferentially With nearing chair and lower'd accent) think — For people talk'd — that it was wholly wise To let that handsome fellow Averill walk So freely with his daughter ? people talk'd — The boy might get a notion into him; The girl might be entangled ere she knew. Sir Aylmer Aylmer slowly stiffening spoke : 'The girl and boy, Sir, know their differ- ences ! ' * Good,' said his friend, ' but watch ! ' and he, * Enough, More than enough. Sir ! I can guard my own.' They parted, and Sir Aylmer Aylmer watch'd. Pale, for on her the thunders of the house Had fallen first, was Edith that same night; Pale as the Jephtha's daughter, a rough piece Of early rigid colour, under which Withdrawing by the counter door to that Which Leolin open'd, she cast back upon him A piteous glance, and vanish'd. He, as one Caught in a burst of unexpected storm. And pelted with outrageous epithets, Turning beheld the Powers of the House On either side the hearth, indignant ; her. Cooling her false cheek with a feather fan. Him, glaring, by his own stale devil spurr'd, And, like a beast hard-ridden, breathing hard. ' Ungenerous, dishonourable, base, Presumptuous ! trusted as he was with her. The sole succeeder to their wealth, their lands. The last remaining pillar of their house. The one transmitter of their ancient name. Their child.' ' Our child ! ' ' Our heiress ! ' ♦ Ours ! ' for still, Like echoes from beyond a hollow, came Her sicklier iteratii)n. Last he said. 144 AYLMER'S FIELD, • Boy, mark me ! for your fortunes are to make, I swear you shall not make them out of mine. Now inasmuch as you have practised on her, Perplext her, made her half forget herself, Swerve from her duty to herself and us — Things in an Aylmer deem'd impossible, Far as we track ourselves — I say that this — Else I withdraw favour and countenance From you and yours for ever — shall you do. Sir, when you see her — but you shall not see her — No, you shall write, and not to her, but me: And you shall say that having spoken with me, And after look'd into yourself, you find That you meant nothing — as indeed you know That you meant nothing. Such a match as this ! Impossible, prodigious ! ' These were words. As meted by his measure of himself. Arguing boundless forbearance: after which, And Leolin's horror-stricken answer, ' I So foul a traitor to myself and her, Never oh never,' for about as long As the wind-hover hangs in balance, paused Sir Aylmer reddening from the storm within, Then broke all bonds of courtesy, and crying, *Boy, should I find you by my doors again. My men shall lash you from them like a dog; Hence ! ' with a sudden execration drove The footstool from before him, and arose; So, stammering * scoundrel ' out of teeth that ground As in a dreadful dream, while Leolin still Retreated half-aghast, the fierce old man FoUow'd, and under his own lintel stood Storming with lifted hands, a hoary face Meet for the reverence of the hearth, but now. Beneath a pale and unimpassion'd moon, Vext with unworthy madness, and de form'd. Slowly and conscious of the rageful eye That watch'd him, till he heard the ponderous door Close, crashing with long echoes thro' the land, Went Leolin; then, his passions all in flood And masters of his motion, furiously Down thro' the bright lawns to his brother's ran, And foam'd away his heart at Averill's ear : Whom Averill solaced as he might, amazed : The man was his, had been his father's, friend : He must have seen, himself had seen it long ; He must have known, himself had known : besides, He never yet had set his daughter forth Here in the woman-markets of the west, Where our Caucasians let themselves be sold. Some one, he thought, had slander'd Leolin to him. ' Brother, for I have loved you more as son Than brother, let me tell you : I myself — What is their pretty saying ? jilted, is it ? Jilted I was : I say it for your peace. "Pain'd, and, as bearing in m3'self the shame The woman should have borne, humili- ated, I lived for years a stunted sunless life; Till after our good parents past away W^atching your growth, I seem'd again to grow. T^eolin, I almost sin in envying you: The very whitest lamb in all my fold Loves you: I know her: the worst thought she has Is whiter even than her pretty hand : She must prove true : for, brother, where two fight The strongest wins, and truth and love are strength, And you are happy : let her parents be.' AYLMER'S FIELD. 145 But Leolin cried out the more upon them — Insolent, brainless, heartless ! heiress, wealth, Their wealth, their heiress ! wealth enough was theirs For twenty matches. Were he lord of this, Why twenty boys and girls should marry on it. And forty blest ones bless him, and him- self Be wealthy still, ay wealthier. He be- lieved This filthy marriage-hindering Mammon made The harlot of the cities : nature crost Was mother of the foul adulteries That saturate soul with body. Name, too ! name. Their ancient name ! they might be proud; its worth Was being Edith's. Ah how pale she had look'd, Darling, to-night ! they must have rated her Beyond all tolerance. These old pheasant- lords, These partridge-breeders of a thousand years, Who had mildew'd in their thousands, doing nothing Since Egbert — why, the greater their disgrace ! Fall back upon a name ! rest, rot in that ! Not keep it noble, make it nobler? fools, With such a vantage-ground for noble- ness! He had known a man, a quintessence of man. The life of all — who madly loved — and he, Thwarted by one of these old father-fools, Had rioted his life out, and made an end. He would not do it ! her sweet face and faith Held him from that : but he had powers, he knew it: Back would he to his studies, make a name, Name, fortune too : the world should ring of him To shame these mouldy Aylmers in their graves : Chancellor, or what is greatest would he be — * O brother, I am grieved to learn yout grief- Give me my fling, and let me say my say.' At which, like one that sees his own excess. And easily forgives it as his own, He laugh'd; and then was mute; but presently Wept like a storm: and honest Averill seeing How low his brother's mood had fallen, fetch'd His richest beeswing from a binn reserved For banquets, praised the waning red, and told The vintage — when this Aylmer came of age — Then drank and past it; till at length the two, Tho' Leolin flamed and fell again, agreed That much allowance must be made for men. After an angry dream this kindlier glow Faded with morning, but his purpose held. Yet once by night again the lovers met, A perilous meeting under the tall pines That darken'd all the northward of her Hall. Him, to her meek and modest bosom prest In agony, she promised that no force. Persuasion, no, nor death could alter her : He, passionately hopefuller, would go, Labour for his own Edith, and return In such a sunlight of prosperity He should not be rejected. 'Write tc me ! They loved me, and because I love their child They hate me : there is war between us, dear. Which breaks all bonds but ours; we must remain Sacred to one another.' So they talk'd, Poor children, for their comfort: the wind blew; The rain of heaven, and their own bitter tears, Tears, and the careless rain of heaven, mixt 146 AYLMER'S FIELD. Upon their faces, as they kiss'd each other In darkness, and above them roar'd the pine. So Leolin went; and as we task our- selves To learn a language known but smatter- ingly In phrases here and there at random, toil'd Mastering the lawless science of our law, That codeless myriad of precedent, That wilderness of single instances, Thro' which a few, by wit or fortune led, May beat a pathway out to wealth and fame. The jests, that flash'd about the pleader's room, Lightning of the hour, the pun, the scurrilous tale, — Old scandals buried now seven decads deep In other scandals that have lived and died, And left the living scandal that shall die — Were dead to him already; bent as he was To make disproof of scorn, and strong in hopes, And prodigal of all brain-labour he, Charier of sleep, and wine, and exercise, Except when for a breathing-while at eve, Some niggard fraction of an hour, he ran Beside the river-bank : and then indeed Harder the times were, and the hands of power Were bloodier, and the according hearts of men Seem'd harder too; but the soft river- breeze, Which fann'd the gardens of that rival rose Yet fragrant in a heart remembering His former talks with Edith, on him breathed Far purelier in his rushings to and fro. After his books, to flush his blood with air. Then to his books again. My lady's cousin, Half-sickening of hispension'd afternoon. Drove in upon the student once or twice, Ran a Malayan amuck against the times, Had golden hopes for France and all mankind, Answer'd all queries touching those at home With a heaved shoulder and a saucy smile, And fain had haled him out into the world, And air'd him there : his nearer friend would say, 'Screw not the chord too sharply lest it snap.' Then left alone he pluck'd her dagger forth From where his worldless heart had kept it warm. Kissing his vows upon it like a knight. And wrinkled benchers often talk'd of him Approvingly, and prophesied his rise : For heart, I think, help'd head : her letters too, Tho' far between, and coming fitfully Like broken music, written as she found Or made occasion, being strictly watch'd, Charm'd him thro' every labyrinth till he saw An end, a hope, a light breaking upon him. But they that cast her spirit into flesh, Her worldly-wise begetters, plagued them- selves To sell her, those good parents, for her good. Whatever eldest-born of rank or wealth Might lie within their compass, him they lured Into their net made pleasant by the baits Of gold and beauty, wooing him to woo. So month by month the noise about their doors, And distant blaze of those dull banquets, made The nightly wirer of their innocent hare Falter before he took it. All in vain. Sullen, defiant, pitying, wroth, return'd Leolin'.s rejected rivals from their suit So often, that the folly taking wings Slipt o'er those lazy limits down the wind With rumour, and became in other fields A mockery to the yeomen over ale, ALYMER'S FIELD. 147 And laughter to their lords : but those at home, As hunters round a hunted creature draw The cordon close and closer toward the death, Narrow'd her goings out and comings in; P'orbade her first the house of Averill, Then closed her access to the wealthier farms, Last from her own home-circle of the poor They barr'd her : yet she bore it : yet her cheek Kept colour : wondrous ! but, O mystery ! What amulet drew her down to that old oak, So old, that twenty years before, a part Falling had let appear the brand of John — Once grovelike, each huge arm a tree, but now The broken base of a black tower, a cave Of touchwood, with a single flourishing spray. There the manorial lord too curiously Raking in that millennial touchwood-dust Found for himself a bitter treasure-trove; Burst his own wyvern on the seal, and read Writhing a letter from his child, for which Came at the moment Leolin's emissary, A crippled lad, and coming turn'd to fly, But scared with threats of jail and halter gave To him that fluster'd his poor parish wits The letter which he brought, and swore besides To play their go-between as heretofore Nor let them know themselves betray'd; and then, Soul-stricken at their kindness to him, went Hating his own lean heart and miserable. Thenceforward oft from out a despot dream The father panting woke, and oft, as dawn Aroused the black republic on his elms, Sweeping the frothfly from the fescue brush'd Thro' the dim meadow toward his treasure-trove, Seized it, took home, an J to my lady, — who made A downward crescent of her minio* mouth. Listless in all despondence, — read; and tore, As if the living passion symbol'd there Were living nerves to feel the rent; and burnt. Now chafing at his own great self defie»f, Now striking on huge stumbling-blocks of scorn In babyisms, and dear diminutives Scatter'd all over the vocabulary Of such a love as like a chidden child, After much wailing, hush'd itself at last Hopeless of answer: then tho' Averill wrote And bade him with good heart sustain himself — All would be well — the lover heeded not, But passionately restless came and went, And rustling once at night about the place, There by a keeper shot at, slightly hurt. Raging return'd : nor was it M'ell for her Kept to the garden now, and grove of pines, Watch'd even there; and one was set to watch The watcher, and Sir Aylmer watch'd them all, Yet bitterer from his readings: once indeed, Warm'd with his wines, or taking pride in her, She look'd so sweet, he kiss'd her tenderly Not knowing what possess'd him : that one kiss Was Leolin's one strong rival upon earthy Seconded, for my lady follow'd suit, Seem'd hope's returning rose : and then ensued A Martin's summer of his faded love, Or ordeal by kindness; after this He seldom crost his child without a sneer; The mother flow'd in shallower acrimo- nies: Never one kindly smile, one kindly word : So that the gentle creature shut from all Her charitable use, and face to face With twenty months of silence, slowly lost Nor greatly cared to lose, her hold on life. Last, some low fever ranging round to spy The weakness of a people or a house. 148 AYLMER'S FIELD. Like flies that haunt a wound, or deer, or men, Or abnost all that is, hurting the hurt — Save Christ as we believe him — found the girl And flung her down upon a couch of fire, Where careless of the household faces near. And crying upon the name of Leolin, She, and with her the race of Aylmer, past. Star to star vibrates light : may soul to soul Strike thro' a finer element of her own? So, — from afar, — touch as at once? or why That night, that moment, when she named his name. Did the keen shriek, * Yes, love, yes, Edith, yes,' Shrill, till the comrade of his chambers woke, And came upon him half-arisen from sleep. With a weird bright eye, sweating and trembling, His hair as it were crackling into flames, His body half flung forward in pursuit, And his long arms stretch'd as to grasp a flyer : Nor knew he wherefore he had made the cry; And being much befool'd and idioted By the rough amity of the other, sank As into sleep again. The second day. My lady's Indian kinsman rushing in, A 'breaker of the bitter news from home. Found a dead man, a letter edged with death Beside him, and the dagger which himself Gave Edith, redden'd with no bandit's blood : * From F^dith ' was engraven on the blade. Then Averill went and gazed upon his death. And when he came again, his flock be- lieved — Beholding how the years which are not Time's Had blasted him — that many thousand days Were dipt by horror from his term oi life. Yet the sad mother, for the second death Scarce touch'd her thro' that nearness of the first, And being used to find her pastor texts. Sent to the harrow'd brother, praying him To speak before the people of her child. And fixt the Sabbath. Darkly that day rose : Autumn's mock sunshine of the faded woods Was all the life of it; for hard on these, A breathless burthen of low-folded heavens Stifled and chill'd at once; but every roof Sent out a listener : many too had known Edith among the hamlets round, and since The parents' harshness and the hapless loves And double death were widely murmur'd, left Their own gray tower, or plain-faced tabernacle, To hear him; all in mourning these, and those With blots of it about them, ribbon, glove Or kerchief; while the church, — one night, except For greenish glimmerings thro' the lancets, — made Still paler the pale head of him, who • tower'd Above them, with his hopes in either grave. Long o'er his bent brows linger'd Averill, His face magnetic to the hand from which Livid he pluck'd it forth, and labour'd thro' His brief prayer-prelude, gave the verse ' Behold, Your house is left unto you desolate ! ' But lapsed into so long a pause again As half amazed, half frighted all his flock : Then from his height and loneliness of grief Bore down in flood, and dash'd his angry heart Against the desolations of the world. AYLMER'S FIELD. 149 Never since our bad earth became one sea, Which rolling o'er the palaces of the proud. And all but those who knew the living God — Eight that were left to make a purer world — When since had flood, fire, earthquake, thunder, wrought Such waste and havock as the idolatries. Which from the low light of mortality Shot up their shadows to the Heaven of Heavens, And Worshipt their own darkness in the Highest? Gash thyself, priest, and honour thy brute Baal, And to thy worst self sacrifice thyself. For with thy worst self hast thou clothed thy God. Then came a Lord in no wise like to Baal. The babe shall lead the lion. Surely now The wilderness shall blossom as the rose. Crown thyself, worm, and worship thine own lusts ! — No coarse and blockish God of acreage Stands at thy gate for thee to grovel to — Thy God is far diffused in noble groves And princely halls, and farms, and flowing lawns, And heaps of living gold that daily grow, And title-scrolls and gorgeous heraldries. In such a shape dost thou behold thy God. Thou wilt not gash thy flesh for him ; for thine Fares richly, in fine linen, not a hair Ruffled upon the scarfskin, even while The deathless ruler of thy dying house Is wounded to the death that cannot die; And tho' thou numberest with the fol- lowers Of One who cried, " Leave all and follow me." Thee therefore with His light about thy feet. Thee with His message ringing in thine ears. Thee shall thy brother man, the Lord from Heaven, Born of a village girl, carpenter's son. Wonderful, Prince of peace, the Mighty God, Count the more base idolater of the two; Crueller : as not passing thro' the fire Bodies, but souls — thy children's — thro' the smoke, The blight of low desires — darkening thine own To thine own likeness; or if one of these, Thy better born unhappily from thee. Should, as by miracle, grow straight and fair — Friends, I was bid to speak of such a one By those who most have cause to sorrow for her — Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well, Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn. Fair as the Angel that said " Hail ! " she seem'd, Who entering fill'd the house with sudden light. For so mine own was brighten'd : where indeed The roof so lowly but that beam of Heaven Dawn'd sometime thro' the doorway? whose the babe Too ragged to be fondled on her lap, Warm'd at her bosom? The poor child of shame. The common care ^Vhom no one cared for, leapt To greet her, wasting his forgotten heart, As with the mother he had never known, In gambols; for her fresh and innocent eyes Had such a star of morning in their blue. That all neglected places of the field Broke into nature's music when they saw her. Low was her voice, but won mysterious way Thro' the seal'd ear to which a louder one • Was all but silence — free of alms her hand — The hand that robed your cottage-walls with flowers Has often toil'd to clothe your little ones; Kr;o AYLMER'S FIELD. How often placed upon the sick man's brow Cool'd it, or laid his feverous pillow smooth ! Had you one sorrow and she shared it not? One burthen and she would not lighten it? One spiritual doubt she did not soothe? Or when some heat of difference sparkled out, How sweetly would she glide between your wraths, And steal you from each other ! for she walk'd Wearing the light yoke of that Lord of love, Who still'd the rolling wave of Galilee ! And one — of him I was not bid to speak — Was always with her, whom you also knew. Him too you loved, for he was worthy love. And these had been together from the first; They might have been together till the last. Friends, this frail bark of ours, when sorely tried. May wreck itself without the pilot's guilt, Without the captain's knowledge : hope with me. * Whose shame is that, if he went hence with shame? Nor mine the fault, if losing both of these I cry to vacant chairs and widow'd walls, " My house is left unto me desolate." ' While thus he spoke, his hearers wept; but some. Sons of the glebe, with other frowns than those That knit themselves for summer shadow, scowl'd • At their great lord. He, when it seem'd he saw No pale sheet-lightnings from afar, but fork'd Of the near storm, and aiming at his head. Sat anger-charm'd from sorrow, soldier- like. Erect : but when the preacher's cadence flow'd Softening thro' all the gentle attributes Of his lost child, the wife, who watch'd his face, Paled at a sudden twitch of his iron mouth ; And, ' O pray God' that he hold up,' she thought, * Or surely I shall shame myself and him.' ' Nor yours the blame — for who beside your hearths Can take her place — if echoing me you cry " Our house is left unto us desolate "? But thou, O thou that killest, hadst thou known, O thou that stonest, hadst thou under- stood The things belonging to thy peace and ours ! Is there no prophet but the voice that calls Doom upon kings, or in the waste " Re- pent " ? Is not our own child on the narrow way. Who down to those that saunter in the broad Cries "Come up hither," as a prophet to us? Is there no stoning save with flint and rock ? Yes, as the dead we weep for testify — No desolation but by sword and fire? Yes, as your moanings witness, and my- self Am lonelier, darker, earthlier for my loss. Give me your prayers, for he is past your prayers. Not past the living fount of pity in Heaven. But I that thought myself long-suffering, meek. Exceeding " poor in spirit " — how the words Have twisted back upon themselves, and mean Vileness, we are grown so proud — I wish'd my voice A rushing tempest of the wrath of God AYLMER'S FIELD. To blow these sacrifices thro' the world — Sent like the twelve-divided concubine To inflame the tribes : but there — out yonder — earth Lightens from her own central Hell — O there The red fruit of an old idolatry — The heads of chiefs and princes fall so fast, They cling together in'the ghastly sack — The land all shambles — naked marriages Flash from the bridge, and ever-murder'd France, By shores that darken with the. gathering wolf, Runs in a river of blood to the sick sea. Is this a time to madden madness then? Was this a time for these to flaunt their pride? May Pharaoh's darkness, folds as dense as those Which hid the Holiest from the people's eyes Ere the great death, shroud this great sin from all ! Doubtless our narrow world must canvass it: O rather pray for those and pity them, Who, thro' their own desire accom- plish'd, bring Their own gray hairs with sorrow to the grave — Who broke the bond which they desired to break. Which else had link'd their race with times to come — Who wove coarse webs to snare her purity, Grossly contriving their dear daughter's good — Poor souls, and knew not what they did, but sat Ignorant, devising their own daughter's death ! May not that earthly chastisement suffice? Have not our love and reverence left them bare? Will not anqther take their heritage? Will there be children's laughter in their hall For ever and for ever, or one stone Left on another, or is it a light thing That I, their guest, their host, their ancient friend, I made by these the last of all my race, Must cry to these the last of theirs, as cried Christ ere His agony to those that swore Not by the temple but the gold, and made Their own traditions God, and slew the Lord, And left their memories a world's curse — " Behold, Your house is left unto you desolate"?' Ended he had not, but she brook'd no more: Long since her heart had beat remorse- lessly. Her crampt- up sorrow pain'd her, and a sense Of meanness in her unresisting life. Then their eyes vext her; for on entering He had cast the curtains of their seat aside — Black velvet of the costliest — she herself Had seen to that : fain had she closed them now. Yet dared not stir to do it, only near'd Her husband inch by inch, but when she laid, Wifelike, her hand in one of his, he veil'd His face with the other, and at once, as falls A creeper when the prop is broken, fell The woman shrieking at his feet, and swoon'd. Then her own people bore along the nave Her pendent hands, and narrow meagre face Seam'-d with the shallow cares of fifty years : And her the Lord of all the landscape round Ev'n to its last horizon, and of all Who peer'd at him so keenly, foUow'd out Tall and erect, but in the middle aisle Reel'd, as a footsore ox in crowded ways Stumbling across the market to his death, Unpitied; for he groped as blind, and seem'd Always about to fall, grasping the pews 152 SEA DREAMS. And oaken finials till he touch'd the door; Yet to the lychgate, where his chariot stood, Strode from the porch, tall and erect again. But nevermore did either pass the gate Save under pall with bearers. In one month, Thro' weary and yet ever wearier hours, The childless mother went to seek her child; And when he felt the silence of his house About him, and the change and not the change, And those fixt eyes of painted ancestors Staring for ever from their gilded walls On him their last descendant, his own head Began to droop, to fall; the man became Imbecile ; his one word was ' desolate ; ' Dead for two years before his death was he; But when the second Christmas came, escaped His keepers, and the silence which he felt, To find a deeper in the narrow gloom By wife and child; nor wanted at his end The dark retinue reverencing death At golden thresholds; nor from tender hearts. And those who sorrow' d o'er a vanish'd race. Pity, the violet on the tyrant's grave. Then the great Hall was wholly broken down, And the broad woodland parcell'd into farms; And where the two contrived their daughter's good, Lies the hawk's cast, the mole has made his run. The hedgehog underneath the plantain bores, The rabbit fondles his own harmless face, The slow-worm creeps, and the thin weasel there Follows the mouse, and all is open field. SEA DREAMS. A CITY clerk, but gently born and bred; His wife, an unknown artist's orphan child — One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old : They, thinking that her clear germander eye Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom. Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea : For which his gains were dock'd, however small : Small were his gains, and hard his work; besides, Their slender household fortunes (for the man Had risk'd his little) like the little thrift, Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep : And oft, when sitting all alone, his face Would darken, as he cursed his credulous- ness, And that one unctuous mouth which lured him, rogue. To buy strange shares in some Peruvian mine. Now seaward-bound for health they gain'd a coast, All sand and cliff and deep-inrunning cave. At close of day; slept, woke, and went the next. The Sabbath, pious variers from the church, To chapel; where a heated pulpiteer, Not preaching simple Christ to simple men, Announced the coming doom, and ful- minated Against the scarlet woman and her creed ; For sideways up he swung his arms, and shriek'd 'Thus, thus with violence,' ev'n as if he held The Ap(>calyptic milestone, and himself Were that great Angel; 'Thus with violence Shall Babylon be cast into the sea; Then comes the close.' The gentle- hearted wife Sat shuddering at the ruin of a world ; He at his own : but when the wordy storm SEA DREAMS. 153 Had ended, forth they came and paced the shore, Ran in and out the long sea-framing caves, Drank the large air, and saw, but scarce believed (The sootflake of so many a summer still Clung to their fancies) that they saw, the sea. So now on sand they walk'd, and now on cliff. Lingering about the thymy promontories, Till all the sails were darken'd in the west, And rosed in the east : then homeward and to bed : Where she, who kept a tender Christian hope, Haunting a holy text, and still to that Returning, as the bird returns, at niglit, * Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,' Said, * Love, forgive him : ' but he did not speak ; And silenced by that silence lay the wife, Remembering her dear Lord who died for all. And musing on the little lives of -men, And how they mar this little by their feuds. But while the two were sleeping, a full tide Rose with ground-swell, which, on the foremost rocks Touching, upjetted in spirts of wild sea- smoke. And scaled in sheets of wasteful foam, and fell In vast sea-cataracts — ever and anon Dead claps of thunder from within the cliffs Heard thro' the living roar. At this the babe. Their Margaret cradled near them, wail'd and woke The mother, and the father suddenly cried, * A wreck, a wreck ! ' then turn'd, and groaning said, * Forgive ! How many will sa}S " for- give," and find A sort of absolution in the sound To hate a little longer ! No; the sin That neither God nor man can well for- give, Hypocrisy, I saw it in him at once. Is it so true that second thoughts are best? Not first, and third, which are a riper first? Too ripe, too late ! they come too late for use. Ah love, there surely lives in man and beast Something divine to warn them of their foes: And such a sense, when first I fronted him, Said, "Trust him not;" but after, when I came To know him more, I lost it, knew him less; Fought with what seem'd my own un- charity; Sat at his table; drank his costly wines; Made more and more allowance for his talk; Went further, fool ! and trusted him with all. All my poor scrapings from a dozen years Of dust and deskwork: there is no such mine. None ; but a gulf of ruin, swallowing gold, Not making. Ruin'd ! ruin'd ! the sea roars Ruin : a fearful night ! V^ *Not fearful; fair,' Said the good wife, *if every star in heaven Can make it fair: you do but hear the tide. Had you ill dreams?' *0 yes,' he said, 'I dream'd Of such a tide swelling toward the land. And I from out the boundless outer deep Swept with it to the shore, and enter'd one Of those dark caves that run beneath the cliffs. I thought the motion of the boundless deep Bore thro' the cave, and I was heaved upon it In darkness : then I saw one lovely star Larger and larger. " What a world," I thought, "To live in ! " but in moving on I found Only the landward exit of the cave. Bright with the sun upon the stream beyond: 154 SEA DREAMS. And near the light a giant woman sat, All over earthy, like a piece of earth, A pickaxe in her hand : then out I slipt Into a land all sun and blossom, trees ■ As high as heaven, and every bird that sings : And here the night-light flickering in my eyes Awoke me.' 'That was then your dream,' she said, * Not sad, but sweet.' ' So sweet, I lay,' said he, *And mused upon it, drifting up the stream In fancy, till I slept again, and pieced The broken vision; for I dream'd that still The motion of the great deep bore me on. And that the woman walk'd upon the brink : I wonder'd at her strength, and ask'd her of it: " It came," she said, " by working in the mines : '^ O then to ask her of my shares, I thought; And ask'd; but not a word; she shook her head. And then the motion of the current ceased. And there was rolling thunder; and we reach'd A mountain, like a wall of burs and thorns; But she with her strong feet up the steep hill Trod out a path: I foUow'd; and at top She pointed seaward: there a fleet of glass. That seem'd a fleet of jewels under me, Sailing along before a gloomy cloud That not one moment ceased to thunder, past In sunshine: right across its track there lay, Down in the water, a long reef of gold. Or what seem'd gold : and I was glad at first To think that in our often-ransack'd world Still so much gold was left; and then I fear'd Lest the gay navy there should splinter on it, And fearing waved my arm to warn them off; An idle signal, for the brittle fleet (I thought I could have died to save it) near'd, Touch'd, clink'd, and clash'd, and van- ish'd, and I woke, I heard the clash so clearly. Now I see My dream was Life; the woman honest Work; And my poor venture but a fleet of glass Wreck'd on a reef of visionary gold.' * Nay,' said the kindly wife to comfort him, * You raised your arm, you tumbled down and broke The glass with little Margaret's medicine in it; And, breaking that, you made and broke your dream: A trifle makes a dream, a trifle breaks.' * No trifle,' groan'd the husband ; * yes« ^ terday I met him suddenly in the street, and ask'd That which I ask'd the woman in my dream. Like her, he shook his head. " Show me the books ! " He dodged me with a long and loose account. "The books, the books!" but he, he could not wait, Bound on a matter he of life and death : When the great Books (see Daniel seven and ten) Were open'd, I should find he meant me well; And then began to bloat himself, and ooze All over with the fat affectionate smile That makes the widow lean. " My dearest friend, Have faith, have faith ! We live by faith," said he; "And all things work together for the good Of those" — it makes me sick to quote him — last Gript my hand hard, and with God-bless- you went. I stood like one that had received a blow : I found a hard friend in his loose accounts, SEA DREAMS. IS-? A loose one in the hard grip of his hand, A curse in his God-bless-} ou : then my eyes Pursued him down the street, and far away. Among the honest shoulders of the crowd, Read rascal in the motions of his back, And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee.' •Was he so bound, poor soul? 'said the good wife; * So are we all : but do not call him, love, Before you prove him, rogue, and proved, forgive. His gain is loss; for he that wrongs his friend Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about A silent court of justice in his breast. Himself the judge and jury, and himself The prisoner at the bar, ever condemn'd: And that drags down his life : then comes what comes Hereafter : and he meant, he said he meant. Perhaps he meant,- or partly meant, you well.' * " With all his conscience and one eye askew " — Love, let me quote these lines, that you may learn A man is likewise counsel for himself, Too often, in that silent court of yours — "With all his conscience and one eye askew. So false, he partly took himself for true; Whose pious talk, when most his heart was dry, Made wet the crafty crowsfoot round his eye; Who, never naming God except for gain, So never took that useful name in vain, Made Him his catspaw and the Cross his tool, And Christ the bait to trap his dupe and fool; Nor deeds of gift, but gifts of grace he forged. And snake-like slimed his victim ere he gorged ; And oft at Bible meetings, o'er the rest Arising, did his holy oily best, Dropping the too rough H in Hell and Heaven, To spread the Word by which himself had thriven." How like you this old satire?' * Nay,' she said, ' I loathe it : he had never kindly heart. Nor ever cared to better his own kind. Who first wrote satire, with no pity in it. But will you hear my dream, for I had one That altogether went to music? Still It awed me.' Then she told it, having dream'd Of that same coast. — But round the North, a light, A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay. And ever in it a low musical note Swell'd up and died; and, as it swell'd, a ridge * Of breaker issued from the belt, and still Grew with the growing note, and when the note Had reach'd a thunderous fulness, on those cHfTs Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that Living within the belt) whereby she saw That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more, But huge cathedral fronts of every age, Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see. One after one : and then the great ridge drew. Lessening to the lessening music, back, And past into the belt and swell'd again Slowly to music : ever when it broke The statues, king or saint, or founder fell; Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left Came men and women in dark clusters round. Some crying, 'Set them up! they shall not fall ! ' And others, * Let them lie, for they have fall'n.' And still they strove and wrangled : and she grieved In her strange dream, she knew not whv to find 156 SEA DREAMS. Their wildest wailings never out of tune Here than ourselves, spoke with me on With that sweet note; and ever as their the shore; shrieks While you were running down the sands, Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave and made Returning, while none mark'd it, on the The dimpled flounce of the sea-furbelow crowd flap. Broke, mixt with awful light, and show'd Good man, to please the child. She their eyes brought strange news. Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept Why were you silent when I spoke to- away night? The men of flesh and blood, and men of I had set my heart on your forgiving stone, mm To the waste deeps together. Before you knew. We tnust forgive the dead.' ♦Thenlfixt My wistful eyes on two fair images, 'Dead! who is dead?' Both crown'd with stars and high among the stars, — 'The man your eye pursued. The Virgin Mother standing with her A little after you had parted with him, child He suddenly dropt dead of heart-disease.' High up on one of those dark minster- fronts — •Dead? he? of heart-disease? what Till she began to totter, and the child heart had he Clung to the- mother, and sent out a cry To die of? dead ! ' Which mixt with little Margaret's, and I woke, * Ah, dearest, if there be And my dream awed me: — well — but A devil in man, there is an angel too. what are dreams? And if he did that wrong you charge him Yours came but from the breaking of a with, glass. His angel broke his heart. But your And mine but from the crying of a rough voice child.' (You spoke so loud) has roused the child again. ' Oiild ? No ! ' said he, * but this tide's Sleep, Httle birdie, sleep! will she not roar, and his. sleep Our Boanerges with his threats of doom, Without her "little birdie"? well then, And loud-lung'd Antibabylonianisms sleep. (Altho' I grant but httle music there) And I will sing you " birdie." ' Went both' to make your dream : but if there were Saying this. A music harmonizing our wild cries. The woman half turn'd round from him Sphere-music such as that you dream'd she loved, about. Left him one hand, and reaching thro' Why, that would make our passions far the night too like Her other, found (for it was close be- The discords dear to the musician. No — side) (Jne shriek of hate would jar all the hymns And half-embraced the basket cradle- of heaven : head True Devils with no ear, they howl in tune With one soft arm, which, like the pliant With nothing but the Devil ! ' bough That moving moves the nest and nestling. * " True " indeed ! sway'd One of our town, but later by an hour The cradle, while she sang this baby song : LUCRETIUS, '57 What does little birdie say In her nest at peep of day? Let me fly, says little birdie, Mother, let me fly away. Birdie, rest a little longer. Till the little wings are stronger So she rests a little longer. Then she flies away. What does little baby say, In her bed at peep of day? Baby says, like little birdie, Let me rise and fly away. Baby, sleep a little longer, Till the little limbs are stronger. If she sleeps a little longer, Baby too shall fly away. *She sleeps: let us too, let all evil, sleep. He also sleeps — another sleep than ours. He can do no more wrong : forgive him, dear. And I shall sleep the sounder ! ' Then the man, * His deeds yet live, the worst is yet to come. Yet let our sleep for this one night be sound : I do forgive him ! * * Thanks, my love,' she said, * Your own will be the sweeter,' and they slept. LUCRETIUS. LuciLiA, wedded to Lucretius, found Her master cold; for when the morning flush Of passion and the first embrace had died Between them, tho' he lov'd her none the less. Yet often when the woman heard his foot Return from pacings in the field, and ran To greet him with a kiss, the master took Small notice, or austerely, for — his mind Half buried in some weightier argument, Or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise And long roll of the Hexameter — he past To turn and ponder those three hundred scrolls Left by the Teacher, whom he held divine. She brook'd it not ; but wrathful, petulant. Dreaming some rival, sought and found a witch Who brew'd the philtre which had power, they said. To lead an errant passion home again. And this, at times, she mingled with his drink, And this destroy'd him; for the wicked broth Confused the chemic labour of the blood. And tickling the brute brain within the man's Made havock among those tender cells, and check'd His power to shape : he loathed himself; and once After a tempest woke upon a morn That mock'd him with returning calm, and cried : ' Storm in the night ! for thrice I heard the rain Rushing; and once the flash of a thunderbolt — Methought I never saw so fierce a fork — Struck out the streaming mountain-side, and show'd A riotous confluence of watercourses Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it. Where all but yester-eve was dusty-dry. * Storm, and what dreams, ye holy Gods, what dreams ! For thrice I waken'd after dreams. Per- chance We do but recollect the dreams that come Just ere the waking : terrible ! for it seem'd A void was made in Nature ; all her bonds Crack'd; and I saw the flaring atom- streams And torrents of her myriad universe, Ruining along the illimitable' inane. Fly on to clash together again, and make Another and another frame of things For ever: that was mine, my dream, I knew it — Of and belonging to me, as the dog With inward yelp and restless forefoot plies 58 LUCRETIUS. His function of the woodland : but the next ! I thought that all the blood by Sylla shed Came driving rainlike down again on earth, And where it dash'd the reddening meadow, sprang No dragon warriors from Cadmean teeth. For these I thought my dream would show to me, But girls, Hetairai, curious in their art, Hired animalisms, vile as those that made The mulberry-faced Dictator's orgies worse Than aught they fable of the quiet Gods. And hands they mixt, and yell'd and round me drove In narrowing circles till I yell'd again Half-suffocated, and sprang up, and saw — Was it the first beam of my latest day? 'Then, then, from utter gloom stood out the breasts, The breasts of Helen, and hoveringly a sword Now over and now under, now direct, Pointed itself to pierce, but sank down shamed At all that beauty; and as I stared, a fire, The fire that left a roofless Ilion, Shot out of them, and scorch'd me that I woke. *Is this thy vengeance, holy Venus, thine. Because I would not one of thine own doves, Not ev'n a rose, were offer'd to thee? thine. Forgetful how my rich prooemion makes Thy glory fly along the Italian field, In lays that will outlast thy Deity? * Deity ? nay, thy worshippers. My tongue Trips, or I speak profanely. Which of these Angers thee most, or angers thee at all? Not if thou be'st of those who, far aloof From envy, hate and pity, and spite and scorn, Live the great life which all our greatest fain Would follow, centr'd in eternal calm. * Nay, if thou canst, O Goddess, like ourselves Touch, and be touch'd, then would I cry to thee To kiss thy Mavors, roll thy tender arms Round him, and keep him from the lust of blood That makes a steaming slaughter-house of Rome. 'Ay, but I meant not thee; I meant not her. Whom all the pines of Ida shook to see Slide from that quiet heaven of hers, and tempt The Trojan, while his neat-herds were abroad ; Nor her that o'er her wounded hunter wept Her Deity false in human-amorous tears; Nor whom her beardless apple-arrbiter Decided fairest. Rather, O ye Gods, Poet-like, as the great Sicilian called Calliope to grace his golden verse — Ay, and this Kypris also — did I take That popular name of thine to shadow forth The all-generating powers and genial heat Of Nature, when she strikes thro' the thick blood Of cattle, and Hght is large, and lambs are glad Nosing the mother's udder, and the bird Makes his heart voice amid the blaze of flowers : Which things appear the work of mighty Gods. ' The Gods ! and if I go my work is left Unfinish'd — if \ go. The Gods, who haunt The lucid interspace of world and world. Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, Nor ever falls the least white star of snow. Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, LUCRETIUS. 159 Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar Their sacred everlasting calm ! and such, Not all so fine, nor so divine a calm. Not such, nor all unlike it, man may gain Letting his own life go. The Gods, the Gods! If all be atoms, how then should the Gods Being atomic not be dissoluble, Not follow the great law? My master held That Gods there are, for all men so believe. I prest my footsteps into his, and meant Surely to lead my Memmius in a train Of flowery clauses onward to the proof That Gods there are, and deathless. Meant? I meant? I have forgotten what I meant : my mind Stumbles, and all my faculties are lamed. * Look where another of our Gods, the Sun, Apollo, Delius, or of older use All-seeing Hyperion — what you will — Has mounted yonder; since he never sware, Except his wrath, were wreak'd on wretched man. That he would only shine among the dead Hereafter; tales! for never yet on earth Could dead flesh creep, or bits of roast- ing ox Moan round the spit — nor knows he what he sees; King of the East altho' he seem, and girt With song and flame and fragrance, slowly lifts His golden feet on those empurpled stairs That climb into the windy halls of heaven : And here he glances on an eye new-born. And gets for greeting but a wail of pain ; And here he stays upon a freezing orb That fain would gaze upon him to the last; And here upon a yellow eyelid fall'n And closed by those who mourn a friend in vain, Not thankful that his troubles are no more. And me, altho' his fire is on my face Blinding, he sees not, nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself. Or lend an ear to Plato where he says. That men like soldiers may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods : but he that holds The Gods are careless, wherefore need he care Greatly for them, nor rather plunge at once, Being troubled, wholly out of sight, and sink Past earthquake — ay, and gout and stone, that break Body toward death, and palsy, death-in- life. And wretched age — and worst disease of all. These prodigies of myriad nakednesses, And twisted shapes of lust, unspeakable, Abominable, strangers at my hearth Not welcome, harpies miring every dish, The phantom husks of something foully done, And fleeting thro' the boundless universe, And blasting the long quiet of my breast With animal heat and dire insanity? ' How should the mind, except it loved them, clasp These idols to herself? or do they fly Now thinner, and now thicker, like the flakes In a fall of snow, and so press in, per- force Of multitude, as crowds that in an hour Of civic tumult jam the doors, and bear The keepers down, and throng, their rags and they The basest, far into that council-hall Where sit the best and stateliest of the land? ( *Can I not fling this horror off me again, Seeing with how great ease Nature can smile, Balmier and nobler from her bath of storm. At random ravage? and how easily r6o LUCRETIUS. The mountain there has cast his cloudy slough, Now towering o'er him in serenest air, A mountain o'er a mountain, — ay, and within All hollow as the hopes and fears of men ? *But who was he, that in the garden snared Picus and Faunus, rustic Gods? a tale To laugh at — more to laugh at in my- self— For look ! what is it? there? yon arbutus Totters; a noiseless riot underneath Strikes through the wood, sets all the tops quivering — The mountain quickens into Nymph and Faun; And here an Oread — how the sun de- lights To glance and shift about her slippery sides, And rosy knees and supple roundedness. And budded bosom-peaks — who this way runs Before the rest — A satyr, a satyr, see. Follows; but him I proved impossible; Twy-natured is no nature : yet he draws Nearer and nearer, and I scan him now Beastlier than any phantom of his kind That ever butted his rough brother-brute For lust or lusty blood or provender : I hate, abhor, spit, sicken at him; and she Loathes him as well; such a precipitate heel, Fledged as it were with Mercury's ankle- wing, Whirls her to me : but will she fling her- self. Shameless upon me? Catch her, goat- foot : nay, Hide, hide them, million-myrtled wilder- ness, And cavern-shadowing laurels, hide ! do I wish — What? — that the bush were leafless? or to whelm All of them in one massacre? O ye Gods, I know you careless, yet, behold, to you From childly wont and ancient use I caU — I thought I lived securely as yourselves — No lewdness, narrowing envy, monkey- spite. No madness of ambition, avarice, none : No larger feast than under plane or pine With neighbours laid along the grass, to take Only such cups as left us friendly-warm, Affirming each his own philosophy — Nothing to mar the sober majesties Of settled, sweet. Epicurean life. But now it seems some unseen monster lays His vast and filthy hands upon my will, Wrenching it backward into his; and spoils My bliss in being; and it was not great; For save when shutting reasons up in rhythm. Or Heliconian honey in living words. To make a truth less harsh, I often grew Tired of so much within our little life. Or of so little in our little life — Poor little life that toddles half an hour Crown'd with a flower or two, and there an end — And since the nobler pleasure seems to fade. Why should I, beastJike as I find myself, Not manlike end myself? — our privi- lege — What beast has heart to do it? And what man. What Roman would be dragg'd in tri- umph thus? Not I; not he, who bears one name with her Whose death-blow struck the dateless doom of kings. When, brooking not the Tarquin in her veins, She made her blood in sight of Collatine And all his peers, flushing the guiltless air. Spout from the maiden fountain in her heart. And from it sprang the Commonwealth, which breaks As I am breaking now ! ' And therefore now Let her, that is the womb and tomb of all, Great Nature, take, and fcwcing far apart THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. i6i Those blind beginnings that have made me man, Dash them anew together at her will Thro' all her cycles — into man once more, Or beast or bird or fish, or opulent flower : But till this cosmic order everywhere' Shatter'd into one earthquake in one day Cracks all to pieces, — and that hour perhaps Is not so far when momentary man Shall seem no more a something to him- self. But he, his hopes and hates, his homes and fanes, And even his bones long laid within the grave. The very sides of the grave itself shall pass, Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void. Into the unseen for ever, — till that hour. My golden work in which I told a truth That stays the rolling Ixionian wheel. And numbs the Fury's ringlet-snake, and plucks The mortal soul from out immortal hell, Shall stand : ay, surely : then it falls at last And perishes as I must; for O Thou, Passionless bride, divine Tranquillity, Yearn'd after by the wisest of the wise. Who fail to find thee, being as thou art Without one pleasure and without one pain, Howbeit I know thou surely must be mine Or soon or late, yet out of season, thus I woo thee roughly, for thou carest not How roughly men may woo thee so they win — Thus — thus: the soul flies out and dies in the air.' With that he drove the knife into his side: She heard him raging, heard him fall; ran in. Beat breast, tore hair, cried out upon herself As having fail'd in duty to him, shriek'd That she but meant to win him back, fell on him, Clasp'd, kiss'd him, wail'd: he answer'd, * Care not thou ! Thy duty? What is duty? Fare thee well!' THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. PROLOGUE. Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun Up to the people : thither flock'd at noon His tenants, v.ife and child, and thither half The neighbouring borough with their Institute Of which he was the patron. I was there From college, visiting the son, — the son A Walter too, — with others of our set. Five others : we were seven at Vivian- place. And me that morning Walter show'd the house, Greek, set with busts : from vases in the hall Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names, Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park. Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time ; And on the tables every clime and age Jumbled together; celts and calumets. Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries. [62 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere, The cursed Malayan crease, and battle- clubs From the isles of palm : and higher on the walls, Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer, His own forefathers' arms and armour hung. And 'This,' he said, * was Hugh's at Agincourt; And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon : A good knight he ! we keep a chronicle With all about him ' — which he brought, and I Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights. Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings Who laid about them at their wills and died ; And mixt with these, a lady, one that arm'd Her own fair head, and sallying thro' the gate, Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls. * O miracle of women,' said the book, * O noble heart who, being strait-besieged By this wild king to force her to his wish, Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunn'd a soldier's death, But now when all was lost or seem'd as lost — Her stature more than mortal in the burst Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire — Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate. And, falling on them like a thunderbolt. She trampled some beneath her horses' heels, And some were whelm'd with missiles of the wall. And some were push'd with lances from the rock. And part were drown'd within the whirl- ing brook : O miracle of noble womanhood ! ' So sang the gallant glorious chronicle ; And, T all rapt in this, 'Come out,' he said, ' To the Abbey : there is Aunt Elizabeth And sister Lilia with the rest.' We weni (1 kept the book and had my hnger in it) Down thro' the park : strange was the sight to me; For all the sloping pasture murmur'd, sown With happy faces and with holiday. There moved the multitude, a thousand heads : The patient leaders of their Institute Taught them with facts. One rear'd a font of stone And drew, from butts of water on the slope. The fountain of the moment, playing, now A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls. Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball Danced like a wisp : and somewhat lower down A man with knobs and wires and vials fired A cannon : Echo answer'd in her sleep From hollow fields : and here were tele- scopes For azure views; and there a group of girls In circle waited, whom the electric shock Dislink'd with shrieks and laughter : round the lake A little clock-work steamer paddling plied And shook the lilies : perch'd about the knolls A dozen angry models jetted steam : A petty railway ran : a fire-balloon Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves And dropt a fairy parachute and past : And there thro' twenty posts of telegraph They flash'd a saucy message to and fro Between the mimic stations; so that sport Went hand in hand with Science; other where Pure sport : a herd of boys with clamour bowl'd And stump'd the wicket; babies roll'd about Like tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maids Arranged a country dance, and flew thro' light And shadow, while the twanging violin THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. t63 Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and over- head The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end. Strange was the sight and smacking of the time; And long we gazed, but satiated at length Came to the ruins. High-arch'd and ivy- claspt, Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire. Thro' one wide chasm of time and frost they gave The park, the crowd, the house; but all within .The sward was trim as any garden lawn : And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth, And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends From "neighbour seats : and there was Ralph himself, A broken statue propt against the wall, As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport, Half child half woman as she was, had wound A scarf of orange round the stony helm. And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk. That made the old warrior from his ivied nook Glow like a sunbeam : near his tomb a feast Shone, silver-set; about it lay the guests, And there we join'd them : then the maiden Aunt Took this fair day for text, and from it preach'd An universal culture for the crowd, And all things great; but we, unworthier, told Of college : he had climb'd across the spikes. And he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars, And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs; and one Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men, But honeying at the whisper of a lord; And one the Master, as a rogue in grain Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory. But while they talk'd, above their heads I saw The feudal warrior lady-clad; which brought My book to mind : and opening this I read Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang With tilt and tourney; then the tale of her That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls, And much I praised her nobleness, and ♦ Where,' Ask'd Walter, patting Lilia's head (she lay Beside him) ' lives there such a woman now ? ' Quick answer'd Lilia, * There are thou- sands now Such women, but convention beats them down : It is but bringing up; no more than that : You men have done it : how I hate you all! Ah, were I something great ! I wish I were Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then. That love to keep us children ! O I wish That I were some great princess, I would build Far off from men a college like a man's, And I would teach them all that men are taught; We are twice as quick ! ' And here she shook aside The hand that play'd the patron with her curls. And one said smiling, ' Pretty were the sight If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt With prudes for proctors, dowagers fcr deans, And sweet girl-graduates in their goldci. hair. I think they should not wear our rust;. gowns. But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph Who shines so in the corner; yet I fear, If there were many Lilias in the brood, However deep you might embower the nest. 164 THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. Some boy would spy it.' At this upon the sward She tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot : 'That's your light way; but I would make it death For any mala thing but to peep at us.' Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd ; A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, And sweet as English air could make her- she : But \yalter hail'd a score of names upon her, And ' petty Ogress,' and 'ungrateful Puss,' And swore he long'd at college, only long'd. All else was well, for she-society. They boated and they cricketed; they talk'd At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics; They lost their weeks; they vext the souls of deans; They rode; they betted; made a hun- dred friends, And caught the blossom of the flying terms, But miss'd the mignonette of Vivian-place, The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke, Part banter, part affection. *True,' she said, * We doubt not that. O yes, you miss'd us much. I'll stake my ruby ring upon it you did.' She held it out; and as a parrot turns Up thro' gilt wires a crafty loving eye, And takes a lady's finger with all care. And bites it for true heart and not for harm, So he with Lilia's. Daintily she shriek'd And wrung it. ' Doubt my word again ! ' he said. ' Come, hsten ! here is proof that you were miss'd : We seven stay'd at Christmas up to read ; And there we took one tutor as to read : The hard-grain'd Muses of the cube and square Were out of season : never man, I think, So moulder'd in a sinecure as he : For while our cloisters echo'd frosty feet, And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms. We did but talk you over, pledge you all In wassail; often, like as many girls — Sick for the hollies and the yewS of home — As many little trifling Lilias — play'd Charades and riddles as at Christmas here. And whaCs my thought and when and where and how. And often told a tale from mouth to mouth As here at Christmas.' She remember'd that : A pleasant game, she thought : she liked it more Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest. But these — what kind of tales did men tell men. She wonder'd, by themselves? A half-disdain Perch'd on the pouted blossom of her lips: And Walter nodded at me; ^ He began. The rest would follow, each in turn; and so We forged a sevenfold story. Kind? what kind? Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms. Seven-headed monsters only made to kill Time by the fire in winter.' ' Kill him now. The tyrant ! kill him in the summer too,' Said Lilia; * Why not now? ' the maiden Aunt. * Why not a summer's as a winter's tale? A tale for summer as befits the time, And something it should be to suit the place. Heroic, for a hero lies beneath, Grave, solemn ! ' Walter warp'd his mouth at this To something so mock-solemn, that' I laugh'd And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth And echo like a ghostly woodpecker, Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt (A little sense of wrong had touch'd her face With colour) turn'd to me with 'As you will; Heroic if you will, or what you will, Or be yourself your hero if you will.' THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 165 *Take Lilia, then, for heroine,' clam- our'd he, * And make her some great Princess, six feet high. Grand, epic, homicidal ; and be you The Prince to win her ! ' * Then follow me, the Prince,' I answer'd, ' each be hero in his turn ! Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream. — Heroic seems our Princess as required — But something made to suit with Time and place, A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, A talk of college and of ladies' rights, A feudal knight in silken masquerade. And, yonder, shrieks and strange experi- ments For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all — This were a medley ! we should have him back Who told the " Winter's tale " to do it for us. No matter : we will say whatever comes. And let the ladies sing us, if they will, From time to time, some ballad or a song To give us breathing-space.' So I began, And the rest follow'd : and the women sang Between the rougher voices of the men. Like linnets in the pauses of the wind : And here I give the story and the songs. A prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face, Of temper amorous, as the first of May, With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl. For on my cradle shone the Northern star. There lived an ancient legend in pur house. Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt Because he cast no shadow, had foretold. Dying, that none of all our blood should know The shadow from the substance, and that one Should come to fight with shadows and to fall. For so, my mother said, the story ran. And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less. An old and strange affection of the house. Myself too had weird seizures. Heaven knows what: On a sudden in the midst of men and day. And while I walk'd and talk'd as hereto- fore, I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts. And feel myself the shadow of a dream. Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane. And paw'd his beard, and mutter'd ' cata- lepsy.' My mother pitying made a thousand prayers; My mother was as mild as any saint. Half-canonised by all that look'd on her, So gracious was her tact and tenderness : But my good father thought a king a king; He cared not for the affection of the house; He held his sceptre like a pedant's wand To lash offence, and with long arms and hands Reach'd out, and pick'd offenders from the mass For judgment. Now it chanced that I had been, While life was yet in bud and blade, betroth'd To one, a neighbouring Princess : she to me Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf At eight years old; and still from time to time Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, And of her brethren, youths of puissance ; And still I wore her picture by my heart. And one dark tress; and all around them both Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen. But when the days drew nigh that I should wed, My father sent ambassadors with furs [66 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. And jewels, gifts, to fetch her : these brought l:)ack A present, a great hihour of the loom; And therewithal an answer vague as wind : Besides, they saw the king; he took the gifts; He said there was a compact; that was true: But then she had a will; was he to blame? And maiden fancies; loved to live alone Among her women; certain, would not wed. , That morning in the presence room T stood With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends : The first, a gentleman of broken means (His father's fault) but given to starts and bursts Of revel ; and the last, my other heart. And almost my half-self, for still we moved Together, twinn'd as horse's ear and eye. Now, while they spake, I saw my father's face Grow long and troubled like a rising moon, Inflamed with wrath : he started on his feet, Tore the king's letter, snow'd it down, and rent The wonder of the loom thro' warp and woof From skirt to skirt; and at the last he sware That he would send a hundred thousand men. And bring her in a whirlwind : then he chew'd The thrice-turn'd cud of wrath, and cook'd his spleen, Communing with his captains of the war. At last I spoke. * My father, let me go. It cannot be but some gross error lies In this report, this answer of a king. Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable : Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen, Whate'er my grief to find her less than fame, May rue the bargain made.' And Florian said : * I have a sister at the foreign court, Wlio moves about the Princess; she, you know. Who wedded with a nobleman from thence : He, dying lately, left her, as I hear, The lady of three castles in that land : Thro' her this matter might be sifted clean.' And Cyril whisper'd : * Take me with you too.' Then laughing 'what, if these weird seizures come Upon you in those lands, and no one neai To point you out the shadow from the truth ! Take me: I'll serve you better in a strait; I grate on rusty hinges here : ' but * No ! ' Roar'd the rough king, 'you shall not; we ourself Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead In iron gauntlets : break the council up.' But when the council broke, I rose and past Thro' the wild woods that hung about the town; Found a still place, and pJuck'd her like- ness out; Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees : What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth? Proud look'd the lips : but while I medi- ■ tated A wind arose and rush'd upon the South, And shook the songs, the whispers, and • the shrieks Of the wild woods together; and a. Voice Went with it, ' Follow, follow, thou shalt win.' Then, ere the silver sickle of that month Became her gulden shield, I stole from court With Cyril and witli Florian, unperceived, Cat-footed thro' the town and half in dread To hear my father's clamour at our backs THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 167 With Ho ! from some bay-window shake the night; But all was quiet: from the bastion'd walls Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt, And flying reach'd the frontier : then we crost To a livelier land; and so by tilth and grange, And vines, and blowing bosks of wilder- ness, We gain'd the mother-city thick with towers, And in the imperial palace found the king. His name was Gama; c^ack'd and small his voice, But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind On glassy water drove his cheek in lines; A little dry old man, without a star, Not like a king : three days he feasted us. And on the fourth I spake of why we came, And my betroth'd. * You do us, Prince,' he said. Airing a snowy hand and signet gem, 'All honour. We remember love our- selves In our sweet youth : there did a compact pass Long summers back, a kind of cere- mony — I think the year in which our olives , fail'd. I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart. With my full heart: but there were widows here, Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche; They fed her theories, in and out of place Maintaining that with equal husbandry The woman were an equal to the man. They harp'd on this; with this our ban- quets rang; Our dances broke and buzz'd in knots of talk ; Nothing but this; my very ears were hot To hear them : knowledge, so my daughter held. Was all in all : they had but been, she thought, As children; they must lose the child, assume The woman : then. Sir, awful odes she wrote. Too awful, sure, for what they treated of, But all she is and does is awful; odes About this losing of the child ; and rhymes And dismal lyrics, prophesying change Beyond all reason : these the women sang; And they that know such things — I sought but peace ; No critic I — would call them master- pieces : They master'd me. At last she begg'd a boon, A certain summer-palace which I have Hard by your father's frontier : I said no, Yet being an easy man, gave it : and there, All wild to found an University For maidens, on the spur she fled; and more We know not, — only this : they see no men, Not ev'n her brother Arac, nor the twins Her brethren, tho' they love her, look upon her As on a kind of paragon; and I (Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed Dispute betwixt myself and mine : but since (And I confess with right) you think me bound In some sort, T can giv'e you letters to her; And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance Almost at naked nothing.' Thus the king; And I, tho' nettled that he seem'd to slur With garrulous ease and oily courtesies Our formal compact, yet, not less (all frets But chafing me on fire to find my bride) Went forth again with both my friends. W^e rode Many a long league back to the North. At last From hills, that look'd across a land of hope. We dropt with evening on a rustic town 1 68 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. Set in a gleaming river's crescent-curve, Close at the boundary of the liberties; There, enter'd an old hostel, call'd mine host To council, plied him with his richest wines, And show'd the late-writ letters of the king. He with a long low sibilation, stared As blank as death in marble; then ex- claim'd Averring it was clear against all rules For any man to go : but as his brain Began to mellow, ' If the king,' he said, ' Had given us letters, was he bound to speak? The king would bear him out; ' and at the last — The summer of the vine in all his veins — * No doubt that we might make it worth his while. She once had past that way; he heard her speak; She scared him; life ! he never saw the like; She look'd as grand as doomsday and as grave : And he, he reverenced his liege-lady there; He always made a point tt) post with mares; His daughter and his housemaid were the boys: The land, he understood, for miles about Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows. And all the dogs ' — But while he jested thus, A thought flash'd thro' me which I clothed in act, Remembering how we three presented Maid Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast. In masque or pageant at my father's court. We sent mine host to purchase female gear; He brought it, and himself, a sight to shake The midriff' of despair with laughter, holp To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes We rustled : him we gave a costly bribe To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds. And boldly ventured on the liberties. We foUow'd up the river as we rode. And rode till midnight when the college lights Began to glitter firefly-like in copse And linden alley : then we past an arch, Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings From four wing'd horses dark against the stars; And some inscription ran along the front, But deep in shadow : further on we gain'd A little street half garden and half house; But scarce could hear each other speak for noise Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling On silver anvils, and the splash and stir Of fountains spouted up and showering down In meshes of the jasmine and the rose : And all about us peal'd the nightingale, Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare. There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign. By two sphere lamps blazon'd like Heaven and Earth With constellation and with continent, Above an entry: riding in, we call'd; A plump-arm'd Ostleress and a stable wench Came running at the call, and help'd U3 down. Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sail'd. Full-blown, before us into rooms which gave Upon a pillar'd porch, the bases lost In laurel : her we ask'd of that and this, And who were tutors. ' Lady Blanche,' she said, * And Lady Psyche.' * Which was pret- tiest, Best-natured?' * Lady Psyche.' * Hers are we,' One voice, we cried; and I sat down and wrote, In such a- hand as when a field of corn THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 169 Bows all its ears before the roaring East; 'Three ladies of the Northern empire pray Your Highness would enroll them with your own. As Lady Psyche's pupils.' This I seal'd : The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll, And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung, And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes : I gave the letter to be sent with dawn; And then to bed, where half in doze I seem'd To float about a glimmering night, and watcli A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swell On some dark shore just seen that it was rich. II. As thro' the land at eve we went. And pluck'd the ripen'd ears, We fell out, my wife and I, O we fell out I know not why, And kiss'd again with tears. And blessings on the falling out That all the more endears, When we fall out with those we love And kiss again with tears ! For when we came where lies the child We lost in other years, There above the little grave, O there above the little grave. We kiss'd again with tears. At break of day the College Portress came : She brought us Academic silks, in hue The lilac, with a silken hood to each, And zoned with gold; and now when these were on. And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons. She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know The Princess Ma waited : out we paced, I first, and following thro' the porch that sang All round with laurel, issued in a court Compact of lucid marbles, boss'd with lengths Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers. The Muses and the Graces, group'd in threes, Enring'd a billowing fountain in the midst ; And here and there on lattice edges lay Or book or lute; but hastily we past, And up a flight of stairs into the hall. There at a board by tome and paper sat, With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne, All beauty compass'd in a female form, The Princess; liker to the inhabitant Of some clear planet close upon the vSun, Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head, And so much grace and power, breathing down From over her arch'd brows, with every turn Lived thro' her to the tips of her long hands, And to her feet. She rose her height, and said : *\Ve give you welcome: not without redound Of use and glory to yourselves ye come, The first-fruits of the stranger : aftertime, And that full voice which circles round the grave, Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me. What ! are the ladies of your land so tall?' * We of the court,' said Cyril. *From the court,' She answer'd, * then ye know the Prince? ' and he : * The climax of his age ! as tho' there were One rose in all the world, your Highness that. He worships your ideal : ' she replied : ' We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear This barren verbiage, current among men, Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment Your flight from out your bookless wilcis would seem As arguing love of knowledge and of power; THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. Your language proves you still the child. Indeed, We dream not of him : when we set our hand To this great work, we purposed with ourself Never to wed. You likewise will do well, Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling The tricks, which make us toys of men, that so. Some future time, if so indeed you will,. You may with those self-styled our lords ally Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.' At those high words, we conscious of ourselves, Perused the matting; then an officer Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these: Not for three years to correspond with home; Not for three years to cross the liberties; Not for three years to speak with any men; And many more, which hastily subscribed. We enter'd on the boards: and 'Now,' she cried, ■'Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall ! Our statues ! — not of those that men desire, Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode, Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but she That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she The foundress of the Babylonian walk The Carian Artemisia strong in war, The Rhodope, that built the pyram.id, Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose Convention, since to look on noble forms Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism That which is higher. O lift your natures up: EoiDrace our aims : work out your free- dom. Girls, Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal'd : Drink deep, until the habits of the slave, The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite And slander, die. Better not be at all Than not be noble. Leave us : you may go: To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue The fresh arrivals of the week before; For they press in from all the provinces, And fill the hive.' She spoke, and bowing waved Dismissal : back again we crost the court To Lady Psyche's : as we enter'd in, There sat along the forms, like morning doves That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, A patient range of pupils; she herself Erect behind a desk of satin-wood, A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon eyed. And on the hither side, or so she look'd, Of twenty summers. At her left, a child, In shining draperies, headed like a star. Her maiden babe, a double April old, Aglaia slept. We sat : the Lady glanced : Then Florian, but no livelier than the dame That whisper'd * Asses' ears ' among the sedge, * My sister.' * Comely, too, by all that's fair,' Said Cyril. * O hush, hush ! ' and she began. ' This world was once a fluid haze of light. Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets : then the monster, then the man; Tattoo'd or woaded, winter-clad in skins. Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate; As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here Among the lowest.' Thereupon she took A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past; Glanced at the legendary Amazon As emblematic of a nobler age; THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo; Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines Of empire, and the woman's state in each. How far from just; till warming with her theme She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique And little-footed China, touch'd on Ma- homet With much contempt, and came to chivalry : When some respect, however slight, was paid To woman, superstition all awry: However then commenced the dawn: a beam Had slanted forward, falling in a land Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed, Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared To leap the rotten pales of prejudice, Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert None lordlier than themselves but that which made Woman and man. She had founded; they must build. Here might they learn whatever men were taught : Let them not fear : some said their heads were less : Some men's were small; not they the least of men; For often fineness compensated size : Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew With using ; thence the man's, if more was more ; He took advantage of his strength to be First in the field : some ages had been lost; But woman ripen'd earlier, and her life Was longer; and albeit their glorious names Were fewer, scatter'd stars, yet since in truth The highest is the measure of the man, And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so With woman : and in arts of government Elizabeth and others; arts of war The peasant Joan and others; arts of grace Sappho and others vied with any man : And, last not least, she who had left her place, And bow'd he'r state to them, that they might grow To use and power on this Oasis, lapt In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight Of ancient influence and scorn. At last She rose upon a wind of prophecy Dilating on the future; 'everywhere Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, Two in the tangled business of the world, Two in the liberal offices of life. Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss Of science, and the secrets of the mind : Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more: And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth Should bear a double growth of those rare souls. Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.' She ended here, and beckon'd us : the rest Parted ; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she Began to address us, and was moving on In gratulation, till as when a boat Tacks, and the slacken'd sail flaps, all her voice Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried *My brother!' 'Well, my sister.' 'O,' she said, 'What do you here? and in this dress? and these? Why who are these? a wolf within the foldr A pack of wolves ! the Lord be gracious to me ! A plot, a plot, a plot, to ruin all ! ' 'No plot, no plot,' he answer'd. * Wretched boy, 172 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. How saw you not the inscription on the gate, Let no man enter in on pain of DEATH ? ' * And if I had,' he answer'd, ' who could think The softer Adams of your Academe, sister, Sirens tho' they be, were such As chanted on the blanching bones of men?' ' But you will find it otherwise,' she said. ' You jest : ill jesting with edge-tools ! my vow Binds me to speak, and O that iron will. That axelike edge unturnable, our Head, The Princess.' ' Well then, Psyche, take my life. And nail me like a weasel on a grange For warning : bury me beside the gate, And cut this epitaph above my bones; Here lies a brother by a sister slain. All for the common good of ivomankind.^ * Let me die too,' said Cyril, ' having seen And heard the Lady Psyche.' I struck in : 'Albeit so mask'd, Madam, I love the truth ; Receive it; and in me behold the Prince Your countryman, affianced years ago To the Lady Ida: here, for here she was, And thus (what other way was left) I came.' *0 Sir, O Prince, I have no country; none; If any, this; but none. Whate'er I was Disrooted, what I am is grafted here. Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe Within this vestal limit, and how should I, Who am not mine, say, live : the thunder- bolt Hangs silent ; but prepare : I speak ; it Tails.' ' Yet pause,' I said : * for that inscription there, 1 think no more of deadly lui'ks therein. Than in a clapper clapping in a garth. To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be, If more and acted on, what follows? war; Your own work marr'd : for this your Academe, Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass With all fair theories only made to gild A stormless summer.' * Let the Princess judge Of that,' she said : ' farewell. Sir — and to you. I shudder at the sequel, but I go.' 'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoin'd^ 'The fifth in line from that old Florian, • Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall (The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights) As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell. And all else fled? we point to it, and we say, The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold, But branches current yet in kindred veins.' 'Are you that Psyche,' Florian added; ' she With whom I sang about the morning hills, Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly, And snared the squirrel of the glen? are you That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow, To smoothe my pillow, mix the foaming draught Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read My sickness down to happy dreams? are you That brother-sister Psyche, both in one? You were that Psyche, but what are you now ? ' * You are that Psyche,' Cyril said, * for whom I would be that for ever which I seem, Woman, if I might sit beside your feet, And glean your scatter'd sapience.' Then once more, 'Are you that LadyPsyche,' I began, 'That on her bridal morn before she past From all her old companions, when the king THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 73 Kiss'd her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties Would still be dear beyond the southern hills; That were there any of our people there In want or peril, there was one to hear And help them? look! for such are these and I.' *Are you that Psyche,' Florian ask'd, 'to whom, In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn Came living while you sat beside the well? The creature laid his muzzle on your lap. And sobb'd, and you sobb'd with it, and the blood Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept. That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you wept. O by the bright head of my little niece, You were that Psyche, and what are you now? ' * You are that Psyche,' Cyril said again, 'The mother of the sweetest little maid. That ever crow'd for kisses.' ' Out upon it ! ' She answer'd, * peace ! and why should I not play The Spartan Mother with emotion, be The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind ? Him you call great : he for the common weal. The fading politics of mortal Rome, As I might slay this child, if good need were. Slew both his sons: and I, shall I, on whom The secular emancipation turns Of half this world, be swerved from right to save A prince, a brother? a little will I yield. Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you. O hard, when love and duty clash ! I fear My conscience will not count me fleck- less; yet — Hear my conditions : promise (otherwise You perish) as you came, to slip away, To-day, to-morrow, soon : it shall be said. These women were too barbarous, would not learn; They fled, who might have shamed us: promise, all.' What could we else, we promised each; and she. Like some wild creature newly-caged, commenced A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused By Florian; holding out her lily arms Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said : * I knew you at the first : tho* you have grown You scarce have alter'd: I am sad and glad To see you, Florian. / give thee to death My brother ! it was duty spoke, not I. My needful seeming harshness, pardon it. Our mother, is she well?' With that she kiss'd His forehead, then, a moment after, clung About him, and betwixt them blossom'd up P'rom out a common vein of memory Sweet household talk, and ' phrases ot the hearth. And far allusion, till the gracious dews Began to glisten and to fall: and while They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice, * I brought a message here from Lady Blanche.' Back started she, and turning round we saw The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, Melissa, with her hand upon the lock, A rosy blonde, and in a college gown. That clad her like an April dartodilly (Her mother's colour) witn her lip- apart, And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes. As bottom agates seen to wave and float In crystal currents of clear morning seas. So stood that same fair creature at the door. Then Lady Psyche, * Ah — Melissa — you i 174 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. You heard us? ' arid Melissa, 'O pardon me I heard, I could not help it, did not wish : But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not. Nor think I bear that heart within my breast, To give three gallant gentlemen to death.' ' I trust you,' said the other, ' for we two Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine : But yet your mother's jealous tempera- ment — Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove The Danaid of a leaky vase, for fear This whole foundation ruin, and I lose My honour, these their lives.' * Ab, fear me not,' Replied Melissa; * no — I would not tell. No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness. No, not to answer, Madam, all those hard things That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.' * Be it so,' the other, * that we still may lead The new light up, and culminate in peace, For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.' Said Cyril, 'TVIadam, he the wisest man Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls Of Lebanonian cedar : nor should you (Tho', Madam, yoic should answer, we would ask) Less welcome find among us, if you came Among us, debtors for our lives to you. Myself for something more.' He said not what. But 'Thanks,' she answer'd, *Go: we have been too long Together: keep your hoods about the face; They do so that affect abstraction here. Speak little; mix not with the rest; and hold Your promise : all, I trust, may yet be well.' We turn'd to go, but Cyril took the child, And held her round the knees against his waist, And blew the swoU'n cheek of a trump- eter, While Psyche Avatch'd them, smiling and the child Push'd her flat hand against his face and laugh'd; And thus our conference closed. And then we stroll'd For half the day thro' stately theatres Bench'd crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard The grave Professor. On the lecture slate The circle rounded under female hands With flawless demonstration : follow'd then A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words long That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever : then we dipt in all I'hat treats of whatsoever is, the state. The total chronicles of man, the mind. The morals, something of the frame, the rock. The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower. Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest. And whatsoever can be taught and known ; Till like three horses that have broken fence. And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn. We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke : * Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we.' 'They hunt old trails,' said Cyril, 'very well; But when did woman ever yet invent?' ' Ungracious ! ' answered Florian; ' have you learnt No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talk'd The trash that made me sick, and almost sad ? ' * O trash,' he said, ' but with a kernel in it. Should I not call her wise, who made me wise? And learnt? I learnt more from her in a flash, THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. 175 Than if my brainpan were an empty hull, And every Muse tumbled a science in. A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, And round these halls a thousand baby loves Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts. Whence follows many a vacant pang; butO With me, Sir, enter'd in the bigger boy, The Head of all the golden-shafted firm, The long-limb'd lad that had a Psyche too; He cleft me thro' the stomacher; and now What think you of it, Florian? do I chase The substance or the shadow? will it hold? I have no sorcerer's malison on me, No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I Flatter myself that always everywhere I know the substance when I see it. Well, Are castles shadows? Three of them? Is she The sweet proprietress a shadow? If not, Shall those three castles patch my tat- ter'd coat? For dear are those three castles to my wants. And dear is sister Psyche to my heart, And two dear things are one of double worth. And much I might have said, but that my zone Unmann'd me : then the Doctors ! O to hear The Doctors! O to watch the thirsty plants Imbibing ! once or twice I thought to roar. To break my chain, to shake my mane : but thou. Modulate me. Soul of mincing mimicry ! Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat; Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet Star-sisters answering under crescent brows; Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek, Where they like swallows coming out of time Will wonder why they came : but hark the bell For dinner, let us go ! ' And in we stream'd Among the columns, pacing staid and still By twos and threes, till all from end to end . With beauties every shade of brown and fair In colours gayer than the morning mist, The long hall glitter'd like a bed of flowers. How might a man not wander from his wits Pierced thro' with eyes, but that I kept mine own Intent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams, The second-sight of some Astraean age, Sat compass'd with professors : they, the while, Discuss'd a doubt and tost it to and fro : A clamour thicken'd, mixt with inmost terms Of art and science : Lady Blanche alone Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments. With all her autumn tresses falsely brown. Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat In act to spring. At last a solemn grace Concluded, and we sought the gardens : there One walk'd reciting by herself, and one In this hand held a volume as to read. And smoothed a petted peacock down with that : Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by. Or under arches of the marble bridge Hung, shadow'd from the heat : some hid and sought In the orange thickets : others tost a ball Above the fountain-jets, and back again With laughter: others lay about the lawns. Of the older sort, and murmur'd that their May Was passing: what was learning unto them? They wish'd to marry; they could rule a house ; Men hated learned women : but we three Sat muffled like the Fates; and often came Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts Of gentle satire, kin to charity. 176 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. That harm'd not: then day droopt; the chapel bells Call'd us: we left the walks; we mixt with those Six hundred maidens clad in purest white, Before two streams of light from wall to wall, While the great organ almost burst his pipes, Groaning for power, and rolling thro' the court A long melodious thunder to the sound Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies. The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven A blessing on her labours for the world. III. Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow. Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon ; Father will come to his babe in the nest. Silver sails all out of the west ^ Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. Morn in the white wake of the morning star Came furrowing all the orient into gold. We rose, and each by other drest with care Descended to the court that lay three parts in shadow, but the Muses' heads were touch'd Above the darkness from their native East, There while we stood beside the fount, and watch'd Or seem'd to watch the dancing bubble, approach'd Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep. Or srief, and glowing round her dewy ^ves ' The circled Iris of a night of tears; * And fly,' she cried, ' O fly, while yet you may 1 My mother knows : ' and when I ask'd her ' how,' ' My fault,' she wept, ' my fault ! and yet not mine; Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me. My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night To rail at Lady Psyche and her side. She says the Princess should have been the Head, Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms; And so it was agreed when first they came ; But Lady Psyche was the right hand now, And she the left, or not, or seldom used; Hers more than half the students, all the love. And so last night she fell to canvass you : Her countrywomen ! she did not envy her. " Who ever saw such wild barbarians? Girls? — more like men!" and at these words the snake. My secret, seem'd to stir within rhy breast; And oh, Sirs, could I help it, but my cheek Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd : " O marvellously modest maiden, you ! Men ! girls, like men ! why, if they had been men You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus For wholesale comment." Pardon, I am shamed That I must needs repeat for my excuse What looks so little graceful : " men " (for still My mother went revolving on the word) " And so they are, — very like men in- deed — And with that woman closeted for hours ! " Then came these dreadful words out one by one, "Why — these — are — men:" I shud- der'd : *' and you know it." "O ask me nothing," I said: "And she knows too. And she conceals it." So my mother clutch'd THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. [77 The truth at once, but with no word from me; And now thus early risen she goes to inform The Princess: Lady Psyche will be crush'd; But you may yet be saved, and therefore fly: But heal me with your pardon ere you go.' ' What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a blush?' Said Cyril : * Pale one, blush again : than wear Those lilies, better blush our lives away. Yet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven,' He added, ' lest some classic Angel speak In scorn of us, "They mounted, Gahy- medes, To tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn." But I will melt this marble into wax To yield us farther furlough : ' and he went. Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought He scarce would prosper. 'Tell us,' Florian ask'd, •How grew this feud betwixt the right and left.' • O long ago,' she said, ' betwixt these two Division smoulders hidden; 'tis my mother, Too jealous, often fretful as the wind Pent in a crevice : much 1 bear with her : I never knew my father, but she says (God help her) she was wedded to a fool; And still she rail'd against the state of things. She had the care of Lady Ida's youth, And from the Queen's decease she brought her up. But when your sister came she won the heart Of Ida : they were still together, grew ( For so they said themselves) inosculated ; Consonant chords that shiver to one note; One mind in all things : vet my mother still Affirms your Psyche thieved her theories, And angled with them for her pupil's love : She calls her plagiarist; I know not what : But I must go : I dare nut tarry,' and light, As flies the -shadow of a bird, she fled. Then murmur'd Florian gazing after her, ' An open-hearted maiden, true and pure. If I could love, why this were she : hov\ pretty Her blushing was, and how she blush'i again. As if to close with Cyril's random wish : Not like your Princess cramm'd with erring pride. Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags iii tow.' ' The crane,' I said, * may chatter of the crane, The dove may murmur of the dove, but I An eagle clang an eagle to the sphere. My princess, O my princess ! true she errs, But in her own grand way : being herself Three times more noble than three score of men. She sees herself in every woman else. And so she wears her error like a crown To blind the truth and me : for her, and her, Hebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix The nectar; but — ah she — whene'er she moves The Samian Here rises and she speaks A Memnon smitten with the morning Sun.' So saying from the court we paced, and gain'd The terrace ranged along the Northern front. And leaning there on those balusters, high Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale That blown about the foliage underneath, And sated with the innumerable rose, Beat balm upon our eyelids. Hither came Cyril, and yawning 'O hard task,' he cried; *No fighting shadows here! I forced a way Thro' solid opposition crabb'd andgnari'd. Better to clear prime forests, heave and thump 178 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. A league of street in summer solstice down, Than hammer at this reverend gentle- woman, I knock'd and bidden, enter'd; found her there At point to move, and settled in her eyes The green malignant light of coming storm. Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well- oil'd, As man's could be; yet maiden-meek I pray'd Concealment : she demanded who we were. And why we came? I fabled nothing fair, But, your example pilot, told her all. Up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye. But when I dwelt upon your old affiance. She ansvver'd sharply that I talk'd astray. I urged the fierce inscription on the gate, And our three hves. True — we had hmed ourselves With open eyes, and we must take the chance. But such extremes, I told her, well might harm The woman's cause. "Not more than now," she said, ** So puddled as it is with favouritism." I tried the mother's heart. Shame might befall Melissa, knowing, saying not she knew : Her answer was, " Leave me to deal with that." I spoke of war to come and many deaths. And she replied, her duty was to speak. And duty duty, clear of consequences. I grew discouraged, Sir; but since I knew No rock so hard but that a little wave May beat admission in a thousand years, I recommenced; " Decide not ere you pause. I find you here but in the second place, Some say the third — the authentic foun- dress you. I offer boldly : we will seat you highest : Wink at our advent : help my prince to gain His rightful bride, and here I promise you Some palace in our land, where you shall reign The head and heart of all our fair she- world, And your great name flow on with broad- ening time For ever." Well, she ba;lanced this a little, And told me she would answer us to-day, Meantime be mute : thus much, nor more I gain'd.' He ceasing, came a message from the Head. 'That afternoon the Princess rode to take The dip of certain strata to the North. Would we go with her? we should find the land Worth seeing; and the river made a fall Out yonder : ' then she pointed on to where A double hill ran up his furrowy forks Beyond the thick-leaved platans of the vale. Agreed to, this, the day fled on thro' all Its range of duties to the appointed hour. Then summon'd to the porch we went. She stood Among her maidens, higher by the head, Her back against a pillar, her foot on one Of those tame leopards. Kittenlike he roll'd And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near; I gazed. On a sudden my strange seizure came Upon me, the weird vision of our house : The Princess Ida seem'd a hollow show, Her gay-furr'd cats a painted fantasy, Her college and her maidens empty masks, And I myself the shadow of a dream. For fell things were and were not. Yet I felt My heart beat thick with passion and with awe; Then from my breast the involuntary sigh Brake, as she smote me with the light <3f eyes THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 79 That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook My pulses, till to horse we got, and so Went forth in long retinue following up The river as it narrow'd to the hills. I rode beside her and to me she said : *0 friend, we trust that you esteem'd us not Too harsh to your companion yestermorn; Unwillingly we spake.' ' No — not to her,' I answer'd, ' but to one of whom we spake Your Highness might have seem'd the thing you say.' 'Again?' she cried, 'are you ambassa- dresses From him to me? we give you, being strange, A license : speak, and let the topic die.' I stammer'd that I knew him — could have wish'd — 'Our king expects — was there no pre- contract? There is no truer-hearted — ah, you seem All he prefigured, and he could not see The bird of passage flying south but long'd To follow : surely, if your Highness keep Your purport, you will shock him ev'n to death. Or baser courses, children of despair.' * Poor boy,' she said, ' can he not read — no books? Quoit, tennis, ball — no games? nor deals in that Which men delight in, martial exercise? To nurse a blind ideal like a girl, Methinks he seems no better than a girl; As girls were once, as we ourself have been : We had our dreams; perhaps he mixt with them : We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it. Being other — since we learnt our mean- ing here, To lift the woman's fall'n divinity Upon an even pedestal with man.' She paused, and added with a haughtier smile ' And as to precontracts, we move, my friend. At no man's beck, but know ourself and thee, Vashti, noble Vashti ! Summon'd out She kept her state, and left the drunken king To brawl at Shushan underneath the palms.' * Alas your Highness breathes full East,' I said, *0n that which leans to you. i know the Prince, 1 prize his truth : and then how vast a work To assail this gray preeminence of man ! You grant me license; might I use it? think; Ere half be done perchance your life may fail; Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan. And takes and ruins all; and thus your pains May only make that footprint upon sand Which old-recurring waves of prejudice Resmooth to nothing : might I dread that you, With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss. Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due, Love, children, happiness?' And she exclaim'd, ' Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild ! What ! tho' your Prince's love were like a God's, Have we not made ourself the sacrifice? You are bold indeed : we are not talk'd to thus : Yet will we say for children, would they grew Like field-flowers everywhere ! we like them well : But children die; and let me tell you, Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die; They with the sun and moon renew their light i8o THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. For ever, blessing those that look on them. Children — that men may pluck them from our hearts, Kill us with pity, break us with our- selves — O — children — there is nothing upon earth More miserable than she that has a son And sees him err : nor would we work for fame; Tho' she perhaps might reap the applause of Great, Who learns the one pou sto whence after- hands May move the world, tho' she herself effect But little : wherefore up and act, nor shrink ':'^3r fear our solid aim be dissipated By frail successors. Would, indeed, we had been, In lieu of many mortal flies, a race Of giants living, each, a thousand years, That we might see our own work out, and watch The sandy footprint harden into stone.' I answer'd nothing, doubtful in myself If that strange Poet-princess with her grand Imaginations might at all be won. And she broke out interpreting my thoughts : * No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you; We are used to that : for women, up till this Cramp'd under worse than South-sea-isle taboo, Dwarfs of the gynsgceum, fail so far In high desire, they know not, cannot guess How much their welfare is a passion to us. If we could give them surer, quicker proof — Oh if our end were less achievable By slow approaches, than by single act Of immolation, any phase of death, We were as prompt to spring against the pikes. Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it, To compass our dear sisters' liberties.' She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear; And up we came to where the river sloped To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks A breadth of thunder. O'er it shook the woods. And danced the colour, and, below, stuck out The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roar'd Before man was. She gazed awhile and said, * As these rude bones to us, are we to her That will be.' * Dare we dream of that,' I ask'd, * Which wrought us, as the workman and his work, That practice betters ? ' ' How,' she cried, * you love The metaphysics ! read and earn our prize, A golden brooch : beneath an emerald plane Sits Diotima, teaching him that died Of hemlock; our device; wrought to the life; She rapt upon her subject, he on her: For there are schools for all.' *And yet,' I said, * Methinks I have not found among them all One anatomic' 'Nay, we thought of that,' She answer'd, ' but it pleased us not : in truth We shudder but to dream our maids should ape Those monstrous males that carve the living hound. And cram him with the fragments of the grave, Or in the dark dissolving human heart, And holy secrets of this microcosm. Dabbling a shameless hand with shame- ful jest, Encarnalise their spirits : yet we know Knowledge is knowledge, and this mat- ter hangs : Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty, Nor willing men should come among us, learnt. THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. [8i For many weary moons before we came, This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself Would tend upon you. To your ques- tion now, Which touches on the workman and his work. Let thei-e be light and there was light : 'tis so : For was, and is, and will be, are but is; And all creation is one act at once. The birth of light : but we that are not all, -As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make One act a phantom of succession : thus Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time; But in the shadow will we work, and mould The woman to the fuller day.' She spake With kindled eyes : we rode a league beyond, And, o'er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came On flowery levels underneath the crag, Full of all beauty. * O how sweet,' I said (For I was half-oblivious of my mask), 'To linger here with one that loved us.' 'Yea,' She answer'd, * or with fair philosophies That lift the fancy; for indeed these fields Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns. Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw The soft white vapour streak the crowned towers Built to the Sun : ' then, turning to her maids, ' Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward; Lay out the viands.' At the word, they raised A tent of satin, elaborately wrought W^ith fair Corinna's triumph; here she stood. Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek, The woman-conqueror ; woman-con- quer'd there The bearded Victor of ten-thousand hymns, And all the men mourn'd at his side : but we Set forth to climb; then, climbing, Cyril kept With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I With mine affianced. Many a little hand Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, Many a light foot shone like a jewel set In the dark crag: and then we turn'd, we wound About the cliffs, the copses, out and in. Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff, Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all The rosy heights came out above the lawns. IV. The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying. Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear. And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O love, they die in yon rich sky. They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul. And grow for ever and for ever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dj'ing, dying, dying. •'There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun, If that hypothesis of theirs be sound,' Said Ida; 'let us down and rest; ' and we I82 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. Down from the lean and wrinkled preci- pices, By every coppice-feather'd chasm and cleft, Dropt thro' the ambrosial gloom to where below No bigger than a glow-worm shone the tent Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she lean'd on me, Descending; once or twice she lent her hand, And blissful palpitations in the blood, Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell. But when we planted level feet, and dipt Beneath the satin dome and enter'd in. There leaning deep in broider'd down we sank Our elbows : on a tripod in the midst A fragrant flame rose, and before us glow'd Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold. Then she, * Let some one sing to us : lightlier move The minutes fledged with music : ' and a maid. Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang. -'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn- fields. And thinking of the days that are no more. ' Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld. Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. * Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more, ' Dear as remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others: deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.' She ended with such passion that the tear, She sang of, shook and fell, an earing pearl *Lost in her bosom : but with some dis- dain Answer'd the Princess, ' If indeed there haunt About the moulder'd lodges of the Past So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men. Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool And so pace by: but thine are fancies hatch'd In silken-folded idleness; nor is it Wiser to weep a true occasion lost. But trim our sails, and let old bygones be, While down the streams that float us each and all To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice. Throne after throne, and molten on the waste Becomes a cloud : for all things serve their time Toward that great year of equal mights and rights, Nor would I tight with iron laws, in the end Found golden : let the past be past; let be Their cancell'd Babels: tho' the rough kex break The starr'd mosaic, and the beard-blown goat Kang on the shaft, and the wild figtree split Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear A trumpet in the distance pealing news Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle^ burns Above the unrisen morrow : ' then to me; ' Know you no song of your own land,' she said, 'Not such as moans about the retrospect, But deals with the other distance and the hues Of promise; not a death's-head at the wine.' THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 183 Then I remember'd one myself had made, What time I watch'd the swallow wing- ing south From mine own land, part made long since, and part Now while I sang, and maidenlike as far As I could ape their treble, did I sing. ' O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves. And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee. * O tell her. Swallow, thou that knowest each. That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And dark and true and tender is the North. ' O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, And cheep and twitter twenty million loves. * O were I thou that she might take me in. And lay me on her bosom, and her heart Would rock the snowy cradle till I died. ' Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, Delaying as the tender ash delays To clothe herself, when all the woods are green? ' O tell her. Swallow, that thy brood is flown: Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, But in the North long since my nest is made. ' O tell her, brief is life but love is long. And brief the sun of summer in the North, And brief the moon of beauty in the South. ' O Swallow, flying from the golden woods. Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine, And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.' I ceased, and all the ladies, each at each, Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time, Stared with great eyes, and laugh'd with alien lips, And knew not what they meant; for still my voice Rang false : but smiling, * Not for thee,' she said, ' O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan Shall burst her veil : marsh-divers, rather, maid. Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow crake Grate her harsh kindred in the grass: and this A mere love-poem ! O for such, my friend. We hold them, slight: they mind us of the time When we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves are men, That lute and flute fantastic tenderness, And dress the victim to the offering up. And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise, And play the slave to gain the tyranny. Poor soul! 1 had a maid of honour once; She wept her true eyes blind for such a one, A rogue of canzonets and serenades. I loved her. Peace be with her. She is dead. So they blaspheme the muse ! But great is song Used to great ends : ourself have often tried Valkyrian hymns, or into rhythm have dash'd The passion of the prophetess; for song Is duer unto freedom, force and growth Of spirit than to junketing and love. Love is it ? Would this same mock-love, and this Mock-Hymen were laid up like winter bats, Till all men grew to rate us at our worth, Not vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes To be dandled, no, but living wills, and sphered Whole in ourselves and owed to none. Enough ! Bitt now to leaven play with profit, you. Know you no song, the true growth of your soil, That gives the manners of your country- women?' She spoke and turn'd her sumptuous head with eyes Of shining expectation fixt on mine. Then while I dragg'd my brains for such a song, Cyril, with whom the bell-mouth'd glass had wrought. Or master'd by the sense of sport, began To troll a careless, careless tavern-catch i84 THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences Unmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at him, I frowning; Psyche flush'd and wann'd and shook; The ladylike Melissa droop'd her brows; ' Forbear,' the Princess cried; 'Forbear, Sir,' I ; And heated thro' and thro' with wrath and love, I smote him on the breast; he started up; There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd; Melissa clamour'd, ' Flee the death; ' *To horse,' Said Ida; ' home 1 to horse ! ' and fled, as flies A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk. When some one batters at the dovecote doors, Disorderly the women. Alone I stood With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart, In the pavilion : there like parting hopes I heard them passing from me : hoof by hoof, And every hoof a knell to my desires, Clang'd on the bridge; and then another shriek, 'The Head, the Head, the Princess, O the Head!' For blind with rage she miss'd the plank, and roll'd In the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom : There whirl'd her white robe like a blossom'd branch Rapt to the horrible fall : a glance I gave, No more; but woman-vested as I was Plunged; and the flood drew; yet I caught her; then Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left The weight of all the hopes of half the world. Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree Was half-disrooted from his place and stoop'd To drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave Mid-channel. Right on this we drove and caught, And grasping down the boughs I gain'd the shore. There stood her maidens glimmeringly group' d In the hollow bank. One reaching for- ward drew My burthen from mine arms; they cried ' she lives : ' They bore her back into the tent : but I, So much a kind of shame within me wrought, Not yet endured to meet her opening eyes. Nor found my friends; but push'd alone on foot (For since her horse was lost I left her mine) Across the woods, and less from Indian craft Than beelike instinct hiveward, found at length The garden portals. Two great statues. Art And Science, Caryatids, lifted up A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves Of open-work in which the hunter rued His rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows Had sprouted, and the branches there- upon Spread out at top, and grimly spiked the gates. A Httle space was left betv^^een the horns. Thro' which I clamber'd o'er at top with pain, Dropt on the sward, and up the linden walks, And, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue. Now poring on the glowworm, now the star, I paced the terrace, till the Bear had wheel'd Thro' a great arc his seven slow suns. A step Of lightest echo, then a loftier form Than female, moving thro' the uncertain gloom, Disturb'd me with the doubt 'if this were she,' But it was Florian. * Hist, O. hist,' he said, THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. [85 'They seek us: out so late is out of rules. Moreover " seize the strai)gers " is the cry. How came you here?' 1 told him: 'I,' said he, ' Last ot the train, a moral leper, I, To whom none spake, half-sick at heart, return'd. Arriving all confused among the rest With hooded brows I crept into the hall, And, couch'd behind a Judith, under- neath The head of Holofernes peep'd and saw. Girl after girl was call'd to trial : each Disclaim'd all knowledge of us: last of all, Melissa : trust me. Sir, I pitied her. She, question'd if she knew us men, at first Was silent ; closer prest, denied it not : And then, demanded if her mother knew, Or Psyche, she affirm'd not, or denied : From whence the Royal mind, famihar with her. Easily gather'd either guilt. She sent For Psyche, but she was not there ; she call'd For Psyche's child to cast it from the doors; She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face; And I slipt out : but whither will you now? And where are Psyche, Cyril? both are fled: What, if together? that were not so well. Would rather we had never come ! I dread His wildness, and the chances of the dark.' 'And yet,' I said, 'you wrong him more than I That struck him : this is proper to the clown, Tho' smock'd, or furr'd and purpled, still the clown, To harm the thing that trusts him, and to shame That which he says he loves : for Cyril, howe'er He deal in frolic, as to-night — the song Might have been worse and sinn'd in grosser lips Beyond all pardon — as it is, I hold These flashes on the surface are not he. He has a solid base of temperament : But as the waterlily starts and slides Upon the level in little puffs of wind, Tho' anchor'd to the bottom, such is he.' Scarce had I ceased when from a tama- risk near Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying, ' Names : ' He, standing still, was clutch'd; but 1 began To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind And double in and out the boles, and race By all the fountains : fleet I was of foot : Before me shower'd the rose in flakes; behind I heard the puffd pursuer; at mine ear Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not. And secret laughter tickled all my soul. At last I hook'd my ankle in a vine, That claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne, And falling on my face was caught and known. They haled us to the Princess where she sat High in the hall : above her droop'd a lamp, And made the single jewel on her brow Burn like the mystic fire on a mast- head. Prophet of storm : a handmaid on each side Bow'd toward her, combing out her long black hair Damp from the river; and close behind her stood Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men. Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, And labour. Each was like a Druid rock; Or like a spire of land that stands apart Cleft from the main, and wail'd about with mews. j86 THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. Then, as we came, the crowd dividing clove An advent to the throne : and there- beside, Half-naked as if caught at once from bed And tumbled on the purple footcloth, lay The lily-shining child; and on the left, Bow'd on her palms and folded up from wrong. Her round white shoulder shaken with her sobs, Melissa knelt; but Lady Blanche erect Stood up and spake, an affluent orator. * It was not thus, O Princess, in old days : You prized my counsel, lived upon my lips: I led you then to all the CastaHes; I fed you with the milk of every Muse ; I loved you like this kneeler, and you me Your second mother: those were gra- cious times. Then came your new friend : you began to change — I saw it and grieved — to slacken and to cool; Till taken with her seeming openness You turn'd your warmer currents all to her, To me you froze : this was my meed for all. Yet I bore up in part from ancient love. And partly that I hoped to win you back. And partly conscious of my own deserts. And partly that you were my civil head. And chiefly you were born for something great, In which I might your fellow-worker be, When time should serve; and thus a noble scheme Grew up from seed we two long since had sown; In us true growth, in her a Jonah's gourd. Up in one night and due to sudden sun : We took this palace ; but even from the first You stood in your own light and darken'd mine. What student came but that you planed her path To Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise, A foreigner, and I your countrywoman, I your old friend and tried, she new in all? But still her lists were swell'd and mine were lean; Yet I bore up in hope she would be known : Then came these wolves : they knew her ; they endured, Long-closeted with her the yestermorn, To tell her what they were, and she to hear: And me none told : not less to an eye like mine A lidless watcher of the public weal, Last night, their mask was patent, and my foot Was to you : but I thought again : I fear'd To meet a cold " We thank you, we shall hear of it From Lady Psyche : " you had gone to her, She told, perforce; and winning easy grace, No doubt, for slight delay, remain'd among us In our young nursery still unknown, the stem Less grain than touchwood, while my honest heat Were all miscounted as malignant haste To push my rival out of place and power. But public use required she should be known; And since my oath was ta'en for public use, I broke the letter qf it to keep the sense. I spoke not then at first, but watch'd them well, Saw that they kept apart, no mischief done; And yet this day (tho' you should hate me for it) I came to tell you; found that you had gone, Ridd'n to the hills, she likewise : now, I thought, That surely she will speak ; if not, then I : Did she? These monsters blazon'd what they were. According to the coarseness of their kind, For thus I hear; and known at last (my work) THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. 187 A.ncl full of cowardice and guilty shame, I grant in her some sense of shame, she flies; And I remain on whom to wreak your rage, I, that have lent my life to build up yours, I that have wasted here health, wealth, and time. And talent, I — you know it — I will not boast : Dismiss me, and I prophesy your plan. Divorced from my experience, will be chaff P'or every gust of chance, and men will say We did not know the real light, but chased The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread.' She ceased : the Princess answer'd • coldly, * Good : Your oath is broken : we dismiss you : go. For this lost lamb (she pointed to the child) Our mind is changed : we take it to our- self.' Thereat the Lady stretch'd a vulture throat, And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile. * The plan was mine. I built the nest,* she said, ' To hatch the cuckoo. Rise ! ' and stoop'd to updrag Melissa : she, half on her mother propt, Half-drooping from her, turn'd her face, and cast A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer, Which melted Florian's fancy as she hung, A Niobean daughter, one arm out. Appealing to the bolts of Heaven; and while We gazed upon her came a little stir About the doors, and on a sudden rush'd Among us, out of breath, as one pursued, A woman-post in flying raiment. Fear Stared in her eyes, and chalk'd her face, and wing'd Her transit to the throne, whereby she fell Delivering seal'd dispatches which the Head Took half-amazed, and in her lion's mood Tore open, silent we with blind surmise Regarding, while she read, till over brow And cheek and bosom brake the wrath- ful bloom As of some fire against a stormy cloud. When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens; For anger most it seem'd, while now her breast. Beaten with some great passion at htt- heart. Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard In the dead hush the papers that she held Rustle : at once the lost lamb at her feet Sent out a bitter bleating for its dam; The plaintive cry jarr'd on her ire; she crush'd The scrolls together, made a sudden turn As if to speak, but, utterance failing her. She whirlVl them on to me, as who should say 'Read,' and I read — two letters — one her sire's. * Fair daughter, when we sent the Prince your way We knew not your ungracious laws, which learnt. We, conscious of what temper you are built, Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell Into his father's hands, who has this night, You lying close upon his territory, Slipt round and in the dark invested you, And here he keeps me hostage for his son.' The second was my father's running thus : * You have our son : touch not a hair of his head : Render him up unscathed : give him your hand : Cleave to your contract : tho' indeed we hear You hold the woman is the better man: THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. A rampant heresy, such as if it spread Would make all women kick against their Lords Thro' all the world, and which might well deserve That we this night should pluck your palace down; And we will do it, unless you send us back Our son, on the instant, whole.' So far I read; And then stood up and spoke impetu- ously. * O not to pry and peer on your reserve, But led by golden wishes, and a hope The child of regal compact, did I break Your precinct; not a scorner of your sex But venerator, zealous it should be All that it might be: hear me, for I bear, Tho' man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs. From the flaxen curl to the gray lock a life Less mine than yours : my nurse would tell me of you; I babbled for you, as babies for the moon, Vague brightness; when a boy, you stoop'd to me From all high places, lived in all fair lights. Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south And blown to inmost north; at eve and dawn With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods; The leader wildswan in among the stars Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light The mellow breaker murmur'd Ida. Now, Because I would have reach'd you, had you been Sphered up with Cassiopeia, or the en- throned Persephone in Hades, now at length, hose winters of abeyance all worn out, man I came to see you: but, indeed, .)t in this frequence can I lend full tongue, ) noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait On you, their centre : let me say but this. That many a famous man and woman, town And landskip, have I heard of, after seen The dwarfs of presage : tho' when known, there grew Another kind of beauty in detail Made them worth knowing; but in you I found My boyish dream involved and dazzled down And master'd, while 'that after-beauty makes Such head from act to act, from hour to hour. Within me, that except you slay me here. According to your bitter statute-book, I cannot cease to follow you, as they say The seal does music; who desire you more Than growing boys their manhood; dy- ing lips, With many thousand matters left to do. The breath of life; O more than poor men wealth, Than sick men health — yours, yours, not mine — but half Without you; with you, whole; and of those halves You worthiest; and howe'er you block and bar Your heart with system out from mine, I hold That it becomes no man to nurse despair, But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms To follow up the worthiest till he die : Yet that I came not all unauthorised Behold your father's letter.' On one knee Kneeling, I gave -it, which she caught, and dash'd Unopen'd at her feet : a tide of fierce Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips, As waits a river level with the dam Ready to burst and flood the world with foam : And so she would have spoken, but there rose A hubbub in the court of half the maids Gather'd together : from the illumined hall Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes. And rainbow robes, and gems and gem- like eyes. THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. And gold and golden heads; they to and fio Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale. All open-niouth'd, all gazing to the light, Some crying there was an army in the land. And some that men were in the very walls. And some they cared not; till a clamour ,grew As of a new-world Babel, woman-built, And worse-confounded : high above them stood The placid marble Muses, looking peace. Not peace she look'd, the Head: but rising up Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so To the open window moved, remaining there Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light Dash themselves dead. She stretch'd her arms and call'd Across the tumult and the tumult fell. ' What fear ye, brawlers ? am not I your Head? On me, me, me, the storm first breaks: /dare All these male thunderbolts: what is it ye fear? Peace ! there are those to avenge us and they come : If not, — myself were like enough, O girls, To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights. And clad in iron burst the ranks of war, Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause. Die : yet 1 blame you not so much for fear; Six thousand years of fear have made you that. From which I would redeem you: but for those That stir this hubbub — you and you — I know Your faces there in the crowd — to-morrow morn We hold a great convention : then shall they That love their voices more than duty, learn With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live No wiser than their mothers, household stuff. Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame, Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown. The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels, But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum. To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour. For ever slaves at home and fools abroad.' She, ending, waved her hands : thereat the crowd Muttering, dissolved : then with a smile, that look'd A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff. When all the glens are drown'd in azure gloom Of thunder-shower, she floated to us and said : *You have done well and like a gentleman, And like a prince : you have our thanks for all : And you look well too in your woman's dress : Well have you done and like a gentleman. You saved our life: we owe you bitter. thanks : Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood — Then men had said — but now — What hinders me To take such bloody vengeance on you both? — Yet since our father — W^asps in our good hive. You would-be quenchers of the light to be, Barbarians, grosser than your native bears — 190 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. would I had his sceptre for one hour ! You that have dared to break our bound, and gtrll'd Our servants, wrong'd and lied and thwarted us — / wed with thee ! / bound by precontract Your bride, your bondslave ! not tho' all the gold That veins the world were pack'd to make your crown, And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us: 1 trample on your offers and on you : Begone : we will not look upon you more. Here, push them out at gates.' In wrath she spake. Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough Bent their broad faces toward us and address'd Their motion : twice I sought to plead my cause, But on my shoulder hung their heavy hands, The weight of destiny : so from her face They push'd us, down the steps, and thro' the court, And with grim laughter thrust us out at gates. We cross'd the street and gain'd a petty mound Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard The voices murmuring. While I listen'd, came On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt : I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts; The Princess with her monstrous woman- guard. The jest and earnest working side by side. The cataract and the tumult and the kings Were shadows ; and the long fantastic night With all its doings had and had not been, And all things were and were not. This went by As strangely as it came, and on my spirits Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy; Not long; I shook it off; for spite ol doubts And sudden ghostly shadowings I was one To whom the touch of all mischance but came As night to him that sitting on a hill Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun Set into sunrise; then we moved away. Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums. That beat to battle where he stands; Thy face across his fancy comes, And gives the battle to his hands: A moment, while the trumpets blow. He sees his brood about thy knee; The next, like fire he meets the foe, And strikes him dead for thine and thee. So Lilia sang: we thought her half possess'd. She struck such warbling fury thro' the words ; And, after, feigning pique at what she call'd The raillery, or grotesque, or false sub- lime — Like one that wishes at a dance to change The music — clapt her hands and cried for war. Or some grand fight to kill and make an end : And he that next inherited the tale Half turning to the broken statue, snid, * Sir Ralph has got your colours : if I prove Your knight, and fight your battle, what for me?' It chanced, her empty glove upon the tomb Lay by her like a model of her hand. She took it and she flung it. * Fight,' she said, 'And make us all we would be, great and good.' He knightlike in his cap instead of casque, A cap of Tyrol borrow'd from the hall. Arranged the favour, and assumed the Prince. Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound, We stumliled on a stationary voice, THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY, 191 And 'Stand, who goes?' 'Two from the palace,' I. 'The second two: they wait,' he said, ' pass on ; His Highness wakes : ' and one, that clash'd in arms. By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led Threading the soldier-city, till we heard The drowsy folds of our great ensign shake From blazon'd lions o'er the imperial tent Whispers of war. Entering, the sudden light Dazed me half-blind : I stood and seem'd to hear, As in a poplar grove when a light wind wakes A lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies, Each hissing in his neighbour's ear; and then A strangled titter, out of which there brake On all sides, clamouring etiquette to death. Unmeasured mirth; while now the two old kings Began to wag their baldness up and down. The fresh young captains flash'd their glittering teeth. The huge bush-bearded Barons heaved and blew, And slain with laughter roll'd the gilded Squire. At length my Sire, his rough cheek wet with tears. Panted from weary sides, * King, you are free ! We did but keep you surety for our son, If this be he, — or a draggled mawkin, thou. That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge : ' For I was drench'd with ooze, and torn with briers, More crumpled than a poppy from- the sheath, And all one rag, disprinced from head to heel. L hen some one sent beneath his vaulted palm A whisper'd jest to some one near him, ' Look, He has been among his shado^vs.' * Satan take The old women and their shadows ! (thus the King Roar'd) make yourself a man to fight with men. Go: Cyril told us all.' As boys that slink From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye, Away we stole, and transient in a trice From what was left of faded woman- slough To sheathing splendovirs and the golden scale Of harness, issued in the sun, that now Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, And hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met us. A little shy at first, but by and by We twain, with mutual pardon ask'd and given For stroke and song, resolder'd peace, whereon Follow'd his tale. Amazed he fled away Thro' the dark land, and later in the night Had come on Psyche weeping : * then we fell Into your father's hand, and there she lies. But will not speak, nor stir.' He show'd a tent A stone-shot off: we enter'd in, and there Among piled arms and rough accoutre- ments. Pitiful sight, wrapp'd in a soldier's cloak, Like some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot. And push'd by rude hands from its pedestal, All her fair length upon the ground she lay : And at her head a follower of the camp, A charr'd and wrinkled piece of woman= hood, Sat watching like a watcher by the dead. Then B'lorian knelt, and * Come,' he whisper'd to her, * Lift up your head, sweet sister : lie not thus. 192 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. What have you done but right ? you could not slay Me, nor your prince : look up : be com- forted : Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought, When fall'n in darker virays.' And like- wise I : * Be comforted : have I not lost her too, In whose least act abides the nameless charm That none has else for me ? ' She heard, she moved, She moan'd, a folded voice; and up she sat. And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth As those that mourn half-shrouded over death In deathless marble. ' Her,' she said, 'my friend — Parted from her — betray'd her cause and mine — Where shall I breathe? why kept ye not your faith? O base and bad! what comfort? none for me ! ' To whom remorseful Cyril, ' Yet I pray Take comfort : live, dear lady, for your child ! ' At which she lifted up her voice and cried. 'Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my child, My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more ! For now will cruel Ida keep her back; And either she will die from want of care, Or sicken with ill-usage, when they say The child is hers — for every little fault. The child is hers; and they will beat my girl Remembering her mother : O my flower ! Or they will take her, they will make her hard, And she will pass me by in after-life With some cold reverence worse than were she dead. Ill mother that I was to leave her there. To lag behind, scared by the cry they made. The horror of the shame among them all : But I will go and sit beside the doors, And make a wild petition night and day, Until they hate to hear me like a wind Wailing for ever, till they open to me. And lay my little blossom at my feet, My babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child : And I will take her up and go my way, And satisfy my soul with kissing her: Ah ! what might that man not deserve of me Who gave me back my child?' *Be comforted,' Said Cyril, * you shall have it; ' but again She veil'd her brows, and prone she sank, and so Like tender things that being caught feign death. Spoke not, nor stirr'd. By this a murmur ran Thro' all the camp and inward raced the scouts With rumour of Prince Arac hard at hand. We left her by the woman, and without Found the gray kings at parle : and ' Look you,' cried My father, 'that our compact be fulfiU'd : You have spoilt this child; she laughs at you and man : She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him : But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire; She yields, or war.' Then Gama turn'd to me : * We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time With our strange girl : and yet they say that still You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large : How say you, war or not ? ' * Not war, if possible, O king,' I said, * lest from the abuse of war. The desecrated shrine, the trampled year, The smouldering homestead, and the household flower Torn from the lintel — all the common wrong — A smoke go up thro' which I loom to her Three times a monster : now she lightens scorn At him that mars her plan, but then would hate THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY, 193 (And every voice she talk'd with ratify it, And every face she look'd on justify it) The general foe. More soluble is this knot, By gentleness than war. I want her love. What were I nigher this altho' we dash'd Your cities into shards with catapults, She would not love; — or brought her chain'd, a slave. The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord, Not ever would she love; but brooding turn The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance Were caught within the record of her wrongs, And crush'd to death : and rather, Sire, than this I would the old God of war himself were dead, Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, Or like an old-world mammoth bulk'd in ice, . Not to be molten out.' And roughly spake My father, * Tut, you know them not, the girls. Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think That idiot legend credible. Look vou, Sir! Man is the hunter; woman is his game : The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, W^e hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it, and we ride them down. WheedHng and siding with them ! Out ! for shame ! Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them As he that does the thing they dare not do, Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in Among the women, snares them by the score Platter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho' dash'd with death • He reddens what he kisses : thus I won Your mother, a good mother, a good wife, Worth winning; but this firebrand — gentleness To such as her ! if Cyril spake her true. To catch a dragon in a cherry net, To trip a tigress with a gossamer, Were wisdom to it.' ' Yea but Sire,' I cried, * Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier? No: What dares not Ida do that she should prize The soldier ? I beheld her, when she rose The yesternight, and storming in extremes. Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down Gagelike to man, and had not shunn'd the death, No, not the soldier's : yet I hold her, king, True woman : but you clash them all in one. That have as many diffiferences as we. The violet varies from the lily as far As oak from elm ; one loves the soldier, one The silken priest of peace, one this, one that, And some unworthily; their sinless faith, A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty. Glorifying clown and satyr; whence they need More breadth of culture : is not Ida right? They worth it? truer to the law within? Severer in the logic of a life? Twice as magnetic to sweet influences Of earth and heaven? and she of whom you speak, My mother, looks as whole as some serene Creation minted in the golden moods Of sovereign artists; not a thought, a touch. But pure as lines of green that streak the white Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves; I^say, Not like the piebald miscellany, man. Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire. But whole and one : and take them all- in-all. Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind. As truthful, much that Ida claims as right 194 THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. Had ne'er been mooted, but as frankly theirs As dues of Nature. To our point : not war: Lest I lose all.' ' Nay, nay, you spake but sense,' Said Gama. * We remember love ourself In our sweet youth ; we did not rate him then This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows. You talk almost like Ida : she can talk ; And there is something in it as you say : But you talk kindlier : we esteem you for it.— He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince, I would he had our daughter : for the rest, Our own detention, why, the causes weigh'd, Fatherly fears — you used us courteously — We would do much to gratify your Prince — We pardon it; and for your ingress here Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land. You did but come as goblins in the night, Nor in the furrow broke the ploughman's head, Nor burnt the grange, nor buss'd the milking-maid. Nor robb'd the farmer of his bowl of cream : But let your Prince (our royal word upon it. He comes back safe) ride with us to our lines. And speak with Arac: Arac's word is thrice As ours with Ida: something may be done — I know not what — and ours shall see us friends. You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will, Follow us: who knows? we four may build some plan Foursquare to opposition.' Here he reach'd White hands of farewell to my sire, who growl'd An answer which, half-muffled in his beard, Let so much out as gave us leave to go. Then rode we with the old king across the lawns Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings oi Spring In every bole, a song on every spray Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke Desire in me to infuse my tale of love In the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozed All o'er with honey'd answer as we rode And blossom-flagrant slipt the heavy dews Gather'd by night and peace with each light air On our mail'd heads : but other thoughts than peace Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares. And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers With clamour : for among them rose a cry As if to greet the king; they made a halt; The horses yell'd; they clash'd their arms; the drum Beat; merrily-blowing shrill'd the mar- tial fife; And in the blast and bray of the long horn And serpent-throated bugle, undulated The banner : anon to meet us lightly pranced Three captains out; nor ever had I seen Such thews of men : the midmost and the highest Was Arac : all about his motion clung The shadow of his'sister, as the beam Of the East, that play'd upon them, made them glance Like those three stars of the airy Giant's zone, That glitter burnish'd by the frosty dark; And as the fiery Sirius alters hue. And bickers into red and emerald, shone Their morions, wash'd with morning, as they came. And I that prated peace, when first I heard War-music, felt the blind wildbeast of force. THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. 195 Whose home is in the sinews of a man, Stir in me as to strike : then took the king His three broad sons; with now a wan- dering hand And now a pointed finger, told them all : A common light of smiles at our dis- guise Broke from their lips, and, ere the windy jest Had labour'd down within his ample lungs, The genial giant, Arac, roU'd himself Thrice in the saddle, then burst out in words. * Our land invaded, 'sdeath ! and he himself Your captive, yet my father wills not war: And, ' 'sdeath ! myself, what care I, war or no? But then this question of your troth re- mains : And there's a downright honest meaning in her; She flies too high, she flies too high ! and yet She ask'd but space and fairplay for her scheme; She prest and prest it on me — I myself, What know I of these things? but, life and soul ! I thought her half-right talking of^ her wrongs ; I say she flies too high, 'sdeath ! what of that? I take her for the" flower of woman- kind. And so I often told her, right or wrong, And, Prince, she can be sweet to those she loves, And, right or wrong, I care not: this is all, I stand upon her side : she made me swear it — 'Sdeath — and with solemn rites by candle-light — Swear by St. something — I forget her name — Her that talk'd down the fifty wisest men; She was a princess too; and so 1 swore. Come, this is all; she will not: waive your claim : If not, the foughten field, what else, at once Decides it, sdeath ! against my father's will.' I lagg'd in answer, loth to render up My precontract, and loth by brainless war To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet; Till one of those two brothers, half aside And fingering at the hair about liis lip, To prick us on to combat ' Like to like ! The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.' A taunt that clench'd his purpose like a blow ! For fiery-short was Cyril's counter-scoff", And sharp I answer'd, touch'd upon the point Where idle boys are cowards to their shame, 'Decide it here : why not? we are three to three.' • Then spake the third, * But three to tliree? no more? No more, and in our noble sister's cause? More, more, for honour: every captain waits Hungry for honour, angry for his king. More, more, some fifty on a side, that each May breathe himself, and quick! by overthrow Of these or those, the question settled die.' ' Yea,' answer'd I, * for this wild wreath of air. This flake of rainbow flying on the highest Foam of men's deeds — this honour, if ye will. It needs must be for honour if at all : Since, what decision? if we fail, we fail, And if we win, we fail : she would not keep Her compact.' * 'Sdeath ! but we will send to her,' Said Arac, ' worthy reasons why she should 196 THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY, Bide by this issue : let our missive thro', And you shall have her answer by the word.' • Boys ! ' shriek'd the old king, but vainlier than a hen To her false daughters in the pool; for none Regarded; neither seem'd there more to say: Back rode we to my father's camp, and found He thrice had sent a herald to the gates, To learn if Ida yet would cede our claim. Or Hy denial flush her babbling wells With her own people's life : three times he went : The first, he blew and blew, but none appear'd : He batter'd at the doors; none came : the next, An awful voice within had warn'd him thence : The third, and those eight daughters of the plough Came sallying thro' • the gates, and caught his hair. And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek They made him wild : not less one glance he caught Thro' open doors of Ida station'd there Unshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm Tho' compass'd by two armies and the noise Of arms; and standing like a stately Pine Set in a cataract on an island-crag, When storm is on the heights, and right and left Suck'd from the dark heart of the long hills roll The torrents, dash'd to the vale : and yet her will Bred will in me to overcome it or fall. But when I told the king that I was pledged To fight in tourney for my bride, he clash'd His iron palms together with a cry; Himself would tilt it out among the lads : But overborne by all his bearclcd lords With reasons drawn from age and state, perforce He yielded, wroth and red, with fierce demur : And many a bold knight started up in heat, And sware to combat for my claim till death. All on this side the palace ran the field Flat to the garden-wall : and likewise here. Above the garden's glowing blossom-belts, A column'd entry shone and marble stairs, And great bronze valves, emboss'd with Tomyris And what she did to Cyrus after fight. But now fast barr'd : so here upon the flat All that long morn the lists were hammer'd up. And all that morn the heralds to and fro. With message and defiance, went and came; Last, Ida's answer, in a royal hand,. But shaken here and there, and rolling words Oration-like. I kiss'd it and I read. * O brother, you have known the pangs we felt. What heats of indignation when we heard Of those that iron-cramp'd their women's feet; Of lands in which at the altar the poor bride Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge ; Of living hearts that crack within the fire Where smoulder their dead despots; and of those, — Mothers, — that, all prophetic pity, fling Their pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart Made for all noble motion : and I saw That equal baseness lived in sleeker times With smoother men : the old leaven leaven'd all : Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights. No woman named : therefore I set my face Against all men, and lived but for mine own. Far off from men I built a fold for them : I stored it full of rich memorial: THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 197 I fenced it round with gallant institutes, And biting laws to scare the beasts of prey And prosper'd; till a rout of saucy boys Brake on us at our books, and marr'd our peace, Mask'd like our maids, blustering I know not what Of insolence and love, some pretext held Of baby troth, invalid, since my will Seal'd not the bond — the striplings ! — for their sport ! — I tamed my leopards : shall I not tame these ? Or you? or I? for since you think m^ touch'd In honour — what, I would not aught of false — Is not our cause pure? and whereas I know Your prowess, Arac, and what mother's blood You draw from, fight; you failing, I abide What end soever : fail you will not. Still Take not his life : he risk'd it for my own; His mother lives : yet whatsoe'er you do, Fight and fight well; strike and strike home. O dear Brothers, the woman's Angel guards you, you The sole men to be mingled with our cause. The sole men we shall prize in the after- time, Your very armour hallow'd, and your statues Rear'd, sung to, when, this gad-fly brush'd aside, We plant a ::olid foot into the Time, And mould a generation strong to move With claim on claim from right to right, till she Whose name is yoked with children's, know herself; And Knowledge in our own land make her free. And, ever following those two crowned twins, Commerce and conquest, shower the fiery grain Of freedom broadcast over all that orbs Between the Northern and the Southern Then came a postscript dash'd across the rest. * See that there be no traitors in your camp : We seem a nest of traitors — none to trust Since our arms fail'd — this Egypt-plague of men ! Almost our maids were better at their homes, Than thus man-girdled here : indeed I think Our chiefest comfort is the little child Of one unworthy mother; which she left : She shall not have it back: the chDd shall grow To prize the authentic mother of her mind. I took it for an hour in mine own bed This morning : there the tender orphan hands Felt at my heart, and seem'd to charm from thence The wrath I nursed against the world: farewell.' I ceased; he said, ' Stubborn, but she may sit Upon a king's right hand in thunder- storms, And breed up warriors ! See now, tho' yourself Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs That swallow common sense, the spin- dling king. This Gama swamp'd in lazy tolerance. When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up. And topples down the scales; but this is fixt As are the roots of earth and base of all; Man for the field and woman for the hearth: Man for the sword and for the needle she: Man with the head and woman with the heart: Man to command and woman to obey; All else confusion. Look you ! the gray mare Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills From tile to scullery, and her small good- man Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell 198 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. Mix with his hearth: but you — she's yet a colt — Take, break her : strongly groom'd and straitly curb'd She might not rank with those detestable That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street. They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance : /like her none the less for rating at her ! Besides, the woman wed is not as we, But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace Of twins mayweed her of her folly. Boy, The bearing and the training of a child Is woman's wisdom.' Thus the hard old king: I took my leave, for it was nearly noon : I pored upon her letter which I held, And on the little clause ' take not his life : ' I mused on that wild morning in the woods. And on the ' Follow, follow, thou shalt win: ' I thought on all the wrathful king had said, And how the strange betrothment was to end : Then I remember'd that burnt sorcerer's curse That one should fight with shadows and should fall; And like a flash the weird affection came : King, camp and college turn'd to hollow shows; I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts, And doing battle with forgotten ghosts. To dream myself the shadow of a dream : And ere I woke it was the point of noon. The lists were ready. Empanoplied and plumed We enter'd in, and waited, fifty there Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared At the barrier like a wild horn in a land Of echoes, and a moment, and once more The trumpet, and again : at which* the storm Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears And riders front to front, until they closed In conflict with the crash of shivering points. And thunder. Yet it seem'd a dream, I dream'd Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed. And into fiery splinters leapt the lance, And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire. Part sat like rocks : part reel'd but kept their seats : Part roU'd on the earth and rose again and drew: Part stumbled mixt with floundering horses. Down From those two bulks at Arac's side, and down From Arac's arm, as from a giant's flail, The large blows rain'd, as here and everywhere He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists. And all the plain, — ^ brand, mace, and shaft, and shield, — Shock'd, like an iron-clanging anvil bang'd With hammers; till* I thought, can this be he From Gama's dwarfish loins? if this be soj The mother makes us most — and in my dream I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes. And highest, among the statues, statue- like, Between a cymbal'd Miriam and a Jael, With Psyche's babe, was Ida watching us, A single band of gold about her hair, Like a Saint's glory up in heaven : but she No saint — inexorable — no tenderness — Too hard, too cruel: yet she sees me fight, Yea, let her see me fall ! with that I drave Among the thickest and bore down a Prince, And Cyril, one. Yea, let me make my dream All that I would. But that large- moulded man, THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 199 His visage all agrin as at a wake, Made at me thro' the press, and, stagger- ing back With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came As comes a pillar of electric cloud, Playing the roofs and sucking upthe drains, And shadowing down the champaign till it strikes On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and splits. And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth Reels, and the herdsmen cry; for every- thing Gave way before him : only Florian, he That loved me closer than his own right eye, Thrust in between; but Arac rode him down : And Cyril seeing it, push'd against the Prince, With Psyche's colour round his helmet, tough. Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms; But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote And threw him : last I spurr'd; I felt my veins Stretch with fierce heat; a moment hand to hand, And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung. Till I struck out and shouted; the blade glanced, I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth Flow'd from me; darkness closed me; and I fell. Home they brought her warrior dead: She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry: All her maidens, watching, said, ' She must weep or she will die.* Then they praised him, soft and low, Call'd him worthy to be loved, Truest friend and noblest foe ; Yet she neither spoke nor moved. Stole a maiden from her place. Lightly to the warrior stept, Took the face-clotli from the face; Yet she neither moved nor wept. Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee — Like summer tempest came her tears — ' Sweet my child, I live for thee.' My dream had never died or lived again. As in some mystic middle state I lay; Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard: Tho', if I saw not, yet they told me all So often that I speak as having seen. For so it seem'd, or so they said to me, That all things grew more tragic and more strange; That when our side was vanquish'd and my cause For ever lost, there went up a great cry. The Prince is slain. My father heard and ran In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque And grovell'd on my body, and after him Came Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaia. But high upon the palace Ida stood With Psyche's babe in arm : there on the roofs Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang. • ' Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n : the seed, The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark, Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk Of spanless girth, that lays on every side A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun. ' Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came ; The leaves were wet with women's te&rs: they heard The noise of songs they would not understand : They mark'd it with the red cross to the fall, And would hav- -trown it, and. are fall'n them- selves. Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: came. they The woodmen with their axes: lo the tree! But we will make it faggots for the hearth, And shape it plank and beam ior roof and floor. And boats and bridges for the use of men. 'Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they struck ; With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. There dwelt an iron nature in the grain : The glittering axe was broken in their arms, Their arms were shattered to the shoulder blade, * Our enemies have fall'n, but this shall grow A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power: and roU'd vVith music in the growing breeze of Time, The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs Shall move the stony bases of the world. 'And now, O maids, behold our sanctuary Is violate, our laws broken : fear we not To break them more . in their behoof, whose arms Champion'd our cause and won it with a day Blanch'd in our annals, and perpetual feast. When dames and heroines of the golden year Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring, To rain an April of ovation round Their statues, borne aloft, the three : but come, We will be liberal, since our rights are won. Let them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind, 111 nurses; but descend, and proffer these The brethren of our blood and cause, that there Lie bruised and maim'd, the tender ministries Of female hands and hospitality.' She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms, Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led A hundred maids in train across the Park. Some cowl'd, and some bare-headed, on they came. Their feet in flowers, her loveliest: by them went The enamour'd air sighing, and on their curls From the high tree the blossom wavering fell. And over them the tremulous isles of light Slided, they moving under shade : but Blanche At distance follow'd : so they came : anon Thro' open field into the lists they wound Timorously; and as the leader of the herd That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun, And follow'd up by a hundred airy does. Steps with a tender foot, light as on air. The lovely, lordly creature floated on To where her wounded brethren lay; there stay'd; Knelt on one knee, — the child on one, — and prest Their h'^nds, and call'd them dear de- liverers, And happy warriors, and immortal names. And said : ' You shall not He in the tents but here. And nursed by those for whom you fought, and served With female hands and hospitality.' Then, whether moved by this, or was it chance. She past my way. Up started from my side The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye. Silent; but when she saw me lying stark, Dishelm'd and mute, and motionlessly pale. Cold ev'n to her, she sigh'd; and when she saw The haggard father's face and reverend beard Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood Of his own son, shudder'd, a twitch of pain Tortured her mouth, and o'er her fore- head past A shadow, and her hue changed, and she said: * He saved my life : my brother slew him for it.' No more : at which the king in bitter scorn Drew from my neck the painting and the tress. And held them up : she saw them, and a day Rose from the distance on her memory. When the good Queen, her mother, shore the tress With k isses, ere the days of Lady Blanche : THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. And then once more she look'd at my pale face : Till understanding all the foolish work Of Fancy, and the bitter close of all, Her iron will was broken in her mind; Her noble heart was molten in her breast ; She bow'd, she set the child on the earth; she laid A feeling finger on my brows, and pres- ently "O Sire,' she said, 'he lives: he is not dead : O let me have him with my brethren here In our own palace : we will tend on him Like one of these ; if so, by any means. To lighten this great clog of thanks, that make Our progress falter to the woman's goal.' She said : but at the happy word ' he lives,* My father stoop'd, re-father'd o'er my wounds. So those two foes above my fallen life, With brow to brow like night and evening mixt Their dark and gray, while Psyche ever stole A little nearer, till the babe that by us, Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede, Lay like a new-fall'n meteor on the grass, Uncared for, spied its mother and began A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal Brook'd not, but clamouring out ' Mine — mine — not yours. It is not yours, but mine : give me the child,' Ceased all on tremble : piteous was the cry : So stood the unhappy mother open- mouth'd, And turn'd each face her way : wan was her cheek With hollow watch, her blooming mantle torn, Red grief and mother's hunger in her eye, And down dead-heavy sank her curls, and half The sacred mother's bosom, panting, burst The laces toward her babe; but she nor cared Nor knew it, clamouring on, till Ida heard, Look'd up, and rising slowly from me, stood Erect and silent, striking with her glance The mother, me, the child; but he that lay Beside us, Cyril, batter'd as he was, Trail'd himself up on one knee: then he drew Her robe to meet his lips, and down she look'd At the arm'd man sideways, pitying as it seem'd, Or self-involved; but when she learnt his face, Remembering his ill-omen'd song, arose Once more thro' all her height, and o'er him grew Tall as a figure lengthen'd on the sand When the tide ebbs in sunshine, and he said: * O fair and strong and terrible ! Lioness That with your long locks play the Lion's mane ! But Love and Nature, these are two more terrible And stronger. See, your foot is on our necks, We vanquish'd, you the Victor of your will. What would you more? give her the child ! remain Orb'd in your isolation : he is dead. Or all as dead : henceforth we let you be : Win you the hearts of women; and beware Lest, where you seel: the common love of these. The common hate with the revolving wheel Should drag you down, and some great Nemesis Break from a darken'd future, crown'd with fire, And tread you out for ever: but how- soe'er i-ix'd in yourself, never in your own arms To hold your own, deny not hers to her, THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. Give her the child ! if, I say, you keep To meet it, with an eye that swum in One pulse that beats true woman, if you thanks; loved Then felt it sound and whole from head The breast that fed or arm that dandled to foot, you, And hugg'd and never hugg'd it close Or own one port of sense not flint to enough, prayer, And in her hunger mouth'd and mum- Give her the child ! or if you scorn to bled it, lay it, And hid her bosom with it; after that Yourself, in hands so lately claspt with Put on more calm and added suppliantly : yours. Or speak to her, your dearest, her one ' We two were friends : I go to mine fault own land The tenderness, not yours, that could not For ever : find some other : as for me kill, I scarce am fit for your great plans : yet Give tneKl: I will give it her.' speak to me, He said : Say one soft word and let me part for- At first her eye with slow dilation roll'd given.' Dry flame, she listening; after sank and sank But Ida spoke not, rapt upon the child. And, into mournful twilight mellowing. Then Arac. ' Ida — 'sdeath ! you blame dwelt the man; Full on the child; she took it: 'Pretty You wrong yourselves — the woman is so bud! hard Lily of the vale ! half open'd bell of the Upon the woman. Come, a grace to me ! woods ! I am your warrior: I and mine have Sole comfort of my dark hour, when a fought world Your battle : kiss her; take her hand, she Of traitorous friend and broken system weeps : made 'Sdeath ! I would sooner fight thrice o'er No purple in the distance, mystery, than see it.' Pledge of a love not to be mine, farewell; These men are hard upon us as of old, But Ida spoke not, gazing on the We two must part: and yet how fain ground; was I And reddening in the furrows of his chin. To dream thy cause embraced in mine, And moved beyond his custom, Gama to think said : I might be something to thee, when I felt 'I've heard that there is iron in the Thy helpless warmth about my barren blood, breast And I believe it. Not one word? not In the dead prime : but may thy mother one? prove Whence drew you this steel temper? not As true to thee as false, false, false to me ! from me, And, if thou needs must bear the yoke. . Not from your mother, now a saint with I wish it saints. Gentle as freedom ' — here she kiss'd it : She said you had a heart — I heard her then — say it — 'All good go with thee ! take it, Sir,' and so "Our Ida has a heart"— just ere she Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailed died — hands, " But see that some one with authority Who turn'd half-round to Psyche as she Be near her still " and I — I sought for sprang ope — THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 203 All people said she had authority — The Lady Blanche : much profit ! Not one word ; No ! tho' your father sues : see how you stand Stiff as Lot's wife, and all the good knights maim'd, I trust that there is no one hurt .to death. For your wild whim : and was it then for this, Was it for this we gave our palace up, Where we withdrew from summer heats and state, • And had our wine and chess beneath the planes, And many a pleasant hour with her that's gone, Ere you were born to vex us? Is it kind? Speak to her I say : is this not she of whom, When first she came, all flush'd you said to me Now had you got a friend of your own age, Now could you share your thought; now should men see Two women faster welded in one love Than pairs of wedlock; she you walk'd with, she You talk'd with, whole nights long, up in the tower. Of sine and arc, spheroid and azimuth, And right ascension. Heaven knows what ; and now A word, but one, one little kindly word, Not one to spare her : out upon you, flint! You love nor her, nor me, nor any; nay. You shame your mother's judgment too. Not one? You will not? well — no heart have you, or such As fancies like the vermin in a nut Have fretted all to dust and bitterness.' So said the small king moved beyond his wont. But Ida stood nor spoke, drain'd of her force By many a varying influence and so long. Down thro' her limbs a drooping languor wept : Her head a little bent; and on her mouth A doubtful smile dwelt like a clouded moon In a still water : then brake out my sire, Lifting his grim head from my wounds. ' O you. Woman, whom we thought woman even now, And were half fool'd to let you tend our son, Because he might have wish'd it — but we see The accomplice of your madness unfor- given. And think that you might mix his draught with death, When your skies change again : the rougher hand Is safer : on to the tents : take up the Princ^.' He rose, and while each ear was prick'd to attend A tempest, thro' the cloud that dimm'd her broke A genial warmth and light once more, and shone Thro' glittering drops on her sad friend. 'Come hither. Psyche,' she cried out, ' embrace me, come, Quick while I melt; make reconcilement sure With one that cannot keep her mind an hour : Come to the hollow heart they slander so ! Kiss and be friends, like children being chid! /seem no more: /want forgiveness too: 1 should have had to do with none but maids. That have no links with men. Ah false but dear, Dear traitor, too much loved, why? — why? — Yet see. Before these kings we embrace you yet once more With all forgiveness, all oblivion, And trust, not love, you less. And now, O sire. Grant me your son, to nurse, to wait upon him. Like mine own brother. For my debt to him. 204 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. This nightmare weight of gratitude, I know it; Taunt me no more : yourself and yours shall have Free adit; we will scatter all our maids Till happier times each to her proper hearth : What use to keep them here — now? grant my prayer. Help, father, brother, help; speak to the king : Thaw this male nature to some touch of that Which kills me with myself, and drags me down From my fixt height to mob me up with all The soft and milky rabble of womankind, Poor weakling ev'n as they are.' Passionate tears Follow'd : the king replied not : Cyril said: * Your brother, Lady, — Florian, — ask for him Of your great Head — for he is wounded too — That you may tend upon him with the prince/ * Ay so,' said Ida with a bitter smile, * Our laws are broken : let him enter too.' Then Violet, she that sang the mournful song. And had a cousin tumbled on the plain, Petition'd too for him. ' Ay so,' she said, * I stagger in the stream : 1 cannot keep My heart an eddy from the brawling hour: We break our laws with ease, but let it be.' *Ayso?' said Blanche: * Amazed am I to hear Your Highness: but your Highness breaks with ease The law your Highness did not make : 'twas I. I had been wedded wife, I knew man- kind. And block'd them out; but these men came to woo Your Highness — verily I think to win.' So she, and turn'd askance a wintry eye: But Ida with a voice, that like a bell ToU'd by an earthquake in a trembling tower. Rang ruin, answer'd full of grief and scorn. ' Pling our doors wide ! all, all, not one, but all, Not only he, but by my mother's soul. Whatever man lies wounded, friend or foe, Shall enter, if he will. Let our girls flit. Till the storm die ! but had you stood by us, * The roar that breaks the Pharos from his base Had left us rock. She fain would sting us too, But shall not. Pass, and mingle with your likes. We brook no further insult but are gone.' She turn'd ; the very nape of her white neck Was rosed with indignation : but the Prince Her brother came; the king her father charm'd Her wounded soul with words : nor did mine own Refuse her proffer, lastly gave his hand. Then us they lifted up, dead weights, and bare Straight to the doors : to them the doors gave way Groaning, and in the Vestal entry shriek'd The virgin marble under iron heels : And on they moved and gain'd the hall, and there Rested : but great the crush was, and each base. To left and right, of those tall columns drown'd In silken fluctuation and the swarm Of female whisperers : at the further end Was Ida by the throne, the two great cats Close by her, like supporters on a shield, Bow-back'd with fear : but in the centre stood The common men with rolling eyes; amazed They glared upon the women, and aghast THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 205 The women stared at these, all silent, save When armour clash'd or jingled, while the day, Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shot A flying splendour out d brass and steel, That o'er the statues leapt from head to head, Now fired an angry Pallas on the helm. Now set a wrathful Dian's moon on flame, And now and then an echo started up, And shuddering fled from room to room, and died Of fright in far apartments. Then the voice Of Ida sounded, issuing ordinance : And me they bore up the broad stairs, and thro' The long-laid galleries past a hundred doors To one deep chamber shut from sound, and due To languid limbs and sickness; left me in it; And others otherwhere they laid; and all That afternoon a sound arose of hoof And chariot, many a maiden passing home Till happier times; but some were left of those Held sagest, and the great lords out and in, From those two hosts that lay beside the walls, Walk'd at their will, and everything was changed. VII. Ask me no more : the moon may draw the sea; The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape With -.old to fold, of mountain or of cape; But O too fond, when have I answer'd thee? Ask me no more. Ask me no more: what answer should I give? I love not hollow cheek or faded eye: Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die ! Ask ir.e no more, lest I should bid thee live; Ask me no more. Ask me no more; thy fate and mine are seal'd: I strove against the stream and all in vain: Let the great river take me to the main: No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield; Ask me no more. So was their sanctuary violated, So their fair college turn'd to hospital; At first with all confusion : by and by Sweet order lived again with other laws: A kindlier influence reign'd; and every- where Low voices with the ministering hand Hung round the sick : the maidens came, they talk'd. They sang, they read: till she not fair began To gather light, and she that was, be- came Her former beauty treble; and to and fro With books, with flowers, with Angel ofiices. Like creatures native unto gracious act, And in their own clear element, they moved. But sadness on the soul of Ida fell, And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. Old studies fail'd; seldom she spoke: but oft. Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men Darkening her female field : void was her use. And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night. Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore, And suck the blinding splendour from the sand. And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn Expunge the world : so fared she gazing there; So blacken'd all her world in secret, blank And waste it seem'd and vain; till down she came, And found fair peace once more amoii^ the sick. 206 THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. And twilight dawn'dj and morn by morn the lark Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gyres, but I Lay silent in the muffled cage of life : And twilight gloom'd ; and broader-grown the bowers Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven, Star after star, arose and fell; but I, Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay Quite sunder'd from the moving Universe, Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the hand That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep. But Psyche tended Florian : with her oft, Melissa came ; for Blanche had gone, but left Her child among us, willing she should keep Court-favour : here and there the small bright head, A light of healing, glanced about the couch. Or thro' the parted silks the tender face Peep'd, shining in upon the wounded'man With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw The sting from pain ; nor seem'd it strange that soon He rose up whole, and those fair charities Join'd at her side; nor stranger seem'd that hearts So gentle, so employ'd, should close in love, Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down, And slip at once all-fragrant into one. Less prosperously the second suit ob- tain'd At first with Psyche. Not tho' Blanche had sworn That after that dark night among the fields She needs must wed him for her own good name; Not tho' he built upon the babe restored; Nor tho' she liked him, yielded she, but fear'd To incense the Head once more; till on a day When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind Seen but of Psyche : on her foot she hung A moment, and she heard, at which her face A little flush'd, and she past on ; but each Assumed from thence a half- consent in- volved In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace. Nor only these : Love in the sacred halls Held carnival at will, and flying struck With showers of random sweet on maid and man. Nor did her father cease to press my claim, Nor did mine own, now reconciled; nor yet Did those twin brothers, risen again and whole ; Nor Arac, satiate with his victory. But I lay still, and with me oft she sat: Then came a change; for sometimes I would catch Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard, And fling it like a viper off, and shriek * You are not Ida; ' clasp it once again, And call her Ida, tho' 1 knew her not. And call her sweet, as if in irony. And call her hard and cold which seem'd a truth : And still she fear'd that I should lose my mind. And often she believed that I should die : Till out of long frustration of her care, And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons, And watches in the dead, the dark, when clocks Throbb'd thunder thro' the palace floors, or call'd. On flying Time from all their silver tongues — And out of memories of her kindlier days. And sidelong glances at my father's grief, THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 207 And at the happy lovers heart in heart — And out of hauntings of my spoken love, And lonely listenings to my mutter'd dream, And often feeling of the helpless hands, And wordless broodings on the wasted cheek — From all a closer interest flourish'd up, Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these. Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears By some cold morning glacier; frail at first And feeble, all unconscious of itself. But such as gather'd colour day by day. Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close to death For weakness: it was evening: silent light Slept on the painted walls, wherein were wrought Two grand designs; for on one side arose The women up in wild revolt, and storm'd At the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they cramm'd The forum, and half-crush'd among the rest A dwarf-like Cato cower'd. On the other side Hortensia spoke against the tax; behind, A train of dames : by axe and eagle sat, With all their foreheads drawn in Roman scowls, And half the wolf's-milk curdled in their veins. The fierce triumvirs; and before them paused Hortensia pleading : angry was her face. I saw the forms : I knew not where I was: They did but look like hollow shows; nor more Sweet Ida: palm to palm she sat: the dew Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape And rounder seem'd: I moved: Isigh'd: a touch Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand: Then all for languor and self-pity ran Mine down my face, and with what life I had, •And like a flower that cannot all unfold, So drench'd it is with tempest, to the sun, Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisper- ingly : * If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream, I would but ask you to fulfil yourself: But if you be that Ida whom I knew, I ask you nothing : only, if a dream, Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night. Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.' I could no more, but lay like one in trance. That hears his burial talk'd of by his friends. And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign. But lies and dreads his doom. She turn'd ; she paused; She stoop'd; and out of languor leapt a cry; Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; And I believed that in the living world My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips^ Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose Glowing all over noble shame ; and all Her falser self slipt from her like a robe, And left her woman, lovelier in her mood Than in her mould that other, when she came From barren deeps to conquer all with love; And down the streaming crystal dropt; and she Far- fleeted by the purple island-sides. Naked, a double light in air and wave. To meet her Graces, where they declc'd her out For worship without end ; nor end of mine. Stateliest, for thee ! but mute she glided forth. Nor glanced behind her, and I sank and slept, Fill'd thro' and thro' with Love, a happjf sleep. 208 THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. Deep in the night I woke : she, near me, held A volume of the Poets of her land : There to herself, all in low tones, she read. ' Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me. Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost, And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars. And all thy heart lies open unto me. Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. Now folds the lily ^11 her sweetness up. And slips into the bosom of the lake: So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip Into my bosom and be lost in me.' I heard her turn the page; she found a small Sweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she read : ' Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang) In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; Acd come, for Love is of the valley, come, For Love is of the valley, come thou down And find him; by the happy threshold, he, Or nand in hand with Plenty in the maize. Or red with spirted purple of the vats, Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk With Death and Morning on the silver horns, Nor wilt ihou snare him in the white ravine. Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls To roll the torrent out of dusky doors: But follow; let the torrent dance thee down To find him in the valley; let the wild Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill Their thousand wreaths of dan,gling water-smoke, That like a broken purpose waste in air: So waste not thou ; but come ; for all the vales Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth Arise to thee; the children call, and I Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn. The moan of doves in immemorial elms. And murmuring of innumerable bees.' So she low-toned; while with shut eyes I lay Listening; then look'd. Pale was the perfect face; The bosom with long sighs labour'd; and meek Seem'd the full lips, and mild the lumi- nous eyes, And the voice trembled and the hand. She said Brokenly, that she knew it, she had fail'd In sweet humility; had fail'd in all; That all her labour was but as a block Left in the quarry; but she still were loth, She still were loth to yield herself to one That wholly scorn'd to help their equal rights Against the sons of men, and barbarous laws. She pray'd me .not to judge their cause from her That wrong'd it, sought far less for truth than power In knowledge: something wild within her breast, A greater than all knowledge, beat her down. And she had nursed me there from week to week : Much had she learnt in little time. In part It was ill counsel had misled the girl To vex true hearts: yet was she but a girl — *Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce ! When comes another such ? never, I think. Till the Sun drop, dead, from the signs.' Her voice Choked, and her forehead sank upon her hands. And her great heart thro' all the faultful Past Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break ; Till notice of a change in the dark world Was hspt about the acacias, and a bird, That early woke to feed her little ones, THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. 209 Sent from a dew^ breast a cry for light: She moved, and at her feet the volume fell. 'Blame not thyself too much,' I said, ' nor blame Too much the sons of men and barbarous lav/s; These were the rough ways of the world till now. Henceforth thou hast n, helper, me, that know The woman's cause is man's: they rise or 'sink Together, dwarf 'd or godlike, bond or free: For she that out of Lethe scales with man The shining steps of Nature, shares with man His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, Stays all the fair young planet in her hands — If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, How shall men grow? but work no more alone ! Our place is much : as far as in us lies We two will serve them both in aiding her — Will clear away the parasitic forms That seem to keep her up but drag her down — Will leave her space to burgeon out of all Within her — let her make herself her own To give or keep, to live and learn and be All that not harms distinctive womanhood. For woman is not undevelopt man. But diverse : could we make her as the man. Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this. Not like to like, but like in difference. Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; The man be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height. Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto noble words; And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, Sit side by side, fuU-summ'd in all their powers. Dispensing harvest, so\ving the To-be, Self-reverent each and reverencing each. Distinct in individualities. But like each other ev'n as those who love. Then comes the statelier Eden back to men : Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm : Then springs the crowning race of human- kind. May these things be ! ' Sighing she spoke, * I fear They will not.' ' Dear, but let us type them now In our own lives, and this proud watch- word rest Of equal; seeing either sex alone Is half itself, and in true marriage lies Nor equal, nor unequal : each fulfils Defect in each, and always thought in thought, Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow, The single pure and perfect animal, The two-cell'd heart beating, with one full stroke, Life.' And again sighing she spoke : * A dream That once was mine ! what woman taught you this?' * Alone,' I said, ' from earlier than I know, Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world, I loved the woman : he, that doth not, lives A drowning life, besotted in sweet self. Or pines in sad experience worse than death. Or keeps his wing'd affections dipt with crime : Yet was there one thro' whom I loved her, one Not learned, save in gracious household ways. Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 2IO THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY. No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, Interpreter between the Gods and men, Who look'd all native to her place, and yet On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved, And girdled her with music. Happy he With such a mother ! faith in woman- kind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall He shall not blind his soul with clay.' ' But I,' Said Ida, tremulously, * so all unlike — It seems you love to cheat yourself with words : This mother is your model. I have heard Of your strange doubts : they well might be : I seem A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince; You cannot love me.' * Nay but thee,' I said, • From yearlong poring on thy pictureid eyes, Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw Thee woman thro' the crust of iron moods That mask'd thee from men's reverence up, and forced Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood : now, Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee, Indeed I love : the new day comes, the light Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults Lived over: lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead, My haunting sense of hollow shows: the change. This truthful change in thee has kill'd it. Dear, Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, Like yonder morning on the blind half world ; Approach and fear not; breathe upon my brows; In that fine air I tremble, all the past Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this Is morn to more, and all the rich to° come Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, I waste my heart in signs : let be. My bride, My wife, my life. O we will walk this world. Yoked in all exercise of noble end, And so thro' those dark gates across the wild That no man knows. Indeed I love thee : come. Yield thyself up : my hopes and thine are one : Accomplish thou my manhood and thy- self; Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.' CONCLUSION. So closed our tale, of vv'hich I give you all The random scheme as wildly as it rose : The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased There came a minute's pause, and Wal- ter said, ' I wish she had not yielded ! ' then to me, * What, if you drest it up poetically ! ' So pray'd the men, the women : I gave assent : Yet how to bind the scatter' d scheme of seven Together in one sheaf? What style could suit? The men required that I should give throughout The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque. With which we banter'd little Lilia first: The women — and perhaps they felt their power, THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY, 211 For something in the ballads which they sang, Or in their silent influence as they sat, Had ever seem'd to wrestle with bur- lesque, And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close — They hated banter, vvish'd for something real, A gallant fight, a noble princess — why Not make her true-heroic — true-sub- lime ? Or all, they said, as earnest as the close? Which yet with such a framework scarce could be. Then rose a httle feud betwixt the two. Betwixt the mockers and the realists : And I, betwixt them both, to please them both. And yet to give the story as it rose, I moved as in a strange diagonal. And maybe neither pleased myself nor them. But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part In our dispute : the sequel of the tale Had touch'd her ; and she sat, she pluck'd the grass, She flung it from her, thinking : last, she fixt A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, • *You — tell us what we are,' who might have told, For she was cramm'd with theories out of books, But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now. To take their leave, about the garden rails. So I and some went out to these : we cHmb'd The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw The happy valleys, half in light, and half Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace; Gray halls alone among their massive groves; Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat; The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas; A red sail, or a white; and far beyond, Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. * Look there, a garden ! * said my col- lege friend, The Tory member's elder son, * and there ! God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled — Some sense of duty, something of a faith, Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made. Some patient force to change them when we will, Some civic manhood firm against the crowd — But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat. The gravest citizen seems to lose his head. The king is scared, the soldier will not fight. The little boys begin to shoot and stab, A kingdom topples over with a shriek Like an old woman, and down rolls the world In mock heroics stranger than our own; Revolts, republics, revolutions, most No graver than a schoolboys' barring out ; Too comic for the solemn things they are. Too solemn for the comic touches in them. Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream As some of theirs — God bless the narrow seas! I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad.' * Have patience,' I replied, ' ourselves are full Of social wrong; and maybe wildest dreams Are but the needful preludes of the truth : For me, the genial day, the happy crowd, 212 ODE ON THE DEATH OF The sport half-science, fill me with a faith. This fine old world of ours is but a child Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time To learn its limbs : there is a hand that guides.' In such discourse we gain'd the garden rails, And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood. Before a tower of crimson holly- oaks. Among six boys, head under head, and look'd No little lily-handed Baronet he, A great broad-shoulder'd genial English- man, A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep, A raiser of huge melons and of pine, A patron of some thirty charities, A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none; Fair-hair'd and redder than a windy morn; Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those That stood the nearest — now address'd to speech — Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year To follow : a shout rose again, and made The long line of the approaching rookery swerve From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout More joyful than the city-roar that hails Premier or king ! Why should not these great Sirs Give up their parks some dozen times a year To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried, I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away. But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, So much the gathering darkness charm'd : we sat But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, Perchance upon the future man : the walls Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and owls whoop'd, And gradually the powers of the night, That 'range above the region of the wind. Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds, Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens. Last little Lilia, rising quietly, Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph From those rich silks, and home well- pleased we went. ODE ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. PUBLISHED IN 1852. I. Bury the Great Duke With an empire's lamentation. Let us bury the Great Duke To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation, Mourning when their leaders fall, Warriors carry the warrior's pall, And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall. II. Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore? Here, in streaming London's central roar. Let the sound of those he wrought for, And the feet of those he fought for, Echo round his bones for evermore. Lead out the pageant :' sad and slow, As fits an universal woe. Let the long long procession go, And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow. And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 213 Mourn, for to us he seems the last, Remembering all his greatness in the Past. No more in soldier fashion will he greet With lifted hand the gazer in the street. O friends, our chief state-oracle is mute : Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood, The statesman-warrior, moderate, reso- lute. Whole in himself, a common good. Mourn for the man of amplest influence. Yet clearest of ambitious crime, Our greatest yet with least pretence, Great in council and great in war. Foremost captain of his time. Rich in saving common-sense, And, as the greatest only are. In his simplicity sublime. O good gray head which all men knew, O voice from which their omens all men drew, O iron nerve to true occasion true, O fall'n at length that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew ! Such was he whom we deplore. The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er. The great World-victor's victor will be seen no more. All is over and done : Render thanks to the Giver, England, for thy son. Let the bell be toll'd. Render thanks to the Giver, And render him to the mould. Under the cross of gold That shines over citv and river, There he shall rest for ever Among the wise and the bold. Let the bell be toll'd : And a reverent people behold The towering car, the sable steeds: Bright let it be with its blazon'd deeds. Dark in its funeral fold. Let the bell be toll'd : And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd; And the sound of the sorrowing anthem roll'd Thro' the dome of the golden cross; And the volleying cannon thunder his loss; He knew their voices of old. For many a time in many a clime His captain's-ear has heard them boom Bellowing victory, bellowing doom : When he with those deep voices wrought, Guarding realms and kings from shame; With those deep voices our dead captain taught The tyrant, and asserts his claim In that dread sound to the great name, Which he has worn so pure of blame. In praise and in dispraise the same, A man of well-temper'd frame. O civic muse, to such a name, To such a name for ages long. To such a name. Preserve a broad approach of fame, And ever-echoing avenues of song. VI. Who is he that cometh, like an honour'd guest. With banner and with music, with soldier and with priest, With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest? Mighty Seaman, this is he Was great by land as thou by sea. Thine island loves thee well, thou famous man, The greatest sailor since our world began. Now, to the roll of muffled drums. To thee the greatest soldier comes; For this is he Was great by land as thou by sea ; His foes were thine; he kept us free* O give him welcome, this is he Worthy of our gorgeous rites, And worthy to be laid by thee; For this is England's greatest son, He that gain'd a hundred fights, Nor ever lost an English gun; This is he that far away Against the myriads of Assaye Clash'd with his fiery few and won; And underneath another sun. Warring on a later day, 214 ODE ON THE DEATH OF ■ Round affrighted Lisbon drew I'he treble works, the vast designs Of his labour'd rampart-lines, Where he greatly stood at bay, Whence he issued forth anew, And ever great and greater grew, Beating from the wasted vines Back to France her banded swarms. Back to France with countless blows, Till o'er the hills her eagles flew Beyond the Pyrenean pines, Follow'd up in valley and glen With blare of bugle, clamour of men. Roll of cannon and clash of arms, And England pouring on her foes. Such a war had such a close. Again their ravening eagle rose In anger, wheel'd on Europe-shadowing wings. And barking for the thrones of kings; Till one that sought but Duty's iron crown On that loud sabbath shook the spoiler down; A day of onsets of despair ! Dash'd on every rocky square Their surging charges foam'd themselves away; Last, the Prussian trumpet blew; Thro' the long-tormented air Heaven flash'd a sudden jubilant ray. And down we swept and charged and overthrew. So great a soldier taught us there, What long-enduring hearts could do In that world-earthquake, Waterloo ! Mighty Seaman, tender and true. And pure as he from taint of craven guile, O saviour of the silver-coasted isle, O shaker of the Balti; and the Nile, If aught of things that here befall Touch a spirit among things divine, If love of country move thee there at all. Be glad, because his bone:: are laid by thine ! And thro' the centuries It a people's voice In full acclaim, A people's voice, The proof and echo of all human fame, A people's voice, when they rejoice At civic revel and pomp and game, Attest their great commartder's claim With honour, honour, honour, honoui to him. Eternal honour to his name. VII. A people's voice ! we are a people yet. Tho' all men else their nobler dreams forget. Confused by brainless mobs and lawless Powers; Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set His Briton in blown seas and storming showers, We have a voice, with which to pay the debt Of boundless love and reverence and regret To those great men who fought, and kept it ours. And keep it ours, O God, from brute control; O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul Of Europe, keep our noble England whole. And save the one true seed of freedom sown Betwixt a people and their ancient throne, That sober freedom out of which there springs Our loyal passion for our temperate kings; For, saving that, ye help to save man- kind Till public wrong be crumbled into dust, And drill the raw world for the march of mind. Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just. But wink no more in slothful overtrust. Remember him who led your hosts; He bade you guard the sacred coasts. Your cannons moulder on the seaward wall; His voice is silent in your council-hall For ever; and whatever tempests lour For ever silent; even if they broke In thunder, silent; yet remember all He spoke among you, and the Man who spoke; THE DU^E OF WELLINGTON. 215 Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor palter'd with Eternal God for poM'er; Who let the turb'd streams of rumour flow Thro' either babbling world of high and . low; Whose life was work, whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life; Who never spoke against a foe; Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke All great self-seekers trampling on the right : Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named; Truth-lover was our English Duke; Whatever record leap to light He never shall be shamed. Lo, the leader in these glorious wars Now to glorious burial slowly borne, Follow'd by the brave of other lands, He, on whom from both her open hands Lavish Honour shower'd all her stars, And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn. Yea, let all good things await Him who cares not to be great. But as he saves or serves the state. Not once or twice 'n our rough island- story, The path of duty was the way to glory : He that walks it, only thirsting For the right, and learns to deaden Love of self, before his journey closes. He shall find the stubborn thistle burst- ing Into glossy purples, which outredden All voluptuous garden-roses. Not once or twice in our fair island-story, The path of duty was the way to glory : He, that ever following her commands, On with toil of heart and knees and hands, Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won His path upward, and prevail'd. Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled Are close upon the shining table-lands To which our God Himself is moon and sun. Such was he : his work is done. But while the races of mankind endure, Let his great example stand Colossal, seen of every land. And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure : Till in all lands and thro' all human story The path of duty be the way to glory: And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame For many and many an age proclaim At civic revel and pomp and game, And when the long-illumined cities flame, Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame, With honour, honour, honour, honour to him. Eternal honour to his name. IX, Peace, his triumph will be sung By some yet unmoulded tongue Far on in summers that we shall not see : Peace, it is a day of pain For one about whose patriarchal knee Late the little children clung: O peace, it is a day of pain For one, upon whose hand and heart and brain Once the weight and fate of Europe hung. Ours the pain, be his the gain ! More than is of man's degree Must be with us, watching here At this, our great solemnity. Whom we see not we revere; We revere, and we refrain From talk of battles loud and vain. And brawling memories all too free For such a wise humility As befits a solemn fane : We revere, and 'vhile we hear The tides of Music's golden sea Setting toward ^^ernity, Uplifted high in heart and hope are we. Until we doubt not that for one so true There must be ocher nobler work to do Than when he fought at Waterloo, And Victor he must ever be. For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill 310 THE THIRD OF FEBRUARY, 1832. And break the shore, and evermore Make and break, and work their will; Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers, And other forms of life than ours, What know we greater than the soul? On God and Godlike men we build our trust. Hush, the Dead March wails in the peo- ple's ears : The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears : The black earth yawns : the mortal disappears; Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; He is gone who seem'd so great. — Gone; but nothing can bereave him Of the force he madq his own Being here, and we believe him Something far advanced in State, And that he wears a truer crown Than any wreath that man can weave him. Speak no more of his renown, Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him, God accept him, Christ receive him. 1852. THE THIRD OF FEBRUARY, 1852. My Lords, we heard you speak : you told us all That England's honest censure went too far; That our free press should cease to brawl. Not sting the fiery Frenchman into war. It was our ancient privilege, my Lords, To fling whate'er we felt, not fearing, into words. We love not this French God, the child of Hell, Wild War, who breaks the converse of the wise; But though we love kind Peace so well. We dare not ev'n by silence sanction lies. It might be safe our censures to with- draw; And yet, my Lords, not well : there is a higher law. As long as we remain, we must speak free, Tho' all the storm of Euror/; on us break ; No little German state are we, But the one voice in Europe : we must speak; That if to-night our greatness were struck dead. There might be left some record of the things we said. If you be fearful, then must we be bold. Our Britain cannot salve a tyrant o'er. Better the waste Atlantic roll'd On her and us and ours for ever- more. What !• have we fought for Freedom from our prime. At last to dodge and palter with a public crime ? Shall we fear him? our own we never fear'd. From our first Charles by force we wrung our claims. Prick'd by the Papal spur, we rear'd. We flung the burthen of the second James. I say, we never feared ! and as for these. We broke them on the land, we drove them on the seas. And you, my Lords, you make the people muse In doubt if you be of our Barons' breed — • Were those your sires who fought at Lewes? Is this the manly strain of Runnymede? O fall'n nobility, that, overawed. Would lisp in honey'd whispers of this monstrous fraud ! We feel, at least, that silence here were sin. Not ours the fault if we have feeble hosts — THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. 217 If easy patrons of their kin Into the jaws of Death, Have left the last free race with naked Into the mouth of Hell coasts ! Rode the six hundred. They knew the precious things they had to guard : IV. For us, we will not spare the tyrant one Flash'd all their sabres bare, hard word. Flash'd as they turn'd in air Tho' niggard throats of Manchester may Sabring the gunners there. Charging an army, while bawl, All the world wonder'd : What England was,, shall her true sons Plunged in the battery-smoke forget? Right thro' the line they broke; We are not cotton-spinners all, Cossack and Russian But some love England and her honour Reel'd from the sabre-stroke yet. Shatter'd and sunder'd. And these in our Thermopylae shall Then they rode back, but not — stand. Not the six hundred. And hold against the world this honour of the land. V. Cannon to right of them, THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT Cannon to left of them. Cannon behind them BRIGADE. Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, I. While horse and hero fell, Half a league, half a league, They that had fought so well Half a league onward, Came thro' the jaws of Death, All in the valley of Death Back from the mouth of Hell, Rode the six hundred. All that was left of them. 'Forward, the Light Brigade! Left of six hundred. Charge for the guns ! ' he said : Into the valley of Death VI. Rode the six hundred. When can their glory fade? II. the wild charge they made ! All the world wonder'd. ' Forward, the Light Brigade ! ' Honour the charge they made ! Was there a man dismay'd? Honour the Light Brigade, Not tho' the soldier knew Noble six hundred ! Some one had blunder'd : Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, ODE SUNG AT THE OPENING Theirs but to do and die : Into the valley of Death OF THE INTERNATIONAL EX- Rode the six hundred. HIBITION. I. III. Uplift a thousand voices full and sweet, Cannon to right of them. In this wide hall with earth's invention Cannon to left of them. stored, Cannon in front of them And praise the invisible universal Volley'd and thunder'd; Lord, Storm'd at with shot and shell, Who lets once more in peace the nations Boldly they rode and well, meet, 2l8 A WELCOME TO ALEXANDRA. Where Science, Art, and Labour have outpour'd Their myriad horns of plenty at our feet. O silent father of our Kings to be Mourn'd in this golden hour of jubilee, For this, for all, we weep our thanks to thee! III. The world-compelHng plan was thine, — And, lo ! the long laborious miles Of Palace; lo ! the giant aisles, Rich in model and design; Harvest-tool and husbandry. Loom and wheel and enginery, Secrets of the sullen mine. Steel and gold, and corn and wine, Fabric rough, or fairy-fine. Sunny tokens of the Line, Polar marvels, and a feast Of wonder, out of West and East, And shapes and hues of Art divine ! All of beauty, all of use. That one fair planet can produce. Brought from under every star, Blown from over every main. And mixt, as life is mixt with pain. The works of peace with works of war. Is the goal so far away? Far, how far no tongue can say, Let us dream our dream to-day. V. O ye, the wise who think, the wise who reign. From growing commerce loose her latest chain, And let the faif white-wing'd peacemaker fly To happy havens under all the sky, And mix the seasons and the golden hours; Till each man find his own in all men's good. And all men work in noble brotherhood. Breaking their mailed fleets and armed towers, And ruling by obeying Nature's powers. And gathering all the fruits of earth and crown'd with all her flowers. A WELCOME TO ALEXANDRA. MARCH 7, 1 063. Sea-kings' daughter from over the sea, Alexandra ! Saxon and Normari and Dane are we, But all of us Danes in our welcome of thee, Alexandra ! Welcome her, thunders of fort and of fleet ! Welcome her, thundering cheer of the street ! Welcome her, all things youthful and sweet, Scatter the blossom under her feet ! Break, happy land, into earlier flowers ! Make music, O bird, in the new-budded bowers ! Blazon your mottoes of blessing and prayer ! Welcome her, welcome her, all that is ours! Warble, O bugle, and trumpet, blare I Flags, flutter out upon turrets and towers ! Flames, on the windy headland flare ! Utter your jubilee, steeple and spire ! Clash, ye bells, in the merry March air! Flash, ye cities, in rivers of fire ! Rush to the roof, sudden rocket, and higher Melt into stars for the land's desire ! Roll and rejoice, jubilant voice, Roll as a ground-swell dash'd on the strand. Roar as the sea when he welcomes the land, And welcome her, welcome the land's desire, The sea-kings' daughter as happy as fair, Blissful bride of a blissful heir. Bride of the heir of the kings of the sea — O joy to the people ana joy to the throne, Come to us, love us and make us your own : For Saxon or Dane or Norman we, Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be. We are each all Dane in our welcome of thee, Alexandra/ A WELCOME TO ALEXANDROVNA. 219 A WELCOME TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS MARIE ALEXAN- DROVNA, DUCHESS OF' EDIN- BURGH. MARCH 7, 1874. I. The Son of him with whom we strove for power — Whose will is lord thro' all his world- domain — Who made the serf a man, and burst his chain — Has given our Prince his own imperial Flower, Alexandrovna. And welcome, Russian flower, a people's pride, To Britain, when her flowers begin to blow! From love to love, from home to home you go. From mother unto mother, stately bride, Marie Alexandrovna ! n. The golden news along the steppes is blown, And at thy name the Tartar tents are stirr'd ; Elburz and all the Caucasus have heard; And all the sultry palms of India known, Alexandrovna. The voices of our universal sea On capes of Afric as on cliffs of Kent, The Maoris and that Isle of Continent, And loyal pines of Canada murmur thee, Marie Alexandrovna ! III. Fair empires branching, both, in lusty life ! — Yet Harold's England fell to Norman swords ; Yet thine own land has bow'd to Tartar hordes Since English Harold gave its throne a wife, Alexandrovna ! For thrones and peoples are as waifs that swing, Ana float or fall, in endless ebb and flow; But who love best have best the grace to know That Love by right divine is deathless king, Marie Alexandrovna! IV. And Love has led thee to the stranger land, Where men are bold and strongly say their say; — See, empire upon empire smiles to- day, As thou with thy young lover hand in hand Alexandrovna ! So now thy fuller life is in the west. Whose hand at home was gracious to thy poor: Thy name was blest within the narrow door; Here also Marie, shall thy name be blest, Marie Alexandrovna ! V. Shall fears and jealous hatreds flame again? Or at thy coming, Princess, every- where, The blue heaven break, and some diviner air Breathe thro' the world and change the hearts of men, Alexandrovna? But hearts that change not, love that cannot cease, And peace be yours, the peace of soul in soul ! And howsoever this wild world may roll. Between your peoples truth and manful peace, Alfred — Alexandrovna ! SiO THE GRANDMOTHER. THE GRANDMOTHER. And Willy, my eldest-born, is gone, you say, little Anne? Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man. And Willy's wife has written : she never was over-wise, Never the wife for Willy : he wouldn't take my advice. II. For, Annie, you see, her father was not the man to save, Hadn't a head to manage, and drank himself into his grave. Pretty enough, very pretty ! but I was against it for one. Eh ! — but he wouldn't hear me — and Willy, you say, is gone. Willy, my beauty, my eldest-born, the flower of the flock; Never a man could fling him : for Willy stood like a rock. * Here's a leg for a babe of a week ! ' says doctor; and he would be bound. There was not his like that year in twenty parishes round. IV. Strong of his hands, and strong on his legs, but still of his tongue ! I ought to have gone before him : 1 wonder he went so young. I cannot cry for him, Annie : I have not long to stay; Perhaps I shall see him the sooner, for he lived far away. Why do you look at me, Annie? you think I am hard and cold; But all my children have gone before me, I am so old : I cannot weep for Willy, nor can I weep for the rest; Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best. For I remember a quarrel I had with your father, my dear, All for a slanderous story, that cost me many a tear. I mean your grandfather, Annie: it cost me a world of woe, Seventy years ago, my darling, seventy years ago. VII. For Jenny, my cousin, had come to the place, and I knew right well That Jenny had tript in her time : I knew, but I would not tell. And she to be coming and slandering me, the base little liar ! But the tongue is a fire as you know, my dear, the tongue is a fire. And the parson made it his text that week, and he said likewise, That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies, That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight. THE GRANDMOTHER. 221 And Willy had not been down to the farm for a week and a day; And all things look'd baif-dead, tho' it was the middle of May. Jenny, to slander me, who knew what Jenny had been ! But soiling another, Annie, will never make oneself clean. X. And I cried myself well-nigh blind, and all of an evening late I climb'd to the top of the garth, and stood by the road at the gate. The moon like a rick on fire was rising over the dale. And whit, whit, whit, in the bush beside me chirrupt the nightingale. XI. All of a sudden he stopt : there past by the gate of the farm, Willy, — he didn't see me, — and Jenny hung on his arm. Out into the road I started, and spoke I scarce knew how; Ah, there's no fool like the old one — it makes me angry now. XII. Willy stood up like a man, and look'd the thing that he meant; Jenny, the viper, made me a mocking curtsey and went. And I said, ' Let us part : in a hundred years it'll all be the same, Vou cannot love me at all, if you love not my good name.' And he turn'd, and I saw his eyes all wet, in the sweet moonshine : ' Sweetheart, I love you so well that your good name is mine. And what do I care for Jane, let her speak of you well or ill; But marry me out of hand : we two shall be happy still.' XIV. * Marry you, Willy ! ' said I, ' but I needs must speak my mind, And I fear you'll listen to tales, be jealous and hard and unkind.* But he turn'd and claspt me in his arms, and answer'd, * No, love, no; * Seventy years ago, my darling, seventy years ago. XV. So Willy and I were wedded : I wore a lilac gown; And the ringers rang with a will, and he gave the ring'^rs a crown. But the first that ever I bare was dead before he was born, Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, flower and thorn. XVI. That was the first time, too, that ever I thought of death. There lay the sweet little body that never had drawn a breath. I had not wept, little Anne, not since I had been a wife; But I wept like a child that day, for the babe had fought for his life. 222 THE GRANDMOTHER. XVII. His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or pain : I look'd at the still little body — his trouble had all been in vain. For Willy I cannot weep, I shall see him another morn : But I wept like a child for the child that was dead before he was born. But he cheer'd me, my good man, for he seldom said me nay : Kind, like a man, was he; like a man, too, would have his way : Never jealous — not he: we had many a happy year; And he died, and I could not weep — my own time seem'd so near. XIX. But I wish'd it had been God's will that I, too, then could have died: I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his side. And that was ten years back, or more, if I don't forget : But as to the children, Annie, they're all about me yet. XX. Pattering over the boards, my Annie who left me at two. Patter she goes, my own little Annie, an Annie like you : Pattering over the boards, she comes and goes at her will, While Harry is in the five-acre and Charlie ploughing the hill, XXI. And Harry and Charlie, I hear them too — they sing to their team: Often they come to the door in a pleasant kind of a dream. They come and sit by my chair, they hover about my bed — I am not always certain if they be alive or dead. XXII. And yet I know for a truth, there's none of them left alive; For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty-five : And Willy, my eldest-born, at nigh threescore and ten; I knew them all as babies, and now they're elderly men. XXIII. For mine is a time of peace, it is not often I grieve; I am oftener sitting at home in my father's farm at eve : And the neighbours come and laugh and gossip, and so do I; I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by. To be sure the preacher says, our sins should make us sad : But mine is a time of peace, and there is Grace to be had; And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall cease; And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of Peace. NORTHERN FARMER. 223 XXV. And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain, And happy lias been my life; but I would not live it again. I seem to be tired a little, that's all, and long for rest; Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best. XXVI. So Willy has gone, my beauty, my eldest-born, my flower; But how can I weep for Willy, he has but gone for an hour, Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next; I, too, shall go in a minute. What time have I to be vext? And Willy's wife has written, she never was over-wise. Get me my glasses, Annie : thank God that I keep my eyes. There is but a trifle left you, when I shall have past away. But stay with the old woman now : you cannot have long to stay. NORTHERN FARMER. OLD STYLE. Wheer 'asta bean saw long and mea liggin' 'ere aloan? Noorse? thourt nowt o' a noorse: whoy. Doctor's abean an' agoan: Says that I moant 'a naw moor aale : but I beant a fool: Git ma my aale, fur I beant a-gawin' to break my rule. Doctors, they knaws nowt, fur a says what's nawways true : Naw soort o' koind o' use to saay the things that a do. I've 'ed my point o' aale ivry noight sin' I bean 'ere. An' I've 'ed my quart ivry market-noight for foorty year. in. Parson's a bean loikewoise, an' a sittin' 'ere o' my bed. 'The amoighty's a taakin o' you^ to 'issen, my friend,' a said. An' a towd ma my sins, an's toithe were due, an' I gied it in hond; I done moy duty boy 'um, as I 'a done boy the lond. Larn'd a ma' bea. I reckons I 'annot sa mooch to lam. But a cast oop, thot a did, 'bout Bessy M arris's barne. Thaw a knaws I hallus voated wi' Squoire an' choorch an' staate. An' i' the woost o' toimes I wur niver agin the raate. 1 ou as in hour. 224 NORTHERN FARMER, An' I hallus coom'd to 's chooch afoor moy Sally wur dead, An' 'card 'um a bummin' awaay loike a buzzard-clock ^ ower my 'ead, An' 1 niver knaw'd whot a mean'd but I thowt a 'ad summut to saay, An' I thowt a said whot a owt to 'a said an' I coom'd awaay. VI. Bessy Marris's barne ! tha knaws she laaid it to mea. Mowt a bean, mayhap, for she wur a bad un, shea. 'Siver, I kep 'um, I kep 'um my lass, tha mun understond; I done moy duty boy 'um as I 'a done boy the lond. VII. But Parson a cooms an' a goas, an' a says it easy an' freea 'The amoighty's a taakin o' you to 'issen, my friend,' says *ea. I weant saay men be loiars, thaw summun said it in 'aaste : But 'e reads wonn sarmin a wee.ak, an' I 'a stubb'd Thurnaby waaste. D'ya moind the waaste, my lass? naw, naw, tha was not born then; Theer wur a boggle in it, I often 'card 'um mysen; Moast loike a butter-bump,^ fur I 'eard 'um about an' about, But I stubb'd 'um oop wi' the lot, an' raaved an' rembled 'um out. IX. Keaper's it wur; fo' they fun 'um theer a-laaid of 'is faace Down i' the woild 'enemies ^ afoor I coom'd to the plaace. Noaks or Thimbleby — toaner ^ 'ed shot 'um as dead as a naail. Noaks wur 'ang'd for it oop at 'soize — but git ma my aale. X. Dubbut loook at the waaste: theer warn't not feead for a cow; Nowt at all but bracken an' fuzz, an' loook at it now — Warnt worth nowt a haacre, an' now theer's lots o' feead, Fourscoor ^ yews upon it an' some on it down i' seead.* XI. Nobbut a bit on it's left, an' I mean'd to 'a stubb'd it at fall, Done it ta-year I mean'd, an' runn'd plow thrufif it an' all, If godamoighty an' parson 'ud nobbut let ma aloan, Mea, wi' haate hoonderd haacre o' Squoire's, an' lond o' my oan. Do godamoighty knaw what a's doing a-taakin' o' mea? I beant wonn as saws 'ere a bean an' yonder a pea; An' Squoire 'uU be sa mad an' all — a' dear a' dear ! And I 'a managed for Squoire coom Michaelmas thutty year. * Cockchafer. * Bittern. ^ Anemones. * One or other. " ou as in hour. « Clover. NORTHERN FARMER. 225 A mowt 'a taaen owcl Joanes, as 'ant not a 'aapoth o' sense, Or a mowt 'a taaen young Robins — a niver mended a fence : But godamoighty a moost taake mea an' taake ma now Wi' aaf the cows to cauve an' Thurnaby hoalms to plow ! Loook 'ow quoloty smoiles when they seeas ma a passin' boy, Says to thessen naw doubt ' what a man a bea sewer-loy ! ' Fur they knaws what I bean to Squoire sin fust a coom'd to the 'Allj I done moy duty by Squoire an' I done moy duty boy hall. Squoire's i' Lunnon, an' summun I reckons 'ull 'a to wroite, For whoa's to howd the lond ater mea thot muddles ma quoit; Sartin-sewer I bea, thot a weant niver give it to Joanes, Naw, nor a moant to Robins — a niver rembles the stoans. But summun 'ull come ater mea mayhap wi' 'is kittle o' steam Huzzin' an' maazin' the blessed fealds wi' the Divil's oan team. Sin' I mun doy I mun doy, thaw loife they says is sweet, But sin' I mun doy I mun doy, for I couldn abear to see it. What atta stannin' theer fur, an' doesn bring ma the aale? Doctor's a 'toattler, lass, an a's hallus i' the owd taale ; I weant break rules fur Doctor, a knaws naw moor nor a floy; Git ma my aale I tell tha, an' if I mun doy I mun doy. NORTHERN FARMER. NEW STYLE. Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay? Proputty, proputty, proputty — that's what I 'ears 'em saay. Proputty, proputty, proputty — Sam, thou's an ass for thy paalns: Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs nor in all thy braains. Woa — theer's a craw to pluck wi' tha, Sam: yon's parson's 'ouse- Dosn't thou knaw that a man mun be eathei: a man or a mouse? Time to think on it then; for thou'U be twenty to weeak.^ Proputty, proputty — woa then woa — let ma 'ear mysen speak. 1 This week. 226 NORTHERN FARMER. III. Me an' thy muther, Sammy, 'as bean a-talkin' o' thee; Thou's bean talkin' to muther, an' she bean a tellin' it me. Thou'll not marry for munny — thou's sweet upo' parson's lass — Noa — thou'll marry for luvv — an' we boath on us thinks tha an ass. Seea'd her todaay goa by — Saaint's-daay — they was ringing the bells. She's a beauty thou thinks — an' soa is scoors o' gells. Them as 'as munny an' all — wot's a beauty? — the flower as blaws. But proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws. . V. Do'ant be stunt : ^ taake time : I knaws what maakes tha sa mad. Warn't I craazed fur the lasses mysen when I wur a lad ? But I knaw'd a Quaaker feller as often 'as towd ma this : * Doant thou marry for munny, but goa wheer munny is ! ' An' I went wheer munny war : an' thy muther coom to 'and, Wi' lots o' munny laaid by, an' a nicetish bit o' land. Maaybe she warn't a beauty : — I niver giv it a thowt — But warn't she as good to cuddle an' kiss as a lass as 'ant nowt? Parson's lass 'ant nowt, an' she weant 'a nowt when 'e's dead, Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and addle ^ her bread : Why? fur 'e's nobbut a curate, an' weant niver git hissen clear, An' 'e maade the bed as 'e ligs on afoor 'e coom'd to the shere. VIII. 'An thin 'e coom'd to the parish wi' lots o' Varsity debt, Stook to his taail they did, an' 'e 'ant got shut on 'em yet. An' 'e ligs on 'is back i' the grip, wi' noan to lend 'im a shuvv, Woorse nor a far-welter'd ^ yowe : fur, Sammy, 'e married fur luvv. IX. Luvv? what's luvv? thou can luvv thy lass an' 'er munny too, Maakin' 'em goa togither as they've good right to do. Couldn I luvv thy muther by cause o' 'er munny laaid by? Naay — fur I luvv'd 'er a vast sight moor fur it : reason why. X. Ay an' thy muther says thou wants to marry the lass, Gooms of a gentleman burn : an' we boath on us thinks tha an ass. Woa then, proputty, wiltha? — an ass as near as mays nowt* — Woa then, wiltha? dangtha ! — the bees is as fell as owt.^ * Obstinate. ' Earn. ' Or fow-welter'd, — said of a sheep lying on its back. * Makes nothing. ^ The flies nre as fierce as anything. NORTHERN FARMER— THE DAISY. 227 XI. Break me a bit o' the esh for his 'ead, lad, out o' the fence ! Gentleman burn ! what's gentleman burn? is it shillins an' pence? Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere, an', Sammy, I'm blest If it isn't the saame oop yonder, fur them as 'as it's the best. Tis'n them as 'as munny as breaks into 'ouses an' steals. Them as 'as coats to their backs an' taakes their regular meals. Noa, but it's them as niver knaws wheer a meal's to be 'ad. Taake my word for it, Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad. XIII. Them or thir feythers, tha sees, mun 'a bean a laazy lot, Fur work mun 'a gone to the gittin' whiniver munny was got. Feyther 'ad ammost nowt; leastways 'is munny was 'id. But 'e tued an' moil'd 'issen dead, an' 'e died a good un, 'e did. XIV. Loook thou theer wheer Wrigglesby beck cooms out by the 'ill ! Feyther run oop to the farm, an' I runs oop to the mill; An' I'll run oop to the brig, an' that thou'll live to see; And if thou marries a good un I'll leave the land to thee. XV. Thim's my noations, Sammy, wheerby I means to stick; But if thou marries a bad un, I'll leave the land to Dick. — Coom oop, proputty, proputty — that's what I 'ears 'im saay — Proputty, proputty, proputty — canter an' canter awaay. THE DAISY. WRITTEN AT EDINBURGH. O LOVE, what hours were thine and mine, In lands of palm and southern pine; In lands of palm, of orange-blossom. Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine. What Roman strength Turbia show'd In ruin, by the mountain road; How like a gem, beneath, the city Of little Monaco, basking, glow'd. How richly down the rocky dell The torrent vineyard streaming fell To meet the sun and sunny waters. That only heaved with a summer swell. "What slender campanili grew By bays, the peacock's neck in hue; Where, here and there, on sandy beaches A milky-bell'd amaryllis blew. How young Columbus seem'd to rovt, Yet present in his natal grove. Now watching high on mountain cor- nice, And steering, now, from a purple cove, Now pacing mute by ocean's rim; Till, in a narrow street and dim, I stay'd the wheels at Cogoletto, And drank, and loyally drank to him. Nor knew we well what pleased us most, Not the dipt palm of which they boast; 228 THE DAISY. But distant colour, happy hamlet, A moulder'd citadel on the coast, Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen A light amid its olives green; Or olive-hoary cape in ocean; Or rosy blossom in hot ravine, Where oleanders flush' d the bed Of silent torrents, gravel-spread ; And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten Of ice, far up on a mountain head. We loved that hall, tho' white and cold, Those niched shapes of noble mould, A princely people's awful princes, The grave, severe Genovese of old. At Florence too what golden hours. In those long galleries, were ours; What drives about the fresh Cascine, Or walks in Boboli's ducal bowers. In bright vignettes, and each complete, . Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet. Or palace, how the city glitter'd. Thro' cypress avenues, at our feet. But when we crost the Lombard plain Remember what a plague of rain ; Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma ; At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain. And stern and sad (so rare the smiles Of sunlight) look'd the Lombard piles; Porch-pillars on the lion resting, And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles. ~ Milan, O the chanting quires. The giant windows' blazon'd fires, The height, the space, the gloom, the glory ! A mount of marble, a hundred spires ! 1 climb'd the roofs at break of day Sun-smitten Alps before me lay. I stood among the silent statues, And statued pinnacles, mute as they. How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair, Was Monte Rosa, hanging there A thousand shadowy-penciU'd valleys And snowy dells in a golden air. Remember how we came at last To Como; shower and storm and blast Had blown the lake beyond his limit. And all was flooded; and how we past From Como, when the light was gray, And in my head, for half the day. The rich Virgilian rustic measure Of Lari Maxume, all the way. Like ballad-burthen music, kept. As on the Lariano crept To that fair port below the castle Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept; Or hardly slept, but watch'd awake A cypress in the moonlight shake. The moonhght touching o'er a ter- race One tall Agave above the lake. What more? we took our last adieu. And up the snowy Splugen drew. But ere we reach'd the highest sum- mit I pluck'd a daisy, J gave it you. It told of England then to me, And now it tells of Italy. O love, we two shall go no longer To lands of summer across the sea; So dear a Hfe your arms enfold Whose crying is a cry for gold : Yet here to-night in this dark city. When ill and weary, alone and cold, I found, tho' crush'd to hard and dry. This nurseling of another sky Still in the little book you lent me, And where you tenderly laid it by : And I forgot the clouded Forth, The gloom that saddens Heaven and Earth, The bitter east, the misty summer And gray metropolis of the North. Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain. Perchance, to charm a vacant brain, Perchance, to dream you still beside me. My fancy fled to the South again. TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE— WILL. 229 TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE. Come, when no graver cares employ, Godfather, come and see your boy : Your presence will be sun in winter, Making the Httle one leap for joy. For, being of that honest few. Who give the Fiend himself his due. Should eighty-thousand college-coun- cils Thunder 'Anathema,' friend, at you; Should all our churchmen foam in spite At you, so careful of the right. Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight; Where, far from noise and smoke of town, I watch the twilight falling brown All round a careless-order'd garden Close to the ridge of a noble down. You'll have no scandal while you dine, But honest talk and wholesome wine. And only hear the magpie gossip Garrulous under a roof of pine : For groves of pine on either hand. To break the blast of winter, stand; And further on, the hoary Channel Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand; Where, if below the milky steep Some ship of battle slowly creep. And on thro' zones of light and shadow Glimmer away to the lonely deep. We might discuss the Northern sin Which made a selfish war begin ; Disputethe claims, arrange the chances; Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win : Or whether war's avenging rod Shall lash all Europe into blood; Till you should turn to dearer matters. Dear to the man that is dear to God; How best to help the slender store. How mend the dwellings, of the poor; How gain in life, as life advances, Valour and charity more and more. Come, Maurice, come : the lawn as yet Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet; But when the wreath of March has blossom'd, Crocus, anemone, violet, Or later, pay one visit here, For those are few we hold as dear; Nor pay but one, but come for many, Many and many a happy year. Jatiuary, 1854. WILL. O WELL for him whose will is strong ! He sufiFers, but he will not suffer long; He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong : For him nor moves the loud world's random mock, Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound, Who seems a promontory of rock, That, compass'd round with turbulent sound, In middle ocean meets the surging shock, Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd. n. But ill for him who, bettering not with time, Cortupts the strength of heaven-de- scended Will, And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime. Or seeming-genial venial fault, Recurring and suggesting still ! He seems as one whose footsteps halt, Toiling in immeasurable sand, And o'er a weary sultry land, Far beneath a blazing vault. Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill, The city sparkles like a grain of salt. IN THE VALLEY OF CAUTERETZ. All along the valley, stream that flashest white. Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night, All along the valley, where thy waters flow, 230 IN THE GARDEN AT SWAINSTON— THE SAILOR BOY. I walk'd with one I loved two and thirty years ago. All along the valley, while I walk'd to- day, The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away; For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed, Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead. And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree, The voice of the dead was a living voice to me. IN THE GARDEN AT SWAINSTON. Nightingales warbled without, Within was weeping for thee-: Shadows of three dead men Walk'd in the walks with me, Shadows of three dead men and thou wast one of the three. Nightingales sang in his woods : ■ The Master was far away : Nightingales warbled and sang Of a passion that lasts but a day ; Still in the house in his coffin the Prince of courtesy lay. Two dead men have I known In courtesy like to thee : Two dead men have I loved With a love that will ever be : Three dead men have I loved and thou art last of the three. THE FLOWER. Once in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower. The people said, a weed. To and fro they went Thro' my garden-bower, And muttering discontent Cursed me and my flower. Then it grew so tall It wore a crown of light. But thieves from o'er the wall Stole the seed by night. Sow'd it far and wide By every town and tower, Till all the people cried, ' Splendid is the flower.' Read my little fable : He that runs may read. Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed. And some are pretty enough, And some are poor indeed; And now again the people Call it but a weed. REQUIESCAT. Fair is her cottage in its place. Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides. It sees itself from thatch to base Dream in the sliding tides. And fairer she, but ah how soon to die ! Her quiet dream of life this hour may cease. Her peaceful being slowly passes by To some more perfect peace. THE SAILOR BOY. He rose at dawn and, fired with hope, Shot o'er the seething harbour-bar, And reach'd the ship and caught the rope. And whistled to the morning star. And while he whistled long and loud He heard a fierce mermaiden cry, * O boy, tho' thou art young and proud, I see the place where thou wilt lie. 'The sands and yeasty surges mix In caves about the dreary bay. And on thy ribs the limpet sticks, And in thy heart the scrawl shall play.' THE ISLET— CHILD-SONGS. 231 ' Fool,' he answer'd, ' death is sure And his compass is but of a single note, To those that stay and thosQ that roam, That it makes one weary to hear.' But I will nevermore endure To sit with empty hands at home. ' Mock me not ! mock me not ! love, let * My mother clings about my neck. us go.' My sisters crying, " Stay for shame; " • No, love, no. My father raves of death and wreck, For the bud ever breaks into bloom on They are all to blame, they are all to the tree, blame. And a storm never wakes on the lonely * God help me ! save I take my part sea, And a worm is there in the lonely wood ; Of danger on the roaring sea, That pierces the liver and blackens the A devil rises in my heart. blood ; Far worse than any death to me.' And makes it a sorrow to be.' THE ISLET. CHILD-SONGS. * Whither, O whither, love, shall we go,' I. For a score of sweet little summers or so ? The sweet little wife of the singer said, THE CITY CHILD. On the day that follow'd the day she was Dainty little maiden, whither would you wed, wander? 'Whither, whither, love, shall we go? ' Whither from this pretty home, the And the singer shaking his curly head home where mother dwells? Turn'd as he sat, and struck the keys * Far and far away,' said the dainty little There at his right with a sudden crash, maiden. Singing, ' And shall it be over the seas * All among the gardens, auriculas. With a crew that is neither rude nor anemones. rash, Roses and lilies and Canterbury-bells. ' But a bevy of Eroses apple-cheek'd. In a shallop of crystal ivory-beak'd, Dainty little maiden, whither would you With a satin sail of a ruby glow. wander? To a sweet little Eden on earth that I Whither from this pretty house, this know, city-house of ours? A mountain islet pointed and peak'd? ' Far and far away,' said the dainty little Waves on a diamond shingle dash, maiden, Cataract brooks to the ocean run. * All among the meadows, the clover and Fairily-delicate palaces shine the clematis, Mixt with myrtle and clad with vine. Daisies and kingcups and honeysuckle- And overstream'd and silvery-streak'd flowers.' With many a rivulet high against the Sun II. The facets of the glorious mountain flash Above the valleys of palm and pine.' MINNIE AND WINNIE. Minnie and Winnie * Thither, thither, love, let us go.' Slept in a shell. Sleep, little ladies! 'No, no, no! And they slept well. For in all that exquisite isle, my dear. There is but one bird with a musical , Pink was the shell within, throat, Silver without; 2^2 THE SPITEFUL LETTER— THE VICTIM. Sounds of the great sea Wander'd about. Sleep, little ladies ! Wake not soon ! Echo on echo Dies to the moon. Two bright stars Peep'd into the shell. ' What are they dreaming of? Who can tell?' Started a green linnet Out of the croft; Wake, little ladies, The sun is aloft ! THE SPITEFUL LETTER. Here, it is here, the close of the year, And with it a spiteful letter. My name in song has done him much wrong, For himself has done much better. little bard, is your lot so hard, If men neglect your pages? 1 think not much of yours or of mine, I hear the roll of the ages. Rhymes and rhymes in the range of the times ! Are mine for the moment stronger? Yet hate me not, but abide your lot, I last but a moment longer. This faded leaf, our names are as brief; What room is left for a hater? Yet the yellow leaf hates the greener leaf, For it hangs one moment later. Greater than I — is that your cry? And men will live to see it. Well — if it be so — so it is, you know; And if it be so, so be it. Brief, brief is a summer leaf, But this is the time of hollies. O hollies and ivies and evergreens. How I hate the spites and the follies ! LITERARY SQUABBLES. Ah God ! the petty fools of rhyme That shriek and sweat in pigmy wars Before the stony face of Time, And look'd at by the silent stars : Who hate each other for a song, And do their little best to bite And pinch their brethren in the throng, And scratch the very dead for spite : And strain to make an inch of room For their sweet selves, and cannot hear The sullen Lethe rolling doom On them and theirs and all things here : When one small touch of Charity Could lift them nearer God-like state Than if the crowded Orb should cry Like those who cried Diana great : And I too, talk, and lose the touch I talk of. Surely, after all, The noblest answer unto such Is perfect stillness when they brawl. THE VICTIM. A PLAGUE upon the people fell, A famine after laid them low, Then thorpe and byre arose in fire, For on them brake the sudden foe; So thick they died the people cried, * The Gods are moved against the land. The Priest in horror about his altar To Thor and Odin lifted a hand : ' Help us from famine And plague and strife ! What would you have of us? Human life? Were it our nearest, Were it our dearest, (Answer, O answer) We give you his life.' But still the foeman spoil'd and burn'd, And cattle died, and deer in wood. And bird in air, and fishes turn'd And whiten'd all the rolling flood ; THE VICTIM— WAGES. 233 And dead men lay all over the way, They have taken our son, Or down in a furrow scathed with They will have his life. flame : Is he your dearest? And ever and aye the Priesthood moan'd, Or I, the wife?' Till at last it seem'd that an answer came. V. * The King is happy The King bent low, with hand on brow, In child and wife; He stay'd his arms upon his knee : Take you his dearest, ' wife, what use to answer now? Give us a life.' For now the Priest has judged for me.' III. The King was shaken with holy fear; 'The Gods,' he said, ' would have chosen The Priest went out by heath and hill; well; The King was hunting in the wild; Yet both are near, and both are dear. They found the mother sitting still; And which the dearest I cannot tell ! ' She cast her arms about the child. But the Priest was happy, The child was only eight summers old, His victim won : His beauty still with his years in- * We have his dearest. creased, His only son ! ' His face was ruddy, his hair was gold, He seem'd a victim due to the priest. VI. The Priest beheld him. The rites prepared, the victim bared. And cried with joy, The knife uprising toward the blow 'The Gods have answer'd: To the altar-stone she sprang alone. We give them the boy.' ' Me, not my darling, no ! ' He caught her away with a sudden cry; IV. Suddenly from him brake his wife. The King return'd from out the wild. And shrieking '/am his dearest, I — He bore but Httle game in hand; / am his dearest ! ' rush'd on the The mother said, 'They have taken the knife. child And the Priest was happy, To spill his blood and heal the land : *0, Father Odin, The land is sick, the people diseased. We give you a life. And blight and famine on all the Which was his nearest? lea: Who was his dearest? The holy Gods, they must be appeased, The Gods have answer'd ; So I pray you tell the truth to me. We give them the wife ! * WAGES. Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song. Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea — Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong — Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she : Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust. Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just. To rest in a gulden grove, or to bask in a summer sky; Give her the wages of going on, and not to die. 234 THE HIGHER PANTHEISM. THE HIGHER PANTHEISM. The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains — Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb, Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him ? Dark is the world to thee : thyself art the reason why; For is He not all but that which has power to feel * I am I '? Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fuUillest thy doom Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom. Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet — Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice, For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice. Law is God, say some : no God at all, says the fool; For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool; And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; But if we could see and hear, this Vision — were it not He ? THE VOICE AND THE PEAK. The voice and the Peak Far over summit and lawn, The lone glow and long roar Green-rushing from the rosy thrones of dawn ! II. All night have I heard the voice Rave over the rocky bar, But thou wert silent in heaven, Above thee glided the star. Hast thou no voice, 6 Peak, That standest high above all? 'I am the voice of the Peak, I roar and rave for I fall. IV. ' A thousand voices go To North, South, East, and V^est; They leave the heights and are troubled. And moan and sink io their rest. V. • The fields are fair beside them, The chestnut towers in his bloom; But they — they feel the desire of the deep — Full, and follow their doom. 'The deep has power on the height. And the height has power on the deep; They are raised for ever and ever, And sink again into sleep.' THE VOICE AND THE PEAK—BOADICAa. 235 vn. Not raised for ever and ever, But when their cycle is o'er, The valley, the voice, the peak, the star Pass, and are found no more. VIII. The Peak is high and flush'd At his highest with sunrise fire; The Peak is high, and the stars are high. And the thought of a man is higher. IX. A deep below the deep, And a height beyond the height ! Our hearing is not hearing, And. our seeing is not sight. X. The voice and the Peak Far into heaven withdrawn. The lone glow and long roar Green-rushing from the rosy thrones of dawn ! Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies. I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower — but if\ could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. A DEDICATION. Dear, near and true — no truer Time himself Can prove you, tho' he make you ever- more Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life Shoots to the fall — take this . and pray that he Who wrote it, honouring your sweet faith in him, May trust himself; and after praise and scorn, As one who feels .the immeasurable world, Attain the wise indifference of the wise; And after Autumn past — if left to pass His autumn into seeming-leafless days — Draw toward the long frost and longest night, W^earing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit Which in our winter woodland looks a flower. 1 1 The fruit of the Spindle-tree {Euonymus EuropcEiis). EXPERIMENTS. BOADICEA. While about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionaries Burnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess, Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted, Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility. Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camuloddne, Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy. * They that scorn the tribes and call us Britain's barbarous populaces, Did they hear me, would they listen, did they pity me supplicating? Shall I heed them in their anguish? shall I brook to be supplicated? Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant ! Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us? Tear the noble heart of Britain, leave it gorily quivering? Bark an answer, Britain's raven ! bark and blacken innumerable, 236 BOADIC&A. Blacken round the Roman carrion, make the carcase a skeleton, Kite and kestrel, wolf and wolf kin, from the wilderness, wallow in it, Till the face of Bel be brighten'd, Taranis be propitiated. Lo their colony half-defended ! lo their colony, Camuloddne ! There the horde of Roman robbers mock at a barbarous adversary. There the hive of Roman liars worship an emperor-idiot. Such is Rome, and this her deity : hear it. Spirit of Cassiv6ladn ! * Hear it, Gods ! the Gods have heard it, O Icenian, O Coritanian ! Doubt not ye the Gods have answer'd, Catieuchlanian, Trinobant. These have told us all their anger in miraculous utterances, Thunder, a flying fire in heaven, a murmur heard aerially, Phantom sound of blows descending, moan of an enemy massacred, Phantom wail of women and children, multitudinous agonies. Bloodily flow'd the Tamesa rolling phantom bodies of horses and men; Then a phantom colony smoulder'd on the refluent estuary ; Lastly yonder yester-even, suddenly giddily tottering — There was one who watch'd and told me — down their statue of Victory fell. Lo their precious Roman bantling, lo the colony Cam ulod tine, Shall we teach it a Roman lesson? shall we care to be pitiful? Shall we deal with it as an infant? shall we dandle it amorously? * Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant ! While I roved about the forest, long and bitterly meditating, There I heard them in the darkness, at the mystical ceremony, Loosely robed in flying raiment, sang the terrible prophetesses, " Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of silvery parapets ! Tho' the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho' the gathering enemy narrow thee, Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet ! Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated. Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable. Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises, Thine the North and thine the South and thine the battle-thunder of God," *So they chanted: how shall Britain light upon auguries happier? So they chanted in the darkness, and there cometh a victory now. 'Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant! Me the wife of rich Prasdtagus, me the lover of liberty. Me they seized and me they tortured, me they lash'd and humiliated. Me the sport of ribald Veterans, mine of ruffian violators ! See they sit, they hide their faces, miserable in ignominy ! Wherefore in me burns an anger, not by blood to be satiated. Lo the palaces and the temple, lo the colony Camuloddne ! There they ruled, and thence they wasted all the flourishing territory, Thither at their will they haled the yellow-ringleted Britoness — Bloodily, bloodily fall the battle-axe, unexhausted, inexorable. Shout Jcenian, Catieuchlanian, shout Coritanian, Trinobant, Till the victim hear within and yearn to hurry precipitously Like the leaf in a roaring whirlwind, like the smoke in a hurricane whirl'd. Lo the colony, there they rioted in the city of Cunobeline ! There they drank in cups of emerald, there at tables of ebony lay. Rolling on their purple couches in their tender effeminacy. There they dwelt and there they rioted; there — there — they dwell no more. boadicAa—in quantity. 237 Burst the gates, and burn the palaces, break the works of the statuary, Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable, Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness, Lash the maiden into swooning, me they lash'd and humiliated. Chop the breasts from off the mother^ dash the brains of the little one out, Up my Britons, on my chariot, on my chargers, trample them under us.' So the Queen Boadicea, standing loftily charioted. Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like, Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters in her fierce volubility. Till her people all around the royal chariot agitated, Madly dash'd the darts together, writhing barbarous lineaments. Made the noise of frosty woodlands, when they shiver in January, Roar'd as when the roaring breakers boom and blanch on the precipices, Yell'd as when the winds of winter tear an oak on a promontory. So the silent colony hearing her tumultuous adversaries Clash the darts and on the buckler beat with rapid unanimous baud, Thought on all her evil tyrannies, all her pitiless avarice. Till she felt the heart within her fall and flutter tremulously. Then her pulses at the clamouring of her enemy fainted away. Out of evil evil flourishes, out of tyranny tyranny buds. Ran the land with Roman slaughter, multitudinous agonies. Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valorous legionary. Fell the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Camuloddne. IN QUANTITY. ON TRANSLATIONS OF HOMER. Hexameters and Pentameters. These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer ! No — but a most burlesque barbarous experiment. When was a harsher sound ever heard, ye Muses, in England? When did a frog coarser croak upon our Helicon? Hexameters no worse than daring Germany gave us, Barbarous experiment, barbarous hexameters. MILTON. Alcaics. O mighty-MOUTH'd inventor of har- monies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages; Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous ar- mouries. Tower, as the deep- domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset — Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring. And bloom profuse and cedar arches Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palm- woods Whisper in odorous heights of even. 238 TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD. Hejtdecasyllabics. O YOU chorus of indolent reviewers, Irresponsible, indolent reviewers, Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem All composed in a metre of Catullus, All in quantity, careful of my motion, Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him, Lest I fall unawares before the people, Waking laughter in indolent reviewers. Should I flounder awhile without a tumble Thro' this metrification of Catullus, They should speak to me not without a welcome. All that chorus of indolent reviewers. Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble, So fantastical is the dainty metre. Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers. O blatant Magazines, regard me rather — Since I blush to belaud myself a mo- ment — As some rare little rose, apiece of inmost Horticultural art, or half coquette-like Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly. SPECIMEN OF A TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD IN BLANK VERSE. So Hector spake; the Trojans roar'd applause; Then loosed their sweating horses from the yoke, And each beside his chariot bound his own; And oxen from the city, and goodly sheep In haste they drove, and honey-hearted wine And bread from out the houses brought, and heap'd Their firewood, and the winds from off the plain Roll'd the rich vapour far into the heaven. And these all night upon the bridge ^ of war Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed : As when in heaven the stars about the moon Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid. And every height comes out, and jutting peak And valley, and the immeasurable heavens Break open to their highest, and all the stars Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart : So many a fire between the ships and stream Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy, A thousand on the plain; and close by each Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire; And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds, Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn. Iliad \iii. 542-561. ■ 1 Or, ridge. THE WINDOW. 239 THE WINDOW; OR, THE SONG OF THE WRENS. Four years ago Mr. Sullivan requested me to write a little song-cycle, German fashion, for him to exercise his art upon. He had been very successful in setting such old songsas ' Orpheus with his lute,' and I drest up for him, partly in the old style, a puppet, whose almost only merit is, perhaps, that it can dance to Mr. Sullivan's instrument. I am sorry that my four-year-old puppet should have to dance at all in the dark shadow of these days; but the music is now completed, and 1 am bound by my promise. December, 1870. A- Tennyson. THE WINDOW. ON THE HILL. The lights and shadows fly ! Yonder it brightens and darkens down on the plain. A jewel, a jewel dear to a lover's eye ! Oh is it the brook, or a pool, or her window-pane, When the winds are up in the morning? Qouds that are racing above, And winds and lights and shadows that cannot be still, All running on one way to the home of my love. You are all running on, and I stand on the slope of the hill. And the winds are up in the morn- ing! Follow, follow the chase ! And my thoughts are as quick and as quick, ever on, on, on. O lights, are you flying over her sweet little face? And my heart is there before you are come, and gone. When the winds are up in the morning ! Follow them down the slope ! And I follow them down to the window- pane of my dear. And it brightens and darkens and brightens like my hope, And it darkens and brightens and darkens like my fear. And the winds are up in the morning. AT THE WINDOW. Vine, vine and eglantine. Gasp her window, trail and twine ! Rose, rose and clematis. Trail and twine and clasp and kiss. Kiss, kiss; and make her a bower All of flowers, and drop me a flower. Drop me a flower. Vine, vine and eglantine. Cannot a flower, a flower, be mine? Rose, rose and clematis, Drop me a flower, a flower, to kiss. Kiss, kiss — and out of her bower All of flowers, a flower, a flower, Dropt, a flower. Gone! Gone, Gone, Taken Gone, Flown Down GONE. till the end of the year, and the light gone with her, and left me in shadow here ! Gone — flitted away, the stars from ^the night and the sun from the day ! and a cloud in my heart, and a storm in the air ! to the east or the west, flitted I know not where ! in the south is a flash and a groan : she is there ! she is there ! The frost is here, And fuel is dear. And woods are sear, And fires burn clear, . And frost is here And has bitten the hctl of the going year. 240 THE WINDOW. Bite, frost, bite ! You roll up away from the light The blue wood-louse, and the plump dormouse, And the bees are still'd, and the flies are kill'd, And you bite far into the heart of the house, But not into mine. Bite, frost, bite ! The woods are all the searer. The fuel is all the dearer, The fires are all the clearer, My spring is all the nearer, You have bitten into the heart of the earth. But not into mine. Birds' love and birds' song Flying here and there. Birds' song and birds' love. And you with gold for hair ! Birds' song and birds' love. Passing with the weather, Men's song and men's love, To love once and for ever. Men's love and birds' love. And women's love and men's ! And you my wren with a crown of gold, You my queen of the wrens ! You the queen of the wrens — We'll be birds of a feather, I'll be King of the Queen of the wrens. And all in a nest together. THE LETTER. Where is another sweet as my sweet, Fine of the fine, and shy of the shy? Fine little hands, fine little feet — Dewy blue eye. Shall I write to her? shall I go? Ask her to marry me by and by? Somebody said that she'd say no; Somebody knows that she'll say ay ! Ay or no, if ask'd to her face? Ay or no, from shy of the shy? Go, little letter, apace, apace, Fly; Fly to the light in the valley below — Tell my wish to her dewy blue eye : Somebody said that she'd say no; Somebody knows that she'll say ay ! NO ANSWER. The mist and the rain, the mist and the rain ! Is it ay or no? is it ay or no? And never a glimpse of her window-pane ! And I may die but the grass will grow. And the grass will grow when I am gone. And the wet west wind and the world will go on. Ay is the song of the wedded spheres, No is trouble and cloud and storm. Ay is life for a hundred years. No will push me down to the worm. And when I*am there and dead and gone, The wet west wind and the world will go on. The wind and the wet, the vi'ind and the wet! Wet west wind how you blow, you blow ! And never a line from my lady yet ! Is it ay or no? is it ay or no? Blow then, blow, and when I am gone, The wet west wind and the world may go on. NO ANSWER. Winds are loud and you are dumb, Take my love, for love will come. Love will come but once a life. Winds are loud and winds will pass ! Spring is here with leaf and grass: Take my love and be my wife. After-loves of maids and men Are but dainties drest again : Love me now, you'll love me then : Love can love but once a life. THE ANSWER. Two little hands that meet, Claspt on her seal, my sweet ! Must I take you and break you, Two little hands that meet? I must take you, and break you, And loving hands must part — THE WINDOW, 241 Take, take — break, break — * A year hence, a year hence.' Break — you may break my heart. ' We shall both be gray.' Faint heart never won — *A month hence, a month hence. Break, break, and all's done. • Far, far away.' * A week hence, a week hence.' AY. 'Ah, the long delay.' • Wait a little, wait a little, Be merry, all birds, to-day, You shall fix a day.' Be merry on earth as you never were merry before, * To-morrow, love, to-morrow, Be merry in heaven, O larks, and far And that's an age away.' away, Blaze upon her window, sun. And merry for ever and ever, and one And honour all the day. day more. Why? MARRIAGE MORNING. For it's easy to find a rhyme. Look, look, how he flits. Light, so low upon earth, The fire-crown'd king of the wr from out of the pine ! ens. You send a flash to the sun. Here is the golden close of love, Look how they tumble the blossom, the All my wooing is done. mad little tits ! Oh, the woods and the meadows, * Cuck-00 ! Cuck-oo I ' was ever a May Woods where we hid from the wet, so fine ? Stiles where we stay'd to be kind, Why? For it's easy to find a rhyme. Meadows in which we met ! merry the linnet and dove, Light, so low in the vale And swallow and sparrow and throstle. You flash and lighten afar. and have your desire ! For this is the golden morning of love, merry my heart, you have gotten the And you are his morning star. wings of love, And flit like the king of the wrens Flash, I am coming, I come, with By meadow and stile and wood, a crown of fire. Oh, lighten into my eyes and my heart. Why? Into my heart and my blood ! For it's ay ay, ay ay. Heart, are you great enough For a love that never tires? WHEN. heart, are you great enough for love? I have heard of thorns and briers. Sun comes, moon comes, Over the thorns and briers. Time slips away. Over the meadows and stiles. Sun sets, moon sets, Over the world to the end of it Love, fix a day. Flash for a million miles. IN MEMORIAM A. H. R OBIIT MDCCCXXXIIL Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove j R Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made. 242 IN MEMORIAM. Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : Thou madest man, he knows not why, He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him : thou art just. Thou seemest human and divine. The highest, holiest manhood, thou : Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine. Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be : They are but broken lights of thee. And thou, O Lord, art more than they. We have but faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness : let it grow. Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverencd in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before, But vaster. We are fools and slight; We mock thee when we do not fear : (But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. Forgive what seem'd my sin in me; What seem'd my worth since I began ; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee. Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair. I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved. Forgive these wild and wandering cries. Confusions of a wasted youth ; Forgive them where they fail in truth. And in thy wisdom make me wise. . 1849. I. ^ I HM.D it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things. But who shall so forecast the years And find in loss a gain to match? Or reach a hand thro' time to catch The far-off interest of tears? Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Let darkness keep her raven gloss : Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with death, to beat the ground, Than that the victor Hours should scorn The long result of Love, and boast, * Behold the man that loved and lost. But all he was is overworn.' Old Yew, which graspest at the stones That name the under-lying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. The seasons bring the flower again. And bring the firstling to the flock; And in the dusk of thee, the clock Beats out the little lives of men. O not for thee the glow, the bloom, Who changest not in any gale, Nor branding summer suns avail To touch thy thousand years of gloom : And gazing on thee, sullen tree, Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, I seem to fail from out my blood And grow incorporate into thee. III. O Sorrow, cruel fellowship, O Priestess in the vaults of Death, O sweet and bitter in a breath. What whispers from thy lying lip? 'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run; A web is wov'n across the sky; From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun : 'And all the phantom, Nature, stands-^ With all the music in her tone, A hollow echo of my own, — A hollow form with empty hands.' IN MEMORIAM. 243 And shall I take a thing so blind, Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind? To Sleep I give my powers away; My will is bondsman to the dark ; I sit within a helmless bark, And with my heart I muse and say : heart, how fares it with thee now, That thou should'st fail from thy desire. Who scarcely darest to inquire, ' What is it makes me beat so low?' Something it is which thou hast lost. Some pleasure from thine early years. Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, That grief hath shaken into frost ! Such clouds of nameless trouble cross All night below the darken'd eyes; With morning wakes the will, and cries, * Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.' V. 1 sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold : But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more. One writes, that 'Other friends remain,' That ' Loss is common to the race '— And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain. That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more : Too common ! Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break. O father, wheresoe'er thou be. Who pledgest now thy gallant son; A shot, ere half thy draught be done, Hath still'd the life that beat from thee. O mother, praying God will save Thy sailor, — while thy head is bow'd, His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave. Ye know no more than I who wrought At that last hour to please him well; Who mused on all I had to tell. And something written, something thought; Expecting still his advent home; And ever met him on his way With wishes, thinking, * here to-day,' Or ' here to-morrow will he come.' O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove, . That sittest ranging golden hair; And glad to find thyself so fair, Poor child, that waitest for thy love ! For now her father's chimney glows In expectation of a guest; And thinking, * this will please him best,' She takes a riband or a rose; For he will see them on to-night; And with the thought her colour burns; And, having left the glass, she turns Once more to set a ringlet right; And, even when she turn'd, the curse , Had fallen, and her future Lord Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford. Or kill'd in falling from his horse. O what to her shall be the end? And what to me remains of good? To her, perpetual maidenhood, And unto me no second friend. 244 IN MEMORIAM. Dark house, by which once -more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for^ hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more — Behold me, for I cannot sleep, . And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here ; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day. VIII. A hiappy lover who has come To look on her that loves him well, Who 'lights and rings the gateway bell, And learns her gone and far from home; He saddens, all the magic light Dies off at once from bower and hall, And all the place is dark, and all The chambers emptied of delight : So find I every pleasant spot In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber and the street, For all is dark where thou art not. Yet as that other, wandering there In those deserted walks, may find A flower beat with rain and wind, Which once she foster'd up with care; So seems it in my deep regret, my forsaken heart, with thee And this poor flower of poesy Which little cared for fades not yet. But since it pleased a.vanish'd eye, 1 go to plant it on his tomb, That if it can it there may bloom, Or dying, there at least may die. IX. Fair ship, that from the Italian shore Sailest the placid ocean-plains With my lost Arthur's loved re- mains. Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er. So draw him home to those that mourn In vain; a favourable speed Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn. All night no ruder air perplex Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, thro' early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. Sphere all your lights around, above ; Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; Sleep, gentle winds, as he 'sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love; My Arthur, whom I shall not see Till all my widow'd race be run; Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me. X. I hear the noise about thy keel; I hear the bell struck in the night : I see the cabin- window bright; I see the sailor at the wheel. Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife, And travell'd men from foreign lands; And letters unto trembling hands; And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life. So bring him : we have idle dreams : This look of quiet flatters thus Our home-bred fancies : O to us, The fools of habit, sweeter seems To rest beneath the clover sod, That takes the sunshine and the rains. Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God; IN MEMORIAM. 245 Than if with thee the roaring wells Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine; And hands so often clasp'd in mine, Should toss with tangle and with shells. X,. J Calm is the morn without a sound, Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only thro' the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground : Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze, And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold : Calm and still light on yon great plain That sweeps with all its autumn bowers. And crowded farms and lessening towers, To mingle with the bounding main : Calm and deep peace in this wide air. These leaves that redden to the fall; And in my heart, if calm at all, If any calm, a calm despair : Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, And waves that sway themselves in rest. And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep. XII. Lo, as a dove when up she springs To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe. Some dolorous message knit below The wild pulsation of her wings; Like her I go; I cannot stay; I leave this mortal ark behind, A weight of nerves without a mind. And leave the cliffs, and haste away O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large, And reach the glow of southern skies. And see the sails at distance rise. And linger weeping on the marge, And saying : * Comes he thus, my friend ? Is this the end of all my care?' And circle moaning in the air : ' Is this the end? Is this the end? ' And forward dart again, and play About the prow, and back return To where the body sits, and learn That I have been an hour away. XIII. Tears of the widower, when he sees A late-lost form that sleep reveals, And moves his doubtful arms, and feels Her place is empty, fall like these; Which weep a loss for ever new, A void where heart on heart reposed ; And, where warm hands have prest and closed. Silence, till I be silent too. Which weep the comrade of my choice, An awful thought, a life removed. The human-hearted man I loved, A Spirit, not a breathing voice. Come Time, and teach me, many years, I do not suffer in a dream; For now so strange do these things seem. Mine eyes have leisure for their tears; My fancies time to rise on wing. And glance about the approaching sails, As tho' they brought but merchants* bales. And not the burthen that they bring. If one should bring me this report. That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day. And I went down unto the quay, And found thee lying in the port; And standing, muffled round with woe, Should see thy passengers in rank Come stepping lightly down the plank. And beckoning unto those they know; 246 IN MEMORIAM. And if along with these should come The man I held as half-divine; Should strike a sudden hand in mine, And ask a thousand things of home ; And I should tell him all my pain, And how my life had droop'd of late. And he should sorrow o'er my state And marvel what possess'd my brain; And I perceived no touch of change. No hint of death in all his frame, But found him all in all the same, I should not feel it to be strange. To-night the winds begin to rise And roar from yonder dropping day : The last red leaf is whirl'd away, The rooks are blown about the skies; The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd. The cattle huddled on the lea; And wildly dash'd on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world : And but for fancies, which aver That all thy motions gently pass Athwart a plane of molten glass, I scarce could brook the strain and stir That makes the barren branches loud; And but for fear it is not so, The wild unrest that lives in woe Would dote and pore on yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a labouring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire. XVI. What words are these have fall'n from me ? Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast. Or sorrow such a changeling be? Or doth she only seem to take The touch of change in calm or storm ; Rut knows no more of transient form In her deep self, than some dead lake That holds the shadow of a lark Hung in the shadow of a heaven? Or has the shock, so harshly given, Confused me like the unhappy bark That strikes by night a craggy shelf. And staggers blindly ere she sink ? And stunn'd me from my power to think And all my knowledge of myself; And made me that delirious man Whose fancy fuses old and new, And flashes into false and true. And mingles all without a plan ? XVII. Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze CompelPd thy canvas, and my prayer Was as the whisper of an air To breathe thee over lonely seas. For I in spirit saw thee move Thro' circles of the bounding sky, Week after week : the days go by : Come quick, thou bringest all I love. Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam, My blessing, like a line of light. Is on the waters day and night. And like a beacon guards thee home. So may whatever tempest mars Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark; And balmy drops in summer dark Slide from the bosom of the stars. So kind an office hath been done. Such precious relics brought by thee; The dust of him I shall not see Till all my widow'd race be run. XVIII. 'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand Where he in English earth is laid. And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land. 'Tis little ; but it looks in truth As if the quiet bones were blest Among familiar names to rest And in the places of his youth. IN MEMORIAM. 247 Come then, pure hands, and bear the head That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep, And come, whatever loves to weep, And hear the ritual of the dead. Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be, I, falling on his faithful heart. Would breathing thro' his lips im- part The life that almost dies in me; That dies not, but endures with pain. And slowly forms the firmer mind. Treasuring the look it cannot find, The words that are not heard again. The Danube to the Severn gave The darken'd heart that beat no more; They laid him by the pleasant shore. And in the hearing of the wave. There twice a day the Severn fills; The salt sea-wa'ter passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills. The Wye is hush'd nor moved along. And hush'd my deepest grief of all. When fiU'd with tears that cannot fall, I brim with sorrow drowning song. The tide flows down, the wave again Is vocal in its wooded walls; My deeper anguish also falls, And I can speak a little then. XX. The lesster griefs that may be said. That breathe a thousand tender vows, Are but as servants in a house Where lies the master newly dead; Who speak their feeling as it is. And weep the fulness from the mind : ' It will be hard,' they say, ' to find Another service such as this.' My lighter moods are like to these, That out of words a comfort win; But there are other griefs within, And tears that at their fountain freeze; For by the hearth the children sit Cold in that atmosphere of Death, And scarce endure to draw the breath. Or like to noiseless phantoms flit : But open converse is there none. So much the vital spirits sink To see the vacant chair, and think, * How good ! how kind ! and he is gone.' XXI. I sing to him that rests below, And, since the grasses round me wave, I take the grasses of the grave. And make them pipes whereon to blow. The traveller hears me now and then. And sometimes harshly will he speak : ' This fellow would make weakness weak. And melt the waxen hearts of men.* Another answers, 'Let him be, He loves to make parade of pain, That with his piping he may gain The praise that comes to constancy.' A third is wroth : * Is this an hour For private sorrow's barren song, When more and more the people throng The chairs and thrones of civil power? * A time to sicken and to swoon. When Science reaches forth her arms To feel from world to world, and charms Her secret from the latest moon? ' Behold, ye speak an idle thing : Ye never knew the sacred dust : I do but sing because I must. And pipe but as the linnets sing : 248 IN MEMORIAM. And one is glad; her note is gay, For now her little ones have ranged; And one is sad ; her note is changed, Because her brood is stol'n away. XXII. The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Thro' four sweet years arose and fell. From flower to flower, from snow to snow : And we with singing cheer'd the way. And, crown'd with all the season lent. From April on to April went. And glad at heart from May to May : But where the path we walk'd began To slant the fifth autumnal slope. As we descended following Hope There sat the Shadow fear'd of man; Who broke our fair companionship, And spread his mantle dark and cold, And wrapt thee formless in the fold, And duU'd the murmur on thy lip. And bore thee where I could not see Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste. And think, that somewhere in the waste The Shadow sits and waits for me. XXIII. Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut, Or breaking into song by fits, Alone, alone, to where he sits, The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot, Who keeps the keys of all the creeds, I wander, often felling lame. And looking back to whence I came. Or on to where the pathway leads; And crying, How changed from where it ran Thro' lands where not' a leaf was dumb; But all the lavish hills would hum The murmur of a happy Pan : When each by turns was guide to each. And Fancy light from Fancy caught. And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech; And all we met was fair and good. And all was good that Time could bring, And all the secret of the Spring Moved in the chambers of the blood; And many an old philosophy On Argive heights divinely sang, And round us all the thicket rang To many a flute of Arcady. And was the day of my delight As pure and perfect as I say? The very source and fount of Day Is dash'd with wandering isles of night. If all was good and fair we met, This earth had been the Paradise It never look'd to human eyes Since our first Sun arose and set. And is it that the haze of grief Makes former gladness loom so great? The lowness of the present state, That sets the past in this relief? Or that the past will always win A glory from its being far; And orb into the perfect star We saw not, when we moved therein? • XXV. I know that this was Life, — the track Whereon with equal feet we fared; And then, as now, the day pre pared The daily burden for the back. But this it was that made me move As light as carrier-birds in air; I loved the weight I had to bear, Because it needed help of Love : IN MEMORIAM. 249 Nor could I weary, heart or limb, When mighty Love would cleave in twain The lading of a single pain, And part it, giving half to him. XXVI. Still onward winds the dreary way; I with it; for I long to prove No lapse of moons can canker Love, Whatever fickle tongues may say. And if that eye which watches guilt And goodness, and hath power to see Within the green the moulder'd tree, And towers fall'n as soon as built — Oh, if indeed that eye foresee Or see (in Him is no before) In more of life true life no more And Love the indifference to be, Then might I find, ere yet the morn Breaks hither over Indian seas, That Shadow waiting with the keys, To shroud me from my proper scorn. XXVII. / I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage. The linnet born within the cage, . That never knew the summer woods : I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time, Unfetter'd by the sense of crime, To whom a conscience never wakes; Nor, what may count itself as blest, The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth; Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. XXVIII. The time draws near the birth of Christ: The moon is hid; the night is still; The Christmas bells from hill to hill Answer each other in the mist. Four voices of four hamlets round, From far and near, on mead and moor. Swell out and fail, as if a door Were shut between me and the sound : Each voice four changes on the wind, That now dilate, and now decrease. Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace, Peace and goodwill, to all mankind. This year I slept and woke with pain, I almost wish'd no more to wake, And that my hold on life would break Before I heard those bells again : But they my troubled spirit rule. For they controU'd me when a boy; They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy, The merry merry bells of Yule. With such compelling cause to grieve As daily vexes household peace, And chains regret to his decease, How dare we keep our Christmas-eve; Which brings no more a welcome guest To enrich the threshold of the night With shower'd largess of delight In dance and song and game and jest? Yet go, and while the holly boughs Entwine the cold baptismal font, Make one wreath more for Use and Wont, That guard the portals of the house; Old sisters of a day gone by, Gray nurses, loving nothing new; Why should they miss their yearly due Before their time ? They too will die. 250 IN MEMORIAM. With trembling fingers did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth ; A rainy cloud possess'd the earth, And sadly fell our Christmas-eve. At our old pastimes in the hall We gamboll'd, making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute Shadow watching all. We paused : the winds were in the beech : We heard them sweep the winter land; And in a circle hand-in-hand Sat silent, looking each at each; Then echo-like our voices rang; We sung, tho' every eye was dim, A merry song we sang with him Last year : impetuously we sang : We ceased : a gentler feeling crept Upon us : surely rest is meet : * They rest,' we said, * their sleep is sweet,' And silence follow'd, and we wept. Our voices took a higher range; Once more we sang : * They do not die Nor lose their mortal sympathy, Nor change to us, altho' they change; ' Rapt from the fickle and the frail With gather'd power, yet the same, Pierces the keen seraphic flame From orb to orb, from veil to veil.' Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, Draw forth the cheerful day from night : O Father, touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was born. XXXI. When Lazarus left his charnel-cave. And home to Mary's house return'd, Was this demanded — if he yearn'd To hear her weeping by his grave? ' Where wert thou, brother, those foui days?' There lives no record of reply. Which telling what it is to die Had surely added praise to praise. From every house the neighbours met, The streets were fiU'd with joyful sound, A solemn gladness even crown'd The purple brows of Olivet. Behold a man raised up by Christ ! The rest remaineth unreveal'd; He told it not; or something seal'd The lips of that Evangelist. XXXII. Her eyes are homes of silent prayer. Nor other thought her mind admits But, he was dead, and there he sits. And he that brought him back is there. Then one deep love doth supersede All other, when her ardent gaze Roves from the living brother's face, And rests upon the Life indeed. All subtle thought, all curious fears, Borne down by gladness so complete, She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears. Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, Whose'loves in higher love endure; What souls possess themselves so pure, ^ Or is there blessedness like theirs? O thou that after toil and storm Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air, Whose faith has centre everywhere. Nor cares to fix itself to form. Leave thou thy sister when she prays. Her early Heaven, her happy views; Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse A life that leads melodious days. IN MEMORIAM. 251 Her faith thro' form is pure as thine, Her hands are quicker unto good: Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood To which she links a truth divine ! See thou, that countest reason ripe In holding by the law within, Thou fail not in a world of sin, • And ev'n for want of such a type. XXXIV. >/ My own dim life should teach me this, That life shall live for evermore. Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is; This round of green, this orb of flame. Fantastic beauty; such as lurks In some wild Poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim. What then were God to such as I ? 'Twere hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use A little patience ere I die; 'Twere best at once to sink to peace, Like birds the charming serpent draws, To drop head-foremost in the jaws Of vacant darkness and to cease. Yet if some voice that man could trust Should murmur from .the narrow house, 'The cheeks drop in; the body bows; Man dies : nor is there hope in dust : ' Might I not say? 'Yet even here, But for one hour, O Love, I strive To keep so sweet a thing alive : ' But I should turn mine ears ancl hear The moanings of the homeless sea. The sound of streams that swift or slow Draw down Ionian hills, and sow The dust of continents to be; And Love would answer with a sigh, 'The sound of that forgetful shore Will change my sweetness more and more, Half-dead to know that I shall die.' O me, what profits it to put An id'c; case? If Death were seen At fiv-t as Death, Love had not been, Or been in narrowest working shut, Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape, And bask'd and batten'd in the woods. xxxvr. Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, Deep-seated in our mystic frame. We yield all blessing to the name Of Him that made them current coin; For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers. Where truth in closest words shall fail, When truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors. And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought; Which he may read that binds the sheaf. Or builds the house, or digs the grave, And those wild eyes that watch the wave In roarings round the coral reef. xxxvii. Urania speaks with darken'd brow : 'Thou pratest here where thou art least ; This faith has many a purer priest. And many an abler voice than thou. 'Go down beside thy native rill. On thy Parnassus set thy feet, And hear thy laurel whisper sweet About the ledges of the hill.' 252 IN MEMORIAM. And my Melpomene replies, A touch of shame upon her cheek : ' I am not worthy ev'n to speak Of thy prevailing mysteries; *ForI am but an earthly Muse, And owning but a little art To lull with song an aching heart. And render human love his dues; * But brooding on the dear one dead, And all he said of things divine, (And dear to me as sacred wine To dying lips is all he said), * I murmur'd, as I came along, Of comfort clasp'd in truth reveal'd; And loiter'd in the master's field. And darken'd sanctities with song.' With weary steps I loiter on, Tho' always under alter'd skies The purple from the distance dies. My prospect and horizon gone. No joy the blowing season gives. The herald melodies of spring, But in the songs I love to sing A doubtful gleam of solace lives. If any care for what is here Survive in spirits render'd free, Then are these songs I sing of thee Not all ungrateful to thine ear. Old warder of these buried bones, And answering now my random stroke With fruitful cloud and living smoke. Dark yew, that graspest at the stones And dippest toward the dreamless head, To thee too comes the golden hour When flower is feeling after flower; But Sorrow — fixt upon the dead, And darkening the dark graves of men, — What whisper'd from her lying lips? Thy gloom is kindled at the tips, And passes into gloom again. Could we forget the widow'd hour And look on Spirits breathed away. As on a maiden in the day When first she wears her orange-flower ! When crown'd with blessing she doth rise To take her latest leave of home. And hopes and light regrets that come Make April of her tender eyes; And doubtful joys the father move. And tears are on the mother's face, As parting with a long embrace She enters other realms of love; Her office there to rear, to teach. Becoming as is meet and fit A link among the days, to knit The generations each with each; And, doubtless, unto thee is given A life that bears immortal fruit In those great offices that suit The full-grown energies of heaven. Ay me, the difference I discern ! How often shall her old fireside . Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride, How often she herself return, And tell them all they would have told, And bring her babe, and make her boast, Till even those that miss'd her most Shall count new things as dear as old : But thou and I have shaken hands. Till growing winters lay me low; My paths are in the fields I know, And thine in undiscover'd lands. XLI. Thy spirit ere our fatal loss Did ever rise from high to higher; As mounts the heavenward altar- fire. As flies the lighter thro' the gross. IN MEMORIAM. «53 But thou art turn'd to something strange, And I have lost the links that bound Thy changes; here upon the ground, No more partaker of thy change. Deep folly ! yet that this could be — That I could wing my will with might To leap the grades of life and light. And flash at once, my friend, to thee. For tho' my nature rarely yields To that vague fear implied in. death; Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath. The howlings from forgotten fields; Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor An inner trouble I behold, A spectral doubt which makes me cold, That I shall be thy mate no more, Tho' following with an upward mind The wonders that have come to thee, Thro' all the secular to-be, But evermore a life behind. XLII. I vex my heart with fancies dim : He still outstript me in the race; It was but unity of place That made me dream I rank'd with him. And so may Place retain us still. And he the much-beloved again, A lord of large experience, train To riper growth the mind and will : And what delights can equal those That stir the spirit's inner deeps. When one that loves but knows not, reaps A truth from one that loves and knows? XLIII. If Sleep and Death be truly one, And every spirit's folded bloom Thro' all its intervital gloom In some long trance should slumber on; Unconscious of the sliding hour. Bare of the body, might it last, And silent traces of the past Be all the colour of the flower : So then were nothing lost to man; So that still garden of the souls In many a figured leaf enrolls The total world since life began; And love will last as pure and whole As when he loved me here in Time, And at the spiritual prime Rewaken with the dawning soul. How fares it with the happy dead? For here the man is more and more; But he forgets the days before God shut the doorways of his head. The days have vanish'd, tone and tint. And yet perhaps the hoarding sense Gives out at times (he knows not whence) A little flash, a mystic hint; And in the long harmonious years (If Death so taste Lethean springs), May some dim touch of earthly things Surprise thee ranging with thy peers. If such a dreamy touch should fall, O turn thee round, resolve the doubt; My guardian angel will speak out In that high place, and tell thee all. The baby new to earth and sky. What time his tender palm is prest Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that ' this is I : ' But as he grows he gathers much. And learns the use of *I,' and 'me,' And finds * I am not what I see. And other than the things I touch.' 254 IN MEMORIAM. So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, As thro' the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined. This use may lie in blood and breath, Which else were fruitless of their due. Had man to learn himself anew Beyond the second birth of Death. XLVI. We ranging down this lower track, The path we came by, thorn and flower. Is shadow'd by the growing hour, Lest life should fail in looking back. So be it: there no shade can last In that deep dawn behind the tomb, But clear from marge to marge shall bloom The eternal landscape of the past; A lifelong tract of time reveal'd; The fruitful hours of still increase; Days order'd in a wealthy peace, And those five years its richest field. O Love, thy province were not large, A bounded field, nor stretching far; Look also. Love, a brooding star, A rosy warmth from marge to marge. XLVII. That each, who seems a separate whole. Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging in the general Soul, Is faith as vague as all unsweet : Eternal form shall still divide The eternal soul from -all beside; And I shall know him when we meet : And we shall sit at endless feast, Enjoying each the other's good : What vaster dream can hit the mood Of Love on earth? He seeks at least Upon the last and sharpest height, Before the spirits fade away. Some landing-place, to clasp and say, * Farewell ! We lose ourselves in light.' If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, Were taken to be such as closed Grave doubts aild answers here pro- posed, Then these were such as men might scorn : Her care is not to part and prove; She takes, when harsher moods remit. What slender shade of doubt may flit,* And makes it vassal unto love : And hence, indeed, she sports with words. But better serves a wholesome law. And holds it sin and shame to draw The deepest measure from the chords : Nor dare she trust a larger lay, But rather loosens from the lip Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away. XLIX. From art, from nature, from the schools, Let random influences glance, Like light in many a shiver'd lance That breaks about the dappled pools : The lightest wave of thought shall lisp, The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe, The shghtest air of song shall breathe To make the sullen surface crisp. And look thy look, and go thy way, But blame not thou the winds that make The seeming-wanton ripple break, The tender-pencill'd shadow play. Beneath all fancied hopes and fears Ay me, the sorrow deepens down, IN MEMORIAM. 255 Whose muffled motions blindly drown The bases of my life in tears. Be near me when my light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of Being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frame Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust ; And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a Fury slinging flame. Be near me when my faith is dry, And men the flies of latter spring, That lay their eggs, and sting and sing And weave their petty cells and die. Be near me when I fade away, To point the term of human strife. And on the low dark verge of life The twilight of eternal day. LI. Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side? Is there no baseness we would hide? No inner vileness that we dread? Shall he for whose applause I strove, I had such reverence for his blame. See with clear eye some hidden shame And I be lessen'd in his love? I wrong the grave with fears untrue : Shall love be blamed for want of faith? There must be wisdom with great Death : The dead shall look me thro' and thru'. Be near us when we climb or fall : Ye watch, Hke God, the rolling hours With larger other eyes than ours. To make allowance for us all. I cannot love thee as I ought, For love reflects the thing beloved; My words are only words, and moved Upon the topmost froth of thought. * Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,' The Spirit of true love replied ; 'Thou canst not move me from thy side. Nor human frailty do me wrong. ' What keeps a spirit wholly true To that ideal which he bears? What record ? not the sinless years That breathed beneath the Syrian blue : *So fret not, like an idle girl. That life is dash'd with flecks of sin. Abide : thy wealth is gather'd in, When Time hath sunder'd shell from pearl. ' Liii. y How many a father have I seen, A sober man, among his boys. Whose youth was full of foolish noise, Who wears his manhood hale and green : And dare we to this fancy give, That had the wild oat not been sown, The soil, left barren, scarce had grown The grain by which a man may live? Or, if we held the doctrine sound For life outliving heats of youth, Yet who would preach it as a truth To those that eddy round and round? Hold thou the good : define it well : For fear divine Philosophy Should push beyond her mark, and be Procuress to the Lords of Hell. Liv. • Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will. Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 256 IN MEMORIAM. That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroy'd, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete; That not a worm is cloven in vain ; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain. ^ Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At last — far off— at last, to all, And every winter change to spring. So runs my dream : but what am I ? An infant crying in the night : An infant crying for the light : And with no language but a cry. / The wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the graye, Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul? Are God and Nature then at strife. That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds. And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear, I falter where I firmly trod. And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope. LVI. ^ * So careful of the type ? ' but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, 'A thousand types are gone : I care for nothing, all shall go. * Thou makest thine appeal to me : I bring to life, I bring to death : The spirit does but mean the breath : I know no more.' And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair. Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry " skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer. Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law — Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed — Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills. Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or seal'd within the iron hills? No more? A monster then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime. That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music match'd with him. O life as futile, then, as frail! O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! What hope of answer, or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil. Peace; come away: the song of woe Is after all an earthly song : Peace; come away: we do him wrong To sing so wildly : let us go. Come; let us go : your cheeks are pale; But half my Ufe I leave behind : Methinks my friend is richly shrinedj But I shall pass; my work will fail. Yet in these ears, till hearing dies. One set slow bell will seem to toll The passing of tiie sweetest soul That ever look'd with human eyes. I hear it now, and o'er and o'er. Eternal greetings to the dead; And ' Ave, Ave, Ave,' said, * Adieu, adieu,' for evermore. IN MEMORIAM. 257 In those sad words I took farewell : Like echoes in sepulchral halls, As drop by drop the water falls In vaults and catacombs, they fell; And, falling, idly broke the peace Of hearts that beat from day to day, Half^conscious of their dying clay. And those cold crypts where they shall cease. The high Muse answer' d : * Wherefore grieve Thy brethren with a fruitless tear? Abide a little longer here. And thou shalt take a nobler leave.* LIX. O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me No casual mistress, but a wife, My bosom-friend and half of life; As I confess it needs must be; O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood. Be sometimes lovely like a bride, And put thy harsher moods aside, If thou wilt have me wise and good. My centred passion cannot move, Nor will it lessen from to-day; But I'll have leave at times to play As with the creature of my love; And set thee forth, for thou art mine, With so much hope for years to come. That, howsoe'er I. know thee, some Could hardly tell what name were thine. He past; a soul of nobler tone : My spirit loved and loves him yet, Like some poor girl whose heart is set On one whose rank exceeds her own He mixing with his proper sphere, She finds the baseness of her lot, Half jealous of she knows not w^hat, And envying all that meet him there. The little village looks forlorn; She sighs amid her narrow days, Moving about the household ways, In that dark house where she was born. The foolish neighbours come and go, And tease her till the day draws by : At night she weeps, * How vain am I ! How should he love a thing so low? ' LXI. If, in thy second state sublime, Thy ransom'd reason change replies With all the circle of the wise, The perfect flower of human time; And if thou cast thine eyes below. How dimly character'd and slight, How dwarfd a growth of cold and night, How blanch'd with darkness must I grow ! Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore. Where thy first form was made a man; I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can The soul of Shakspeare love thee more. Tho' if an eye that's downward cast Could make thee somewhat blench or fail, Then be my love an idle tale. And fading legend of the past; And thou, as one that once declined, When he was little more than boy. On some unworthy heart with joy, But lives to wed an equal mind; And breathes a novel world, the while His other passion wholly dies. Or in the hght of deeper eyes Is matter for a flying smile. LXIII. Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven, And love in which my hound has part, Can hang no weight upon my heart In its assumptions up to heaven; 258 IN MEMORIAM. And I am so much more than these, As thou, perchance, art more than I, And yet I spare them sympathy, And I would set their pains at ease. So mayst thou watch me where I weep, As, unto vaster motions bound, The circuits of thine orbit round A higher height, a deeper deep. Dost thou look back on what hath been, As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began And on a simple village green ; Who breaks his birth's invidious bar. And grasps the skirts of happy chance. And breasts the blows of circum- stance. And grapples with his evil- star; Who makes by force his merit known And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees, And shape the whisper of the throne; And moving up from high to higher. Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope The pillar of a people's hope, The centre of a world's desire; Yet feels, as in a pensive dream. When all his active powers are still, A distant dearness in the hill, A secret sweetness in the stream, The limit of his narrower fate, While yet beside its vocal springs He play'd at counsellors and kings. With one that was his earliest mate; Who ploughs with pain his native lea And reaps the labour of his hands, Or in the furrow musing stands ; * Does my old friend remember me? ' LXV. Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt; I lull a fancy trouble-tost With ' Love's too precious to be lost, A little grain shall not be spilt.' And in that solace can I sing, Till out of painful phases wrought There flutters up a happy thought, Self-balanced on a lightsome wing : Since we deserved the name of friends, And thine effect so lives in me, A part of mine may live in thee And move thee on to noble ends. You thought my heart too far diseased; You wonder when my fancies play To find me gay among the gay, Like one. with any trifle pleased. The shade by which my life was crost, Which makes a desert in the mind, Has made me kindly with my kind, And like to him whose sight is lost; Whose feet are guided thro' the land, Whose jest among his friends is free. Who takes the children on his knee, And winds their curls about his hand : He plays with threads, he beats his chair For pastime, dreaming of the sky; His inner day can never die. His night of loss is always there. When on my bed the moonlight falls, I know that in thy place of rest By that broad water of the west. There conies a glory on the walls : Thy marble bright in dark appears, As slowly steals a silver flame Along the letters of thy name, And o'er the number of thy years. The mystic glory swims away; From off my bed the moonlight dies; And closing eaves of wearied eyes I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray : And then I know the mist is drawn A lucid veil from coast to coast. And in the dark church like a ghost Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn. IN MEMORIAM. 259 LXVIII. He reach'd the glory of a hand, That seem'd to touch it into leaf: When in the down I sink my head, The voice was not the voice of grief. Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times The words were hard to understand. my breath; Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows LXX. not Death, I cannot see the features right, Nor can I dream of thee as dead: When on the gloom I strive to paint The face I know; the hues are faint I walk as ere I walk'd forlorn, And mix with hollow masks of night; When all our path was fresh with dew, Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought. And all the bugle breezes blew A gulf that ever shuts and gapes. Reveillee to the breaking morn. A hand that points, and palled shapes In shadowy thoroughfares of thought; But what is this? I turn about, I find a trouble in thine eye. And crowds that stream from yawning Which makes me sad I know not doors, why. And shoals of pucker'd faces drive; Nor can my dream resolve the doubt : Dark bulks that tumble half alive. And lazy lengths on boundless shores; But ere the lark hath left the lea I wake, and I discern the truth; Till all at once beyond the will It is the trouble of my youth I hear a wizard music roll. That foolish sleep transfers to thee. And thro' a lattice on the soul LXIX. Looks thy fair face and makes it still. I dream'd there would be Spring no LXXI. Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance more. And madness, thou hast forged at That Nature's ancient power was last lost: A night-long Present of the Past The streets were black with smoke In which we went thro' summer France. and frost, They chatter'd trifles at the door : Hadst thou such credit with the soul? Then bring an opiate trebly strong, I wander'd from the noisy town. Drug down the blindfold sense of I found a wood with thorny boughs : wrong I took the thorns to bind my brows. That so my pleasure may be whole; I wore them like a civic crown : While now we talk as once we talk'd X met with scoffs, I met with scorns Of men and minds, the dust of From youth and babe and hoary change. hairs : The days that grow to something They call'd me in the public squares strange, , The fool that weats a crown of thorns : In walking as of old we walk'd They call'd me fool, they call'd me Beside the river's wooded reach. child : The fortress, and the mountain I found an angel of the night; ridge, The voice was low, the look was The cataract flashing from the bright; bridge, He look'd upon my crown and smiled : The breaker breaking on the beach. 260 IN MEMORIAM. LXXII. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, And howlest, issuing out of night, With blasts that blow the poplar white. And lash with storm the streaming pane? Day, when my crown'd estate begun To pine in that reverse of ci )om. Which sicken'd every living bloom, And blurr'd the splendour of the sun; Who ushefest in the dolorous hour With thy quick tears that make the rose Pull sideways, and the daisy close Her crimson fringes to the shower; Who might'st have heaved a windless flame Up the deep East, or, whispering, play'd A chequer-work of beam and shade Along the hills, yet look'd the same. As wan, as chill, as wild as now; Day, mark'd as with some hideous crime. When the dark hand struck down thro' time. And canceU'd nature's best : but thou Lift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows Thro' clouds that drench the morn- ing star, And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar. And sow the sky with flying boughs, And up thy vault with roaring sound Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day; Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray. And hide thy shame beneath the ground. So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be. How know I what had need of thee, For thou wert strong as thou wert true? The fame is quench'd that I foresaw. The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath : I curse not nature, no, nor death; For nothing is that errs from law. We pass; the path that each man trod Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds : What fame is left for human deeds In endless age? It rests with God. O hollow wraith of dying fame, Fade wholly, while the soul exults. And self-infolds the large results Of force that would have forged a name. LXXIV. As sometimes in a dead man's face. To those that watch it more and more, A likeness, hardly seen before. Comes out — to some one of his race: So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, I see thee what thou art, and know Thy likeness to the wise below, Thy kindred with the great of old. But there is more than I can see. And what I see I leave unsaid, Nor speak it, knowing Death has made His darkness beautiful with thee. I leave thy praises unexpress'd In verse that brings myself relief, And by the measure of my grief I leave thy greatness to be guess'd; What practice howsoe'er expert In fitting aptest words to things, Or voice the richest- toned that sings. Hath power to give thee as thou wert? I care not in these fading days To raise a cry that lasts not long, And round thee with the breeze of song To stir a little dust of praise. IN MEMORIAM. 261 Thy leaf has perish'd in the green, And, while we breathe beneath the sun, The world which credits what is done Is cold to all that might have been. So here shall silence guard thy fame; But somewhere, out of human view, Whate'er thy hands are set to do Is wrought with tumult of acclaim. LXXVI. Take wings of fancy, and ascend, And in a moment set thy face Where all the starry heavens of space Are sharpen'd to a needle's end; Take wings of foresight; lighten thro' The secular abyss to come, And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb Before the mouldering of a yew; And if the matin songs, that woke The darkness of our planet, last. Thine own shall wither in the vast, Ere half the lifetime of an oak. Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain; And what are they when these re- main The ruin'd shells of hollow towers? What hope is here for modern rhyme To him, who turns a musing eye On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie Foreshorten'd in the tract of time? These mortal lullabies of pain May bind a book, may line a box. May serve to curl a maiden's locks; Or when a thousand moons shall wane A man upon a stall may find, And, passing, turn the page that tells A grief, then changed to something else, Sung by a long-forgotten mind. But what of that? My darken'd ways Shall ring with music all the same; To breathe my loss is more than fame, To utter love more sweet than praise. Again at Christmas did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth ; The silent snow possess'd the earth. And calmly fell our Christmas-eve : The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost, No wing of wind the region swept, But over all things brooding slept The quiet sense of something lost. As in the winters left behind. Again our ancient games had place, The mimic picture's breathing grace, And dance and song and hoodman-blind. Who show'd a token of distress? No single tear, no mark of pain : sorrow, then can sorrow wane? O grief, can grief be changed to less? O last regret, regret can die ! No — mixt with all this mystic frame. Her deep relations are the same. But with long use her tears are dry. LXXIX. * More than my brothers are to me,' — Let this not vex thee, noble heart ! 1 know thee of what force thou art To hold the costliest love in fee. But thou and I are one in kind. As moulded like in Nature's mint; And hill and wood and field did print The same sweet forms in either mind. For us the same cold streamlet curl'd Thro' all his eddying coves; the same All winds that roam the twilight came In whispers of the beauteous world. 262 IN MEMORIAM. At one dear knee we proffer'd vows, One lesson from one book we learn'd, Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd To black and brown on kindred brows. And so my wealth resembles thine, But he was rich where I was poor, And he supplied my want the more As his unhkeness fitted mine. If any vague desire should rise. That holy Death ere Arthur died Had moved me kindly from his side, And dropt the dust on tearless eyes; Then fancy shapes, as fancy can. The grief my loss in him had wrought, A grief as deep as life or thought. But stay'd in peace with God and man. I make a picture in the brain; I hear the sentence that he speaks; He bears the burthen of the weeks But turns his burthen into gain. His credit thus shall set me free; And, influence-rich to soothe and save, Umised example from the grave Reach out dead hands to comfort me. LXXXI. Could I have said while he was here, • My love shall now no further range; There cannot come a mellower change. For now is love mature in ear.' Love, then, had hope of richer store : What end is here to my complaint? This haunting whisper makes me faint, ' More yesrs had made me love thee mors.' But Death returns an answer sweet : • My fiudden frost was sudden gain, And gave all ripeness to the grain. It might have drawn from after-heat.* LXXXII. I wage not any feud with Death For changes wrought on form and face; No lower life that earth's embrace May breed with him, can fright my faith. Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks; And these are but the shatter'd stalks. Or ruin'd chrysalis of one. Nor blame I Death, because he bare The use of virtue out of earth : I know transplanted human worth Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. For this alone on Death I wreak The wrath that garners in my heart ; He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak. Dip down upon the northern shore, O sweet new-year delaying long; Thou doest expectant nature wrong; Delaying long, delay no more. What stays thee from the clouded noons, Thy sweetness from its proper place? Can trouble live with April days, Or sadness in the summer moons? Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire. The little speedwell's darling blue, Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. O thou new-year, delaying long, Delayest the sorrow in my blood, That longs to burst a frozen bud And ficod a fresher throat with song. When I contemplate all alone The life that hat! been thine below, And fix my thoughts on all the glow To which thy crescent would have grown; IN MEMORIAM. 263 I see thee sitting crovvn'd with good, A central warmth diffusing bliss In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss, On all the branches of thy blood; Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine; For now the day was drawing on, When thou should'st hnk thy life with one Of mine own house, and boys of thine Had babbled ' Uncle ' on my knee; But that remorseless iron hour Made cypress of her orange flower, Despair of Hope, and earth of thee. 1 seem to meet their least desire, To clap their cheeks, to call them mine. I see their unborn faces shine Beside the never-lighted fire. I see myself an honour'd guest, Thy partner in the flowery walk Of letters, genial table-talk. Or deep dispute, and graceful jest; While now thy prosperous labour fills The lips of men with honest praise, And sun by sun the happy days Descend below the golden hills With promise of a morn as fair ; And all the train of bounteous hours Conduct by paths of growing powers. To reverence and the silver hair; Till slowly worn her earthly robe, Her lavish mission richly wrought, Leaving great legacies of thought, Thy spirit should fail from off the globe ; What time mine own might also flee. As link'd with thine in love and fate, And, hovering o'er the dolorous strait To the other shore, involved in thee, Arrive at last the blessed goal, And He that died in Holy Land Would reach us out the shining hand And take us as a single soul. What reed was that on which I leant? Ah, backward fanc}', wherefore wake The old bitterness again, and break The low beginnings of content. This truth came borne with bier and pall, 1 felt it, when I sorrow'd most, 'Tis better to have loved and lost. Than never to have loved at all — O true in word, and tried in deed, Demanding, so to bring relief To this which is our common grief, What kind of life is that I lead; And whether trust in things above Be dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd; And whether love for him have drain'd My capabilities of love; Your words have virtue such as draws A faithful answer from the breast. Thro' light reproaches, half exprest, And loyal unto kindly laws. My blood an even tenor kept, Till on mine ear this message falls. That in Vienna's fatal walls God's finger touch'd him, and he slept. The great Intelligences fair That range above our mortal state. In circle round the blessed gate. Received and gave him welcome there; And led him thro' the blissful chmes. And shov/'d him in the fountain fresh All knowledge that the sons of flesh Shall gather in the cycled times. But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim, Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth. To wander on a darken'd earth, Where all things round me breathed of him. O friendship, equal-poised control, O heart, with kindliest motion warm, O sacred essence, other form, O solemn ghost, O crowned soul ! 264 IN MEMORIAM, Yet none could better know than I, How much of act at human hands The sense of human will demands By which we dare to live or die. Whatever way my days decline, I felt and feel, tho' left alone, His being- working in mine own, The footsteps of his life in mine; A life that all the Muses deck'd With gifts of grace, that might ex- press All-comprehensive tenderness. All-subtilising intellect : And so my passion hath not swerved To works of weakness, but I find An image comforting the mind. And in my grief a strength reserved. Likewise the imaginative woe. That loved to handle spiritual strife. Diffused the shock thro' all my life. But in the present broke the blow. My pulses therefore beat again For other friends that once I met; Nor can it suit me to forget The mighty hopes that make us men. I woo your love : I count it crime To mourn for any overmuch; I, the divided half of such A friendship as had master'd Time; Which masters Time indeed, and is Eternal, separate from fears : The all-assuming months and years Can take no part away from this : But Summer on the steaming floods, And Spring that swells the narrow brooks. And Autumn, with a noise of rooks, That gather in the waning woods. And every pulse of wind and wave Recalls, in change of light or gloom, My old affection of the tomb, And my prime passion in the grave. My old aff"ection of the tomb, A part of stillness, yearns to speak : 'Arise, and get thee forth and seek A friendship for the years to come. 'I watch thee from the quiet shore; Thy spirit up to mine can reach; But in dear words of human speech We two communicate no more.' And I, * Can clouds of nature stain The starry clearness of the free? How is it? Canst thou feel for me Some painless sympathy with pain ? ' And lightly does the whisper fall; • ' Tis hard for thee to fathom this; I triumph in conclusive bliss, And that serene result of all.' So hold I commerce with the dead; Or so methinks the dead would say; Or so shall grief with symbols play And pining life be fancy-fed. Now looking to some settled end, That these things pass, and I shall prove A meeting somewhere, love with love, I crave your pardon, O my friend; If not so fresh, with love as true, I, clasping brother-hands, aver I could not, if I would, transfer The whole I felt for him to you. For which be they that hold apart The promise of the golden hours? First love, first friendship, equal powers. That marry with the virgin heart. Still mine, that cannot but deplore, That beats within a lonely place, That yet remembers his embrace. But at his footstep leaps no more. My heart, tho' wicfow'd, may not rest Quite in the love of what is gone, But seeks to beat in time with one That warms another living breast. IN MEMORIAM. 265 Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring. Knowing the primrose yet is dear, The primrose of the later year, As not unlike to that of Spring. LXXXVI. Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, That rollest from the gorgeous gloom Of evening over brake and bloom And meadow, slowly breathing bare The round of space, and rapt below Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood, And shadowing down the horned flood In ripples, fan my brows and blow The fever from my cheek, and sigh The full new life that feeds thy breath Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death, 111 brethren, let the fancy fly From belt to belt of crimson seas On leagues of odour streaming far. To where in yonder orient star A hundred spirits whisper ' Peace.' I past beside the reverend walls In which of old I wore the gown; I roved at random thro' the town, And saw the tumult of the halls; And heard once more in college fanes The storm their high-built organs make, And thunder-music, rolling, shake The prophet blazon'd on the panes; And caught once more the distant shout, The measured pulse of racing oars Among the willows ; paced the shores And many a bridge, and all about The same gray flats again, and felt The same, but not the same; and last Up that long walk of limes I past To see the rooms in which he dwelt. Another name was on the door : I linger'd; all within was noise Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys That crash'd the glass and beat the floor; Where once we held debate, a band Of youthful friends, on mind and art. And labour, and the changing mart. And all the framework of the land; When one would aim an arrow fair. But send it slackly from the string; And one would pierce an outer ring. And one an inner, here and there; And last the master-bowman, he, W^ould cleave the mark. A willing ear We lent him. Who, but hung to hear The rapt oration flowing free From point to point, with power and grace And music in the bounds of law. To those conclusions when we saw The God within him light his face. And seem to lift the form, and glow In azure orbits heavenly-wise; And over those ethereal eyes The bar of Michael Angelo. LXXXVIII. Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet. Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks, tell me where the senses mix, O tell me where the passions meet. Whence radiate : fierce extremes employ Thy spirits in the darkening leaf, And in the midmost heart of grief Thy passion clasps a secret joy : And I — my harp would prelude woe — 1 cannot all command the strings; The glory of the sum of things Will flash along the chords and go.. 266 JN MEMORIAM. Witch-elms that counterchange the floor Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright; And thou, with all thy breadth and height Of foliage, towering sycamore; iiow often, hither wandering down, My Arthur found your shadows fair, And shook to all the liberal air The dust and din and steam of town : He brought an eye for all he saw; He mixt in all our simple sports; They pleased him, fresh from brawl- ing courts And dusty purlieus of the law. O joy to him in this retreat, Immantled in ambrosial dark, To drink the cooler air, and mark The landscape winking thro' the heat : O sound to rout the brood of cares. The sweep of scythe in morning dew. The gust that round the garden flew, And tumbled half the mellowing pears ! O bliss, when all in circle drawn About him, heart and ear we're fed To hear him as he lay and read The Tuscan poets on the lawn : Or in the all-golden afternoon A guest, or happy sister, sung, Or here she brought the harp and flung A ballad. to the brightening moon : Nor less it pleased in livelier moods, Beyond the bounding hill to stray, And break the livelong summer day With banquet in the distant woods; Whereat we glanced from theme to theme, Discuss'd the books to love or hate. Or touch'd the changes of the state. Or threaded some Socratic dream; But if I praised the busy town. He loved to rail against it still, For ' ground in yonder social mill We rub each other's angles down, 'And merge,' he said, 'in form and gloss The picturesque of man and man.' We talk'd : the stream beneath us ran, The wine-flask lying couch'd in moss, Or cool'd within the glooming wave; And last, returning from afar, .Before the crimson-circled star Had fall'n into her father's grave, And brushing ankle-deep in flowers, We heard behind the woodbine veil The milk that bubbled in the pail, And buzzings of the honied hours. xc. He tasted love with half his mind. Nor ever drank the inviolate spring Where nighest heaven, who first could fling This bitter seed among mankind; That could the dead, whose dying eyes Were closed with wail, resume their hfe, They would but find in child and wife An iron welcome when they rise : 'Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine, To pledge them with a kindly tear, To talk them o'er, to wish them here, To count their memories half divine; But if they came who past away. Behold their brides in other hands; The hard heir strides about their lands. And will not yield them for a day. Yea, tho' their sons were none of these, Not less the yet-loved sire would make Confusion worse than death, and shake The pillars of domestic peace. IN MEMORIAM. 267 Ah dear, but come thou back to me : Whatever change the years have wrought, I find not yet one lonely thought That cries against my wish for thee. When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, And rarely pipes the mounted thrush; Or underneath the barren bush Flits by the sea-blue bird of March; Come, wear the form by ^vhich I know Thy spirit in time among thy peers; The hope of unaccomplish'd years Be large and lucid round thy brow. When summer's hourly-mellowing change May breathe, with many roses sweet, Upon the thousand waves of wheat, That ripple round the lonely grange; Come : not in watches of the night. But where the sunbeam broodeth warm, Come, beauteous in thine after form, And like a finer light in light. XCII. If any vision should reveal Thy likeness, I might count it vain As but the canker of the brain; Yea, the' it spake and made appeal To chances where our lots were cast Together in the days behind, I might but say, I hear a wind Of memory murmuring the past. Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view A fact within the coming year; And tho' the months, revolving near, Should prove the phantom-warning true, They might not seem thy prophecies. But spiritual presentiments, And such refraction of events As often rises ere they rise. I shall not see thee. Dare I say No spirit ever brake the band That stays him from the native land Where first he vvalk'd when claspt in clay? No visual shade of som'e one lost. But he, the Spirit himself, may come Where all the nerve of sense is numb; Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost. O, therefore from thy sightless range With gods in unconjectured bliss, O, from the distance of the abyss Of tenfold-complicated change. Descend, and touch, and enter; hear The wish too strong for words to name; That in this blindness of the frame My Ghost may feel that thine is near, XCiv. How pure at heart and sound in head. With what divine affections bold Should be the man whose thought would hold An hour's communion with the dead. In vain shalt thou, or any, call The spirits from their golden day, Except, like them, thou too canst say, My spirit is at peace with all. They haunt the silence of the breast, Imaginations calm and fair. The memory like a cloudless air, The conscience as a sea at rest : But when the heart is full of din. And doubt beside the portal waits. They can but listen at the gates. And hear the household jar within. By night we linger'd on the lawn. For underfoot the herb was dry; And genial warmth ; and o'er the sky The silvery haze of summer drawn; And calm that let the tapers burn Unwavering: not a cricket chirr'd: The brook alone far-off was heard, And on the board the fluttering urn : 268 IN MEMORIAM. And bats went round in fragrant skies, And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes And woolly breasts and beaded eyes; While now we sang old songs that peal'd From knoll to knoll, where, couch'd at ease, The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field. But when those others, one by one, Withdrew themselves from me and night, And in the house light after light Went out, and I was all alone, A hunger seized my heart; I read Of that glad year which once had been, In those fall'n leaves which kept their green, The noble letters of the dead : And strangely on the silence broke The silent-speaking words, and strange Was love's dumb cry defying change To test his worth; and strangely spoke The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell On doubts that drive the coward back. And keen thro' wordy snares to track Suggestion to her inmost cell. So word by word, and line by line, The dead man touch'd me from the past. And all at once it seem'd at last The living soul was flash'd on mine, And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd About empyreal heights of thought. And came on that which is, and caught The deep pulsations of the world, i^onian music measuring out The steps of Time — the shocks of Chance — The blows of Death. At length my trance Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt. Vague words ! but ah, how hard to frame In matter-moulded forms of speech. Or ev'n for intellect to reach Thro' memory that which I became : Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd The knolls once more where, couch'd at ease, The white -kine glimmer'd, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field : And suck'd from out the distant gloom A breeze began to tremble o'er The large leaves of the sycamore. And fluctuate all the still perfume, And gathering freshlier overhead, Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung The heavy-folded rose, and flung The lilies to and fro, and said, *The dawn, the dawn,' and died away; And East and West, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death. To broaden into boundless day. XCVI. You say, but with no touch of scorn. Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. I know not : one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true : Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. IN MEMORIAM. 269 He fought his doubts and gather'd strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them : thus he came at length To find a stronger faith his own; And Power was with him in the night, Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone, But in the darkness and the cloud, As over Sinai's peaks of old, While Israel made their gods of gold, Altho' the trumpet blew so loud. XCVII. My love has talk'd with rocks and trees; He finds on misty mountain-ground His own vast shadow glory-crown'd ; He sees himself in all he sees. Two partners of a married life — I look'd on these and thought of thee In vastness and in mystery, And of my spirit as of a wife. These two — they dwelt with eye on eye, Their hearts of old have beat in tune. Their meetings made December June, Their every parting was to die. Their love has never past away; The days she never can forget Are earnest that he loves her yet, Whate'er the faithless people say. Her life is lone, he sits apart, He loves her yet, she will not weep, Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep He seems to slight her simple heart. He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, He reads the secret of the star. He seems so near and yet so far, He looks so cold : she thinks him kind. She keeps the gift of years before, A wither'd violet is her bliss : She knows not what his greatness is. For that, for all, she loves him more. For him she plays, to him she sings Of early faith and plighted vows; She knows "but matters of the house. And he, he knows a thousand things. Her faith is fixt and cannot move. She darkly feels him great and wise, She dwells on him with faithful eyeS; ' I cannot understand : I love.' You leave us : you will see the Rhine, And those fair hills I sail'd below, When I was there with him; and go By summer belts of wheat and vine To where he breathed his latest breath. That City. All her splendour seems No livelier than the wisp that gleams On Lethe in the eyes of Death. Let her great Danube rolling fair Enwind her isles, unmark'd of me : I have not seen, I will not see Vienna; rather dream that there, A treble darkness. Evil haunts The birth, the bridal; friend from friend Is oftener parted, fathers bend Above more graves, a thousand wants Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey By each cold hearth, and sadness flings Her shadow on the blaze of kings : And yet myself have heard him say. That not in any mother town With statelier progress to and fro The double tides of chariots flow By park and suburb under brown Of lustier leaves; nor more content. He told me, lives in any crowd, When all is gay with lamps, and loud With sport and song, in booth and tent. 270 IN MEMORIAM. Imperial halls, or open plain , And wheels the circled dance, and breaks The rocket molten into flakes Of crimson or in emerald rain. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, So loud with voices of the birds, So thick with lowings of the herds, Da}^ when I lost the flower of men; Who tremblest thro' thy darkling red On yon swoU'n brook that bubbles fast By meadows breathing of the past. And woodlands holy to the dead; Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves A song that slights the coming care. And Autumn laying here and there A fiery finger on the leaves; Who wakenest with thy balmy breath To myriads on the genial earth, Memories of bridal, or of birth. And unto myriads more, of death. O wheresoever those may be. Betwixt the slumber of the poles. To-day they count as kindred souls; They know me not, but mourn with me. I climb the hill: from end to end Ofall the landscape underneath, I find no place that does not breathe Some gracious memory of my friend; No gray old grange, or lonely fold, Or low morass and whispering reed, Or simple stile from mead to mead. Or sheepwalk up the windy wold; Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw That hears the latest linnet trill. Nor quarry trenched along the hill And haunted by the wrangling daw; Nor runlet tinkling from the rock ; Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves To left and right thro' meadowy curves, That feed the mothers of the flock; But each has pleased a kindred eye. And each reflects a kindUer day; And, leaving these, to pass away, I think once more he seems to die. Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway, The tender blossom flutter down, Unloved, that beech will gather brown. This maple burn itself away; Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair, Ray round with flames her disk of seed. And many a rose-carnation feed With summer spice the humming air; Unloved, by many a sandy bar. The brook shall babble down the plain. At noon or when the lesser wain Is twisting round the polar star; Uncared for, gird the windy grove. And flood the haunts of hern and crake; Or into silver arrows break The sailing moon in creek and cove; Till from the garden and the wild A fresh association blow, And year by year the landscape grow Familiar to the stranger's child; As year by year the labourer tills His wonted glebe, or lops the glades; And year by year our memory fades From all the circle of the hills. We leave the well-beloved place Where first we gazed upon the sky; The roofs, that heard our earliest cry, Will shelter one of stranger race. IN MEMORIAM. 271 We go, but ere we go from home, As down the garden-walks I move. Two spirits of a diverse love Contend for loving masterdom. One whispers, * Here thy boyhood sung Long since its matin song, and heard The low love-language of the bird In native hazels, tassel-hung.' The other answers, * Yea, but here Thy feet have stray'd in after hours With thy lost friend among the .bowers, And this hath made them trebly dear.' These two have striven half the day. And each prefers his separate claim. Poor rivals in a losing game. That will not yield each other way. I turn to go : my feet are set To leave the pleasant fields and farms; They mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret. On that last night before we went From out the doors where I was bred, I dream'd a vision of the dead. Which left my after-morn content. Methought I dwelt within a hall, And maidens with me : distant hills From hidden summits fed with rills A river sliding by the wall. The hall with harp and carol rang. They sang of what is wise and good And graceful. In the centre stood A statue veil'd, to which they sang; And which, tho' veil'd, was known to me. The shape of him I loved, and love For ever : then flew in a dove And brought a summons from the sea : And when they learnt that I must go They wept and wail'd, but led the way To where a little shallop lay At anchor in the flood below; And on by many a level mead, And shadowing bluff that made the banks. We glided winding under ranks Of iris, and the golden reed; And still as vaster grew the shore And rolled the floods in grander space, The maidens gather'd strength and grace And presence, lordlier than before; And I myself, who sat apart And watch'd them, wax'd in every limb; I felt the thews of Anakim, The pulses of a Titan's heart; As one would sing the death of war, And one would chant the history Of that great race, which is to be. And one the shaping of a star; Until the forward-creeping tides Began to foam, and we to draw From deep to deep, to where we saw A great ship lift her shining sides. The man we loved was there on deck. But thrice as large as man he bent To greet us. Up the side I went. And fell in silence on his neck : Whereat those maidens with one mind Bewail'd their lot; I did them wrong : ' We served thee here,' they said, * so long. And wilt thou leave us now behind ? ' So rapt I was, they could not win An answer from my lips, but he Replying, ' Enter likewise ye And go with us : ' they enter'd in. And while the wind began to sweep A music out of sheet and shroud, We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud That landlike slept along the deep. 272 JN MEMORIAM. The time draws near the birth of Christ; The moon is hid, the night is still; A single church below the hill Is pealing, folded in the mist. A single peal of bells below, That wakens at this hour of rest A single murmur in the breast, That these are not the bells I know. Like strangers' voices here they sound. In lands where not a memory strays, Nor landmark breathes of other days, But all is new unhallow'd ground. cv. To-night ungather'd let us leave This laurel, let this holly stand : We live within the stranger's land, And strangely falls our Christmas-eve. Our father's dust is left alone And silent under other snows : There in due time the woodbine blows, The violet comes, but we are gone. No more shall wayward grief abuse The genial hour with mask and mime; For change of place, like growth of time, Has broke the bond of dying use. Let cares that petty shadows cast. By which our lives are chiefly proved, A little spare the night I loved, And hold it solemn to the past. But let no footstep beat the floor, Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm; For who would keep an ancient form Thro' which the spirit breathes no more? Be neither song, nor game, nor feast; Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown; No dance, no motion, save alone What lightens in the lucid east Of rising worlds by yonder wood. Long sleeps the summer in the seed; Run out your measured arcs, and lead The closing cycle rich in good. cvi. y Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sKy, The flying cloud, the frosty light : The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and'let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new. Ring, happy bells, across the snow : The year is going, let him goj Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause. And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournfu2 rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be. CVII. It is the day when he was born, A bitter day that early sank Behind a purple-frosty bank Of vapour, leaving night forlorn. IN MEMORIAM. 273 The time admits not flowers or leaves To deck the banquet. Fiercely CIX. flies Heart-affluence in discursive talk The blast of North and East, and From household fountains never ice dry; Makes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves, The critic clearness of an eye, That saw thro' all the Muses' walk; And bristles all the brakes and thorns To yon hard crescent, as she hangs Seraphic intellect and force Above the wood which grides and To seize and throw the doubts of clangs man; Its leafless ribs and iron horns Impassion'd logic, which outran The hearer in its fiery course; Together, in the drifts that pass To darken on the rolling brine High nature amorous of the good, That breaks the coast. But fetch But touch'd with no ascetic gloom; the wine, And passion pure in snowy bloom Arrange the board and brim the glass; Thro' all the years of April blood ; Bring in great logs and let them lie. A love of freedom rarely felt, To make a solid core of heat; Of freedom in her regal seat Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat Of England; not the schoolboy Of all things ev'n as he were by; heat. The blind hysterics of the Celt; We keep the day. With festal cheer. With books and music, surely we And manhood fused with female grace Will drink to him, whate'er he be, In such a sort, the child would twine And sing the songs he loved to hear. A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine, And find his comfort in thy face; CVIII. All these have been, and thee mine eyes I will not shut me from my kind, Have look'd on : if they look'd in And, lest I stiffen into stone, vain. I will not eat my heart alone. My shame is greater who remain, Nor feed with sighs a passing wind : Nor let thy wisdom make me wise. What profit lies in barren faith, ex. And vacant yearning, tho' with might To scale the heaven's highest height. Thy converse drew us with delight, Or dive below the wells of Death ? The men of rathe and riper years : The feeble soul, a haunt of fears, What find I in the highest place, Forgot his weakness in thy sight. But mine own phantom chanting hymns? On thee the loyal-hearted hung, And on the depths of death there The proud was half disarm'd of swims pride. The reflex of a human face. Nor cared the serpent at thy side To flicker with his double tongue. I'll rather take what fruit may be Of sorrow under human skies : The stern wtx^ mild when thou wert by, 'Tis held that sorrow makes us The flippant put himself to school wise, And heard thee, and the brazen fool Whatever wisdom sleep with thee. Was soften'd, and he knew not why; 274 IN MEMORIAM. While I, thy nearest, sat apart, For what wert thou? some novel power And felt thy triumph was as mine; Sprang up for ever at a touch. And loved them more, that they were And hope could never hope too thine, much, The graceful tact, the Christian art; In watching thee from hour to hour, Nor mine the sweetness or the skill, Large elements in order brought, But mine the love that will not tire, And tracts of calm from tempest And, born of love, the vague desire made. That spurs an imitative will. And world-wide fluctuation sway'd CXI. In vassal tides that follow'd thought. ihe churl in spirit, up or down CXIII. Along the scale of ranks, thro' all. 'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise; To him who grasps a golden ball, Yet how much wisdom sleeps with By blood a king, at heart a clown; thee Which not alone had guided me, The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil But served the seasons that may rise; His want in forms for fashion's sake, Will let his coltish nature break For can I doubt, who knew thee keen At seasons thro' the gilded pale : In intellect, with force and skill To strive, to fashion, to fulfil — For who can always act? but he, I doubt not what thou wouldst have To whom a thousand memories call. been: Not being less but more than all The gentleness he seem'd to be, A life in civic action warm. A soul on highest mission sent, Best seem'd the thing he was, and join'd A potent voice of Parliament, Each office of the social hour A pillar steadfast in the storm, To noble manners, as the flower And native growth of noble mind; Should licensed boldness gather force, Becoming, when the time has birth, Nor ever narrowness or spite, A lever to uplift the earth Or villain fancy fleeting by, And roll it in another course, Drew in the expression of an eye, Where God and Nature met in light; With thousand shocks that come and go, With agonies, with energies, And thus he bore without abuse With overthrowings, and with cries, The grand old name of gentleman, And undulations to and fro. Defamed by every charlatan, And soil'd with all ignoble use. CXIV; CXII. Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail Against her beauty? May she mix High wisdom holds my wisdom less. That I, who gaze with temperate eyes With men and prosper ! Who shall On glorious insufficiencies. fix Set light by narrower perfectness. Her pillars? Let her work prevail. But thou, that fiUest all the room But on her forehead sits a fire : Of all my love, art reason why She sets her forward countenance I seem to cast a careless eye And leaps into the future chance, On souls, the lesser lords of doom. Submitting all things to desire. IN MEMORIAM. 275 Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain — She cannot fight the fear of death. What is she, cut from love and faith, But some wild Pallas from the brain Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst All barriers in her onward race P'or power. Let her know her place ; She is the second, not the first. A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain ; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child : P'or she is earthly of the mind, But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. O friend, who earnest to thy goal So early, leaving me behind, I would the great world grew like thee. Who grewest nojt alone in power And knowledge, but by year and hour In reverence and in charity. CXV. Now fades the last long streak of snow. Now. burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow. Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue. And drown'd in yonder living blue ■ The lark becomes a sightless song. Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, The flocks are whiter down the vale, And milkier every milky sail On winding stream or distant sea; Where now the seamew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam, and fly The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood; that live their lives From land to land; and in my breast Spring wakens too; and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest. CXVI. Is it, then, regret for buried time That keenlier in sweet April wakes, And meets the year, and gives and takes The colours of the crescent prime? Not all : the songs, the stirring air, The life re-orient out of dust. Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust In that which made the world so fair. Not all regret : the face will shine Upon me, while I muse alone; And that dear voice, I once have known. Still speak to me of me and mine : Yet less of sorrow lives in me For days of happy commune dead; Less yearning for the friendship fled, Than some strong bond which is to be. CXVII. O days and hours, your work is this, To hold me from my proper place, A little while from his embrace. For fuller gain of after bliss : That out of distance might ensue Desire of nearness doubly sweet; ' And unto meeting when we meet, Delight a hundredfold accrue. For every grain of sand that runs, And every span of shade that steals. And every kiss of toothed wheels. And all the courses of the suns. CXVIII. Contemplate all this work of Time, The giant labouring in his youth; Nor dream of human love and truth, As dying Nature's earth and lime; But trust that those we call the dead Are breathers of an ampler day For ever nobler ends. They say, The solid earth whereon we tread 276 IN MEMORIAM, In tracts of fluent heat began, And grew to seeming-random forms, The seeming prey of cycUc storms, Till at the last arose the man; Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime, The herald of a higher race, And of himself in higher place, If so he type this work of time Within himself, from more to more; Or, crown'd with attributes of woe Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears. And dipt in baths of hissing tears. And batter'd with the shocks of doom To shape and use. Arise and fly The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; Move upward, working out the beast And let the ape and tiger die. CXIX. Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, not as one that weeps I come once more; the city sleeps; I smell the meadow in the street; I hear a chirp of birds; I see Betwixt the black fronts long-with- drawn A light-blue lane of early dawn. And think of early days and thee. And bless thee, for thy lips are bland, And bright the friendship of thine eye; And in my thoughts with scarce a . sigh T take the pressure of thine hand. cxx. I trust I have not wasted breath : I think we are not wholly brain, Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain, Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Peath; Not only cunning casts in clay: Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men. At least to me ? I would not stay. Let him, the wiser man who springs Hereafter, up from childhood shape His action like the greater ape, But I v^'as born to other things. Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun And ready, thou, to die with him. Thou watchest all things ever dim And dimmer, and a glory done : The team is loosen'd from the wain. The boat is drawn upon the shore; Thou listenest to the closing door, And life is darken'd in the brain. Bright Phosphor, frjesher for the night, By thee the world's great work is heard Beginning, and the wakeful bird; Behind thee comes the greater light : The market boat is on the stream, And voices hail it from the brink; Thou hear'st the village hammer clink. And see'st the moving of the team. Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name For what is one, the first, the last. Thou, like my present and my past. Thy place is changed; thou art the same. CXXII. Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then. While I rose up against my doom. And yearn'd to burst the folded gloom. To bare the eternal Heavens again. To feel once more, in placid awe, The strong imagination roll A sphere of stars about my soul, In all her motion one with law; If thou wert with me, and the grave Divide us not, be with me now, IN MEMORIAM, 277 And enter in at breast and brow Till all my blood, a fuller wave. Be quicken'd with a livelier breath. And like an inconsiderate boy, As in the former flash of joy, I slip the thoughts of life and death; And all the breeze of Fancy blows, And every dew-drop paints a bow,^ The wizard lightnings deeply glow, And every thought breaks out a rose. CXXIII. There rolls the deep where grew the tree. earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars hath been The stillness of the central sea. The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mist, the solid lands. Like clouds they shape themselves and go- But in my spirit will I dwell, And dream my dream, and hold it true; For tho' my lips may breathe adieu, I cannot think the thing farewell. cxxiv. y That which we dare invoke to bless; Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt; He, They, One, All; within, with- out; The Power in darkness whom we guess; I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye; Nor thro' the questions men may try. The petty cobwebs we have spun : If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, 1 heard a voice, * Believe no more ' And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the Godless deep; A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answer'd, * I have felt.' No, like a child in doubt and fear : But that blind clamour made me wise ; Then was I as a child that cries. But, crying, knows his father near; And what I am beheld again What is, and no man understands; And out of darkness came the hands That reach thro' nature, moulding men. cxxv. Whatever I have said or sung, Some bitter notes my harp would give, Yea, tho' there often seemM to live A contradiction on the tongue, Yet Hope had never lost her youth; She did but look through dimmer eyes; Or Love but play'd -with gracious lies, Because he felt so fix'd in truth : And if the song were full of care. He breathed the spirit of the song; And if the words were sweet and strong He set his royal signet there; Abiding with me till I sail To seek thee on the mystic deeps, And this electric force, that keeps A thousand pulses dancing, fail. Love is and was my Lord and King, And in his presence I attend To hear the tidings of my friend, Which every hour his couriers bring. Love is and was my King and Lord, And will be, the' as yet I keep Within his court on earth, and sleep Encompass'd by his faithful guard, 278 IN MEMORIAM. And hear at times a sentinel Who moves about from place to place, And whispers to the worlds of space, In the deep night, that all is well. And all is well, tho' faith and form Be sunder'd in the night of fear ; Well roars the storm to those that hear A deeper voice across the storm, Proclaiming social truth shall spread, And justice, ev'n tho' thrice again The red fool-fury of the Seine Should pile her barricades with dead. But ill for him that wears a crown, And him, the lazar, in his rags : They tremble, the sustaining crags; The spires of ice are toppled down. And molten up, and roar in flood; The fortress crashes from on high, The brute earth lightens to the sky, And the great Man sinks in blood. And compass'd by the fires of Hell; While thou, dear spirit, happy star, O'erlook'st the tumult from afar, And smilest, knowing all is well. The love that rose on stronger wings, Unpalsied'when he met with Death, Is comrade of the lesser faith That sees the course of human things. No doubt vast eddies in the flood Of onward time shall yet be made, And throned races may degrade; Yet O ye mysteries of good, Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear, If all your office had to do With old results that look like new; If this were all your mission here. To draw, to sheathe a useless sword. To fool the crowd with glorious lies. To cleave a creed in sects and cries. To change the bearing of a word. To shift an arbitrary power. To cramp the student at his desk. To make old bareness picturesque^ And tuft with grass a feudal tower; Why then my scorn might well descend On you and yours. I see in part That all, as in some piece of art. Is toil cooperant to an end. Dear friend, far off, my lost desire. So far, so near in woe and weal; O loved the most, when most I feel There is a lower and a higher; Known and unknown; human, divine; Sweet human hand and lips and eye: Dear heavenly friend that canst not die. Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine; Strange friend, past, present, and to be; Loved deeplier, darklier understood; Behold, I dream a dream of good. And minglfe all the world with thee. Thy voice is on the rolling air; I hear thee where the waters run; Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair. What art thou then? I cannot guess; But tho' I seem in star and flower To feel thee some diffusive power, I do not therefore love thee less : My love involves the love before; My love is vaster passion now; Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou, I seem to love thee more and more. Far off thou art, but ever nigh ; I have thee still, and I rejoice; I prosper, circled with thy voice j I shall not lose thee tho' I die. cxxxi. '>/ O living will that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock. IN MEMORIAM. 279 Rise in the spiritual rock, Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, That we may lift from out of dust A voice as unto him that hears, A cry above the conquer'd years To one that with us works, and trust, With faith that comes of self-control, The truths that never can be proved Until we close with all we loved, And ail we flow from, soul in soul. ^O true and tried, so well and long, Demand not thou a marriage lay; In that it is thy marriage day Is music more than ^ny song. Nor have I felt so much of bliss Since first he told me that he loved A daughter of our house ; nor proved Since that dark day a day like this; Tho' I since then have number'd o'er Some thrice three years : they went and came, Remade the blood and changed the frame, And yet is love not less, but more ; No longer caring to embalm In dying songs a dead regret, But like a statue solid-set, And moulded in colossal calm. Regret is dead, but love is more Than in the summers that are flown, For I myself with these have grown To something greater than before; Which makes appear the songs I made As echoes out of weaker times. As half but idle brawling rhymes. The sport of random sun and shade. But where is she, the bridal flower. That must be made a wife ere noon? She enters, glowing like the moon Of Eden on its bridal bower : On me she bends her blissful eyes And then on thee; they meet thy look And brighten like the star that shook Betwixt the palms of paradise. O when her life was yet in bud, He too foretold the perfect rose. For thee she grew, for thee she grows For ever, and as fair as good. And thou art worthy; full of power; As gentle; liberal-minded, great, Consistent; wearing all that weight Of learning lightly like a flower. But now set out : the noon is near, And I must give away the bride; She fears not, or with thee beside "And me behind her will not fear: For I that danced her on my knee, That watch'd hev on her nurse's arm, That shielded all her life from harm At last must part with her to thee; Now waiting to be made a wife, Her feet, my darling, on the dead; Their pensive tablets round her head, And the most living words of life Breathed in her ear. The ring is on. The ' wilt thou ' answer'd, and again The * wilt thou ' ask'd, till out of twain Her sweet * I will ' has made you one. Now sign your names, which shall be read. Mute symbols of a joyful morn, By village eyes as yet unborn; The names are sign'd, and overhead Begins the clash and clang that tells The joy to every wandering breeze; The blind wall rocks, and on the trees The dead leaf trembles to the bells. O happy hour, and happier hours Await them. Many a merry face Salutes them — maidens of the place, That pelt us in the porch with flowers. O happy hour, behold the bride With him to whom her hand I gave. They leave the porch, they pass the grave That has to-day its sunny side. IN MEMORIAM. To-day the grave is bright for me, For them the light of life increased, "Who stay to share the morning feast, Who rest to-night beside the sea. Let all my genial spirits advance To meet and greet a whiter sun; My drooping memory will not shun The foaming grape of eastern France. It circles round, and fancy plays, And hearts are warm'd and faces bloom, As drinking health to bride and groom We wish them store of happy days. Nor count me all to blame if I Conjecture of a stiller guest, Perchance,perchance,amongtherest, And, tho' in silence, wishing joy. But they must go, the time draws on. And those white-favour'd horses wait ; They rise, but linger; it is late; Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone. A shade falls on us like the dark From little cloudlets on the grass, But sweeps away as out we pass To range the woods,, to roam the park, Discussing how their courtship grew. And talk of others that are wed, And how she look'd, and what he said. And back we come at fall of dew. ^Again the feast, the speech, the glee, The shade of passing thought, the wealth Of words and wit, the double health. The crowning cup, the three-times-three. And last the dance; — till I retire : Dumb is that tower which spake so loud. And high in heaven the streaming cloud, And on the downs a rising fire : And rise, O moon, from yonder down. Till over down and over dale All night the shining vapour sail And pass the silent-lighted town. The white-faced halls, the glancing rills, And catch at every mountain head, And o'er the friths that branch and spread Their sleeping silver thro' the hills; And touch with shade the bridal doors, With tender gloom the roof, the wall; ^nd breaking let the splendour fall To spangle all the happy shores By which they rest, 'and ocean sounds, And, star and system rolling past, A soul shall draw from out the vast And strike his being into bounds, And, moved thro' life of lower phase, Result in man, be born and think, And act and love, a closer link Betwixt us and the crowning race Of those that, eye to eye, shall look On knowledge; under whose com- mand Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand Is Nature like an open book; No longer half-akin to brute, For all we thought and loved and did. And hoped, and sufTer'd, is but seed Of what in them is* flower and fruit ; Whereof the man, that with me trod This planet, was a noble type Appearing ere the times were ripe, That friend of mine who lives in God, That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element. And one far-off divine event. To which the whole creation moves. MAUD. 281 MAUD; A MONODRAMA. PART I. I. I. I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, Its lips in the field above are dappled with blood-red heath, The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood, And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers ' Death.' II. For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found, His who had given me life — O father ! O God ! was it well? — Mangled, and flatten'd, and crush'd, and dinted into the ground : There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell. Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation had fail'd, And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair. And out he walk'd when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air. I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirr'd By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail'd, by a whisper'd fright. And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I heard The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night. Villainy somewhere ! whose? One says, we are villains all. Not he ; his honest fame should at least by me be maintained : But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall, Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain'd. VI. Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse. Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own; And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone? But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind. When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word? Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword. 282 MAUD. VIII. Sooner or later I too may passively take the print Of the golden age — why not? I have neither hope nor trust; May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint, Cheat and be cheated, and die: vi'ho knows? we are ashes and dust. IX. Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by. When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine. When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie; Peace in her vineyard — yes ! — but a company forges the wine. And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head, Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife. And chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life, XI. And Sleep must lie down arm'd,'for the villainous centre-bits Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights. While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights. XII. When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee, And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones. Is it peace or war? better, war ! loud war by land and by sea, War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones. For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill. And the rushing battle-boat sang from the three-decker out of the foam, That the smooth-faced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter and till, And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yardwand, home. XIV. What ! am I raging alone as my father raged in his mood? Must / too creep to the hollow and dash myself down and die Rather than hold by the law that I made, nevermore to brood On a horror of shatter'd limbs and a wretched swindler's lie? XV. Would there be sorrow for me? there was love in the passionate shriek. Love for the silent thing that had made false haste to the grave — Wrapt in a cloak, as I saw him, and thought he would rise and speak And rave at the lie and the liar, ah God, as he used to rave. MAUD. 283 XVI. I am sick of the Hall and the hill, I am sick of the moor and the main. "Why should I stay? can a sweeter chance ever come to me here? O, having the nerves of motion as well as the nerves of pain, Were it not wise if I fled from the place and the pit and the fear? XVII. Workmen up at the Hall ! — they are coming back from abroad; The dark old place will be gilt by the touch of a millionaire : I have heard, I know not whence, of the singular beauty of Maud; I play'd with the girl when a child; she promised then to be fair. XVIII, Maud with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes, Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall, Maud with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled the grapes, Maud the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all, — What is she now? My dreams are bad. She may bring me a curse. No, there is fatter game on the moor : she will let me alone. Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be the worse. I will bury myself in myself, and the Devil may pipe to his own. II. Long have I sigh'd for a calm : God grant I may find it at last ! It will never be broken by Maud, she has neither savour nor salt, But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage past. Perfectly beautiful : let it be granted her: where is the fault? All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen) Faultily faultless, -icily regular, splendidly null, Dead perfection, no more; nothing more, if it had not been For a chance of travel, a paleness, an hour's defect of the rose, Or an underlip, you may call it a little too ripe, too full, Or the least little delicate aquiline curve in a sensitive nose. From which I escaped heart-free, with the least little touch of spleen, III. Cold and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek. Breaking a slumber in which all spleenful folly was drown'd. Pale with the golden beam of an eyelash dead on the cheek. Passionless, pale, cold face, staiv sweet on a gloom profound; Womanlike, taking revenge too deep for a transient wrong Done but in thought to your beauty, and ever as pale as before Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound, Luminous, genilike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the night long Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no more. But arose, and all by myself in my own dark garden ground, 284 MAUD, Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking roar, Now to the scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by the wave, Walk'd in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found The shining daftbdil dead, and Orion low in his grave. IV. A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime In the little grove where I sit — ah, wherefore cannot I be Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland, When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime, Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea, The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land? Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet and small ! And yet bubbles o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite; And Jack on his ale-house bench has as many lies as a Czar; And here on the landward side, by a red rock, glimmers the Hall; And up in the high Hall-garden I see her pass like a light; But sorrow seize me if ever that light be my leading star ! III. When have I bow'd to her father, the wrinkled head of the race? I met her to-day with her brother, but not to her brother I bow'd: I bow'd to his lady-sister as she rode by on the moor; But the fire of a foolish pride flash'd over her beautiful face. O child, you wrong your beauty, believe it, in being so proud ; Your father has wealth well-gotten, and I am nameless and poor. I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal; I know it, and smile a hard-set smile, like a stoic, or like A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its way : For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal; The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey. V. We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower ; Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed? Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour; We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame; However we brave it out, we men are a little breed. VI. A monstrous eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth, For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran. MAUD. 28s And he felt himself in his force to be Nature's crowning race. As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth, So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man : He now is first, but is he the last? is he not too base? VII. The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain, An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor; The passionate heart of the poet is whirl'd into folly and vice. I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain; For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice. VIII. For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil. Who knows the ways of the world, how God will bring them about ? Our planet is one, the suns are many, the world is wide. Shall I weep if a Poland fall? shall I shriek if a Hungary fail? Or an infant civilisation be ruled with rod or with knout? /have not made the world, and He that made it will guide. Be mine a philosopher's life in the quiet woodland ways. Where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be my lot, Far-off from the clamour of liars belied in the hubbub of lies; From the long-neck'd geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise Because their natures are little, and, whether he heed it or not, Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies. And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love, The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill. Ah Maud, you milkwhite fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife. Your mother is mute in her grave as her image in marble above; Your father is ever in London, you wander about at your will; You have but fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life. V. A voice by the cedar tree In the meadow under the Hall ! She is singing an air that is known to me, A passionate ballad gallant and gay, A martial song like a trumpet's call ! Singing alone in the morning of life. In the happy morning of life and of May, Singing of men that in battle array, Ready in heart and ready in hand, March with banner and bugle and fife To the death, for their native land. II. Maud with her exquisite face. And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky. And feet like sunny gems on an English green, Maud in the light of her youth and her grace. Singing of Death, and of Honour that cannot die, Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean, And myself so languid and base. 286 MAUD, Silence, beautiful voice ! Be still, for you only trouble the mind With a joy in which I cannot rejoice, A glory I shall not find. Still ! I will hear you no more, For your sweetness hardly leaves me a choice But to move to the meadow and fall before Her feet on the meadow grass, and adore. Not her, who is neither courtly nor kind, Not her, not her, but a voice. VI. Morning arises stormy and pale, No sun, but a wannish glare In fold upon fold of hueless cloud, And the budded peaks of the wood are bow'd 'Caught and cuffd by the gale : I had fancied it would be fair. II. Whom but Maud should I meet Last night, when the sunset burn'd On the blossom'd gable-ends At the head of the village street. Whom but Maud should I meet? And she touch'd my hand with a smile so sweet. She made me divine amends For a courtesy not return'd. III. And thus a delicate spark Of glowing and growing light Thro' the livelong hours of the dark Kept itself warm in the heart of my dreams. Ready to burst in a colour'd flame; Till at last when the morning came In a cloud, it faded, and seems But an ashen-gray delight. IV. What if with her sunny hair, And smile as sunny as cold, She meant to weave me a snare Of some coquettish deceit, Cleopatra-like as of old To entangle me when we met, , To have her lion roll in a silken net And fawn at a victor's feet. Ah, what shall I be at fifty Should Nature keep me alive, If I find the world so bitter When I am but twenty-five? Yet, if she were not a cheat, If Maud were all that she seem'd. And her smile were all that I dream'd^ Then the world were not so bitter But a smile could make it sweet. What if tho' her eye seem'd full Of a kind intent to me, What if that dandy-despot, he, That jewell'd mass of millinery. That oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bull Smelling of musk and of insolence. Her brother, from whom I keep aloof, Who wants the finer politic sense To mask, tho' but in his own behoof. With a glassy smile his brutal scorn — What if he had told her yestermorn How prettily for his own sweet sake A face of tenderness might be feign'd, And a moist mirage in desert eyes. That so, when the rotten hustings shake In another month to his brazen lies, A wretched vote may be gain'd. For a raven ever croaks, at my side. Keep watch and ward, keep watch and ward. Or thou wilt prove their tool. Yea, too, myself from myself I guard, For often a man's own angry pride Is cap and bells for a fool. VIII. Perhaps the smile and tender tone Came out of her pitying womanhood, For am I not, am I not, here alone So many a summer since she died, My mother, who was so gentle and good? Living alone in an empty house, Here half-hid in the gleaming wood, MAUD. 287 Where I hear the dead at midday moan, And the shrieking rush of the" wainscot mouse, And my own sad name in corners cried, When the shiver of dancing leaves is thrown About its echoing chambers wide, Till a morbid hate and horror have grown Of a world in which I have hardly mixt, And a morbid eating lichen fixt On a heart half-turn'd to stone. IX. O heart of stone, are you flesh, and caught By that you swore to withstand? For what was it else within me wrought But, I fear, the new strong wine of love, That made my tongue so stammer and trip When I saw the treasured splendour, her hand. Come sliding out of her sacred glove, And the sunHght broke from her lip? I have play'd with her when a child; She remembers it now we meet. Ah well, well, well, I may be beguiled By some coquettish deceit. Yet, if she were not a cheat. If Maud were all that she seem'd, And her smile had all that I dream'd, Then the world were not so bitter But a smile could make it sweet. VII. Did I hear it half in a doze Long since, I know not where? Did I dream it an hour ago, When asleep in this arm-chair? Men were drinking together, Drinking and talking of me; * Well, if it prove a girl, the boy Will have plenty : so let it be,' Is it an echo of something Read with a boy's delight, Viziers nodding together In some Arabian night? IV. Strange, that I hear two men, Somewhere, talking of me; * Well, if it prove a girl, my boy Will have plenty : so let it be.' VIII. She came to the village church, And sat by a pillar alone; An angel watching an urn Wept over her, carved in stone; And once, but once, she lifted her eyes, And suddenly, sweetly, strangely blush'd To find they were met by my own; And suddenly, sweetly, my heart beat stronger And thicker, until I heard no longer The snowy-banded, dilettante, Delicate-handed priest intone; And thought, is it pride, and mused and sigh'd * No surely, now it cannot be pride.' IX. I was walking a mile. More than a mile from the shore, The sun look'd out with a smile Betwixt the cloud and the moor And riding at set of day Over the dark moor land, Rapidly riding far away. She waved to me with her hand. There were two at her side. Something flash'd in the sun, Down by the hill I saw them ride, In a moment they were gone : Like a sudden spark Struck vainly in the night, Then returns the dark With no more hope of light. X. I. Sick, am I sick of a jealous dread? Was not one of the two at her side 288 MAUD. This new-made lord, whose splendour plucks The slavish hat from the villager's head? "Whose ol'd grandfather has lately died, Gone to a blacker pit, for whom Grimy nakedness dragging his trucks And laying his trams in a poison'd gloom Wrought, till he crept from a gutted mine Master of half a servile shire, And left his coal all turn'd into gold To a grandson, first of his noble line. Rich in the grace all women desire, Strong in the power that air men adore. And simper and set their voices lower, And soften as if to a girl, and hold Awe-stricken breaths at a work divine, Seeing his gewgaw castle shine, New as his title, built last year, There amid perky larches and pine, And over the sullen-purple moor (Look at it) pricking a cockney ear. What, has he found my jewel out? For one of the two that rode at her side Bound for the Hall, I am sure was he : Bound for the Hall, and I think for a bride. Blithe would her brother's acceptance be. Maud could be gracious too, no doubt To a lord, a captain, a padded shape, A bought commission, a waxen face, A rabbit mouth that is ever agape — Bought? what is it he cannot buy? And therefore splenetic, personal, base, A wounded thing with a rancorous cry. At war with myself and a wretched race. Sick, sick to the heart of life, am I. III. Last week came one to the country town. To preach our poor little army down. And play the game of the despot kings, Tho' the state has done it and thrice as well: This broad-brimm'd hawker of holy things. Whose ear is cramm'd with his cotton, and rings Even in dreams to the chink of his pence, This huckster put down war ! can he tell Whether war be a cause or a consequence ? Put down the passions that make earth Hell! Down with ambition, avarice, pride. Jealousy, down ! cut off from the mind The bitter springs of anger and fear; Down too, down at your own fireside, With the evil tongue and the evil ear, For each is at war with mankind. I wish I could hear again The chivalrous battle-song That she warbled alone in her joy ! I might persuade myself then She would not do herself this great wrong, To take a wanton dissolute boy For a man and leader of men. V, Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand. Like some of the simple great ones gone For ever and ever by. One still strong man in a blatant land. Whatever they call him, what care I, Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat — one Who can rule and dare not lie. VI. And ah for a man to arise in me. That the man I am may cease to be ! XI. I. let the solid ground Not fail beneath my feet Before my life has found What some have found so sweet; Then let come what come may. What matter if I go mad, 1 shall have had my day. II. Let the sweet heavens endure. Not close and darken above me Before I am quite quite sure That there is one to love me; Then let come what come may To a life that has been so sad, I shall have had my day. MAUD. 2S9 XII. I. Birds in the high Hall-garden When twilight was falling, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, They were crying and calling. II. Where was Maud? in our wood; And I, who else, was with her, Gathering woodland lilies, Myriads blow together. III. Birds in our wood sang Ringing thro' the valleys, Maud is here, here, here In among the lilies. IV. I kiss'd her slender hand, She took the kiss sedately; Maud is not seventeen. But she is tall and stately. I to cry out on pride Who have won her favour ! Maud were sure of Heaven If lowliness could save her. VI. 1 know the way she went Home with her maiden posy, For her feet have touch'd the meadows And left the daisies rosy. VII. Birds in the high Hall -garden Were crying and calling to her. Where is Maud, Maud, Maud? One is come to woo her. Look, a horse at the door. And little King Charley snarling, Go back, my lord, across the moor, You are not her darling. XIII. Scorn'd, to be scorn'd by one that I scorn, Is that a matter to make me fret? That a calamity hard to be borne? Well, he may live to hate me yet. Fool that I am to be vext with his pride ! I past him, I was crossing his lands; He stood on the path a little aside; His face, as I grant, in spite of spite, Has a broad-blown comeliness, red and white, And six feet two, as I think, he stands; But his essences turn'd the live air sick, And barbarous opulence jewel-thick Sunn'd itself on his breast and his hands. Who shall call me ungentle, unfair, I long'd so heartily then and there To give him the grasp of fellowship; But while I past he was humming an air, Stopt, and then with a riding whip Leisurely tapping a glossy boot. And curving a contumelious lip, Gorgonised me from head to foot With a stony British stare. III. Why sits he here in his father's chair? That old man never comes to his place : Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen? For only once, in the village street. Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face, A gray old wolf and a lean. Scarcely, now, would I call him a cheat; For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit, She might by a true descent be untrue ; And Maud is as true as Maud is sweet : Tho' I fancy her sweetness only due To the sweeter blood by the other side; Her mother has been a thing complete. However she came to be so allied. And fair without, faithful within, Maud to him is nothing akin : Some peculiar mystic grace Made her only the child of her mother And heap'd the whole inherited sin On that huge scapegoat of the race, All, all upon the brother. 290 MAUD. IV. Peace, angry spirit, and let him be ! Has not his sister smiled on me? XIV. Maud has a garden of roses And lilies fair on a lawn; There she walks in her state And tends upon bed and bower, And thither I climb'd at dawn And stood by her garden-gate; A lion ramps at the top, He is claspt by a passion-flower. II. Maud's own little oak-room (Which Maud, like a precious stone Set in the heart of the carven gloom, Lights with herself, when alone She sits by her music and books And her brother lingers late With a roystering company) looks Upon Maud's own garden-gate : And I thought as I stood, if a hand, as white As ocean-foam in the moon, were laid On the hasp of the window, and my Delight Had a sudden desire, like a glorious ghost, to glide, Like a beam of the seventh Heaven, down to my side. There were but a step to be made, III. The fancy flatter'd my mind. And again seem'd overbold; • Now I thought that she cared for me. Now I thought she was kind Only because she was cold. I heard no sound where I stood But the rivulet on from the lawn Running down to my own dark wood; Or the voice of the long sea-wave as it swell'd Now and then in the d'm-gray dawn; But I look'd, and round, all round the house 1 beheld The death-white curtain drawn; Felt a horror over me creep. Prickle my skin and catch my breath. Knew that the death-white curtain meant but sleep. Yet I shudder'd and thought like a fool of the sleep of death. XV. So dark a mind within me dwells, And I make myself such evil cheer, That if /be dear to some one else, Then some one else may have much to fear; But if / be dear to some one else, Then I should be to myself more dear. Shall I not take care of all that I think, Yea ev'n of wretched meat and drink, If I be dear. If I be dear to some one else. XVI. This lump of earth has left his estate The lighter by the loss of his weight; And so that he find what he went to seek, And fulsome Pleasure clog him, and drown His heart in the gross mud-honey of town. He may stay for a year who has gone for a week : But this is the day when I must speak And I see my Oread coming down, O this is the day ! beautiful creature, what am I That I dare to look her way; Think I may hold dominion sweet. Lord of the pulse that is lord of her breast, And dream of her beauty with tender dread. From the delicate Arab arch of her feet To the grace that, bright and light as the crest Of a peacock, sits on her shining head, And she knows it not : O, if she knew it, To know her beauty might half undo it. 1 know it the one bright thing to save My yet young life in the wilds of Time, MAUD. 29X Perhaps from madness, perhaps from crime, Perhaps from a selfish grave. II. What, if she be fasten'd to this fool lord, Dare I bid her abide by her word? Should 1 love her so well if she Had given her word to a thing so low? Shall I love her as well if she Can break her word were it even for me? I trust that it is not so. Catch not my breath, O clamorous heart, Let not my tongue be a thrall to my eye. For I must tell her before we part, I must tell her, or die. XVII. Go not, happy day, From the shining fields. Go not, happy day. Till the maiden yields. Rosy is the West, Rosy is the South, Roses are her cheeks. And a rose her mouth When the happy Yes Falters from her lips. Pass and blush the news Over glowing ships; Over blowing seas. Over seas at rest, Pass the happy news, Blush it thro' the West; rill the red man dance By his red cedar-tree, And the red man's babe Leap, beyond the sea. Blush from West to East, Blush from East to West, Till the West is East, Blush it thro' the West. Rosy is the West, Rosy is the South, Roses are her cheeks, And a rose her mouth. XVIII. I. I have led her home, my love, my only friend. There is none like her, none. And never yet so warmly ran my blood And sweetly, on and on. Calming itself to the long-wish'd-for end, Full to the banks, close on the promised good. None like her, none. Just now the dry-tongued laurels' patter- ing talk Seem'd her light foot along the garden walk. And shook my heart to think she comes once more; But even then I heard her close the door, The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone. There is none like her, none. Nor will be when our summers have de- ceased. O, art thou sighing for Lebanon In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East, Sighing for Lebanon, Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased. Upon a pastoral slope as fair, And looking to the South, and fed With honey'd rain and delicate air. And haunted by the starry head Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate, And made my life a perfumed altar- flame; And over whom thy darkness must have spread With such delight as theirs of old, thy great Forefathers of the thornless garden, there Shadowing the snow-limb'd Eve from whom she came. 292 MAUD. IV. Here will I lie, while these long branches sway, And you fair stars that crown a happy day Go in and out as if at merry play, Who am no more so all forlorn, x\s when it seem'd far better to be born To labour and the mattock-harden'd hand. Than nursed at ease and brought to un- derstand A sad astrology, the boundless plan That makes you tyrants in your iron skies. Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes, Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand His nothingness into man. But now shine on, and what care I, Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl The countercharm of space and hollow sky. And do accept my madness, and would die To save from some slight shame one simple girl. Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give More life to Love than is or ever was In our low world, where yet 'tis sweet to live. Let no one ask me how it came to pass; It seems that I am happy, that to me A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, A purer sapphire melts into the sea. VII. Not die; but live a life of truest breath. And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs. O, why should Love, like men in drink- ing-songs, Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death ? Make answer, Maud my bliss, Maud made my Maud by that long lov- ing kiss. Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this? ' The dusky strand of Death inwoven here With dear Love's tie, makes Love him- self more dear.' VIII. Is that enchanted moan only the swell Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay? And hark the clock within, the silver knell Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white. And died to live, long as my pulses play; But now by this my love has closed her sight And given false death her hand, and stol'n away To dreamful wastes where footless fan- cies dwell Among the fragments of the golden day. May nothing there her maiden grace affright ! Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell. My bride to be, my evermore delight, My own heart's heart, my ownest own, farewell ; It is but for a little space I go : And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell Beat to the noiseless music of the night ! Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow Of your soft splendours that you look so bright? /have climb'd nearer out of lonely Hell. Beat, happy stars, timing with things below. Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell. Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe That seems to draw — but it shall not be so : Let all be well, be well. XIX. I. Her brother is coming back to-night, Breaking up my dream of delight. MAUD. 293 II. My dream? do I dream of bliss? I have walk'd awake with Truth. when did a morning ^hine So rich in atonement as this For my dark -dawning youth, Darken-d watching a mother decline And that dead man at her heart and mine : For who was left to watch her but I? Yet so did I let my freshness die. III. 1 trust that I did not talk To gentle Maud in our walk (For often in lonely wanderings I have cursed him even to lifeless things) But I trust that 1 did not talk, Not touch on her father's sin : I am sure I did but speak Of my mother's faded cheek When it slowly grew so thin, That I felt she was slowly dying Vext with lawyers and harass'd with debt : For how often I caught her with eyes all wet, Shaking her head at her son and sighing A world of trouble within ! IV. And Maud too, Maud was moved To speak of the mother she loved As one scarce less forlorn, Dying abroad and it seems apart ■ From him who had ceased to share her heart. And ever mourning over the feud. The household Fury sprinkled with blood By Which our houses are torn : How strange was what she said, When only Maud and the l-)rother Hung over her dying bed — That Maud's dark father and mine Had bound us one to the other, Betrothed us over their wine, On the day when Maud was born; Seal'd her mine from her first sweet breath. Mine, mine by a right, from birth till death. Mine, mine — our fathers have sworn. V. But the true blood spilt had in it a heat To dissolve the precious seal on a bond That, if left uncancell'd, had been so sweet : And none of us thought of a something beyond, A desire that awoke in the heart of the child, As it were a duty done to the tomb. To be friends for her sake, to be recon- ciled; And I was cursing them and my doom. And letting a dangerous thought run wild While often abroad in the fragrant gloom Of foreign churches — I see her there. Bright English lily, breathing a prayer To be friends, to be reconciled ! But then what a flint is he ! Abroad, at Florence, at Rome, I find whenever she touch'd on me This brother had laugh'd her down. And at last, when each came home. He had darken'd into a frown. Chid her, and forbid her to speak To me, her friend of the years before; And this was what had redden'd her cheek When I bow'd to her on the moor. Yet Maud, altho' not blind To the faults of his heart and mind, I see she cannot but love him. And says he is rough but kind, And wishes me to approve him, And tells me, when she lay Sick once, with a fear of worse, That he left his wine and horses and play, Sat with her, read to her, night and day^ And tended her like a nurse. VIII. Kind? but the deathbed desire Spurn'd by this heir of the liar — Rough but kind? yet I know He has plotted against me in this, That he plots against me still. Kind to Maud? that were not amiss. 294 MAUD. Well, rough but kind; why let it be so: For shall not Maud have her will ! II. But to-morrow if we live, IX. Our ponderous squire will give For, Maud, so tender and true, A grand political dinner As long as my life endures To half the squirelings near; I feel I shall owe you a debt, And Maud will wear her jewels, That I never can hope to pay; • And the bird of prey will hover. And if ever I should forget And the titmouse hope to win her That I owe this debt to you With his chirrup at her ear. And for your sweet sake to yours; then, what then shall I say? — III. If ever I should forget, May God make me more wretched A grand political dinner Than ever I have been yet ! To the men of many acres, A gathering of the Tory, X. A dinner and then a dance So now I have sworn to bury All this dead body of hate, I feel so free and so clear For the maids and marriage-makers, And every eye but mine will glance At Maud in all her glory. By the loss of that dead weight. That I should grow hght-headed, I fear, IV. Fantastically merry; But that her brother comes, like a blight For I am not invited, On my fresh hope, to the Hall to-night. But, with the Sultan's pardon, I am all as well delighted. For I know her own rose-garden, XX. And mean to linger in it Till the dancing will be over; I. And then, oh then, come out to me Strange, that I felt so gay. For a minute, but for a minute. Strange, that / tried to-day Come out to your own true lover, That your true lover may see To beguile her melancholy; The Sultan, as we name him, — Your glory also, and render She did not wish to blame him — All homage to his own darling, But he vext her and perplext her Queen Maud in all her splendour. With his worldly talk and folly : Was it gentle to reprove her XXI. For stealing out of view From a little lazy lover Rivulet crossing my ground. Who but claims her as his due? And bringing me down from the Hall Or for chilling his caresses This garden-rose that I found, By the coolness of her manners. Forgetful of Maud and me. Nay, the plainness of her dresses? And lost in trouble and moving round Now I know her but in two, Here at the head of a tinkling fall, Nor can pronounce upon it And trying to pass to the sea; If one should ask me whether Rivulet, born at the Hall, The habit, hat, and feather. My Maud has sent it by thee Or the frock and gipsy bonnet (If I read her sweet will right) Be the neater and completer; On a blushing mission to me. For nothing can be sweeter Saying in odour and colour, 'Ah, be Than maiden Maud in either. Among the roses to-night.' MAUD. 29i XXII. I. Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad. And the musk of the rose is blown. II. For a breeze of morning moves. And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky. To faint in the light of the sun she loves, To faint in his light, and to die. III. All night have the roses heard The flute, violin, bassoon; All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd To the dancers dancing in tune; Till a silence fell with the waking bird, And a hush with the setting moon. IV. I said to the lily, * There is but one With whom she has heart to be gay. When will the dancers leave her alone? She is weary of dance and play.' Now half to the setting moon are gone, And half to the rising day; Low on the sand and loud on the stone The last wheel echoes away. I said to the rose, 'The brief night goes In babble and revel and wine. O young lord-lover, what sighs are those, For one that will never be thine? But mine, but mine,' so I sware to the rose, * For ever and ever, mine.' VI. And the soul of the rose went into my blood, As the music clash'd in the hall; And long by the garden lake I stood, For I heard your rivulet fall From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood, Our wood, that is dearer than all; From the meadow your walks have left so sweet That whenever a March-wind sighs He sets the jewel-print of your feet In violets blue as your eyes. To the woody hollows in which we meet And the valleys of Paradise. VIII. The slender acacia would not shake One long milk-bloom on the tree; The white lake-blossom fell into the lake As the pimpernel dozed on the lea; But the rose was awake all night for your sake, Knowing your promise to me ; The lilies and roses were all awake, They sigh'd for the dawn and thee. IX. Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls, Come hither, the dances are done. In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls. Queen lily and rose in one; Shine out, little head, sunning over with cuils, To the flowers, and be their sun. There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries, ' She is near, she is near; ' And the white rose weeps, * She is late ; ' The larkspur listens, ' I hear, I hear;' And the lily whispers, ' I wait.' XI. She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread. My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; 296 MAUD. My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, \nd blossom in purple and red. PART II. I. -The fault was mine, the fault was mine ' — Why am I sitting here so stunn'd and still, Plucking the harmless wild-flower on the hill? — It is this guilty hand ! — And there rises ever a passionate cry From underneath in the darkening land — What is it that has been done? O dawn of Eden bright over earth and sky. The fires of Hell brake out of thy rising sun. The fires of Hell and of Hate; For. she, sweet soul, had hardly spoken a word. When her brother ran in his rage to the gate. He came with the babe-faced lord; Heap'd on her terms of disgrace, And while she wept, and I strove to be cool, He fiercely gave me the lie, Till I with as fierce an anger spoke, And he struck me, madman, over the face. Struck me before the languid fool, Who was gaping and grinning by : Struck for himself an evil stroke; Wrought for his house an irredeemable woe; For front to front in an hour we stood, And a million horrible bellowing echoes broke From the red-ribb'd hollow behind the wood. And thunder'd up into Heaven the Christ- less code. That must have life for a blow. Ever and ever afresh they seem'd to grow. Was it he lay there with a fading eye? * The fault was mine/ he whisper'd, * fly ! ' Then glided out of the joyous wood The ghastly Wraith of one that I know; And there rang on a sudden a passionate cry, A cry for a brother's blood : It will ring in my heart and my ears, till I die. till I die. Is it gone? my pulses beat — What was it? a lying trick of the brain? Yet I thought I saw her stand, A shadow there at my feet. High over the shadowy land. It is gone; and the heavens fall in a gentle rain. When they should burst and drown with deluging storms The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust. The little hearts that know not how to forgive : Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold Thee just. Strike dead the whole weak race of venomous worms. That sting each other here in the dust; We are not worthy to live. II. See what a lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Lying close to my foot. Frail, but a work divine. Made so fairily well With delicate spire and whorl, How exquisitely minute, A miracle of design ! II. What is it? a learned man Could give it a clumsy name. Let him name it who can. The beauty would be the same. III. The tiny cell is forlorn. Void of the little living will That made it stir on the shore. Did he stand at the diamond door MAUD. 297 Of his house in a rainbow frill? One would think that it well Did he push, when he was uncurl'd, Might drown all life in the eye, — A golden foot or a fairy horn That it should, by being so overwrought, Thro' his dim water- world? Suddenly strike on a sharper sense For a shell, or a flower, little things IV. Which else would have been past by ! Slight, to be crush'd with a tap And now I remember, I, Of my finger-nail on the sand, When he lay dying there, Small, but a work divine, I noticed one of his many rings Frail, but of force to withstand, (For he had many, poor worm) and Year upon year, the shock thought Of cataract seas that snap It is his mother's hair. The three decker's oaken spine Athwart the ledges of rock, IX, Here on the Breton strand ! Who knows if he be dead? Whether I need have fled? V. Am I guilty of blood ? Breton, not Briton; here However this may be. Like a shipwreck'd man on a coast Comfort her, comfort her, all things Of ancient fable and fear — good, Plagued with a flitting to and fro, . While I am over the sea ! A disease, a hard mechanic ghost Let me and my passionate love go by, That' never came from on high But speak to her all things holy and Nor ever arose from below, high, But only moves with the moving eye, Whatever happen to me ! Flying along the land and the main — Me and my harmful love go by; Why should it look like Maud? But come to her waking, find her asleep, Am I to be overawed Powers of the height, Powers of the By what I cannot but know deep, Is a juggle born of the brain? And comfort her tho' I die. VI. III. Back from the Breton coast, Sick of a nameless fear, Courage, poor heart of stone ! I will not ask thee why Back to the dark sea-line Thou canst not understand Looking, thinking of all I have lost; That thou art left for ever alone : An old song vexes my ear; But that of Lamech is mine. Courage, poor stupid heart of stone. — Or if I ask thee why. VII. Care not thou to reply : She is but dead, and the time is at hand For years, a measureless ill. When thou shalt more than die. For years, for ever, to part — But she, she would love me still; IV. And as long, O God, as she Have a grain 'of love for me. '• So long, no doubt, no doubt, that 'twere possible Shall 1 nurse in my dark heart, After long grief and pain However weary, a spark of will To find the arms of my true love Not to be trampled out. Round me once again ! VIII, II. Strange, that the mind, when fraught When I was wont to meet her With a passion so intense In the silent woody places MAUD, By the home that gave me birth, We stood tranced in long embraces Mixt M'ith kisses sweeter sweeter Than anything on earth. A shadow flits before me, Not thou, but like to thee : Ah Christ, that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us, What and where they be. IV. It leads me forth at evening, It lightly winds and steals In a cold white robe before me, When all my spirit reels At the shouts, the leagues of lights, And the roaring of the wheels. V. Half the night I waste in sighs. Half in dreams I sorrow after The delight of early skies; In a wakeful doze I sorrow For the hand, the lips, the eyes. For the meeting of the morrow. The delight of happy laughter, The delight of low replies. 'Tis a morning pure and sweet, And a dewy splendour falls On the little flower that clings To the turrets and the walls; 'Tis a morning pure and sweet. And the light and shadow fleet ; She is walking in the meadow, And the woodland echo rings; In a moment we shall meet; She is singing in the meadow And the rivulet at her feet Ripples on in light and shadow To the ballad that she sings. VII. Do I hear her sing as of old, My bird with the shining head, My own dove with the tender eye? But there rings on a sudden a passionate cry. There is some one dying or dead. And a sullen thunder is roll'd; For a tumult shakes the city, And I wake, my dream is fled; In the shuddering dawn, behold, Without knowledge, without pity, By the curtains of my bed That abiding phantom cold. VIII. Get thee hence, nor come again, Mix not memory with doubt. Pass, thou deathlike type of pain, Pass and cease to move about ! 'Tis the blot upon the brain That will show itself without. Then I rise, the eavedrops fall. And the yellow vapours choke The great city sounding wide; The day comes, a dull red ball Wrapt in drifts of lurid smoke On the misty river-tide. Thro' thehubbub of the market I steal; a wasted frame, It crosses here, it crosses there. Thro' all that crowd confused and loud. The shadow still the same; And on my heavy eyelids My anguish hangs like .shame. Alas for her that met me. That heard me softly call, Came glimmering thro' the laurels At the quiet evenfall. In the garden by the turrets Of the old manorial hall. Would the happy spirit descend. From the realms of light and song, In the chamber or the street, As she looks among the blest. Should I fear to greet my friend Or to say, * Forgive the wrong,' Or to ask her, 'Take me, sweet. To the regions of thy rest ' ? MAUD. 299 But the broad light glares and beats, And the shadow flits and fleets And will not let me be; And I loathe the squares and streets, And the faces that one meets. Hearts with no love for me : Always I long to creep Into some still cavern deep, There to weep, and weep, and weep My whole soul out to thee. Dead, long dead, Long dead ! And my heart is a handful of dust. And the wheels go over my head, And my bones are shaken with pain. For into a shallow grave they are thrust. Only a yard beneath the street. And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat, ' The hoofs of the horses beat. Beat into my scalp and my brain, With never an end to the stream of passing feet. Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying. Clamour and rumble, and ringing and clatter, And here beneath it is all as bad. For I thought the dead had peace, but it is not so; To have no peace in the grave, is that not sad? But up and down and to and fro. Ever about me the dead men go; And then to hear a dead man chatter Is enough to drive one mad. II. Wretchedest age since Time began, They cannot even bury a man; And tho' we paid our tithes in the days that are gone, Not a bell was rung, not a prayer was read; It is that which makes us loud in the world of the dead; There is none that does his work, not one; A touch of their ofiice might have sufficed. But the churchmen fain would kill their church. As the churches have kill'd their Christ. III. See, there is one of us sobbing, No limit to his distress; And another, a lord of all things, praying To his own great self, as I guess; And another, a statesman there, betraying His party-secret, fool, to the press; And yonder a vile physician, blabbing The case of his patient — all for what? To tickle the maggot born in an empty head. And wheedle a world that loves him not. For it is but a world of the dead. Nothing but idiot gabble ! For the prophecy given of old And then not understood. Has come to pass as foretold; Not let any man think for the public good. But babble, merely for babble. For I never whisper'd a private affair Within the hearing of cat or mouse. No, not to myself in the closet alone, But I heard it shouted at once from the top of the house; Everything came to be known. Who told him we were there? Not that gray old wolf, for he came not back From the wilderness, full of wolves, where he used to lie; He has gather'd the bones for his o'er- grown whelp to crack; Crack them now for yourself, and howl, and die. VI. Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip. And curse me the British vermin, the rat; I know not whether he came in the Hanover ship, But I know that he lies and listens mute 300 MAUD. In an ancient mansion's crannies and holes : Arsenic, arsenic, sure, would do it, Except that now we poison our babes, poor souls ! It is all used up for that. VII. Tell him now : she is standing here at my head; Not beautiful now, not even kind; He may take her now; for she never speaks her mind. But is ever the one thing silent here. She is not ^us, as I divine; She comes from another stiller world of the dead, Stiller, not fairer than mine. But I know where a garden grows. Fairer than aught in the world beside, All made up of the lily and rose That blow by night, when the season is good, To the sound of dancing music and flutes : It is only flowers, they had no fruits. And I almost fear they are not roses, but blood; For the keeper was one, so full of pride. He linkt a dead man there to a spectral bride ; For he, if he had not been a Sultan of brutes, Would he have that hole in his side? IX. But what will the old man say? He laid a cruel snare in a pit To catch a friend of mine one stormy day; Yet now I could even weep to think of it; For what will the old man say? When he comes to the second corpse in the pit? X. Friend, to be struck by the public foe, Then to strike him and lay him low, That were a public merit, far. Whatever the Quaker holds, from sin; But the red life spilt for a private blow — I swear to you, lawful and lawless war Are scarcely even akin. XI. me, why have they not buried me deep enough? Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough. Me, that was never a quiet sleeper? Maybe still I am but half-dead; Then I cannot be wholly dumb; 1 will cry to the steps above my head And somebody, surely, some kind heart will come To bury me, bury me Deeper, ever so little deeper. PART III. VI. My life has crept so long on a broken wing Thro' cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear, That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing : My mood is changed, for it fell at a time of year When the face of night is fair on the dewy downs, And the shining daffodil dies, and the Charioteer And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns Over Orion's grave low down in the west, That like a silent lightning under the stars She seem'd to divide in a dream from a band of the blest. MAUD. 301 And spoke of a hope for the world in the coming wars — * And in that hope, dear soul, let trouble have rest. Knowing I tarry for thee,' and pointed to Mars As he glow'd like a ruddy shield on the Lion's breast. II. And it was but a dream, yet it yielded a dear delight To have look'd, tho' but in a dream, upon eyes so fair, That had been in a weary world my one thing bright; And it was but a dream, yet it hghten'd my despair When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right, That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease, The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height, Nor Britain's one sole God be the millionaire : No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note, And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase, Nor the cannon-bullet rust on a slothful shore. And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no more. III. And as months ran on and rumour of battle grew, * It is time, it is time, O passionate heart,' said I (P"or I cleaved to a cause that I felt to be pure and true), * It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye. That old hysterical mock-disease should die.' And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath With a loyal people shouting a battle cry, Till I saw the dreary phantom arise and fly Far into the North, and battle, and seas of death. IV. Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold, And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames, Horrible, hateful, rrionstrous, not to be told ; And hail once more to the banner of battle unroU'd ! Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring claims. Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar; And many a darkness into the light shall leap. And shine in the sudden making of splendid names. And noble thought be freer under the sun. And the heart of a people beat with one desire; For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and done, And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep, And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire. 302 IDYLLS OF THE KING. Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind, We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still, And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind; It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill; I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind, I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd. IDYLLS OF THE KING. IN TWELVE BOOKS. Flos Regum Artkurtis.' — Joseph of Exeter. DEDICATION. These to His Memory — since he held them dear. Perchance as finding there unconsciously Some image of himself — I dedicate, I dedicate, I consecrate with tears — These Idylls. And indeed He seems to me Scarce other than my king's ideal knight, * Who reverenced his conscience as his king; Whose glory was, redressing human wrong ; Who spake no slander, no, nor listen'd to it; Who loved one onlv and who clave to her — ' Her — over all whose realms to their last isle. Commingled with the gloom of imminent war, The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse. Darkening the world. We have lost him : he is gone : We know him now: all narrow jealousies Are silent; and we see him as he moved. How modest, kindly, all-accomplish'd, wise. With what sublime repression of himself. And in what limits, and how tenderly; Not swaying to this faction or to that; Not making his high place the lawless perch Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantage- ground For pleasure; but thro' all this tract of years Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which beats upon a throne. And blackens every blot : for where is he, Who dares foreshadow for an only son A lovelier life, a more unstain'd than his? Or how should England dreaming of his sons Hope more for these than some inheri- tance Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine. Thou noble Father of her Kings to be, Laborious for her people and her poor — Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day — Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace — Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art, Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed, Beyond all titles, and a household name, Hereafter, thro' all times, Albert the Good. Break not, O woman's-heart, but still endure; Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure, Remembering all the beauty of that star THE COMING OF ARTHUR. 303 Which shone so close beside Thee that ye made One light together, but has past and leaves The Crown a lonely splendour. May all love, His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow Thee, The love of all Thy sons encompass Thee, The love of all Thy daughters cherish Thee, The love of all Thy people comfort Thee, Till God's love set Thee at his side again I THE COMING OF ARTHUR. Leodogran, the King of Cameliard, Had one fair daughter, and none other child; And she was fairest of all flesh on earth, Guinevere, and in her his one delight. - For many a petty king ere Arthur came Ruled in this isle, and ever waging war Each upon other, wasted all the land; And still from time to time the heathen host Swarm'd overseas, and harried what was left. And so there grew great tracts of wilder- ness. Wherein the beast was ever more and more. But man was less and less, till Arthur came. For first Aurelius lived and fought and died, And after him King Uther fought and died. But either fail'd to make the kingdom one. And after these King Arthur for a space, And thro' the puissance of his Table Round, Drew all their petty princedoms under him. Their king and head, and made a realm, and reign'd. And thus the land of Cameliard was waste. Thick with wet woods, and many a beast therein, And none or few to scare or chase the beast; So that wild dog, and wolf and boar and bear Came night and day, and rooted in the fields, And wallow'd in the gardens of the King. And ever and anon the wolf would steal The children and devour, but now and then, Her own brood lost or dead, lent her fierce teat To human sucklings; and the children, housed In her foul den, there at their meat would growl. And mock their foster-mother on four feet, Till, straighten'd, they grew up to wolf- like men, Worse than the wolves. And King Leodogran Groan'd fgr the Roman legions here again, And Caesar's eagle: then his brother king, Urien, assail'd him : last a heathen horde, Reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood. And on the spike that split the mother's heart Spitting the child, brake on him, till, amazed, He knew not whither he should turn for aid. But — for he heard of Arthur newly crown'd, Tho' not without an uproar made by those Who cried, ' He is not Uther's son ' — the King Sent to him, saying, ' Arise, and help us thou! For here between the man and beast we die.' 304 THE COMING OF ARTHUR. And Arthur yet had done no deed of arms, But heard the call, and came : and Guinevere Stood by the castle walls to watch him pass; But since he neither wore on helm or shield The golden symbol of his kinglihood, But rode a simple knight among his knights, And many of these in richer arms than he. She saw him not, or mark'd not, if she saw, One among many, tho' his face was bare. But Arthur, looking downward as he past, Felt the light of her eyes into his life Smite on the sudden, yet rode on, and pitch'd His tents beside the forest. Then he drave The heathen; after, slew the beast, and feird The forest, letting in the sun, and made Broad pathways for the hunter and the knight And so return'd. For while he linger'd there, A doubt that ever smoulder'd in the hearts Of those great Lords and Barons of his realm Flash'd forth and into war: for most of these, Colleaguing with a score of petty kings, Made head against him, crying, ' Who is he That he should rule us? who hath proven him King Uther's son? for lo! we look at him. And find nor face nor bearing, limbs nor voice, Are like to those of Uther whom we knew. This is the son of Gorlois, not the King; This is the son of Anton, not the King.' And Arthur, passing thence to battle, felt Travail, and throes and agonies of the life, Desiring to be join'd with Guinevere; And thinking as he rode, ' Her father said That there between the man and beast they die. Shall I not lift her from this land of beasts Up to my throne, and side by side with me? What happiness to reign a lonely king, Vext — O ye stars that shudder over me, earth that soundest hollow under me, Vext with waste dreams? for saving I tje join'd To her that is the fairest under heaven, 1 seem as nothing in the mighty world, And cannot will my will, nor work my work Wholly, nor make myself in mine own realm Victor and lord. But were I join'd with her, Then might we live together as one life, And reigning with one will in everything Have power on this dark land to lighten it. And power on this dead world to make it live.' Thereafter — as he speaks who tells the tale — When Arthur reach'd a field-of-battle bright With pitch'd pavilions of his foe, the world Was all so clear about him, that he saw The smallest rock far on the faintest hill, And even in high day the morning star. So when the King had set his banner broad, At once from either side, with trumpet- blast. And shouts, and clarions shrilling unto blood, The long-lanced battle let their horses run. And now the Barons and the kings pre- vail'd. And now the King, as here and there that war Went swaying; but the Powers who walk the world Made lightnings and great thunders over him. THE COMING OF ARTHUR. 305 And dazed all eyes, till Arthur by main might, And mightier of his hands with every blow. And leading all his knighthood threw the kings Carados, Urien, Cradlemont of Wales, Claudius, and Clariance of Northumber- land, The King Brandagoras of Latangor, With Anguisant of Erin, Morganore, And Lot of Orkney. Then, before a voice As dreadful as the shout of one who sees To one who sins, and deems himself alone And all the world asleep, they swerved and brake Flying, and Arthur call'd to stay the brands That hack'd among the flyers, * Ho ! they yield ! ' So like a painted battle the war stood Silenced, the living quiet as the dead. And in the heart of Arthur joy was lord. He laugh'd upon his warrior whom he loved And honour'd most. 'Thou dost not doubt me King, So well thine arm hath wrought for me to-day.' ' Sir and mv liege,' he cried, * the fire of God Descends upon thee in the battle-field : I know thee for my King ! ' Whereat the two. For each had warded either in the fight, Sware on the field of death a deathless love. And Arthur said, * Man's word is God in man: Let chance what will, I trust thee to the death.' Then quickly from the foughten field he sent Ulfius, and Brastias, and Bedivere, His new-made knights, to King Leodo- gran, Saying, 'If I in aught have served thee well. Give me thy daughter Guinevere to wife.' X Whom when he heard, Leodogran in heart Debating — ' How should I that am a king. However much he holp me at my need, Give my one daughter saving to a king, And a king's soil ? ' — lifted his voice, and called A hoary man, his chamberlain, to whom He trusted all things, and of him re- quired His counsel : * Knowest thou aught of Arthur's birth?' Then spake the hoary chamberlain and said, * Sir King, there be but two old men that know : And each is twice as old as I; and one Is Merlin, the wise man that ever served KingUther thro' his magic art; and one Is Merlin's master (so they call him) Bleys, Who taught him magic; but the scholar ran Before the master, and so far, that Bleys Laid magic by, and sat him down, and wrote All things and whatsoever Merlin did In one great annal-book, where after-years W^ill learn the secret of our Arthur's birth.' To whom the King Leodogran replied, ' O friend, had I been holpen half as well By this King Arthur as by thee to-day. Then beast and man had had their share of me : But summon here before us yet once more Ulfius, and Brastias, and Bedivere.' Then, when they came before him, the King said, *I have seen the cuckoo chased by lesser fowl, And reason in the chase : but wherefore now Do these your lords stir up the heat of war, Some calling Arthur born of Gorlois, Others of Anton ? Tell me, ye yourselves, Hold ye this Arthur for King Uther'5 son?' 306 THE COMING OF ARTHUR. And Ulfius and Brastias answer'd, * Ay.' Then Bedivere, the first of all his knights Knighted by Arthur at his crowning, spake — For bold in heart and act and word was he, Whenever slander breatfied against the King — ' Sir, there be many rumours on this head: For there be those who hate him in their hearts, Call him baseborn, and since his ways are sweet, And theirs are bestial, hold him less than man : And there be those who deem him more than man. And dream he dropt from heaven : but my belief In all this matter — so ye care to learn — Sir, for ye know that in King Other's time The prince and warrior Gorlois, he that held Tintagil castle by the Cornish sea. Was wedded with awinsome wife, Ygerne : And daughters had she borne him, — one whereof, Lot's wife, the Queen of Orkney, Belli- cent, Hath ever like a loyal sister cleaved To Arthur, — but a son she had not borne. And Uther cast upon her eyes of love : But she, a stainless wife to Gorlois, So loathed the bright dishonour of his love, That Gorlois and King Uther went to war : And overthrown was Gorlois and slain. Then Uther in his wrath and heat be- sieged Ygerne within Tintagil, where her men. Seeing the mighty swarm about their walls, Left her and fled, and Uther enter'd in. And there was none to call to but him- self. So, compass'd by the power of the King, Enforced she was to wed him in her tears. And with a shameful swiftness: after- ward, Not many moons. King Uther died him- self, Moaning and wailing for an hdr to rule After him, lest the realm should go to wrack. And that same night, the night of the new year, By reason of the bitterness and grief That vext his mother, all before his time Was Arthur born, and all as soon as born Deliver'd at a secret postern-gate To Merhn, to be holden far apart Until his hour should come; because the lords Of that fierce day were as the lords of this, Wild beasts, and surely would have torn the child Piecemeal among them, hiad they known; for each But sought to rule for his own self and hand, And many hated Uther for the sake Of Gorlois. Wherefore MerUn took the child. And gave him to Sir Anton, an old knight And ancient friend of Uther; and his wife Nursed the young prince, and rear'd him with her own; And no man- knew. And ever since the lords Have foughten like wild beasts among themselves, So that the realm has gone to wrack : but now. This year, when Merlin (for his hour had come) Brought Arthur forth, and set him in the hall. Proclaiming, " Here is Uther's heir, your king," A hundred voices cried, " Away with him ! No king of ours ! a son of Gorlois he, Or else the child of Anton, and no king, Or else baseborn." Yet Merlin thro' his craft. And while the people, clamour'd for a king. Had Arthur crown'd; but after, the great lords Banded, and so brake out in open war.* Then while the King debated with him- self If Arthur were the child of shamefulness, Or born the son of Gorlois, after death, THE COMING OF ARTHUR. 307 Or Uther's son, and born before his time, Or whether there were truth in anything Said by these three, there came to Came- liard, With Gawain and young Modred, her two sons. Lot's wife, the Queen of Orkney, Belli- cent; Whom as he could, not as he would, the King Made feast for, saying, as they sat at meat, *A doubtful throne is ice on summer seas. Ye come from Arthur's court. Victor his men Report him ! Yea, but ye — think ye this king — So many those that hate him, and so strong. So few his knights, however brave they be — Hath body enow to hold his foemen down?' *0 King,' she cried, 'and I will tell thee: few. Few, but all brave, all of one mind with • him; For I was near him when the savage yells Of Uther's peerage died, and Arthur sat Crown'd on the dais, and his warriors cried, " Be thou the king, and we will work thy will Who love thee." Then the King in low deep tones, And simple words of great authority, Bound them by so strait vows to his own self. That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some Were pale as at the passing of a ghost. Some flush'd, and others dazed, as one who wakes Half-blinded at the coming of a light. * But when he spake and cheer'd his Table Round With large, divine, and comfortable words. Beyond my tongue to tell thee — I beheld From eye to eye thro' all their Order flash A momentary likeness of the King : And ere it left their faces, thro' the cross And those around it and the Crucified, Down from the casement over Arthur, smote Flame-colour, vert and azure, in three rays, One falling upon each of three fair queens, Who stood in silence near his throne, the friends Of Arthur, gazing on him, tall, with bright Sweet faces, who will help him at his need. * And there I saw mage Merlin, whose vast wit And hundred winters are but as the hands Of loyal vassals toiling for their liege. * And near him stood the Lady of the Lake, Who knows a subtler magic than his own — Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonder- ful. She gave the King his huge cross-hilted sword-. Whereby to drive the heathen out : a mist Of incense curl'd about her, and her face Wellnigh was hidden in the minster gloom ; But there was heard among the holy hymns A voice as of the waters, for she dwells Down in a deep ; calm, whatsoever storms May shake the world, and when the surface rolls, Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord. 'There likewise I beheld Excalibur Before him at his crowning borne, the sword That rose from out the bosom of the lake, And Arthur row'd across and took it — rich With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt. Bewildering heart and eye — the blade so bright That men are blinded by it — on one side. Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world, " Take me," but turn the blade and ye shall see. 3o8 THE COMING OF ARTHUR. And written in the speech ye speak your- self, "Cast me away ! " And sad was Arthur's face Taking it, but old Merlin counsell'd him, " Take thou and strike ! the time to cast away Is yet far-off." So this great brand the king Took, and by this will beat his foemen down.' Thereat Leodogran rejoiced, but thought To sift his doubtings to the last, and ask'd, Fixing full eyes of question on her face, 'The swallow and the swift are near akin, But thou art closer to this noble prince, Being his own dear sister;' and she said, * Daughter of Gorlois and Ygerne am I; ' 'And therefore Arthur's sister?' ask'd the King. She answer'd, 'These be secret things,' and sign'd To those two sons to pass, and let them be. And Gawain went, and breaking into song Sprang out, and foUow'd by his flying hair Ran like a colt, and leapt at all he saw : But Modred laid his ear beside the doors. And there half-heard; the same that afterward Struck for the throne, and striking found his doom. And then the Queen made answer, * What know I ? For dark my mother was in eyes and hair, And dark in hair and eyes am I ; and dark Was Gorlois, yea and dark was Uther too, Wellnigh to blackness; but this King is fair Beyond the race of Britons and of men. Moreover, always in my mind I hear A cry from out the dawning of my life, A mother weeping, and I hear her say, " O that ye had some brother, pretty one. To guard thee on the rough ways of the world." ' ' Ay,' said the King, * and hear ye such a cry? But when did Arthur chance upon thee first?' « O King ! ' she cried, ' and I will tell thee true : He found me first when yet a little maid : Beaten had I been for a little fault Whereof I was not guilty; and out I ran And flung myself down on a bank of heath, And hated this fair world and all therein, And wept, and wish'd that I were dead; and he — I know not whether of himself he came, Or brought by Merlin, who, they say, can walk Unseen at pleasure — he was at my side. And spake sweet words, and comforted my heart. And dried my tears, being a child with me. And many a time he came, and evermore As I grew greater grew with me; and sad At times he seem'd, and sad with him was I, Stern too at times, and then I loved him not. But sweet again, and then I loved him well. And now of late I see him less and less. But those first days had golden hours for me. For then I surely thought he would be king. ' But let me tell thee now another tale : For Bleys, our Merlin's master, as they say, Died but of late, and sent his cry to me, To hear him speak before he left his life. Shrunk like a fairy changeling lay the mage; And when I enter'd told me that himself And Merlin ever served about the King, Uther, before he died; and on the night When Uther in Tintagil past away Moaning and wailing for an heir, the two Left the still King, and passing forth to breathe. Then from the castle gateway by the chasm Descending thro' the dismal night — a night In which the bounds of heaven and earth were lost — Beheld, so high upon the dreary deeps It seem'd in heaven, a ship, the shape thereof THE COMING OF ARTHUR, 309 A dragon wing'd, and all from stem to stern Bright with a shining people on the decks, And gone as soon as seen. And then the two Dropt to the cove, and watch'd the great sea fall, Wave after wave, each mightier than the last, Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame : And down the wave and in the flame was borne A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet. Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried " The King ! Here is an heir for Uther ! " And the fringe Of that great breaker, sweeping up the strand, Lash'd at the wizard as he spake the word. And all at once all round him rose in fire, So that the child and he were clothed in fire. And presently thereafter follow'd calm. Free sky and stars: "And this same child," he said, "Is he who reigns; nor could I part in peace Till thisSvere told." . And saying this the seer Went thro' the strait and dreadful pass of death, Nor ever to be question'd any more Save on the further side ; but when I met Merlin, and ask'd him if these things were truth — The shining dragon and the naked child Descending in the glory of the seas — He laugh'd as -is his wont, and ansvver'd me In riddling triplets of old time, and said : * " Rain, rain, and sun ! a rainbow in the sky ! A young man will be wiser by and by ; An old man's wit may wander ere he die. Rain, rain, and sun ! a rainbow on the lea! And truth is this to me, and that to thee; And truth or clothed or naked let it be. Rain, sun, and rain ! and the free blossom blows : Sun, rain, and sun ! and where is he who knows ? From the great deep to the great deep he goes." 'So Merlin riddling anger'd me; but thou Fear not to give this King thine only child," Guinevere : so great bards of him will sing Hereafter; and dark sayings from of old Ranging and ringing thro' the minds of men. And echo'd by old folk beside their fires For comfort after their wage-work is done, Speak of the King; and Merlin in our time Hath spoken also, not in jest, and sworn Tho' men may wound him that he will not die, But pass, again to come; and then or now Utterly smite the heathen underfoot, Till these and all men hail him for their king.' She spake and King Leodogran re- joiced, But musing * Shall I answer yea or nay? ' Doubted, and drowsed, nodded and slept, and saw, Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew, Field after field, up to a height, the peak Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom king, Now looming, and now lost; and on the slope The sword rose, the hind fell, the herd was driven. Fire glimpsed; and all the land from roof and rick. In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind, Stream'd to the peak, and mingled with the haze And made it thicker; while the phantom king Sent out at times a voice; and here or there Stood one who pointed toward the voice, the rest Slew on and burnt, crying, * No king of ours, 3IO THE COMING OF ARTHUR. No son of Uther, and no king of ours; ' Till with a wink his drea"m was changed, the haze Descended, and the solid earth became As nothing, but the King stood out in heaven, Crown'd. And Leodogran awoke, and sent Ulfius, and Brastias and Bedivere, Back to the court of Arthur answering yea. Then Arthur charged his warrior whom he loved And honour'd most, Sir Lancelot, to ride forth And bring the Queen; — and watch'd him from the gates : And Lancelot past away among the flowers, (For then was latter April) and return'd Among the flowers, in May, with Guine- vere. To whom arrived, by Dubric the high saint, Chief of the church in Britain, and before The Stateliest of her altar-shrines, the King That morn was married, while in stainless white. The fair beginners of a nobler time, And glorying in their vows and him, his knights Stood round him, and rejoicing in his joy. Far shone the fields of May thro' open door, The sacred altar blossom'd white with May, The Sun of May descended on their King, They gazed on all earth's beauty in their Queen, Roll'd incense, and there past along the hymns A voice as of the waters, while the two Sware at the shrine of Christ a deathless love : And Arthur said, * Behold, thy doom is mine. Let chance what will, I love thee to the death ! ' To whom the Queen replied with drooping eyes, 'King and my lord, I love thee to the death ! ' And holy Dubric spread his hands and spake, ' Reign ye, and live and love, and make the world Other, and may thy Queen be one with thee. And all this Order of thy Table Round Fulfil the boundless purpose of their King ! ' So Dubric said; but when they left the shrine Great Lords from Rome before the portal stood, In scornful stillness gazing -as they past; Then while they paced a city all on fire With sun and cloth of gold, the trumpets blew. And Arthur's knighthood sang before the King : — * Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May; Blow trumpet, the long night hath roll'd away ! Blow thro' the living world — " Let the King reign." * Shall Rome or Heathen rule in Arthur's realm? Flash brand and lance, fall battleaxe upon helm, Fall battleaxe, and flash brand ! Let the King reign. * Strike for the King and live ! his knights have heard That God hath told the King a secret word. Fall battleaxe and flash brand ! Let the King reign. * Blow trumpet ! he will lift us from I the dust. I Blow trumpet ! live the strength and die the lust ! Clang battleaxe, and clash brand ! Let the King reign. ' Strike for the King and die ! and if thou diest, The King is King, and ever wills the highest. GARETH AND LYNETTE. 31] Clang battleaxe, and clash brand ! Let the King reign. * Blow, for our Sun is mighty in his May ! Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day ! Clang battleaxe, and clash brand ! Let the King reign. ' The King will follow Christ, and we the King In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing. Fall battleaxe, and flash brand ! Let the King reign.' So sang the knighthood, moving to their hall. There at the banquet those great Lords from Rome, The slowly-fading mistress of the world. Strode in, and claim'd their tribute as of yore. But Arthur spake, 'Behold, for these have sworn To wage my wars, and worship me their King; The old order changeth, yielding place to new; And we that fight for our fair father Christ, Seeing that ye be grown too weak and old To drive the heathen from your Roman wall. No tribute will we pay : ' so those great lords Drew back in wrath, and Arthur strove with Rome. And Arthur and his knighthood for a space Were all one will, and thro' that strength the King Drew in the petty princedoms under him. Fought, and in twelve great battles over- came The heathen hordes, and made a realm and reign'd. THE ROUND TABLE. GARETH AND LYNETTE. THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. GERAINT AND ENID. BALIN AND BALAN. MERLIN AND VIVIEN. GARETH AND LYNETTE. The last tall son of Lot and Bellicent, And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful spring Stared at the spate. A slender-shafted Pine Lost footing, fell, and so was whirl'd away. * How he went down,' said Gareth, * as a false knight Or evil king before my lance if lance Were mine to use — O senseless cataract. Bearing all down in thy precipitancy — And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows And mine is living blood : thou dost His will, The Maker's, and not knowest, and I that know, Have strength and wit, in my good mother's hall LANCELOT AND ELAINE. THE HOLY GRAIL. PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. THE LAST TOURNAMENT. GUINEVERE. Linger with vacillating obedience, Prison'd, and kept and coax'd and whistled to — Since the good mother holds me still a child ! Good mother is bad mother unto me ! A worse were better; yet no worse would I. Heaven yield her for it, but in me put force To weary her ears with one continuous prayer. Until she let me fly discaged to sweep In ever-highering eagle-circles up Ta the great Sun of Glory, and thence swoop Down upon all things base, and dash them dead, A knight of Arthur, working out his will. To cleanse the world. Why, Gawain, when he came 312 GARETH AND LYNETTE. "With Modred hither in the summer- time, Ask'd me to tilt with him, the proven knight, Modred for want of worthier was the judge. Then I so shook him in the saddle, he said, "Thou hast half prevail'd against me," said so — he — Tho' Modred biting his thin lips was mute, For he is alway sullen : what care I? ' And Gareth went, and hovering round her chair Ask'd, * Mother, tho' ye count me still the child, Sweet mother, do ye love the child?' She laugh'd, 'Thou art but a wild-goose to question it.' 'Then, mother, and ye love the child,' he said, 'Being a goose and rather tame than wild. Hear the child's story.' ' Yea, my well- beloved, An 'twere but of the goose and golden eggs.' And Gareth answer'd her with kind- ling eyes, *Nay, nay, good mother, but this egg of mine Was finer gold than any goose can lay; For this an Eagle, a royal Eagle, laid Almost beyond eye-reach, on" such a palm As glitters gilded in thy Book of Hours. And there was ever haunting round the palm A lusty youth, but poor, who often saw The splendour sparkling from aloft, and thought " An I could climb and lay my hand upon it, Then were I wealthier than a leash of kings." But ever when he reach'd a hand to • climb, One that had loved him from his child- hood, caught And stay'd him, " Climb not lest thou break thy neck, I charge thee by my love," and so the boy. Sweet mother, neither clomb, nor brake his neck. And brake his very heart in pining for it, And past away.' To whom the mother said, 'True love, sweet son, had risk'd himself and climb'd. And handed down the golden treasure to him.' And Gareth answer'd her with kindling eyes, 'Gold? said I gold? — ay then, why he, or she. Or whosoe'er it was, or half the world Had ventured — had the thing I spake of been Mere gold — but this was all of that true steel, "Whereof they forged the brand Excalibur, And lightnings play'd about it in the storm. And all the little fowl were flurried at it. And there were cries and clashings in the nest, That sent him from his senses : let me go.' Then Bellicent bemoan'd herself and said, 'Hast thou no pity upon my loneliness? Lo, where thy father Lot beside the hearth Lies like a log, and all but smoulder'd out! For ever since when traitor to the King He fought against him in the Barons' war, And Arthur gave him back his territory. His age hath slowly droopt, and now lies there A yet-warm corpse, and yet unburiable. No more; nor sees, nor hears, nor speaks, nor knows. And both thy brethren are in Arthur's hall, Albeit neither loved with that full love I feel for thee, nor worthy such a love : Stay therefore thou; red berries charm the bird, GARETH AND LYNETTE. 313 And thee, mine innocent, the jousts, the wars. Who never knewest finger-ache, nor pang Of wrench'd or broken limb — an often chance In those brain-stunning shocks, and tourney-falls. Frights to my heart; but stay: follow the deer By these tall firs and our fast-falling burns; So make thy manhood mightier day by day; Sweet is the chase : and I will seek thee out Some comfortable bride and fair, to grace Thy climbing life, and cherish my prone year. Till falling into Lot's forgetfulness I know not thee, myself, nor anything. Stay, my best son ! ye are yet more boy than man.' Then Gareth, ' An ye hold me yet for child. Hear yet once more the story of the child. For, mother, there was once a King, like ours. The prince his heir, when tall and mar- riageable, Ask'd for a bride; and thereupon the King Set two before him. One was fair, strong, arm'd — But to be won by force — and many men Desired her; one, good lack, no man desired. And these were the conditions of the King : That save he won the first by force, he needs Must wed that other, whom no man desired, A red-faced bride who knew herself so vile. That evermore she long'd to hide her- self. Nor fronted man or woman, eye to eye — Yea — some she cleaved to, but they died of her. And one — they call'd her Fame; and one, — O mother, How can ye keep me tether'd to you — Shame. Man am I grown, a man's work must I do. Follow the deer? follow the Christ, the King, . j Live pure, speak true, right wrong, fol-j low the King — I Else, wherefore born? ' To whom the mother said, * Sweet son, for there be many who deem him not. Or will not deem him, wholly proven King — Albeit in mine own heart I knew him King, When I was frequent with him in my youth. And heard him Kingly speak, and doubted him No more than he, himself; but felt him mine. Of closest kin to me : yet — wilt thou leave Thine easeful biding here, and risk thine all, Life, limbs, for one that is not proven King? Stay, till the cloud that settles round his birth Hath lifted but a little. Stay, sweet son.' And Gareth answer'd quickly, ' Not an hour. So that ve yield me — I will walk thro' fire, Mother, to gain it — your full leave to go. Not proven, who swept the dust of - ruin'd Rome From off the threshold of the realm, and crush'd The Idolaters, and made the people free? Who should be King save him who makes us free?' So when the Queen, who long had sought in vain To break him from the intent to which he grew. Found her son's will unwaveringly one, She answer'd craftily, * Will ye walk thro' fire? 314 GARETH AND LYNETTE. Who walks thro' fire will hardly heed the smoke. Ay, go then, an ye must : only one proof, Before thou ask the King to make thee knight, Of thine obedience and thy love to me, Thy mother, — I demand.' And Gareth cried, 'A hard one, or a hundred, so I go. Nay — quick ! the proof to prove me to the quick ! ' But slowly spake the mother looking at him, * Prince, thou shalt go disguised to Arthur's hall. And hire thyself to serve for meats and drinks Among the scullions and the kitchen- knaves, And those that hand the dish across the bar. Nor shalt thou tell thy name to any one. And thou shalt serve a twelvemonth and a day.' For so the Queen believed that when her son Beheld his only way to glory lead Low down thro' villain kitchen-vassalage. Her own true Gareth was too princely- proud To pass thereby; so should he rest with her. Closed in her castle from the sound of arms. Silent awhile was Gareth, then replied, * The thrall in person may be free in soul. And I shall see the jousts. Thy son am I, And since thou art my mother, must obey. I therefore yield me freely to thy will; For hence will I, disguised, and hire myself To serve with scullions and with kitchen- knaves; Nor tell my name to any — no, not the King.' Gareth awhile linger'd. The mother's eye Full of the wistful fear that he would go, And turning toward him wheresoe'er he turn'd, Perplext his outward purpose, till an hour, When waken'd by the wind which with full voice Swept bellowing thro' the darkness on to dawn. He rose, and out of slumber calling two That still had tended on him from his birth, Before the wakeful mother heard him, went. The three were clad like tillers of the soil. Southward they set their faces. The birds made Melody on branch, and melody in mid air. The damp hill-slopes were quicken'd into green. And the live green had kindled into flowers, For it was past the time of Easterday. So, when their feet were planted on the plain That broaden'd toward the base of Game- lot, Far off they saw the silver-misty morn Rolling her smoke about the Royal mount. That rose between the forest and the field. At times the summit of the high city flash'd; At times the spires and turrets half-way down Prick'd thro' the mist; at times the great gate shone Only, that open'd on the field below : Anon, the whole fair city had disappear'd. Then those who went with Gareth were amazed, One crying, * Let us go no further, lord. Here is a city of Enchanters, built By fairy Kings.' The second echo'd him, 'Lord, we have heard from our wise « man at home To Northward, that this King is not the King, GARETH AND LYNETTE. 315 But only changeling out of Fairyland, Who drave the heathen hence by sorcery And Merlin's glamour.' Then the first again, ' Lord, there is no such city anywhere. But all a vision.' Gareth answer'd them With laughter, swearing he had glamour enow In his own blood, his princedom, youth and hopes, To plunge old Merlin in the Arabian sea; So push'd them all unwilling toward the gate. And there was no gate like it under heaven. For barefoot on the keystone, which was lined And rippled like an ever-fleeting wave, The Lady of the Lake stood : all her dress Wept from her sides as water flowing away ; But like the cross her great and goodly arms Stretch'd under all the cornice and up- held : And drops of water fell from either hand; And down from one a sword was hung, from one A censer, either worn with wind and storm; And o'er her breast floated the sacred fish; And in the space to left of her, and right. Were Arthur's wars in weird devices done. New things and old co-twisted, as if Time Were nothing, so inveterately, that men Were giddy gazing there; and over all High on the top were those three Queens, the friends Of Arthur, who should help him at his need. Then those with Gareth for so long a space Stared at the figures, that at last it seem'd The dragon-boughts and elvish emblem- ings Began to move, seethe, twine and curl : they call'd To Gareth, * Lord, the gateway is alive.' And Gareth likewise on them fixt his eyes So long, that ev'n to him they seem'd to move. Out of the city a blast of music peal'd. Back from the gate started the three, to whom From out thereunder came an ancient man, Long-bearded, saying, ' Who be ye, my sons?' Then Gareth, ' We be tillers of the soil. Who leaving share in furrow come to see The glories of our King : but these, my men, (Your city moved so weirdly in the mist) Doubt if the King be King at all, or come From Fairyland; and whether this be built By magic, and by fairy Kings and Queens; Or whether there be any city at all, Or all a vision : and this music now Hath scared them both, but tell thou these the truth.' Then that old Seer made answer play- ing on him And saying, * Son, I have seen the good ship sail Keel upward, and mast downward, in the heavens, And solid turrets topsy-turvy in air : And here is truth; but an it please thee not. Take thou the truth as thou hast told it me. For truly as thou sayest, a Fairy King And Fairy Queens have built the city, son; They came from out a sacred mountain- cleft Toward the sunrise, each with harp in hand, And built it to the music of their harps. 316 GARETH AND LYNETTE. And, as thou sayest, it is enchanted, son, For there is nothing in it as it seems Saving the King; tho' some there be that hold The King a shadow, and the city real : Yet take thou heed of him, for, so thou pass Beneath this archway, then wilt thou become A thrall to his enchantments, for the King Will bind thee by such vows, as is a shame A man should not be bound by, yet the which No man can keep; but, so thou dread to swear, Pass not beneath this gateway, but abide Without, among the cattle of the field. For an ye heard a music, like enow They are building still, seeing the city is built To music, therefore never built at all, And therefore built for ever.' Gareth spake Anger'd, * Old Master, reverence thine own beard That looks as white as utter truth,- and seems Wellnigh as long as thou art statured tall! Why mockest thou the stranger that hath been To thee fair-spoken?' But the Seer replied, * Know ye not then the Riddling of the Bards? " Confusion, and illusion, and relation, Elusion, and occasion, and evasion"? I mock thee not but as thou mockest me. And all that see thee, for thou art not who Thou seemest, but I know thee who thou art. And now thou goest up to mock the King, Who cannot brook the shadow of any lie.' Unmockingly the mocker ending here Turn'd to the right, and past along the plain; Whom Gareth looking after said, * My men, Our one white lie sits like a little ghost Here on the threshold of our enterprise. Let love be blamed for it, not she, nor I : Well, we will make amends.' With all good cheer He spake and laugh'd, then enter'd with his twain Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces And stately, rich in emblem and the work Of ancient kings who did their days in stone; Which Merlin's hand, the Mage at Arthur's court, Knowing all arts, had touch'd, and every- where At Arthur's ordinance, tipt with lessening peak And pinnacle, and had made it spire to heaven. And ever and anon a knight would pass Outward, or inward to the hall : his arms Clash'd; and the sound was good to Gareth's ear. And out of bower and casement shyly glanced Eyes of pure women, wholesome stars of love; And all about a healthful people stept As in the presence of a gracious king. Then into hall Gareth ascending heard A voice, the voice of Arthur, and beheld Far over heads in that long-vaulted hall The splendour of the presence of the King Throned, and delivering doom — and look'd no more — But felt his young heart hammering in his ears, And thought, ' For this half-shadow of a lie The truthful King will doom me when I speak.' Yet pressing on, tho' all in fear to find Sir Gawain or Sir Mod red, saw nor one Nor other, but in all the listening eyes GARETH AND LYNETTE. 3^7 // Of those tall knights, that ranged about the throne, Clear honour shining like the dewy star Of dawn, and. faith in their great King, with pure Affection, and the light of victory, And glory gain'd, and evermore to gain. Then came a widow crying to the King, * A boon, Sir King ! Thy father, Uther, reft From my dead lord a field with violence : For howsoe'er at first he proffer'd gold, Yet, for the field was pleasant in our eyes, We yielded not; and then he reft us of it Perforce, and left us neither gold nor field.' Said Arthur, * Whether would ye ? gold or field?' To whom the woman weeping, * Nay, my lord. The field was pleasant in my husband's eye.' And Arthur, * Have thy pleasant field again, And thrice the gold for Uther's use thereof. According to the years. No boon is here, But justice, so thy say be proven true. Accursed, who from the wrongs his father did Would shape himself a right ! * /• ' ' And while she past. Came yet another widow crying to him, * A boon. Sir King ! Thine enemy. King, am I. With thine own hand thou slewest my dear lord, A knight of Uther in the Barons' war. When Lot and many another rose and fought Against thee, saying thou wert basely born. I held with these, and loathe to ask thee aught. Yet lo ! my husband's brother had my son Thrall'd in his castle, and hath starved him dead; And standeth seized of that inheritance Which thou that slewest the sire hast left the son. So tho' I scarce can ask it thee for hate, Grant me some knight to do the battle for me, Kill the foul thief, and wreak me for my son.' Then strode a good knight forward, crying to him, ' A boon, Sir King ! I am her kinsman, I. Give me to right her wrong, and slay the man.' Then came Sir Kay, the seneschal, and cried, * A boon. Sir King ! ev'n that thou grant her none, This railer, that hath mock'd thee in full hall — None; or the wholesome boon of gyve and gag.' But Arthur, * We sit King, to help the wrong'd Thro' all our realm. The woman loves her lord. Peace to thee, woman, with thy loves and hates ! The kings of old had doom'd thee to the flames, Aurelius Emrys would have scourged thee dead. And Uther slit thy tongue : but get thee hence — Lest that rough humour of the kings of old Return upon me ! Thou that art her kin. Go likewise; lay him low and slay him not, But bring him here, that I may judge the right. According to the justice of the King : Then, be he guilty, by that deathless King Who lived and died for men, the man shall die.' Then came in hall the messenger of Mark, A name of evil savour in the land. The Cornish king. In either hand he bore 3iB GARETH AND LYNETTE, What dazzled all, and shone far-ofif as shines A field of charlock in the sudden sun Between two showers, a cloth of palest gold, Which down he laid before the throne, and knelt. Delivering, that his lord, the vassal king. Was ev'n upon his way to Camelot; For having heard that Arthur of his grace Had made his goodly cousin, Tristram, knight. And, for himself was of the greater state. Being a king, he trusted his liege-lord W^ould yield him this large honour all the more; So pray'd him well to accept this cloth of gold, In token of true heart and fealty. Then Arthur cried to rend the cloth, to rend In pieces, and so cast it on the hearth. An oak-tree smoulder'd there. 'The goodly knight ! What! shall the shield of Mark stand among these?' For, midway down the side of that long hall A stately pile, — whereof along the front. Some blazon'd, some but carven, and some blank. There ran a treble range of stony shields, — Rose, and high-arching overbrow'd the hearth. And under every shield a knight was named : For this was Arthur's custom in his hall; When some good knight had done one noble deed. His arms were carven only; but if twain His arms were blazon'd also ; but if none. The shield was blank and bare without a sign Saving the name beneath; and Gareth saw The shield of Gawain blazon'd rich and bright. And Modred's blank as death; and Arthur cried To rend the cloth and cast it on the hearth. * More like are we to reave him of his crown Than make him knight because men call him king. The kings we found, ye know we stay'd their hands From war among themselves, but left them kings; Of whom were any bounteous, merciful. Truth-speaking, brave, good livers, them we enroll'd Among us, and they sit within our hall. But Mark hath tarnish'd the great name of king. As Mark would sully the low state of churl : And, seeing he hath sent us cloth of gold. Return, and meet, rnd hold him from our eyes. Lest we should lap him up in cloth of lead, Silenced for ever — craven — a man of plots, Crafts, poisonous counsels, wayside am- bushings — No fault of thine : let Kay the seneschal Look to thy wants, and send thee satis- fied- Accursed, who strikes nor lets the hand be seen ! ' And many another suppliant crying came With noise of ravage wrought by beast and man, And evermore a knight would ride away. Last, Gareth leaning both hands heavily Down on the shoulders of the twain, his men, Approach'd between them toward the King, and ask'd, 'A boon, Sir King (his voice was all ashamed). For see ye not how weak and hungerworn I seem — leaning on these? grant me to serve For meat and drink among thy kitchen- knaves A twelvemonth and a day, nor seek my name. Hereafter I will fight.' GARETH AND LYNETTE. 319 To him the King, * A goodly youth and worth a goodlier boon ! But so thou wilt no goodlier, then must Kay, The master of the meats and drinks, be thine.' He rose and past; then Kay, a man of mien Wan-sallow as the plant that feels itself Root-bitten by white lichen, ' Lo ye now ! This fellow hath broken from some Abbey, where, God wot, he had not beef and brevvis enow, However that might chance ! but an he work, Like any pigeon will I cram his crop. And sleeker shall he shine than any hog.' Then Lancelot standing near, ' Sir Seneschal, Sleuth-hound thou knowest, and gray, and all the hounds; A horse thou knowest, a man thou dost not know : Broad brows and fair, a fluent hair and fine. High nose, a nostril large and fine, and hands Large, fair and fine ! — Some young lad's mystery — But, or from sheepcot or king's hall, the boy Is noble-natured. Treat him with all grace. Lest he should come to shame thy judging of him.' Then Kay, ' What murmurest thou of mystery ? Think ye this fellow will poison the King's dish? Nay, for he spake too fool-like : mys- tery ! Tut, an the lad were noble, he had ask'd For horse and armour: fair and fine, forsooth ! Sir Fine-face, Sir Fair-hands? but see thou to it That thine own fineness, Lancelot, some fine day Undo thee not — and leave my man to me,' So Gareth all for glory underwent The sooty yoke of kitchen- vassalage ; Ate with young lads his portion by the door, And couch'd at night with grimy kitchen- knaves. And Lancelot ever spake him pleasantly, But Kay the seneschal, who loved him not, Would hustle and harry him, and labour him Beyond his comrade of the hearth, and set To turn the broach, draw water, or hew wood, Or grosser tasks; and Gareth bow'd himself With all obedience to the King, and wrought All kind of service with a noble ease That graced the lowliest act in doing it. And when the thralls had talk among themselves. And one would praise the love that linkt the King And Lancelot — how the King had saved his life In battle twice, and Lancelot once the King's — For Lancelot was the first in Tournament, i But Arthur mightiest on the battle-field — \ Gareth was glad. Or if some other told, How once the wandering forester at dawn. Far over the blue tarns and hazy seas. On Caer-Eryri's highest found the King, A naked babe, of whom the Prophet spake, . * He passes to the Isle Avilion, / He passes and is heal'd and cannot die ' — ' Gareth was glad. But if their talk were foul. Then would he whistle rapid as any lark, Or carol some old roundelay, and so loud That first they mock'd, but, after, rever- enced him. Or Gareth telling some prodigious tale Of knights, who sliced a red life-bubbling way Thro' twenty folds of twisted dragon, held All in agap-mouth'd circle his good mates Lying or sitting round him, idle handS; 320 GARETH AND LYNETTE. Chann'd; till Sir Kay, the seneschal, would come Blustering upon them, like a sudden wind Among dead leaves, and drive them all apart. Or when the thralls had sport among themselves, So there were any trial of mastery, He, by two yards in casting bar or stone Was counted best; and if there chanced a joust, So that Sir Kay nodded him leave to go. Would hurry thither, and when he saw the knights Clash like the coming and retiring wave. And the spear spring, and good horse reel, the boy Was half beyond himself for ecstasy. So for a month he wrought among the thralls; But in the weeks that follow'd, the good Queen, Repentant of the word she made him swear, And saddening in her childless castle, sent. Between the in-crescent and de-crescent moon, Arms for her son, and loosed him from his vow. This, Gareth hearing from a squire of Lot With whom he used to play at tourney once. When both were children, and in lonely haunts Would scratch a ragged oval on the sand, And each at either dash from either end — Shame never made girl redder than Gareth joy. He laugh'd; he sprang. 'Out of the smoke, at once I leap from Satan's foot to Peter's knee — These news be mine, none other's — nay, the King's — Descend into the city : ' whereon he sought The King alone, and found, and told him all. * I have stagger'd thy strong Gawain in a tilt For pastime; yea, he said it : joust can I. Make me thy knight — in secret! let my name Be hidd'n, and give me the first quest, I spring Like flame from ashes.' Here the King's calm eye Fell on, and check'd, and made him flush, and bow Lowly, to kiss his hand, who answer'd him, ' Son, the good mother let me know thee here. And sent her wish Ihat I would yield thee thine. Make thee my knight? my knights ar$ sworn to vows Of utter hardihood, utter gentleness. And, loving, utter faithfulness in love, And uttermost obedience to the King.' Then Gareth, lightly springing from his knees, * My King, for hardihood I can promise thee. For uttermost obedience make demand Of whom ye gave me to, the Seneschal, No mellow master of the meats and drinks ! And as for love, God wot, I love not yet, But love I shall, God willing.' And the King — 'Make thee my knight in secret? yea, but he, Our noblest brother, and our truest man, And one with me in all, he needs must know.' ' Let Lancelot know, my King, let Lancelot know. Thy noblest and thy truest ! ' And the King — * But wherefore would ye men should wonder at you? Nay, rather for the sake of me, their King^ And the deed's sake my knighthood do the deed, Than to be noised of.' GARETH AND LYNETTE, 3-21 Merrily Gareth ask'd, ' Have I not earn'd my cake in baking of it? Let be my name until I make my name ! My deeds will speak : it is but for a day.' So with a kindly hand on Gareth's arm Smiled the great King, and half-unwill- ingly Loving his lusty youthhood yielded to him. Then, after summoning Lancelot privily, * I have given him the first quest : he is not proven. Look therefore when he calls for this in hall, Thou get to horse and follow him far away. Cover the lions on thy shield, and see Far as thou mayest, he be nor ta'en nor slain.' Then that same day there past into the hall A damsel of high lineage, and a brow May-blossom, and a cheek of apple- blossom, Hawk-eyes; and lightly was her slender nose Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower; She into hall past with her page and cried, * O King, for thou hast driven the foe without. See to the foe within ! bridge, ford, beset By bandits, everyone that owns a tower The Lord for half a league. Why sit ye there? Rest would I not, Sir King, an I were king. Till ev'n the lonest hold were all as free From cursed bloodshed, as thine altar- cloth From that best blood it is a sin to spill.' * Comfort thyself,' said Arthur, ' I nor mine Rest : so my knighthood keep the vows they swore. The wastest moorland of our realm shall be Safe, damsel, as the centre of this hall. What is thy name? thy need?' Y * My name? ' she said — 'Lynette my name; noble; my need, a knight To combat for my sister, Lyouors, A lady of high lineage, of great lands. And comely, yea, and comelier than my- self. She lives in Castle Perilous : a river Runs in three loops about her living place; And o'er it are three passings, and three knights Defend the passings, brethren, and a fourth And of that four the mightiest, holds her stayed In her own castle, and so besieges her To break her will, and make her wed with him: And but delays his purport till thou send To do the battle with him, thy chief man Sir Lancelot whom he trusts to over- throw, Then wed, with glory : but she will not wed Save whom she loveth, or a holy life. Now therefore have I come for Lancelot.' Then Arthur mindful of Sir Gareth ask'd, 'Damsel, ye know this Order lives to crush All wrongers of the Realm. But say, these four, Who be they ? What the fashion of the men?' * They be of foolish fashion, O Sir King, The fashion of that old knight-errantry Who ride abroad, and do but what they will; Courteous or bestial from the moment, such As have nor law nor king; and three of these Proud in their fantasy call themselves the Day, Morning-Star, and Noon-Sun, and Even- ing-Star, Being strong fools; and never a whit more wise The fourth, who always rideth arm'd in black, 322 GARETH AMD LYNETTE. A huge man-beast of boundless sav- Now two great entries open'd from the agery. hall, He names himself the Night and oftener At one end one, that gave upon a range Death, ^ Of level pavement where the King would And wears a 'helmet mounted with a pace skull, At sunrise, gazing over plain and wood; And bears a skeleton figured on his And down from this a lordly stairway arms, sloped To show that who may slay or scape the Till lost in blowing trees and tops of three, towers; Slain by himself, shall enter endless night. And out by this main doorway past the And all these four be fools, but mighty King. men. But one was counter to the hearth, and And therefore am I come for Lancelot.' rose High that the highest-crested helm could Hereat Sir Gareth call'd from where ride he rose. Therethro' nor graze : and by this entry A head with kindling eyes above the fled throng, The damsel in her wrath, and on to this 'A boon, Sir King — this quest!' then Sir Gareth strode, and saw without the — for he mark'd door Kay near him groaning like a wounded King Arthur's gift, the worth of half a bull — town. 'Yea, King, thou knowest thy kitchen A warhorse of the best, and near it stood knave am I, The two that out of north had follow'd And mighty thro' thy meats and drinks him: am I, This bare a maiden shield, a casque; And I can topple over a hundred such. that held Thy promise, King,' and Arthur glan- The horse, the spear; whereat Sir Ga- cing at him. reth loosed Brought down a momentary brow. A cloak that dropt from collar-bone to ' Rough, sudden, heel, And pardonable, worthy to be knight — A cloth of roughest web, and cast it Go therefore,' and all hearers were down, amazed. And from it like a fuel-smother'd fire. That lookt half-dead, brake bright, and But on the damsel's forehead shame, flash'd as those pride, wrath Dull-coated things, that making slide Slew the May-white : she hfted either apart arm. Their dusk wing-cases, all beneath there * Fie on thee, King ! I ask'd for thy chief burns knight. A jewell'd harness, ere they pass and fly. And thou hast given me but a kitchen- So Gareth ere he parted flash'd in arms. knave.' Then as he donn'd the helm, and took Then ere a man in hall could stay her. the shield turn'd. And mounted horse and graspt a spear, Fled down the lane of access to the King, of grain Took horse, descended the slope street, Storm-strengthen'd on a windy site, and and p;ast tipt The weird white gate, and paused with- With trenchant steel, around him slowly out, beside prest The field of tourney, murmuring 'kitchen- The people, while from out of kitchen knave.' came GARETH AND LYNETTE. 323 The thralls in throng, and seeing who had work'd Lustier than any, and whom they could but love, Mounted in arms, threw up their caps and cried, * God bless the King, and all his fellow- ship ! ' And on thro' lanes of shouting Gareth rode Down the slope street, and past without the gate. So Gareth past with joy; but as the cur Pluckt from the cur he fights with, ere his cause Be cool'd by fighting, follows, being named, His owner, but remembers all, and growls Remembering, so Sir Kay beside the door Mutter'd in scorn of Gareth whom he used To harry and hustle. * Bound upon a quest With horse and arms — the King hath past his time — My scullion knave ! Thralls to your work again, ' For an your fire be low ye kindle mine ! Will there be dawn in West and eve in East? Begone ! — my knave ! — belike and like enow Some old head-blow not heeded in his youth So shook his wits they wander in his prime — Crazed! How the villain lifted up his voice. Nor shamed to bawl himself a kitchen- knave. Tut: he was tame and meek enow with me, Tillpeacock'd up with Lancelot's noticing. Well — I will after my loud knave, and learn Whether he know me for his master yet. Out of the smoke he came, and so my lance Hold, by God's grace, he shall into the mire — Thence, if the King awaken from his craze, Into the smoke asain.' But Lancelot said, ' Kay, wherefore wilt thou go against the King, For that did npver he whereon ye rail. But ever meekly served the King in thee? Abide: take counsel; for this lad is great And lusty, and knowing both of lance and sword.' *Tut, tell not me,' said Kay, *ye are overfine To mar stout knaves with foolish courte- sies : ' Then mounted, on thro' silent faces rode Down the slope city, and out beyond the gate. But by the field of tourney lingering yet Mutter'd the damsel, • Wherefore did the King Scorn me? for, were Sir Lancelot lackt, at least He might have yielded to me one of those Who tilt for lady's love and glory here. Rather than — O sweet heaven ! O fie upon him — His kitchen-knave.' To whom Sir Gareth drew (And there were none but few goodlier than he) Shining in arms, * Damsel, the quest is mine. Lead, and I follow.' She thereat, as one That smells a foul-flesh'd agaric in the holt. And deems it carrion of some woodland thing. Or shrew, or weasel, nipt her slender nose With petulant thumb and finger, shrilling, ' Hence ! Avoid, thou smellest all of kitchen-grease. And look who comes behind,' for there was Kay. * Knowest thou not me? thy master? I am Kay. We lack thee by the hearth.' And Gareth to him, ' Master no more ! too well I know thee, ay — The most ungentle knight in Arthur's hall.' m GARETH AND LYNETTE. Have at thee then,' said Kay : they shock'd, and Kay Fell shoulder-slipt, and Gareth cried again, • Lead, and I follow,' and fast away she fled. But after sod and shingle ceased to fly Behind her, and the heart of her good horse Was nigh to burst with violence of the beat. Perforce she stay'd, and overtaken spoke. 'What doest thou, scullion, in my fellowship? Deem'st thou that I accept thee aught the more Or love thee better, that by some device Full cowardly, or by mere unhappiness. Thou hast overthrown and slain thy master — thou ! — Dish-washer and broach-turner, loon ! — to me Thou smellest all of kitchen as before.' 'Damsel,' Sir Gareth answer'd gently, * say Whate'er ye will, but whatsoe'er ye say, I leave not till I finish this fair quest, Or die therefore,' •Ay, wilt thou finish it? Sweet lord, how like a noble knight he talks ! The listening rogue hath caught the man- ner of it. But, knave, anon thou shalt be met with, knave, And then by such a one that thou for all The kitchen brewis that was ever supt Shalt not once dare to look him in the face.' • I shall assay,' said Gareth with a smile That madden'd her, and away she flash'd again Down the long avenues of a boundless wood, And Gareth following was again beknaved. * Sir Kitchen-knave, 1 have miss'd the only way Where Arthur's men are set along the wood; The wood is nigh as full of thieves as leaves : If both be slain, I am rid of thee; but yet, Sir SculUon, canst thou use that spit of thine? Fight, an thou canst; I have miss'd the only way.' So till the dusk that follow'd even- song Rode on the two, reviler and reviled; Then after one long slope was mounted, saw. Bowl-shaped, thro' tops of many thousand pines A gloomy-gladed hollow slowly sink To westward — in the deeps whereof a mere, Round as the red eye of an Eagle-owl, Under the half-dead sunset glared; and shouts Ascended, and there brake a serving man Flying from out of the black wood, and crying, ' They have bound my lord to cast him in the mere.' Then Gareth, ' Bound am I to right the wrong'd. But straitlier bound am I to bide with thee.' And when the damsel spake contempt- uously, ' Lead, and I follow,' Gareth cried again, ' Follow, I lead ! ' so down among the pines He plunged; and there, blackshadow'd nigh the mere. And mid-thigh-deep in bulrushes and reed, Saw six tall men haling a seventh along, A stone about his neck to drown him in it. Three with good blows he quieted, but three Fled thro' the pines; and Gareth loosed the stone From off" his neck, then in the mere beside Tumbled it; oilily bubbled up the mere. Last, Gareth loosed his bonds and on free feet Set him, a stalwart Baron, Arthur's friend. GARETH AND LYNETTE. 325 ' Well that ye came, or else these caitiff rogues Had wreak'd themselves on nie; good cause is theirs To hate me, for my wont hath ever been To catch my thief, and then like vermin here Drown him, and with a stone about his neck; And under this wan water many of them Lie rotting, but at night let go the stone, And rise, and flickering in a grimly light Dance on the mere. Good now, ye have saved a life Worth somewhat as the cleanser of this wood. And fain would I reward thee worship- fully. What guerdon will ye ? ' Gareth sharply spake, * None ! for the deed's sake have I done the deed, In uttermost obedience to the King. But wilt thou yield this damsel harbour- age?' Whereat the Baron saying, *I well believe You be of Arthur's Table,' a light laugh Broke from Lynette, ' Ay, truly of a truth. And in a sort, being Arthur's kitcheti- knave ! — But deem not I accept thee aught the more. Scullion, for running sharply with thy spit Down on a rout of craven foresters. A thresher with his flail had scatter'd them. Nay — for thou smellest of the kitchen still. But an this lord will yield us harbourage, well.' So she spake. A league beyond the wood, All in a full-fair manor and a rich. His towers w^here that day a feast had been Held in high hall, and many a viand left. And many a costly cate, received the three. And there they placed a peacock in his pride Before the damsel, and the Baron set Gareth beside her, but at once she rose. * Meseems, that here is much dis- courtesy, Setting this knave. Lord Baron, at my side. Hear me — this morn I stood in Arthur's hall, And pray'd the King would grant me Lancelot To fight the brotherhood of Day and Night — The last a monster unsubduable Of any save of him for whom I call'd — Suddenly bawls this frontless kitchen- knave, " The quest is mine ; thy kitchen-knave am I, And mighty thro' thy meats and drinks am I." Then Arthur all at once gone mad replies, " Go therefore," and so gives the quest to him — Him — here — a villain fitter to stick swine Than ride abroad redressing woman's wrong. Or sit beside a noble gentlewoman.' Then half-ashamed and part-amazed, the lord Now look'd at one and now at other, left The damsel by the peacock in his pride, And, seating Gareth at another board. Sat down beside him, ate and then began. ' Friend, whether thou be kitchen- knave, or not. Or whether it be the maiden's fantasy, And whether she be mad, or else the King, Or both or neither, or thyself be mad, I ask not : but thou strikest a strong stroke. For strong thou art and goodly there- withal. And saver of my life; and therefore now, For here be mighty men to joust with, weigh 326 GARETH AND LYNETTE. Whether thou wilt not with thy damsel back To crave again Sir Lancelot of the King. Thy pardon; I but speak for thine avail, The saver of my life.' And Gareth said, ' Full pardon, but I follow up the quest, Despite of Day and Night and Death and Hell.' So when, next morn, the lord whose life he saved Had, some brief space, convey'd them on their way And left them with God-speed, Sir Gareth spake, Lead, and I follow.' Haughtily she replied, * I fly no more : I allow thee for an hour. Lion and stoat have isled together, knave. In time of flood. Nay, furthermore, methinks Some ruth is mine for thee. Back wilt thou, fool? For hard by here is one will overthrow And slay thee : then will I to court again, And shame the King for only yielding me My champion from the ashes of his hearth.' To whom Sir Gareth answer'd cour- teously, * Say thou thy say, and I will do my deed. Allow me for mine hour, and thou wilt find My fortunes all as fair as hers who lay Among the ashes and wedded the King's son.' Then to the shore of one of those long loops Wherethro' the serpent river coil'd, they came. Rough-thicketed were the banks and steep; the stream Full, narrow; this a bridge of single arc Took at a leap; and on the further side Arose a silk pavilion, gay with gold In streaks and rays, and all Lent-lily in hue, Save that the dome was purple, and above. Crimson, a slender banneret fluttering. And therebefore the lawless warrior paced Unarm' d. and calling, * Damsel, is this he, The champion thou hast brought from Arthur's hall? For whom we let thee pass.' 'Nay, nay,' she said, ' Sir Morning-Star. The King in utter scorn Of thee and thy much folly hath sent thee here His kitchen-knave : and look thou to thyself: See that he fall not on thee suddenly, And slay thee unarm'd : he is not knight but knave.' Then at his call, * O daughters of the Dawn, And servants of the Morning-Star, ap- proach, Arm me,' from out the silken curtain- folds Bare-footed and bare-headed three fair girls In gilt and rosy raiment came : their feet In dewy grasses glisten'd; and the hair All over glanced with dewdrop or with gem Like sparkles in the stone Avanturine. These arm'd him in blue arms, and gave a shield Blue also, and thereon the morning star. And Gareth silent gazed upon the knight, Who stood a moment, ere his horse was brought, Glorying; and in the stream beneath him, shone Immingled with Heaven's azure waver- ingly, The gay pavilion and the naked feet. His arms, the rosy raiment, and the star. Then she that watch'd him, 'Where- fore stare ye so? Thou shakest in thy fear: there yet is time: GARETH AND LYNETTE. 327 Flee down the valley before he get to horse. Who will cry shame? Thou art not knight but knave.' Said Gareth, ' Damsel, whether knave or knight, Far liefer had I fight a score of times Then hear thee so missay me and revile. Fair words were best for him who fights for thee; But truly foul are better, for they send That strength of anger thro' mine arms, I know That I shall overthrow him.' And he that bore The star, when mounted, cried from o'er the bridge, *A kitchen-knave, and sent in scorn of me ! Such fight not I, but answer scorn with scorn. For this were shame to do him further wrong Than set him on his feet, and take his horse And arms, and so return him to the King. Come, therefore, leave thy lady lightly, knave. Avoid : for it beseemeth not a knave To ride with such a lady.' * Dog, thou liest. I spring from loftier lineage than thine own.' He spake; and all at fiery speed the two Shock'd on the central bridge, and either spear Bent but not brake, and either knight at once, Hurl'd as a stone from out of a catapult Beyond his horse's crupper and the bridge. Fell, as if dead; but quickly rose and drew. And Gareth lash'd so fiercely with his brand He drave his enemy backward down the bridge, The damsel crying, * Well-stricken, kitchen-knave ! ' Till Gareth's shield was cloven; but one stroke Laid him that clove it grovelling on the ground. Then cried the fall'n, 'Take not my life: I yield.' And Gareth, ' So this damsel ask it of me Good — I accord it easily as a grace.' She reddening, * Insolent scullion : I of thee? I bound to thee for any favour ask'd ! ' * Then shall he die.' And Gareth there unlaced His helmet as to slay him, but she shriek'd, * Be not so hardy, scullion, as to slay One nobler than thyself.' * Damsel, thy charge Is an abounding pleasure to me. Knight, Thy life is thine at her command. Arise And quickly pass to Arthur's hall, and say His kitchen-knave hath sent thee. See thou crave His pardon for thy breaking of his laws. Myself, when I return, will plead for thee. Thy shield is mine — farewell; and, damsel, thou. Lead, and I follow.' And fast away she fled. Then when he came upon her, spake, ' Methought, Knave, when I watch'd thee striking on the bridge The savour of thy kitchen came upon me A little faintlier: but the wind hath changed : I scent it twenty-fold.' And then she sang, * " O morning star " (not that tall felon there Whom thou by sorcery or unhappiness Or some device, hast foully overthrown), " O morning star that smilest in the blue, O star, my morning dream hath prcven true. Smile sweetly, thou ! my love hath smiled on me." 328 CARET ff AND LYNETTE. ♦But thou begone, take counsel, and Ten thousand-fold had grown, flash'd the away, fierce shield, For hard bv here is one that guards a All sun; and Gareth's eyes had flying ford — blots The second brother in their fool's para- Before them when he turn'd from watch- ble- ing him. Will pay thee all thy wages, and to boot. He from beyond the roaring shallow Care not for shame : thou art not knight roar'd, but knave.' * What doest thou, brother, in my marches Iiere?' And she athwart the shallow shrill'd To whom Sir Gareth answer'd laugh- ingly, again. * Parables? Hear a parable of the knave. * Here is a kitchen-knave from Arthur's When I was kitchen-knave among the hall rest Hath overthrown thy brother, and hath Fierce was the hearth, and one of my his arms.' co-mates ' Ugh ! ' cried the Sun, and vizoring up a Own'd a rough dog, to whom he cast his , ox red coat. And cipher face of rounded foolishness, •' Guard it," and there was none to med- Push'd horse across the foamings of the dle with it. ford, And such a coat art thou, and thee the Whom Gareth met midstream : no room King was there Gave me to guard, and such a dog am I, For lance or tourney-skill : four strokes To worry, and not to flee — and — knight they struck or knave — With sword, and these were mighty; the The knave that doth thee service as full new knight knight Had fear he might be shamed; but as the Is all as good, meseems, as any knight Sun Toward thy sister's freeing.' Heaved up a ponderous arm to strike the fifth, The hoof of his horse slipt in the stream, * Ay, Sir Knave ! Ay, knave, because thou strikest as a the stream knight. Descended) and the Sun was wash'd Being but knave, I hate thee all the away. more. Then Gareth laid his lance athwart the * Fair damsel, you should worship me ford; the more, So drew him home; but he that' fought That, being but knave, I throw thine no more. enemies.' As being all bone-batter'd on the rock, Yielded; and Gareth sent him to the * Ay, ay,' she said, * but thou shalt meet King. thy match.' 'Myself when I return will plead for thee.' * Lead, and I follow.' Quietly she led. So when they touch'd the second river- loop, * Hath not the good wind, damsel, Huge on a huge red horse, and all in mail changed again?' Burnish'd to blinding, shone the Noon- *Nay, not a point: nor art thou victor day Sun here. Beyond a raging shallow. As if the There lies a ridge of slate across the ford ; flower, His horse thereon stumbled — ay, for I That blows a globe of after arrowlets, saw it. GARETH AND LYNETTE. 329 «"0 Sun" (not this strong tool whom Larded thy last, except thou turn and thou, Sir Knave, fly- Hast overthrown thro' mereunhappiness), There stands the third fool of their "0 Sun, that wakenest all to bliss or allegory.' pain, moon, that layest all to sleep again, For there beyond a bridge of treble Shine sweetly: twice my love hath bow, smiled on me." All in a rose-red from the west, and all Naked it seem'd, and glowing in the * What knowest thou of lovesong or of broad love? Deep-dimpled current underneath, the Nay, nay, God wot, so thou wert nobly knight, born, That named himself the Star of Evening, Thou hast a pleasant presence. Yea, stood. perchance, — ■ And Gareth, ' Wherefore waits the •"0 dewy flowers that open to the madman there sun, Naked in open dayshine?' *Nay,' she dewy flowers that close when day is cried, done. 'Not naked, only wrapt in harden'd skins Blow sweetly : twice my love hath smiled That fit him like his own; and so ye on me." cleave His armour off him, these will turn the « What knowest thou of flowers, except. blade.' belike. To garnish meats with? hath not our Then the third brother shouted o'er good King the bridge, Who lent me thee, the flower of kitchen- •0 brother-star, why shine ye here so dom. low? A foolish love for flowers? what stick ye Thy ward is higher up : but have ye slain round The damsel's champion? ' and the damsel The pasty? wherewithal deck the boar's cried, head? Flowers? nay, the boar hath rosemaries * No star of thine, but shot from Arthur's and bay. heaven With all disaster unto thine and thee ! ' " birds, that warble to the morning For both thy younger brethren have gone sky, down birds that warble as the day goes by, Before this youth; and so wilt thou, Sir Sing sweetly : twdce my love hath smiled Star; on me," Art thou not old ? ' * What knowest thou of birds, lark, * Old, damsel, old and hard. mavis, merle. Old, with the might and breath of twenty Linnet? what dream ye when they utter boys.' forth Said Gareth, «01d, and over-bold in May-music growing with the growing brag! light. But that same strength which threw the Their sweet sun-worship? these be for Morning Star the snare Can throw the Evening.* (So runs thy fancy), these be icv the spit, Larding and basting. See thou have Then that other blew not now A hard and deadly note upon the horn. 330 GARETH AND LYNETTE. ' Approach and arm me ! ' With slow steps from out An old storm-beaten, russet, many-stain'd Pavilion, forth a grizzled damsel came, And arm'd him in old arms, and brought a helm With but a drying evergreen for crest, And gave a shield w^hereon the Star of Even Half-tarnish'd and half-bright, his em- blem, shone. But when it glitter'd o'er the saddle-bow^ They madly hurl'd together on the bridge; And Gareth overthrew him, lighted, drew. There met him drawn, and overthrew him again. But up like fire he started : and as oft As Gareth brought him grovelling on his knees, So many a time he vaulted up again ; Till Gareth panted hard, and his great heart. Foredooming all his trouble was in vain, Labour'd within him, for heseem'd as one That all in later, sadder age begins To war against ill uses of a life. But these from all his life arise, and cry, ' Thou hast made us lords, and canst not put us down ! ' He half despairs; so Gareth seem'd to strike Vainly,thedamsel clamouringall the while, * Well done, knave-knight, well stricken, O good knight-knave — O knave, as noble as any of all the knights — Shame me not, shame me not. I have prophesied — Strike, thou art worthy of the Table Round — His arms are old, he trusts the harden'd skin — Strike — strike — the wind will never change again.' And Gareth hearing ever stronglier smote. And hew'd great pieces of his armour off him. But lash'd in vain against the harden'd skin, And could not wholly bring him under, more Than loud Southwesterns, rolling ridge on ridge, The buoy that rides at sea, and dips and sorings For ever; till at length Sir Gareth's brand Clash'd his, and brake it utterly to the hilt. * I have thee now; ' but forth that other sprang, And, all unknightlike, writhed his wiry arms Around him, till he felt, despite his mail. Strangled, but straining ev'n his utter- most Cast, and so hurl'd him headlong o'er the bridge Down to the river, sink or swim, and cried, 'Lead, and 1 follow.' But the damsel said, * I lead no longer; ride thou at my side; Thou art the kingliest of all kitchen- knaves. * " O trefoil, sparkling on the rainy plain, O rainbow with three colours after rain, Shine sweetly : thrice my love hath cmiled on' me." *Sir, — and, good faith, I fain had added — Knight, But that I heard thee call thyself a knave, — Shamed am I that I so rebuked, reviled, Missaid thee; noble I am; and thought the King Scorn'd me and mine; and now thy pardon, friend. For thou hast ever answer'd courteously, And wholly bold thou art, and meek withal As any ot Arthur's best, but, being knave, Hast mazed my wit : I marvel what thou art.' ' Damsel,' he said, ' you be not all to blame, Saving X^-J. you mistrusted our good King Would handle scorn, or yield you, asking, one Not fit to cope your quest. You said your say; GARETH AND LYNETTE. 331 Mine answer was my deed. Good sooth ! I hold He scarce is knight, yea but half-man, nor meet To fight for gentle damsel, he, who lets His heart be stirr'd with any foolish heat At any gentle damsel's waywardness. Shamed ! care not ! thy foul sayings fought for me : And seeing now thy words are fair, me- thinks There rides no knight, not Lancelot, his great self. Hath force to quell me.' Nigh upon that hour When the lone hern forgets his melan- choly. Lets down his other leg, and stretching, dreams Of goodly supper in the distant pool. Then turn'd the noble damsel smiling at him. And told him of a cavern hard at hand, Where bread and baken meats and good red wine Of Southland, which the Lady Lyonors Had sent her coming champion, waited him. Anon they past a narrow comb wherein Were slabs of rock with figures, knights on horse Sculptured, and deckt in slowly-waning hues. * Sir Knave, my knight, a hermit once was here. Whose holy hand hath fashioc'd on the rock The war of Time against the soul of man. And yon four fools have suck'd their alle- gory From these damp walls, and taken but the form. Klnow ye not these?' and Gareth lookt and read — In letters like to those the vexillary Hath left crag-carven o'er the streaming Gelt — * Phosphorus,' then 'Meridies' — 'Hes- perus ' — ' Nox ' — ' Mors,' beneath five figures, armed men. Slab after slab, their faces forward all, And running down the Soul, a Shape that fled With broken wings, torn raiment and loose hair, For help and shelter to the hermit's cave. ' Follow the faces, and we find it. Look, Who comes behind ! ' For one — delay'd at first Thro' helping back the dislocated Kay To Camelot, then by what thereafter chanced, ^ The damsel's headlong error thro' the wood — Sir Lancelot, having swum the river- loops — His blue shield-lions cover'd — softly drew Behind the twain, and when he saw the star Gleam, on Sir Gareth's turning to him, cried, * Stay, felon knight, I avenge me for my friend.' And Gareth crying prick'd against the cry; But when they closed — in a moment — at one touch Of that skill'd spear, the wonder of the world — Went sliding down so easily, and fell, That when he found the grass within his hands He laugh'd; the laughter jarr'd upon Lynette : Harshly she ask'd him, * Shamed and over- thrown, And tumbled back into the kitchen-knave, Why laugh ye? that ye blew your boast in vain? ' * Nay, noble damsel, but that I, the son Of old King Lot and good Queen Belli- cent, And victor of the bridges and the ford, And knight of Arthur, here lie thrown by whom I know not, all thro' mere unhappiness — Device and sorcery and unhappiness — Out, sword ; we are thrown ! ' And Lancelot answer'd ' Prince, O Gareth — thro' the mere unhappiness Of one who came to help thee, not to harm, Lancelot, and all as glad to find thee whole, As on the day when Arthur knighted him.' 332 GARETH AND LYNETTE. Then Gareth, ' Thou — Lancelot ! — thine the hand That threw me ? And some chance to mar the boast Thy brethren of thee make — which could not chance — Had sent thee down before a lesser spear, Shamed had I been, and sad — O Lancelot — thou ! ' Whereat the maiden, petulant, ' Lance- lot,, Why came ye not, when call'd? and wherefore now Come ye, not call'd? I gloried in my knave. Who being still rebuked, would answer still Courteous as any knight — but now, if knight. The marvel dies, and leaves me fool'd and tricked. And only wondering wherefore play'd upon: And doubtful whether I and mine be scorn'd. Where should be truth if not in Arthur's hall, In Arthur's presence? Knight, knave, prince and fool, I hate thee and for ever.' And Lancelot said, * Blessed be thou, vSir Gareth ! knight art thou To the King's best wish. O damsel, be you wise To call him shamed, who is but over- thrown? Thrown have I been, nor once, but many a time. Victor from vanquish'd issues at the last. And overthrower from being overthrown. With sword we have not striven; and thy good horse And thou are wearyf yet not less I felt Thy manhood thro' that wearied lance of thine. Well hast thou done; for all the stream is freed. And thou hast wreak'd his justice on his foes, And when reviled, hast answer'd gra- ciously. And makest merry when overthrown. Prince, Knight, Hail, Knight and Prince, and of our Table Round ! ' And then when turning to Lynette he tola The tale of Gareth, petulantly she said, ' Ay well — ay well — for worse than being fool'd Of others, is to fool one's self. A cave, Sir Lancelot, is hard by, with meats and dilnks And forage for the horse, and flint for fire. But all about it flies a honeysuckle. Seek, till we find.' And when they sought and found. Sir Gareth drank and ate, and all his life Past into sleep; on whom the maiden gazed. ' Sound sleep be thine ! sound cause to sleep hast thou. Wake lusty ! Seem I not as tender to him As any mother? Ay, but such a one As all day long hath rated at her child, And vext his day, but blesses him asleep — Good lord, how sweetly smells the honey- suckle In the hush'd night, as if the world were one Of utter peace, and love, and gentleness ! O Lancelot, Lancelot ' — and she clapt her hands — ' Full merry am I to find my goodly knave Is knight and noble. See now, sworn have I, Else yon black felon had not let me pass, To bring thee back to do the battle with him. Thus an thou goest, he will fight thee first; Who doubts thee victor? so will my knight-knave Miss the full flower of this accomplish- ment.' Said Lancelot, * Peradventure he, you name, May know my shield. Let Gareth, an he will, Change his for mine, and take my charger, fresh, CARET H AND LYNETTE. 333 Not to be spurr'd, loving the battle as well As he that rides him.' ' Lancelot-like,' she said, 'Courteous in this, Lord Lancelot, as in all.' And Gareth, wakening, fiercely clutch'd the shield; * Ramp ye lance-splintering lions, on whom all spears Are rotten sticks ! ye seem agape to roar ! Yea, ramp and roar at leaving of your lord ! — Care not, good beasts, so well I care for you. noble Lancelot, from my hold on these Streams virtue — fire — thro' one that will not shame Even the shadow of Lancelot Uixder shield. Hence : let us go.' Silent the silent field They traversed. Arthur's harp tho' summer-wan. In counter motion to the clouds, allured The glance of Gareth dreaming on his liege. A star shot : ' Lo,' said Gareth, ' the foe falls ! ' An owl whoopt : ' Hark the victor peal- ing there ! ' Suddenly she that rode upon his left Clung to the shield that Lancelot lent him, crying, * Yield, yield him this again : 'tis he must fight: 1 curse the tongue that all thro' yesterday Reviled thee, and hath wrought on Lancelot now To lend thee horse and shield : wonders ye have done; Miracles ye cannot : here is glory enow In having flung the three : I see thee maim'd, Mangled: I swear thou canst not fling the fourth.' *And wherefore, damsel? tell me all ye know. You cannot scare me; nor rough face, or voice. Brute bulk of limb, or boundless savagery Appall me from the quest.' 'Nay, Prince,' she cried, * God wot, I never look'd upon the face, Seeing he never rides abroad by day; But watch'd him have I like a phantom pass Chilling the night : nor have I heard the voice. Always he made his mouthpiece of a page Who came and went, and still reported him As closing in himself the strength of ten, And when his anger tare him, massacring Man, woman, lad and girl — yea, the soft babe ! Some hold that he hath swallow'd infant flesh, Monster ! O Prince, I went for Lancelot first. The quest is Lancelot's : give him back the'shield.' Said Gareth laughing, * An he fight for this, Belike he wins it as the better man : Thus — and not else ! ' But Lancelot on him urged All the devisings of their chivalry When one might meet a mightier than himself; How best to manage horse, lance, sword and shield, And so fill up the gap where force might fail With skill and fineness. Instant were his words. Then Gareth, ' Here be rules. I know but one — To dash against mine enemy and to win. Yet have I watch'd thee victor in the joust. And seen thy way.' * Heaven help thee,' sigh'd Lynette. Then for a space, and under cloud that grew To thunder-gloom palling all stars, they rode In converse till she made her palfrey halt, Lifted an arm, and softly whisper '<^ ' There.' 334 GARETH AND LYNETTE. And all the three were silent seeing, pitch'd Beside the Castle Perilous on flat field, A huge pavilion like a mountain peak Sunder the glooming crimson on the marge, Black, with black banner, and a long black horn Beside it hanging; which Sir Gareth graspt, And so, before the two could hinder him, Sent all his heart and breath thro' all the horn. Echo'd the walls; a light twinkled; anon Came lights and lights, and once again he blew; Whereon were hollow tramplings up and down And muffled voices heard, and shadows past; Till high above him, circled with her maids. The Lady Lyonors at a window stood, Beautiful among lights, and waving tq him White hands, and courtesy; but when the Prince Three times had blown — after long hush — at last — The huge pavilion slowly yielded up. Thro' those black foldings, that which housed therein. High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack arms, With white breast-bone, and barren ribs of Death, And crown'd with fleshless laughter — some ten steps — In the half-light — thro' the dim dawn — advanced The monster, and then paused, and spake no word. But Gareth spake and all indignantly, ' Fool, for thou hast, men say, the strength of ten. Canst thou not trust the limbs thy God hath given. But must, to make the terror of thee more, Trick thyself out in ghastly imageries Of that which Life hath done with, and the clod. Less dull than thou, will hide with mantling flowers As if for pity? ' But he spake no word; Which set the horror higher : a maiden swoon'd; The Lady Lyonors wrung her hands and wept. As doom'd to be the bride of Night and Death ; Sir Gareth's head prickled beneath his helm; And ev'n Sir Lancelot thro' his warm blood felt Ice strike, and all that mark'd him were aghast. At once Sir Lancelot's charger fiercely neigh'd. And Death's dark war-horse bounded forward with him. Then thcsc that did not blink the terror, sav.' That Death was cast to ground, and sicvvly rose. But with one stroke Sir Gareth split the skull. Half fell to right and half to left and lay. Then witn a stronger buffet he clove the helm As throughly as the skull; and out from this Issued the bright face of a blooming boy Fresh as a flower new-born, and crying, 'Kr.ight, Slay me not : my three brethren bade me do it. To make a horror all about the house, And stay the world from Lady Lyonors. They never dream'd the passes would be past.' Answer'd Sir Gareth graciously to one Not manv a moon his younger, * My fair child, What ms-ness made thee challenge the chief knight Of Arthur'- hall? ' * Fair Sir, they bade me do it. They hate the King, and Lancelot, the King's friend. They hoped to slay him somewhere on the stream. They never dream'd the passes could be past.' THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. 335 Then sprang the happier day from underground; And Lady Lyonors and her house, with dance And revel and song, made merry over Death, As being after all their foolish fears And horrors only proven a blooming boy. So large mirth lived and Gareth won the quest. And he that told the tale in older times Says that Sir Gareth wedded Lyonors, But he, that told it later, says Lynette. THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthu^:'s court, A tributary prince of Devon, one Of that great Order of the Table Round, Had married Enid, Yniol's only child, And loved her, as he loved me light of Heaven. And as the light of Heaven varies, now At sunrise, now at sunset, nov.' by night With moon and trembling stars, so loved Geraint To make her beauty vary day by day. In crimsons and in purples and in gems. And Enid, but to please her husband's eye, Who first had found and loved her in a state Of broken fortunes, daily fronted him In some fresh splendour; and the Queen herself, Grateful to Prince Geraint for service done, Loved her, and often with her own white hands Array'd and deck'd her, as the loveliest. Next after her own self, in all the court. And Enid loved the Queen, and v/ith true heart Adored her, as the stateliest and the best And loveliest of all women upon earth. And seeing them so tender and so close. Long in their common love rejoiced Geraint. But when a rumour rose about the Queen, Touching her guilty love for Lancelot, Tho' yet there lived no proof, nor yet was heard The world's loud whisper breaking into storm. Not less Geraint believed it; and there fell , A horror on him, lest his gentle wife, Thro' that great tenderness for Guinevere, Had suffer'd, or should suffer any taint In nature : wherefore going to the King, He made this prete:xt, that his princedom lay Close on the borders of a territory, Wherein were bandit earls, and caitiff knights. Assassins, and all flyers from the hand Of Justice, and whatever loathes a law : And therefore, till the King himself should please To cleanse this common sewer of all his realm, He craved a fair permission to depart. And there defend his marches; and the King, Mused for a little on his plea, but, last, Allowing it, the Prince and Enid rode. And fifty knights rode with them, to the shores Of Severn, and they past to their own land ; Where, thinking, that if ever yet was wife True to her lord, mine shall be so to me. He compass'd her with sweet observances And worship, never leaving her, and grew Forgetful of his promise to the King, Forgetful of the falcon and the hunt, Forgetful of the tilt and tournament, Forgetful of his glory and his name, Forgetful of his princedom and its cares. And this forgetfulness was hateful to her. And by and by the people, when they met In twos and threes, or fuller companies. Began to scoff and jeer and babble of him As of a prince whose manhood was all gone. And molten down in mere uxoriousness. And this she gather'd from the people's eyes: This too the women who attired her head. To please her, dwelling on his boundless love, 336 THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. Told Enid, and they sadden'd her the more : And day by day she thought to tell Geraint, But could not out of bashful delicacy; While he that watched her sadden, was the more , Suspicious that her nature had a taint. At last, it chanced that on a summer morn (They sleeping each by either) the new sun Beat thro' the Windless casement of the room, And heated the strong warrior in his dreams; Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside, And bared the knotted column of his throat, The massive square of his heroic breast. And arms on which the standing muscle sloped, As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, ' Running too vehemently to break upon it. And Enid woke and sat beside the couch. Admiring him, and thought within herself, Was ever man so grandly made as he? Then, like a shadow, past the people's talk And accusation of uxoriousness Across her mind, and bowing over him. Low to her own heart piteously she said : * O noble breast and all-puissant arms, Am I the cause, I the poor cause that men Reproach you, saying all your force is gone? I am the cause, because I dare not speak And tell him what I think and what they say. And yet I hate that he should linger here ; I cannot love my lord and not his name. Far liefer had I gird his harness on him. And ride with him to battle and stand by, And watch his mightful hand striking . great blows At caitiffs and at wrongers of the world. Far better w^ere I laid in the dark earth, Not hearing any more his noble voice. Not to be folded more in these dear arms, And darken'd from the high light in his eyes. Than that my lord thro' me should suffer shame. Am I so bold, and could I so stand by. And see my dear lord wounded in the stnfe. Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes, And yet not dare to tell him what I think, iAnd how men slur him, saying all his force I Is melted into mere effeminacy? 1 me, I fear that I am no true wife.' Half inwardly, half audibly she spoke, And the strong passion in her made her weep True tears upon his broad and naked breast. And these awoke him, and by great mis- chance H-e heard but fragments of her later words, And that she fear'd she was not a true wife. And then he thought, ' In spite of all my care, For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains. She is not faithful to me, and I see her Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur's hall.' Then thu' he loved and reverenced her too much To dream she could be guilty of foul act. Right thro' his manful breast darted the pang That makes a man, in the sweet face of her Whom he loves most, lonely and miser- able. At this he hurl'd his huge limbs out of bed, And sheok his drowsy squire awake and cried, * My cha. ~er and her palfrey; ' then to her, * I will ride forth into the wilderness; For tho' it seems my spurs are yet to win, I have not fall'n so low as some would wish. And thou, put on thy worst and meanest dress And ride with me.' And Enid ask'd, amazed, ' If Enid errs, let Enid learn her fault.' But he, * I charge thee, ask not, but obey.' THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. 337 Then she bethought her of a faded silk, '■ A faded mantle and a faded veil, And moving toward a cedarn cabinet. Wherein she kept them folded reverently With sprigs of summer laid between the folds, 'z She took them, and array'd herself therein, Remembering when first he came on her Drest in that dress, and how he loved her in it. And all her foolish fears about the dress. And all his journey to her, as himself Had told her, and their coming to the court. For Arthur on the Whitsuntide before Held court at old CaerTeon upon Usk. There on a day, he sitting high in hall, Before him came a forester of Dean, Wet from the woods, with notice of a hart ' Taller than all his fellows, milky-white, First seen that day : these things he told the King. Then the good King gave order to let blow His horns for hunting on the morrow morn. And when the Queen petition'd for his leave To see the hunt, allow'd it easily. So with the morning all the court were gone. • But Guinevere lay late into the morn. Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her love For Lancelot, and forgetful of the hunt; But rose at last, a single maiden with her, Took horse, and forded Usk, and gain'd the wood; There, on a little knoll beside it, stay'd Waiting to hear the hounds; but heard instead A sudden sound of hoofs, for Prince Geraint, Late also, wearing neither hunting-dress Nor weapon, save a golden-hilted brand, Came quickly flashing thro' the shallow ford Behind them, and so gallop'd up the knoll. A purple scarf, at either end whereof z There swung an apple of the purest gold, Sway'd round about him, as he gallop'd . . "P To join them, glancing like a dragon-fly In summer suit and silks of holiday. Low bow'd the tributary Prince, and she, Sweetly and statelily, and with all grace Of womanhood and queenhood, answer'd him: 'Late, late, Sir Prince,' she said, Mater than we ! ' 'Yea, noble Queen,' he answer'd, 'and so late That I but come like you to see the hunt. Not join it.' ' Therefore wait with me,' she said ; ' For on this little knoll, if anywhere. There is good chance that we shall hear the hounds: Here often they break covert at our feet.' And while they listen'd for the distant hunt, And chiefly for the baying of Cavall, King Arthur's hound of deepest mouth, there rode Full slowly by a knight, lady, and dwarf; Whereof the dwarf lagg'd latest, and the knight Had vizor up, and show'd a youthful face. Imperious, and of haughtiest lineaments. And Guinevere, not mindful of his face In the King's hall, desired his name, and sent Her maiden to demand it of the dwarf; Who being vicious, old and irritable, And doubling all his master's vice of pride, Made answer sharply that she should not know. ' Then will I ask it of himself,' she said. ' Nay, by my faith, thou shalt not,' cried the dwarf; ' Thou art not worthy ev'n to speak of him;' And when she put her horse toward the knight, Struck at her with his whip, and she re- turn'd Indignant to the Queen; whereat Geraint Exclaiming, * Surely I will learn the name,' 338 THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. Made sharply to the dwarf, and ask'd it of him, Who answer'd as before; and when the Prince Had put his horse in motion toward the knight, Struck at him with his whip, and cut his cheek. The Prince's blood spirted upon the scarf, Dyeing it; and his quick, instinctive hand Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him : But he, from his exceeding manfulness And pure nobility of temperament. Wroth to be wroth at such a worm, re- frain' d From ev'n a word, and so returning said : ' I will avenge this insult, noble Queen, Done in your maiden's person to yourself : And I will track this vermin to their earths : For tho' I ride unarm'd, I do not doubt To find, at some place I shall come at, arms On loan, or else for pledge; and, being found, Then will I fight him, and will break his pride, And on the third day will again be here. So that I be not fall'n in fight. Farewell.' 'Farewell, fair Prince,' answer'd the stately Queen. 'Be prosperous in this journey, as in all; And may you light on all things that you love, And live to wed with her whom first you love: But ere you wed with any, bring your bride. And I, were she the daughter of a king. Yea, tho' she were a beggar from the hedge, Will clothe her for her bridals like the sun.' And Prince Geraint, now thinking that he heard The noble hart at bay, now the far horn, A little vext at losing of the hunt, A little at the vile occasion, rode. By ups and downs, thro' many a grassy glade And valley, with fixt eye following the three. At last they issued from the world oi wood, And climb'd upon a fair and even ridge. And show'd themselves against the sky, and sank. And thither came Geraint, and under- neath Beheld the long street of a little town In a long valley, on one side whereof, White from the mason's hand, a fortress rose; And on one side a castle in decay, Beyond a bridge that spann'd a dry ravine : And out of town and valley came a noise As of a broad brook o'er a shingly bed Brawling, or like a clamour of the rooks At distance, ere they settle for the night. And onward to the fortress rode the three. And enter'd, and were lost behind the walls. ' So,' thought Geraint, * I have track'd him to his earth.' And down the long street riding wearily, Found every hostel full, and everywhere Was hammer laid to hoof, and the hot hiss And bustling whistle of the youth who scour'd His master's armour; and of such a one He ask'd, ' What means the tumult in the town?' Who told him, scouring still, 'The sparrow-hawk ! ' Then riding close behind an ancient churl. Who, smitten by the dusty sloping beam. Went sweating underneath a sack of corn, Ask'd yet once more what meant the hubbub here? Who answer'd gifuffly, * Ugh ! the sparrow- hawk.' Then riding further past an armourer's. Who, with back turn'd, and bow'd above his work, Sat riveting a helmet on his knee. He put the self-same query, but the man Not turning round, nor looking at him, said: THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. 339 ' Friend, he that labours for the sparrow- hawk Has little time for idle questioners.' Whereat Geraint flash'd into sudden spleen : *A thousand pips eat up your sparrow- hawk ! Tits, wrens, and all wing'd nothings peck him dead ! Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg The murmur of the world ! What is it to me? O wretched set of sparrows, one and all, Who pipe of nothing but of sparrow- hawks ! Speak, if ye be not like the rest, hawk- mad, Where can I get me harbourage for the night? And arms, arms, arms to fight my enemy ? Speak ! ' Whereat the armourer turning all amazed And seeing one so gay in purple silks. Came forward with the helmet yet in hand And answer'd, 'Pardon me, O stranger knight; We hold a tourney here to-morrow morn, And there is scantly time for half the work. Arms? truth! I know not: all are wanted here. Harbourage? truth, good truth, I know not, save. It may be, at Earl Yniol's, o'er the bridge Yonder.' He spoke and fell to work again. Then rode Geraint, a little spleenful yet, Across the bridge that spann'd the dry ravine. There musing sat the hoary-headed Earl, (His dress a suit of fray'd magnificence, Once fit for feasts of ceremony) and said: 'Whither, fair son?' to whom Geraint replied, 'O friend, I seek a harbourage for the night.' Then Yniol, ' Enter therefore and partake The slender entertainment of a house Once rich, now poor, but ever open- door'd,' * Thanks, venerable friend,' replied Geraint; ' So that ye do not serve me sparrow- hawks For supper, I will enter, I will eat With all the passion of a twelve hours' fast.' Then sigh'd and smiled the hoary-headed Earl, And answer'd, • Graver cause than yours is mine To curse this hedgerow thief, the sparrow- hawk: But in, go in; for save yourself desire it. We will not touch upon him ev'n in jest.' Then rode Geraint into the castle court. His charger trampling many a prickly star Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones. He look'd and saw that ^11 was ruinous. Here stood a shatter'd archway plumed with fern; And here had fall'n a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff. And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers : And high above a piece of turret stair, Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems, Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms, And suck'd the joining of the stones, and look'd A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove. And while he waited in the castle court, The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang Clear thro' the open casement of the hall. Singing; and as thfe sweet voice of a bird. Heard by the lander in a lonely isle. Moves him to think what kind of bird it is That sings so delicately clear, and make Conjecture of the plumage and the form: So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint ; And made him like a man abroad at morn When first the liquid note beloved of men Comes flying over many a windy wave To Britain, and in April suddenly Breaks from a coppice gemm'd with green and red, 340 THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. And he suspends his converse with a friend, Or it may be the labour of his hands, To think or say, * There is the nightingale ; ' So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said, * Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me.' It chanced the song that Enid sang was one Of Fortune and her wheel, and Enid sang: 'Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud; Turn thy wild wheel thro' sunshine, storm, and cloud; Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate. 'Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown; With that wild wheel we go not up or down; Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. * Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands; Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands; For man is man and master of his fate. * Turn, turn thy wheel above the staring crowd; Thy wheel and thou are shadows in the cloud; Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.' * Hark, by the bird's song ye may learn the nest,' Said Yniol; 'enter quickly.' Entering then. Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones; The dusky-rafter'd ma'ny-cobwebb'd hall. He found an ancient dame in dim bro- cade; And near her, lil^e a blossom vermeil- white, That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath, Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk, Her daughter. In a moment thought Geraint, ' Here by God's rood is the one maid for me.' But none spake word except the hoary Earl: ' Enid, the good knight's horse stands in the court; Take him to stall, and give him corn, and then Go to the town and buy us flesh and wine ; And we will make us merry as we may. Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.' He spake : the Prince, as Enid past him, fain To follow, strode a stride, but Yniol caught His purple scarf, and held, and said, ' For- bear ! Rest ! the good house, tho' ruin'd, O my son. Endures not that her guest should serve himself. ' And reverencing the custom of the house Geraint, from utter courtesy, forbore. So Enid took his charger to the stall; And after went her way across the bridge, And reach'd the town, and while the Prince and Earl Yet spoke together, came again with one, A youth, that following with a costrel bore The means of goodly welcome, flesh and wine. And Enid brought sweet cakes to make them cheer. And in her veil enfolded, manchet bread. And then, because their hall must also serve For kitchen, boil'd the flesh, and spread the board, And stood behind, and waited on the three. And seeing her so sweet and serviceable, Geraint had longing in him evermore To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb, That crost the trencher as she laid it down : But after all had eaten, then Geraint, For now the wine made summer in his veins. Let his eye rove in following, or rest THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. 341 On Enid at her lowly handmaid-work, Now here, now there, about the dusky hall; Then suddenly addrest the hoary Earl : * Fair Host and Earl, I pray your cour- tesy; This sparrow-hawk, what is he? tell me of him. His name? but no, good faith, I will not have it : For if he be the knight whom late 1 saw f / Ride into that new fortress by your town, / White from the mason's hand, then have \ I sworn From his own lips to have it — I am Geraint Of Devon — for this morning when the Queen Sent her own maiden to demand the name. His dwarf, a vicious under-shapen thing, Struck at her with his whip, and she re- turn'd Indignant to the Queen ; and then I swore That I would track this caitiff to his hold, And fight and break his pride, and have it of him. And all unarm'd I rode, and thought to find Arms in your town, where all the men are mad; They take the rustic murmur of their bourg For the great wave that echoes round the world ; They would not hear me speak : but if ye know Where I can light on arms, or if yourself Should have them, tell me, seeing I have sworn That I will break his pride and learn his name, Avenging this great insult done the Queen.' Then cried Earl Yniol, 'Art thou he indeed, Geraint, a name far-sounded among men For noble deeds? and truly I, when first I saw you moving by me on the bridge, Felt ye were somewhat, yea, and by your state And presence might have guess'd you one of those That eat in Arthur's hall at Camelot. Nor speak I now from foolish flattery; For this dear child hath often heard me praise Your feats of arms, and often when 1 paused Hath ask'd again, and ever loved to hear; So grateful is the noise of noble deeds To noble hearts who see but acts of wrong : never yet had woman such a pair Of suitors as this maiden; first Limours, A creature wholly given to brawls and wine, Drunk even when he woo'd; and be he dead 1 know not, but he past to the wild land. The second was your foe, the sparrow- hawk, My curse, my nephew — I will not let his name Slip from my lips if I can help it — he, When I that knew him fierce and turbu- lent Refused her to him, then his pride awoke; And since the proud man often is the mean. He sow'd a slander in the common ear. Affirming that his father left him gold, And in my charge, which was not ren- der'd to him; Bribed with large promises the men who served About my person, the more easily Because my means were somewhat broken into Thro' open doors and hospitality; Raised my own town against me in the night Before my Enid's birthday, sack'd my house; From mine own earldom foully ousted me; Built that new fort to overawe my friends, For truly there are those who love me yet; And keeps me in this ruinous castle here. Where doubtless he would put me soon to death. But that his pride too much despises me : And I myself sometimes despise myself; 342 THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. For I have let men be, and have their way; Am much too gentle, have not used my power : Nor know I whether I be very base Or very manful, whether very wise Or very foolish; only this I know, That whatsoever evil happen to me, I seem to suffer nothing heart or limb, But can endure it all most patiently.' * Well said, true heart,' replied Geraint, ' but arms, That if the sparrow-hawk, this nephew, fight In next day's tourney I may break his pride.' AndYniol answer'd, 'Arms, indeed, but old And rusty, old and rusty, Prince Geraint, Are mine, and therefore at thine asking, thine. But in this tournament can no man tilt. Except the lady he loves best be there. Two forks are fixt into the meadow ground. And over these is placed a silver wand, And over that a golden sparrow-hawk. The prize of beauty for the fairest there. And this, what knight soever be in field Lays claim to for the lady at his side, And tilts with my good nephew there- upon. Who being apt at arms and big of bone Has ever won it for the lady with him, And toppling over all antagonism Has earn'd himself the name of sparrow- hawk. But thou, that hast no lady, canst not fight.' To whom Geraint with eyes all bright replied, Leaning a little toward him, • Thy leave ! Let me lay lance in rest, O noble host, For this dear child, becauso I never saw, Tho' having seen all beauties of our time. Nor can see elsewhere, anything so fair. And if I fall her name will yet remain Untarnish'd as before; but if I live, So aid me Heaven when at mine utter- most. As I will make her truly my true wife.' Then, howsoever patient, Yniol's heart Danced in his bosom, seeing better days. And looking round he saw not Enid there, (Who hearing her own name had stol'n away) But that old- dame, to whom full tenderly And fondling all her hand in his he said, * Mother, a maiden is a tender thing. And best by her that bore her under- stood. Go thou to rest, but ere thou go to rest Tell her, and prove her heart toward the Prince.' So spake the kindly-hearted Earl, and she With frequent smile and nod departing found, Half disarray'd as to her rest, the girl; Whom first she kiss'd on either cheek, and then On either shining shoulder laid a hand And kept her off" and gazed upon her face. And told her all their converse in the hall. Proving her heart : but never light and shade Coursed one another more on open ground Beneath a troubled heaven, than red and pale Across the face of Enid hearing her; While slowly falling as a scale that falls, When weight is added only grain by grain, Sank her sweet head upon her gentle breast; Nor did she lift an eye nor speak a word, Rapt in the fear and in the wonder of it; So moving without answer to her rest She found no rest, and ever fail'd to draw The quiet night into her blood, but lay Contemplating her own unworthiness; And when the pale and bloodless east began To quicken to the sun, arose, and raised Her mother too, and hand in hand they moved Down to the meadow where the jousts were held. And waited there for Yniol and Geraint THE MARRIAGE OF CERA TNT, 343 And thither came the twain, and when Geraint Beheld her first in field, awaiting him, He felt, were she the prize of bodily force, Himself beyond the rest pushing could move The chair of Idris. Yniol's rusted arms Were on his princely person, but thro' these Princelike his bearing shone; and errant knights And ladies came, and by and by the town Flow'd in, and settling circled all the lists. And there they fixt the forks into the ground. And over these they placed the silver wand. And over that the golden sparrow-hawk. Then Yniol's nephew, after trumpet blown, Spake to the lady with him and pro- claim'd, * Advance and take, as fairest of the fair, What I these two years past have won for thee, The prize of beauty.' Loudly spake the Prince, * Forbear : there is a worthier,' and the knight With some surprise and thrice as much disdain Turn'd, and beheld the four, and all his face Glow'd like the heart of a great fire at Yule, So burnt he was with passion, crying out, *Do battle for it then,' no more; and thrice They clash'd together, and thrice they brake their spears. Then each, dishorsed and drawing, lash'd at each So often and with such blows, that all the crowd Wonder'd, and now and then from distant walls There came a clapping as of phantom hands. So twice they fought, and twice they breathed, and still The dew of their great labour, and the blood Of their strong bodies, flowing, drain'd their force. But cither's force was match'd till Yniol's cry, * Remember that great insult done the Queen,' Increased Geraint's, who heaved his blade aloft. And crack'd the helmet thro', and bit the bone. And fell'd him, and set foot upon his breast. And said, 'Thy name?' To whom the fallen man Made answer, groaning, * Edyrn, son of Nudd! Ashamed am I that I should tell it thee. My pride is broken : men have seen my fall.' 'Then, Edyrn, son of Nudd,' replied Geraint, * These two things shalt thou do, or else thou diest. First, thou thyself, with damsel and with dwarf, Shalt ride to Arthur's court, and coming there, Crave pardon for that insult done the Queen, And shalt abide her judgment on it; next. Thou shalt give back their earldom to thy kin. These two things shalt thou do, or thou shalt die.' And Edyrn answer'd, ' These things will I do. For I have never yet been overthrown, And thou hast overthrown me, and my pride Is broken down, for Enid sees my fall ! ' And rising up, he rode to Arthur's court. And there the Queen forgave him easily. And being young, he changed and came to loathe His crime of traitor, slowly drew him- self Bright from his old dark life, and fell at last In the great battle fighting for the King. / 344 THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. But when the third day from the hunt- ing-morn Made a low splendour in the world, and wings Moved in her ivy, Enid, for she lay With her fair head in the dim-yellow light, Among the dancing shadows of the birds, Woke and bethought her of her promise given No later than last eve to Prince Geraint — So bent he seem'd on going the third day. He would not leave her, till her promise given — To ride with him this morning to the court, And there be made known to the stately Queen, And there be wedded with all cere- mony. At this she cast her eyes upon her dress. And thought it never yet had look'd so mean. For as a leaf in mid-November is To what it was in mid-October, seem'd The dress that now she look'd on to the dress She look'd on ere the coming of Geraint. And still she look'd, and still the terror grew Of that strange bright and dreadful thing, a court. All staring at her in her faded silk : And softly to her own sweet heart she said: * This noble prince who won our earl- dom back, So splendid in his acts and his attire, Sweet heaven, how much I shall discredit him! Would he could tarry with us here awhile, But being so beholden to the Prince, It were but little grace in any of us, Bent as he seem'd on going this third day, To seek a second favour at his hands. Yet if he could but tarry a day or two. Myself would work eye dim, and finger lame. Far liefer than so much discredit him.' And Enid fell in longing for a dress All branch'd and flower'd with gold, a costly gift Of her good mother, given her on the night Before her birthday, three sad years ago, That night of fire, when Edyrn sack'd their house. And scatter'd all they had to all the winds : For while the mother show'd it, and the two Were turning and admiring it, the work To both appear'd so costly, rose a cry That .Edyrn's men were on them, and they fled ,With little save the jewels they had on. Which being sold and sold had bought them bread : And Edyrn's men had caught them in their flight, And placed them in this ruin; and she wish'd The Prince had found her in her ancient home; Then let her fancy flit across the past. And roam the goodly places that she knew; And last bethought her how she used to watch. Near that old home, a pool of golden carp; And one was patch'd and blurr'd and lustreless Among his burnish'd brethren of the pool; And half asleep she made comparison Of that and these to her own faded self And the gay court, and fell asleep again; And dreamt herself was such a faded form Among her burnish'd sisters of the pool; But this was in the garden of a king; And tho' she lay dark in the. pool, she knew That all was bright; that all about were birds Of sunny plume in gilded trellis-work; That all the turf was rich in plots that look'd Each like a garnet or a turkis in it; And lords and ladies of the high court went THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. 345 In silver tissue talking things of state; And children of the King in cloth of gold Glanced at the doors or gamboU'd down the walks; And while she thought 'They will not see me,' came A stately queen whose name was Guine- vere, And all the children in their cloth of gold Ran to her, crying, *If we have fish at all Let them be gold; and charge the gardeners now To pick the faded creature from the pool, And cast it on the mixen that it die.' And therewithal one came and seized on her, And Enid started waking, with her heart All overshadow'd by the foolish dream, And lo ! it was her mother grasping her To get her well awake; and in her hand A suit of bright apparel, which she laid Flat on the couch, and spoke exultingly : * See here, my child, how fresh the colours look, How fast they hold like colours of a shell That keeps the wear and polish of the wave. Why not? It never yet was worn, I trow : Look on it, child, and tell me if ye know it.' And Enid look'd, but all confused at first, Could scarce divide it from her foolish dream : Then suddenly she knew it and rejoiced. And answer'd, ' Yea, I know it ; your good gift. So sadly lost on that unhappy night; Your -own good gift!' 'Yea, surely,' said the dame, 'And gladly given again this happy morn. For when the jousts were ended yester- day. Went Yniol thro' the town, and every- where He found the sack and plunder of our house All scatter'd thro' the houses of the town ; And gave command that all which once was ours Should now be ours again : and yester-eve, While ye were talking sweetly with your Prince, Came one with this and laid it in my hand. For love or fear, or seeking favour of us. Because we have our earldom back again. And yester-eve I would not tell you of it, But kept it for a sweet surprise at morn. Yea, truly is it not a sweet surprise? For I myself unwillingly have worn My faded suit, as you, my child, have yours. And howsoever patient, Yniol his. Ah, dear, he took me from a goodly house. With store of rich apparel, sumptuous fare, And page, and maid, and squire, and seneschal. And pastime both of hawk and hound, and all That appertains to noble maintenance. Yea, and he brought me to a goodly house; But since our fortune swerved from sun to shade, And all thro' that young traitor, cruel need Constrain'd us, but a better time has come ; So clothe yourself in this, that better fits Our mended fortunes and a Prince's bride : For tho' ye won the prize of fairest fair, And tho' I heard him call you fairest fair. Let never maiden think, however fair. She is not fairer in new clothes than old. And should some great court-lady say, the Prince. Hath pick'd a ragged-robin from the hedge. And like a madman brought her to the court. Then were ye shamed, and, worse, might shame the Prince 346 THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT. To whom we are beholden; but I know, When my dear child is set forth at her best, That neither court nor country, tho' they sought Thro' all the provinces like those of old That lighted on Queen Esther, has her match.' Here ceased the kindly mother out of breath; And Enid listen'd brightening as she lay; Then, as the white and gUttering star of morn Parts from a bank of snow, and by and by Slips into golden cloud, the maiden rose. And left her maiden couch, and robed herself, Help'd by the mother's careful hand and eye, Without a mirror, in the gorgeous gown; Who, after, turn'd her daughter round, and said, She never yet had seen her half so fair; And call'd her like that maiden in the tale, Whom Gwydion made by glamour out of flowers, And sweeter than the bride of Cassive- laun, Flur, for whose love the Roman Csesar first Invaded Britain, * But we beat him back. As this great Prince invaded us, and we, Not beat him back, but welcomed him with joy. And I can scarcely ride with you to court. For old am I, and rough the ways and wild ; But Yniol goes, and I full oft shall dream I see my princess as I see her now, Clothed with my gift, and gay among the gay.' But while the women thus rejoiced, Geraint Woke where he slept in the high hall, and call'd For Enid, and when Yniol made report Of that good mother making F^nid gay In such apparel as might well beseem His princess, or indeed the stately Queen, He answer'd : * Earl, entreat her by my love. Albeit I give no reason but my wish. That she ride with me in her faded silk.' Yniol with that hard message went; it fell Like flaws in summer laying lusty corn : For Enid, all abash'd she knew not why, Dared not to glance at her good mother's face. But silently, in all obedience, Her mother silent too, nor helping her, Xaid from her limbs the costly- broider'd gift, And robed them in her ancient suit again, And so descended. Never man rejoiced More than Geraint to greet her thus attired; And glancing all at once as keenly at her As careful robins eye the delver's toil, Made her cheek burn and either eyelid fall. But rested with her sweet face satisfied; Then seeing cloud upon the mother's brow. Her by both hands he caught, and sweetly said, * O my new mother, be not wroth or grieved At thy new son, for my petition to her. When late I left Caerleon, our great Queen, In words whose echo lasts, they were so sweet. Made promise, that whatever bride I brought, Herself would clothe her like the sun in Heaven. Thereafter, when I reach'd this ruin'd hall. Beholding one so bright in dark estate, I vow'd that could I gain her, our fair Queen, No hand but hers, should make your Enid burst Sunlike from cloud — and likewise thought perhaps. That service done so graciously would bind The two together; fain I would the two GERAINT AND ENID. 347 Should love each other : how can Enid find A nobler friend? Another thought was mine; I came among you here so suddenly, That tho' her gentle presence at the lists Might well have served for proof that I was loved, I doubted whether daughter's tenderness, Or easy nature, might not let itself Be moulded by your wishes for her weal; Or whether some false sense in her own self Of my contrasting brightness, overbore Her fancy dwelling in this dusky hall; And such a sense might make her long for court And all its perilous glories: and I thought. That could I someway prove such force in her Link'd with such love for me, that at a word (No reason given her) she could cast aside A splendour dear to women, new to her, And therefore dearer; or if not so new, Yet therefore tenfold dearer by the power Of intermitted usage; then I felt That I could rest, a rock in ebbs and flows, N Fixt on her faith. Now, therefore, I do rest, A prophet certain of my prophecy. That never shadow of mistrust can cross Between us. Grant me pardon for my thoughts : And for my strange petition I will make Amends hereafter by some gaudy-day. When your fair child shall wear your costly gift Beside your own warm hearth, with, on her knees. Who knows? another gift of the high God, Which, maybe, shall have learn'd to lisp you thanks.' He spoke : the mother smiled, but half in tears. Then brought a mantle down and wrapt her in it. And claspt and kiss'd her, and they rode away. Now thrice that morning Guinevere had climb'd The giant tower, from whose high crest, they say. Men saw the goodly hills of Somerset, And white sails flying on the yellow sea; But not to goodly hill or yellow sea Look'd the fair Queen, but up the vale of Usk, By the flat meadow, till she saw them come; And then descending met them at the gates, Embraced her with all welcome as a friend, And did her honour as the Prince's bride. And clothed her for her bridals like the sun; And all that week was old Caerleon gay, For by the hands of Dubric, the high saint, They twain were wedded with all cere- mony. And this was on the last year's Whit- suntide. But Enid ever kept the faded silk. Remembering how first he came on her, Drest in that dress, and how he loved her in it. And all her foolish fears about the dress. And all his journey toward her, as him- self Had told her, and their coming to the court. And now this morning when he said to her, ' Put on your worst and meanest dress,' she found And took it, and array'd herself therein. GERAINT AND ENID. O PURBLIND race of miserable men. How many among us at this very hour Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves, By taking true for false, or false for true ; Here, thro' the feeble twihght of this world Groping, how many, until we pass and reach That other, where we see as we are seen I 348 GERAINT AND ENID. So fared it with Geraint, who issuing forth That morning, when they both had got to horse, Perhaps because he loved her passion- ately, And felt that tempest brooding round his heart, Which, if he spoke at all, would break perforce Upon a head so dear in thunder, said : *Not at my side. I charge thee ride before. Ever a good way on before; and this 1 charge thee, on thy duty as a wife. Whatever happens, not to speak to me, No, not a word ! ' and Enid was aghast ; And forth they rode, but scarce three paces on, When crying out, * Effeminate as I am, I will not fight my way with gilded arms, All shall be iron; ' he loosed a mighty purse. Hung at his belt, and hurl'd it toward the squire. So the last sight that Enid had of home Was all the marble threshold flashing, strown With gold and scatter'd coinage, and the squire Chafing his shoulder: then he cried again, * To the wilds ! ' and Enid leading down the tracks Thro' which he bade her lead him on, they past The marches, and by bandit-haunted holds, Gray swamps and pools, waste places of the hern, And wildernesses, perilous paths, they rode : Round Was their pace at first, but slack- en'd soon : A stranger meeting them had surely thought They rode so slowly and they look'd so pale, That each had sufifer'd some exceeding wrong. For he was ever saying to himself, * O I that wasted time to tend upon her. To compass her with sweet observances, To dress her beautifully and keep her true ' — And there he broke the sentence in his heart Abruptly, as a man upon his tongue May break it, when his passion masters him. And she was ever praying the sweet heavens To save her dear lord whole from any wound. And ever in her mind she cast about For that unnoticed failing in herself, Which made him look so cloudy and so cold; Till the great plover's human whistle amazed Her heart, and glancing round the waste she fear'd In every wavering brake an ambus- cade. Then thought again, * If there be such in me, I . might amend it by the grace of Heaven, If he would only speak and tell me of it.' But when the fourth part of the day was gone. Then Enid was aware of three tall knights On horseback, wholly arm'd, behind a rock In shadow, waiting for them, caitiffs all; And heard one crying to his fellow, ' Look, Here comes a laggard hanging down his head. Who seems no bolder than a beaten hound ; Come, we will slay him and will have his horse And armour, and his damsel shall be ours.' Then Enid ponder'd in her heart, and said: * I will go back a little to my lord. And I will tell him all their caitiff talk; P^or, be he wroth even to slaying me, Far liefer by his dear hand had I die. Than that my lord should suffer loss or shame.' GERAINT AND ENID. 349 Then she went back some paces of return, Met his full frown timidly firm, and said ; ' My lord, I saw three bandits by the rock Waiting to fall on you, and heard them boast That they would slay you, and possess your .horse And armour, and your damsel should be theirs.' He made a wrathful answer : ' Did I wish Your warning or your silence ? one com- mand I laid upon you, not to speak to me, And thus ye keep it ! Well then, look — for now, Whether ye wish me victory or defeat, Long for my life, or hunger for my death, Yourself shall see my vigour is not lost.' Then Enid waited, pale and sorrowful, And down upon him bare the bandit three. And at the midmost charging, Prince Geraint Drave the long spear a cubit thro' his breast And out beyond; and then against his brace Of comrades, each of whom had broken on him A lance that splinter'd like an icicle. Swung from his brand a windy buffet out Once, twice, to right, to left, and stunn'd the twain Or slew them, and dismounting like a man That skins the wild beast after slaying him, Stript from the three dead wolves of woman born The three gay suits of armour which they wore. And let the bodies lie, but bound the suits Of armour on their horses, each on each, And tied the bridle-reins of all the three Together, and said to her, * Drive them on Before you; ' and she drove them thro' the waste. He follow'd nearer : ruth began to work Against his anger in him, while he watch'd The being he loved best in all the world, With difficulty in mild obedience Driving them on: he fain had spoken to her. And loosed in words of sudden fire the wrath And smoulder'd wrong that burnt him all within; But evermore it seem'd an easier thing At once without remorse to strike her dead. Than to cry * Halt,' and to her own bright face Accuse her of the least immodesty : And thus tongue-tied, it made him wroth the more That she could speak whom his own ear had heard Call herself false : and suffering thus he made Minutes an age : but in scarce longer time Than at Caerleon the full-tided Usk, Before he turn to fall seaward again. Pauses, did Enid, keeping watch, behold In the first shallow shade of a deep wood. Before a gloom of stubborn-shafted oaks. Three other horsemen waiting, wholly arm'd, Whereof one seem'd far larger than her lord. And shook her pulses, crying, * Look, a prize ! Three horses and three goodly suits of arms. And all in charge of whom? a girl : set on.' 'Nay,' said the second, * yonder comes a knight.' The third, * A craven; how he hangs his head.' The giant answer'd merrily, 'Yea, but one? Wait here, and when he passes fall upon him.' 35<> GERAINT AND ENID. And Enid ponder'd in her heart and said, 'I will abide the coming of my lord, And I will tell him all their villainy. My lord is weary with the fight before, And they will fall upon him unawares. I needs must disobey him for his good ; How should I dare obey him to his harm? Needs must I speak, and tho' he kill me for it, I save a life dearer to me than mine.' And she abode his coming, and said to him With timid firmness, ' Have I leave to speak ? ' He said, * Ye take it, speaking,' and she spoke. 'There lurk three villains yonder in the wood, And each of them is wholly arm'd, and one Is larger-limb'd than you are, and they say That they will fall upon you while ye pass.' To which he flung a wrathful answer back : 'And if there were an hundred in the wood. And every man were larger-limb'd than I, And all at once should sally out upon me, I swear it would not ruffle me so much As you that not obey me. Stand aside, And if I fall, cleave to the better man.' And Enid stood aside to wait the event, Not dare to watch the combat, only breathe Short fits of prayer, at every stroke a breath. And he, she dreaded most, bare down upon him. Aim'd at the helm, his lance err'd; but Geraint's, A little in the late encounter strain'd, Struck thro' the bulky bandit's corselet home, And then brake short, and down his enemy roU'd, And there lay still; as he that tells the tale " Saw once a great piece of a promontory, That had a sapling growing on it, slide From the long shore-cliff's windy walls to the beach, And there lie still, and yet the sapling grew : So lay the man transfixt. His craven pair Of comrades making slowlier at the Prince, When now they saw their bulwark fallen, stood; On whom the victor, to confound them more, Spurr'd with his terrible war-cry; for as one, That listens near a torrent mountain- brook, All thro' the crash of the near cataract hears The drumming thunder of the huger fall At distance, were the soldiers wont to hear His voice in battle, and be kindled by it, And foemen scared, like that false pair who turn'd Flying, but, overtaken, died the death Themselves had wrought on many an innocent. Thereon Geraint, dismounting, pick'd the lance That pleased him best, and drew from those dead wolves Their three gay suits of armour, each from each. And bound them on their horses, each on each. And tied the bridle-reins of all the three Together, and said to her, ' Drive them on Before you,' and she drove them thro' the wood. He foUow'd nearer still : the pain she had To keep them in the wild ways of the wood. Two sets of three laden with jingling arms. Together, served a little to disedge The sharpness of that pain about hei heart : GERAINT AND ENID. 35t And they themselves, like creatures gently born But into bad hands fall'n, and now so long By bandits groom'd, prick'd their light ears, and felt Her low firm voice and tender government. So thro' the green gloom of the wood they past. And issuing under open heavens beheld A little town with towers, upon a rock, And close beneath, a meadow gemlike chased In the brown wild, and mowers mowing in it: And down a rocky pathway from the place There came a fair-hair'd youth, that in his hand Bare victual for the mowers : and Geraint Had ruth again on Enid looking pale : Then, moving downward to the meadow ground, He, when the fair-hair'd youth came by him, said, 'Friend, let her eat; the damsel is so faint.' * Yea, willingly,* replied the youth ; ' and thou, My lord, eat also, tho' the fare is coarse. And only meet for mowers;' then set down His basket, and dismounting on the sward They let the horses graze, and ate them- selves. And Enid took a little delicately. Less having stomach for it than desire To close with her lord's pleasure; but Geraint Ate all the mowers' victual unawares, And when he found all empty, was amazed ; And * Boy,' said he, ' I have eaten all, but take A horse and arms for guerdon; choose the best.' He, reddening in extremity of delight, * My lord, you overpay me fifty-fold.' * Ye will be all the wealthier,' cried the Prince. * I take it as free gift, then,' said the boy, * Not guerdon ; for myself can easily. While your good damsel rests, return, and fetch Fresh victual for these mowers of our Earl; For these are his, and all the field is his, And I myself am his; and I will tell him How great a man thou art : he loves to know When men of mark are in his territory : And he will have thee to his palace here, And serve thee costlier than with mowers' fare.' Then said Geraint, * I wish no better fare : I never ate with angrier appetite Than when I left your mowers dinnerless. And into no Earl's palace will I go. I know, God knows, too much of palaces ! And if he want me, let him come to me. But hire us some fair chamber for the night. And stalling for the horses, and return With victual for these men, and let us know.' ' Yea, my kind lord,' said the glad youth, and went, Held his head high, and thought himself a knight. And up the rocky pathway disappear'd, Leading the horse, and they were left alone. But when the Prince had brought his errant eyes Home from the rock, sideways he let them glance At Enid, where she droopt : his own false doom, That shadow of mistrust should never cross Betwixt them, came upon him, and he sigh'd; Then with another humorous ruth re- mark'd The lusty mowers labouring dinnerless, And watch'd the sun blaze on the turning scythe. And after nodded sleepiiy in the heat. But she, remembering her old ruin'd hall, And all the windy clamour of the daws About her hollow turret, pluck'd the grass There growing longest by the meadow's edge, 352 GERAINl^ AND ENID. And into many a listless annulet, Now over, now beneath her marriage ring, Wove and unwove it, till the boy return'd And told them of a chamber, and they went ; Where, after saying to her, ' If ye will. Call for the woman of the house,' to which She answer'd, 'Thanks, my lord; ' the two remain'd Apart by all the chamber's width, and mute As creatures voiceless thro' the fault of birth. Or two wild men supporters of a shield, Painted, who stare at open space, nor glance The one at other, parted by the shield. On a sudden, many a voice along the street. And heel against the pavement echoing, burst Their drowse; and either started while the door, Push'd from without, drave backward to the wall, And midmost of a rout of roisterers, Femininely fair and dissolutely pale. Her suitor in old years before Geraint, Enter'd, the wild lord of the place, Limours. He moving up with pliant courtliness, Greeted Geraint full face, but stealthily, In the mid-warmth of welcome and graspt hand. Found Enid with the corner of his eye. And knew her sitting sad and solitary. ' Then cried Geraint for wine and goodly cheer To feed the sudden guest, and sumptu- ously According to his fashion, bade the host Call in what men soever were his friends, And feast with these in honour of their Earl; 'And care not for the cost; the cost is mine.' And wine and food were brought, and Earl Limours Drank till he jested with all ease, and told Free tales, and took the word and play'd upon it. And made it of two colours; for his talk, When wine and free companions kindled him, Was wont to glance and sparkle like a gem Of fifty facets; thus he moved the Prince To laughter and his comrades to applause. Then, when the Prince was merry, ask'd Limours, * Your leave, my lord, to cross the room, and speak To your good damsel there who sits apart. And seems so lonely ? ' * My free leave,' he said; * Get her to speak : she doth not speak to me.' Then rose Limours, and looking at his feet, Like him who tries the bridge he fears may fail, Crost and came near, lifted adoring eyes, Bow'd at her side and utter'd whisper- ingly : * Enid, the pilot star of my lone life, Enid, my early and my only love, Enid, the loss of whom hath turn'd me wild — What chance is this? how is it I see you here? Ye are in my power at last, are in my power. Yet fear me not : I call .mine own self wild. But keep a touch of sweet civility Here in the heart of waste and wilderness. I thought, but that your father came between. In former days you saw me favourably. And if it were so do not keep it back : Make me a little happier : let me know it : Owe you me nothing for a life half-lost? Yea, yea, the whole dear debt of all you are. And, Enid, you and he, I see with joy. Ye sit apart, you do not speak to him, You come with no attendance, page or maid. To serve you — doth he love you as of old ? For, call it lovers' quarrels, yet I know Tho' men may bicker with the thing" they love, GERAINT AND ENID. 353 They would not make them laughable in all eyes. Not while they loved them; and your wretched dress, A wretched insult on you, dumbly speaks Your story, that this man loves you no more. Your beauty is no beauty to him now : A common chance — right well I know it — pall'd — For I know men : nor will ye win him back, For the man's love once gone never returns. But here is one who loves you as of old; With more exceeding passion than of old : Good, speak the word : my followers ring him round : He sits unarm'd; I hold a finger up; They understand : nay; I do not mean blood : Nor need ye look so scared at what I say: My malice 'is no deeper than a moat, No stronger than a wall : there is the keep; He shall not cross us more; speak but the word : Or speak it not; but then by Him that made me The one true lover whom you ever own'd, I will make use of all the power I have. O pardon me ! the madness of that hour, When first I parted from thee, moves me yet.' At this the tender sound of his own voice And sweet self-pity, or the fancy of it. Made his eye moist; but Enid fear'd his eyes, Moist as they were, wine-heated from the feast; And answer'd with such craft as women use. Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chance That breaks upon them perilously, and said: ' Earl, if you love me as in former years, And do not practise on me, come with morn, And snatch me from him as by violence; Leave me to-night : I am weary to the death.' Low at leave-taking, with his brandish'd plume Brushing his instep, bow'd the all-amorous Earl, And the stout Prince bade him a loud good-night. He moving homeward babbled to his men. How Enid never loved a man but him. Nor cared a broken egg-shell for her lord. But Enid left alone with Prince Geraint, Debating his command of silence given. And that she now perforce must violate it. Held commune with herself, and while she held He fell asleep, and Enid had no heart To wake him, but hung o'er him, wholly pleased To find him yet unwounded after fight. And hear him breathing low and equally. Anon she rose, and stepping lightly, heap'd The pieces of his armour in one place. All to be there against a sudden need; Then dozed awhile herself, but overtoil'd By that day's grief and travel, evermore Seem'd catching at a rootless thorn, and then Went slipping down horrible precipices. And strongly striking out her limbs awoke ; Then thought she heard the wild Earl at the door. With all his rout of random followers, Sound on a dreadful trumpet, summoning her; Which was the red cock shouting to the light, As the gray dawn stole o'er the dewy world, And glimmer'd on his armour in the room. And once again she rose to look at it. But touch'd it unawares: jangling, the casque P'ell, and he started up and stared at her. Then breaking his command of silence given, She told him all that Earl Limours had said. i54 GERAINT AND ENID. Except the passage that he loved her not; Nor left untold the craft herself had used; But ended with apology so sweet, Low-spoken, and of so few words, and seem'd So justified by that necessity, That tho' he thought ' was it for him she wept In Devon? ' he but gave a wrathful groan. Saying, 'Your sweet faces make good fellows fools And traitors. Call the host and bid him bring Charger and palfrey.' So she glided out Among the heavy breathings of the house, And like a household Spirit at the walls Beat, till she woke the sleepers, and return'd : Then tending her rough lord, tho' all unask'd. In silence, did him service as a squire; Till issuing arm'd he found the host and cried, 'Thy reckoning, friend?' and ere he learnt it, ' Take Five horses and their armours; ' and the host Suddenly honest, answer'd in amaze, ' My lord, I scarce have spent the worth of one ! ' • ' Ye will be all the .wealthier,' said the Prince, And then to Enid, * Forward ! and to-day I charge you, Enid, more especially, What thing soever ye may hear, or see. Or fancy (tho' I count it of small use To charge you) that ye speak not but obey.' And Enid answer'd, 'Yea, my lord, I know Your wish, and would obey ; but riding first, I hear the violent threats you do not hear, I see the danger which you cannot see : Then not to give you warning, that seems hard; Almost beyond me : yet I would obey.' *Yea so,' said he, 'do it: be not too wise ; Seeing that ye are wedded to a man, Not all mismated with a yawning clown. But one with arms to guard his head and yours. With eyes to find you out however far. And ears to hear you even in his dreams.' With that he turn'd and look'd as keenly at her As careful robins eye the delver's toil; And that within her, which a wanton fool. Or hasty judger would have call'd her guilt, Made her cheek burn and either eyelid fall. And Geraint look'd and was not satisfied. Then forv»'ard by a way which, beaten broad. Led from the territory of false Limours To the waste earldom of another earl, Doorm, whom his shaking vassals call'd the Bull, Went Enid with her sullen follower on. Once she look'd back, and when she saw him ride More near by many a rood than yester- morn. It wellnigh made her cheerful; till Geraint Waving an angry hand as who should say 'Ye watch me,' sadden'd all her heart again. But while the sun yet beat a dewy blade, The sound of many a heavily-galloping hoof Smote on her ear, and turning round she saw Dust, and the points of lances bicker in it. Then not to disobey her lord's behest. And yet to give him warning, for he rode As if he heard not, moving back she held Her finger up, and pointed to the dust. At which the warrior in his obstinacy. Because she kept the letter of his word. Was in a manner pleased, and turning, stood. And in the moment after,, wild Limours, Borne on a black horse, like a thunder- cloud Whose skirts are loosen' d by the breaking storm, Half ridden off with by the thing he rode, And all in passion uttering a dry shriek, GERAINT AND ENID. 355 Dash'd on Geraint, who closed with him, and bore Down by the length of lance and arm beyond The crupper, and so left him stunn'd or dead. And overthrew the next that foUow'd him. And blindly rush'd on all the rout behind. But at the flash and motion of the man They vanish'd panic-stricken, like a shoal Of darting fish, that on a summer morn Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand. But if a man who stands upon the brink But lift a shining hand against the sun. There is not left the twinkle of a fin Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower; So, scared but at the motion of the man, Fled all the boon companions of the Earl, And left him lying in the public way; So vanish friendships only made in wine. Then like a stormy sunlight smiled Geraint, Who saw the chargers of the two that fell Start from their fallen lords, and wildly Mixt with the flyers. * Horse and man,' he said, * All of one mind and all right-honest friends ! Not a hoof left : and I methinks till now Was honest — paid with horses and with arms; I cannot steal or plunder, no nor beg : And so what say ye, shall we strip him there Your lover ? has your palfrey heart enough To bear his armour? shall we fast, or dine? No? — then do thou, being right honest, pray That we may meet the horsemen of Earl Doorm, I too would still be honest.' Thus he said : And sadly gazing on her bridle-reins, And answering not one word, she led the way. But as a man to whom a dreadful loss Falls in a far land and he knows it not. But coming back he learns it, and the loss So pains him that he sickens nigh to death; So fared it with Geraint, who being prick'd In combat with the follower of Limours, Bled underneath his armour secretly, And so rode on, nor told his gentle wife What ail'd him, hardly knowing it himself, Till his eye darken'd and his helmet wagg'd ; And at a sudden swerving of the road, Tho' happily down on a bank of grass, The Prince, without a word, from his horse fell. And Enid heard the clashing of his fall. Suddenly came, and at his side all pale Dismounting, loosed the fastenings of his arms. Nor let her true hand falter, nor blue eye Moisten, till she had lighted on his wound. And tearing off her veil of faded silk Had bared her forehead to the blistering sun, And swathed the hurt that drain'd her dear lord's life. Then after all was done that hand could do, She rested; and her desolation came Upon her, and she wept beside the way. And many past, but none regarded her, For in that realm of lawless turbulence, A woman weeping for her murder'd mate Was cared as much for as a summer shower : One took him for a victim of Earl Doorm, Nor dared to waste a perilous pity on him : Another hurrying past, a man-at-arms, Rode on a mission to the bandit Earl; Half whistling and half singing a coarse song, He drove the dust against her veilless eyes : Another, flying from the wrath of Doorm Before an ever-fancied arrow, made The long way smoke beneath him in his fear; At which her palfrey whinnying lifted heel. And scour'd into the coppices and was lost. While the great charger stood, grieved like a man. 356 GERAINT AND ENID. But at the point of noon the huge Earl Doorm, Broad-faced with under-fringe of russet beard, Bound on a foray, rolling eyes of prey, Came riding with a hundred lances up; But ere he came, hke one that hails a ship. Cried out with a big voice, 'What, is he dead?' * No, no, not dead ! ' she answer'd in all haste. * Would some of your kind people take him up. And bear him hence out of this cruel sun? Most sure am I, quite sure, he is not dead.' Then said Earl Doorm: 'Well, if he be not dead, Why wail ye for him thus? ye seem a child. And be he dead, I count you for a fool; Your wailing will not quicken him : dead or not. Ye mar a comely face with idiot tears. Yet, since the face is comely — some of you. Here, take him up, and bear him -to our hall: And if he live, we will have him of our band; And if he die, why earth has earth enough To hide him. See ye take the charger too, A noble one.' He spake, and past away, But left two brawny spearmen, who advanced, Each growling like a dog, when his good bone Seems to be pluck'd at by the village boys W^ho love to vex him eating, and he fears To lose his bone, and lays his foot upon it. Gnawing and growling: so the ruffians growl' d. Fearing to lose, and all for a dead man. Their chance of booty from the morning's raid. Yet raised and laid him on a litter-bier. Such as they brought upon their forays out For those that might be wounded; laid him on it All in the hollow of his shield, and took And bore him to the naked hall of Doorm (His gentle charger following him unled). And cast him and the bier in which he lay Down on an oaken settle in the hall. And then departed, hot in haste to join Their luckier mates, but growling as before, And cursing their lost time, and the dead man, And their own Earl, and their own souls, and her. They might as well have blest her : she was deaf To blessing or to cursing save from one. So for long hours sat Enid by her lord. There in the naked hall, propping his head, And chafing his pale hands, and calling to him. Till at the last he waken'd from his swoon, And found his own dear bride propping his head, And chafing his faint hands, and calling to him; And felt the warm tears faUing on his face; And said to his own heart, ' She weeps for me: ' And yet lay still, and feign'd himself as dead. That he might prove her to the uttermost, And say to his own heart, ' She weeps for me.' But in the falling afternoon retum'd The huge Earl Doorm with plunder to the hall. His lusty spearmen follow'd him with noise : Each hurling down a heap of things that rang Against the pavement, cast his lance aside, And dofiPd his helm : and then there flutter'd in. Half-bold, half-frighted, with dilated eyes, A tribe of women, dress'd in many hues. And mingled with the spearmen: and Earl Doorm Struck with a knife's haft hard against the board, And call'd for flesh and wine to feed his spears. And men brought in whole hogs and quarter beeves, GERAINT AND ENID. 357 And all the hall was dim with steam of flesh: And none spake word, but all sat down at once, And ate with tumult in the naked hall, Feeding like horses when you hear them feed; Till Enid shrank far back into herself, To shun the wild ways of the lawless tribe. But when Earl Doorm had eaten all he would, He roll'd his eyes about the hall, and found A damsel drooping in a corner of it. Then he reniember'd her, and how she wept ; And out of her there came a power upon him; And rising on the sudden he said, ' Eat ! I never yet beheld a thing so pale. God's curse, it makes me mad to see you weep. Eat ! Look yourself. Good luck had your good man. For were I dead who is it would weep for me? Sweet lady, never since I first drew breath Have I beheld a lily like yourself. And so there lived some colour in your cheek, There is not one among my gentlewomen Were fit to wear your slipper for a glove. But listen to me, and by me be ruled. And I will do the thing I have not done, For ye shall share my earldom with me, girl And we will live like two birds in 'one nest, And I will fetch you forage from all fields. For I compel all creatures to my will.' He spoke : the brawny spearman let his cheek Bulge with the unswallow'd piece, and turning stared; While some, whose souls the old serpent long had drawn Down, as the worm draws in the wither'd leaf . And makes it earth, hiss'd each at other's ear What shall not be recorded — women they, Women, or what had been those gracious things. But now desired the humbling of their best. Yea, would have help'd him to it: and all at once They hated her, who took no thought of them, But answer'd in low voice, her meek head yet Drooping, ' I pray you of your courtesy, He being as he is, to let me be.' She spake so low he hardly heard her speak, But like a mighty patron, satisfied With what himself had done so graciously, Assumed that she had thank'd him, add- ing, ' Yea, Eat and be glad, for I account you mine.* She answer'd meekly, ' How should I be glad Henceforth in all the world at anything. Until my lord arise and look upon me?' Here the huge Earl cried out upon her talk, As all but empty heart and weariness And sickly nothing ; suddenly seized on her. And bare her by main violence to the board. And thrust the dish before her, crying, ' Eat.' ' No, no,' said Enid, vext, * I will not eat Till yonder man upon the bier arise. And eat with me.' ' Drink, then,' he answer'd. ' Here ! ' (And fiU'd a horn with wine and held it to her,) ' Lo ! I, myself, when flush'd with fight, or hot, God's curse, with anger — often I myself, .Before I well have drunken, scarce can eat: Drink therefore and the wine will change your will.' * Not so,' she cried, * by Heaven, I will not drink Till my dear lord arise and bid me do it, 358 GERAINT AND ENID. And drink with me; and if he rise no more, I will not look at wine until I die.' At this he turn'd all red and paced his hall, Now gnaw'd his under, now his upper lip, And coming up close to her, said at last : * Girl, for I see ye scorn my courtesies. Take warning: yonder man is surely dead ; And I compel all creatures to my will. Not eat nor drink? And wherefore wail for one, Who put your beauty to this flout and scorn By dressing it in rags? Amazed am I, Beholding how ye butt against my wish, That I forbear you thus : cross me no more. At least put off to please me this poor gown, This silken rag, this beggar-woman's weed : I love that beauty should go beautifully: For see ye not my gentlewomen here, How gay, how suited to the house of one "Who loves that beauty should go beauti- fully? Rise therefore; robe yourself in this: obey.' He spoke, and one among his gentle- women Display'd a splendid silk of foreign loom, Where like a shoaling sea the lovely blue Play'd into green, and thicker down the front With jewels than the sward with drops of dew, When all night long a cloud clings to the hill, Ajid with the dawn ascending lets the day Strike where it clung : so thickly shone . the gems. But Enid answer'd, harder to be moved Than hardest tyrants in their day of power. With life-long injuries burning unavenged. And now their hour has come; and Enid said : * In this poor gown my dear lord found me first, And loved me serving in my father's hall; In this poor gown I rode with him to court. And there the Queen array'd me like the sun: In this poor gown he bade me clothe myself. When now we rode upon this fatal quest Of honour, where no honour can be gain'd : And this poor gown I will not cast aside Until himself arise a living man. And bid me cast it. I have griefs enough : Pray you be gentle, pray you let me be : I never loved, can never love but him : Yea, God, I pray you of your gentleness, He being as he is, to let me be.' Then strode the brute Earl up and down his hall. And took his russet beard between his teeth; Last, coming up quite close, and in his mood Crying, ' I count it of no more avail, Dame, to be gentle than ungentle with you; Take my salute,' unknightly with flat hand, However lightly, smote her on the cheek. Then Enid, in her utter helplessness. And since she thought, ' He had not dared to do it. Except he surely knew my lord was dead,' Sent forth a sudden sharp and bitter cry, As of a wild thing taken in the trap. Which sees the trapper coming thro' the wood. This heard Geraint, and grasping at his sword (It lay beside him in the hollow shield), Made but a single bound, and with a sweep of it Shore thro' the swarthy neck, and like a ball The russet-bearded head roU'd on the floor. So died Earl Doorm by him he counted dead. And all the men and women in the hall GERAINT AND ENID. 359 Rose when they saw the dead man rise, and fled Yelling as from a spectre, and the two Were left alone together, and he said : ' Enid, I have used you worse than that dead man; Done you more wrong : we both have undergone That trouble which has left me thrice your own : Henceforward I will rather die than doubt. And here I lay this penance on myself, Not, tho' mine own ears heard you yestermorn — You thought me sleeping, but I heard you say, I heard you say, that you were no true wife : I swear I will not ask your meaning in it : I do believe yourself against yourself. And will henceforward rather die than doubt.' And Enid could not say one tender word, She felt so blunt and stupid at the heart : She only pray'd him, * Fly, they will return And slay you; fly, your charger is with- out, My palfrey lost.' 'Then, Enid, shall you ride Behind me.' * Yea,' said Enid, * let us go.' And moving out they found the stately horse, Who now no more a vassal to the thief, But free to stretch his limbs in lawful fight, Neigh'd with all gladness as they came, and stoop'd With a low whinny toward the pair : and she Kiss'd the white star upon his noble front. Glad also; then Geraint upon the horse Mounted, and reach'd a hand, and on his foot She set her own and climb'd; he turn'd his face And kiss'd her climbing, and she cast her arms About him, and at once they rode away. And never yet, since high in Paradise O'er the four rivers the first roses blew. Came purer pleasure unto mortal kind Than lived thro' her, who in that perilous hour Put hand to hand beneath her husband's heart, And felt him hers again : she did not weep. But o'er her meek eyes came a happy mist Like that which kept the heart of Eden green Before the useful trouble of the rain : Yet not so misty were her meek blue eyes As not to see before them on the path. Right in the gateway of the bandit hold, A knight of Arthur's court, who laid his lance In rest, and made as if to fall upon him. Then, fearing for his hurt and loss of blood. She, with her mind all full of what had chanced, Shriek'd to the stranger * Slay not a dead man! ' 'The voice of Enid,' said the knight; but she. Beholding it was Edyrn son of Nudd, Was moved so much the more, and shriek'd again, 'O cousin, slay not liim who gave you life.' And Edyrn moving frankly forward spake : ' My lord Geraint, 1 greet you with all love; I took you for a bandit knight of Doorm ; And fear not, Enid, I should fall upon him, W^ho love you. Prince, with something of the love Wherewith we love the Heaven that chastens us. For once, when I was up so high in pride That I was halfwav down the slope to Hell, By overthrowing me you threw me higher. Now, made a knight of Arthur's Table Round, And since I knew this Earl, when I my- self Was half a bandit in my lawless hour. 360 GERAINT AND ENID. I come the mouthpiece of our King to Doorm (The King is close behind me) bidding him Disband himself, and scatter all his powers, Submit, and hear the judgment of the King.' ' He hears the judgment of the King of kings,' Cried the wan Prince ; ' and lo, the powers of Doorm Are scatter'd,' and he pointed to the field, Where, huddled here and there on mound and knoll, Were men and women staring and aghast, While some yet fled ; and then he plainlier told How the huge Earl lay slain within his hall. But when the knight besought him, • Follow me, Prince, to the camp, and in the King's own ear Speak what has chanced; ye surely have endured Strange chances here alone;' that other flush'd. And hung his head, and halted in reply, Fearing the mild face of the blameless King, And after madness acted question ask'd : Till Edyrn crying, * If ye will not go To Arthur, then will Arthur come to you,' * Enough,' he said, * I follow,' and they went. But Enid in their going had two fears, One from the bandit scatter'd in the field, And one from Edyrn. Every now and then. When Edyrn rein'd his charger at her side. She shrank a little. In a hollow land. From which old fires have broken, men may fear Fresh fire and ruin. He, perceiving, said : * Fair and dear cousin, you that most had cause To fear me, fear no longer, I am changed. Yourself were first the blameless cause to make My nature's prideful sparkle in the blood Break into furious flame; being repulsed By Yniol and yourself, 1 schemed and wrought Until I overturn'd him; then set up (With one main purpose ever at my heart) My haughty jousts, and took a paramour; Did her mock-honour as the fairest fair. And, toppling over all antagonism. So wax'd in pride, that I believed myself Unconquerable, for I was wellnigh mad : And, but for my main purpose in these jousts, I should have slain your father, seized yourself. I lived in hope that sometime you would come To these my lists with him whom best you loved; And there, poor cousin, with your meek blue eyes. The truest eyes that ever answer'd Heaven, Behold me overturn and trample on him. Then, had you cried, or knelt, or pray'd to me, I should not less have kill'd him. And you came, — But once you came, — and with your own true eyes Beheld the man you loved (I speak as one Speaks of a service done him) overthrow My proud self, and my purpose three years old. And set his foot upon me, and give me Hfe. There was I broken down; there was I saved : Tho' thence I rode all-shamed, hating the hfe He gave me, meaning to be rid of it. And all the penance the Queen laid upon me Was but to rest awhile within her court; Where first as sullen as a beast new-caged, And waiting to be treated like a wolf, Because I knew my deeds were known, I found, Instead of scornful pity or pure scorn, Such fine reserve and noble reticence, Manners so kind, yet stately, such a grace Of tenderest courtesy, that I began To glance behind me at my former life, GERAINT AND ENID. 361 And find that it had been the wolfs indeed : And oft I talk'd with Dubric, the high saint, Who, with mild heat of holy oratory, Subdued me somewhat to that gentleness, Which, when it weds with manhood, makes a man. And you were often there about the Queen, But saw me not, or mark'd not if you saw ; Nor did I care or dare to speak with you, But kept myself aloof till I was changed; And fear not, cousin; I am changed indeed.' He spoke, and Enid easily believed, Like simple noble natures, credulous Of what they long for, good in friend or foe. There most in those who most have done them ill. And when they reach'd the camp the King himself Advanced to greet them, and beholding her Tho' pale, yet happy, ask'd her not a word. But went apart with Edyrn, whom he held In converse for a little, and return'd. And, gravely smiling, lifted her from horse. And kiss'd her with all pureness, brother- like. And show'd an empty tent allotted her. And glancing for a minute, till he saw her Pass into it, turn'd to the Prince, and said : * Prince, when of late ye pray'd me for my leave To move to your own land, and there defend Your marches, I was prick'd with some reproof, As one that let foul wrong stagnate and be. By having look'd too much thro' alien eyes. And wrought too long with delegated hands, Not used mine own : but now behold me come To cleanse this common sewer of all my realm. With Edyrn and with others: have ye look'd At Edyrn? have ye seen how nobly changed? This work of his is great and wonderful. His very face with change of heart is changed. The world will not believe a man repents : And this wise world of ours is mainly right. Full seldom doth a man repent, or use Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch Of blood and custom wholly out of him, And make all clean, and plant himself afresh. Edyrn has done it, weeding all his heart As I will weed this land before I go. I, therefore, made him of our Table Round, Not rashly, but have proved him every- way One of our noblest, our most valorous. Sanest and most obedient : and indeed This work of Edyrn wrought upon him- self After a life of violence, seems to me A thousand-fold more great and wonderful Than if some knight of mine, risking his hfe. My subject with my subjects under him, Should make an onslaught single on a realm Of robbers, tho' he slew them one by one. And were himself nigh wounded to the death.' So spake the King; low bow'd the Prince, and felt His work was neither great nor wonder- ful, And past to Enid's tent; and thither came The King's own leech to look into his hurt; And Enid tended on him there; and there Her constant motion round him, and the breath Of her sweet tendance hovering over him. 362 BALIN AND BALAN. Fill'd all the genial courses of his blood With deeper and with ever deeper love, As the south-west that blowing Bala lake Fills all the sacred Dee. So past the days. But while Geraint lay healing of his hurt, The blameless King went forth and cast his eyes On each of all whom Uther left in charge Long since, to guard the justice of the King: He look'd and found them wanting; and as now Men weed the white horse on the Berk- shire hills To keep him bright and clean as hereto- fore. He rooted out the slothful officer Or guilty, which for bribe had wink'd at wrong, And in their chairs set up a stronger race With hearts and hands, and sent a thou- sand men To till the wastes, and moving everywhere Cleared the dark places and let in the law, And broke the bandit holds and cleansed the land. Then, when Geraint was whole again, they past With Arthur to Caerleon upon Usk. There the great Queen once more em- braced her friend. And clothed her in apparel like the day. And tho' Geraint could never take again That comfort from their converse which he took Before the Queen's fair name was breathed upon, He rested well content that all was well. Thence after tarrying for a space they rode. And fifty knights rode with them to the shores Of Severn, and they past to their own land. And there he kept the justice of the King So vigorously yet mildly, that all hearts Applauded, and the spiteful whisper died : And being ever foremost in the chase, And victor at the tilt and tournament, They call'd him the great Fringe and man of men. But Enid, whom her ladies loved to call Enid the Fair, a grateful people named Enid the Good; and in their halls arose The cry of children, Enids and Geraints Of times to be; nor did he doubt her more, But rested in her fealty, till he crown'd A happy life with a fair death, and fell Against the heathen of the Northern Sea In battle, fighting for the blameless King. BALIN AND BALAN. Pellam the King, who held and lost with Lot In that first war, and had his realm restored But render'd tributary, fail'd of late To send his tribute; wherefore Arthur call'd His treasurer, one of many years, and spake, * Go thou with him and him and bring it to us, Lest we should set one truer on his throne. Man's word is God in man.' His Baron said * We go but harken : there be two strange knights Who sit near Camelot at a fountain-side, A mile beneath the forest, challenging And overthrowing every knight who comes. Wilt thou I undertake them as we pass, And send them to thee? ' Arthur laugh'd upon him. * Old friend, too old to be so young, depart, Delay not thou for aught, but let them sit, Until they find a lustier than themselves.' So these departed. Early, one fair dawn. The light-wing'd spirit of his youth return'd On Arthur's heart; he arm'd himself and went. So coming to the fountain-side beheld Balin and Balan sitting statuelike, BALIN AND BALAN. 363 Brethren, to right and left the spring, that down. From underneath a plume of lady-fern, Sang, and the sand danced at the bottom of it. And on the right of Balin Balin's horse Was fast beside an alder, on the left Of Balan Balan's near a poplartree. * Fair Sirs,' said Arthur, * wherefore sit ye here?' Balin and Balan answer'd, * For the sake Of glory; we be mightier men than all In Arthur's court; that also have we proved; For whatsoever knight against us came Or I or he have easily overthrown.' * I too,' said Arthur, ' am of Arthur's hall. But rather proven in his Paynim wars Than famous jousts; but see, or proven or not, Whether me likewise ye can overthrow.' And Arthur lightly smote the brethren down. And lightly so return'd, and no man knew. Then Balin rose, and Balan, and beside The carolling water set themselves again, And spake no word until the shadow turn'd; When from the fringe of coppice round them burst A spangled pursuivant, and crying * Sirs, Rise, follow ! ye be sent for by the King,' They follow'd ; whom when Arthur seeing ask'd * Tell me your names; why sat ye by the well?' Balin the stillness of a minute broke Saying, ' An unmelodious name to thee, Balin, "the Savage" — that addition thine — My brother and my better, this man here, Balan. I smote upon the naked skull A thrall of thine in open hall, my hand Was gauntleted, half slew him; for I heard He had spoken evil of me; thy just wrath Sent me a three-years' exile from thine eyes. I have not lived my life delightsomely : For I that did that violence to thy thrall, Had often wrought some fury on myself, Saving for *Balan : those three kingless years Have past — were wormwood-bitter to me. King, Methought that if we sat beside the well, And hurl'd to ground what knight soever spurr'd Against us, thou would'st take me gladher back. And make, as ten-times worthier to be thine Than twenty Balins, Balan knight. I have said. Not so — not all. A man of thine to-day Abash'd us both, and brake my boast. Thy. will?' Said Arthur, 'Thou hast ever spoken truth; Thy too fierce manhood would not let thee lie. Rise, my true knight. As children learn, be thou Wiser for falling! walk with me, and move To music with thine Order and the King. Thy chair, a grief to all the brethren, stands Vacant, but thou retake it, mine again ! ' Thereafter, when Sir Balin enter'd hall. The Lost one Found was greeted as in Heaven With joy that blazed itself in woodland wealth Of leaf, and gayest garlandage of flowers. Along the walls and down the board; they sat. And cup clash'd cup; they drank and some one sang, Sweet-voiced, a song of welcome, where- upon Their common shout in chorus, mount- ing, made Those banners of twelve battles overhead Stir, as they stirr'd of old, when Arthur's host Proclaim'd him Victor, and the day was won. Then Balan added to their Order lived A wealthier life than heretofore with these And Balin, till their embassage return'd. 364 BALIN AND BALAN. * Sir King,' they brought report, ' we hardly found, * So bush'd about it is with gloom, the hall Of him to whom ye sent us, Pellam, once A Christless foe of thine as ever dash'd Horse against horse; but seeing that thy realm Hath prosper'd in the name of Christ, the King Took, as in rival heat, to holy things; And finds himself descended from the Saint Arimathsean Joseph ; him who first Brought the great faith to Britain over seas; He boasts his life as purer than thine own; Eats scarce enow to keep his pulse abeat; Hath push'd aside his faithful wife, nor lets Or dame or damsel enter at his gates Lest he should be polluted. This gray King Show'd us a shrine wherein were wonders — yea — Rich arks with priceless bones of martyr- dom, Thorns of the crown and shivers of the cross, And therewithal (for thus he told us) brought By Holy Joseph hither, that same spear Wherewith the Roman pierced the side of Christ. He much amazed us; after, when vi^e sought The tribute, answer'd " 1 have quite fore- gone All matters of this world : Garlon, mine heir, Of him demand it," which this Garlon gave With much ado, railing at thine and thee. * But when we left, in those deep woods we found A knight of thine spear-stricken from behind, Dead, whom we buried; more than one of us Cried out on Garlon, but a woodman there Reported of some demon in the woods Was once a man, who driven by evil tongues From all his fellows, lived alone, and came To learn black magic, and to hate his kind With such a hate, that when he died, his soul Became a Fiend, which, as the man in life W^as wounded by blind tongues he saw not whence. Strikes from behind. This woodman show'd the cave From which he sallies, and wherein he dwelt. We saw the hoof-print of a horse, no more.' Then Arthur, ' Let who goes before me, see He do not fall behind me : foully slain And villainously ! who will hunt for me This demon of the woods? ' Said Balan, *I!' So claim'd the quest and rode away, but first. Embracing Balin, * Good my brother, hear! Let not thy moods prevail, when I am gone Who used to lay them ! hold them outer fiends. Who leap at thee to tear thee; shake them aside, Dreams ruling when wit sleeps ! yea, but to dream That any of these would wrong thee, wrongs thyself. Witness their flowery welcome. Bound are they To speak no evil. Truly save for fears. My fears for thee, so rich a fellowship Would make me wholly blest : thou one of them, Be one indeed : consider them, and all Their bearing in their common bond of love, No more of hatred than in Heaven itself, No more of jealousy than in Paradise.* So Balan warn'd, and went; Balin remain'd : Who — for but three brief moons had glanced away From being knighted till he smote the thrall. And faded from the presence into years Of exile — now would strictlier set himself BALIN AND BALAN. 36S To learn what Arthur meant by courtesy, Manhood, and knighthood; wherefore hover'd round Lancelot, but when he mark'd his high sweet smile In passing, and a transitory word Make knight or churl or child or damsel seem From being smiled at happier in them- selves — Sigh'd, as a boy lame-born beneath a height, That glooms his valley, sighs to see the peak Sun-flush'd, or touch at night the north- ern star; For one from out his village lately climb'd And brought report of azure lands and fair, Far seen to left and right; and he himself Hath hardly scaled with help a hundred feet Up from the base: so Balin marvelling oft How far beyond him Lancelot seem'd to move, Groan'd, and at times would mutter, 'These be gifts, Born with the blood, not learnable, divine. Beyond my reach. Well had I foughten — well — In those fierce wars, struck hard — and had I crown'd With my slain self the heaps of whom I slew — So — better ! — But this worship of the Queen, That honour too wherein she holds him — this, This was the sunshine that hath given the man A growth, a name that branches o'er the rest, ■ And strength against all odds, and what the King So prizes — overprizes — gentleness. Her likewise would I worship an I might. I never can be close with her, as he That brought her hither. Shall I pray the King To let me bear some token of his Queen Whereon to gaze, remembering her — forget My heats and violences? live afresh? j What, if the Queen disdain'd to grant it! nay Being so stately-gentle, would she make My darkness blackness? and with how sweet grace She greeted my return ! Bold will I be — Some goodly cognizance of Guinevere, In lieu of this rough beast upon my shield, Langued gules, and tooth'd with grinning savagery.' And Arthur, when Sir Balin sought him, said * What wilt thou bear ? ' Balin was bold, and ask'd To bear her own crown-royal upon shield, Whereat she smiled and turn'd her to the King, Who answer'd, 'Thou shalt put the crown to use. The crown is but the shadow of the King, And this a shadow's shadow, let him have it, So this will help him of his violences ! ' ' No shadow,' said Sir Balin, 'O my Queen, But light to me ! no shadow, O my King, But golden earnest of a gentler Hfe ! ' So Balin bare the crown, and all the knights Approved him, and the Queen, and all the world Made music, and he felt his being move In music with his Order, and the King. The nightingale, full-toned in middle May, Hath ever and anon a note so thin It seems another voice in other groves; Thus, after some quick burst of sudden wrath, The music in him seem'd to change, and grow Faint and far-off. And once he saw the thrall His passion half had gauntleted to death, That causer of his banishment and shame, Smile at him, as he deem'd, presumptu- ously : His arm half rose to strike again, but fell ; 366 BALIN AND BALAN. The memory of that cognizance on shield Weighted it down, but in himself he moan'd : *Too high this mount of Camelot for me : These high-set courtesies are not for me. Shall I not rather prove the worse for these ? Fierier and stormier from restraining, break Into some madness ev'n before the Queen?' Thus, as a hearth lit in a mountain home, And glancing on the window, when the gloom Of twilight deepens round it, seems a flame That rages in a woodland far below. So when his moods were darken'd, court and King And all the kindly warmth of Arthur's hall Shadow'd an angry distance: yet he strove To learn the graces of their Table, fought Hard with himself, and seem'd at length in peace. Then chanced, one morning, that Sir Balin sat Qose-bower'd in that garden nigh the hall. A walk of roses ran from door to door; A walk of lilies crost it to the bower : And down that range of roses the great Queen Came with slow steps, the morning on her face; And all in shadow from the counter door Sir Lancelot as to meet her, then at once, As if he saw not, glanced aside, and paced The long white walk of lilies toward the bower. FoUow'd.the Queen; Sir Balin heard her * Prince, Art thou so little loya. to thy Queen, As pass without good morrow to thy Queen? ' To whom Sir Lancelot with his eyes on earth, * Fain would I still be loyal to the Queen.' *Yea so,' she said, 'but so to pass me by- So loyal scarce is loyal to thyself, Whom all men rate the king of courtesy. Let be : ye stand, fair lord, as in a dream.' Then Lancelot with his hand among the flowers, *Yea — for a dream. Last night me- thought I saw That maiden Saint who stands with lily in hand In yonder shrine. All round her prest the dark. And all the light upon'her silver face Flow'd from the spiritual lily that she held. Lo ! these her emblems drew mine eyes — away : For see, how perfect-pure ! As light a flush As hardly tints the blossom of the quince Would mar their charm of stainless maidenhood.' * Sweeter to me,' she said, * this garden rose Deep-hued and many-folded! sweeter still The wild-wood hyacinth and the bloom of May. Prince, we have ridd'n before among the flowers In those fair days — not ajl as cool as these, Tho' season-earlier. Art thou sad? or sick? Our noble King will send thee his own leech — Sick? or for any matter anger'd at me?' Then Lancelot lifted his large eyes; they dwelt Deep-tranced on hers, and could not fall : her hue Changed at his gaze : so turning side by side They past, and Balin started from his bower. BALIN AND BALAN. 3^7 'Queen? subject? but I see not what I see. Damsel and lover? hear not what I hear. My father hath begotten me in his wrath. I suffer from the things before me, know, Learn nothing; am not worthy to be knight; A churl, a clown ! ' and in him gloom on gloom Deepen'd: he sharply caught his lance and shield, Nor stay'd to crave permission of the King, But, mad for strange adventure, dash'd away. He took the selfsame track as Balan, saw The fountain where they sat together, sigh'd, 'Was I not better there with him? ' and rode The skyless woods, but under open blue Came on the hoarhead woodman at a bough Wearily hewing. * Churl, thine axe ! ' he cried, Descended, and disjointed it at a blow: To whom the woodman utter'd wonder- ingly, *Lord, thou couldst lay the Devil of these woods If arm of flesh could lay hiiti.' Balin cried, * Him, or the viler devil who plays his part. To lay that devil would lay the Devil in me.' 'Nay,' said the churl, 'our devil is a truth, I saw the flash of him but yestereven. And some do say that our Sir Garlon too Hath learn'd black magic, and to ride unseen. Look to the cave.' But Balin answer'd him, * Old fabler, these be fancies of the churl, Look to thy woodcraft,' and so leaving him, Now with slack rein and careless of him- self, Now with dug spur and raving at him- self. Now with droopt brow down the long glades he rode; So mark'd not on his right a cavern-chasm Yawn over darkness, where, not far within, The whole day died, but, dying, gleam'd on rocks Roof-pendent, sharp; and others from the floor, Tusklike, arising, made that mouth of night Whereout the Demon issued up from Hell. He mark'd not this, but blind and deaf to all Save that chain'd rage, which ever yelpt within. Past eastward from the falling sun. At once He felt the hollow-beaten mosses thud And tremble, and then the shadow of a spear. Shot from behind him, ran along the ground. Sideways he started from the path, and saw, With pointed lance as if to pierce, a shape, A light of armour by him flash, and pass And vanish in the woods; and foUow'd this. But all so blind in rage that unawares He burst his lance against a forest bough Dishorsed himself, and rose again, and fled Far, till the castle of a King, the hall Of Pellam, lichen-bearded, grayly draped With streaming grass, appear'd, low-built but strong; The ruinous donjon as a knoll of moss, The battlement overtopt with ivytods, A home of bats, in every tower an owl. Then spake the men of Pellam crying, ' Lord, Why wear ye this crown-roval upon shield ? ' Said Balin, ' For the fairest and the best Of ladies living gave me this to bear.' So stall'd his horse, and strode across the court. 368 BALIN AND BALAN. But found the greetings both of knight and King Faint in the low dark hall of banquet : leaves ' Laid their green faces flat against the panes, Sprays grated, and the canker'd boughs without Whined in the wood; for all was hush'd within, Till when at feast Sir Garlon likewise ask'd * Why wear ye that crown-royal ? ' Balin said 'The Queen we worship, Lancelot, I, and all. As fairest, best and purest, granted me To bear it ! ' Such a sound (for Arthur's knights Were hated strangers in the hall) as makes The white swan-mother, sitting, when she hears A strange knee rustle thro' her secret reeds. Made Garlon, hissing; then he sourly smiled. * Fairest I grant her • I have seen ; but best. Best, purest? thou from Arthur's hall, and yet So simple ! hast thou eyes, or if, are these So far besotted that they fail to see This fair wife-worship cloaks a secret shame ? Truly, ye men of Arthur be but babes.' A goblet on the board by Balin, boss'd With holy Joseph's legend, on his right Stood, all of massiest bronze : one side had sea And ship and sail and angels blowing on it: And one was rough with wattling, and the walls Of that low church he built at Glaston- bury. This Balin graspt, but while in act to hurl, Thro' memory of that token on the shield Relax'd his hold : ' I will be gentle,' ht thought, 'And passing gentle,' caught his hand away. Then fiercely to Sir Garlon, * Eyes have I That saw to-day the shadow of a spear. Shot from behind me, run along the ground ; Eyes too that long have watch' d how Lancelot draws From homage to the best and purest, might, Name, manhood, and a grace, but scantly thine, Who, sitting in thine own hall, canst endure To mouth so huge a foulness — to thy guest, Me, me of Arthur's Table. Felon talk ! Let be ! no more ! ' But not the less by night The scorn of Garlon, poisoning all his rest. Stung him in dreams. At length, and dim thro' leaves Blinkt the white morn, sprays grated, and old boughs Whined in the wood. He rose, de- scended, met The scorner in the castle court, and fain. For hate and loathing, would have past him by; But when Sir Garlon utter'd mocking- wfse, ' What, wear ye still that same crown- scandalous?' His countenance blacken'd, and his forehead veins Bloated, and branch'd; and tearing out of sheath The brand, Sir Balin with a fiery ' Ha ! So thou be shadow, here I make thee ghost,' Hard upon helm smote him, and the blade flew Splintering in six, and clinkt upon the stones. Then Garlon, reeling slowly backward, fell. And Balin by the banneret of his helm Dragg'd him, and struck, but from the castle a cry BALIN AND BALAN. 369 Sounded across the court, and — men-at- arms, A score with pointed lances, making at him — He dash'd the pummel at the foremost face. Beneath a low door dipt, and made his feet Wings thro' a glimmering gallery, till he mark'd The portal of King Pellam's chapel wide And inward to the wall; he stept behind; Thence in a moment heard them pass like wolves Howling; but while he stared about the shrine. In which he scarce could spy the Christ for Saints, Beheld before a golden altar lie The longest lance his eyes had ever seen. Point-painted red; and seizing thereupon Push'd thro' an open casement down, lean'd on it. Leapt in a semicircle, and lit on earth; Then hand at ear, and barkening from what side The blindfold rummage buried in the walls Might echo, ran the counter path, and found His charger, mounted on him and away. An arrow whizz'd to the right, one to the left. One overhead; and Pellam's feeble cry * Stay, stay him ! he defileth* heavenly things With earthly uses ' — made him quickly dive Beneath the boughs, and race thro' many a mile Of dense and open, till his goodly horse, Arising wearily at a fallen oak, Stumbled headlong, and cast him face to ground. Half-wroth he had not ended, but all glad, Knightlike, to find his charger yet un- lamed, Sir Balin drew the shield from off his neck, Stared at the priceless cognizance, and th( ught 2B ' I have shamed thee so that now thou shamest me, Thee will I bear no more,' high on a branch Hung it, and turn'd aside into the woods, And there in gloom cast himself all along, Moaning * My violences, my violences ! ' But now the wholesome music of the wood Was dumb'd by one from out the hall of Mark, A damsel-errant, warbling, as she rode The woodland alleys, Vivien, with her Squire. 'The fire of Heaven has kill'd the barren cold, And kindled all the plain and all the wold. The new leaf ever pushes off the old. The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell. ' Old priest, who mumble worship in your quire — Old monk and nun, ye scorn the world's desire. Yet in your frosty cells ye feel the fire ! The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell. *The fire of Heaven is on the dusty ways. The wayside blossoms open to the blaze. The whole wood-world is one full peal of praise. The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell. *The fire of Heaven is lord of all things good, And starve not thou this fire within thy blood. But follow Vivien thro' the fiery flood ! The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell ! ' Then turning to her Squire, 'This fire of Heaven, This old sun-worship, boy, will rise again, 370 BALIN AND BALAN. And beat the cross to earth, and break the King And all his Table.' Then they reach'd a glade, Where under one long lane of cloudless air Before another wood, the royal crown Sparkled, and swaying upon a restless elm Drew the vague glance of Vivien, and her Squire; Amazed were these; * Lo there,' she cried, ' a crown — Borne by some high lord-prince of Arthur's hall. And there ahorse! the rider? where is he? See, yonder lies one dead within the wood. Not dead ; he stirs ! — but sleeping. I will speak. Hail, royal knight, we break on thy sweet rest, Not, doubtless, all unearn'd by noble deeds. But bounden art thou, if from Arthur's hall. To help the weak. Behold, I fly from shame, A lustful King, who sought to win my love Thro' evil ways : the knight, with whom I rode. Hath suffer'd misadventure, and my squire Hath in him small defence; but thou, Sir Prince, Wilt surely guide me to the warrior King, Arthur the blameless, pure as any maid, To get me shelter for my maidenhood. I charge thee by that crown upon thy shield. And by the great Queen's name, arise and hence.' And Balin rose, * Thither no more ! nor Prince Nor knight am I, but one that hath defamed The cognizance she gave me : here I dwell Savage among the savage woods, here die — Die : let the wolves' black maws en- sepulchre Their brother beast, whose anger was his lord. me, that such a name as Guinevere's, Which our high Lancelot hath so lifted up. And been thereby uplifted, should thro' me. My violence, and my villainy, come to shame.* Thereat she suddenly laugh'd and shrill, anon Sigh'd all as suddenly. Said Balin to her 'Is this thy courtesy — to mock me, ha? Hence, for I will not with thee.' Again she sigh'd * Pardon, sweet lord ! we maidens often laugh When sick at heart, when rather we should weep. 1 knew thee wrong'd. I brake upon thy rest. And now full loth am I to break thy dream. But thou art man, and canst abide a truth, Tho' bitter. Hither, boy — and mark me well. Dost thou remember at Caerleon once — A year ago — nay, then I love thee not — Ay, thou rememberest well — one summer dawn — By the great tower — Caerleon upon Usk— _ - Nay, trulv we were hidden : this fair lord. The flower of all their vestal knighthood, knelt In amorous homage — knelt — what else? — Oay Knelt, and drew down from out his night-black hair And mumbled that white hand whose ring'd caress Had wander'd from her own King's golden head. And lost itself in darkness, till she cried. — I thought the great tower would crash down on both — " Rise, my sweet King, and kiss me on the lips, BALIN AND BALAN. yj"^ Thou art my King." This lad, whose lightest word Is mere white truth in simple nakedness, Saw them embrace : he reddens, cannot speak. So bashful, he ! but all the maiden Saints, The deathless mother-maidenhood of Heaven, Cry out upon her. Up then, ride with me ! Talk not of shame ! thou canst not, an thou would'st. Do these more shame than these have done themselves.' She lied with ease; but horror-stricken he. Remembering that dark bower at Came- lot. Breathed in a dismal whisper *It is truth.' Sunnily she smiled * And even in this lone wood. Sweet lord, ye do right well to whisper this. Fools prate, and perish traitors. Woods have tongues. As walls have ears: but thou shalt go with me. And we will speak at first exceeding low. Meet is it the good King be not deceived. See now, I set thee high on vantage ground, From whence to watch the time, and eagle-like Stoop at thy will on Lancelot and the Queen.' She ceased; his evil spirit upon him leapt. He ground his teeth together, sprang with a yell, Tore from the branch, and cast on earth, the shield, Drove his mail'd heel athwart the royal crown, Stampt all into defacement, hurl'd it from him Among the forest weeds, and cursed the tale, The told-of, and the teller. That weird yell, Unearthlier than all shriek of bird or beast, Thrill'd thro' the woods; and Balan lurking there (His quest was unaccomplish'd) heard and thought 'The scream of that Wood-devil. I came to quell ! ' Then nearing ' Lo ! he hath slain some brother-knight. And tramples on the goodly shield to show His loathing of our Order and the Queen. My quest, meseems, is here. Or devil or man Guard thou thine head.' Sir Balin spake not word. But snatch'd a sudden buckler from the Squire, And vaulted on his horse, and so they crash'd In onset, and King Pellam's holy spear, Reputed to be red with sinless blood, Redden'd at once with sinful, for the point Across the maiden shield of Balan prick'd The hauberk to the flesh; and Balin's horse Was wearied to the death, and, when they clash'd, Rolling back upon Balin, crush'd the man Inward, and either fell, and swoon'd away. Then to her Squire mutter'd the damsel * Fools I This fellow hath wrought some foulness with his Queen : Else never had he borne her crown, nor raved And thus foam'd over at a rival name : But thou. Sir Chick, that scarce hast broken shell. Art yet half-yolk, not even come to down — Who never sawest Caerleon upon Usk — And yet hast often pleaded for my love — See what I see, be thou where I have been. Or else Sir Chick — dismount and loose their casques, I fain would know what manner of men they be.' 372 BALIN AND BALAN. And when the Squire had loosed them, ' Brother, I dwelt a day in Pellam'f ' Goodly ! — look ! hall: They might have cropt the myriad flower This Garlon mock'd me, but I heeded of May, not. And butt each other here, like brainless And one said " Eat in peace ! a liar bulls, is he. Dead for one heifer ! * And hates thee for the tribute!" this good knight Then the gentle Squire Told me that twice a wanton damsel «I hold them happy, so they died for came. love: And sought for Garlon at the castle- And, Vivien, tho' ye beat me Uke your gates. dog, Whom Pellam drove away with holy I too could die, as now I live, for thee.' heat. I well believe this damsel, and the one * Live on, Sir Boy,' she cried. ' I Who stood beside thee even now, the better prize same. The living dog than the dead lion : away ! " She dwells among the woods," he said, I cannot brook to gaze upon the dead.' " and meets Then leapt her palfrey o'er the fallen oak, And dallies with him in the Mouth of And bounding forward ' Leave them to Hell." the wolves.' Foul are their lives; foul are their lips; they lied. But when their foreheads felt the Pure as our own true Mother is our cooling air. Queen.' Balin first woke, and seeing that true * face. 'O brother,' answer'd Balin, *woe is Familiar up from cradle-time, so wan, me ! Crawl'd slowly with low moans to where My madness all thy life has been thy he lay. doom, And on his dying brother cast himself Thy curse, and darken'd all thy day; Dying; and he lifted faint eyes; he felt and now One near him; all at once they found The night has come. I scarce can see the world, thee now. Staring wild-wide; then with a childUke Goodnight ! for we shall never bid again wail. Goodmorrow — Dark my doom was here, And drawing down the dim disastrous and dark brow It will be there. I see thee now no That o'er him hung, he kiss'd it, moan'd more. and spake : I would not mine again should darken --■ thine, * O Balin, Balin, I that fain had died Goodnight, true brother.' To save thy life, have brought thee to thy death. Balan answer'd low Why had ye not the shield I knew? and 'Goodnight, true brother here! good- why morrow there ! Trampled ye thus on that which bare the We two were born together, and we Crown ? ' die Together by one doom : ' and while he Then Balin told him brokenly, and in spoke gasps, Closed his death-drowsing eyes, and slept All that had chanced, and Balan moan'd the sleep again. With Balin, either lock'd in cither's arm. MERLIN AND VIVIEN 373 . MERLIN AND VIVIEN. A STORM was coming, but the winds were still, And in the wild woods of Broceliande, Before an? oak, so hollow, huge and old It look'd a tower of ivied masonwork, At Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay. For he that always bare in bitter grudge The slights of Arthur and his Table, Mark The Cornish King, had heard a wander- ing voice, A minstrel of Caerleon by strong storm Blown into shelter at Tintagil, say That out of naked knightlike purity Sir Lancelot worshipt no unmarried girl But the great Queen herself, fought in her name, Sware by her — vows like theirs, that high in heaven Love most, but neither marry, nor are given In marriage, angels of our Lord's report. He ceased, and then — for Vivien sweetly said (She sat beside the banquet nearest Mark), *And is the fair example foUow'd, Sir, In Arthur's household? ' — answer'd inno- cently : * Ay, by some few — ay, truly — youths that hold It more beseems the perfect virgin knight To worship woman as true wife beyond All hopes of gaining, than as maiden girl. They place their pride in Lancelot and the Queen. So passionate for an utter purity Beyond the limit of their bond, are these. For Arthur bound them not to singleness. Brave hearts and clean ! and yet — God guide them — young.' Then Mark was half in heart to hurl his cup Straight at the speaker, but forbore : he rose To leave the hall, and, Vivien following him, Turn'd to her : ' Here are snakes within the grass; And you methinks, O Vivien, save ye fear The monkish manhood, and the mask of pure Worn by this court, can stir them till they sting.' And Vivien answer'd, smiling scorn- fully, 'Why fear? because that foster'd 2X thy court I savour of thy — virtues? fear them? no. As Love, if Love be perfect, casts out fear. So Hate, if Hate be p'erfect, casts out fear. My father died in battle against the King, My mother on his corpse in open field; She bore me there, for born from death was I Among the dead and sown upon the wind — And then on thee ! and shown the truth betimes. That old true filth, and bottom of the well, Where Truth is hidden. Gracious lessons thine And maxims of the mud ! " This Arthur pure ! Great Nature thro' the flesh herself hath made Gives him the lie ! There is no being pure, My cherub; saith not Holy Writ the same?" — If I were Arthur, I would have thy blood. Thy blessing, stainless King ! I bring thee back. When I have ferreted out their burrow- ings. The hearts of all this Order in mine hand — Ay — so that fate and craft and folly close. Perchance, one curl of Arthur's golden beard. To me this narrow grizzled fork of thine 374 MERLIN AND VIVIEN. Is cleaner-fashionM — Well, I loved thee first, That warps the wit.' Loud laugh'd the graceless Mark. But Vivien, into Camelot stealing, lodged Low in the city, and on a festal day When Guinevere was crossing the great hall Cast herself down, knelt to the Queen, and wail'd. * Why kneel ye there? What evil have ye wrought? Rise ! ' and the damsel bidden rise arose And stood with folded hands and down- ward eyes Of glancing corner, and all meekly said, 'None wrought,* but sufter'd much, an orphan maid ! My father died in battle for thy King, My mother on his corpse — in open field, The sad sea-sounding wastes of Lyon- esse — Poor wretch — no friend ! — and now by Mark the King For that small charm of feature mine, pursued — If any such be mine — I fly to thee. Save, save me thou — Woman of women — thine The wreath of beauty, thine the crown of power, Be thine the balm of pity, O Heaven's own white Earth-angel, stainless bride of stainless King — Help, for he follows ! take me to thy- self! O yield me shelter for mine innocency Among thy maidens ! ' Here her slow sweet eyes Fear-tremulous, but humbly hopeful, rose Fixt on her hearer's, while the Queen who stood All glittering like May sunshine on May leaves In green and gold, and plumed with green replied, ' Peace, child ! of overpraise and over- blame We choose the last. Our noble Arthur, him Ye scarce can overpraise, will hear and know. Nay — -.we believe all evil of thy Mark — W^ell, we shall test thee farther; but this hour We ride a-hawking with Sir Lancelot. He hath given us a fair falcon which he train'd; We go to prove it. Bide ye here the while.' She past; and Vivien murmur'd after, ♦Go! I bide the while.' Then thro' the portal- arch Peering askance, and muttering broken- wise, As one that labours with an evil dream. Beheld the Queen and Lancelot get to horse. * Is that the Lancelot? goodly — ay, but gaunt : Courteous — amends for gauntness — takes her hand — That glance of theirs, but for the street, had been A clinging kiss — how hand lingers in hand ! Let go at last ! — they ride away — to hawk For waterfowl. Royaller game is mine. For such a supersensual sensual bond As that gray cricket chirpt of at our hearth — Touch flax with flame — a glance will serve — the liars ! Ah little rat that borest in the dyke Thy hole by night to let the boundless deep Down upon far-off cities while they dance — Or dream — of thee they dream'd not — nor of me These — ay, but each of either : ride, and dream The mortal dream that never yet was mine — Ride, ride and dream until ye wake — to me ! Then, narrow court and lubber King, farewell ! MERLIN AND VIVIEN. 375 For Lancelot will be gracious to the rat, And our wise Queen, if knowing that I know. Will Late, loathe, fear — l)ut honour me the more.' Yet while they rode together down the plain. Their talk was all of training, terms of art, Diet and seeling, jesses, leash and lure. ' She is too noble,' he said, ' to check at pies. Nor will she rake : there is no baseness in her.' Here when the Queen demanded as by chance, 'Know ye the stranger woman?' 'Let her be,' . Said Lancelot and unhooded casting off The goodly falcon free; she tower'd; her bells. Tone under tone, shrill'd; and they lifted up Their eager faces, wondering at the strength. Boldness and royal knighthood of the bird Who pounced her quarry and slew it. Many a time As once — of old — among the flowers — they rode. But Vivien half-forgotten of the Queen Among her damsels broidering sat, heard, watch'd And whisper'd : thro' the peaceful court she crept And whisper'd: then as Arthur in the highest Leaven'd the world, so Vivien in the lowest. Arriving at a time of golden rest, And sowing one ill hint from ear to ear. While all the heathen lay at Arthur's feet, And no quest came, but all was joust and play, Leaven'd his hall. They heard and let her be. Thereafter as an enemy that has left Death in the living waters, and with- drawn, The wily Vivien stole from Arthur's court. She hated all the knights, and heard in thought Their lavish comment when her name was named. For once, when Arthur walking all alone, Vext at a rumour issued from herself Of some corruption crept among his knights. Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair. Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice. And flutter'd adoration, and at last With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more Than who should prize him most; at which the King Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by: But one had watch'd, and had not held his peace : It made the laughter of an afternoon That Vivien should attempt the blame- less King. And after that, she set herself to gain Him, the most famous man of all those times. Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts. Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls. Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens; The people call'd him Wizard; whom at first She plav'd about with slight and sprightly talk, And vivid smiles, and faintly-venom'd points Of slander, glancing here and grazing there; And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer Would watch her at her petulance, and play, Ev'n when they seem'd unlovable, and laugh As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew Tolerant of what he half disdain'd, and she, Perceiving that she was but half disdain'd, 376 MERLIN AND VIVIEN. Began to break her sports with graver fits, Turn red or pale, would often when they met Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him With such a fixt devotion, that the old man, Tho' doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times Would flatter his own wish in age for love, And half believe her true : for thus at times He waver'd; but that other clung to him, Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went. Then fell on Merlin a great melancholy; He walk'd with dreams and darkness, and he found A doom that ever poised itself to fall. An ever-moaning battle in the mist. World-war of dying flesh against the life, Death in all life and lying in all love. The meanest having power upon the highest. And the high purpose broken by the worm. So leaving Arthur's court he gain'd the beach; There found a little boat, and stept into it; And Vivien follow'd, but he mark'd her not. She took the helm and he the sail; the boat Drave with a sudden w'ind across the deeps. And touching Breton sands, they dis- embark' d. And then she follow'd Merlin all the way, Ev'n to the wild woods of Broceliande. For Merlin once had told her of a charm, The which if any wrought on any one With woven paces and with waving arms. The man so wrought on ever seem'd to lie Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower. From which was no escape for evermore; And none could find that man for ever- more, Nor coukl lie see but him who wrought the charm Coming and going, and he lay as dead And lost to life and use and name and fame. And Vivien ever sought to work the charm Upon the great Enchanter of the Time, As fancying that her glory would be great According to . his greatness whom she quench'd. There lay she all her length and kiss'd his feet, As if in deepest reverence and in love. A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe Of samite without price, that more exprest Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs, In colour like the satin-shining palm On sallows in the windy gleams of March : And while she kiss'd them, crying, 'Trample me. Dear feet, that I have follow'd thro' the world. And I will pay you worship; tread me down And I will kiss you for it;' he was mute : So dark a forethought roU'd about his brain, As on a dull day in an Ocean cave The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall In silence : wherefore, when she lifted up A face of sad appeal, and spake and said, * O Merlin, do ye love me? ' and again, *0 Merlin, do ye love me?' and once more, 'Great Master, do ye love me?' he was mute. And lissome Vivien, holding by his heel, Writhed toward him, slided up his knee and sat. Behind his ankle twined her hollow feet Together, curved an arm about his neck, Clung like a snake; and letting her left hand Droop from his mighty shoulder, as a leaf, Made with her right a comb of pearl to part The lists of such a beard as youth gone out Had left in ashes: then he spoke and said. Not looking at her, ' Who are wise in love MERLIN AND VIVIEN. 377 Love most, say least,' and Vivien an- swer'd quick, * I saw the little elf-god eyeless once In Arthur's arras hall at Camelot : But neither eyes nor tongue — O stupid child ! Yet you are wise who say it; let me think Silence is wisdom : I am silent then, And ask no kiss;' then adding all at once, 'And lo, I clothe myself with wisdom,' drew The vast and shaggy mantle of his beard Across her neck and bosom to her knee, And call'd herself a gilded summer fly Caught in a great old tyrant spider's web, Who meant to eat her up in that wild wood Without one word. So Vivien call'd her- self. But rather seem'd a lovely baleful star Veil'd in gray vapour; till he sadly smiled : * To what request for what strange boon,' he said, 'Are these your pretty tricks and fooleries, Vivien, the preamble? yet my thanks, For these have broken up my melancholy.' And Vivien ansvver'd smiling saucily, * What, O my Master, have ye found your voice? 1 bid the stranger welcome. Thanks at last! But yesterday you never open'd lip, Except indeed to drink : no cup had we : In mine own lady palms I cuU'd the spring That gather'd trickling dropwise from the cleft. And made a pretty cup of both my hands And ofifer'd you it kneeling: then you drank And knew no more, nor gave me one poor word ; O no more thanks than might a goat have given With no more sign of reverence than a beard. And when we halted at that other well, And I was faint to swooning, and you lay Foot-gilt with all the blossom-dust of those Deep meadows we had traversed, did you know That Vivien bathed your feet before her own ? And yet no thanks : and all thro' this wild wood And all this morning when I fondled you : Boon, ay, there was a boon, one not su strange — How had I wrong'd you? surely ye are wise. But such a silence is more wise than kind.' And Merlin lock'd his hand in hers and said : * O did ye never lie upon the shore, And watch the curl'd white of the com- ing wave Glass'd in the slippery sand before it breaks? Ev'n such a wave, but not so pleasurable. Dark in the glass of some presageful mood, Had I for three days seen, ready to fall. And then I rose and fled from Arthur's court To break the mood. You follow'd me unask'd ; And when I look'd, and saw you follow- ing still, My mind involved yourself the nearest thing • In that mind-mist : for shall I tell you truth? You seem'd that wave about to break upon me And sweep me from my hold upon the world, My use and name and fame. Your par- don, child. Your pretty sports have brighten'd all again. And ask your boon, for boon I owe you thrice, Once for wrong done you by confusion, next For thanks it seems till now neglected, last For these your dainty gambols: where- fore ask; And take this boon so strange and not so strange.' 378 MERLIN AND VIVIEN. And Vivien answer'd smiling mourn- fully : * O not so strange as my long asking it, Not yet so strange as you yourself are strange, Nor half so strange as that dark mood of yours. I ever fear'd ye were not wholly mine; And see, yourself have own'd ye did me wrong. The people call you prophet : let it be : But not of those that can expound them- selves. Take Vivien for expounder; she will call That three-days'-long presageful gloom of yours No presage, but the same mistrustful mood That makes you seem less noble than yourself, Whenever I have ask'd this very boon. Now ask'd again : for see you not, dear love. That such a mood as that, which lately gloom'd Your fancy when ye saw me following you. Must make me fear still more you are not mine, Must make me yearn still more to prove you mine, And make me wish still more to learn this charm Of woven paces and of waving hands, As proof of trust. O Merlin, teach it me. The charm so taught will charm us both to rest. For, grant me some slight pov/er upon your fate, I, feeling that you felt me worthy trust. Should rest and let you rest, knowing you mine. And therefore be as great as ye are named, Not muffled round with selfish reticence. How hard you look and how denyingly ! O, if you think this wickedness in me, That I should prove it on you unawares, That makes me passing wrathful; then our bond Had best be loosed fur ever : but think or not. By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk : Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Ev'n in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery — May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which 1 scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, The great proof of your love : because I think. However wise, ye hardly know me yet.' And Merlin loosed his hand from hers and said, * I never was less wise, however wise, Too curious Vivien, tho' you talk of trust, Than when I told you first of such a charm. Yea, if ye talk of trust I tell you this. Too much I trusted when I told you that, And stirr'd this vice in you which ruin'd man Thro' woman the first hour; for howsoe'ef In children a great curiousness be well. Who have to learn themselves and all the world, In you, that are no child, for still I find Your face is practised when I spell the lines, 1 call it, — well, I will not call it vice : But since you name yourself the summer fly, I well could wish a cobweb for the gnat. That settles, beaten back, and beaten back Settles, till one could yield for weariness : But since I will not yield to give you power Upon my life and use and name and fame, Why will ye never ask some other boon? Yea, by God's rood, I trusted you too much.' And Vivien, like the tenderest-hearted maid That ever bided tryst at village stile. Made answer, either eyelid wet with tears : 'Nay, Master, be not wrathful with your maid ; MERLIN AND VIVIEN, 379 Caress her : let her feel herself forgiven Who feels no heart to ask another boon. I think ye hardly know the tender rhyme Of " trust nie not at all or all in all." I heard the great Sir Lancelot sing it once, And it shall answer for me. Listen to it. * '* In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours, Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers : Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all. ' "It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all. * "The little rift within the lover's lute Or little pitted speck in garner'd fruit. That rotting inward slowly moulders all. * " It is not worth the keeping : let it go : But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no. And trust me not at all or all in all." O Master, do ye love my tender rhyme? ' And Merlin look'd and half believed her true, .So tender was her voice, so fair her face. So sweetly gleam'd her eyes behind her tears Like sunlight on the plain behind a shower : And yet he answer'd half indignantly : * Far other was the song that once I heard By this huge oak, sung nearly vv^here we sit: For here we met, some ten or twelve of us, To chase a creature that was current then In these wild woods, the hart with golden . horns. It was the time when first the question rose About the founding of a Table Round, That was to be, for love of God and men And noble deeds, the flower of all the world. And each incited each to noble deeds. And while we waited, one, the youngest of us. We could not keep him silent, out he flash'd, And into such a song, such fire for fame. Such trumpet-blowings in it, coming down To such a stern and iron-clashing close. That when he stopt we long'd to hurl together, And should have done it; but the beau- teous beast Scared by the noise upstarted at our feet, And like a silver shadow slipt away Thro' the dim land; and all day long we rode Thro' the dim land against a rushing wind. That glorious roundel echoing in our ears. And chased the flashes of his golden horns Until they vanish'd by the fairy well That laughs at iron — as our warriors did — Where children cast their pins and nails, and. cry, " Laugh, little well ! " but touch it with a sword. It buzzes fiercely round the point; and there We lost him : such a noble song was that. But, Vivien, when you sang me that sweet rhyme, I felt as tho' you knew this cursed charm, Were proving it on me, and that I lay And felt them slowly ebbing, name and fame.' And Vivien answer'd, smiling mourn- _ fully : * O mine have ebb'd away for evermore, And all thro' following you to this wild vs'ood. Because I saw you sad, to comfort you. Lo now, what hearts have men ! they never mount As high as woman in her selfless mood. And touching fame, howe'er ye scorn my song. Take one verse more — the lady speaks it — this: , 38o MERLIN AND VIVIEN. ' " My name, once mine, now thine, is closelier mine. For fame, could fame be mine, that fame were thine, And shame, could shame be thine, that shame were mine. So trust me not at all or all in all." *Says she not well? and there is more — this rhyme Is like the fair pearl-necklace of the Queen, That burst in dancing, and the pearls were split; Some lost, some stolen, some as relics kept. But nevermore the same two sister pearls Ran down the silken thread to kiss each other On her white neck — so is it with this rhyme : It lives dispersedly in many hands, And every minstrel sings it differently; Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls : " Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love." Yea ! Love, tho' Love were of the gross- est, carves A portion from the solid present, eats And uses, careless of the rest; but Fame, The Fame that follows death is nothing to us; And what is Fame in life but half-dis- fame. And counterchanged with darkness? ye yourself Know well that Envy calls you Devil's son, And since ye seem the Master of all Art, They fain would make you Master of all vice.' And Merlin lock'd his hand in hers and said, *I once was looking for a magic wee.d. And found a fair young squire who sat alone, Had carved himself a knightly shield of wood. And then was painting on it fancied arms. Azure, an Eagle rising, or the Sun In dexter chief; the scroll "I follow fame." And speaking not, but leaning over him, I took his brush and blotted out the bird, And made a Gardener putting in a graff. With this for motto, " Rather use than fame." You should have seen him blush; but afterwards He made a stalwart knight. O Vivien, For you, methinks you think you love me well; For me, I love you somewhat; rest : and Love Should have some rest and pleasure in himself, Not ever be too curious for a boon, Too prurient for a pi'oof against the grain Of him ye say ye love : but Fame with men, Being but ampler means to serve man- kind. Should have small rest or pleasure in herself. But work as vassal to the larger love. That dwarfs the petty love of one to one. Use gave me Fame at first, and Fame again Increasing gave me use. Lo, there my boon ! What other? for men sought to prove me vile. Because I fain had given them greater. wits: And then did Envy call me Devil's son : The sick weak beast seeking to help herself By striking at her better, miss'd, and brought Her own claw back, and wounded her own heart. Sweet were the days when I was all unknown. But when my name was lifted up, the storm Brake on the mountain and I cared not for it. Right well know I that Fame is half- disfame, Yet needs must work my work. Tiiat other fame, To one at least, who hath not children, vague, The cackle of the unborn about the grave, I cared not for it : a single misty star, MERLIN AND VIVIEN. 381 Which is the second in a line of stars That seem a sword beneath a belt of three, I never gazed upon it but I dreamt Of some vast charm concluded in that star To make fame nothing. Wherefore, if I fear, Giving you power upon me thro' this charm, That you might play me falsely, having power. However well ye think ye love me now (As sons of kings loving in pupilage Have turn'd to tyrants when they came to power), I rather dread the loss of use than fame ; If you — and not so much from wicked- ness, As some wild turn of anger, or a mood Of overstrain'd affection, it may be. To keep me all to your own self, — or else A sudden spurt of woman's jealousy, — Should try this charm on whom ye say ye love.' And Vivien answer'd smiling as in wrath : *Have I not sworn? I am not trusted. Good ! Well, hide it, hide it; I shall find it out; And being found take heed of Vivien. A woman and not trusted, doubtless I Might feel some sudden turn of anger born Of your misfaith; and your fine epithet Is accurate too, for this full love of mine Without the full heart back may merit well Your term of overstrain'd. So used as I, My daily wonder is, I love at all. And as to woman's jealousy, O why not? to what end, except a jealous one, And one to make me jealous if I love. Was this fair charm invented by yourself? 1 well believe that all about this world Ye cage a buxom captive here and there. Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower From which is no escape for evermore.' Then the great Master merrily answer'd her: *Full many a love in loving youth was mine; I needed then no charm to keep them mine But youth and love; and that full heart of yours Whereof ye prattle, may now assure you mine; So live uncharm'd. For those who wrought it first. The wrist is parted from the hand that waved, The feet unmortised from their ankle- bones Who paced it, ages back : but will ye hear The legend as in guerdon for your rhyme ? 'There lived a king in the most Eastern East, Less old than I, yet older, for my blood Hath earnest in it of far springs to be. A tawny pirate anchor'd in his port. Whose bark had plunder'd twenty name- less isles; And passing one, at the high peep of dawn. He saw two cities in a thousand boats All fighting for a woman on the sea. And pushing his black craft among them all. He lightly scatter'd theirs and brought her off. With loss of half his people arrow-slain; A maid so smooth, so white, so wonderful, They said a light came from her when she moved : And since the pirate would not yield her up. The King impaled him for his piracy; Then made her Queen: but those isle- nurtured eyes Waged such unwilling tho' successful war On all the youth, they sicken'd; councils thinn'd. And armies waned, for magnet-like she drew The rustiest iron of old fighters' hearts; And beasts themselves would worship; camels knelt Unbidden, and the brutes of mountain back That carry kings in castles, bow'd black knees 382 MERLIN AND VIVIEN. Of homage, ringing with their serpent hands, To make her smile, her golden ankle-bells. What wonder, being jealous, that he sent His horns of proclamation out thro' all The hundred under-kingdoms that he sway'd To find a wizard who might teach the King Some charm, which being wrought upon the Queen Might keep her all his own : to such a one He promised more than ever king has given, A league of mountain full of golden mines, A province with a hundred miles of coast, A palace and a princess, all for him : But on all those who tried and fail'd, the King Pronounced a dismal sentence, meaning by it To keep the list low and pretenders back, Or like a king, not to be trifled with — Their heads should moulder on the city gates. And many tried and fail'd, because the charm Of nature in her overbore their own : And many a wizard brow bleach'd on the walls : And many weeks a troop of carrion crows Hung like a cloud above the gateway towers.' And Vivien breaking in upon him, said : * I sit and gather honey; yet, methinks, Thy tongue has tript a little : ask thyself. The lady never made tinwilling war With those fine eyes : she had her pleas- ure in it, And made her good man jealous with good cause. And lived there neither dame nor damsel then Wroth at a lover's loss? were all as tame, I mean, as noble, as their Queen was fair? Not one to flirt a venom at her eyes, Or pinch a murderous dust into her drink, Or make her paler with a poison'd rose? Well, those were not our days : but did they find A wizard ? Tell me, was he like to thee ? * She ceased, and made her lithe arm round his neck Tighten,' and then drew back, and let her eyes Speak for her, glowing on him, like a bride's On her new lord, her own, the first of men. He answer'd laughing, ' Nay, not like to me. At last they found — his foragers for charms — A little glassy-headed hairless man. Who lived alone in a great wild on grass; Read but q_ne book, and ever reading grew So grated down and filed away with thought, So lean his eyes were monstrous; while the skin Clung but to crate and basket, ribs and spine. And since he kept his mind on one sole aim. Nor ever touch'd fierce wine, nor tasted flesh. Nor own'd a sensual wish, to him the wall That sunders ghosts and shadow-casting men Became a crystal, and he saw them thro' it, And heard their voices talk behind the wall, And learnt their elemental secrets, powers And forces; often o'er the sun's bright eye Drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud. And lash'd it at the base with slanting storm ; Or in the noon of mist and driving rain, When the lake whiten'd and the pine- wood roar'd. And the cairn'd mountain was a shadow, sunn'd The world to peace again : here was the man. And so by force they dragg'd him to the King. And then he taught the King to charm the Queen In such-wise, that no man could see her more, Nor saw she save the King, who wrought the charm, MERLIN AND VIVIEN. 383 Coming and going, and she lay as dead, And lost all use of life : but when the King Made proffer of the league of golden mines, The province with a hundred miles of coast, The palace and the princess, that old man Went back to his old wild, and lived on grass, And vanish'd, and his book came down to me.' And Vivien answer'd smiling saucily : * Ye have the book : the charm is written in it : Good : take my counsel : let me know it at once : For keep it like a puzzle chest in chest, With each chest lock'd and padlock'd thirty-fold, And whelm all this beneath as vast a mound As after furious battle turfs the slain On some wild down above the windy deep, I yet should strike upon a sudden means To dig, pick, open, find and read the charm : Then, if I tried it, who should blame me then?' And smiling as a master smiles at one That is not of his school, nor any school But that where blind and naked Ignorance Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed, On all things all day long, he answer'd her: * Thou read the book, my pretty Vivien ! O ay, it is but twenty pages long, But every page having an ample marge. And every marge enclosing in the midst A square of text that looks a little blot. The text no larger than the limbs of fleas; And every square of text an awful charm. Writ in a language that has long gone by. So long, that mountains have arisen since With cities on their flanks — thou read the book ! And every margin scribbled, crest, and cramm'd With comment, densest condensation, hard To mind and eye; but the long sleepless nights Of my long life have made it easy to me. And none can read the text, not even I; And none can read the comment but myself; And in the comment did I find the charm. O, the results are simple; a mere child Might use it to the harm of any one. And never could undo it : ask no more : For tho' you should not prove it upon me. But keep that oath ye sware, ye might, perchance. Assay it on some one of the Table Round, And all because ye dream they babble of you.' And Vivien, frowning in true anger, said: * What dare the full-fed liars say of me ? They ride abroad redressing human wrongs ! They sit with knife in meat and wine in horn ! They bound to holy vows of chastity ! Were I not woman, I could tell a tale. But you are man, you well can under- stand The shame that cannot be explain'd for shame. Not one of all the drove should touch me : swine ! ' Then answer'd Merlin careless of her words: ' You breathe but accusation vast and vague. Spleen-born, I think, and proofless. If ye know. Set up the charge ye know, to stand or fall ! ' And Vivien answer'd frowning wrath- fully : ' O ay, what say ye to Sir Valence, him Whose kinsman left him watcher o'er his wife And two fair babes, and went to distant lands; 384 MERLIN AND VIVIEN. Was one year gone, and on returning found Not two but three? there lay the reck- ling, one But one hour old ! What said the happy sire? A seven-months' babe had been a truer gift. Those twelve sweet moons confused his fatherhood.' Then answer'd Merlin, * Nay, I know the tale. Sir Valence wedded with an outland dame : Some cause had kept him sunder'd from his wife : One child they had: it lived with her: she died : His kinsman travelling on his own affair Was charged by Valence to bring home the child. He brought, not found it therefore : take the truth.' *0 ay,' said Vivien, * overtrue a tale. What say ye then to sweet Sir Sagramore, That ardent man? "to pluck the flower in season," So says the song, " I trow it is no trea- son." Master, shall we call him overquick To crop his own sweet rose before the hour? ' And Merlin answer'd, ' Overquick art thou To catch a loathly plume fall'n from the wing Of that foul bird of rapine whose whole prey Is man's good name : he never wrong'd his bride. 1 know the tale. An angry gust of wind PufPd out his torch among the myriad- room'd And many-corridor'd complexities Of Arthur's palace : then he found a door. And darkling felt the sculptured ornament That wreathen round it made it seem his own: And wearied out made for the couch and slept, A stainless man beside a stainless maid; And either slept, nor knew of other there; Till the high dawn piercing the royal rose In Arthur's casement glimmer'd chastely down, Blushing upon them blushing, and at once He rose without a word and parted from her: But when the thing was blazed about the court, The brute world howling forced them into bonds, And as it chanced they are happy, being pure.' ' O ay,' said Vivien, * that were likely too. What say ye then to fair Sir Percivale And of the horrid foulness that he wrought, The saintly youth, the spotless lamb of Christ, Or some black wether of St. Satan's fold. What, in the precincts of the chapel-yard, Among the knightly brasses of the graves, And by the cold Hie Jacets of the dead ! ' And Merlin answer'd careless of her charge, 'A sober man is Percivale and pure; But once in life was fluster'd with new wine, Then paced for coolness in the chapel- yard; Where one of Satan's shepherdesses caught And meant to stamp him with her mas- ter's mark; And that he sinn'd is not believable; For, look upon his face ! — but if he sinn'd. The sin that practice burns into the blood, And not the one dark hour which brings remorse, Will brand us, after, of whose fold we be : Or else were he, the holy king, whose hymns Are chanted in the minster, worse than all. But is your spleen froth'd out, or have ye more? ' MERLIN AND VIVIEN. 38s And Vivien answer'd frowning yet in wrath : 'O ay; what say ye to Sir Lancelot, friend ? Traitor or true? that commerce with the Queen, I ask you, is it clamour'd by the child. Or whisper'd in the corner? do ye know - it?' To which he answer'd sadly, * Yea, I know it. Sir Lancelot went ambassador, at first, To fetch her, and she watch'd him from her walls. A rumour runs, she took him for the King, So fixt her fancy on him : let them be. But have ye no one word of loyal praise For Arthur, blameless King and stainless man? ' She answer'd with a low and chuckling laugh : ' Man ! is he man at all, who knows and winks? Sees what his fair bride is and does, and winks? By which the good King means to blind himself, And blinds himself and all the Table Round To all the foulness that they work. My- self Could call him (were it not for woman- hood) The pretty, popular name such manhood earns, Could call him the main cause of all their crime; Yea, were he not crown'd King, coward, and fool.' Then Merlin to his own heart, loath- ing, said : * O true and tender ! O my liege and King ! O selfless man and stainless gentleman, Who wouklst against thine own eye-wit- ness fain Have all men true and leal, all women pure; How, in the mouths of base interpreters. From over-fineness not intelligible To things with every sense as false and foul As the poach'd filth that floods the middle street, Is thy white blamelessness accounted blame ! ' But Vivien, deeming Merlin overborne By instance, recommenced, and let her tongue ' Rage like a fire among the noblest names. Polluting, and imputing her whole self. Defaming and defacing, till she left Not evea Lancelot brave, nor Galahad clean. Her words had issue other than she will'd. He dragg'd his eyebrow bushes down, and made A snowy penthouse for his hollow eyes. And mutter'd in himself, *Tell her the charm I So, if she had it, would she rail on me To snare the next, and if she have it not So will she rail. What did the wanton say? "Not mount as high; " we scarce can sink as low : For men at most differ as Heaven and earth. But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell. I know the Table Round, my friends of old; All brave, and many generous, and some chaste. She cloaks the scar of some repulse with lies; I well believe she tempted them and fail'd. Being so bitter : for fine plots may fail, Tho* harlots paint their talk as well as face With colours of the heart that are not theirs. I will not let her know: nine tithes of times Face-flatterer and backbiter are the same. And they, sweet soul, that most impute a crime Are pronest to it, and impute themselves, Wanting the mental range; or low desire Not to feel lowest makes them level alL 386 MERLIN AND VIVIEN. Vea, they would pare the mountain to the plain, To leave an equal baseness; and in this Are harlots like the crowd, that if they find Some stain or blemish in a name of note, Not grieving that their greatest are so small. Inflate themselves with some insane de- light, And judge all nature from her feet of clay, Without the will to lift their eyes, and see Her godlike head crown'd with spiritual fire, And touching other worlds. I am weary of her.' He spoke in words part heard, in whispers part. Half-suffocated in the hoary fell And many-winter'd fleece of throat and chin. But Vivien, gathering somewhat of his mood. And hearing * harlot ' mutter'd twice or thrice. Leapt from her session on his lap, and stood Stiff" as a viper frozen; loathsome sight, How from the rosy lips of life and love, Flash'd the bare-grinning skeleton of death ! White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puff'd Her fairy nostril out; her hand half- clench'd Went faltering sideways downward to her belt, And feeling; had she found a dagger there (For in a wink the false love turns to hate) She would have stabb'd him; but she found it not : His eye was calm, and suddenly she took To bitter weeping like a beaten child, A long, long weeping, not consolable. Then her false voice made way, broken with sobs: * O crueller than was ever told in tale. Or sung in song ! O vainly lavish'd love ! O cruel, there was nothing wild or strange, Or seeming shameful — for what shame in love. So love be true, and not as yours is — nothing Poor Vivien had not done to win his trust Who call'd her what he call'd her — ail her crime, All — all — the wish to prove him wholly hers.' She mused a little, and then clapt her hands Together with a wailing shriek, and said : ' Stabb'd through the heart's affections to the heart ! Seethed like the kid in its own mother's milk ! Kill'd with a word worse than a life of blows ! I thought that he was gentle, being great : God, that I had loved a smaller man ! 1 should have found in him a greater heart. O, I, that flattering my true passion, saw The knights, the court, the King, dark in your light, Who loved to make men darker than they are. Because of that high pleasure which I had To seat you sole upon my pedestal Of worship — I am answer'd, and hence- forth The course of life that seem'd so flowery to me With you for guide and master, only you. Becomes the sea-cliff pathway broken short. And ending in a ruin — nothing left. But into some low cave to crawl, and there. If the wolf spare me, weep my life away, Kill'd with inutterable unkindliness.' She paused, she turn'd away, she hung her head, The snake of gold slid from her hair, the braid Slipt and uncoil'd itself, she wept afresh, And the dark wood grew darker toward the storm In silence, while his anger slowly died Within him, till he let his wisdom go MERLIN AND VIVIEN. 387 For ease of heart, and half believed her true : Call'd her to shelter in the hollow oak, ' Come from the storm,' and having no reply, Gazed at the heaving shoulder, and the face Hand-hidden, as for utmost grief or ^hame; Then thrice essay'd, by tenderest-touching terms, To sleek her ruffled peace of mind, in vain. At last she let herself be conquer'd by him, And as the cageling newly flown returns, The seeming-injured simple-hearted thing Came to her old perch back, and settled there. There while she sat, half-falling from his knees, Half-nestled at his heart, and since he saw The slow tear creep from her closed eye- lid yet, xVbout her, more in kindness than in love. The gentle wizard cast a shielding arm. But she dislink'd herself at once and rose. Her arms upon her breast across, and stood, A virtuous gentlewoman deeply wrong'd, Upright and flush'd before him : then she said: * There must be now no passages of love Betwixt us twain henceforward evermore; Since, if I be what I am grossly call'd, What should be granted which your own gross heart Would reckon worth the taking? I will go- In truth, but one thing now — better have died Thrice than have ask'd it once — could make me stay — That proof of trust — so often ask'd in vain ! How justly, after that vile term of yours, I find with grief! I might believe i'ou then. Who knows? once more. Lo ! what was once to me Mere matter of the fancy, now hath grown The vast necessity of heart and life. Farewell; think gently of me, for I fear My fate or folly, passing gayer youth For one so old, must be to love thee still. But ere I leave thee let me swear once more That if I schemed against thy peace in this, May yon just heaven, that darkens o'er me, send One flash, that, missing all things els'^, may make My scheming brain a cinder, if I lie.' ScarcQ had she ceased, when out of heaven a bolt (For now the storm was close above them) struck. Furrowing a giant oak, and javelining With darted spikes and splinters of the wood The dark earth round. He raised his eyes and saw The tree that shone white-listed thro' the gloom. But Vivien, fearing heaven had heard her oath. And dazzled by the livid-flickering fork, And deafen'd with the stammering cracks and claps That follow'd, flying back and crying out, ' O Merlin, tho' you do not love me, save. Yet save me ! ' clung to him and hugg'd him close; And call'd him dear protector in her fright, Nor yet forgot her practice in her fright. But wrought upon his mood and hugg'd him close. The pale blood of the wizard at her touch Took gayer colours, like an opal warm'd. She blamed herself for telling hearsay tales : She shook from fear, and for her fault she wept Of petulancy; she call'd him lord and liege, Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve. Her God, her Merlin, the one passionate love Of her whole life; and ever overhead 388 LANCELOT AND ELAINE, Bellow'd the tempest, and the rotten branch Snapt in the rushing of the river-rain Above them; and in change of glare and gloom Her eyes and neck glittering went and came; Till now the storm, ils l^iurst of passion spent, Moaning and calling out of other lands, Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more To peace; and what should not have been had been, For Merlin, overtalk'd and overworn, Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept. Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm Of woven paces and of waving hands. And in the hollow oak he lay as dead. And lost to life and use and name and fame. Then crying ' I have made his glory mine,' And shrieking out * O fool ! ' the harlot leapt Adown the forest, and the thicket closed Behind her, and the forest echo'd ' fool.' LANCELOT AND ELAINE. Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat, High in her chamber up a tower to the east - Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot; Which first she placed where morning's earliest ray Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam ; Then fearing rust or soilure fashion'd for it A case of silk, and braided thereupon All the devices blazon'd on the shield In their own tinct, and added, of her wit, A border fantasy of branch and flower, And yellow-throated nestling in the nest. Nor rested thus content, but day by day. Leaving her household and good father, climb'd That eastern tower, and entering l)arr'd her door, Stript off the case, and read the naked shield, Now guess'd a hidden meaning in his arms. Now made a pretty history to herself Of every dint a sword had beaten in it, And every scratch a lance had made upon it, Conjecturing when and where : this cut is fresh ; That ten years back; this dealt him at Caerlyle; That at Caerleon ; this at Cariielot : And ah God's mercy, what a stroke was there ! And here a thrust that might have kill'd, ' but God Broke the strong lance, and roU'd his ^ and kings. Surely his King and most familiar friend ^v. " Might well have kept his secret. True, So all in wrath he got to horse and indeed, went; Albeit I know my knights fantastical, While Arthur to the banquet, dark in So fine a fear in our large Lancelot mood, Must needs have moved my laughter: Past, thinking, ' Is it Lancelot who hath now remains come But little cause for laughter : his own Despite the wound he spake of, all for kin — gain 111 news, my Queen, for all who love him, Of glory, and hath added wound to this ! — wound, His kith and kin, not knowing, set upon And ridd'n away to die? ' So fear'd the him; King, So that he went sore wounded from the And, after two days' tarriance there. field : return'd. Yet good news too : for goodly hopes are Then when he saw the Queen, embra- mine cing ask'd. That Lancelot is no more a lonely heart. •Love, are you yet so sick?' 'Nay, He wore, against his wont, upon his helm lord,' she said. A sleeve of scarlet, broider'd with great 'And where is Lancelot?' Then the pearls. Queen amazed, Some gentle maiden's gift.' 'Was he not with you? won he not your . prize?' ' Yea, lord,' she said, ' Nay, but one like him.' ' Why that like 'Thy hopes are mine,' and saying that, was he.' she choked. And when the King demanded how she And sharply turn'd about to hide her face, knew, Past to her chamber, and there flung Said, ' Lord, no sooner had ye parted herself from us. Down on the great King's couch, and Than Lancelot told me of a common talk writhed upon it, That men went down before his spear at And clench'd her fingers till they bit the a touch. palm. But knowing he was Lancelot; his great And shriek'd out 'Traitor' to the un- name hearing wall. Conquer'd; and therefore would he hide Then flash'd into wild tears, and rose his name again. From all men, ev'n the King, and to this And moved about her palace, proud and end pale. LANCELOT AND ELAINE. Gavvain the while thro' all the region round Rode with his diamond, wearied of the quest, Touch'd at all points, except the poplar grove, And came at last, tho' late, to Astolat : Whom glittering in enamell'd arms the maid Glanced at, and cried, ' What news from Camelot, lord? What of the knight with the red sleeve? ' ' He won.' * I knew it,' she said. * But parted from the jousts Hurt in the side,' whereat she caught her breath ; Thro' her own side she felt the sharp lance go; Thereon she smote her hand: wellnigh she swoon'd : And, while he gazed wonderingly at her, came The Lord of Astolat out, to whom the Prince Reported who he was, and on what quest Sent, that he bore the prize and could ' not find The victor, but had ridd'n a random round To seek him, and had wearied of the search. To whom the Lord of Astolat, ' Bide with us, And ride no more at random, noble Prince ! Here was the knight, and here he left a shield; This will he send or come for : further- more Our son is with him; we shall hear anon. Needs must we hear.' To this the cour- teous Prince Accorded with his wonted courtesy, Courtesy with a touch of traitor in it. And stay'd; and cast his eyes on fair Elaine : Where could be found face daintier? then her shape From forehead down to foot, perfect — again From foot to forehead exquisitely turn'd : 'Well — if I bide, lo ! this wild flower for me ! ' And oft they met among the garden yews, And there he set himself to pla,y upon her With sallying wit, free ilashes from a height Above her, graces of the court, and songs, Sighs, and slow smiles, and golden elo- quence And amorous adulation, till the maid Rebell'd against it, saying to him, ' Prince, O loyal nephew of our noble King, Why ask you not to see the shield he left, Whence you might learn his name ? Why slight your King, And lose the quest he sent you on, and prove No surer than our falcon yesterday. Who lost the hem we slipt her at, and went To all the winds ? ' ' Nay, by mine head,' said he, ' I lose it, as we lose the lark in heaven, O damsel, in the light of your blue eyes; But an yc will it let me see the shield.' And when the shield was brought, and Gawain saw Sir Lancelot's azure lions, crown'd with gold, Ramp in the field, he smote his thigh, and mock'd : * Right was the King ! our Lancelot ! that true man ! ' * And right was I,' - iC answer'd merrily, 'I, Who dream'd my knight the greatest knight of all' *And if / dream'd,' said Gawain, '.that you love This greatest knight, your pardon ! lo, ye know it ! Speak therefore : shall I waste myself in vain? ' Full simple was her answer, * What know I? My brethren have been all my fellow- ship; And I, when often they have talk'd of love, Wish'd it had been my mother, for they talk'd, Mcseem'd, of what they knew not; so myself — LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 399 I know not if I know what true love is, But if I know, then, if I love not him, I know there is none other I can love.' 'Yea, by God's death,' said he, 'ye love . him well. But would not, knew ye what all others know, And whom he loves.' ' So be it,' cried Elaine, And lifted her fair face and moved away : But he pursued her, calling, 'Stay a little ! One golden minute's grace ! he wore your sleeve : Would he break faith with one I may not name? Must our true man change like a leaf at last? Nay — like enow: why then, far be it from me To cross our mighty Lancelot in his loves ! And, damsel, for I deem you know full well Where your great knight is hidden, let me leave My quest Avith you; the diamond also: here ! For if you love, it will be sweet to give it; And if he love, it will be sweet to have it From your own hand; and whether he love or not, A diamond is a diamond. Fare you well A thousand times ! — a thousand times farewell ! Yet, if he love, and his love hold, we two May meet at court hereafter: there, I think. So ye will learn the courtesies of the court, We two shall know each other.' Then he gave, And slightly kiss'd the hand to which he gave, The diamond, and all wearied of the quest Leapt on his horse, and carolling as he went A true-love ballad, lightly rode away. Thence to the court he past; there told the King What the King knew, ' Sir Lancelot is the knight.' And added, 'Sir, my liege, so much I learnt; But fail'd to find him, tho' I rode all round The region : but I lighted on the maid Whose sleeve he wore; she loves him; and to her. Deeming our courtesy is the truest law, I gave the diamond: she will render it; For by mine head she knows his hiding- place.' The seldom-frowning King frown'd, and replied, ' Too courteous truly ! ye shall go no more On quest of mine, seeing that ye forget Obedience is the courtesy due to kings.' He spake and parted. Wroth, but all in awe, For twenty strokes of the blood, without a word, Linger'd that other, staring after him; Then shook his hair, strode off, and buzz'd abroad About the maid of Astolat, and her love. All ears were prick 'd at once, all tongues were loosed : 'The maid of Astolat loves Sir Lance- lot, Sir Lancelot loves the maid of Astolat.' Some read the King's face, some the Queen's, and all Had marvel what the maid might be, but most Predoom'd her as unworthy. One old dame Came suddenly on the Queen with the sharp news. She, that had heard the noise of it before, But sorrowing Lancelot should have stoop'd so low, Marr'd her friend's aim with pale tran- quillity. So ran the tale like fire about the court. Fire in dry stul)ble a nine-days' wonder flared : 400 LANCELOT AND ELAINE. Till ev'n the knights at banquet twice or thrice Forgot to drink to Lancelot and the Queen, And pledging Lancelot and the lily maid Smiled at each other, while the Queen, who sat With lips severely placid, felt the knot Climb in her throat, and with her feet unseen Crush'd the wild passion out against the floor Beneath the banquet, where the meats became As wormwood, and she hated all who pledged. But far away the maid in Astolat, Her guiltless rival, she that ever kept The one-day-seen Sir Lancelot in her heart, Crept to her father, while he mused alone. Sat on his knee, stroked his gray face and said, ' Father, you call me wilful, and the fault Is yours who let me have my will, and now, Sweet father. Will you let me lose my wits ? ' ' Nay,' said he, ' surely.' * Wherefore, let me hence,' She answer'd, ' and find out our dear Lavaine.' 'Ye will not lose your wits for dear Lavaine : Bide,' answer'd he : * we needs must hear anon Of him, and of that other.' ' Ay,' she said, ' And of that other, for I needs must hence And find that other, wheresoe'er he be. And with mine own hand give his diamond to him. Lest I be found as faithless in the quest As yon proud Prince who left the quest to me. Sweet father, I behold him in my dreams Gaunt as it were the skeleton of himself, Death-pale, for lack of gentle maiden's aid. The gentler-born the maiden, the more bound, My father, to be sweet and serviceable To noble knights in sickness, as ye know When these have worn their tokens: let me hence I pray you.' Then her father nodding said, * Ay, ay, the diamond : wit ye well, my child. Right fain were I to learn this knight were whole. Being our greatest : yea, and you must give it — And sure I think this fruit is hung too high For any mouth to gape for save a queen's — Nay, I mean nothing : so then, get you gone, Being so very wilful you must go.' Lightly, her suit allow'd, she slipt away, And while she made her ready for her ride, Her father's latest word humm'd in her ear, * Being so very wilful you must go,' And changed itself and edio'd in her heart, ' Being so very wilful you must die.' But she was happy enough and shook it off, As we shake off the bee that buzzes at us; And in her heart she answer'd it and said, * What matter, so I help him back to life?' Then far away with good Sir Torre for guide Rode o'er the long backs of the bushless downs To Camelot, and before the city-gates Came on her brother with a happy face . Making a roan horse caper and curvet For pleasure all about a field of flowers : Whom when she saw, ' Lavaine,' she cried, 'Lavaine, How fares my lord Sir Lancelot?' He amazed, 'Torre and Elaine! why here? Sir Lancelot ! How know ye my lord's name is Lance- lot?' But when the maid had told him all her tale, Then turn'd Sir Torre, anc' being in bis moods LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 401 Left them, and under the strange-statued gate, Where Arthur's wars were render'd mystically. Past up the still rich city to his kin, His own far blood, which dwelt at Camelot; And her, Lavaine across the poplar grove Led to the caves : there first she saw the casque Of Lancelot on the wall: her scarlet sleeve, Tho' carved and cut, and half the pearls away, Stream'd from it still; and in her heart she laugh'd, Because he had not loosed it from his helm. But meant once more perchance to tour- ney in it. And when they gain'd the cell wherein he slept, His battle-writhen arms and mighty hands Lay naked on the wolfskin, and a dream Of dragging down his enemy made them move. Then she that saw him lying unsleek, unshorn, Gaunt as it were the skeleton of himself, Utter'd a little tender dolorous cry. The sound not wonted in a place so still Woke the sick knight, and while he roll'd his eyes Yet blank from sleep, she started to him, saying, * Your prize the diamond sent you by the King:' His eyes glisten'd : she fancied * Is it for me?' And when the maid had told him all the tale Of King and Prince, the diamond sent, the quest Assign'd to her not worthy of it, she knelt Full lowly by the corners of his bed. And laid the diamond in his open hand. Her face was near, and, as we kiss the child That does the^task assign'd, he kiss'd her face. At once she slipt like water to the floor. * Alas,' he said, ' your ride hath wearied you. 2D Rest must you have.' * No rest for me,' she said; * Nay, for near you, fair lord, I am at rest.' What might she mean by that? his large black eyes, Yet larger thro' his leanness, dwelt upon her, Till all her heart's sad secret blazed itself In the heart's colours on her simple face; And Lancelot look'd and was perplext in mind, And being weak in body said no more; But did not love the colour; woman's love. Save one, he not regarded, and so turn'd Sighing, and feign'd a sleep until he slept. Then rose Elaine and glided thro' the fields, And past beneath the weirdly-sculptured gates Far up the dim rich city to her kin; There bode the night: but woke with dawn, and past Down thro' the dim rich city to the fields. Thence to the cave : so day by day she past In either twilight ghost-like to and fro Gliding, and every day she tended him. And likewise many a night : and Lancelot Would, tho' he call'd his wound a little hurt Whereof he should be quickly whole, at times Brain-feverous in his heat and agony, seem Uncourteous, even he : but the meek maid Sweetly forbore him ever, being to him Meeker than any child to a rough nurse. Milder than any mother to a sick child. And never woman yet, since man's first fall, Did kindlier unto man, but her deep love Upbore her; till the hermit, skill'd in all The simples and the science of that time, Told him that her fine care had saved his fife. And the sick man forgot her simple blush. Would call her friend and sister, swee-' Elaine, Would listen for her coming and regret Her parting step, and held her tende4y, 402 LANCELOT AND ELAINE. And loved her with all love except the love Of man and woman when they love their best, Closest and sweetest, and had died the death In any knightly fashion for her sake. And peradventure had he seen her first She might have made this and that other world Another world for the sick man; but now The shackles of an old love straiten'd him, His honour rooted in dishonour stood. And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. Yet the great knight in his mid-sick^ ness made Full many a holy vow and pure resolve. These, as but born of sickness, could not live : For when the blood ran lustier in him again, Full often the bright image of one face, Making a treacherous quiet in. his heart. Dispersed his resolution like a cloud. Then if the maiden, while that ghostly grace Beam'd on his fancy, spoke, he answer'd not, Or short and coldly, and she knew right well What the rough sickness meant, but what this meant She knew not, and the sorrow dimm'd her sight, And drave her ere her time across the fields Far into the rich city, where alone She murmur'd, * Vain, in vain : it cannot be. He will not love me: how then? must I die?' Then as a little helpless innocent bird. That has but one plain passage of few notes. Will sing the simple passage o'er and o'er For all an April morning, till the ear Wearies to hear it, so the simple maid Went half the night repeating, * Must I die?' And now to right she turn'd, and now to left, And found no ease in turning or in rest; And ' Him or death,' she mutter'd, ' death or him,' Again and like a burthen, ' Him or death.' But when Sir Lancelot's deadly hurt was whole. To Astolat returning rode the three. There morn by morn, arraying her sweet self In that wherein she deem'd she look'd her best, She came before Sir Lancelot, for she thought * If I be loved, these are my festal robes. If not, the victim's flowers iDefore he fall.' And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid That she should ask some goodly gift of him For her own self or hers; ' and do not shun To speak the wish most near to your true heart; - Such service have ye done me, that I make My will of yours, and Prince and Lord am I In mine own land, and what I will I can.' Then like a ghost she lifted up her face, But like a ghost without the power to speak. And Lancelot saw that she withheld her wish. And bode among them yet a little space Till he should learn it; and one morn it chanced . He found her in among the garden yews, And said, * Delay no longer, speak your wish. Seeing I go to-day : ' then out she brake : ' Going? and we shall never see you more. And I must die for want of one bold word.' ' Speak : that I live to hear,' he said, * is yours.' Then suddenly and passionately she spoke : *I have gone mad. I love you: let me die.' ' Ah, sister,' answer'd Lancelot, * what is this?' And innocently extending her white arms, ' Your love,' she said, 'your love — to be your wife.' And Lancelot answer'd, ' Had I chosen to wed. LANCELOT A\D ELAINE. 403 I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine : Stood grasping what was nearest, then But now there never will be wife of mine.' rephed : ■ No, no,' she cried, ' I care not to be 'Of all this will I nothing; ' and so wife, fell, But to be with you still, to see your face. And thus they bore her swooning to her To serve you, and to follow you thro' the world.' And Lancelot answer'd, * Nay, the world. tower. Then spake, to whom thro' those black the world. walls of yew All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart Their talk had pierced, her father : * Ay, To interpret ear and eye, and such a a flash. tongue I fear me, that will strike my blossom To blare its own interpretation — nay, dead. Full ill then should 1 quit your brother's Too courteous are ye, fair Lord Lancelot. love. I pray you, use some rough discourtesy And your good father's kindness.' And To blunt or break her passion.' she said, * *Not to be with you, not to see your Lancelot said, face- 'That were against me: what I can I Alas for me then, my good days are will; ' done.' And there that day remain'd, and toward *Nay, noble maid,' he answer'd, 'ten even times nay ! Sent for his shield : full meekly rose the This is not love : but love's first flash in maid. youth. Stript off" the case, and gave the naked Most common: yea, I know it of mine shield; own self ; Then, when she heard his horse upon And you yourself will smile at your own the stones, self Unclasping flung the casement back, and Hereafter, when you yield your flower of look'd life Down on his helm, from which her sleeve To one more fitly yours, not thrice your had gone. age: And Lancelot knew the little clinking And then will I, for true you are and sound ; sweet And she by tact of love was well aware Beyond mine old belief in womanhood, That Lancelot knew that she was looking More specially should your good knight at him. be poor. And yet he glanced not up, nor waved Endow you with broad land and territory his hand. Even to the half my realm beyond the Nor bade farewell, but sadly rode away. seas, This was the one discourtesy that he So that would make you happy : further- used. more, Ev'n to the death, as tbo' ye were my So in her tower alone the maiden sat : blood. His very shield was gone; only the case. Iji all your quarrels will I be your knight. Her own poor work, her empty labour. This will I do, dear damsel, for your left. sake. But still she heard him, still his picture And more than this 1 cannot.' form'd And grew between her and the pictured While he spoke wall. She neither 'blush'd nor shook, but Then came her father, saying in low deathly-pale tones, 404 LANCELOT AND ELAINE. * Have comfort,' whom she greeted quietly. Then came her brethren saying, * Peace to thee, Sweet sister,' whom she answer'd with all calm. But when they left her to herself again, Death, like a friend's voice from a distant field Approaching thro' the darkness, call'd; the owls Wailing had power upon her, and she mixt Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms Of evening, and the moanings of the wind. And in those days she made a little song, And call'd her song * The Song of Love and Death,' And sang it: sweetly could she make and sing. * Sweet is true love tho' given in vain, in vain; And sweet is death who puts an end to pain : I know not which is sweeter, no, not I. 'Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be : Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me. Love, if death be sweeter, let me die. •Sweet love, that seems not made to fade away. Sweet death, that seems to make us loveless clay, 1 know not which is sweeter, no, not I. * I fain would follow love, if that could be; I needs must follow death, who calls for me; Call and I follow, I follow ! let me die.' High with the last line scaled her voice, and this. All in a fiery dawning wild with wind That shook her tow^er, the brothers heard, and thought With shuddering, • Hark the Phantom of the house That ever shrieks before a death,' and call'd The father, and all three in hurry and fear Ran to her, and lo ! the blood-red light of dawn Flared on her face, she shrilling, * Let me die ! ' And when we dwell upon a word we know, Repeating, till the word we know so well Becomes a wonder, and we know not why. So dwelt the father on her face, and thought *Is this Elaine?' tiir back the maiden fell, Then gave a languid hand to each, and lay. Speaking a still good-morrow with her eyes. At last she said, * Sweet brothers, yester- night I seem'd a curious little maid again, As happy as when we dwelt among the woods, And when ye used to take me with the tlood Up the great river in the boatman's boat. Only ye would not pass beyond the cape That has the poplar on it : there ye fixt Your limit, oft returning with the tide. And yet I cried because ye would not pass Beyond it, and far up the shining flood Until we found the palace of the King. And yet ye would not; but this night I dream'd That I was all alone upon the flood, And then I said, "Now shall I have my will : " And there I woke, but still the wish remain'd. So let me hence that I may pass at last^ Beyond the poplar and far up the flood, Until I find the palace of the King. There will I enter in among them all. And no man there will dare to mock a\ me; But there the fine Gawain will wonder at me, LANCELOT AND ELAINE, 405 And there the great Sir Lancelot muse at me; Gawain, who bade a thousand farewells to me, Lancelot, who coldly went, nor bade me one : And there the King will know me and my love, And there the Queen herself will pity me, And all the gentle court will welcome me. And after my long voyage I shall rest ! ' * Peace,' said her father, ' O my child, ye seem Light-headed, for what force is yours to go So far, being sick? and wherefore would ye look On this proud fellow again, who scorns us all?' Then the rough Torre began to heave and move. And bluster into stormy sobs and say, ' I never loved him : an I meet with him, I care not howsoever great he be, Then will I strike at him and strike him down, Give me good fortune, I will strike him dead. For this discomfort he hath done the house.' To whom the gentle sister made reply, * Fret not yourself, dear brother, nor be wroth, Seeing it is no more Sir Lancelot's fault Not to love me, than it is mine to love Him of all men who seems to me the highest.' * Highest ? ' the father answer'd, echo- ing ' highest?' (He meant to break the passion in her) 'nay, Daughter, I know not what you call the highest; But this I know, for all the people know it, He loves the Queen, and in an open shame : And she returns his love in open shame; If this be high, what is it to be low ? ' Then spake the lily maid of Astolat : * Sweet father, all too faint and sick am I For anger : these are slanders : never yet Was noble man but made ignoble talk. He makes no friend who never made a foe. But now it is my glory to have loved One peerless, without stain : so let me pass, My father, howsoe'er I seem to you. Not all unhappy, having loved God's best And greatest, tho' my love had no return : Yet, seeing you desire your child to live, ^Thanks, but you work against your own desire; For if I could l^elieve the things you say I should but die the sooner; wherefore cease. Sweet father, and bid call the ghostly man Hither, and let me shrive me clean, and die.' So when the ghostly man had come and gone. She with a face, bright as for sin forgiven. Besought Lavaine to write as she devised A letter, word for word; and when he ask'd * Is it for Lancelot, is it for my dear lord? Then will I bear it gladly; ' she replied, ' For Lancelot and the Queen and all the world. But I myself must bear it.' Then he wrote The letter she devised; which being writ And folded, ' O sweet father, tender and true. Deny me not,' she said — * ye never yet Denied my fancies — this, however strange, My latest : lay the letter in my hand A little ere I die, and close the hand Upon it; I shall guard it even in death. And when the heat is gone from out my heart. Then take the little bed on which I died For Lancelot's love, and deck it like the Queen's For richness, and me also like the Queen In all I have of rich, and lay me on it. And let there be prepared a chariot-bier To take me to the river, and a barge Be ready on the river, clothed in black- I go in state to court, to meet the Queen. 4o6 LANCELOT AND ELAINE. There surely I shall speak for mine own self, And none of you can speak for me so well. And therefore let our dumb old man alone Go with me, he can steer and row, and he Will guide me to that palace, to the doors.' She ceased: her father promised; whereupon She grew so cheerful that they deem'd her death Was rather in the fantasy than the blood. But ten slow mornings past, and on the eleventh Her father laid the letter in her hand, And closed the hand upon it, and she died. So that day there was dole in Astolat. But when the next sun brake from un- derground. Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows, Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier Past like a shadow thro' the field, that shone Full-summer, to that streani whereon the barge, Pall'd all its length in blackest samite, lay. There sat the lifelong creature of the house, Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck, Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face. So those two brethren from the chariot took And on the black decks laid her in her bed. Set in her hand a lily, o'er her hung The silken case with braided blazonings. And kiss'd her quiet brows, and saying to her ' Sister, farewell for ever,' and again ' Farewell, sweet sister,' parted all in tears. Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead, Oar'd by the dumb, went upward with the flood — In her right hand the lily, in her left The letter — all her bright hair streaming down — And all the coverlid was cloth of gold Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white All but her face, and that clear-featured face Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead. But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled. That day Sir Lancelot at the palace craved Audience of Guinevere, to give at last The price of half a realm, his costly gift, Hard-won and hardly won with bruise and blow. With deaths of others, and almost his own, The nine-years-fought-for diamonds : for he saw One of her house, and sent him to the Queen Bearing his wish, whereto the Queen agreed With such and so unmoved a majesty She might have seem'd her statue, but that he. Low-drooping till he wellnigh kiss'd her feet For loyal awe, saw with a sidelong eye The shadow of some piece of pointed lace. In the Queen's shadow, vibrate on the walls. And parted, laughing in his courtly heart. All in an oriel on the summer side, Vine-clad, of Arthur's palace toward the stream, They met, and Lancelot kneeling utter'd, ' Queen, Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy. Take, what I had rcjt won except for you. These jewels, and make me happy, making them An armlet for the roundest arm on earth. Or necklace for a neck to which the swan's Is tawnier than her cygnet's: these are words : - Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin in words Perchance, we both can pardon : but, my Queen, LANCELOT AND ELALNE. 407 I hear of rumours flying thro' your court. Our l)ond, as not the bond of man and wife, Should have in it an absohiter trust To make up that defect : let rumours be : When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust That you trust me in your own nobleness, I may not well believe that you believe.' While thus he spoke, half-turn'd away, the Queen Brake from the vast oriel-embowering vine Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them off-. Till all the place whereon she stood was green; Then, when he ceased, in one cold pas- sive hand Received at once and laid aside the gems There on a table near her, and replied : ' It may be, I am quicker of belief Than you believe me, Lancelot of the Lake. Our bond is not the bond of man and wife. This good is in it, whatsoe'er of ill, It can be broken easier. I for you This many a year have done despite and wrong To one whom ever in my heart of hearts I did acknowledge nobler. What are these? Diamonds for me ! they had been thrice their worth Being your gift, had you not lost your own. To loyal hearts the value of all gifts Must vary as the giver's. Not for me ! For her ! for your new fancy. Only this Grant me, I pray you: have your joys apart. I doubt not that however changed, you keep So much of what is graceful: and myself Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy In which as Arthur's Queen I move and rule : So cannot speak my mind. An end to this! A strange one ! yet I take it with Amea So pray you, add my diamonds to hei pearls ; Deck her with these; tell her she shines me down : An armlet for an arm to which the Queen's Is haggard, or. a necklace for a neck O as much fairer — as a faith once fail* Was richer than these diamonds — hers not mine — Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself Or hers or mine, mine now to work my will — She shall not have them,' Saying which she seized, And, thro' the casement standing wide for heat, Flung them, and down they flash'd, and smote the stream. Then from the smitten surface flash'd, «s it were, Diamonds to meet them, and they past away. Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain At love, life, all things, on the window ledge. Close underneath his eyes, and right across Where these had' fallen, slowly past the barge Whereon the lily maid of Astolat Lay smiling, hke a star in blackest night. But the wild Queen, who saw not, burst away To weep and wail in secret; and the barge, On to the palace-doorway sliding, paused. There two stood arm'd, and kept the door; to whom. All up the marble stair, tier over tier. Were added mouths that gaped, and eyes that ask'd ' What is it?' but that oarsman's haggard face. As hard and still as is the face that men Shape to their fancy's eye from broken rocks On some cliff-side, appall'd them, and they said, 402J LANCELOT AND ELAINE. 'He is enchanted, cannot speak — and she, Look how she sleeps — the Fairy Queen, so fair ! Yea, but how pale ! what are they? flesh and blood? Or come to take the King to Fairyland? For some do hold our Arthur cannot die. But that he passes into Fairyland.' While thus they babbled of the King, the King Came girt with knights : then turn'd the toi^gueless man From the half-face to the full eye, and rose And pointed to the damsel, and the doors. So Arthur bade the meek Sir Percivale And pure Sir Galahad to uplift the maid; And reverently they bore her into hall. Then came the fine Gawain and wonder'd at her, And Lancelot later came and mused at her, And last the Queen herself, and pitied her: But Arthur spied the letter in her hand, Stoopt, took, brake seal, and read it; this was all : * Most noble lord. Sir Lancelot of the Lake, I, sometime call'd the maid of Astolat, Come, for you left me taking no farewell, Hither, to take my last farewell of you. I loved you, and my love had no return. And therefore my true love has. been my death. And therefore to our Lady Guinevere, And to all other ladies, I make moan : Pray for my soul, and yield me burial. Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot, As thou art a knight peerless.' Thus he read; And ever in the reading, lords and dames Wept, looking often from his face who read To hers which lay so silent, and at times, So touch'd were they, half-thinking that her lips, Who had devised the letter, moved again. Then freely spoke Sir Lancelot to them all; * My lord liege Arthur, and all ye that hear, Know that for this most gentle maiden's death Right heavy am I; for good she was and true. But loved me with a love beyond all love In women, whomsoever I have known. Yet to be loved makes not to love again; Not at my years, however it hold in youth. I swear by truth and knighthood that I gave No cause, not willingly, for such a love : To this I call my friends in testimony, Her brethren, and her father, who him- self Besought me to be plain and blunt, and use. To break her passion, some discourtesy Against my nature : what I could, I did. I left, her and I bade her no farewell; Tho', had I dreamt the damsel would have died, I might have put my wits to some rough use, And help'd her from herself.' Then said the Queen (Sea was her wrath, yet working after storm), *Ye might at least have done her so much grace. Fair lord, as would have help'd her from her death.' He raised his head, their eyes met and hers fell, He adding, * ' Queen, she would not be content Save that I wedded her, which could not be. Then might she follow me thro' the world, she ask'd; It could not be. I told her that her love Was but the flash of youth, would darken down To rise hereafter in a stiller flame Toward one more worthy of her — then would I, More specially were he, she wedded, poor, LANCELOT AND ELALNE. 409 Estate them with large land and territory In mine own realm beyond the narrow seas, To keep them in all joyance : more than this I could not; this she would not, and she died.' He pausing, Arthur answer'd, 'O my knight, It will be to thy worship, as my knight. And mine, as head of all our Table Round, To see that she be buried worshipfully.' So toward that shrine which then in all the realm Was richest, Arthur leading, slowly went The marshall'd Order of their Table Round, And Lancelot sad beyond his wont, to see The maiden buried, not as one unknown, Nor meanly, but with gorgeous obsequies. And mass, and rolling music, like a queen. And when the knights had laid her comely head Low in the dust of half-forgotten kings. Then Arthur spake among them, * Let her tomb Be costly, and her image thereupon, And let the shield of Lancelot at her feet Be carven, and her lily in her hand. And let the story of her dolorous voyage For all true hearts be blazon'd on her tomb la letters gold and azure ! ' which was wrought Thereafter ; but when now the lords and dames And people, from the high door stream- ing, brake Disorderly, as homeward each, the Queen, Who mark'd Sir Lancelot where he moved apart. Drew near, and sigh'd in passing, * Lance- lot, Forgive me; mine was jealousy in love.' He answer'd with his eyes upon the ground, 'That is love's curse; pass on, my Queen, forgiven.' But Arthur, who beheld his cloudy brows, Approach'd him, and with full affection said, * Lancelot, my Lancelot, thou in whom I have Most joy and most affiance, for I know What thou hast been in battle by my side, And many a time have watch'd thee at the tilt Strike down the lusty and long-practised knight, And let the younger and unskill'd go by To win his honour and to make his name, And loved thy courtesies and thee, a man Made to be loved; but now I would to God, Seeing the homeless trouble in thine eyes, Thou couldst have loved this maiden, shaped, it seems. By God for thee alone, and from her face. If one may judge the living by the dead, Delicately pure and marvellously fair. Who might have brought thee, now a lonely man Wifeless and heirless, noble issue, sons Born to the glory of thy name and fame. My knight, the great Sir Lancelot of the Lake.' Then answer'd Lancelot, * Fair she was, my King, Pure, as you ever wish your knights to be. To doubt her fairness were to want an eye, To doubt her pureness were to want a heart — Yea, to be loved, if what is worthy love Could bind him, but free love will not be bound.' * Free love, so bound, were freest,' said the King. 'Let love be free; free love is for the best: And, after heaven, on our dull side of death, What should be best, if not so pure a love Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee She fail'd to bind, tho' being, as I think, Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know.' 4IO THE HOL Y GRAIL. And " Lancelot answer'd nothing, but he went, And at the inrunning of a little brook Sat by the river in a cove, and watch'd The high reed wave, and lifted up his eyes And saw the barge that brought her moving down, Far-off, a blot upon the stream, and said Low in himself, * Ah, simple heart and sweet. Ye loved me, damsel, surely with a love Far tenderer than my Queen's. Pray for thy soul? Ay, that will L Farewell too — now at last — Farewell, fair lily. "Jealousy in love?" Not rather dead love's harsh heir, jealous pride? Queen, if I grant the jealousy as of love. May not your crescent fear for name and fame Speak, as it waxes, of a love that wanes? Why did the King dwell on my name to me? Mine own name shames me, seeming a reproach, Lancelot, whom the Lady of the Lake Caught from his mother's arms — the wondrous one Who passes thro' the vision of the night — She chanted snatches of mysterious hymns Heard on the winding waters, eve and morn She kiss'd, me saying, "Thou art fair, my child, As a king's son," and often in her arms She bare me, pacing on the dusky mere. Would she had drown'd me in it, wher- e'er it be ! For what am I? what profits me my name Of greatest knight? I fought for it, and have it: Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it, pain; Now grown a part of me : but what use in it? To make men worse by making my sin known? Or sin seem less, the sinner seeming great? Alas for Arthur's greatest knight, a man Not after Arthur's heart ! I needs must break These bonds that so defame me : not without She wills it: would I, if she will'd it? nay. Who knows? but if I Would not, then may God, I pray him, send a sudden Angel down To seize me by the hair and bear me far, And fling me deep in that forgotten mere, Among the tumbled fragments of the hills.' So groan' d Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain. Not knowing he should die a holy man. THE HOLY GRAIL. From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale, Whom Arthur and his knighthood call'd The Pure, Had pass'd into the silent life of prayer. Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl The helmet in an abbey far away PVom Camelot, there, and not long after, died. And one, a fellow-monk among the rest, Ambrosius, loved him much beyond the rest, And honour'd him, and wrought into his heart A way by love that waken'd love within, To answer that which came : and as they sat Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half The cloisters, on a gustful April morn That pufiPd the swaying branches into smoke Above them, ere the summer when he died. The monk Ambrosius question'd Per- civale : THE HOLY GRAIL. 411 ' O brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke, Spring after spring, for half a hundred years : For never have I known the world with- out, Nor ever stray'd beyond the pale : but thee. When first thou earnest — such a courtesy Spake thro' the limbs and in the voice — I knew For one of those who eat in Arthur's hall; For good ye are and bad, and like to coins, Some true, some light, but every one of you Staihp'd with the image of the King; and now fell me, what drove thee from the Table Round, My brother ? was it earthly passion crost ? ' 'Nay,' said the knight; 'for no such passion mine. But the sweet vision of the Holy Grail Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries. And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out Among us in the jousts, while women watch Who wins, who falls; and waste the spiritual strength Within us, better offer'd up to Heaven.' To whom the monk : * The Holy Grail ! — I trust We are green in Heaven's eyes; but here too much We moulder — as to things without I mean — Yet one of your own knights, a guest of ours, Told us of this in our refectory, But spake with such a sadness and so low We heard not half of what he said. What is it? The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?' * Nay, monk ! what phantom ? ' an- swer'd Percivale. 'The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord Drank at the last sad supper with his own. This, from the blessed land of Aromat — After the day of darkness, when the dea-' Went wandering o'er Moriah — the good saint Arimathaean Joseph, journeying brought To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord. And there awhile it bode; and if a man Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at once. By faith, of all his ills. But then the times Grew to such evil that the holy cup Was caught away to Heaven, and disap- pear'd.' To whom the monk : * From our old books I know That Joseph came of old to Glastonbury, And there the heathen Prince, Arviragus, Gave him an isle of marsh whereon to build; And there he built with wattles from the marsh A little lonely church in days of yore. For so they say, tjjese books of ours, but se^m Mute of this miracle, far as I have read. But who first saw the holy thing to-day?' * A woman,' answer'd Percivale, * a nun. And one no further off in blood from me Than sister; and if ever holy maid With knees of adoration wore the stone, A holy maid; tho' never maiden glow'd. But that was in her earlier maidenhood. With such a fervent flame of human love. Which being rudely blunted, glanced and shot Only to holy things; to prayer and praise She gave herself, to fast and alms. And yet. Nun as she was, the scandal of the Court, Sin against Arthur and the Table Round, And the strange sound of an adulterous race. Across the iron grating of her cell Beat, and she pray'd and fasted all the more. ' And he to whom she told her sins, or what Her all but utter whiteness held for sin, 412 THE HOLY GRAIL. A man wellnigh a hundred winters old, Spake often with her of the Holy Grail, A legend handed down thro' five or six, And each of these a hundred winters old, From our Lord's time. And when King Arthur made His Table Round, and all men's hearts became Clean for a season, surely he had thought Ihat now the Holy Grail would come again ; But sin broke out. Ah, Christ, that- it would come, And heal the world of all their wicked- ness ! " O Father ! " ask'd the maiden, " might it come To me by prayer and fasting? " " Nay," said he, "I know not, for thy heart is pure as snow." And so she pray'd and fasted, till the sun Shone, and the wind blew, thro' her, and I thought She might have risen apd floated when I saw her. ' For on a day she sent to speak with me. And when she came to speak, behold her eyes Beyond my knowing of them, beautiful. Beyond all knowing of them, wonderful, Beautiful in the light of holiness. And " O my brother Percivale," she said, " Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail : For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound As of a silver horn from o'er the hills Blown, and I thought, * It is not Arthur's use To hunt by moonlight; ' and the slender sound As from a distance beyond distance grevir Coming upon me — O never harp nor horn,. Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand. Was like that music as it came; and then Stream'd thro' my cell a cold and silver beam, And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail, Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive, Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed With rosy colours leaping on the wall; And then the music faded, and the Grail Past, and the beam decay'd, and from the walls The rosy quiverings died into the night. So now the Holy Thing is here again Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray, And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray, That so perchance the vision may be seen By thee and those, and all the world be heal'd." 'Then leaving the pale nun, I spake of this To all men; and myself fasted and pray'd Always, and many among us many a week Fasted and pray'd even to the uttermost. Expectant of the wonder that would be. *And one there was among us, ever moved Among us in white armour, Galahad. " God make thee good as thou art beau- tiful," Said Arthur, when he dubb'd him knight; and none In so young youth, was ever made a knight Till Galahad; and this Galahad, when he heard My sister's vision, fill'd me with amaze; His eyes became so like her own, they seem'd Hers, and himself her brother more than I. 'Sister or brother none had he; but some Call'd him a son of Lancelot, and some said Begotten by enchantment — chatterers they. Like birds of passage piping up and down, That gape for flies — we know not whence they come; For when was Lancelot wanderingly lewd? THE HOLY GRAIL, 413 ' But she, the wan sweet maiden, shore away Clean from her forehead all that wealth of hair Which made a silken mat-work for her feet; And out of this she plaited broad and long A strong sword-belt, and wove with silver thread And crimson in the belt a strange device, A crimson grail within a silver beam; And saw the bright boy-knight, and bound it on him. Saying, " My knight, my love, my knight of heaven, O thou, my love, whose love is one with mine, I, maiden, round thee, maiden, bind my belt. Go forth, for thou shalt see what I have seen. And break thro' all, till one will crown thee king Far in the spiritual city:" and as she spake She sent the deathless passion in her eyes Thro' him, and made him hers, and laid her mind On him, and he believed in her belief. * Then came a year of miracle : O brother, In our great hall there stood a vacant chair, Fashion'd by Merlin ere he past away, And carven with strange figures; and in and out The figures, like a serpent, ran a scroll Of letters in a tongue no man could read. And Merlin call'd it "The Siege peril-- ous," Perilous for good and ill; "for there," he said, " No man could sit but he should lose himself:" And once by misadvertence Merlin sat In his own chair, and so was lost ; but he, Galahad, when he heard of Merlin's doom, Cried, " If I lose myself, I save myself! " ' Then on a summer night it came to pass. While the great banquet lay along the hall, That Galahad would sit down in Merlin's chair. * x^nd all at once, as there we sat, we heard A cracking and a riving of the roofs. And rending, and a blast, and overhead Thunder, and in the thunder was a cry. And in the blast there smote along the hall A beam of light seven times more clear than day: And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail All over cover'd with a luminous cloud, And none might see who bare it, and it past. But every knight beheld his fellow's face As in a glory, and all the knights arose, And staring each at other like dumb men Stood, till I found a voice and sware a * I sware a vow before them all, that I, Because I had not seen the Grail, would ride A twelvemonth and a day in quest of it. Until I found and saw it, as the nun My sister saw it; and Galahad sware the vow, And good Sir Bors, our Lancelot's cousin, sware. And Lancelot sware, and many among the knights, And Gawain sware, and louder than the rest.' Then spake the monk Ambrosius, ask- ing him, ' What said the King? Did Arthur take the vow ? ' * Nay, for my lord,' said Percivale, ' the King, Was not in hall : for early that same day Scaped thro' a cavern from a bandit hold. An outraged maiden sprang into the hali Crying on help : for all her shining hair Was smear'd with earth, and either milk^ arm 414 THE HOLY GAAIL. Red-rent with hooks of bramble, and all she wore Torn as a sail that leaves the rope is torn In tempest: so the King arose and went To smoke the scandalous hive of those wild bees That made such honey in his realm. Howbeit Some little of this marvel he too saw, Returning o'er the plain that then began To darken under Camelot; whence the King Look'd up, calling aloud, *' Lo, there ! the roofs Of our great hall are roll'd in thunder- smoke ! Pray Heaven, they be not smitten by the bolt." For dear to Arthur was that hall of ours, As having there so oft with all his knights Feasted, and as the stateliest under heaven. * O brother, had you known our mighty hall, Which Merlin built for Arthur long ago ! For all the sacred mount of Camelot, And all the dim rich city, roof by roof. Tower after tower, spire beyond spire, By grove, and garden-lawn, and rushing brook. Climbs to the mighty hall that Merlin built. And four great zones of sculpture, set betwixt With many a mystic symbol, gird the hall : And in the lowest beasts are slaying men, And in the second men are slaying beasts, And on the third are warriors, perfect men. And on the fourth are men with growing wings, And over all one statue in the mould Of Arthur, made by Merlin, with a crown, And peak'd wings pointed to the Northern Star. And eastward fronts the statue, and the crown And both the wings are made of gold, and flame At sunrise till the people in far fields, Wasted so often l)y the heathen hordes, Behold it, crying, " We have still a King." * And, brother, had you known our hall within, Broader and higher than any in all the lands ! Where twelve great windows blazon Arthur's wars, And all the light that falls upon the board Streams thro' the twelve great battles of our King. Nay, one there is, and at the eastern end, Wealthy with wandering lines of mount and mere, Where Arthur finds the brand Excalibur. And also one to the west, and counter to it, And blank: and who shall blazon it? when and how? — O there, perchance, when all our wars are done. The brand Excalibur will be cast away. 'So to this hall full quickly rode the King, In horror lest the work by Merlin wrought, Dreamlike, should on the sudden vanish, wrapt In unremorseful folds of rolling fire. And in he rode, and up I glanced, and saw The golden dragon sparkling over all : And many of those who burnt the hold, their arms Hack'd, and their foreheads grimed with smoke, and sear'd, Follow'd, and in among bright faces, ours, Full of the vision, prest : and then the King Spake to me, being nearest, " Percivale " (Because the hall was all in tumult — ■ some Vowing, and some protesting), "what is this?" ' O brother, when I told him what had chanced. My sister's vision, and the rest, his face Darken'd, as I have seen it more than once, When some brave deed seem'd to be done in vain. Darken; and " Woe is me, my knights," he cried, " Had I been here, ye had not sworn the vow." THE HOLY GRAIL, 415 Bold was mine answer, " Had thyself been here, My King, thou wouldst have sworn." " Yea, yea," said he, ** Art thou so bold and hast not seen ^he Grail?" *"Nay, lord, I heard the sound, I saw the light. But since I did not see the Holy Thing, I sware a vow to follow it till I saw." *Then when he ask'd us, knight by knight, if any Had seen it, all their answers were as one: " Nay, lord, and therefore have we sworn our vows." *"Lo now," said Arthur, "have ye seen a cloud? What go ye into the wilderness to see? " •Then Galahad on the sudden, and in a voice Shrilling along the hall to Arthur, call'd, " But I, Sir Arthur, saw the Holy Grail, I saw the Holy Grail and heard a cry — * O Galahad, and O Galahad, follow me.' " *"Ah, Galahad, Galahad," said the King, •' for such As thou art is the vision, not for these. Thy holy nun and thou have seen a sign — HoHer is none, my Percivale, than she — A sign to maim this Order which I made. But ye, that follow but the leader's bell " (Brother, the King was hard upon his knights), "Taliessin is our fullest throat of song, And one hath sung and all the dumb will sing. Lancelot is Lancelot, and hath overborne Five knights at once, and every younger knight, Unproven, holds himself as Lancelot, Till overborne by one, he learns — and ye. What are ye? Galahads? — no, nor Percivales " (For thus it pleased the King to range me close Aftet Sir Galahad); "nay," said he, *' but men With strength and will to right the wrong'd, of power To lav the sudden heads of violence ' flat. Knights that in twelve great battles splash' d and dyed The strong White Horse in his own heathen blood — But one hath seen, and all the blind will see. Go, since your vows are sacred, being made : Yet — for ye know the cries of all my realm Pass thro' this hall — how often, O my knights, Your places being vacant at my side, . This chance of noble deeds will, come and go Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires Lost in the quagmire ! Many of you, yea most. Return no more: ye think I show my- self Too dark a prophet: come now, let us meet The morrow morn once more in one full field Of gracious pastime, that once more the King, Before ye leave him for this Quest, may count The yet-unbroken strength of all his knights. Rejoicing in that Order which he made." *So when the sun broke next from under ground, All the great table of our Arthur closed And clash'd in such a tourney and so full. So many lances broken — never yet Had Camelot seen the like, since Arthut came; And I myself and Galahad, for a strength Was in us from the vision, overthrew So many knights that all the people cried. And almost burst the barriers in their heat, Shouting, " Sir Galahad and Sir Perci- vale ! " 4i6 THE HOLY GRAIL, *But when the next Jay brake from under ground — O brother, had you known our Camelot, Built by old kings, age after age, so old The King himself had fears that it would fall, So strange, and rich, and dim ; for where the roofs Totter'd toward each other in the sky, Met foreheads all along the street of those Who watch'd us pass; and lower, and where the long Rich galleries, lady-laden, weigh'd the necks Of dragons clinging to the crazy walls. Thicker than drops from thunder, showers of flowers Fell as we past ; and men and boys astride On wyvern, lion, dragon, griffin, swan, At all the corners, named us each by name. Calling " God speed ! " but in the ways below The knights and ladies wept, and rich and poor "Wept, and the King himself could hardly speak For grief, and all in middle street the Queen, Who rode by Lancelot, wail'd and shriek'd aloud, "This madness has come on us for our sins." So to the Gate of the three Queens we came, Where Arthur's wars are render'd mysti- cally, And thence departed every one his way. 'And I was lifted up in heart, and thought Of all my late-shown prowess in the lists. How my strong lance had beaten down the knights, So many and famous names; and never yet Had heaven appear'd so blue, nor earth so green, For all my blood danced in me, and I knew That I should light upon the Holy Grail. ' Thereafter, the dark warning of our King, That most of us would follow wandering fires. Came like a driving gloom across my mind. Then every evil word I had spoken once, And every evil thought I had thought of old, And every evil d,(tQA I ever did. Awoke and cried, "This Quest is not for thee." And lifting up mine eyes, I found myself Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns. And I was thirsty even unto death; And I, too, cried, " This Quest is not for thee." ' And on I rode, and when I thought my thirst Would slay me, saw deep lawns, and then a brook. With one sharp rapid, where the crisping white Play'd ever back upon the sloping wave. And took both ear and eye; and o'er the brook Were apple-trees, and apples by the brook Fallen, and on the lawns. " I will rest here," I said, " I am not worthy of the Quest;" But even while I drank the brook, and ate The goodly apples, all these things at once Fell into dust, and I was left alone, And thirsting, in a land of sand and thorns. * And then behold a woman at a door Spinning; and fair the house whereby she sat, And kind the woman's eyes and innocent, And all her bearing gracious; and she rose Opening her arms to meet me, as who should say, " Rest here; " but when I touch'd her, lo ! she, too, Fell into dust and nothing, and the house Became no better than a broken shed, THE HOLY GRAIL. A^l And in it a dead babe; and also this Fell into dust, and I was left alone. ' And on I rode, and greater was ni) thirst. Then flash'd a yellow gleam across the world, And where it smote the plowshare in the field, The plowman left his plowing, and fell down Before it; where it glitter'd on her pail, The milkmaid left her milking, and fell down Before it, and I knew not why, but thought "The sun is rising," tho' the sun had risen. Then was I ware of one that on me moved In golden armour with a crown of gold About a casque all jewels; and his horse In golden armour jewell'd everywhere : And on the splendour came, flashing me blind; And seem'd to me the Lord of all the world, Being so huge. But when I thought he meant To crush me, moving on me, lo ! he, too, Open'd his arms to embrace me as he came, And up I went and touch'd him, and he, too, Fell into dust, and I was left alone And wearying in a land of sand and thorns. * And I rode on and found a mighty hill. And on the top, a city wall'd : the spires Prick'd with incredible pinnacles into heaven. And by the gateway stirr'd a crowd; and these Cried to me chmbing, " Welcome, Perci- vale ! Thou mightiest and thou purest among men ! " And glad was I and clomb, but found at top No man, nor any voice. And thence I past 2E Far thro' a ruinous "city, and I saw That man had once dwelt there; but there I found Only one man of an exceeding age. " Where is that goodly company," said I, "That so cried out upon me?" and he had Scarce any voice to answer, and yet gasp'd, " Whence and what art thou? " and even as he spoke Fell into dust, and disappear'd, and I Was left alone once more, and cried in grief, " Lo, if I find the Holy Grail itself And touch it, it will crumble into dust." * And thence I dropt into a lowly vale, Low as the hill was high, and where the vale Was lowest, found a chapel, and thereby A holy hermit in a hermitage. To whom I told my phantoms, and he said: ' " O son, thou hast not true humility, The highest virtue, mother of them all; For when the Lord of all things made Himself Naked of glory for His mortal change, * Take thou my robe,' she said, * for all is thine,' And all her form shone forth with sud- den light So that the angels were amazed, and she FoUow'd Him down, and like a flying star Led on the gray-hair'd wisdom of the east; But her thou hast not known : for what is this Thou thoughtest of thy prowess and thy sins? Thou hast not lost thyself to save thyself As Galahad." When the hermit made an end. In silver armour suddenly Galahad shone Before us, and against the chapel door Laid lance, and enter' d, and we knelt in prayer. And there the hermit slaked my burning thirst, And at the sacring of the mass I saw The holy elements alone; but he, 4i8 THE HOLY GRAIL. " Saw ye no more? I, Galahad, saw the Grail, The Holy Grail, descend upon the shrine : I saw the fiery face as of a child That smote itself into the bread, and went; And hither am I copie; and never yet Hath what thy sister taught me first to see, This Holy Thing, fail'd from my side, nor come Cover'd, but moving with me night and day, Fainter by day, but always in the night Blood-red, and sliding down the blacken'd marsh Blood-red, and on the naked mountain top Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere below Blood-red. And in the strength of this I rode. Shattering all evil customs everywhere. And past thro' Pagan realms, and made them mine, And clash'd with Pagan hordes, and "bore them down, And broke thro' all, and in the strength of this Come victor. But my time is hard at hand. And hence I go; and one will crown me king Far in the spiritual city; and come thou, too. For thou shalt see the vision when I go." * While thus he spake, his eye, dwell- ing on mine. Drew me, with power upon me, till I grew One with him, to believe as he believed. Then, when the day began to wane, we went. ' There rose a hill that none but man could climb, Scarr'd with a hundred wintry water- courses — Storm at the top, and when we gain'd it, storm Round us and death; for every moment glanced His silver arms and gloom'd : so quick and thick The lightnings here and there to left and right Struck, till the dry old trunks about us, dead, Yea, rotten with a hundred years of death, Sprang into fire : and at the base we found On either hand, as far as eye could see, A great black swamp and of an evil smell, Part black, part whiten'd with the bones of men, Not to be crost, save that some ancient king Had built a way, where, link'd with many a bridge, A thousand piers ran into the great Sea. And Galahad fled along them bridge by bridge. And every bridge as quickly as he crost Sprang into fire and vanish'd, tho' I yearn'd To follow; and thrice above him all the heavens Open'd and blazed with thunder such as seem'd Shoutings of all the sons of God : and first At once I saw him far on the great Sea, In silver-shining armour starry-clear; And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung Clothed in white samite or a luminous cloud. And with exceeding swiftness ran the boat, If boat it were — I saw not whence it came. And when the heavens open'd and blazed again Roaring, I saw him like a silver star — And had he set the sail, or had the boat Become a living creature clad with wings? And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung Redder than any rose, a joy to me, For now I knew the veil had been with- drawn. Then in a moment when they blazed again Opening, I saw the least of little stars THE HOLY GRAIL. 419 Down on the waste, and straight beyond the star I saw the spiritual city and all her spires And gateways in a glory like one pearl — No larger, tho' the goal of all the saints — Strike from the sea; and from the star there shot A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy" Grail, Which never eyes on earth again shall see. Then fell the floods of heaven drowning the deep. And how my feet recrost the deathful ridge No memory in me lives; but that I touch'd The chapel-doors at dawn I know; and thence Taking my war-horse from the holy man, Glad that no phantom vext me more, return'd To whence I came, the gate of Arthur's wars.' 'O brother,' ask'd Ambrosius, — 'for in sooth These ancient books — and they would win thee — teem. Only I find not there this Holy Grail, With miracles and marvels like to these. Not all unlike; which oftentime I read. Who read but on my breviary with ease, Till my head swims; and then go forth and pass Down to the little thorpe that lies so close, And almost plaster'd like a martin's nest To these old walls — and mingle with our folk; And knowing every honest face of theirs As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep. And every homely secret in their hearts, Delight myself with gossip and old wives, And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings- in, And mirthful sayings, children of the place. That have no meaning half a league away : Oi lulling random squabbles when they Chafferings and chatterings at the mar- ket-cross. Rejoice, small man, in this small world of mine, Yea, even in their hens and in their eggs — brother, saving this Sir Galahad, Came ye on none but phantoms in your quest, No man, no woman ? ' Then Sir Percivale : ' All men, to one so bound by such a vow. And women were as phantoms. O my brother, Why wilt thou shame me to confess to thee How far I falter'd from my quest and vow ? For after I had lain so many nights,^ A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake. In grass and burdock, I was changed to wan And meagre, and the vision had not come; And then I chanced upon a goodly town With one great dwelling in the middle of it; Thither I made, and there was I disarm'd By maidens each as fair as any flower : But when they led me into hall, behold. The Princess of that castle was the one. Brother, and that one only, who had ever Made my heart leap; for when I moved of old A slender page about her father's. hah. And she a slender maiden, all my heart Went after her with longing: yet we twain Had never kiss'd a kiss, or vow'd a vow. And now I came upon her once again, And one had wedded her, and he was dead. And all his land and wealth and state were hers. And while I tarried, every day she set A banquet richer than the day before By me; for all her longing and her will Was toward me as of old; till one fair morn, 1 walking to and fro beside a stream That flash'd across her orchard under- neath 420 THE HOLY GRAIL. Her castle-walls, she stole upon my walk, And calling me the greatest of all knights, Embraced me, and so kiss'd me the first time, And gave herself and all her wealth to me. ^ Then I remember'd Arthur's warning word. That most of us would follow wandering fires, And the Quest faded in my heart. Anon, The heads of all her people drew to me, With supplication both of knees and tongue : " We have heard of thee : thou art our greatest knight. Our Lady says it, and we well believe : Wed thou our Lady, and rule over us. And thou shalt be as Arthur in our'land." O me, my brother ! but one night my vow Burnt me within, so that I rose and fled. But vvail'd and wept, and hated mine own self. And ev'n the Holy Quest, and all but her; Then after I was join'd with Galahad Cared not for her, nor anything upon earth.' Then said the monk, * Poor men, when yule is cold, Must be content to sit by little fires. And this am I, so that ye care for me Ever so little; yea, and blest be. Heaven That brought thee here to this poor house of ours Where all the brethren are so hard, to warm My cold heart with a friend : but O the pity To find thine own first love once more — to hold. Hold her a wealthy bride within thine arms. Or all but hold, and then — cast her aside. Foregoing all her sweetness, like a weed. For we that want the warmth of double life. We that are plagued with dreams of something sweet Beyond all sweetness in a life so rich, — Ah, blessed Lord, I speak too earthly- wise, Seeing I never stray'd beyond the cell, But live like an old badger in his earth. With earth about him everywhere, despite All fast and penance. Saw ye none be- side," None of your knights? ' * Yea so,' said Percivale : ' One nighi my pathway swerving east, I saw . The pelican on the casque of our Sir Bors All in the middle of the rising moon : And toward him spurr'd, and hail'd him, and he me. And each made joy of either; then he ask'd, "Where is he? hast thou seen him — Lancelot? — Once," Said good Sir Bors, " he dash'd across me — mad. And maddening what he rode : and when I cried, * Ridest thou then so hotly on a quest So holy,' Lancelot shouted, * Stay me not ! I have been the sluggard, and I rid? apace. For now there is a lion in the way.' So vanish'd." * Then Sir Bors had ridden on Softly, and sorrowing for our Lancelot, Because his former madness, once the talk And scandal of our table, had return'd; For Lancelot's kith and kin so worship him That ill to him is ill to them; to Bors Beyond the rest : he well had been con- tent Not to have seen, so Lancelot might have seen, i'he Holy Cup of healing; and, indeed. Being so clouded with his grief and love. Small heart was his after, the Holy Quest : If God would send the vision, well : if not. The Quest and he were in the hands of Heaven. * And then, with small adventure met. Sir Bors Rode to the lonest tract of all the realm, THE HOLY GRAIL, 421 And found a people there among their crags, Our race and blood, a remnant that were left Paynim amid their circles, and the stones They pitch up straight to heaven: and their wise men Were strong in that old magic which can trace The wandering of the stars, and scoff d at him And this high Quest as at a simple thing : Told him he follovv'd — almost Arthur's words — A mocking fire : " What other fire than he, Whereby the blood beats, and the blossom blows. And the sea rolls, and all the world is warm'd ? " And when his answer chafed them, the rough crowd, Hearing he had a difference with their priests. Seized him, and bound and plunged him into a cell Of great piled stones; and lying bounden there In darkness thro' innumerable hours He heard the hollow-ringing heavens sweep Over him till by miracle — what else? — Heavy as it was, a great stone slipt and fell. Such as no wind could move : and thro* the gap Glimmer'd the streaming scud: then came a night Still as the day was loud; and thro' the gap The seven clear stars of Arthur's Table Round — For, brother, so one night, because they roll Thro' such a round in heaven, we named the stars, Rejoicing in ourselves and in our King — And these, like bright eyes of familiar friends, In on him shone : " And then to me, to me," Said good Sir Bors, "beyond all hopes of mine. Who scarce had pray'd or ask'd it for myself — Across the seven clear stars — O grace to me — In colour like the fingers of a hand Before a burning taper, the sweet Grail Glided and past, and close upon it peal'd A sharp quick thunder." Afterwards, a maid, Who kept our holy faith among her kin In secret, entering, loosed and let hiir go.' To whom the monk : * And I remember now That pelican on the casque : Sir Bors it was Who spake so low and sadly at our board ; And mighty reverent at our grace was he : A square-set man and honest; and his eyes. An out-door sign of all the warmth within, Smiled with his lips — a smile beneath a cloud, But heaven had meant it for a sunny one : Ay, ay, Sir Bors, who else? But when ye reach'd The city, found ye all your knights re- turn'd. Or was there sooth in Arthur's prophecy, Tell me, and what said each, and what the King? ' Then answer'd Perc^vale : ' And that can I, Brother, and truly; sin<;e the living words Of so great men as Lancelot and our King Pass not from door to door and out again. But sit within the house. O, when we reach'd The city, our horses stumbling as they trode On heaps of ruin, hornless unicorns, Crack'd basilisks, and splinter'd cocka- trices. And shatter'd talbots, which had left the stones Raw, that they fell from, brought us to the hall. 422 THE HOLY GRAIL. 'And there sat Arthur on the dais- throne, And those that had gone out upon the Quest, Wasted and worn, and but a tithe of them, And those that had not, stood before the King, Who, when he saw me, rose, and bade me hail, Saying, " A welfare in thine eye reproves Our fear of some disastrous chance for thee On hill, or plain, at sea, or flooding ford. So tierce a gale made havoc here of late Among the strange devices of our kings; Yea, shook this newer, stronger hall of ours, And from the statue Merlin moulded for us Half-wrench'd a golden wing; but now — . the Quest, This vision — hast thou seen the Holy Cup, That Joseph brought of old to Glaston- bury?" *So when I told him all thyself hast heard, Ambrosius, and my fresh but fixt resolve To pass away into the quiet life, He answer'd not, but, sharply turning, ask'd Of Gawain, " Gawain, was this Quest for thee?" * " Nay, lor(^," said Gawain, " not for such as I. Therefore I communed with a saintly man. Who made me sure the Quest was not for me ; For I was much awearied of the Quest : But found a silk pavilion in a field. And merry maidens in it; and then this gale Tore my pavilion from the tenting-pin. And blew my merry maidens all about With all discomfort; yea, and but for this, My twelvemonth and a day were pleasant to me." * He ceased ; and Arthur turn'd to whom at first He saw not, for Sir Bors, on entering, push'd Athwart the throng to Lancelot, caught his hand. Held it, and there, half-hidden by him, stood. Until the King espied him, saying to him, •* Hail, Bors ! if ever loyal man and true Could see it, thou hast seen the Grail;" and Bors, " Ask me not, for I may not speak of it : I saw it;" and the tears were in his eyes. 'Then there remain'd but Lancelot, for the rest Spake but of sundry perils in the storm; Perhaps, like him of Cana in Holy Writ, Our Arthur kept his best until the last; "Thou, too, my Lancelot," ask'd the King, " my friend. Our mightiest, hath this Quest avail'd for thee?" * *' Our mightiest ! " answer'd Lancelot, with a groan; " O King ! " — and when he paused, me- thought I spied A dying fire of madness in his eyes — ** O King, my friend, if friend of thine I be, Happier are those that welter in their sin. Swine in the mud, that cannot see for slime. Slime of the ditch : but in me lived a sin So strange, of such a kind, that all of pure. Noble, and knightly in me twined and clung Round that one sin, until the wholesome flower And poisonous grew together, each as each. Not to be pluck'd asunder; and when thy knights Sware, I sware with them only in the hope That could I touch or see the Holy Grail They might be pluck'd asunder. Then I spake To one most holy saint, who wept and said, THE HOLY GRAIL. 423 That save they could be pluck'd asunder, all My quest were but in vain; to whom I vow'd That I would work according as he will'd. And forth I went, and while I yearn'd and strove To tear the twain asunder in my heart, My madness came upon me as of old, And whipt me into waste fields far away; There was I beaten down by little men, Mean knights, to whom the moving of my sword And shadow of my spear had been enow To scare them from me once; and then I came All in my folly to the naked shore. Wide flats, where nothing but coarse grasses grew; But such a blast, my King, began to blow, So loud a blast along the shore and sea, Ye could not hear the waters for the blast, Tho' heapt in mounds and ridges all the sea Drove like a cataract, and all the sand Swept like a river, and the clouded heavens Were shaken with the motion and the sound. And blackening in the sea-foam sway'd a boat, Half-swallow'd in it, anchor'd with a chain; And in my madness to myself I said, ' I will embark and I will lose myself, And in the great sea wash away my sin.' I burst the chain, I sprang into the boat. Seven days I drove along the dreary deep, And with me drove the moon and all the stars; And ':he wind fell, and on the seventh night I heard the shingle grinding in the surge. And felt the boat shock earth, and look- ing up. Behold, the enchanted towers of Car- iDonek, A castle like a rock upon a rock. With chasm-like portals open to the sea. And steps that met the breaker ! there was none Stood near it but a lion on each side That kept the entrv, and the moon was full. Then from the boat I leapt, and up the stairs. There drew my sword. With sudden- flaring manes Those two great beasts rose upright like a man. Each gript a shoulder, and I stood between; And, when I would have smitten them, heard a voice, 'Doubt not, go forward; if thou doubt, the beasts Will tear thee piecemeal.' Then with violence The sword was dash'd from out my hand, and fell. And up into the sounding hall I past; But nothing in the sounding hall I saw. No bench nor table, painting on the wall Or shield of knight; only the rounded moon Thro' the tall oriel on the rolling sea. But always in the quiet house I heard, Clear as a lark, high o'er me as a lark, A sweet voice singing in the topmost tower To the eastward : up I climb'd a thousand steps With pain : as in a dream I seem'd to climb For ever : at the last I reach'd a door, A light was in the crannies, and I heard, * Glory and joy and honour to our Lord And to the Holy Vessel of the Grail.' Then in my madness I essay'd the door; It gave ; and thro' a stormy glare, a heat As from a seventimes- heated furnace, I, Blasted and burnt, and blinded as I was. With such a fierceness that I swoon'd away — O, yet methought I saw the Holy Grail, All pall'd in crimson samite, and around Great angels, awful shapes, and wings and eyes. And but for all my madness and my sin^ And then my swooning, I had sworn I saw That which I saw; but what I saw was veil'd And cover'd; and this Quest was not for me." 424 THE HOLY GRAIL. * So speaking, and here ceasing, Lance- lot left The hall long silent, till Sir Gawain — nay, Brother, I need not tell thee foolish words, — A reckless and irreverent knight was he, Now bolden'd by the silence of his King, — Well, I will tell thee: "O King, my hege," he said, " Hath Gawain fail'd in any quest of thine? When have I stinted stroke in foughten field? But as for thine, my good friend Percivale, Thy holy nun and thou have driven men mad, Yea, made our mightiest madder than our least. But by mine eyes and by mine ears I swear, I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat. And thrice as blind as any noonday owl. To holy virgins in their ecstasies, Henceforward." ' " Deafer," said the blameless King, "Gawain, and blinder unto holy things Hope not to make thyself by idle vows, Being too blind to have desire to see. But if indeed there came a sign from heaven. Blessed are Bors, Lancelot and Percivale, For these have seen according to their sight. For every fiery prophet in old times. And all the sacred madness of the bard, When God made music thro' them, could but speak His music by the framework and the chord ; And as ye saw it ye have spoken truth. * " Nay — but thou errest, Lancelot : never yet Could all of true and noble in knight and man Twine round one sin, whatever it might be. With such a closeness, but apart there grew. Save that he were the swine thou spakest of, Some root of knighthood and pure noble- ness; Whereto see thou, that it may bear its flower. • " And spake I not too truly, O my knights? Was I too dark a prophet when I said To those who went upon the Holy Quest, That most of them would follow wander- ing fires. Lost in the quagmire? — lost to me and gone. And left me gazing at a barren board, And a lean Order — scarce return'd a tithe — And out of those to whom the vision came My greatest hardly will believe he saw; Another hath beheld it afar off. And leaving human wrongs to right themselves. Cares but to pass into the silent life. And one hath had the vision face to face, And now his chair desires him here in vain. However they may crown him otherwhere. *'*And some among you .held, that if the King Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow : Not easily, seeing that the King must guard That which he rules, and is but as the hind To whom a space of land is given to plow. Who may not wander from the allotted field Before his work be done ; but, being done, Let visions of the night or of the day Come, as they will; and many a time they come, Until this earth he walks on seems not earth. This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, This air that smites his forehead is not air But vision — yea, his very hand and foot — In moments when he feels he cannot die, And knows himself no vision to him self, PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. 425 Nor the high God a vision, nor that One Who rose again : ye have seen what ye have seen." *So spake the King: I knew not all he meant.' PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. King Arthur made new knights to fill the gap Left by the Holy Quest; and as he sat In hall at old Caerleon, the high doors Were softly sunder'd, and thro' these a youth, Pelleas, and the sweet smell of the fields Past, and the sunshine came along with him. * Make me thy knight, because I know, Sir King, All that belongs to knighthood, and I love.' Such was his cry : for having heard the King Had let proclaim a tournament — the prize A golden circlet and a knightly sword, Full fain had Pelleas for his lady won The golden circlet, for himself the sword : And there were those who knew him near the King, And promised for him : and Arthur made him knight. And this new knight, Sir Pelleas of the isles — But lately come to his inheritance. And lord of many a barren isle was he — Riding at noon, a day or twain before. Across the forest call'd of Dean, to find Caerleon and the King, had felt the sun Beat like a strong knight on his helm, and reel'd Almost to falling from his horse; but saw Near him a mound of even-sloping side, Whereon a hundred stately beeches grew, And here and there great hollies under them; But for a mile all round was open space, And fern and heath : and slowly Pelleas drew To that dim day, then binding his good horse To a tree, cast himself down; and as he lay At random looking over the brou n earth Thro' that green-glooming twilight of the grove, It seem'd to Pelleas that the fern without Burnt as a living fire of emeralds, So that his eyes were dazzled looking at it. Then o'er it crost the dimness of a cloud Floating, and once the shadow of a bird Flying, and then a fawn; and his eyes closed. And since he loved all maidens, but no maid In special, half-awake he whisper'd, 'Where? O where? I love thee, tho' I know thee not. For fair thou art and pure as Guinevere, And I will make thee with my spear and sword As famous — O my Queen, my Guinevere, For I will be thine Arthur when we meet.' Suddenly waken'd with a sound of talk And laughter at the limit of the wood. And glancing thro' the hoary boles, he saw. Strange as to some old prophet might have seem'd A vision hovering on a sea of fire. Damsels in divers colours like the cloud Of sunset and sunrise, and all of them On horses, and the horses richly trapt Breast-high in that-.bright line of bracken stood : And all the damsels talk'd confusedly. And one was pointing this way, and one that, Because the way was lost. And Pelleas rose. And loosed his horse, and led him to the light. There she that seem'd the chief among them said, ' In happy time behold our pilot-star ! Youth, we are damsels-errant, and we ride, Arm'd as ye see, to tilt against the knights There at Caerleon, but have lost our way ; To right? to left? straight forward? bacV again? W^hich ? tell us quickly.' 426 PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. Pelleas gazing thought, Is Guinevere herself so beautiful?' For large her violet eyes look'd, and her bloom A rosy dawn kindled in stainless heavens, And round her limbs, mature in woman- hood; And slender was her hand and small her shape: And but for those large eyes, the haunts of scorn, She might have seem'd a toy to trifle with, And pass and care no more. But while he gazed The beauty of her flesh abash'd the boy, As tho' it were the beauty of her soul : For as the base man, judging of the good, Puts his own baseness in him by default Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend All the young beauty of his own soul to hers, Believing her; and when she spake to him, Stammer'd, and could not make her a reply. For out of the waste islands had he come. Where saving his own sisters he had known Scarce any but the women of his isles, Rough wives, that laugh'd and scream'd against the gulls, Makers of nets, and living from the sea. Then with a slow smile turn'd the lady round And look'd upon" her people j and as when A stone is flung into some sleeping tarn, The circle widens till it lip the marge, Spread the slow smile thro' all her com- pany. Three knights were thereamong; and they too smiled, Scorning him; for the lady was Ettarre, And she was a great lady in her land. Again she said, 'O wild and of the woods, Knowest thou not the fashion of our speech ? Or have the Heavens but given thee a fair face. Lacking a tongue?* ' O damsel,' answer'd he, 'I woke from dreams; and coming out of gloom Was dazzled by the sudden light, and crave Pardon: but will ye to Caerleon? I Go likewise : shall I lead you to the King? ' 'Lead then,' she said; and thro' the woods they went. And while they rode, the meaning in his eyes, His tenderness of manner, and chaste awe, His broken utterances and bashfulness, Were all a burthen to her, and in her heart She mutter'd, ' I have lighted on a fool. Raw, yet so stale ! ' But since her mind was bent On hearing, after trumpet blown, her name And title, ' Queen of Beauty,' in the lists Cried — and beholding him so strong, she thought That peradventure he will fight for me, And win the circlet: therefore flatter'd him. Being so gracious, that he wellnigh deem'd His wish by hers was echo'd; and her knights And all her damsels too were gracious to him, For she was a great lady. And when they reach'd Caerleon, ere they past to lodging, she. Taking his hand, *0 the strong hand,' she said, * See ! look at mine ! but wilt thou fight for me. And win me this fine circlet, Pelleas, That I may love thee? ' Then his helpless heart Leapt, and he cried, * Ay ! wilt thou if I win?' * Ay, that will I,' she answer'd, and she laugh'd, And straitly nipt the hand, and flung it from her; Then glanced askew at those three knights of hers. Till all her ladies laugh'd along with her. PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. 427 ' O happy world,' thought Pelleas, * all, meseems. Are happy; I the happiest of them all.' Nor slept that night for pleasure in his blood, And green wood-ways, and eyes among the leaves; Then being on the morrow knighted, sware To love one only. And as he came away. The men Avho met him rounded on their heels And wonder'd after him because his face Shone like the countenance of a priest of old Against the flame about a sacrifice Kindled by fire from heaven : so glad was he. Then Arthur made vast banquets, and strange knights From the four winds came in : and each one sat, Tho' served with choice from air, land, stream, and sea, Oft in mid-banquet measuring with his eyes His neighbour's make and might: and Pelleas look'd Noble among the noble, for he dream'd His lady loved him, and he knew himself Loved of the King: and him his new- made knight Worshipt, whose lightest whisper moved him more Than all the ranged reasons of the world. Then blush'd and brake the morning of the jousts, And this was call'd ' The Tournament of Youth : ' For Arthur, loving his young knight, withheld His older and his mightier from the lists, That Pelleas might obtain his lady's love. According to her promise, and remain Lord of the tourney. And Arthur had the jousts Down in the flat field by the shore of Usk Holden : the gilded parapets were crown'd With faces, and the great tower fill'd with eyes Up to the summit, and the trumpets blew. There all dav long Sir Pelleas kept the field With honour : so by that strong hand of his The sword and golden circlet were achieved. Then rang the shout his lady loved: the heat Of pride and glory fired her face; her eye Sparkled ; she caught the circlet from his lance, And there before the people crown'd herself: So for the last time she was gracious to him. Then at Caerleon for a space — her look Bright for all others, cloudier on her knight — Linger'd Ettarre : and seeing Pelleas droop, Said Guinevere, ' We marvel at thee much, damsel, wearing this unsunny face To him who won thee glory ! ' and she said, * Had ye not held your Lancelot in your bower. My Queen, he had not won.' Whereat the Queen, As one whose foot is bitten by an ant. Glanced down upon her, turn'd and went her way. But after, when her damsels, and her- self, And those three knights all set their faces home, Sir Pelleas follow'd. She that saw him cried, ' Damsels — and yet I should be shamed to say it — 1 cannot bide Sir Baby. Keep him back Among yourselves. Would rather that we had Some rough old knight who knew the worldly way. Albeit grizzlier than a bear, to ride And jest with : take him to you, keep him off. 428 PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. And pamper him with papmeat, if ye will, Old milky fables of the wolf and sheep, Such as the wholesome mothers tell their boys. Nay, should ye try him with a merry one To find his mettle, good : and if he fly us, Small matter ! let him.' This her damsels heard, And mindful of her small and cruel hand, They, closing round him thro' the journey home. Acted her hest, and always from her side Restrain'd him with all manner of device, So that he could not come to speech with her. And when she gain'd her castle, upsprang the bridge, Down rang the grate of iron thro' the groove, And he was left alone in open field. ' These be the ways of ladies,' Pelleas thought, *To those who love them, trials of our faith. Yea, let her prove me to'the uttermost. For loyal to the uttermost am I.' So made his moan; and, darkness falling, sought A priory not far off, there lodged, but rose With morning every day, and, moist or dry, Full-arm'd upon his charger all day long Sat by the walls, and no one open'd to him. And this persistence turn'd her scorn to wrath. Then calling her three knights, she charged them,*' Out ! And drive him from the walls.' And out they came, But Pelleas overthrew them as they dash'd Against him one by one; and these return'd, But still he kept his watch beneath the wall. ' Thereon her wrath became a hate; and once, A week beyond, while walking on the walls With her three knights, she pointed downward, 'Look, He haunts me — I cannot breathe — besieges me; Down ! strike him ! put my hate into your strokes. And drive him from my walls.' And down they went, And Pelleas overthrew them one by one; And from the tower above him cried Ettarre, ' Bind him, and bring him in.' He heard her voice; Then let the strong hand, which had overthrown Her minion-knights, by those he over- threw Be bounden straight, and so they brought him in. Then when he came before Ettarre, the sight Of her rich beauty made him at one glance More bondsman in his heart than in his bonds. Yet with good cheer he spake, ' Behold me. Lady, A prisoner, and the vassal of thy will; And if thou keep me in the donjon here, Content am I so that I see thy face But once a day : for I have sworn my vows, And thou hast given thy promise, and I know That all these pains are trials of my faith. And that thyself, when thou hast seen me strain'd And sifted to the utmost, wilt at length Yield me thy love and know me for thy knight.' Then she began to rail so bitterly, With all her damsels, he was stricken mute; But when she mock'd his vows and the great King, PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. 429 Lighted on words: 'For pity of thine own self, Peace, Lady, peace : is he not thine and mine? ' * Thou fool,' she said, ' I never heard his voice But long'd to break away. Unbind him now, And thrust him out of doors; for save he be Fool to the midmost marrow of his bones, He will return no more.' And those, her three, Laugh'd and unbound, and thrust him from th^ gate. And after this, a week beyond, again She call'd them, saying, 'There he watches yet. There like a dog before his master's door ! Kick'd, he returns : do ye not hate him, ye? Ye know yourselves: how can ye bide at peace, Affronted with his fulsome innocence? Are ye but creatures of the board and bed. No men to strike? Fall on him all at once. And if ye slay him I reck not : if ye fail. Give ye the slave mine order to be bound. Bind him as heretofore, and bring him in : It may be ye shall slay him in his bonds.' She spake; and at her will they couch'd their spears. Three against one : and Gavvain passing by, Bound upon solitary adventure, saw Low down beneath the shadow of those towers A villainy, three to one : and thro' his heart The fire of honour and all noble deeds Flash'd, and he call'd, ' I strike upon thy side — The caitiffs ! ' ' Nay,' said Pelleas, ' but forbear; He needs no aid who doth his lady's will,' So Gawain, looking at the villainy done, P'orbore, but in his heat and eagerness Trembled and quiver'd, as the dog, with- held A moment from the vermin that he sees Before him, shivers, ere he springs and kills. And Pelleas overthrew them, one to three; And they rose up, and bound, and brought him in. Then first her anger, leaving Pelleas, burn'd Full on her knights in many an evil name. Of craven, weakling, and thrice-beaten hound : 'Yet, take him, ye that scarce are fit to touch. Far less to bind, your victor, and thrust him out. And let who will release him from his bonds. And if he comes again ' — there she brake short; And Pelleas answer'd, ' Lady, for indeed I loved you and I deem'd you beautiful, I cannot brook to see your beauty marr'd Thro' evil spite : and if ye love me not, I cannot bear to dream you so forsworn : I had liefer ye were worthy of my love. Than to be loved again of you — fare- well ; And tho' ye kill my hope, not yet my love. Vex not yourself: ye will not see me more.' While thus he spake, she gazed upon the man Of princely bearing, tho' in bonds, and thought, ' Why have I push'd him from me? this man loves. If love there be : yet him I loved not. Why? I deem'd him fool? yea, so? or that in him A something — was it nobler than mv- self ?— Seem'd my reproach? He is not of my kind. 430 PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. He could not love me, did he know me well. Nay, let him go — and quickly.' And her knights Laugh'd not, but thrust him bounden out of door. Forth sprang Gawain, and loosed him from his bonds, And flung them o'er the walls; and afterward. Shaking his hands, as from a lazar's rag, 'Faith of my body,' he said, 'and art thou not — Yea thou art he, whom late our Arthur made Knight of his Table; yea and he that won The circlet? wherefore hast thou so defamed Thy brotherhood in me and all the rest, As let these caitiffs on thee work their will?' And Pelleas answer'd, 'O, their wills are hers For whom I won the circlet; and mine, hers. Thus to be bounden, so to see her face, Marr'd tho' it be with spite and mockery now,' Other than when I found her in the woods; And tho' she hath me bounden but in spite. And all to flout me, when they bring me in. Let me be bounden, I shall see her face; Else must I die thro' mine unhappiness.' And Gawain answer'd kindly tho' in scorn, ' Why, let my lady bind me if she will. And let my lady beat me if she will : But an she send her delegate to thrall These fighting hands of mine — Christ kill me then But I will slice him handless by the wrist, And let my lady sear the stump for him, Howl as he may. But hold me for your friend : Come, ye know nothing: here I pledge my troth, Yea, by the honour of the Table Round, I will be leal to thee and work thy work, And tame thy jailing princess to thine hand. Lend me thine horse and arms, and I will say That I have slain thee. She will let me in To hear the manner of thy fight and fall; Then, when I come within her counsels, then From prime to vespers will I chant thy praise As prowest knight and truest lover, more Than any have sung thee living, till she long To have thee back in lusty life again. Not to be bound, save by white bonds and warm, Dearer than freedom. Wherefore now thy horse And armour : let me go : be comforted : Give me three days to melt her fancy, and hope The third night hence will bring thee news of gold.' Then Pelleas lent his horse and all his arms, Saving the goodly sword, his prize, and took Gawain's, and said, * Betray me not, but help — Art thou not he whom men call light-of- love?' * Ay,' said Gawain, * for women be so light.' Then bounded forward to the castle walls, And raised a bugle hanging from his neck, And winded it, and that so musically That all the old echoes hidden in the wall Rang out Hke hollow woods at hunting- tide. Up ran a score of damsels to the tower; ' Avaunt,' they cried, ' our lady loves thee not.' But Gawain lifting up his vizor said, * Gawain am I, Gawain of Arthur's court, And I have slain this Pelleas whom ye hate: PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. 431 Behold his horse and armour. Open gates, And I will make you merry.' And down they ran, Her damsels, crying to their lady, * Lo ! Pelleas is dead — he told us — he that hath His horse and armour : will ye let him in ? He slew him ! Gawain, Gawain of this court, Sir Gawain — there he waits below the wall, Blowing his bugle as who should say him nay.' And so, leave given, straight on thro' open door Rode Gawain, whom she greeted courte- ously. 'Dead, is it so?' she ask'd. *Ay, ay,' said he, * And oft in dying cried upon your name.' * Pity on him,' she answer'd, ' a good knight. But never let me bide one hour at peace.' * Ay,' thought Gawain, ' and you be fair enow : But I to your dead man have given my troth, That whom ye loathe, him will I make you love.' So those three days, aimless about the land, Lost in a doubt, Pelleas wandering Waited, until the third night brought a moon With promise of large light on woods and ways. Hot was the night and silent; but a sound Of Gawain ever coming, and this lay — Which Pelleas had heard sung before the Queen, And seen her sadden listening — vext his heart, And marr'd his rest — * A worm within the rose.' ' A rose, but one, none other rose had I, A rose, one rose, and this was wondrous fair, One rose a rose that gladden'd earth and sky, One rose, my rose, that sweeten'd all mine air — I cared not for the thorns; the thorns were there. * One rose, a rose to gather by and by. One rose, a rose to gather and to wear, No rose but one — what other rose had I ? One rose, my rose; a rose that will not die, — He dies who loves it, — if the worm be there.' This tender rhyme, and evermore the doubt, ' Why lingers Gawain with his golden news? ' So shook him that he could not rest, but rode Ere midnight to her walls, and bound his horse Hard by the gates. Wide open were the gates, And no watch kept; and in thro' these he past. And heard but his own steps, and his own heart Beating, for nothing moved but his own self, And his own shadow. Then he crost the court. And spied not any light in hall or bower. But saw the postern portal also wide Yawning; and up a slope of garden, all Of roses white and red, and brambles mixt And overgrowing them, went on, and found. Here too, all hush'd below the mellow moon. Save that one rivulet from a tiny cave Came lightening downward, and so spilt itself Among the roses, and was lost again. Then was he ware of three pavilions rear'd Above the bushes, gilden-peakt : in one. Red after revel, droned her lurdane knights Slumbering, and their three squires across their feet ; 432 PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. In one, their malice on the placid lip Froz'n by sweet sleep, four of her damsels lay: And in the third, the circlet of the jousts Bound on her brow, were Gawain and Ettarre. Back, as a hand that pushes thro' the leaf To find a nest and feels a snake, he drew; Back, as a coward slinks from what he fears To cope with, or* a traitor proven or hound Beaten, did Pelleas in an utter shame Creep with his shadow thro' the court again. Fingering at his sword-handle until he stood There on the castle-bridge once more, and thought, * I will go back, and slay them where they lie.' And so went back, and seeing them yet in sleep Said, ' Ye, that so dishallow the holy sleep, Your sleep is death,' and drew the sword, and thought, * What ! slay a sleeping knight? the King hath bound And sworn me to this brotherhood; ' again, 'Alas that ever a knight should be so false.' then turn'd, and so return'd, and groan- ing laid The naked sword athwart their naked throats There left it, and them sleeping; and she lay. The circlet of the tourney round her brows, And the sword of the tourney across her throat. And forth he past, and mounting on his horse Stared at her towers that, larger than themselves Tn their own darkness, throng'd into the moon. Then crush'd the saddle with his thighs, and clench'd His hands, and madden'd with himseli and moan'd : 'Would they have risen against me in their blood At the last day? I might have answer' d them Even before high God. O towers so strong. Huge, solid, would that even while I gaze The crack of earthquake shivering to your base Split you, and Hell burst up your harlot roofs Bellowing, and charr'd you thro' and thro' within, Black as the harlot's heart — hollow as a skull ! Let the fierce east scream thro' your eye- let-holes. And whirl the dust of harlots round and round In dung and nettles ! hiss, snake — I saw him there — Let the fox bark, let the wolf yell. Who yells Here in the still sweet summer night, but I — I, the poor Pelleas whom she call'd her fool? Fool, beast — he, she, or I ? myself most fool; Beast too, as lacking human wit — dis- graced, Dishonour'd all for trial of true love — Love? — we be all alike : only the King Hath made us fools and liars. O noble vows ! great and sane and simple race of brutes That own no lust because they have no law ! For why should I have loved her to my shame? ' 1 loathe her, as I loved her to my shame. I never loved her, I but lusted for her — Away — ' He dash'd the rowel into his horse, And bounded forth and vanish'd thro' the night. PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. 433 Then she, that felt the cold touch on her throat, Awaking knew the sword, and turn'd herself To Gawain : ' Liar, for thou hast not slain This Pelleas ! here he stood, and might have slain Me and thyself.' And he that tells the tale Says that her ever-veering fancy turn'd To Pelleas, as the one true knight on earth, And only lover; and thro' her love her life Wasted and pined, desiring him in vain. But he by wild and way, for half the night; And over hard and soft, striking the sod From out the soft, the spark from off the hard. Rode till the star above the wakening sun, Beside that tower where Percivale was cowl'd. Glanced from the rosy forehead of the dawn. For so the words were flash'd into his heart He knew not whence or wherefore : ' O sweet star, Pure on the virgin forehead of the dawn ! ' And there he would have wept, but felt his eyes Harder and drier than a fountain bed In summer : thither came the village girls And linger'd talking, and they come no more fill the sweet heavens have fiU'd it from the heights Again with living waters in the change Of seasons: hard his eyes; harder his heart Seem'd; but so weary were his limbs, that he. Gasping, ' Of Arthur's hall am I, but here. Here let me rest and die,' cast himself down, And gulfd his griefs in inmost sleep; so lay, Till shaken by a dream, that Gawain fired The hall of Merlin, and the morning star Reel'd in the smoke, brake into flame, and fell. 2F He woke, and being ware of some one nigh, Sent hands upon him, as to tear him, crying, ' False ! and I held thee pure as Guine- vere.' But Percivale stood near him and replied, * Am I but false as Guinevere is pure ? Or art thou mazed with dreams? or being one Of our free-spoken Table hast not heard That Lancelot ' — there he check'd him- self £tnd paused. Then fared it with Sir Pelleas as with one Who gets a wound in battle, and the sword That made it plunges thro' the wound again. And pricks it deeper : and he shrank and wail'd, * Is the Queen false?' and Percivale was mute. ' Have any of our Round Table held their vows ? ' And Percivale made answer not a word. 'Is the King true?' 'The King!' said Percivale. ' Why then let men couple at once with wolves. What ! art thou mad? ' But Pelleas, leaping up. Ran thro' the doors and vaulted on his horse And fled : small pity upon his horse had he. Or on himself, or any, and when he met A cripple, one that held a hand for alms — Hunch'd as he was, and like an old dwarf- elm That turns its- back on the salt blast, the boy Paused not, but overrode him, shouting, ' False, And false with Gawain ! ' and so left him bruised And batter'd, and fled on, and hill and wood Went ever streaming by him till the gloom, That follows on the turning of the world. 434 PELLEAS AND ETTARRE. Darken'd the common path : he twitch'd the reins, And made his beast that better knew it, swerve Now off it and now on ; but when he saw High up in heaven the hall that Merlin built. Blackening against the dead-"green stripes of even, * Black nest of rats,' he groan'd, * ye build too high.' Not long thereafter from the city gates issued Sir Lancelot riding airily, Warm with a gracious partirig from the Queen, Peace at his heart, and gazing at a star And marvelling what it was : on whom the boy. Across the silent seeded meadow-grass Borne, clash'd : and Lancelot, saying, * What name hast thou That ridest here so blindly and so hard?' * No name, no name,' he shouted, ' a scourge am I To lash the treasons of the Table Round.' * Yea, but thy name ? ' * I have many names,' he cried : * I am wrath and shame and hate and evil fame. And like a poisonous wind I pass to blast And blaze the crime of Lancelot and the Queen.' * First over me,' said Lancelot, * shalt thou pass.' * Fight therefore,' yell'd the youth, and either knight Drew back a space, and when they closed, at once The weary steed of Pelleas floundering flung His rider, who call'd out from the dark field, *Thou art false as Hell : slay me : I have no sword.' Then Lancelot, 'Yea, between thy lips — and sharp; But here will I disedge it by thy death.' 'Slay then,' he shriek'd, 'my will is to be slain,' And Lancelot, with his heel upon the fall'n, Rolling his eyes, a moment stood, then spake : ' Rise, weakling; I am Lancelot; say thy say.' And Lancelot slowly rode his warhorse back To Camelot, and Sir Pelleas in brief while Caught his unbroken limbs from the dark field. And follow'd to the city. It chanced that both Brake into hall together, worn and pale. There with her knights and dames was Guinevere. Full wonderingly she gazed on Lancelot So soon return'd, and then on Pelleas, him Who had not greeted her, but cast him- self Down on a bench, hard-breathing. 'Have ye fought? ' She ask'd of Lancelot. ' Ay, my Queen,' he said. * And hast thou overthrown him ? ' * Ay, my Queen.' Then she, turning to Pelleas, * O young knight. Hath the great heart of knighthood in thee fail'd So far thou canst not bide, unfrowardly, A fall from hitn ? ' Then, for he answer'd not, * Or hast thou other griefs? If I, the Queen, May help them, loose thy tongue, and let me know.' But Pelleas lifted up an eye so fierce She quail'd ; and he, hissing, ' I have no sword,' Sprang from the door into the dark. The Queen Look'd hard upon her lover, he on her; And each foresaw the dolorous day to be: And all talk died, as in a grove all song Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey; Then a long silence came upon the hall. And Modred thought, 'The time is hard at hand.' THE LAST TOURNAMENT. 435 THE LAST TOURNAMENT. 'Take thou the jewels of this dead inno- cence. And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney- Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood prize.' Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round, To whom the King, ' Peace to thine At Camelot, high above the yellowing eagle-borne woods. Dead nestling, and this honour after Danced like a wither'd leaf before the death. hall. Following thy will! but, my Queen, And toward him from the hall, with harp I muse in hand. Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or And from the crown thereof a carcanet zone Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize Those diamonds that I rescued from the Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday, tarn. Came Tristram, saying, ' Why skip ye so, And Lancelot won, methought, for thee Sir Fool?' to wear.' For Arthur and Sir Lancelot riding once * Would rather you had let them fall,' Far down beneath a winding wall of rock she cried. Heard a child wail. A stump of oak 'Plunge and be lost — ill-fated as they half-dead. were. From roots like some black coil of carven A bitterness to me ! — ye look amazed, snakes, Not knowing they were lost as soon as Clutch'd at the crag, and started thro' given — mid air Slid from my hands, when I was leaning Bearing an eagle's nest: and thro' the out tree Above the river — that unhappy child Rush'd ever a rainy wind, and thro' the Past in her barge : but rosier luck will go wind W^ith these rich jewels, seeing that they Pierced ever a child's cry : and crag and came tree Not from the skeleton of a brother- Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous slayer, nest, But the sweet body of a maiden babe. This ruby necklace thrice around her Perchance — who knows ? — the purest neck. of thy knights And all unscarr'd from beak or talon, May win them for the purest of my brought maids.' A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took, She ended, and the cry of a great Then gave it to his Queen to rear : the jousts Queen With trumpet-blowings ran on all the But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms ways Received, and after loved it tenderly. From Camelot in among the faded fields And named it Nestling; so forgot herself To furthest towers; and everywhere the A moment, and her cares; till that young knights life Arm'd for a day of glory before the King. Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal cold But on the hither side of that loud Past from her; and in time the carcanet morn Vext her with plaintive memories of the Into the hall stagger'd, his visage ribb'd child: From ear to ear with dogwhip-weals, his So she, delivering it to Arthur, said, nose 436 THE LAST TOURNAMENT. Bridge-broken, one eye out, and one The heathen are upon him, his long lance hand off, Broken, and his Excaliljur a straw." ' And one with shatter'd fingers dangling lame, Then Arthur turn'd to Kay the senes- A churl, to whom indignantly the King, chal, 'Take thou my churl, and tend him * My churl, for whom Christ died, what curiously evil beast Like a king's heir, till all his hurts be Hath drawn his claws athwart thy face? whole. or fiend? The heathen — but that ever-climbing Man was it who marr'd heaven's image wave. in thee thus? ' Hurl'd back again so often in empty foam. Hath lain for years at rest — and rene- Then, sputtering thro' the hedge of gades. splinter'd teeth, Thieves, bandits, leavings of confusion. Yet strangers to the tongue, and with whom blunt stump The wholesome realm is purged of other- Pitch-blacken'd sawing the air, said the where, maim'd churl, Friends, thro' your manhood and your fealty, — now ' He took them and- he drave them to Make their last head like Satan in the his tower — North. Some hold he was a table-knight of My younger knights, new-made, in whom thine — your flower A hundred goodly ones — the Red Knight, Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds, he — Move with me toward their quelling. Lord, I was tending swine, and the Red which achieved, Knight The loneliest ways are safe from shore to Brake in upon me and drave them to his shore. tower; But thou, Sir Lancelot, sitting in my place And when I call'd upon thy name as one Enchair'd to-morrow, arbitrate the field; That doestxright by gentle and by churl. For wherefore shouldst 'thou care to Maim'd me and maul'd, and would out- mingle with it, right have slain, Only to yield my Queen her own again? Save that he sware me to a message. Speak, Lancelot, thou art silent: is it saying. well?' "Tell thou the King and all his liars, that I Thereto Sir Lancelot answer'd, * It is Have founded my Round Table in the well: North, Yet better if the King abide, and leave And whatsoever his own knights have The leading of his younger knights to me. sworn Else, for the King has will'd it, it is well.' My knights have sworn the counter to it — and say Then Arthur rose and Lancelot follow'd My tower is full of harlots, like his court. him, But mine are worthier, seeing they profess And while they stood without the doors, To be none other than themselves — and the King say Turn'd to him saying, * Is it then so well? My knights are all adulterers like his Or mine the blame that oft I seem as he own, Of whom was written, "A sound is in his But mine are truer, seeing they profess ears"? To be none other; and say his hour is The foot that loiters, bidden go, — the come, glance THE LAST TOURNAMENT. 437 That only seems half-loyal to command, — A manner somewhat fall'n from rever- ence — Or have I dream'd the bearing of our knights Tells of a manhood ever less and lower? Or whence the fear lest this my realm, uprear'd, By noble deeds at one with noble vows, PVom flat confusion and brute violences, Reel back into the beast, and be no He spoke, and taking all his younger knights, Down the slope city rode, and sharply turn'd North by the gate. In her high bower the Queen, Working a tapestry, lifted up her head, Watch'd her lord pass, and knew not that she sigh'd. Then ran across her memory the strange rhyme Of bygone Merlin, ' Where is he who knows? From the great deep to the great deep he goes.' But when the morning of a tourna- ment. By these in earnest those in mockery call'd The Tournament of the Dead Innocence, Brake with a wet wind blowing, Lancelot, Round whose sick head all night, like birds of prey. The words of Arthur flying shriek'd, arose. And down a streetway hung with folds of pure White samite, and by fountains running wine, Where children sat in white with cups of gold. Moved to the lists, and there, with slow sad steps Ascending, fiU'd his double-dragon'd chair. He glanced and saw the stately gal- leries, Dame, damsel, each thro' worship of their Queen White-robed in honour of the stainless child, And some with scatter'd jewels, like a bank Of maiden snow mingled with sparks of fire. He look'd but once, and vail'd his eyes again. The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began : And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one Who sits and gazes on a faded fire. When all the goodlier guests are past away. Sat their great umpire, looking o'er the lists. He saw the laws that ruled the tourna- ment Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast doAvn Before his throne of arbitration cursed The dead babe and the follies of the King; And once the laces of a helmet crack'd, And show'd him, like a vermin in its hole, Modred, a narrow face : anon he heard The voice that billow'd round the barriers roar An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight, But newly-enter'd, taller than the rest, And armour'd all in forest green, whereon There tript a hundred tiny silver deer, - And wearing but a holly-spray for crest, With ever-scattering berries, and on shield A spear, U harp, a bugle — Tristram — late From overseas in Brittany return'd, And marriage with a princess of that realm, Isolt the White — Sir Tristram of the Woods — Whom Lancelot knew, had held some- time with pain 438 THE LAST TOURNAMENT. His own against liim, and now yearn'd to slaake The burthen off his heart in one full shock With Tristram ev'n to death : his strong hands gript And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, Until he groan'd for wrath — so many of those, That ware their ladies' colours on the casque, Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds, And there with gibes and flickering mockeries Stood, while he mutter'd, ' Craven crests ! O shame ! What faith have these in whom they sware to love? The glory of our Round Table is no more.' So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems, Not speaking other word than ' Hast thou won? Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand Wherewith thou takest this, is red ! ' to whom Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot's languorous mood. Made answer, *Ay, but wherefore toss me this Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound? Let be thy fair Queen's fantasy. Strength of heart And might of limb, but mainly use and skill, Are winners in this pastime of our King. My hand — belike the lance hath dript upon it — No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief knight, Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield. Great brother, thou nor I have made the world ; Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.' And Tristram round the gallery made his horse Caracole ; then bow'd his homage, bluntly saying. ' Fair damsels, each to him who worships each Sole Queen of Bea'uty and of love, behold This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.' And most of these were mute, some anger'd, one Murmuring, ' x\ll courtesy is dead,' and one, * The glory of our Round Table is no more.' Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung. And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day Went glooming down in wet and weari- ness : But under her black brows a swarthy one Laugh'd shrilly, crying, ' Praise the pa- tient saints. Our one white day of Innocence hath past, Tho' somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it. The snowdrop only, flowering thro' the year, Would make the world as blank as Win- ter-tide. Come — let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen's And Lancelot's, at this night's solemnity With all the kindlier colours of the field.' So dame and damsel glitter'd at the feast Variously gay : for he that tells the tale Liken'd them, saying, as when an hour of cold Falls on the mountain in midsummer snows, And all the purple slopes of mountain flowers Pass under white, till the warm hour re- turns With veer of wind, and all are flowers again; So dame and damsel cast the simple white. And glowing in all colours, the live grass, Rose-campion, bluebell, kingcup, poppy, glanced About the revels, and with mirth so loud Beyond all use, that, half-amazed, the Queen, And wroth at Tristram and the lawless jousts, THE LAST TOURNAMENT. 439 Brake up their sports, then slowly ta her bower Parted, and in her bosom pain was lord. And little Dagonet on the morrow morn, High over all the yellowing Autumn-tide, Danced like a wither'd leaf before the hall. Then Tristram saying, * Why skip ye so, Sir Fool?' Wheel'd round on either heel, Dagonet replied, 'Belike for lack of wiser company; Or being fool, and seeing too much wit Makes the world rotten, why belike I skip To know myself the wisest knight of all.' * Ay, fool,' said Tristram, * but 'tis eating dry To dance without a catch, a roundelay To dance to.' Then he twangled on his harp. And while he twangled little Dagonet stood Quiet as any water-sodden log Stay'd in the wandering warble of a brook ; But when the twangling ended, skipt again; And being ask'd, • Why skipt ye not. Sir Fool?' Made answer, ' I had liefer twenty years Skip to the broken music of my brains Than any broken music thou canst make.' Then Tristram, waiting for the quip to come, * Good now, what music have I broken, fool?' And little Dagonet, skipping, * Arthur, the King's; For when thou playest that air with Queen Isolt, Thou makest broken music with thy bride. Her daintier namesake down in Brit- tany — And so thou breakest Arthur's music too,' * Save for that broken music in thy brains, Sir Fool,' said Tristram, ' I would break thy head. Fool, I came late, the heathen wars were o'er, The life had flown, we sware but by the shell — I am but a fool to reason with a fool — Come, thou art crabb'd and sour : but lean me down, Sir Dagonet, one of thy long ass's ears. And harken if my music be not true. * " Free love — free field — we love but while we may : The woods are hush'd, their music is no more : The leaf is dead, the yearning past away : New leaf, new life — the days of frost are o'er: New life, new love, to suit the newer day : New loves are sweet as those that went before : Free love — free field — we love but while we may." *Ye might have moved slow-measure to my tune. Not stood slockstill. I made it in the woods, And heard it ring as true as tested gold.' But Dagonet with one foot poised in his hand, 'Friend, did ye mark that fountain yester- day Made to run wine? — but this had run itself All out Hke a long life to a sour end — And them that round it sat with golden cups To hand the wine to whomsoever came — The twelve small damosels white as In- nocence, In honour of poor Innocence the babe, Who left the gems which Innocence the Queen Lent to the King, and Innocence the King Ga- e for a prize — and one of those white slips Handed her cup and piped, the pretty one, " Drink, drink, Sir Fool," and thereupon I drank. Spat — pish — the cup was gold, the draught was mud.' And Tristram, * Was it muddier than thy gibes? Is all the laughter gone dead out of thee? — 440 THE LAST TOURNAMENT. Not marking how the knighthood mock thee, fool — " Fear God : honour the King — his one true knight — Sole follower of the vows " — for here be they Who knew thee swine enow before I came, Smuttier than blasted grain : but when the King Had made thee fool, thy vanity so shot up It frighted all free fool from out thy heart; Which left thee less than fool, and less than swine, A naked aught — yet swine I hold thee still, For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine.' And little Dagonet mincing with his feet, • ' Knight, an ye fling those rubies round my neck In lieu of hers, I'll hold thou hast some touch Of music, since I care not for thy pearls. Swine? I have wallow'd, I have wash'd — the world Is flesh and shadow — I have had my day. The dirty nurse. Experience, in her kind Hath foul'd me — an I wallow'd then I wash'd — • I have had my day and my philosophies — And thank the Lord I am King Arthur's fool. Swine, say ye? swine, goats, asses, rams and geese Troop'd round a Paynim harper once, who thruram'd On such a wire as musically as thou Some such fine song — but never a king's fooL' And Tristram, 'Then were swine, goats, asses, geese The wiser fools, seeing thy Paynim bard Had such a mastery of his mystery That he could harp his wife up out of hell.' Then Dagonet, turning on the ball of his foot, 'And whither harp'st thou thine? down ! and thyself Down ! and two more : a helpful harpei thou. That harpest downward ! Dost thou know the star We call the harp of Arthur up in heaven? ' And Tristram, 'Ay, Sir Fool, for when our King Was victor wellnigh day by day, the knights. Glorying in each new glory, set his name High on all hills, and in the signs of heaven.' And Dagonet answer'd, * Ay, and when the land Was freed, and the Queen false, ye set yourself To babble about him, all to show your wit — And whether he were King by courtesy. Or King by right — and so went harping down The black king's highway, got so far, and grew So witty that ye play'd at ducks and drakes With Arthur's vows on the great lake of fire. Tuwhoo ! do ye see it? do ye see the star?' 'Nay, fool,' said Tristram, 'not in open day.' And Dagonet, 'Nay, nor will: I see it and hear. It makes a silent music up in heaven, And I, and Arthur and the angels hear. And then we skip.' ' Lo, fool,' he said, *ye talk Fool's treason : is the King thy brother fool?' Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrill'd, 'Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools ! Conceits himself as God that he can make Figs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milk From burning spurge, honey from hornet- combs. And men from beasts — Long live the king of fools I ' THE LAST TOURNAMENT. 441 And down the city Dagonet danced away ; But thro' the slowly-mellowing avenues And solitary passes of the wood Rode Tristram toward Lyonesse and the west. Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt With ruby-circled neck, but evermore Past, as a rustle or twitter in the wood Made dull his inner, keen his outer eye For all that walk'd, or crept, or perch'd, or flew. Anon the face, as, when a gust hath blown, Unruffling waters re-collect the shape Of one that in them sees himself, return'd ; But at the slot or fewmets of a deer, Or ev'n a fall'n feather, vanish'd again. So on for all that day from lawn to lawn Thro' many a league-long bower he rode. At length A lodge of intertwisted b it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?' And answer made the bold Sir Bedi- vere : ' I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag.' To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale : ' Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name, Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight : For surer sign had follow'd, either hand. Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again. As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word.' Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt. How curiously and strangely chased, he smote His palms together, and he cried aloud : ' And if indeed I cast the brand away, Surely a precious thing, one worthy note, Should thus be lost for ever from the earth, "Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. What good should follow this, if this were done? What harm, undone? Deep harm to disobey. Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey then, if a king demand An act unprofitable, against himself? The King is sick, and knows not what he does. What record, or what relic of my lord Should be to aftertime, but empty breath And rumours of a doubt? But were this kept, Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings. Some one might show it at a joust of arms. Saying, " King Arthur's sword, Excali- bur, Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake. Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills." So might some old man speak in the aftertime To all the people, winning reverence. But now much honour and much fame were lost.' So spake he, clouded with his own conceit. And hid Excalibur the second time. And so strode back slow to the wounded King. Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily : * What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard? ' And answer made the bold Sir Bedi- vere : * I heard the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds.' To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath : * Ah, miserable arid unkind, untrue, Unknightly, traitor-hearted ! Woe is me ! Authority forgets a dying king. Laid widow'd of the power in his eye THE PASSING OF ARTHUR. 463 That bovv'd the will. I see thee what thou art, For thou, the latest-left of all my knights, In whom should meet the offices of all. Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt; Either from lust of gold, or like a girl Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice. And the third time may prosper, get thee hence : But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, I will arise and slay thee with my hands.' Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged Among the bulrush beds, and clutch'd the sword. And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon. And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch. Shot like a streamer of- the northern morn. Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the Northern Sea. So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur : But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, won- derful, And caught him by the hilt, and bran- dish'd him Three times, and drew him under in the mere. And lightly went the other to the King. Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath : -Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. Speak out : what is it thou hast heard, or seen?' And answer" made the bold Sir Bedi- vere : * Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men, So great a miracle as yonder hilt. Then with both hands I flung him, wheel- ing him; But when I look'd again, beholden arm, Clothed in white samite, mystic, won- derful, That caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him Three times, and drew him under in the mere.' And answer made King Arthur, breath- ing hard : 'My end draws nigh; 'tis time that I were gone. Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, And bear me to the margin ; yet I fear My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die.' So saying, from the pavement he half rose, Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm, And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears, And would have spoken, but he found not words; Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands. And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs. But, as he walk'd. King Arthur panted hard, Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed When all the house is mute. So sigh'd the King, Muttering and murmuring at his ear, ' Quick, quick ! I fear it is too late, and I shall die.' But the other swiftly strode from ridge. to ridge. Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd, 464 THE PASSING OF ARTHUR. Larger than human on the frozen hills. He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and rjght The bare black cLff clang'd round him, as he based His feet on ju<:s of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels — And on a sudden, lo ! the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon. Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge. Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, Beneath them; and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms, Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream — by these Three Queens with crowns of gold : and from them rose A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars, And, as it were one voice, an agony Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes. Or hath come, since the making of the world. Then murmur'd Arthur, * Place me in the barge.' So to the barge they came. There those three Queens Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept. But she, that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap. And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands, And call'd him by his name, complaining loud. And dropping bitter tears against a brow Striped with dark blood : for all his face was white And colourless, and like the wither'd moon Smote by the fresh beam of the spring. ing east; And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls — That made his forehead like a rising sun High from the dais-throne — were parch'd with dust; Or clotted into points and hanging loose, Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. So like a shatter'd column lay the King; Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest, From spur to plume a star of tourna- ment. Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged Before the eyes of ladies and of kings. Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedi- vere : ' Ah ! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are dead. When every morning brought a noble chance. And every chance brought out a noble knight. Such times have been not since the light that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole Round Table is dis- solved Which was an image of the mighty world. And I, the last, go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds.' And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge : ' The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world, THE PASSING OF ARTHUR. 465 Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure ! but thou, If thou shOuldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. ^Iore__tiiingsare wroughtbyprayer T han thls^orlH dream s of. Wherefore, '^ let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift riot hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the- feet of God. But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou seest — if indeed I go (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) — To the island-valley of Avilion ; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow. Nor 'ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with sum- mer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.' So said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full- breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death. Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn. And on the mere the wailing died away. 2H But when that moan had past for ever- more, The stillness of the dead world's winter dawn Amazed him, and he groan'd, ' The King is gone.' And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme, 'From the great deep to the great deep he goes.' Whereat he slowly turn'd and slowly clomb The last hard footstep of that iron crag; Thence mark'd the black hull moving yet, and cried, * He passes to be King among the dead. And after healing of his grievous wound He comes again; but — if he come no more — O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black boat. Who shriek'd and wail'd, the three -whereat we gazed On that high day, when, clothed with living light, They stood before his throne in silence, friends Of Arthur, who should help him at his need?' Then from the dawn it seem'd there came, but faint As from beyond the limit of the world, Like the last echo born of a great cry. Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice Around a king returning from his wars. Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw. Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand. Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King, Down that long water opening on the deep Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go From less to less and vanish into light. And the new sun rose bringing the new year. 466 TO THE QUEEN. TO THE QUEEN. O LOYAL to the royal in thyself, And loyal to the land, as this to thee — Bear witness, that rememberable day, When, pale as yet, and fever-worn, the Prince Who scarce had pluck'd his flickering life again From halfway down the shadow of the grave, Past with thee thro' thy people and their love. And London roll'd one tide of joy thro' all Her trebled millions, and loud leagues of man And welcome ! witness, too, the silent cry. The prayer of many a race and creed, and clime — Thunderless lightnings striking under sea From sunset and sunrise of all thy realm, And that true North, whereof we lately heard A strain to shame us * keep you to your- selves; So loyal is too costly! friends — your love Is but a burthen : loose' the bond, and go.' Is this the tone of empire? here the faith That made us rulers? this, indeed, her voice And meaning, whom the roar of Hougou- mont Left mightiest of all peoples under heaven? What shock has fool'd her since, that she should speak So feebly ? wealthier — wealthier — hour by hour ! The voice of Britain, or a sinking land, Some third-rate isle half-lost among her seas? There rang her voice, when the full city peal'd Thee and thy Prince ! The loyal to their crown Are loyal to their own far sons, who love Our ocean-empire with her boundless homes For ever-broadening England, and her throne In our vast Orient, and one isle, one isle, That knows not her own greatness; if she knows And dreads it we are fall'n. — But thou, my Queen Not for itself, but thro' thy living love For one to whom I made it o'er his grave Sacred, accept this old imperfect tale, New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul Ideal manhood closed in real man Rather than that gray king, whose name, a ghost. Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak, ■ And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one Touch'd by the adulterous finger of a time That hover'd between war and wanton- ness, And crownings and dethronements : take withal Thy poet's blessing, and his trust that Heaven Will blow the tempest in the distance back From thine and ours : for some are scared, who mark, Or wisely or unwisely, signs of storm, Waverings of every vane with every wind, Ajid wordy trucklings to the transient hour, And fierce or careless looseners of the faith. And Softness breeding scorn of simple life, Or Cowardice, the child of lust for gold, Or Labour, with a groan and not a voice, Or Art with poisonous honey stol'n from France, THE LOVER'S TALE. 467 And that which knows, but careful for itself, And that which knows not, ruling that which knows To its own harm : the goal of this great world Lies beyond sight : yet — if our slowly- grown And crown'd Republic's crowning com- mon-sense, That saved her many times, not fail — their fears Are morning shadows huger than the shapes That cast them, not those gloomier which forego The darkness of that battle in the West, Where all of high and holy dies away. THE LOVER'S TALE. The original Preface to ' The Lover's Tale ' states that it was composed in my nineteenth year. Two only of the three parts then written were printed, when, feeling the imperfection of the poem, I with- drew it from the press. One of my friends, however, who, boylike, admired the boy's' work, distributed among our common associates of that hour some copies of these two parts, without my knowledge, without the omissions and amendments which I had in contemplation, and marred by the many mis- prints of the compositor. Seeing that these two parts have of late been mercilessly pirated, and that what I had deemed scarce worthy to live is not allowed to die, may I not be pardoned if I suffer the whole poem at last to come into the light — accompanied with a reprint of the sequel — a work of my mature life — ' The Golden Supper ' ? May 1879. ARGUMENT. Julian, whose cousin and foster-sister, Camilla, has been wedded to bis friend arid rival, Lionel, en- deavours to narrate the story of his own love for her, and the strange sequel. He speaks (in Parts IL and in.) of having been haunted by visions and the sound of bells, tolling for a funeral, and at last ringing for a marriage; but he breaks away, overcome, as he approaches the Event, and a witness to it completes the tale. I. Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff, Filling with purple gloom the vacancies Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas Hung in mid-heaven, and half-way down rare sails, White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky. Oh ! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay, Like to a quiet mind in the loud world. Where the chafed breakers of the outer sea Sank powerless, as anger falls aside And withers on the breast of peaceful love; Thou didst receive the growth of pines that fledged The hills that watch'd thee, as Love watcheth Love, In thine own essence, and delight thyself To make it wholly thine on sunny days. Keep thou thy name of ' Lover's Bay.' See, sirs, Even now the Goddess of the Past, that takes The heart, and sometimes touches but one string That quivers, and is silent, and sometimes Sweeps suddenly all its half-moulder'd chords To some old melody, begins to play That air which pleased her first. I feel thy breath ; I come, great Mistress of the ear and eye : Thy breath is of the pinewood; and tho' years Have hollow'd out a deep and stormy strait Betwixt the native land of Love and me, Breathe but a little on me, and the sail 468 THE LOVER'S TALE. Will draw me to the rising of the sun, The lucid chambers of the morning star, And East of Life. Permit me, friend, I prythee, To pass my hanrd across my brows, and muse On those dear hills, that never more will meet The sight that throbs and aches beneath my touch. As tho' there beat a heart in either eye; For when the outer lights are darken'd thus. The memory's vision hath a keener edge. It grows upon me now — the semicircle Of dark-blue waters and the narrow fringe Of curving beach — its wreaths of drip- ping green — Its pale pink shells — the summerhouse aloft That open'd on the pines with doors of glass, A mountain nest — the pleasure-boat that rock'd, Light-green with its own shadow, keel to keel. Upon the dappled dimplings of the wave. That blanch'd upon its side. O Love, O Hope ! They come, they crowd upon me all at once — Moved from the cloud of unforgotten things, "That sometimes on the horizon of the mind Lies folded, often sweeps athwart in storm — Flash upon flash they lighten thro' me — days Of dewy dawning and the amber eves When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I Were borne about the bay or safely moor'd Beneath a low-brow'd cavern, where the tide Plash'd, sapping its worn ribs; and all without The slowly-ridging rollers on the cliffs Clash'd, calling to each other, and thro' the arch Down those loud waters, like a setting star, Mixt with the gorgeous west the light- house shone, And silver-smiling Venus ere she fell Would often loiter in her balmy blue, To crown it with herself. Here, too, my love Waver'd at anchor with me, when day hung From his mid-dome in Heaven's airy halls; Gleams of the water-circles as they broke, Flicker'd like doubtful smiles about her lips, Quiver'd a flying glory on her hair. Leapt like a passing thought across her eyes; And mine with one that will not pass, till earth And heaven pass too, dwelt on my heaven, a face Most starry-fair, but kindled from within As 'twere with dawn. She was dark- hair'd, dark-eyed : Oh, such dark eyes! a single glance of them Will govern a whole life from birth to death. Careless of all things else, led on with light In trances and in visions : look at them. You lose yourself in utter ignorance; You cannot find their depth; for they go back. And farther back, and still withdraw themselves Quite into the deep soul, that evermore Fresh springing from her fountains in the brain. Still pouring thro', floods with redundant life Her narrow portals. Trust me, long ago I should have died, if it were possible To die in gazing on that perfectness Whieh I do bear within me : I had died, But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb, Thine image, like a charm of light and strength Upon the waters, push'd me back again On these deserted sands of barren life, THE LOVER'S TALE. 469 Tho' from the deep vault where the heart of Hope P'ell into dust, and crumbled in the dark — Forgetting how to render beautiful Her countenance with quick and health- ful blood — Thou didst not sway me upward; could I perish While thou, a meteor of the sepulchre, Didst swathe thyself all round Hope's quiet urn For ever? He, that saith it, hath o'er- stept The slippery footing of his narrow wit, And fall'n away from judgment. Thou art light. To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers, And length of days, and immortality Of thought, and freshness ever self- renew'd. For Time and Grief abode too long with Life, And, like all other friends i' the world, at last They grew aweary of her fellowship : So Time and Grief did beckon unto Death, And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of Life ; But thou didst sit alone in the inner house, A wakeful portress, and didst parle with Death, — 'This is a charmed dwelling which I hold;' So Death gave back, and would no fur- ther come. Yet is my life nor in the present time. Nor in the present place. To me alone, Push'd from his chair of regal heritage, The Present is the vassal of the Past : So that, in that I have lived, do I live, And cannot die, and am, in having been — A portion of the pleasant yesterday. Thrust forward on to-day and out of place; A body journeying onward, sick with toil. The weight as if of age upon my limbs, The grasp of hopeless grief about my heart. And all the senses weaken'd, save in that, Which long ago they had glean'd and garner'd up Into the granaries of memory — The clear brow, bulwark of the precious brain, Chink'd as you see, and seam'd — and all the while The light soul twines and mingles with the growths Of vigorous early days, attracted, won, Married, made one with, molten into all The beautiful in Past of act or place. And like the all-enduring camel, driven Far from the diamond fountain by the palms, Who toils across the middle moonlit nights. Or when the white heats of the blinding noons Beat from the concave sand; yet in him keeps A draught of that sweet fountain that he loves. To stay his feet from falling, and his spirit From bitterness of death. Ye ask me, friends, When I began to love. How should I tell you? Or from the after-fulness of my heart. Flow back again unto my slender spring And first of love, tho' every turn and depth Between is clearer in my life than all Its present flow. Ye know not what ye ask. How should the broad and open flower tell What sort of bud it was, when, prest together In its green sheath, close-lapt in silken folds. It seem'd to keep its sweetness to itself. Yet was not the less sweet for that it seem'd? For young Life knows not when young Life was born, But takes it all for granted : neither Love, Warm in the heart, his cradle, can re- member Love in the womb, but resteth satisfied, Looking on her that brought him to the light: Or as men know not when they fall asleep Into delicious dreams, our other life. 470 THE LOVER'S TALE. So know I not when I began to love. This is my sum of knowledge — that my love Grew with myself — say rather, was my growth, My inward sap, the hold I have on earth, My outward circling air wherewith I breathe. Which yet upholds my life, and evermore Is to me daily life and daily death : For how should I have lived and not have loved? Can ye take off the sweetness from the flower, The colour and the sweetness from the rose, And place them by themselves; or set apart Their motions and their brightness from the stars. And then point out the flower or the star? Or build a wall betwixt my life and love. And tell me where I am? 'Tis even thus: In that I live I love; because I love I live : whate'er is fountain to the one Is fountain to the other ; and whene'er Our God unknits the riddle of the one, There is no shade or fold of mystery Swathing the other. Many, many years (For they seem many and my most of life, And well I could have linger'd in that porch, So unproportion'd to the dwelling-place), In the Maydews of childhood, opposite The flush and dawn of youth, we lived together, Apart, alone together :;n those hills. Before he saw my day my father died, And he was happy that he saw it not; But I and the first daisy on his grave From the same clay came into light at once. As Love and I ^o number equal years. So she, my love, is of an age with me. How like each other was the birth of each! On the sanie morning, almost the same hour, Under the selfsame aspect of the stars, (Oh falsehood of all starcraft!) we were born. How like each other was the birth of each ! The sister of my mother — she that bore Camilla close beneath her beating heart. Which to the imprison'd spirit of the child. With its true-touched pulses in the flow And hourly visitation of the blood, Sent notes of preparation manifold. And mellow'd echoes of the outer world — My mother's sister, mother of my love, Who had a twofold claim upon my heart, One twofold mightier than the other was. In giving so much beauty to the world, And so much wealth as God had charged her with — Loathing to put it from herself for ever, Left her own life with it; and dying thus, Crown'd with her highest act the placid face And breathless body of her good deeds past. So were we born, so orphan'd. She was motherless And I without a father. So from each Of those two pillars which from earth uphold Our childhood, one had fallen away, and all The careful burthen of our tender years Trembled upon the other. He that gave Her life, to me delightedly fulfiU'd All lovingkindnesses, all offices Of watchful care and trembling tender- ness. He waked for both : he pray'd for both : he slept Dreaming of both : nor was his love the less Because it was divided, and shot forth Boughs on each side, laden with whole- some shade, Wherein we nested sleeping or awake, And sang aloud the matin-song of life. She was my foster-sister : on one arm The flaxen ringlets of our infancies Wander'd, the while we rested: one soft lap Pillow'd us both : a common light of eyes THE LOVER'S TALE. ATI' Was on us as we lay : our baby lips, Kissing one bosom, ever drew from thence The stream of life, one stream, one life, one blood. One sustenance, which, still as thought grew large, Still larger moulding all the house of thought. Made all our tastes and fancies like, perhaps — All — all but one; and strange to me, and sweet. Sweet thro' strange years to know that whatsoe'er Our general mother meant for me alone. Our mutual mother dealt to both of us : So what was earliest mine in earliest life, I shared with her in whom myself remains. As was our childhood, so our infancy, They tell me, was a very miracle Of fellow-feeling and communion. They tell me that we would not be alone, — We cried when we were parted; when I wept. Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears, Stay'd on the cloud of sorrow; that we loved The sound of one another's voices more Than the gray cuckoo loves his name, and learn'd To lisp in tune together; that we slept In the same cradle always, face to face. Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing lip, Folding each other, breathing on each other, Dreaming together (dreaming of each other They should have added), till the morning light Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy pane Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we woke To gaze upon each other. If this be true, At thought of which my whole soul languishes And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath — as tho' A man in some still garden should infuse Rich atar in the bosom of the rose, Till, drunk with its own wine, and over- full Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself, It fall on its own thorns — if this be true — And that way my wish leads me ever- more Still to believe it — 'tis so sweet a thought, Why in the utter stillness of the soul Doth question'd memory answer not, nor tell Of this our earliest, our closest-drawn. Most loveliest, earthly-heavenliest har- mony? O blossom'd portal of the lonely house, Green prelude, April promise, glad new- year Of Being, which with earliest violets And lavish carol of clear-throated larks Fill'd all the March of life ! — I will not speak of thee. These have not seen thee, these can never know thee, They cannot understand me. Pass we then A term of eighteen years. Ye would but laugh. If I should tell you how I hoard in thought The faded rhymes and scraps of ancient crones, Gray relics of the nurseries of the world, Which are as gems set in my memory, Because she learnt them with me; or what use To know her father left us just before The daffodil was blown? or how we found The dead man cast upon the shore? All this Seems to the quiet daylight of your minds But cloud and smoke, and in the dark of mine Is traced with flame. Move with me to the event. There came a glorious morning, such a one As dawns but once a season. Mercury On such a morning would have flung himself From cloud to cloud, and swum with balanced wings To some tall mountain : when I said to her. 472 THE LOVER'S TALE. * A day for Gods to stoop,' she answered, 'Ay, And men to soar : ' for as that other gazed. Shading his eyes till all the fiery cloud, The prophet and the chariot and the steeds, Suck'd into oneness like a little star Were drunk into the inmost blue, we stood. When first we came from out the pines at noon. With hand's for eaves, uplooking and almost Waiting to see some blessed shape in heaven, So bathed we were in brilliance. Never yet Before or after have I known the spring Pour with such sudden deluges of light Into the middle summer; for that day Love, rising, shook his wings, and charged the winds With spiced May-sweets from bound to bound, and blew Fresh fire into the sun, and from within Burst thro' the heated buds, and sent his soul Into the songs of birds, and touch'd far- off His mountain-altars, his high hills, with flame Milder and purer. Thro' the rocks we wound : The great pine shook with lonely sounds of joy That came on the sea-wind. As moun- tain streams Our bloods ran free : the sunshine seem'd to brood More warmly on the heart than on the brow. We often paused, and, looking back, we saw The clefts and openings in the mountains fill'd With the blue valley and the glistening brooks. And all the low dark groves, a land of love ! ' A land of promise, a land of memory, A land of promise flowing with the milk And honey of delicious memories ! And down to sea, and far as eye could ken, Each way from verge to verge a Holy Land, Still growing holier as you near'd the bay, For there the Temple stood. When we had reach'd The grassy platform on some hill, I stoop'd, I gather'd the wild herbs, and for her brows And mine made garlands of the selfsame flower. Which she took smiling, and with my work thus Crown'd her clear forehead. Once or twice she told me (For I remember all things) to let grow The flowers that run poison in their veins. She said, 'The evil flourish in the world.' Then playfully she gave herself the lie — 'Nothing in nature is unbeautiful; So, brother, pluck and spare not.' So I wove Ev'n the dull-blooded poppy-stem, ' whose flower, Hued with the scarlet of a fierce sunrise, Like to the wild youth of an evil prince, Is without sweetness, but who crowns himself ' Above the naked poisons of his heart In his old age.' A graceful thought of hers Grav'n on my fancy ! And oh, how like a nymph, A stately mountain nymph she look'd! how native Unto the hills she trod on ! While I gazed My coronal slowly disentwined itself And fell between us both; tho' while I gazed My spirit leap'd as with those thrills of bhss That strike across the soul in prayer, and show us That we are surely heard. Methought a light Burst from the garland I had wov'n, and stood THE LOVER'S TALE. 473 A solid glory on her bright black hair; A light methought broke from her dark, dark eyes, And shot itself into the singing winds; A mystic light flash'd ev'n from her white robe As from a glass in the sun, and fell about My footsteps on the mountains. Last we came To what our people call * The Hill of Woe.' A bridge is there, that, look'd at from beneath Seems but a cobweb filament to link The yawning of an earthquake-cloven chasm. And thence one night, when all the winds were loud, A woful man (for so the story went) Had thrust his wife and child and dash'd himself Into the dizzy depth below. Beldw, Fierce in the strength of far descent, a stream Flies with a shatter'd foam along the chasm. The path was perilous, loosely strown with crags : We mounted slowly; yet to both there came The joy of life in steepness overcome, And victories of ascent, and looking down On all that had look'd down on us; and joy In breathing nearer heaven; and joy to me. High over all the azure-circled earth, To breathe with her as if in heaven itself; And more than joy that I to her became Her guardian and her angel, raising her Still higher, past all peril, until she saw Beneath her feet the region far away. Beyond the nearest mountain's bosky brows, Arise in open prospect — heath and hill. And hollow lined and wooded to the lips. And steep-down walls of battlemented rock Gilded with broom, or shatter'd into spires. And glory of broad waters interfused, Whence rose as it were breath and steam of gold, And over all the great wood rioting And climbing, streak'd or starr'd at intervals With falling brook or blossom'd bush — and last. Framing the mighty landscape to the west, A purple range of mountain-cones, be- tween Whose interspaces gush'd in blinding bursts The incorporate blaze of sun and sea. At length Descending from the point and standing both. There on the tremulous bridge, that from beneath Had seem'd a gossamer filament up in air, We paused amid the splendour. All the west And ev'n unto the middle south was ribb'd And barr'd with bloom on bloom. The sun below, Held for a space 'twixt cloud and wave, shower'd down Rays of a mighty circle, weaving over That various wilderness a tissue of light Unparallel'd. On the other side, the moon, Half-melted into thin blue air, stood still. And pale and fibrous as a wither'd leaf. Nor yet endured in presence of His eyes To indue his lustre; most unloverlike, Since in his al:)sence full of light and joy. And giving light to others. But this most. Next to her presence whom I loved so well, Spoke loudly even into my inmost heart As to my outward hearing: the loud stream, Forth issuing from his portals in the crag (A visible link unto the home of my heart), Ran amber toward the west, and nigh the sea Parting my own loved mountains was received. Shorn of its strength, into the sympathy 474 THE LOVER'S TALE. Of that small bay, which out to open main Glow'd intermingling close beneath the sun. Spirit of Love ! that little hour was bound Shut in from Time, and dedicate to thee: Thy fires from heaven had touch'd it, and the earth They fell on became hallow'd evermore. We turn'd : our eyes met : hers were bright, and mine "Were dim with floating tears, that shot the sunset In lightnings round me; and my name was borne Upon her breath. Henceforth my name has been A hallow'd memory like the names of old, A centr'd, glory-circled memory, And a peculiar treasure, brooking not Exchange or currency : and in that hour A hope flow'd round me, like a golden mist Charm'd amid eddies of melodious airs, A moment, ere the onward whirlwind shatter it, Waver'd and floated — which was less than Hope, Because it lack'd the power of perfect Hope; But which was more and higher than all Hope, Because all other Hope had lower aim; Even that this name to which her gracious lips Did lend such gentle utterance, this one name, In some obscure hereafter, might in- wreathe (How lovelier, nobler then !) her life, her love, With my life, love, soul, spirit, and heart and strength. * Brother,' she said, ' let this be call'd henceforth The Hill of Hope; ' and I replied, 'O sister, My will is one with thine; the Hill of Hope.* Nevertheless, we did not change the name. I did not speak : I could not speak my love. Love lieth deep : Love dwells not in lip- depths; Love wraps his wings on either side the heart. Constraining it with kisses close and warm, Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts So that they pass not to the shrine of sound. Else had the life of that delighted hour Drunk in the largeness Ci the utterance Of Love; but how should Earthly meas- ure mete The Heavenly-unmeasured or unlimited Love, Who scarce can tune his high majestic sense Unto the thundersong that wheels the spheres. Scarce living in the ^olian harmony, And flowing odour of the spacious air, Scarce housed within the circle of this Earth, Be cabin'd up in words and syllables. Which pass with that which breathes them? Sooner Earth Might go round Heaven, and the strait girth of Time Inswathe the fulness of Eternity, Than language grasp the infinite of Love. O day which did enwomb that happy hour. Thou art blessed in the years, divinest day ! O Genius of that hour which dost uphold Thy coronal of glory like a God, Amid thy melancholy mates far-seen. Who walk before thee, ever turning round To gaze upon thee till their eyes are dim With dwelling on the light and depth of thine. Thy name is ever worshipp'd among hours ! Had I died then, I had not seem'd to die. For bjiss stood round me like the light of Heaven, — Had I died then, I had not known the death; Yea had the Power from whose right hand the light Of Life issueth, and from whose left hand flowetii THE LOVER'S TALE. 475 The Shadow of Death, perennial efflu- ences, Whereof to all that draw the wholesome air, Some while the one must overflow the other; Then had he stemm'd my day with night, and driven My current to the fountain whence it sprang, — Even his own abiding excellence — On me, methinks, that shock of gloom had fall'n Unfelt, and in this glory I had merged The other, like the sun I gazed upon, Which seeming for the moment due to death, And dipping his head low beneath the verge, Yet bearing round about him his own day, In confidence of unabated strength, Steppeth from Heaven to Heaven, from light to light. And holdeth his undimmed forehead far Into a clearer zenith, pure of cloud. We trod the shadow of the downward hill; We past from light to dark. On the other side Is scoop'd a cavern and a mountain hall, Which none have fathom'd. If you go far in (The country people rumour) you may hear The moaning of the woman and the child. Shut in the secret chambers of the rock. I too have heard a sound — perchance of streams Running far on within its inmost halls. The home of darkness; but the cavern- mouth, Half overtrailed with a wanton weed. Gives birth to a brawling brook, that passing lightly Adown a natural stair of tangled roots, Is presently received in a sweet grave Of eglantines, a place of burial Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen. But taken with the sweetness of the place, It makes a constant bubbling melody That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower down Spreads out a little lake, that, flooding, leaves Low banks of yellow sand; and from the woods That belt it rise three dark, tall cy- presses, — Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe. That men plant over graves. Hither we came. And sitting down upon the golden moss, Held converse sweet and low — low con- verse sweet. In which our voices bore least part. The wind Told a lovetale beside us, how he woo'd The waters, and the waters answering lisp'd To kisses of the wind, that, sick with love, Fainted at intervals, and grew again To utterance of passion. Ye cannot shape Fancy so fair as is this memory. Methought all excellence that ever was Had drawn herself from many thousand years. And all the separate Edens of this earth, To centre in this place and time. I listen'd. And her words stole with most prevailing sweetness Into my heart, as thronging fancies come To boys and girls when summer days are new. And soul and heart and body are all at ease: What marvel my Camilla told me all? It was so happy an hour, so sweet a place. And I was as the brother of her blood, And by that name I moved upon her breath; Dear name, which had too much of nearness in it And heralded the distance of this time ! At first her voice was very sweet and low. As if she were afraid of utterance; But in the onward current of her speech, (As echoes of the hollow-banked brooks Are fashion'd by the channel which they keep). Her words did of their meaning borrow sound, 476 THE LOVER'S TALE. Her cheek did catch the colour of her words. I heard and trembled, yet I could but hear; My heart paused — my raised eyelids would not fall, But still I kept my eyes upon the sky. I seem'd the only part of Time stood still. And saw the motion of all other things; While her words, syllable by S3dlable, Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear Fell; and I wish'd, yet wish'd her not to speak ; But she spake on, for I did name no wish, What marvel my Camilla told me all Her maiden dignities of Hope and Love — ' Perchance,' she said, 'return'd.' Even then the stars Did tremble in their stations as I gazed; But she spake on, for I did name no wish, No wish — no hope. Hope was not wholly dead, But breathing hard at the approach of Death, — Camilla, my Camilla, who was mine No longer in the dearest sense of mine — For all the secret of her inmost heart. And all the maiden empire of her mind. Lay like a map before me, and I saw There, where I hoped myself to reign as king. There, -where that day I crown'd myself as king, There in my realm and even on my throne. Another ! then it seem'd as tho' a link Of some tight chain within my inmost frame Was riven in twain : that life I heeded not Flow'd from me, and the darkness of the grave, The darkness of the grave and utter night, Did swallow up my vision; at her feet, Even the feet of her I loved, I fell, Smit with exceeding sorrow unto Death. Then had the earth beneath me yawn- ing cloven With such a sound as when an iceberg splits From cope to base — had Heaven from ' all her doors. With all her golden thresholds clashing, roll'd Her heaviest thunder — I had lain as ' dead, Mute, blind and motionless as then I lay; Dead, for henceforth there was no life for me ! Mute, for henceforth what use were words to me ! Blind, for the day was as the night to me ! The night to me was kinder than the day; The night in pity took away my day. Because my grief as yet was newly born Of eyes too weak to look upon the light; And thro' the hasty notice of the ear Frail Life was startled from the tender love Of him she brooded over. Would I had lain Until the plaited ivy-tress had wound Round my worn limbs, and the wild brier had driven Its knotted thorns thro' my unpaining brows, Leaning its roses on my faded eyes. The wind had blown above me, and the rain Had fall'n upon me, and the gilded snake Had nestled in this bosom-throne of Love, But I had been at rest for evermore. Long time entrancement held me. All too soon Life (like a wanton too-officious friend, Who will not hear denial, vain and rude With proffer of unwish'd-for services) Entering all the avenues of sense Past thro' into his citadel, the brain, With hated warmth of apprehensiveness. And first the chillness of the sprinkled brook Smote on my brows, and then I seem'd to hear Its murmur, as the drowning seaman hears, THE LOVER'S TALE. 477 Who with his head below the surface dropt Listens the muffled booming indistinct Of the confused floods, and dimly knows His head shall rise no more : and then came in The white light of the weary moon above, Diffused and molten into flaky cloud. Was my sight drunk that it did shape to me Him who should own that name? Were it not well If so be that the echo of that name Ringing within the fancy had updrawn A fashion and a phantasm of the form It should attach to? Phantom! — had the ghastliest • That ever lusted for a body, sucking The foul steam of the grave to thicken by it, There in the shuddering moonlight brought its face And what it has for eyes as close to mine As he did — better that than his, than he The friend, the neighbour, Lionel, the beloved, The loved, the lover, the happy Lionel, The low-voiced, tender-spirited Lionel, All joy, to whom my agony was a joy. O how her choice did leap forth from his eyes ! O how her love did clothe itself in smiles About his lips! and — not one moment's grace — Then when the effect weigh'd seas upon my head To come my way ! to twit me with the cause ! Was not the land as free thro' all her ways To him as me? Was not his wont to walk Between the going light and growing night? Had I not learnt my loss before he came? Could that be more because he came my way? Why should he not come my way if he woiUd? And yet to-night, to-night — when all my wealth Flash'd from me in a moment and I fell Beggar'd for ever — why should he. come my way Robed in those robes of light I must not wear, With that great ccown of beams about his brows — Come like an angel to a damned soul, To tell him of the bliss he had with God — Come like a careless and a greedy heir That scarce can wait the reading of the will Before he takes possession ? Was mine a mood To be invaded rudely, and not rather A sacred, secret, unapproached woe, Unspeakable? 1 was shut up with Grief; She took the body of my past delight, Narded and swathed and balm'd it for herself, And laid it in a sepulchre of rock Never to rise again. I was led mute Into her temple like a sacrifice; I was the High Priest in her holiest place. Not to be loudly broken in upon. Oh friend, thoughts deep and heavy as these wellnigh O'erbore the limits of my brain : but he Bent o'er me, and my neck his arm up- stay'd. I thought it was an adder's fold, and once I strove to disengage myself, but fail'd, Being so feeble : she bent above me, too ; Wan was her cheek; for whatsoe'er of blight Lives in the dewy touch of pity had made The red rose there a pale one — and her eyes — I saw the moonlight glitter on their tears — And some few drops of that distressful rain Fell on my face, and her long ringlets moved. Drooping and beaten by the breeze, and brush 'd My fallen forehead in their to and fro, For in the sudden anguish of her heart 478 THE LOVER'S TALE. Loosed from their simple thrall they had flow'd abroad, And floated on and parted round her neck, Mantling her form halfway. She, when I woke, Something she ask'd, I know not what, and ask'd, Unanswer'd, since I spake not; for the sound Of that dear voice so musically low. And now first heard with any sense of pain, As it had taken life away before. Choked all the syllables, that strove to rise From my full heart. The blissful lover, too. From his great hoard of happiness dis- till' d Some drops of solace; like a vain rich man, That, having always prosper'd in the world. Folding his hands, deals comfortable words To hearts wounded for ever; yet, in truth, Fair speech was his and delicate of phrase, Falling in whispers on the sense, ad- dress'd More to the inward than the outward ear, As rain of the midsummer midnight soft, Scarce-heard, recalling fragrance and the green Of the dead spring : but mine was wholly dead. No bud, no leaf, no flower, no fruit for me. Yet who had done, or who had sufi'er'd wrong? And why was I to darken their pure love. If, as I found, they two did love each other, Because my own was darken'd? Why was I To cross between their happy star and them? To stand a shadow by their shining doors, And vex them with my darkness? Did I love her? Ye know that I did love her; to this present My fuU-orb'd love has waned not. Did I love her, And could I look upon her tearful eyes? What had she done to weep? Why should she weep? innocent of spirit — let my heart Break rather — whom the gentlest airs of Heaven Should kiss with an unwonted gentleness. Her love did murder mine ? What then ? She deem'd 1 wore a brother's mind : she call'd me brother : She told me all her love : she shall not weep. The brightness of a burning thought, awhile In battle with the glooms of my dark will. Moonlike emerged, and to itself lit up There on the depth of an unfathom'd woe Reflex of action. Starting up at once. As from a dismal dream of my own death, I, for I loved her, lost my love in Love; I, for I loved her, graspt the hand she lov'd, And laid it in her own, and sent my cry Thro' the blank night to Him who loving made The happy and the unhappy love, that He Would hold the hand of blessing over them, Lionel, the happy, and her, and her, his bride ! Let them so love that men and boys may say, * Lo ! how they love each other ! ' till their love Shall ripen to a proverb, unto all Known, when their faces are forgot in the land — One golden dream of love, from which may death Awake them with heaven's music in a life THE LOVER'S TALE. 479 More living to some happier happiness, Swallowing its precedent in victory. And as for me, Camilla, as for me, — The dew of tears is an unwholesome dew, They will but sicken the sick plant the more. Deem that I love thee but as brothers do, So shalt thou love me still as sisters do; Or if thou dream aught farther, dream but how I could have loved thee, had there been none else To love as lovers, loved again by thee. Or this, or somewhat like to this, I spake, When I beheld her weep so ruefully; For sure my love should ne'er indue the front And mask of Hate, who lives on others' moans. Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter draughts. And batten on her poisons? Love for- bid ! Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate, And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love. O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these tears Shed for the love of Love; for tho' mine image, The subject of thy power, be cold in her, Yet, like cold snow, it melteth in the source Of these sad tears, and feeds their down- ward flow. So Love, arraign'd to judgment and to death, Received unto himself a part of blame. Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner. Who, when the woful sentence hath been past, And all the clearness of his fame hath gone Beneath the shadow of the curse of man, First falls asleep in swoon, wherefrom awaked, And looking round upon his tearful friends, Forthwith and in his agony conceives A shameful sense as of a cleaving crime — For whence without some guilt should such grief be? So died that hour, and fell into the abysm Of forms outworn, but not to me out- worn, W^ho never hail'd another — was there one? There might be one — one other, worth the life That made it sensible. So that hour died Like odour rapt into the winged wind Borne into alien lands and far away. There be some hearts so airily built, that they. They — when their love is wreck'd — if Love can wreck — On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride highly Above the perilous seas of Change and Chance; Nay, more, hold out the lights of cheer- fulness; As the tall ship, that many a dreary year Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea. All thro' the livelong hours of utter dark, Showers slanting light upon the dolorous wave. For me — what light, what gleam on those black ways Where Love could walk with banish'd* Hope no more? It was ill-done to part you. Sisters fair; Love's arms were wreath 'd about the neck of Hope, And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath In that close kiss, and drank her whis- per'd tales. They said that Love would die when Hope was gone. And Love mourn'd long, and sorrow'd after Hope; At last she sought out Memory, and th^y trod 430 THE LOVER'S TALE. The same old paths where Love had walk'd with Hope, And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears. IL From that time forth I would not see her more; But many weary moons I lived alone — Alone, and in the heart of the great forest. Sometimes upon the hills beside the sea All day I watch'd the floating isles of shade, And sometimes on the shore, upon the sands Insensibly I drew her name, until The meaning of the letters shot into My brain ; anon the wanton billow wash'd Them over, till they faded like my love. The hollow caverns heard me — the black brooks Of the mid-forest heard me — the soft winds. Laden with thistledown and seeds of flowers, Paused in their course to hear me, for my voice Was all of thee : the merry linnet knew me. The squirrel knew me, and the dragonfly Shot by me hke a flash of purple fire. The rough brier tore my bleeding palms; the hemlock, Brow-high, did strike my forehead as I past; •Yet trod 1 not the wildflower in my path. Nor bruised the wildbird's egg. Was this the end? Why grew we then together in one plot? Why fed we from one fountain ? drew one sun ? Why were or,x. mothers' branches of one stem? Why were we one in all things, save in that Where to have been one had been the cope and crown Of all I hoped and fear'd? — if that same nearness Were father to this distance, and that cwi? Vauntcourier to this double ? if Aff"ection Living slew Love, and Sympathy hew'd out The bosom-sepulchre of Sympathy? Chiefly I sought the cavern and the hill Where last we roam'd together, for the sound Of the loud stream was pleasant, and the wind Came wooingly with woodbine smells. Sometimes All day I sat within the cavern-mouth, Fixing my eyes on those three cypress- cones That spired above the wood; and with mad hand Tearing the bright leaves of the ivy- screen, I cast them in the noisy brook beneath. And watch'd them till they vanish'd from my sight Beneath the bower of wreathed eglan- tines: And all the fragments of the living rock (Huge blocks, which some old trembling of the world Had loosen'd from the mountain, till they fell Half-digging their own graves) these in my agony Did I make bare of all the golden moss, Wherewith the dashing runnel in the spring Had liveried them all over. In my brain The spirit seem'd to flag from thought to thought, As moonlight wandering thro' a mist: my blood Crept like marsh drains thro' all my lan- guid limbs; The motions of my heart seem'd far within me, Unfrequent, low, as tho' it told its pulses; And yet it shook me, that my frame would shudder, As if 'twere drawn asunder by the rack. But over the deep graves of Hope and Fear, And all the broken palaces of the Past, Brooded one master-passion evermore. Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky Above some fair metropolis, earth* shock'd, — THE LOVER'S TALE. 4S1 Hung round with ragged rims and burn- ing folds, — Embathing all with wild and woful hues, Great hills of ruins, and collapsed masses Of thundershaken columns indistinct. And fused together in the tyrannous light — Ruins, the ruin of all my life and me ! Sometimes I thought Camilla was no more, Some one had told me she was dead, and ask'd If I would see her burial : then I seem'd To rise, and through the forest-shadow borne With more than mortal swiftness, I ran down The steepy sea-bank, till I came upon The rear of a procession, curving round The silver-sheeted bay : in front of which Six stately virgins, all in white, upbare A broad earth-sweeping pall of whitest lawn, Wreathed round the bier with garlands: in the distance. From out the yellow woods upon the hill Look'd forth the summit and the pinna- cles Of a gray steeple — thence at intervals A low bell tolling. iVll the pageantry, Save those six virgins which upheld the bier, Were stoled from head to foot in flowing black ; One walk'd abreast with me, and veil'd his brow. And he was loud in weeping and in praise Of her, we follow'd : a strong sympathy Shook all my soul : I flung myself upon him In tears and cries : I told him all my love, How I had loved her from the first; whereat He shrank and howl'd, and from his brow drew back His hand to push me from him; and the face. The very face and form of Lionel Flash'd thro' my eyes into my innermost brain, And at his feet I seem'd to faint and fall, To fall and die away. I could not rise 21 Albeit I strove to follow. They past on, The lordly Phantasms! in their floating folds They past and were no more : but I had fallen Prone by the dashing runnel on the grass. Alway the inaudible invisible thought, Artificer and subject, lord and slave, Shaped by the audible and visible. Moulded the audible and visible ; All crisped sounds of wave and leaf and wind, Flatter'd the fancy of my fading brain; The cloud- pavilion'd element, the wood, The mountain, the three cypresses, the cave. Storm, sunset, glows and glories of the moon Below black firs, when silent-creeping winds Laid the long night in silver streaks and bars, Were wrought into the tissue of my dream : The moanings in the forest, the lo"ud brook, Cries of the partridge like a rusty key Turn'd in a lock, owl-whoop and dor- hawk-whirr Awoke me not, but were a part of sleep, And voices in the distance calling to me And in my vision bidding me dream on. Like sounds without the twilight realm of dreams. Which wander ro»nd the bases of the hills, And murmur at the low-dropt eaves of sleep. Half-entering the portals. Oftentimes The vision had fair prelude, in the end Opening on darkness, stately vestibules To caves and shows of Death : whether the mind. With some revenge, — even to itself un- known, — Made strange dfvision of its suffering With her, whom to have suffering view'd had been Extremest pain; or that the clear-eyed Spirit, Being blunted in the Present, grew at length 482 THE LOVER'S TALE. Prophetical and prescient of whate'er The Future had in store : or that which most Enchains belief, the sorrow of my spirit Was of so wide a compass it took in All I had loved, and my dull agony, Ideally to her transferr'd, became Anguish intolerable. The day waned; Alone I sat with her : about my brow Her warm breath floated in the utterance Of silver-chorded tones: her Hps were sunder'd With smiles of tranquil bliss, which broke in light Like morning from her eyes — her elo- quent eyes, (As I have seen them many a hundred times) Fill'd all with pure clear fire, thro' mine down rain'd Their spirit-searching splendours. As a vision Unto a haggard prisoner, iron-stay'd In damp and dismal dungeons under- ground, Confined on points of faith, when strength is shock'd With torment, and expectancy of worse Upon the morrow, thro' the ragged walls. All unawares before his half-shut eyes, Comes in upon him in the dead of night. And with the excess of sweetness and of awe, Makes the heart tremble, and the sight run over Upon his steely gyves; so those fair eyes Shone on my darkness, forms which ever stood- Within the magic cirque of memory, Invisible but deathless, waiting still The edict of the will to reassume The semblance of those rare realities Of which they were the mirrors. Now the light Which was their life, burst through the cloud of thought Keen, irrepressible. It was a room Within the summer-house of which I spake, Hung round with paintings of the sea, and one A vessel in mid-ocean, her heaved prow Clambering, the mast bent and the ravin wind In her sail roaring. From the outer day, Betwixt the close-set ivies came a broad And solid beam of isolated light. Crowded with driving atomies, and fell Slanting upon that picture, from prime youth Well-known well-loved. She drew it long ago Forthgazing on the waste and open sea, One morning when the upblown billow ran Shoreward beneath red clouds, and I had pour'd Into the shadowing pencil's naked forms Colour and life : it was a bond and seal Of friendship, spoken of with tearful smiles; A monument of childhood and of love; The poesy of childhood; my lost love Symbol'd in storm. We gazed on it together In mute and glad remembrance, and each heart Grew closer to the other, and the eye Was riveted and charm-bound, gazing like The Indian on a still-eyed snake, low- couch'd — A beauty which is death; when all at once That painted vessel, as with inner life, Began to heave upon that painted sea; An earthquake, my loud heart-beats, made the ground Reel under us, and all at once, soul, life And breath and motion, past and flow'd away To those unreal billows: round and round A whirlwind caught and bore us; mighty gyres Rapid and vast, of hissing spray wind- driven Far thro' the dizzy dark. Aloud she shrieked; My heart was cloven with pain; I wound my arms About her- we whirl'd giddily; the wind THE LOVER'S TALE. 483 Sung; but I clasp'd her without fear: her weight Shrank in my grasp, and over my dim eyes, And parted lips which drank her breath, down-hung The jaws of Death : I, groaning, from me flung Her empty phantom : all the sway and whirl Of the storm dropt to windless calm, and I Down welter'd thro' the dark ever and ever. III. I CAME one day and sat among the stones Strewn in the entry of the moaning cave; A morning air, sweet after rain, ran over The rippling levels of the lake, and blew Coolness and moisture and all smells of bud And foliage from the dark and dripping woods Upon my fever'd brows that shook and throbb'd From temple unto temple. To what height The day had grown I know not. Then came on me The hollow tolling of the bell, and all The vision of the bier. As heretofore I walk'd behind with one who veil'd his brow. Methought by slow degrees the sullen bell Toll'd quicker, and the breakers on the shore Sloped into louder surf: those that went with me. And those that held the bier before my face. Moved with one spirit round about the bay. Trod swifter steps; and while I walk'd with these In marvel at that gradual change, I thought Four bells instead of one began to ring, Four merry bells, four merry marriage- bells, In clanging cadence jangling peal on peal — A long loud clash of rapid marriage- bells. Then those who led the van, and those in rear, Rush'd into dance, and like wild Bac- chanals Fled onward to the steeple in the woods : I, too, was borne along and felt the blast Beat on my heated eyelids : all at once The front rank made a sudden halt; the bells Lapsed into frightful stillness; the surge fell From thunder into whispers; those six maids With shrieks and ringing laughter on the sand Threw down the bier; the woods upon the hill Waved w^ith a sudden gust that sweeping down Took the edges of the pall, and blew it far Until it hung, a little silver cloud Over the sounding seas : I turn'd : my heart Shrank in me, like a snowflake in the hand. Waiting to see the settled countenance Of her I loved, adorn'd with fading flowers. But she from out her death-like chrysalis, She from her bier, as into fresher life, My sister, and my cousin, and my love, Leapt lightly clad in bridal white — her hair Studded with one rich Provence rose — a light Of smiling welcome round her lips — her eyes And cheeks as bright as when she climb'd the hill. One hand she reach'd to those that came behind. And while I mused nor. yet endured to take So rich a prize, the man who stood with me Stept gaily forward, throwing down his robes, And claspt her hand in his: again the bells Jangled and clang'd : again the stormy surf 484 THE GOLDEN SUPPER. Crash'd in the shingle : and the whirling Surely, but for a whisper, ' Go not yet,' rout Some warning — sent divinely — as it Led by those two rush'd into dance, and seem'd fled By that which follow'd — but of this I Wind-footed to the steeple in the woods, deem Till they were swallow'd in the leafy As of the visions that he told — the event bowers, Glanced back upon them in his after And I stood sole beside the vacant bier. life, And partly made them — tho' he knew it There, there, my latest vision — then the not. event! IV. And thus he stay'd and would not look at her — THE GOLDEN SUPPER.l No not for months: but, when the eleventh moon (^Another speaks^ After their marriage lit the lover's Bay, Heard yet once more the tolling bell, and He flies the event : he leaves the event said. to me: Would you could toll me out of life, but Poor Julian — how he rush'd away; the found — bells. All softly as his mother broke it to him — Those marriage-bells, echoing in ear and A crueller reason than a crazy ear. heart — For that low knell toUing his lady dead — But cast a parting glance at me, you saw, Dead — and had lain three days without As who should say, 'Continue.' Well a pulse : he had All that look'd on her had pronounced One golden hour — of triumph shall I her dead. say? And so they bore her (for in Julian's Solace at least — before he left his home. 1-1 land They never nail a dumb head up in Would you had seen him in that hour elm). of his ! Bore her free-faced to the free airs of He moved thro' all of it majestically — heaven, Restrain'd himself quite to the close — And laid her in the vault of her own but now — kin. Whether they were his lady's marriage- What did he then? not die : he is here bells, and hale — Or prophets of them in his fantasy. Not plunge headforemost from the moun- I never ask'd : but Lionel and the girl tain there. Were wedded, and our Julian came again And leave the name of Lover's Leap: Back to his mother's house among the not he : pines. He knew the meaning of the whisper But these, their gloom, the mountains now. and the Bay, Thought that he knew it. 'This, I The whole land weigh'd him down as stay'd for this; ^tna does love, I have not seen you for so long. The Giant of Mythology : he would go, Now, now, will I go down into the grave, Would leave the land for ever, and had I will be all alone with all I 'love, gone And kiss her on the lips. She is his no 1 This poem is founded upon a story in Boc- more : The dead returns to me, and I go down caccio. See Introduction, p. 467. To kiss the dead.' THE LOVER'S TALE. 48s The fancy stirr'd him so He rose and went, and entering the dim vault, And, making there a sudden light, beheld All round about him that which all will be. The light was but a flash, and went again. Then at the far end of the vault he saw His lady with the moonlight on her face; Her breast as in a shadow-prison, bars Of black and bands of silver, which the moon Struck from an open grating overhead Hi^h in the wall, and all the rest of her Drovvn'd in the gloom and horror of the vault. * It was my wish,' he said, * to pass, to sleep, To rest, to be with her — till the great day Peal'd on us with that music which rights all. And raised us hand in hand.' And kneeling there Down in the dreadful dust that once was man. Dust, as he said, that once was loving hearts, Hearts that had beat with such a love as mine — Not such as mine, no, nor for such as her — He softly put his arm about her neck And kiss'd her more than once, till help- less death And silence made him bold — nay, but I wrong him. He reverenced his dear lady even in death; But, placing his true hand upon her heart, *0, you warm heart,' he moan'd, 'not even death Can chill you all at once : ' then starting, thought His dreams had come again. *Do I wake or sleep? Or am I made immortal, or my love Mortal once more ? ' It beat — the heart — it beat : Faint — but it beat : at which his own began To pulse with such a vehemence that it drown'd The feebler motion underneath his hand. But when at last his doubts were satisfied, He raised her softly from the sepulchre, And, wrapping her all over with the cloak He came in, and now striding fast, and now Sitting awhile to rest, but evermore Holding his golden burthen in his arms. So bore her thro' the solitary land Back to the mother's house where she was born. There the good mother's kindly minis- tering. With half a night's appliances, recall'd Her fluttering life : she raised an eye that ask'd ' Where ? ' till the things familiar to her youth Had made a silent answer : then she spoke ' Here ! and how came I here ? ' and learning it (They told her somewhat rashly as I think) At once began to wander and to wail, *Ay, but you know that you must give me back : Send! bid him come; ' but Lionel was away — Stung by his loss had vanish'd, none knew where. *He casts me out,' she wept, 'and goes' — a wail That seeming something, yet was nothing, born Not from believing mind, but shatter'd nerve, Yet haunting Julian, as her own reproof At some precipitance in her burial. Then, when her own true spirit had return'd, ' Oh yes, and you,' she said, * and none but you? For you have given me life and love again. And none but you yourself shall tell him of it, And you shall give me back when he returns.' ' Stay then a little,' answer'd Julian, * here. 486 THE GOLDEN SUPPER, And keep yourself, none knowing, to yourself; And I will do your will. I may not stay, No, not an hour; but send me notice of him When he returns, and then will I return, And I will make a solemn offering of you To him you love.' And faintly she replied, ^ And I will do your will, and none shall know. ' Not know? with such a secret to be known. But all their house was old and loved them both. And all the house had known the loves of both; Had died almost to serve them any way, And all the land was waste and solitary : And then he rode away; but after this, An hour or two, Camilla's travail came Upon her, and that day a boy was born. Heir of his face and land, to Lionel. And thus our lonely lover rode away, And pausing at a hostel in a marsh. There fever seized upon him : myself was then Travelling that land, and meant to rest an hour; And sitting down to such a base repast. It makes me angry yet. to speak of it — I heard a groaning overhead, and climb'd The moulder'd stairs (for everything was vile) And in a loft, with none to wait on him. Found, as it seem'd, a skeleton alone. Raving of dead men's dust and beating hearts. A dismal hostel in a dismal land, A flat malarian world of reed and rush ! But there from fever and my care of him Sprang up a friendship that may help us yet. For while we roam'd along the dreary coast, And waited for her message, piece by piece I learnt the drearier story of his life; And, tho' he loved and honour'd Lionel, Found that the sudden wail his lady made Dwelt in his fancy : did he know her worth. Her beauty even? should he not be taught, Ev'n by the price that others set upon it, The value of that jewel he had to guard? Suddenly came her notice and we past, I with our lover to his native Bay. This love is of the brain, the mind, the soul : That makes the sequel pure; tho' some of us Beginning at the sequel know no more. Not such am I : and yet I say the bird That will not hear my call, however sweet. But if my neighbour whistle answers him — What matter? there are others in the wood. Yet when I saw her (and I thought him crazed, Tho' not with such a craziness as needs A cell and keeper), those dark eyes of hers — Oh ! such dark eyes ! and not her eyes alone, But all from these to where she touch'd on earth, For such a craziness as Julian's look'd No less than one divine apology. So sweetly and so modestly she came To greet us, her young hero in her arms ! ' Kiss him,' she said. * You gave me life again. He, but for you, had never seen it once. His other father you! Kiss him, and then Forgive him, if his name be Julian too.' Talk of lost hopes and broken heart ! his own Sent such a flame into his face, I knew Some sudden vivid pleasure hit him there. But he was all the more resolved to go, And sent at once to Lionel, praying him THE LOVER'S TALE. 487 By that great love they both had borne the dead, To come and revel for one hour with him Before he left the land for evermore; And then to friends — they were not many — who lived Scatteringly about that lonely land of his, And bade them to a banquet of farewells. And Julian made a solemn feast : I never Sat at a costlier; for all round his hall From column on to column, as in a wood, Not such as here — an equatorial one, Great garlands swung and blossom'd; and beneath, Heirlooms, and ancient miracles of Art, Chalice and salver, wines that, Heaven knows when, Had suck'd the fire of some forgotten sun. And kept it thro' a hundred years of gloom, Yet glowing in a heart of ruby — cups Where nymph and god ran ever round in gold — Others of glass as costly — some with gems Movable and resettable at will, And trebling all the rest in value — Ah heavens ! Why need I tell you all? — suffice to say That whatsoever such a house as his, And his was old, has in it rare or fair Was brought before the guest : and they, the guest?, Wonder'd at some strange light in Julian's eyes (I told you that he had his golden hour). And such a feast, ill-suited as it seem'd To such a time, to Lionel's loss and his And that resolved self-exile from a land He never would revisit, such a feast So rich, so strange, and stranger ev'n than rich, But rich as fof the nuptials of a king. And stranger yet, at one end of the hall Two great funereal curtains, looping down, Parted a little ere they met the floor. About a picture of his lady, taken Some years before, and falling hid the frame. And just above the parting was a lamp : So the sweet figure folded round with night Seem'd stepping out of darkness with a smile. Well then — our solemn feast — we ate and drank. And might — the wines being of such nobleness — Have jested also, but for Julian's eyes, And something weird and wild about it all: What was it? for our lover seldom spoke. Scarce touch'd the meats; but ever and anon A priceless goblet with a priceless wine Arising, show'd he drank beyond his use; And when the feast was near an end, he said: * There is a custom in the • Orient, friends — I read of it in Persia — when a man Will honour those who feast with him, he brings And shows them whatsoever he accounts Of all his treasures the most beautiful. Gold, jewels, arms, whatever it may be. This custom ' Pausing here a moment, all The guests broke in upon him with meeting hands And cries about the banquet — * Beautiful ! Who could desire more beauty at a feast? ' The lover answer'd, 'There is more than one Here sitting who desires it. Laud me not Before my time, but hear me to the close. This custom steps yet furtlier when the guest Is loved and honour'd to the uttermost. For after he hath shown him gems or gold, He brings and sets before him in rich guise That which is thrice as beautiful as these. 488 THE GOLDEN SUPPER. The beauty that is dearest to his heart — " O my heart's lord, would I could show you," he says, "Ev'n my heart too." And I propose to-night To show you what is dearest to my heart, And my heart too. ' But solve me first a doubt. I knew a man, nor many years ago; He had a faithful servant, one who loved His master more than all on earth beside. He falling sick, and seeming close on death, His master would not wait until he died, But bade his menials bear him from the door, And leave him in the public way to die. I knew another, not so long ago, Who found the dying servant, took him home. And fed, and cherish'd him, and saved his life. I ask you now, should this first master claim His service, whom does it belong to? him Who thrust him out, or him who saved his life?' This question, so flung down before the guests, And balanced either way by each, at length When some were doubtful how the law woulct hold, Was handed over by consent of all To one who had not spoken, Lionel. Fair speech was his, and delicate of phrase. And he beginning languidly — his loss Weigh'd on him yet — but warming as he went. Glanced at the point of law, to pass it by, Affirming that as long as either lived, By all the laws of love and gratefulness. The service of the one so saved was due All to the saver — adding, with a smile, The first for many weeks — a semi-smile As at a strong conclusion — * body and soul And life and limbs, all his to work his wiU.' Then Julian made a secret sign to me To bring Camilla down before them all. And crossing her own picture as she came. And looking as much lovelier as herself Is lovelier than all others — on her head A diamond circlet, and from under this A veil, that seemed no more than gilded air, Flying by each fine ear, an Eastern gauze With seeds of gold — so, with that grace of hers, Slow-moving as a wave against the wind. That flings a mist behind it in the sun — And bearing high in arms the mighty babe. The younger Julian, who himself was crown'd With roses, none so rosy as himself — And over all her babe and her the jewels Of many generations of his house Sparkled and flash'd, for he had decked them out As for a solemn sacrifice of love — So she came in : — I am long in telling it, . I never yet beheld a thing so strange, Sad, sweet, and strange together — floated in — While all the guests in mute amazement rose — And slowly pacing to the middle hall, Before the board, there paused and stood, her breast Hard-heaving, and her eyes upon her feet, Not daring yet to glance at Lionel. But him she carried, him nor lights nor feast Dazed or amazed, nor eyes of men; who cared Only to use his own, and staring wide And hungering for the gilt and jewell'd world About him, look'd, as he is like to prove. When Julian goes, the lord of all he saw. * My guests,' said Julian : * you are honour'd now Ev'n to the uttermost : in her behold Of all my treasures the moSt beautiful, Of all things upon earth the dearest to me.' Then waving us a sign to seat ourselves, Led his dear lady to a chair of state. And I, by Lionel sitting, saw his face THE LOVER'S TALE. 489 Fire, and dead ashes and all fire again Thrice in a second, felt him tremble too, And heard him muttering, ' So like, so like; She never had a sister. I kne"-' none. Some cousin of his and hers — O God, so like ! ' And then he suddenly ask'd her if she were. She shook, and cast her eyes down; and was dumb. And then some other question'd if she came From foreign lands, and still she did not speak. Another, if the boy were hers : but she To all their queries answer'd not a word. Which made the amazement more, till one of them Said, shuddering, ' Her spectre ! ' But his friend Replied, in half a whisper, * Not at least The spectre that will speak if spoken to. Terrible pity, if one so beautiful Prove, as I almost dread to nnd her, dumb ! ' But Julian, sitting by her, ans-'.^er'd all : * She is but dumb, because in her you see That faitliful servant whom we spoke about. Obedient to her second master now; Which will not last. I have here to-night a guest So bound to me by common love and loss What! shall I bind him mde.' in his behalf. Shall I exceed the Persian, giving him That which of all things is the dearest to me, Not only showing? and he himself pro- nounced That my rich gift is wholly mine to give. * Now all be dumb, and promise all of you Not to break in on what I say byword Or whisper, while I show you all my heart.' And then began the story of his love As here to-day, but not so wordily — The passionate moment would not suffer that — Past thro' his visions to the burial; thence Down to this last strange hour in his own hall; And then rose up, and with him all his guests Once more as by enchantment ; all but he, Lionel, who fain had risen, but fell again. And sat as if in chains — to whom he said : •Take my free gift, my cousin, for your wife; And were it only for the giver's sake, And tho' she seem so like the one you lost. Yet cast her not away so suddenly. Lest there be none left here to bring her back : I leave this land for ever.' Here he ceased. Then taking his dear lady by one hand, And bearing on one arm the noble babe, He slowly brought them both to Lionel. And there the widower husband and dead wife Rush'd each at each with a cry, that rather seem'd For some new death than for a life re- new'd; Whereat the very babe began to wail; At once they turn'd, and caught and brought him in To their charm'd circle, and, half killing him With kisses, round him closed and claspt again. But Lionel, when at last he freed himself From wife and child, and lifted up a face All over glowing with the sun of life. And love, and boundless thanks — the sight of'this So frighted our good friend, that turning to me And saying, ' It is over : let us go ' — There were our horses ready at the doors — We bade them no farewell, but mounting these He past for ever from his native land; And I with him, my Julian, back ta mine. 490 THE FIRST QUARREL. TO ALFRED TENNYSON MY GRANDSON. Golden-hair'd Ally whose name is one with mine, Crazy with laughter and babble and earth's new wine, Now that the flower of a year and a half is thine, little blossom, O mine, and mine of mine, Glorious poet who never hast written a line. Laugh, for the name at the head of my verse is thine. May'st thou never be wrong'd by the name that is mine! THE FIRST QUARREL. (in the isle of wight.) I. *Wait a little,' you say, *you are sure it'll all come right,' But the boy was born i' trouble, an' looks so wan an' so white : Wait ! an' once I ha' waited — I hadn't to wait for long. Now I wait, wait, wait for Harry. — No, no, you are doing me wrong ! Harry and I were married : the boy can hold up his head, The boy was born in wedlock, but after my man was dead ; 1 ha' work'd for him fifteen years, an' I work an' I wait to the end. 1 am all alone in the world, an' you are my only friend. II. Doctor, if you can wait, I'll tell you the tale o' my life. When Harry an' I were children, he call'd me his own little wife; I was happy when I was with him, an' sorry when he was away. An' when we play'd together, I loved him better than play; He workt me the daisy chain — he made me the cowslip ball, He fought the boys that were rude, an' I loved him better than all. Passionate girl tho' I was, an' often at home in disgrace, 1 never could quarrel with Harry — I had but to look in his face. in. There was a farmer in Dorset of Harry's kin, that had need Of a goorl stout lad at his farm; he sent, an' llie father agreed; So Harry was bound to the Dorsetshire tarm for years an' for years; I walked with him down to the quay, poor lad, an' we parted in tears. The boai was beginning to move, we heard them a-ringing the bell, * I'll never love any but you, God bless you, my own little Nell.' IV. I was a child, an' he was a child, an' he L3>.rie to harm; There was a girl, a hussy, that workt with him up at the farm. One had deceived her an' left her alone with her sin an' her shame, An' so she was wicked with Harry; the giri was the most to blame. An' years went over till I that was little had grown so tall. The meii would say of the maids, 'Our Nelly's the flower of 'em all.' I didn't take heed o' them, but 1 taught m.yself all I could To make a good wife for Harry, when Harry came home for good. VI. Often I seem'd unhappy, and often as haopy too. For I heard it abroad in the fields * I'll never love any but you ; ' * I'll never love any but you ' the morning song of the lark, * I'll never love any but you ' the nightin- gale's hymn in the dark. And Harry came home at last, but he lock'd at me sidelong and shy, Vext me a bit, till he told me that so many years had gone by, I had grown so handsome and tall — that I might ha' forgot him somehow — For he thought — there were other lads — he v/as fear'd to look at me now. THE FIRST QUARREL. 491 VIII. Hard was the frost in the field, we were married o' Christmas dsy, Married among the red berries, an' all as merry as May — Those were the pleasant times, my house an' my man were my pride, We seem'd like ships i' the Channel a-sailing with wind an' tide. IX. But work was scant in the Isle, tho' he tried the villages round, So Harry went over the Solent to see if work could be found; An' he Avrote 'I ha' six weeks' work, little wife, so far as I know; I'll come for an hour to-morrow, an' kiss you before I go.' So I set to righting the house, for wasn't he coming that day? An' I hit on an old deal-box that was push'd in a corner away, It was full of old odds an' ends, an' a r letter along wi' the rest, \: I had better ha' put my naked hand in a hornets' nest. XI. • Sweetheart' — this was the letter — this was the letter I read — ' You promised to find me work near you, an' I wish I was dead — Didn't you kiss me an' -promise? you haven't done it, my lad. An' I almost died o' your going away, an' I wish that I had.' XII. I too wish that I had — in the pleasant times that had past, Before I quarrell'd with Harry — my quarrel — the first an' the last. XIII. For Harry came in, an' I flung him the letter that drove me wild, An' he told it me all at once, as simple as any child, * What can it matter, my lass, what I did wi' my single life? I ha' been as true to you as ever a man to his wife; An' she wasn't one o' the worst,' * Then,' I said, ' I'm none o' the best.' An' he smiled at me, ' Ain't you, my love ? Come, come, little wife, let it rest ! The man isn't like the woman, no need to make such a stir.' But he anger'd me all the more, an' I said ' You were keeping with her. When I was a-loving you all along an' the same as before.' An' he didn't speak for a while, an' he anger'd me more and more. Then he patted my hand in his gentle way, ' Let bygones be ! ' 'Bygones! you kept yours hush'd,' I said, • when you married me ! By-gones ma' be come-agains; an' she — in her shame an' her sin — You'll have her to nurse my child, if I die o' my lying in ! You'll make her its second mother ! I hate her — an' I hate you ! ' Ah, Harry, my man, you had better ha' beaten me black an' blue Than ha' spoken as kind as you did, when I were so crazy wi' spite, ' Wait a little, my lass, I am sure it 'ill all come right.' An' he took three turns in the rain, an' I watch'd him, an' when he came in I felt that my heart was hard, he was all wet thro' to the skin. An' I never said ' off wi' the wet,' I never said ' on wi' the dry,' So I knew my heart w^s hard, when he came to bid me goodbye. * You said that you hated me, Ellen, but that isn't true, you know; I am going to leave you a bit — vou'U kiss me before I go? ' ' Going! you're going to her — kiss her — if you will,' I said — I was near my time wi' the boy, I must ha' been light i' my head — 492 RIZPAH. * I had sooner be cursed than kiss'd ! ' — I didn't know well what I meant, But I turn'd my face from him, an' he turned his face an' he went. XVI. I've And then he sent me a letter, gotten my work to do; You wouldn't kiss me, my lass, an' I never loved any but you; I am sorry for all the quarrel an' sorry for what she wrote, I ha' six weeks' work in Jersey an' go to- night by the boat.' An' the wind began to rise, an' I thought of him out at sea. An' I felt I had been to blame; he was always kind to me. * Wait a little, my lass, I am sure it 'ill all come right ' — An' the boat went down that night — the boat went down that night. RIZPAH. 17—- Wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over land and sea — And Willy's voice in the wind, ' O mother come out to me.' Why should he call me to-night, when he knows that I cannot go? For the downs are as bright as day, and the full moon stares at the snow. II. We should be seen, my dear; they would spy us out of the town. The loud black nights for us, and the storm rushing over the down. When I cannot see my own hand, but am led by the creak of the chain, And grovel and grope for my son till I find myself drenched with the rain. III. Anything fallen again ? nay — what was there left to fall? I have taken them home, I have num- ber'd the bones, I have hidden them all. What am I saying? and what are you? do you come as a spy? Falls? what falls? who knows? As the tree falls so must it lie. IV. Who let her in? how long has she been? you — what have you heard? Why did you sit so quiet? you never have spoken a word. O — to pray with me — yes — a lady — none of their spies — But the "ight has crept into my heart, and begun to darken my eyes. V. Ah — you, that have lived so soft, what should you know of the night. The blast and the burning shame and the bitter frost and the fright? I have dene it, while you were asleep — you were only made for the day. I have gather'd my baby together — and now you may go your way. Nay — for it's kind of you. Madam, to sit by an old dying wife. But say nothing hard of my boy, I have only an hour of life. I kiss'd my boy in the prison, before he went out to die. * They dared me to do it,' he said, and he never has told me a lie. I whipt him for robbing an orchard once when he was but a child — * The farmer dared me to do it,' he said; he was always so wild — And idle — and couldn't be idle — my Willy — he never could rest. The King should have made him a sol- dier, he would have been one of his best. RIZPAH. 493 VII. But he lived with a lot of wild ma.tes, and they never would let hin'i be good; They swore that he dare not rob the mail, and he swore that iie would; And he took no life, but he rook one purse, and when all was done He flung it among his fellows — I'll none of it, said my son. VIII. I came into court to the Judg** and the lawyers. I told them my tale, God's own truth — but they kill'd him, they kill'd him for robbing the mail. They hang'd him in chains for a show — we had always borne a good name — To be hang'd for a thief — and then put away — isn't that enoug'ri shame? Dust to dust — low down — let us hide ! but they set him so high That all the ships of the v/crld could stare at him, passing by. God 'ill pardon the hell-black raven and horrible fowls of the air, But not the black heart of the lawyer who kill'd him and hang'd 'him there. IX. And the jailer forced me away. I had bid him my last goodbye; They had fasten'd the door of his cell. * O mother ! ' I heard him cry. I couldn't get back tho' I tried, he had something further to say, And now I never shall know it. The jailer forced me away. X. Then since I couldn't but hear that cry of my boy that was dead, They seized me and shut me up : they fasten'd me down on my bed. * Mother, O mother ' ' — he call'd in the dark to me year after year — They beat me for that, they beat me — you know that I couldn't but hear; And then at the last they found I had grown so stupid and still They let me abroad again — but the creatures had worked their will. XI. Flesh of my flesh was gone, but bone of my bone was left — . I stole them all from the lawyers — and you, will you call it a theft? — My baby, the bones that had suck'd me, the bones that had laugh'd and had cried — Theirs ? O no ! they are mine — not theirs — they had moved in my side. Do you think I was scared by the bones? I kiss'd 'em, 1 buried 'em all — I can't dig deep, I am old — in the night by the churchyard wall. My Willy 'ill rise up whole when the trumpet of judgment 'ill sound; But I charge you never to say that I laid him in holy ground. They would scratch him up — they would hang him again on the cursed tree. Sin? O yes — we are sinners, I know — let all that be. And read me a Bible verse of the Lord's good will toward men — * P'ull of compassion and mercy, the Lord ' — let me hear it again; * Full of compassion and mercy — long- suffering.' Yes, O yes ! For the lawyer is born but to murder — the Saviour lives but to bless. ^va.p — dream of a shadow, go — God bless you. I shall join you in a day. MONTENEGRO. They rose to where their sovran eagle sails. They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height. Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night Against the Turk ; whose inroad nowhere scales Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails. And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales. O smallest among peoples ! rough rock- throne Of Freedom ! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Tsernogora ! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm Has breathed a race of mightier moun- taineers. TO VICTOR HUGO. Victor in Drama, Victor in Romance, Cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears, French of the French, and Lord of hu- man tears; Child-lover; Bard whose fame-lit laurels glance Darkening the wreaths of all that would advance, Beyond our strait, their claim to be thy peers; Weird Titan by thy winter weight of years As yet unbroken. Stormy voice of France ! Who dost not love our England — so they say; I know not — England, France, all man to be Will make one people ere man's race be run : And I, desiring that diviner day, Yield thee full thanks for thy full courtesy To younger England in the boy my son. TRANSLATIONS, ETC. BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH. Constantinus, King of the Scots, after having sworn allegiance to Athelstan, allied himself with the Danes of Ireland under Anlaf, and invading England, was defeated by Athelstan and his brother Edmund with great slaughter at Brunan- burh in the year 937. 1 Athelst.^n King, Lord among Earls, Bracelet-bestower and Baron of Barons, He with his brother, Edmund Atheling, Gaining a lifelong Glory in battle, Slew with the sword-edge There by Brunanburh, 1 I have more or less availed myself of my son's prose translation of this poem in the Con- temporary Review (November 1876). 524 BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH. Brake the shield -wall, Hew'd the lindenvvood,! Hack'd the battleshield, Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands. II. Theirs was a greatness Got from their Grandsires — Theirs that so often, in Strife with their enemies Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes. Bow'd the spoiler, Bent the Scotsman, Fell the shipcrews Doom'd to the death. All the field with blood of the fighters Flow'd,from when first the great Sun-star of morningtide, Lamp of the Lord God Lord everlasting, Glode over earth till the glorious creature Sank to his setting. IV. There lay many a man Marr'd by the javelin, . Men of the Northland Shot over shield. There was the Scotsman Weary of war. We the West-Saxons, Long as the daylight Lasted, in companies Troubled the track of the host that we hated, Grimly with swords that were sharp from the grindstone, Fiercely we hack'd at the flyers before us. VI. Mighty the Mercian, Hard was his hand-playj Sparing not any of Those that with Anlaf, ^ Shields of lindenwood. Warriors over the Weltering waters Borne in the bark's-bosom, Drew to this island : Doom'd to the death. VII. Five young kings put asleep by the sword- stroke. Seven strong Earls of the army of Anlaf Fell on the war-field, numberless numbers, Shipmen and Scotsmen. Then the Norse leader, Dire was his need of it. Few were his following, Fled to his warship : Fleeted his vessel to sea with the king in it, Saving his life on the fallow flood. IX. Also the crafty one, Constantinus, Crept to his North again, Hoar-headed hero ! X. Slender warrant had He to be proud of The welcome of war-knives — He that was reft of his Folk and his friends that had Fallen in conflict. Leaving his son too Lost in the carnage. Mangled to morsels, A youngster in war ! Slender reason had He to be glad of The clash of the war-glaive Traitor and trickster And spurner of treaties — He nor had Anlaf With armies so broken A reason for bragging That they had the better In perils of battle ACHILLES OVER THE TREIVCH. 525 On places of slaughter — The struggle of standards, The rush of the javelins, ^he crash of the charges,^ The wielding of weapons — The play that they play'd with The children of Edward. Then with their nail'd prows Parted the Norsemen, a Blood-redden'd relic of Javelins over The jarring breaker, the deep- sea billow. Shaping their way toward Dy- flen - again. Shamed in their souls. Also the brethren, King and Atheling, Each in his glory, Went to his own in his own West- Saxon- land, Glad of the war. Many a carcase they left to be carrion. Many a livid one, many a sallow-skin — Left for the white-tail'd eagle to tear it, and Left for the horny-nibb'd raven to rend it, and Gave to the garbaging war-hawk to gorge it, and That gray beast, the wolf of the weald. XV. ' Never had huger Slaughter of heroes Slain by the sword-edge — Such as old writers Have writ of in histories — Hapt in this isle, since Up from the East hither Saxon and Angle from Over the broad billow Broke into Britain with Haughty war-workers who * Lit. ' the gathering of men.' ^ Dublin. Harried the Welshman, when Earls that were lured by the Hunger of glory gat Hold of the land. ACHILLES OVER THE TRENCH. ILIAD, xviii, 202. So saying, light-foot Iris pass'd away. Then rose Achilles dear to Zeus; and round The warrior's puissant shoulders Pallas flung Her fringed aegis, and around his head The glorious goddess wreath'd a golden cloud, And from it lighted an all-shining flame. As when a smoke from a city goes to heaven Far off from out an island girt by foes, All day the men contend in grievous war From their own city, but with set of sun Their fires flame thickly, and aloft the glare Flies streaming, if perchance the neigh- bours round May see, and sail to help them in the war ; So from his head the splendour went to heaven. From wall to dyke he stept, he stood, nor join'd The Achaeans — honouring his wise mother's vi^ord — There standing, shouted, and Pallas far away Call'd; and a boundless panic shook the foe. For like the clear voice when a trumpet shrills. Blown by the fierce beleaguerers of a town, So rang the clear voice of ^EakidSs; And when the brazen cry of /EakidSs Was heard among the Trojans, all their hearts Were troubled, and the fuU-maned horses whirl'd The chariots backward, knowing griefs at hand; 526 TO PRINCESS FREDERICA—TIRESIAS. And sheer-astounded were the chariot- SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. eers To see the dread, unweariable fire ON THE CENOTAPH IN WESTMINSTER That always o'er the great Peleion's ABBEY. head Not here! the white North has thy Burn'd, for the bright-eyed goddess made bones; and thou. it burn. Heroic sailor-soul, Thrice from the dyke he sent his mighty Art passing on thine happier voyage now shout, Toward no earthly pole. Thrice backward reel'd the Trojans and allies; TO DANTE. And there and then twelve of their noblest died (written at REQUEST OF THE Among their spears and chariots. FLORENTINES.) King, that hast reign'd six hundred years, and grown TO PRINCESS FREDERICA ON In power, and ever growest, since thine HER MARRIAGE. own Fair Florence honouring thy nativity, YOU that were eyes and light to the Thy Florence now the crown of Italy, King till he past away Hath sdught the tribute of a verse from From the darkness of life — me. He saw not his daughter — he blest her : I, wearing but the garland of a day. the blind King sees you to-day, Cast at thy feet one flower that fades He blesses the wife. away. TIRESIAS AND OTHER POEMS. TO E. FITZGERALD. Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange, Where once I tarried for a while, Glance at the wheeling Orb of change, hxv\ greet it with a kindly smile; Whom yet I see as there you sit Beneath your sheltering garden-tree, And while your doves about you flit, And plant on shoulder, hand and knee. Or on your head their rosy feet, As if they knew your diet spares iVhatever moved in that full sheet Let down to Peter at his prayers; Who live on milk and meal and grass; And once for ten long weeks I tried- Your table of Pythagoras, And seem'd at first ' a thing enskied ' (As Shakespeare has it) airy-light To float above the ways of men, Then fell from that half-spiritual height Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again One night when earth was winter-black. And all the heavens flash'd in frost; And on me, half-asleep, came back That wholesome heat the blood had lost. And set me climbing icy capes And glaciers, over which there roll'd To meet me long-arm'd vines with grapes Of Eshcol hugeness; for the cold Without, and warmth within me, wrought To mould the dream; but none can say That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought. Who reads your golden Eastern lay. Than which I know no version' done In English more. divinely well; A planet equal to the sun Which cast it, that large infidel Your Omar; and your Omar drew Full-handed plaudits from our best In modern letters, and from two. Old friends outvaluing all the rest. Two voices heard on earth no more; But we old friends are still alive, TIRESIAS. 527 And I am nearing seventy-four, While you have touch'd at seventy- five, And so I send a birthday line Of greeting; and my son, who dipt In some forgotten book of mine With sallow scraps of manuscript, And dating many a year ago. Has hit on this, which you will take My Fitz, and, welcome, as I know Less for its own than for the sake Of one recalling gracious times, When, in our younger London days, You found some merit in my rhymes. And I more pleasure in your praise. TIRESIAS. I WISH I were as in the years of old. While yet the blessed daylight made itself Ruddy thro' both the roofs of sight, and woke These eyes, now dull, but then so keen to seek The meanings ambush'd under all they saw, The flight of birds, the flame of sacrifice. What omens may foreshadow fate to man And woman, and the secret of the Gods. My son, the Gods, despite of human prayer, Are slower to forgive than human kings. The great God, Ares, burns in anger still Against the guiltless heirs of him from Tyre, Our Cadmus, out of whom thou art, who found Beside the springs of Dirce, smote, and still'd Thro' all its folds the multitudinous beast, The dragon, which our trembling fathers call'd The God's own son. • A tale, that told to me. When but thine age, by age as winter- white As mine is now, amazed, but made me yearn For larger glimpses of that more than man Which rolls the heavens, and lifts, and lays the deep, Yet loves and hates with mortal hates and loves, And moves unseen among the ways of men. Then, in my wanderings all the lands that lie Subjected to the Heliconian ridge Have heard this footstep fall, altho' my wont Was more to scale the highest of the heights With some strange hope to see the nearer God. One naked peak — the sister of the sun Would climb from out the dark, and linger there To silver all the valleys with her shafts — There once, but long ago, five-fold thy term Of years, I lay; the vnnds were dead for heat; The noonday crag made the hand burn; and sick For shadow — not one bush was near — I rose Following a torrent till its myriad falls Found silence in the hollows under- neath. There in a secret olive-glade I saw Pallas Athene climbing from the bath In anger; yet one glittering foot disturb'd The lucid well; one snowy knee was prest Against the margin flowers; a dreadful fight Came from her golden hair, her golden helm And all her golden armour on the grass. And from her virgin breast, and virgin eyes Remaining fixt on mine, till mine grew dark For ever, and I heard a voice that said * Henceforth be blind, for thou hast seen too much. And speak the truth that no man may believe.' Son, in the hidden world of sight, that lives Behind this darkness, I behold her still. Beyond all work of those who carve the stone, $2» TIRESIAS. Beyond all dreams of Godlike woman- hood. Ineffable beauty, out of whom, at a glance. And as it were, perforce, upon me flash'd The power of prophesying — but to me No power — so chain'd and coupled with the curse Of blindness and their unbelief, who heard And heard not, when I spake of famine, plague, Shrine-shattering earthquake, fire, flood, thunderbolt, And angers of the Gods for evil done And expiation lack'd — no power on Fate, Theirs, or mine own ! for when the crowd would roar For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom, To cast wise words among the multitude Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb The madness of our cities and their kings. Who ever turn'd upon his heel to hear My warning that the tyranny of one Was prelude to the tyranny of all? My counsel that the tyranny of all Led backward to the tyranny of one? This power hath work'd no good to aught that lives. And these blind hands were useless in their wars. O therefore that the unfulfill'd desire. The grief for ever born from griefs to be. The boundless yearning of the Prophet's heart — Could /hat stand forth, and, like a statue rear'd . To some great citizen, win all praise from all Who past it, saying, 'That was he ! ' In vain ! Virtue must shape itself in deed, and those Whom weakness or necessity have cramp'd Within themselves, immerging, each, his urn In his owii well, draw solace as he may. Menoeceus, thou hast eyes, and I can hear Too plainly what full tides of onset sap Our seven high gates, and what a weight of war Rides on those ringing axles ! jingle of bits, Shouts, arrows, tramp of the hornfooted horse That grma the glebe to powder ! Stony showers Of that ear-stunning hail of Ares crash Along the sounding walls. Above, below, Shock after shock, the song-built towers and gates Reel, bruised and butted with the shuddering War- thunder of iron rams; and from within The city comes a murmur void of joy, Lest she be taken captive — maidens, wives, And mothers with their babblers of the dawn. And oldest age in shadow from the night. Falling about their shrines before their Gods, And wailing * Save us.' And they wail to thee ! These eyeless eyes, that cannot see thine own. See this, that only in thy virtue lies The saving of our Thebes; for, yester- night. To me, the great God Ares, whose one bliss Is war, and human sacrifice — himself Blood-red from battle, spear and helmet tipt With stormy light as on a mast at sea. Stood out before a darkness, crying * Thebes, Thy Thebes shall fall and perish, for I loathe The seed of Cadmus — yet if one of these By his own hand — if one of these ' My son. No sound is breathed so potent to coerce. And to conciliate, as their names who dare For that sweet mother land which gave them birth TIRESIAS. 529 Nobly to do, nobly to die. Their names, Graven on memorial columns, are a song Heard in the future; few, but more than wall And rampart, their examples reach a hand Far thro' all years, and everywhere they meet And kindle generous purpose, and the strength To mould it into action pure as theirs. Fairer thy fate than mine, if life's best end Be to end well ! and thou refusing this, Unvenerable will thy memory be While men shall move the lips: but if thou dare — Thou, one of these, the race of Cadmus — then No stone is fitted in yon marble girth Whose echo shall not tongue thy glorious doom. Nor in this pavement but shall ring thy name To every hoof that clangs it, and the springs Of Dirce laving yonder battle-plain, Heard from the roofs by night, will mur- mur thee To thine own Thebes, while Thebes thro' thee shall stand Firm-based with all her Gods. The Dragon's cave Half-hid, they tell me, now in flowing vines — Where once he dwelt and whence he roU'd himself At dead of night — thou knowest, and that smooth rock Before it, altar-fashion'd, where of late The woman-breasted Sphinx, with wings drawn back. Folded her lion paws, and look'd to Thebes. There blanch the bones of whom she slew, and these Mixt with her own, because the fierce beast found A wiser than herself, and dash'd herself Dead in her rage : but thou art wise enough, Tho' young, to love thy wiser, blunt the curse Of Pallas, hear, and tho' I speak the truth Believe I speak it, let thine own hand strike Thy youthful pulses into rest and quench The red God's anger, fearing not to plunge Thy torch of life in darkness, rather — thou Rejoicing that the sun, the moon, the stars Send no such light upon the ways of mei "As one g^reat deed. Thither, my son, and there Thou, that hast never known the embrace of love, Offer thy maiden life. This useless hand ! I felt one warm tear fall upon it. Gone ! He will achieve his greatness. But for me, I would that I were gather'd to my rest. And mingled with the famous kings of old, On whom about their ocean-islets flash The faces of the Gods — the wise man's word, Here trampled by the populace under- foot, There crown'd with worship — and these eyes will find The men I knew, and watch the chariot About the goal again, and hunters race The shadowy lion, and the warrior- kings. In height and prowess more than human, strive Again for glory, while the golden lyre Is ever sounding in heroic ears Heroic hymns, and every way the vales Wind, clouded with the grateful incense- fume Of those who mix all odour to the Gods On one far height in one far-shining fire * One height and one far-shining fire,' And while I fancied that my friend For this brief idyll would require A less diff"use and opulent end. And would defend his judgment well, If I should deem it over nice — 530 THE WRECK. The tolling of his funeral bell Broke on my Pagan Paradise, And mixt the dream of classic times And all the phantoms of the dream, With present grief, and made the rhymes, That miss'd his living welcome, seem Like would-be guests an hour too late, Who down the highway moving on With easy laughter find the gate Is bolted, and the master gone. Gone into darkness, that full light Of friendship ! past, in sleep, away By night, into the deeper night I The deeper night? A clearer day Than our poor twilight dawn on earth — If night, what barren toil to be ! What life, so maim'd by night, were worth Our living out? Not mine to me Remembering all the golden hours Now silent, and so many dead. And him the last; and laying flowers, This wreath, above his honour'd head, And praying that, when I from hence Shall fade with him into the unknown, My close of earth's experience May prove as peaceful as his own. THE WRECK. Hide me. Mother ! my Fathers belong'd to the church of old, I am driven by storm and sin and death to the ancient fold, I cling to the Catholic Cross once more, to the Faith that saves, My brain is full of the crash of wrecks, and the roar of waves. My life itself is a wreck, I have sullied a noble name, I am flung from the rushing tide of the world as a waif of shame, I am roused by the wail of a child, and awake to a livid light. And a ghastlier face than ever has haunted a grave by night, I would hide from the storm without, I would flee from the storm within, I would make my life one prayer for a soul that died in his sin, I was the tempter. Mother, and mine was the deeper fall; I will sit at your feet, I will hide my face, I will tell you all. He that they gave me to, Mother, a . heedless and innocent bride — I never have wrong'd his heart, I have only wounded his pride — Spain in his blood and the Jew — dark- visaged, stately and tall — • A princelier-looking man never stept thro' a Prince's hall. And who, when his anger was kindled, would venture to give him the nay ? And a man men fear is a man to be lovec. by the women they say. And I could have loved him too, if the blossom can dote on the blight. Or the young green leaf rejoice in the frost that sears it at night; He would open the books that I prized, and toss them away with a yawn, Repell'd by the magnet of Art to the which my nature was drawn. The word of the Poet by whom the deeps of the world are stirr'd, The music that robes it in language be- neath and beyond the word ! My Shelley would fall from my hands when he cast a contemptuous glance From where he was poring over his Tables of Trade and Finance; My hands, when I heard him coming, would drop from the chords or the keys. But ever I fail'd to please him, however I strove to please — All day long far-off in the cloud of the city, and there Lost, head and heart, in the chances of dividend, consol, and share — And at home if I sought for a kindly ca- ress, being woman and weak, His formal kiss fell chill as a flake of snow on the cheek: And so, when I bore him a girl, when I held it aloft in my joy, He look'd at it coldly, and sai-d to me, * Pity it isn't a boy.' The one thing given me, to love and to live for, glanced at in scorn ! The child that I felt I could die for — as if she were basely born I THE WRECK, 531 I had lived a wild-flower life, I was planted now in a tomb; The daisy will shut to the shadow, I closed my heart to the gloom; I threw myself all abroad — I would play my part with the young By the low foot-lights of the world — and I caught the wreath that was flung. Mother, I have not — however their tongues may have babbled of me — Sinn'd thro' an animal vileness, for all but a dwarf was he, And all but a hunchback too; and I look'd at him, first, askance, With pity — not he the knight for an amorous girl's romance ! Tho' wealthy enough to have bask'd in the light of a dowerless smile. Having lands at home and abroad in a rich West-Indian isle; But I came on him once at a ball, the heart of a listening crowd' — Why, what a brow was there ! he was seated — speaking aloud To women, the flower of the time, and men at the helm of state — Flowing with easy greatness and touch- ing on all things great. Science, philosophy, song — till I felt myself ready to weep For I knew not what, when I heard that voice, — as mellow and deep As a psalm by a mighty master and peal'd from an organ, — roll Rising and falling — for, Mother, the voice was the voice of the soul; And the sun of the soul made day in the dark of his wonderful eyes. Here was the hand that would help me, would heal me — the heart that was wise ! And he, poor man, when he learnt that I hated the ring I wore. He helpt me with death, and he heal'd me with sorrow for evermore. IV. For I broke the bond. That day my nurse had brought me the child. The small sweet face was flush'd, but it coo'd to the Mother and smiled. 'Anything ailing,' I ask'd her, 'with baby?' She shook her head, And the Motherless Mother kiss'd it, and turn'd in her haste and fled. V. Low warm winds had gently breathed us away from the land — Ten long sweet summer days upon deck, sitting hand in hand — When he clothed a naked mind with the wisdom and wealth of his own. And I bow'd myself down as a slave to his intellectual throne. When he coin'd into English gold some treasure of classical song. When he flouted a statesman's error, *or flamed at a public wrong. When he rose as it were on the wings of an eagle beyond me, and past Over the range and the change of the M'orld from the first to the last. When he spoke of his tropical home in the canes by the purple tide. And the high star-crowns of his palm? on the deep-wooded mountain- side. And cliff's all robed in lianas that dropt to the brink of his bay, And trees like the towers of a minster, the sons of a winterless day. * Paradise there ! ' so he said, but I seem'd in Paradise then With the first great love I had felt for the first and greatest of men; Ten long days of summer and sin — if it must be so — But days of a larger light than I ever again shall know — Days that will glimmer, I fear, thro' life to my latest breath; ' No frost there,' so he said, * as in truest Love no Death.' VI. Mother, one morning a bird with a warble plaintively sweet Perch'd on the shrouds, and then fell fluttering down at my feet; I took it, he made it a cage, we fondled it, Stephen and I, But it died, and I thought of the child for a moment, I scarce know why. 532 THE WRECK. VII. But if sin be sin, not inherited fate, as many will say, My sin to my desolate little one found me at sea on a day, When her orphan wail came borne in the shriek of a growing wind, And a voice rang out in the thunders of Ocean and Heayen 'Thou hast sinn'd.' And down in the cabin were we, for the towering crest of the tides Plunged on the vessel and swept in a cataract off from her sides. And ever the great storm grew with a howl and a hoot of the blast In the rigging, voices of hell — then came the crash of the mast. 'The wages of sin is death,' and there I began to v/eep, ' I am the Jonah, the crew should cast me into the deep, For ah God, what a heart was mine to forsake her even for you.' 'Never the heart among women,' he said, * more tender and true.' *The heart! not a mother's heart, when I left my darling alone.' •Comfort yourself, for the heart of the father will care for his own.' 'The heart of the father will spurn her,' I cried, 'for the sin of the wife, The cloud of the mother's shame will enfold her and darken her life.' Then his pale face twitch'd; ' O Stephen, I love you, I love you, and yet ' — As I lean'd away from his arms — ' would God, we had never met ! ' And he spoke not — only the storm; till after a little, I yearn'd For his voice again, and he call'd to me ' Kiss me ! ' and there — as I turn'd — «The heart, the heart!' I kiss'd him, I clung to the sinking form. And the storm went roaring above us, and he — was out of the storm. VIII. And then, then, Mother, the ship stag- ger'd under a thunderous shock. That shook us asunder, as if she had Struck and crash'd on a rock; For a huge sea smote every soul from the decks of The Falcon but one; All of them, all but the man that was lash'd to the helm had gone; And I fell — and the storm and the days went by, but I knew no more — Lost myself — lay like the dead by the dead on the cabin floor, Dead to the death beside me, and lost to the loss that was mine. With a dim dream, now and then, of a hand giving bread and wine, Till I woke from the trance, and the ship stood still, and the skies were blue, But the face I had known, O Mother, was not the face that I knew. IX. The strange misfeaturing mask that I saw so amazed me, that I Stumbled on deck, half mad. I would fling myself over and die ! But one — he was waving a flag — the one man left on the wreck — ' W^oman ' — he graspt at my arm — ' stay there' — I crouch'd upon deck — 'We are sinking, and yet there's hope: look yonder,' he cried, ' a sail,' In a tone so rough that I broke into passionate tears, and the wail Of a beaten babe, till I saw that a boat was nearing us — then All on a sudden I thought, I shall look on the child again. They lower'd me down the side, and there in the boat I lay With sad eyes fixt on the lost sea-home, as we glided away, And I sigh'd, as the low dark hull dipt under the smiling main, 'Had I stay'd with him, I had now — with him — been out of my pain.' XI. They took us aboard : the crew were gentle, the captain kind; But / was the lonely slave of an often- wandering mind; For whenever a rougher gust might tumble a stormier wave, DESPAIR. 533 •O Stephen,' I moan'd, 'I am coming to thee in thine Ocean-grave.' And again, wlien a bahiiier breeze curl'd over a peacefuUer sea, I found myself moaning again ' O child, I am coming to thee.' XII. The broad white brow of the Isle — that bay with the colour'd sand — Rich was the rose of sunset there, as we drew to the land; All so quiet the ripple would hardly blanch into spray At the feet of the cliff; and I pray'd — • my child ' — for I still could pray — * May her life be as blissfully calm, be never gloom'd by the curse Of a sin, not hers ! ' Was it well with the child? I wrote to the nurse Who had borne my flower on her hireling heart; and an answer came Not from the nurse — nor yet to the wife — to her maiden name ! I shook as I opened the letter — I knevi^ that hand too well — And from it a scrap, dipt out of the ' deaths ' in a paper, fell. *Ten long sweet summer days' of fever, and want of care ! And gone — that day of the storm — O Mother, she came to me there. DESPAIR. A man and his wife having lost faith in a God, and hope of a life to come, and being utterly miserable in this, resolve to end themselves by drowning. The woman is drowned, but the man rescued by a minister of the sect he had aban- doned. I. Is it you, that preach'd in the chapel there looking over the sand? FoUow'd us too that night, and dogg'd us, and drew me to land? What did I feel that night? You are curious. How should I tell? Does it matter so much what I felt? You rescued me — yet — was it well That you came unwish'd for, uncall'd, between me and the deep and my doom. Three days since, three more dark days of the Godless gloom Of a life without sun, without health, with- out hope, without any delight In anything here upon earth? but ah God, that night, that night When the rolling eyes of the lighthouse there on the fatal neck Of land running out into rock — they had saved many hundreds from wreck — Glared on our way toward death, I re- member I thought, as we past, Does it matter how many they saved? we are all of us wreck'd at last — * Do you fear? ' and there came thro' the roar of the breaker a whisper, a breath, 'Fear? am I not with you? I am frighted at life not death.' iili. And the suns of the limitless Universe sparkled and shone in the sky. Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light was a lie — Bright as with deathless hope — but, however they sparkled and shone, The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of woe like our own — No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth below, A fiery scroll written over with lamenta- tion and woe. IV. See, we were nursed in the drear night- fold of your fatalist creed. And we turn'd to the growing dawn, we had hoped for a dawn indeed. When the light of a Sun that was coming would scatter the ghosts of the Past, And the cramping creeds that had madden'd the peoples would vanish at last. 534 DESPAIR. And we broke away from the Christ, our human brother and friend, For He spoke, or it seem'd that He spoke, of a Hell without help, without end. Hoped for a dawn and it came, but the promise had faded away; We had past from a cheerless night to the glare of a drearier day ; He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire. The guess of a worm in the dust and the shadow of its desire — Of a worm as it writhes in a world of the weak trodden down by the strong, Of a dying worm in a world, all massacre, murder, and wrong. O we poor orphans of nothing — alone on that lonely shore — Born of the brainless Nature who knew not that which she bore ! Trusting no longer that earthly flower would be heavenly fruit — Come from the brute, poor souls — no souls — and to die with the brute Nay, but I am not claiming your pity : I know you of old — Small pity for those that have ranged from the narrow warmth of your fold, Where you bawl'd the dark side of your faith and a God of eternal rage. Till you flung us back on ourselves, and the human heart, and the Age. But pity — the Pagan held it a vice — was in her and in me, Helpless, taking the place of the pitying God that should be ! Pity for all that aches in the grasp of an idiot power, And pity for our own selves on an earth that bore not a flower; Pity for all that suff'ers on land or in air or the deep, And pity for our own selves till we long'd for eternal sleep. 'Lightly step over the sands! the waters — you hear them call ! Life with its anguish, and horrors, and errors — away with it all ! ' And she laid her hand in my own — she was always loyal and sweet — Till the points of the foam in the dusk came playing about our feet. There was a strong sea-current would sweep us out to the main. ' Ah God ' tho' I felt as I spoke I was taking the name in vain — 'Ah God' and we turn'd to each other, we kiss'd, we embraced, she and I, Knowing the Love we were used to be- lieve everlasting would die : We had read their know-nothing books and we lean'd to the darker side — Ah God, should we find Him, perhaps, perhaps, if we died, if we died; We never had found Him on earth, this earth is a fatherless Hell — ' Dear Love, for ever and ever, for ever and ever farewell,' Never a cry so desolate not since the world began. Never a kiss so sad, no, not since the coming of man ! But the blind wave cast me ashore, and you saved me, a valueless life. Not a grain of gratitude mine ! You have parted the man from the wife. I am left alone on the land, she is all alone in the sea; If a curse meant aught, I would curse you for not having let me be. Visions of youth — for my brain was drunk with the water, it seems; I had past into perfect quiet at length out of pleasant dreams. And the transient trouble of drowning — what was it when match'd with the pains Of the hellish heat of a wretched life rushing back thro' the veins? DESPAIR. 535 XII. Why should I live ? one son had forged on his father and fled, And if I believed in a God, I would thank him, the other is dead, And there was a baby-girl, that had never look'd on the light : Happiest she of us all, for she past from the night to the night. But the crime, if a crime, of her eldest- born, her glory, her boast, Struck hard at the tender heart of the mother, and broke it almost; Tho', glory and shame dying out for ever in endless time, Does it matter so much whether crown'd for a virtue, or hang'd for a crime? XIV. And ruin'd by him, by him, I stood there, naked, amazed In a world of arrogant opulence, fear'd myself turning crazed, And I would not be mock'd in a mad- house ! and she, the delicate wife, With a grief that could only be cured, if cured, by the surgeon's knife, — Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of pain. If every man die for ever, if all his griefs are in vain, And the homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of space. Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race, When the worm shall have M'rithed its last, and its last brother-worm will have fled From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth that is dead? Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings? O yes, For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press. When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whooping at noon. And Doubt is the lord of this dunghill and crows to the sun and the moon. Till the Sun and the Moon of our science are both of them turn'd into blood, And Hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow of good; For their knowing and know-nothing books are scatter'd from hand to hand — We have knelt in your know-all chapel too looking over the sand. XVII. What ! I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us so well? Infinite crueltv rather that made everlast- ing Hell, Made us, foreknew us, foredoom'd us, and does what he will with his own; Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan ! XVIII. Hell? if the souls of men were immortal, as men have been told. The lecher would cleave to his lusts, and the miser would yearn for his gold, And so there were Hell for ever ! but were there a God as you say, His Love would have power over Hell till it utterly vanish'd away. XIX. Ah yet — I have had some glimmer, at times, in my gloomiest woe. Of a God behind all — after all — the great God for aught that I know; But the God of love and of Hell together — they cannot be thought. If there be such a God may the Great God curse him and bring him to naught ! Blasphemy ! whose is the fault? is it mine? for why would you save A madman to vex you with wretched words, who is best in his grave? Blasphemy ! ay, why not, being damn'd beyond hope of grace? 536 THE ANCIENT SAGE. would I were yonder with her, and away from your faith and your face ! Blasphemy ! true ! I have scared you pale with my scandalous talk, But the blasphemy to my mind lies all in the way that you walk. XXI. Hence 1 she is gone! can I stay? can I breathe divorced from the Past? You needs must have good lynx-eyes if I do not escape you at last. Our orthodox coroner doubtless will find it a felo-de-se. And the stake and the cross-road, fool, if you will, does it matter to me? THE ANCIENT SAGE. A THOUSAND summers ere the time of Christ From out his ancient city came a Seer Whom one that loved, and honour'd him, and yet Was no disciple, richly garb'd, but worn From wasteful living, foUow'd — in his hand A scroll of verse — till that old man before A cavern whence an affluent fountain pour'd From darkness into daylight, turn'd and spoke. This wealth of waters might but seem to draw From yon dark cave, but, son, the source is higher, Yon summit half-a-league in air — and higher, The cloud that hides it — higher still, the heavens Whereby the cloud was moulded, and whereout The cloud descended. Force is from the heights. 1 am wearied of our city, son, and go To spend my one last year among the hills. What hast thou there? Some deathsong for the Ghouls To make their banquet relish? let me read. " How far thro' all the bloom and brake That nightingale is heard ! What power but the bird's could make This music in the bird? How summer-bright are yonder skies, And earth as fair in hue ! And yet what sign of aught that lies Behind the green and blue? But man to-day is fancy's fool As man nath ever been. The ''.„uieless Power, or Powers, that rule Were never heard or seen." If thou would'st hear the Nameless, and wilt dive Into the Temple-cave of thine own self. There, brooding by the central altar, thou May'st haply learn the Nameless hath a voice, By which thou wilt abide, if thou be wise. As if thou knewest, tho' thou canst not know ; For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there But never yet hath dipt into the abysm, The Abysm of all Abysms, beneath, within The blue of sky and sea, the green of earth, And in the million-millionth of a grain Which cleft'and cleft again for evermorei And ever vanishing, never vanishes. To me, my son, more mystic than myself, Or even than the Nameless is to me. And when thou sendest thy free soul thro' heaven. Nor understandest bound nor boundless- ness. Thou seest the Nameless of the hundred names. And if the Nameless should withdraw from all Thy frailty counts most real, all thy world Might vanish like thy shadow in the dark ** And since — from when this earth began — The Nameless never came Among us, never spake with man, And never named the Name" — THE ANCIENT SAGE. <>yi Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son, Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in, Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone, Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one : Thou canst not prove thou art immor- tal, no Nor yet that thou art mortal — nay, my son, Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee, Am not thyself in converse with thyself, For nothing worthy proving can be proven. Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise, Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith ! She reels not in the storm of warring words, She brightens at the clash of * Yes ' and 'No,' She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst, She feels the Sun is hid but for a night. She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls. She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the fountain where they wail'd * Mirage ' ! " What Power ? aught akin to Mind, The mind in me and you? Or power as of the Gods gone blind Who see not what they do? " But some in yonder city hold, my son, That none but Gods could build this house of ours, So beautiful, vast, various, so beyond All work of man, yet, like all work of man, A beauty with defect till That which knows. And is not known, but felt thro' what we feel Within ourselves is highest, shall descend On this half-deed, and shape it at the last According to the Highest in the Highest. " What Power but the Years that make And break the vase of clay. And stir the sleeping earth, and wake The bloom that fades away? What rulers but the Days and Hours That cancel weal with woe. And wind the front of youth with flowers. And cap our age with snow? " The days and hours are ever glancing by, And seem to flicker past thro' sun and shade. Or short, or long, as Pleasure leads, or Pain; But with the Nameless is nor Day nor Hour; Tho' we, thin minds, who creep from thought to thought, • Break into ' Thens ' and * Whens ' the Eternal Now : This double seeming of the single world ! — My words are like the babblings in a dream Of nightmare, when the babblings break the dream. But thou be wise in this dream-world of ours, Nor take thy dial for thy deity. But make the passing shadow serve thy will. " The years that made the stripling wise Undo their work again, And leave him, blind of heart and eyes, The last and least of men; Who clings to earth, and once would dare Hell-heat or Arctic cold. And now one breath of cooler air Would loose him from his hold; \ His winter chills him to the root, \ He withers marrow and mind; The kernel of the shrivell'd fruit Is jutting thro' the rind ; The tiger spasms tear his chest, 538 THE ANCIENT SAGE. The palsy wags his head; slender lily waving there, The wife, the sons, who love him best And laughing back the light. Would fain that he were dead; In vain you tell me ' Earth is fair ' b The griefs by which he once was 1 wrung When all is dark as night." Were never worth the while " — My son, the world is dark with griefs and graves, Who knows ? or whether this earth-narrow So dark that men cry out against the life Heavens. Be yet but yolk, and forming in the shell? Who knows but that the darkness is in " The shaft of scorn that once had stung man r The doors of Night may be the gates of But wakes a dotard smile." Light; For wert thou born or blind or deaf, and The placid gleam of sunset after storm ! then Suddenly heal'd, how would'st thou glory "The statesman's brain that sway'd the in all past The splendours and the voices of the Is feebler than his knees; world ! The passive sailor wrecks at last And we, the poor earth's dying race, and In ever-silent seas ; yet The warrior hath forgot his arms, No phantoms, watching from a phantom The Learned all his lore; shore The changing market frets or charms Await the last and largest sense to make The merchant's hope no more; The phantom walls of this illusion fade, The prophet's beacon burn'd in vain, And show us that the world is wholly fair. And now is lost in cloud ; The plowman passes, bent with pain, " But vain the tears for darken'd years To mix with what he plow'd; As laughter over wine. The poet whom his Age would quote And vain the laughter as the tears, As heir of endless fame — brother, mine or thine. He knows not ev'n the book he wrote, Not even his own name. " For all that laugh, and all that weep, For man has overlived his day. And all that breathe are one And, darkening in the light, Slight ripple on the boundless deep Scarce feels the senses break away That moves, and all is gone." To mix with ancient Night." But that one ripple on the boundless deep The shell must break before the bird can Feels that the deep is boundless, and fly. itself For ever changing form, but evermore "The years that when my Youth began One with the boundless motion of the Had set the lily and rose deep. By all my ways where'er they ran, Have ended mortal foes; "Yet wine and laughter friends! and set My rose of love for ever gone. The lamps alight, and call My lily of truth and trust — For golden music, and forget They made her lily and rose in one. The darkness of the pall." And changed her into dust. rosetree planted in my grief, If utter darkness closed the day, my And growing, on her tomb, son Her dust is greening in your leaf, But earth's dark forehead flyigs athwart Her blood is in your bloom. the heavens THE ANCIENT SAGE. 539 Her shadow crown'd with stars — and yonder — out To northward — some that never set, but pass From sight and night to lose themselves in day. I hate the black negation of the bier, And wish the dead, as happier than our- selves And higher, having climb'd one step beyond Our village miseries, might be borne in white To burial or to burning, hymn'd from hence With songs in praise of death, and crown'd with flowers ! " O worms and maggots of to-day Without their hope of wings ! " But louder than thy rhyme the silent Word Of that world-prophet in the heart of man. " Tho' some have gleams or so they say Of more than mortal things." To-day? but what of yesterday? for oft On me, when boy, there came what then I call'd, Who knew no books and no philosophies, In my boy-phrase * The Passion of the Past.' The first gray streak of earliest summer- dawn, The last long stripe of waning crimson gloom. As if the late and early were but one — A height, a broken grange, a grove, a flower Had murmurs * Lost and gone and lost and gone ! ' A breath, a whisper ■ — some divine fare- well — Desolate sweetness — far and faraway — What had he loved, what had he lost, the boy? I know not and I speak of what has been. And more, my son ! for more than once when I Sat all alone^, revolving in myself The word that is the symbol of myself, The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, And past into the Nameless, as a cloud Melts into Heaven. I touch 'd my limbs, the limbs Were strange not mine — and yet- no shade of doubt. But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self The gain of such large life as match'd with ours Were Sun to spark — unshadowable in words. Themselves but shadows of a shadow- world. " And idle gleams will come and go, But still the clouds remain; " The clouds themselves are children of the Sun. " And Night and Shadow rule below When only Day should reign." And Day and Night are children of the Sun, And idle gleams to thee are light to me. Some say, the Light was father of the Night, And some, the Night was father of the Light, No night no day ! — I touch thy world again — No ill no good ! such counter-terms, my son, Are border-races, holding, each its own By endless war : but night enough is there In yon dark city : get thee back : and since The key to that weird casket, which for thee But holds a skull, is neither thine nor mine. But in the hand of what is more than man. Or in man's hand when man is more than man. Let be thy wail and help thy fellow men. And make thy gold thy vassal not thy king. And fling free alms into the beggar's bowl. And send the day into the darken'd heart; 540 THE FLIGHT. Nor list for guerdon in the voice of men, A dying echo from a falling wall; Nor care — for Hunger hath the Evil eye — To vex the noon with fiery gems, or fold Thy presence in the silk of sumptuous looms; Nor roll thy viands on a luscious tongue, Nor drown thyself with flies in honied wine; Nor thou be rageful, like a handled bee, And lose thy life by usage of thy sting; Nor harm an adder thro' the lust for harm, Nor make a snail's horn shrink for wan- tonness; And more — think well ! Do-well will follow thought, And in the fatal sequence of this world An evil thought may soil thy children's blood ; But curb the beast would cast thee in the mire. And leave the hot swamp of voluptuous- ness A cloud between the Nameless and thy- self, And lay thine .uphill shoulder to the wheel. And cHmb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou Look higher, then — perchance — thou mayest — beyond A hundred ever-rising mountain lines. And past the range of Night and Shadow — see The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day Strike on the Mount of Vision ! So, farewell. fHE FLIGHT. Are you sleeping? have you forgotten? do not sleep, my sister dear ! How f«« you sleep? the morning brings the day I hate and fear; The cock has crow'd already once, he crows before his time; Awake ! the creeping glimmer steals, the hills are white with rime. Ah, clasp me in your arms, sister, ah, fold me to your breast ! Ah, let me weep my fill once more, and cry myself to rest ! To rest? to rest and wake no more were better rest for me. Than to waken every morning to that face I loathe to see : I envied your sweet slumber, all night so calm you lay. The night was calm, the morn is calm, and like another day; But I could wish yon moaning sea would rise and burst the shore, And such a whirlwind blow these woods, as never blew before. IV. For, one by one, the stars went down across the gleaming pane. And project after project rose, and all of them were vain; The blackthorn-blossom fades and falls and leaves the bitter sloe, The hope I catch at vanishes and youth is turn'd to woe. V. Come, speak a little comfort ! all night I pray'd with tears. And yet no comfort came to me, and now the morn appears, When he will tear me from your side, who bought me for his slave : This father pays his debt with me, and weds me to my grave. What father, this or mine, was he, who, on that summer day When I had fall'n from off the crag we clamber'd up in play, Found, fear'd me dead, and groan'd, and took and kiss'd me, and again He kiss'd me; anrl I loved him then; he was my father :hen. THE FLIGHT. 54? VII. No father now, the tyrant vassal of a tyrant vice ! The Godless Jephtha vows his child . . . to one cast of the dice. These ancient woods, this Hall at last will go — perhaps have gone, Except his own meek daughter yield her life, heart, soul to one — To one who knows I scorn him. O the formal mocking bow, The cruel smile, the courtly phrase that masks his malice now — But often in the sidelong eyes a gleam of all things ill — It is not Love but Hate that weds a bride against her will; IX. Hate, that would pluck from this true breast the locket that I wear. The precious crystal into which I braided Edwin's hair ! The love that keeps this heart alive beats on it night and day — One golden curl, his golden gift, before he past away. X. He left us weeping in the woods; his boat was on the sand; How slowly down the rocks he went, how loth to quit the land ! And all my life was darken'd, as I saw the white sail run, And darken, up that lane of light into the setting sun. How often have we watch'd the sun fade from us thro' the West, And follow Edwin to those isles, those islands of the Blest ! Is he not there? would I were there, the friend, the bride, the wife. With him, where summer never dies, with Love, the Sun of life I XII. would I were in Edwin's arms — once more — to feel his breath Upon my cheek — on Edwin's ship, with Edwin, ev'n in death, Tho' all about the shuddering wreck the death-white sea should rave. Or if lip were laid to lip on the pillows of the wave. XIII. Shall I take hiin ? I kneel with him ? \ swear and swear forsworn To love him most, whom most I loathe, to honour whom I scorn? The Fiend would yell, the grave would yawn, my mother's ghost would rise — To lie, to lie — in God's own house — the blackest of all lies ! XIV. Why — rather than that hand in mine, tho' every pulse would freeze, I'd sooner fold an icy corpse dead o( some foul disease : Wed him? I will not wed him, let them spurn me from the doors. And I will wander till I die about the barren moors. XV. The dear, mad bride who stal>b'd her bridegroom on her bridal night — If mad, then I am mad, but sane, if she were in the right. My father's madness makes me mad — but words are only words ! 1 am not mad, not yet, not quite — There ! listen how the birds XVI. Begin to warble yonder in the budding orchard trees ! The lark has past from earth to Heaven upon the morning breeze ! How gladly, were I one of those, how early would I wake I And yet the sorrow that I bear is sorrow for his sake. 542 THE FLIGHT. XVII. XXII. They love their mates, to whom they You will not leave me thus in grief to sing; or else their songs, that meet wander forth forlorn; The morning with such music, would We never changed a bitter word, not never be so sweet ! once since we were born; And tho' these fathers will not hear, the Our dying mother join'd our hands; she blessed Heavens are just, knew this father well ; And Love is fire, and burns the feet She bade us love, like souls in Heaven, would trample it to dust. and now I fly from Hell, XVIII. XXIII. A door was open'd in the house — who? And you with me; and we shall light who? my father sleeps! upon some lonely shore. A stealthy foot upon the stair ! he — some Some lodge within the waste sea-dunes, one — this way creeps ! and hear the waters roar. If he? yes, he . . . lurks, listens, fears And see the ships from out the West go his victim may have fled — dipping thro' the foam, He ! where is some sharp-pointed thing? And sunshine on that sail at last which he comes, and finds me dead. brings our Edwin home. XIX. XXIV. Not he, not yet! and time to act — but But look, the morning grows apace, and how my temples burn ! lights the old church-tower. And idle fancies flutter me, I know not And lights the clock ! the hand points where to turn; five — me — it strikes the hour — Speak to me, sister; counsel me; this I bide no more, I meet my fate, whatever marriage must not be. ills betide ! You only know the love that makes the Arise, my own true sister, come forth ! world a world to me ! the world is wide. XX. XXV. Our gentle mother, had she lived — but And yet my heart is ill at ease, my eyes we were left alone : are dim with dew, That other left us to ourselves; he cared I seem to see a new-dug grave up yonder not for his own ; by the yew ! So all the summer long we roam'd in If we should never more return, but these wild woods of ours. wander hand in hand My Edwin loved to call us then ' His With breaking hearts, without a friend. two wild woodland flowers.' and in a distant land ! XXI. XXVI. Wild flowers blowing side by side in sweet, they tell me that the world is God's free light and air. hard, and harsh of mind. Wild flowers of the secret woods, when But can it be so hard, 30 harsh, as those Edwin found us there. that should be kind? Wild woods in which we roved with him, That matters not: let come what will; and heard his passionate vow, at last the end is sure, Wild woods in which we rove no more, And every heart that loves with truth is if we be parted now ! equal to endure. TOMORROW. 543 TOMORROW. Her, that yer Honour was spakin' to? Whin, yer Honour? last year — Standin' here by the bridge, when last yer Honour was here? An' yer Honour ye gev her the top of the mornin', 'Tomorra,' says she. What did they call her, yer Honour? They call'd her Molly Magee. An' y£r Honour's the thrue ould blood that always manes to be kind, But there's rason in all things, yer Honour, for Molly was out of her mind. Shure, an' meself remimbers wan night comin' down be the sthrame. An' it seems to me now like a bit of yisther-day in a dhrame — Here where yer Honour seen her — there was but a slip of a moon, But I hard thim — Molly Magee wid her bachelor, Danny O'Roon — * You've been takin' a dhrop o' the crathur,' an' Danny says, ' Troth, an' I been Dhrinkin' yer health wid Shamus O'Shea at Katty's shebeen; ^ But I must be lavin' ye soon.' 'Ochone are ye goin' away?' * Goin' to cut the Sassenach whate,' he says, ' over the say ' — *An' whin will ye meet me agin?' an' I hard him, ' Molly asthore, , I'll meet you agin tomorra,' says he, * be the chapel-door.' *An' whin are ye goin' to lave me?' 'O' Monday mornin',' says he; *An' shure thin ye'll meet me tomorra?' * Tomorra, .tomorra, Machree ! * Thin Molly's ould mother, yer Honour, that had x\o iikin' for Dan, Call'd from her cabin an' tould her to come away from the man, An' Molly Magee kem flyin' acrass me, as light as a lark. An' Dan stood there for a minute, an' thin wint into the dark. * Grog-shop. But wirrah ! the storm that night — the tundher, an' rain that fell, An' the sthrames runnin' down at the back o' the glin 'ud 'a dhrownded Hell. III. But airth was at pace nixt mornin', an' Hiven in its glory smiled. As the Holy Mother o' Glory that smiles at her sleepin' child — Ethen — she stept an the chapel-green, an' she turn'd herself roun' Wid a diamond dhrop in her eye, for Danny was not to be foun'. An' many's the time that I watch'd hfer at mass lettin' down the tear, For the Divil a Danny was there, yer Honour, for forty year. IV. Och, Molly Magee, wid the red o' the rose an' the white o' the May, An' yer hair as black as the night, an' yer eyes as bright as the day ! Achora, yer laste little whishper was sweet as the lilt of a bird ! Acushla, ye set me heart batin' to music wid ivery word ! An' sorra the Queen wid her sceptre in sich an illigant han', An' the fall of yer foot in the dance was as light as snow an the Ian', An' the sun kem out of a cloud whiniver ye walkt in the shtreet. An' Shamus O'Shea was yer shadda, an' laid himself undher yer feet, An' I loved ye meself wid a heart and a half, me darlin', and he 'Ud 'a shot his own sowl dead for a kiss of ye, Molly Magee. V. But shure we wor betther frinds whin I crack'd his skull for her sake, An' he ped me back wid the best he could give at ould Donovan's wake — For the boys wor about her agin whin Dan didn't come to the fore, An' Shamus along wid the rest, but she put thim all to the door. 544 TOMORROW. An', afther, I thried her meself av the bird 'ud come to me call, But Molly, begorrah, 'ud listhen to naither at all, at all. VI. An' her nabours an' frinds 'ud consowl an' condovvl wid her, airly and late, * Your Danny,' they says, ' niver crasst over say to the Sassenach whate; He's gone to the States, aroon, an' he's married another wife, An' ye'll niver set eyes an the face of the thraithur agin in life !. An' to dhrame of a married man, death alive, is a mortial sin.' But Molly says, ' I'd his hand-promise, an' shure he'll meet me agin.' VII. An' afther her paarints had inter'd glory, an' both in wan day, She began to spake to herself, the crathur, an' whishper, an' say, ' Tomorra, Tomorra ! ' an' Father Mo- lowny he tuk her in han', ' Molly, you're manin',' he says, ' me dear, av I undherstan'. That ye'll meet your paarints agin an' yer Danny O'Roon afore God Wid his blessed Marthyrs an' Saints; ' an' she gev him a friendly nod, 'Tomorra, Tomorra,' she says, an' she didn't intind to desave. But her wits wor dead, an' her hair was as white as the snow an a grave. VIII. Arrah now, here last month they wor diggin' the bog, an' they foun' Dhrownded in black bog-wather a corp lyin' undher groun'. Yer Honour's own agint, he says to me, wanst, at Katty's shebeen, 'The Divil take all the black Ian', for a blessin' 'ud come wid the green ! ' An' where 'ud the poor man, thin, cut his bit o' turf for the fire? But och ! bad scran to the bogs whin they swallies the man intire ! An' sorra the bog that's in Hiven wid all the light an' the glow. An' there's hate enough, shure, widout thim in the Divil's kitchen below. Thim ould blind nagers in Agypt, I hard his Riverence say, Could keep their haithen kings in the flesh for the Jidgemint day, An', faix, be the piper o' Moses, they kep' the cat an' the dog, But it 'ud 'a been aisier work av they lived be an Irish bog. How-an-iver they laid this body they foun' an the grass Be the chapel-door, an' the people 'ud see it that wint in to mass — But a frish gineration had riz, an' most of the ould was few, An' I didn't know him meself, an' none of the parish knew. XII. But Molly kem limpin' up wid her stick, she was lamed av a knee. Thin a slip of a gossoon call'd, ' Div ye know him, Molly Magee?' An' she stood up straight as the Queen of the world — she lifted her head — ' He said he would meet me tomorra ! ' an' dhropt down dead an the dead. XIII. Och, Molly, we thought, machree, ye would start back agin into life. Whin we laid yez, aich be aich, at yer wake like husban' an' wife. Sorra the dhry eye thin but was wet for the frinds that was gone ! Sorra the silent throat but we hard it cryin' ' Ochone ! ' An' Shamus O'Shea that has now ten childer, hansome an' tall, Him an' his childer wor keenin' as if he had lost thim all. THE SPINSTER'S SWEET-ARTS. 545 Thin his Riverence buried thim both in wan grave be the dead boor-tree,^ The young man Danny O'Roon wid his ould woman, Molly Magee. XV. May all the flowers o' Jeroosilim blossom an' spring from the grass, Imbrashin' an' kissin' aich other — as ye did — over yer Crass ! An' the lark fly out o' the flowers wid his song to the Sun an' the Moon, An' tell thim in Hiven about Molly Magee an' her Danny O'Roon, Till Holy St. Pether gets up wid his kays an' opens the gate ! An' shure, be the Crass, that's betther nor cuttin' the Sassenach whate , To be there wid the Blessed Mother, an' Saints an' Marthyrs galore, An' singin' yer * Aves ' an' * Fathers ' for iver an' ivermore. XVI. An' now that I tould yer Honour what- iver I hard an' seen, Yer Honour'ill give me a thrifle to dhrink yer health in potheen. THE SPINSTER'S SWEET-ARTS. Milk for my sweet-arts, Bess ! fur it mun be the time about now When Molly cooms in fro' the far-end close wi' her paails fro' the cow. Eh! tha be new to the plaace — thou'rt gaapin' — doesn't tha see I calls 'em arter the fellers es once was sweet upo''me? Naay to be sewer it be past 'er time. What maakes 'er sa laate? Goa to the laane at the back, an' loook thruf Maddison's gaate ! 1 Elder tree. Sweet-arts ! Molly belike may 'a lighted to-night upo' one. Sweet-arts ! thanks to the Lord that I niver not listen'd to noan ! So I sits i' my oan armchair wi' my oan kettle theere o' the hob, An' Tommy the fust, an' Tommy the second, an' Steevie an' Rob. IV. Rob, coom oop 'ere o' my knee. Thou sees that i' spite o' the men I 'a kep' thruf thick an' thin my two 'oonderd a-year to mysen; Yis ! thaw tha call'd me es pretty es ony lass i' the Shere; An' thou be es pretty a Tabby, but Robby I seed thruf ya theere. Feyther 'ud saay I wur ugly es sin, an' I beant not vaain. But I niver wur downright hugly, thaw soom 'ud 'a thowt ma plaain, An' I wasn't sa plaain i' pink ribbons, ye said I wur pretty i' pinks. An' I liked to 'ear it I did, but I beant sich a fool as ye thinks; Ye was stroakin ma down wi' the *air, as I be a-stroakin o' you. But whiniver I loooked i' the glass I wur sewer that it couldn't be true; Niver wur pretty, not I, but ye knaw'd it wur pleasant to 'ear. Thaw it warn't not me es wur pretty, but my two 'oonderd a-year. D'ya mind the murnin' when we was a-walkin' togither, an' stood By the claay'd-oop pond, that the foalk be sa scared at, i' Gigglesby wood, Wheer the poor wench drowndid hersen, black Sal, es 'ed been disgraaced? An' I feel'd thy arm es I stood wur a-creeapin about my waaist; An' me es wur alius afear'd of a man's gittin' ower fond, I sidled awaay an' awaay till I plumpt foot fust i' the pond; 2N 546 THE SPINSTER'S SWEET-ARTS. And, Robby, I niver 'a liked tha sa well, as I did that daay, Fur tha joompt in thysen, an' tha hoickt my feet wi' a flop fro' the claay. Ay, stick oop thy back, an' set oop thy taail, tha may gie ma a kiss. Fur I walk'd wi' tha all the way hoam an' wur niver sa nigh saayin' Yis. But \.'a boath was i' sich a clat we was shaamed to cross GigglesbyGreean, Fur a cat may loook at a king thou knaws but the cat mun be clean. Sa we boath on us kep out o' sight o' the winders o' Gigglesby Hinn — Naay, but the claws o' tha ! quiet ! they pricks clean thruf to the skin — An' wa boath slinkt 'oam by the brokken shed i' the laane at the back, Wheer the poodle runn'd at tha once, an' thou runn'd oop o' the thack; An' tha squeedg'd my 'and i' the shed, fur theere we was forced to 'ide, Fur I seed that Steevie wur coomin', and one o' the Tommies beside. Theere now, what art 'a mewin at, Steevie ? for owt I can tell — Robby wur fust to be sewer, or I mowt 'a liked tha as well. VIII. But, Robby, I thowt o' tha all the while I wur clraangin' my gown, An' I thowt shall I chaange my staate? but, O Lord, upo' coomin' down — My bran-new carpet es fresh es a midder o' flowers i' Maay — Why 'edn't tha wiped thy shoes? it wur clatted all ower wi' claay. An' I could 'a cried ammost, fur I seed that it couldn't be, An' Robby 1 gied tha a raatin that sattled thy coortin o' me. An* Molly an' me was agreed, as we was a-cleanin' the floor, That a man be a durty thing an' a trouble an' plague wi' indoor. But I rued it arter a bit, fur I stuck to tha moor na the rest. But I couldn't 'a lived wi' a man an' I knaws it be all fur the best. Naay — let ma stroak tha down till \ maakes tha es smooth es silk. But if I 'ed married tha, Robby, thou'd not 'a been worth thy milk, Thou'd niver 'a cotch'd ony mice but 'a left me the work to do. And 'a taaen to the bottle beside, so es all that I 'ears be true; But I loovs tha to niaake thysen 'appy, an' soa purr awaay, my dear. Thou 'ed wellnigh purr'd ma awaay fro' my oan two 'oonderd a-year. Swearin agean, you Toms, as ye used to do twelve year sin' ! Ye niver 'card Steevie swear 'cep' it wur at a dog coomin' in. An' boath o' ye mun be fools to be hallus a-shawin' your claws, Fur I niver cared nothink for neither — an' one o' ye dead ye knaws ! Coom give hoaver then, weant ye? I warrant ye soom fine daay — Theere, lig down — I shall hev to gie one or tother awaay. Can't ye t^ake pattern by Steevie? ye sha'n't hev a drop fro' the paail. Steevie be right good manners bang thruf to the tip o' the taail. XI. Robby, git down .wi'tha, wilt tha? let Steevie coom oop o' my knee. Steevie, my lad, thou 'ed very nigh be^n the Steevie fur me ! Robby wur fust to be sewer, 'e wur burn an' bred i' the 'ouse, But thou be es 'ansom a tabby es iver patted a mouse. An' I beant not vaain, but I knaws I 'ed led tha a quieter life Nor her wi' the hepitaph yonder ! * A faaithful an' loovin' wife ! ' An' 'cos o' thy farm by the beck, an' thy windmill oop o' the croft, Tha thowt tha would marry ma, did tha? but that wur a bit ower soft, THE SPINSTER'S SWEET-ARTS. 547 Thaw thou was es soaber es daay, wi' a niced red faace, an' es clean Es a shillin' fresh fro' the mint wi' a bran- new 'ead o' the Queean, An' thy farmin' es clean es thysen', fur, Steevie, tha kep' it sa neat That I niver not spied sa much es a poppy along wi' the wheat, An' the wool of a thistle a-flyin' an' seeadin' tha haated to see; Twur es bad es a battle-twig i 'ere i' my oan blue chaumber to me. Ay, roob thy whiskers agean ma, fur I could 'a taaen to tha well. But fur thy bairns, poor Steevie, a bouncin' boy an' a gell. XIII. An' thou was es fond o' thy bairns es I be mysen o' my cats. But I niver not wish'd fur childer, I hevn't naw likin' fur brats; Pretty anew when ya dresses 'em oop, an' they goas fur a walk, Or sits wi' their 'ands afoor 'era, an' doesn't not 'inder the talk ! But their bottles o' pap, an' their mucky bibs, an' the clats an' the clouts. An' their mashin' their toys to pieaces an' maakin' ma deaf wi' their shouts, An' hallus a-joompin' about ma as if they was set upo' springs, An' a-haxin' ma hawkard questions, an' saayin' ondecent things, An' a-callin' ma * hugly ' mayhap to my faace, or a-tearin' my gown — Dear ! dear ! dear ! I mun part them Tommies — Steevie git down. Ye be wuss nor the men-tommies, you. I tell'd ya, na moor o' that ! Tom, lig theere o' the cushion, an' tother Tom 'ere o' the mat. XV. Theere! I ha' master'd them! Hed I married the Tomrriies — O Lord, To loove an' obaay the Tommies ! 1 couldn't 'a stuck by my word. To be horder'd about, an' waaked, when Molly 'd put out the light, ^ Earwig. By a man coomin' in wi' a hiccup at ony hour o' the night ! An' the taable staain'd wi' 'is aale, an' the mud o' 'is boots o' the stairs, An' the stink o' 'is pipe i' the 'ouse, an' the mark o' 'is 'ead o' the chairs ! An' noan o' my four sweet-arts 'ud 'a let me 'a hed my oan waay, Sa I likes 'em best wi' taails when they 'evn't a word to saay. XVI. An' I sits i' my oan little parlour, an' sarved by my oan little lass, Wi' my oan little garden outside, an' my oan bed o' sparrow-grass, An' my oan door-poorch wi' the woodbine an' jessmine a-dressin' it greean. An' my oan fine Jackman i' purple a- roabin' the 'ouse like a Queean. XVII. An' the little gells bobs to ma hoffens es I be abroad i' the laanes. When I goas fur to coomfut the poor es be down wi' their haaches an' their paains : An' a haaf-pot o' jam, or a moss'el o' meat when it beant too dear. They maakes ma a graater Laady nor 'er i' the mansion theer, Hes 'es hallus to hax of a man how much to spare or to spend; An' a spinster I be an' I will be, if soa please God, to the hend. XVIII. Mew ! mew ! — Bess wi' the milk ! what ha maade our Molly sa laate ? It should 'a been 'ere by seven, an' theere — it be strikin' height — ' Cushie wur craazed fur 'er cauf,' well — I 'card 'er a-maakin' 'er moan, An' I thowt to mysen * thank Gyd that I hevn't naw cauf o' my oan.' Theere ! Set it down ! Now Robby ! You Tommies shall waait to-night Till Robby an' Steevie 'es 'ed their lap — an' it sarves ye right, 548 LOCKSLEY HALL LOCKSLEY HALL SIXTY YEARS AFTER. Late, my grandson ! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts, Wander' d back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call, I myself so close on death, and death itself in Locksley Hall. , So — your happy suit was blasted — she the faultless, the divine; And you liken — boyjsh babble — this boy-love of yours with mine. I myself have often babbled doubtless of a foolish past; Babble, babble; our old England may go down in babble at last. * Curse him! ' curse your fellow-victim? call him dotard in your rage? Eyes that lured a doting boyhood well might fool a dotard's age. Jilted for a wealthier ! wealthier? yet perhaps she was not wise; I remember how you kiss'd the miniature with those sweet eyes. In the hall there hangs a painting — Amy's arms about my neck — Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on the ribs of wreck. In my life there was a picture, she that clasp'd my neck had flown; I was left within the shadow sitting on the wreck alone. Yours has been a slighter ailment, will you sicken for her sake? You, not you ! your modern amourist is of easier, earthlier make. Amy loved me, Amy fail'd me, Amy was a timid child; But your Judith — but your worldling —^ j,^ Take the charm * For ever ' from them, and they crumble into dust. Gone the cry of * Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom; Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb. Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space. Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage, into commonest commonplace ! * Forward' rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one. Let us hush this cry of ' Forward ' till ten thousand years have gone. Far among the vanish'd races, old Assyrian kings would flay Captives whom they caught in battle — iron-hearted victors they. Ages after, while in Asia, he that led the wild Moguls, Timur built his ghastly tower of eighty thousand human skulls, Then, and here in Edward's time, an age of noblest English names, Christian conquerors took and flung the conquer'd Christian into flames. Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great; Christian love among the Churches look'd the twin of heathen hate. From the golden alms of Blessing man had coin'd himself a curse : Rome of Caesar, Rome of Peter, which was crueller? which was worse? France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a Gospel, all men's good; Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood. Hope was ever on her mountain, watching till the day begun — Crown'd with sunlight — over darkness — from the still unrisen sun. Have we grown at last beyond the passions of the primal clan? * Kill your enemy, for you hate him,' still, * your enemy ' was a man. Have we sunk below them? peasants maim the helpless harse, and drive Innocent cattle under thatch, and burn the kindlier brutes alive. Brutes, the brutes are not your wrongers — burnt at midnight, found at morn, ,Twisted hard in mortal agony with their offspring, born-unborn, Clinging to the silent mother ! Are we devils? are we men? Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again, He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers Sisters, brothers — and the beasts — whose pains are hardly less than ours ! Chaos, Cosmos ! Cosmqs, Chaos ! who can tell how all will end? Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend. SIXTY YEARS AFTER. 551 Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past, Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last. Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave your courage to be wise : When was age so cramm'd with menace? madness? written, spoken lies? Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn, Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, * Ye are equals, equal-born.' Equal-born ? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat. Charm us. Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat, Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom Larger than the Lion, — Demos end in working its own doom. Russia bursts our Indian? barrier, shall we fight her? shall we yield? Pause ! before you sound the trumpet, hear the voices from the field. Those three hundred millions under one Imperial sceptre now. Shall we hold them? shall we loose them? take the suffrage of the plow. Nay, but these would feel and follow Truth if only you and you. Rivals of realm-ruining party, when you speak were wholly true. Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find, Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind. Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practised hustings-liar; So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the Higher. Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-born by right divine; Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine. Chaos, Cosmos ! Cosmos, Chaos ! once again the sickening game; Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name. Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to all; Step by step we rose to greatness, — thro' the tonguesters we may fall. You that woo the Voices — tell them 'old experience is a fool,* Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot read can rule. Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek ones in their place; Pillory Wisdom in your markets, pelt your offal at her face. Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street. Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet. Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, without the hope, Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down the slope. Authors — essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part, Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of Art. 552 LOCKSLEY HALL Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare; Down with Reticence, down with Reverence — forward — naked — let them stare. Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer; Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure. Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism, — Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too into the abysm. Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men; Have we risen from out the beast, then back into the beast again? Only 'dust to dust' for me that sicken at your lawless din, Dust in wholesome old-world dust before the newer world begin. Heated am I? you — ^you wonder — well, it scarce becomes mine age — Patience ! let the dying actor mouth his last upon the stage. Cries of unprogressive dotage ere the dotard fall asleep? Noises of a current narrowing, not the music of a deep? Ay, for doubtless I am old, and think gray thoughts, for I am gray: After all the stormy changes shall we find a changeless May? After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie, Some diviner force to guide us thro' the days I shall not see? When the schemes and all the systems. Kingdoms and Republics fall, Something kindlier, higher, holier — all for each and each for all? All the full-brain, half-brain races, led by Justice, Love, and Truth; All the millions one at length with all the visions of my youth? All diseases quench'd by Science, no man halt or deaf or blind; Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body, larger mind? Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue — I have seen her far away — for is not Earth as yet so young? — Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion kill'd, Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd. Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles, Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles. Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands millions, then — All her harvest all too narrow — who can fancy warless men? Warless? war will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon? Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon? Dead thefnew astronomer calls her. . . . On this day and at this hour, Jn this gap between the sandhills, whence you see the Locksley tower, SIXTY YEARS AFTER. 553 Here we met, our latest meeting — Amy — sixty years ago — She and I — the moon was falling greenish thro' a rosy glow, Just above the gateway tower, and even where you see her now — Here we stood and claspt each other, swore the seeming-deathless vow. . . . Dead, but how her living glory lights the hall, the dune, the grass ! i""^ Yet the moonlight is the sunlight, and the Sun himself will pass. Venus near her ! smiling downward at this earthlier earth of ours, Closer on the Sun, perhaps a world of never fading flowers. Hesper, whom the poet call'd the Bringer home of all good things. All good things may move in Hesper, perfect peoples, perfect kings. Hesper — Venus — were we native to that splendour or in Mars, We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening stars. Could we dream of wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust and spite, Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light? Might we not in glancing heavenward on a star so silver-fair. Yearn, and clasp the hands and murmur, ' Would to God that we were there'? Forward, backward, backward, forward, in the immeasurable sea, Sway'd by vaster ebbs and flows than can be known to you or me. All the suns — are these but symbols of innumerable man, Man or Mind that sees a shadow of the planner or the plan? Is there evil but on earth? or pain in every peopled sphere? Well be grateful for the sounding watchword ' Evolution ' here, Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good. And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud. '^ What are men that He should heed us? cried the king of sacred song; Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insect wrong, While the silent Heavens roll, and Suns along their fiery way, All their planets whirling round them, flash a million miles a day. Many an M.oxv moulded earth before her highest, man, was born. Many an ^on too may pass when earth is manless and forlorn. Earth so huge, and yet so bounded — pools of salt, and plots of land — Shallow skin of green and azure — chains of mountain, grains of sand ! Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by, Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye, Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul; Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole. 554 LOCKS LEY HALL Here is Locksley Hall, my grandson, here the lion-guarded gate. Not to-night in I.ocksley Hall — to-morrow — you, you come so late. Wreck'd — your train — or all but wreck'd? ashatter'd wheel? a vicious boy! Good, this forward, you that preach it, is it well to wish you joy? Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime? There among^ *he glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet. Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street. There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread, There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead. There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor, And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of the poor. Nay, your pardon, cry your * forward,' yours are hope and youth, but I — Eighty winters leave the dog too lame to follow with the cry, Lame and old, and past his time, and passing now into the night; Yet I would the rising race were half as eager for the light. Light the fading gleam of Even? hght the glimmer of the dawn? Aged eyes may take the growing glimmer for the gleam withdrawn. Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me. Earth may reach her earthly-worst, or if she gain her earthly-best. Would she find her human offspring this ideal man at rest? Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time v^ill swerve. Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve. Not the Hall to-night, my grandson ! Death and Silence hold their own. Leave the Master in the first dark hour of his last sleep alone. Worthier soul was he than I am, sound and honest, rustic Squire, Kindly landlord, boon companion — youthful jealousy is a liar. Cast the poison from your bosom, oust the madness from your brain. Let the trampled serpent show you that you have not lived in vain. Youthful ! youth and age are scholars yet but in the lower school, Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool. Yonder lies our young sea-village — Art and Grace are less and less: Science grows and Beauty dwindles — roofs of slated hideousness ! There is one old Hostel left us where they swing the Locksley shield. Till the peasant cow shall butt the * Lion passant ' from his field. SIXTY YEARS AFTER. 555 Poor old Heraldry, poor old History, poor old Poetry, passing hence, In the common deluge drowning old political common-sense ! Poor old voice of eighty crying after voices that have fled ! All I loved are vanish'd voices, all my steps are on the dead. All the world is ghost to me, and as the phantom disappears. Forward far and far from here is all the hope of eighty years. In this Hostel — I remember — I repent it o'er his grave — Like a clown — by chance he met me — I refused the hand he gave. From that casement where the trailer mantles all the mouldering bricks — I was then in early boyhood, Edith but a "child of six — While 1 shelter'd in this archway from a day of driving showers — Peept the winsome face or Edith like a flower among the flowers. Here to-night ! the Hall to-morrow, when they toll the Chapel bell ! Shall I hear in one dark room a wailing, * I have loved thee well.' Then a peal that shakes the portal — one has come to claim his bride, Her that shrank, and put me from her, shriek'd, and started from my side — Silent echoes ! You, my Leonard, use and not abuse your day, Move among your people, know them, follow him who led the way, Strove for sixty widow'd years to help his homelier brother men, Served the poor, and built the cottage, raised the school, and drain'd the fea Hears he now the Voice that wrong'd him? wtio shall swear it cannot be? Earth would never touch her worst, were one in fifty such as he. Ere she gain her Heavenly-best, a God must mingle with the game : Nay, there may be those about us whom we neither see nor name, Felt within us as ourselves, the Powers of Good, the Powers of 111, Strpwing balm, or shedding poison in the fountains of the Will. Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine. Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine. Follow Light, and do the Right — for man can half-control his doom — Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb. Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past. I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last. Gone at eighty, mine own age, and I and you will bear the pall ; Then I leave thee Lord and Master, latest Lord of Locksley Hall. 556 PROLOGUE— THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE. PROLOGUE TO GENERAL HAMLEY. Our birches yellowing and from each The light leaf falling fast, While squirrels from our fiery beech Were bearing off the mast, You came, and look'd and loved the view Long-known and loved by me, Green Sussex fading into blue With one gray glimpse of sea; And, gazing from this height alone. We spoke of what had been Most marvellous in the wars your own Crimean eyes had seen; And now — like old-world inns that take Some warrior for a sign That therewithin a guest may make True cheer with honest wine — Because you heard the lines I read Nor utter'd word of blame, I dare without your leave to head These rhymings with your name,- Who know you but as one of those I fain would meet again, Yet know you, as your England knows That you and all your men Were soldiers to her heart's desire, When, in the vanish'd year, You saw the league-long rampart-fire Flare from Tel-el-Kebir Thro' darkness, and the foe was driven, And Wolseley overthrew Ar^l)i, and the stars in heaven- Paled, and the glory grew. THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE AT BALACLAVA. October 25, 1854. The charge of the gallant three hundred, the Heavy Brigade ! Down the hill, down the hill, thousands of Russians, Thousands of horsemen, drew to the valley — and stay'd; For Scarlett and Scarlett's three hundred were riding by When the points of the Russian lances arose in the sky; And he call'd * Left wheel into line ! * and they wheel'd and obey'd. Then he look'd at the host that had halted he knew not why, And he turn'd half round, and he bade his trumpeter sound To the charge, and he rode on ahead, as he waved his blade To the gallant three hundred whose glory will never die — * Follow, ' and up the hill, up the hill, up the hill. Follow' d the Heavy Brigade. II. The trumpet, the gallop, the charge, and the might of the fight ! Thousands of horsemen had gather'd there on the height, With a wing push'd out to the left and a wing to the right. And who shall escape if they close? but he dash'd up alone Thro' the great gray slope of men, Sway'd his sabre, and held his own Like an Englishman there and then; All in a moment foUow'd with force Three that were next in their fiery course, Wedged themselves in between hprse and horse, Fought for their lives in the narrow gap they had made — Four amid thousands! and up the hill, up the hill, Gallopt the gallant three hundred, the Heavy Brigade. Fell like a cannonshot. Burst like a thunderbolt, Crash'd like a hurricane, Broke thro' the mass from below, Drove thro' the midst of the foe. Plunged up and down, to and fro, Rode flashing blow upon blow, Brave Inniskillens and Greys Whirling their sabres in circles of light ! And some of us, all in amaze. Who were held for a while from the fight, THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE — EPILOGUE. 557 And were only standing at gaze, When the dark-muffled Russian crowd Folded its wings from the left and the right, And roU'd them around like a cloud, — O mad for the charge and the battle were we, When our own good redcoats sank from sight, Like drops of blood in a dark-gray sea, And we turn'd to each other, whispering, all dismay'd, * Lost are the gallant three hundred of Scarlett's Brigade ! ' * Lost one and all ' were the words Mutter'd in our dismay; But,they rode like Victors and Lords Thro' the forest of lances and swords In the heart of the Russian hordes, They rode, or they stood at bay — Struck with the sword-hand and slew, Down with the bridle-hand drew The foe from the saddle and threw Underfoot there in the fray — Ranged like a storm or stood like a rock In the wave of a stormy day; Till suddenly shock upon shock Stagger'd the mass from without. Drove it in wild disarray. For our men gallopt up with a cheer and a shout, And the foeman surged, and waver'd, and reel'd Up the hill, up the hill, up the hill, out of the field, And over the brow and away. V. Glory to eacll and to all, and the charge that they made ! Glory to all the three hundred, and all the Brigade ! Note. — The ' three hundred ' of the 'Heavy Brigade' who made this famous charge were the Scots Greys and the and squadron of Inniskil- lings, the remainder of the ' Heavy Brigade ' subsequently dashing up to their support. The * three ' were Scarlett's aide-de-camp, Elliot, and the trumpeter and Shegog the orderly, who had been close behind him. EPILOGUE. Irene. Not this way will you set your name A star among the stars. Poet. W^hat way? Irene. You praise when you should blame The barbarism of wars. A juster epoch has begun. Poet. Yet tho' this cheek be gray. And that bright hair the modern sun, Those eyes the blue to-day. You wrong me, passionate little friend. I would that wars should cease, I would the globe from end to end Might sow and reap in peace. And some new Spirit o'erbear the old, Or Trade refrain the Powers From war with kindly links of gold, Or Love with wreaths of flowers. Slav, Teuton, Kelt, I count them all My friends and brother souls, With all the peoples, great and small. That wheel between the poles. But since, our mortal shadow. 111 To waste this earth began — Perchance from some abuse of Will In worlds before the man Involving ours — he needs must fight To make true peace his own. He needs must combat might with might, Or Might would rule alone; And who loves War for War's own sake Is fool, or crazed, or worse; But let the patriot-soldier take His 'meed of fame in verse; Nay — tho' that realm were in the wrong For which her warriors bleed. It still were right to crown with song The warrior's noble deed — A crown the Singer hopes may last. For so the deed endures; But Song will vanish in the Vast; And that large phrase of yours ' A Star among the stars,' my dear, Is girlish talk at best; For dare we dally with the sphere As he did half in jest. 558 TO VIRGIL. Old Horace ? ' I will strike,' said he, * The stars with head sublime,' But scarce could see, as now we see, The man in Space and Time, So drew perchance a happier lot Than ours, who rhyme to-day. The fires that arch this dusky dot — Yon myriad-worlded way — The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze, World-isles in lonely skies. Whole heavens within themselves, amaze Our brief humanities; And so does Earth ; for Homer's fame, Tho' carved in harder stone — The falling drop will make his name As mortal as my own. No! Irene. Poet. Let it live then — ay, till when? Earth passes, all is lost In what they prophesy, our wise men, Sun-flame or sunless frost, And deed and song alike are swept Away, and all in vain As far as man can see, except The man himself remain; And tho', in this lean age forlorn, Too many a voice may cry That man can have no after-morn, Not yet of these am I. The man remains, and whatsoe'er He wrought of good or brave Will mould him thro' the cycle-year That dawns behind the grave. And here the Singer for his Art Not all in vain may plead « The song that nerves a nation's Ifeart, Is in itself a deed.' TO VIRGIL. WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE MANTUANS FOR THE NINETEENTH CENTENARY OF VIRGIL'S DEATH. Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre; II. Landscape-lover, lord of language more than he that sang the Works and Days, All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase; III. Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word; IV. Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers; Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers; Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be, Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea; VI. Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind; Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind ; VII. • Light among the vanish'd ages; star that gildest yet this phantom shore ; Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more; VIII. Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Caesar's dome — THE DEAD PROPHET. 559 Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound for ever of Imperial Rome — Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd, and the Rome of freemen holds her place, I, from out the Northern Island sunder'd once from all the human I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. THE DEAD PROPHET. 1 82-. I. Dead! And the Muses cried with a stormy cry • Send them no more, for evermore. Let the people die.' II. Dead! * Is it he then brought so low? ' And a careless people flock'd from the fields With a purse to pay for the show. Dead, who had served his time, Was one of the people's kings, Had labour'd in lifting them out of slime. And showing them souls have wings ! Dumb on the winter heath he lay. His friends had stript him bare. And roU'd his nakedness everyway That all the crowd might stare. A storm-worn signpost not to be read, And a tree with a moulder'd nest On its barkless bones, stood stark by the dead ; And behind him, low in the West, VI. With shifting ladders of shadow and light, And blurr'd in colour and form, The sun hung over the gates of Night, And glared at a coming storm. VII. Then glided a vulturous Beldam forth, That on dumb death had thriven; They call'd her ' Reverence ' here upon earth. And 'The Curse of the Prophet' in. Heaven. * VIII. She knelt — * We worship him ' — all but wept — ' So great, so noble was he ! ' She clear'd her sight, she arose, she swept The dust of earth from her knee. IX. * Great ! for he spoke and the people heard, And his eloquence caught like a flame From zone to zone of the world, till his Word Had won him a noble name. X. Noble ! he sung, and the sweet sound ran Thro' palace and cottage door. For he touch'd on the whole sad planet of man, The kings and the rich and the poor; And he sung not alone of an old sun set. But a sun coming up in his youth ! Great and noble — O yes — but yet — For man is a lover of Truth, XII. And bound to follow, wherever she go Stark-naked, and up or down, Thro' her high hill-passes of stainless snow, Or the foulest sewer of the town — 560 EARLY SPRING. Noble and great — O ay — but then, Tho' a prophet should have his due, "Was henoblier-fashion'd than other men? Shall we see to it, 1 and you? For since he would sit on a Prophet's seat, As a lord of the Human soul. We needs must scan him from head to feet "V^ere it but for a wart or a mole ? ' XV. His wife and his child stood by him in tears, But she — she push'd them aside. * Tho' a name may last for a. thousand years, Yet a truth is a truth,' she cried. And she that had haunted his pathway still, Had often truckled and cower'd When he rose in his wrath, and had yielded her will To the master, as overpower'd, XVII. She tumbled his helpless corpse about. ' Small blemish upon the skin ! But 1 think we know what is fair without Is often as foul within.' She crouch'd, she tore him part from part, And out of his body she drew The red * Blood-eagle ' ^ of liver and heart; She held them up to the view; XIX. She gabbled, as she groped in the dead. And all the people were pleased; 1 Old Viking term for lungs, liver, etc., when torn by the conqueror out of the body of the conquered. ' See, what a little heart,' she said, * And the liver is half-diseased ! ' She tore the Prophet after death, And the people paid her well. Lightnings flicker'd along the heath; One shriek'd * The fires of Hell ! ' EARLY SPRING. Once more the Heavenly Power Makes all things new, And domes the red-plow'd hills With loving blue; The blackbirds have their wills, The throstles too. Opens a door in Heaven; From skies of glass A Jacob's ladder falls On greening grass. And o'er the mountain-walls Young angels pass. Before them fleets the shower, And burst the buds. And shine the level lands, And flash the floods; The stars are from their hands Flung thro' the woods, IV. The woods with living airs How softly fann'd, Light airs from where the deep, All down the sand. Is breathing in his sleep. Heard by the land. O follow, leaping blood. The season's lure ! O heart, look down and up Serene, secure. Warm as the crocus cup, Like snowdrops, pure I PREFATORY POEM— HELEN'S TOWER. 561 Past, Future glimpse and fade Thro' some slight spell, A gleam from yonder vale, Some far blue fell, And sympathies, how frail, In sound and smell ! VII. Till at thy chuckled note, Thou twinkling bird, The fairy fancies range. And, lightly stirr'd, Ring little bells of change From word to word. VIII. For now the Heavenly Power Makes all things new. And thaws the cold, and fills The flower with dew; The blackbirds have their wills, The poets too. PREFATORY POEM TO MY BROTHER'S SONNETS. Midnight, June 30, 1879. I. Midnight — in no midsummer tune The breakers lash the shores : The cuckoo of a joyless June Is calling out of doors : And thou hast vanish'd from thine own To that which looks like rest, True brother, only to be known By those who love thee best. Midnight — and joyless June gone by, And from the deluged park The cuckoo of a worse July Is calling thro' the dark : But thou art silent underground. And o'er thee streams the rain, True poet, surely to be found When Truth is found again. III. And, now to these unsummer'd skies The summer bird is still, Far off a phantom cuckoo cries From out a phantom hill; And thro' this midnight breaks the sun Of sixty years away. The light of days when life begun. The days that seem to-day. When all my griefs were shared with thee, As all my hopes were thine — As all thou wert was one with me, May all thou art be mine ! ' FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE.' Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row ! So they row'd, and there we landed — * O venusta Sirmio ! ' There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow. There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow, Came that ' Ave atque Vale ' of the Poet's hopeless woe, Tenderest .of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago, * Frater Ave atque Vale,' — as we wan- der'd to and fro. Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below. Sweet CatuUus's all-but-island, olive- silvery Sirmio ! HELEN'S TOWER.1 Helen's Tower, here I stand. Dominant over sea and land. Son's love built me, and I hold Mother's love in letter'd gold. Love is in and out of time, I am mortal stone and lime. Would my granite girth were strong As either love, to last as long ! 1 Written at the request of my friend. Lord DufTerin. 562 EPITAPHS— HANDS ALL ROUND. I should wear my crown entire To and thro' the Doomsday fire, And be found of angel eyes In earth's recurring Paradise. EPITAPH ON LORD STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE. 11^ WESTMINSTER ABBEY. Thou third great Canning, stand among our best And noblest, now thy long day's work hath ceased, Here silent in our Minster of the West "Who wert the voice of England in the East. EPITAPH ON GENERAL GORDON. IN THE GORDON BOYS' NATIONAL MEMORIAL HOME NEAR WOKING. Warrior of God, man's friend, and tyrant's foe, Now somewhere dead far in the waste Soudan, Thou livest in all hearts, for all men know This earth has never borne a nobler man. EPITAPH ON CAXTON. IN ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER. FIAT LUX (his motto). Thy prayer was * Light — more Light — while Time shall last ! ' Thou sawest a glory growing on the night, But not the shadows which that light would cast, Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light. TO THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. O Patriot Statesman, be thou wise to know The limits of resistance, and the bounds Determining concession; still be bold Not only to slight praise but suffer scorn; And be thy heart a fortress to maintain The day against the moment, and the year Against the day; thy voice, a music heard Thro', all the yells and counter-yells of feud And faction, and thy will, a power to make This ever-changing world of circumstance, In changing, chime with never-changing Law. HANDS ALL ROUND. First pledge our Queen this solemn night. Then drink to England, every guest; That man's the best Cosmopolite Who loves his native country best. May freedom's oak for ever live With stronger life from day to day; That man's the true Conservative Who lops the moulder'd branch away. Hands all round ! God the traitor's hope confound ! To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends. And the great name of England, round and round. To all the loyal hearts who long To keep our English Empire whole ! To all our noble sons, the strong New England of the Southern Pole ! To England under Indian skies, To those dark millions of her realm ! To Canada whom we love and prize. Whatever statesman hold the helm. Hands all round ! God the traitor's hope confound ! To this great name of England drink, my friends. And all her glorious empire, round and round. To all our statesmen so they be True leaders of the land's desire ! To both our Houses, may they see Beyond the borough and the shire ! We sail'd wherever ship could sail. We founded many a mighty state; FREEDOM— TO H.R.H. PRINCESS BEATRICE. 563 Pray God our greatness may not fail Thro' craven fears of being great. Hands ail round ! God the traitor's hope confound ! To this great cause of P>eedom drinlc, my friends, And the great name of England, round and round. FREEDOM. O THOU SO fair in summers gone, While yet thy fresh and virgin soul Inform'd the pillar'd Parthenon, The glittering Capitol; So fair in southern sunshine bathed, But scarce of such majestic mien As here with forehead vapour-swathed In meadows ever green; III. For thou — when Athens reign'd and Rome, Thy glorious eyes were dimm'd with pain To mark in many a freeman's home The slave, the scourge, the chain; O follower of the Vision, still In motion to the distant gleam, Howe'er blind force and brainless will May jar thy golden dream Of Knowledge fusing class with class, Of civic Hate no more to be. Of Love to leaven all the mass. Till every Soul be free ; Who yet, like Nature, wouldst not mar By changes all too fierce and fast This order of Her Human Star, This heritage of the past; O scorner of the party cry That wanders from the public good. Thou — when the nations rear on high Their idol smear'd with blood, VIII. And when they roll their idol down — Of saner worship sanely proud; Thou loather of the lawless crown As of the lawless crowd; IX. How long thine ever-growing mind Hath still'd the blast and strown the wave, Tho' some of late would raise a wind To sing thee to thy grave, X. Men loud against all forms of power — Unfurnish'd brows, tempestuous tongues — Expecting all things in an hour — Brass mouths and iron lungs ! TO H.R.H. PRINCESS . BEATRICE. Two Suns of Love make day of human life. Which else with all its pains, and griefs, and deaths. Were utter darkivess — one, the Sun of dawn That brightens thro' the Mother's tender eyes, And warms the child's awakening world — and one The later-rising Sun of spousal Love, Which from her household orbit draws the child To move in other spheres. The Mother weeps At that white funeral of the single life. Her maiden daughter's marriage; and her tears Are half of pleasure, half of pain — the child Is happy — ev'n in leaving her ! but Thou, 564 THE FLEET. True daughter, whose all- faithful, filial eyes Have seen the loneliness of earthly thrones, Wilt neither quit the widow'd Crown, nor let This later light of Love have risen in vain. But moving thro' the Mother's home, between The two that love thee, lead a summer life,' Sway'd by each Love, and swaying to each Love, Like some conjectured planet in mid heaven Between two Suns, and drawing down , from both The light and genial warmth of double day. THE FLEET.i You, you, e/you shall fail to understand What England is, and what her all-in-all, On you will come the curse of all the land, Should this old England fall Which Nelson left so great. II. His isle, the mightiest Ocean-power on earth. Our own fair isle, the lord of every sea — 1 The speaker said that * he should like to be assured that other outlying portions of the Empire, the Crown colonies, and important coal- ing stations were being as promptly and as thoroughly fortified as the yarious capitals of the self-governing colonies. He was credibly in- formed this was not so. It was impossible, also, not to feel some degree of anxiety about the efficacy of present provision to defend and pro- tect, by means of swift well-armed cruisers, the immense mercantile fleet of the Empire. A third source of anxiety, so far as the colonies were concerned, was the apparently insufficient provi- sion for the rapid manufacture of armaments and their prompt despatch when ordered to their colonial destination. Hence the necessity for manufacturing appliances equal to the require- ments, not of Great Britain alone, but of the whole Empire. But the keystone of the whole was the necessity for an overwhelmingly powerful fleet and efficient defence for all necessary coaling stations. This was as essential for the colonies as for Great Britain. It was the one condition Her fuller franchise — what would that be worth — Her ancient fame of Free — Were she . . . a fallen state? III. Her dauntless army scatter'd, and so small. Her island-myriads fed from alien lands — The fleet of England is her all-in-all; Her fleet is in your bands. And in her fleet her Fate. You, you, that have the ordering of her fleet, If yovi should only compass her disgrace. When all men starve, the wild mob's million feet Will kick you from your place. But then too late, too late. OPENING OF THE INDIAN AND COLONIAL EXHIBITION BY THE QUEEN. Written at the Request of the Prince of Wales. W^ELCOME, welcome with one voice ! In your welfare we rejoice, for the continuance of the Empire. All that Continental Powers did with respect to armies England should effect with her navy. It was essentially a defensive force, and could be moved rapidly from point to point, but it should be equal to all that was expected from it. It was to strengthen the fleet that colonists would first readily tax themselves, because they realised how essential a powerful fleet was to the safety, not only of that extensive commerce sailing in every sea, but ultimately to the security of the distant portions of the Empire. Who could estimate the. loss involved in even a brief period of disaster to the Imperial Navy? Any amount of money timely expended in preparation would be quite insignificant when compared with the possible calamity he had referred to' — Extract from Sir Graham Berry's Speech at the (^olonial Institute, gth November 1886. TO W. C. M ACRE AD Y, 565 Sons and brothers that have sent, From isle and cape and continent, Produce of your field and flood, Mount and mine, and primal wood; Works of subtle brain and hand, And splendours of the morning land Gifts from every British zone; Britons, hold your own ! May we find, as ages run, The mother featured in the son And may yours for ever be That old strength and constancy Which has made your fathers great In our ancient island State, And wherever her flag fly. Glorying between sea and sky, Makes the might of Britain known; Britons, hold your own ! Britain fought her sons of yore — Britain fail'd; and never more. Careless of our growing kin. Shall we sin our fathers' sin. Men that in a narrower day — . Unprophetic rulers they — Drove from out the mother's nest That young eagle of the West To forage for herself alone; Britons, hold your own ! IV. Sharers of our glorious past, Brothers, must we part at last? Shall we not thro' good and ill Cleave to one another still? Britain's myriad voices call, * Sons, be welded each and all. Into one imperial whole. One with Britain, heart and soul ! One life, one flag, one fleet, one Throne ! Britons, hold your own ! POETS AND THEIR BIBLIOGRA- PHIES. Old poets foster'd under friendlier skies. Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say, At dawn, and lavish all the golden day To make them wealthier in his readers' eyes; And you, old popular Horace, you the wise Adviser of the nine-years-ponder'd lay And you, that wear a wreath of sweeter bay, Catullus whose dead songster never dies; If, glancing downward on the kindly sphere That once had roU'd you round and round the Sun, You see your Art still shrined in human shelves, You should be jubilant that youflourish'd here Before the Love of Letters, overdone. Had swampt the sacred poets with them- selves. TO W. C. MACREADY. 1851. Farewell, Macready, since to-night we part; Full-handed thunders often have con- fess'd Thy power, well-used to move the public breast. We; thank thee with our voice, and from the heart. Farewell, Macready, since this night we part. Go, take thine honours home; rank with the best, Garrick and statelier Kemble, and the rest Who made a nation purer through their art. Thine is it that our drama did not die. Nor flicker down to brainless panto- mime. And those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see. Farewell, Macready; moral, grave, sub- lime; Our Shakespeare's bland and universal eye Dwells pleased, through twice a hundred years, on thee. QUEEN MARY A DRAMA. DRAMATIS PERSONS. Queen Mary. Philip, King- of Naples and Sicily, afterwards King of Spain. The Princess Elizabeth. Reginald Pole, Cardinal a7td Papal Legate. Simon Renard, Spanish Ambassador. Le Sieur de Noailles, French Ambassador. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbttry. Sir Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York ; Lord Chancellor after Gardiner. Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon. Lord William Howard, afterwards Lord Howard, and Lord High Admiral. Lord Williams of Thame. Lord Paget. Lord Petre. Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor. Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London. Thomas Thirlby, Bishop of Ely. Sir Thomas Wyatt |. j^.^^^..^^ Leaders. Sir Thomas Stafford ' Sir Ralph Bagenhall. Sir Robert Southwell. Sir Henry Bedingfield. Sir William Cecil. Sir Thomas White, Lord Mayor of London. The Duke of Alva ) attending on Philip. Father Cole. Soto. Father Bourne. The Count de Feria ) Peter Martyr. Villa Garcia. Captain Brett \ Adherents of Wyatt. Anthony Knyvett ) Peters, Gentleman of Lord Howard. Roger, Servant to Noailles. William, Servant to Wyatt. Steward of Household to the Princess Elizabeth. Old Nokes and Nokes. Marchioness of Yxkvkr, Mother of Courtenay. Lady Clarence \ Lady Magdalen Dacres V Ladies in Waiting to the Queen. Alice ' . Maid of Honour to the Princess Elizabeth. Jf"^^ j two Country Wives. Lords and other Attendants, Members of the Privy Council, Members of Parliament, Two Gentle- men, Aldermen, Citizens, Peasants, Ushers, Messengers, Guards, Pages, Gospellers, Marshal- men, etc. ACT I. SCENE I. — Aldgate richly decorated. Crowd. Marshalmen. Marshalman. Stand back, keep a clear lane ! When will her Majesty pass, sayst thou? why now, even now; wherefore draw back your heads and your horns before I break them, and make what noise you will with your tongues, so it be not treason. Long live Queen Mary, the lawful and legitimate daughter of Harry the Eighth ! Shout, knaves ! Citizens. Long live Queen Mary ! First Citizen. That's a hard word, legitimate; what does it mean? Second Citizen. It means a bastard. ACT I, SCENE I. QUEEN MARY. 567 Third Citizen. Nay, it means true- born. First Citizen. Why, didn't the Par- liament make her a bastard ? Second Citizen. No; it was the Lady Elizabeth. Third Citizen. That was after, man; that was after. First Citizen. Then which is the bastard? Second Citizen. Troth, they be both bastards by Act of Parliament and Council. Third Citizen. Ay, the Parliament can make every true-born man of us a bastard. Old Nokes, can't it make thee a bastard? thou shouldst know, for thou art as white as three Christmasses. Old Nokes {^dreamily). Who's a-pass- ing? King Edward or King Richard? Third Citizen. No, old Nokes. Old Nokes. It's Harry ! Third Citizen. It's Queen Mary. Old Nokes. The blessed Mary's a- passing ! [Falls on his knees. Nokes. Let father alone, my masters ! he's past your questioning. Third Citizen. Answer thou for him, then ! thou'rt no such cockerel thyself, for thou wast born i' the tail end of old Harry the Seventh. Nokes. Eh ! that was afore bastard- making began. I was born true man at five in the forenoon i' the tail of old Harry, and so they can't make me a bastard. Third Citizen. But if Parliament can make the Queen a bastard, why, it follows all the more that they can make thee one, who art fray'd i' the knees, and out at elbow, and bald o' the back, and bursten at the toes, and down at heels. Nokes. I was born of a true man and a ring'd wife, and I can't argue upon it; but I and my old woman 'ud burn upon it, that would we. Marshal-man. What are you cackling of bastardy under the Queen's own nose? I'll have you flogg'd and burnt too, by the Rood I will. First Citizen. He swears by the Rood. Whew ! Second Citizen. Hark ! the trumpets. [ The Procession passes, Mary and Elizabeth riding side by side, and disappears under the gate. Citizens. Long live Queen Mary ! down with all traitors ! God save her Grace; and death to Northumberland! [Exeunt. Manent Two Gentlemen. First Gentleman. By God's light a noble creature, right royal ! Second Gentleman. She looks comelier than ordinary to-day; but to my mind the Lady Elizabeth is the more noble and royal. First Gentleman. I mean the Lady Elizabeth. Did you hear (I have a daughter in her service who reported it) that she met the Queen at Wanstead with five hundred horse, and the Queen (tho' some say they be much divided) took her hand, call'd her sweet sister, and kiss'd not her alone, but all the ladies of her following. Second Gentleman. Ay, that was in her hour of joy ; there will be plenty to sunder and unsister them again : this Gardiner for one, who is to be made Lord Chancellor, and will pounce like a wild beast out of his cage to worry Cranmer. First Gentleman. And furthermore, my daughter said that when there rose a talk of the late rebellion, she spoke even of Northumberland pitifully, and of the good Lady Jane as a poor innocent child who had but obeyed her father; and furthermore, she said that no one in her time should be burnt for heresy. Second Gentleman. Well, sir, I look for happy times. First Gentleman. There is but one thing against them. I know not if you know. Second Gentleman. I suppose you touch upon the rumour that Charles, the master of the world, has offer' d her his son Philip, the Pope and the Devil. I trust it is but a rumour. First Gentleman. She is going now to the Tower to loose the prisoners there, and among them Courtenay, to be made Earl of Devon, of royal blood, of splendid 568 QUEEN MARY. feature, whom the council and all her people wish her to marry. May it be so, for we are many of us Catholics, but few Papists, and the Hot Gospellers will go mad upon it. Second Genilevian. Was she not betroth'd in her babyhood to the Great Emperor himself? Firsi Gentleman. Ay, but he's too old. Second Gentleman. And again to her cousin Reginald Pole, now Cardinal; but I hear that he too is full of aches and broken before his day. First Gentleman. O, the Pope could dispense with his Cardinalate, and his achage, and his breakage, if that were all : will you not follow the procession? Second Gentleman. No; I have seen enough for this day. First Gentleman. Well, I shall follow; if I can get near enough I shall judge with my own eyes whether her Grace in- cline to this splendid scion of Plantagenet. \_Exeunt. SCENE II. A Room in Lambeth Palace. Cranmer. To Strasburg, Antwerp, Frankfort, Zurich, Worms, Geneva, Basle — our Bishops from their sees Or fled, they say, or flying — Poinet, Barlow, Bale, Scory, Coverdale; besides the Deans Of Christchurch, Durham, Exeter, and Wells — Ailmer and BuUingham, and hundreds more; So they report : I shall be left alone. No : Hooper, Ridley, Latimer will not fly. Enter Peter Martyr. Peter Martyr. Fly, Cranmer ! were there nothing else, your name Stands first of those who sign'd the Letters Patent That gave her royal crown to Lady Jane. Cranmer. Stand first it may, but it was written last : Those that are now her Privy Council, sign'd Before me : nay, the Judges had pro- nounced That our young Edward might bequeath the crown Of England, putting by his father's will. Yet I stood out, till Edward sent for me. The wan boy-king, with his fast-fading eyes Fixt hard on mine, his frail transparent hand, Damp with the sweat of death, and griping mine, Whisper'd me, if I loved him, not to yield His Church of England to the Papal wolf And Mary; then I could no more — I sign'd. Nay, for bare shame of inconsistency. She cannot pass her traitor council by, To make me headless. Peter Martyr. That might be forgiven. I tell you, fly, my Lord. You do not own The bodily presence in the Eucharist, Their wafer and perpetual sacrifice : Your creed will be your death. Cranmer. Step after step. Thro' many voices crying right and left, Have I climb'd back into the primal church. And stand within the porch, and Christ with me : My flight were such a scandal to the faith. The downfall of so many simple souls, I dare not leave my post. Peter Martyr. But you divorced Queen Catharine and her father; hence, her hate Will burn till you are burn'd. Cranmer. I cannot help it. The Canonists and Schoolmen were with me. *Thou shalt not wed thy brother's wife.' — 'Tis written, 'They shall be childless.' True, Mary was born. But France would not accept her for a bride As being born from incest; and this wrought Upon the king; and child by child, you know. Were momentary sparkles out as quick Almost as kindled; and he brought his doubts QUEEN MARY. 569 And fears to me. Peter, I'll swear for him He did believe the bond incestuous. But wherefore am I trenching on the time That should already have seen your steps a mile From me and Lambeth? God be with you ! Go. Peter Martyr. Ah, but how fierce a letter you wrote against Their superstition when they slander'd you For setting up a mass at Canterbury To please the Queen. Cranmer. It was a wheedling monk Set up the mass. Peter Martyr. I know it, my good Lord. But you so bubbled over with hot terms Of Satan, liars, blasphemy. Antichrist, She never will forgive you. Fly, my Lord, fly! Cranmer. I wrote it, and God grant me power to burn ! Peter Martyr. They have given me a safe conduct: for all that I dare not stay. I fear, I fear, I see you. Dear friend, for the last time; farewell, and fly. Cranmer. Fly and farewell, and let me die the death. \_Exit Peter Martyr. Enter Old Servant. kind and gentle master, the Queen's Officers Are here in force to take you to the Tower. Cranmer. Ay, gentle friend, admit them. I will go. 1 thank my God it is too late to fly. [_Exeunt. SCENE III. — St. Paul's Cross. Fathp:r Bourne in the ptdpit. A crowd. Marchioness of Exeter, Courte- NAY. The Sieur de Noailles atid his man Roger in front of the stage. Hubbub. Noailles. Hast thou let fall those papers in the palace? Roger. Ay, sir. Noailles. * There will be no peace fot Mary till Elizabeth lose her head.' Roger. Ay, sir. Noailles. And the other, 'Long live Elizabeth the Queen ! ' Roger. Ay, sir; she needs must tread upon them. Noailles. Well. These beastly swine make such a grunting here, I cannot catch what Father Bourne is saying. Roger. Quiet a moment, my masters; hear what the shaveling has to say for himself. Croivd. H ush — hear! Botirne. — and so this unhappy land, long divided in itself, and sever'd from the faith, will return into the one true fold, seeing that our gracious Virgin Queen hath Croiud. No pope ! no pope ! Roger {to those about him, mimicking Bourne). — hath sent for the holy legate of the holy father the Pope, Cardinal Pole, to give us all that holy absolution which First Citizen. Old Bourne to the life! Second Citizen. Holy absolution ! holy Inquisition ! Third Citizen. Down with the Papist ! IHuhbuh. Bourne. — and now that your good bishop, Bonner, who hath lain so long under bonds for the faith \^Niibbuh. N^oailles. Friend Roger, steal thou in among the crowd. And get the swine to shout Elizabeth, Yon gray old Gospeller, sour as midwinter, Begin with him. Roger {goes). By the mass, old friend, we'll have no pope here while the Lady Elizabeth lives. Gospeller. Art thou of the true faith, fellow, that swearest by the mass? Roger. Ay, that am I, new converted, but the old leaven sticks to my tongue yet. First Citizen. He says right; by the mass we'll have no mass here. Voices of the crowd. Peace ! hear him; 570 QUEEN MARY. ACT I. let his own words damn the Papist. From thine own mouth I judge thee — tear him down ! Bourne. — and since our Gracious Queen, let me call her our second Virgin Mary, hath begun to re-edify the true temple First Citizen. Virgin Mary ! we'll have no virgins here — we'll have the Lady Elizabeth ! {^Szvords are drawn, a knife is hurled and sticks in the pulpit. The mob throng to the pulpit stairs. Marchioness of Exeter. Son Courtenay, wilt thou see the holy father Murdered before thy face? up, son, and save him ! They love thee, and thou canst not come to harm. Courtenay (in the pulpit'). Shame, shame, my masters ! are you Eng- lish-born, And set yourselves by hundreds against one? Crowd. A Courtenay ! a Courtenay ! \^A train of Spanish servants crosses at the back of the stage. Noailles. These birds of passage come before their time : Stave off the crowd upon the Spaniard there. Roger. My masters, yonder's fatter game for you Than this old gaping gurgoyle : look you there — The Frince of Spain coming to wed our Queen ! After him, boys ! and pelt him from the city. [ They seize stones and follow the Spaniards. Exeunt on the other side Marchioness of Exeter and Attendants. Noailles {to Roger) . Stand from me. If Elizabeth lose her head — That makes for France. And if her people, anger'd thereupon, Arise against her and dethrone the Queen — That makes for France. And if I breed confusion anyway — That makes for France. Good-day, my Lord of Devon; A bold heart yours to beard that raging mob ! Courtenay. My mother said. Go up; and up I went. I knew they would not do me any wrong, For I am mighty popular with them, Noailles. Noailles. You look'd a king. Courtenay. Why not? I am king's blood. Noailles. And in the whirl of change may come to be one. Courtenay. Ah ! Noailles. But does your gracious Queen entreat you kinglike? Courtenay. 'Fore God, I think she entreats me like a child. Noailles. You've but a dull life in this maiden court, I fear, my Lord? Courtenay. A life of nods and yawns. Noailles. So you would honour my poor house to-night. We might enliven you. Divers honest fellows. The Duke of Suffolk lately freed from prison. Sir Peter Carew and Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Thomas Stafford, and some more — we play. Courtenay. At what? Noailles. The Game of Chess. Courtenay. The Game of Chess ! I can play well, and I shall beat you there. Noailles. Ay, but we play with Henry, King of France, And certain of his court. His Highness makes his moves across the Channel, We answer him with ours, and there are messengeis That go between us. Courtenay. Why, such a game, sir, were whole -years a playing. Noailles. Nay; not so long I trust. That all depends Upon the skill and swiftness of the players. Courtenay. The King is skilful at it? Noailles. Very, my Lord. Courtenay. And the stakes high? Noailles. But not beyond your means. SCENE IV. QUEEN MARY. 571 Courtenay. Well, I'm the first of players. I shall win. Noailles. With our advice and in our company, And so you well attend to the king's moves, I think you may. Courtenay. When do you meet? Noailles. To-night. Courtenay {aside^. I will be there; the fellow's at his tricks — Deep— I shall fathom him. {Aloud.) Good morning, Noailles. \_Exit Courtenay. Noailles. Good-day, my Lord. Strange game of chess ! a King That with her own pawns plays against a Queen, Whose play is all to find herself a King. Ay; but this fine blue-blooded Courtenay seems Too princely for a pawn. Call him a Knight, That, with an ass's, not a horse's head, Skips every way, from levity or from fear. Well, we shall use him somehow, so that Gardiner And Simon Renard spy not out our game Too early. Roger, thinkest thou that anyone Suspected thee to be my man ? Roger. Not one, sir. Noailles. No ! the disguise was perfect. Let's away. \_Exeu7it. SCENE IV. London. A Room in the Palace. Elizabeth. Enter Courtenay. Courtenay. So yet am I, Unless my friends and mirrors lie to me, A goodher-looking fellow than this Philip. Pah! The Queen is ill advised : shall I turn traitor? They've almost talked me into it : yet the word Affrights me somewhat : to be such a one As Harry Bolingbroke hath a lure in it. Good now, my Lady Queen, tho' by your age. And by your looks you are not worth the having, Yet by your crown you are. {^Seeing Elizabeth. The Princess there? If I tried her and la — she's amorous. Have we not heard of her in Edward's time, Her freaks and frolics with the late Lord Admiral ? I do believe she'd yield. I should be still A party in the state; and then, who knows — Elizabeth. What are you musing on, my Lord of Devon? Courtenay. Has not the Queen — Elizabeth. Done what. Sir? Cotirtenay.' — made you follow The Lady Suffolk and the Lady Lennox ? — You, The heir presumptive. Elizabeth. Why do you ask? you know it. Courtenay. You needs must bear it hardly. Elizabeth. No, indeed ! I am utterly submissive to the Queen. Courtenay. Well, I was musing upon that; the Queen Is both my foe and yours : we should be friends. Elizabeth. My Lord, the hatred of another to us Is no true bond of friendship. Courtenay. Might it not Be the rough prefaceof some closer bond? Elizabeth. My Lord, you late were loosed from out the Tower, Where, like a butterfly in a chrysalis. You spent your life; that broken, out you flutter Thro' the new world, go zigzag, now would settle Upon this flower, now that; but all things here At court are known; you have solicited The Queen, and been rejected. Courtenay. Flower, she ! Half faded ! but you, cousin, are fresh and sweet As the first flower no bee has ever tried. Elizabeth. Are you the bee to try me? why, but now I called you butterfly. 572 QUEEN MARY. ACT -U Coiirtenay. You did me wrong, 1 love not to be called a butterfly : Why do you call me butterfly? Elizabeth. Why do you go so gay then? Courtenay. Velvet and gold. This dress was made me as the Earl of Devon To take my seat in; looks it not right royal ? Elizabeth. So royal that the Queen forbade you wearing it. Courtenay. I wear it then to spite her. Elizabeth. My Lord, my Lord ; I see you in the Tower again. Her Majesty Hears you affect the Prince — prelates kneel to you. — Courtenay. I am the noblest blood in Europe, Madam, A Courtenay of Devon, and her cousin. Elizabeth. She hears you make your boast that after all She means to wed you. Folly, my good Lord. Courtenay. How folly ? a great party in the state Wills me to wed her. Elizabeth. Failing her, my Lord, Doth not as great a party in the state Will you to wed me? Courtenay. Even so, fair lady. Elizabeth. You know to flatter ladies. Courtenay. Nay, I meant True matters of the heart. Elizabeth. My heart, my Lord, Is no great party in the state as yet. Courtenay. Great, said you? nay, you shall be great. I love you. Lay my life in your hands. Can you be close? Elizabeth. Can you, my Lord? Courtenay. Close as a miser's casket. Listen : The King of France, Noailles the Am- bassador, The Duke of Suffolk and Sir Peter Carew, Sir Thomas Wyatt, I myself, some others, Have sworn this Spanish marriage shall not be. If Mary will not hear us — well — con- jecture — Were I in Devon with my wedded bride, The people there so worship me — Your ear; You shall be Queen. Elizabeth. You speak too low, my Lord; I cannot hear you. Courtenay. I'll repeat it. Elizabeth. No ! Stand further off, or you may lose your head. Courtenay. I have a head to lose for your sweet sake. Elizabeth. Have you, my Lord? Best keep it for your own. Nay, pout not, cousin. Not many friends are mine, except indeed Among the many. I believe you mine; And so you may continue mine, farewell, And that at once. Enter Mary, behind. Mary. Whispering — leagued together To bar me from my Philip. Courtenay. Pray — consider — Elizabeth {seeing the Queen). Well, that's a noble horse of yours, my Lord. I trust that he will carry you well to-day, And heal your headache. Courtenay. Youare wild; what head- ache? Heartache, perchance; not headache. Elizabeth {aside to Courtenay). Are you blind ? [Courtenay sees the Queen and exit. Exit Mary. Enter Lord William Howard. Hoivard. Was that my Lord of Devon ? do not you Be seen in corners with my Lord of Devon. He hath fallen out of favour with the Queen. She fears the Lords may side with you and him Against her marriage; therefore is he dangerous. And if this Prince of fluff and feather come To woo you, niece, he is dangerous every way. SCENE IV. QUEEN MARY. 573 Elizabeth. Not very dangerous that way, my good uncle. Howard. But your own state is full of danger here. The disaffected, heretics, reformers, Look to you as the one to crown their ends. Mix not yourself with any plot I pray you; Nay, if by chance you hear of any such. Speak not thereof — no, not to your best friend. Lest you should be confounded with it. Still — Perinde ac cadaver — as the priest says, You know your Latin — quiet as a dead body. What was my Lord of Devon telling you? Elizabeth. Whether he told me any- thing or not, I follow your good counsel, gracious uncle. Quiet as a dead body. Howard. You do right well. I do not care to know ; but this I charge you, Tell Courtenay nothing. The Lord Chancellor (I count it as a kind of virtue in him. He hath not many), as a mastiff dog May love a puppy cur for no more reason Than that the twain have been tied up together, Thus Gardiner — for the two were fellow- prisoners So many years in yon accursed Tower — Hath taken to this Courtenay. Look to it, niece. He hath no fence when Gardiner ques- tions him; All oozes out; yet him — because they know him The last White Rose, the last Plantagenet (Nay, there is Cardinal Pole, too), the people Claim as their natural leader — ay, some say, That you shall marry him, make him King belike. Elizabeth. • Do they say so, good uncle? Howard. Ay, good niece ! You should be plain and open with me, niece. You should not play upon me. Elizabeth. No, good uncle. Enter Gardiner. Gardiner. The Queen would see your Grace upon the moment. Elizabeth. Why, my lord Bishop? Gardiner. I think she means to coun- sel your withdrawing To Ashridge, or some other country house. Elizabeth. Why, my lord Bishop? Gardiner. I do but bring the message, know no more. Your Grace will hear her reasons from herself Elizabeth. 'Tis mine own wish fulfill'd before the word Was spoken, for in truth I had meant to crave Permission of her Highness to retire To Ashridge, and pursue my studies there. Gardiner. Madam, to have the wish before the word Is man's good Fairy — and the Queen is yours. I left her with rich jewels in her hand. Whereof 'tis like enough she means to make A farewell present to your Grace. Elizabeth. My Lord, I have the jewel of a loyal heart. Gardiner. I doubt it not, Madam, most loyal. \_Boi.vs low and exit. Howard. See, This comes of parleying with my Lord of Devon. Well, well, you must obey; and I myself Believe it will be better for your welfare. Your time will come. Elizabeth. I think my time will come. Uncle, I am of sovereign nature, that I know, Not to be quell'd; and I have felt within me Stirrings of some great doom when God's just hour Peals — but this fierce old Gardiner — his big baldness, That irritable forelock which bfe rubs, 574 QUEEN MARY. ACT 1. His buzzard beak and deep-incavern'd eyes Half fright me. Howard. You've a bold heart; keep it so. He cannot touch you save that you turn traitor; And so take heed I pray you — you are one Who love that men should smile upon you, niece. They'd smile you into treason — some of them. Elizabeth. 1 spy the rock beneath the smiling sea. But if this Philip, the proud Catholic prince, And this bald priest, and she that hates me, seek In that lone house, to practise on my life, By poison, fire, shot, stab — Howa^'d. They will not, niece. Mine is the fleet and all the power at sea — Or will be in a moment. If they dared To harrn you, I would blow this Philip and all Your trouble to the dogstar and the devil. Elizabeth. To the Pleiads, uncle; they have lost a sister. Howard. But why say that? what have you done to lose her? Come, come, I will go with you to the Queen. \_Exeunt. SCENE V. A Room in the Palace. Mary with Philip's nmiiature. Alice. • Mary {kissing the miniature). Most goodly, Kinglike and an Emperor's son,- — A king to be, — is he not noble, girl? Alice. Goodly enough, your Grace, and yet, methinks, I have seen goodlier. Mary. Ay; some waxen doll Thy baby eyes have rested on, belike; All red and white, the fashion of our land. But my good mother came (God rest her soul) Of Spain, and I am Spanish in myself. And in my likings. Alice. By your Grace's leave Your royal mother came of Spain, but took To the English red and white. Your royal father (For so they say) was all pure lily and rose In his youth, and like a lady. Mary. O just God! Sweet mother, you had time and cause enough To sicken of his lilies and his roses. Cast off, betray'd, defamed, divorced, forlorn ! And then the King — that traitor past forgiveness. The false archbishop fawning on him, married The mother of Elizabeth — a heretic Ev'n as she is; but God hath sent me here To take such order with all heretics That it shall be, before I die, as tho' My father and my brother had not lived. What M^ast thou saying of this Lady Jane, Now in the Tower? Alice. Why, Madam, she was passing Some chapel down in Essex, and with her Lady Anne Wharton, and the Lady Anne Bow'd to the Pyx; but Lady Jane stood up Stiff as the very backbone of heresy. And wherefore bow ye not, says Lady_ Anne, To him within there who made Heaven and Earth? I cannot and I dare not tell your Grace What Lady Jane replied. Mary. But I will have it. Alice. She said — pray pardon me, and pity her — She hath harken'd evil counsel — ah ! she said, The baker made him. Mary. Monstrous ! blasphemous ! She ought to burn. Hence, thou. {Exit Alice.) No — being traitor QUEEN MARY. 575 Her head will fall: shall it? she is but a child. We do not kill the child for doing that His father whipt him into doing — a head So full of grace and beauty ! would that mine Were half as gracious ! O my lord to be, My love, for thy sake only. I am eleven years older than he is. But will he care for that? No, by the holy Virgin, being noble, But love me only : then the bastard sprout. My sister, is far fairer than myself. Will he be drawn to her? No, being of the true faith with myself. Paget is for him — for to wed with Spain Would treble England — Gardiner is against him; The Council, people, Parliament against him; But 1 will have him ! My hard father hated me; My brother rather hated me than loved; My sister cowers and hates me. Holy Virgin, Plead with thy blessed Son; grant me my prayer : Give me my Philip; and we two will lead The living waters of the Faith again Back thro' their widow'd channel here, and watch The parch'd banks rolling incense, as of old. To heaven, and kindled wdth the palms of Christ ! Enter UsHER. Who waits, sir? Usher. Madam, the Lord Chancellor. Mary. Bid him come in. {Enter Gardinjek.) Good morning, my good Lord. \_Exit Usher. Gardiner. That every morning of your Majesty May be most good, is every morning's prayer Of your most loyal subject, Stephen Gardiner. Mary. Come you to tell me this, my Lord? Gardiner. And more. Your people have begun to learn your worth. Your pious wish to pay King Edward's debts, Your lavish household curb'd, and the remission Of half that subsidy levied on the people, Make all tongues praise and all hearts beat for you. I'd have you yet more loved : the realm is poor. The exchequer at neap-tide : we might withdraw Part of our garrison at Calais. Mary. Calais ! Our one point on the main, - the gate of France ! I am Queen of England ; take mine eyes, mine heart, But do not lose me Calais. Gardiner. Do not fear it. Of that hereafter. I say your Grace is loved. That I may keep you thus, who am your friend And ever faithful counsellor, might I speak ? Mary. I can forespeak your speaking. Would I marry Prince Philip, if all England hate him? That is Your question, and I front it with another : Is it England, or a party? Now, your answer. Gardiner. My answer is, I wear be- neath my dress A shirt of mail : my house hath been assaulted, And when I walk abroad, the populace, With fingers pointed like so many daggers. Stab me in fancy, hissing Spain and Philip; And when I sleep, a hundred men-at- arms Guard my poor dreams for England. Men would murder me. Because they think me favourer of this marriage. Mary. And that were hard upon you, my Lord Chancellor. Gardiner. But our young Earl of Devon — Mary. Earl of Devon? 576 QUEEN MAkY. ACl- 1 I freed him from the Tower, placed him at Court; I made him Earl of Devon, and — the fool — He wrecks his health and wealth on courtesans. And rolls himself in carrion like a dog. Gardiner. More like a schoolboy that hath broken bounds. Sickening himself with sweets. Alary. I will not hear of him. Good, then, they will revolt : but I am Tudor, And shall control them. Gardiner. I will help you. Madam, Even to the utmost. All the church is grateful. You have ousted the mock priest, re- pulpited The shepherd of St. Peter, raised the rood again. And brought us back the mass. I am all thanks To God and to your Grace : j'et I know well. Your people, and- 1 go with them so far. Will brook nor Pope nor Spaniard here to play The tyrant, or in commonwealth or church. Mary {showing the picture'). Is this the face of one who plays the tyrant? Peruse it; is it not goodly, ay, and gentle? Gardiner. Madam, methinks a cold face and a haughty. And when your Highness talks of Cour- tenay — Ay, true — a goodly one. I would his life Were half as goodly {aside) . Mary. What is that you mutter? Gardiner. O Madam, take it bluntly; marry Philip, And be stepmother of a score of sons ! The prince is known in Spain, in Flanders, ha! For Philip — Mary. You offend us; you may leave us. You see thro' warping glasses. Gardiner. If your Majesty — Mary. I have sworn upon the body and blood of Christ I'll none but Philip. Gardiner. Hath your Grace so sworn ? Mary. Ay, Simon Renard knows it. Gardiner. News to me ! It then remains for your poor Gardiner, So you still care to trust him somewhat less Than Simon Renard, to compose the event In some such form as least may harm your Grace. Mary. I'll have the scandal sounded to the mud. I know it a scandal. Gardiner. All my hope is now It may be found a scandal. Mary. You offend us. Gardiner {aside). These princes are like children, must be physick'd, The bitter in the sweet. I have lost mine office, It may be, thro' mine honesty, like a fool. lExit. Enter Usher. Mary. Who waits? Usher. The Ambassador from France, your Grace. Mary {sits dozvn). Bid him come in. Good morning. Sir de Noailles. {^Exit Usher. Noailles {entering) . A happy morning to your Majesty. Mary. And I should sometime have a happy morning; I have had none yet. What says the King your master? Noailles. Madam, my master hears with much alarm, That you may marry Philip, Prince of Spain — Foreseeing, with whate'er unwillingness, That if this Philip be the titular king Of England, and at war with him, your Grace And kingdom will be suck'd into the war, Ay, tho' you long for peace; wherefore, my master, If but to prove your Majesty's good will, Would fain have some fresh treaty drawn between you. Mary. Whysome fresh treaty? where- fore should I do it? Sir, if we marry, we shall still maintain SCENE V. QUEEN MARY. Ill All former treaties with his Majesty. Our royal word for that ! and your good master, Pray God he do not be the first to break them, Must be content with that; and so, fare- well. Noailles {going, reha-ns). I would your answer had been other. Madam, For I foresee dark days. Mary. And so do I, sir; Your master works against me in the dark. I do believe he holp Northumberland Against me. Noailles. Nay, pure phantasy, your Grace. Why should he move against you? Mary. Will you hear why? Mary of Scotland, — for I have not own'd My sister, and I will not, — after me Is heir of England; and my royal father. To make the crown of Scotland one with ours, Ha^ mark'd her for my brother Edward's bride; Ay, but your king stole her a babe from Scotland In order to betroth her to your Dauphin. See then : Mary of Scotland, married to your Dauphin, Would make our England, France; Mary of England, joining hands with Spain, Would be too strong for France. Yea, were there issue born to her, Spain and we, One crown, might rule the world. There lies your fear. That is your drift. You play at hide and seek. Show me your faces ! Noailles. Madam, I am amazed : French, I must needs wish all good things for France. That must be pardon'd me; but I protest Your Grace's policy hath a farther flight Than mine into the future. We but seek Some settled ground for p ;ace to stand upon. Mary. Well, we will leave all this, sir, to our council. Have you seen Philip ever? 2P Noailles. Only once. Mary. Is this like Philip? N'oailles. Ay, but nobler-looking. Mary. Hath he the large ability of the Emperor? Noailles. No, surely. Mary. I can make allowance for thee. Thou speakest of the enemy of thy king. Noailles. Make no allowance for the naked truth. He is everyway a lesser man than Charles; Stone-hard, ice-cold — no dash of daring in him. Mary. If cold, his life is pure. Noailles. Why {smiling), no, indeed. Mary. Sayst thou? Noailles. A very wanton life indeed {s7nili7tg'). Mary. Your audience is concluded, sir. \_Exit Noailles. You cannot Learn a man's nature from his natural foe. Enter Usher. Who waits? Usher. The Ambassador of Spain, your Grace. \_Exit, Enter Simon Renard. Mary {rising to meet him). Thou art ever welcome, Simon Renard. Hast thou Brought me the letter which thine Emperor promised Long since, a formal offer of the hand Of Philip? Renard. Nay, your Grace, it hath not reach'd me. I know not wherefore — some mischance of flood. And broken bridge, or spavin'd horse, or wave And wind at their old battle: he must have written. Mary. But Philip never writes me one poor word. Which in his absence had been all my wealth. Strange in a wooer ! Renard. Yet I know the Prince, So your king-parliament suffer him to land. Yearns to set foot upon your island shore. 578 QUEEN MARY, Mary. God change the pebble which his kingly foot First presses into some more costly stone Than ever blinded eye. I'll have one mark it And bring it me. I'll have it burnish'd firelike; I'll set it round with gold, with pearl, with diamond. Let the great angel of the church come with him; Stand on the deck and spread his wings for sail ! God lay the waves and strow the storms at sea, And here at land among the people ! O Renard, I am much beset, I am almost in despair. Paget is ours. Gardiner perchance is ours; But for our heretic Parliament — Renard. O Madam, You fly your thoughts like kites. My master, Charles, Bade you go softly with your heretics here. Until your throne had ceased to tremble. Then Spit them like larks for aught I care. Besides, When Henry broke the carcase of your church To pieces, there were many wolves among you Who dragg'd the scatter'd limbs into their den. The Pope would have you make them render these; So would your cousin. Cardinal Pole; ill counsel ! These let them keep at present; stir not yet This matter of the Church lands. At his coming Your star will rise. Mary. My star ! a baleful one. I see but the black night, and hear the wolf. A^hatstar? Renard. Your star will be your princely son. Heir ofthisEnglandand the Netherlands! And if your wolf the while should howl for more. We'll dust him from a bag of Spanish gold. I do believe, I have dusted some already, That, soon or late, your Parliament is ours. Mary. Why do they talk so foully of your Prince, Renard ? Renard. The lot of Princes. To sit high Is to be lied about. Mary. They call him cold, Haughty, ay, worse. Renard. Why, doubtless, Philip shows" Some of the bearing of your blue blood — still All within measure — nay, it well becomes him. Mary. Hath he the large ability of his father? Renard. Nay, some believe that he will go beyond him. Mary. Is this like him? Renard. Ay, somewhat; but your Philip Is the most princelike Prince beneath^the sun. This is a daub to Philip. Mary. Of a pure life? Renard. As an angel among angels. Yea, by Heaven, The text — Your Highness knows it, * Whosoever Looketh after a woman,' would not graze The Prince of Spain. You are happy in him there, Chaste as your Grace ! Mary. I am happy in him there. Renard. And would be altogether happy. Madam, So that your sister were but look'd to closer. You have sent her from the court, but then she goes, I warrant, not to hear the nightingales, But hatch you some new treason in the woods. Mary. We have our spies abroad to catch her tripping. And then if caught, to the Tower. Renard. The Tower ! the block ! The word has turn'd your Highness pale; the thing Was no such scarecrow in your father's time. SCENE V. QUEEN MARY. 579 I have heard, the tongue yet quiver'd with the jest When the head leapt — so common! I do think To save your crown that it must come to this. Mary. No, Renard; it must never come to this. Renard. Not yet; but your old Traitors of the Tower — Why, when you put Northumberland to death, The sentence having past upon them all, Spared you the Duke of Suffolk, Guildford Dudley, Ev'n that young girl who dared to wear your crown? Mary. Dared? nay, not so; the child obey'd her father. Spite of her tears her father forced it on her. Renard. Good Madam, when the Roman wish'd to reign, He slew not him alone who wore the purple. But his assessor in the throne, perchance A child more innocent than Lady Jane. Mary. I am English Queen, not Roman Emperor. Renard. Yet too much mercy is a want of mercy. And wastes more life. Stamp out the fire, or this Will smoulder and re-flame, and burn the throne Where you should sit with Philip: he will not come Till she be gone. Mary. Indeed, if that were true — For Philip comes, one hand in mine, and one Steadying the tremulous pillars of the Church — But no, no, no. Farewell. I am some- what faint With our long talk. Tho' Queen, I am not Queen Of mine own heart, which every now and then Beats me half dead : yet stay, this golden chain — My father on a birthday gave it me, And I have broken with my father — take And wear it as memorial of a morning Which found me full of foolish doubts, and leaves me As hopeful. Renard {aside) . Whew — the folly of all follies Is to be love-sick for a shadow. {Aloud.) Madam, This chains me to your service, not with gold. But dearest links of love. Farewell, and trust me, Philip is yours. \_Exit. Mary. Mine — but not yet all mine Enter Usher. Usher. Your Council is in Session, please your Majesty. Mary. Sir, let them sit. I must have time to breathe. -No, say I come. {Exii\J^\iQX.) I won by boldness once. The Emperor counsell'd me to fly to Flanders. I would not; but a hundred miles I rode, Sent out my letters, call'd my friends together. Struck home and won. And when the Council would not crown me — thought To bind me first by oaths I could not keep. And keep with Christ and conscience — was it boldness Or weakness that won there? when I, their Queen, Cast myself down upon my knees before them. And those hard men brake into woman- tears, Ev'n Gardiner, all amazed, and in that passion Gave me my Crown. Enter Alice. Girl; hast thou ever heard Slanders against Prince Philip in our Court? Alice. What slanders? I, your Grace; no, never. Mary. Nothing? Alice. Never, your Grace. 580 QUEEN MARY. ACT It Mary. See that you neither hear them nor repeat ! Alice {aside) . Good . Lord ! but I have heard a thousand such. Ay, and repeated them as often — mum ! Why comes that old fox-Fleming back again ? En^er Renard.. Renard. Madam, I scarce had left your Grace's presence Before I chanced upon the messenger Who brings that letter which we waited for — The formal offer of Prince Philip's hand. It craves an instant answer, Ay or No. Mary. An instant Ay or No ! the Council sits. Give it me quick. Alice {stepping before her). Your ffighness is all trembling. Mary. Make way. \^Exit inlo the Council Chamber. Alice. O Master Renard, Master Renard, If you have falsely painted your fine Prince; Praised, where you should have blamed him, I pray God / No woman ever love you, Master Renard. It breaks my heart to hear her moan at night As tho' the nightmare never left her bed. Renard. My pretty maiden, tell me, did you ever Sigh for a beard? Alice. That's not a pretty question. A'enard. Not prettily put? I mean, my pretty maiden, A pretty man for such a pretty maiden. Alice. My Lord of Devon is a pretty man. I hate him. Well, but if I have, what then? Renard. Then, pretty maiden, you should know that whether A wind be warm or cold, it serves to fan A kindled fire. Alice. According to the spng. His friends would praise him, I believed 'em, His foes would blame him, and I scorn'd 'em, His friends — as Angels I received 'em. His foes — the Devil had subom'd 'em. Renard. Peace, pretty maiden. I hear them stirring in the Council Chamber. Lord Paget's * Ay ' is sure — who else ? and yet. They are ail too much at odds to close at once In one full-throated No ! Her Highness comes. Ettter Mary. Alice. How deathly pale ! — a chair, your Highness. \^Bringi7ig one to the Queen. Renard. Madam, The Council? Mary. Ay ! My Philip is all mine. \_Sinks into chair, half fainting. ACT II. SCENE I. — Alington Castle. Sir Thomas Wyatt. I do not hear from Carew or the Duke Of Suffolk, and till then I should not move. The Duke hath gone to Leicester;. Ca- rew stirs » In Devon : that fine porcelain Courtenay, Save that he fears he might be crack'd in using (I have known a semi-madman in my time So fancy-ridd'n), should be in Devon too. Enter William. News abroad, William? William. None so new, Sir Thomas, and none so old. Sir Thomas. No new news that Philip comes to wed Mary, no old news that all men hate it. Old Sir Thomas"would have hated it. The bells are ringing at Maidstone. Doesn't your worship hear? IVyatt. Ay, for the Saints are come to reign again. Most like it is a Saint's-day. There's no call As yet for me; so in this pause, before The mine be fired, it were a pious work To string my father's sonnets, left about Like loosely-scatter'd jewels, in fair orderi QUEEN MARY. 5S1 And head them with a lamer rhyme of mine, To grace his memory. William. Ay, why not, Sir Thomas? He was a fine courtier, he; Queen Anne loved him. All the women loved him. I loved him, 1 was in Spain with him. I couldn't eat in Spain, I couldn't sleep in Spain. I hate Spain, Sir Thomas. Wyatt. But thou could'st drink in Spain if I remember. William. Sir Thomas, we may grant the wine. Old Sir Thomas always granted the wine. Wyatt. Hand me the casket with my father's sonnets. William. Ay — sonnets — a fine court- ier of the old Court, old Sir Thomas. lExit. Wyatt. Courtier of many courts, he loved the more His own gray towers, plain life and letter'd peace, To read and rhyme in solitary fields. The lark above, the nightingale below, And answer them in song. The sire begets Not half his likeness in the son. I fail Where he was fullest: yet — to write it down. . \^He writes. Re-enter William. Williajn. There is news, there is news, and no call for sonnet-sorting now, nor for sonnet-making either, but ten thou- sand men on Penenden Heath all calling after your worship, and your worship's name heard into Maidstone market, and your worship the first man in Kent and Christendom, for the Queen's down, and the world's up, and your worship a-top of it. Wyatt. Invented ^sop — mountain out of mouse. Say for ten thousand ten — and pothouse knaves, Brain-dizzied with a draught of morning ale. Enter Anthony Knyvett. William. Here's Anthony Knyvett. Knyvett. Look you. Master Wyatt, Tear up that woman's work there. Wyatt. No; not these, Dumb children of my father, that will speak When I and thou and all rebellions lie Dead bodies without voice. Song flies you know For age's. Knyvett. Tut, your sonnet's a flying ant, Wing'd for a moment. Wyatt. Well, for mine own work, [ Tearing the paper . It lies there in six pieces at your feet; For all that I can carry it in my head. Knyvett. If you can carry your head upon your shoulders. Wyatt. I fear you come to carry it off my shoulders, And sonnet-making's safer. Knyvett. Why, good Lord, Write you as many sonnets as you will. Ay, but not now; what, have you eyes, ears, brains? This Philip and the black-faced swarms of Spain, The hardest, cruellest people in the world, Come locusting upon us, eat us up. Confiscate lands, goods, money — Wyatt, Wyatt, Wake, or the stout old island will become A rotten limb of Spain. They roar for you On Penenden Heath, a thousand of them — more — All arm'd, waiting a leader; there's no glory Like his who saves his country: and you sit Sing-songing here; but if I'm any judge. By God, you are as poor a poet, Wyatt, As a good soldier. Wyatt. You as poor a critic As an honest friend : you stroke me on one cheek, Buffet the other. Come, you bluster, Anthony ! You know I know all this. I must not move Until I hear from Carew and the Duke. I fear the mine is fired before the time. Knyvett {shozving a paper) . But here's some Hebrew. Faith, I half for- got it. 582 QUEEN MARY. Look; can you make it English? A strange youth Suddenly thrust it on me, whisper'd, ' Wyatt,' And whisking round a corner, show'd his back Before I read his face. Wyatt. Ha ! Courtenay's cipher. \_Reads. * Sir Peter Carew fled to France : it is thought the Duke will be taken. I am with you still; but, for appearance' sake, stay with the Queen. Gardiner knows, but the Council are all at odds, and the Queen hath no force for resistance. Move, if you move, at once.' Is Peter Carew fled ? Is the Duke taken ? Down scabbard, and out sword ! and let Rebellion Roar till throne rock, and crown fall. No; not that; But we will teach Queen Mary how to reign. Who are those that shout below there? Knyvett. Why, some fifty That follow'd me from Penenden Heath in hope To hear you speak. Wyatt. Open the window, Knyvett; The mine is fired, and I will speak to them. Men of Kent; England of England; you that have kept your old customs upright, while all the rest of England bow'd theirs to the Norman, the cause that hath brought us together is not the cause of a county or a shire, but of this England, in whose crown our Kent is the fairest jewel. Philip shall not wed Mary ; and ye have called me to be your leader. I know Spain. I have been there with my father; I have seen them in their own land; have marked the haughtiness of their nobles; the cruelty of their priests. If this man marry our Queen, however the Council and the Commons may fence round his power with restriction, he will be King, King of England, my masters; and the Queen, and the laws, and the people, his slaves. What? shall we have Spain on the throne and in the parlia- ment; Spain in the pulpit and on the law-bench; Spain in all the great offices of state; Spain in our ships, in our forts, in our houses, in our beds? Crowd. No ! no ! no Spain ! William. No Spain in our beds — that were worse than all. I have been there with old Sir Thomas, and the beds I know. I hate Spain. A Peasant. But, Sir Thomas, must we levy war against the Queen's Grace? Wyatt. No, my friend; -wax for the Queen's Grace — to save her from herself and Philip — war against Spain. And think not we shall be alone — thousands will flock to us. The Council, the Court itself, is on our side. The Lord Chancel- lor himself is on our side. The King of France is with us; the King of Denmark is with us; the world is with us — war against Spain ! And if we move not now, yet it will be known that we have moved; and if Philip come to be King, O my God ! the rope, the rack, the thumbscrew, the stake, the fire. If we move not now, Spain moves, bribes our nobles with her gold, and creeps, creeps snake-like about our legs till we cannot move at all; and ye know, my masters, that wherever Spain hath ruled she hath wither'd all beneath her. Look at the New World — a paradise made hell; the red man, that good helpless creature, starved, maim'd, flogg'd, flay'd,burn'd, boil'd, buried alive, worried by dogs; and here, nearer home, the Netherlands, Sicily, Naples, Lom- bardy. I say no more — only this, their lot is yours. Forward to London with me ! forward to London ! If ye love your liberties or your skins, forward to London ! Crowd. Forward to London ! A Wyatt! a Wyatt J Wyatt. But first to Rochester, to take the guns From out the vessels lying in the river. Then on. A Peasant. Ay, but I fear we be too few. Sir Thomas. Wyatt. Not many yet. The world as yet, my friend, Is not half- waked ; but every parish tower Shall clang and clash alarum as we pass, QUEEN MARY. 583 And pour along the land, and swoll'n and fed With indraughts and side-currents, in full force Roll upon London. Crozud. A Wyatt! a Wyatt ! For- ward ! Knyvett. Wyatt, shall we proclaim Elizabeth ? Wyatt. I'll think upon it, Knyvett. Knyvett. Or Lady Jane ? Wyatt. No, poor soul; no. Ah, gray old castle of Alington, green field Beside the brimming Medway, it may chance That I shall never look upon you more. Knyvett. Come, now, you're sonnet- ting again. Wyatt. Not I. I'll have my head set higher in the state; Or — if the Lord God will it — on the stake. [^Exeunt. SCENE II. — Guildhall. Sir Thomas White (the Lord Mayor), Lord William Howard, Sir Ralph Bagenhall, Aldermen ««fl' Citizens. White. I trust the Queen comes hither with her guards. Howard. Ay, all in arms. \^Several of the citizens move hastily out of the hall. Why do they hurry out there? White. My Lord, cut out the rotten from your apple. Your apple eats the better. Let them go. They go like those old Pharisees in John Convicted by their conscience, -arrant cowards. Or tamperers with that treason out of Kent. When will her Grace be here? Hozvard. In some few minutes. She will address your guilds and com- panies. I have striven in vain to raise a man for her. But help her in this exigency, make Your city loyal, and be the mightiest man This day in England, White. I am Thomas White. Few things have fail'd to which I set my will. I do my most and best. Howard. You know that after The Captain Brett, who went with your train bands To fight with Wyatt, had gone over to him With all his men, the Queen in that distress Sent Cornwallis and Hastings to the traitor, Feigning to treat with him about her marriage — Know too what Wyatt said. White. He'd sooner be. While this same marriage question was being argued, Trusted than trust — the scoundrel — and demanded Possession of her person and the Tower. Howard. And four of her poor Coun- cil too, my Lord, As hostages. * White. I know it. What do and say' Your Council at this hour? Howard. I will trust you. We fling ourselves on you, my Lord. The Council, The Parliament as well, are troiibled waters; And yet like waters of the fen they know not Which way to flow. All hangs on her address, And upon you, Lord Mayor. White. How look'd the city When now you past it? Quiet? Hozvard. Like our Council, Your city is divided. As we past, Some hail'd, some hiss'd us. There were citizens Stood each before his shut-up booth, and look'd As grim and grave as from a funeral. And here a knot of ruffians all in rags. With execrating execrable eyes, Glared at the citizen. Here was a young mother. Her face on flame, her red hair all blown back, She shrilling * Wyatt,' while the boy she held 584 QUEEN MARY, ACT U Mimick'd and piped her ' Wyatt,' as red as she In hair and cheek ; and almost elbowing her. So close they stood, another, mute as death, A.nd white as her own milk ; her babe in arms Had felt the faltering of his mother's heart. And look'd as bloodless. Here a pious Catholic, Mumbling and mixing up in his scared prayers Heaven and earth's Maries; over his bow'd shoulder Scowl'd that world-hated and world- hating beast, A haggard Anabaptist. Many such groups. The names of Wyatt, Elizabeth, Cour- tenay, Nay, the Queen's right to reign — 'fore 'God, the rogues — Were freely buzz'd among them. So I say Your city is divided, and I fear One scruple, this or that way, of success Would turn it thither. Wherefore now the Queen In this low pulse and palsy of the state. Bade me to tell you that shfe counts on you And on myself as her two hands; on you, In your own city, as her right, my Lord, For you are loyal. White. Am I Thomas White? One word before she comes. Elizabeth — Her name is much abused among these traitors. Where is she ? She is loved by all of us. I scarce have heart to mingle in this matter, If she should be mishandled. Howard. No ; she shall not. The Queen had written her word to come to court : Methought I smelt out Renard in the letter. And fearing for her, sent a secret missive, Which told her to be sick. Happily or not, Ct found her sick indeed. White. God send her well; Here comes her Royal Grace. Enter Guards, Mary, and Gardiner. Sir Thomas White leads her to a raised seat on the dais. White. I, the Lord Mayor,- and these our companies And guilds of London, gathered here, beseech Your Highness to accept our lowliest thanks For your most princely presence; and we pray That we, your true and loyal citizens, From your own royal lips, at once may know The wherefore of this coming, and so learn Your royal will, and do it. — I, Lord Mayor Of London, and our guilds and com- panies. Mary. In mine own person am I come to you, To tell you what indeed ye see and know. How traitorously these rebels out of Kent Have made strong head against ourselves and you. They would not have me wed the Prince of Spain; That was their pretext — so they spake at first — But we sent divers of our Council to them, And by their answers to the question ask'd. It doth appear this marriage is the least Of all their quarrel. They have betray'd the treason of their hearts : Seek to possess our person, hold our Tower, Place and displace our councillors, and use Both us and them according as they will. Now what I am ye know right well — your Queen; To whom, when I was wedded to the realm And the realm's laws (the spousal ring whereof, Not ever to be laid aside, I wear Upon this fmger), ye did promise full SCENE II. QUEEN MARY. 585 Allegiance and obedience to the death. Ye know my father was the rightful heir Of England, and his right came down to me, Corr£)borate by your acts of Parliament : And as ye were most loving unto him, So doubtless will ye show yourselves to me. Wherefore, ye will not brook that any- one Should seize our person, occupy our state, iVIore specially a traitor so presumptuous As this same Wyatt, who hath tamper'd with A public ignorance, and, under colour Of such a cause as hath no colour, seeks To bend the laws to his own will, and yield Full scope to persons rascal and forlorn. To make free spoil and havock of your goods. Now as your Prince, I say, I, that was never mother, cannot tell How mothers love their children; yet, methinks, A prince as naturally may love his people As these their childeen; and be sure your Queen So loves you, and so loving, needs must deem This love by you return'd as heartily; And thro' this common knot and bond of love. Doubt not they will be speedily over- thrown. As to this marriage, ye shall understand We made thereto no treaty of ourselves, And set no foot theretoward unadvised Of all our Privy Council; furthermore. This marriage had the assent of those to whom The king, my father, did commit his trust ; Who not alone esteem'd it honourable, But for the wealth and glory of our realm. And all our loving subjects, most ex- pedient. As to myself, . I am not so set on wedlock as to choose But where I list, nor yet so amorous That 1 must needs be husbanded; I thank God, I have lived a virgin, and I noway doubt But that with God's grace I can live so still. Yet if it might please God that 1 should leave Some fruit cf mine own body after me. To be your king, ye would rejoice thereat. And it would be your comfort, as I trust; And truly, if I either thought or knew This marriage should bring loss or danger to you. My subjects, or impair in any way This royal state of England, I would never Consent thereto, nor marry while I live; Moreover, if this marriage should not seem. Before our own High Court of Parliament, To be of rich advantage to our realm. We will refrain, and not alone from this, Likewise from any other, out of which Looms the least chance of peril to our realm. Wherefore be bold, and with your lawful Prince Stand fast against our enemies and yours. And fear them not. I fear them not. My Lord, I leave Lord William Howard in your city. To guard and keep you whole and safe from all The spoil and sackage aim'd at by these rebels. Who mouth and foam against the Prince of Spain. Voices. Long live Queen Mary ! Down with Wyatt ! The Queen ! White. Three voices from our guilds and companies ! You are shy and proud- like Englishmen, my masters, And will not trust your voices. Under- stand : Your lawful Prince hath come to cast herself On loyal hearts and bosoms, hoped to fall Into the widespread arms of fealty, And finds you statues. Speak at once — and all ! For whom? Our sovereign Lady by King Harry's will ; The Queen of England — or the Kentish Squire ? 586 QUEEN MARY. ACT It I know you loyal. Speak ! in the name of God ! The Queen of England or the rabble of Kent? The reeking dungfork master of the mace ! Your havings wasted by the scythe and spade — Your rights and charters hobnail'd into slush — Your houses fired — your gutters bubbling blood — Acclamation. No ! No ! The Queen ! the Queen ! White. Your Highness hears This burst and bass of loyal harmony, And how we each and all of us abhor The venomous, bestial, devilish revolt Of Thomas Wyatt. Hear us now make oath To raise your Highness thirty thousand men. And arm and strike as with one hand, and brush This Wyatt from our shoulders, like a flea That might have leapt upon us unawares. Swear with me, noble fellow-citizens, all, With all your trades, and guilds, and companies. Citizens. We swear ! Mary. We thank your Lordship and your loyal city. \^Exit Mary attended. White. I trust this day, thro' God, I have saved the crown. First Alderman. Ay, so my Lord of Pembroke in command Of all her force be safe; but there are doubts. Second Alderman. I hear that Gar- diner, coming with the Queen, And meeting Pembroke, bent to his saddle-bow, As if to win the man by flattering him. Is he so safe to fight upon her side? First Alderman. If not, there's no man safe. White. Yes, Thomas White. I am safe enough ; no man need flatter me. Second Alderman. Nay, no man need; but did you mark our Queen? The colour freely play'd into her face. And the half sight which makes her look so stern, Seem'd thro' that dim dilated world of hers, To read our faces; I have never seen her So queenly or so goodly. White. Courage, sir, That makes or man or woman look their goodliest. Die like the torn fox dumb, but never whine Like that poor heart, Northumberland, at the block. Bagenhall. The man had children, and he whined for those. Methinksmost men are but poor-hearted, else Should we so dote on courage, were it commoner? The Queen stands up, and speaks for her own self; And all men cry. She is queenly, she is goodly. Yet she's no goodHer; tho' my Lord Mayor here, By his own rule, he hath been so bold to-day, Should look more goodly than the rest of us. White. Goodly? I feel most goodly heart and hand, And strong to throw ten Wyatts and all Kent. Ha! ha! sir; but you jest; I love it: a jest In time of danger shows the pulses even. Be merry ! yet. Sir Ralph, you look but sad. I dare avouch you'd stand up for your- self, Tho' all the world should bay like winter wolves. Bagenhall. Who knows? the man is proven by the hour. White. The man should make the hour, not this the man; And Thomas White will prove this Thomas Wyatt, And he will prove an Iden to this Cade, And he will play the Walworth to this Wat; Come, sirs, we prate; hence all — gather your men — Myself must bustle. Wyatt comes to South vvark: SCENE III. QUEEN MARY. 587 I'll have the drawbridge hewn into- the Thames, And see the citizens arm'd. Good-day; good-day. \^Exit White. Bagenhall. One of much outdoor bluster. Howard. For all that, Most hone'^t, brave, and skilful; and his wealth A fountain of perennial alms — his fault So thoroughly to tjelieve in his own self. Bagenhall. Yet thoroughly to believe in one's own self. So one's own self be thorough, were to do Great things, my Lord. Howard. It may be. Bagenhall. I have heard One of your Council fleer and jeer at him. Howard. The nursery-cocker'd child will jeer at aught That may seem strange beyond his nursery. The statesman that shall jeer and fleer at men. Makes enemies for himself and for his king; And if he jeer not seeing the true man Behind his folly, he is thrice the fool; And if he see the man and still will jeer, He is child and fool, and traitor to the State. Who is he? let me shun him. Bagenhall. Nay, my Lord, He is damn'd enough already. Howard. I must set The guard at Ludgate. Fare you well. Sir Ralph. Bagenhall. ' Who knows? ' I am for England. But who knows, That knows the Queen, the Spaniard, and the Pope, Whether I be for Wyatt, or the Queen? {_£xeunl. SCENE III. — London BridgEv Enler Sir Thomas Wyatt and Brett. MyaU. Brett, when the Duke of Norfolk moved against us Thou cried'st * A Wyatt ! ' and flying to pur side Left his all bare, for which I love thee, Brett. Have for thine asking aught that I can give. For thro' thine help we are come to London Bridge; But how to cross it balks me. I fear we cannot. Brett. Nay, hardly, save by boat, swimming, or wings. Wyatt. Last night I climb'd into the gate-house, Brett, And scared the gray old porter and his wife. And then I crept along the gloom and saw They had hewn the drawbridge down into the river. It roU'd as black as death ; and that same tide Which, coming with our coming, seem'd to smile And sparkle like our fortune as thou saidest, Ran sunless down, and moan'd against the piers. But o'er the chasm I saw Lord William Howard By torchlight, and his guard; four guns gaped at me. Black, silent mouths : had Howard spied me there And made them speak, as well he might have done, Their voice had left me none to tell you this. What shall we do? Brett. On somehow. To go back Were to lose all. Wyatt. On over London Bridge We cannot; stay we cannot; there is ordnance On the White Tower and on the Devil's Tower, And pointed full at Southwark; we must round By Kingston Bridge. Brett. Ten miles about. Wyatt. Ev'n so. But I have notice from our partisans Within the city that they will stand by us If Ludgate can be reach'd by dawn to- morrow. Enter oneofV^YATi'i men. Man. Sir Thomas, I've found this paper; pray your worship read it; I 588 QUEEN MARY. ACT IL know not my letters; the old priests taught me nothing. Wyatt {reads). 'Whosoever will ap- prehend the traitor Thomas Wyatt shall have a hmidred pounds for reward.' Man. Is that it? That's a big lot of money. Wyatt. Ay, ay, my friend; not read it? 'tis not written Half plain enough. Give me a piece of paper ! [ Writes ' Thomas Wyatt ' large. There, any man can read that. [Stich it in his cap. Brett. But that's foolhardy. Wyatt, No ! boldness, which will give my followers boldness. Enter Man with a prisoner. Man. We found him, your worship, a- plundering o' Bishop Winchester's house; he says he's a poor gentleman. Wyatt. Gentleman! a thief! Go hang him. Shall we make Those that we come to serve our sharpest foes? Brett. Sir Thomas — Wyatt. Hang him, I say. Brett. Wyatt, but now you promised me a boon. Wyatt. Ay, and I warrant this fine fellow's life. Brett. Ev'n so; he was my neighbour once in Kent. He's poor enough, has drunk and gambled out All that he had, and gentleman he was. We have been glad together; let him live. Wyatt. He has gambled for his life, and lost, he hangs. No, no, my word's my word. Take thy poor gentleman ! Gamble thyself at once out of my sight. Or I will dig thee with my dagger. Away ! Women and children !' Enter a Crowd ^/ Women a^^^T Children. First Woman. O Sir Thomas, Sir Thomas, pray you go away, Sir Thomas, or you'll make the White Tower a black 'un for us this blessed day. He'll be the death on us; and you'll set the Divil's Tower a-spitting, and he'll smash all out bits o' things worse than Philip o' Spain. Second Wojnati. Don't ye now go to think that we be for Philip o' Spain. Third Woman. No, we know that ye be come to kill the Queen, and we'll pray for you all on our bended knees. But o' God's mercy don't ye kill the Queen here, Sir Thomas; look ye, here's little Dickon, and little Robin, and little Jenny — though she's Iput a side-cousin — and all on our knees, we pray you to kill the Queen further off, Sir Thomas. Wyatt. My friends, I have not come to kill the Queen Or here or there : 1 come to save you all. And ril go further off. Croivd. Thanks, Sir Thomas, we be beholden to you, and we'll pray for you on our bended knees till our lives' end. Wyatt. Be happy, I am your friend. To Kingston, forward ! {^Exeunt. SCENE IV. — Room in the Gate- house OF Westminster Palace. Mary, Alice, Gardiner, Renard, Ladies. Gardiner. Their cry is, Philip never shall be king. Mary. Lord Pembroke in command of all our force Will front their cry and shatter them into dust. Alice. Was not Lord Pembroke with Northumberland? O Madam, if this Pembroke should be false ? Mary. No, girl; most brave and loyal, brave and loyal. His breaking with Northumberland broke Northumberland. At the park gate he hovers with our guards. These Kentish ploughmen cannot break the guards. Enter Messenger. Messenger. Wyatt, your (jrace, hath broken thro' the guards And gone to Ludgate. Gardiner. Madam, I much fear SCENE IV. QUEEN MARY. 589 That all is lost; but we can save your Grace. The river still is free. I do beseech you, There yet is time, take boat and pass to Windsor. Mary. ■ I pass to Windsor and I lose my crown. Gardiner. Pass, then, I pray your Highness, to the Tower. Mary. I shall but be their prisoner in the Tower. Cries without. The traitor ! treason ! Pembroke ! Ladies. Treason ! treason ! Mary. Peace. False to Northumberland, is he false to me? Bear witness, Renard, that I live and die The true and faithful bride of Philip — A sound Of feet and voices thickening hither — blows — Hark, there is battle at the palace gates. And I will out upon the gallery. Ladies. No, no, your Grace; see there the arrows flying. Mary. I am Harry's daughter, Tudor, and not Fear. [ Goes out on the gallery. The guards are all driven in, skulk into corners Like rabbits to their holes. A gracious guard Truly ; shame on them ! they have shut the gates ! Enter Sir Robert Southwell. Southwell. The porter, please your Grace, hath shut the gates On friend and foe. Your gentlemen-at- arms, If this be not your Grace's order, cry To have the gates set wide again, and they With their good battleaxes will do you right Against all traitors. Mary. They are the flower of Eng- land; set the gates wide. \_Exit Southwell. Enter Courtenay. Courtenay. All lost, all lost, all yielded ! A barge, a barge ! The Queen must to the Tower. Mary. Whence come you, sir? Courtenay. From Charing Cross; the rebels broke us there. And I sped hither with what haste I might To save my royal cousin. Mary. Where is Pembroke? Courtenay. I left him somewhere in the thick of it. Mary. Left him and fled; and thou that would'st be King, And hast nor heart nor honour. I myself Will down into the battle and there bide The upshot of my quarrel, or die with those That are no cowards and no Courtenays. Courtenay. I do not love your Grace should call me coward. Enter another Messenger. Messenger. Over, your Grace, all crush'd; the brave Lord William Thrust him from Ludgate, and the traitor flying To Temple Bar, there by Sir Maurice Berkeley Was taken prisoner. Mary. To the Tower with him 1 Messenger. 'Tis said he told Sii Maurice there was one Cognisant of this, and party thereunto, My Lord of Devon. Mary. To the Tower with him I Courtenay. O la, the Tower, the Tower, always the Tojver, I shall grow into it — I shall be the Tower. Mary. Your Lordship may not have so long to wait. Remove him ! Courtenay. La, to whistle out my life, And carve my coat upon the walls again ! \_Exit Courtenay guarded. Messenger. Also this Wyatt did con- fess the Princess Cognisant thereof, and party thereunto. Mary. What ? whom — whom did you say? Messenger. Elizabeth, Your Royal sister. 590 QUEEN MARY. ACT la Mary. To the Tower with her ! My foes are at my feet and I am Queen. [Gardiner and her Ladies kneel to her. Gardiner (rising) . There let tliem lie, your footstool ! (^Aside.) Can I strike Elizabeth? — not now and save the life Of Devon : if I save him, he and his Are bound to me — may strike hereafter. {Aloud.) Madam, What Wyatt said, or what they said he said, Cries of the moment and the street — Mary. He said it. Gardiner. Your courts of justice will determine that. Renard {advancing). I trust by this your Highness will allow Some spice of wisdom in my telling you. When last we talk'd, that Philip would not come Till Guildford Dudley and the Duke of Suffolk, And Lady Jane had left us. Mary. They shall die. Renard. And your so loving sister? Mary. She shall die. My foes are at my feet, and Philip King. \_Exeunt. ACT in. SCENE L — The Conduit in Grace- church, Painted with the Nine Worthies, among them King Henry VIII. holding a book, on it inscribed ' Verbum Dei.' Enter Sir Ralph Bagenhall and Sir Thomas Stafford. Bagenhall. A hundred here and hun- dreds hang'd in Kent. The tigress had unsheathed her nails at last. And Renard and the Chancellor sharpen'd them. In every London street a gibbet stood. They are down to-day. Here by this house was one; The traitor husband dangled at the door, And when the traitor wife came out for bread To still the petty treason therewithin. Her cap would brush his heels. Stafford. It is Sir Ralphj And muttering to himself as heretofore. Sir, see you aught up yondei ? Bagenhall. I miss something. The tree that only bears dead fruit is gone. Stafford. What tree, sir? Bagenhall. Well, the tree in Virgil, sir. That bears not its own apples. Stafford. What ! the gallows? Bagenhall. Sir, this dead fruit was ripening overmuch, And had to be removed lest living Spain, Should sicken at dead England. Stafford. Not so dead, But that a shock may rouse her. Bagenhall. I believe Sir Thomas Stafford? Stafford. I am ill disguised. Bagenhall. Well, are you not in peril here? Stafford. I think so. I came to feel the pulse of England, whether It beats hard at this marriage. Did you see it? Bagenhall. Stafford, I am a sad man and a serious. Far liefer had I in my country hall Been reading some old book, with mine old hound Couch'd at my hearth, and mine old flask of wine Beside me, than have seen it : yet I saw it. Stafford. Good, was it splendid? Bagenhall. Ay, if Dukes, and Earls,. And Counts, and sixty Spanish cavaliers, Some six or seven Bishops, diamonds, pearls. That royal commonplace too, cloth of gold, Could make it so. Stafford. And what was Mary's dress? Bagenhall. Good faith, I was too sorry for the woman To mark the dress. She wore red shoes ! Stafford. Red shoes ! Bagenhall. Scarlet, as if her feet were wash'd in blood. As if she had waded in It. SCENE I. QUEEN MARY. 59J Stafford. Were your eyes So bashful that you look'd no higher? Bageiihall. A diamond, And Philip's gift, as proof of Philip's love, Who hath not any for any, — tho' a true one, Blazed false upon her heart. Stafford. But this proud Prince — Bagenhall. Nay, he is King, you know, the King of Naples. The father ceded Naples, that the son Being a King, might wed a Queen — O he Flamed in brocade — white satin his trunk-hose, Inwrought with silver, — on his neck a collar. Gold, thick with diamonds; hanging down from this The Golden Fleece — and round his knee, misplaced. Our English Garter, studded with great emeralds, Rubies, I know not what. Have you had enough Of all this gear? Stafford. Ay, since you hate the telling it. How look'd the Queen? Bagenhall. No fairer for her jewels. And I could see that as the new-made couple Came from the Minster, moving side by side Beneath one canopy, ever and anon She cast on him a vassal smile of love, Which Philip with a glance of some dis- taste, Or so methought, return'd. I may be wrong, sir. This marriage will not hold. Stafford. I think with you. The King of France will help to break it. Bagenhall. France ! We once had half of France, and hurl'd our battles Into the heart of Spain; but England now Is but a ball chuck'd between France and Spain, His in whose hand she drops; Harry of Bolingbroke Had holpen Richard's tottering throne to stand. Could Harry have foreseen that all our nobles Would perish on the civil slaughter-field, And leave the people naked to the crown, And the crown naked to the people; the crown Female, too ! Sir, no woman's regimen Can save us. We are fallen, and as I think. Never to rise again. Stafford. You are too black-blooded. I'd make a move myself to hinder that : I know some lusty fellows there in France. Bagenhall. You would but make us weaker, Thomas Stafford. Wyatt was a good soldier, yet he fail'd, And strengthen'd Philip. Stafford. Did not his last breath Clear Courtenay and the Princess from the charge Of being his co-rebels? Bagenhall. Ay, but then What such a one as Wyatt says is nothing : We have no men among us. The new Lords Are quieted with their sop of Abbeylands, And ev'n before the Queen's face Gardi- ner buys them With Philip's gold. All greed, no faith, no courage ! Why, ev'n the haughty prince, Northum- berland, The leader of our Reformation, knelt And blubber'd like a lad, and on the scaffold Recanted, and resold himself to Rome. Stafford. I swear you do your country wrong, Sir Ralph. I know a set of exiles over there. Dare-devils, that would eat fire and spit it out At Philip's beard: they pillage Spain already. The French King winks at it. An hour will come When they will sweep her from the seas. No men? Did not Lord Suffolk die like a true man? Is not Lord William Howard a true man ? Yea, you yourself, altho' you are black' blooded : 592 QUEEN MARY. And I, by God, believe myself a man. Ay, even in the church there is a man — Cranmer. Fly would he not, when all men bade him fly. And what a letter he wrote against the Pope! There's a brave man, if any. Bagenhall. Ay; if it hold. Crowd {^coming on). God save their Graces ! Stafford. Bagenhall, I see The Tudor green and white. ( Tru7npets^ They are coming now. And here's a crowd as thick as herring- shoals. Bagenhall. Be limpets to this pillar, or we are torn Down the strong wave of brawlers. Crowd. God save their Graces ! [^Procession of Trumpeters, Javelin- men, etc.; then Spanish and flemish N'obles intermingled. Stafford. Worth seeing, Bagenhall ! These black dog-Dons Garb themselves bravely. Who's the long-face there, Looks very Spain of very Spain ? Bagenhall. The Duke Of Alva, an iron soldier. Stafford. And the Dutchman, Now laughing at some jest? Bagenhall. William of Orange, William the Silent. Stafford. Why do they call him so? Bagenhall. He keeps, they say, some secret that may cost Philip his life. Stafford. But then he looks so merry. Bagenhall. I cannot tell you why they call him so. ^ The King and Queen pass, attended by Peers of the Realm, Officers of State, etc. Cannon shot off. Crowd. Philip and Mary, Philip and Mary! Long live the King and Queen, Philip and Mary ! Stafford. They smile as if content with one another. Bagenhall. A smile abroad is oft a scowl at home. [King and Qyxttn pass on. Procession. First Citizen. I thougb.t this Philip had been one of those black devils ot Spain, but he hath a yellow beard. Second Citizen. Not red like Iscariot's. First Citizen. Like a carrot's, as thou say'st, and English carrot's better than Spanish licorice; but I thought he was a beast. Third Citizen. Certain I had heard that every Spaniard carries a tail like a devil under liis trunk-hose. Tailor. Ay, but see what trunk-hoses ! Lord! they be fine; I never stitch'd none such. They make amends for the tails. Fourth Citizen. Tut ! every Spanish priest will tell you that all English heretics have tails. Fifth Citizen. Death and the Devil — if he find I have one — Fourth Citizen. Lo ! thou hast call'd them up ! here they come — a pale horse for Death and Cjardiner for the Devil. Enter Gardiner {turning back from the procession') . Gardiner. Knave, wilt thou wear thy cap before the Queen? Man. My Lord, I stand so squeezed among the crowd I cannot lift my hands unto my head. Gardiner. Knock off his cap there, some of you about him ! See there be, others that can use their hands. Thou art one of Wyatt's men? Man. No, my Lord, no. Gardiner. Thy name, thou knave ? Man. I am nobody, my Lord. Gardiner {shouting). God's passion! knave, thy name? Man. I have ears to hear. Gardiner. Ay, rascal, if I leave thee ears to hear. Find out his name and bring it me {to Attendant). Attendant. Ay, my Lord. Gardiner. Knave, thou shalt lose thine ears and find thy tongue, And shalt be thankful if I leave thee that. {^Coming before the Condtnt. The conduit painted — the nine worthies — ay! SCENE I. QUEEN MARY, 593 But then what's here? King Harry with a scroll. Ha — Verbum Dei — verbum — word of God! God's passion ! do you know the knave that painted it? Attendant. I do, my Lord. Gardiner. Tell him to paint it out, And put some fresh device in lieu of it — A pair of gloves, a pair of gloves, sir; ha? There is no heresy there. Attendant. I will, my Lord; The man shall paint a pair of gloves. I am sure (Knowing the man) he wrought it igno- rantly, And not from any malice. Gardiner. Word of God In English I over this the brainless loons That cannot spell Esaias from St. Paul,- Make themselves drunk and mad, fly out and flare Into rebellions. I'll have their Bibles burnt. The Bible is the priest's. Ay! fellow, what 1 Stand staring at me ! shout, you gaping rogue ! Man. I have, my Lord, shouted till I am hoarse. Gardiner. What hast thou shouted, knave? Man. " Long live Queen Mary ! Gardiner. Knave, there be two. There be both King and Queen, Philip and Mary. Shout ! Man. Nay, but, my I^ord, The Queen comes first, Mary and Philip. Gardiner. Shout, then, Mary and Philip ! Matt. Mary and Philip ! Gardiner. Now, Thou hast shouted for thy pleasure, shout for mine ! Philip and Mary ! Man. Must it be so, my Lord? Gardiner. Ay, knave. Man. Philip and Mary ! Gardiner. I distrust thee. Thine is a half voice and a lean assent. What is thy name? 2Q Man. Sanders. Gardiner. What else? Man. Zerubbabel Gardiner. Where dost thou live? Man. In Cornhill. Gardiner. Where, knave, where? Man. Sign of the Talbot. Gardiner. Come to me to-morrow. — Rascal ! — this land is like a hill of fire, One crater opens when another shuts. But so I get the laws against the heretic. Spite of Lord Paget and Lord William Howard, And others of our Parliament, revived, I will show fire on my side — stake and fire — Sharp work and short. The knaves are easily cow'd. Follow their Majesties. \^Exit. The crowd following. Bagenhall. As proud as Becket. Stafford. You would not have him murder'd as Becket was? Bagenhall. No — murder fathers mur- der : but I say There is no man — there was one woman with us — It was a sin to love her married, dead I cannot choose but love her. Stafford. Lady Jane? Crowd {going off). God save their Graces ! Stafford. Did you see her die? Bagenhall. No, no; her innocent blood had blinded me. You call me too black-blooded — true enough Her dark dead blood is in my heart with mine. If ever I cry out against the Pope Her dark dead blood that ever moves with mine Will stir the living tongue and make the cry. Stafford. Yet doubtless you can tell me how she died? Bagenhall. Seventeen — and knew eight languages — in music Peerless — her needle perfect, and her learning Beyond the churchmen; yet so meek, so modest. So wife-like humble to the trivial boy 594 QUEEN MARY. ACT III Mismatch'd with her for policy ! I have heard She would not take a last farewell of him, She fear'd it might unman him for his end. She could not be unmann'd — no, nor outwoman'd — Seventeen — a rose of grace ! Girl never breathed to rival such a rose; Rose never blew that equall'd such a bud. Stafford. Pray you gc on. Bagenhall. She came upon the scaffold, And said she was condemn'd to die for treason; She had but foUow'd the device of those Her nearest kin : she thought they knew the laws. But for herself, she knew but little law, And nothing of the titles to the crown; She had no desire for that, and wrung her hands, And trusted God would save her thro' the blood Of Jesus Christ alone. Stafford. Pray you go on. Bagenhall. Then knelt and said the Miserere Mei — But all in English, mark you ; rose again, And, when the headsman pray'd to be forgiven, Said, * You will give me my true crown at last, But do it quickly; ' then all wept but she, Who changed not colour when she saw the block, But ask'd him, childlike : ' Will you take it off Before I lay me down?' 'No, Madam,' he said. Gasping; and when her innocent eyes were bound. She, with her poor blind hands feeling — * where is it? Where is it ? ' — You must fancy that which foUow'd, If you have heart to do it ! Crowd (in the distance). God save their Graces ! Stafford. Their Graces, our disgraces ! God confound them ! Why, she's grown bloodier ! when I last was here, This was against her conscience — would be murder ! Bagenhall. The 'Thou shalt do no murder,' which God's hand Wrote on her conscience, Mary rubb'd out pale — She could not make it white — and over that, Traced in the blackest text of Hell — 'Thou shalt!' And sign'd it — Mary ! Stafford. Philip and the Pope Must have sign'd too. I hear this Legate's coming To bring us absolution from the Pope. The Lords and Commons will bow down before him — You are of the house? what will you do, Sir Ralph? Bagenhall. And why should I be bolder than the rest, Or honester than all? Stafford. But, sir, if I — And oversea they say this state of yours Hath no more mortice than a tower of cards; • And that a puff would do it — then if I And others made that move I touch'd upon, Back'd by the power of France, and land- ing here, Came with a sudden splendour, shout, and show, • And dazzled men and deafen'd by some bright Loud venture, and the people so unquiet — And I the race of murder'd Bucking- ham — Not for myself, but for the kingdom — Sir, I trust that you would fight along with us. Bagenhall. No ; you would fling your lives into the gulf. Stafford. But if this Philip, as he's Hke to do, Left Mary a wife-widow here alone, Set up a viceroy, sent his myriads hither To seize upon the forts and fleet, and make us A Spanish province ; would you not fight then? Bagenhall. I think I should fight then, Stafford, I am sure of it. QUEEN MARY. 595 Hist ! there's the face coming on here of one Who knows me. I must leave you. Fare you well, You'll hear of me again. Bagenhall. .Upon the scaffold. \_Exeunt. SCENE II. -Room in Whitehall Palace. Mary. Enter Philip and Cardinal Pole. Pole. Ave Maria, gratia plena, Bene- dicta tu in mulieribus. Mary. Loyal and royal cousin, humblest thanks. Had you a pleasant voyage up the river? Pole. We had your royal barge, and that same chair, Or rather throne of purple, on the deck. Our silver cross sparkled before the prow, The ripples twinkled at their diamond- dance, The boats that foUow'd were as glowing- gay As regal gardens; and your flocks of swans, As fair and white as angels; and your shores Wore in mine eyes the green of Paradise. My foreign friends, who dream'd us blanketed In ever-closing fog, were much amazed To find as fair a sun as might have flash'd Upon their lake of Garda, fire the Thames; Our voyage by sea was all but miracle; And here the river flowing from the sea, Not toward it (for they thought not of our tides), •' Seem'd as a happy miracle to make glide — In quiet — home your banish'd country- man. Mary. We heard that you were sick in Flanders, cousin. Pole. A dizziness. Mary. . And how came you round again? Pole. The scarlet thread of Rahab saved her life; And mine, a little letting of the blood. Mary. Well? now? Pole. Ay, cousin, as the heathen giant Had but to touch the ground, his force return'd — Thus, after twenty years of banishment, Feeling my native land beneath my foot, I said thereto : * Ah, native land of mine, Thou art much beholden to this foot of mine. That hastes with full commission from the Pope To absolve thee from thy guilt of heresy. Thou hast disgraced me and attainted me. And mark'd me ev'n as Cain, and 1 return As Peter, but to bless thee : make me well.' Methinks the good land heard me, for to- day My heart beats twenty, when I see you, cousin. Ah, gentle cousin, since your Herod's death. How oft hath Peter knock'd at Mary's gate ! And Mary would have risen and let him in, But, Mary, there were those within the house Who would not have it. Mary. True, good cousin Pole ; And there were also those without the house Who would not have it. Pole. I believe so, cousin. State-policy and church-poHcy are con- joint, But Janus-faces looking diverse ways. I fear the Emperor much misvalued me. But all is well ; 'twas ev'n the will of God, Who, waiting till the time had ripen'd, now, Makes me his mouth of holy greeting. * Hail, Daughter of God, and saver of the faith. Sit benedictus fructus ventris tui ! ' Mary. Ah, heaven ! Pole. Unwell, your Grace? Alary. No, cousin, happy — i Happy to see you; never yet so happy Since I was crown'd. Pole, Sweet cousin, you forget 596 QUEEN MARY. ACT III That long low minster where you gave your hand To this great Catholic King. Philip. Well said, Lord Legate. Mary. Nay, not well said; I thought of you, my liege, Ev'n as I spoke. Philip. Ay, Madam; my Lord Paget Waits to present our Council to the Legate. Sit down here, all; Madam, between us you. Pole. Lo, now you are enclosed with boards of cedar. Our little sister of the Song of Songs ! You are doubly fenced and shielded sit- ting here Between the two most high-set thrones on earth, The Emperor's highness happily symboll'd by The King your husband, the Pope's Holiness By mine own self. Mary, True, cousin, I am happy. When will you that we summon both our houses To take this absolution from your lips, And be regather'd to the Papal fold ? Pole. In Britain's calendar the bright- est day Beheld our rough forefathers break their Gods, And clasp the faith in Christ; but after that Might not St. Andrew's be her happiest day? Mary. Then these shall meet upon St. Andrew's day. Enter Paget, who presents the Council. Dumb shoiv. Pole. I am an old man wearied with my journey, Ev'n with my joy. Permit me to with- draw. To Lambeth? Philip. Ay, Lambeth has ousted Cranmer. It was not meet the heretic swine should live In Lambeth. Mary. There or anywhere, or at all. Philip. We have had it swept and garnish'd after him. Pole. Not for the seven devils to enter in? Philip. No, for we trust they parted in the swine. Pole. True, and I am the Angel of the Pope. Farewell, your Graces. Philip. Nay, not here — tome; I will go with you to the waterside. Pole. Not be my Charon to the counter side? Philip. No, my Lord Legate, the Lord Chancellor goes. Pole. And unto no dead world; but Lambeth palace, Henceforth a centre of the living faith. [^Exeunt Philip, Pole, Paget, etc. Manet Mary. Mary. He hath awaked! he hath awaked ! He stirs v»'ithin the darkness ! Oh, Philip, husband ! now thy love to mine Will cling more close, and those bleak manners thaw, That make me shamed and tongue-tied in my love. The second Prince of Peace — The great unborn defender of the Faith, Who will avenge me of mine enemies -^ He comes, and my star rises. The stormy Wyatts and Northumberlands, The proud ambitions of Elizabeth, And all her fieriest partisans — are pale Before my star ! The light of this new learning wanes and dies: The ghosts of Luther and Zuinglius fade Into the deathless hell which is their doom Before my star ! His sceptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind ! His sword shall hew the heretic peoples down ! His faith shall clothe the world that will be his. Like universal air and sunshine ! Open, Ye everlasting gates ! The King is here ! — My star, my son ! SCENE III. QUEEN MARY. 597 Enter Philip, Duke of Alva, etc. Oh, Philip, come with me; Good news I have to tell ypu, news to make Both of us happy — ay, the Kingdom too. Nay, come with me — one moment ! Philip {to Alva). More than that : There was one here of late — William the Silent They call him — he is free enough in talk, But tells me nothing. You will be, we trust, Sometime the viceroy of those provinces — He must deserve his surname better. Alva. Ay, sir; Inherit the Great Silence. Philip. True; the provinces Are hard to rule and must be hardly ruled ; Most fruitful, yet, indeed, an empty rind, All hollow'd out with stinging heresies; And for their heresies, Alva, they will fight; You must break them or they break you. Alva {proudly). The first. Philip. Good ! Well, Madam, this new happiness of mine ? \_Exeunt. Enter Three Pages. First Page. News, mates ! a miracle, a miracle ! news ! The bells must ring; Te Deums must be sung; The Queen hath felt the motion of her babe ! Second Page. Ay; but see here ! First Page. See what? Second Page. This paper, Dickon. I found it fluttering at the palace gates : — '' The Queen of England is delivered of a dead dog! ' Third Page. These are the things that madden her. Fie upon it! First Page. Ay; but I hear she hath a dropsy, lad, Or a high-dropsy, as the doctors call it. Third Page. Fie on her dropsy, so she have a dropsy ! I know that she was ever sweet to me. First Page. For thou and thine are Roman to the core. Third Page. So thou and thine must be. Take heed ! First Page. Not I, And whether this flash of news be false or true, So the wine run, and there be revelry, Content am I. Let all the steeples clash. Till the sun dance, as upon Easter Day. \^Exeujit. SCENE III. — Great Hall in Whitehall. At the far end a dais. On this three chairs, two under one canopy for Mary ajid Philip, another on the right of these for Pole. Under the dais on Pole's side, ranged along the wall, sit all the Spi7-itual Peers, and along the tuall opposite, all the Temporal. The Commons on cross benches in front., a line of approach to the dais between them. In the foreground, SiR Ralph Bagenhall and other Members of the Commons. First Member. St. Andrew's day; sit close, sit close, we are friends. Is reconciled the word ? the Pope again ? It must be thus; and yet, cocksbody ! how strange That Gardiner, once so one with all of us Against this foreign marriage, should have yielded So utterly! — strange! but stranger still that he. So fierce against the headship of the Pope, Should play the second actor in this pageant That brings him in; such a cameleon he ! Second Member. This Gardiner turn'd his coat in Henry's time; The serpent that hath slough'd will slough again. Ihird Member. Tut, then we all are serpents. Second Member. Speak for yourself. Third Member. Ay, and for Gardiner ! being English citizen. How should he bear a bridegroom out of Spain? 598 QUEEN MARY, ACT m The Queen would have him ! being English churchman How should he bear the headship of the Pope? The Queen would have it! Statesmen that are wise Shape a necessity, as a sculptor clay, To their own model. Second Member, Statesmen that are wise Take truth herself for model. What say you? [ To Sir Ralph Bagenhall. Bagenhall. We talk and talk. First Member. Ay, and what use to talk? Philip's no sudden alien — the Queen's husband, He's here, and king, or will be — yet cocksbody ! So hated here ! I watch'd a hive of late; My seven-years' friend was with me, my young boy; Out crept a wasp, with half the swarm behind. * Philip ! ' says he. I had to cuff the rogue For infant treason. Third Member. But they say that bees. If any creeping life invade their hive Too gross to be thrust out, will build him round. And bind him in from harming of their combs. And Philip by these articles is bound From stirring hand or foot to wrong the realm. Second Member. By bonds of beeswax like your creeping thing; But your wise bees had stung him first to death. Third Member. Hush, hush ! You wrong the Chancellor: the clauses added To that same treaty which the Emperor sent us Were mainly Gardiner's : that no foreigner Hold office in the household, fleet, forts, army; That if the Queen should die without a child. The bond between the kingdoms be dissolved; That Philip should not mix us any way With his French wars — Second Member. Ay, ay, but wbaJ security, Good sir, for this, if Philip — • Third Member. Peace — the Queen, Philip, and Pole. \^All rise, and stand. Enter Mary, Philip, and Pole. [Gardiner conducts them to the three chairs of state. Philip sits on the Queen's lefty Pole on her right. Gardiner. Our short-lived sun, before his winter plunge. Laughs at the last red leaf, and Andrew's day. Mary. Should not this day be held in after years More solemn than of old ? Philip. Madam, my wish Echoes your Majesty's. Pole. It shall be so. Gardiner. Mine echoes both your Graces'; {aside) but the Pope — Can we not have the Catholic church as well Without as with the Italian? if we cannot, Why then the Pope. My Lords of the upper house, And ye, my masters, of the lower house, Do ye stand fast by that which ye resolved ? Voices. We do. Gardiner. And be you all one mind to supplicate The Legate here for pardon, and acknow- ledge The primacy of the Pope? » Voices. We are all one mind. Gardiner. Then must I play the vas- sal to this Pole. [^Aside. \_He draws a paper from under his robes and presents it to the King and Queen, who look through it and return it to him ; then ascends a tribune and reads. We, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, And Commons her^ in Parliament assem- bled. Presenting the whole body of this realm Of England, and dominions of the same. Do make most humble suit unto your Majesties, In our own name and that of all the state, That by your gracious means and inter* cession SCENE III. QUEEN MARY. S99 Our supplication be exhibited To the Lord Cardinal Pole, sent here as Legate From our most Holy Father Julius, Pope, And from the Apostolic see of Rome; And do declare our penitence and grief For our long schism and disobedience, Either in making laws and ordinances Against the Holy Father's primacy. Or else by doing or by speaking aught Which might- impugn or prejudice the same; By this our supplication promising. As well for our own selves as all the realm. That MOW we be and ever shall be quick, Under and with your Majesties' authori- ties, To do to the utmost all that in us lies Towards the abrogation and repeal Of all such laws and ordinances made; Whereon we humbly pray your Majesties, As persons undefiled with our offence, So to set forth this humble suit of ours That we the rather by your intercession May from the Apostolic see obtain, Thro' this most reverend F'ather, absolu- tion, And full release from danger of all censures Of Holy Church that we be fall'n into, So that we may, as children penitent. Be once again received into the bosom And unity of Universal Church; And that this noble realm thro' after years May in this unity and obedience Unto the holy see and reigning Pope Serve God and both your Majesties. Voices. Amen. \_All sit. \^He again presents the petition to the King and Queen, who hand it reverentially to Pole. Pole {sitting). This is the loveliest day that ever smiled On England. All her breath should, incenselike, Rise to the heavens in grateful praise of Him Who now recalls her to His ancient fold. Lo ! once again God to this realm hath given A token of His more especial Grace; For as this people were the first of all The islands call'd into the dawning church Out of the dead, deep night of heathen- dom. So now are these the first whom God hath given Grace to repent and sorrow for their schism ; And if your penitence be not mockery. Oh how the blessed angels who rejoice Over one saved do triumph at this hour In the reborn salvation of a land So noble. \A' pause. For ourselves we do protest That our commission is to heal, not harm; ^ We come not to condemn, but reconcile;* We come not to compel, but call again; We come not to destroy, but edify; Nor yet to question things already done; These are forgiven — matters of the past — And range with jetsam and with offal thrown Into the bUnd sea of forgetfulness. \_A pause. Ye have reversed the attainder laid on us By him who sack'd the house of God; and we, Amplier than any field on our poor earth Can render thanks in fruit for being sown, Do here and now repay you sixty-fold, A hundred, yea, a thousand thousand-fold. With heaven for earth. [^Rising and stretching forth his hands. All kneel but Sir Ralph Bagenhall, who rises and remains standing. The Lord who hath redeem'd us With His own blood, and wash'd us from our sins. To purchase for Himself a stainless bride; He, whom the Father hath appointed head Of all his church, He by His mercy absolve you! \_A pause. And we by that authority Apostolic Given unto us, his Legate, by the Pope, Our Lord and Holy Father, Julius, God's Vicar and Vicegerent upon earth. Do here absolve you and deliver you And every one of you, and all the realm And its dominions from all heresy. All schism, and from all and every cen- sure. Judgment, and pain accruing thereupon; And also we restore you to the bosom 6cx) QUEEN MARY. ACT III And unity of Universal Church. [ Ttirning to Gardiner. Our letters of commission will declare this plainlier. [Queen heard sobbing. Cries of Amen ! x\men ! Some of the Members embrace one another. All but Sir Ralph Bagenhall pass out into the neighbouring chapel, whence is heard the Te Deum. Bagenhall. We strove against the papacy from the first, ,In William's time, in our first Edward's time, And in my master Henry's time; but now, The unity of Universal Church, Mary would have it; and this Gardiner follows ; The unity of Universal Hell, Philip would have it; and this Gardiner follows ! A Parliament of imitative apes ! Sheep at the gap which Gardiner takes, who not Believes the Pope, nor any of them believe — These spaniel-Spaniard English of the time, Who rub their fawning noses in the dust, For that is Philip's gold-dust, and adore This Vicar of their Vicar. Would I had been Born Spaniard ! I had held my head up then. I am ashamed that I am Bagenhall, English. Enter Officer. Officer. Sir Ralph Bagenhall ! Bagenhall. What of that? Officer. You were the one sole man in either house Who stood upright when both the houses fell. Bagenhall. The houses fell ! Officer. I mean the houses knelt Before the Legate. Bagenhall. Do not scrimp your phrase, But stretch it wider; say when England fell. Officer. I say you were the one sole man who stood. Bagenhall. I am the one sole man in either house, Perchance in England, loves her like a son. Officer. Well, you one man, because you stood upright. Her Grace the Queen commands you to the Tower. Bagenhall. As traitor, or as heretic, or for what? Offi-cer. If any man in any way would be The one man, he shall be so to his cost. Bagenhall. What ! will she have my head? Oflicer. A round fine likelier. Your pardon. [ Calling to Attendant. By the river to the Tower. \_Exeunt. SCENE IV. — Whitehall. IN THE Palace. A Room Mary, Gardiner, Pole, Paget, Bonner, etc. Mary. The King and I, my Lords, now that all traitors Against our royal state have lost the heads Wherewith they plotted in their treason- ous malice. Have talk'd together, and are well agreed That those old statutes touching Lollard- ism To bring the heretic to the stake, should be No longer a dead letter, but requicken'd. One of the Council. Why, what hath fluster'd Gardiner? how he rubs His forelock ! Paget. I have changed a word with him In coming, and may change a word again. Gardiner. Madam, your Highness is our sun, the King And you together our two suns in one; And so the beams of both may shine upon us, The faith that seem'd to droop will feel your light. Lift head, and flourish; yet not light alone. There must be heat — there must be heat enough QUEEN MARY. 6oi To scorch and wither heresy to the root. For what saith Christ? 'Compel them to come in.' And what saith Paul? *I would they were cut off That trouble- you.' Let the dead letter live ! Trace it in fire, that all the louts to whom Their A B C is darkness, clowns and grooms May read it ! so you quash rebellion too, For heretic and traitor are all one : Two vipers of one breed — anamphisbaena, Each end a sting: Let the dead letter burn ! Paget. Yet there be some disloyal Catholics, And many heretics loyal; heretic throats Cried no God-bless-her to the Lady Jane, But shouted in Queen Mary. So there be Some traitor-heretic, there is axe and cord. To take the lives of others that are loyal. And by the churchman's pitiless doom of tire, Were but a thankless policy in the crown. Ay, and against itself; for there are many. Mary. If we could burn out heresy, my Lord Paget, We reck not tho' we lost this crown of England — Ay ! tho' it were ten Englands ! Gardiner. Right, your Grace. Paget, you are all for this poor life of ours. And care but little for the life to be. Paget. I have some time, for curious- ness, my Lord, Watch'd children playing at their life to be, And cruel at it, killing helpless flies; Such is our time— »- all times for aught I know. Gardiner. We kill the heretics that sting the soul — They, with right reason, flies that prick the flesh. Paget. They had not reach'd right reason; little children ! They kill'd but for their pleasure and the power They felt in killing. Gardiner. A spice of Satan, ha ! Why, good ! what then? granted! — we are fallen creatures; Look to your Bible, Paget I we are fallen. Paget. I am but of the laity, my Lord Bishop, And may not read your Bible, yet I found One day, a wholesome scripture, * Little children, Love one another.' Gardiner, Did you find a scripture, ' I come not to bring peace but a sword ' ? The sword Is in her Grace's hand to smite with. Paget, You stand up here to fight for heresy, You are more than guess'd at as a heretic, And on the steep-up track of the true faith Your lapses are far seen. Paget. The faultless Gardiner ! Mary. You brawl beyond the ques- tion; speak, Lord Legate! Pole. Indeed, 1 cannot follow with your Grace : Rather would say — the shepherd doth not kill The sheep that wander from his flock, but sends His careful dog to bring them to the fold. Look to the Netherlands, wherein have been Such holocausts of heresy ! to what end? For yet the faith is not established there. Gardiner. The end's not come. Pole. No — nor this way will come, Seeing there lie two ways to every end, A better and a worse — the worse is here To persecute, because to persecute . Makes a faith hated, and is furthermore No perfect witness of a perfect faith In him who persecutes : when men are tost On tides of strange opinion, and not sure Of their own selves, they are wroth with their own selves, And thence with others; then, who lights the faggot? Not the full faith, no, but the lurking doubt. Old Rome, that first made martyrs in the Church, 602 QUEEN MARY, Trembled for her own gods, for these were trembling — But when did our Rome tremble? Paget. Did she not In Henry's time and Edward's? Pole. What, my Lord ! The Church on Peter's rock? never! I have seen A pine in Italy that cast its shadow Athwart a cataract; firm stood the pine — The cataract shook the shadow. To my mind. The cataract typed the headlong plunge and fall Of heresy to the pit : the pine was Rome. You see, my Lords, It was the shadow of the Church that trembled; Your church was but the shadow of a church, Wanting the Papal mitre. Gardiner {muttering). Here be tropes. Pole. And tropes are good to clothe a naked truth, And make it look more seemly. Gardiner. Tropes again ! Pole. You are hard to please. Then without tropes, my Lord, An overmuch severeness, I repeat, When faith is wavering makes the waverer pass Into more settled hatred of the doctrines Of those who rule, which hatred by and by Involves the ruler (thus fhere springs to light That Centaur of a monstrous Common- weal, The traitor-heretic) then tho' some may quail, Yet others are that dare the stake and fire. And their strong torment bravely borne, begets An admiration and an indignation, And hot desire to imitate; so the plague Of schism spreads; were there l)ut three or four Of these misleaders, yet I would not say Burn! and we cannot burn whole towns; they are many, As my Lord Paget says. Gardiner. Yet my Lord Cardinal — Pole. I am your Legate; please you let me finish. Methinks that under our Queen's regimen We might go softlier than with crimson rowel And streaming lash. When Herod- Henry first Began to batter at your English Church, This was the cause, and hence the judg- ment on her. She seethed with such adulteries, and the lives Of many among your churchmen were so foul That heaven wept and earth blush'd. I would advise That we should thoroughly cleanse the Church within Before these bitter statutes be requick- en'd. So after that when she once more is seen White as the light, the spotless bride of Christ, Like Christ himself on Tabor, possibly The Lutheran may be won to her again; Till when, my Lords, I counsel tolerance. Gardiner. What, if a mad dog bit your hand, my Lord, Would you not chop the bitten finger off, Lest your whole body should madden with the poison? I would not, were I Queen, tolerate the heretic. No, not an hour. The ruler of a land Is bounden by his power and place to see His people Idc not poison'd. Tolerate them ! Why? do they tolerate you? Nay, many of them Would burn — have burnt each other; call they not The one true faith, a loathsome idol- worship? Beware, Lord Legate, of a heavier crime Than heresy is itself; beware, I say, Lest men accuse you of indifference To all faiths, all religion; for you know Right well that you yourself have been supposed Tainted with Lutheranism in Italy. Pole {angered'). But you, my Lord, beyond all supposition. In clear and open day were congruent SCENE IV. QUEEN MARY. 603 With that vile Cranmer in the accursed lie Of good Queen Catharine's divorce — the spring Of all those evils that have flow'd upon us; For you yourself have truckled to the tyrant, And done your best to bastardise our Queen, For which God's righteous judgment fell upon you In your five years of imprisonment, my Lord, Under young Edward. Who so bolster'd up The gross King's headship of the Church, or more Denied the Holy Father ! Gardiner. Ha ! what I eh ? But you, my Lord, a polish'd gentleman, A bookman, flying from the heat and tussle, You lived among your vines and oranges, In your soft Italy yonder ! You were sent for. You were appeal'd to, but you still preferr'd Your learned leisure. As for what I did I suffer'd and repented. You, Lord Legate And Cardinal-Deacon, have not now to learn That ev'n St. Peter in his time of fear Denied his Master, ay, and thrice, my Lord. Pole. But not for five-and-twenty years, my Lord. Gardiner. Ha ! good ! it seems then I was summon'd hither But to be mock'd and baited. Speak, friend Bonner, And tell this learned Legate he lacks zeal. The Church's evil is not as the King's, Cannot be heal'd by stroking. The mad bite Must have the cautery — tell him — and at once. What would'st thou do had'st thou his power, thou That layest so long in heretic bonds with me; Would'st thou not burn and blast them root and branch? Bonner. Av, after you, my L,ord. Gardiner. Nay, God's passion, before me ! speak ! Bonner. I am on fire until I see them flame. Gardiner. Ay, the psalm-singing weavers, cobblers, scum — But this most noble prince Plantagenet, Our good Queen's cousin — dallying over seas Even when his brother's, nay, his noble mother's. Head fell — Pole. Peace, madman ! Thou stirrest up a grief thou canst not fathom. Thou Christian Bishop, thou Lord Chan- cellor Of England ! no more rein upon thine anger Than any child ! Thou mak'st me much ashamed That I was for a moment wroth at thee. Mary. I come for counsel and ye give me feuds. Like dogs that set to watch their master's gate. Fall, when the thief is ev'n within the walls. To worrying one another. My Lord Chancellor, You have an old trick of offending us; And but that you are art and part with us In purging heresy, well we might, for this Your violence and much roughness to the Legate, Have shut you from our counsels. Cousin Pole, You are fresh from brighter lands. Re- tire with me. His Highness and myself (so you allow us) Will let you learn in peace and privacy What power this cooler sun of England hath In breeding godless vermin. And pray Heaven That you may see according to our sight. Come, cousin. {^Exeunt Queen and Pole, etc. Gardiner. Pole has the Plantagenet face. But not the force made them our mightiest kings. 6o4 QUEEN MARY. ACT lU Fine eyes — but melancholy, irresolute — A fine beard, Bonner, a very full fine beard. But a weak mouth, an indeterminate — ha? Bonner. Well, a weak mouth, per- chance. Gardiner. And not like thine fo gorge a heretic whole, roasted or raw. Bomter. I'd do my best, my Lord; but yet the Legate Is here as Pope and Master of the Church, And if he go jiot with you — Gardiner. Tut, Master Bishop, Our bashful Legate, saw'st not how he flush'd? Touch him upon his old heretical talk, He'll burn a diocese to prove his ortho- doxy. And let him call me truckler. In those times. Thou knowest we had to dodge, or duck, or die; I kept my head for use of Holy Church ; And see you, we shall have to dodge again, And let the Pope trample our rights, and plunge His foreign fist into our island Church To plump the leaner pouch of Italy. For a time, for a time. Why? that these statutes may be put in force, And that his fan may thoroughly purge his floor. Bonner. So then you hold the Pope — Gardiner. I hold the Pope ! What do I hold him? what do I hold the Pope? Come, come, the morsel stuck — this Cardinal's fault — 1 have gulpt it down. I am wholly for the Pope, Utterly and altogether for the Pope, The Eternal Peter of the changeless chair, Crown'd slave of slaves, and mitred king of kings, God upon earth ! what more? what would you have? Hence, let's be gone.* Enter Usher. Usher. Well that you be not gone. My Lord. The Queen, most wroth at first with you. Is now content to grant you full forgive' ness, So that you crave full pardon of the Legate. I am sent to fetch you. Gardiner. Doth Pole yield, sir, ha! Did you hear 'em? were you by? Usher. I cannot tell you, His bearing is so courtly-delicate; And yet methinks he falters: their two Graces Do so dear-cousin and royal-cousin him, So press on him the duty which as Legate He owes himself, and with such royal smiles — Gardiner. Smiles that burn men. Bonner, it will be carried. He falters, ha? 'fore God, we change and change; Men now are bow'd and old, the doctors tell you, At three-score years; then if we change at all We needs must do it quickly; it is an age Of brief life, and brief purpose, and brief patience. As I have shown to-day. I am sorry for it If Pole be like to turn. Our old friend Cranmer, Your more especial love, hath turn'd so often, He knows not where he stands, which, if this pass. We two shall have to teach him; let 'em look to it, Cranmer and Hooper, Ridley and Latimer Rogers and Ferrar, for their time is come, Their hour is hard at hand, their * dies Irae,' Their * dies Ilia,' which will test their sect. I feel it but a duty — you will find in it Pleasure as well as duty, worthy Bonner, — To test their sect. Sir, I attend the Queen To crave most humble pardon — of her most Royal, Infallible, Papal Legate-cousin. [^Exeunt. SCENE V. — Woodstock. Elizabeth, Lady in Waiting. Elizabeth. So they have sent pool Courtenay over sea. QUEEN MARY, 605 Lady. And banish'd us to Woodstock, and the fields. The colours of our queen are green and . white, These fields are only green, they make me gape. Elizabeth. There's whitethorn, girl. Lady. Ay, for an hour in May. But court is always May, buds out in masques. Breaks into feather'd merriments, and flowers In silken pageants. Why do they keep U3 here? Why still suspect your Grace ? Elizabeth. Hard upon both. [ Writes on the window zuith a diamond. Much suspected, of me Nothing proven can be. Quoth Elizabeth, prisoner. Lady. What hath your Highness written ? Elizabeth. A true rhyme. Lady. Cut with a diamond ; so to last like truth. Elizabeth. Ay, if truth last. Lady. But truth, they say, will out. So it must last. It is not like a word, That comes and goes in uttering. Elizabeth. Truth, a word ! The very Truth and very Word are one. But truth of story, which I glanced at, girl, Is like a word that comes from olden days, And passes thro'thepeoples: every tongue Alters it passing, till it spells and speaks Quite other than at first. Lady. I do not follow. Elizabeth. How many names in the long sweep of time That so foreshortens greatness, may but hang On the chance mention of .some fool that once Brake bread with us, perhaps : and my poor chronicle Is but of glass. Sir Henry Bedingfield May split it for a spite. Lady. God grant it last, - And witness to your Grace's innocence, Till doomsday melt it. Elizabeth. Or a second fire. Like that which lately crackled underfoot And in this very chamber, fuse the glass. And char us back again into the dust We spring from. Never peacock against rain Screara'd as you did for water. Lady. And I got it. I woke Sir Henry — and he's true to you — I read his honest horror in his eyes. Elizabeth. Or true to you? Lady. Sir Henry Bedingfield ! I will have no man true to me, your Grace, But one that pares his nails; to me? the clown ! Elizabeth. Out, girl ! you wrong a noble gentleman. Lady. For, like his cloak, his man- ners want the nap And gloss of court; but of this fire he says. Nay swears, it was no wicked wilfulness. Only a natural chance. Elizabeth. A chance — perchance One of those wicked wilfuls that men make. Nor shame to call it nature. Nay, I know They hunt my blood. Save for my daily range Among the pleasant fields of Holy Writ I might despair. But there hath some one come; The house is all in movement. Hence, and see. \_Exit Lady. Milkmaid {singing without). Shame upon you, Robin, Shame upon you now ! Kiss me would you? with my hands Milking the cow? Daisies grow again. Kingcups blow again. And you came and kiss'd me milking the cow Robin came behind me, Kiss'd me well I vow; Cuff hinj could I? with my hands Milking the cow? Swallows fly again, Cuckoos cry again, And you came and kiss'd me milking the cow 6o6 QUEEN MARY. ACT III. Come, Robin, Robin, Come and kiss me now; Help it can 1? with my hands Milking the cow? Ringdoves coo again. All things woo again. Come behind and kiss me milking the cow ! Elizabeth. Right honest and red- cheek'd ; Robin was violent, And she was crafty — a sweet violence, And a sweet craft. I would I were a milkmaid, To sing, love, marry, churn, brew, bake, and die. Then have my simple headstone by the church. And all things lived and ended honestly. I could not if I would. I am Harry's daughter : Gardiner would have my head. They are not sweet, The violence and the craft that do divide The world of nature; what is weak must lie; The lion needs but roar to guard his young; The lapwing lies, says * here ' when they are there. Threaten the child; 'I'll scourge you if you did it : ' What weapon hath the child, save his soft tongue, To say *I did not'? and my rod's the block. I never lay my head upon the pillow But that I think, * Wilt thou lie there to- morrow ? ' How oft the falling axe, that never fell, Hath shock'd me back into the daylight truth That it may fall to-day! Those damp, black, dead Nights in the Tower; dead — with the fear of death Too dead ev'n for a death-watch ! Toll of a bell, Stroke of a clock, the scurrying of a rat Affrighted me, and then delighted me. For there was life — And there was life in death — The little murder'd princes, in a pale light, Rose hand in hand, and whisper'd, * Come awayl The civil wars are gone for evermore : Thou last of all the Tudors, come away ! With us in peace ! ' The last? It was a dream ; I must not dream, not wink, but watch. She has gone, Maid Marian to her Robin — by and by Both happy ! a fox may filch a hen by night. And make a morning outcry in the yard; But there's no Renard here to • catch her tripping.' Catch me who can; yet, sometime I have wish'd That I were caught, and kill'd away at once Out of the flutter. The gray rogue, Gardiner, Went on his knees, and pray'd me to confess In Wyatt's business, and to cast myself Upon the good Queen's mercy; ay, when, my Lord? God save the Queen ! My jailor — Enter SiR Henry Bedingfield. Bedim^field. One, whose bolts, That jail "you from free life, bar you from death. There haunt some Papist ruffians here- about Would murder you. Elizabeth. I thank you heartily, sir, But I am royal, tho' your prisoner. And God hath blest or cursed me with a nose — Your boots are from the horses. Bedingfield. Ay, my Lady. When next there comes a missive from the Queen It shall be all my study for one hour To rose and lavender my horsiness. Before I dare to glance upon your Grace. Elizabeth, i^missive from the Queen : last time she wrote, I had like to have lost my life : it takes my breath: O God, sir, do you look upon your boots^ Are you so small a man? Help me: what think you, Is it life or death? Bedingfield. I thought not on my boots; SCENE VI. QUEEN MARY. 607 The devil take all boots were ever made Since man went barefoot. See, I lay it here, For I will come no nearer to your Grace; {^Laying dozvn the letter. And, whether it bring you bitter news or sweet, And God hath given your Grace a nose, or not, I'll help you, if I may. Elizabeth. Your pardon, then; It is the heat and narrowness of the cage That makes the captive testy; with free wing The world were all one Araby. Leave me now, Will you, companion to myself, sir? Beding field. Willi? With most exceeding willingness, I will; You know I never come till I be call'd. {Exit. Elizabeth. It lies there folded : is there venom in it? A snake — and if I touch it, it may sting. Come, come, the worst ! Best wisdom is to know the worst at once. \^Reads: *It is the King's wish, that you should wed Prince Philibert of Savoy. You are to come to Court on the instant; and think of this in your coming. *Mary the Queen.* Think ! I have many thoughts; I think there may be birdlime here for me; I think they fain would have me from the realm ; I think the Queen may never bear a child; I think that I may be sometime the Queen, Then, Queen indeed : no"Toreign prince or priest Should fill my throne, myself upon the steps. I think I will not marry anyone, Specially not this landless Philibert Of Savoy; but, if Philip menace me, I think that I will play with Philibert, — As once the Holy Father did with mine, Before my father married my good •mother, — For fear of Spain. Enter Lady. Lady. O Lord! your Grace, your Grace, I feel so happy : it seems that we shall fly These bald, blank fields, and dance into the sun That shines on princes. Elizabeth. Yet, a moment since, I wish'd myself the milkmaid singing here. To kiss and cuff among the birds and flowers — A right rough life and healthful. Lady. But the wench Hath her own troubles; she is weeping now; For the wrong Robin took her at her word.. Then the cow kick'd, and all her milk was spilt. Your Highness such a milkmaid? Elizabeth. I had kept My Robins and my cows in sweeter order Had I been such. Lady {slyly). And had your Grace a Robin? Elizabeth. Come, come, you are chill here; you want the sun That shines at court;, make ready for the journey. Pray God, we 'scape the sunstroke. Ready at once. {^Exeunt. SCENE VI. — London. A Room in THE Palace. Lord Petre and Lord William Howard. Petre. You cannot see the Queen. Renard denied her, Ev'n now to me. Howard. Their Flemish go-between And all-in-all, I came to thank her Majesty For freeing my friend Bagenhall from the Tower; A grace to me ! Mercy, that herb-of« grace, Flowers now but seldom. 6o8 QUEEN MARY. ACT III. Petre. Only now perhaps. Because the Queen hath been three days m tears For Philip's going — like the wild hedge- rose Of a soft winter, possible, not probable, However you have prov'n it. Howard. I must see her. Ente)'- Renard. Renard. My Lords, you cannot see her Majesty. Howard. Why then the King ! for I would have him bring it Home to the leisure wisdom of his Queen, Before he go, that since these statutes . past, Gardiner out-Gardiners Gardiner in his heat, Bonner cannot out-Bonner his own self — Beast! — but they play with fire as chil- dren do. And burn the house. I know that these are breeding A fierce resolve and fixt heart-hate in men Against the King, the Queen, the Holy Father, The faith itself. Can I not see him? Renard. Not now. And in all this, my Lord, her Majesty Is flint of flint, you may strike fire from her, Not hope to melt her. I will give your message. {^Exeunt Petre and Howard. Enter Philip {musing). Philip. She will not have Prince Philibert of Savoy, I talk'd with her in vain — says she will live And die true maid — a goodly creature too. Would she had been the Queen ! yet she must have him; She troubles England : that she breathes in England Is life and lungs to every rebel birth That passes out of embryo. Simon Renard ! — This Howard, whom they fear, what was he saying? Renard. What your imperial father said, my liege, To deal with heresy gentlier. Gardiner burns, And Bonner burns; and it would seem this people Care more for our brief life in their wet land. Than yours in happier Spain. I told my Lord He should not vex her Highness; she would say These are the means God works with, that His church May flourish. Philip. Ay, sir, but in statesmanship To strike too soon is oft to miss the blow. Thou knovvest I bade my chaplain, Castro, preach Against these burnings. Renard. And the Emperor Approved you, and when last he wrote, declared His comfort in your Grace that you were bland And affable to men of all estates, In hope to charm them from their hate of Spain. Philip. In hope to crush all heresy under Spain. But, Renard, I am sicker staying here Than any sea could make me passing hence, Tho' I be ever deadly sick at sea. So sick ain I with biding for this child. Is it the fashion in this clime for women To go twelve months in bearing of a child? The nurses yawn'd, the cradle gaped, they led Processions, chanted litanies, clash'd their bells, Shot off their lying cannon, and her priests Have preach 'd, the fools, of this fair prince tp come; Till, by St. James, I find myself the fool. Why do you lift your eyebrow at me thus? Renard. I never saw your Highness moved till now. Philip. So weary am I of this wet land of theirs. And every soul of man that breathes therein. SCENE VI. QUEEN MARY, 609 Kenai'd. My liege, we must not drop the mask before The masquerade is over — Philip. — Have I dropt it? I have but shown a loathing face to you, Who knew it from the first. Enter Mary. Mary (aside). With Renard. Still Parleying with Renard, all the day with Renard, And scarce a greeting all the day for me — And goes to-morrow. \_Exit Mary. Philip {to Renard, who advances to him). Well, sir, is there more ? Renard {u'ho has perceived the Queen). May Simon Renard speak a single word? Philip. Ay. Renard. And be forgiven for it? Philip. Simon Renard Knows me too well to speak a single word That could not be forgiven. Renard. Well, my liege, Your Grace hath a most chaste and loving wife. Philip. Why not? The Queen of Philip should be chaste. Renard. Ay, but, my Lord, you know what Virgil sings, Woman is various and most mutable. Philip. She play the harlot ! never. Renard. No, sire, no. Not dream'd of by the rabidest gospeller. There was a paper thrown into the palace, •The King hath wearied of his barren bride.' She came upon it, read it, and then rent it, With all the rage of one who hates a truth He cannot but allow. Sire, I would have you — What should I say, I cannot pick my words — Be somewhat less — majestic to your Queen. Philip. Am I to change my manners, Simon. Renard, Because these islanders are brutal beasts? Or would you have me turn a sonneteer. And warble those brief-sighted eyes of hers? 2B Renard. Brief-sighted tho' they be, I have seen them, sire, When you perchance were trifling royally With some fair dame of court, suddenly till With such fierce fire — had it been fire indeed It would have burnt both speakers. Philip. Av, and then? Renard. Sire, might it not be policy in some matter Of small importance now and then to cede A point to her demand? Philip. Well, I am going. Retiard. For should her love when you are gone, my liege. Witness these papers, there will not be wanting Those that will urge her injury — should her love — And I have known such women more than one — Veer to the counterpoint, and jealousy Hath in it an alchemic force to fuse Almost into one metal love and hate, — And she impress her wrongs upon her Council, ^ And these again upon her Parliament — We are not loved here, and would be then perhaps Not so well holpen in our wars with France, As else we might be — here she comes. Enter Mary. O Philip ! Mary. Nay, must you go indeed? Philip. Madam, I must. Mary. The parting of a husband and a wife Is like the cleaving of a heart; one half Will flutter here, one there. Philip. You say true, Madam. Mary. The Holy Virgin will not have me yet Lose the sweet hope that I may bear a prince. If such a prince were born and you not here ! Philip. I should be here if such a prince were born. Mary. But must you go? 6IO QUEEN MARY. Philip. Madam, you know my father, Retiring into cloistral solitude To yield the remnant of his' years to heaven, Will shift the yoke and weight of all the world From off his neck to mine. We meet at Brussels. But since mine absence will not be for long, Your Majesty shall go to Dover with me, And wait my coming back. Mary, To Dover? no, I am too feeble. I will go to Greenwich, So you will have me with you; and there watch All that is gracious in the breath of heaven Draw with your sails from our poor land, and pass And leave me, Philip, with my prayers for you. Philip. And doubtless I shall profit by your prayers. Mary. Methinks that would you tarry one day more (The news was sudden) I could mould myself To bear your going better; will you do it? Philip. Madam, a day may sink or save a realm. Mary. A day may save a heart from breaking too. Philip. Well, Simon Renard, shall we stop a day? Renard. Your Grace's business will not suffer, sire, For one day more, so far as I can tell. Philip. Then one day more to please her Majesty. Mary. The sunshine sweeps across my life again. if I knew you felt this parting, Philip, As I do ! Philip. By St. James I do protest. Upon the faith and honour of a Span- iard, 1 am vastly grieved to leave your Majesty. Simon, is supper ready? Renard. Ay, my liege, I saw the covers laying. Philip, Let us have it. \_Exeunt. ACT IV. SCENE I. — A Room in the Palace Mary, Cardinal Pole. Mary. What have you there? Pole. So please your Majesty, A long petition from the foreign exiles To spare the life of Cranmer. Bishop Thirlby, And my Lord Paget and Lord William Howard, Crave, in the same cause, hearing of your Grace. Hath he not written himself — infatu- ated — To sue you for his life? Mary. His life? Oh, no; Not sued for that — he knows it were in vain. But so much of the anti-papal leaven Works in him yet, he hath pray'd me not to sully Mine own prerogative, and degrade the realm By seeking justice at a stranger's hand Against my natural subject. King and Queen, To whom he owes his loyalty after God, Shall these accuse him to a foreign prince? Death would not grieve him more. I cannot be True to this realm of England and the Pope Together, says the heretic. Pole. And there errs; As he hath ever err'd thro' vanity. A secular kingdom is but as the body Lacking a soul; and in itself a beast. The Holy Father in a secular kingdom Is as the soul descending out of heaven Into a body generate. Mary. Write to him, then. Pole. I will. Mary. And sharply, Pole. Pole. Here come the Cranmerites ! Enter Thirlby, Lord Paget, Lord William Howard. Howard. Health to your Grace! Good morrow, my Lord Cardinal; SCENE I. QUEEN MARY. 6ii We make our humble prayer unto your Grace That Cranmer may withdraw to foreign parts, Or into private life within the realm. In several bills and declarations, Madam, He hath recanted all his heresies. Paget. Ay, ay; if Bonner have not forged the bills, \_Aside. Mary. Did not More die, and Fisher ? he must burn. Howard. He hath recanted, Madam. Mary. The better for him. He burns in Purgatory, not in Hell. Howard. Ay, ay, your Grace; but it was never seen That anyone recanting thus at full, As Cranmer hath, came to the fire on earth. Mary. It will be seen now, then. Thirlby. O Madam, Madam ! I thus implore you, low upon my knees. To reach the hand of mercy to my friend. I have err'd with him; with him I have recanted. What human reason is there why my friend Should meet with lesser mercy than my- self? Mary. My Lord of Ely, this. After a riot We hang the leaders, let their following go. Cranmer is head and father of these here- sies. New learning as they call it; yea, may God Forget me at most need when I forget Her foul divorce — my sainted mother — No! — Howard. Ay, ay, but mighty doctors doubted there. The Pope himself waver'd; and more than one Row'd in that galley — Gardiner to wit, Whom truly I deny not to have been Your faithful friend and trusty councillor. Hath not your Highness ever read his book, His tractate upon True Obedience, Writ by himself and Bonner? Mary. I will take Such order with all bad, heretical books That none shall hold them in his house and live. Henceforward. No, my Lord. Howard. Then never read it. The truth is here. Your father was a man Of such colossal . kinghood, yet so cour- teous, Except when wroth, you scarce could meet his eye And hold your own ; and were he wroth indeed. You held it less, or not at all. I say, Your father had a will that beat men down ; Your father had a brain that beat men down — Pole. Not me, my Lord. Howard. No, for you were not here; You sit upon this fallen Cranmer's throne; And it would more become you, my Lord Legate, To join a voice, so potent with her High- ness, To ours in plea for Cranmer than to stand On naked self-assertion. Mary. All your voices Are waves on flint. The heretic must burn. Howard. Yet once he saved your Majesty's own life; Stood out against the King in your be- half. At his own peril. Mary. I know not if he did; And if he did I care not, my Lord Howard. My life is not so happy, no such boon. That I should spare to take a heretic priest's, Who saved it or not saved. Why do you vex me? Paget. Yet to save Cranmer were to serve the Church, Your Majesty's I mean; he is effaced, Self-blotted out; so wounded in his honour. He can but creep down into some dark hole Like a hurt beast, and hide himself and die; But if you burn him, — well, your High- ness knows The saying, * Martyr's blood — seed of the Church.' 6l2 QUEEN MARY. ACT IV Mary. Of the true Church; but his is none, not will be. You are too politic for me, my Lord Paget. And if he have to live so loath'd a life. It were more merciful to burn him now. Thirlby. Oh, yet relent. O Madam, if you knew him As I do, ever gentle, and so gracious. With all his learning — Mary. Yet a heretic still. His learning makes his burning the more just. Thirlby. So worshipt of all those that came across him; The stranger at his hearth, and all his house — Mary. His children and his concu- bine, belike, Thirlby. To do him any wrong was to beget A kindness from him, for his heart was rich. Of such fine mould, that if you sow'd therein The seed of Hate, it blossom'd Charity. Pole. * After his kind it costs him nothing,' there's An old world English adage to the point. These are but natural graces, my good Bishop, Which in the Catholic garden are as flowers, But on the heretic dunghill only weeds. Howard. Such weeds make dunghills gracious. Mary. Enough, my Lords. It is God's will, the Holy Father's will. And Philip's will, and mine, that he should burn. He is pronounced anathema. Howard. Farewell, Madam, God grant you ampler mercy at your call Than you have shown to Cranmer. S^Exeunt Lords. Pole. After this. Your Grace will hardly care to overlook This same petition of the foreign exiles For Cranmer's life. Mary. Make out the writ to-night. \_ExeunL SCENE II. — Oxford. Cranmer m Prison. Cranmer. Last night, I dream'd the faggots were alight, And that myself was fasten'd to the stake, And found it all a visionary flame. Cool as the light in old decaying wood; And then King Harry look'd out from a cloud. And bade me have good courage; and I heard An angel cry, 'There is more joy in Heaven,' — And after that, the trumpet of the dead. [ Trumpets without. Why, there are trumpets blowing now : what is it? Enter Father Cole. Cole. Cranmer, I come to question you again; Have you remain'd in the true Catholic faith I left you in? Cranmer. In thp true Catholic faith, By Heaven's grace, I am more and more confirm'd. Why are the trumpets blowing, Father Cole? Cole. Cranmer, it is decided by the Council That you to-day should read your recan- tation Before the people in St. Mary's Church. And there be many heretics in the town, Who loathe you for your late return to Rome, And might assail you passing through the street, And tear you piecemeal : so you have a guard. Cranmer. Or seek to rescue me. I thank the Council. Cole. Do you lack any money ? Cranmer. Nay, why should I? The prison fare is good enough for me. Cole. Ay, but to give the poor. Cranmer. Hand it me, then ! I thank you. Cole. For a little space, farewell; Until I see you in St. Mary's Church. \^Exit Cole, QUEEN MARY. 613 Cranmer. It is against all precedent to burn One who recants; they mean to pardon me. To give the poor — they give the poor who die. Well, burn me or not burn me I am fixt; It is but a communion, not a mass : A holy supper, not a sacrifice; No man can make his Maker — Villa Garcia. Enter Villa Garcia. Villa Garcia. Pray you write out this paper for me, Cranmer. Cranmer. Have I not writ enough to satisfy you? Villa Garcia. It is the last. Cranmer. Give it me, then. \_He writes. Villa Garcia. Now sign. Cranmer. I have sign'd enough, and I will sign no more. Villa Garcia, It is no more than what you have sign'd already. The public form thereof. Cranmer. It may be so; I sign it with my presence, if I read it. Villa Garcia. But this is idle of you. Well, sir, well. You are to beg the people to pray for you; Exhort them to a pure and virtuous life; Declare the Queen's right to the throne; confess Your faith before all hearers; and retract That Eucharistic doctrine in your book. Will you not sign it now? Cranmer. No, Villa Garcia, I sign no more. Will they have mercy on me? ■ Villa Garcia. Have you good hopes of mercy ! So, farewell. \^Exit. Cran?ner. Good hopes, not theirs, have I that I am fixt, Fixt beyond fall; however, in strange hours, After the long brain-dazing colloquies. And thousand-times recurring argument Of those two friars ever in my prison. When left alone in my despondency, Without a friend, a book, my faith would seem Dead or half-drown'd, or else swam heavily Against the huge corruptions of the Church, Monsters of mistradition, old enough To scare me into dreaming, * what am I, Cranmer, against whole ages? ' was it so, Or am I slandering my most inward friend, To veil the fault of my most outward foe — The soft and tremulous coward in the flesh? higher, holier, earlier, purer church, 1 have found thee and not leave thee any more. It is but a communion, not a mass — No sacrifice, but a life-giving feast ! ( Writes.) So, so; this will I say — thus will I pray. \^Puts up the paper. Enter BoNNER. Bonner. Good-day, old friend; what, you look somewhat worn; And yet it is a day to test your health Ev'n at the best : I scarce have spoken with you Since when? — your degradation. At your trial Never stood up a bolder man than you; You would not cap the Pope's commis- sioner — Your learning, and your stoutness, and your heresy, Dumbfounded half of us. So, after that. We had to dis-archbishop and unlord. And make you simple Cranmer once again. The common barber dipt your hair, and I Scraped from your finger-points the holy oil; And worse than all, you had to kneel to me ; Which was not pleasant for you. Master Cranmer. Now you, that would not recognise the Pope, And you, that would not own the Real Presence, Have found a real presence in the stake, Which frights you back into the ancient faith; 6i4 QUEEN MARY. And so you have recanted to the Pope. How are the mighty fallen, Master Cranmer ! Cranmer, You have been more fierce against the Pope than I; But why fling back the stone he strikes me with? \^Aside. Bonner, if I ever did you kindness — Power hath been given you to try faith by fire — Pray you, remembering how yourself have changed, Be somewhat pitiful, after I have gone, To the poor flock — to women and to children — That when I was archbishop held with me. Bonner. Ay — gentle as they call you — live or die ! Pitiful to this pitiful heresy? 1 must obey the Queen and Council, man. Win thro' this day with honour to your- self. And I'll say something for you — so — good-bye. \^Exit. Cranmer. This hard coarse man of old hath crouch'd to me Till I myself was half ashamed for him. Enter Thirlby. Weep not, good Thirlby. Thirlby. O my Lord, my Lord ! My heart is no such block as Bonner's is : Who would not weep? Cranmer. Why do you so my-lord me. Who am disgraced? Thirlby. On earth; but saved in heaven By your recanting. Cranmer. Will they burn me, Thirlby? Thirlby. Alas, they will; these burn- ings will not help The purpose of the faith; but my poor voice Against them is a whisper to the roar Of a spring-tide. Craujuer. And they will surely burn me? Thirlby. Ay; and besides, will have you in the church Repeat your recantation in the ears Of all men, to the saving of their souls. Before your execution. May God help you Thro' that hard hour ! Cranmer. And may God bless you, Thirlby ! Well, they shall hear my recantation there. \_Exit Thirlby. Disgraced, dishonour'd ! — not by them, indeed, -By mine own self — by mine own hand! thin-skinn'd hand and jutting veins, 'twas you That sign'd the burning of poor Joan of Kent; But then she was a witch. You have written much. But you were never raised to plead for Frith, Whose dogmas I have reach'd: he was deliver'd To the secular arm to burn; and there was Lambert; Who can foresee himself? truly these burnings. As Thirlby says, are profitless to the burners. And help the other side. You shall burn too. Burn first when I am burnt. Fire — inch by inch to die in agony! Latimer Had a brief end — not Ridley. Hooper burn'd Three-quarters of an hour. Will my faggots Be wet as his were ? It is a day of rain. 1 will not muse upon it. My fancy takes the burner's part, and makes The fire seem even crueller than it is. No, I doubt not that God will give me strength. Albeit I have denied him. Enter Soto and Villa Garcia. Villa Garcia. ' We are ready To take you to St. Mary's, Master Cranmer. Cranmer. And I : lead on ; ye loose me from my bonds. \^Ereunt. SCENE III. QUEEN MARY. 615 SCENE III. — St. Mary's Church. Cole /« the Pulpit, Lord Williams of Thame presiding. Lord Wijxiam Howard, Lord Paget, and others. Cranmer enters between SoTO and Villa Garcia, and the whole Choir strike up ' Nunc Dimittis.' Cranmer is set upon a scaffbld before the people. Cole. Behold him — \^A pause: people in the foreground. People. Oh, unhappy sight ! First Protestaftt. See how the tears run down his fatherly face. Second Protestant. James, didst thou ever see a carrion crow Stand watching a sick beast before he dies? First Protestant. Him perch'd up there? I wish some thunderbolt Would make this Cole a cinder, pulpit and all. Cole. Behold him, brethren : he hath cause to weep ! — So have we all : weep with him if ye will, Yet — It is expedient for one man to die. Yea, for the people, lest the people die. Yet wherefore should he die that hath return'd To the one Catholic Universal Church, Repentant of his errors? Protestant murmurs. Ay, tell us that. Cole. Those of the wrong side will despise the man. Deeming him one that thro' the fear of death Gave up his cause, except he seal his faith In sight of all with flaming martyrdom. Cranmer. Ay. Cole. Ye hear him, and albeit there may seem According to the canons pardon due To him that so repents, yet are there causes Wherefore our Queen and Council at this time Adjudge him to the death. He hath been a traitor, A shaker and confounder of the realm; And when the King's divorce was sued at Rome, He here, this heretic metropolitan, As if he had been the Holy Father, sat And judged it. Did I call him heretic? A huge heresiarch ! never was it known That any man so writing, preaching s6, So poisoning the Church, so long con- tinuing, Hath found his pardon ; therefore he must die, For warning and example. Other reasons There be fct this man's ending, which our Queen And Council at this present deem it not Expedient to be known. Protestant viunnurs. I warrant you. Cole. Take therefore, all, example by this man. For if our Holy Queen not pardon him, Much less shall others in like cause escape, That all of you, the highest as the lowest, May learn there is no power against the Lord. There stands a man, once of so high degree, Chief prelate of our Church, archbishop, first In Council, second person in the realm. Friend for so long time of a mighty King : And now ye see downfallen and debased From councillor to caitiff — fallen so low. The leprous flutterings of the byway, scum And offal of the city, would not change Estates with him ; in brief, so miserable. There is no hope of better left for him, No place for worse. Yet, Cranmer, be thou glad. This is the work of God. He is glorified In thy conversion : lo ! thou art reclaim'd; He brings thee home : nor fear but that to-day Thou shalt receive the penitent thief's award. And be with Christ the Lord in Paradise. Remember how God made the fierce fire seem To those three children like a pleasant dew. Remember, too. The triumph of St. Andrew on his cross, The patience of St. Lawrence in the fire. 6i6 QUEEN MARY. ACT IV. Thus, if thou call on God and all the saints, God will beat down the fury of the flame, Or give thee saintly strength to undergo. And for thy soul shall masses here be sung By every priest in Oxford. Pray for him. Cranmer. Ay, one and all, dear brothers, pray for me; Pray with one breath, one heart, one soul for me. Cole. And now, lest anyone among you doubt The man's conversion and remorse of heart, Yourselves shall hear him speak. Speak, Master Cranmer, Fulfil your promise made me, and pro- claim Your true undoubted faith, that all may hear. Cranmer. And that I will. O God, Father of Heaven ! O Son of God, Redeemer of the world ! Holy Ghost ! proceeding from them both, Three persons and one God, have mercy on me. Most miserable sinner, wretched man. 1 have offended against heaven and earth More grievously than any tongue can tell. Then whither should I flee for any help? I am ashamed to Hft mine eyes to heaven. And I can find no refuge upon earth. Shall I despair then"? — God forbid ! O God, For thou art merciful, refusing none That come to Thee for succour, unto Thee, Therefore, I come; humble myself to Thee; Saying, O Lord God, although my sins be great. For thy great mercy have mercy! O God the Son, Not for. slight faults alone, when thou becamest Man in the Flesh, was the great mystery wrought; O God the Father, not for little sins Didst thou yield up thy Son to human death; But for the greatest sin that can be sinn'd, Yea, even such as mine, incalculable, Unpardonable, — sin against the light. The truth of God, which I had proven and known. Thy mercy must be greater than all sin. Forgive me, Father, for no merit of mine. But that Thy name by man be glorified, And Thy most blessed Son's, who died for man. Good people, evjsry man at time of death Would fain set forth some saying that may live After his death and better humankind ; For death gives life's last word a power to live. And, like the stone-cut epitaph, remain After the vanish'd voice, and speak to men. God grant me grace to glorify my God ! And first I say it is a grievous case. Many so dote upon this bubble world. Whose colours in a moment break and fly, They care for nothing else. What saith St. John : — 'Love of this world is hatred against God.' Again, I pray you all that, next to God, You do unmurmuringly and willingly Obey your King and Queen, and not for dread Of these alone, but from the fear of Him Whose ministers they be to govern you. Thirdly, I pray you all to live together Like brethren; yet what hatred Christian men Bear to each other, seeming not as brethren. But mortal foes ! But do you good to all As much as in you lieth. Hurt no man more Than you would harm your loving natural brother Of the same roof, same breast. If any do, Albeit he think himself at home with God, Of this be sure, he is whole worlds away. Protestant murmurs. What sort of brothers then be those that lust To burn each other? Williams. Peace among you, there I SCENE III. QUEEN MARY, 617 Cranmer. Fourthly, to those that own exceeding wealth, Remember that sore saying spoken once By Him that was the truth, ' How hard it is For the rich man to enter into Heaven; ' Let all rich men remember that hard word. I have not time for more : if ever, now Let them flow forth in charity, seeing now The poor so many, and all food so dear. Long have 1 lain in prison, yet have heard Of all their wretchedness. Give to the poor, Ye give to God. He is with us in the poor. And now, and forasmuch as I have come To the last end of life, and thereupon Hangs all my past, and all my life to be. Either to live with Christ in heaven with joy, Or to be still in pain with devils in hell; And, seeing in a moment, I shall find {^Pointing upwards. Heaven or else hell ready to swallow me, \^Pointutg downwards. I shall declare to you my very faith Without all colour. Cole. Hear him, my good brethren. Cranmer. I do believe in God, Father of all; In every article of the Catholic faith. And every syllable taught us by our Lord, His prophets, and apostles, in the Testa- ments, Both Old and New. Cole. Be plainer, Master Cranmer. Cranmer. And now I come to the great cause that weighs Upon my conscience more than anything Or said or done in all my life by me; For there be writings I have set abroad Against the truth I knew within my heart. Written for fear of death, to save my life, If that might be; the papers by my hand Sign'd since my degradation — by this hand \^Holding out his right hand. Written and sign'd — I here renounce them all; And, since my hand offended, having written Against my heart, my hand shall first be burnt, So I may come to the fire. \^Dead silence. Protestant murmurs. First Protestant. I knew it would be so. Second Protestant. Our prayers are heard ! Third Protestant. God bless him ! Catholic murmurs. Out upon him ! out upon him ! Liar ! dissembler ! traitor ! to the fire ! Williams {raising his voice). You know that you recanted all you said Touching the sacrament in that same book You wrote against my Lord of Winches- ter; Dissemble not; play the plain Christian man. Cranmer. Alas, my Lord, I have been a man loved plainness all my life; I did dissemble, but the hour has come For utter truth and plainness; wherefore, I say, I hold by all I wrote within that book. Moreover, As for the Pope I count him Antichrist, With all his devil's doctrines; and refuse, Reject him, and abhor him. I have said. [ Cries on all sides, * Pull him down ! Away with him ! ' Cole. Ay, stop the heretic's mouth ! Hale him away ! Williams. Harm him not, harm him not ! have him to the fire ! [Cranmer goes out between Two Friars, stniling; hands are reached to him from the crowd. Lord William Howard and Lord Paget are left alone in the church. Paget. The nave and aisles all empty as a fool's jest ! No, here's Lord William Howard. What, my Lord, You have not gone to see the burning? Howard. Fie ! To stand at ease, and stare as at a show, And watch a good man burn ! Never again. 6ig QUEEN MARY. ACT IV, I saw the deaths of Latimer and Ridley. Moreover, tho' a Cathohc, 1 would not, For the pure honour of our common nature. Hear what I might — another recanta- tion Of Cranmer at the stake. Paget. You'd not hear that. He pass'd out smiling, and he walk'd upright ; His eye was like a soldier's, whom the general He looks to and he leans on as his God, Hath rated for some backwardness and bidd'n him Charge one against a thousand, and the man Hurls his soil'd life against the pikes and dies. Howard. Yet that he might not after all those papers Of recantation yield again, who knows? Paget. Papers of recantation ! Think you then That Cranmer read all papers that he sign'd ? Or sign'd all those they tell us that he sign'd? Nay, I trow not : and you shall see, my Lord, That howsoever hero-like the man Dies in the fire, this Bonner or another "Will in some lying fashion misreport His ending to the glory of their church. And you saw Latimer and Ridley die ? Latimer was eighty, was he not? his best Of life was over then. Howard. His eighty years Look'd somewhat crooked on him in his frieze ; But after they had stript him to his shroud. He stood upright, a lad of twenty-one, And gather'd with his hands the starting flame. And wash'd his hands and all his face therein, Until the powder suddenly blew him dead. Ridley was longer burning; but he died As manfully and boldly, and, 'fore God, I know them heretics, but right English ones. If ever, as heaven grant, we clash with Spain, Our Ridley-soldiers and our Latimer- sailors Will teach her something. Paget. Your mild Legate Pole Will tell you that the devil helpt them thro' it. \_A murmur of the croivd in the dis^ tance. Hark, how those Roman wolfdogs howl and bay him ! Hozvard. Might it not be the other side rejoicing In his brave end? Paget. They are too crush'd, too broken. They can but weep in silence. Howard. Ay, ay, Paget, They have brought it in large measure on themselves. Have I not heard them mock the blessed Host In songs so lewd, the beast might roar his claim To being in God's image, more than they? Have I not seen the gamekeeper, the groom, Gardener, and huntsman, in the parson's place, The parson from his own spire swung out dead. And Ignorance crying in the streets, and all men Regarding her? I say they have drawn the fire On their own heads: yet, Paget, I do hold The Catholic, if he have the greater right. Hath been the crueller. Paget. Action and re-action, The miserable see-saw of our child-world, Make us despise it at odd hours, my Lord. Heaven help that this re-action not re- act Yet fiercelier under Queen Elizabeth, So that she come to rule us. - Howard. The world's mad. Paget. My Lord, the world is like a drunken man. SCENE III. QUEEN MARY. 619 Who cannot move straight to his end — but reels Now to the right, then as far to the left, Push'd by the crowd beside — and under- foot An earthquake; for since Henry for a doubt — Which a young lust had clapt upon the back, Crying, ' Forward ! ' — set our old church rocking, men Have hardly known what to believe, or whether They should believe in anything; the currents So shift and change, they see not how they are borne, Nor whither. I conclude the King a beast; Verily a lion if you will — the world A most obedient beast and fool — myself Half beast and fool as appertaining to it; Altho' your Lordship hath as little of each Cleaving to your original Adam-clay, As may be consonant with mortality. Howard. We talk and Cranmer suffers. The kindliest man I ever knew; see, see, I speak of him in the past. Unhappy land ! Hard-natured Queen, half-Spanish in herself. And grafted on the hard-grain'd stock of Spain — Her life, since Philip left her, and she lost Her fierce desire of bearing him a child. Hath, like a brief and bitter winter's day. Gone narrowing down and darkening to a close. There will be more conspiracies, I fear. Paget. Ay, ay, beware of France. Howard. O Paget, Paget, I have seen heretics of the poorer sort. Expectant of the rack from day to day, To whom the fire were welcome, lying chain'd In breathless dungeons over steaming sewers, Fed with rank bread that crawl'd upon the tongue, And putrid water, every drop a worm, Until they died of rotted limbs; and then Cast on the dunghill naked, and become Hideously alive again from head to heel. Made even the carrion-nosing mongrel vomit With hate and horror. Paget. Nay, you sicken vie To hear you. Hoivard. Fancy-sick; these things are done. Done right against the promise of this Queen Twice given. Paget. No faith with heretics, mv Lord ! Hist ! there be two old gossips — gospel- lers, I take it; stand behind the pillar here; I warrant you they talk about the burn- ing. Enter Two Old Women. Joan, and after her TiB. Joan. Why, it be Tib ! Tib. I cum behind tha, gall, and couldn't make tha hear. Eh, the wind and the wet ! What a day, what a day ! nigh upo' judgment daay loike. Pwoaps be pretty things, Joan, but they wunt set i' the Lord's cheer o' that daay. Joan. I must set down myself, Tib; it be a var waay vor my owld legs up vro' Islip. Eh, my rheumatizy be that bad howiver be I to win to the burnin'. Tib. I should saay 'twur ower by now. I'd ha' been here avore, but Dumble wur blow'd wi' the wind, and Dumble's the best milcher in Islip. Joan. Our Daisy's as good 'z her. Tib. Noa, Joan. Joajt. Our Daisy's butter's as good 'z hern. Tib. Noa, Joan. Joan. Our Daisy's cheeses be better. Tib. Noa, Joan. Joan. Eh, then ha' thy waay wi' me, Tib; ez thou hast wi' thy owld man. Tib. Ay, Joan, and my owld man wur up and awaay betimes wi' dree hard eggs for a good pleace at the burnin'; and barrin' the wet, Hodge 'ud ha' been a-harrowin' o' white peasen i' the outfield 620 QUEEN MARY. ACT V. — and barrin' the wind, Dumble wur blow'd wi' the wind, so 'z we was forced to stick her, but we fetched her round at last. Thank the Lord therevore. Bum- ble's the best mile her in Islip. Joan. Thou's thy way wi' man and beast, Tib. I wonder at tha', it beats me ! Eh, but I do know ez Pwoaps and vires be bad things; tell 'ee now, I heerd summat as summun towld summun o' owld Bishop Gardiner's end; there wur an owld lord a-cum to dine wi' un, and a wur so owld a couldn't bide vor his dinner, but a had to bide howsomiver, vor 'I wunt dine,' says my Lord Bishop, says he, * not till I hears ez Latimer and Ridley be a-vire;' and so they bided on and on till vour o' the clock, till his man cum in post vro' here, and tells un ez the vire has tuk holt. 'Now,' says the Bishop, says he, 'we'll gwo to dinner;' and the owld lord fell to 's meat wi' a will, God bless un ! but Gardiner wur struck down like by the hand o' God avore a could taste a mossel, and a set un all a-vire, so 'z the tongue on un cum a-lolluping out o' 'is mouth as black as a rat. Thank the Lord, therevore, Paget. The fools ! Tib. Ay, Joan; and Queen Mary gwoes on a-burnin' and a-burnin', to get her baaby born; but all her hurnin's 'ill never burn out the hypocrisy that makes the water in her. There's nought but the vire of God's hell ez can burn out ■.hat. Joan. Thank the Lord, therevore. Paget. The fools ! Tib. A-burnin', and a-burnin', and a-makin' o' volk madder and madder; but tek thou my word vor't, Joan, — and I bean't wrong not twice i' ten year — the burnin' o' the owld archbishop 'ill burn the Pwoap out o' this 'ere land vor iver and iver. Howard. Out of the church, you brace of cursed crones, Or I will have you duck'd ! ( Women hurry out.) Said I not right? For how should reverend prelate or throned prince Brook for an hour such brute malignity? Ah, what an acrid wine has Luther brew'd ! Paget. Pooh, pooh, my Lord! pool garrulous country-wives. Buy you their cheeses, and they'll side with you; You cannot judge the liquor from the lees. Howard. I think that in some sort we may. But see, Enter Peters. Peters, my gentleman, an honest Catholic, Who foUow'd with the crowd to Cran- mer's fire. One that would neither misreport nor lie, Not to gain Paradise : no, nor if the Pope, Charged him to do it — he is white as death, Peters, how pale you look ! you bring the smoke Of Cranmer's burning with you. Peters. Twice or thrice The smoke ot Cranmer's burning wrapt me round. Howard. Peters, you know me Catholic, but English. Did he die bravely ? Tell me that, or leave All else untold. Peters. My Lord, he died most bravely. Howard. Then tell me all. Paget. Ay, Master Peters, tell us. Peters. You saw him how he past among the crowd; And ever as he walk'd the Spanish friars Still plied him with entreaty and reproach : But Cranmer, as the helmsman at the helm Steers, ever looking to the happy haven Where he shall rest at night, moved to his death; And I could see that many silent hands Came from the crowd and met his own; and thus, When we had come where Ridley burnt with Latimer, He, with a cheerful smile, as one whose mind Is all made up, in haste put off the rags They had mock'd his misery with, and all in white. His long white beard, which he had never shaven Since Henry's death, down-sweeping to the chain. Wherewith they bound him to the stake, he stood SCENE QUEEN MARY. 621 More like an ancient father of the Church, Than heretic of these times; and still the friars Plied him, but Cranmer only shook his head, Or answer'd them in smiling negatives; Whereat Lord Williams gave a sudden cry: — * Make short ! make short ! ' and so they lit the wood. Then Cranmer lifted his left hand to heaven, And thrust his right into the bitter flame; And crying, in his deep voice, more than once, •This hath offended — this unworthy hand ! ' So held it till it all was burn'd, before The flame had reach'd his body; I stood near — Msyrk'd him — he never uttered moan of pain: He never stirr'd or writhed, but, like a statue, Unmoving in the greatness of the flame, Gave up the ghost; and so past martyr- like— Martyr I may not call him — past — but whither? Paget. To purgatory, man, to purga- tory. Peters. Nay, but, my Lord, he denied purgatory. Paget. Why then to heaven, and God ha' mercy on him. Howard. Paget, despite his fearful heresies, I loved the man, and needs must moan for him; Cranmer ! Paget. But your moan is useless now : Come out, my Lord, it is a world of fools. {^Exeunt, ACT V. SCENE I. — London. Hall in the Palace. Queen, Sir Nicholas Heath. Heath. Madam, 1 do assure you, that it must be look'd to: Calais is but ill-garrison'd, in Guisnes Are scarce two hundred men, and the French fleet Rule in the narrow seas. It must be look'd to. If war should fall between yourself and France; Or you will lose your Calais. Mary. It shall be look'd to; I wish you a good morning, ■ good Sir Nicholas : Here is the King. \_Exit Heath. Enter Philip. Philip. Sir Nicholas tells you true, And you must look to Calais when I go. Mary. Go? must you go, indeed — again — so soon? Why, nature's licensed vagabond, the swallow. That might live always in the sun's warm heart. Stays longer here in our poor north than you: — Knows where he nested — ever comes again. Philip, And, Madam, so shall I. Mary. Oh, will you? will you? I am faint with fear that you will come no more. Philip. Ay, ay; but many voices call me hence. Mary. Voices — I hear unhappy ru- mours — nay, I say not, I believe. What voices call you Dearer than mine that should be dearest to you? Alas, my Lord! what voices and how many? Philip. The voices of Castille and Aragon, Granada, Naples, Sicily, and Milan, — The voices of Franche-Comte, and the Netherlands, The voices of Peru and Mexico, Tunis, and Oran, and the Philippines, And all the fair spice-islands of the East. Mary {ad7?iiringly). You are the mightiest monarch upon earth, I but a little Queen: and so, indeed. Need you the more. Philip. A little Queen ! but when 622 QUEEN MARY. I came to wed your majesty, Lord Howard, Sending an insolent shot that dash'd the seas Upon us, made us lower our kingly flag To yours of England. Mary. Howard is all English ! There is no king, not were he ten times king. Ten times our husband, but must lower his flag To that of England in the seas of Eng- land. Philip. Is that your answer? Mary. Being Queen of England, I have none other. Philip. So. Mary. But wherefore not Helm the huge vessel of your state, my liege. Here by the side of her who loves you most? Philip. No, Madam, no ! a candle in the sun Is all but smoke — a star beside the moon Is all but lost; your people will not crown me — Your people are as cheerless as your clime; Hate me and mine : witness the brawls, the gibbets. Here swings a Spaniard — there an Eng- lishman; The peoples are unlike as their com- plexion ; Yet will I be your swallow and return — But now I cannot bide. Mary. Not to help me ? They hate me also for my love to you, My Philip; and these judgments on the land — Harvestless autumns, horrible agues, plague — Philip. The blood and sweat of here- tics at the stake Is God's best dew upon the barren field. Burn more ! Mary. I will, I will ; and you will stay ? Philip. Have I not said? Madam, I came to sue Your Council and yourself to declare war. Mary. Sir, there are many English in your ranks To help your battle. Philip. So far, good. I say I came to sue your Council and yourself To declare war against the King ot France. Mary. Not to see me? Philip. Ay, Madam, to see you. Unalterably and pesteringly fond ! {^Aside. But, soon or late you must have war with France; King Henry warms your traitors at his hearth. Carew is there, and Thomas Stafford there. Courtenay, belike — Mary. A fool and featherhead ! Philip. Ay, but they use his name. In brief, this Henry Stirs up your land against you to the in- tent That you may lose your English heritage. And then, your Scottish namesake mar- rying The Dauphin, he would weld France, England, Scotland, Into one sword to hack at Spain and me. Mary. And yet the Pope is now col- leagued with France; You make your wars upon him down in Italy : — Philip, can that be well? Philip. Content you. Madam; You must abide my judgment, and my father's, Who deems it a most just and holy war. The Pope would cast the Spaniard out of Naples: He calls us worse than Jews, Moors, Saracens. The Pope has pushed his horns beyond his mitre — Beyond his province. Now, Duke Alva will but touch him on the horns. And he withdraws; and of his holy head — For Alva is true son of the true church — No hair is harm'd. Will you not help me here? Mary. Alas ! the Council will not hear of war. They say your wars are not the wars of England. They will not lay more taxes on a land QUEEN MARY. 623 So hunger-nipt and wretched; and you know The crown is poor. We have given the church-lands back : The nobles would not; nay, they clapt their hands Upon their swords when ask'd; and therefore God Is hard upon the people. What's to be done? Sir, I will move them in your cause again, And we will raise us loans and subsidies Among the merchants; and Sir Thomas Gresham Will aid us. There is Antwerp and the Jews. Philip. Madam, my thanks. Mary. And you will stay your going? Philip. And further to discourage and lay lame The plots of France, altho' you love her not, You must proclaim Elizabeth your heir. She stands between you and the Queen of Scots. Mary. The Queen of Scots at least is Catholic. Philip. Ay, Madam, Catholic; but I will not have The King of France the King of England too. Mary. But she's a heretic,' and, when I am gone, Brings the new learning back. Philip. It must be done. You must proclaim Elizabeth your heir. Mary. Then it is done; but you will stay your going Somewhat beyond your settled purpose? Philip. No ! Mary. What, not one day? Philip. You beat upon the rock. Mary. And I am broken there. Philip. Is this a place To wail in. Madam? what ! a public hall. Go in, 1 pray you. Mary. Do not seem so changed. Say go; but only say it lovingly. Philip. You do mistake. I am not one to change. I never loved you more. Mary. Come quickly. Philip. Ay, Sire, I obey you \^Exit Mary. Etiter Count de Feria. Feria {aside). The Queen in tears! Philip. Feria ! Hast thou not mark'd — come closer to mine ear — How doubly aged this Queen of ours hath grown Since she lost hope of bearing us a child? Feria. Sire, if your Grace hath mark'd it, so have I. Philip. Hast thou not likewise mark'd Elizabeth, How fair and royal — like a Queen, indeed? Feria. Allow me the same answer as before — That if your Grace hath mark'd her, so have I. Philip. Good, now; methinks my Queen is like enough To leave me by and by. Feria. To leave you, sire ? Philip. I mean not like to live. Elizabeth — To Philibert of Savoy, as you know, We meant to wed her; but I am not sure She will not serve me better — so my Queen Would leave me — as — my wife. Feria. Sire, even so. Philip. She will not have Prince Philibert of Savoy. Feria. No, sire. Philip. I have to pray you, some odd time. To sound the Princess carelessly on this; Not as from me, but as your phantasy; And tell me how she takes it. Feria. Sire, I will. Philip. I am not certain but that Philibert Shall be the man; and I shall urge his suit Upon the Queen, because I am not cer- tain : You understand, Feria? Feria. Sire, I do. 624 QUEEN MARY. Philip. And if you be not secret in this matter, You understand me there, too? Feria. Sire, I do. Philip. You must be sweet and supple, like a Frenchman. She is none of those who loathe the honeycomb. \_Exit Feria. Enter Renard. Renard. My liege, I bring you goodly tidings. Philip. Well? Renard. There will be war with France, at last, my liege; Sir Thomas Stafford, a bull-headed ass. Sailing from France, with thirty English- men, Hath taken Scarboro' Castle, north of York; Proclaims himself protector, and affirms The Queen has forfeited her right to reign By marriage with an alien — other things As idle; a weak Wyatt ! Little doubt This buzz will soon be silenced; but the Council (I have talk'd with some already) are for war. This is the fifth conspiracy hatch'd in France ; They show their teeth upon it; and your Grace, So you will take advice of mine, should stay Yet for awhile, to shape and guide the event. Philip. Good! Renard, I will stay then. Renard. Also, sire, Might t not say — to please your wife, the Queen? Philip. Ay, Renard, if you care to put it so. \_Exeunt. SCENE II. — A Room in the Palace. Mary, sitting: a rose in her hand. Lady Clarence. Alice in the hack- ground. Mary. Look ! I have play'd with this poor rose so long I have broken off the head. Lady Clarence. Your Grace hath been More merciful to many a rebel head That should have fallen, and may rise again. Mary. There were not many hang'd for Wyatt's rising. Lady Clarence, Nay, not two hundred. Mary. 1 could weep for them And her, and mine own self and all the world. Lady Clarence. For her? for whom, your Grace? Enter UsHER. Usher. The Cardinal. Enter Cardinal Pole. (Mary rises^ Mary. Reginald Pole, what news hath plagued thy heart? "What makes thy favour like the bloodless head Fall'n on the block, and held up by the hair? Philip? — Pole. No, Philip is as warm in life As ever. Mary. Ay, and then as cold as ever. Is Calais taken? Pole. Cousin, there hath chanced A sharper harm to Ergland and to Rome, Than Calais taken. Julius the Third Was ever just, and mild, and father-like; But this new Pope Caraffa, Paul the Fourth, Not only reft me of that legateship Which Julius gave me, and the legateship Annex'd toCanterbury — nay, but worse — And yet I must obey the Holy Father, And so must you, good cousin; — worse than all, A passing bell toU'd in a dying ear — He hath cited me to Rome, for heresy, Before his Inquisition. Mary. I knew it, cousin, But held from you all papers sent by Rome, That you might rest among us, till the Pope, To compass which I wrote myself to Rome, Reversed his doom, and that you might not seem To disobey his Holiness. SCENE II. QUEEI^ MARY. 625 Pole. He hates Philip; (It was God's cause); so far they call He is all Italian, and he hates the me now. Spaniard; The scourge and butcher of their English He cannot dream that / advised the church. war; Alary. Have courage, your reward is He strikes thro' me at Philip and your- Heaven itself. self. Pole. They proan amen; they swarm Nay, but I know it of old, he hates me into the .re too; Like flies — for what? no dogma. They So brands me in the stare of Christendom know nothing; A heretic ! They burn for nothing. Now, even now, when bow'd before my Mary. You have done your best. time, Pole. Have done my best, and as a The house half-ruin'd ere the lease be faithful son, out; That all day long hath wrought his father's When I should guide the Church in peace work, at home. When back he comes at evening hath the After my twenty years of banishment. door And all my lifelong labour to uphold Shut on him by the father whom he The primacy — a heretic. Long ago, loved. When I was ruler in the patrimony. His early follies cast into his teeth, I was too lenient to the Lutheran, And the poor son turn'd out into the And I and learned friends among our- street selves To sleep, to die — I shall die of it. Would freely canvass certain Lutheran- cousin. isms. Mary. I pray you be not so' dis- W^hat then, he knew I was no Lutheran. consolate; A heretic ! I still will do mine utmost with the Pope. He drew this shaft against me to the Poor cousin ! head, Have not I been the fast friend of youi When it was thought I might be chosen life Pope, Since mine began, and it was thought we But then withdrew it. In full consis- two tory, Might make one flesh, and cleave unto When I was made Archbishop, he each other approved me. As man and wife? And how should he "have sent me Legate Pole. Ah, cousin, I remember hither, How I would dandle you upon my knee Deeming me heretic? and what heresy At lisping-age. I watch'd you dancing since? once But he was evermore mine enemy, With your huge father; he look'd the And hates the Spaniard — fiery-choleric. Great Harry, A drinker of black, strong, volcanic You but his cockboat; prettily you wines, did it. That ever make him fierier. I, a heretic? And innocently. No — we were not made Your Highness knows that in pursuing One flesh in happiness, no happiness heresy here; I have gone beyond your late Lord But now we are made one flesh in Chancellor, — misery ; He cried Enough ! enough ! before his Our bridemaids are not lovely — Dis- death. -— appointment, Gone beyond him and mine own natural Ingratitude, Injustice, Evil-tongue, man Labour-in-vain. 2S 626 QUEEN MARY. ACT V Mary. Surely, not all in vain. Peace, cousin, peace ! I am sad at heart myself. Pole. Our altar is a mound of dead men's clay. Dug from the grave that yawns for us beyond; And there is one Death stands behind the Groom, And there is one Death stands behind the Bride — Mary. Have you been looking at the 'Dance of Death'? Pole. No; but these libellous papers which I found Strewn in your palace. Look you here — the Pope Pointing at me with * Pole, the heretic. Thou hast burnt others, do thou burn thyself, Or I will burn thee; ' and this other; see ! — * We pray continually for the death Of our accursed Queen and Cardinal Pole.' This last — I dare not read it her. \_Aside. Mary. Away ! Why do you bring me these? I thought you knew me better. I never read, I tear them; they come back upon my dreams. The hands that write them should be burnt clean ofif As Cranmer's, and the fiends that utter them Tongue-torn with pincers, lash'd to death, or lie Famishing in black cells, while famish'd rats Eat them alive. Why do they bring me these? Do you mean to drive me mad ? Pole. I had forgotten How these poor libels trouble you. Your pardon. Sweet cousin, and farewell ! * O bubble world. Whose colours in a moment break and fly ! ' Why, who said that? I know not — true enough ! \_Puts up the papers, all but the last, which falls. Exit Pole. Alice. If Cranmer's spirit were a mocking one, And heard these two, there might be sport for him. [^Aside. Alary. Clarence, they hate me; even while I speak There lurks a silent dagger, listening In some dark closet, some long gallery, drawn. And panting for my blood as I go by. Lady Clarence. Nay, Madam, there be loyal papers too. And I have often found them. Mary. Find me one ! Lady Clarence. Ay, Madam; but Sir Nicholas Heath, the Chancellor, Would see your Highness. Mary. Wherefore should I see him? Lady Clarence. Well, Madam, he may bring you news from Philip. Mary. So, Clarence. Lady Clarence. Let me first put up your hair; It tumbles all abroad. Mary. And the gray dawn Of an old age that never will be mine Is all the clearer seen. No, no; what matters ? Forlorn I am, and let me look forlorn. Enter Sir Nicholas Heath. LLeath. I bring your Majesty such grievous news I grieve to bring it. Madam, Calais is taken. Mary. What traitor spoke? Here, let my cousin Pole Seize him and burn him for a Lutheran. 'LLeath. Her Highness is unwell. I will retire. Lady Clarence. Madam, your Chan- cellor, Sir Nicholas Heath. Mary. Sir Nicholas ! I am stunn'd — Nicholas Heath? Methought some traitor smote me on the head. What said you, my good Lord, that our brave English Had sallied out from Calais and driven back The Frenchmen from their trenches ? LLeath. Alas! no. That gateway to the mainland over which SCENE II. QUEEN MARY. 627 Our flag hath floated for two hundred years Is France again. Mary. So; but it is n(jt lost — Not yet. Send out: let England as of old Rise lionlike, strike hard and deep into The prey they are rending from her — ay, and rend The renders too. Send out, send out, and make Musters in all the counties; gather all From sixteen years to sixty; collect the fleet; Let every craft that carries sail and gun Steer toward Calais. Guisnes is not taken yet? Heath. Guisnes is not taken yet. Mary. There yet is hope. Heath. Ah, Madam, but your people are so cold; I do much fear that England will not care. Methinks there is no manhood left among us. Mary. Send out; I am too weak to stir abroad : Tell my mind to the Council — to the Parliament : Proclaim it to the winds. Thou art cold thyself To babble of their coldness. O would I were My father for an hour! Away now — Quick ! \^Exit Heath. I hoped I had served God with all my might ! It seems 1 have not. Ah ! much heresy Shelter'd in Calais. Saints, I have re- built Your shrines, set up your broken images; Be comfortable to me. Suffer not That my brief reign in England be de- famed Thro' all her angry chronicles hereafter By loss of Calais. Grant me Calais. Philip, We have made war upon the Holy Father All for your sake : what good could come of that? Lady Clarence. No, Madam, not against the Holy Father; You did but help King Philip's war with France, Your troops were never down in Italy. Mary. I am a byword. Heretic and rebel Point at me and make merry. Philip gone ! And Calais gone ! Time that I were gone too ! Lady Clarence. Nay, if the fetid gutter had a voice And cried I was not clean, what should I care? Or you, for heretic cries? And I believe, Spite of your melancholy Sir Nicholas, Your England is as loyal as myself. Mary {seeijig the paper dropt by Pole). There ! there ! another paper ! said you not Many of these were loyal? Shall I try If this be one of such? Lady Clarence. Let it be, let it be. God pardon me ! I have never yet found one. \^Aside. Mary (reads) . ' Your people hate you as your husband hates you.' Clarence, Clarence, what have I done?' what sin Beyond all grace, all pardon? Mother, of God, Thou knowest never woman meant so well, And fared so ill in this disastrous world. My people hate me and desire my death. Lady Clarence. No, Madam, no. Mary. My husband hates me, and desires my death. Lady Clarence. No, Madam; these are libels. Mary. I hate myself, and I desire my death. Lady Clarence. Long live your Majesty ! Shall Alice sing you One of her pleasant songs? Alice, my child. Bring us your lute. (Alice goes^ They say the gloom of Saul Was lighten'd by young David's harp. Mary. Too young! And never knew a Philip. Re-enter Alice. Give me the lute. He hates ine ! 628 QUEEN MARY. ACT V. i^She sings^ Hapless doom of woman happy in betrothing! Beauty passes like a breath and love is lost in loathing: Low, my lute; speak low, my lute, but say the world is nothing — Low, lute, low! Love will hover round the flowers when they first awaken ; Love will fly the fallen leaf, and not be over- taken ; Low, my lute! oh low, rhy lute! we fade and are forsaken — Low, dear lute, low ! Take it away ! not low enough for me ! Alice. Your Grace hath a low voice. Mary. How dare you say it? Even for that he hates me. A low voice Lost in a wilderness where none can hear! A voice of shipwreck on a shoreless sea ! A low voice from the dust and from the grave (^Sitting on the ground'). There, am I low enough now? Alice. Good Lord ! how grim and ghastly looks her Grace, With both her knees drawn upward to her chin. There was an old-world tomb beside my father's. And this was open'd, and the dead were found Sitting, and in this fashion; she looks a corpse. Enter Lady Magdalen Dacres. Lady Magdalen. Madam, the Count de Feria waits without. In hopes to see your Highness. Lady Clarence (^pointing to Mary). Wait he must — Her trance again. She neither sees nor hears, And may not speak for hours. Lady Magdalen. Unhappiest Of Queens and wives and women ! Alice {in the foreground with Lady Magdalen). And all along Of Philip. Lady Magdalen. Not so loud ! Our Clarence there Sees ever such an aureole round the Queen, It gilds the greatest wronger of her peace, Who stands the nearest to her. Alice. Ay, this Philip ; I used to love the Queen with all my heart — God help me, but methinks I love her less For such a dotage upon such a man. I would I were as tall and strong as you. Lady Magdalen. I seem half-shamed at times to be so tall. Alice. You are the stateliest deer in all the herd — Beyond his aim — but I am small and scandalous, And love to hear bad tales of Philip. Lady Magdalen. Why? I never heard him utter worse of you Than that you were low-statured. Alice. Does he think Low stature is low nature, or all women's Low as his own? Lady Magdalen. There you strike in the nail. This coarseness is a want of phantasy. It is the low man thinks the woman low; Sin is too dull to see beyond himself. Alice. Ah, Magdalen, sin is bold as well as dull. How dared he? Lady Magdalen. Stupid soldiers oft are bold. Poor lads, they see not what the general sees, A risk of utter ruin. I am not Beyond his aim, or was not. Alice. Who? Not you? Tell, tell me ; save my credit with myself. Lady Magdalen. I never breathed it to a bird in the eaves, Would not for all the stars and maiden moon Our drooping Queen should know ! In Hampton Court My window look'd upon the corridor; And I was robing; — this poor throat of mine. Barer than I should wish a man to see it, — When he we speak of drove the window back, And, like a thief, push'd in his royal hand; SCENE II. QUEEN MARY. 629 But by God's providence a good stout staff" Lay near me; and you know me strong of arm ; I do believe I lamed his Majesty's For a day or two, tho', give the Devil his due, I never found he bore me any spite. Alice. I would she could have wedded that poor youth, My Lord of Devon — light enough, God knows. And mixt with Wyatt's rising — and the boy Not out of him — but neither cold, coarse, cruel, And more than all — no Spaniard. Lady Clarence. Not so loud. Lord Devon, girls ! what are you whis- pering here? Alice. Probing an old state-secret — how it chanced That this young Earl was sent on foreign. travel, Not lost his head. Lady Clarence. There was no proof against him. Alice. Nay, Madam; did not Gardiner intercept A letter which the Count de Noailles wrote To that dead traitor Wyatt, with full proof Of Courtenay's treason? What became of that? Lady Clarence. Some say that Gardi- ner, out of love for him. Burnt it, and some relate that it was lost When Wyatt sack'd the Chancellor's house in Southwark. Let dead things rest. Alice. Ay, and with him who died Alone in Italy. Lady Clarence. Much changed, I hear, Had put off levity and put graveness on. The foreign courts report him in his manner Noble as his young person and old shield. It might be so — but all is over now; He caught a chill in the lagoons of Venice, And died in Padua. Mary {looking up suddenly'). Died in the true faith? Lady Clarence. Ay, Madam, happily. Mary. Happier he than I. Lady Magdalen. It seems her High- ness hath awaken'd. Think you That I might dare to tell her that the Count — Mary. I will see no man hence for evermore, Saving my confessor and my cousin Pole.. L^ady Magdalen. It is the Count de Feria, my dear lady. Mary. What Count? Lady Magdalen. The Count de Feria, from his Majesty King Philip. Mary. Philip ! quick ! loop up my hair ! Throw cushions on that seat, and make it throne-like. Arrange my dress — the gorgeous Indian shawl That Philip brought me in our happy days ! — That covers all. So — am I somewhat Queenlike, Bride of the mightiest sovereign upon earth? Lady Clarence. Ay, so your Grace would bide a moment yet. Mary. No, no, he brings a letter. I may die Before I read it. Let me see him at once. Enter Count de Feria (kneels). Feria. I trust your Grace is well. {Aside) How her hand burns ! Mary. I am not well, but it will better me. Sir Count, to read the letter which you bring. Feria. Madam, I bring no letter. Mary. How! no letter? Feria. His Highness is so vex'd with strange affairs — Mary. That his own wife is no affair of his. Feria. Nay, Madam, nay! he sends his veriest love, And says, he will come quickly. 630 QUEEN MARY. Mary. Doth he, indeed? You, sir, do you remember what you said When last you came to England? Feria. Madam, I brought My King's congratulations; it was hoped Your Highness was once more in happy state To give him an heir male. Mary. Sir, you said more; You said he would come quickly. I had horses On all the road from Dover, day and night; On all the road from Harwich, night and day; But the child came not, and the husband came not; And yet he will come quickly. . . Thou hast learnt Thy lesson, and I mine. There is no need For Philip so to shame himself again. Return, And tell him that I know he comes no more. Tell him at last I know his love is dead, And that I am in state to bring forth death — Thou art commission'd to Elizabeth, And not to me ! Feria. Mere compliments and wishes. But shall I take some message from your Grace? Mary. Tell her to come and close my dying eyes. And wear my crown, and dance upon my grave. Feria. Then I may say your Grace will see your sister? Your Grace is too low-spirited. Air and sunshine. I would we had you, Madam, in our warm Spain. You droop in your dim London. Mary. Have him away ! I sicken of his readiness. Lady Clarence. My Lord Count, Her Highness is too ill for colloquy. Feria {kneels., and kisses her hand^. I wish her Highness better. {Aside) How her hand burns ! \_Exeunt. SCENE III. — A House near London. Elizabeth, Steward of the House- hold, Attendants. Elizabeth. There's half an angel wrong'd in your account; Methinks I am all angel, that I bear it Without more ruffling. Cast it o'er again. Steward. I were whole devil if I wrong'd you, Madam. \^Exit Steward. Attendant. The Count de Feria, from the King of Spain. Elizabeth. Ah ! — let him enter. Nay, you need not go : [ To her Ladies. Remain within the chamber, but apart. We'll have no private conference. Wel- come to England ! Enter Feria. Feria. Fair island star ! Elizabeth. I shine ! What else, Sir Count? Feria. As far as France, and into Philip's heart. My King would know if you be fairly served. And lodged, and treated. Elizabeth. You see the lodging, sir, I am well-served, and am in everything Most loyal and most grateful to the Queen. Feria. You should be grateful to my master, too. He spoke of this; and unto him you owe That Mary hath acknowledged you her heir. Elizabeth, No, not to her nor him; but to the people, Who know my right, and love me, as I love The people ! whom God aid ! Feria. You will be Queen, And, were I Philip — Elizabeth. Wherefore pause you — what? Feria. Nay, but I speak from mine own self, not him; Yoiir royal sister cannot last; your hand SCENE IV. QUEEN MARY. 631 Will be much coveted ! What a delicate one ! Our Spanish ladies have none such — and there, Were you in Spain, this fine fair gossamer gold — Like sun-gilt breathings on a frosty dawn — That hovers round your shoulder — Elizabeth. Is it so fine? Troth, some have said so. Feria. — would be deemed a miracle. Elizabeth. Your Philip hath gold hair and golden beard; There must be ladies many with hair like mine. Feria. Some few of Gothic blood have golden hair, But none like yours. Elizabeth. I am happy you approve it. Feria. But as to Philip and your Grace — consider, — If such a one as* you should match with Spain, What hinders but that Spain and England join'd, Should make the mightiest empire earth has known. Spain would be England on her seas, and England Mistress of ^e Indies. Elizabeth. It may chance, that England Will be the Mistress of the Indies yet, Without the help of Spain. Feria. Impossible ; Except you put Spain down. Wide of the mark ev'n for a madman's dream. Elizabeth. Perhaps; but we have seamen. Count de Feria, I take it that the King hath spoken to you; But is Don Carlos such a goodly match? Feria. Don Carlos, Madam, is but twelve years old. Elizabeth. Ay, tell the King that I will muse upon it; He is my good friend, and I would keep him so; But — he would have me Catholic of Rome, And that I scarce can be; and, sir, till now My sister's marriage, and my father's marriages, Made me full fain t •> ■=> -^ Sir Hugh de Morville J De Broc of Saltwood Castle. Lord Leicester. Philip de Eleemosyna. Two Knight Templars. John of Oxford {called the Swearer^. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England {divorced from Louis of France^. Rosamund de Clifford. Margery. Knights, Monks, Beggars, etc. PROLOGUE. A Castle in Normandy. Interior of the Hall. Roofs of a City seen thro'' Windows. Henry and Becket at chess. Henry. So then our good Archbishop Theobald Lies dying. Becket. I am gd-jved to know as much. Henry. But we must have a mightier man than he For his successor. Becket. Have you thought of one? Henry. A cleric lately poison'd his own mother, And being brought before the courts of the Church, They but degraded him. I hope they whipt him. I would have hang'd him. Becket. It is your move. Henry. Well — there. {^Moves. The Church in the pell-mell of Stephen's time Hath climb'd the throne and almost clutch'd the crown; But by the royal customs of our realm PROLOGUE. BECKET. 677 The Church should hold her baronies of me, Like other lords amenable to law. I'll have them written down and made the law. Becket. My liege, I move my bishop. Henry. And if I live. No man without my leave shall excom- municate My tenants or my household. Becket. Look to your king. Henry. No man without my leave shall cross the seas To set the Pope against me — I pray your pardon. Becket. Well — will you move ? Henry. There. \_Moves. Becket. Check — you move so wildly. Henry. There then ! \_Moves. Becket. Why — there then, for you see my bishop Hath brought your king to a standstill. You are beaten. Henry {kicks over the board^. Why, there then — down go bishop and king together. I loathe being beaten; had I fixt my fancy Upon the game I should have beaten thee. But that was vagabond. Becket. Where, my liege? With Phryne, Or Lais, or thy Rosamund, or another? Henry. ' My Rosamund is no Lais, Thomas Becket; And yet she plagues me too — no fault in . her — But that I fear the Queen would have her life. Becket. Put her away, put her away, my liege ! Put her away into a nunnery ! Safe enough there from her to whom thou art bound By Holy Church. And wherefore should she seek The life of Rosamund de Clifford more Than that of other paramours of thine? Henry. How dost thou know I am not wedded to her? Becket. How should I know? Henry. That is my secret, Thomas. Becket. State secrets should be patent to the statesman Who serves and loves his king, and whom the king Loves not as statesman, but true lover and friend. Henry. Come, come, thou art but deacon, not yet bishop. No, nor archbishop, nor my confessor yet. I would to God thou wert, for I should find An easy father confessor in thee. Becket. St. Denis, that thou shouldst not. I should beat Thy kingship as my bishop hath beaten it. Henry. Hell take thy bishop then, and my kingship too ! Come, come, I love thee and I know thee, I know thee, A doter on white pheasant-flesh at feasts, A sauce-deviser for thy days of fish, A dish-designer, and most amorous Of good old red sound liberal Gascon wine : Will not thy 'body rebel, man, if thou flatter it? Becket. That palate is insane which cannot tell A good dish from a bad, new wine from old. Henry. Well, who loves wine loves woman. Becket. So I do. Men are God's trees, and women are God's flowers; And when the Gascon wine mounts to my head, The trees are all the statelier, and the flowers Are all the fairer. Henry. And thy thoughts, thy fancies? Becket. Good dogs, my liege, well train'd, and easily call'd Off from the game. Henry. Save for some once or twice, When they ran down the game and worried it. Becket. No, my liege,*no ! — not once — in God's name, no ! Henry. Nay, then, I take thee at thy word — believe thee 678 BECKET. PROLOGUE. The veriest Galahad of old Arthur's hall. And so this Rosamund, my true heart- wife, Not Eleanor — she whom I love indeed As a woman should be loved — Why dost thou smile So dolorously? Becket. My good liege, if a man Wastes himself among women, how should he love A woman, as a woman should be loved? Henry. How shouldst thou know that never hast loved one? Come, I would give her to thy care in England When I am out in Normandy or Anjou. Becket. My lord, I am your subject, not your Henry. Pander. God's eyes! I know all that — not my purveyor Of pleasures, but to save a life — her life; Ay, and the soul of Eleanor from hell-fire. I have built a secret bower in England, Thomas, A nest in a bush. Becket. And where, my liege? Henry (zvhispers) . Thine ear. Becket. That's lone enough. Henry {laying paper on table). This chart here mark'd ^Her Bower^ Take, keep it, friend. See, first, a cir- cling wood, A hundred pathways running everyway, And then a brook, a bridge; and after that This labyrinthine brickwork maze in maze, And then another wood, and in the midst A garden and my Rosamund. Look, this line — The rest you see is colour'd green — but this -DraAvs thro' the chart to her. Becket. This blood-red line ? Henry. Ay ! blood, perchance, except thou see to her. Becket. And where is she? There in her English nest? Henry. Would God she were — no, here within the city. We take her from her secret bower in Anjou And pass her to her secret bower in England. She is ignorant of all but that I love her. Becket. My liege, I pray thee let me hence : a widow And orphan child, whom one of thy wild barons 1 Henry. Ay, ay, but swear to see to her in England. Becket. Well, well, I swear, but not to please myself. 4 Henry. Whatever come between us? Becket. What should come Between us, Henry? t^ Henry. Nay — I know not, Thomas. Becket. What need then? Well — whatever come between us. [ Going. Henry. A moment ! thou didst help me to my throne In Theobald's time, and after by thy wisdom Hast kept it firm from shaking; but now I, For my realm's sake, myself must be the wizard To raise that tempest which will set it trembling Only to base it deeper. I, true son Of Holy Church — no croucher to the Gregories That tread the kings their children under- heel — Must curb her; and the Holy Father, while This Barbarossa butts him from his chair, Will need my help — be facile tg my hands. Now is my time. Yet — lest there should be flashes JAnd fulminations from the side of Rome, An interdict on England — I will have My young son Henry crown'd the King of England, That so the Papal bolt may pass by England, As seeming his, not mine, and fall abroad. I'll have it done — and now. Becket. Surely too young Even for this shadow of a crown; and tho' I love him heartily, I can spy already PROLOGUE. BECKET. 679 A strain of hard and headstrong in him. Say, The Queen should play his kingship against thine ! Henry. I will not think so, Thomas. Who shall crown him? Canterbury is dying. Becket. The next Canterbury. Henry. And who shall he be, my friend Thomas? Who? Becket. Name him; the Holy Father will confirm him. Henry (Jays his hand on Becket's shoulder'). Here! Becket. Mock me not. I am not even a monk. Thy jest — no more. Why — look — is this a sleeve For an archbishop? Henry. But the arm within Is Becket's, who hath beaten down my foes. Becket. A soldier's, not a spiritual arm. Henry. I lack a spiritual soldier, Thomas — A man of this world and the next to boot. Becket. There's Gilbert F'oliot. Henry. He ! too thin, too thin. Thou art the man to fill out the Church robe; Your Foliot fasts and fawns too much for me. Becket. Roger of York. Henry. Roger is Roger of York. King, Church, and State to him but foils wherein To set that precious jewel, Roger of York. No. Becket. Henry of Winchester? Henry. Him who crown'd Stephen — King Stephen's brother ! No ; too royal for me. And I'll have no more Anselms. Becket. Sire, the business Of thy whole kingdom waits me: let me go. Henry. Answer me first. Becket. Then for thy barren jest Take thou mine answer in bare common- place — Nolo episcopari. Henry. Ay, but Nolo Archiepiscopari .^ my good friend, Is quite another matter. Becket. A more awful one. Make me archbishop ! Why, my liege, I know Some three or four poor priests a thou- sand times Fitter for this grand function. Me arch- bishop ! God's favour and king's favour might so clash That thou and I That were a jest indeed ! Henry. Thou angerest me, man: I do not jest. Enter Eleanor atid Sir Reginald FiTZURSE. Eleanor {singing). Over! the sweet summer closes, The reign of the roses is done Henry (Jo Becket, who is going) . Thou shalt not go. I have not ended with thee. Eleanor {seeing chart on table) . This chart with the red line ! her bower ! whose bower? Hen?y. The chart is not mine, but Becket's : take it, Thomas, Eleanor. Becket ! O — ay — and these chessmen on the floor — the king's crown broken ! Becket hath beaten thee again — and thou hast kicked down the board. I know thee of old. Henry. True enough, my mind was set upon other matters. Eleanor. What matters? State mat- ters? love matters? Henry. My love for thee, and thine for me. Eleanor. Over ! the sweet summer closes, The reign of the roses is done; Over and gone with the roses. And over and gone with the sun. Here; but our sun in Aquitaine lasts longer. I would I were in Aquitaine again — your north chills me. Over ! the sweet summer closes, And never a flower at the close; Over and gone with the roses. And winter again and the snows. 68o BECKET. PROLOGUE, That was not the way I ended it first — but unsymmetrically, preposterously, illog- ically, out of passion, without art — like a song of the people. Will you have it? The last Parthian shaft of a for- lorn Cupid at the King's left brea^^t, and all left-handedness and under hand- edness. And never a flower at the close, Over and gone with the roses, Not over and gone with the rose. True, one rose will outblossom the rest, one rose in a bower. I speak after my fancies, for I am a Troubadour, you know, and won the violet at Toulouse; but my voice is harsh here, not in tune, a nightingale out of season ; for marriage, rose or no rose, has killed the golden violet. Becket. Madam, you do ill to scorn wedded love. Eleanor. So I do. Louis of France loved me, and 1 dreamed that I loved Louis of France: and I loved Henry of England, and Henry of England dreamed that he loved me; but the marriage-gar- land withers even with the putting on, the bright hnk ruits with the breath of the first after-marriage kiss, the harvest moon is the ripening of the harvest, and the honeymoon is the gall of love; he dies of his honeymoon. I could pity this poor world myself that it is no better ordered. Henry. Dead is he, my Queen? What, altogether? Let me swear nay to that by this cross on thy neck. God's eyes ! what a lovely cross ! what jewels ! Eleanor. Doth it please you? Take it and wear it on that hard heart of yours — there. [ Gives it to him. Henry {puts it on). On this left breast before so hard a heart. To hide the scar left by thy Parthian dart. Eleanor. Has my simple song set you jingling? Nay, if I took and trans- lated that hard heart into our Provencal facilities, I could so play about it with the rhyme Henry. That the heart were lost in- the rhyme and the matter in the metre. May we not pray you, Madam, to spare us the hardness of your facility? Eleanor. The wells of Castaly are not wasted "upon the desert. We did but jest. Henry. There's no jest on the brows of Herbert there. What is it, Herbert? Enter Herbert of Bosham. Herbert. My liege, the good Arch- bishop is no more. Henry. Peace to his soul ! Herbert. I left him with peace on his face — that sweet other- world smile, which will be reflected in the spiritual body among the angels. But he longed much to see your Grace and the Chancellor ere he past, and his last words were a commendation of Thomas Becket to your Grace as his successor in the archbishop- rick. Henry. Ha, Becket ! thou remem- berest our talk ! Becket. My heart is full of tears — I have no answer. Henry. Well, well, old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again. Come to me to-morrow. Thou hast but to hold out thy hand. Meanwhile the revenues are mine. A-hawking, a-hawk- ing! If I sit, I grow fat. \_Leaps over the table, and exit. Becket. He did prefer me to the chancellorship, Believing I should ever aid the Church — But have I done it ? He commends me now From out his grave to this archbishop- rick. Herbert. A dead man's dying wish should be of weight. Becket. His should. Come with me. Let me learn at full The manner of his death, and all he said. \_Exeunt Herbert and Becket. Eleanor. Fitzurse, that chart with the red line — thou sawest it — her bower. Fitzurse. Rosamund's? Eleanor. Ay — there lies the secret of her whereabouts, and the King gave it to his Chancellor, PROLOGUE. BECKET. 68i Fitziirse. To this son of a London merchant — how your Grace must hate him ! Eleanor. Hate him? as brave a soldier as Henry and a goodlier man : but thou — dost thou love this Chancellor, that thou hast sworn a voluntary alle- giance to him? Fitzurse. Not for my love toward him, but because he had the love of the King. How should a baron love a beggar on horseback, with the retinue of three kings behind him, outroyalling royalty? Besides, he holp the King to break down our castles, for the which I hate him. Eleanor. For the which I honour him. Statesman not Churchman he. A great and sound policy that: I could embrace him for it : you could not see the King for the kinglings. Fitzurse. Ay, but he speaks to a noble as tho' he were a churl, and to a churl as if he were a noble. Eleanor. Pride of the plebeian ! Fitzurse. And this plebeian like to be Archbishop ! Eleanor. True, and I have an in- herited loathing of these black sheep of the Papacy. Archbishop? I can see further into a man than our hot-headed Henry, and if there ever come feud between Church and Crown, and I do not then charm this secret out of our loyal Thomas, I am not Eleanor. Fitzurse. Last night I followed a woman in the city here. Her face was veiled, but the back methought was Rosamund — his paramour, thy rival. I can feel for thee. Flleanor. Thou feel for me ! — para- mour — rival ! King Louis had no para- mours, and I loved him none the more. Henry had many, and I loved him none the less — now neither more nor less — not at all; the cup's empty. I would she were but his paramour, for men tire of their fancies; but I fear this one fancy hath taken root, and borne blossom too, and she, whom the King loves indeed, is a power in the State. Rival ! — ay, and when the King passes, there may come a crash and embroilment as in Stephen's time; and her children — canst thou not — that secret matter which would heat the King against thee {juhispers him and he starts). Nay, that is safe with me as with thyself: but canst thou not — thou art drowned in debt — thou shalt have our love, our silence, and our gold — canst thou not — if thou light upon her — free me from her? Fitzurse. Well, Madam, I have loved her in my time. Eleanor. No, my bear, thou hast not. My Courts of Love would have held thee guiltless of love — the fine attrac- tions and repulses, the delicacies, the subtleties. Fitzurse. Madam, I loved accord- ing to the main purpose and intent of nature. Eleanor. I warrant thee ! thou wouldst hug thy Cupid till his ribs cracked — enough of this. Follow me this Rosamund day and night, whither- soever she goes; track her, if thou canst, even into the King's lodging, that I may {clenches her fist) — may at least have my cry against him and her, — and thou in thy way shouldst be jealous of the King, for thou in thy way didst once, what shall I call it, affect her thine own self. Fitzurse. Ay, but the young colt winced and whinnied and flung up her heels; and then the King came honey- ing about her, and this Becket, her father's friend, like enough staved us from her. Eleanor. Us ! Fitzurse. Yea, by the Blessed Virgin ! There were more than I buzzing round the blossom — De Tracy — even that flint De Brito. Eleanor. Carry her off among you; run in upon her and devour her, one and all of you; make her as hateful to her- self and to the King, as she is to me. Fitzurse. I and all would be glad to wreak our spite on the rosefaced minion of the King, and bring her to the level of the dust, so that the King Eleanor. Let her eat it like the ser- pent, and be driven out of her para- dise. 682 BECKET. ACT I ACT I. SCENE I. — Becket's House in Lon- don. Chamber barely furnished. Becket unrobing. Herbert of Bosham and Servant. Servant. Shall I not help your lord- ship to your rest? Becket. Friend, am I so much better than thyself That thou shouldst help me? Thou art wearied out With this day's work, get thee to thine own bed. Leave me with Herbert, friend. [^:fzV Servant. Help me off, Herbert, with this — and this. Herbert. Was not the people's bless- ing as we past Heart-comfort and a balsam to thy blood? Becket. The people know their Church a tower of strength, A bulwark against Throne and Baronage. Too heavy for me, this; off with it, Herbert ! Herbert. Is it so much heavier than thy Chancellor's robe? Becket. No; but the Chancellor's and the Archbishop's Together more than mortal man can bear. Herbert. Not heavier than thine armour at Thoulouse? Becket. O Herbert, Herbert, in my chancellorship I more"thah once have gone against the Church. Herbert. To please the King? Becket. Ay, and the King of kings, Or justice; for it seem'd to me but just The Church should pay her scutage like the lords. But hast thou heard this cry of Gilbert Foliot That I am not the man to be your Primate, For Henry could not work a miracle — Make an Archbishop of a soldier? Herbert. Ay, For Gilbert Foliot held himself the man. Becket. Am I the man? My mother, ere she bore me, Dream'd that twelve stars fell glittering out of heaven Into her bosom. Herbert. Ay, the fire, the light. The spirit of the twelve Apostles enter'd Into thy making. Becket. And when I was a child, The Virgin, in a vision of my sleep, Gave me the golden keys of Paradise. Dream, Or prophecy, that? Herbert. Well, dream and prophecy both. Becket. And when I was of Theobald's household, once — The good old man would sometimes have his jest — He took his mitre off, and set it on me. And said, ' My young Archbishop — thou wouldst make A stately Archbishop i ' Jest or prophecy there? Herbert. Both, Hiomas, both. r" Becket. Am I the man? That rang I Within my head last night, and when I ■ slept Methought I stood in Canterbury Min- ster, , And spake to the Lord God, and said, j 'O Lord, • I have been a lover of wines, and deli- cate meats, And secular splendours, and a favourer ; Of players, and a courtier, and a feeder Of dogs and hawks, and apes, and lions, and lynxes. Am / the man ? ' And the Lord answer'd me, * Thou art the man, and all the more the man.' And then I ask'd again, * O Lord my God, Henry the King hath been my friend, my brother, And mine uplifter in this world, and chosen me For this thy great archbishoprick, be- lieving That I should go against the Church with him, I SCENE I. BECKET. 683 And I shall go against him with the. Church, ' And I have said no word of this to him : Am /the man? ' And the Lord answer'd' me, * Thou art the man, and all the more the j man.' i And thereupon, methought, He drew ' toward me, \ And smote me down upon the Minster i floor. / I fell. -^ ' Herbert. God make not thee, but thy foes, fall. Becket. I fell. Why fall? Why did He smite me? What? Shall I fall off — to please the King once more ? Not fight — tho' somehow traitor to the King — My truest and mine utmost for the Church? Herbert. Thou canst not fall that way. Let traitor be; For how have fought thine utmost for the Church, Save from the throne of thine archbishop- rick? And how been made Archbishop hadst thou told him, • I mean to fight mine utmost for the Church, Against the King'? Becket. But dost thou think the King Forced mine election? Herbert. I do think the King Was potent in the election, and why not? Why should not Heaven have so inspired the King? Be comforted. Thou art the man — be thou . A mightier Ahselm. Becket. I do beli eve theej_theru I^ am the man. And yet I seem appall'd — on such a sudden. At such an eagle-height I stand and see The rift tFaf runs between me .axuL-the King. I served our Theobald well when I was with him; I served King Henry well as Chancellor; I am his no more, and I must serve the Church. This Canterbury is only less than Rome, And all my doubts I fling from me like dust, Winnow and scatter all scruples to the wind, And all the puissance of the warrior. And all the wisdom of the Chancellor, And all the heap'd experiences of life, I cast upon the side of Canterbury — Our holy mother Canterbury, who sits With tatter'd robes. Laics and barons .thro' The random gifts of careless kings, have graspt Her livings, her advowsons, granges, farms, And goodly acres — we will make her whole; Not one rood lost. And for these Royal customs, These ancient Royal customs — they are Royal, Not of the Church — and let them be anathema, And all that speak for them anathema. Herbert. Thomas, thou art moved too much. Becket. O Herbert, here I gash myself asunder from the King, TKo^reavTng each, a wound; mine 'own, a grief To show the scar for ever — his, a hate Not ever to be heal'd. Enter Rosamund de Clifford, fly- ing from Sir Reginald Fitzurse. ,Drops her veil. Becket. Rosamund de Clifford ! Rosamund. Save me, father, hide me — they follow me — and I must not be known. Becket. Pass in with Herbert there. \_Exeunt Rosamund aiid Herbert by side door. Enter Fitzurse. Fitzurse. The Archbishop ! Becket. Ay ! what wouldst thou, Regi- nald? Fitzurse. Why — why, my lord, I fol- low'd — follow'd one 684 BECKET. ACT 1. Becket. And then what follows? Let me follow thee. Fitzurse. It much imports me I should know her name. Becket. What her? Fitzurse. The woman that I foUow'd hither. Becket. Perhaps it may import her all as much Not to be known. Fitzurse. And what care I for that? Come, come, my lord Archbishop; I saw that door Close even now upon the woman., Becket. Well? Fitzurse {making for the door). Nay, let me pass, my lord, for I must know, Becket. Back, man ! Fitzurse. Then tell me who and what she is. Becket. Art thou so sure thou fol- lowedst anything? Go home, and sleep thy wine off, for thine eyes Glare stupid-wild with wine. Fitzurse {making to the door). I must and will. I care not for thy new archbishoprick. Becket. B-ack, man, I tell thee ! What ! Shall I forget my new archbishoprick And smite thee with my crozier on the skull? 'Fore God, I am a mightier man than thou. Fitzurse. It well befits thy new arch- bishoprick To take the vagabond woman of the street Into thine arms ! Becket. O drunken ribaldry ! Out, beast ! out, l)ear ! Fitzurse. I shall remember this. Becket. Do, and begone ! [Exit Fitzurse. \_Going to the door, sees De Tracy. Tracy, what dost thou here? De Tracy. My lord, I foUow'd Reginald Fitzurse. Becket. Follow him out ! De Tracy. I shall remember this Discourtesy. \_Exit. Becket. Do. These be those baron- brutes That havock'd all the land in Stephen's day. Rosamund de Clifford. Re-enter Rosamund and Herbert. Rosamund. Here am I. Becket. Why here? We gave thee to the charge of John of Salisbury, To pass thee to thy secret bower to- morrow. Wast thou not told to keep thyself from . sight? Rosamund. Poor bird of passage ! so I was; but, father, They say that you are wise in winged things, And know the ways of Nature. Bar the bird From following the fled summer — a chink — he's out, Gone ! And there stole into the city a breath Full of the meadows, and it minded me Of the sweet woods of Clifford, and the walks Where I could move at pleasure, and I thought Lo ! I must out or die. Becket. Or out and die. And what hast thou to do with this Fitzurse? Rosamund. Nothing. He sued my hand. I shook at him. He found me once alone. Nay — nay I cannot Tell you : my father drove him and his friends, De Tracy and De Brito, from our castle. I was but fourteen and an April then. I heard him swear revenge. Becket. Why will you court it By self-exposure? flutter out at night? Make it so hard to save a moth from the fire? Rosamund. I have saved many of 'em. You catch 'em, so. Softly, and fling them out to the free air. They burn themselves within-CLOOt. Becket. ' Our good John SCENE I. BECKET. 685 Must speed you to your bower at once. The_ciiild Is there already. Kosamund. Yes — the child — the child — O rare, a whole long day of open field. Becket. Ay, but you go disguised. Rosamund. O rare again ! We'll baffle them, I warrant. What shall it be? I'll go as a nun. Becket. No. Rosamund. What, not good enough Even to play at nun? Becket. Dan John with a nun. That Map, and these new railers at the Church May plaister his clean name with scur- rilous rhymes! No! Go like a monk, cowling and clouding up That fatal star, thy Beauty, from the squint Of lust and glare of malice. Good night ! good night ! Rosamund. Father, I am so tender to all hardness ! Nay, father, first thy blessing. Becket. Wedded? Rosamund. Father ! Becket. Well, well ! I ask no more. Heaven bless thee ! hence ! Rosamund. O holy father, when thou seest him next. Commend me to thy friend. Becket. What friend? . Rosamund. The King. Becket. Herbert, take out a score of armed men To guard this bird of passage to her cage; And watch Fitzurse, and if he follow thee, Make him thy prisoner. I am Chancel- lor yet. S^Exeunt Herbert and Rosamund. Poor soul ! poor soul ! My friend, the King! ... O thou Great Seal of England, Given me by my dear friend the King • of England — We long have wrought together, thou and I — Now must I send thee as a common friend To tell the King, my friend, I am against him. We are friends no more: he will say ^~ thatj^nol I: The worldly bond between us is dissolved, Not yet the love : can I be under him iVa Chancellor? as^Archbishop over him? Go therefore like a friend slighted by one That hath climb'd up to nobler company. Not slighted — all but moan'd for : thou must go. I have not dishonour'd thee — I trust J have not; Not mangled justice. May the hand that next Inherits thee be but as true to thee As mine hath been ! O my dear friend, the King ! brother ! — 1 may come to martyrdom. 1 am martyr in myself already. — Her- bert ! Herbert {re-entering). My lord, the town is quiet, and the moon Divides the whole long street with light and shade. No footfall — no Fitzurse. We have seen her home. Becket. The hog hath tumbled him- self into some corner. Some ditch, to snore away his drunken- ness Into the sober headache, — Nature's moral Against excess. Let the Great Seal be sent Back to the King to-morrow. Herbert. Must that be? The King may rend the bearer limb from limb. Think on it again. Becket. Against the moral excess No physical ache, but failure it may be Of all we aim'd at. John of Salisbury Hath often laid a cold hand on my heats, And Herbert hath rebuked me even now. I will be wise and wary, not the soldier As Foliot swears it. — John, and out of breath ! 686 BECKET. ACT I Enter John of Salisbury. John of Salisbury. Thomas, thou wast not happy taking charge Of this wild Rosamund to please the King, Nor am I happy having charge of her — The included Uanae has escaped again Her tower, and her Acrisius — where to seek? 1 have been about the city. Becket. Thou wilt find her Back in her lodging. Go with her — at once — To-night — my men will guard you to the gates. Be sweet to her, she has many enemies. Send the Great Seal by daybreak. Both, good night ! SCENE IL — Street in Northampton LEADING TO THE CaSTLE. Eleanor's Retainers and Becket's Retainers fighting. Enter Eleanor and Becket /r£?/« opposite streets. Eleanor. Peace, fools ! Becket. Peace, friends ! what idle brawl is this? Retainer of Becket. They said — her Grace's people — thou wast found — Liars ! I shame to quote 'em — caught, my lord. With a wanton in thy lodging — Hell requite 'em ! Retainer- of Eleanor. My liege, the Lord Fitzurse reported this In passing the Castle even now. Retainer of Becket. And then they mock'd us and we fell upon 'em. For we would live and die for thee, my lord. However kings and queens may frown on thee. Becket to his Retainers. Go, go — no more of this ! Eleanor to her Retainers. Away ! — (£'jr^«w/' Retainers) Fitzurse Becket. Nay, let him be. Eleanor. No, no, my Lord Archbishop, 'Tis known you are midwinter to all women, But often in your chancellorship you served The follies of the King. Becket. No, not these follies ! Eleanor. My lord, Htzurse beheld her in your lodging. Becket. Whom? Eleanor. Well — you know — the minion, Rosamund, Becket. He had good eyes ! EJeanor. Then hidden in the street He watch'd her pass with John of Salis- bury And heard her cry ' Where is this bower of mine?' Becket. Good ears too ! Eleanor. You are going to the Castle, Will you subscribe the customs? Becket. I leave that, Knowing how much you reverence Holy Church, My liege, to your conjecture. Eleanor. I and mine — And many a baron holds along with me — Are not so much at feud vi^ith Holy Church But we might take your side against the customs — So that you grant me one slight favour. Becket. What? Eleanor. A sight of that same chart which Henry gave you With the red line — ' her bower.' Becket. And to what end? Eleanor. That Church must scorn herself whose fearful Priest Sits winking at the license of a king, Altho' we grant when kings are dangerous The Church must play into the hands of kings; Look ! I would move this wanton from his sight And take the Church's danger on myself. Becket. For which she should be duly grateful. Eleanor. True ! Tho' she that binds the bond, herself should see • - That kings are faithful to their marriage vow. SCENE III. BECKET. 687 Becket. Ay, Madam, and queens also. Eleanor. And queens also ! What is your drift? Becket. My drift is to the Castle, Where I shall meet the Barons and my King. \^Exit. De Broc, De Tracy, De Brito, De Morville {passing): Eleanor. To the Castle ? De Broc. Ay ! Eleanor. Stir up the King, the Lords ! Set all on fire against him ! De Brito. Ay, good Madam ! \^Exeunt. Eleanor. Fool ! I will make thee hateful to thy King. Churl ! I will have thee frighted into France, And I shall live to trample on thy grave. SCENE III.— The Hall in North- AMiTON Castle. On one side of the stage the doors of an inner Council-chamber, half-open. At the bottom, the great doors of the Hall. Roger Archbishop of York, FoLiOT Bishop of London, Hilary of Chichester, Bishop of Here- ford, Richard de Hastings {Grand Prior of Templars), Philip de Elee- MOSYNA {the Pope^s Almoner), and others. De Broc, Fitzhrse, De Brito, De Morville, De Tracy, and other Barons assembled-^ a table before them. John of Oxford, President of the Council. Enter Becket and Herbert of BOSHAM. Becket. Where is the King? Roger of York. Gone hawking on the Nene, His heart so gall'd with thine ingrati- tude, He will not see thy face till thou hast sign'd These ancient laws and customs of the realm. Thy sending back the Great Seal mad- den'd him, He all but pluck'd the bearer's eyes away. Take heed, lest he destroy thee utterly. Becket. Then shall thou step into my place and sign. Roger of York. Didst thou not promise Henry to obey These ancient laws and customs of the realm? Becket. Saving the honour of my order — ay. Customs, traditions, — clouds that come and go; The customs of the Church are Peter's rock. Roger of York. Sa\ing thine order! But King Henry sware That, saving his King's kingship, he would grant thee The crown itself. Saving thine order, Thomas, Is black and white at once, and comes to naught. O bolster'd up with stubbornness and pride. Wilt thou destroy the Church in fighting for it. And bring us all to shame? Becket. Poger of York, When I and thou were youths in Theo- bald's house. Twice did thy malice and thy calumnies Exile me from the face of Theobald, Now I am Canterbury and thou art York. Roger of York. And is not York the peer of Canterbury? Did not Great Gregory bid St. Austin here Found two archbishopricks, London and York? Becket. What came of that? The first archbishop fled. And York lay barren for a hundred years. Why, by this rule, Foliot may claim the pall For London too. Foliot. And with good reason too, For London had a temple and a priest When Canterbury hardly bore a name. Becket. The pagan temple of a pagan Rome ! The heathen priesthood of a heathen creed ! Thou goest beyond thyself in petulancy I 688 BECKET. ACT L Who made thee London? Who, but Canterbury? John of Oxford. Peace, peace, my lords ! these customs are no longer As Canterbury cani"~tTvem, wandering clouds, But by the King's command are written ~^own, And by the King's command I, John of Oxford, The President of this Council, read them. Becket. Read ! John of Oxford (reads). * All causes of adyowsons and presentations, whether between laymen or clerics, shall be tried in the King's court.' Becket. But that I cannot sign : for that would drag The cleric before the civil judgment-seat, And on a matter wholly spiritual. John of Oxford. ' If any cleric be accused of felony, the Church shall not protect him; buL_he. shall answer to the summons of the King's court to be tried therein.' Becket. And that I cannot sign. Is not the Church the visible Lord on . earth ? Shall hands that do create the Lord be bound Behind the back like laymen-criminals? The Lord be judged again by Pilate? No ! John of Oxford. 'When a bishoprick falls vacant, the King, till another Tdc appointed, shall receive the revenues thereof.' Becket. And that I cannot sign. Is the King's treasury A fit place for the monies of the Church, That be the patrimony of the poor? John of Oxford. * And when the va- cancy is to be filled up, the King shall summon the chapter of that church to court, and the election shall be made in the Chapel Royal, with the consent of our lord the King, and by the advice of his Government.' Becket. And that I cannot sign : for that would mal^e Our island-Church a schism from Chris- tendom, And weight down all free choice beneath the throne. Foliot. And was thine own election so canonical, Good father? Becket. If it were not, Gilbert Foliot, I mean to cross the sea to France, and lay My crozier in the Holy Father's hands. And bid him re-create me, Gilbert Fohot. Foliot. Nay ; by another of these cus- toms thou WiU not be suffer 'd so to cross_the^seas Without the license of our lord the King. Becket. That, too, I cannot sign. De Broc, De Brito, De Tracy, Fitz- URSE, De Morville, start up — a clash of swords. Sign and obey ! Becket. My lords, is this a combat or a council? Are ye my masters, or my lord the King? Ye make this clashing for no love o' the customs Or constitutions, or whate'er ye call them. But that there^e among XQU those that hold Lands reft from Canterbury. De Broc. And mean to keep them. In spite of thee ! Lords {shouting). Sign, and obey the crown ! , Becket. The crown? Shall I do less for Canterbury Than Henry for the crown? King Ste- phen gave Many of the crown lands to those that helpt him; So did Matilda, the King's mother. Mark, When Henry came into his own again. Then he took back not only Stephen's gifts, But his own mother's, lest the crown should be • Shorn of ancestral splendour. This did Henry. Shall I do less for mine own Canterbury? And thou, De Broc, that holdest Salt- wood Castle De Broc. And mean to hold it, or Becket. To have my life. De Broc. The King is quick to anger; if thou anger him. We wait but the King's word to strike thee dead. SCENE III. BECKET. 689 Becket. Strike^a nd I die the death of martyrdom; Strike, and ye set thege customs by my death ~ Ringing their own death -knell thro' all the realm. Herbert. And I can tell you, lords, ye ' are all as like To lodge a fear in Thomas Becket's heart As find a hare's form in a lion's cave. John of Oxford. Ay, sheathe your swords, ye will displease the King. De Broc. Why down then thou ! but an he come to Saltwood, By God's death, thou shalt stick him like a calf ! [ Sheathing his sword. Hilary. O my good lord, I do entreat thee — sign. Save the King's honour here before his barons. He hath sworn that thou shouldst sign, and now but shuns The semblance of defeat; I have heard him say He means no more; so if thou sign, my lord, That were but as the shadow of an assent. Becket. 'Twould seem too like the substance, if I sign'd. Philip de Eleemosyna. My lord, thine ear ! I have the ear of the Pope. As thou hast honour for the Pope our master, Have pity on him, sorely prest upon By the fierce Emperor and his Antipope. Thou knowest he was forced to fly to France; He pray'c? me to pray thee to pacify Thy King; for if thou go against thy King, Then must he likewise go against thy King, And then thy King might join the Anti- pope, And that would shake the Papacy as it stands. Besides, thy King swore to our cardinals He meant no harm nor damage to the Church. Smooth thou his pride — thy signing is but form; Nay, and should harm come of it, it is . the Pope Will be to blame — not thou. Over and over He told me thou shouldst pacify the King, Lest there be battle between Heaven and Earth, And Earth should get the better — for the time. Cannot the Pope absolve thee if thou sign ? Becket. Have I the orders of the Holy Father? Philip de Eleemosyna. Orders, my lord — why, no; for what am I? The secret whisper of the Holy Father. Thou, that hast been a statesman, couldst thou always Blurt thy free mind to the air? Becket. If Rome be feeble, then should I be firm. Philip. Take it not that way — balk not the Pope's will. When he hath shaken off" the Emperor, He heads the Church against the King with thee. Richard de Hastings {kneeling^. Becket, I am the oldest of the Templars; I knew thy father; he would be mine age Had "he lived now; think of me as thv father ! Behold thy father kneeling to thee, Becket. Submit; I promise thee on my salvation That thou wilt hear no more o' the customs. Becket. What ! Hath Henry told thee? hast thou talk'd with him? Another Templar (Jzneeling) . Father, I am the youngest of the Tem- plars, Look on me as I were thy bodily son, For, like a son, I lift my hands to thee. Philip. Wilt thou hold out for ever, Thomas Becket? Dost thou not hear? ■ Becket {signs'). Why — th ere then — there — I sign, ' And swearto obey the customs. Poliot. Is it thy will, My lord Archbishop, that we too should sign? 690 BECKET. ACT \ Becket. O ay, by that canonical obedience Thou still hast owed thy father, Gilbert Foliot. Foliot. Loyally and with good faith, my lord Archbishop? Becket. O ay, with all that loyalty and good faith Thou still hast shown thy primate, Gilbert Foliot. [Becket draws apart with Herbert. Herbert, Herbert, have I betray'^d the Church? I'll have the paper back — blot out my name. Herbert. Too late, my lord : you see they are signing there. Becket. Fa lse to myself — it isj hgjwill Tn hrpak ms, biqv^, me Jiothing of iny- ^dfj This Almoner hath tasted Henry's gold. The cardinals have finger'd Henry's gold. And Rome is venal ev'n to rottenness. I see it, I see it. •Lamjio soldier, as he said^.at least No leader. Herbert, till I hear from the Pope I will suspend myself from all my func- tions. If fast and prayer, the lacerating scourge Foliot {from the table'). My lord Archbishop, thou hast yet to seal. Becket. First, Foliot, let me see what I have sign'd. [ Goes to the table. What, this ! and this ! — what ! new and old together ! Seal? If a seraph shouted from the sun, And bade me seal against the rights of the Church, I would anathematise him. I will not seal. \^Exit with Herbert. Enter King Henry. Henry. Where's Thomas? hath he sign'd? show me the papers ! Sign'd and not seal'd ! How's that? John of Oxford. He would not seal. And when he sign'd, his face was stormy- red — Shame, wrath, I know not what. He sat down there And dropt it in his hands, and then a paleness. Like the wan twilight after sunset, crept Up even to the tonsure, and he groan'd, « False to myself! It is the will of God ! ' Henry. God's will be what it will, the man shall seal. Or I will seal his doom. My burgher's son — Nay, if I cannot break him as the prelate, I'll crush him as the subject. Send for him back. \^Sits on his throne. Barons and bishops of our realm of Eng- land, After the nineteen winters of King Stephen — A reign which was no reign, when none could sit By his own hearth in peace; when mur- der common As nature's death, like Egypt's plague, had fill'd All things with blood ; when every door- way blush'd, Dash'd red with that unhallow'd passover ; When every baron ground his blade in blood; The household dough was kneaded up with blood ; The mill wheel turn'd in blood; the wholesome plow Lay rusting in the furrow's yellow weeds. Till famine dwarft the race — I came, your King ! Nor dwelt alone, like a soft lord of the East, In mine own hall, and sucking thro' fools' ears The flatteries of corruption — went abroad Thro' all my counties, spied my people's ways; Yea, heard the churl against the baron — yea, And did him justice; sat in mine own courts Judging my judges, that had found a King Who ranged confusions, made the twilight day. And struck a shape from out the vague, and law From madness. And the event— '"QW fallows till'd. SCENE III. BECKET. 69Z Much corn, repeopled towns, a realm again. So far_ my course, albeit not glassy- smooth, Had prospere d in the maini, but suddenly Jarr'd on this rock. 4,sktic viftl^tsd The,,iiaughjtexjQ.f..bis JiiOStj.and murder'd him. Bishops* — York, London, Chichester, Westminster — Ye, ,haled„ this tonsu red de vil into your jcourts; Butjinceyour canon will not let you take LifieL.fQr.a life, ye but degraded.him Where I had hang'd \^vax. What..(lQth hard murder care Iior —degradation? and that made me muse, Being bounden by my coronation oath To do men justice. Look to it» your own selves ! Say that a cleric murder'd an archbishop, ^hat could ye do? Degrade, imprison him — Not death for death. John of Oxford. But I, my liege, could swear. To death for death. Henry. And, looking thro' my reign, I found a hundred ghastly murders done By men, the scum and offal of the Church ; Then, glancing thro' the story of this realm, I came on certain wholesome usages. Lost in desuetude, of my grandsire's day. Good royal customs — had them written fair For John of Oxford here to read to you. John of Oxford. And I can easily swear to these as being The King's will and God's will and justice; yet I could but read a part to-day, be- cause Fitzurse. Because my lord of Canter- bury De Tracy. Ay, This lord of Canterbury De Brito. As is his wont Too much of late whene'er your royal rights Are mooted in our councils — — Fitzurse. — made an uproar. Henry. And Becket had my bosom on all this; If ever man by bonds of gratefulness — I raised him from the puddle of the gutter, I made him porcelain from the clay of the city — Thought that I knew him, err'd thro' love of him. Hoped, were he chosen archbishop, Church and Crown, Two sisters gliding in an equal dance, Two rivers gently flowing side by side — But no ! The bird that moults sings the same song again. The snake that sloughs comes out a snake again. Snake — ay, but he that lookt a fangless one. Issues a venomous adder. For he, when having dofft the Chancellor's robe — Flung the Great Seal of England in my face — Claim'd some of our crown lands for Canterbury — My comrade, boon companion, my co- reveller. The master of his master, the King's king. — God's eyes ! I had meant to make him all but king. Chancellor-Archbishop, he might well have sway'd All England under Henry, the young King, When I was hence. What did the traitor say? False to himself, but ten-fold false to me ! The will of God — why, then it is my will — Is he coming? Messenger {entering). With a crowd of worshippers, And holds his cross before him thro' the crowd. As one that puts himself in sanctuary. Henry. His cross ! Roger of York. His cross ! I'll front him, cross to cross. \_Exit Roger of York. 692 BECKET. ACT 1 Henry. His cross! it is the traitor that imputes Treachery to his King ! It is not safe for me to look upon him. Away — with me ! \_Goes in zvith his Barons to the Council- Chamber, the door of which is left open. Enter Becket, holding his cross of silver before hh?i. The Bishops come round him. Hereford. The King will not abide thee with thy cross. Permit me, my good lord, to bear it for thee, Being thy chaplain. Becket. No : it must protect me. Herbert. As once he bore the stand- ard of the Angles, So now he bears the standard of the angels. Foliot. I am the Dean of the province : let me bear it. Make not thy King a traitorous murderer. Becket. Did not your barons draw their swords against me? Enter Roger of York, with his cross, advancing to Becket. Becket. Wherefore dost thou presume to bear thy cross, Against the solemn ordinance from Rome, Out of thy province? Roger of York. Why dost thou pre- sume, Arm'd with thy cross, to come before the King? If Canterbury bring his cross to court, Let York bear his to mate with Canter- bury. Foliot {seizing hold of Becket's cross^ . Nay, nay, my lord, thou must not brave the King. Nay, let me have it. I will have it ! Becket. Away ! {^Flinging him off. Foliot. He fasts, they say, this mitred Hercules! He fast ! is that an arm of fast ? My lord, Hadst thou not sign'd, I had gone along with thee; But thou the shepherd hast betray'd the sheep. And thou art perjured, and thou wilt not seal. As_ Chancellor thou was t against th e Church, Now as Archbishop goest against the King; " For, like a fool, thou knowst no middle , way. '' Ay, ay ! but art thou stronger than the King? Becket. Strong — not in mine own ';elf, but iliaven; true To eitht.. function, holding it; and thou Fast, scourge thyself, and mortify thy flesh, Not spirit — thou remainest Gilbert Foliot, A worldly follower of the worldly strong. I, bearing this great ensign, make it clear Under what Prince I fight. Foliot. My lord of York, Let us go in to the Council, where our bishops And our great lords will sit in judgment on him. Becket. Sons sit in judgment on their father ! — then The spire of Holy Church may prick the graves — Her crypt among the stars. Sign? seal? I promised The King to obey these customs, not yet written, Saving mine order; true too, that when written I sign'd them — being a fool, as Foliot call'd me. I_hold not by my signing. Get ye hence, Tell wTiat 1 say to the King. \_Exeunt Hereford, Foliot, ajid other Bishops. Roger of York. The phurch will hate thee. \_Exit. Becket. Serve my best friend and make him my worst foe; Fight for the Church, and set the Church against me ! Herbert. To be honest is to set all knaves against thee. A.h ! Thomas, excommunicate them all ! Hereford {re-entering^. I cannot brook the turmoil thou hast raised. SCENE III. BECKET. 693 I would, my lord Thomas of Canterbury, Thou wert plain Thomas and not Canter- bury, Or that thou wouldst deliver Canterbury To our King's hands again, and be at peace. Hilary {re-entering). For hath not thine ambition set the Church This day between the hammer and the anvil — Fealty to the King, obedience to thyself? Herbert. What say the bishops? Hilary. Some have pleaded for him, But the King rages — most are with the King; And some are reeds, that one time sway to the current, And to the wind another. But we hold Thou art forsworn; and no forsworn Archbishop Shall helm the Church. We therefore place ourselves Under the shield and safeguard of the Pope, And cite thee to appear before the Pope, And answer thine accusers. . . . Art thou deaf? Becket. I hear you. \^Clash of arms. Hilary. Dost thou hear those others? Becket. Ay ! Roger of York {re-entering). The King's ' God's eyes ! ' come now so thick and fast, We fear that he may reave thee of thine own. Come on, come on ! it is not fit for us To see the proud Archbishop mutilated. Say that he blind thee and tear out thy tongue. Becket. So be it. He begins at top with me : They crucified St. Peter downward. Roger of York. Nay, But for their sake who stagger betwixt thine Appeal, and Henry's anger, yield. Becket. Hence, Satan ! \_Exit Roger of York. Fitzurse {re-entering). J^y^ lord, the ^ing demands three hundred marks, '! " Due from his castles of Berkhamstead and Eye When thou thereof wast warden. Becket. ~ Tell the King I spent thrice that in fortifying his castles. De Tracy {re-entering). My lord, the King demands seven hundred marks. Lent at the siege of Thoulouse by the King. Becket. I led seven hundred knights and fought his wars. De Brito {re-entering). My lord, the King demands five hundred marks. Advanced thee at his instance by the Jews, For which the King was bound security. Becket. I thought it was a gift; I thought it was a gift. Enter Lord Leicester {followed by Barons and Bishops). Leicester. My lord, I tome unwillingly. The King Demands a strict account of all those revenues From all the vacant sees and abbacies. Which came into thy hands when Chan- cellor. Becket. How much might that amount to, my lord Leicester? Leicester. Some thirty — forty thou- sand silver marks. Becket. Are these your customs? O my good lord Leicester, The King and I were brothers. All 1 1 had I lavish'd for the glory of the King; I shone from him, for him, his glory, his Reflection : now the glory of the Church | Hath swallow'd up the glory of the King; j I am his no more, but hers. Grant me one day To ponder these demands. Leicester. Hear first thy sentence ! The King and all his lords Becket. Son, first hear fue s Leicester. Nay, nay, canst thou, that boldest thine estates In fee and barony of the King, decline The judgment of the King? Becket. The King ! I hold Nothing in fee and barony of the King. Whatever the Church owns — she holds it in 694 BECKET. Free and perpetual alms, unsubject to One earthly sceptre. Leicester. Nay, but hear thy judgment. The King and all his barons Becket. Judgment ! Barons ! Who but the bridegroom dares to judge the bride. Or he the bridegroom may appoint? Not he That is not of the house, but from the street Stain'd with the mire thereof. I had been so true To Henry and mine office that the King Would throne me in the great Arch- bishoprick : And I, that knew mine own infirmity, For the King's pleasure rather than God's cause Took it upon me — err'd thro' love of him. Now therefore God from me withdraws Himself, And the King too. What ! forty thousand marks ! W^hy thou, the King, the Pope, the Saints, the world. Know that when made Archbishop I was . freed. Before the Prince and chief Justiciary, From every bond and debt and obligation Incurr'd as Chancellor. Hear me, son. As gold Outvalues dross, light darkness, Abel Cain, The soul the body, and the Church the Throne, I charge thee, upon pain of mine anath- ema. That thou obey, not me, but God in me. Rather than Henry. I refuse to stand By the King's censure, make my cry to the Pope, By whom I will be judged; refer myself, The King, these customs, all the Church, to him. And under his authority — I depart. [ Going. [Leicester looks at him doubtingly. Am I a prisoner? Leicester. By St. Lazarus, no ! I am confounded by thee. Go in peace. De Broc. In peace now — but after Take that for earnest. \^Flings a bone at him from the rushes. De Brito, Fitzurse, De Tracy, and others (^fiinging zvisps of rushes). Ay, go in peace, caitiff, caitiff! And that too, perjured prelate — and that, turncoat shaveling ! There, there, there ! traitor, traitor, traitor ! Becket. Mannerless wolves ! [ Turning and facing them. Herbert. Enough, my lord, enough ! Becket. Barons of England and of Normandy, When what ye shake at doth but seem to fly, True test of coward, ye follow with a yell. But I that threw the mightiest knight of France, Sir Engelram de Trie, Herbert. Enough, my lord. Becket. More than enough. I play the fool again. Enter Herald. Herald. The King commands you, upon pain of death. That none should wrong or injure your Archbishop. Foliot. Deal gently with the young man Absalom. [ Great doors of the Hall at the back open, and discover a crowd. They shout : Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord ! SCENE IV. — Refectory of the Monastery at Northampton. A banquet on the Tables. Enter Becket. Becket's Retainers. \st Retainer. Do thou speak first. 2nd Retainer. Nay, thou ! Nay, thou ! Hast not thou drawn the short straw ? \st Retainer. My lord Archbishop, wilt thou permit us Becket. To speak without stanlmering and like a free man? Ay. \st Retainer. My lord, permit us then to leave thy service. SCENE IV. BECKET. 695 Becket. When? \st Retainer. Now. Becket. To-night? L \st Retainer. To-night, my lord. I Becket. And why? ^ \st Retainer. My lord, we leave thee not without tears. Becket. Tears? Why not stay with me then? \st Retainer. My lord, we cannot yield thee an answer altogether to thy satisfaction. Becket. I warrant you, or your own either. Shall I find you one? The King hath frowned upon me. \st Retainer. That is not altogether our answer, my lord. Becket. No; yet all but all. Go, go ! Ye have eaten of my dish and r drunken of my cup for a dozen years. I \st Retainer. And so we have. We - mean thee no wrong. Wilt thou not say, 'God bless you,' ere we go? Becket. God bless you all ! God redden your pale blood ! But mine is human-red; and when ye shall hear it is poured out upon earth, and see it mount- ing to Heaven, my God bless you, that seems sweet to you now, will blast and blind you like a curse. \st Retainer. We hope not, my lord. : . Our humblest thanks for your blessing. Farewell ! {^Exeunt Retainers. Becket. Farewell, friends ! farewell, swallows! I wrong the bird; she leaves only the nest she built, they leave the builder. Why? Am I to be murdered ^o-night? \^Knocking at the door . Attendant. Here is a missive left at the gate by one from the castle. Becket. Cornwall's hand or Leices- ter's: they write marvellously alike. \_Reading. * Fly at once to France, to King Louis of France : there be those about our King who would have thy blood.' Was not my lord of Leicester bidden to our supper? Attendant. Ay, my lord, and divers other earls and barons. But the hour is past, and our brother, Master Cook, he makes moan that all be a-getting cold. Becket. And I make my moan along with him. Cold after warm, winter after summer, and the golden leaves, these earls and barons, that clung to me, frosted off me by the first cold frown of the King. Cold, but look how the table steams, like a heathen altar; nay, like the altar at Jerusalem. Shall God's good gifts be wasted? None of them here! Call in the poor from the streets, and let them feast. Herbert. That is the parable of our blessed Lord. Becket. And why should not the parable of our blessed Lord be acted again? Call in the poor! The Church is ever at variance with the kings, and ever at one with the poor. I marked a group of lazars in the marketplace — half- rag, half-sore — beggars, poor rogues (Heaven bless 'em) who never saw nor dreamed of such a banquet. I will amaze them. Call them in, I say. They shall henceforward be my earls and barons — our lords and masters in Christ Jesus. \^Exit Herbert. If the King hold his purpose, I am myself a beggar. Forty thousand marks ! forty thousand devils — and these craven bishops ! Enter a Poor Man with his dog. Man. My lord Archbishop, may I come in With my poor friend, my dog? The King's verdurer caught him a-hunt- ing in the forest, and cut off his paws. The dog followed his calling, my lord. I ha' carried him ever so many miles in my arms, and he licks my face and moans and cries out against the King. Becket. Better thy dog than thee. The King's courts would use thee worse than thy dog — they are too bloody. Were the Church king, it would be otherwise. Poor beast ! poor beast ! set him down. I will bind up his wounds with my napkin. Give him a bone, give him a bone ! Who misuses a dog v\'ould misuse a child — they cannot speak for themselves. Past help! his paws are past help. God help him! 696 BECKET. ACT I Etiter the Beggars (^and seat themselves at the Tablis^. Beckkt and Her- bert wait upon thetJi. 1st' Be^^ar. Swine, sheep, ox — here's a P>ench supper. W] en thieves fall out, honest men ind Beggar.^ Is the Archbishop a thief who gives thee thy supper? \st Beggar. Well, then, how does it go? When honest men fall out, thieves — no, it can't be that. 2nd Beggar. Who stole the widow's one sitting hen o' Sunday, when she was at mass? \st Beggar. Come, come ! thou hadst thy share on her. Sitting hen ! Our Lord Becket's our great sitting-hen cock, and we shouldn't ha' been sitting here if the barons and bishops hadn't been a-sitting on the Archbishop. Becket. Ay, the princes sat in judg- ment against me, and the Lord hath prepared your table — Sederunt principes, ederunt pauper es. A voice. Becket, beware of the knife ! Becket. Who spoke? 3^,3!' Beggar. Nobody, my lord. What's that, my lord? Becket. Venison. yd Beggar. Venison? Becket. Buck; deer, as you call it. yd Beggar. King's .neat ! By the Lord, won't we pray for your lo iship ! Becket. And, my childreii, your prayers will do more for me in the day of peril that dawns darkly and drearily over the house of God — yea, and in the day of judgment also, than the swords of the craven sycophants would have done had they remained true to me whose bread they have partaken. I must leave you to your banquet. Feed, feast, and be merry. Herbert, for the sake of the Church itself, if not for my own, I must fly to France to-night. Come with me. [ Exit ivith H e rb e r t . yd Beggar. Here — all of you — my lord's health {they drink'). Well — if that isn't goodly wine \st Beggar. Then there isn't a goodly wench to serve him with it : they were fighting for her to-day in the street. yd Beggar. Peace ! 1st Beggar. The black sheep baaed to the miller's ewe-lamb. The miller's away for to-night. Black sheep, quoth she, too black a sin for me. And what said the black sheop, my masters? We can make a black sin white. yd Beggar. Peace ! \st Beggar. ' Ewe lamb, ewe lamb, I am here by the dam.' But the miller came home that night, And so dusted his back with the meal in his sack. That he made the black sheep white. yd Beggar. Be we not of the family? be we not a-supping with the head of the family? be we not in my lord's own refractory? Out from among us; thou art our black sheep. Enter the four Knights. Fitzurse. Sheep, said he? And sheep without the shepherd, too. Where is my lord Archbishop? Thou the lustiest and lousiest of this Cain's brotherhood, answer. yd Beggar. With Cain's answer, my lord. Am I his keeper? Thou shouldst call him Cain, not me. Fitzurse. So I do, for he would murder his brother the State. yd Beggar {rising and advancing). No, my lord; but because the Lord hath set his mark upon him that no man should murder him. Fitzurse. Where is he? where is he? yd Beggar. With Cain belike, in the land of Nod, or in the land of France for aught I know. Fitzurse. France ! Ha ! De Morville, Tracy, Brito — fled is he? Cross swords all of you ! swear to follow him ! Remember the Queen ! £ The four Knights cross their swords. De Brito. They mock us; he is here. \_All the Beggars rise and advance upon them. Fitzurse. Come, you filthy knaves, let us pass. yd Beggar. Nay, my lord, let us pass. We be a-going home after our supper in all humbleness, my lord; fot BECKET. 697 the Archbishop loves humbleness, my lord; and though we be fifty to four, \ve daren't fight you with our crutches, my lord. There now, if thou hast not laid hands upon me ! and my fellows know that I am all one scale like a fish. I pray God I haven't given thee my leprosy, my lord. \Y\\.z\xx%Q shrinks froi?i him and ajtother presses upon De Brito. De Brito. Away, dog ! 4//^ Beggar. iVnd I was bit by a mad dog o' Friday, an' I be half dog already by this token, that tho' I can drink wine 1 cannot bide water, my lord; and I want to bite, I want to bite, and they do say the very breath catches. De Brito. Insolent clown ! Shall I smite him with the edge of the sword? De Morville. No, nor with the flat of it either. Smite the shepherd and the sheep are scattered. Smite the sheep and the shepherd will excommunicate thee. De Brito. Yet my fingers itch to beat him into nothing. ^th Beggar. So do mine, my lord. I was born with it, and sulphur won't bring it out o' me. But for all that the Arch- bishop washed my feet o' Tuesday. He likes it, my lord. dth Beggar. And see here, my lord, this rag fro' the gangrene i' my leg. It's humbling — it smells o' human natur'. Wilt thou smell it, my lord? for the Archbishop likes the smell on it, my lord; for I be his lord and master i' Christ, my lord. De Morville. Faugh ! we shall all be poisoned. Let us go. [ They draw back, Beggars following. yth Beggar. My lord, I ha' three sisters a-dying at home o' the sweating sickness. - They be dead while I be a- supping. Sth Beggar. And I ha' nine darters i' the spital that be dead ten times o'er i' one day wi' the putrid fever; and I bring the taint on it along wi' me, for the Archbishop likes it, my lord. [Pressing upon the Knights till they disappear thro'' the door. yd Beggar. QrutcheSjjj,nd itches, and ,leprosies, and ulcers, and gangrenes, and running sores, praise ye the Lord, for to-night ye have saved our Archbishop ! \st Beggar. I'll go back again. I hain't half done yet. Herbert of Bosham {entering) . My friends, the Archbishop bids you good night. He hath retired to rest, and being in great jeopardy of his life, he hath made his bed between the altars, from whence he sends me to bid you this night pray for him who hath fed you in the wilderness. yd Beggar. So we will — so we will, I warrant thee. Becket shall be king, and the Holy Father shall be king, and the world shall live by the King's venison and the bread o' the Lord, and there - shall be no more poor for ever. Hurrah ! Vive le Roy ! That's the English of it. ACT II. SCENE I. — Rosamund's Bower. A Garden of Flowers. In the midst a bank of wild-flowers tuith a bench be- fore it. Voices heard singing atnong the trees. Duet. 1. Is it the wind of the dawn that I hear in the pine overhead? 2. No; but the voice of the deep as it hollows the cliffs of the land. 1. Is there a voice coming up with the voice of the deep from the strand, One coming up with a song in the flush of the glimmering red? 2. Love that is born of the deep coming up with the sun from the sea. 1. Love that can shape or can shatter a hfe till the life shall have fled? 2. Nay, let us welcome him. Love that can lift up a life from the dead. 1. Keep him away from the lone little isle. Let us be, let us be. 2. Nay, let him make it his own, let him reign in it — he, it is he, Love that is born of the deep coming up with the sun from the sea. O 698 BECKET. ACT n Enter Henry and Rosamund. Rosamund. Be friends with him again — I do beseech thee. Henry, With Becket? I have but one hour with thee — Sceptre and crozier clashing, and the mitre Grappling the crown — and when I flee from this For a gasp of freer air, a breathing- while To rest upon thy bosom and forget him — Why thou, my bird, thou pipest Becket, Becket — Yea, thou my golden dream of Love's own bower. Must be the nightmare breaking on my peace With ' Becket.' Rosamund. O my life's life, not to smile Is all but death to me. My sun, no cloud ! Let there not be one frown in this one hour. Out of the many thine, let this be mine ! Look rather thou all-royal as when first I met thee. Henry, Where was that? Rosamund. Forgetting that Forgets me too. Henry. Nay, I remember it well. There on the moors. Rosamund. And in a narrow path. A plover flew before thee. . Then I saw Thy high black steed among the flaming furze. Like sudden night in the main glare of day. And from that height something was said to me I knew not what. Henry. I ask'd the way. Rosamund. I think so. So I lost mine. Henry, Thou wast too shamed to answer. Rosamund. Too scared — so young! Henry. The rosebud of my rose ! — Well, well, no more of him — I have sent his folk, His kin, all his belongings, overseas; Age, orphans, and babe-breasting mothers — all By hundreds to him — there to beg, starve, die — So that the fool King Louis feed them not. The man shall feel that I can strike him yet. Rosamund, Babes, orphans, mothers ! is that royal. Sire? Henry. And I have been as royal with the Church. He shelter'd in the Abbey of Pontigny. There wore his time studying the canon law To work it against me. But since he cursed My friends at Veselay, I have let them know. That if they keep him longer as their guest, I scatter all their cowls to all the hells. Rosamund. And is that altogether royal? Henry. Traitress ! Rosamund. A faithful traitress to thy royal fame. Henry. Fame ! what care I for fame ? Spite, ignorance, envy, Yea, honesty too, paint her what way they will. Fame of to-day is infamy to-morrow; Infamy of to-day is fame to-morrow; And round and round again. What matters? Royal — I mean to leave the royalty of my crown Unlessen'd to mine heirs. Rosamutid. Still — thy fame too: I say that should be royal. Henry. And I say, I care not for thy saying. Rosamund. And I say, I care not for thy saying. A greater King Than thou art, Love, who cares not for the word, Makes ' care not ' — care. There have I spoken true? Henry. Care dwell with me for ever, when I cease To care for thee as ever ! Rosamund. No need ! no need ! . # • BECKET. 699 There is a bench. Come, wilt thou sit? . . . My bank Of wild-flowers (he sits). At thy feet ! \_She sits at his feet. Henry. I bade them clear A royal pleasaunce for thee, in the wood. Not leave these countryfolk at court. Rosamtind. I brought them In from the wood, and set them here. I love them More than the garden flowers, that seem at most Sweet guests, or foreign cousins, not half speaking The language of the land. I love them too, Yes. But, my liege, I am sure, of all the roses — Shame fall on those who gave it a dog's name — This wild one (^picking a briar-rose') — nay, I shall not prick myself — Is sweetest. Do but smell ! Henry. Thou rose of the world ! Thou rose of all the roses ! \_Muttering. I am not worthy of her — this beast- body That God has plunged my soul in — I, that taking The Fiend's advantage of a throne, so long Have wander'd among women, — a foul stream Thro' fever-breeding levjsls, — at her side, Among these happy dales, run clearer, drop The mud I carried, like yon brook, and glass The faithful face of heaven \_Lookingather, and unconsciously aloud, — thine ! thine ! Rosamund. I know it. Henry (^muttering). Not hers. We have but one bond, her hate of Becket. Rosamund (^ha If hearing). Nay ! nay ! what art thou muttering? /hate Becket? Henry {muttering). A sane and natural loathing for a soul Purer, and truer and nobler than herself; And mine a bitterer illegitimate hate, A bastard hate born of a former love. Rosamund. My fault to name him I O let the hand of one To whom thy voice is all her music, stay it But for a breath, \^Puts her hand before his lips. Speak only of thy love. Why there — like some loud beggar at thy gate — The happy boldness of this hand hath won it 'L<:)Vt^%2\xiss,,\h^\^\'!& {looking at her hand) — Sacred ! I'll kiss it too. S^Kissing it. There ! wherefore dost thou so peruse it? Nay, There may be crosses in my line of life. Henry. Not half her hand — nahand to mate with her, If it should come to that. Rosamund. With her? with whom? Henry. Life on the hand is naked gipsy-stuff; Life on the face, the brows — clear inno- cence ! Vein'd marble — not a furrow yet — and hers \_Muttering. Crost and recrost, a venomous spider's web Rosamund {springing up) . Out of the cloud, my Sun — out of the eclipse Narrowing my golden hour ! Henry. O Rosamund, I would be true — would tell thee all — and something I had to say — I love thee none the less — Which will so vex thee. Rosamund. Something against me? Henry. No, no, against myself. Rosamund. I will not hear it. Come, come, mine hour ! I bargain for mine hour. I'll call thee little Geoffrey. Henry. Call him ! Rosamund. Geoffrey ! Enter GEOFFREY. Henry. How the boy grows ! Rosamtind. Ay, and his brows are thine; The mouth is only Clifford, my dear father. Geoffrey. My liege, what hast thou brought me? TOO BECKET. ACT II. Henry. Venal imp ! What say'st thou to the Chancellorship of England ? Geoffrey. O yes, my liege. Henry. ' O yes, my liege ! ' He speaks As if it were a cake of gingerbread. Dost thou know, my boy, what it is to be Chancellor of England? Geoffrey. Something good, or thou wouldst not give it me. Henry. It is, my boy, to side with the King when Chancellor, and then to be made Archbishop and go against the King who made him, and turn the world upside down. Geoffrey. I won't have it then. Nay, but give it me, and I promise thee not to turn the world upside down. Henry {giving him a bait). Here is a ball, my boy, thy world, to turn anyway and play with as thou wilt — which is more than I can do with mine. Go try it, play. \_Exit Geoffrey. A pretty lusty boy. Rosamund. So like to thee; Like to be liker. Henry. Not in my chin, I hope ! That threatens double. Rosamund. Thou art manlike perfect. Henry. Ay, ay, no doubt; and were I humpt behind, Thou'dst say as much — the goodly way of women Who love, for which 1 love them. May God grant No ill befall or him or thee when I Am gone. Rosamund. ■ Is he thy enemy? Henry. He? who? ay! Rosamund. Thine enemy knows the secret of my bower. Henry. And I could tear him asunder with wild horses Before he would betray it. Nay — no fear ! More like is he to excommunicate me. Rosamund. And I would creep, crawl over knife-edge flint Barefoot, a hundred leagues, to stay his hand Before he flash'd the bolt. Henry. And when he flash'd it Shrink from me, like a daughter of the Church. Rosamtnid. Ay, but he will not. Henry. Ay I but if he did ? Rosamund. O then ! O then ! I almost fear to say That my poor heretic heart would ex- communicate His excommunication, clinging to thee Closer than ever. Henry (r<2zVz«^ Rosamund and kissing her). My brave-hearted Rose! Hath he ever been to see thee? Rosamtaid. Here? not he. And it is so lonely here — no confessor. Hen7y. Thou shalt confess all thy sweet sins to me. Rosamund. Besides, we came away in such a heat, I brought not ev'n my crucifix. Henry. Take this. \_Giving her the Crucifix zvhich Elea- nor gave him. Rosamund. O beautiful ! May I have it as mine, till mine Be mine again? Henry {throwing it round her neck) . Thine — as I am — till death! Rosamund. Death? no! I'll have it with me in my shroud. And wake with it, and show it to all the Saints. Henry. Nay — I must go; but when thou layegt thy lip To this, remembering One who died for thee. Remember also one who lives for thee Out there in France; for I must hence to brave The Pope, King Louis, and this turbu- lent priest. Rosamund {kneeling). O by thy love for me, all mine for thee. Fling not thy soul into the flames of hell : I kneel to thee — be friends with him again. Henry, Look, look ! if little Geoffrey have not tost His ball into the brook ! makes after it too To find it. Why, the child will drown himself. Rosajnund. Geoffrey ! Geoffrey ! [^Exeuntc SCENE II. BECKET. 701 SCENE II. — MONTMIRAIL. * The Meeting of the Kings: John of ^ Oxford and Henry. Croivd in the distance. John of Oxford. You have not crown'd young Henry yet, my liege? Henry. Crown'd ! by God's eyes, we will not have him crown'd. I spoke of late to the boy, he answer'd me, As if he wore the crown already — No, We will not have him crown'd. 'Tis true what Becket told me, that the mother Would make him play his kingship against mine. John of Oxford. Not have him crown'd? Hejtry. Not now — not yet! and Becket — Becket should crown him were he crown'd at all : But, since we would be lord of our own manor, This Canterbury, like a wounded deer, Has fled our presence and our feeding- grounds. John of Oxford. Cannot a smooth tongue lick him whole agaiin To serve your will? Henry. He hates my will, not me. John of Oxford. There's York, my liege. Henry. But England scarce would hold Young Henry king, if only crown'd by York, And that would stilt up York to twice himself. There is a movement yonder in the crowd — See if our pious — what shall I call him, John? — Husband-in-law, our smooth-shorn suze- rain, Be yet within the field. John of Oxford. I will. \_Exit. Henry. Ay ! Ay ! Mince and go back ! his politic Holiness Hath all but climb'd the Roman perch again, And we shall hear him presently wiih clapt wing Crow over Barbarossa — at last tongue- free To blast my realms with excommunication And interdict. I must patch up a peace — A piece in this long-tugged-at, threadbare- worn Quarrel of Crown and Church — to rend again. His Holiness cannot steer straight thro' • shoals. Nor I. The citizen's heir liath conquer'd me For the moment. So we make our peace with him. Enter Louis. Brother of France, what shall be done with Becket? Louis. The holy Thomas ! Brother, you have traffick'd Between the Emperor and the Pope, between The Pope and Antipope — a perilous ..game. Fp,r_men to play with God. Henry. Ay, ay, good brother, They call you the Monk-King. Louis. Who calls me? she That was my wife, now yours? You have her Duchy, The point you aim'd at, and pray God she prove True wife to you. You have had the better of us In secular matters. Henry. Come, confess, good brother, You did your best or worst to keep her Duchy. Only the golden Leopard printed in it Such hold-fast claws that you perforce again Shrank into France. Tut, tut ! did we convene This conference but to babble of our wives ? They are plagues enough in-door. Louis. We fought in the East, And felt the sun of Antioch scald our mail. And push'd our lances into Saracen- hearts. 702 BECKET. ACT 11. W^ never hounded on the State at home To spoil the Church. Henry. How should you see this rightly? Louis. Well, well, no more ! I am proud of my ' Monk-King,' Whoever named me ; and, brother, Holy Church May rock, but will not wreck, nor our Archbishop Stagger on the slope decks for any rough sea Blown by the breath of kings. We do forgive you For aught you v^^rought against us. \_Henry holds up his hand. Nay, I pray you, Do not defend yourself. You will do much To rake out all old dying heats, if you, At my requesting, will but look into The wrongs you did him, and restore his kin, Reseat him on his throne of Canterbury, Be, both, the friends you vt^ere. Henry. The friends we were ! Co-mates we were, and had our sport together, Co-kings we were, and made the laws together. The world had never seen the like before. You are too cold to know the fashion of it. Well, well, we will be gentle with him, gracious — ■ Most gracious. Enter Becket, after him, John of Oxford, Roger of York, Gilbert FoLiOT, De Broc, Fitzurse, etc. Only that the rift he made May close between us, here I am wholly king. The word should come from him. Becket (kneeling) . The n, my dear liege, I here deliver all this controversy Into your royal hands. Henry. Ah, Thomas, Thomas, Thou art thyself again, Thomas again. Becket (rising). Saving God's honour ! Henry. Out upon thee, man ! Saving the Devil's honour, his yes and no. Knights, bishops, earls, this London spawn — by Mahound, I had sooner have been born a Mussul- man — Less clashing with their priests — I am half-way down the slope — will no man stay me? I dash myself to pieces — I stay myself — Puff — it is gone. You, Master Becket, you That owe to me your power over me — Nay, nay — Brother of France, you have taken, cherish'd him Who thief-like fled from his own church by night, No man pursuing. 1 would have had him back. Take heed he do not turn and rend you too: For whatsoever may displease him — that Is clean against God's honour — a shift, a trick Whereby to challenge, face me out of all My regal rights. Yet, yet — that none may dream I go against God's honour — ay, or him- self In any reason, choose A hundred of the wisest heads from England, A hundred, too, from Normandy and Anjou : Let these decide on what was customary In olden days, and all .the Church of France Decide on their decision, I am content. More, what the mightiest and the holiest Of all his predecessors may have done Ev'n to the least and meanest of my own, Let him do the same to me — I am con- tent. Louis. Ay, ay ! the King humbles himself enough. Becket. (Aside?) Words! he will wriggle out of them like an eel When the time serves. (Aloud.) My lieges and my lords. The thanks of Holy Church are due to those That went before us for their work, which we Inheriting reap an easier harvest, Yet BECKET, 703 Louis. My lord, will you be greater than the Saints, - More than St. Peter? whom what is it you doubt? Behold your peace at hand. Becket. I say that those Who went before us did not wholly clear The deadly growths of earth, which Hell's own heat So dwelt on that they rose and darken'd Heaven. Yet they did much. Would God they had torn up all By the hard root, which shoots again; our trial Had so been less ; but, seeing they were men Defective or excessive, must we follow All that they overdid or underdid? Nay, if they were defective as St. Peter Denying Christ, who yet defied the tyrant, We hold by his defiance, not his defect. good son Louis, do not counsel me, 1^0, to suppress God's honour for the sake jQf any king that breathes. No, God forbid ! Henry. No ! God forbid ! and turn me Mussulman ! No God but one, and Mahound is his prophet. But for your Christian, look you, ^ou shall have ^qne other God^ but _me — me, Thomas, son Of Gilbert Becket, London merchant. Out! 1 hear no more. \_Exit, Louis. Our brother's anger puts him, Poor man, beside himself — not wise. My lord, We have claspt your cause, believing that our brother Had wrong'd you; but this day he proffer'd peace. You will have war; and tho' we grant the Church King over this world's kings, yet, my good lord. We that are kings are something in this world, And so we pray you, draw yourself from under The wings of France. We shelter you no more. \_Exit. John of Oxford. I am glad that France hath scouted him at last : I told the Pope what manner of man he was. \_Exit. Roger of York. Yea, since he flouts the will of either realm, Let either cast him away like a dead dog ! \^Exit. Foliot. Yea, let a stranger spoil his heritage. And let another take his bishoprick ! S^Exit. De Broc. Our castle, my lord, be- longs to Canterbury. I pray you come and take it. \^Exit. Fitzurse. When you will. {^Exit. Becket. Cursed be John of Oxford, Roger of York, And Gilbert Foliot! cursed those De Brocs That hold our Saltwood Castle from our see ! Cursed Fitzurse, and all the rest of them That sow this hate between my lord and me ! Voices from ike Crowd. Blessed be the Lord Archbishop, who hath with- -, stood two Kings to their faces for the / honour of God. Becket. Out of the mouths of babes \ and sucklings, praise ! ^^ I thank you, sons; when kings but hold by crowns, The crowd that hungers for a crown in ; Heaven y Is my true king. Herbert. Thy true King bade thee be A fisher of men; thou hast them in thy net. Becket. I am too like the King here; both of us Too headlong for our office. Better have been A fisherman at Bosham, my good Herbert, Thy birthplace — the sea-creek — the petty rill That falls into it — the green field — the gray church — The. simple lobster-basket, and the mesh — The more or less of daily labour done — 764 BRCKET. ACT ir. The pretty gaping bills in the home-nest Piping for bread — the daily want sup- plied — The daily pleasure to supply it. Herbert. Ah, Thomas, You had not borne it, no, not for a day. Becket. Well, maybe, no. Herbert. But bear with Walter Map, For here he comes to comment on the time. Enter Walter Map. Walter Map. Pity, my lord, that you have quenched the warmth of France to- ward you, tho' His Holiness, after much smouldering and smoking, be kindled again upon your quarter. Becket. Ay, if he do not end in smoke again. Walter Map. My lord, the fire, when first kindled, said to the smoke, ' Go up, my son, straight to Heaven.' And the smoke said, *1 go; ' but anon the North- east took and turned him South-west, then the South-west turned him North- east, and so of the other winds; but it was in him to go up straight if the time had been quieter. Your lordship affects the unwavering perpendicular; but His Holiness, pushed one way by the Em- pire and another by England, if he move at all, Heaven stay him, is fain to diagonalise. Herbert. Diagonalise ! thou art a word- monger. Our Thomas never will diagonalise. Thou art a jester and a verse-maker. Diagonalise ! Walter Map. Is the world any the worse for my verses if the Latin rhymes be rolled out from a full mouth? or any harm done to the people if my jest be in defence of the Truth? Becket. Ay, if the jest be so done that the people Delight to wallow in the grossness of it, Till Truth herself be shamed of her defender. Non defensoribus istis, Walter Map. Walter Map. Is that my case? so if the city be sick, and I cannot call the kennel sweet, your lordship would sus- pend me from verse-writing, as you sus- pended yourself after sub-writing to the customs. Becket. I pray God pardon mine in- firmity. Walter Alap. Nay, my lord, take heart; for tho' you suspended yourself, the Pope let you down again; and tho' you suspend Foliot or another, the Pope will not leave them in suspense, for the Pope himself is always in suspense, like Mahound's coffin hung between heaven and earth — always in suspense, like the scales, till the weight of Germany or the gold of England brings one of them down to the dust — always in suspense, like the tail of the horologe — to and fro — tick-tack — we make the time, we keep the time, ay, and we serve the time; for I have heard say that if you boxed the Pope's ears with a purse, you might stagger him, but he would pocket the purse. No saying of mine — Jocelyn of Salisbury. But the King hath bought half the College of Redhats. He warmed to you to-day, and you have chilled him again. Yet you both love God. Agree with him quickly again, even for the sake of the Church. My one grain of good counsel which you will not swallow. I hate a split between old friendships as I hate the dirty gap in the face of a Cis- tercian monk, that will swallow anything. Farewell. \_Exit. Becket. Map scoffs at Rome. I all but hold with Map. Save for myself no Rome were left in J^^nglandj All had been his.. W^hy should this Rome, this Rome, Still choose Barabbas rather than the Christ, Absolve the left-hand thief and damn the right? Take fees of tyranny, wink at sacri- lege, Which even Peter had not dared? con- demn The blameless exile? — Herbert. Thee, thou holy Thomas ! I would that thou hadst been the Holy Father. Becket. I would have done my mosfv to keep Rome holy, \ BECKET. 705 I would have made Rome know she still is Rome — Who stands aghast at her eternal self And shakes at mortal kings — her vacilla- tion, Avarice, craft — O God, how many an innocent Has left his bones upon the way to Rome Unwept, uncared for. Yea — on mine own self The King had had no power except for Rome. 'Tis not the King who is guilty of mine exile. But Rome, Rome, Rome ! Herbert. My lord, I see this Louis Returning, ah ! to drive thee from his realm. Becket. He said as much before. Thou art no prophet. Nor yet a prophet's son. Herbert. Whatever he say, Deny not thou God's honour for a king. The King looks troubled. Re-enter King Louis. I ^ Louis. My dear lord Archbishop, ^- 1 learn but now that those poor Poitevins, That in thy cause were stirr'd against King Henry, Have been, despite his kingly promise given To our own self of pardon, evilly used And put to pain. I have lost all trust in him. The Church alone hath eyes — and now I see That I was blind — suffer the phrase — surrendering God's honour to the pleasure of a man. Forgive me and absolve me, holy father. i\_Kneels. Becket. Son, I absolve thee in the name of God. Louis {rising). Return to Sens, where- we will care for you. The wine and wealth of all our France are yours; Rest in our realm, and be at peace with all. {^Exeunt. Voices from the Crowd. Long live the good King Louis ! God bless the great Archbishop ! 2Z Re-enter Henry and John of Oxford. Henry {looking after King Louis and Becket). Ay, there they go — both backs are turn'd to me — Why then I strike into my former path For England, crown young Henry there, and make Our waning Eleanor all but love me ! John, Thou hast served me heretofore with Rome — and well. They call thee John the Swearer. John of Oxford. For this reason, That, being ever duteous to the King, I evermore have sworn upon his side. And ever mean to do it. Henry {claps him on the shoulder^. Honest John ! To Rome again ! the storm begins again. Spare not thy tongue ! be lavish with our coins, Threaten our junction with the Emperor — flatter And fright the Pope — bribe all the Car- dinals — leave Lateran and Vatican in one dust of gold — Swear and unswear, state and misstate thy best ! I go to have young Henry crown'd by York. ACT HL SCENE I. — The Bower. Henry and Rosamund. Henry. All that you say is just. I cannot answer it. Till better times, when I shall put away Rosamund. What will you put away? Henry. That which you ask me Till better times. Let it content you now There is no woman that I love so well. Rosamund. No woman but should be content with that Henry. And one fair child to fondle ! Rosamund. O yes, the child We waited for so long — heaven's gift at last — 7o6 BECKET, ACT III And how you doted on him then! To- day 1 almost fear'd your kiss was colder — yes — But then the child is such a child. What chance That he should ever spread into the man Here in our silence? I have done my best. I am not learn'd. Henry. I am the King, his father, And 1 will look to it. Is our secret ours? Have you had any alarm? no stranger? Rosamund. No. The warder of the bower hath given himself Of late to wine. I sometimes think he sleeps When he should .watch; and yet what fear? the people Believe the wood enchanted. No one comes. Nor foe nor friend; his fond excess of wine Springs from the loneliness of my poor bower. Which weighs even on me. Henry. Yet these tree-towers. Their long bird-echoing minster-aisles, — the voice Of the perpetual brook, these golden slopes Of Solomon-shaming flowers — ^^that was your saying, All pleased you so at first. Rosamund. Not now so much. My Anjou bower was scarce as beautiful. But you were oftener there. I have none but you. The brook's voice is not yours, and no flower, not The sun himself, should he be changed ,to one, Could shine away the darkness of that gap Left by the lack of love. Henry. The lack of love ! Rosamund. Of one we love. Nay, I would not be bold. Yet hoped ere this you might — — \_Looks earnestly at him. Henry. Anything further? Rosamund. Only my best bower- maiden died of late, And that old priest whom John of Salis- bury trusted Hath sent another. Henry. Secret? Kosaniund. I but ask'd her One question, and she primm'd her mouth and put Her hands together — thus — and said, God help her. That she was sworn to silence. Henry. What did you ask her? Rosamund. Some daily something- nothing. Henry. Secret, then? Rosamund. I do not love her. Must you go, my liege. So suddenly? Henry. I came to England suddenly, And on a great occasion sure to wake As great a wrath in Becket Rosamund. Always Becket ! He always comes between us. Henry. — And to meet it I needs must leave as suddenly. It is raining. Put on your hood and see me to the bounds. \_Exeunt. Margery {singing behind scene). Babble in bower Under the rose ! Bee mustn't buzz, Whoop— -but he knows. Kiss me, little one. Nobody near ! Grasshopper, grasshopper, Whoop — you can hear. Kiss in the bower, Tit on the tree ! Bird mustn't tell, Whoop — he can see. Enter Margery. I ha' been but a week here and I ha' seen what I ha' seen, for to be sure it's no more than a week since our old Father Philip that has confessed our mother for twenty years, and she was hard put to it, and to speak truth, nigh at the end of our last crust, and that mouldy, and she cried out on him to put SCENE I. BECKET. 707 me forth in the world and to make me a woman of the world, and to win my own bread, whereupon he asked our mother if I could keep a quiet tongue i' my head, and iK)t speak till I was spoke to, and I answered for myself that I never spoke more than was needed, and he told me he would advance me to.the service of a great lady, and took me ever so far away, and gave me a great pat o' the cheek for a pretty wench, and said it was a pity to blindfold such eyes as mine, and such to be sure they be, but he blinded 'em for all that, and so brought me no-hows as I may say, and the more shame to him after his promise, into a garden and not into the world, and bade me whatever I saw not to speak one word, an' it 'ud be well for me in the end, for there were great ones who would look after me, and to be sure I ha' seen great ones to-day — and then not to speak one word, for that's the rule o' the garden, tho' to be sure if I had been Eve i' the garden I shouldn't ha' minded the apple, for what's an apple, you know, save to a child, and I'm no child, but more a woman o' the world than my lady here, and I ha' seen what I ha' seen — tho' to be sure if I hadn't minded it we should all on us ha' had to go, bless the Saints, wi' bare backs, but the backs 'ud ha' counte- nanced one another, and belike it 'ud ha' been always summer, and anyhow I am as well-shaped as my lady here, and I ha' seen what I ha' seen, and what's the good of my talking to myself, for here comes my lady {enter Rosamund), and, my lady, tho' I shouldn't speak one word, I wish you joy o' the King's brother. Rosamund. What is it you mean? Margery. I mean your goodman, your husband, my lady, for I saw your ladyship a-parting wi' him even now i' the coppice, when I was a-getting o' bluebells for your ladyship's nose to smell on — and I ha' seen the King once at Oxford, and he's as like the King as fingernail to fingernail, and I thought at first it was the King, onlv you know the King's married, for King Louis Rosamund. Married ! Margery. Years and years, my lady, for her husband, King Louis Rosamund. Hush! Margery. — And I thought if it were the King's brother he had a better bride than the King, for the people do say that his is bad beyond all reckoning, and Rosamutid. The people lie. Margery. Very like, my lady, but most on 'em know an honest woman and a lady when they see her, and besides they say, she makes songs, and that's against her, for I never knew an honest woman that could make songs, tho' to be sure our mother 'ill sing me old songs by the hour, but then, God help her, she had 'em from her mother, and her mother from her mother back and back for ever so long, but none of 'em ever made songs, and they were all honest. Rosamund. Go, you shall tell me of her some other time. Margery. There's none so much to tell on her, my lady, only she kept the seventh commandment better than some I know on, or I couldn't look your lady- ship i' the face, and she brew'd the best ale in all Glo'ster, that is to say in her time when she had the * Crown.' Rosamund. The crown ! who? Margery. Mother. Rosamund. I mean her whom you call — fancy — my husband's brother's wife. Margery. Oh, Queen Eleanor. Yes, my lady; and tho' I be sworn not to speak a word, I can tell you all about her, if Rosamund. No word now. I am faint and sleepy. Leave me. Nay — go. What ! will you anger me? \^Exit Margery. He charged me not to question any of those About me. Have I? no! she question'd me. Did she not slander him ? Should she stay here? May she not tempt me, being at my side, To question her? Nay, can I send her hence Without his kingly leave? I am in the dark. 7o8 BECKET. I have lived, poor bird, from cage to • cage, and known Nothing but him — happy to know no more. So that he loved me — and he loves me — yes, And bound me by his love to secrecy Till his own time. Eleanor, Eleanor, have I Not heard ill things of her in France? Oh, she's The Queen of France. I see it — some confusion, Some strange mistake. I did not hear aright, Myself confused with parting from the King. Margery {behind scene). Bee mustn't buzz. Whoop — but he knows. Rosamund. Yet her — what her? he hinted of some her — When he was here before — Something that would displease me. Hath he stray'd From love's clear path into the common bush, And, being scratch'd, returns to his true rose, Who hath not thorn enough to prick him for it, Ev'n with a word? Margery {behind scene) . Bird mustn't tell. Whoop — he can see. Rosamund. I would not hear him. Nay — there's more — he frown'd *No mate for her, if it should come to that ' — To that — to what? Margery {behind scene). Whoop — but he knows. Whoop — but he knows. Rosamund. O God ! some dreadful truth is breaking on me — Some dreadful thing is coming on me. {^Enter Geoffrey. Geoffrey ! Geoffrey. What are you crying for, when the sun shines? Rosamund, flath not thy father left us to ourselves? Geoffrey. Ay, but he's taken the rain with him. I hear Margery : I'll go play with her. \^Exit Geoffrey. Rosamund. Rainbow, stay, Gleam upon gloom, Bright as my dream, Rainbow, stay ! But it passes away, Gloom upon gleam, Dark as my doom — O rainbow, stay. SCENE II.— Outside the Woods NEAR RoSAxMUND's BoWER. Eleanor. Fitzurse. Eleanor. Up from the salt lips of the land we two Have track'd the King to this dark inland wood; And somewhere hereabouts he vanish'd. Here His turtle builds; his exit is our adit : Watch ! he will out again, and presently. Seeing he must to Westminster and crown Young Henry there to-morrow. Fitzurse. We have watch'd So long in vain, he hath pass'd out again, And on the other side. \_A great horn winded. Hark ! Madam ! Eleanor. Ay, How ghostly sounds that horn in the black wood ! \_A countryman Jiying. Whither away, man? what are you flying from? Countryman. The witch ! the witch ! she sits naked by a great heap of gold in the middle of the wood, and when the horn sounds she comes out as a wolf. Get you hence ! a man passed in there to-day : I holla'd to him, but he didn't hear me : he'll never out again, the witch has got him. I daren't stay — I daren't stay! Eleanor. Kind of the witch to give thee warning tho'. \^Man flies. Is not this wood-witch of the rustic's fear Our woodland Circe that hath witch'd the King? l^Horn sounded. Another flying. BECKET. 709 ^Fitzurse. Again ! stay, fool, and tell me why thou fliest. Countryman. Fly thou too. The King keeps his forest head of game here, and when that horn sounds, a score of wolf-dogs are let loose that will tear thee piecemeal. Linger not till the third horn. Fly! {^Exit. Eleanor. This is the likelier tale. We have hit the place. Now let the King's fine game look to itself. \_FIorn. Fitzurse. Again ! — And far on in the dark heart of the wood I hear the yelping of the hounds of hell. Eleanor. I have my dagger here to still their throats. Fitzurse. Nay, Madam, not to-night — the night is falling. What can be done to-night? Eleanor. Well — well — away. SCENE III. — Traitor's Meadow at Fr^teval. Pavilions and Tents OF THE English and French Bar- onage. R Becket and Herbert of Bosham. Becket. See here ! Herbert. What's here? Becket. A notice from the priest. To whom our John of Salisbury com- mitted The secret of the bower, that our wolf- Queen Is prowling round the fold. I should be back In England ev'n for this. Herbert. These are by-things In the great cause. Becket. The.by-things of the Lord Are the wrong'd innocences that will cry From all the hidden by-ways of the world In the great day against the wronger. I know • Thy meaning. Perish she, I, all, before The Church should suffer wrong ! Herbert. Do you see, my lord. There is the King talking with Walter Map? Becket. He hath the Pope's last letters, and they threaten The immediate thunder-blast of interdict : Yet he can scarce be touching upon those. Or scarce would smile that fashion. Herbert. ^ Winter sunshine ! Beware of opening out thy bosom to it. Lest thou, myself, and all thy flock should catch An after ague-fit of trembling. Look ! He bows, he bares his head, he is coming hither. Still with a smile. Enter King Henry and Walter Map. Henry. We have had so many hours together, Thomas, So many happy hours alone together. That I would speak with you once more alone. Becket. My liege, your will and happi- ness are mine. \^Exeutit King and Becket. Herbert. The same smile still. Walter Map. Do you see that great black cloud that hath come over the sun and cast us all into shadow? Herbert. And feel it too. Walter Map. And see you yon side- beam that is forced from under it, and sets the church-tower over there all a-hell-fire as it were? Herbert. Ay. Walter Map. It is this black, bell- silencing, anti-marrying, burial-hindering interdict that hath squeezed out this side- smile upon Canterbury, whereof may come conflagration. Were I Thomas, I wouldn't trust it. Sudden change is a house on sand; and tho' I count Henry honest enough, yet when fear creeps in at the front, honesty steals out at the back, and the King at last is fairly scared by this cloud — this interdict. I have been more for the King than the Church in this matter — yea, even for the sake of the Church : for, truly, as the case stood, you had safelier have slain an archbishop than a she-goat : but our recoverer and upholder of customs hath in this crown- ing of young Henry by York and London so violated the immemorial usage of the Church, that, like the gravedigger's child I have heard of, trying to ring the bell, he hath half-hanged himself in the rope 7IO BECKET, ACT m of the Church, or rather pulled all the Church with the Holy Father astride of it down upon his own head. Herbert. Were you there ? Walter Map. In the church rope? — no. I was at the crowning, for I have pleasure in the pleasure of crowds, and to read the faces of men at a great show. Herbert. And how did Roger of York comport himself? Walter Map. As magnificently and archiepiscopally as our Thomas would have done : only there was a dare-devil in his eye — I should say a dare-Becket. He thought less of two kings than of one Roger the king of the occasion. Foliot is the holier man, perhaps the better. Once or twice there ran a twitch across his face as who should say what's to follow? but Salisbury was a calf cowed by Mother Church, and every now and then glancing about him like a thief at night when he hears a door open in the house and thinks 'the master.' Herbert. And the father-king? Walter Map. The father's eye was so tender it would have called a goose off the green, and once he strove to hide his face, like the Greek king when his daughter was sacrificed, but he thought better of it: it was but the sacrifice of a kingdom to his son, a smaller matter; but as to the young crownling himself, he looked so malapertJn the eyes, that had I fathered him I had given him more of the rod than the sceptre. Then followed the thunder of the captains and the shouting, and so we came on to the banquet, from whence there puffed out such an incense of unctuosity into the nostrils of our Gods of Church and State, that Lucullus or Apicius might have sniffed it in their Hades of heathenism, so that the smell of their own roast had not come across it Herbert. Map, tho' you make your butt too big, you overshoot it. Walter Map. — For as to the fish, they de-miracled the miraculous draught, and might have sunk a navy Herbert. There again, Goliasing and QoUathising ! Walter Map. — And as for the flesh at table, a whole Peter's sheet, with all manner of game, and four-footed things, and fowls Herbert. And all manner of creeping things too? Walter Map. —Well, there were Abbots — but they did not bring their women; and so we were dull enough at first, but in the end we flourished out into a merriment; for the old King would act servitor and hand a dish to his son ; whereupon my Lord of York — his fine-cut face bowing and beaming with all that courtesy which hath less loyalty in it than the backward scrape of the clown's heel — 'great honour,' says he, ' from the King's self to the King's son.' Did you hear the young King's quip? Herbert. No, what was it? Walter Map. Glancing at the days when his father was only Earl of Anjou, he answered : — * Should not an earl's son wait on a king's son ? ' And when the cold corners of the King's mouth began to thaw, there was a great motion of laughter among us, part real, part childlike, to be freed from the dulness — part royal, for King and kingling both laughed, and so we could not but laugh, as by a royal necessity — part childlike again — when we felt we had laughed too long and could not stay ourselves — many midriff-shaken even to tears, as springs gush out after earthquakes — but from those, as I said before, there may come a conflagration — tho', to keep the figure moist and make it hold water, I should say rather, the lacrymation of a lamentation; but look if Thomas have not flung himself at the King's feet. They have made it up again — for the moment. Herbert. Thanks to the blessed Mag- dalen, whose day it is. Re-enter Henry and Becket. (^Dur- ing their conference the BaronS and Bishops of France and England come in at back of stage. ^ Becket. Ay, King! for in thy king- dom, as thou knowest, SCENE III. BECKET. ,1 The spouse of the Great King, thy King, hath fallen — The daughter of Zion lies beside the way — The priests of Baal tread her under- foot— The golden ornaments are stolen from her Henry. Have I not promised to re-' ^ store her, Thomas, And send thee back again to Canter- bury? Becket. Send back again those exiles of my kin Who wander famine-wasted thro' the world. Henry. Have I not promised, man, to send them back? Becket. Yet one thing more. Thou hast broken thro' the pales Of privilege, crowning thy young son by York, London and Salisbury — not Canterbury. Henry. York crown'd the Conqueror — not Canterbury. Becket. .There was no Canterbury in William's time. Henry. But Hereford, you know, crown'd the first Henry. Becket. But Anselm crown'd this Henry o'er again. Henry. And thou shalt crown njy Henry o'er again. Becket. And is it then with thy good- will that I Proceed against thine evil councillors, And hurl the dread ban of the Church on those Who made the second mitre play the first, And acted mq? Henry. Well, well, then — have thy way! It may be they were evil councillors. What more, my lord Archbishop? What more, Thomas? 1 make thee full amends. Say all thy say, But blaze not out before the Frenchmen here. Becket. More? Nothing, so thy promise be thy deed. Henry {holding out his hand). Give me thy hand. My Lords of France and England, My friend of Canterbury and myself Are now once more at perfect amity. Unkingly should I be, and most mn- knightly, Not striving still, however much in vain. To rival him in Christian charity. Herbert. All praise to Heaven, and sweet St. Magdalen ! Henry. And so farewell until we meet in England. Becket. I fear, my liege, we may not meet in England. Henry. How, do you make me a traitor? Becket. . No, indeed ! That be far from thee. Henry. Come, stay with us, then, Before you part for England. Becket. I am bound For that one hour to stay with good King Louis, Who helpt me when none else. Herbert. He said thy life Was not one hour's worth in England save King Henry gave thee first the kiss of peace. Henry. He said so? Louis, did he? look you, Herbert, When I was in mine anger with King Louis, I sware I would not give the kiss of peace. Not on French ground, nor any ground but Enghsh, Where his cathedral stands. Mine old friend, Thomas, I would there were that perfect trust between us. That healtTi of heart, once ours, ere Pope or King Had come between us ! Even now — who knows? — ,1 might deliver all things to thy hand — If_^. . . but I say no more . . . fare- "^ well, my lord. Becket. Farewell, my liege ! \_Exit Henry, then the Barons and Bishops. Walter Map. There again ! when the full fruit of the royal promise might have dropt into thy mouth hadst thou but opened it to thank him. 712 BECKET. ACT IV. Becket. He fenced his royal promise with an if. Walter Map. And is the King's if too high a stile for your lordship to over- step and come at all things in the next field? Becket. Ay, if this if be like the Devil's ' if Thou wilt fall down and worship me,' Herbert. Oh, Thomas, I could fall down and worship thee, my Thomas, For thou hast trodden this wine-press alone. Becket. Nay, of the people there are many with me. Walter Map. I am not altogether with you, my lord, tho' I am none of those that would raise a storm between you, lest ye should draw together like two ships in a calm. You wrong the King: he meant what he said to-day. Who shall vouch for his to-morrows? One word further. Doth not the few- ness of anything make the fulness of it in estimation? Is not virtue prized mainly for its rarity, and great baseness loathed as an exception? for were all, my lord, as noble as yourself, who would look up to you? and were all as base as — who shall I say — Fitzurse and his following — who would look down upon them? My lord, you have put so many of the King's household out of communion, that they begin to smile at it. Becket. At their peril, at their peril Walter Map. — For tho' the drop may hollow out the dead stone, doth not the living skin thicken against perpetual whippings? This is the second grain of good counsel I ever proffered thee, and so cannot suffer by the rule of frequency. Have I sown it in salt? I trust not, for before God I promise you the King hath many more wolves than he can tame in his woods of England, and if it suit their purpose to howl for the King, and you still move against him, you may have no Jess than to die for it; but God and his free wind grant your lordship a happy home-return and the King's kiss of peace in Kent. Farewell ! I must follow the King. {^Exit. Herbert. Ay, and I warrant the cus- toms. Did the King Speak of the customs? Becket. No ! — To die for it — X liye^to die for it, I die tq^live for it. The State will die, the Church .can never die. The King's not like to die for that which dies; But I must die for that whicL never dies. JUwill be so — my visions in the Lord : It must be so, my friend! the wolves of England Must murder her one shepherd,, that the sheep May feed in peace. False figure. Map would say. Earth's falses are heaven's truths. And when my voice Is martyr'd mute, and this man disappears, That perfect trust may come again between us, And there, there, there, not here I shall rejoice To find my stray sheep back within the fold. The crowd are scattering, let us move away ! And thence to England. \_Exeunt. ACT IV. SCENE I. — The Outskirts of the Bower. Geoffrey (^coming out of the zvood^. Light again ! light again ! Margery? no, that's a finer thing there. How it glitters ! Eleanor {entering) . Come to me, little one. How camest thou hither? Geoffrey. On my legs. Eleanor. And mighty pretty legs too. Thou art the prettiest child I ever saw. Wilt thou love me? Geoffrey. No; I only love mother. Eleanor. Ay; and who is thy mother? Geoffrey. They call her But she lives secret, you see. EAeanor. Why? Geoffrey. Don't know why. Eleanor. Ay, but some one comes to see her now and then. Who is he? Geoffrey. Can't tell. BECKET. 713 Eleanor. What does she call him? Geoffrey. My liege. Eleanor. Pretty one, how earnest thou ? Geoffrey. There was a bit of yellow silk here and there, and it looked pretty like a glowworm, and I thought if I followed it I should find the fairies. Eleanor. I am the fairy, pretty one, a good fairy to thy mother. Take me to her. Geoffrey. There are good fairies and bad fairies, and sometimes she cries, and can't sleep sound o' nights because of the bad fairies. Eleanor. She shall cry no more; she shall sleep sound enough if thou wilt take me to her. I am her good fairy. Geoffrey. But you don't look like a good fairy. Mother does. You are not pretty, like mother. Eleanor. We can't all of us be as pretty as thou art — {aside) little bastard. Come, here is a golden chain I will give thee if thou wilt lead me to thy mother. Geoffrey. No — no gold. Mother says gold spoils all. Love is the only gold. Eleanor. I love thy mother, my pretty boy. Show me where thou camest out of the wood, Geoffrey. By this tree; but I don't know if I can find the way back again. Eleanor. Where's the warder? Geoffrey. Very bad. Somebody struck him. Eleanor. Ay? who was that? Geoffrey. Can't tell. But I heard say he had had a stroke, or you'd have heard his horn before now. Come along, then; we shall see the silk here and there, and I want my supper. \_Exeiint. SCENE IT. — Rosamund's Bower. Rosamund. The boy so late; pray God, he be not lost. I sent this Margery, and she comes not back; I sent another, and she comes not back. I go myself — so many alleys, crossings. Paths, avenues — nay, if I lost him, now The folds have fallen from the mystery, And left all naked, I were lost indeed. Enter Geoffrey and Eleanor. Geoffrey, the pain thou hast put me to ! \_Seeing Eleanor. Ha, you! How came you hither? Eleanor. Your own child brought me hither ! Geoffrey. You said you couldn't trust Margery, and I watched her and followed her into the woods, and I lost her and went on and on till I found the light and the lady, and she says she can make you sleep o' nights. Rosamund. How dared you? Know you not this bower is secret, Of and belonging to the King of England, More sacred than his forests for the chase ? Nay, nay, Heaven help you; get you hence in haste Lest worse befall you. Eleanor. Child, I am mine own self Of and !)elonging to the King. The King Hath divers ofs and ons, ofs and belong- ings. Almost as many as your true Mussulman — Belongings, paramours, whom it pleases him • To call his wives; but so it chances, child. That I am his main paramour, his sultana. But since the fondest pair of doves will jar, Ev'n in a cage of gold, we had words of late. And thereupon he call'd my children bastards. Do you believe that you are married to him? Rosamund. I should h€i\tMQ. it. Eleanor. You must not believe it, Because I have a wholesome medicine here Puts that- belief asleep. Your answer, beauty ! Do you believe that you are married to him? Rosamund. Geoffrey, my boy, I saw the ball you lost in the fork of the great willow over the brook. Go. See that you do not fall in. Go. 7H BECKET, ACT I> Geoffrey. And leave you alone with the good fairy. She calls you beauty, but I don't lilce her looks. Well, you bid me go, and I'll have my ball anyhow. Shall I find you asleep when I come back? Rosamund. Go. \^Exit Geoffrey. Eleanor. He is easily found again. Do you believe it? I pray you then to take my sleeping- draught; But if you should not care to take it — See ! [Draws a dagger. What ! have I scared the red rose from your face Into your heart? But this will find it there, And dig it from the root for ever. Rosamund. Help ! help ! Eleanor. They say that walls have ears; but these, it seems. Have none ! and I have none — to pity thee. Rosamund. I do beseech you — my child is so young, So backward too; I cannot leave him yet. I am not so happy I could not die myself, But the child is so young. You have children — his; And mine is the'King's child; so, if you love him — Nay, if you love him, there is great wrong done Somehow; but if you do not — there are those Who say you i^o not love him — let me go With my young boy, and I will hide my face, Blacken and gipsyfy it; none shall know me; The King shall never hear of me again. But I will beg my bread along the world With my young boy, and God will be our guide. I never meant you harm in any way. See, I can say no more. Eleanor. Will you not say you are not married to him? Rosamund. Ay, Madam, I can say it, if you will. Eleanor. Then is thy pretty boy a bastard ? Rosamund. No. Eleanor. And thou thyself a proven wanton? Rosamund. No. I am none such. I never loved but one. I have heard of such that range from love to love. Like the wild beast — if you can call it love. I have heard of such — yea, even among those Who sit on thrones — I never saw any such. Never knew any such, and howsoever You do misname me, match'd with any such, I am snow to mud. Eleanor. The more the pity then That thy true home — the heavens — cry out for thee Who art too pure for earth. Enter FiTZURSE. Fitzurse. Give her to me. Eleanor. The Judas-lover of our passion-play Hath track'd us hither. Fitzurse. Well, why not? I follow'd You and the child: he babbled all the way. Give her to me to make my honey-moon. Eleanor. Ay, as the bears love honey. Could you keep her Indungeon'd from one whisper of the wind, Dark even from a side glance of the moon. And oublietted in the centre — No ! I follow out my hate and thy revenge. Fitzurse. You bade me take revenge another way — To bring her to the dust. . . . Come with me, love. And I will love thee. . . . Madam, let her live. I have a far-off burrow where the King Would miss her and for ever. Eleanor. How sayest thou, sweetheart? Wilt thou go with him? he will marry thee. Rosamund. Give me the poison; set me free of him ! [Eleanor offers the vial. SCENE II. BECKET, 715 No, no ! I will not have it. Eleanor. Then this other, The wiser choice, because my sleeping- draught May bloat thy beauty out of shape, and make Thy body loathsome even to thy child; While this but leaves thee with a broken heart; A doll-face blanch'd and bloodless, over which If pretty Geoffrey do not break his own. It must be broken for him. Rosamund. O I see now Your purpose is to fright me — a trouba- dour You play with words. You had never used so many, Not if you meant it, I am sure. The child . . . No . . . mercy! No! (^Kneels.') Eleanor. Play! . . . that bosom never Heaved under the King's hand with such true passion As at this loveless knife that stirs the riot Which it will quench in blood! Slave, if he love thee, Thy life is worth the wrestle for it : arise, And dash thyself against me that I may slay thee ! The worm ! shall I let her go ? But ha! what's here? By very God, the cross I gave the King ! His village darling in some lewd caress Has wheedled it off the King's neck to her own. By thy leave, beauty. Ay, the same ! I warrant Thou hast sworn on this my cross a hundred times Never to leave him — and that merits death. False oath on holy cross — for thou must leave him To-day, but not quite yet. My good Fitzurse, The running down the chase is kindlier sport Ev'n than the death. Who knows but that thy lover May plead so pitifully, that i may spare thee? 3A Come hither, man; stand there. {To Rosamund.) Take thy one chance; Catch at the last straw. Kneel to thy lord Fitzurse; Crouch even because thou hatest him; fawn upon him For thy life and thy son's. Rosamund {rising). I am a Clifford, „My son a Clifford and Plantagenet. I am to die then, tho' there stand beside thee One who might grapple with thy dagger, if he Had aught of man, or thou of woman; or I Would bow to such a baseness as would make me Most worthy of it : both of us will die. And I will fly with my sweet boy to heaven. And shriek to all the saints among the stars : . ' Eleanor of Aquitaine, Eleanor of Eng- land! Murder'd by that adulteress Eleanor, Whose doings are a horror to the east, A hissing in the west ! ' Have we not heard Raymond of Poitou, thine own uncle — nay, Geoffrey Plantagenet, thine own hus- band's father — Nay, ev'n the accursed heathen Salad- deen Strike ! I challenge thee to meet me before God. Answer me there. Eleanor {raising the dagger) . This in thy bos9m, fool. And after in thy bastard's ! Enter Becket from behind. Catches hold of her arm. Becket. Murderess ! \_lhe dagger falls; they stare at one another. After a pause. Eleanor. My lord, we know you proud of your fine hand. But having now admired it long enough. We find that it is mightier than it seems — At least mine own is frailer: you are laming it. 7i6 BECKET. ACT IV. Becket, And lamed and maim'd to dislocation, better Than raised to take a life which Henry bade me Guard from the stroke that dooms thee after death To wail in deathless flame. Eleanor. Nor you, nor I Have now to learn, my lord, that our good Henry Says many a thing in sudden heats, which he Gainsays by next sunrisiiig — often ready To tear himself for having said as much. My lord, Fitzurse Becket. He too ! what dost thou here ? Dares the bear slouch into the lion's den? One downward plunge of his paw would rend away Eyesight and manhood, life itself, from thee. Go, lest I blast thee with anathema, And make thee a world's horror. Fitzurse. My lord, I shall Remember this. Becket. I do remember thee; Lest I remember thee to the lion, go. \^Exit Fitzurse. Take up your dagger; put it in the sheath. Eleanor. Might not your courtesy stoop to hand it me? But crowns must bow when mitres sit so high. Well — well — too costly to be left or lost. S^Picks up the dagger. I had it from an Arab soldan, who. When I was there in Antioch, marvell'd at Our unfamiliar beauties of the west ; But wonder'd more at my much constancy To the monk-king, Louis, our former burthen, From whom, as being too kin, you know, my lord, God's grace and Holy Church deliver'd us. I think, time given, I could have talk'd him out of His ten wives into one. Look at the hilt. What excellent workmanship. In our poor west We cannot do it so well. Becket. We can do worse. Madam, I saw your dagger at her throat; I heard your savage cry. Eleanor. Well acted, was it? A comedy meant to seem a tragedy — A feint, a farce. My honest lord, you are known Thro' all the courts of Christendom as one That mars a cause with over-violence. You have wrong'd Fitzurse. I speak not of myself. We thought to scare this minion of the King Back from her churchless commerce with the King To the fond arms of her first love, Fitzurse, Who swore to marry her. You have spoilt the farce. My savage cry ? Why, she — she — when I strove To work against her license for her good, Bark'd out at me such monstrous charges, that The King himself, for love of his own sons. If hearing, would have spurn'd her; whereupon I menaced her with this, as when we threaten A yelper with a stick. Nay, I deny not, That I was somewhat anger'd. Do you hear me? Believe or no, I care not. You have lost The ear of the King. I have it. . . . My lord Paramount, Our great High-priest, will not your Holiness Vouchsafe a gracious answer to your Queen? Becket. Rosamund hath not answer'd you one word; Madam, I will not answer you one word. Daughter, the world hath trick'd thee. Leave it, daughter; Come thou with me to Godstow nunnery, And live what may be left thee of a life Saved as by miracle alone with Him Who gave it. BECKET. 717 Re-e7tter Geoffrey. Geoffrey. Mother, you told me a great fib : it wasn't in the willow. Becket. Follow us, my son, and we will find it for thee — Or something manlier. \_Exeunt Becket, Rosamund, and Geoffrey. Eleanor. The world hath trick'd her — that's the King; if so, There was the farce, the feint — not mine. And yet I am all but sure my dagger was a feint Till the worm turn'd — not life shot up in blood. But death drawn in; — {looking at the vial) this was no feint then? no. But can I swear to that, had she but given Plain answer to plain query? nay, me- thinks Had she but bow'd herself to meet the wave Of humiliation, worshipt whom she loathed, I should have let her be, scorn'd her too much To harm her. Henry — Becket tells him this — To take my life might lose him Aquitaine. Too politic for that. Imprison me? No, for it came to nothing — only a feint. Did she not tell me I was playing on her? I'll swear to mine own self it was a feint. Why should I swear, Eleanor, who am, or was, A sovereign power? The King plucks out their eyes Who anger him, and shall not I, the Queen, Tear out her heart — kill, kill with knife or venom One of his slanderous harlots? 'None of such? ' I love her none the more. Tut, the chance gone, She lives — but not for him; one point is gain'd. O I, that thro' the Pope divorced King Louis, Scorning his monkery, — I that wedded Henry, Honouring his manhood, — will he not mock at me The jealous fool balk'd of her will — with hiin ? But he and he must never meet again. Reginald Fitzurse ! Re-enter Fitzurse. Fitzurse. Here, Madam, at your pleasure. Eleanor. My pleasure is to have a man about me. Why did you slink away so like a cur? Fitzurse. Madam, I am as much man as the King. Madam, I fear Church-censures like your King. Eleanor. He grovels to the Church when he's black-blooded, But kinglike fought the proud archbishop, — kinglike Defied the Pope, and, like his kingly sires, The Normans, striving still to break or bind The spiritual giant with our island laws And customs, made me for the moment proud Ev'n of that stale Church-bond which link'd me with him To bear him kingly sons. I am not so sure But that I love him still. Thou as much man ! No more of that; we- will to France and be Beforehand with the King, and brew from out This Godstow-Becket intermeddling such A strong hate-philtre as may madden him — madden Against his priest beyond all hellebore. ACT V. SCENE I. — Castle in Normandy. King's Chamber. Henry, Roger of York, Foliot, JocELYN OF Salisbury. Roger of York. Nay, nay, my liege, He rides abroad with armed followers, Hath broken all his promises to thyself, 7i8 BECKET. Cursed and anathematised us right and left, Stirr'd up a party there against your son Henry. Roger of York, you always hated him, Even when you both were boys at Theo- bald's. Roger of York. I always hated bound- less arrogance. In mine own cause I strove against him there, And in thy cause I strive against him now. Henry. I cannot think he moves against my son, Knowing right well with what a tender- ness He loved my son. Roger of York. Before you made him king. But Becket ever moves against a king. The Church is all — the crime to be a king. We trust your Royal Grace, lord of more land Than any crown in Europe, will not yield To lay your neck beneath your citizen's heel. Henry. Not to a Gregory of my thron- ing ! No. Foliot. My royal liege, in aiming at your love. It may be sometimes I have overshot My duties to our Holy Mother Church, Tho' all the world allows I fall no inch Behind this Becket, rather go beyond In scourgings, macerations, mortifyings, Fasts, disciplines that clear the spiritual eye. And break the soul from earth. Let all that be. I boast not : but you know thro' all this quarrel I still have cleaved to the crown, in hope the crown Would cleave to me that but obey'd the crown, Crowning your son; for which our loyal service, And since we likewise swore to obey the customs, York and myself, and our good Salisbury here, Are push'd from out communion of the Church. Jocelyn of Salisbury. Becket hath trodden on us like worms, my liege ; Trodden one half dead; one half, but half-alive, Cries to the King. Henry {aside). Take care o' thvself, O King. Jocelyn of Salisbury. Being so crush'd and so humiliated We scarcely dare to bless the food we eat Because of Becket. Henry. What would ye have me do? Roger of York. Summon your ban>ns;- take their counsel : yet I know — could swear — as long as Becket breathes. Your Grace will never have one quiet hour. Henry. What? ... Ay . . . but pray you do not work upon me. I see your drift ... it may be so . . . and yet You know me easily anger'd. Will you hence? He shall absolve you . . . you shall have redress. I have a dizzying headache. Let me rest, I'll call you by and by. {^Exeunt Roger of York, Foliot, and Jocelyn of Salisbury. Would he were dead ! I have lost all love for him. If God would take him in some sudden way — Would he were dead. S^Lies down. Page {entering) . My liege, the Queen of England. Henry. God's eyes! \_Starting up. Enter Eleanor. Eleanor. Of England? Say of Aquitaine. I am no Queen of England. I had dream'd I was the bride of England, and a queen. Henry. And, — while you dream'd you were the bride of England,— BECKET. 719 Stirring her baby-king against me? ha ! Eleanor. The brideless Becket is thy king and mine : I will go live and die in Aquitaine. Henry. Except I clap thee into prison here, Lest thou shouldst play the wanton there again. Ha, you of Aquitaine ! O you of Aqui- taine ! You were but Aquitaine to Louis — no wife ; You are only Aquitaine to me — no wife. Eleanor. And why, my lord, should I be wife to one That only wedded me for Aquitaine ? Yet this no wife — her six and thirty sail Of Provence blew you to your English throne; And this no wife has borne you four brave sons, And one of them at least is like to prove Bigger in our small world than thou art. Henry. Ay — Richard, if he be mine — I hope him mine. But thou art like enough to make him thine. Eleanor. Becket is like enough to make all his. Henry. Methought I had recover'd of the Becket, That all was planed and bevell'd smooth again. Save from some hateful cantrip of thine own. Eleanor. I will go live and die in Aquitaine. I dream'd I was the consort of a king, Not one whose back his priest has broken. Henry. What ! Is the end come? You, will you crown my foe My victor in mid-battle? I will be Sole master of my house. The end is mine. What game, what juggle, what devilry are you playing? Why do you thrust this Becket on me again ? Eleanor. Why? for I am true wife, and have my fears Lest Becket thrust you even from your throne. Do you know this cross, my liege? Henry {turning his head). Awayl Not I. Eleanor. Not ev'n the central dia- mond, worth, I think, Half of the Antioch whence I had it? Henry. That? Eleanor. I gave it you, and you your paramour; She sends it back, as being dead to earth. So dead henceforth to you. Henry. Dead ! you have murder'd her, Found out her secret bower and murder'd her! Eleanor. Your Becket knew the secret of your bower. Henry {calling out). Ho there! thy rest of life is hopeless prison. Eleanor. And what would my own Aquitaine say to that? First, free thy captive from her hopeless prison. Henry. O devil, can I free her from the grave? Eleanor. You are too tragic : both of us are players In such a comedy as our court of Pro- vence Had laugh'd at. That's a delicate Latin lay Of Walter Map: the lady holds the cleric Lovelier than any soldier, his poor tonsure A crown of Empire. Will you have it again ? ( Offering the cross. He dashes it down.) St. Cupid, that is too irreverent. Then mine once more. {Puts it on.) Your cleric hath your lady. Nay, what uncomely faces, could he see you! Foam at the mouth because King Thomas, lord Not only of your vassals but amours, Thro' chastest honour of the Decalogue Hath used the full authority of his Church To put her into Godstow nunnery. 720 BECKET, Henry. To put her into Godstovv nunnery ! He dared not — liar! yet, yet I remem- ber — I do remember. He bade me put her into a nunnery — Into Godstovv, into Hellstow, Devilstow f The Church ! the Church ! God's eyes ! I would the Church were down in hell ! \^Exit. Eleanor. Aha ! Enter the four Knights. Fitzurse. What made the King cry out so furiously ? Eleanor. Our Becket, who will not absolve the Bishops. I think ye four have cause to love this Becket. Fitzurse. I hate him for his insolence to all. De Tracy. And I for all his insolence to thee. De Brito. I hate him for I hate him is my reason, And yet I hate him for a hypocrite. De Morville. I do not love him, for he did his best To break the barons, and now braves the King. Eleanor. Strike, then, at once, the King would have him — See ! Re-enter Henry. Henry. No man to love me, honour j me, obey me ! ! Sluggards and fools ! The slave that eat my bread has kick'd his King ! The dog I cramm'd with dainties worried me ! The fellow that on a lame jade came to court, A ragged cloak for saddle — he, he, he, To shake my throne, to push into my chamber — My bed, where ev'n the slave is private — he — I'll haVe her out again, he shall absolve The bishops — they but did my will — not you — Sluggards and fools, why do you stand and stare? You are no King's men — you — you — ' you are Becket's men, Down with King Henry! up with the Archbishop ! Will no man free me from this pestilent priest? \_Exit. [ The Knights draw their swords. Eleanor. Are ye king's men? I am king's woman, I. The Knights. King's men! King's ,-— ' men ! SCENE II. — A Room in Canterbury Monastery. Becket and John of Salisbury. Becket. York said so? John of Salisbury. Yes : a man may take good counsel Ev'n from his foe. Becket. York will say anything. What is he saying now? gone to the King And taken our anathema with him. York ! Can the King de-anathematise this York ? John of Salisbury. Thomas, I would thou hadst return'd to England, Like some wise prince of this world from ^his wars, ' With more of olive-branch and amnesty For foes at home — thou hast raised the world against thee. Becket. Why, John, my kingdom is not of this world. John of Salisbury. If it were more of this world it might be More of the next. A policy of wise pardon Wins here as well as there. To bless thine enemies Becket. Ay, mine, not Heaven's. John of Salisbury. And may there not be something Of this world's leaven in thee too, when crying ♦ On Holy Church to thunder out her rights And thine own wrong so pitilessly? Ah, Thomas, The lightnings that we think are only Heaven's Flash sometimes out of earth against the heavens. SCENE II. BECKET. 72r The soldier, when he lets his wliole self go Lost in the common good, the common wrong, Strikes truest ev'n for his own self. I crave Thy pardon — I have still thy leave to speak. Thou hast waged God's war against the King; and yet We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may, Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites And private hates with our defence of Heaven, Enter Edward Grim. Becket. Thou art but yesterday from Cambridge, Grim; What say ye there of Becket? Grim. /believe him The bravest in our roll of Primates down From Austin — there are some — for there are men Of canker'd judgment everywhere Becket. Who hold With York, with York against me. Grim. Well, my lord, A stranger monk desires access to you. Becket. York against Canterbury, York against God ! I am open to him. \_Exit Grim. Enter Rosamund as a Monk. Rosamund. Can I speak with you Alone, my father? Becket. Come you to confess? Rosamund. Not now. Becket. Then speak; this is my other self, Who like my conscience never lets me be. Rosam und ( throzving back the cowl) . I know him; our good John of Salisbury, Becket. Breaking already from thy noviciate To plunge into this bitter world again — These wells of Marah. I am grieved, my daughter. I thought that I had made a peace for thee. Rosamund. Small peace was mine in my noviciate, father. 3A Thro' all closed doors a dreadful whisper crept That thou wouldst excommunicate the King. I could not eat, sleep, pray : I had with me The monk's disguise thou gavest me for my bower : I think our Abbess knew it and allow'd it. I fled, and found thy name a charm to get me Food, roof, and rest. I met a robber once, I told him I was bound to see the Arch- bishop; * Pass on,' he said, and -in thy name I pass'd From house to house. In one a son stone-blind Sat by his mother's hearth : he had gone too far Into the King's own woods; and the poor mother. Soon as she learnt I was a friend of thine, Cried out against the cruelty of the King. I said it was the King's courts, not the King; But she would not believe me, and she wish'd The Church were' king: she had seen the Archbishop once, So mild, so kind. The people love thee, father. Becket. Alas ! when I was Chan- cellor to the King, I fear I was as cruel as the King. Rosamund. Cruel? Oh, no — it is the law, not he; The customs of the realm. Becket. The customs ! customs I Rosamund. My lord, you have not excommunicated him? Oh, if you have, absolve him ! Becket. Daughter, daughter. Deal not with things you know not. Rosamund. I know him. Then you have done it, and I call you cruel. /ohn of Salisbtiry. No, daughter, you mistake our good Archbishop; For once in France the King had been so harsh. 722 BECKET. He thought to excommunicate him — Thomas, You could not — old affection master'd you, You falter'd into tears. Rosamund. God bless him for it. Becket. Nay, make me not a woman, John of Salisbury, Nor make me traitor to m;^ holy office. Did not a man's voice ring along the aisle, * The King is sick and almost unto death'? How could I excommunicate him then ? Rosamund. 'And wilt thou excom- municate him now? Becket. Daughter, my time is short, I shall not do it. And were it longer — well — I should not do it. Rosamund. Thanks in this life, and in the life to come. Becket. Get thee back to thy nunnery with all haste; Let this be thy last trespass. But one question — How fares thy pretty boy, the little Geoffrey? No fever, cough, croup, sickness? Rosamund. No, but saved From all that by our solitude. The plagues That smite the city spare the solitudes. Becket. God save him from all sick- ness of the soul ! Thee too, thy solitude among thy nuns, May that save thee ! Doth he remember me? Rosamund. I warrant him. Becket. He is marvellously like thee. Rosamund. Liker the King. Becket. No, daughter. Rosamund. Ay, but wait Till his nose rises; he will be very king. Becket. Ev'n so : but think not of the King : farewell ! Rosamund. My lord, the city is full of armed men. Becket. Ev'n so : farewell ! Rosamund. I will but pass to vespers, And breathe one prayer for my liege-lord the King, His child and mine own soul, and so return. Becket. Pray for me too : much need of prayer have I. [Rosamund kneels and goes. Dan John, how much we lose, we celi- bates, Lacking the love of woman and of child ! John of Salisbury. More gain than loss; for of your wives you shall Find one a slut whose fairest linen seems P'oul as her dust-cloth, if she used it — • one So charged with tongue, that every thread of thought Is broken ere it joins — a shrew to boot, Whose evil song far on into the night Thrills to the topmost tile — no hope but death ; One slow, fat, white, a burthen of the hearth; And one that being thwarted ever swoons And weeps herself into the place of power; And one an uxor pauperis Ibyci. So rare the household honeymaking bee, Man's help ! but we, we have the blessed Virgin For worship, and our Mother Church for bride; And all the souls we saved and father'd here Will greet us as our babes in Paradise. What noise was that? she told us of arm'd rrien Here in the city. Will you not with- draw? Becket. I once was out with Henry in the days When Henry loved me, and we came upon A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still I reach'd my hand and touch'd; she did not stir; The snow had frozen round her, and she sat Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs. Look ! how this love, this mother, runs thro' all The world God made — even the beast — the bird I BECKET. 723 John of Salisbury. Ay, still a lover of the beast and bird? But these arni'd men — will you not hide yourself? Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Salt- wood Castle, To assail our Holy Mother lest she brood Too long o'er this hard egg, the world, and send Her whole heart's heat into it, till it break Into young angels. Pray you, hide yourself. Becket. There was a little fair-hair'd Norman maid Lived in my mother's house : if Rosa- mund is The world's rose, as her name imports her — she Was the world's lily. John of Salisbury. Ay, and what of her? Becket. She died of leprosy. fohn of Salisbury. I know not why You call these old things back again, my lord. Becket. The drowning man, they say, remembers all The chances of his life, just ere he dies. John of Salisbury. Ay — but these arm'd men — will_j/^« drown /^^r- self? He loses half the meed of martyrdom ■■'*- WliQ,. will be martyr when he might escape. Becket. What day of the week? Tuesday? John of Salisbury. Tuesday, my lord. Becket. On a Tuesday was I born, and on a Tuesday Baptized^ and on a Tuesday did I fly Forth from Northampton ; on a Tuesday pass'd From England into bitter banishment; On a Tuesday at Pontigny came to me The ghostly warning of my martyrdom; On a Tuesday from mine exile I return'd, And on a Tuesday [Tracy enters, then Fitzurse, De Brito, and De Morville. Monks following. — on a Tuesday Tracy ! \_A long silence broken ^/Fitzurse say- ing, contemptuously) God help thee V John of Salisbury {aside). How the good Archbishop reddens ! He never yet could brook the note of scorn. Fitzurse. My lord, we bring a message from the King Beyond the water; will you have it alone. Or with these listeners near you? Becket. As you will. Fitzurse. Nay, as you will. Becket. Nay, as you will. John of Salisbury. Why then Better perhaps to speak with them apart. Let us withdraw. \^All go out except the four Knights and Becket, Fitzurse. We are all alone with him. Shall I not smite him with his own cross- staff? De Morville. No, look ! the door is open : let him be. Fitzurse. The King condemns your excommunicating Becket. This is no secret, but a public matter. In here again ! [John of Salisbury and Monks return. Now, sirs, the King's commands ! Fitzurse. The King beyond the water, thro' our voices. Commands you to be dutiful and leal To your young King on this side of the water. Not scorn him for the foibles of his youth. What ! you would make his coronation void By cursing those who crown'd him ! Out upon you ! Becket. Reginald, all men know I loved the Prince. His father gave him to my care, and I Became his second father: he had his faults. For which I would have laid mine own life down To help him from them, since indeed I loved him, And love him next after my lord his father. 724 BECKET. ACT V Rather than dim the splendour of his crown I fain would treble and quadruple it With revenues, realms, and golden prov- inces So that were done in equity. Fitzurse. You have broken Your bond of peace, your treaty with the King — Wakening such brawls and loud disturb- ances In England, that he calls you oversea To answer for it in his Norman courts. Becket. Prate riot of bonds, for never, oh, never again Shall the waste voice of the bond-break- ing sea Divide me from the mother church of England, My Canterbury. Loud disturbances ! Oh, ay — the bells rang out even to deafening, Organ and pipe, and dulcimer, chants and hymns In all the churches, trumpets in the halls. Sobs, laughter, cries: they spread their raiment down , Before me — would have made my path- way flowers, Save that it was mid-winter in the street, But full mid-summer in those honest hearts. Fitzurse. The King commands you to absolve the bishops Whom you have excommunicated. Becket. I? Not I, the Pope. Ask him for absolution. Fitzurse. But you advised the Pope. Becket. And so I did. They have but to submit. The four Knights. The King com- mands you. We are all King's men. Becket. King's men at least should know That their own King closed with me last July That I should pass the censures of the Church On those that crown'd young Henry in this realm, And trampled on the rights of Canter- bury. Fitzurse. What ! dare you charge the King with treachery? He sanction thee to excommunicate The prelates whom he chose to crown his son ! Becket. I spake no word of treachery, Reginald. But for the truth of this I make appeal To all the archbishops, bishops, prelates, barons, Monks, knights, five hundred, that were there and heard. Nay, you yourself were there : you heard yourself. Fitzurse. I was not there. Becket. I saw you there. Fitzurse. I was not. Becket. You were. I never forget anything. Fitzurse. He makes the King a traitor, me a liar. How long shall we forbear him? John of Salisbury {draiving Becket aside'). O my good lord, Speak with them privately on this here- after. You see they have been revelling, and I fear Are braced and brazen'd up with Christmas wines For any murderous brawl. Becket. And yet they prate Of mine, my brawls, when those, that name themselves Of the King's part, have broken down our barns, Wasted our diocese, outraged our tenants. Lifted our produce, driven our clerics out-T- Why they, your friends, those ruffians, the De Brocs, They stood on Dover beach to^ murder me, They slew my stags in mine own manor here. Mutilated, poor brute, my sumpter-mule, Plunder'd the vessel full of Gascon wine, The old King's present, carried off the casks, Kill'd half the crew, dungeon'd the other half In Pevensey Castle De Morville. Why not rather then, SCENE II. BECKET. 725 If this be so, complain to your young King, Not punish of your own authority ? Becket. Mine enemies barr'd all access to the boy. They knew he loved me. Hugh, Hugh, how proudly you exalt your head ! Nay, when they seek to overturn our rights, I ask no leave of king, or mortal man, To set them straight again. Alone I do it. Give to the King the things that are the King's, And those of God to God, Fitzurse. Threats ! threats ! ye hear him. What ! will he excommunicate all the world ? [ The Knights come round Becket. De Tracy. He shall not. De Brito. Well, as yet — I should be grateful — ; He hath not excommunicated me. Becket. Because thou wast born ex- communicate. I never spied in thee one gleam of grace. De Brito. Your Christian's Christian charity ! Becket. By St. Denis De Brito. Ay, by St. Denis, now will he flame out. And lose his head as old St. Denis did. Becket. Ye think to scare me from my loyalty To God and 'to the Holy Father. No ! Tho' all the swords in England flash'd above me Ready to fall at Henry's word or yours — Tho' all the loud-lung'd trumpets upon earth Blared from the heights of all the thrones of her kings. Blowing the world against me, I would stand Clothed with the full authority of Rome, Mail'd in the perfect panoply of faith, First of the foremost of their files, who die For God, to people heaven in the great day When God makes up his jewels. Once I fled — Never again, and you — I marvel at you — Ye know what is between us. Ye have sworn Yourselves my men when I was Chan- cellor — My vassals — and yet threaten your Archbishop In his own house. Knights. Nothing can be between us That goes against our fealty to the King. Fitzurse. And in his name we charge you that ye keep This traitor from escaping. Becket. Rest you easy. For I am easy to keep. I shall not fly. Here, liere, here will you find me. De Morville. Know you not You have spoken to the peril of your life? Becket. As I shall speak again. Fitzurse, De Tracy, and De Brito. To arms ! [ They rush out, De Morville lingers. Becket. De Morville, I had thought so well of you; and even now You seem the least assassin of the four. Oh, do not damn yourself for company ! Is it too late for me to save your soul? I pray you for one moment stay and speak. De Morville. Becket, it is too late. {^Exit. Becket. Is it too late ? Too late on earth may be too soon in hell. Knights {in the distance^ Close the great gate — ho, there — upon the town. Beckefs Retainers. Shut the hall- doors. \_A pause. Becket. You hear them, brother John ; Why do you stand so silent, brother John? John of Salisbury. For I was musing on an ancient saw, Suaviter in modo, for titer in re. Is strength less strong when hand-in- hand with grace? Gratior in pulchro cor^ore virtus. Thomas, Why should you heat yourself for such as these? 726 BECKET. Becket. Methought I answer'd mod- erately enough. John of Salisbury. As one that blows the coal to cool the fire. My lord, I marvel why you never lean On any man's advising but your own. Becket. Is it so, Dan John? well, what should I have done? John of Salisbury. You should have taken counsel with your friends Before these bandits brake into your presence. They seek — you make — occasion for your death. Becket. My counsel is already taken, John, I am prepared to die. Johti of Salisbury. We are sinners all, The best of all not all-prepared to die. Becket. God's will be done ! John of Salisbury. Ay, well. God's will be done ! Grim {re-entering). My lord, the knights are arming in the garden Beneath the sycamore. Becket. Good ! let them arm. Grim. And one of the De Brocs is with them, Robert, The apostate monk that was with Ran- dulf here. He knows the twists and turnings of the place. Becket. No fear ! Grim. No fear, my lord. \_Cr ashes on the hall-doors. The Monksy?^^. Becket (rising). Our dovecote flown ! I cannot. tell why monks should all be cowards. John of Salisbury. Take refuge in your own cathedral, Thomas, Becket. Do they not fight the Great Fiend day by day? Valour and holy life should go together. Why should all monks be cowards? John of Salisbury. Are they so? I say, take refuge in your own cathedral. Becket. Ay, but I told them I would wait them here. Grim. May they not say you dared not show yourself In your old place? and vespers are beginning. \^Bell rings for vespers till end of scene. You should attend the office, give them heart. They fear you slain : they dread they know not what. Becket. Ay, monks, not men. Gri77i. 1 am a monk, my lord. Perhaps, my lord, you wrong us. Some would stand by you to the death, Becket. Your pardon. John of Salisbury. He said, * Attend the office,' Becket. Attend the office? Why then — The Cross ! — who bears my Cross before me ? Methought they would have brain'd me with it, John. [Grim takes it. Grim. I ! Would that I could bear thy cross indeed ! Becket. The Mitre ! John of Salisbury. Will you wear it? — there ! [Becket puts on the mitre. Becket. The Pall ! I go to meet my King ! \_Puts on the pall. Grim. To meet the King ! [ Crashes on the doors as they go out. John of Salisbury. Why do you move with such a stateliness? Can you not hear them yonder like a storm, Battering the doors, and breaking thro* the walls? Becket. Why do the heathen rage? My two good friends. What matters murder'd here, or murder'd there? And yet my dream foretold my martyr- dom In mine own church. It is God's will. Go on. Nay, drag me not. We must not seem to fly. SCENE III.— North Transept of Canterbury Cathedral. On the right hand a flight of steps leading to the Choir, another flight on the left, leading to the North Aisle. Winter afternoon slowly darkening. . Low BECKET, 727 thunder now and then of an approach- ing storm. Monks heard cha nting the service. ROSAMUND kneeling. Rosamund. O blessed saint, O glori- ous Benedict^ — These arm'd men in the city, these fierce faces — Thy holy follower fv nnded Canterbury — Save that dear heaa which now is Can- terbury, Save him, he saved my life, he saved my child, Save him, his blood would darken Henry's name; Save him till all as saintly as thyself He miss the searching flame of purgatory, And pass at once perfect to Paradise. {_Noise of steps and voices in the cloisters. Hark ! Is it they? Coming! He is not here — Not yet, thank heaven. O save him ! [ Goes up steps leadijtg to choir. Becket {^entering, forced along by John of Salisbury and Grim). No, I tell you ! I cannot bear a hand upon my person, Why do you force me thus against my will? Grim. My lord, we force you from your enemies. Becket. As you would force a king from being crown'd. John of Salisbury. We must not force the crown of martyrdom. \_Service stops. Monks come down from the stairs that lead to the choir. Monks. Here is the great Archbishop ! He lives ! he lives ! Die with him, and be glorified together. Becket. Together? . . . get you back! go on with the office. Monks. Come, then, with us to vespers. Becket. How can I come When you so block the entry? Back, I say! Go on with the office. Shall not Heaven be served Tho' earth's last earthquake clash'd the minster-bells, And the great deeps were broken up again, And hiss'd against the sun? \_Noise in the cloisters. Monks. The murderers, hark ! Let us hide ! let us hide ! Becket. What do these people fear? .Monks. Those arm'd men in the cloister. Becket. Be not such cravens ! I will go out and meet them. Grim and others. Shut the doors ! We will not have him slain before our face. [ They close the doors of. the transept. Knocking. Fly, fly, my lord, before they burst the doors ! \_Knocking. Becket. Why, these are our own monks who follow'd us ! And will you bolt them out, and have them slain? Undo the doors: the church is not a castle : Knock, and it shall be open'd. Are you deaf? What, have I lost authority among you? Stand by, make way ! \_0pe7ts the doors. Enter Monks from cloister. Come in, my friends, come in ! Nay, faster, faster ! Monks. Oh, my lord Archbishop, A score of knights all arm'd with swords and axes — To the choir, to the choir ! [Monks divide, part flying by the stairs on the right, part by those on the left. The rush of these last bears Becket along with them some way up the steps, where he is left standing alone. Becket. Shall I too pass to the choir, And die upon the Patriarchal throne Of all my predecessors? John of Salisbury. No, to the crypt! Twenty steps down. Stumble not in the darkness. Lest they should seize thee. Grim. To the crypt? no — no, To the .chapel of St. Blaise beneath the roof! John of Salisbury {pointing upward and dowmvard). That way, or this ! Save thyself either way. ^28 BECKET. ACT V. Becket. Oh, no, not either way, nor any way Save by that way which leads thro' night to light. Not twenty steps, but one. And fear not I should stumble in the darkness, Not tho' it be their hour, the power of darkness, But my hour too, the power of light in darkness ! I am not. in the darkness but the light. Seen by the Church in Heaven, the Church on earth — v^ The power of life in death to make her free! \_Enter the four Knights. John of Salisbury flies to the altar of St. Benedict. Fitzurse. Here, here, King's men ! [ Catches hold of the lastflyiitg Monk. Where is the traitor Becket? Monk. I am not he ! I am not he, my lord. I am not he indeed ! Fitzurse. Hence to the fiend ! {^Pushes him away. Where is this treble traitor to the King? De Tracy. Where is the Archbishop, Thomas Becket? Becket. Here. N> traitor to the King, but Priest of God, Primate of England. [^Descending into the transept. I am he ye seek. What would ye have of me? Fitzurse. Your life. De Tracy. Your life. De Morville. Save that you will ab- solve the bishops. Becket. Never, — Except they make submission to the Church. You had my answer to that cry before. De Morville. Why, then .you are a dead man; flee ! Becket. I will not. 1 am readier to be slain, than thou to slay. Hugh, I know well thou hast but half a heart To bathe this sacred pavement with my blood. God pardon thee and these, but God's full curse Shatter you all to pieces if ye harm One of my flock ! Fitzurse. Was not the great gate shut? They are thronging in to vespers — halt the town. We shall be overwhelm'd. Seize him and carry him ! Come with us — nay — thou art our pris- oner — -come! De Morville. Ay, make him prisoner, do not harm the man. [Fitzurse lays hold of the Arch- bishop's /a//. Becket. Touch me not ! De Brito. How the good priest gods himself! He is not yet ascended to the Father. Fitzurse. I will not only touch, but drag thee hence. Becket. Thou art my man, thou art my vassal. Away ! \_Fli7igs him off till he reels, almost to falling. De Tracy (Jays hold of the pall). Come; as he said, thou art our prisoner. Becket. Down ! [ Throws him headlong. Fitzurse (^advances with drawn sword). I told thee that I should re- member thee ! Becket. Profligate pander ! Fitzurse. Do you hear that? strike, strike. [^Strikes off the Archbishop's mitre., and zvounds him in the forehead. Becket {covers his eyes with his hand). I do commend my cause to God, the Virgin, St. Denis of France and St. Alphege of England, And all the tutelar Saints of Canter- bury. [Grim wraps his arms about the Archbishop. Spare this defence, dear brother. [Tracy has arisen, and approaches, hesitatijigly., with his sword raised. Fitzurse. Strike him, Tracy I SCENE III. BECKET. 729 Rosa77iund {I'ushing doivn steps from the choir). No, No, No, No ! Fitzurse. This wanton here, De Morville, Hold her away. De Morville. I hold her. Rosamtaid {held back by De Morville, and stretching out her arms'). Mercy, mercy. As you would hope for mercy. Fitzurse. Strike, I say. Grim. O God, O noble knights, O sacrilege ! Strike our Archbishop in his own cathe- dral ! The Pope, the King, will curse you — the whole world Abhor you; ye will die the death of dogs ! Nay, nay, good Tracy. \_Lifts his arm. Fitzurse. Answer not, but strike. De Tracy. There is my answer then. \_S2vord falls on Grim's arm, and glances from it^ wounding Becket. G?-im. Mine arm is sever'd. I can no more — fight out the good fight — die Conqueror. \_Staggers into the chapel of St. Benedict. Becket {^falling on his knees). At the right hand of Power — Power and great glory — for thy Church, O Lord — Into Thy hands, O Lord — into Thy hands! \^Sinks prone. De Brito. This last to rid thee of a world of brawls ! \^Kills him. The traitor's dead, and will arise no more. Fitzurse. Nay, have we still'd him? What ! the great Archbishop ! Does he breathe? No? De Tracy. No, Reginald, he is dead. {^Storm btirsts.^ De Morville. Will the earth gape and swallow us? De Brito. The deed's done — Away ! [De Brito, De Tracy, Fitzurse, rush out, crying ' Kin^s 7nen !^ De Morville follows slozuly. Flashes of lightning thro* the Cathedral. Rosamund seen kneeling by tht body of Becket. ^ A tremendous thunderstorm actually broke over the Cathedral as the murderers were leaving it. THE CUP. A TRAGEDY. DRAMATIS PERSONS. GALATIANS. Synorix, an ex-Tetrarch. SiNNATUS, a Tetrarch. Attendant. Boy. Antonius, a Roman General, PUBLIUS. ROMANS. ACT I. SCENE I. — Distant View of a City OF Galatia. As the curtain rises. Priestesses are heard singing in the Temple. Boy discovered on a pathway among Rocks, picking grapes. A party of Roman Soldiers, guarding a prisoner in chains, come down the pathway and exeunt. Enter Synorix {looking round^. Sing- ing ceases. Synorix. Pine, beech and plane, oak, walnut, apricot. Vine, cypress, poplar, myrtle, bowering-in The city where she dwells. She past me here Three years ago when I was flying from My tetrarchy to Rome. I almost touch'd her — A maiden slowly moving on to music Among her maidens to this Temple — O Gods ! She is my fate — else wherefore has my . fate Brought me again to her own city? — married Since — married Sinnatus, the Tetrarch here — But if he be conspirator, Rome will chain, Or slay him. I may trust to gain her then When I shall have my tetrarchy restored Maid. Phcebe. Camma, wzye of Sinnatus, afterwards Priestess in the Temple of Artemis- Nobleiuan. Messenger. By Rome, our mistress, grateful that I show'd her The weakness and the dissonance of our clans, And how to crush them easily. Wretched race ! And once I wish'd to scourge them to the bones. But in this narrow breathing-time of life- Is vengeance for its own sake worth the while, If once our ends are gain'd? and now this cup — I never felt such passion for a woman. {^Brings out a cup and scroll from under his cloak. What have I written to her? S^Reading the scroll. 'To the admired Camma, wife of Sinnatus, the Tetrarch, one who years ago, himself an adorer of our great god- dess, Artemis, beheld you afar off worship- ping in her Temple, and loved you for it, sends you this cup rescued from the burn- ing of one of her shrines in a city thro' which he past with the Roman army : it is the cup we use in our marriages. Receive it from one who cannot at pres- ent write himself other than 'A Galatian serving by force in the Roman Legion.' [ Turns and looks up to Boy. Boy, dost thou know the house of Sinnatus? Boy. These grapes are for the house of Sinnatus — ACT I, SCENE I. THE CUP. 731 Close to the Temple. Synorix. Yonder ? Boy. Yes. Synorix {aside) . •- That I With all my range of women should yet shun To meet her face to face at once ! My boy, \_Boy comes down rocks to him. Take thou this letter and this cup to Camma, The wife of Sinnatus. Boy. Going or gone to-day To hunt with Sinnatus. Synorix. That matters not. Take thou this cup and leave it at her doors. [ Gives the cup and scroll to the Boy. Boy. I will, my lord. [ Takes his basket of grapes and exit. Enter Antonius. Antonius {ineeting the Boy as he goes out) . Why, whither runs the boy ? . Is that the cup you rescued from the fire? Synorix. I send it to the wife of Sinnatus, One half besotted in religious rites. You come here with your soldiers to enforce The long-withholden tribute : you suspect This Sinnatus of playing patriotism, Which in your sense is treason. You have yet No proof against him : now this pious cup Is passport to their house, and open arms To him who gave it; and once there I warrant I worm thro' all their windings. Antonius. If you prosper, Our Senate, wearied of their tetrarchies, Their quarrels with themselves, their spites at Rome, Is like enough to cancel them, and throne One king above them all, who shall be true To the Roman : and from what I heard in Rome, This tributary crown may fall to you^ Synorix. The king, the crown ! their talk in Rome ? is it so ? [Antonius nods. Well — I shall serve Galatia taking it. And save her from herself, and be to Rome More faithful than a Roman. [ Turns and sees Camma coming. Stand aside. Stand aside; here she comes! [ Watching Camma as she enters with her Maid. Camma {to Maid) . Where is he, girl ? Maid. You know the waterfall That in the summer keeps the mountain side. But after rain o'erleaps a jutting rock And shoots three hundred feet. Camma. The stag is there? Maid. Seen in the thicket at the bottom there But yester-even. Camma. Good then, we will climb The mountain opposite and watch the chase. [ 1 hey descend the rocks and exeunt. Synorix {watching her) . {Aside.) The bust of Juno and the brows and eyes Of Venus; face and form unmatchable ! Antonius. Why do you look at her so lingeringly? Synorix. To see if years have changed her. Antonius {sarcastically). Love her, do you? Synorix. I envied Sinnatus when he married her. Antonius. She knows it? Ha! Synorix. She — no, nor ev'n my face. Antonius. Nor Sinnatus either? Synorix. No, nor Sinnatus. Antonius. Hot-blooded ! I have heard them say in Rome, That your own people cast you from their bounds, For some unprincely violence to a woman. As Rome did Tarquin. Synorix. Well, if this were so, I here return like Tarquin — for a crown. Antonius. And may be foil'd like Tarquin, if you follow Not the dry light of Rome's straight-going policy. But the fool-fire of love or lust, which well 73^ THE CUP. ACT 1 May make you lose yourself, may even drown you In the good regard of Rome. Synorix. Tut — fear me not ; I ever had my victories among women. I am most true to Rome. Antonius {aside). I hate the man! What filthy tools our Senate works with ! Still I must obey them. {Aloud.) Fare you well. \^Going. Synorix. Farewell ! Antonius {stopping). A moment ! If you track this Sinnatus In any treason, I give you here an order {^Produces a paper. To seize upon him. Let me sign it. {Signs it.) There * Antonius leader of the Roman Legion.' {^Hands the paper to Synorix. Goes up pathway and exit. Synorix. Woman again ! — but I am wiser now. No rushing on the game — the net, — the net. \_Shouts of * Sinnatus ! Sinnatus ! ' Then horn. Looking off stage."] He comes, a rough, bluff, simple-looking fellow. If we may judge the kernel by the husk, Not one to keep a woman's fealty when Assailed by Craft and Love. I'll join with him: I may reap something from him — come upon her Again, perhaps, to-day — her. Who are with him? I see no face that knows me. Shall I risk it? I am a Roman now, they dare not touch me. I will. Enter Sinnatus, Huntsmen and hounds. Fair Sir, a happy day to you ! You reck but little of the Roman here. While you can take your pastime in the woods. Sinnatus. Ay, ay, why not? What would you with me, man? Synorix. I am a life-long lover of the chase, And tho' a stranger fain would be allow'd To join the hunt. Sinnatus. Your name? Synorix. Strato, my name. Sinnatus. No Roman name? Synorix. A Greek, my lord; you know That we Galatians are both Greek and Gaul. [^Shoi{ts and horns in the distance. Sinnatus. Hillo, the stag ! ( 7^o Synorix.) What, you are all un- furnish'd ? Give him a bow and arrows — follow^ — follow. \_Exit,-foll(m}ed by Huntsmen. Synorix. Slowly but surely — till I see my way. It is the one step in the dark beyond Our expectation, that amazes us. {^Distant shouts and horns. Hillo! Hillo! \^Exit Synorix. Shouts and horns. SCENE II. — A Room in the Tetrarch's House. Frescoed figures on the walls. Evening. Moonlight outside. A couch with cushions on it. A small table with a fiagon of zvine, cups, plate of grapes, etc., also the cup of Scene I. A chair with drapery on it. Camma enters, and opens curtains of window. Camma. No Sinnatus yet — and there the rising moon. [ Takes up a cithern and sits on couch. Plays and sings. Moon on the field and the foam, Moon on the waste and the wold, Moon bring him home, bring him home Safe from the dark and the cold, Home, sweet moon, bring him home. Home with the flock to the fold — Safe from the wolf {Listening.) Is he coming? I thought I heard A footstep. No, not yet. They say that Rome Sprang from a wolf. I fear my dear lord mixt SCENE II. THE CUJ^. 733 With some conspiracy against the wolf. This mountain shepherd never dream'd of Rome. (^Si/i^s.) Safe from the wolf to the fold And that great break of precipice that runs Thro' all the wood, where twenty years ago Huntsman, and hound, and deer Were all neck-broken ! Nay, here he comes. £yi^er Sinnatus followed by Synorix. Sinnattis {angrily). I tell thee, my good fellow, My arrow struck the stag. Synorix. But was it so ? Nay, you were further off: besides the wind Went with my arrow. Sinnatus. I am sure / struck him. Synorix. x\nd I am just as sure, my lord, /struck him. {.4side.) And I may strike your game when you are gone, Camma. Come, come, we will not quarrel about the stag. ] have had a weary day in watching you. Vouis must have been a wearier. Sit and eat, And take a hunter's vengeance on the meats. Sinnatus. No, no — we have eaten — we are heated. Wine! Cdmma. Who is our guest? Sinnatus. Strato he calls himself. [Camma offers ivine to Synorix, zv/iile Sinnatus helps himself. Sinnatus. I pledge you, Strato. \^Dri7tks. Synorix. And I you, my lord. {^Drinks. Sinnatus (seeing the cup sent to Cam- ma). What's here? Camma. A strange gift sent to me to-day. A sacred cup saved from a blazing shrine Of our great Goddess, in some city where Antonius past. I had believed that Rome H^de war upon the peoples not the Gods. Synorix. Most like the city rose against Antonius, Whereon he fired it, and the sacred shrine By chance was burnt along with it. Sinnatus. Had you then No message with the cup? Cajnma. Why, yes, see here. [ Gives him the scroll. Sinnattis {reads). 'To the admired Camma, — beheld you afar off — loved you — sends you this cup — the cup we use in our marriages — cannot at present write himself other than *A Galatian serving by force in THE Roman Legion.' Serving by force ! Were there no boughs to hang on. Rivers to drown in? Serve by force? No force Could make me serve by force. Sy7iorix. How. then, my lord? The Roman is encampt without your city — The force of Rome a thousand-fold our own. Must all Galatia hang or drown herself? And you a Prince and Tetrarch in this province Sinnatus. Province ! Synorix. Well, well, they call it so in Rome. Sinnatus {angrily). Province! Synorix. A noble anger! but An- tonius To-morrow will demand your tribute — you. Can you make war? Have you alliances? Bithynia, Pontus, Paphlagonia? We have had our leagues of old with Eastern kings. There is my hand — if such a league there be. What will you do? Sinnatus. Not set myself abroach And run my mind out to a random guest Who join'd me in the hunt. You saw my hounds True to the scent; and we have two- legg'd dogs Among us who can smell a true occasion, And when to bark and how. Synorix. My good Lord Sinnatus 734 THE CUP. ACT I. I once was at the hunting of a lion. Roused by the clamour of the chase he woke, Came to the front of the wood — his monarch mane Bristled about his quick ears — he stood there Staring upon the hunter. A score of dogs Gnaw'd at his ankles : at the last he felt The trouble of his feet, put forth one paw, Slew four, and knew it not, . and so remain'd Staring upon the hunter : and this Rome Will crush you if you wrestle with her; then Save for some slight report in her own Senate Scarce know what she has done. (^szde.) Would I could move him. Provoke him anyway! (.-i/otid.) The Lady Cam ma, Wise I am sure as she is beautiful, Will close with me that to submit at once Is better than a wholly-hopeless war, Our gallant citizens murder'd all in vain. Son, husband, brother gash'd to death in vain. And the small state more cruelly trampled on Than had she never moved. Camma. Sir, I had once A boy who died a babe; but were he living And grown to man and Sinnatus will'd it, I Would set him in the front rank of the fight With scarce a pang. {Rises.) Sir, if a state submit At once, she may be blotted out at once And swallow'd in the conqueror's chron- icle. Whereas in wars of freedom and defence The glory and grief of battle won or lost Solders a race together — yea — tho' they fail. The names of those who fought and fell are like A bank'd-up fire that flashes out again From century to century, and at last May lead them on to victory — I hope so — Like phantoms of the Gods. Sinnatus. Well spoken, wife. Synorix (Jwiviug). Madam, so well I yield. Sinnatus. I should not wonder If Synorix, who has dwelt three years in Rome And wrought his worst against his native land, Returns with this Antonius. Synorix. What is Synorix? Sinnatus. Galatian, and not know? This Synorix Was Tetrarch here, and tyrant also — did Dishonour to our wives. Synorix. Perhaps you judge him With feeble charity: being as you tell me Tetrarch, there might be willing wives enough To feel dishonour, honour. Camma. Do not say so. I know of no such wives in all Galatia. There may be courtesans for aught I know Whose life is one dishonour. Enter Attendant. Attendant {aside') . My lord, the men ! Sinnatus {aside). Our anti-Roman faction ? Attendant {aside). Ay, my lord. Synorix {overhearing). {Aside.) I have enough — their anti- Roman faction. Sinnatus {aloud). Some friends of mine would speak with me with- out. You, Strato, make good cheer till I re- turn. [^Exit. Synorix. I have much to say, no time to say it in. First, lady, know myself am that Galatian Who sent the cup. Camma. I thank you from my heart. Synorix. Then that I serve with Rome to serve Galatia. That is my secret: keep it, or you sell me To torment and to death. [ Coming closer. For your ear only — SCENE II. THE CUP. 735 I love you — for your love to the great Goddess. The Romans sent me here a spy upon you, To draw you and your husband to your doom. I'd sooner die than do it. [ Takes out paper given him by Antonius. This paper sign'd Antonius — will you take it, read it? there ! Camma. {Reads.') * You are to seize on Sinnatus, — if ' Synorix. {Snatches paper.) No more. What follows is for no wife's eyes. O Camma, Rome has a glimpse of this conspiracy; Rome never yet hath spar'd conspirator. Horrible ! flaying, scourging, crucify- ing ^ Camma. I am tender enough. Why do you practise on me ? Syno?-ix. Why should I practise on you? How you wrong me ! I am sure of being every way malign'd. And if you should betray me to your husband Cajuma. Will you betray him by this order? Synorix. See, I tear it all to pieces, never dream'd Of acting on it. [ Tears the paper. Camma. I owe you thanks for ever. Synorix. Hath Sinnatus never told you of this plot? • Camma. What plot? Synorix. A child's sand- castle on the beach For the next wave — all seen, — all calcu- lated. All known by Rome. No chance for Sinnatus. Camma. Why said you not as much to my brave Sinnatus? Synorix. Brave — ay — too brave, too over-confident. Too like to ruin himself, and you, and me ! Who else, with this black thunderbolt of Rome Above him, would have chased the stag to-day In the full face of all the Roman camp? A miracle that they let him home again. Not caught, maim'd, blinded him. [Camma shudders. {Aside.) I have made her tremble. {Aloud.) I know they mean to torture him to death, I dare not tell him how I came to know it; I durst not trust him with — my serving Rome To serve Galatia : you heard him on the letter. Not say as much? I all but said as much. I am sure I told him that his plot was folly. I say it to you — you are wiser — Rome knows all. But you know not the savagery of Rome. Camma. O — have you power with Rome ? use it for him ! Synorix. Alas ! I have no such power with Rome. All that Lies with Antonius. \_As if struck by a sudden thought. Comes over to her. He will pass to-morrow In the gray dawn before the Temple doors. You have beauty, — O great beauty, — and Antonius, So gracious toward women, never yet Flung back a woman's prayer. Plead to him, I am sure you will prevail. Camma. Still — I should tell My husband. Synorix. Will he let you plead for him To a Roman? Camma. I fear not. Synorix. Then do not tell him. Or tell him, if you will, when you return. When you have charm'd our general into mercy, And all is safe again. O dearest lady, \_Mur?nurs of * Synorix ! Synorix ! ' heard outside. Think, — torture, — death, — and come. Camma. I will, I will. And I will not betray you. Synorix {aside). {As Sinnatus enters.) Stand apart 736 THE CUP. ACT 1. Enter Sinnatus and Attendant. Sinnatus. Thou art that Synorix ! One whom thou hast wrong'd Without there, knew thee with Antonius. They howl for thee, to rend thee head -from limb. Synorix. I am much malign'd. I thought to serve Galatia. Sinnatus. Serve thyself first, villain ! They shall not harm My guest within my house. There ! {points to door) there ! this door Opens upon the forest ! Out, begone ! Henceforth I am thy mortal enemy. Synorix. However I thank thee {draws his szvord)', thou hast saved my life. \_Exit. Sinnatus. { To Attendant.) Return and tell them Synorix is not here. \_Exit Attendant. What did that villain Synorix say to you? Caimna. Is he — that — Synorix ? Sinnatus. Wherefore should you doubt it? One of the men there knew him. Gamma. Only one, And he perhaps mistaken in the face. Sinnatus. Come, come, could he deny it? What did he say? Camnia. What should he say? Sinnatus. What should he say, my wife ! He should say this, that being Tetrarch once His ow^n true people cast him from their doors Like a base coin. Camma. Not kindly to them? Sinnatus. Kindly? O the most kindly Prince in all the world ! Would clap his honest citizens on the back, Bandy their own rude jests with them, be curious About the welfare of their babes, their wives, O ay — their wives — their waves. What should he say? He should say nothing to my wife if I Were by to throttle him ! He steep'd himself In all the lust of Rome. How should you guess What maner of beast it is? Ca?nma. Yet he seem'd kindly, And said he loathed the cruelties that Rome Wrought on her vassals. Sinnatus. Did he, hojiest man? Camma. And you, that seldom brook the stranger here, Have let him hunt the stag with you to- day. Sinnatus. I warrant you now, he said he struck the stag. Camnia. Why no, he never touch'd upon the stag. Sinnatus. Why so I said, my arrow. Well, to sleep. [ Goes to close door. Camma. Nay, close not yet the door upon a night That looks half day. Simiatus. True; and my friends may spy him And slay him as he runs. Camma. He is gone already. Oh look, — yon grove upon the moun- tain, — white In the sweet moon as with a lovelier snow! But what a blotch of blackness under- neath ! Sinnatus, you remember — yea, you must, That there three years ago — the vast vine-bowers Ran to the summit of the trees, and dropt Their streamers earthward, which a breeze of May Took ever and anon, and open'd out The purple zone of hill and heaven; there You told your love; and like the sway- ing vines — Yea, — with our eyes, — our hearts, our prophet hopes Let in the happy distance, and that all But cloudless heaven which we have found together In our three married years ! You kiss' d me there For the first time. Sinnatus, kiss me now. SCENE III. THE CUP. 737 Sinnatus. First kiss. {Kisses her.') There then. You talk almost as if it Might be the last. Camma. Will you not eat a little? , Sinnatus. No, no, we found a goat- herd's hut and shared His fruits and milk. Liar! You will believe Now that he never struck the stag — a brave one Which you shall see to-morrow. Camma. I rise to-morrow In the gray dawn, and take this holy cup To lodge it in the shrine of Artemis. Sinnatus, Good ! Caninia. If I be not back in half an hour, Come after me. Sinnatus. What! is there danger? Camma. Nay, None that I know : 'tis but a step from here To the Temple. Sinnatus. All my brain is full of sleep. Wake me before you go, I'll after you — After 7?ie now ! [ Closes door and exit. Camma {drawing curtains^. Your shadow. Synorix — His face was not malignant, and he said That men malign'd him. Shall I go? Shall I go? Death, torture — * He never yet flung back a woman's prayer ' — I go, but I will have my dagger with me. \_Exit. SCENE HI.— Same as Scene I. Dawn. Music and Singing in the Temple. Enter Synorix watchfully, after him PuBLius and Soldiers. Synorix. Publius ! Fublius. Here ! Synorix. Do you re- member what. I told you? Publius. When you cry * Rome, Rome,' to seize 3B On whomsoever may be talking with you, Or man, or woman, as traitors unto Rome. Synorix. Right. Back again. How many of you are there? Publius. Some half a score. {^Exeunt Soldiers and Publius. Synorix. I have my guard about me. I need not fear the crowd that hunted me Across the woods, last night. I hardly gain'd The camp at midnight. Will she come to me Now that she knows me Synorix? Not if Sinnatus Has told her all the truth about me. Well, I cannot help the mould that I was cast in. I fling all that upon my fate, my star. I know that I am genial, I would be Happy, and make all others happy so They did not thwart me. Nay, she will net come. Yet if she be a true and loving wife She may, perchance, to save this husband. Ay! See, see, my white bird stepping toward the snare. Why now I count it all but miracle. That this brave heart of mine should shake me so. As helplessly as some unbearded boy's When first he meets his maiden in a bower. \^Enter Camma {with cup). The lark first takes the sunlight on his wing, But you, twin sister of the morning star, Forelead the sun. Camma. Where is Antonius? Synorix. Not here as yet. You are too early for him. \_She crosses toivards Temple. Synorix. Nay, whither go you now? Camma. To lodge this cup Within the holy shrine of Artemis, And so return. Synorix. To find Antonius here. 738 THE CUP. ACT X \^She goes into the Temple, he looks after her. The loveliest life that ever drew the light From heaven to brood upon her, and enrich Earth with her shadow ! I trust she will return. These Romans dare not violate the Temple. No, I must lure my game into the camp. A woman I could live and die for. What! Die for a woman, what new faith is this? I am not mad, not sick, not old enough To dote on one alone. Yes, mad for her, Camma the stately, Camma the great- hearted. So mad, I fear some strange and evil chance Coming upon me, for by the Gods I seem Strange to myself. Re-enter Camma. Camma. Where is Antonius? Synorix. Where? As I said before, you are still too early. Camma. Too early to be here alone with thee; For whether men malign thy name, or no, It bears an evil savour among women. W^here is Antonius ? {Loud.) Synorix. Madam, as you know The camp is half a league without the city; If you will walk with me we needs must meet Antonius coming, or at least shall find him There in the camp. Camma. No, not one step with thee. Where is Antonius? {Louder.) Synorix {advancing towards her). Then for your own sake, Lady, I say it with all gentleness. And for the sake of Sinnatus your husband, I must compel you. Camma {drawing her dagger). Stay! — too near is death. Synorix {disarming her). Is it not easy to disarm a woman? Enter SiNNATUS {seizes him frotn behind by the throat). Synorix {throttled and scarce audible). Rome ! Rome ! Sinnatus. Adulterous dog ! Synorix {stabbing him with Gamma's dagger) . What ! will you have it ? [Gamma utters a cry and runs to Sinnatus. Sinnatus {falls backward). I have it in my heart — to the Temple — fly- For ??iy sake — or they seize on thee. Remember ! Away — farewell ! [^Dies. Camma {runs up the steps into the Temple, looking back) . Farewell ! Synorix {seeing her escape). The women of the Temple drag her in. Publius ! Publius ! No, Antonius would not suffer me to break Into the sanctuary. She hath escaped. {^Looking down at Sinnatus. ' Adulterous dog ! ' that red-faced rage at me ! Then with one quick short stab — eternal peace. So end all passions. Then what use in passions? To warm the cold bounds of our dying life And, lest we freeze in mortal apathy. Employ us, heat us, quicken us, help us, keep us From seeing all too near, that urn, those ashes Which all must be. Well used, they serve us well. I heard a saying in Egypt, that ambition Is like the sea wave, which the more you drink, The more you thirst — yea — drink too much, as men Have done on rafts of wreck — it drives you mad. I will be no such wreck, am no such gamester As, having won the stake, would dare the chance Of double, or losing all. The Roman Senate. THE CUP. 739 For I have always play'd into their hands, Means me the crown. And Camma for my bride — The people love her — if I win her love, They too will cleave to me, as one with her. There then I rest, Rome's tributary king. [^Looking down on Sinnatus. Why did I strike him? — having proof enough Against the man, I surely should have left That stroke to Rome. He saved my life too. Did he? It seem'd so. 1 have play'd the sudden fool. And that sets her against me — for the moment. Camma — well, well, I never found the woman I could not force or wheedle to my will. She will be glad at last to wear my crown. And I will make Galatia prosperous too, And we will chirp among our vines, and smile At bygone things till that {pointing to Sinnatus) eternal peace. Rome ! Rome ! \_Enter Publius and Soldiers. Twice I cried * Rome.' Why came ye not before ? Pttblius. Why come we now ? Whom shall we seize upon? Synorix {pointing to the body of Sin- natus). The body of that dead traitor Sinnatus. Bear him away. Music and Singing in Temple. ACT II. SCENE. — Interior of the Temple OF Artemis. Small gold gates on platform in front of the veil before the colossal statue of the Goddess, and in the centre of the Tem- ple a tripod altar, on which is a lighted lamp. Lamps {lighted) suspended be- tween each pillar. Tripods^ vases, garlands of flowers, etc., about stage. Altar at back close to Goddess, with two cups. Solemn mtuic. Priestesses decorating the Temple. ( The Chorus 0/ Priestesses sing as they enter ^ Artemis, Artemis, hear us, O Mother, hear us, and bless us I Artemis, thou that art life to the wind, to the wave, to the glebe, to the fire ! Hear thy people who praise thee ! O help us from all that oppress us ! Hear thy priestesses hymn thy glory ! O yield them all their desire ! Priestess. Phoebe, that man from Syn- orix, who has been So oft to see the Priestess, waits once more Before the Temple. Phoebe. We will let her know. \_Signs to one of the Priestesses, who goes out. Since Camma fled from Synorix to our Temple, And for her beauty, stateliness, and power Was chosen Priestess here, have you not mark'd Her eyes were ever on the marble floor? To-day they are fixt and bright — they look straight out. Hath she made up her mind to marry him? Priestess. To marry him who stabb'd her Sinnatus ! You will not easily make me credit that. Phcebe. Ask her. Enter Camma as Priestess {in front of the curtains) . Priestess. You will not marry Synorix ? Camma. My girl, I am the bride of Death, and only Marry the dead. Priestess. Not Synorix then? Camma. My girl. At times this oracle of great Artemis Has no more power than other oracles To speak directly. Ph(Ebe. Will you speak to him, The messenger from Synorix who waits Before the Temple? Camma. Why not? Let him enter. [ Comes forward on to step by tripod. 740 THE CUP. ACT II Enter a MESSENGER. Messenger {kneels). Greeting and health from Synorix ! More than once You have refused his hand. When last I saw you. You all but yielded. He entreats you now For your last answer. When he struck at Sinnatus — As I have many a time declared to you — He knew not at the moment who had fasten'd About his throat — he begs you to for- get it As scarce his act: — a random stroke: all else Was love for you: he prays you to be- lieve him. Cajn77ia. I pray him to believe — that I believe him. Messenger. Why that is well. You mean to marry him? Camma. I mean to marry him — if that be well. Messenger. This very day the Romans crown him king For all his faithful services to Rome. He wills you then this day to marry him, And so be throned together in the sight Of all the people, that the world may know You twain are reconciled, and no more feuds Disturb our peaceful vassalage to Rome. Camma. To-day? Too sudden. I will brood upon it. When do they crown him? Messenger. Even now. Camma. And where? Messenger. Here by your temple. Camma. Come once more to me Before the crowning, — I will answer you. ^Exit Messenger. Phoebe. Great Artemis! O Camma, can it be well, Or good, or wise, that you should clasp a hand Red with the sacred blood of Sinnatus? Camma. Good ! mine own dagger driven by Synorix found All good in the true heart of Sinnatus, And quench'd it there for ever. Wise ! Life yields to death and wisdom bows to Fate, Is wisest, doing so. Did not this man Speak well? We cannot fight imperial Rome, But he and I are both Galatian-born, And tributary sovereigns, he and I Might teach this Rome — from know- ledge of our people — Where to lay on her tribute — heavily here And lightly there. Might I not live for that. And drown all poor self-passion in the sense Of public good? PhcBbe. I am sure you will not marry him. Camma. Are you so sure? I pray you wait and see. \_Shouts (yfrom the distance), ' Synorix ! Synorix ! ' Camma. Synorix, Synorix ! So they cried Sinnatus Not so long since — they sicken me. The One Who shifts his policy suffers something, must Accuse himself, excuse himself; the Many Will feel no shame to give themselves the lie. Phoebe. Most like it was the Roman soldiers shouted. Camma. Their shield-borne patriot of the morning star Hang'd at mid-day, their traitor of the dawn The clamour'd darling of their afternoon ! And that same head they would have play'd at ball with And kick'd it featureless — they now would crown. [^Flourish of trumpets. Enter a Galatian Nobleman with crozun on a cushion. Noble {kneels). Greeting and health from Synorix. He sends you This diadem of the first Galatian Queen, That you may feed your fancy on the glory of it, ACT II. THE CUP. 74X And join your life this day with his, and wear it Beside him on his throne. He waits your answer. Camnia. Tell him there is one shadow among the shadows, One ghost of all the ghosts — as yet so new. So strange among them — such an alien there, So much of husband in it still — that if The shout of Synorix and Camma sitting Upon one throne, should reach it, it would rise He! . . . He, with that red star between the ribs. And my knife there — and blast the king and me. And blanch the crowd with horror. I dare not, sir ! Throne him — and then the marriage — ay and tell him That I accept the diadem of Galatia — \^All are amazed. Yea, that ye saw me crown myself withal. \^Puts on the crmmt. I wait him his crown'd queen. Noble. So will I tell him. {^Exit. Music. Two Priestesses go up the steps before the shrine, draw the curtains on either side {discovering the Goddess), then open the gates and remain on steps, one on either side, and kneel. A Priestess goes off and returns ivith a veil of marriage, then assists Phcebe to veil Camma. At the same time Priestesses enter and stand on either side of the 7'ejnple. Camjna and all the Priestesses kneel, raise their hands to the Goddess, and bow dojvn. [^Shouts, ' Synorix ! Synorix ! ' All rise. Camma. Fling wide the doors and let the new-made children Of our imperial mother see the show. \_Sunlight potirs through the doors. I have no heart to do it. ( To Phoebe.') Look for me ! [ Crouches. Phoebe looks out. [Shouts, ' Synorix ! Synorix ! ' Phoebe. He climbs the throne. Hot blood, ambition, pride So bloat and redden his face — O would it were His third last apoplexy ! O bestial ! O how unlike our goodly Sinnatus. Camma {on the ground). You wrong him surely; far as the face goes A goodlier-looking man than Sinnatus. Phcebe (^aside). How dare she say it? I could hate her for it But that she is distracted. [A flourish of trumpets. Camma. Is he crown'd? Phoebe. Ay, there they crown him. [ Crowd without shout, ' Synorix ! Synorix ! ' {_A Priestess brings a box of spices to Camma, zvho throws them on the altar-flame. Camma. Rouse the dead altar-flame, fling in the spices, Nard, Cinnamon, amomum, benzoin. Let all the air reel into a mist of odour, As in the midmost heart of Paradise. Lay down the Lydian carpets for the king. The king should pace on purple to his bride. And music there to greet my lord the king. \_Music. ( To Phcebe). Dost thou remember when I wedded Sinnatus? Ay, thou wast there — whether from maiden fears Or reverential love for him I loved, Or some strange second-sight, the mar- riage cup Wherefrom we make libation to the Goddess So shook within my hand, that the red wine Ran down the marble and lookt like blood, like blood. Phoebe. I do remember your first- marriage fears. Camma. I have no fears at this my second marriage. See here — I stretfch my hand out — hold it there. How steady it is ! Phcebe. Steady enough to stab him ! Caf?tma. O hush ! O peace ! This violence ill becomes 742 THE CUP. ACT II. The silence of our Temple. Gentleness, Low words best chime with this solem- nity. Enter a procession of Priestesses and Children bearing garlands and golden goblets, and streiving Jiozvers. Enter Synorix {as King, zvith gold laurel-wreath croivn and purple robes), followed by Antonius, Pub- Lius, N'oblemen, Guards, and the Populace. Camma. Hail, King! Synorix. Hail, Queen ! The wheel of Fate has roll'd me to the top. I would that happiness were gold, that I Might cast my largess of it to the crowd ! I would that every man made feast to-day Beneath the shadow of our pines and planes ! For all my truer life begins to-day. The past is like a travell'd land now sunk Below the horizon — like a barren shore That grew salt weeds, but now all drown'd in love And glittering at full tide — the bounteous bays And havens filling with a blissful sea. Nor speak I now too mightily, being King And happy ! happiest. Lady, in my power To make you happy. Camma. Yes, sir. Synorix. Our Antonius, Our faithful friend of Rome, tho' Rome may set A free foot where she will, yet of his courtesy Entreats he may be present at our marriage. Camma. Let him come— a legion with him, if he will. ( To Antonius.) Welcome, my lord An- tonius, to our Temple. ( To Synorix.) You on this side the altar. ( To Antonius.) You on that. Call first upon the Goddess, Synorix. [^All face the Goddess. Priestesses, Children, Populace, and Guards kneel — the others remain standing. Synorix. O Thou, that dost inspire the germ with life. The child, a thread within the house of birth. And give him limbs, then air, and send him forth The glory of his father — Thou whose breath Is balmy wind to robe our hills with grass. And kindle all our vales with myrtle- blossom. And roll the golden oceans of our grain, And sway the long grape-bunches of our vines, And fill all hearts with fatness and the lust Of plenty — make me happy in my marriage ! Chorus {chanting). Artemis, Artemis, hear him, Ionian Artemis ! Camma. O Thou that slayest the- babe within the womb Or in the being born, or after slayest him As boy or man, great Goddess, whose storm-voice Unsockets the strong oak, and rears his root Beyond his head, and strows our fruits, and lays Our golden grain, and runs to sea and makes it Foam over all the fleeted wealth of kings And peoples, hear. Whose arrow is the plague — whose quick flash splits The mid-sea mast, and rifts the tower to the rock, And hurls the victor's column down with him That crowns it, hear. Who causes the safe earth to shudder and gape, And gulf and flatten in her closing chasm Domed cities, hear. Whose lava-torrents blast and blacken a province To a cinder, hear. Whose winter-cataracts find a realm and leave it A waste of rock and ruin, hear. I call thee To make my marriage prosper to my wish! THE CUP. 743 Chorus. Artemis, Artemis, hear her, Ephesian Artemis ! Camma. Artemis, Artemis, hear me, Galatian Artemis ! I call on our own Goddess in our own Temple. Chorus. Artemis, Artemis, hear her, Galatian Artemis ! [ Ihunder. All rise. Synorix {aside). Thunder! Ay, ay, the storm was drawing hither Across the hills when I was being crown'd. I wonder if I look as pale as she? Camma. Art thou — still bent — on marrying? Synorix. Surely — yet These are strange words to speak to Artemis. Camma. Words are not always what they seem, my King. I will be faithful to thee till thou die. Synorix. I thank thee, Camma, — I thank thee. Camma {turning to Antonius). An- tonius. Much graced are we that our Queen Rome in you Deigns to look in upon our barbarisms. [ Turns, goes up steps to altar before the Goddess. Takes a cup from off the altar. Holds it towards Antonius. Antonius goes up to the foot of the steps opposite to Synorix. You see this cup, my lord. [ Gives it to him. Antonius. Most curious ! The many-breasted mother Artemis Emboss'd upon it. Camma. It is old, I know not How many hundred years. Give it me again. It is the cup belonging our own Temple. \^Puts it back on altar, and takes up the cup of Act I. Shoiving it to Antonius. Here is another sacred to the Goddess, The gift of Synorix; and the Goddess, being For this most grateful, wills, thro' me her Priestess, In honour of his gift and of our marriage. That Synorix should drink from his own cup. Synorix. I thank thee, Camma, — I thank thee. Camtna. For — my lord — It is our ancient custom in Galatia That ere two souls be knit for life anc" death, They two should drink together from one cup. In symbol of their married unity. Making libation to the Goddess. Bring me The costly wines we use in marriages. [ They bring in a large jar of wine. Camma pours wine into cup. ( To Synorix.) See here, I fill it. ( To Antonius.) Will you drink, my lord? Antonius. . I? Why should I? I am not to be married. Camma. But that might bring a Roman blessing on us. Antonius {refusing cup). Thy pardon, Priestess ! Camma. Thou art in the right. This blessing is for Synorix and for me. See first I make libation to the Goddess. [yWakes libation. And now I drink. \^Drinks and fills the cup again. Thy turn, Galatian King, Drink and drink deep — our marriage will be fruitful. Drink and drink deep, and thou wilt make me happy. • [Synorix goes up to her. She hands him the cup. He drinks. Synorix. There, Camma ! I have almost drain'd the cup — A few drops left. Camma. Libation to the Goddess. [// So easy to forgive — even the dead. Harold. But sure am I that of your gentleness You will forgive him. She, you mourn for, seem'd A miracle of gentleness — would not blur A moth's wing by the touching; would not crush The fly that drew her blood; and, were she living, Would not — if penitent ^ have denied him her Forgiveness. And perhaps the man himself. When hearing of that piteous death, has suffer'd More than we know. But wherefore waste your heart In looking on a chill and changeless Past? Iron will fuse, and marble melt; the Past Remains the Past. But you are young, and — pardon me — As lovely as your sister. Who can tell What golden hours, with what full hands, may be Waiting you in the distance? Might I call Upon your father — I have seen the world — And cheer his blindness with a traveller's tales? Dora. Call if you will, and when you will. I cannot Well answer for my father; but if you Can tell me anything 0/ our sweet Eva When in her brighter girlhood, I at least Will bid you welcome, and will listen to you. Now I must go. Harold. But give me first your hand : I do not dare, like an old friend, to shake it. I kiss it as a prelude to that privilege W^hen you shall know me better. Dora. {Aside.) How beautiful His manners are, and how unlike the farmer's ! You are staying here? Harold. Yes, at the wayside inn Close by that alder-island in your brook, 'The Angler's Home.' Dora. Axt you ox\q1 Harold. No, but I 770 THE PROMISE OF MA Y. Take some delight in sketching, and the country Has many charms, altho' the inhabitants Seem semi-barbarous. Dora. I am glad it pleases you; Yet I, born here, not only love the country, But its inhabitants too; and you, I doubt not. Would take to them as kindly, if you cared To live some time among them. Harold. If I did, Then one at least of its inhabitants Might have more charm for me than all the country. Dora. That one, then, should be grateful for your preference. Harold. I cannot tell, tho' standing in her presence. (Aside.) She colours ! Dora. Sir ! Harold. Be not afraid of me, For these are no conventional flourishes. I do most earnestly assure you that Your likeness \_Shouts and cries without. Dora. What was that? my poor blind father Enter YAv.umG Man. Farming Alan. Miss Dora, Dan Smith's cart hes runned ower a laady i' the holler laane, and they ha' ta'en the body up inter yojir chaumber, and they be all a-callin' for ye. Dora. The body ! — Heavens ! I come ! Harold. But you are trembling. Allow me to go with you to the farm. [^Exeunt. Enter Dobson. Dobson. What feller wur it as 'a' been a-talkin' fur haafe an hour wi' my Dora? (Looking after him.) Seeams I ommost knaws the back on 'im — drest hke a gentleman, too. Damn all gentlemen, says I! I should ha' thowt they'd hed anew o' gentlefoak, as I telled 'er to-daay when she fell ft)ul upo' me. Minds ma o' summun. I could swear to that; but that be all one, fur I haates 'im afoor I knaws what 'e be. Theer 1 he turns round. Philip Hedgar o' Soomerset ! Philip Hedgar o' Soomer- set ! — Noa — yeas — thaw the feller's gone and maade such a litter' of his faace. Eh lad, if it be thou, Til Philip tha ! a-plaayin' the saame gaame wi' my Dora — I'll Soomerset tha. I'd like to drag 'im thruf the herse- pond, and she to be a-lookin' at it. I'd like to leather 'im black and blue, and she to be a-laughin' at it. I'd like to fell 'im as dead as a bullock ! ( Clench- ing his fist.) But what 'ud she saay to that? She telled me once not to meddle wi' 'im, and now she be fallen out wi' ma, and I can't coom at 'er. It mun be him. Noa! Fur she'd niver 'a' been talkin' haafe an hour wi' the divil 'at killed her oan sister, or she beant Dora Steer. Yeas ! Fur she niver knawed 'is faace when 'e wur 'ere afoor; but I'll maake 'er knaw ! I'll maake 'er knaw ! Enter Harold. Naay, but I mun git out on 'is waay now, or I shall be the death on 'im. \_Exit. Harold. How the clown glared at me ! that Dobbins, is it. With whom I used to jar? but can he trace me Thro' five years' absence, and my change of name. The tan of southern summers and the beard? I may as well avoid him. Ladylike ! Lilylike in her stateliness and sweetness ! How came she by it? — a daughter of the fields, This Dora ! She gave her hand, unask'd, at the farm gate; I almost think she half return'd the pressure Of mine. What, I that held the orange blossom Dark as the yew? but may not those, who march Before their age, turn back at times, and make ACT II. THE PROMISE OF MAY. 771 Courtesy to custom? and now the stronger motive, Misnamed free-will — the crov ^ would call it conscience — Moves me — to what? I am dreaming; for the past Look'd thro' the present, Eva's eyes thro' hers — A spell upon me ! Surely I loved Eva More than I knew ! or is it but the past That brightens in retiring? Oh, last night, Tired, pacing my new lands at Little- chester, I dozed upon the bridge, and the black river Flow'd thro' my dreams — if dreams they were. She rose From the foul flood and pointed toward the farm. And her cry rang to me across the years, ' I call you, Philip Edgar, Philip Edgar ! Come, you will set all right again, and father Will not die miserable.' I could make his age A comfort to him — so be more at peace With mine own self. Some of my former friends Would find my logic faulty; let them. Colour Flows thro' my life again, and I have lighted On a new pleasure. Anyhow we must Move in the line of least resistance when The stronger motive rules. But she hates Edgar May not this Dobbins, or some other, spy Edgar in Harold? Well then, I must make her Love Harold first, and then she will for- give Edgar for Harold's sake. She said her- self She would forgive him, by-and-by, not now — For her own sake then, if not for mine — not now — But by-and-by. Enter Dobson behind. Dobson. By-and-by — eh, lad, dosta knaw this paaper? Ye dropt it upo' the road. 'Philip Edgar, Esq.' Ay, you be a pretty squire. I ha' fun' ye out, I hev. Eh, lad, dosta knaw what tha means wi' by-and-by? Fur if ye be goin' to sarve our Dora as ye sarved our Eva — then, by-and-by, if she weant listen to me when I be a-tryin' to saave 'er — if she weant — look to thysen, for, by the Lord, I'd think na moor o' maakin' an end o' tha nor a carrion craw — noa — thaw they hanged ma at 'Size fur it. Harold. Dobbins, I think ! Dobson. I beant Dobbins. Harold. Nor am I Edgar, my good fellow. Dobson. Tha lies ! What hasta been . saayin' to viy Dora ? Harold. I have been telling her of the death of one Philip Edgar of Toft Hall, Somerset. Dobson. Tha lies ! Harold (^pulling out a newspaper^. Well, my man, it seems that you can read. Look there — under the deaths. Dobson. 'O' the 17th, Philip Edgar, o' Toft Hall, Soomerset.' How coom thou to be sa like 'im, then? Harold. Naturally enough; for I am closely related to the dead man's family. Dobson. An' 'ow coom thou by the letter to 'im? Harold. Naturally again; for as 1 used to transact all his business for him, 1 had to look over his letters. Now then, see these {takes out letters^. Half a score of them, all directed to me — Harold. Dobson. 'Arold ! 'Arold ! 'Arold, so they be. Harold. My name is Harold ! Good day, Dobbins! \^Exit. Dobson. 'Arold ! The feller's clean daazed, an' maazed, an' maated, an' mud- dled ma. Dead ! It mun be true, fur it wur i' print as black as owt. Naay, but ' Good daay, Dobbins.' Why, that wur the very twang on 'im. Eh, lad, but whether thou be Hedgar, or Hedgar's business man, thou hesn't naw business 'ere wi' my Dora, as 1 knaws on, an' w:hether thou calls thysen Hedgar or Harold, if thou stick to she I'll stick to thee — stick to tha like a weasel to a 772 THE PROMISE OF MAY. ACT 111. rabbit, I will. Ay ! and I'd like to shoot tha like a rabbit an' all. 'Good daay, Dobbins.' Dang tha ! ACT III. SCENE. — A Room in Steer's House. Door leading into Bedroom at the BACK. Dora {ringing a handbell^. Milly ! Enter MiLLY. Milly. The little 'ymn? Yeas, Miss; but I wur so ta'en up wi' leadin' the owd man about all the blessed murnin' 'at I ha' nobbut larned mysen haafe on it. ' O man, forgive thy mortal foe, Nor ever strike him blow for blow; For all the souls on earth that live To be forgiven must forgive. Forgive him seventy times and seven; For all the blessed souls in Heaven Are both forgivers and forgiven.' But I'll git the book agean, and larn mysen the rest, and saay it to ye afoor dark; ye ringed fur that, Miss, didn't ye? Dora. No, Milly; but if the farming men be come for their wages, to send them up to me. Milly. Yeas, Miss. \^Exit. Dora {sitting at desk counting money) . Enough at any rate for the present. {^Enter Farming Men.) Good afternoon, my friends. I am sorry Mr. Steer still continues too unwell to attend to you, but the schoolmaster looked to the paying you your wages when I was away, didn't he? Men. Yeas; and thanks to ye. Dora. Some of our workmen have left us, but he sent me an alphabetical list of those that remain, so, Allen, I may as well begin with you. Alle7t {with his hand to his ear). Halfabitical ! Taake one o' the young 'uns fust, Miss, fur I be a bit deaf, and I wur hallus scaared by a big word; least- waays, I should be wi' a lawyer. Dora. I spoke of your names, Allen, as they are arranged here {shows book) — according to their first letters. Allen. Letters! Yeas, I sees now. Them be what they larns the childer' a: school, but 1 were burn afoor schoolin* time. Dora. But, Allen, tho' you can't read, you could whitewash that cottage of yours where your grandson had the fever. Allen. I'll hev it done o' Monday. Dora. Else if the fever spread, the parish will have to thank you for it. Allen. Mea? why, it be the Lord's doin', noan o' mine; d'ye think I^d gCt 'em the fever? But I thanks ye all the saame. Miss. ( 1'akes money.) Dora {calling out names). Higgins, Jackson, Luscombe, Nokes, Oldham, Skipworth ! {All take money.) Did you find that you worked at all the worse upon the cold tea than you would have done upon the beer? Higgins. Noa, Miss; we worked naw wuss upo' the cowd tea; but we'd ha' work'd better upo' the beer. Dora. Come, come, you worked well enough, and I am much obliged to all of you. There's for you, and you, and you. Count the money and see if it's all right. Men. All right, Miss; and thank ye kindly. {^Exeunt Luscombe, Nokes, Old- ham, Skipworth. Dora. Dan Smith, my father and I forgave you stealing our coals. [Dan Smith advances to Dora. Dan Smith {bellowing). Whoy, O lor. Miss ! that wur sa long back, and the walls sa thin, and the winders brok- ken, and the weather sa cowd, and my missus a-gittin' ower 'er lyin'-in. Dora. Didn't I say that we had for- given you? But, Dan Smith, they tell me that you — and you have six children — spent all your last Saturday's wages at the ale-house; that you were stupid drunk all Sunday, and so ill in conse- quence all Monday that you did not come into the hayfield. Why should I pay you your full wages? Dan Smith. I be ready to taake the pledge. Dora. And as ready to break it again. Besides it was you that were driving the ACT III. THE PROMISE OF MAY. 773 cart — and I fear you were tipsy then, too — when you lamed the lady in the hollow lane. Dan Smith (belloiving). O lor, Miss! noa, noa, noa ! Ye sees the holler laane be hallus sa dark i' the arternoon, and wheere the big eshtree cuts athurt it, it gi^es a turn like, and 'ow should I see to laame the laady, and mea coomin' along pretty sharp an' all? Dora. Well, there are your wages; the next time you waste them at a pot- house you get no more from me. {Exit Dan Smith.) Sally Allen, you worked for Mr. Dobson, didn't you? Sally (advancing). Yeas, Miss; but he wur so rough wi' ma, I couldn't abide 'im. Dora. Why should he be rough with you? You are as good as a man in the hayfield. What's become of your brother? Sally. 'Listed for a soadger. Miss, i' the Queen's Real Hard Tillery. Dora. And your sweetheart — when are you and he to be married? Sally. At Michaelmas, Miss, please God. Dora. You are an Jionest pair. I will come to your wedding. Sally. An' I thanks ye fur that. Miss, moor nor fur the waage. (Going — returns.) 'A cotched ma about the waaist, Miss, when 'e wur 'ere afoor, an' axed ma to be 'is little sweet- 'art, an 'soa I knaw'd 'im when I seed 'im agean an' I telled feyther on 'im. Dora. What is all this, Allen? Allen. Why, Miss Dora, mea and my maates, us three, we wants to hev three words wi' ye. Higgins. That be 'im, and mea, Miss. Jackson. An' mea. Miss. Allen. An' we weant mention naw naames, we'd as lief talk o' the Divil afoor ye as 'im, fur they says the master goas clean off his 'ead when he 'ears the naame on 'im : but us three, arter Sally'd telled us on 'im, we fun' 'im out a-walkin' i' West Field wi' a white 'at, nine o'clock, upo' Tuesday murnin', and all on us, wi' your leave, we wants to leather 'im. Dora. Who? Allen. Him as did the mischief here, five year sin'. Dora. Mr. Edgar? Allen. Theer, Miss ! You ha' naiimed 'im — not me. Dora. He's dead, man — dead ; gone to his account — dead and buried. Allen. I beant sa sewer o' that, fur Sally knaw'd 'im. Now then? Dora. Y'es; it was in the Somerset- shire papers. Allen. Then yon mun be his brother, an' we'll leather />;/. Dora. I never heard that he had a brother. Some foolish mistake of Sally's; but what! would you beat a man for his brother's fault? That were a wild justice indeed. Let bygones be bygones. Go home ! Good-night ! (All exeunt.) I have once more paid them all. The work of the farm will go on still, but for how long? We are almost at the bottom of the well : little more to be drawn from it — and what then ? Encum- bered as we are, who would lend us any- thing? We shall have to sell all the land, which father, for a whole life, has been getting together, again, and that, I am sure, would be the death of him. What am I to do? Farmer Dobson, were I to marry him, has promised to keep our heads above water; and the man has doubtless a good heart, and a true and lasting love for me : yet — though I can be sorry for him — as the good Sally says, ' I can't abide him ' — almost brutal, and matched with my Harold is like a hedge thistle by a garden rose. But then, he, too — will he ever be of one faith with his wife? which is my dream of a true marriage. Can I fancy him kneeling with me, and uttering the same prayer; standing up side by side with me, and singing the same "hymn? I fear not. Have I done wisely, then, in accepting him? But may not a girl's love-dream have too much romance in it to be real- ised all at once, or altogether, or any- where but in Heaven? And yet 1 had once a vision of a pure and perfect mar- riage, where the man and the woman, only differing as the stronger and the weaker, should walk hand in hand to- 774 THE PROMISE OF MAY. ACT 111 gather down this valley of tears, as they call it so truly, to the grave at the bottom, and lie down there together in the dark- ness which would seem but for a moment, to be wakened again together by the light of the resurrection, and no more part- ings for ever and for ever. ( Walks ^ up and down. She sings.^ *0 happy lark, that warblest high Above thy lowly nest, O brook, that brawlest merrily by Thro' fields that onte were blest, O tower spiring to the sky, O graves in daisies drest, O Love and Life, how weary am I, And how I long for rest.' There, there, I am a fool ! Tears ! 1 have sometimes been moved to tears by a chapter of fine writing in a novel; but what have I to do with tears now? All depends on me — Father, this poor girl, the farm, everything; and they both love me — I am all in all to both; and he loves me too, I am quite sure of that. Courage, courage ! and all will go well. (^Goes to bedroom door ; opens it.) How dark your room is ! Let me bring you in here where there is still full daylight. (^Brings Eva forzvard.) Why, you look better. Eva. And I feel so much better, that I trust I may be able by-and-by to help you in the business of the farm; but I must not be known yet. Has anyone found me out, Dora? Dora. Oh, no; you kept your veil too close for that when they carried you in; since then, no one has seen you but myself. Eva. Yes — this Milly. Dora. Poor blind Father's little guide, Milly, who came to us three years after you were gone, how should she know you? But now that you have been brought to us as it were from the grave, dearest Eva, and have been here so long, will you not speak with Father to-day? Eva. Do you think that I may? No, not yet. I am not equal to it yet. Dora. Why ? Do you still suffer from your fall in the hollow lane? Eva. Bruised; but no bones broken. Dora. I have always told Father that the huge old ashtree there would cause an accident some day; but lie would never cut it down, because one of the Steers had planted it there in former tinies. Eva. If it had killed one of the Steers there the other day, it might have been better for her, for him, and for you. Dora. Come, come, keep a good heart ! Better for me ! That's good. How better for me? Eva. You tell me you have a lover. Will he not fly from you if he learn the story of my shame and that I am still living? Dora. No; I am sure that when we are married he will be willing that you and Father should live with us; for, in- deed, he tells me that he met you once in the old times, and was much taken with you, my dear. Eva. Taken with me; who was he? Have you told him I am here? Dora. No; do you wish it? ' Eva. See, Dora; you yourself are ashamed of me {%veeps), and I do not wonder at it. Dora. But I should wonder at myself if it were so. Have we not been all in all to one another from the time when we first peeped into the bird's nest, waded in the brook, ran after the butter- flies, and prattled to each other that we would marry fine gentlemen, and played at being fine ladies? Eva. That last was my Father's fault, poor man. And this lover of yours — this Mr. Harold — is a gentleman? Dora. That he is, from head to foot. I do believe I lost my heart to him the very first time we met, and I love him so much Eva. Poor Dora ! ' Dora. That I dare not tell him how much I love him. Eva. Better not. Has he offered you marriage, this gentleman? Dora. Could I love him else? Eva. And are you quite sure that after marriage this gentleman will not be shamed of his poor farmer's daughter among the ladies in his drawing-room? THE PROMISE OF MAY. 775 Dora. Shamed of me in a drawing- room ! Wasn't Miss Vavasour, our schoolmistress at Littlech ester, a lady born? Were not our fellow-pupils all ladies? Wasn't dear mother herself at least by one side a lady? Can't I speak like a lady; pen a letter like a lady; talk a little French like a lady; play a little like a lady? Can't a girl when she loves her husband, and he her, make herself anything he wishes her to be? Shamed of me in a drawing-room, indeed! See here ! * I hope your Lordship is quite recovered of your gout?' {^Curtsey s^ * Will your Ladyship ride to cover to-day? ( Curtseys.^ I can recommend our Volti- geur.' ' I am sorry that we could not attend your Grace's party on the loth ! ' (^Curtseys.) There, I am glad my non- sense has made you smile ! Eva. I have heard that 'your Lord- ship,' and ' your Ladyship,' and ' your Grace ' are all growing old-fashioned ! Dora. But the love of sister for sister can never be old-fashioned. I have been unwilling to trouble you with questions, but you seem somewhat better to-day. We found a letter in your bedroom torn into bits. I couldn't make it out. What was it? Eva. From him ! from him ! He said we had been most happy together, and he trusted that sometime we should meet again, for he had not forgotten his promise to come when I called him. But that was a mockery, you know, for he gave me no address, and there was no word of marriage; and, O Dora, he signed himself ' Yours gratefully ' — fancy, Dora, ' gratefully ' ! * Yours gratefully ' ! Dora. Infamous wretch ! {Aside.') Shall I tell her he is dead? No; she is still too feeble. Eva. Hark ! Dora, some one is com- ing. I cannot and I will not see any- body. Dora. It is only Milly. Enter Milly zvith basket of roses. Dora. Well, Milly, why do you come in so roughly? The sick lady here might have been asleep. Milly. Please, Miss, Mr. Dobson telled me to saay he's browt some of Miss Eva's roses for the sick laady to smell on. Dora. Take them, dear. Say that the sick lady thanks him ! Is he here? Milly. Yeas, Miss; and he wants to speak to ye partic'lar. Dora. Tell him 1 cannot leave the sick lady just yet. Milly. Yeas, Miss; but he says he wants to tell ye summut very partic'lar. Dora. Not to-day. What are you staying for? 3Iilly. Why, Miss, I be afeard I shall set him a-swearing like onythink. Dora. And what harm will that do you, so that you do not copy his bad . manners? Go, child. {Exit Milly.) But, Eva, why did you write, ' Seek me at the bottom of the river ' ? Eva. Why? because I meant it! — that dreadful night ! that lonely walk to Littlechester, the rain beating in my face all the way, dead midnight when I came upon the bridge; the river, black, slimy, swirling under me in the lamplight, by the rotten wharfs — but I was so mad, that I mounted upon the parapet Dora. You make me shudder ! Eva. To fling myself over, when I heard a voice, * Girl, what are you doing there?' It was a Sister of Mercy, come from the death-bed of a pauper, who had died in his misery blessing God, and the Sister took me to her house, and bit by bit — for she promised secrecy — I told her all. Dora. And what then? Eva. She would have persuaded me to come back here, but I couldn't. Then she got me a place as nursery governess, and when the children grew too old for me, and I asked her once more to help me, once more she said, ' Go home;' but I hadn't the heart or face to do it. And then — what would Father say? I sank so low that I went into service — the drudge of a lodging-house — and when the mistress died, and I appealed to the Sister again, her answer — I think I have it about me — yes, there it is! Dora {reads). 'My dear Child, — I can do no more for vou. I have done 776 THE PROMISE OF MAY. ACT III. wrong in keeping your secret ; your Father must be now in extreme old age. Go back to him and ask his forgiveness be- fore he dies. — Sister Agatha.' Sister Agatha is right. Don't you long for Father's forgiveness? Eva. I would almost die to have it ! Dora. And he may die before he gives it; may drop oft' any day, any hour. You must see him at once. {A'ings bell. Enter Milly.) Milly, my dear, how did you leave Mr. Steer? Milly. He's been a-moanin' and a- groanin' in 'is sleep, but I thinks he be wakkenin' oop. Dora. Tell him that I and the lady here wish to see him. You see she is lamed, and cannot go down to him. Milly. Yeas, Miss, I will. S^Exit Milly. Dora. I ought to prepare you. You must not expect to find our Father as he was five years ago. He is much altered; but I trust that your return — for you know, my dear, you were always his favourite — will give him, as they say, a new lease of life. Eva {clinging to Dora). Oh, Dora, Dora! Enter Steer led by Milly. Steer. Has the cow cawved? Dora. No, Father. Steer. Be the colt dead? Dora. No, father. Steer. He wur sa bellows'd out wi' the wind this murnin', 'at I telled 'em to gallop 'im. Be he dead? Dora. Not that I know. Steer. What hasta sent fur me, then, fur? Dora {taking Steer's ami). Well, Father, 1 have a surprise for you. Steer. I ha' niver been surprised but once i' my life, and I went blind upon it. Dora. Eva has come home. Steer. Hoam? fro' the bottom o' the river? Dora. No, Father, that was a mis- take. She's here again. Steer. The Steers were all gentlefoalks i' the owd times, an' I worked early an' laate to maake 'em all gentlefoalks agean. The land belonged to the Steers i' the owd times, an' it belongs to the Steers agean : I bowt it back agean ; but I couldn't buy my darter back agean when she lost hersen, could I? I eddicated boalh on 'em to marry gentlemen, an' one on 'em went an' lost hersen i' the river. Dora. No, Father, she's here. Steer. Here ! she moant coom here. What would her mother saay? If it be her ghoast, we mun abide it. We can't keep a ghoast out. Eva {Jailing at his feet) . Oh, forgive me ! forgive me ! Steer. Who said that? Taake me awaay, little gell. It be one o' my bad daays. ^Exit Steer led by Milly. Dora {sfnoothing Eva's forekead) . Be not so cast down, my sweet Eva. You heard him say it was one of his bad days; He will be sure to know you to-morrow. Eva. It is almost the last of my bad days, I think. I am very faint. I must lie down. Give me your arm. Lead me back again. [Dora takes Eva into inner room. ' Enter Milly. Milly. Miss Dora ! Miss Dora ! Dora {returning and leaving the bed- room door ajar). Quiet ! quiet ! What is it? Milly. Mr. 'Arold, Miss. Dora. Below? Milly. Yeas, Miss. He be saayin*" a word to the owd man, but he'll coom up if ye lets 'im. Dora. Tell him, then, that I'm wait- ing for him. Milly. Yeas, Miss. \_Exit. Dora sits pensively and waits. Enter Harold. Harold. You are pale, my Dora! but the ruddiest cheek That ever charm'd the plowman of your wolds Might wish its rose a lily, could it look But half as lovely. I was speaking with Your father, asking his consent — you wish'd me — THE PROMISE OF MA Y. 777 That we should marry : he would answer nothing, I could make nothing of him; but, my flower, You look so weary and so worn ! What is it Has put you out of heart? Dora. It puts me in heart Again to see you; but indeed the state Of my poor father puts me out of heart. Is yours yet living? Harold. No — I told you. Dora. When? Harold. Confusion ! — Ah well, well ! the state we all Must come to in our spring-and-winter world If we live long enough ! and poor Steer looks The very type of Age in a picture, bow'd To the earth he came from, to the grave he goes to, Beneath the burthen of years. Dora. More like the picture Of Christian in my ' Pilgrim's Progress ' here, Bow'd to the dust beneath the burthen of sin. Harold. Sin! What sin? Dora, Not his own. Harold. That nursery-tale Still read, then? Dora. Yes; our carters and our shepherds Still find a comfort there. Harold. Carters and shepherds ! Dora. Scorn ! I hate scorn. A soul with no religion — My mother used to say that such a one Was without rudder, anchor, compass — might be Blown everyway with every gust and wreck On any rock ; and tho' you are good and gentle, Yet if thro' any want Harold. Of this religion? Child, read a little history, you will find The common brotherhood of man has been Wrong'd by the cruelties of his religions More than could ever have happen'd thro' the want Of any or all of them. Dora^ — But, O dear friend, If thro' the want of any — I mean the true one — And pardon me for saying it — you should ever Be tempted into doing what might seem Not altogether worthy of you, I think That I should break my heart, for you have taught me To love you. Harold. What is this ? some one been stirring Against me? he, your rustic amourist, The polish'd Damon of your pastoral here, This Dobson of your idyll ? Dora. No, Sir, no ! Did you not tell me he was crazed with jealousy. Had threaten'd ev'n your life, and would say anything? Did /not promise not to listen to him. Nor ev'n to see the man? Harold. Good; then what is it That makes you talk so dolefully? Dora. I told you — My father. Well, indeed, a friend just now. One that has been much wrong'd, whose griefs are mine. Was warning me- that if a gentleman Should wed a farmer's daughter, he would be Sooner or later shamed of her among The ladies, born his equals. Harold. More fool he ! What I that have been call'd a Socialist, A Communist, a Nihilist — what you will ! Dora. What are all these? Harold. Utopian idiotcies. They did not last three Junes. Such rampant weeds Strangle each other, die, and make the soil For Ccesars, Crom wells, and Napoleons To root their power in. I have freed myself From all such dreams, and some will say because I have inherited my Uncle. Let them. But — shamed of you, my Empress! I should prize 773 THE PROMISE OF MAY. The pearl of Beauty, even if I found it Dark with the soot of slums. Dora. But I can tell you. We Steers are of old blood, tho' we be fallen. See there our shield. (^Pointing to arms on mantelpiece.^ For I have heard the Steers Had land in Saxon times; and your own name Of Harold sounds so English and so old I am sure you must be proud of it. Harold. Not I ! As yet I scarcely feel it mine. I took it For some three thousand acres. I have land now And wealth, and lay both at your feet. Dora. And what was Your name before? Harold. Come, come, my girl, enough Of this strange talk. I love you and you me. True, 1 have held opinions, hold some still, Which you would scarce approve of: for all that, I am a man not prone to jealousies, Caprices, humours, moods; but very ready To make allowances, and mighty slow To feel ofifences. Nay, I do believe I could forgive — well, almost anything — And that more freely than your formal priest. Because I know more fully than he can What poor earthworms are all and each of us, Here crawling in this boundless Nature. Dora, If marriage ever brought a woman happi- ness I doubt not I can make you happy. Dora. You make me Happy already. Haroldi And I never said As much before to any woman living. Dora. No ? Harold. No ! by this true kiss, you are the first I ever have loved truly. [ They kiss each other. Eva {with a wild cry) . Philip Edgar ! Harold. The phantom cry! You — di'1 you hear a cry? Dora. She must be crying out ' Edgar' in her sleep. Harold. Who must be crying out ' Edgar' in her sleep? Dora. Your pardon for a minute. She must be waked. Harold. Who must be waked? Dora. I am not deaf: you fright me. What ails you? Harold. Speak. Dora. You know her, Eva. Harold Eva ! \_Eva opens the door and stands in the entry. She! Eva. Make her happy, then, and I forgive you. \_Falls dead. Dora. Happy! What? Edgai:? Is it so? Can it be? They told me so. Yes, yes ! I see it all now. Oh, she has fainted. Sister, Eva, sister ! He is yours again — he will love you again ; I give him back to you again. Look up ! One word, or do but smile ! Sweet, do you hear me? \^Puts her hand on Eva's heart. There, there — the heart, O God! — the poor young heart Broken at last — all still — and nothing left To live for. [Falls on body of her sister, Harold. Living . . . dead . . . She said ' all still. Nothing to live for.' She — she knows me — now . . . {A pause.) She knew me from the first, she juggled with me. She hid this sister, told me she was dead — I have wasted pity on her — not dead now — No ! acting, playing on me, both of them. They drag the river for her ! no, not they! Playing on me — not dead now — a swoon — a scene — Yet — how she made her wail as for the dead ! Enter Milly. Milly. Please, Mister 'Arold. Harold {roughly). Well? THE PROMISE OF MAY. 779 Milly. The owd man's coom'd agean to 'issen, an' wants To hev a word \vi' ye about the maiiiage. Harold. The what? Milly. The marriage. Harold. The marriage? Milly. Yeas, the marriage. Granny says marriages be maade i' 'eaven. Harold. She Hes ! They are made in Hell. Child, can't you see? Tell them to fly for a doctor. Milly. Oh, law — yeas. Sir ! I'll run fur 'im mysen. \_Exit. Harold. All silent there. Yes, deathlike! Dead? I dare not look : if dead. Were it best to steal away, to spare my- self, And her too, pain, pain, pain? My curse on all This world of mud, on all its idiot gleams Of pleasure, all the foul fatalities That blast our natural passions into pains ! Enter DoBSON. Dobson. You, Master Hedgar, Harold, or whativer They calls ye, for I warrants that ye goas By haafe a scoor o' naames — out o' the chaumber. \_Dragging him past the body. Harold. Not that way, man ! Curse on your brutal strength ! I cannot pass that way. Dobson. Out o' the chaumber ! I'll mash tha into novvt. Harold. The mere wild-beast ! Dobson. Out o' the chaumber, dang tha! Harold. Lout, churl, clown ! [ While they are shonting and strug- gling Dora rises and comes be- tween them. Dora (Jo Dobson) . Peace, let him be : it is the chamber of Death ! Sir, you are tenfold more a gentleman, A hundred times more worth a woman's love, Than this, this — but I waste no words upon him : His wickedness is like my wretchedness — Beyond all language. ( To Harold.) You — you see her there ! Only fifteen when first you came on her. And then the sweetest flower of all the wolds. So lovely in the promise of her May, So winsome in her grace and gaiety, So loved by all the village people here, So happy in herself and in her home Dobson {agitated^. Theer, theer ! ha' done. I can't abear to see her. S^Exit. Dora. A child, and all as trustful as a child ! Five years of shame and suffering broke the heart That only beat for you; and he, the father, Thro' that dishonour which you brought upon us, Has lost his health, his eyesight, even his mind. Harold (^covering his face) . Enough ! Dora. Itseem'dso; only there was left A second daughter, and to her you came Veiling one sin to act another. Harold. No ! You wrong me there ! hear, hear me ! I wish'd, if you [Pauses. Dora. If I Harold. Could love me, could be brought to love me As I loved you Dora. What then? Harold. I wish'd, I hoped To make, to make Dora. What did you hope to make? Harold. 'Twere best to make an end of my lost life. O Dora, Dora ! Dora. What did you hope to make? Harold. Make, make ! I cannot find the word — forgive it — Amends. Dora. For what? to whom? Harold. To him, to you ! \^Falling at her feet. Dora. To him ! io me ! No, not with all your wealth. Your land, your life ! Out in the fiercest storm That ever made earth tremble — he, nor I — 78o THE PROMISE OF MA Y. The shelter ol your roof — not for one moment — Nothing from you ! Sunk in the deepest pit of pauperism, Push'd from all doors as if we bore the plague, Smitten with fever in the open field, Laid famine-stricken at the gates of Death — Nothing from you ! But she there — her last word Forgave — and I forgive you. If you ever Forgive yourself, you are even lower and baser Than even I can well believe you. Go ! \_He lies at her feet. Curtain falls DEMETER AND OTHER POEMS. TO THE MARQUIS OF DUF- FERIN AND AVA. At times our Britain cannot rest, At times her steps are swift and rash; She moving, at her girdle clash The golden keys of East and West. Not swift or rash, when late she lent The sceptres of her West, her East, To one, that ruling has increased Her greatness and her self-content. III. Your rule has made the people love Their ruler. Your viceregal days Have added fulness to the phrase Of ' Gauntlet in the velvet glove.' But since your name will grow with Time, Not all, as honouring your fair name Of Statesman, have I made the name A golden portal to my rhyme : But more, that you and yours may know From me and mine, how dear a debt We owed you, and are owing yet To you and yours, and still would owe. VI. For he — your India was his Fate, And drew him over sea to you — He fain had ranged her thro' and thro', To serve her myriads and the State, — A soul that, watch'd from earliest youth. And on thro' many a brightening year, Had never swerved for craft or fear. By one side-path, from simple truth; Who might have chased and claspt Renown And caught her chaplet here — and there In haunts of jungle-poison'd air The flame of life went wavering down; IX. But ere he left your fatal shore, And lay on that funereal boat, Dying, * Unspeakable,' he wrote, 'Their kindness,' and he wrote no more; And sacred is the latest word; And now the Was, the Might-havC' been. And those lone rites I have not seen. And one drear sound I have not heard, Are dreams that scarce will let me be. Not there to bid my boy farewell, When That within the coffin fell. Fell — and flash'd into the Red Sea, XIll Beneath a haril Arabian moon And alien stars. To question, why The sons before the fathers die. Not mine ! and I may meet him soon ; XIII. But while my life's late eve endures, Nor settles into hueless gray. My memories of his briefer day Will mix with love for you and yours. 782 ON THE JUBILEE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. ON THE JUBILEE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. I. Fifty times the rose has flower'd and faded, Fifty times the golden harvest fallen, Since our Queen assumed the globe, the sceptre. II. She beloved for a kindliness Rare in Fable or History, Queen, and Empress of India, Crovi^n'd so long with a diadem Never worn by a worthier, Now with prosperous auguries Comes at last to the bounteous Crowning year of her Jubilee. Nothing of the lawless, of the Despot, Nothing of the vulgar, or vainglorious. All is gracious, gentle, great and Queenly. IV. You then joyfully, all of you, Set the mountain aflame to-night, Shoot your stars to the firmament, Deck your houses, illuminate All your towns for a festival. And in each let a multitude Loyal, each, to the heart of it. One full voice of allegiance, Hail the fair Ceremonial Of this year of her Jubilee. Queen, as true to womanhood as Queen- hood, Glorying in the glories of her people, Sorrowing with the sorrows of the lowest ! You, that wanton in affluence. Spare not now to be bountiful. Call your poor to regale with you. All the lowly, the destitute. Make their neighbourhood health- fuller, Give your gold to the Hospital, Let the weary be comforted, Let the needy be banqueted. Let the maim'd in his heart rejoice At this glad Ceremonial, And this year of her Jubilee. Henry's fifty years are all in shadow, Gray with distance Edward's fifty sum- mers, Ev'n her Grandsire's fifty half forgotten. You, the Patriot Architect, You that shape for Eternity, Raise a stately memorial, Make it regally gorgeous, Some Imperial Institute, Rich in symbol, in ornament, Which may speak to the centuries, All the centuries after us. Of this great Ceremonial, And this year of her Jubilee. IX. Fifty years of ever-broadening Com- merce ! Fifty years of ever-brightening Science ! I'lfty years of ever-widening Empire ! You, the Mighty, the Fortunate, You, the Lord-territorial, You, the Lord-manufacturer, You, the hardy, laborious. Patient children of Albion, You, Canadian, Indian, Australasian, African, All your hearts be in harmony, All your voices in unison, Singing * Hail to the glorious Golden year of her Jubilee ! ' XI. Are there thunders moaning in the dis- tance? Are there spectres moving in the dark-, ness? Trust the Hand of Liglit will lead her people. Till the thunders pass, the spectres vanish, DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE. 783 And the Light is Victor, and the dark- ness Dawns into the Jubilee of the Ages. TO PROFESSOR JEBB, WITH THE Following Poem. Fair things are slow to fade away, Bear witness you, that yesterday 1 From out the Ghost of Pindar in you RoU'd an Olympian; and they say 2 That here the torpid mummy wheat Of Egypt bore a grain as sweet As that which gilds the glebe of England, Sunn'd with a summer of milder heat. So may this legend for awhile, If greeted by your classic smile, Tho' dead in its Trinacrian Enna, Blossom again on a colder isle. DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE. (In Enna.) Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies All night across the darkness, and at dawn Falls on the threshold of her native land, And-can no more, thou camest, O my child, Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams. Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb With passing thro' at once from state to state, Until I brought thee hither,' that the day. When here thy hands let fall the gather'd flower, Might break thro' clouded memories once again On thy lost self. A sudden nightingale Saw thee, and flash'd into a frolic of song 1 In Bologna * They say, for the fact is doubtful. And welcome; and a gleam as of the moon, When first she peers along the tremulous deep, Fled wavering o'er thy face, and chased away That shadow of a likeness to the king Of shadows, thy dark mate. Persephone ! Queen of the dead no more — my child! Thine eyes Again were human-godlike, and the Sun Burst from a swimming fleece of winter gray, And robed thee in his day from head to feet — * Mother ! ' and I was folded in thine arms. Child, those imperial, disimpassion'd eyes Awed even me at first, thy mother — eyes That oft had seen the serpent-wanded power Draw downward into Hades with his drift Of flickering spectres, lighted from below By the red race of fiery Phlegethon; But when before have Gods or men be- . held The Life that had descended re-arise, And lighted from above him by the Sun? So mighty was the mother's childless cry, A cry that rang thro' Hades, Earth, and Heaven ! So in this pleasant vale we stand again, The field of Enna, now once more ablaze With flowers that brighten as thy foot- step falls, All flowers — but for one black blur of earth Left by that closing chasm, thro' which the car Of dark Aidorieus rising rapt thee hence. And here, my child, tho' folded in thine arms, I feel the deathless heart of motherhood Within me shudder, lest the naked glebe Should yawn once more into the gulf, and thence The shrilly whinnyings of the team of Hell, 784 DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE. Ascending, pierce the glad and songful air, And all at once their arch'd necks, mid- night-maned, Jet upward thro' the mid-day blossom. No! For, see, thy foot has touch' d it; all the space Of blank earth-baldness clothes itself afresh. And breaks into the crocus-purple hour That saw thee vanish. Child, when thou wert gone, I envied human wives, and nested birds, Yea, the cubb'd lioness; went in search of thee Thro' many a palace, many a cot, and gave Thy breast to ailing infants in the night. And set the mother waking in amaze To find her sick one whole; and forth again Among the wail of midnight winds, and cried, 'Where is my loved one? Wherefore do ye wail?' And out from all the night an answer shrill'd, ' We know not, and we know not why we wail.' I climb'd on all the cliffs of all the seas. And ask'd the waves that moan about the world, * Where? do ye make your moaning for my child?' And round from all the world the voices came, *We know not, ^^ id we know not why we moan.' * Where ? ' and I stared from every eagle- peak, I thridded the black heart of all the woods, I peer'd thro' tomb and cave, and in the storms Of Autumn swept across the city, and heard The murmur of their temples chanting me, Me, me, the desolate Mother ! * Where ? ' — and turri'd. And fled by many a waste, forlorn of man. And griev'd for man thro' all my grief for thee, — The jungle rooted in his shatter'd hearth. The serpent coil'd about his broken shaft, The scorpion crawling over naked skulls; — I saw the tiger in the ruin'd fane Spring from his fallen God, but trace of thee I saw not; and far on, and, following out A league of labyrinthine darkness, came On three gray heads beneath a gleaming rift. ' Where ? ' and I heard one voice from all the three, * We know not, for we spin the lives of men. And not of Gods, and know not why we spin ! There is a Fate beyond us.' Nothing knew. Last, as the likeness of a dying man. Without his knowledge, from him flits to warn A far-off friendship that he comes no more, So he, the God of dreams, who heard my cry. Drew from thyself the likeness of thyself Without thy knowledge, and thy shadow past Before me, crying, * The Bright oite in the highest Is brother of the Dark one in the lowest. And Bright and Dark have sworn that I, the child Of thee, the great Earth-Mother, thee, the Power That lifts her buried life from gloom to bloom. Should be for ever and for evermore The Bride of Darkness.' So the Shadow wail'd. Then I, Earth-Goddess, cursed the Gods of Heaven. I would not mingle with their feasts; to me Their nectar smack'd of hemlock on the lips, DE METER AND PERSEPHONE— OWD ROA. 785 Their rich ambrosia tasted aconite. The man, that only lives and loves an hour, Seem'd nobler than their hard Eternities. My quick tears kill'd the flower, my ravings hush'd The bird, and lost in utter grief I fail'd To send my life thro' olive-yard and vine And golden grain, my gift to helpless man. Rain-rotten died the wheat, the barPsy- spears Were hollow-husk'd, the leaf fell, and the sun, Pale at my grief, drew down before his time Sickening, and ^tna kept her winter snow. Then He, the brother of this Darkness, He Who still is highest, glancing from his height On earth a fruitless fallow, when he miss'd The wonted steam of sacrifice, the praise And prayer of men, decreed that thou should'st dwell For nine white moons of each whole year with me. Three dark ones in the shadow with thy King. Once more the reaper in the gleam of dawn Will see me by the landmark far away, Blessing his field, or seated in the dusk Of even, by the lonely threshing-floor, Rejoicing in the harvest and the grange. Yet I, Earth-Goddess, am but ill- content With them, who still are highest. Those gray heads. What meant they by their ' Fate beyond the Fates' But younger kindlier Gods to bear us down. As we bore down the Gods before us? Gods, To quench, not hurl the thunderbolt, to stay, Not spread the plague, the famine; Gods indeed, 3E To send the noon into the night and break The sunless halls of Hades into Heaven? Till thy dark lord accept and love the Sun, And all the Shadow die into the Light, When thou shalt dwell the whole bright year with me, And souls of men, who grew beyond their race, And made themselves as Gods against the fear Of Death and Hell; and thou that hast from men, As Queen of Death, that worship which is Fear, Henceforth, as having risen from out the dead, Shalt ever send thy life along with mine From buried grain thro' springing blade, and bless Their garner'd Autumn also, reap with me. Earth-mother, in the harvest hymns of Earth The worship which is Love, and see no more The Stone, the Wheel, the dimly- glimmering lawns • Of that Elysium, all the hateful fires Of torment, and the shadowy warrior ghde Along the silent field of Asphodel. OWD ROA.i Naay, noa mander^ o' use to be callin^ 'im Roa, Roa, Roa, Fur the dog's stoan-deaf, an' e's blind, 'e. can naither stan' nor goa. But I means fur to maake 'is owd aage as 'appy as iver I can. Fur I owas owd Roaver moor nor I iver owad mottal man. Thou's rode of 'is back when a babby, afoor thou was gotten too owd, Fur 'e'd fetch an' carry like owt, 'e was alius as good as gowd. 1 Old Rover. * Manner. 786 01V£> ROA. Eh, but 'e'd fight M'i' a will wheti 'e fowt; 'e could howd^ 'is oan, An' Roa was the dog as knaw'd when an' wheere to bury his boane. An' 'e kep' his head hoop Hke a king, an' 'e'd niver not down wi' 'is taail, Fur 'e'd niver done nowt to be shaamed on, when we was i' Howlaby Daale. An' 'e sarved me sa well when 'e lived, that, Dick, when 'e cooms to be dead, I thinks as I'd like fur to hev soom soort of a sarvice read. Fur 'e's moor good sense na the Parlia- ment man 'at stans fur us 'ere, An' I'd voat fur 'im, my oan sen, if 'e could but Stan' fur the Shere. * Faaithful an' True ' — them words be i' Scriptur — an' Faaithful an' True 'Ull be fun' ^ upo' four short legs ten times fur one upo' two. An' maaybe they'll walk upo' two but I knaws they -runs upo' four,^ — Bedtime, Dicky ! but waait till tha 'ears it be strikin' the hour. Fur I wants to tell tha o' Roa when we lived i' Howlaby Daale, Ten year sin' — Naay — naay ! tha mun nobbut hev' one glass of aale. Straange an' owd-farran'd * the 'ouse, an' belt^ long afoor my daay Wi' haafe o' the chimleys a-twizzen'd^ an' twined like a band o' haay. The fellers as maakes them picturs, 'ud coom at the fall o' the year, An' sattle their ends upo' stools to pictur the door-poorch theere, An' the Heagle 'as hed two heads stannin' theere o' the brokken stick; '^ An' they niver 'ed seed sich ivin'^ as graw'd hall ower the bricTc; * Hold. 2 Found. ^ * Ou ' as in ' house.' * * Owd-farran'd,' old-fashioned. ^ Built. 6 * Twizzen'd,' twisted. '^ On a staff ragule. 8 Ivy. An' theere i' the 'ouse one night — but it's down, an' all on it now Goan into mangles an' tonups,i an' raaved slick thruf by the plow — Theere, when the 'ouse wur a house, one night I wur sittin' aloan, Wi' Roaver athurt my feeat, an' sleeapin still as a stoan, Of a Christmas Eave, an' as cowd as • this, an' the midders^ as white, An' the fences all on 'em bolster'd oop wi' the windle^ that night; An' the cat wur a-sleeapin alongside Roaver, but I wur awaake. An' smoakin' an' thinkin' o' things — Doant maake thysen sick wi' the caake. Fur the men ater supper 'ed sung their songs an' 'ed 'ed their beer, An' 'ed goan their waays; ther was nob- but three, an' noan on 'em theere. They was all on 'em fear'd o' the Ghoast an' dussn't not slgeap i' the 'ouse, But Dicky, the Ghoast moastlins* was nobbut a rat or a mouse. An' I loookt out wonst^ at the night, an' the daale was all of a thaw, Fur I seed the beck coomin' down like a long black snaake i' the snaw, An' I heard great heaps o' the snaw slushin' down fro' the bank to the beck, An' then as I stood i' the doorwaay, I feeald it drip o' my neck. Saw I turn'd in agean, an' I thowt o' the good owd times 'at was goan. An' the munney they maade by the war, an' the times 'at was coomin' on; Fur I thowt if the Staate was a-gawin' to let in furriners' wheat, Howiver was British farmers to stan' agean o' their feeat. ^ Mangolds and turnips. 2 Meadows. ^ Drifted snow. * * Moastlins,' for the most part, generally. 6 Once. OlVn ROA. 787 Howiver was I fur to find my rent an' to paay my men? An' all along o' the feller ^ as turn'd 'is back of hissen. rhou slep' i' the chaumber above us, we couldn't ha' 'card tha call, Sa Moother 'ed tell'd ma to bring tha down, an' thy craadle an' all; Fur the gell o' the farm 'at slep' wi' tha then 'ed gotten wer leave, Fur to goa that night to 'er foalk by cause o' the Christmas Eave; But I clean forgot tha, my lad, when Moother *ed gotten to bed, An' I slep' i' my chair hup-on -end, an' the Freea Traade runn'd i' my 'ead, Till I dream'd 'at Squire walkt in, an' I says to him, • Squire, ya're laate,' Then I seed at 'is faace wur as red as the Yule-block theere i' the graate. An' •'e says, ' Can ya paay me the rent to- night?' an' I says to 'im, *Noa,' An' 'e cotch'd howd hard o' my hairm,^ ' Then hout to-night tha shall goa.' *Tha'll niver,' says I, 'be a-turnin' ma hout upo' Christmas Eave?' Then I waaked an' I fun it was Roaver a-tuggin' an' tearin' my slieave. An' I thowt as 'e'd goan clean-wud,* fur I noawaays knaw'd 'is intent; An' I says, ' Git awaay, ya beast,' an' I fetcht 'im a kick an' 'e went. Then 'e tummled up stairs, fur I 'card 'im, as if 'e'd 'a brokken 'is neck, An' I'd clear forgot, little Dicky, thy chaumber door wouldn't sneck;* An' I slep' i' my chair agean wi' my hairm hingin' down to the floor. An' I thowt it was Roaver a-tuggin' an' tearin' me wuss nor afoor, iPeel. 2 Arm. 3 Mad. * Latch. An' I thowt 'at I kick'd 'im agean, but I kick'd thy Moother istead. •What arta snorin' theere fur? the house is afire,' she said. Thy Moother 'ed beSn a-naggin' about the gell o' the farm. She offens 'ud spy summut wrong when there warn't not a mossel o' harm; An' she didn't not solidly mean I wur gawin' that waay to the bad. Fur the gell ^ was as howry a troUope as iver traapes'd i' the squad. But Moother was free of 'er tongue, as I offens 'ev tell'd 'er niysen, Sa I kep' i' my chair, fur I thowt she was nobbut a-rilin' ma then. An' 1 says, ' I'd be good to tha, Bess, if tha'd onywaays let ma be good,' But she skelpt ma haafe ower i' the chair, an' scread like a Howl gone wud^ — * Ya mun run fur the lether.^ Git cop, if ya're onywaays good for owt.' And I says, * If I beant noawaays — not nowadaays — good fur nowt — • Yit I beant sich a Nowt * of all Nowts as 'ull hallus do as 'e's bid.' ' But the stairs is afire,' she said; then I seed 'er a-cryin', I did. An' she beald, * Ya mun saave little Dick, an' -be sharp about it an' all,' Sa I runs to the yard fur a lether, an' sets 'im agean the wall. An' I claums an' I mashes the winder hin, when I gits to the top, But the heat druv hout i' my heyes till I feald mysen ready to drop. 1 The girl was as dirty a slut as ever trudged in the mud, but there is a sense of slatternliness in ' traapes'd' which is not expressed in ' trudged. ' 2 She half overturned me and shrieked like an owl gone mad. ^ Ladder. * A thoroughly insignificant or worthless person. 788 OfVn ROA — VASTNESS. Thy Moother was howdin' the lether, an' tellin' me not to be skeard, An' I wasn't afeard, or I thinks leaast- waays as I wasn't afeard; But I couldn't see fur the smoake wheere thou was a-liggin, my lad, An' Roaver was theere i' the chaumber a-yowlin' an' yaupin' like mad; An' thou was a-bealin' likewise, an' a- squealin', as if tha was bit, An' it wasn't a bite but a burn, fur the merk'si o' thy shou'der yit; Then I call'd out Roa, Roa, Roa, thaw I didn't haafe think as 'e'd 'ear. But V cooni'd thruf the fire wi'' my bairn V Hs mouth to the winder theere! He coom'd like a H angel o' marcy as soon as 'e 'eard 'is naame, Or like tother Hangel i' Scriptur 'at summun seed i' the flaame, When summun 'ed hax'd fur a son, an' 'e promised a son to she. An' Roa was as good as the Hangel i' saavin' a son fur me. Sa I browt tha down, an' I says, ' I mun gaw up agean fur Roa.' ' Gaw up agean fur the varmint? ' I tell'd 'er^ ' Yeas I mun goa.' An' I claumb'd up agean to the winder, an' clemm'd ^ owd Roa by the 'ead, An' 'is 'air coom'd off i' my 'ands an' I taaked 'im at fust fur dead; Fur 'e smell'd like a herse a-singein', an' seeam'd as blind as a poop, An' haafe on 'im bare as a bublin'.^ I couldn't wakken 'im oop, But I browt 'im down, an' we got to the barn, fur the barn wouldn't burn Wi' the wind blawin' hard tother waay, an' the wind wasn't like to turn. 1 Mark. 2 Clutched. 3 * Bubbling,' a young unfledged bird. An' /kep'a-callin' o' Roa till 'e waggled 'is taail fur a bit. But the cocks kep"' a-crawin' an' crawin all night, an' I 'ears 'em yit; An' the dogs was a-yowlin' all round, and thou was a-squealin' thysen, An' Moother was naggin' an' groanin' an' moanin' an' naggin' agean; An' I 'eard the bricks an' the baulks i rummle down when the roof gev waay. Fur the fire was a-raagin' an' raavin' an' roarin' like judgment daay. Warm enew theere sewer-ly, but the barn was as cowd as owt, An' we cuddled and huddled togither, an' happt '^ wersens oop as we mowt. An' I browt Roa round, but Moother 'ed bean sa soak'd wi' the thaw 'At she cotch'd 'er death o' cowd that night, poor soul, i' the straw. Haafe o' the parish runn'd oop when the rigtree ^ was tummlin' in — * Too laate — but it's all ower now — hall hower — an' ten year sin'; Too laate, tha mun git tha to bed, but I'll coom an' I'll squench the light. Pur we moant 'ev naw moor fires — and soa little Dick, good-night. VASTNESS. Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish'd face. Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a vanish'd race. Raving politics, never at rest — as this poor earth's pale history runs, — What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns? 1 Beams. 2 Wrapt ourselves. 3 The beam that runs along the roof of fh* house just beneath tlie ridge. FASTNESS. 789 III. Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless violence mourn'd by the Wise, Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular torrent of lies upon lies; IV. Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet, Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat; Innocence seethed in her mother's milk, and Charity setting the martyr aflame; Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her name. VI. Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom of doubts that darken the schools; Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand, foUow'd up by her vassal legion of fools; VII. Trade flying over a thousand seas with her spice and her vintage, her silk and her corn; Desolate offing, sailorless harbours, famishing populace, wharves for- lorn; VIII. Star of the morning, Hdpe in the sunrise; gloom of the evening, Life at a close ; Pleasure who flaunts on her wide down- way with her flying robe and her poison'd rose ; IX. Pain, that has crawl'd from the corpse of Pleasure, a worm which writhes all day, and at night Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper, and stings him back to the curse of the light; X. Wealth with his wines and his wedded harlots; honest Poverty, bare to the bone; Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty; Flattery gilding the rift in a throne ; XI. Fame blowing out from her golden trumpet a jubilant challenge to Time and to Fate; Slander, her shadow, sowing the nettle on all the laurel'd graves of the Great; Love for the maiden, crown'd with marriage*, no regrets - for aught that has been, Household happiness, gracious chil- dren, debtless competence, golden mean; XIII. National hatreds of whole generations, and pigmy spites of the village spire; Vows that will last to the last death- ruckle, and vows that are snapt in a moment of fire ; He that has lived for the lust of the minute, and died in the doing it, flesh without mind; He that has nail'd all flesh to the Cross, till Self died out in the love of his kind; XV. Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter, and all these old revolu- tions of earth ; All new-old revolutions of Empire — change of the tide — what is all of it worth? XVI. What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy, varying voices of prayer? 790 THE RING. All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is filthy with all that is fair? XVII. What is it all, if we all of us end but in . being our own corpse-coffins at last, Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown'd in the deeps of a mean- ingless Past? What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's anger of bees in their hive? — Peace, let it be ! for I loved him, and love him for ever : the dead are not dead but alive. ©flJicateU to tijc l^on. 3. Kusscll ILobJElL THE RING. Miriam and her Father. Miriam (singing). Mellow moon of heaven, Bright in blue, Moon of married hearts, Hear me, you ! Twelve times in the year Bring me bliss, Globing Honey Moons Bright as this. Moon, you fade at times From the night. Young again you grow Out of sight. Silver crescent-curve. Coming soon, Globe again, and make Honey Moon. Shall not my love last, Moon, with you, For ten thousand years Old and new? Father. And who was he with such love-drunken eyes They made a thousand honey moons ol one? Miriam. The prophet of his own, my Hubert — his The words, and mine the setting. *Air and Words,' Said Hubert, when I sang the song, ' are bride And bridegroom.' Does it please you? Father. Mainly, child, Because I hear your Mother's voice in yours. 'She Why, you shiver tho' the wind is west With all the warmth of summer. Miriam. Well, I felt On a sudden I know not what, a breath that past With all the cold of winter. Father {muttering to himself). Even so. The Ghost in Man, the Ghost that once was Man, But cannot wholly free itself from Man, Are calling to each other thro' a dawn Stranger than earth has ever seen; the . veil Is rending, and the Voices of the day Are heard across the Voices of the dark. No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man, But thro' the Will of One who knows and rules — And utter knowledge is but utter love — yEonian Evolution, swift or slow, Thro' all the Spheres — an ever opening height. An ever lessening earth — and she per- haps, My Miriam, breaks her latest earthly link With me to-day. Miriam. You speak so low, what is it? Your ' Miriam breaks ' — is making a new link Breaking an old one? Father. No, for we, my child, Have been till now each other's all-in-all. THE RING. 791 Mh'iam. And you the lifelong guar- dian of the child. Father. I, and one other whom you have not known. Miriam. And who? what other? Father. Whither are you bound? For Naples which we only left in May? Miriam. No ! father, Spain, but Hubert brings me home With April and the swallow. Wish me joy ! Father. What need to wish when Hubert weds in you The heart of Love, and you the soul of Truth In Hubert? Miriam. Tho' you used to call me once The lonely maiden-Princess of the wood, Who meant to sleep her hundred sum- mers out Before a kiss should wake her. Father. Ay, but now Your fairy Prince has found you, take this ring. Miriam. ' to t'amo ' — and these dia- monds — beautiful ! • From Walter,' and for me from you then? Father. Well, One way for Miriam. Miriam. Miriam am I not? Father. This ring bequeath'd you by your mother, child. Was to be given you — such her dying wish — Given on the morning when you came of age Or on the day you married. Both the days Now close in one. The ring is doubly yours. Why do you look so gravely at the tower? Miriam. I never saw it yet so all ablaze With creepers crimsoning to the pin- nacles, As if perpetual sunset linger'd there. And all ablaze loo in the lake below ! And how the birds that circle round the tower Are cheeping to each other of their flight To summer lands ! Father. And that has made you grave ? Fly — care not. Birds and brides must leave the nest. Child, I am happier in your happiness Than in mine own. Miriam. It is not that ! Father. What else? Miria?Ti. That chamber in the tower. Father. What chamber, child? Your nurse is here? Miriam. My Mother's nurse and mine. She comes to dress me in my bridal veil. Father. What did she say? Miriam. She said, that you and I Had been abroad for my poor health so long She fear'd I had forgotten her, and I ask'd About my Mother, and she said, *Thy hair Is golden like thy Mother's, not so fine.' Father. What then? what more? Miriam,. She said — perhaps indeed She wander'd, having wander'd now so far Beyond the common date of death — that you. When I was smaller than the statuette Of my dear Mother on your bracket here — You took me to that chamber in the tower, The topmost — a chest there, by which you knelt — And there were books and dresses — left to me, A ring too which you kiss'd, and I, she said, I babbled. Mother, Mother — as I used To prattle to her picture — stretch' d my hands As if I saw her; then a woman came And caught me from my nurse. I hear her yet — A sound of anger like a distant storm. Father. Garrulous old crone. Miriam. Poor nurse ! Father. I bade her keep. Like a seal'd book, all mention of the ring, For I myself would tell you all to-day. Miriam. ' She too might speak to- day,' she mumbled. Still, I scarce have learnt the title of your book, 794 THE RING. But you will turn the pages. Father. Ay, to-day ! I brought you to that chamber on your third September birthday with your nurse, and felt An icy breath play on me, while I stoopt To take and kiss the ring. Miriam. This very ring lo t'amo? Father. Yes, for some wild hope was mine That, in the misery of my married life, Miriam your Mother might appear to me. She came to you, not me. The storm, you hear Far-off, is Muriel — your stepmother's voice. Mii'iam. Vext, that you thought my Mother came to me? Or at my crying * Mother'? or to find My Mother's diamonds hidden from her • there, Like worldly beauties in the Cell, not shown To dazzle all that see them? Father. Wait awhile. Your Mother and step-mother — Miriam Erne And Muriel Erne — the two were cousins — lived With Muriel's mother on the down, that sees A thousand squares of corn and meadow, far As the gray deep, a landscape which your eyes Have many a time ranged over when a babe. Miriam. I climb'd the hill with Hubert yesterday. And from the thousand squares, one silent voice Came on the wind, and seem'd to say ' Again.' We saw far off an old forsaken house. Then home, and past the ruin'd mill. Father. ■ And there I found these cousins often by the brook, For Miriam sketch'd and Muriel threw the fly; The girls of equal age, but one was fair. And one was dark, and both were beauti- ful. No voice for either spoke within my heart Then, for the surface eye, that only dotes On outward beauty, glancing from the one To the other, knew not that which pleased it most. The raven ringlet or the gold; but both Were dowerless, and myself, I used to walk This Terrace — morbid, melancholy; mine And yet not mine the hall, the farm, the field; For all that ample woodland whisper'd . ' debt,' The brook that feeds this lakelet mur- mur'd ' debt,' And in yon arching avenue of old elms, Tho' mine, not mine, I heard the sober rook And carrion crow cry 'mortgage.' Miriam. Father's fault Visited on the children ! Father. Ay, but then A kinsman, dying, summun'd me to Rome — He left me wealth — and while I jour ney'd hence. And saw the world fly by me like a dream, And while I communed with my truest self, I woke to all of truest in myself. Till, in the gleam of those mid-summer dawns, The form of Muriel faded, and the face Of Miriam grew upon me, till I knew; And past and future mix'd in Heaven and made i The rosy twilight of a perfect day. '--\ Miriam. So glad? no tear for him, who left you wealth. Your kinsman? * Father. I had seen the man but onco, I He loved my name not me; and then I a pass'd Home, and thro' Venice, where a jeweller. So far gone down, or so far up in life, That he was nearing his own hundred, sold This ring to me, then laugh'd, * The ring is weird.' THE RING, 793 And weird and worn and wizard-like was A hollow laughter ! he. Miriam. Vile, so near the ghost • Why weird? ' 1 ask'd him; and he said, Himself, to laugh at love in death ! But ' The souls you? Of two repentant Lovers guard the ring; * Father. Well, as the bygone lover Then with a ribald twinkle in his bleak thro' this ring eyes — Had sent his cry for her forgiveness, I ' And if you give the ring to any maid, Would call thro' this * lo t'amo ' to the They still remember what it cost them heart here, Of Miriam; then I bade the man en- And bind the maid to love you by the grave ring; ' From Walter ' on the ring, and send it And if the ring were stolen from the — wrote maid, Name, surname, all as clear as noon, but The theft were death or madness to the he — thief, Some younger hand must have engraven So sacred those Ghost Lovers hold the the ring — gift.' His fingers were so stifFen'd by the frost And then he told their legend : Of seven and ninety winters, that he * Long ago scrawl'd Two lovers parted by a scurrilous tale A ' Miriam ' that might seem a ' Muriel '; Had quarrell'd, till the man repenting And Muriel claim'd and open'd what I sent meant This ring " lo t'amo " to his best beloved. For Miriam, took the ring, and flaunted And sent it on her birthday. She -in it wrath Before that other whom I loved and love. Return'd it on her birthday, and that day A mountain stay'd me here, a minster His death-day, when, half-frenzied by the there. ring. A galleried palace, or a battlefield, He wildly fought a rival suitor, him Where stood the sheaf of Peace: but — The causer of that scandal, fought and coming home — fell; And on your Mother's birthday — all but And she that came to part them all too yours — late. A week betwixt — and when the tower as And found a corpse and silence, drew the now ring Was all ablaze with crimson to the roof, From his dead finger, wore it till her And all ablaze too plunging in the lake death, Head-foremost — who were those that Shrined him within the temple of her stood between heart, The tower and that rich phantom of the Made every moment of her after life tower? A virgin victim to his memory, Muriel and Miriam, each in white, and And dying rose, and rear'd her arms, and Hke cried May-blossoms in mid autumn — was it " I see him, lo t'amo, lo t'amo." ' they? Miriam. Legend or true? so tender A light shot upward on them from the should be true ! lake. Did he believe it? did you ask him? What sparkled there? whose hand was Father. Ay ! that? they stood But that half skeleton, like a barren So close together. I am not keen of ghost sight. From out the fleshless world of spirits, But coming nearer — Muriel had the laugh'd : ^ ring — 794 THE RING. * O Miriam ! have you given your ring to her? O Miriam ! ' Miriam redden'd, Muriel clench'd The hand that wore it, till I cried again : ' O Miriam, if you love me take the ring ! ' She glanced at me, at Muriel, and was mute. * Nay, if you cannot love me, let it be.' Then — Muriel standing ever statue-like — She turn'd, and ia her soft imperial way And saying gently : ' Muriel, by your leave,' Unclosed the hand, and from it drew the ring, And gave it me, who pass'd it down her own, * lo t'amo, all is well then.' Muriel fled. Miriam. Poor Muriel ! Father. Ay, poor Muriel when you hear What follows ! Miriam loved me from the first, Not thro' the ring; but on her marriage- morn This birthday, death -day, and betrothal ring, Laid on her table overnight, was gone; And after hours of search and doubt and threats, And hubbub, Muriel enter'd with it, * See ! — Found in a chink of that old moulder'd floor ! ' My Miriam nodded with a pitying smile, As who should say * that those who lose can find.' Then I and she were married for a year. One year without a storm, or even a cloud; And you my Miriam born within the year; And she my Miriam dead within the year. I sat beside her dying, and she gaspt : 'The books, the miniature, the lace are hers. My ring too when she comes of age, or when She marries; you — you loved me, kept your word. You love me still "lo t'amo." — Muriel — no — She cannot love; "she loves her own hard self. Her firm will, her fix'd purpose. Prom- ise me, Miriam not Muriel — she shall have the ring.' And there the light of other life, which lives Beyond our burial and our buried eyes, Gleam'd for a moment in her own on earth. I swore the vow, then with my latest kiss Upon them, closed her eyes, which would not close. But kept their watch upon the ring and you. Your birthday was her death -day. Miriam. O poor Mother ! And you, poor desolate Father, and poor me. The little senseless, worthless, wordless babe. Saved when your life was wreck'd ! Father. Desolate? yes! Desolate as that sailor, whom the storm Had parted from his comrade in the boat, And diash'd half dead on barren sands, was I. Nay, you were my one solace; only — you Were always ailing. Muriel's mother sent. And sure am I, by Muriel, one day came And saw you, shook her head, and patted yours. And smiled, and making with a kindly pinch Each poor pale cheek a momentary rose — * That should be fix'd,' she said; 'your pretty bud. So blighted here, would flower into full health Among our heath and bracken. Let her come ! And we will feed her with our mountain air. And send her home to you rejoicing.* No — We could not part. And once, when you my girl Rode on my shoulder home — the tiny fist THE RING. 795 Had graspt a daisy from your Mother's And all her talk was of the babe she grave — loved; By the lych-gate was Muriel. ' Ay,' she So, following her old pastime of the said, brook. 'Among the tombs in this damp vale of She threw the fly for me; but oftener yours ! left You scorn my Mother's warning, but the That angling to the mother. * Muriel's child health Is paler than before. We often walk Had weaken'd, nursing little Miriam. In open sun, and see beneath our feet Strange ! The mist of autumn gather from your She used to shun the wailing babe, and lake, dotes And shroud the tower; and once v(4e On this of yours.' But when the matirn only saw saw Your gilded vane, a light above the That hinted love was only wasted bait, mist ' — Not risen to, she was bolder. 'Ever (Our old bright bird that still is veering since there You sent the fatal ring " — I told her Above his four gold letters) 'and the * sent light,' To Miriam,' 'Doubtless — ay, but ever, She said, * was like that light ' — and there since she paused, In all the world my dear one sees but And long; till I believing that the girl's you — Lean fancy, groping for it, .could not In your sweet bal:)e she finds but you — find she makes One likeness, laugh'd a little and found Her heart a mirror that reflects but you.' her two — And then the tear fell, the voice broke. * A warrior's crest above the cloud of Her heart ! war ' — I gazed into the mirror, as a man ' A fiery phoenix rising from the smoke, Who sees his face in water, and a stone, The pyre he burnt in.' — * Nay,' she said, That glances from the bottom of the ' the light pool, That glimmers on the marsh and on the Strike upward thro' the shadow; yet at grave.' last. And spoke no more, but turn'd and Gratitude — loneliness — desire to keep pass'd away. So skilled a nurse about you always — Miriam, I am not surely one of those nay! Caught by the flower that closes on the Some half remorseful kind of pity too — fly, Well ! well, you know I married Muriel But a:fter ten slow weeks her fix'd intent. Erne. In aiming at an all but hopeless mark *I take thee Muriel for my wedded To strike it, struck; I took, I left you wife' — there; I had forgotten it was your birthday. I came, I went, was happier day by child — day; When all at once with some electric For Muriel nursed you with a mother's thrill care; A cold air pass'd between us, and the Till on that clear and heather-scented hands height Fell from each other, and were join'd The rounder cheek had brighten'd into again. bloom. No second cloudless honeymoon was She always came to meet me carrying. mine. you, For by and by she sicken'd of the farce. 796 THE RING. She dropt the gracious mask of mother- hood, She came no more to meet me, carrying you. Nor ever cared to set you on her knee, Nor ever let you gambol in her sight, Nor ever cheer'd you with a kindly smile, Nor ever ceased to clamour for the ring; Why had I sent the ring at first to her? Why had I made her love me thro' the ring, And then had changed? so fickle are men — the best ! Not she — but now my love was hers again. The ring by right, she said, was hers again. At. times too shrilling in her angrier moods, * That weak and watery nature love you? No! " lo t'amo, lo t'amo " ! ' flung herself Against my heart, but often while her lips Were warm upon my cheek, an icy breath. As from the grating of a sepulchre. Past over both. I told her of my vow. No pliable idiot I to break my vow; But still she made her outcry for the ring; For one monotonous fancy madden'd her, Till I myself was madden'd with her cry. And even that * lo t'amo,' those three sweet Italian words, became a weariness. My people too were scared with eerie sounds, A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls, A noise of falling weights that never fell. Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand. Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door. And bolted doors that open'd of them- selves : And one betwixt the dark and light had seen Her., bending by the cradle of her babe. Miriam. And I remember once that being waked By noises in the house — and no one near — I cried for nurse, and felt a gentle hand Fall on my forehead, and a sudden face Look'd in upon me like a gleam and pass'd And I was quieted, and slept again. Or is it some half memory of a dream? Father, Your fifth September birth- day. ^Miriam. And the face, The hand, — my Mother. Father. Miriam, on that day Two lovers parted by no scurrilous tale — Mere want of gold — and still for twenty years Bound by the golden cord of their first love — Had ask'd us to their marriage, and to share Their marriage -banquet. Muriel, paler then Than ever you were in your cradle, moan'd, * I am fitter for my bed, or for ray grave, I cannot go, go you.' And then she rose, She clung to me with such a hard em- brace, So lingeringly long, that half-amazed I parted from her, and I went alone. And when the bridegroom murmur'd, * With this ring,' I felt for what I could not find, the key, The guardian of her relics, of her ring. I kept it as a sacred amulet About me, — gone ! and gone in that embrace ! Then, hurrying home, I found her not in house Or garden — up the tower — an icy air Fled by me. — There, the chest was open — all The sacred relics tost about the floor — Among them Muriel lying on her face — I raised her, call'd her, ' Muriel, Muriel, wake ! ' The fatal ring lay near her; the glazed eye Glared at me as in horror. Dead! I took THE RING — FORLORN. 797 And chafed the freezing hand. A red mark ran All round one finger pointed straight, the rest Were crumpled inwards. Dead ! — and maybe stung With some remorse, had stolen, worn the ring — Then torn it from her finger, or as if — For never had I seen her show remorse — Asif— Miriam. — those two Ghost Lovers — Father. — lovers yet — Mifiaj?i. Yes, yes ! Father. — but dead so long, gone up so far, That now their ever-rising life has dwarfd Or lost the moment of their past on earth. As we forget our wail at being born. Asif— Miriam. — a dearer ghost had — Father. — wrsnch'd it away. Miriam. Had floated in with sad reproachful eyes. Till from her own hand she had torn the ring In fright, and fallen dead. And I my- self Am half afraid to wear it. Father. Well, no more ! No bridal music this ! but fear not you ! You have the ring she guarded; that poor link With earth is broken, and has left her free, Except that, still drawn downward for an hour, Her spirit hovering by the church, where she Was married too, may linger, till she sees Her maiden coming like a Queen, who leaves Some colder province in the North to gain Her capital city, where the loyal bells Clash welcome — linger, till her own, the babe She lean'd to from her Spiritual sphere. Her lonely maiden-Princess, crown'd with flowers, Has enter'd on the larger woman-w^orld Of wives and mothers. But the bridal veil — Your nurse is waiting. Kiss me, child, and go. FORLORN. He is fled — I wish him dead — He that wrought my ruin — O the flattery and the craft Which were my undoing . . . In the night, in the night, When the storms are blowing. II. Who was witness of the crime? Who shall now reveal it? He is fled, or he is dead, Marriage will conceal it . . . In the night, in the night. While the gloom is growing.' III. Catherine, Catherine, in the night, What is this you're dreaming? There is laughter down in Hell At your simple scheming ... In the night, in the night, When the ghosts are fleeting. IV. You to place a hand in his Like an honest woman's. You that lie with wasted lungs Waiting for your summons . . In the night, O the night, O the deathwatch beating ! There will come a witness soon Hard to be confuted, All the world will hear a voice Scream you are polluted . . . In the night, O the night, When the owls are wailing ! 798 FORL ORN— HAPP Y, VI.- XII. Shame and marriage, Shame and mar- Death and marriage. Death and mar- riage, riage ! Fright and foul dissembling, Funeral hearses rolling ! Bantering bridesman, reddening priest, Black with bridal favours mixt ! Tower and altar trembling . . . Bridal bells with tolling ! . . . In the night, O the night, In the night, the night. "When the mind is failing ! When the wolves are howling. VII. XIII. Mother, dare you kill your child? Up, get up, the time is short, How your hand is shaking ! Tell him now or never ! Daughter of the seed of Cain, Tell him all before you die, What is this you're taking? . .. . Lest you die for ever . . . In the night, the night. In the night, the night. While the house is sleeping. Where there's no forgetting. VIII. XIV. Dreadful ! has it come to this. Up she got, and wrote him all, O unhappy creature? All her tale of sadness, You that would not tre.'.d on a worm Blister'd every word with tears, For your gentle nature . . . And eased Rer heart of madness . , , In the night, O the night, In the nighty and nigh the dawn, the night of weeping ! And while the moon was setting. IX. Murder would not veil your sin, HAPPY. Marriage will not hide it, ^ Earth and Hell will brand your name THE leper's BRIDE. Wretch you must abide it . . . I. In the night, O the night. Long before the dawning. W^iiY wail you, pretty plover? and what is it that you fear? X. Is he sick your mate like mine? you lost him, is he fled? have Up, get up, and tell him all. Aiul there — the heron rises from his Tell him you were lying ! watch beside the mere, Do not die with a lie in your mouth, And flies above the leper's hut, v> 'here You that know you're dying . . . lives the living-dead. In the night, the night. ^ While the grave is yawning. II. XI. Come back, nor let me know it ! w he live and die alone? 'ould No — you will not die before, And has he not forgiven me yet , his Tho' you'll ne'er be stronger; over-jealous bride, You will live till that is born, Who am, and was, and will be his , his Then a little longer . . . own and only own, In the night, the night, To share his living death with him, While the Fiend is prowling. die with him side by side? HAPPY. 799 III. Is that the leper's hut on the solitary moor, Where noble Ulric dwells forlorn, and wears the leper's weed? The door is open. He ! is he standing at the door, My soldier of the Cross? it is he and he indeed! My roses — will he take them nozv — mine, his — from off th^ tree We planted both together, happy in our marriage morn? O God, I could blaspheme, for he fought . Thy fight for Thee, And Thou hast made him leper to com- pass him with scorn — Hast spared the flesh of thousands, the coward and the base. And set a crueller mark than Cain's on him, the good and brave ! He sees me, waves me from him. I will front him face to face. You need not wave me from you. I w^ould leap into your grave. My warrior of the Holy Cross and of the conquering sword. The roses that you cast aside — once more I bring you these. No nearer? do you scorn me- when you tell me, O my lord, You wtould not mar the beauty of your bride with your disease. You say your body is so foul — then here I stand apart, Who yearn to ky my loving head upon your leprous breast. The leper plague may scale my skin but never taint my heart; Your body is not foul to me, and body is foul at best. VIII. I loved you first when young and fair, but now I love you most; The fairest flesh at last is filth on which the worm will feast; This poor rib-grated dungeon of the holy human ghost, This house with all its hateful needs no cleaner than the beast, This coarse diseaseful creature which in Eden was divine, This Satan-haunted ruin, this little city of sewers, This wall of solid flesh that comes between your soul and mine, W^ill vanish and give place to the beauty that endures, The beauty that endures on the Spiritual height. When we shall stand transfigured, like Christ on Hermon hill, And moving each to music, soul in soul and light in light, Shall flash thro' one another in a moment as we will. Foul ! foul ! the word was yours not mine, I worship that right hand Which fell'd the foes before you as the woodman fells the wood, And sway'd the sword that lighten'd back the sun of Holy land. And clove the Moslem crescent moon, and changed it into blood. XII. And once I worshipt all too well this creature of decay, For Age will chink the face, and Death will freeze the supplest limbs — Yet you in your mid manhood — O the grief when yesterday They bore the Cross before you to the chant of funeral hymns. 8oo HAPPY. XIII. XVIII. 'Libera me, Domine ! ' you sang the You never once accused me, but" I wept Psalm, and when alone, and sigh'd The Priest pronounced you dead, and In the winter of the Present for the flung the mould upon your feet, summer of the Past; A beauty came upon your face, not that That icy winter silence — how it froze of living men, you from your bride, But seen upon the silent brow when Tho' I made one barren effort to break life has ceased to beat. it at the last. XIV. XIX. 'Libera nos, Domine' — you knew not I brought you, you remember, these roses, one was there when I knew Who saw you kneel beside your bier, You were parting for the war, and you and weeping scarce could see ; took them tho' you frown'd; May I come a httle nearer, I that heard, You frown'd and yet you kiss'd them. and changed the prayer All at once the trumpet blew. And sang the married 'nos' for the And you spurr'd your fiery horse, and solitary ' me.' you hurl'd them to the ground. XV. XX. My beauty marred by you? by you! so You parted for the Holy War without a be it. All is well word to me. If I lose it and myself in the higher And clear myself unask'd — not I. My beauty, yours. nature was too proud. My beauty lured that falcon from his And him I saw but once again, and far eyry on the fell, away was he, "Who never caught one gleam of the When I was praying in a storm — the beauty which enduies — crash was long and loud — XVI. XXI. The Count who sought to snap the bond That God would ever slant His bolt from that link'd us life to life, falling on your head — Who whisper'd me, • Your Ulric loves ' Then I lifted up my eyes, he was coming — a little nearer still — down the fell — He hiss'd, * Let us revenge ourselves, I clapt my hands. The sudden fire from your Ulric woos my wife ' — Heaven had dash'd him dead, A lie by which he thought he could And sent him charr'd and blasted to subdue me to his will. the deathless fire of Hell. XVII. XXII. I knew that you were near me when I See, I sinn'd but for a moment. I re- let him kiss my brow; pented and repent. Did he touch me on the lips? I was And trust myself forgiven by the God jealous, anger'd, vain, to whom I kneel. And I meant to make you jealous. Are A little nearer? Yes. I shall hardly be you jealous of me now? content Your pardon, my love, if I ever gave Till I be leper like yourself, my love, you pain. from head to heeL HAPPY. 8oi XXIII. O foolish dreams, that you, that I, would slight our marriage oath : I held you at that moment even dearer than before; Now God has made you leper in His loving care for both. That we might cling together, never doubt each other more. XXIV. The Priest, who join'd you to the dead, has join'd our hands of old; If man and wife be but one flesh, let mine be leprous too. As dead from all the human race as if beneath the mould; If you be dead, then I am dead, who only live for you. Would Earth tho' hid in cloud not be foUow'd by the Moon? The leech forsake the dying bed for terror of his life ? The shadow leave the Substance in the brooding light of noon? Or if / had been the leper would you have left the wife? XXVI. Not take them ! Still you wave me off — poor roses — must I go — I have worn them year by year — from the bush we both had set — What ? fling them to you ? — well — that were hardly gracious. No ! Your plague but passes by the touch. A little nearer yet ! XXVII. There, there ! he buried you, the Priest; the Priest is not to blame, He joins us once again, to his either office true :, I thank him. I am happy, happy. Kiss me. In the name Of the everlasting God, I will live and die with you. 3F [Dean Milman has remarked that the protection and care afforded by the Church to this blighted race of lepers was among the most beautiful of its offices during the Middle Ages. The leprosy of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was supposed to be a legacy of the crusades, but was in all probability the offspring of meagre and unwholesome diet, miserable lodging and cloth- ing, physical and moral degradation. The ser- vices of the Church in the seclusion of these unhappy sufferers were most affecting The stem duty of looking to the public welfare is tempered with exquisite compassion for the victims of this loathsome disease. The ritual for the sequestra- tion of the leprous differed little from the burial service. After the leper had been sprinkled with holy water, the priest conducted him into the church, the leper singing the psalm ' Libera me domine,' and the crucifix and bearer going before. In the church a black cloth was stretched over two trestles in front of the altar, and the leper leaning at its side devoutly heard mass. The priest, taking up a little earth in his cloak, threw it on one of the leper's feet, and put him out of the church, if it did not rain too heavily; took him to his hut in the midst of the fields, and then uttered the prohibitions: ' I forbid you entering the church .... or entering the company of others. I forbid you quitting your home without your leper's dress.' He concluded: 'Take this dress, and wear it in token of humility; take these gloves, take this clapper, as a sign that you are forbidden to speak to any one. You are not to be indignant at being thus separated from others, and as to your little wants, good people will provide for you, and God will not desert you.' Then in this old ritual follow these sad words : ' When it shall come to pass that the leper shall pass out of this world, he shall be buried in his hut, and not in the churchyard.* At first there was a doubt whether wives should follow their husbands who had been leprous, or remain in the world and marry again. The Church decided that the marriage-tie was indis- soluble, and so bestowed on these unhappy being> this immense source of consolation. With a love stronger than this living death, lepers were fol- lowed into banishment from the haunts of men by their faithful wives. Readers of Sir J. Stephen's Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography will recollect the description of the founder of the Franciscan order, how, controlling his involun- tary disgust, St. Francis of Assisi washed the feet and dressed the sores of the lepers, once at least reverently applying his lips to their wounds. — Boucher-James.] This ceremony of quasiAinrvsS. varied consider-, ably at different times and in different places 8o2 TO ULYSSES. In some cases a grave was dug, and the leper's A name that earth will not forget face was often covered during the service. Till earth has roll'd her latest year — TO ULYSSES. 1 VIII. I, once half-crazed for larger light 1. On broader zones beyond the foam, Ulysses, much-experienced man, Whose eyes have known this globe of But chaining fancy now at home Among the quarried downs of Wight, ours. Her tribes of men, and trees, and IX. flowers. Not less would yield full thanks to you From Corrientes to Japan, For your rich gift, your tale of lands I know not,^ your Arabian sands; II. Your cane, your palm, tree-fern, bamboq To you that bask below the Line, I soaking here in winter wet — X. The century's three strong eights have The wealth of tropic bower and brake; met Your Oriental Eden-isles,* To drag me down to seventy-nine Where man, nor only Nature smiles; III. Your wonder of the boiling lake; ^ In summer if I reach my day — XI. To you, yet young, who breathe the Phra-Chai, the Shadow of the Best,^ balm Phra-bat • the step; your Pontic coast; Of summer- winters by the palm Crag- cloister; » Anatolian Ghost ;9 And orange grove of Paraguay, Hong-Kong,!*^ Kfirnac,^! and all the rest IV. I tolerant of the colder time, XII. Thro' which I follow'd line by line Who love the winter woods, to trace Your leading hand, and came, my On paler heavens the branching grace friend, Of leafless elm, or naked lime, To prize your various book, and send y^ A gift of slenderer value, mine. And see my cedar green, and there My giant ilex keeping leaf 1 ' Ulysses,' the title of a number of essays by W. G. Palgrave. He died at Monte Video before When frost is keen and days are seeing my poem. 2 Garibaldi said to me, alluding to his barren brief— island, ' I wish I had your trees.' Or marvel hdw in English air SThetaleofNejd. 4 The Philippines. VI. B In Dominica, 6 The Shadow of the Lord. Certain obscure My yucca, which no winter quells. markings on a rock in Siam, which express the A tho' the months have scarce begun. image of Buddha to the Buddhist more or less Has push'd toward our faintest sun distinctly according to his faith and his moral A spike of half-accomplish'd bells — worth. 7 The footstep of the Lord on another rock. VII. 8 The monastery of Sumelas. » Anatolian Spectre stories. Or watch the waving pine which here 10 The Three Cities. The warrior of Caprera set,^ " Travels in Egypt. TO MARY BOYLE. 803 TO MARY BOYLE. With the following Poem. * Spring -flowers'! While you still delay to take Youf leave of Town, Our elmtree's ruddy-hearted blossom- flake Is fluttering down. Be truer to your promise. There ! I heard Our cuckoo call. Be needle to the magnet of your word, Nor wait, till all III. Our vernal bloom from every vale and plain And garden pass. And all the gold from each laburnum chain Drop to the grass. IV. Is memory with your Marian gone to rest, Dead with the dead? For ere she left us, when we met, you prest My hand, and said ' I come with your spring-flowers.* You camf not, friend; My birds would sing, You heard not. Take then this spring- flower 1 seni. This song of spring, VI. Found yesterday — forgotten mine own rhyme By mine old self, As I shall be forgotten by old Tim;; Laid on the shelf — VII. A rhyme that flower'd betwixt the whiten- ing sloe And kingcup blaze, And more than half a hundred years ago. In rick-fire days, VIII. When Dives loathed the times, and paced his land In fear of worse. And sanguine Lazarus felt a vacant hand Fill with his purse. For lowly minds were madden'd to the height By tonguester tricks, And once — I well remember that red night When thirty ricks,- X. All flaming, made an English homestead Hell — These hands of mine Have helpt to pass a bucket from the well Along the line, XI. When this bare dome had not begun to gleam Thro' youthful curls. And you were then a lover's fairy dream. His girl of girls; XII. And you, that now are lonely, and with Grief Sit face to face, Might find a flickering glimmer of relief In change of place. What use to brood? this life of mingled pains And joys to me. Despite of every Faith and Creed, remaxna The Mystery. 8o4 THE PROGRESS OF SPRING. Let golden youth bewail the friend, the wife, For ever gone. He dreams of that long walk thro' desert life Without the one. The silver year should cease to mourn and sigh — Not long to wait — So close are we, dear Mary, you and I To that dim gate. XVI. Take, read ! and be the faults your Poet makes Or many or few, He rests content, if his young music wakes A wish in you XVII. To change our dark Queen-city, all her realm Of sound and smoke. For his clearheaven, and these few lanes of elm And whispering oak. THE PROGRESS OF SPRING. I. The groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould, Fair Spring slides hither o'er the . Southern sea. Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold That trembles not to kisses of the bee : Come, Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves The spear of ice has wept itself away, And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves O'er his uncertain shadow droops the day. She comes! The loosen'd rivulets run; The frost-bead melts upon her golden hair; Her mantle, slowly greening in the Sun, Now wraps' her close, now arching leaves her bare To breaths of balmier air; II. Up leaps the lark, gone wild to welcome her, About her glance the tits, and shriek the jays. Before her skims the jubilant woodpecker, The linnet's bosom blushes at her gaze, While round her brows a woodland culver flits, Watching her large light eyes and gracious looks, And in her open palm a halcyon sits Patient — the secret splendour of the brooks. Come, Spring ! She comes on waste and wood. On farm and field : but enter also here. Diffuse thyself at will thro' all my blood, And, tho' thy violet sicken into sere, Lodge with me all the year ! III. Once more a downy drift against the brakes, Self-darken' d in the sky, descending slow ! But gladly see I thro' the wavering flakes Yon blanching apricot like snow in snow. These will thine eyes not brook in forest- paths. On their perpetual pine, nor round the beech; They fuse themselves to little spicy baths, Solved in the tender blushes of the peach; They lose themselves and, die On that new life that gems the haw- thorn line; Thy gay lent-lilies wave and put tbem by. And out once more in varnish'd glory • shine Thy stars of celandine. THE PROGRESS OF SPRING. 805 She floats across the hamlet. Heaven lours, But in the tearful splendour of her smiles I see the slowly-thickening chestnut towers Fill out the spaces by the barren tiles. Now past her feet the swallow circling flies, A clamorous cuckoo stoops to meet her hand; Her light makes rainbows in my closing eyes, I hear a charm of song thro' all the land. Come, Spring ! She comes, and Earth is glad To roll her North below thy deepening dome. But ere thy maiden birk be wholly clad, And these low bushes dip their twigs in foam. Make all true hearths thy home. Across my garden ! and the thicket stirs. The fountain pulses high in sunnier jets. The blackcap warbles, and the turtle purrs. The starling claps his tiny castanets. Still round her forehead wheels the woodland dove, And scatters on her throat the sparks of dew. The kingcup fills her footprint, and above Broaden the glowing isles of vernal blue. Hail ample presence of a Queen, Bountiful, beautiful, apparell'd gay, Whose mantle, every shade of glancing green, Flies back in fragrant breezes to display A tunic white as May ! She whispers, * From the South I bring you balm. For on a tropic mountain was I born, While some dark dweller by the coco- palm Watch'd my far meadov/ zoned with airy morn; From under rose a muffled moan of floods; I sat beneath a solitude of snow; There no one came, the turf was fresh, the woods Plunged gulf on gulf thro' all their vales below. I saw beyond their silent tops The steaming marshes of the scarlet cranes. The slant seas leaning on the mangrove copse, And summer basking in the sultry plains About a land of canes; VII. 'Then from my vapour-girdle soaring forth I scaled the buoyant highway of the birds, And drank the dews and drizzle of the North, That I might'mix with men, and hear their words On pathway'd plains; for — while my hand exults Within the bloodless heart of lowly flowers To work old laws of Love to fresh results. Thro' manifold effect of simple powers — I too would teach the man Beyond the darker hour to see the bright. That his fresh life may close as it began. The still-fulfilling promise of a light Narrowing^ the bounds of night.' So wed thee with my soul, that I may mark The coming year's great good and varied ills, And new developments, whatever spark Be struck from out the clash of warring wills; Or whether, since our nature cannot rest, The smoke of war's volcano burst again From hoary deeps that belt the changeful West, 8o6 MERLIN AND THE GLEAM. Old Empires, dwellings of the kings Great the Master, of men; And sweet the Magic, Or should those fail, that hold the helm, When over the valley, While the long day of knowledge In early summers. grows and warms, Over the mountain, And in the heart of this most ancient On human faces. • realm And all around me, A hateful voice be utter'd and alarms Moving to melody, Sounding * To arms ! to arms ! ' Floated The Gleam. IX. A simpler, saner lesson might he learn III. Once at the croak of a Raven Who reads thy gradual process, Holy who crost it. Spring. A barbarous people. Thy leaves possess the season in their Blind to the magic, turn, And deaf to the melody, And in their time thy warblers rise on Snarl'd at and cursed me. wing. A demon vext me. How surely glidest thou from March to The light retreated. IVIay, The landskip darken'd, And changest, breathing it, the sullen The melody deaden'd. wind, The Master whisper'd, Thy scope of operation, day by day, ' Follow The Gleam.' Larger and fuller, like the human mind ! Thy warmths from bud to bud IV. Accomplish that blind model in the seed, And men have hopes, which race the restless blood, That after many changes may succeed Then to the melody. Over a wilderness Gliding, and glancing at Elf of the woodland, Gnome of the cavern, Life, which is Life indeed. Griffin and Giant, And dancing of Fairies In desolate hollows. MERLIN AND THE GLEAM. And wraiths of the mountain, And rolling of dragons I. By warble of water. YOUNG Mariner, Or cataract music You from the haven* Of falling torrents. Under the sea-cliff, Flitted The Gleam. You that are watching The gray Magician V. With eyes of wonder, Down from the mountain /am Merlin, And over the level. And / am dying, And streaming and shining on /am Merlin Silent river. Who follow The Gleam. Silvery willow, Pasture and plowland, II. Innocent maidens, Mighty the Wizard Garrulous children, Who found me at sunrise Homestead and harvest. Sleeping, and woke me Reaper and gleaner. And learn'd me Magic ! And rough-ruddy faces MERLIN AND THE GLEAM — ROMNEY' S REMORSE. 807 Of lowly labour, Slided The Gleam — VI. Then, with a melody Stronger and statelier, Led me at length To the city and palace Of Arthur the king; Touch'd at the golden Cross of the churches, Flash'd on the Tournament, Flicker'd and bicker'd From helmet to helmet, And last on the forehead Of Arthur the blameless Rested The Gleam. Clouds and darkness Closed upon Camelot; Arthur had vanish'd I knew not whither, The king who loved me, And cannot die; For out of the darkness Silent and slowly The Gleam, that had waned to wintry glimmer On icy fallow And faded forest, Drew to the valley Named of the shadow. And slowly brightening Out of the glimmer, And slowly moving again to melody Yearningly tender. Fell on the shadow, No Ibnger a shadow. But clothed with The Gleam. VIII. And broader and brighter The Gleam flying onward. Wed to the melody, Sang thro' the world; And slower and fainter. Old and weary. But eager to follow, I saw, whenever In passing it glanced upon Hamlet or city, That under the Crosses The dead man's garden, The mortal hillock. Would break into blossom And so to the land's Last limit I came And can no longer, But die rejoicing. For thro' the Magic Of Him the Mighty, Who taught me in childhood. There on the border , Of boundless Ocean, And all but in Heaven Hovers The Gleam. Not of the sunlight, Not of the moonlight. Not of the starlight ! O young Mariner, Down to the haven. Call your companions. Launch your vessel. And crowd your canvas. And, ere it vanishes Over the margin, After it, follow it. Follow The Gleam. ROMNEY'S REMORSE. ' I read Hayley's Life of Romney the other day — Romney wanted but education and reading to make him a very fine painter; but his ideal was not high nor fixed. How touching is the close of his life! He married at nineteen, and because Sir Joshua and others had said that " marriage spoilt an artist " almost immediately left his wife in the North and scarce saw her till the end of his life; when old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to her and she received him and nursed hm till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth all Romney's pictures! even as a matter of Art, I am sure ' (^Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald, vol. i.) * Beat, little heart — I give you this and this,' Who are you? W^hat ! the Lady Hamilton? 8o» ROMNEY'S REMORSE. Good, I am never weary painting you. To sit once more? Cassandra, Hebe, Joan, Or spinning at your wheel beside the vifie — Bacchante, what you will; and if I fail To conjure and concentrate into form And colour all you are, the fault is less In me than Art. What Artist ever yet Could make pure light live on the canvas? Art! Why should I so disrelish that short word2> Where am I? snow on all the hills! so hot, So fever'd ! never colt would more de- light To roll himself in meadow grass than I To wallow in that winter of the hills. Nurse, were you hired? or came of your own will To wait on one so broken, so forlorn ? Have I not met you somewhere long ago? I am all but sure I have — in Kendal church — yes ! I hired you for a season there, And then we parted; but you look so kind That you will not deny my sultry throat One draught of icy water. There — you spill The drops upon my forehead. Your hand shakes. 1 am ashamed. I am a trouble to you. Could kneel for your forgiveness. Are they tears? For me — they do me too much grace — for me ? O Mary, Mary ! Vexing you with words ! Words only, born of fever, or the fumes Of that dark opiate dose you gave me, — words, Wild babble. I have stumbled back again Into the common day, the sounder self. God stay me there, if only for your sake, The truest, kindliest, noblest-hearted wife That ever wore a Christian marriage-ring. My curse upon the Master's apothegm, That wife and children drag an Artist down ! This seem'd my lodestar in the Heaven of Art, And lured me from the household fire on earth. To you my days have been a life-long lie, Grafted on half a truth; and tho' you say ' Take comfort, you have won the Painter's fame,' The best in me that sees the worst in me, And groans to see it, finds no comfort there. .What fame? I am not Raphael, Titian — no Nor even a Sir Joshua, some will cry. Wrong there ! The painter's fame ? but mine, that grew Blown into glittering by the popular breath. May float awhile beneath the sun, may roll The rainbow hues of heaven about it — There ! The colour'd bubble bursts above the abyss Of Darkness, utter Lethe. Is it so? Her sad eyes plead for my own fame with me To make it dearer. Look, the sun has risen To flame along -another dreary day. Your hand. How bright you keep your marriage-ring ! Raise me. I thank you. Has your opiate then Bred this black mood? or am I conscious, more Than other Masters, of the chasm between ^ Work and Ideal? Or does the gloom of Age And suffering cloud the height I stand upon Even from myself? stand? stood . . . no more. And yet The world would lose, if such a wife as you Should vanish unrecorded. Might I crave One favour? I am bankrupt of all claim On your obedience, and my stronges* wish ROMNEY'S REMORSE. 809 Falls flat before your least unwillingness. Still would you — if it please you — sit to me? I dream'd last night of that clear summer noon, When seated on a rock, and foot to foot With your own shadow in the placid lake, You claspt our infant daughter, heart to heart. I had been among the hills, and brought you down A length of staghorn-moss, and this you twined About her cap. I see the picture yet, Mother and child. A sound from far away, No louder than a bee among the flowers, A fall of water luU'd the noon asleep. You still'd it for the moment with a song Which often echo'd in me, while I stood Before the great Madonna-masterpieces Of ancient Art in Paris, or in Rome. Mary, my crayons ! if I can, I will. You should have been — I might have made you once. Had I but known you as I know you now — The true Alcestis of the time. Your song — Sit, listen ! I remember it, a proof That I — even I — at times remember'd you, * Beat upon mine, little heart ! beat, beat ! Beat upon mine ! you are mine, my sweet ! All mine from your pretty blue eyes to your feet, My sweet.' Less profile ! turn to me — three-quarter face. * Sleep, little blossom, my honey, my bliss ! For I give you this, and I give you this ! And I blind your pretty blue eyes with a kiss ! Sleep ! ' Too early blinded by the kiss of death — 'Father and Mother will watch you grow ' — You watch'd not I, she did not grow, she died, ' Father and Mother will watch you grow, And gather the roses whenever they blow, And find the white heather wherever you go. My sweet.' Ah, ray white heather only blooms in .heaven With Milton's amaranth. There, there, there ! a child Had shamed me at it — Down, you idle tools, Stampt into dust — tremulous, all awry, Blurr'd Uke a landskip in a ruffled pool, — Not one stroke firm. This Art, that harlot-like Seduced me from you, leaves me harlot- like. Who love her still, and whimper, im- potent . To win her back before I die — and then — Then, in the loud world's bastard judg- ment-day. One truth t\'ill damn me with the mind- less mob. Who feel no touch of my temptation, more Than all the myriad lies, that blacken round The corpse of every man that gains a name; ' This model husband, this fine Artist ' ! Fool, What matters? Six foot deep of burial mould Will dull their comments ! Ay, but when the shout Of His descending peals from Heaven, and throbs Thro' earth, and all her graves, if He should ask, *Why left you wife and children? for my sake, According to my word?' and I replied, ' Nay, Lord, for Art^ why, that would sound so mean That all the dead, who wait the doom of Hell For bolder sins than mine, adulteries. 8io PARNASSUS— BY AN EVOLUTIONIST. Wife-murders, — nay, the ruthless Mussul- man Who flings his bowstrung Harem in the sea, Would turn, and glare at me, and point and jeer. And gibber at the worm, who, living, made The wife of wives a widow-bride, and lost Salvation for a sketch. I am wild again ! The coals of fire you heap upon my head Have crazed me. Some one knocking there without? No! Will my Indian brother come? to find Me or my coffin? Should I know the man? This worn-out Reason dying in her house May leave the windows blinded, and if so, Bid him farewell for me, and tell him — Hope! I hear a death-bed Angel whisper * Hope.' 'The m_iserable have no medicine But only Hope ! ' He said it ... in the play. His crime was of the senses; of the mind Mine; worse, cold, calculated. Tell^my son — let me lean my head upon your breast. ' Beat little heart ' on this fool brain of mine. 1 once had friends — and many — none like you. I love you more than when we married. Hope ! O yes, I hope, or fancy that, perhaps. Human forgiveness touches heaven, and thence — For you forgive me, you are sure of that — Reflected, sends a light on the forgiven. PARNASSUS. Exegi monumentum . . . Quod non . . . Posfiit diruere ... . . . innumerabilis Annorum series et fuga temporum. — Horace. What be those crown'd forms high over the sacred fountain? Bards, that the mighty Muses have raised to the heights of the mountain, And over the flight of the Ages ! O Goddesses, help me up thither ! . Lightning may shrivel the laurel of Caesar, but mine would not wither. Steep is the mountain, but you, you will help me to overcome it. And stand with my head in the zenith, and roll my voice from the summit, Sounding for ever and ever thro' Earth and her listening nations. And mixt with the great Sphere-music of stars and of constellations. What be those two shapes high over the sacred fountain, Taller than all the Muses, and huger than all the mountain? On those two known peaks they stand ever spreading and heightening; Poet, that evergreen laurel is blasted by more than lightning ! . Look, in their deep double shadow the crown'd ones all disappearing ! Sing like a bird and be happy, nor hope for a deathless hearing ! 'Sounding for ever and ever?' pass on! the sight confuses — These are Astronomy and Geology, ter- rible Muses! III. If the lips were touch 'd with fire from off a pure Pierian altar, Tho' their music here be mortal need the singer greatly care ? Other songs for other worlds ! the fire within him would not falter; Let the golden Iliad vanish. Homer here is Homer there. BY AN EVOLUTIONIST. The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man. And the man said, 'Ami your debtor? ' And the Lord — * Not yet : but make it as clean as you can, And then I will let you a better.* FAR-FAR- A WAY— BE A UTIFUL CIT Y. 8ii ^ If my body come from brutes, my soul uncertain, or a fable, Why not bask amid the senses while the sun of morning shines, I, the liner brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in my stable, Youth and Health, and birth and wealth, and choice of women and of wines? What hast thou done for me, grim Old Age, save breaking my bones on the rack? Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright from afar ! Old Age. Done for thee? starved the wild beast that was linkt with thee eighty years back. Less weight now for the ladder-of- heaven that hangs on a star. if my body come from brutes, tho' somewhat finer than their own, I am heir, and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice be mute? No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne. Hold the sceptre. Human Soul, and rule thy Province of the brute. II. I have climb'd to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the Past, Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire. But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that is higher. FAR — FAR — AWAY. (for music.) What sight so lured him thro' the fields he knew As where earth's green stole into heaven's own hue. Far — far — away ? What sound was dearest in his native dells? The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells Far — far — away. What vague world-whisper, mystic pain or joy, Thro' those three words would haunt him when a boy, Far — far — away ? A whisper from his dawn of life? a breath From some fair dawn beyond the doors of death Far — far — away ? Far, far, how far? from o'er the gates of Birth, The faint horizons, all the bounds of earth. Far — far — away ? What charm in words, a charm no words could give? O, dying words, can Music make you live Far — far — away ? POLITICS. We move, the wheel must always move, Nor always on the plain. And if we move to such a goal As Wisdom hopes to gain. Then you that drive, and know your Craft, Will firmly hold the rein. Nor lend an ear to random cries. Or you may drive in vain. For some cry * Quick ' and some cry * Slow,' But, while the hills remain, Up hill ' Too-slow ' will need the whip, Down hill 'Too-quick,' the chain. BEAUTIFUL CITY. Beautiful city, the centre and crater of European confusion, O you with your passionate shriek for the rights of an equal humanity, 8l2 THE ROSES ON THE TERRACE— THE OAK. How often your Re-volution has proven but E-volution Roll'd again back on itself in the tides of a civic insanity ! THE ROSES ON THE TERRACE. Rose, on this terrace fifty years ago, When I was in my June, you in your May, Two words, ^My Rose ' set all your face aglow. And now that I am white, and you are gray. That blush of fifty years ago, my dear, Blooms in the Past, but close to me to-day As this red rose, which on our terrace here Qows in the blue of fifty miles aVvay. THE PLAY. Act first, this Earth, a stage so gloom'd with woe You all but sicken at the shifting scenes. And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show In some fifth Act what this wild Drama means. ON ONE WHO AFFECTED AN EFFEMINATE MANNER. While man and woman still are incom- plete, I prize that soul where man and woman meet. Which types all Nature's male and female plan, But, friend, man-woman is not woman-- man. TO ONE WHO RAN DOWN THE ENGLISH. You make our faults too gross, and thence maintain Our darker future. May your fears be vain! At times the small black fly upon the pane May seem the black ox of the distant plain. THE SNOWDROP. Many, many welcomes February fair-maid. Ever as of old time, SoHtary firstling. Coming in the cold time. Prophet of the gay time, Prophet of the May time. Prophet of the roses, Many, many welcomes February fair-maid ! THE THROSTLE. * Summer is coming, summer is coming. I know it, I know it, I know it. Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,' Yes, my wild little Poet. Sing the new year in under the blue. Last year you sang it as gladly. ' New, new, new, new ! ' Is it then so new That you should carol so madly? ' Love again, song again, nest again, young again,' Never a prophet so crazy ! And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend, See, there is hardly a daisy. * Here again, here, here, here, happy year ! ' O warble unchidden, unbidden ! Summer is coming, is coming, my dear. And all the winters are hidden. THE OAK. ' Live thy L*ife, Young and old. Like yon oak. Bright in spring, Living gold ; IN MEMORIAM. 813 Summer-rich Then; and then Autumn-changed, Soberer-hued Gold again. All his leaves Fall'n at length, Look, he stands, Trunk and bough. Naked strength. IN MEMORIAM. W. G. Ward. Farewell, whose like on earth I shall not find. Whose Faith and Work were bells of full accord, My friend, the most unworldly of man- kind, Most generous of all Ultramontanes, Ward, How subtle at tierce and quart of mind with mind. How loyal in the following of thy Lord! THE FORESTERS.* ACT I. — Scene I., The Bond; Scenes II., III., The Outlawry. ACT I. SCENE I.— The Garden before Sir Richard Lea's Castle. Kate. {gathering flotvers). These roses for my Lady Marian ; these lilies to lighten Sir Richard's black room, where he sits and eats his heart for want of money to pay the Abbot. \_Sings. The warrior Earl of Allendale, He loved the Lady Anne; The lady loved the master well, The maid she loved the man. All in the castle garden, Or ever the day began, The lady gave a rose to the Earl, The maid a rose to the man. ' I go to fight in Scotland With many a savage clan; ' The lady gave her hand to the Earl, The maid her hand to the man. ' Farewell, farewell, my warrior Earl! * And ever a tear down ran. She gave a weeping kiss to the Earl, And the maid a kiss to the man. Enter four ragged Retainers. First Retainer. You do well, Mistress Kate, to sing and to gather roses. You be fed with tit-bits, you, and we be dogs that have only the bones, till we be only bones our own selves. Second Retainer. I am fed with tit- bits no more than you are, but I keep a good heart and make the most of it, and, truth to say, Sir Richard and my Lady Marian fare wellnigh as sparely as their people. Third Retainer. And look at our suits, out at knee, out at elbow. We be more like scarecrows in a field than decent serving men ; and then, I pray you, look at Robin Earl of Huntingdon's men. First Retainer. She hath looked well 'at one of 'em, Little John. Third Retainer. Ay, how fine they be in their liveries, and each of 'em as full of meat as an egg, and as sleek and as round-about as a mellow codlin. Fourth Retainer. But I be worse off than any of you, for I be lean by nature, and if you cram me crop full I be little better than Famine in the picture, but if you starve me I be Gaffer Death himself. I would like to show you. Mistress Kate, how bare and spare I be on the rib : I be ianker than an old horse turned out to die on the common. Kate. Spare me thy spare ribs, I pray thee; but now I ask you all, did none of you love young Walter Lea? First Retainer. Ay, if he had not gone to fight the king's battles, we should have better battels at home. Kate. Right as an Oxford scholar, but the boy was taken prisoner by the Moors. First Retainer. Ay. Kate. And Sir Richard was told he might be ransomed for two thousand marks in gold. First Retainer. Ay. Kate. Then iie borrowed the monies from the Abbot of York, the Sheriff's brother. And if they be not paid back at the end of the year, the land goes to the Abbot. First Retainer. No news of young Walter? Kate. None, nor of the gold, nor the man who took out the gold : but now ye know why we live so stintedly, and why ye have so few grains to peck at. Sir Richard must scrape and scrape till he get to the land again. Come, come, why do you loiter here? Carry fresh rushes into the dining-hall, for those that are there they be so greasy and smell so vilely that my Lady Marian holds her nose when she steps across it. Fourth Retainer. Why there, now! that very word * greasy ' hath a kind of unction in it, a smack of relish about it. The rats have gnawed 'em already. I pray Heaven we may not have to take to the rushes. [Exeunt, 814 * Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. THE FORESTERS. ,:i Kate. Poor fellows ! The lady gave her hand to the Earl, The maid her^hand to the man. Efiter Little John. Little John. My master, Robin the Earl, is always a-telling us that every man, for the sake of the great blessed Mother in heaven, and for the love of his own little mother on earth, should handle all womankind gently, and hold them in all honour, and speak small to 'em, and not scare 'em, but go about to come at their love with all manner of homages, and observances, and circumbendibuses. Kate. The lady gave a rose to the Earl, The maid a rose to the man. Little John {seeing her) . O the sacred little thing ! What a shape ! what lovely arms ! A rose to the man ! Ay, the man had given her a rose and she gave him another. Kate. Shall I keep one little rose for Little John? No. Little John. There, there ! You see I was right. She hath a tenderness toward me, but is too shy to show it. It is in her, in the woman, and the man must bring it out of her. Kate. She gave a weeping kiss to the Earl, The maid a kiss to the man. Little John. Did she? But there I am sure the ballad is at fault. It should have told us how the man first kissed the maid. She doesn't see me. Shall I be bold? shall I touch her? shall I give her the first kiss? O sweet Kate, my first love, the first kiss, the first kiss ! Kate {turns and kisses him). Why look est thou so amazed? Little John. I cannot tell; but I came to give thee the first kiss, and thou hast given it me. Kate. But if a man and a maid care for one another, docs it matter so much if the maid give the first kiss? Little John. I cannot tell, but I had sooner have given thee the first kiss. I was dreaming of it all the way hither. Kate. Dream of it, then, all the way back, for now I will have none of it. Little John. Nay, now thou hast given me the man's kiss, let me give thee the maid's. Kate. If thou draw one inch nearer, I will give thee a buffet on the face. Little John. Wilt thou not give me rather the little rose for Little John? Kate {throzvs it down and tramples on it). There! [Kate seeing Marian exit hurriedly. Enter Marian {singing). Love flew in at the window, As Wealth walk'd in at the door. ' You have come for you saw Wealth coming,' said I. But he flutter'd his wings with a sweet little cry, I'll cleave to you rich or poor. Wealth dropt out of the window. Poverty crept thro' the door. * Well now you would fain follow Wealth,' said I,' But he flutter'd his wings as he gave me the lie, I cling to you all the more. Little John. Thanks, my lady — inas- much as I am a true believer in true love myself, and your Ladyship hath sung the old proverb out of fashion. Marian. Ay but thou hast ruffled my woman, Little John. She hath the fire in her face and the dew in her eyes. I beheved thee to be too solemn and formal to be a ruffler. Out upon thee ! Little John. I am no ruffler, my lady; but I pray you, my lady, if a man and a maid love one another, may the maid give the first kiss? Marian. It will be all the more gracious of her if she do. Little John. I cannot tell. Manners *be so corrupt, and these are the days of Prince John. {^Exit. Enter Sir Richard Lea {reading a bond) . Sir Richard. Marian ! Marian. Father ! Sir Richard. Who parted from thee even now? Marian. That strange starched stiff creature. Little John, the Earl's man. He would grapple with a Hon like the King, and is flustered by a girl's kiss. 8i6 THE FORESTERS. Sir Richard. There never was an Earl so true a friend of the people as Lord Robin of Huntingdon. Marian. A gallant Earl. I love him as I hate John. Sir Richard. I fear me he hath wasted his revenues in the service of our good King Richard against the party of John, as I have done, as I have done : and where is Richard? Marian. Cleave to him, father ! he will come home at last. Sir Richard. I trust he will, but if he do not I and thou are but beggars. Marian. We will be beggar'd then and be true to the King. Sir Richard. Thou speakest like a fool or a woman. Canst thou endure to be a beggar whose whole life hath been folded like a blossom in the sheath, like a careless sleeper in the down; who never hast felt a want, to whom all things, up to this present, have come as freely as heaven's air and mother's milk? Marian. Tut, father ! I am none of your delicate Norman maidens who can only broider and mayhap ride a-hawking with the help of the men. I can bake and I can brew, and by all the saints I can shoot almost as closely with the bow as the great Earl himself. I have played at the foils too with Kate : but is not to-day his birthday? Sir Richard. Dost thou love him indeed, that thou keepest a record of his birthdays? Thou knowest that the Sheriff of Nottingham loves thee. Marian. The Sheriff dare to love me? me who worship Robin the great Earl of Huntingdon? I love him as a damsel of his day might have loved Harold the Saxon, or Hereward the Wake. They both fought against the tyranny of the kings, the Normans. But then your Sheriff, your little man, if he dare to fight at all, would fight for his rents, his leases, his houses, his monies, his oxen, his din- ners, himself. Now your great man, your Robin, all England's Robin, fights not for himself but for the people of England. .This John — this Norman tyrauny — the stream is ffbaring us all down, and our little Sheriff will ever swim with the stream ! but our great man, our Robin, against it. And how often in old histories have the great men ^striven against the stream, and how often in the long sweep of years to come must the great man strive against it again to save his country, and the liberties of his people ! God bless our well-beloved Robin, Earl of Huntingdon. Sir Richard. Ay, ay. He wore thy colours once at a tourney. I am old and forget. Was Prince John there? Marian. The Sheriff of Nottingham was there — not John. Sir Richard. Beware of John and the Sheriff of Nottingham. They hunt in couples, and when they look at a maid they blast her. Marian. Then the maid is not high- hearted enough. Sir Richard. There — there — be not a fool again. Their aim is ever at that which flies highest — but O girl, girl, I am almost in despair. Those two thousand marks lent me by the Abbot for the ran- som of my son Walter — I believed this Abbot of the party of King Richard, and he hath sold himself to that beast John — they must be paid in a year and a month, or I lose the land. There is one that should be grateful to me overseas, a Count in Brittany — he lives near Quimper. I saved his life once in battle. He has monies. I will go to him. I saved him. I will try him. I am all but sure of him. I will go to him. Marian. ■ And I will follow thee, and God help us both. Sir Richard. Child, thou shouldst marry one who will pay the mortgage. This Robin, this Earl of Huntingdon — he is a friend of Richard — I know not, but he may save the land, he may save the land- Marian {showing a cross hung round her neck). Father, you see this cross? Sir Richard. Ay the King, thy god- father, gave it thee when a baby.' Marian. And he said that whenever I married he would give me away, and on this cross I have sworn \kisses it\ that till I myself pass away, there is no other man that shall give me away. Sir Richard. Lo there — thou art fool SCENE II. THE FORESTERS. 817 again — I am all as loyal as thyself, but what a vow ! what a vow ! Re-enter LITTLE John. Little John. My Lady Marian, your woman so flustered me that I forgot my message from the Earl. To-day he hath accomplished his thirtieth birthday, and he prays your ladyship and your ladyship's father to be present at his banquet to-night. Marian. Say, we will come. Little John. And I pray you, my lady, to stand between me and your woman, Kate. Marian. I will speak with her. Little John. I thank you, my lady, and I wish you and your ladyship's father a most exceedingly good morning. \^Exit. Sir Richard. Thou hast answered for me, but I know not if I will let thee go. Marian. I mean to go. Sir Richard. Not if I barred thee up in thy chamber, like a bird in a cage. Marian. Then I would drop from the casement, like a spider. Sir Richard. But I would hoist the drawbridge, like thy master. Marian. And I would swim the moat, like an otter. Sir Richard. But I would set my men-at-arms to oppose thee, like the Lord of the Castle. Marian. And I would break through them all, like the King of England. Sir Richard. "V^iell, thou shalt go, but O the land ! the land ! my great great great grandfather, my great great grand- father, my great grandfather, my grand- father and my own father — they were born and bred on it — it was their mother — they have trodden it for half a thou- sand years, and whenever I set my own foot on it I say to it. Thou art mine, and it answers, I am thine to the very heart of the earth — but now I have lost my gold, I have lost my son, and I shall lose my land also. Down to the devil with this bond that beggars me ! \_Flings down the bojid. Marian. Take it again, dear father, be not wroth at the dumb parchment. Sufficient for the day, dear father ! let us be merry to-night art the banquet, SCENE II. — A Banqueting- HALL in THE House of Robin Hood the Earl OF Huntingdon. Doors open into a banqueting-hall where he is at feast with his friends. Drinking Song. Long live Richard, Robin and Richard ! Long live Richard 1 Down with John ! Drink to the Lion-heart Every one ! Pledge the Plantagenet, Him that is gone. Who knows whither ? God's good Angel Help him back hither, And down with John! Long live Robin, Robin and Richard ! Long live Robin, And down with John ! Enter Prince John disguised as a monk and the SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM. Cries of *Down with John,'' '■Long live Kifig Richardy *Down with John.^ Prince John. Down with John ! ha. Shall I be known? is my disguise per- fect? Sheriff. Perfect — who should know you for Prince John, so that you keep the cowl down and speak not? \^Shouts from the banquet-room. Prince John. Thou and I will still / these revelries presently. \_Shouts, ' Long live King Richard ! ' I come here to see this daughter of Sir Richard of the Lea and if her beauties answer their report. If so — Sheriff. If so— \^Shouts, ' Down with John ! ' Prince John. You hear ! Sheriff. Yes, my lord, fear not. I will answer for you. Enter Little John, Scarlet, Much, &'c.,fro?n the banquet singing a snatch of the Drinking Song. Little John. I am a silent man myself, and all the more wonder at our Earl. What a wealth of words — O Lord, I will live and die for King Richard — not so much for the cause as for t?ffe Earl. O Lord, I am easily led by words, but I 8i8 THE FORESTERS. ACT I. think the Earl hath right. Scarlet, hath not the Earl right? What makes thee so down in the mouth? Scarlet. I doubt not, I doubt not, and though I be down in the mouth, I will swear by the head of the Earl. Little John. Thou Much, miller's son, hath not the Earl right? Much. More water goes by the mill than the miller wots of, and more goes to make right than I know of, but for all that I will swear the Earl hath right. But they are coming hither for the dance — {Enter Friar Tuck.) be they not, Friar Tuck ? Thou art the Earl's confessor and shouldst know. Tuck, Ay, ay, and but that I am a man of weight, and the weight of the church to boot on my shoulders, I would dance too. Fa, la, la, fa, la, la. [ Capering. Much. But doth not the weight of the flesh at odd times overbalance the weight of the church, ha friar? Ttick. Homo sum. I love my dinner — but I can fast, I can fast; and as to other frailties of the flesh — out upon thee ! Homo sum, sed virgo sum, I am a virgin, my masters, I am a virgin. Much. And a virgin, my masters, three yards about the waist is like to remain a virgin, for who could embrace such an armful of joy? Tuck. Knave, there is a lot of wild fellows in Sherwood Forest who hold by King Richard. If ever I meet thee there, I will break thy sconce with my quarter- staff. Enter from the banqueting-hall Sir Richard Lea, Robin Hood, &=c. Robin. My guests and friends, Sir Richard, all of you Who deign to honour this my thirtieth year, And some of you were prophets that I might be. Now that the sun our King is gone, the light Of these dafk hours; but this new moon, I fear, Is darkness. Nay, this may be the last time When I shall hold my birthday in this hall: I may be outlaw'd, I have heard a rumour. All. God forbid ! Robin. Nay, but we have no news of Richard yet. And ye did wrong in crying ' Down with John;' For be he dead, then John, may be our King. All. God forbid ! Robin. Ay God forbid. But if it be so we must bear with John. The man is able enough — no lack of wit, And apt at arms and shrewd in policy. Courteous enough too when he wills; and yet I hate him for his want of chivalry. He that can pluck the flower of maiden- hood From off the stalk and trample it in the mire, And boast that he hath trampled it. I hate him, I hate the man. I may not hate the King For aught 1 know. So that our Barons bring his baseness under. I think they will be mightier than the king. \_Dance music. (Marian enters with other damsels^ Robin. The high Heaven guard thee from his wantonness Who art the fairest flower of maidenhood That ever blossom'd on this English isle. Marian. Cloud not thy birthday with one fear for me. My lord, myself and my good father pray Thy thirtieth summer may be thirty-fold As happy as any of those that went before. Robin. My Lady Marian you can make it so If you will deign to tread a measure with me. Marian. Full willingly, my lord. [ They dance. Robin {after dance). My Lady, will you answer me a question? THE FORESTERS, 819 ^ Marian. Any that you may ask. Robin. A question that every true man asks of a woman once in his life. Marian. I will not answer it, my lord, till King Richard come home again. Prince John {to Sheriff). How she looks up at him, how she holds her face ! Now if she kiss him, I will have his head. Sheriff. Peace, my lord; the Earl and Sir Richard come this way. Robin. Must you have these monies before the year and the month end? Sir Richard. Or I forfeit my land to the Abbot. I must pass overseas to one that I trust will help me, Robin. Leaving your fair Marian alone here. Sir Richard. Ay, for she hath some- what of the lioness in her, and there be men-at-arms to guard her. [Robin, Sir Richard, and Marian pass on. Prince John {to Sheriff). Why that will be our opportunity "When I and thou will rob the nest of her. Sheriff. Good Prince, art thou in need of any gold ? Prince John. Gold? why? not now. Sheriff. I would give thee any gold So that myself alone might rob the nest. Prince John. Well, well then, thou shalt rob the nest alone. Sheriff. Swear to me by that relic on thy neck. Prince John. I swear then by this relic on my neck — No, no, I will not swear by this ; I keep it For holy vows made to the blessed Saints Not pleasures, women's matters. Dost thou mistrust me? Am I not thy friend ? Beware, man, lest thou lose thy faith in me. I love thee much; and as I am thy friend, I promise thee to make this Marian thine. Go now and ask the maid to dance with thee. And learn from her if she do love this Earl. Sheriff {advancing /oor;' Take all they have and give it to thyself! 834 THE FORESTERS. ACT III. Then after we have eased them of their coins It is our forest custom they should revel Along with Robin. Marian. And if a woman pass Robin. Dear, in these days of Nor- man license, when Oar English maidens are their prey, if ever A Norman damsel fell into our hands, In this dark wood when all was in our power We never wrong'd a woman. Marian. Noble Robin. Little John {coming forward^ . Here come three beggars. Enter the three Beggars. Little John. Toll ! First Beggar. Eh ! we be beggars, we come to ask o' you. We ha' nothing. Second Beggar. Rags, nothing but our rags. Third Beggar. I have but one penny in pouch, and so you would make it two I should be grateful. Marian. Beggars, you are sturdy rogues that should be set to work. You are those that tramp the country, filch the linen from the hawthorn, poison the house-dog, and scare lonely maidens at the farmstead. Search them. Little John. Little John. These two have forty gold marks between them, Robin. Robin. Cast them into our treasury, the beggars' mites. Part shall go to the almshouses at Nottingham, part to the shrine of our Lady. Search this other. Little John. He hath, as he said, but one penny. Robin. Leave it with him and add a gold mark thereto. He hath spoken truth in a world of lies. Third Beggar. I thank you, my lord. Little John. A fine, a fine ! he hath called plain Robin a lord. How much for a beggar? Robin. Take his penny and leave him his gold mark. Little John. Sit there, knaves, till the captain call for you. [ They pass behind the trunk of an odk on the right. Marian. Art thou not hard upon them, my good Robin? Robin. They might be harder upon thee, if met in a black lane at midnight: the throat might gape before the tongue could cry who? Little John. Here comes a citizen, and I think his wife. Enter Citizen and Wife. Citizen. That business which we have in Nottingham Little John. Halt ! Citizen. O dear wife, we have fallen into the hands Of Robin Hood. Marian. And Robin Hood hath sworn — ' Shame on thee. Little John, thou hast forgotten — That by the blessed Mother no man, so His own true wife came with him, should be stay'd From passing onward. Fare you well, fair lady ! [^Bowijig to her. Robin. And may your business thrive in Nottingham ! Citizen. I thank you, noble sir, the very blossom Of bandits. Courtesy to him, wife, and thank him. Wife. I thank you, noble sir, and will pray for you That you may thrive, but in some kindlier trade. Citizen. Away, away, wife, wilt thou anger him? \_Exeunt Citizen and his Wife. Little John. Here come three friars. Robin. Marian, thou and thy woman {looking round) , Why, where is Kate ? Marian {calling) . Kate ! Kate. Here! Robin. Thou and thy woman are a match for three friars. Take thou my bow and arrow and compel them to pay toll. Marian. Toll ! Enter three Friars. First Friar {advancing). Behold a pretty Dian of the wood, Prettier than that same widow which you wot of. THE FORESTERS. 835 Ha, brother. Toll, my dear? the toll of love. Marian {drawing bow) . Back ! how much money hast thou in thy jjurse? First Friar. Thou art playing with us. How should poor friars have money ? Marian. How much? how much? Speak, or the arrow flies. First Friar. How much? well, now I bethink me, I have one mark in gold which a pious son of the Church gave me this morning on my setting forth. Marian {benditig bow at the second). And thou? Second Friar. Well, as he said, one mark in gold. Marian {bending bow at the third). And thou? Third Friar. One mark in gold. Marian, Search them, Kate, and see if they have spoken truth. Kate. They are all mark'd men. They have told but a tenth of the truth : they have each ten marks in gold. Marian. Leave them each what they say is theirs, and take the twenty-seven marks to the captain's treasury. Sit there till you be called for. First Friar. We have fall'n into the hands of Robin Hood. [Marian and Kate return to Robin. [ 77/1? Friars pass behind an oak on the left. Robin. Honour to thee, brave Marian, and thy Kate. I know them arrant knaves in Notting- ham. One half of this shall go to those they have wrong' d, One half shall'pass into our treasury. Where lies that cask of wine whereof we plunder'd The Norman prelate? Little John. In that oak, where twelve Can stand upright, nor touch each other. Robin. Good ! Roll it in here. These friars, thieves, and liars. Shall drink the health of our new wood- land Queen. And they shall pledge thee, Marian, loud enough To fright the wild swan passing over- head. The mouldwarp underfoot. Marian. They pledge me, Robin? The silent blessing of one honest man Is heard in heaven — the wassail yells of thief And rogue and liar echo down in Hell, And wake the Devil, and I may sicken by 'em. Well, well, be it so, thou strongest thief of all. For thou hast stolen my will,' and made it thine. Friar Tuck, Little John, Much, and Scarlet roll in cask. Friar Tuck. I marvel is it sack or Malvoisie ? Robin. Do me the service to tap it, and thou wilt know. Friar Tuck. I would tap myself in thy service, Robin. Robin. And thou wouldst run more wine than blood. Friar Tuck. And both at thy service, Robin. Robin. I believe thee, thou art a good fellow, though a friar. [ They pour the wine into cups. Friar Tuck. Fill to the brim. Our Robin, King o' the woods. Wherever the horn sound, and the buck bound, Robin, the people's friend, the King o' the woods. [ They drink. Robin. To the brim and over till the green earth drink Her health along with us in this rich draught, And answer it in flowers. The Queen o' the woods, Wherever the buck bound, and the horn sound. Maid Marian, Queen o' the woods ! [ They drink. Here, you three rogues, [ To the Beggars. 7 hey come otit. You caught a lonely woodman of our band, And bruised him almost to the death, and took iiis monies. 8^ THE FORESTERS. Third Beggar. Captain, nay, it wasn't me. Robin. You ought to dangle up there among the crows. Drink to the health of our new Queen o' the woods. Or else be bound and beaten. First Beggar. Sir, sir — well. We drink the health of thy new Queen o' the woods. Robin. Louder ! louder ! Maid Marian, Queen o' the woods ! Beggars (^shouting). Maid Marian, Queen o' the woods: Queen o' the woods. First and Second Beggars (aside) . The black fiend grip her ! [ They drink. Robin (to the Friars). And you three holy men, [ They come out. You worshippers of the Virgin, one of you Shamed a too trustful widow whom you heard In her confession; and another — worse ! — An innocent maid. Drink to the Queen o' the woods, Or else be bound and beaten. First Friar. Robin Hood, These be the lies the people tell of us, Because we seek to curb their vicious- ness. However — to this maid, this Queen o' the woods. Robin. Louder, louder, ye knaves. Maid Marian ! Queen o' the woods ! Friars (shouting). Maid Marian, Queen o' the woods. First Fria r (aside) . M aid ? Second Friar (aside). Paramour! Third Friar (aside). Hell take her ! [ l^hey drink. Friar Tuck. Robin, will you not hear one of these beggars' catches? They can do it. I have heard 'em in the market at Mansfield. Little John. No, my lord, hear ours — Robin — I crave pardon, I always think of you as my lord, but I may still say my lady; and, my lady, Kate and 1 have fallen out again, and I pray you to come between us again, for, my lady, we have made a song in your honour, so your lady- ship care to listen. Robin. Sing, and by St. Mary these beggars and these friars shall join you. Play the air. Little John. Little John. Air and word, my lady, are maid and man. Join them and they are a true marriage; and so, 1 pray you, my lady, come between me and my Kate and make us one again. Scarlet, begin. {^Playing the air on his viol. Scarlet. By all the deer that spring Thro' wood and lawn and ling, When all the leaves are green ; By arrow and gray goosewing, When horn and echo ring, We care so much for a King; We care not much for a Queen — For a Queen, for a Queen o' the woods. Marian. Do you call that in my honour? Scarlet. Bitters before dinner, my lady, to give you a relish. The first part — made before you came among us — they put it upon me because I have a bad wife. I love you all the same. Proceed. \_All the rest sing. By all the leaves of spring, And all the birds that sing - When all the leaves are green ; By arrow and by bowstring. We care so much for a King That we would die for a Queen — For a Queen, for a Queen o' the woods. Enter Forester. Forester. Black news, black news from Nottingham ! I grieve I am the Raven who croaks it. My lord John, In wrath because you drove him from the forest, Is coming with a swarm of mercenaries To break our band and scatter us to the winds. Marian. O Robin, Robin ! See that men be set Along the glades and passes of the wood To warn us of his coming ! then each man That owns a wife or daughter, let him bury her Even in the bowels of the earth to scape The glance of John Robin. You hear your Queen, obey 1 SCfiNE 1. THE FORESTERS. 837 ACT IV.— The Conclusion.. ACT IV. SCENE. — A Forest Bower, Cavern in Background. Sunrise. Marian ( rising to meet Robin). Robin, the sweet light of a mother's eye, That beam of dawn upon the opening flower, Has never glanced upon me when a child. He was my father, mother, both in one. The love that children owe to both I give To him alone. (Robin offers to caress her.') Marian. Quiet, good Robin, quiet ! You lovers are such clumsy summer-flies For ever buzzing at your lady's face. Robin. Bees rather, flying to the flower for honey. Afar tan (sings). The bee buzz'd up in the heat. * I am faint for your honey, my sweet.' The flower said ' Take it, my dear, For now is the spring of the year. So come, come ! ' 'Hum!' And the bee buzz'd down from the heat. And the bee buzz'd up in the cold When the flower was wither'd and old. ' Have you still any honey, my dear? ' She said * It's the fall of the year, But come, come ! ' ' Hum J ' And the bee buzz'd 06" in the cold. Robin. Out on thy song ! Marian. Did I not sing it in tune? Robin. No, sweetheart ! out of tune with Love and me. Marian. And yet in tune with Nature and the bees. Robin. Out on it, I say, as out of tune and time ! Marian. Till thou thyself shalt come to sing it — in time. Robin {taking a tress of her hair in his hand). Time! if his back- ward-working alchemy Should change this gold to silver, why, the silver Were dear as gold, the wrinkle as the dimple. Thy bee should buzz about the Court of John. No ribald John is Love, no wanton Prince, The ruler of an hour, but lawful King, Whose writ will run thro' all the range of hfe. Out upon all hard-hearted maidenhood ! Marian. And out upon all simple batchelors ! Ah, well 1 thou seest the land has come between us. And my sick father here has come be- tween us, And this rich Sheriff too has come be- tween us; So, is it not all over now between us? Gone, like a deer that hath escaped thine arrow ! Robin. What deer when I have mark'd him ever yet Escaped mine arrow? over is it? wilt thou Give me thy hand on that? Marian. Take it. Robin {kisses her hand ) . The Sheriff ! This ring cries out against thee. Say it again. And by this ring the lips that never breathed Love's falsehood to true maid will seal Love's truth On those sweet lips that dare to dally with it. Marian. Quiet, quiet! or I will to my father. Robin. So, then, thy father will not grace our feast With his white beard to-day. Marian. Being so sick How should he, Robin? Robin. Then that bond he hath Of the Abbot — wilt thou ask him for it? Marian. Why? Robin. I have sent to the Abbot and justiciary To bring their counter-bond into the forest. Marian. But will they come? Robin. If not I have let them know Their lives unsafe in any of these our woods. And in the winter I will fire their farms. But I have sworn by our Lady if they come 838 THE FORESTERS. ACT IV I will not tear the bond, but see fair play Betwixt them and Sir Richard— promised too, So that they deal with us like honest men, They shall be handled with all courteous- ness. Marian. What wilt thou do with the bond then? Robin. Wait and see. What wilt thou do with the Sheriff? Marian. Wait and see. I bring the bond. \_Exit Marian. Enter LITTLE JOHN, Friar Tuck, and Much, and Foresters and Peasants laughing and talking. Robin. Have you glanced down thro' all the forest ways And mark'd if those two knaves from York be coming? Little John. Not yet, but here comes one of bigger mould. Enter King Richard. Art thou a knight? King Richard. I am. Robin. And walkest here Unarmour'd? all these walks are Robin Hood's And sometimes perilous, Ki7ig Richard. Good ! but having lived For twenty days and nights in mail, at last I crawl' d like a sick crab from my old shell. That I might breathe for a moment free of shield And cuirass in this forest where I dream'd That all was peace — not even a Robin Hood— (Aside) What if these knaves should know me for their King? Robin. Art thou for Richard, or allied to John? King Richard. I am allied to John. Robin. The worse for thee. King Richard. Art thou that banish'd lord of Huntingdon, The chief of these outlaws who break the law? Robin. I am the yeoman, plain Robin Hood, and being out of the law how should we break the law? if we broke into it again we should break the law, and then we were no longer outlaws. King Richard. But, Earl, if thou be he Friar Tuck. Fine him ! fine him ! he hath called plain Robin an earl. How much is it, Robin, for a knight? Robin. A mark. . King Richard {gives it). There. Robin. Thou payest easily, like a good fellow. But being o' John's side we must have thy gold. King Richard. But I am more for Richard than for John, Robin. What, what, a truckler ! a word-eating coward ! Nay, search him then. How much hast thou about thee? King Richard. I had one mark. 'Robin. What more?' King Richard. No more, I think. But how then if I will not bide to be search'd? Robin. We are four to one. King Richard. And I might deal with four. Robin. Good, good, I love thee for that ! but if I wind This forest-horn of mine I can bring down Fourscore tall fellows on thee. King Richard. Search me then. I should be hard beset with thy fourscore. Little yohn (searching King Richard). Robin, he hath no more. He hath spoken truth. Robin. I am glad of it. Give him back his gold again. King Richard. But I had liefer than this gold again — Not having broken fast the livelong day — Something to eat. Robin. And thou shalt have it, man. Our feast is yonder, spread beneath an oak, Venison, and wild boar, wild goose, be- sides Hedge-pigs, a savoury viand, so thou be Squeamish at eating the King's venison. King Richard. Nay, Robin, I am like thyself in that I look on the King's venison as my own, SCENE I. THE FORESTERS, 839 Friar Tuck. Ay, ay, Robin, but let him know our forest laws : he that pays not for his dinner must fight for it. In the sweat of thy brow, says Holy Writ, shalt thou eat bread, but in the sweat of thy brow and thy breast, and thine arms, and thy legs, and thy heart, and thy liver, and in the fear of thy life shalt thou eat the King's venison — ay, and so thou fight at quarterstaff for thy dinner with our Robin, that will give thee a new zest for it, though thou wert like a bottle full up to the cork, or as hollow as a kex, or the shambles-oak, or a weasel-sucked ^^g, or the head of a fool, or the heart of Prince John, or any other symbol of vacuity. [ They bring otit the quarter staffs, and the foresters and peasants crowd rotind to see the games, and ap- plaud at intervals. King Richard. Great woodland king, I know not quarterstaff. Little John. A fine ! a fine ! He hath called plain Robin a king. Robin. A shadow, a poetical fiction — did ye not call me king in your song? — a mere figure. Let it go by. Friar Tuck. No figure, no fiction, Robin. What, is not man a hunting animal? And look you now, if we kill a stag, our dogs have their paws cut off, and the hunters, if caught, are blinded, or worse than blinded. Is that to be a king? If the king and the law work in- justice, is not he that goes against the king and the law the true king in the sight of the King of kings? Thou art the king of the forest, and I woul^ thou wert the king of the land. King Richard. This friar is of much boldness, noble captain. Robin. He hath got it from the bottle, noble knight. Friar Tuck. Boldness out of the bottle ! I defy thee. Boldness is in the blood. Truth in the bottle. She lay so long at the bottom of her well In the cold water that she lost her voice. And so she glided up into the heart O' the bottle, the warm wine, and found it again. In vino Veritas. Shall I undertake The knight at quarterstaff, or thou? Robin. Peace, magpie ! Give him the quarterstaff. Nay, but thy- self Shalt play a bout with me, that he may see The fashion of it. \_Plays with Little John at qtiarterstaff. King Richard. Well, then, let me try. [ They play. I yield, I yield. I know no quarterstaff. Robin. Then thou shalt play the game of buffets with us. King Richard. What's that? Robin. I stand up here, thou there. I give thee A buffet, and thou me. The Holy Virgin Stand by the strongest. I am over- breathed. Friar, by my two bouts at quarterstaff. Take him and try him, friar. Friar Tuck. There ! {^Strikes. King Richard (strikes). There ! [¥x\2iX falls. Friar Tuck. There ! Thou hast roll'd over the Church militant Like a tod of wool from wagon into ware- house. Nay, I defy thee still. Try me an hour hence. I am misty with my thimbleful of ale. Robin. Thou seest. Sir Knight, our friar is so holy That he's a miracle-monger, and can make Five quarts pass into a thimble. Up, good Much. Friar Tuck. And show thyself more of a man than me. Much. W^ell, no man yet has ever bowl'd me dawn. Scarlet. Ay, for old Much is every inch a man. Robin. We should be all the more beholden to him. Much. Much" and more ! much and more ! I am the oldest of thy men, and thou and thy youngsters are always much- ing and moreing me. Robin. Because thou art always so much more of a man than my youngsters- old Much. Much. Well, we Muches be old. 840 THE FORESTERS. Robin. Old as the hills. Much. Old as the mill. We had it i' the Red King's time, and so I may be more of a man than to be bowled over like a ninepin. There ! {^Strikes. King Richard. There! [Much/a//y. Robin. * Much would have more,' says the proverb; but Much hath had more than enough. Give me thy hand, Much; I love thee {lifts him up). At him, Scarlet ! Scarlet. I cannot cope with him : my wrist is strain'd. King Richard. Try, thyself, valorous Robin ! Robin. I am mortally afear'd o' thee, thou big man. But seeing valour is one against all odds, There ! King Richard. There ! [Robin falls back, and is caught in the arms t?/" Little John. Robin. Good, now I love thee might- ily, thou tall fellow. Break thine alliance with this faithless John, And live with us and the birds in the green wood. King Richard. I cannot break it, Robin, if I wish'd. Still I am more for Richard than for John. Little John. Look, Robin, at the far end of the glade I see two figures crawling up the hill. [^Distant sound of trumpets. Robin. The Abbot of York and his justiciary. King Richard {aside). They know me. I must not as yet be known. Friends, your free sports have swallow'd my free hour. Farewell at once, for I must hence upon The King' s affair. Robin. Not taste his venison first? Friar Tuck. Hast thou not fought for it, and earn'd it? Stay, Dine with my brethren here, and on thine own. King Richard. And which be they ? Friar Tuck. Wild geese, for how canst thou be thus allied With John, and serve King Richard save thou be A traitor or a goose? but stay with Robin; For Robin is no scatterbrains like Rich- ard, Robin's a wise man, Richard a wiseacre, Robin's an outlaw, but he helps the poor. While Richard hath outlaw'd himself, and helps Nor rich, nor poor. Richard's the king of courtesy, For if he did me the good grace to kick me I covild but sneak and smile and call it courtesy. For he's a king. And that is only courtesy by courtesy — But Robin is a thief of courtesy Whom they that suffer by him call the blossom Of bandits. There — to be a thief of courtesy — There is a trade of genius, there's glory! Again, this Richard sacks and wastes a town With random pillage, but our Robin takes From whom he knows are hypocrites and liars. Again this Richard risks his life for a straw, So lies in prison — while our Robin's life Hangs by a thread, but he is a free man. Richard, again, is king over a realm He hardly knows, and Robin king of Sherwood, And loves and doats on every dingle of it. Again this Richard is the lion of Cyprus, Robin, the lion of Sherwood — may this mouth Never suck grape again, if our true Robin Be not the nobler lion of the twain. King Richard. Gramercy for thy preachment ! if the land Were ruleable by tongue, thou shouldst be king. Ahd yet thou know'st how little of thy king! What was this realm of England, all the crowns Of all this world, to Richard when he flung His life, heart, soul into those holy wars That sought to free the tomb-place of the King THE FORESTERS. 841 Of all the world? thou, that art church- man too In a fashion, and shouldst feel with him. Farewell ! I left mine horse and armour with a Squire, And I must see to 'em. Robin. When wilt thou return? King Richard. Return, I ? when ? when Richard will return. Robin. No sooner? when will that be ? canst thou tell? But I have ta'en a sudden fancy to thee. Accept this horn ! if e'er thou be assail'd In any of our forests, blow upon it Three mots, this fashion — listen ! {blows) Canst thou do it? [King Richard blows. Blown like a true son of the woods. Farewell ! \_Exit King Richard. Enter Abbot and Justiciary. Friar Tuck. Church and Law, halt and pay toll ! Justiciary. Rogue, we have thy cap- tain's safe-conduct; though he b'e the ^ chief of rogues, he hath never broken his word. Abbot. There is our bond. [ Gives it to Robin. Robin. I thank thee. Justiciary. Ay, but where. Where is this old Sir Richard of the Lea? Thou told'st us we should meet him in the forest. Where he would pay us down his thou- sand marks. Robin. Give him another month, and he will pay it. Justiciary. We cannot give a month. Robin. Why then a week. Justiciary. No, not an hour : the debt is due to-day. Abbot. Where is this laggard Richard of the Lea? Robin. He hath been hurt, was grow- ing whole again. Only this morning in his agony Lest he should fail to pay these thousand marks He is stricken with a slight paralysis. Have you no pity ? must you see the man? Justiciary. Ay, ay, what else? how else can this be settled? Robin. Go men, and fetch him hither on the litter. [Sir Richard Lea is brought in. Marian comes with him. Marian. Here is my father's bond. \_Gives it to Robin Hood. Robin. I thank thee, dear. Justiciary. Sir Richard, it was agreed when you borrowed these monies from the Abbot that if they were not repaid within a limited time your land should be forfeit. Sir Richard. The land ! the land ! Marian. You see he is past himself. What would you more ? Abbot. What more? one thousand marks. Or else the land. You hide this damsel in your forest here, \_Pointing to Marian. You hope to hold and keep her for your- self. You heed not how you soil her maiden fame, You scheme against her father's weal and hers, For so this maid would wed our brother, . he Would pay us all the debt at once, and thus This old Sir Richard might redeem his land. He is all for love, he cares not for the land. Sir Richard. The land ! the land ! Robin {giving two bags to the Abbot). Here be one thousand marks Out of our treasury to redeem the land. \^Pointing to each of the bags. Half here, half there. \_Plaudits from his band. Justiciary. Ay, ay, but there is use, four hundred marks. Robin {giving a bag to Justiciary). There then, four hundred marks. \^Plaudits. Justiciary. What did I say? Nay, my tongue tript — five hundred marks for use. Robin {giving another bag to hini) . A hundred more? There then, a hundred more. \_Plaudits. 842 THE FORESTERS. Justiciary. Ay, ay, but you see the bond and the letter of the law. It is stated there that these monies should be paid in to the Abbot at York, at the end of the month at noon, and they are de- livered here in the wild wood an hour after noon. Marian. The letter — O how often justice drowns Between the law and letter of the law ! God, I would the letter of the law Were some strong fellow here in the wild wood. That thou might'st beat him down at quarterstaff ! Have you no pity? Justiciary. You run down your game, We ours. What pity have you for your game? Robin. We needs must live. Our bowmen are so true They strike the deer at once to death — he falls And knows no more. Marian. Pity, pity! — There was a man of ours Up in the north, a goodly fellow too, He met a stag there on so narrow a ledge — A precipice above, and one below — There was no room to advance or to retire. The man lay down — the delicate-footed creature Came stepping o'er him, so as not to harm him — The hunter's passion flash'd into the man. He drove his knife into the heart of the deer. The deer fell dead to the bottom, and the man Fell with him, and was crippled ever after. 1 fear I had small pity for that man. — You have the monies and the use of them. What would you more? Justiciary. What? must we dance attendance all the day? Robin. Dance ! ay, by all the saints and all the devils ye shall dance. When the Church and the law have forgotten God's music, they shall dance to the music of the wild wood. Let the birds i sing, and do you dance to their song. What, you will not ? Strike up our music, Little John. (//^ plays.) They will not ! Prick 'em in the calves with the arrow-points — prick 'em in the calves. Abbot. Rogue, I am full of gout. I cannot dance. Robin. And Sir Richard cannot. re- deem his land. Sweat out your gout, friend, for by my life, you shall dance till he can. Prick him in the calves ! Justiciary. Rogue, I have a swollen vein in my right leg, and if thou prick me there I shall die. Robin. Prick him where thou wilt, so that he dance. Abbot. Rogue, we come not alone. Justiciary. Not the right. Abbot. We told the Prince and the Sheriff of our coming. Justiciary. Take the left leg for the love of God. Abbot. They follow us. Justiciary. You will all of you hang. Robin. Let us hang, so thou dance meanwhile ; or by that same love of God we will hang thee, prince or no prince, sheriff or no sherift'. Justiciary. Take care, take care ! I dance — I will dance — I dance. [x\bbot and Justiciary dance to music, each holding a bag in each hand. Enter Scarlet. Scarlet. The Sheriff! the Sheriff, fol- low'd by Prince John And all his mercenaries ! We sighted 'em Only this moment. By St. Nicholas They must have sprung like Ghosts from underground, Or, like the Devils they are, straight up from Hell. Robin. Crouch all into the bush ! [ The foresters and peasants hide behind the bushes. Marian. Take up the litter ! Sir Richard. Move me no more ! I am sick and faint with pain ! Marian. But, Sir, the Sheriff Sir Richard. Let me be, I say ! The Sheriff will be welcome ! let me be ! SCENE 1. THE FORESTERS. 843 Marian. Give me my bow and arrows^ I remain Beside my Father's litter. Robin. And fear not thou ! Each of us has an arrow on the cord; We all keep watch. Enter Sheriff of Nottingham. Sheriff. Marian ! Marian. Speak not. I wait upon a dying father. Sheriff. The debt hath not been paid. She will be mine. What are you capering for? By old St. Vitus Have you gone mad? Has it been paid? Abbot {dancing) . O yes. Sheriff. Have I lost her then? Justiciary {dancing). Lost her? O no, we took Advantage of the letter — O Lord, the vein ! Not paid at York — the wood — prick me no more ! Sheriff. What pricks thee save it be thy conscience, man? . Justiciary. By my halidome I felt him at my leg still. \Vhere be they gone to? Sheriff. Thou art alone in the silence of the forest Save for this maiden and thy brother Abbot, And this old crazeling in the litter there. Enter on one side Friar Tuck from che bush, and on the other Prince John and his Spearmen, with banners and trumpets, etc. Justiciary {examining his leg) . They have missed the vein. Abbot. And we shall keep the land. Sheriff. Sweet Marian, by the letter of the law It seems thy father's land is forfeited. Sir Richard. No ! let me out of the litter. He shall wed thee : The land shall still be mine. Child, thou shalt wed him. Or thine old father will go mad — he will. He will — he feels it in his head. Marian. O peace ! Father, I cannot marry till Richard comes. Sir Richard. And then the Sheriff! Marian. Ay, the Sheriff, father, Would buy me for a thousand marks in gold- Sell me again perchance for twice as much. A woman's heart is but a little thing. Much lighter than a thousand marks in gold : But pity for a father, it may be. Is weightier than a thousand ma'rks in gold. I cannot love the Sheriff. Sir Richard. But thou wilt wed him? Marian. Ay, save King Richard, when he comes, forbid me. Sweet heavens, I could wish that all the land Were plunged beneath the waters of the sea, Tho' all the world should go about in boats. Friar Tuck. Why, so should all the love-sick be sea-sick. Marian. Better than heart-sick, friar. Prince John {to Sheriff). See you not They are jesting at us yonder, mocking us? Carry her off, and let the old man die. \_Advancing to Marian. Come, girl, thou shalt along with us on the instant. Friar Tuck {brandishing his staff). Then on the instant I will break thy head. Sheriff. Back, thou fool-friar! Knowest thou not the Prince? Friar Tuck {muttering). He may be prince; he is not gentleman. Prince John. Look 1 1 will take the rope from off thy waist And twist it round thy neck and hang thee by it. Seize him and truss him up, and carry her off. [Friar Tuck slips into the bush. Marian {draivingthe bow). No nearer to me ! back ! My hand is firm, Mine eye most true to one hair's-breadth of aim. 844 THE FORESTERS, You, Prince, our king to come — you that dishonour The daughters and the wives of your own faction — Who hunger for the body, not the soul — This gallant Prince would have me of his — what? Household? or shall I call it by that new term Brought from the sacred East, his harem? Never, Tho' you should queen me over all the realms Held by King Richard, could I stoop so low As mate with one that holds no love is pure, No friendship sacred, values neither man Nor woman save as tools — God help the mark — To his own unprincely ends. And you, you, Sheriff, [ Turning to the Sheriff, Who thought to buy your marrying me with gold. Marriage is of the soul, not of the body. Win me you cannot, murder me you may. And all I love, Robin, and all his men, For I am one with him and his; but while I breathe Heaven's air, and Heaven looks down on me. And smiles at my best meanings, I remain Mistress of mine own self and mine own soul. {^Retreating, with bow drawn, to the bush. Robin ! Robin. I am here, my arrow on the cord. He dies who dares to touch thee. Prince John. Advance, advance ! What, daunted by a garrulous, arrogant girl! Seize her and carry her off into my castle. Sheriff. Thy castle ! Prince John. Said I not, I loved thee, man? Risk not the love I bear thee for a girl. Sheriff. Thy castle ! Prince John. See thou thwart me not, thou fool! When Richard comes he is soft enough to pardon His brother; but all those that held with him, Except I plead for them, will hang as high As Haman. Sheriff. She is mine. I have thy promise. Prince John. O ay, she shall be thine — first mine, then thine. For she shall spend her honeymoon with me. Sheriff. Woe to that land shall own thee for her king ! Prince John. Advance, advance ! [ They advance shouting. The King in armour reappears from the wood. King Richard. What shouts are these that ring along the M^ood? Friar Tuck {coming forward). Hail, knight, and help us. Here is one would clutch Our pretty Marian for his paramour. This other, willy-nilly, for his bride. King Richard. Damsel, is this the . truth? Marian. Ay, noble knight. Friar Tuck, Ay, and she will not marry till Richard come. King Richard {raising his vizor). I am here, and I am he. Prince John {lozvering his, and whis- pering to his men) . It is not he — • his face — tho' very like — No, no ! we have certain news he died in prison. Make at him, all of you, a traitor coming In Richard's name — it is not he — not he. [ The men stand amazed. Friar Tuck {going back to the bush). Robin, shall we not move? Robin. It is the King Who bears all down. Let him alone awhile. He loves the chivalry of his single arm. Wait till he blow the horn. Friar Tuck {coming back). If thou be king, Be not a fool ! Why blowest thou not the horn? King Richard. I that have turn'd their Moslem crescent pale — I blow the horn against this rascal rout ! SCENE I. THE FORESTERS. 845 [Friar Tuck plucks the horn from him and blows. Richard dashes alone against the Sheriff a«^ John's men^ and is almost borne down, when Robin aiid his men rush in and rescue him. King Richard {to Robin H ood) . Thou hast saved my head at the peril of thine own. Prince jfohn. A horse ! a horse ! I must away at once; I cannot meet his eyes. I go to Notting- ham. Sheriff, thou wilt find me at Nottingham. lExit. Sheriff. If anywhere, I shall find thee in hell. Vhat ! go to slay his brother, and make me 'he monkey that should roast his chest- nuts for him ! King Richard. I fear to ask who left us even now. Robin. I grieve to say it was thy father's son. lall I not after him and bring him back ? King Richard, No, let him be. Sheriff of Nottingham, [Sheriff kneels. have been away from England all these years, eading the holy war against the Moslem, 'hile thou and others in our kingless realms ere fighting underhand unholy wars gainst your lawful king. Sheriff. My liege, Prince John — King Richard. Say thou no word against my brother John. Sheriff. Why then, my liege, I have no word to say. King Richard {to Robin). My good friend Robin, Earl of Huntingdon, : Earl thou art again, hast thou no fetters • those of thine own band who would betray thee? lobin. I have; but these were never worn as yet. ;ver found one traitor in my band. '^ing Richard. Thou art happier than thy king. Put him in chains. \_They fetter the Sheriff. Robin. Look o'er these bonds, my liege. \_Shows the King the bonds. They talk together. King Richard. You, my lord Abbot, you Justiciary, [ The Abbot and Justiciary kneel, I made you Abbot, you Justiciary : You both are utter traitors to your king. Justiciary. O my good liege, we did believe you dead. Robin. Was justice dead because the King was dead? Sir Richard paid his monies to the Abbot. You crost him with a quibble of your law. Kijig Richard. But on the faith and honour of a king The land is his again. Sir Richard. The land ! the land ! I am crazed no longer, so I have the land. \_Comes out of the litter and kneels. God save the King ! King Richard {raising Sir Richard). I thank thee, good Sir Richard. Maid Marian. Marian. Yes, King Richard. King Richard. Thou wouldst marry This Sheriff when King Richard came again Except — Marian. The King forbad it. True, my liege. King Richard. How if the King com- mand it Marian. Then, my liege. If you would marry me with a traitor sheriff, I fear I might prove traitor with the sheriff. King Richard. But if the King for- bid thy marrying With Robin, our good Earl of Hunting- don. Marian. Then will I live for ever in the wild wood. Robin {coming fortvard) . And I with thee. King Richard. On nuts and acorns, ha! Or the King's deer? Earl, thou when we were hence Hast broken all our Norman forest-laws, And scruplest not to flaunt it to our face 846 THE FORESTERS. That thou wilt break our forest laws again When we are here. Thou art overbold. Robin. My king, I am but the echo of the lips of love. King Richard. Thou hast risk'd thy life for mine : bind these two men. [ They take the bags fro??i the Abbot and Justiciary, and proceed to fetter them. Justiciary . But will the King, then, judge us all unheard? I can defend my cause against the traitors Who fain would make me traitor. If the King Condemn us without trial, men will call him An Eastern tyrant, not an English king. Abbot. Besides, my liege, these men are outlaws, thieves, They break thy forest laws — nay, by the rood They have done far worse — they plunder — yea, ev'n bishops, Yea, ev'n archbishops — if thou side with these, Beware, O King, the vengeance of the Church. Friar Tuck {brandishing his staff). I pray you, my liege, let me execute the vengeance of the Church upon them. I have a stout crabstick here, which longs to break itself across their backs. Robin. Keep silence, bully friar, be- fore the King, Friar Tuck. If a cat may look at a king, may not a friar speak to one ? King Richard. I have had a year of prison-silence, Robin, And heed him not — the vengeance of the Church ! Thou shalt pronounce the blessing of the Church On those twd here, Robin and Marian. Marian. He is but hedge-priest, Sir King. King Richard. And thou their Queen. Our rebel Abbot then shall join your hands, Or lose all hopes of pardon from us — yet Not now, not now — with' after-dinnci grace. Nay, by the dragon of St. George, we shall Do some injustice, if you hold us here Longer from our own venison. Where is it? I scent it in the green leaves of the wood. Marian. First, king, a boon ! King Richard. Why surely ye are pardon'd. Even this brawler of harsh truths — I trust Half truths, good friar: ye shall with us to court. Then, if ye cannot breathe but woodland air. Thou Robin shalt be ranger of this forest, And have thy fees, and break the law no more. Marian. It is not that, my lord. King Richard. Then what, my lady? Robin. This is the gala-day of thy return. I pray thee for the moment, strike the bonds I From these three men, and let them dine with us. And lie with us among the flowers, and drink— j Ay, whether it be gall or honey to 'em — The king's good health in ale and Mal- voisie. King Richard. By Mahound I couldj strive with Beelzebub ! ' So now which way to the dinner? Marian. , Past the bank Of foxglove, then to left by that one yew. You see the darkness thro' the lighter leaf. But look! who comes? Enter Sailor. Sailor. We heard Sir Richard Lej was here with Robin. O good Sir Richard, I am like the man ] In Holy Writ, who brought his talen back ; \ For tho' we touch'd at many pirate ports I We ever fail'd to light upon thy son. | Here is thy gold again. I am sorry for ii J Sir Richard. The gold — my son — ra gold, my son, the land — Here Abbot, Sheriff — no — no, Robi Hood. SCENE I. THE FORESTERS. 847 Robin. Sir Richard, let that wait till we have dined. Are all our guests here ? King Richard. No — there's yet one other : I will not dine without him. Come from out Enter Walter Lea. That young warrior Here That oak-tree ! This broke his prison And join'd my banner in the Holy Land, And cleft the Moslem turban at my side. My masters, welcome gallant Walter Lea. Kiss him, Sir Richard — kiss him, my sweet Marian. Maria7i. O Walter, Walter, is it thou indeed W^hose ransom was our ruin, whose return Builds up our house again? I fear I dream. -give me one sharp pinch upon the cheek I may feel thou art no phantom — yet Thou art tann'd almost beyond my know- ing, brother. [ They embrace. Walter Lea. But thou art fair as ever, my sweet sister. Sir Richard. Art thou my son? Walter Lea. I am, good father, I am. Sir Richard. I had despair'd of thee — that sent me crazed. Thou art worth thy weight in all those marks of gold. Yea, and the weight of the very land itself, Down to the inmost centre. Robin. Walter Lea, Give me that hand which fought for Richard there. Embrace me, Marian, and thou, good Kate, [ To Kate entering. Kiss and congratulate me, my good Kate. \^She kisses him. Little John. Lo now ! lo now ! I have seen thee clasp and kiss a man indeed. For our brave Robin is a man indeed. Then by thine own account thou shouldst be mine. Kate. Well then, who kisses first? Little John. Kiss both together. [ They kiss each other. Robin. Then all is well. In this full tide of love. Wave heralds wave : thy match shall fol- low mine {to Little John). Would there were more — a hundred lovers more To celebrate this advent of our King ! Our forest games are ended, our free life. And we must hence to the King's court. I trust We shall return to the wood. Meanwhile, farewell Old friends, old patriarch oaks. A thou- sand winters Will strip you bare as death, a thousand summers Robe you life-green again. You seem, as it were. Immortal, and we mortal. How few Junes Will heat our pulses quicker ! How few frosts Will chill the hearts that beat for Robin Hood! Marian. And yet I think these oaks at dawn and even. Or in the balmy breathings of the night, Will whisper evermore of Robin Hood. We leave but happy memories to the forest. We dealt in the wild justice of the woods. All those poor serfs whom we have served will bless us. All those pale mouths which we have fed will praise us — All widows we have holpen pray for us, Our Lady's blessed shrines throughout the land Be all the richer for us. You, good friar. You Much, you Scarlet, you dear Little John, Your names will cling like ivy to the wood. And here perhaps a hundred years away Some hunter in day-dreams or half asleep Will hear our arrows whizzing overhead. And catch the winding of a phantom horn. THE FORESTERS. Robin. And surely these old oaks will murmur thee Marian along with Robin. I am most happy — Art thou not mine? — and happy that our King Is here again, never I trust to roam So far again, but dwell among his own. Strike up a stave, my masters, all is well. Song while they dance a Coufttry Dance. Now the king is home again, and nevermore to roam again, Now the king is home again, the king will have his own again, Home again, home again, and each will have his own again, All the birds in merry Sherwood sing and sing him home agaiin. THE DEATH OF GENONE, AKBAR'S DREAM, AND OTHER POEMS BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON POET LAUREATE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1905 Ail rights reserved Copyright, 1892, By MACMILLAN AND CO. THE DEATH OF OENONE, AKBAR'S DREAM, AND OTHER POEMS. JUNE BRACKEN AND HEATHER. To . There on the top of the down, The wild heather round me and over me June's high blue, When I look'd at the bracken so bright and the heather so brown, I thought to myself I would offer this book to you, This, and my love together^ To you that are seventy-seven. With a faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven. And a fancy as summer-new As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather. TO THE MASTER OF BALLIOL. Dear Master in our classic town, You, loved by all the younger gown There at Balliol, Lay your Plato for one minute down, And read a Grecian tale re-told. Which, cast in later Grecian mould, Quintus Calaber Somewhat lazily handled of old; And on this white midwinter day — For have the far-off hymns of May, All her melodies, All her harmonies echo'd away? — * Copyright, 1892, IV. To-day, before you turn again To thoughts that lift the soul of men. Hear my cataract's Downward thunder in hollow and glen, V. Till, led by dream and vague desire, The woman, gliding toward the pyre, Find her warrior Stark and dark in his funeral fire. THE DEATH OF CENONE.* CEnone sat within the cave from out Whose ivy-matted mouth she used to gaze Down at the Troad ; but the goodly view Was now one blank, and all the serpent vines Which on the touch of heavenly feet had risen. And gliding thro' the branches over- bower'd The naked Three, were wither'd long ago. And thro' the sunless winter morning- mist In silence wept upon the flowerless earth. And while she stared at those dead cords that ran Dark thro' the mist, and linking tree to tree, But once were gayer than a dawning sky With many a pendent bell and fragrant star, Her Past became her Present, and she saw Him, climbing toward her with the golden fruit, Him, happy to be chosen Judge of Gods, Her husband in the flush of youth and dawn, Paris, himself as beauteous as a God. by Macmillan & Co. gci 852 THE DEATH OF (ENONE. Anon from out the long ravine below, She heard a wailing cry, that seem'd at first Thin as the batlike shrilWngs of the Dead When driven to Hades, but, in coming near. Across the downward thunder of the brook Sounded ' CEnone '; and on a sudden he, Paris, no longer beauteous as a God, Struck by a poison'd arrow in the fight, Lame, crooked, reeling, livid, thro' the mist Rose, like the wraith of his dead self, and moan'd * CEnone, my CEnone, while we dwelt Together in this valley — happy then — Too happy had I died within thine arms, Before the feud of Gods had marr'd our peace. And sunder'd each from each. I am dying now Pierced by a poison'd dart. Save me. Thou knowest, Taught by some God, whatever herb or balm May clear the blood from poison, and thy fame Is blown thro' all the Troad, and to thee The shepherd brings his adder-bitten lamb, The wounded warrior climbs from Troy to thee. My life and death are in thy hand. The Gods Avenge on stony hearts a fruitless prayer For pity. Let me owe my life to thee. I wrought thee bitter wrong, but thou forgive. Forget it. Man is but the slave of Fate. CEnone, by thy love which once was mine. Help, heal me. I am poison'd to the heart.' * And I to mine ' she said * Adulterer, Go back to thine adulteress and die ! ' He groan'd, he turn'd, and in the mist at once Became a shadow, sank and disappear'd, But, ere the mountain rolls into the plain. Fell headlong dead; and of the shep- herds one Their oldest, and the same who first had found Paris, a naked babe, among the woods Of Ida, following lighted on him there, And shouted, and the shepherds heard and came. One raised the Prince, one sleek'd the squalid hair. One kiss'd his hand, another closed his eyes, And then, remembering the gay play- mate rear'd Among them, and forgetful of the man, Whose crime had half unpeopled Ilion, these All that day long labour'd, hewing the pines, And built their shepherd-prince a funeral pile; And, while the star of eve was drawing light From the dead sun, kindled the pyre, and all Stood round it, hush'd, or calling on his name. But when the white fog vanish'd like a ghost Before the day, and every topmost pine Spired into bluest heaven, still in her cave. Amazed, and ever seeming stared upon By ghastlier than the Gorgon head, a face, — His face deform'd by lurid blotch and blain — There, like a creature frozen to the heart Beyond all hope of warmth, CEnone sat Not moving, till in front of that ravine Which drowsed in gloom, self-darken'd from the west. The sunset blazed along the wall of Troy. Then her head sank, she slept, and thro' her dream A ghostly murmur floated, * Come to me, CEnone ! I can wrong thee now no more, CEnone, my CEnone,' and the dream Wail'd in her, when she woke beneath the stars. What star could burn so low? not Ilion yet. What light was there? She rose and slowly down. By the long torrent's ever-deepen'd roar, ST. TELEMACHUS. 853 Paced, following, as in trance, the silent cry. She waked a bird of prey that scream'd and past; She roused a snake that hissing writhed away; A panther sprang across her path, she heard The shriek of some lost life among the pines, But when she gain'd the broader vale, and saw The ring of faces redden'd by the flames Enfolding that dark body which had lain Of old in her embrace, paused — and then ask'd Falteringly, 'Who lies on yoncler pyre?' But every man was mute for reverence. Then moving quickly forward till the heat Smote on her brow, she lifted up a voice Of shrill command, ' Who burns upon the pyre ? ' Whereon their oldest and their boldest said, ' He, whom thou wouldst not heal ! ' and all at once The morning light of happy marriage broke Thro' all the clouded years of widowhood. And muffling up her comely head, and crying ' Husband ! ' she leapt upon the funeral pile, And mixt herself with hi7n and past in fire. ST. TELEMACHUS.* Had the fierce ashes of some fiery peak Been hurl'd so high they ranged about the globe? For day by day, thro' many a blood-red eve, In that four-hundredth summer after Christ, The wrathful sunset glared against a cross Rear'd on the tumbled ruins of an old fane No longer sacred to the Sun, and flamed On one huge slope beyond, where in his cave The man, whose pious hand had built the cross. A man who never changed a word with men. Fasted and pray'd, Telemachus the Saint. Eve after eve that haggard anchorite Would haunt the desolated fane, and there • Gaze at the ruin, often mutter low ' Vicisti Galilaee '; louder again. Spurning a shatter'd fragment of the God, ' Vicisti Galilaee ! ' but — when now Bathed in that lurid crimson — ask'd ' Is earth . On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god Wroth at his fall? ' and heard an answer ' Wake Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.' And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West, And at his ear he heard a whisper * Rome ' And in his heart he cried 'The call of God!' And call'd arose, and, slowly plunging down Thro' that disastrous glory, set his face By waste and field and town of alien tongue. Following a hundred sunsets, and the sphere Of westward-wheeling stars ; and every dawn Struck from him his own shadow on to Rome. Foot-sore, way-worn, at length he touch'd his goal, The Christian city. All her splendour fail'd To lure those eyes that only yearn'd to see, Fleeting betwixt her column'd palace- walls, The shape with wings. Anon there past a crowd With shameless laughter, Pagan oath, and jest, Hard Romans brawling of their monstrous games; He, all but deaf thro' age and weariness. Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 854 AKBAR'S DREAM. And muttering to himself 'The call of God' And borne along by that full stream of men, Like some old wreck on some indrawing sea, • Gain'd their huge Colosseum. The caged beast Yell'd, as he yell'd of yore for Christian blood. Three slaves were trailing a dead lion away, One, a dead man. He stumbled in, and sat Blinded; but when the momentary gloom. Made by the noonday blaze without, had left His aged eyes, he raised them, and beheld A blood-red awning waver overhead. The dust send up a steam of human blood, The gladiators moving toward their fight. And eighty thousand Christian faces watch Man murder man. A sudden strength from heaven, As some great shock may wake a palsied limb, Turn'd him again to boy, for up he sprang, And glided lightly down the stairs, and o'er The barrier that divided beast from man Slipt, and ran on, and flung himself be- tween The gladiatorial swords, and call'd * For- bear In the great name of Him who died for men, Christ Jesus ! ' For one moment after- ward A silence follow'd as of death, and then A hiss as from a wilderness of snakes, Then one deep roar as of a breaking sea, And then a shower of stones that stoned him dead. And then once more a silence as of death. His dream became a deed that woke the world, For while the frantic rabble in half-amaze Stared at him dead, thro' all the nobler hearts * Copyright, 1892, by In that vast Oval ran a shudder of shame. The Baths, the Forum gabbled of his death, And preachers linger'd o'er his dying words. Which would not die, but echo'd on to reach Honorius, till he heard them, and decreed That Rome no more should wallow in this old lust Of Paganism, and make her festal hour Dark with the blood of man who mur- der'd man. (For Honorius, who succeeded to the sov- ereignty over Europe, supprest the gladiatorial combats practised of old in Rome, on occasion of the following event. There was one Telemachus, embracing the ascetic mode of life, who setting out from the East and arriving at Rome for this very purpose, while that accursed spectacle was being performed, entered himself the circus, and descending into the arena, attempted to hold back those who wielded deadly weapons against each other. The spectators of the murderous fray, possest with the drunken glee of the demon who delights in such bloodshed, stoned to death the preacher of peace. The admirable Emperor learning this put a stop to that evil exhibition. — Theodoret's Ecclesiastical History.) AKBAR'S DREAM.* An Inscription by Abul Fazl for a Temple IN Kashmir (Blochmann xxxii.). O God in every temple I see people that see thee, and in every language I hear spoken, peo- ple praise thee. Polytheism and Islam feel after thee. Each religion says, * Thou art one, without equal.' If it be a mosque people murmur the holy prayer, and if it be a Christian Church, people ring the bell from love to Thee. Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister, and sometimes the mosque. But it is thou whom I search from temole to temple. Thy elect have no dealings with either heresy or orthodoxy ; for neither of them stands behind the screen of thy truth. Heresy to the heretic, and religion to the orthodox, But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume seller. Macmillan & Co. AKBAR'S DREAM. 855 Akbar and Abul Fazl before the palace at Futehpur-Sikri at night. ' Light of the nations ' ask'd his Chron- icler Of Akbar ' what has darken'd thee to- night?' Then, after one quick glance upon the stars, And turning slowly toward him, Akbar . said ' The shadow of a dream — an idle one It may be. Still I raised my heart to heaven, I pray'd against the dream. To pray, to do — To pray, to do according to the prayer, Are, both, to worship Alia, but the prayers, That have no successor in deed, are faint And pale in Alla's eyes, fair mothers they Dying in childbirth of dead sons. I vow'd Whate'er my dreams, I still would do the right Thro' all the vast dominion which a sword. That only conquers men to conquer peace, Has won me. Alia be my guide ! But come, My noble friend, my faithful counsellor. Sit by my side. While thou art one with me, I seem no longer like a lonely man In the king's garden, gathering here and there From each fair plant the blossom choic- est-grown To wreathe a crown not only for the king But in due time for every Mussulmin, Brahmin, and Buddhist, Christian, and Parsee, Thro' all the warring world of Hindustan. Well spake thy brother in his hymn to heaven " Thy glory baffles wisdom. All the tracks Of science making toward Thy Perfect- ness Are blinding desert sand; we scarce can spell The Alif of Thine Alphabet of Love." He knows Himself, men nor them- selves nor Him, For every splinter'd fraction of a sect Will clamour " / am on the Perfect Way, All else is to perdition." Shall the rose Cry to the lotus "No flower thou"? the palm Call to the cypress " I alone am fair "? The mango spurn the melon at his foot? " Mine is the one fruit Alia made for man." Look how the living pulse of Alia beats Thro' all His world. If every single star Should shriek its claim " I only am in heaven " Why that were such sphere-music as the Greek Had hardly dream'd of. There is light in all. And light, with more or less of shade, in all Man-modes of worship; but our Ulama, Who " sitting on green sofas contemplate The torment of the damn'd " already, these Are like wild brutes new-caged — the narrower The cage, the more their fury. Me they front With sullen brows. What wonder! I decreed That even the dog was clean, that men may taste Swine-flesh, drink wine; they know too that whene'er In our free Hall, where each philosophy And mood of faith may hold its own, they blurt Their furious formalisms, I but hear The clash of tides that meet in narrow seas, — Not the Great Voice not the true Deep. To drive A people from their ancient fold of Faith, And wall them up perforce in mine- unwise, Unkinglike; — and the morning of my reign Was redden'd by that cloud of shame when I . . . I hate the rancour of their castes and creeds, I let men worship as they will, I reap No revenue from the field of unbelief. I cull from every faith and race the best And bravest soul for counsellor and friend. 856 AK BAR'S DREAM. I loathe the very name of infidel. I stagger at the Kordn and the sword. I shudder at the Christian and the stake; Yet " Alia," says their sacred book, " is Love," And when the Goan Padre quoting Him, Issa Ben Mariam, his own prophet, cried "Love one another little ones" and " bless " Whom? even "your persecutors" ! there methought The cloud was rifted by a purer gleam Than glances from the sun of our Islam. And thou rememberest what a fury shook Those pillars of a moulder'd faith, when he, That other, prophet of their fall, pro- claimed His Master as " the Sun of Righteous- ness," Yea, Alia here on earth, who caught and held His people by the bridle-rein of Truth. What art thou saying? "And was not Alia caird In old Iran the Sun of Love ? and Love The net of truth?" A voice from old Ir^n ! Nay, but I know it — his, the hoary Sheik, On whom the women shrieking "Atheist " flung Filth from the roof, the mystic melodist Who all but lost himself in Alia, him Abft Satd — a sun but dimly seen Here, till the mortal morning mists of earth Fade in the noon of heaven, when creed and race Shall bear false v*^itness, each of each, no more. But find their limits by that larger light. And overstep them, moving easily Thro' after-ages in the love of Truth, The truth of Love. The sun, the sun ! they rail At me the Zoroastrian. Let the Sun, Who heats our earth to yield us grain and fruit, And laughs upon thy field as well as mine. And warms th6 blood of Shiah and Sunnee, Symbol the Eternal ! Yea and may noi kings Express Him also by their warmth of love For all they rule — by equal law for all? By deeds a light to men? But no such light Glanced from our Presence on the face of one. Who breaking in upon us yestermorn. With all the Hells a-glare in either eye, Yeli'd " hast thou brought us down a new Korin From heaven? art thou the Prophet? canst thoti work Miracles?" and the wild horse, anger, plunged To fling me, and fail'd. Miracles ! no, not I Nor he, nor any. I can but lift the torch Of Reason in the dusky cave of Life, And gaze on this great miracle, the World, Adoring That who made, and makes, and is. And is not, what I gaze on — all else Form, Ritual, varying with the tribes of men. Ay but, my friend, thou knowest I hold that forms Are needful: only let the hand that rules. With politic care, with utter gentleness, Mould them for all his people. And what are forms? Fair garments, plain or rich, and fitting close Or flying looselier, warm'd but by the heart Within them, moved but by the living limb. And cast aside, when old, for newer, — Forms ! The Spiritual in Nature's market-place — ■ The silent Alphabet-of-heaven-in-man Made vocal — banners blazoning a Power That is not seen and rules from far away — A silken cord let down from Paradise, When fine Philosophies would fail, to draw The crowd from wallowing in the mire of earth, AKBAR'S DREAM. 857 And all the more, when these behold their Lord, Who shaped the forms, obey them, and himself Here on this bank in jt'w^way live the life Beyond the bridge, and serve that Infinite Within us, as without, that All-in-all, And over all, the never-changing One And ever-changing Many, in praise of Whom The Christian bell, the cry from off the mosque. And vaguer voices of Polytheism Make but one music, harmonising, "Pray." There westward — under yon slow-fall- ing star, The Christians own a Spiritual Head; And following thy true counsel, by thine aid. Myself am such in our IslSm, for no Mirage of glory, but for power to fuse My myriads into union under one; To hunt the tiger of oppression out From office; and to spread the Divine Faith Like calming oil on all their stormy creeds. And fill the hollows between wave and wave ; To nurse my children on the milk of Truth, And alchemise old hates into the gold Of Love, and make it current; and beat back The menacing poison of intolerant priests, Those cobras ever setting up their hoods — One Alia! oneKalifa! Still — at times A doubt, a fear, — and yester afternoon I dream'd, — thou knowest how deep a well of love My heart is for my son, Saleem, mine heir, — And yet so wild and wayward that my dream — He glares askance at thee as one of those Who mix the wines of heresy in the cup Of counsel — so — I pray thee Well, I dream'd That stone by stone I rear'd a sacred fane, A temple, neither Pagod, Mosque, nor Church, But loftier, simpler, always open-door'd To every breath from heaven, and Truth and Peace And Love and Justice came and dwelt- therein; But while we stood rejoicing, I and thou, I heard a mocking laugh " the new Kordn ! " And on the sudden, and with a cry " Saleem " Thou, thou — I saw thee fall before me, and then Me too the black-wing'd Azrael overcame, But Death had ears and eyes; I watch'd my son, And those that follow'd, loosen, stone from stone. All my fair work; and from the ruin arose The shriek and curse of trampled mil- lions, even As in the time before; but while I groan'd, From out the sunset pour'd an alien race. Who fitted stone to stone again, and Truth, Peace, Love and Justice came and dwelt therein. Nor in the field without were seen or heard Fires of Siittee, nor wail of baby-wife. Or Indian widow; and in sleep I said " All praise to Alia by whatever hands My mission be accomplish'd ! " but we hear Music : our palace is awake, and morn Has lifted the dark eyelash of the Night From off the rosy cheek of waking Day. Our hymn to the sun. They sing it. Let us go.' Hymn. I. Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee rise. Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and eyes. Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down before thee, Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies. 858 AKBARS DREAM. Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime, Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme. Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the dome of azure Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time ! NOIES TO AKBAR'S DREAM. The great Mogul Emperor Akbar was born October 14, 1542, and died 1605. At 13 he suc- ceeded his father Humayun; at 18 he himself assumed the sole charge of government. He subdued and ruled over fifteen large provinces; his empire included all India north of the Vindhya Mountains — in the south of India he was not so successful. His tolerance of religions and his abhorrence of religious persecution put our Tudors to shame. He invented a new eclectic religion by which he hoped to unite all creeds, castes and peoples; and his legislation was re- markable for vigour, justice and humanity. ' Thy glory baffles wisdom* The Emperor quotes from a hymn to the Deity by Faizi, brother of Abul Fazl, Akbar's chief friend and minister, who wrote the Am z"y][,^(5a;>-/ (Annals of Akbar). His influence on his age was immense. It may be that he and his brother Faizi led Akbar's mind away from Isldm and the Prophet — this charge is brought against him by every Muhammadan writer; but Abul Fazl also led his sovereign to a true appreciation of his duties, and from the moment that he entered Court, the problem of suc- cessfully ruling over mixed races, which Isldm in few other countries had to solve, was carefully considered, and the policy of toleration was the result (Blochmann xxix.). Abul Fail thus gives an account of himself * The advice of my Father with difficulty kept me back from acts of folly ; my mind had no rest and my heart felt itself drawn to the sages of Mongolia or to the hermits on Lebanon. I longed for in- terviews with the Llamas of Tibet or with the padres of Portugal, and I would gladly sit with the priests of the Parsis and the learned of the Zendavesta. I was sick of the learned of my own land.' He became the intimate friend and adviser of Akbar, and helped him in his tolerant system of government. Professor Blochmann writes * Im- pressed with a favourable idea of the value of his Hindu subjects, he (Akbar) had resolved when pensively sitting in the evenings on the solitary stone at Futehpur-Sikri to rule with an even hand all men in his dominions; but as the extreme views of the learned and the lawyers continually urged him to persecute instead of to heal, he instituted discussions, because, believing himself to be in error, he thought it his duty as ruler to inquire.' ' These discussions took place every Thursday night in the Ibadat-khana a building at Futehpur-Sikri, erected for the purpose' (Mai- leson) . In these discussions Abul Fazl became a great power, and he induced the chief of the disputants to draw up a document defining the ' divine Faith * as it was called, and assigning to Akbar the rank of a Mujahid, or supreme khalifah, the vicegerent of the one true God. Abul Fazl was finally murdered at the insti- gation of Akbar's son Salim, who in his Memoirs declares that it was Abul Fazl who had perverted his father's mind so that he denied the divine mission of Mahomet, and turned away his love from his son. Faizi. When Akbar conquered the North- West Provinces of India, Faizi, then 20, began his life as a poet, and earned his living as a physician. He is reported to have been very generous and to have treated the poor for nothing. His fame reached Akbar's ears who commanded him to come to the camp at Chitor. Akbar was delighted with his varied knowledge and scholar- ship and made the poet teacher to his sons. Faizi at 33 was appointed Chief Poet (1588"). He col- lected a fine library of 4300 MSS. and died at the age of 40 (1595) when Akbar incorporated his collection of rare books in the Imperial Library. The Warring World of Hindostan. Akbar's rapid conquests and the good government of his fifteen provinces with their complete military, civil and political systems make him conspicuous among the great kings of history. The Goan Padre. Abul Fazl relates that ' one night the Ibadat-khana was brightened by the presence of Padre Rodolpho, who for intelli- gence and wisdom was unrivalled among Chris- tian doctors. Several carping and bigoted men attacked him and this afforded an opportunity for the display of the calm judgment and justice of the assembly. These men brought forward the old received assertions, and did not attempt to arrive at truth by reasoning. Their statements were torn to -pieces, and they were nearly put to shame, when they began to attack the contradic- tions of the Gospel, but they could not prove their assertions. With perfect calmness, and earnest conviction of the truth he replied to their arguments.' Abie Sa'td. ' Love is the net of Truth, Love THE BANDIT'S DEATH. 859 is the noose of God' is a quotation from the great Sufee poet Abu Sa'id — born a.d. 968, died at the age of 83. He is a mystical poet, and some of his expressions have been compared to our George Herbert. Of Shaikh Abu Sa'id it is re- corded that he said, ' when my affairs had reacht a certain pitch I buried under the dust my books and opened a shop on my own account (z'.^. began to teach with authority) , and verily men represented me as that which I was not, until it came to this, that they went to the Qadhi and testified against me of unbelieverhood ; and women got upon the roofs and cast unclean things upon me.' ( Vide reprint from article in Nati07ial Review, March, 1891, by C. J. Pick- ering.) Aziz. I am not aware that there is any rec- ord of such intrusion upon the king's privacy, but the expressions in the text occur in a letter sent by Akbar's foster-brother Aziz, who refused to come to court when summoned and threw up his government, and ' after writing an insolent and reproachful letter to Akbar in which he asked him if he had received a book from heaven, or if he could work miracles like Mahomet that he presumed to introduce a new religion, warned him that he was on the way to eternal perdition, md concluded with a prayer to God to bring him lack into the path of salvation' (Elphinstone), ' The Koran, the Old and New Testament, aid the Psalms of David are called books by way oi excellence, and their followers " People of the Ebok"' (Elphinstone). Akbar according to Abdel Kadir had his son Mirad instructed in the Gospel, and used to mdce him begin his lessons ' In the name of Chist ' instead of in the usual way ' In the name of(od.' 71? drive A ^opiefrom the ir ancient fold of Truth, etc. Malison says ' This must have happened because Akb*- states it, but* of the forced conversions I ha^ found no record. This must have taken place vhilst he was still a minor, and whilst the chief iithority was wielded by Bairam.' *I rea^no revetiue from the f eld of unbelief ' The H^us are fond of pilgrimages, and Akbar removeta remunerative tax raised by his prede- cessors n pilgrimages. He also abolished the fezza orcapitation tax on thosfe who differed from thriMahomedan faith. He discouraged all exceslve prayers, fasts and pilgrimages. Sati. Vkbar decreed that every widow who showed th least desire not to be burnt on her husband's ineral pyre, should be let go free and unharmed. Baby-wife. He forbad marriage before the age of puberty. Indian widow. Akbar ordained that remar- riage was lawful. Music. ' About a watch before daybreak,' says Abul Fazl, the musicians played to the king in the palace. ' His Majesty had such a knowl- edge of the science of music as trained musicians do not possess.' ' The Divine Faith.' The Divine Faith slowly passed away under the immediate successors of Akbar. An idea of what the Divine Faith was may be gathered from the inscription at the head of the poem. The document referred to, Abul Fazl says ' brought about excellent results (i) the Court became a gathering place of the sages and learned of all creeds ; the good doctrines of all religious systems were recognized, and their defects were not allowed to obscure their good features; (2) perfect toleration or peace with all was established; and (3) the perverse and evil- minded were covered with shame on seeing the disinterested motives of His Majesty, and these stood in the pillory of disgrace.' Dated Septem- ber 1579 — Ragab 987 (Blochmann xiv.). THE BANDITS DEATH.* TO SIR WALTEP. SCOTT.i great and gallant scott, True gentleman heart, blood and bone, 1 WOULD IT had been MY LOT To have seen thee, and heard thee, and known. Sir, do you see this dagger? nay, why do you start aside? I was not going to stab you, tho' I am the Bandit's bride. You have set a price on, his head : I may claim it without a lie. What have I here in the cloth? I will show it you by-and-by. Sir, I was once a wife. I had one brief summer of bliss But the Bandit had woo'd me in vain, and he stabb'd my Piero with this. * I have adopted Sir Walter Scott's version of the following story as given in his last journal (Death of II Bizarro) — but I have taken the liberty of making some slight alterations. * Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. 86o THE CHURCH-WARDEN AND THE CURATE, And he dragg'd me up there to his cave in the mountain, and there one day He had left his dagger behind him. I found it. I hid it away. For he reek'd with the blood of Piero; his kisses were red with his crime, And I cried to the Saints to avenge me. They heard, they bided their time. In a while I bore him a son, and he loved to dandle the child, And that was a link between us; but I — to be reconciled? — No, by the Mother of God, tho' I think I hated him less. And — well, if I sinn'd last night, I will find the Priest and confess. Listen ! we three were alone in the dell at the close of the day. I was lilting a song to the babe, and it laugh'd like a dawn in May. Then on a sudden we saw your soldiers crossing the ridge, And he caught my little one from me : we dipt down under the bridge By the great dead pine — you know it — and heard, as we crouch'd below, The clatter of arms, and voices, and men passing to and fro. Black was the night when we crept away — not a star in the sky — Hush'd as the heart of the grave, till the little one utter'd a cry. I whisper'd ' give it to me,' but he would not answer me — then He gript it so hard by the throat that the boy never cried again. We return'd to his cave — the link was broken — he sobb'd and he wept, And cursed himself; then he yawn'd, for the wretch cou/d sleep, and he slept Ay, till dawn stole into the cave, and a ray red as blood Glanced on the strangled face — I could make Sleep Death, if I would — Glared on at the murder'd son, and the murderous father at rest, . . . I drove the blade th^t had slain my hus- band thrice thro* his breast. He was loved at least by his dog : it was chain'd, but its horrible yell * She has kill'd him, has kill'd him, has kill'd him ' rang out all down thro' the dell. Till I felt I could end myself too with the dagger — so deafen'd and dazed — Take it, and save me from it ! I fled. I was all but crazed With the grief that gnaw'd at my heart, and the weight that dragg'd at my hand; But thanks to the Blessed Saints that I came on none of his band; And the band will be scatter'd now thei' gallant captain is dead. For I with this dagger of his — do yoi doubt me? Here is his head ! THE CHURCH-WARDEN A^D THE CURATE. This is written in the dialect which was curent in my youth at Spilsby and in the country aboit it Eh? good daay! good daay! thtw it bean't not mooCh of a daay. Nasty, casselty weather! an' meahaafe down wi' my haay ! How be the farm gittin on? joaways. Gittin on i'deead ! Why, tonups was haafe on 'er fingers an' toas, an' the mare ^rokken- kneead. An' pigs didn't sell at fall, a' wa lost wer Haldeny cow. An' it beats ma to knaw wot se died on, but wool's looking oof ony how. THE CHURCH-WAkDEN AND THE CURATE, 86i III. A.n' soa they've niaade tha a parson, an* thou'll git along, niver fear, Fur I bean chuch-warden mysen i' the parish fur lifteen year. Well— sin ther bea chuch- wardens, ther mun be parsons an' all, An' if t'one stick alongside t'uther the chuch weant happen a fall. Fur I wvir a Baptis wonst, an' agean the toithe an' the raate, Till I fun that it warn't not the gaainist waay to the narra Gaate. An' I can't abear 'em, I can't, fur a lot on 'em coom'd ta-year — I wur down wi' the rheumatis then — to my pond to wesh thessens theere — Sa I sticks like the ivin as Icag as I lives to the owd chuch now, Fur they wesh'd their sins i' my pond, an' I doubts they poison'd the cow. Ay, an' ya seed the Bishop. They says 'at he coom'd fra nowt — Burn i' traade. Sa I warrants 'e niver said haafe wot 'e thowt, But 'e creeapt an' 'e crawl'd along, till 'e feeald 'e could hovvd 'is oan. Then 'e married a great Yerl's darter, an' sits o' the Bishop's throan. Now I'll gie tha a bit o' my mind an' tha weant be taakin' offence. Fur thou l>e a big scholard now wi' a hoonderd haacre o' sense — But sich an obstropulous lad — naay, naay — fur 1 minds tha sa well, Tha'd niver not hopple thy tongue, an' the tongue's sit afire o' Hell, _ As I says to my missis to-daay, when she hurl'd a plaate at the cat An' anoother agean my noase. Ya was niver sa bad as that. But I minds when i' Howlaby beck won daay ya was ticklin' o' trout, An' keeaper 'e seed ya an roon'd, an' 'e beal'd to ya ' Lad coom hout ' An' ya stood oop maakt i' the beck, an' ya tell'd 'im to knaw his awn plaace An' ya call'd 'im a clown, ya did, an' ya thraw'd the fish i' 'is faace. An' 'e torn' d 'as red as a stag-tuck ey's wattles, but theer an' then I coamb'd 'im down, fur I promised ya'd niver not do it agean. An' I cotch'd tha wonst i' my garden, when thou was a height-year-howd, An' I fun thy pockets as full o' my pippins as iver they'd 'owd, An' thou was as pearky as owt, an' tha maade me as mad as mad. But I savs to tha * keeap 'em, an' welcome ' fur thou was the parson's lad. IX. An' Parson 'e 'ears on it all, an' then taakes kindly to me, An' then 1 wur chose Chuch-warden an' coom'd to the top o' the tree, Fur Quoloty's hall my friends, an' they maakes ma a help to the poor, When I gits the plaate fuller o' Soondays nor ony chuch-warden afoor, Fur if iver thy feyther 'ed riled me I kep' mysen meeak as a lamb, An' saw by the Graace o' the Lord, Mr. Harry, I ham wot I ham. But Parson 'e will speak out, saw, now 'e be sixty-seven. He'll niver swap Owlby an' Scratby fur owt but the Kingdom o' Heaven; An' thou'll be 'is Curate 'ere, but, if iver tha means to git 'igher, Tha mun tackle the sins o' the Wo'ld, an' not the faults o' the Squire. An' I reckons tha'U light of a Hvin' some- wheers i' the Wov/d or the P'en, If tha cottons down to thy betters, an' keeaps thysen to thysen. But niver not speak plaain out, if th? wants to git forrards a bit, But creeap along the hedge-bottoms, an thou'll be a Bishop yit. 862 CHARITY, XI. Naay, but tha i7iun speak hout to the Baptises here i' the town, Fur moast on 'em talks agean tithe, an' I'd Uke tha to preach 'em down, Fur the/vG been a-preachin' 7?iea down, they heve, an' I haates 'em now, Fur they leaved their nasty sins i' my pond, an' it poison'd the cow. GLOSSARY. ' Casselty,' casualty, chance weather. ' Haafe down wi' my haay,' while my grass is only half-mown. ' Fingers an' toas,' a disease in turnips. ' Fall,' autumn. ' If t'one stick alongside t'uther,' if the one hold by the other. One is pronounced like ' own.' ' Fun,' found. ' Gaainist,' nearest. ' Ta-year,' this year. * Ivin,' ivy, * Obstropulous,' obstreperous— here the Curate makes a sign of deprecation. ' Hopple ' or ' hobble,' to tie the legs of a skit- tish cow when she is being milked. * Beal'd,' bellowed. In such words as * torned,' * turned,' * hurled,* the r is hardly audible. ' Stag-tuckey,' turkey-cock. * Height-year-howd,' eight-year-old. ' 'Owd,' hold. ' Pearky,' pert. ' Wo'ld,' the world. Short o. ' Wowd,' wold. CHARITY/ What am I doing, you say to me, ' wast- ing the sweet summer hours'? Haven't you eyes? I am dressing the grave of a woman with flowers. For a woman ruin'd the world, as God's own scriptures tell, And a man ruin'd mine, but a woman, God bless her, kept me from Hell. Love me ? O yes, no doubt — how long — till you threw me aside ! Dresses and laces and jewels and never a ring for the bride. All very well just now to be calling me darling and sweet. And after a while would it matter so much if I came on the street? You when I met you first — when ^e brought you ! — I turn'd away And the hard blue eyes have it still, that stare of a beast of prey. You were his friend — you — you — when he promised to make me his bride. And you knew that he meant to betray me — you knew — you knew that he lied. He married an heiress, an orphan with half a shire of estate, — I sent him a desolate wail and a curse, when I learn'd my fate. For I used to play with the knife, creep down to the river-shore, Moan to myself ' one plunge — then quiet for evermore.' Would the man have a touch of remorse when he heard what an end was mine? Or brag to his fellow rakes of his conquest over their wine? Money — my hire — Ais money- back what he gave,-^ -I sent him * Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. KAPIOLANl. 863 Will you move a little that way? your shadow falls on the grave. Two trains clash'd : then and there he was crush'd in a moment and died, But the new-wedded wife was unharm'd, tho' sitting close at his side. She found my letter upon him, my wail of reproach and scorn; I had cursed the woman he married, and him, and the day I was born. They put him aside for ever, and after a week — no more — A stranger as welcome as vSatan — a widow came to my door : So I turn'd my face to the wall, I was mad, I was raving-wild, I was close on that hour of dishonour, the birth of a baseborn child. O you that can flatter your victims, and juggle, and lie and cajole, Man, can you even guess at the love of a soul for a soul? I had cursed her as woman and wife, and in wife and woman I found The tenderest Christ-like creature that ever stept on the ground. XVII. She watch'd me, she nursed me, she fed me, she sat dav and night by my bed. Till the joyless birthday came of a boy born happily dead. And her name? what was it? I ask'd her. She said with a sudden glow On her patient face ' My dear, I will tell you before I go.' XIX. And I when I learnt it at last, I shriek'd, I sprang from my seat, I wept, and I kiss'd her hands, I flung myself down at her feet, And we pray'd together for him, for hivi who had given her the name. She has left me enough to live on. I need no wages of shame. XXI. She died of a fever caught when a nurse in a hospital ward. She is high in the Heaven of Heavens, she is face to face with her Lord, And He sees not her like anywhere in this pitiless world of ours ! I have told you my tale. Get you gone. I am dressing her grave with flow- ers. KAPIOLANl. Kapiolani was a great chieftainess who lived jn the Sandwich Islands at the beginning of this century. She won the cause of Christianity by openly defying the priests of the terrible goddess Peele. In spite of their threats of vengeance she ascended the volcano Mauna-Loa, then clambered down over a bank of cinders 400 feet high to the great lake of fire (nine miles round) — Kilauea — the home and haunt of the goddess, and flung into the boiling lava the consecrated berries which it was sacrilege for a woman to handle. When from the terrors of Nature a peo- ple have fashion'd and worship a Spirit of Evil, 864 THE DAWN. Blest be the Voice of the Teacher who calls to them * Set yourselves free ! ' Noble the Saxon who hurl'd at his Idol a valorous weapon in olden Eng- land ! Great and greater, and greatest of women, island heroine, Kapiolani Clomb the mountain, and flung the berries, and dared the Goddess, and freed the people Of Hawa-i-ee ! A people believing that Peele the Goddess would wallow in fiery riot and revel On Kilauea, Dance in a fountain of flame with her devils, or shake with her thunders and shatter her island. Rolling her anger Thro' blasted valley and flaring forest in blood-red cataracts down to the sea! Long as the lava-light Glares from the lava-lake Dazing t;he starlight. Long as the silvery vapour in daylight Over the mountain Floats, will t)ie glory of Kapiolani be min- gled with either on Hawa-i-ee. V. What said her Priesthood? * Woe to this island if ever a woman should handle or gather the berries of Peele ! Accursed were she ! And woe to this island if ever a woman should climb to the dwelling of Peele the Goddess ! Accursed were she ! ' One from the Sunrise Dawn'd on His people, and slowly before bim Vanish'd shadow-like Gods and Goddesses, None but the terrible Peele remaining as Kapiolani ascended her mountain. Baffled her priesthood. Broke the Taboo, Dipt to the crater, Call'd on the Power adored by the Chris- tian, and crying ' I dare her, let Peele avenge herself! ' Into the flame-billow dash'd the berries, and drove the demon from Pla- THE DAWN. You are but children." Egyptiati Priest to Solon. Red of the Dawn ! Screams of a babe in the red-hot palms of a Moloch of Tyre, Man with his brotherless dinner on man in the tropical wood. Priests in the name of the Lord passing souls thro' fire to the fire, Head-hunters and boats of Dahomey that float upon human blood ! Red of the Dawn! Godless fury of peoples, and Christless frolic of kings. And the bolt of war dashing down upon cities and blazing farms. For Babylon was a child new-born, and Rome was a babe in arms. And London and Paris and all the res*: are as yet but in leading-strings. III. Dawn not Day, While scandal is mouthing a bloodless name at her cannibal feast. And rake-ruin'd bodies and souls go down in a common wreck, And the Press of a thousand cities is prized for it smells of the beast. Or easily violates virgin Truth for a coin or a cheque. THE MAKING OF MAN—MECHANOPHILUS. 865 IV. Dawn not Day ! Is it Shame, so few should have climb'd from the dens in the level below, Men, with a heart and a soul, no slaves of a four-footed will ? But if twenty million of summers are stored in the sunlight still. We are far from the noon of man, there v. time for the race to grow. Red of the Dawn ! Is it turning a fainter red? so be it, but when shall we lay The Ghost of the Brute that is walking and haunting us yet, and be free? In a hundred, a thousand winters? Ah, what will our children be, The men of a hundred thousand, a million summers away? THE MAKING OF MAN. Where is one that, born of woman, alto- gether can escape From the lower world within him, moods of tiger, or of ape ? Man as yet is being made, and ere the crowning Age of ages, Shall not aeon after seon pass and touch him into shape? All about him shadow still, but, while the races flower and fade. Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on the shade, Till the peoples all are one, and all their voices blend in choric Hallelujah to the Maker ' It is finish'd. Man is made.' THE DREAMER. On a midnight in midwinter when all but the winds were dead, *The meek shall inherit the earth ' was a Scripture that rang thro' his head, rill he dream'd that a Voice of the Earth went wailingly past him and said : 3«^ * I am losing the light of my Youth And the Vision that led me of old, And I clash with an iron Truth, When I make for an Age of gold, And I would that my race were run, For teeming with liars, and madmen, and knaves. And wearied of Autocrats, Anarchs, and Slaves, And darken'd with doubts of a Faith that saves. And crimson with battles, and hollow with graves. To the wail of my winds, and the moan of my waves I whirl, and I follow the Sun.' Was it only the wind of the Night shrill- ing out Desolation and wrong Thro' a dream of the dark? Yet he thought that he answer'd her wail with a song — Moaning your losses, O Earth, Heart- weary and overdone! But all's well that ends well, Whirl, and follow the Sun ! He is racing from heaven to heaven And less will be lost than won, For all's well that ends well. Whirl, and follow the Sun ! The Reign of the Meek upon earth. O weary one, has it begun? But all's well that ends well, Whirl, and follow the Sun I For moans will have grown sphere music Or ever your race be run ! And all's well that ends well. Whirl, and follow the Sun ! MECHANOPHILUS. (In the time of the first railways.) Now first we stand and understand. And sunder false from true. And handle boldly with the hand, And see and shape and do. 866 RIFLEMEN FORM— THE TOURNEY. Dash 6ack that ocean with a pier, Strow yonder mountain flat, A railway there, a tunnel here. Mix me this Zone with that ! Bring me my horse — my horse? my wings That I may soar the sky, For Thought into the outward springs, I find her with the eye. O will she, moonlike, sway the main, And bring or chase the storm, Who was a shadow in the brain, And is a living form? Far as the Future vaults her skies, From this my vantage ground To those still-working energies I spy nor term nor bound. As we surpass our fathers' skill. Our sons will shame our own; A thousand things are hidden still And not a hundred known. And had some prophet spoken true Of all we shall achieve, The wonders were so wildly new That no man would believe. Meanwhile, my brothers, work, and wield The forces of to-day, And plow the Present like a field. And garner all you may ! You, what the cultured surface grows. Dispense with careful hands : Deep under deep for ever goes. Heaven over heaven expands. RIFLEMEN FORM! There is a sound of thunder afar, Storm in the South that darkens the day ! Storm of battle and thunder of war ! Well ii it do not roll our way. Storm, Storm, Riflemen form ! Ready, be ready against the storm ! Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form ! Be not deaf to the sound that warns, Be not gull'-d by a despot's plea ! Are figs of thistles? or grapes of thornrl How can a despot feel with the Free? Form, Form, Riflemen Form ! Ready, be ready to meet the storm ! Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form ! Let your reforms for a moment go ! Look to your butts, and take good aims ! Better a rotten borough or so Than a rotten fleet and a city in flames ! Storm, Storm, Riflemen form ! Ready, be ready against the storm ! Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form ! Form, be ready to do or die ! Form in Freedom's name and the Queen's\ True we have got — such a faithful ally That only the Devil can tell what he means. Form, Form, Riflemen Form ! Ready, be ready to meet the storm ! Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen form ! ^ 1 I have been asked to republish this old poem, which was first published in ' The Times,' May 9, 1859, before the Volunteer movement began. THE TOURNEY. Ralph would fight in Edith's sight, For Ralph was Edith's lover, Ralph went down like a fire to the fight^ Struck to the left and struck to the right, Roli'd them over and over. ' Gallant Sir Ralph,' said the king. Casques were crack'd and hauberks hack'd. Lances snapt in sunder. Rang the stroke, and sprang the blood, Knights were thwack'd and riven, and hew'd Like broad oaks with thunder. ' O what an arm,' said the king, Edith bow'd her stately head. Saw them lie confounded, Edith Montfort bow'd her head, Crovvn'd her knight's, and flush'd as red As poppies when she crown'd it. ' Take her Sir Ralph,' said the king. BEE AND FLOWER— DOUBT AND PRAYER. 867 THE BEE AND THE FLOWER. The bee buzz'd up in the heat. ' I am faint for your honey, my sweet.' The flower said ' Take it my dear, For now is the spring of the year. So come, come ! ' ' Hum ! ' And the bee buzz'd down from the heat. And the bee buzz'd up in the cold When the flower was wither'd and old. ' Have you still any honey, my dear?' She said ' It's the fall of the year, But come, come ! ' ' Hum ! ' And the bee buzz'd off" in the cold. THE WANDERER. The gleam of household sunshine ends, And here no longer can I rest; Farewell ! — You will not speak, my friends, Unfriendly of your parted guest. O well for him that finds a friend, Or makes a friend where'er he come. And loves the world from end to end. And wanders on from home to home ! happy he, and fit to live, On whom a happy home has power To make him trust his life, and give His fealty to the halcyon hour ! 1 count you kind, I hold you true; But what may follow who can tell? Give me a hand — and you — and you — And deem me grateful, and farewell ! POETS AND CRITICS. This thing, that thing is the rage, Helter-skelter runs the age; Minds on this round earth of ours Vary like the leaves and flowers, Fashion'd after certain laws; Sing thou low or loud or sweet, All at all points thou canst not meet, Some will pass and some will pause. What is true at last will tell : Few at first will place thee well; Some too low would have thee shine. Some too high — no fault of thine — Hold thine own, and work thy will ! Year will graze the heel of year. But seldom comes the poet here, And the Critic's rarer still. A VOICE SPAKE OUT OF THE SKIES. A Voice spake out of the skies To a just man and a wise — 'The world and all within it Will only last a minute ! ' And a beggar began to cry * Food, food or I die ! ' Is it worth his while to eat, Or mine to give him meat, If the world and all within it Were nothing the next minute? DOUBT AND PRAYER. Tho' Sin too oft, when smitten by Thy rod, Rail at ' Blind Fate ' with many a vain ' Alas ! ' From sin thro' sorrow into Thee we pass By that same path our true forefathers trod; And let not Reason fail me, nor the sod Draw from my death Thy living flower and grass, Before I learn that Love, which is, and was My Father, and my Brother, and my God! Steel me with patience ! soften me with grief ! Let blow the trumpet strongly while I pray. Till this embattled wall of unbelief My prison, not my fortress, fall away ! Then, if thou wiliest, let my day be brief, So Thou wilt strike Thy glory thro' the day. 868 FAITH— DEATH OF THE DUKE OF CLARENCE. FAITH. Doubt no longer that the Highest is the wisest and the best, Let. not all that saddens Nature blight thy hope or break thy rest, Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the shipwreck, or the rolling Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or the famine, or the pest ! II. Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the heart's desire ! Thro' the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what is higher. Wait till Death has flung them open, when the man will make the Maker Dark no more with human hatreds in the glare of deathless fire ! THE SILENT VOICES.* When the dumb Hour, clothed in black. Brings the Dreams about my bed. Call me not so often back. Silent Voices of the dead, Toward the lowland ways behind me, And the sunlight that is gone ! Call me rather, silent voices, Forward to the starry track Glimmering up the heights beyond me On, and always on ! GOD AND THE UNIVERSE. Will my tiny spark of being wholly van- ish in your deeps and heights? Must my day be dark by reason, O ye Heavens, of your boundless nights. Rush of Suns, and roll of systems, and your fiery clash of meteorites? 'Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state, Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great, 'Nor the myriad world. His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate.' THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF CLARENCE AND AVON- DALE. To THE Mourners. The bridal garland falls upon the bier, The shadow of a crown, that o'er him hung, Has vanish'd in the shadow cast by Death. So princely, tender, truthful, reverent, pure — Mourn ! That a world-wide Empire mourns with you. That all the Thrones are clouded by your loss. Were slender solace. Yet be comforted; For if this earth be ruled by Perfect Love, Then, after his brief range of blameless days, The toll of funeral in an Angel ear Sounds happier than the merriest mar- riage-bell. The face of Death is toward the Sun of Life, His shadow darkens earth : his truer name Is ' Onward,' no discordance in the roll And march of that Eternal Harmony Whereto the worlds beat time, tho' faintly heard Until the great Hereafter. Mourn in hope ! * Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Ca CROSSING THE BAR. 869 CROSSING THE BAR. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark ! Sunset and evening star, And may there be no sadness of fare- And one clear call for me ! well. And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I embark; When I put out to sea, For tho' from out our bourne of Time But such a tide as moving seems asleep. and Place Too full for sound and foam, The flood may bear me far. When that which drew from out the I hope to see my Pilot face to face boundless deep When I have crost the bar. Turns again home. ADDITIONAL POEMS. These Poems were not included by the Poet Laureate in his col- lected Poems, but have, since his death, been published by his son, Hallam, Lord Tennyson. They were submitted, according to the Poet's desire, to an expert committee of friends, before publication. ADDITIONAL POEMS. * I, LOVING Freedom for herself, And much of that which is her form, Wed to no faction in the state, A voice before the storm, I mourn in spirit when I think The year, that comes, may come with shame, Lured by the cuckoo-voice that loves To babble its own name. * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com- pany. * Life of the Life within my blood. Light of the Light within mine eyes, The May begins to breathe and bud. And softly blow the balmy skies; Bathe with me in the fiery flood. And mingle kisses, tears, and sighs, Life of the Life within my blood. Light of the Light within mine eyes. * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com- pany. TO .* Thou may'st remember what I said When thine own spirit was at strife With thine own spirit. " From the tomb And charnel-place of purpose dead. Thro' spiritual dark we come Into the light of spiritual life." God walk'd the waters of thy soul, And still'd them. When from change to change. Led silently by power divine. Thy thought did scale a purer range Of prospect up to self-control. My joy was only less than thine. ♦Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com- pany. THE HESPERIDES.* [Published and suppressed by my father, and republished by me here (with accents written by him) in consequence of a talk that I had with him, in which he regretted that he had done away with it from among his "Juve- nilia,"] Hesperus and his daughters three That sing about the golden tree. Contus. The North wind fall'n, in the new-starred night Zidonian Hanno, wandering beyond The hoary promontory of Soloe, Past Thymiaterion in calmed bays Between the southern and the western Horn, Heard neither warbling of the nightingale. Nor melody of the Libyan Lotus-flute Blown seaward from the shore; but from a slope That ran bloom-bright into the Atlantic blue. Beneath a highland leaning down a weight Of cliffs, and zoned below with cedar- shade, Came voices like the voices in a dream Continuous; till he reach'd the outer sea: — Song of the Three Sisters. I. The Golden Apple, the Golden Apple, the hallow'd fruit, Guard it well, guard it warily. Singing airily, * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com> pany. 873 874 THE HESPERIDES. Standing about the charmed root. Round about all is mute, As the snowfield on the mountain-peaks, As the sandfield at the mountain-foot. Crocodiles in briny creeks Sleep and stir not : all is mute. If ye sing not, if ye make false measure, We shall lose eternal pleasure. Worth eternal want of rest. Laugh not loudly : watch the treasure Of the wisdom of the W^est. In a corner wisdom whispers. Five and three (Let it not be preach'd abroad) make an awful mystery : For the blossom unto threefold music bloweth ; Evermore it is born anew, And the sap to threefold music floweth, From the root, Drawn in the dark. Up to the fruit, Creeping under the fragrant bark, Liquid gold, honeysweet thro and thr6. (^slow movement') Keen'cyed Sisters, singing airily, Looking warily Every way. Guard the apple night and day, Lest one from the East come and take it away. Father Hesper, Father Hesper, Watch, watch, ever and aye. Looking under silver hair with a silver eye. Father, twinkle not thy stedfast sight : Kingdoms lapse, and climates change, and races die; Honour comes with mystery; Hoarded wisdom brings delight. Number, tell th<^m over, and number How many the nystic fruit-tree holds, Lest the red-comb'd dragon slumber Roll'd together in. purple folds. Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stol'n away. For his ancient heart is drunk with over- watchings night and day Round about the hallow'd fruit-tree curl'd — Sing away, sing alodd evermore in the wind without stop, (^Anapcest) Lest his sealed eyelid drop. For he is older than the world. If he waken, we waken, Rapidly levelling eager eyes. If he sleep, zue sleep. Dropping the eyelid over our eyes. If the golden apple be taken The world will be overwise. Five Hnks, a golden chain are we, Hesper, the Dragon, and Sisters three Bound about the golden tree. Father Hesper, Father Hesper, Watch, watch, night and day. Lest the old wound of the world be healed. The glory unsealed, The golden apple stol'n away, And the ancient secret revealed. Look from West to East along: Father, old Himala weakens, Caucasus is bold and strong. Wandering waters unto wandering waters ^call; Let them clash together, foam and fall. Out of watchings, out of wiles. Comes the bliss of secret smiles. All things are not told to all. Half-round the mantling night is drawn. Purplefringed with even and dawn Hesper hateth Phosphor, evening hateth IV. Eve/y flower and every fruit the redolent breath Of the warm seawind ripeneth, Arching the billow in his sleep: But the land-wind wandereth. Broken by the highland steep. Two streams upon the violet deep. For the Western Sun, and the Western Star, And the low west-wind, breathing afar, The end of day and beginning of night. Keep the apple Holy and Bright; Holy and Bright, round and full, bright and blest, THE STATESMAN ^ THE LITTLE MAID, 875 Mellow'd in a land of rest : Watch it warily night and day ; All good things are in the West. Till mid-noon the cool East light Is shut out by the round of the tall hill brow. But, when the full-faced Sunset yel- lowly Stays on the flowerful arch of the bough, The luscious fruitage clustereth mel- lowly, Golden-kerneird, Golden-cored, Sunset-ripen'd above on the tree. The world is wasted with fire and sword. But the Apple of gold hangs over the - Sea! Five links — a Golden chain are we — Hesper, the Dragon, and Sisters three, Daughters three, Round about. All round about The gnarl'd bole of the charmed tree. The Golden Apple, The Golden Apple, The hallow'd fruit. Guard it well. Guard it warily. Watch it warily. Singing airily. Standing about the charmed root. THE STATESMAN.* They wrought a work which Time re- veres, A pure example to the lands. Further and further reaching hands For ever into coming years; They worshipt Freedom for her sake ; We faint unless the wanton ear Be tickled with the loud "hear, hear," To which the slight-built hustings shake; For where is he, the citizen, Deep-hearted, moderate, firm, who sees His path before him? not with' these. Shadows of statesmen, clever men ! Uncertain of ourselves we chase The clap of hands; we jar like boys: And in the hurry and the noise Great spirits grow akin to base. A sound of words that change to blows ! A sound of blows on armed breasts ! And individual interests Becoming bands of armed foes ! A noise of hands that disarrange The social engine ! fears that waste The strength of men, lest overhaste Should fire the many wheels of change ! Ill fares a people passion-wrought, A land of many days that cleaves In two great halves, when each one leaves The middle road of sober thought ! Not he that breaks the dams, but he That thro' the channels of the state Convoys the people's wish, is great; His name is pure, his fame is free : He cares, if ancient usage fade. To shape, to settle, to repair. With seasonable changes fair. And innovation grade by grade : Or, if the sense of most require A precedent of larger scope. Not deals in threats, but works with hope. And lights at length on his desire : Knowing those laws are just alone That contemplate a mighty plan. The frame, the mind, the soul of man, Like one that cultivates his own. He, seeing far an end sublime, Contends, despising party-rage, To hold the Spirit of the Age Against the Spirit of the Time. * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com pany. THE LITTLE MAID.* Along this glimmering gallery A child she loved to play; This chamber she was born in ! See, The cradle where she lay ! 876 THE ANTE-CHAMBER— THE GRAVE, That little garden was her pride, With yellow groundsel grown ! Those holly-thickets only hide Her grave — a simple stone ! * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com pany. THE ANTE-CHAMBER* That is his portrait painted by himself. Look on those manly curls so glossy dark, Those thoughtful furrows in the swarthy cheek; Admire that stalwart shape, those ample brows, And that large table of the breast dis- pread, Between low shoulders; how demure a smile. How full of wisest humour and of love. With some half-consciousness of inward power, Sleeps round those quiet lips; not quite a smile ; And look you what an arch the brain has built Above the eat>! and what a settled mind, Mature, harbour'd from change, contem- plative. Tempers the peaceful light of hazel eyes, Observing all things. This is he I loved. This is th^ man of whom you heard me speak. My fancy was the more luxurious. But his was minted in a detper mould. And took in more of Nature than mine own : Nor proved I such delight as he, to mark The humours of the polling and the wake, The hubbub of the market and the booths : How this one smiled, that other waved his arms, These careful and those candid brows, how each — Down to his slightest turns and atti- tudes — Was something that another could not be. How every brake and flower spread and rose, A various world ! which he compell'd once more Thro' his own nature, with well mingled hues. Into another shape, born of the first. As beautiful, but yet another world. All this so stirr'd him in his hour of joy, Mix'd with the phantom of his coming fame. That once he spake : " I lift the eyes ot thought, I look thro' all my glimmering life, I see At the end, as 'twere athwart a colour'c cloud. O'er the bow'd shoulder of a bland old Age, The face of placid Death." Long, Eus- tace, long May my strong wish, transgressing the low bound Of mortal hope, act on Eternity To keep thee here amongst us ! Yet he lives; His and my friendship have not suffer'd loss. His fame is equal to his years: his praise Is neither overdealt, nor idly won. Step thro' these doors, and I will show to you Another countenance, one yet more dear, More dear, for what is lost is made more dear; " More dear " I will not say, but rather bless The All-perfect Framer, Him, who made the heart, Forethinking its twinfold necessity. Thro' one whole life an overflowing u. i, Capacious both of Friendship and ci Love. * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com- pany. THREE POEMS OMITTED FROM "IN MEMORIAM." The Grave (Originally No. lvii.).* I. I KEEP no more a lone distress. The crowd have come to see thy grave, Small thanks or credit shall I have, But these shall see it none the less. TO A. H. H.— THE VICTOR HOURS — HAVELOCK— JACK TAR. ^tj The happy maiden's tears are free And she will weep and give them way; Yet one unschool'd in want will say " The dead are dead and let them be." Another whispers sick with loss: " O let the simple slab remain ! The * Mercy Jesu ' in the raiii ! The ' Miserere ' in the moss ! " " I love the daisy weeping dew, I hate the trim-set plots of art ! " My friend, thou speakest from the heart, But look, for these are nature too. - * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com- pany. To A. H. H. (Originally No. cviii.).* II. Young is the grief I entertain, And ever new the tale she tells, And ever young the face that dwells With reason cloister'd in the brain : Yet grief deserves a nobler name : She spurs an imitative will; 'Tis shame to fail so far, and still My failing shall be less my shame : Considering what mine eyes have seen. And all the sweetness which thou wast In thy beginnings in the past. And all the strength thou wouldst have been: A master mind with master minds, An orb repulsive of all hate, A will concentric with all fate, A life four-square to all the winds. * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com- pany. The Victor Hours ( Originally No. CXXVII.),* Are those the far-famed Victor Hours That ride to death the griefs of men? I fear not ; if I feared them, then Is this blind flight the winged Powers. Behold, ye cannot bring but good, And see, ye dare not touch the truth. Nor Sorrow beauteous in her youth, Nor Love that holds a constant mood. Ye must be wiser than your looks. Or wise yourselves, or wisdom-led. Else this wild whisper round my head Were idler than a flight of rooks. Go forward ! crumble down a throne. Dissolve a world, condense a star, Unsocket all the joints of war, And fuse the peoples into one. * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com- pany. HAVELOCK. Nov. 25TH, 1857.* Bold Havelock march'd. Many a mile went he. Every mile a battle, Every battle a victory. Bold Havelock march'd. Charged with his gallant few. Ten men fought a thousand. Slew them and overthrew. Bold Havelock march'd. Wrought with his hand and his head, March'd and thought and fought, March'd and fought himself dead. Bold Havelock died. Tender and great and good. And every man in Britain Says " I am of Havelock's blood ! " * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com- pany. JACK TAR.* They say some foreign powers have laid their heads together To break the pride of Britain, anc. bring her on her knees, There's a treaty, so they tell us, of some dishonest fellows. To break the noble pride of the Mis- tress of the Seas. Up, Jack Tars, and save us ! The whole world shall not brave us ! Up and save the pride of the Mis- tress of the Seas ! * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Com- pany. 87S JACK TAR. We quarrel here at home, and they plot against us yonder, They will not let an honest Briton sit at home at ease : Up, Jack Tars, my hearties ! and the d — 1 take the parties ! Up and save the pride of the Mistress of the Seas ! Up, Jack Tars, and save us ! The whole world shall not brave us ! Up and save the pride of the Mis- tress of the Seas 1 The lasses and the little ones. Jack Tars, they look to you ! The despots over yonder, let 'em do whate'er they please ! God bless the little isle where a man may still be true ! God bless the noble isle that is Mis- tress of the Seas ! Up, Tack Tars, and save us ! The whole world shall not brave us ! \iyoM will save the pride of the Mis- tress of the Seas. NOTES AUTHOR'S PREFATORY NOTES POETRY is like shot silk with many glowing colours, and every reader must find his own interpretation according to his ability, and according to his sympathy with the poet. I am told that my young countrymen would like notes to my poems. Shall I write what dictionaries tell to save some of the idle folk trouble? or am I to try to fix a moral to each poem ? or to add an analysis of passages? or to give a history of my similes ? I do not like the task. Knowledge, shone, knoll — let him who reads me always read the vowel in these words long. My paraphrases of certain Latin and Greek Unes seem too obvious to be men- tioned. Many of the parallelisms here given are accidental. The same idea must often occur independently to two men looking on the same aspects of Nature. There is a wholesome page in Eckermann's "Conversations with Goethe," where one or the other (I have not the book by me) remarks that the prosaic mind finds plagiar- ism in passages that only prove "the common brotherhood of man." — T, P. I, To THE Queen. lished in 1851. — Ed.] [First pub- P. I. lines 7, 8. This laurel greener from the brows Of him that utter'd nothing base. [Wordsworth. On Nov. 19, 1850, my father was appointed Poet Laureate in succession to Wordsworth. See Memoir, vol. i, p. 334 foil., and "Reminiscences of Tennyson in Early Days," Memoir, vol. i. pp. 208-210. — Ed.] The third verse in proof stood — Nor should I dare to flatter state, Nor such a lay would you receive. Were I to shape it, who beUeve Your nature true as you are great. P. 2. (Juvenilia) Claribel. [First pubhshed in 1830. — Ed.] All these ladies were evolved, like the camel, from my own consciousness. [Isabel was more or less a portrait. See p. 880, note to p. 6, Isabel. — Ed.] "JuveniUa" were pubhshed in 1830. John Stuart Mill reviewed the volume in the London Review (July 1835) ; Leigh Hunt in the Tatler; and Professor Wilson (Christopher North) in Blackwood. P. 2, line 15. lintwhite, i.e. linnet. P. 2. Nothing will Die. [First published in 1830. — Ed.] All things are evolved. [Cf . the early poem : 01 p40VT€S All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true, All visions wild and strange ; Man is the measure of all truth Unto himself. All truth is change; All me;i do walk in sleep, and all Have faith in that they dream : For all things are as they seem to all, And all things flow like a stream. There is no rest, no calm, no pause. Nor good nor ill, nor light nor shade, 879 88o ::dtes Nor essence nor eternal laws : For nothing is, but all is made. But if I dream that all these are, They are to me for that I dream : For all things are as they seem to all, •And all things flow like a stream. Ed.] P. 3. All Things will Die. [First published in 1830. — Ed.] P. 3, line 35. Nine times goes the passing bell. Nine times for a man. P. 3. Leonine Elegiacs. [First pub- lished in 1830. — Ed.] Line 10. "hyaline." [Cf. ws 6d\a4peLS ah/a, cpipeis fxaripi 'r'*'^"- Sappho. P. 3. Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind. [First published in 1830. — Ed.] If some kind friend had taken him by the hand and said, "Come, work" — "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others" (Philippians ii. 4) — he might have been a happy man, though sensitive. P. S- The Kraken. [First published in 1830. — Ed.] See the account which Erik Pontoppidan, the Norwegian bishop, born 1698, gives of the fabulous sea- monster — the kraken {Biographic Uni- verselle) : "Ce prodigieux polype dont le dos a une demilieue de circonference ou plus . . . quelquefois ses bras s'elevent a la hauteur des m^ts d'un navire de moyenne grandeur ... on croit que s'ils accrochaient le plus gros vaisseau de guerre, ils le feraient couler h. fond . . . les iles flottantes ne sent que des krakens." P. 6. Lilian. [First published in 1830. — Ed.] P. 6. Isabel. [First published in 1830. In the poem of Isabel the poet's mother was more or less described. "A remark- able and saintly woman," "One of the most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I ever saw," wrote Edward FitzGerald. She devoted herself entirely to her husband and her children. — Ed.] P. 7. Mariana. [First published in 1830. — Ed.] The moated grange was no particular grange, but one which rose to the music of Shakespeare's words: "There, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana" {Measure for Measure, Act III, Sc. i.). P. 7, line 4. pear. Altered from "peach," because "peach" spoils the desolation of the picture. It is not a characteristic of the scenery I had in mind. P. 7, col. 2, Unes 6-9. Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: The cock sung out an hour ere light: From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her. Compare Ballad of Clerk Saunders : " Cocks are crowing of merry midnight, I wot the wild fowls are boding day. The psalms of heaven will sure be simg," etc. [Cf. At midnight the cock was crowing. The Ballad of Oriana, p. 17. — Ed.] P. 7, col. 2, line 2. marish-mosses, the little marsh-moss lumps tnat float on the surface of water. P. 8. To — -. [First published in 1830. — Ed.] The first lines were ad- dicssed to Blakesley (afterwards Dean of Lincoln), but the poem wandered oil to describe an imaginary man. [Of Blakesley my father said: '■'He ought to be Lord Chancellor, for he is a subtle and powerful reasoner, and an honest man." — Ed.] P. 8, line 6. Ray-fringed eyelids. Cf. "Under the opening eyelids of the mom." Lycidas. P. 8, col. 2, line 2. Yabbok. Jabbok not so sweet as Yabbok. Cf. Gen. xxxii, 22- 32. The Hebrew J is Y. P. 8, col. 2, line 3. And heaven's mazed signs stood still. The stars stood still in their courses to watch. NOTES 88i P. 8. fMADELiNE. First published in 1830. — Ed.] P. 9. First Song to the Owl. [The songs were first published in 1830. — Ed.] Verse ii. line 6, his five wits, the five senses. Cf. "Bless thy five wits! Tom's a-cold, — O, do de, do de, do de" {King Lear, III. iv. 59). P. 9. Recollections of the Arabl4N Nights, [First published in 1830. — Ed.] Haroun Alraschid lived at the time of Charlemagne, and was renowned for his splendour and his patronage of literary men. I had only the translation — from the French of Galland — of the Arabian Nights when this was written, so I talked of sofas, etc. Lane was yet unborn. P. 9, Unes 13, 14. The low and bloomed foliage, drove The fragrant, glistening deeps. Not "drove over," as one commentator takes it, but the passage means that the deeps were driven before the prow. P. 9, line 23. platans, plane trees. Cf. The thick-leaved platans of the vale. The Princess, iii. 159. P. 10, col. I, Une 6. rivage, bank. P. 10, col. I, line 27. coverture. Cf. "the woodbine coverture " (Much Ado about Nothing," ni. i. 30). P. 10, col. I, Une 29. bulbul, the Persian name for Nightingale. Cf. "Not for thee," she said, • "O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan Shall burst her veil." The Priricess, iv. 104. P. 10, col. I, line 43. counter changed, chequered. Cf. Witch-elms that counterchange the floor Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright. In Memoriam, Lxxxix. P. 10, col. 2, line 37. silvers, silver candelabra. P. 10, col. 2, line 39. mooned, crowned with the Mohammedan crescent moon. The crescent is Ottoman, not Arabian, an anachronism pardonable in a boy's vision. P. 10, col. 2, line 46. Persian girl. 3 L The Persian girl "Noureddin, the fair Persian," in The Arabian Nights' Enter- tainments. P. II, Ode to Memory. [First pub- lished in 1830. My father considered this one of the best of his early and pecuUarly concentrated Nature-poems. — Ed.] The Ode to Memory is a very early poem; all except the lines beginning "My friend, with you to live alone," which were addressed to Arthur Hal lam and added. P. II, line 9. yesternight, the past. P. II, col. 2, line 34 to p. 12, col. i, Une 5. Of purple cliffs, aloof descried; Come from the woods that belt the gray hill-side, The seven elms, the Poplars four That stand beside my father's door, A nd chiefly from the brook that loves To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand. Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves. The rectory at Somersby. The poplars have gone. [The lawn at Somersby was over- shadowed on one side by the wych-elms, and on the other by larch and sycamore trees. Here the poet made his early song, "A spirit haunts the year's last hours." Beyond the path, bounding the greensward to the south, ran in the old days a deep border of lilies and roses, backed by holly- hocks and sunflowers. Beyond that was a garden bower'd close With plaited alleys of the trailing rose. Long alleys falUng down to twilight grots, Or opening upon level plots Of crowned lilies, standing near Purple-spiked lavender — sloping in a gradual descent to the parson's field, at the foot of which flows, by "lawn and lea," the swift steep-banked brook, where are "brambly wildernesses," and "sweet forget-me-nots," and under the water the "long mosses sway." The charm and beauty of this brook haunted him through Ufe. — Ed.] P. 12, col. I, Une 12. wolds. Somersby is on the wolds or hills, about seven miles from the fens. [Edward FitzGerald writer; **Long 882 NOTES after A. T. had settled in the Isle of Wight, I used to say he never should have left old Lincolnshire, where there were not only such grand seas, but also such fine Hill and Dale among The Wolds, which he was brought up on, as people in general scarce thought of." — Ed.] P. 12, col. I, line 41. Pike. Cumber- land word for Peak. P. 12, col. I, lines 42-44 refer to Mable- thorpe. I used to stand [when a boy] on the sand-built ridge at Mablethorpe and think that it was the spine-bone of the world. The seas there are interminable waves rolling along interminable shores of sand. P. 12. Song. [Written at Somersby; first published in 1830. — Ed.] P. 12, line 12. Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. On a sloping bed the tiger-liUes drooped on a dank, damp day. [In 1828 my father had written the following (hitherto unpublished) poem about his home: HOME What shall sever me From the love of home ? Shall the weary sea. Leagues of soimding foam ? Shall extreme distress, Shall unknown disgrace. Make my love the less For my sweet birth-place ? Tho' my brains grow dry, Fancy mew her wings, And my memory Forget all other things, — Tho' I could not tell My left hand from my right, — I should know thee well, Home of my delight ! Ed.] P. 13. A Character. [First pubUshed in 1830. This man was "a very plaus- ible, parliament-hke, and self-satisfied speaker at the Union Debating Society." — Edward FitzGerald. The following character-poem was also written at Cambridge : TO Thou may'st remember what I said When thine own spirit was at strife With thine own spirit. "From the tomb And chamel-place of purpose dead, Thro' spiritual dark we come Into the light of spiritual hfe." God walk'd the waters of thy soul, And still'd them. When from change to change. Led silently by power divine. Thy thought did scale a purer range Of prospect up to self-control. My joy was only less than thine. Ed.] P. 13. The Poet. [First published in 1830. — Ed.] P. 13, line 3. Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn. The poet hates hate; and scorns scorn. [My father denounced hate and scorn as if they were "the sins against the Holy Ghost." — Ed.] P. 13, col. 2, line 5. Calpe. Gibraltar (one of the pillars of Hercules) was the western limit of the old world, as Caucasus was the eastern. P. 13, col. 2, line 19. the arrow-seeds of the field-flower, the dandelion. P. 14. The Poet's Mind. [First pub- lished in 1830. — Ed.] P. 14. The Sea-Fairies. [First pub- Ushed in 1830. — Ed.] P. 15. The Deserted House = the body which Life and Thought have left. [First published in 1830. — Ed.] P. 15. The Dying Swan. [First pub- Ushed in 1830. — Ed.] P. 16, col. I, line 5. Chasing itself at its own wild will. The circling of the swallow. P. 16, col. I, Une 14. the coronach, the Gaelic funeral song. P. 16, col. I, Une 26, soughing. Anglo- Saxon sweg, a sound. Modified into an onomatopoeic word for the soft sound or the deep sighing of the wind, NOTES 883 P. 16. A Dirge. [First published in 1830. — Ed.] P. 16, col. 2, line i. carketh, vexeth. [From late Latin car care, to load, whence to charge. — Ed.] P. 16, col. 2, line 16, eglatere, for eglantine. Cf. "With sicamour was set and eglatere." The Floure and the Leafe. P. 16, col. 2, line 22. pleached, plaited iplico). [Cf. Much Ado about Nothing, III, i. 7 : " the pleached bower, Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun. Forbid the sun to enter." Ed.] P. 16, col. 2, line 24. long purples {Vicia Cracca), the purple vetch. Nothing to do with " long purples" (Hamlet, iv. vii. 170). P. 17, col. I, line i. balm-cricket, cicala. There is an old school-book used by me when a boy {Analecta Grasca Major a et Minora). In the notes there to a poem of Theocritus I found Te-mri^ translated "balm-cricket." "Balm" was evidently a corruption of Baum, tree (Baum-grille) . [A confusion was evidently made be- tween the German Baum and the French baume. — Ed.] P. 17. Love and Death. [First pub- lished in 1830. — Ed.] P. 17, line 4. cassia (Gk. Ka ^wveiJ- cas U7raK0i/€t 884 NOTES Kal yeXal2i, col. 2, line 22. The simple senses crowfi'd his head. The simple senses made death a king. P. 34, col. I, lines 31, 32. Before the Utile duds began To feed thy bones with lime. [Cf. Animal Physiology, by W. B. Car- penter: "In the first development of the embryo, a sort of mould of cartilage is laid down for the greater part of the bones. . . . The process of ossification, or bone- formation, commences with the deposit of calcareous matter in the intercellular sub- stance of the cartilage, so as to form a sort of network, in the interspaces of which are seen the remains of the cartilage-cells. The tissue thus formed can scarcely be considered as true bone, for it contains neither lacunce nor canaliculi. Before long, however, it undergoes very important changes; for many of the partitions are removed, so that the minute chambers which they separated coalesce into larger ones; and thus are formed the cancelli of the spongy substance, and the Haversian canals of the more compact." — Ed.] P. 36, col. I, line 3. You scarce could see the grass for flowers. [Edward FitzGerald says: "Composed as he walked about the Dulwich meadows." — Ed.] P. 36. The Miller's Daughter. [First published in 1832; much altered in 1842. — Ed.] No particular mill, but if I thought at all of any mill it was that of Trumpington, near Cambridge. [FitzGerald notes: "This Poem, as may be seen, is much altered and enlarged from the ist Ed. (dated) 1833; in some respects, I think, not for the better ; losing somewhat of the easy character of 'Talk over the Walnuts and the Wine.' Any- how, would one not preserve the first stanza of the original, slightly altered, as A. T. suggested to me ? I met in all the close green ways, While walking with my rod and line, The Miller with his mealy face. And long'd to take his hand in mine. He look'd so jolly and so good. When fishing in the milldam-water, I laugh' d to see him as he stood. And dreamt not of the miller's daughter." Ed.] P. 36, col. 2, lines 32, 33. Below the chestnuts, when their buds Were glistening to the breezy blue. First reading : Beneath those gummy chestnut buds That gUstened in the April blue. P. 37. Verse omitted after col. i, line 38. That slope beneath the chestnut tall Is woo'd with choicest breaths of air ; Methinks that I could tell you all The cowsUps and the kingcups there, Each coltsfoot down the grassy bent Whose round leaves hold the gather'd shower. Each quaintly-folded cuckoo-pint And silver-paly cuckoo flower. [Cuckoo-pint, or Lords and Ladies, Arum maculatum. Cuckoo-flower, Car- damine pratensis. — Ed.] P. 37, col. 2, lines 17-40. [Spedding writes in the Edinburgh for April 1843 : '"The Millers Daughter' is much en- riched by the introduction of the mother of the lover ; and the following beautiful stanzas (which many people however, will be ill satisfied to miss) are displaced to make room for beauty of a much higher order : Remember you the clear moonlight That whiten' d all the eastern ridge. When o'er the water dancing white I stepp'd upon the old mill bridge ? I heard you whisper from above, A lute-toned whisper, ' I am here ! ' I murmur'd ' Speak again, my love, The stream is loud : I cannot hear ! ' I heard, as I have seem'd to hear. When all the under-air was still. The low voice of the glad New Year Call to the freshly-flov/er'd hill. I heard, as I have often heard, The nightingale in leavy woods Call to its mate when nothing stirr'd To left or right but falling floods. NOTES 887 "These, we observe, are away; and the following graceful and tender picture, full of the spirit of English rural life, appears in their place. (The late squire's son, we should presume, is bent on marrying the daughter of the wealthy miller) : And slowly was my mother brought Approaching, press' d you heart to heart." Ed.] P. 38. Fatima. [Published in 1832, to which this quotation from Sappho was pre- fixed: (paiverai /xoi ktjpos ('." Paper- hanging=Manufacturer. "Invalid Chair- maker" is a sick maker of chairs. Invalid- chair=maker. P. 39, col. I, line i. Ida. On the south of Troas. P. 39, col. 2, line 4. Gargara or Gargaron. The highest part of Mt. Ida. Ipsa suas mirantur Gargara messes. Georg. ir 103. • P. 39, col. 2, Une 10. Paris, once her playmate on the hills. [See Apollodorus, iii. 12, etc. — Ed.] P. 39, col. 2, lines 16, 17. This sort of refrain : O mother Ida, many-fountain' d Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die is found in Theocritus. For "many-foun- tain'd" cf. //. viii. 47 : IStji/ 5' 'Uave TroXviridaKa, firjT^pa dripCbv and elsewhere in the Iliad. P. 39, col. 2, line 18. For now the noonday quiet holds the hill. fjLecrafi^pLpr] 5' eix ^pos rfavxt-o-- CaUimachus, Lavacrum Palladis, 72. P, 39, col. 2, Une 21. and the winds are dead. Altered from the original read- ing of 1842, "and the cicala sleeps." In these lines describing a perfect stillness, I did not like the jump, "Rests like a shadow — and the cicala sleeps." Moreover, in the heat of noon the cicala is generally at its loudest, though I have read that, in extreme heat, it is silent. Some one (I forget who) found them silent at noon on the slopes of Etna. In the Pyrenees, where part of this poem was written, I saw a very beautiful sp>ecies of cicala, which had scarlet wings spotted with black. Probably nothing- of the kind exists in Mount Ida. P. 39, col. 2, Une 22. flower droops. "Flowers droop" in the original edition of 1842 was a misprint for "flower droops." P. 39, col. 2, line 24. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love. This line, that any child might have NOTES written, is not, as some writers say, taken from Shakespeare: "Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of grief." 2 Henry VI, ii. iii. 17. P. 39, col. 2, line 34. Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed. [Cf. Tithonus, p. 95, col. 2, lines 1,2: Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing, While Ilion like a mist rose into towers ; and Ovid, Heroides, xvi. 179: Ilion adspicies, firmataque turribus altis Moenia, Phoebeae structa canore lyrae. Ed.] P. 40, col. I, line 17. foam-bow. The rainbow in the cataract, formed by the simshine on the foam. P. 46, col. I, line 22. Hesperian gold, from the gardens of the Hesperides. P. 40, col. I, line 31. married brows, meeting eye-brows, (T^vo line II. Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn. Lying among these mountains before this waterfall, that comes down one thousand or twefve hundred feet, I sketched it (according to my custom then) in these words. P. 53, line 23. slender galingale. I meant the Cyperus papyrus of Linnaeus. P. 53, col. 2, line 13. wandering fields. Made by me on a voyage from Bordeaux to Dublin (1830). I saw a great creamy slope of sea on the horizon, rolling toward us. I often, as I say, chronicle on the spot, in four or five words or more, whatever strikes me as picturesque in nature. P. 53. Lotos-Eaters: Choric Song, 892 NOTES P. 53, 1. 6. Than tir^ eyelids upon tir'd eyes. 1 printed, contrary to my custom, "tir'd," not "tired," for fear that the readers might pronounce the word "tired," whereas I wished them to read it "tierd," prolonging as much as might be the diphthongic i} [When at Somersby (1830-37) my father now and then listened to the singing and playing of his sisters. He had a love for the simple style of Mozart, and for our own national airs and ballads, but only cared for complicated music as suggesting echoes of winds and waves. FitzGerald, in a note on The Dream of Fair Women, St. xliv., says: "A. T. was not thought to have an ear for music, and I remember little of his execution in that line except humming over 'The weary pund o' tow,' which was more because of the weary moral, I think, than for any music's sake. Carlyle, however, once said, 'The man must have music dormant in him, revealing itself in verse.' I re- member A. T. speaking of Haydn's 'Chaos,' which he had heard at some Oratorio. He said, ' The violins spoke of light.' " Venables wrote in 1835 : "I almost wonder that you with your love of music and tobacco do not go and live in some such place" (as Prague). — Ed.] P. 54, col. 2, line 13. To the influence of mild-minded melancholy. An early sonnet on "first love" {English- man's Magazine, 1831) ran thus: Check every outflash, every ruder sally Of thought and speech; speak low, and give up wholly Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy — This is the place: Thro' yonder poplar valley Below the blue-green river windeth slowly : But in the middle of the sombre valley The inspir'd waters whisper musically, And all the haunted place is dark and holy. The nightingale, with long and low pre- amble Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches. And in and out the woodbine's flowery arches. 1 Making the word neither monosyllabic nor dissyllabic, but a dreamy child of the two. The summer midges wove their wanton gambol, And all the white-stemm'd pinewood slept above — When in that valley first I told my love. P. 55, col. I, line 3, amaranth, the immortal flower of legend. P. 55, col. I, line 3, moly, the sacred herb of mystical power, used as a charm by Odysseus against Circe. P. 55, col. I, line 12. acanthus, the plant seen in the capitals of Corinthian pillars. P. 55, col. I, line 25. On the hills like Gods together. [Cf. note above on p. 904 {(Enone, p. 41, col. i, hne 17), and Lucretius, v. 83, vi. 58: Nam bene qui didicere deos securum agere aevum. Hor. Sat, i. 5. loi : Namque deos didici securum agere aevum. Ed.] P. 55. A Dream of Fair Women. Pu Wished in 1832 [in the edition dated 1833, and much altered in 1842. — Ed.] [FitzGerald notes: "The Dream of Fair Women in the ist Ed. of (dated) 1833 begins with the following stanzas, of which the three first may stand as a separate Poem : — As when a man that sails in a balloon, Down-looking, sees the solid shining ground Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon, Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound : And takes his flags and waves them to the mob. That shout below, all faces turn'd to where Glows ruby-like the far-up crimson globe, Fill'd with a finer air; So, lifted high, the poet at his will Lets- the great world flit from him, seeing all. Higher thro' secret splendours mounting still. Self-poised, nor fears to fall, NOTES 893 Hearing apart the echoes of his fame. While I spoke thus, the seedsman, memory, Sow'd my deep-fxirrow'd thought with many a name. Whose glory will not die." Ed.] P. 55, line 3. the morning star of song. Chaucer, the first great Enghsh poet, wrote the Legend of Good Women. From among these Cleopatra alone appears in my poem. P. 55, line 5. Dan, from dominus. [Cf. Spenser's "Dan Chaucer, well of Enghsh undefiled." Faerie Queene, TV. ii. xxxii. — Ed.] P. 56, col. I, Une 15. tortoise, the "testudo" of ancient war. Warriors with shields upheld on their heads ad- vanced, as under a strong shed, against the wall of a beleaguered city. P. 56, col. 2, line 12. In an old wood. The wood is the Past. Cf. p. 57, col. i, lines 9, 10 : the wood is all thine own Until the end of time, i.e. time backward. P. 56, col. 2, Unes 19-22. The dim red morn had died, her journey done. And with dead lips smiled at the twilight plain, Half-faU'n across the threshold of the sun, Never to rise again. > This stanza refers to the early past. How magnificently old Turner would have painted it. P. 57, col. I, line 11. At length I saw a lady within call. Helen of Troy. P. 57, col. I, line 13. A daughter of the gods, daughter of Zeus and Leda. Some call her daughter of Zeus and Nemesis. P. '57, col. I, line 26. To one that stood beside. Iphigenia, who was sacrificed by Aga- memnon to Artemis. P. 57, col. I, Une 32. Which men call'd Aulis in those iron years. This line (as far as I recollect) is almost synchronous with the old reading; but the inversion there, "Which yet to name my spirit loathes and fears," displeased me. P. 57, col. I, line S3- My father held his hand upon his face. [No doubt my father had in his mind the famous picture by Timanthes, The Sacrifice of Iphigeneia (described by Valerius Maximus, viii. 11, 6), of which there is a Pompeiian wall-painting. Also the passage in Lucretius, i. 84 foil. — Ed.] P. 57, col. 2, lines 5-8. The high masts flickered as they lay afloat; The crowds, the temples, wavered, and the shore; TJte bright death quivered at the victim's throat; Touched; and I knew no more. Originally the verse, which I thought too ghastly reaUstic, ran thus : The tall masts quiver'd as they lay afloat ; The temples and the people and the shore, One drew a sharp knife thro' my tender throat Slowly, — and nothing more. P. 57, col. 2, line 19. A queen, with swarthy clieeks and bold black eyes. I was thinking of Shakespeare's Cleo- patra : "Think of me That am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black." Antony and Cleopatra, I. v. 28. MiUais has made a mulatto of her in his illustration. I know perfectly well that she was a Greek. "Swarthy" merely means sunburnt. I should not have spoken of her breast as "polished silver" if I had not known her as a white woman. Read "sunburnt" if you like it better. P. 58, col. r, line i. That dull cold- blooded Ccesar. [After the battle of Actium Cleopatra strove to fascinate Augustus, as 894 NOTES she had fascinated Caesar, but, not suc- ceeding, "with a worm" she "balk'd" his determination to carry her captive to Rome. — Ed.T P. 58, col. I, line 8. Canopus, in the constellation of Argo. P. 58, col. I, line 23. / died a Queen. Cf. "Non humilis mulier" (Hor. Od. i. 37. 32). P. 58, col. 2, line 12. A noise of some one coming ihro' the lawn. Jephthah's daughter. Cf. Judges, chap. xi. P. 59, col. I, line 26. battled, em- battled, battlemented. P. 59, col. 2, line 3. Saw God divide the night with flying flame. [Cf. Diespiter Igni corusco nubila dividens. Horace, Od. i. 34. 5. — Ed.] P. 59, col. 2, lines 15-17. my race Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer On Arnon unto Minneth. See Judges xi. P. 59, col. 2, line 21. Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood. Threading the dark thickets. Cf. "every bosky bourn" {Comus, 313). P. 60, col. I, line 7. Fulvia, wife of Antony, named by Cleopatra as a parallel to Eleanor. P. 60, col. I, Hues II, 12. The captain of my dreams Ruled in the eastern sky. Venus, the star of morning. P. 60, col. I, lines 14, 15. her, who clasp'd in her last trance Her murdered father'' s head. Margaret Roper, daughter of Sir Thomas More, who is said to have transferred his headless corpse from the Tower to Chelsea Church. Sir Thomas More's head had remained for fourteen days on London Bridge after his execution, and was about to be thrown into the Thames to make room for others, when she claimed and bought it. For this she was cast into prison. She died nine years after her father, and was buried at St. Dunstan's, Canterbury, but in the year 17 15 the vault was opened, and it is stated that she was found in her coffin, clasping the small leaden box which inclosed her father's head. P. 60, col. I, lines 17-20. Or her who knew that Love can vanquish Death, Who kneeling, with one arm about her king. Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath, Sweet as new buds in Spring. Eleanor, wife of Edward I., went with him to the Holy Land (1269), where he was stabbed at Acre with a poisoned dagger. She sucked the poison from the wound. P. 60. The Blackbird. [Written about 1833 and published in 1842. — Ed.] P. 60, line 12. jenneting, an early apple, ripe in June. Juneting, i.e. June-eating. P. 60, line 17. And in the sultry garden-squares was in the original MS. I better brook the drawling stares, i.e. starlings. P. 60, lines 19, 20. / hecir thee not at all, or hoarse As when a hawker hawks his wares. Charles Kingsley confirmed this. P. 60. The Death of the Old Year. [First published in 1832. — Ed.] P. 61, col. I, line 41. rue for you, mourn for you. Cf. intransitive use of "rue" : "Nought shall make us rue." King John, v. vii. 117. P. 61. To J. S. [First published in 1832. — Ed.] Addressed to James Sped- ding, the biographer of Bacon. His brother was Edward Spedding, a friend of mine, who died in his youth. P. 61, line 19. Once thro' mine own doors. The death of my father. [Charles' Tennyson Turner writes (March 1831) : "He suffered little, and after death his NOTES 895 countenance, which was strikingly lofty and peaceful, was, I trust, an image of the condition of his soul, which on earth was daily racked by bitter fancies, and tossed about by stormy troubles." — Ed.] P. 62. On a Mourner. [Written early, but first published in Selections, 1865. See Memoir, vol. ii. p. 19. — Ed.] P. 62, line 9. humm'd the dropping snipe. The snipe makes a humming noise as it drops toward earth. P. 62, Une 10. marish-pipe, marestail. (Originally the paddock-pipe') P. 63, col. I, lines 7, 8. while all the fleet Had rest by stony hills of Crete. [Cf. Aeneid, iii. 135, 147-177. — Ed. P. 63. You ASK ME WHY, THO' ILL AT EASE. [Written about 1833, and first published in 1842. — Ed.] This and the two foUoAving poems, Of old sat Freedom and Love thou thy land, are said to have been versified from a speech by my friend Spedding at the Cambridge Union. I am reported as having gone home and written these three poems during the night and shown them to him in the morning. The speech is purely mythical ; at least I never heard it, and no poem of mine was ever founded upon it. In the first. You ask me why, etc., there is a similarity to a note by Spedding [which Sir Henry Taylor has introduced at the close of one of his plays], and why not, for I thoroughly agreed with him about politics. Aubrey de Vere showed these poems to Wordsworth; they were the first poems oi mine which he read. [Cf. Memoir, vol. i. p. 126. — Ed.] P. 63, line II. [Where Freedom slowly broadens down. has been repeatedly misprinted "broadens slowly." My father never, if he could help it, put two s's together, and the original MS. stood as it stands now. — Ed.] P. 63. Of old sat Freedom on the HEIGHTS. [First pubUshed in 1842, written about 1833. — Ed.] P. 63, line 15. Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks. Like Zeus with his "trisulca fulmina," the thunderbolts. [Ovid, Met. ii. 848, "trisulcis ignibus"; Ovid, lb. 471, "telo trisculco." — Ed.] P. 63. Love thou thy land, with love far-brought. [First published in 1842, written about 1833. — Ed.] P. 64, col. 2, line 12. [the rising wind of revolutionary change. — Ed.] P. 65. England and America in 1782. First pubUshed in a New York paper in 1874. P. 65, line 8. Retaught the lesson thou hadst taught. Copy of part of a letter of mine to Walt Whitman: Nov. 15, 87. "The coming year should give new Hfe to every American, who has breathed the breath of that soil which inspired the great founders of the American constitution, whose work you are to celebrate. Truly the mother-country, pondering on this, may feel that howmuchsoever the daughter owes to her, she the mother has something to learn from the daughter. Especially I would note the care taken to guard a noble constitution from rash and unwise innovators." P. 65. The Goose. [First pubUshed in 1842. — Ed.] P. 66. The Epic. Mrs. Browning wanted me to continue this: she has put my answer in Aurora Leigh. P. 66, col. 2, Une 24. mouthing out his hollow oes and aes. [Edward FitzGerald writes: "Morte d' Arthur when read to us from manuscript in 1835 had no introduction or epilogue; which were added to anticipate or excuse the 'faint Homeric echoes,' etc.^ Mouth- ing out his hollow oes and aes, deep-chested music, this is something as A. T. read, with a broad north country vowel. . . . His voice, very deep and deep-chested, but rather murmuring than mouthing, like 1 As in The Day-Dream, to give a reason for telling an old-world tale. 896 NOTES the sound of a far sea or of a pine-wood, This voice, I remember, greatly struck Carlyle when he first came to know him." — Ed.] P. 67. MoRTE d' Arthur. [First written in 1835, and published in 1842. My father was fond of reading this poem aloud. At the end of May 1835 he re- peated some of it to FitzGerald while in a boat on Windermere. FitzGerald notes the two lines : Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills. '"That is not bad, I think,' (A. T) said to me while rowing on Windermere with him, in May 1835, when this Poem was in MS." In Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales there are four primitive poems naming Arthur which my father often quoted : 1. Vol. i. p. 259. Welsh in vol ii. p. 155. 2. " 261. " " 50. 3. " 264. " " 181. 4. " 266. '■ " 274 and 37. (i) is by Taliessin, named Kadeir Teyrnon (Sovereign's Chair), where Arthur is called "the blessed Arthur." (2) only names Arthur. (3) is also by Taliessin, named Preidden Annwf n (the Spoils of Hades) , and appears to relate to one of Arthur's expeditions. (4) on Geraint and Llongborth, where Arthur is called "Amheraudyr Uauur" — "Imperator laboris." Arthur's unknown grave is mentioned in No. XLiv. of the Verses on the Graves of Warriors (Englynnionn y Bedef) (Skene, vol. i. 315 and ii. 28) : "A mystery to the world, the grave of Arthur." In the Triads of Arthur and his Warriors (Skene, vol. ii, pp. 456-7), Arthur's name is mentioned in No. i. as chief lord of three tribe thrones, and occurs again in Nos. xviii., XXIII. The seventh stanza of the Apple song about Arthur, as printed in Stephens' Literature of the Kymry, ^876 (which my father considered an excellent book), prophesies the return of Arthur and Med- rawd, and renewal of the battle of Camlan. — Ed.] P. 67, line 4. Lyonnesse. The country of legend that lay between Cornwall and the Scilly Islands and included part of Cornwall. P. 67, col. I, line 31. samite, a rich silk stuff inwrought with gold and silver threads. {i^dfUTOv, woven with six kinds of thread.) P. 67, col. 2, hne 21. topaz-lights. The topaz is a precious stone of varying colours (perhaps from root "tap," to shine. — Skeat). P. 67, col. 2, hne 21. jacinth is the hyacinth stone, blue and purple. Cf. Rev. xxi. 20. P. 67, col. 2, line 24. This way and that dividing the swift mind. A translation of V^irgil, Aeneid, iv. 285: Atque animum nunc hue celerem, nunc • dividit illuc. iv 54 ol ijTop . . . 8Ldv8Lxa fxepf^iipi^ev. II. i. 188. P. 68, col. I, hne 12. lief, beloved. Alder-Hefest (2 Hen. VI. 1. i. 28), most beloved of all. P. 69, col. I, line i, a streamer of the northern morn, Aurora Borealis. P. 69, col. I, line 2. the moving isles of winter, icebergs. P. 69, col. I, line 17. three lives of mortal men. Nestor was called rpiyipiov. Anthol. P. vii. 144. Cf. Od.An. 245 : Tpls yap bif p.[v (f)aaiv avd^aadat. ykvi dvdpQip. P. 69, col. 2, hne 26. Three Queens. In the original Morte D' Arthur one was King Arthur's sister, Queen Morgan le Fay; the other was the Queen of North- galis; the third was the Queen of the Waste Lands. Some say that the three Queens are Faith, Hope, and Charity. [The Bishop of Ripon once asked my father whether they were right who inter- preted the three Queens as Faith, Hope, and Charity. He answered: 'They are right, and they are not right. They mean that, and they do not. They are three of the noblest of women. They are also NOTES 897 those three Graces, but they are much more. I hate to be tied down to say, 'This means thai,' because the thought within the image is much more than any one interpretation." — Ed.] P. 70, col. I, ^e II. greaves and cuisses, leg and thigh armour {coxa, thigh) . P. 70, col. 2, line 5. Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. E.g. chivalry, by formaUsm of habit or by any other means. P. 70, col. 2, line 18. Bound by gold chains. [My father said that this passage was not, as has been said, suggested by //. viii. 19 : (xeipijv xpvo'^l-V^ ^^ ovpavbdev Kp€fxd8' ei fidXa iroXXd KdfJMire. or by Plato, Theaetetus, 153. — Ed.] P. 70, col. 2, line 22. To the island-valley of Avilion, or Avalon. There is an island of this name off Brittany, and Avilion also stands for the ancient "isle of Glastonbury." The Welsh Afallon Uterally means the "Apple-trees." It is here the island to which Arthur is borne in the barge, and from which he will some day return — the Isle of the Blest. P. 70, col. 2, line 23. Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow. Cf . Od. iv. 566 : OV VlCpCTOS, OVT &.p X^l-f^<^^ 7ro\l>S 0ijT€ TOT 6/M^po$. and Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, iii. 18 foil. : . . . sedesque quietae Quas neque concutiunt venti, nee nubila nimbis Aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina Cana cadens violat semperque innubilus aether Integit, et large diffuso lumine rident. P. 70, col. 2, Une 25. Deep-meadow' d. dijK€v de Kai ^advKeiixov virb Kippas dyup •n-irpav KpaTrjaiiroda ^piKiav. Pind. Pyth. x. 23. 3M Also Jli.vdei.av ^ad'u\eLfxov,Yiom. Il.'ix. 151. P. 70, col. 2, line 26. crowned with summer sea. Cf. vrjaov, T^v tr^pi irbvros direlpiTos ia-recpdvw- rai. Od. X. 195. P. 71. The Gardener's Daughter; OR, THE Pictures. Written at Cambridge [and corrected in Spedding's chambers at 60 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and published in 1842. — Ed.]. The centre of the poem, that passage describing the girl, must be full and rich. The poem is so, to a fault, especially the descriptions of nature, for the lover is an , artist, but, this being so, the central picture must hold its place. P. 72, col. I, lines, 12, 13. Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge Crowned with the minster-towers. Sir Henry Taylor used to quote this as a picture for a painter. P. 72, col. 2, line 23. The mellow ouzel (pronoimced oozel) fluted in the elm. "The wooselcock so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill." Mid. Night's Dream, ni. i. 128. The merry blackbird sang among the trees would seem quite as good a line to nine- tenths of all English men and women. Who knows but that the Cockney may come to read it: The meller housel fluted i' the helm. Who knows what Enghsh may come to ? P. 72, col. 2, line 24, redcap. Provin- cial for goldfinch. [I remember my father's telling me that FitzGerald had guessed rightly that the autumn landscape, which in the first edition was described in the lines beginning "Her beauty grew," was taken from the back- ground of a Titian (Lord EUesmere's Ages of Man). My father said that perhaps in consequence they had been omitted. They ran thus : Her beauty grew: till drawn in narrowing arcs The southing Autumn touch'd with sallower gleams The granges on the fallows. At that time NOTES Tired of the noisy town I wander'd there ; The bell toU'd four; and by the time I reach'd The Wicket-gate I found her by herself. Ed.] P. 75. Dora. [Written about 1835, and first published in 1842. — Ed.] Partly suggested by Miss Mitford's story, Dora Creswell, which is cheerful in tone, whereas this is sad ; it is the same landscape — one in sunshine, the other in shadow. Spedding used humorously to say that this was the poem which Wordsworth always intended to have written. P. 75, lines 15, 16. he and I Had once hard words. This quarrel is not in Miss Mitford. P. 76, col. 2, line 15. Far ojff the farmer came into the field. From this line to the end of the poem I have not followed Miss Mitford. P. 76, col. 2, line 20. And the sun fell, and all the land was dark. diKxerd r ij^Xios, (tki6(»}pt6 re vdcrai ayviai. Homer, Od. passim. P. 78. AuDLEY Court. [First pub- lished in 1842. — Ed.] Partially suggested by Abbey Park at Torquay in the old time. P. 78, col. 2, hne 14. four-field system [the planting in rotation of turnips, barley, clover, and wheat. — Ed.]. P. 79, col. I, line 34. Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm. This line was added afterwards. No reader seemed to have understood this allusion. A French translator has trans- lated it une verte etincelle. Torquay was in the old days the loveliest sea-village in England, and is now a town. In those old days I, coming down from the hill over Torquay, saw a "star of phosphor- escence" made by the little buoy appearing and disappearing in the dark sea, and was at first puzzled by it. P. 79. Walking to the Mail. [First published in 1842. — Ed.] P. 80, col. 2, Une 17. flay flint, a skin- flint. P. 80, col. 2, line 19. [We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. This is an Eton story. The "leads" were above Long Chamber. — Ed.] P. 81, col. I, line 14. best foot. "Best boot" was a misprint in several editions. P. 81. Edwin Morris ; or, the Lake. [First published in 1851. — Ed.] P. 82, col. I, line 30. [The Latin song I learnt at school refers to Catullus, Acme and Septimius, xlv. lines 8, 9 : Hoc ut dixit. Amor, sinistra ut ante, Dextram sternuit approbationem. Ed.] P. 82, col. 2, line 30. Sweet-Gale, bog- myrtle. P. 83, col. I, line 21. a mystic token from the king. Writ from the old Court of Common Pleas. P. 83. St. Simeon Stylites. [First published in 1842. To be read of in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, iv. 320 (Milrhan-Smith's), and Hone's Every-Day Book, vol. i. pp. 35-36. FitzGerald notes: "This is one of the Poems A. T. would read with grotesque Grimness, especially at such pa.ssages as 'Coughs, Aches, Stitches, etc.,' laughing aloud at times." See the pendant to this poem, St. Tele- machus, p. 878. — Ed.] P. 86. The Talking Oak. [First published in 1842. My father told Aubrey de Vere that "the poem was an experi- ment meant to test the degree in which it was in his power as a poet to humanise external nature." — Ed.] P. 87, col. I, line 31. Blufl Harry. Henry VHI. : "the man-minded offset" of the next stanza being Elizabeth. S pence, the monks' buttery. P. 87, col. I, lines 39, 40. In which the gloomy brewer's soul Went by me, like a stork. It is said that history "does not justify the poet in calling him a brewer." No, l:)ut that old Tory the oak calls him a brewer, as the old Cavaliers did. Like a stork. The stork, a republican NOTES 899 bird, is said to have gone out of England with the Commonwealth. And the' the Commonwealth did hot expire till some months after the death of Oliver, it prac- tically went out with him. The night when he died was a night of storm. P. 87, col. 2, line 5. In teacup-times of hood and hoop. Queen Anne's times. P. 87, col. 2, line 9. The modish Cupid of the day. In many editions misprinted "modest." P. 88, col. I, line 23. holt, copse. P. 88, col. 2, line 33. those ^lind motions of the Spring. Rising of the sap. P. 90, col. I, line 24. Or that Thessalian growth- [The oaks of Dodona in Epirus. The 'Thessalians came out of Thesprotia. Cf. Herod, vii. 176. — Ed.] The oaks are those on which the swarthy dove, flying from Thebes in Egypt, sat and pronounced that in this place should be set up an oracle of Zeus. [Cf. Soph, Trach. 171 ; Herod, ii. 55. — Ed.] P. 90. Love and Duty. [First pub- lished in 1842. — Ed.] P. 91, col. I, line 17. The slow sweet hours. Cf. Theocritus, Idyl xv. 104-105 : ^dpdia-Tai, ixaKapcav '^Qpai cpiXai dXXa TTodeival ipxovrai irdvTeaai ^porois aiei ti (pipoLaai. P. 91, col. 2, line 11. pathos. This word is used in opposition to apathetic in line 12, page 90. The set gray life, and apathetic end. P. 91. The Golden Year. [First published in 1846. — Ed.] P. 92, col. I, line 9. daughters of the horseleech. "The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give" (Proverbs XXX. 15). P. 93, col. I, line 7. high above: "high o'erhead" original reading. P. 93, col. I, line 9. And buffet round the hills, from bluff to bluff. Onomatopoeic. "Bluff to bluff" gives the echo of the blasting as I heard it from the mountain on the counter side, opposite to Snowdon. P. 93. Ulysses. [First published in 1842. Edward FitzGerald notes: "This was the Poem which, as might perhaps be expected, Carlyle liked best in the Book. I do not think he became acquainted with A. T. till after these Volumes (1842) appeared; being naturally prejudiced against one whom every one was praising, and praising for a Sort of Poetry which he despised. But directly he saw, and heard, the Man, he knew there was A Man to deal with: and took pains to cultivate him; assiduous in exhorting him to leave Verse and Rhyme, and to apply his Genius to Prose and Work." — Ed.] Carlyle wrote to me when he read Ulysses: "These lines do not make me weep, but there is in me what would fill whole Lachrymatories as I read." Cf. Odyssey, xi, 100-137, and Dante, Inferno, Canto xxvi. 90 foil. : n A Mi diparti' da Circe, che sottrasse Me pill d' un anno la presso a Gaeta, Prima che si Enea la nominasse, Ne dolcezza di figlio, ne la pieta Del vecchio padre, ne il debito amore, Lo qual dovea Penelope far lieta, Vincer poter dentro da me F ardor e Ch' i' ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto, E degli vizii umani e del valore ; Ma misi me per l' alto mare aperto Sol con un legno e con quella compagna Picciola, dalla qual non fui deserto. L' un lito e l' altro vidi infin la Spagna, Fin nel Marrocco, e 1' isola de' Sardi, E r altre che quel mare intorno bagna. lo e i compagni eravam vecchi e tardi, Quando venimmo a quella foce stretta, Ov' Ercole segno li suoi riguardi, Acciocche V uom piu oltre non si metta ; Dalla man destra mi lasciai Sibilia, Dall' altra gia m' avea lasciata Setta. "O frati," dissi, "che per cento milia Perigli siete giunti all' occidente, A questa tanto picciola vigilia Dei vostri sensi, ch' e del rimanente, Non vogliate negar l' esperienza, Diretro al sol, del mondo senza gente. Considerate la vostra semenza : Fatti non foste a viver come bruti, Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza." 900 NOTES [In the Odyssey, xi. 100-137, the ghost of Tiresias foretells his future to Ulysses. He is to return home to Ithaca and to slay the suitors. After which he is to set off again on a mysterious voyage. This is elaborated by the author of the Telegoneia. My father, Uke Eugammon, takes up the story of further wanderings at the end of the Odyssey. Ulysses has Uved in Ithaca for a long while before the craving for fresh travel seizes him. The comrades he addresses are of the same heroic mould as his old comrades. 1 ^- Ed.] The poem was written soon after Arthur Hallam's death, and it gives the feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in In Memoriam. P. 93, line 10. the rainy Hyades. Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Triones. Virgil, Aen. i. 744. P. 93, hne 18. I am a part of all that I have met. Cf. "quorum pars magna fui" (Virgil, Aen. ii. 6). P. 93, col. 2, line 8, spirit yearning. [Accusative absolute. — Ed.] P. 94, col. I, lines 2, 3. weU in order smite The sounding furrows. €^r]s d'e^dfievoi ttoXltjv aXa t^ittov iperfwis (A hne frequent in Homer's Odyssey.) P. 94. TiTHONUS. Beloved by Aurora, who gave him eternal life but not eternal youth. He grew old and infirm, and as he could not die, according to the legend, was turned into a grasshopper. [This poem was first published in the Cornhill Magazine, February i860, and was praised by Matthew Arnold, who greatly admired the blank verse. My father writes in this year: "My friend Thackeray and his publishers had been so urgent with me to send them something, that I ferreted among my old books and found this Tithonus, written upwards of, a quarter of a century ago, and now queerly enough at the tail of a flashy novel." — Ed.] 1 Perhaps the Odyssey has not been strictly adhered to, and some of the old comrades may be still left. P. 94, col. 2, Hne 8. the silver star, Venus. "P. 94, col. 2, line 13. the goal of ordi- nance, appointed limit. P. 95, col. 2, line 14. I earth in earth. "Terra in terra" (Dante). Forget. Will forget. P. 95. LocKSLEY Hall. [First pub- Hshed in 1842. — Ed.] An imaginary place and imaginary hero. Mr. Hallam said to me that the English people liked verse in trochaics, so I wrote the poem in this metre. [Sir William Jones' prose translation of the Modllakdt, the seven Arabic poems (which are a selection from the work of pre-Mohammedan poets) hanging up in the temple of Mecca, gave the idea of the poem. My father spoke and wrote of this ^nd Maud and other monodramatic poema. thus: "In a certain way, no doubt, poets and novelists, however dramatic they are, give themselves in their works. The mis- take that people make is that they think the poet's poems are a kind of 'catalogue raisonne' of his very own self, and of all the facts of his life, not seeing that they often only express a poetic instinct, or judgment on character real or imagined, and on the facts of lives real or imagined. Of course some poems, like my Ode to Memory, are evidently based on the poet's own nature, and on hints from his own Ufe." — Ed.] P. 95, line 4. Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall. I.e. while dreary gleams of light are flying across a dreary moorland, — put absolutely radiis volantibus (not referring to the curlews, as some commentators insist). Edward FitzGerald notes about verses ii. and iii. : "This is all Lincolnshire coast: about Mablethorpe, where A. T. stayed much, and where he said were the finest Seas except in Cornwall." P. 97, lines II, 12. Well — 'tis well that I should bluster! — Hadst thou less unworthy proved — Would to God — for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved. NOTES 901 He is a passionate young man, and the same emotional nature is reproduced in old age in the second Locksley Hall. The whole poem represents young life, its good side, its deficiencies, and its yearnings. P. 97, line 16. crow. Rooks are called crows in the Northern Counties. P. 97, line 24. That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remem- bering happier things. Ed ella a me: "Nessun xnaggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella rqiseria." , Dante, Inf. v. 121. P. 98, lines 25, 26. And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, Sees in. heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn. A simile drawoi from old times and the top of the mail-coach. They that go by trains seldom see this. P. 99, Unes II, 12. Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher, Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire. and supra, p. 96, lines 17, 18. Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. [my father considered two of his finest similes. The image of the Hon was founded on a passage from A Narrative of a Resi- dence in South Africa, by Thomas Pringle, p. 39 : "About midnight we were suddenly roused by the roar of a Hon close to our tents. It was so loud and tremendous that for the moment I actually thought that a thunderstorm had burst upon us. . . . We roused up the half-extinguished fire to a roaring blaze." — Ed.] P. 99, line 14. process of the suns, progress of years. P. 99. [After line 36, ending "knots of Paradise," in the original MS. was the following fine couplet : All about a summer ocean, leagues on leagues of golden calm, And within melodious waters rolling round the knolls of palm. Ed.] P. 100, line 22, Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change. When I went by the first train from Liverpool to Manchester (1830) I thought that the wheels ran in a groove. It was a black night, and there was such a vast crowd round the train at the station that we could not see the wheels. Then I made tliis line. P. 100, line 24. Cathay, the old name for China. P. loi. GoDiVA. [Written after his visit to Stratford-on-Avon, Kenilworth, and Coventry in 1840, and first published in 1842. Lady Godiva lived in the middle of the eleventh century. She was sister of Thoroldus de Bukendale in Lincolnshire, of which county she was vice-comes or sheriflf. She married Leofric, Count of Leicester or Mercia, as the charter of Thoroldus published in the Codex Diplo- matic. Anglo-Sax. vol. iv. p. 126 shows. This charter, dated 1057, commences thus: "Ego Thoroldus de Bukendale coram nobilissimo domino meo Leofrico Co mite Leycesterie et nobilissima. Comitessa sua Domina Godiva sorore mea," etc. — Ed.] See Sir William Dugdale's Antiquities of Wanvlckshire (1656), who writes : "The Countess Godiva, bearing an extra- ordinary affection to this place (Coventry), often acid earnestly besought her husband that, for the love of God and the blessed Virgin, he would free it from that grievous servitude whereunto it was subject ; but he, rebuking her for importuning him in a manner so inconsistent with his profit, commanded that she should thenceforward forbear to move thereon; yet she, out of her womanish pertinacity, continued to solicit him, insomuch that he told her if she would ride on horseback naked from one end of the town to the other, in sight of all the people, he would grant her re- quest. Whereunto she replied, 'But will ye give me leave to do so?' And he re- plying 'Yes,' the noble lady, upon an appointed day, got on horseback naked, with her hair loose, so that it covered all her body but her legs; and thus perform- ing her journey, she returned with joy to her husband, who thereupon granted to the 902 NOTES inhabitants a charter of freedom. ... In memory whereof the picture of him and his lady was set up in a south window of Trinity Church in this city about Richard II. 's time, his right hand holding a charter with these words written thereon : — I, Luriche, for love of thee, doe make Coventry Tol-free.'" P. loi, line II. a thousand summers. Earl Leofric died in 1057. [He and Lady Godiva were buried in the porch of the Monastery, of which there are still some ruins. — Ed.] P, loi, col. 2, line 23. wide-mouth'd heads,- gargoyles. P. 102. The Day-Dream. [Part of this poem, The Sleeping Beauty, was pub- Ushed in 1830, the other part was pubUshed in 1842. Edward FitzGerald writes: "The Pro- logue and Epilogue were added after 1835 (when the poem was written), for the same reason that caused the Prologue of the Morte d^ Arthur, giving an excuse for tell- ing an old-world tale. ... Of this second volume the Morte d' Arthur, Day-Dream, Lord of Burleigh were in MS. in a httle red Book, from which they were read to me and Spedding of a Night, 'when all the House was mute,' at Spedding's House, Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake, in Cumberland." — -Ed.] P. 104. The Revival. Line 25. Pardy, par dieu. "Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy." Hamlet, iii. ii. 305. P. 104. The Departure. Col. 2, line 2. In that new world which is the old. The world of Love. P. 104, line 20. crescent-bark, crescent- moon. P. 105. L'Envoi. Col. 2, lines 9, 10. Where on the double rosebud droops The fulness of the pensive mind. A recollection of the bust of Clytie. P. 105. Epilogue. Lines 7, 8. Like long-taiVd birds of Paradise That float thro' Heaven, and cannot light. ["The great bird of Paradise, Paradisea apoda, which was the first known repre- sentative of the entire family, derives its specific name from having been described by Linnaeus from a skin prepared in the Papuan fashion with the wings and feet cut off" (Lydekker, Royal Nat. Hist.). — Ed.] P. 105. Amphion. [First pubhshed in 1842. My mother writes of this poem: "Genius must not deem itself exempt from work." — Ed.] P. 107. St. Agnes' Eve. First pub- hshed in The Keepsake, 1837. The poem is a pendant to "Sir Galahad." P. 107, col. I, line 34. One sabbath. "Are" was misprinted for "One" in The Keepsake. No revises were sent me. P. 107. Sir Galahad. [First pub- lished in 1842. Edward FitzGerald notes: "Of the Chivalry Romances he said to me, ' I could not read Palmerin of England, nor Amadis, nor any other of those Romances through. The Morte d' Arthur is much the best : there are very fine things in [it] ; but all strung together without Art.'" — Ed.] P. 107, col. 2, line 34. Three angels bear the holy Grail. "The Holy Grail" was originally the Holy Dish at the Last Supper, and is probably derived from cratella, a little bowl. Then it was said by some to be the dish in which Joseph of Arimathaea caught the blood of Christ as He hung on the cross; afterwards by others to be the cup of sacramental wine used at the Last Supper, and to have been brought by Joseph to England. [Cf. Malory's Morte d'Arthur, Bk. xvii. chaps, xviii.-xxii. In chap. xxii. Joseph of Arimathaea says to Sir Galahad: "Thou hast resembled me in two things, in that thou hast seen the marvels of the Sangreal, and in that thou hast been a clean maiden, as I have been and am." — Ed.] P. 108. Edward Gray. [First written in a letter to my mother in 1840, and published in 1842. — Ed.] Sir Arthur Sullivan has set this well. P. 108. Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue. [First published in 1843. NOTES 903 Edward FitzGerald writes: "The 'plump Head- waiter of The Cock,' by Temple Bar, famous for chop and porter, was rather offended when told of this poem. 'Had Mr. Tennyson dined oftener there, he would not have minded it so much,' he said. I think A. T.'s chief Dinner-resort in these Ante-laureate Days was Bertolini's at the Newton's Head, close to Leicester Square. We sometimes called it Dirto- lini's ; but not seriously : for the Place was dean as well as very cheap, and the Cookery good for the Price. Bertolini himself, who came to take the money at the end of the Feast, was a grave and polite man. He retired with a Fortxme, I think." — Ed.] P. 109, col. I, line 45. rafs, scraps. ["A fansie fed me ones to wryte in verse and rime. To wang my griefe, to crave reward, to aver still my crime ; To frame a long discourse on stirring of a strawe. To rumble rime in raffe and ruffe, yet all not worth an hawe." Gascoigne, The Green Knighfs Farewell to Fansie. Ed.] P. no, col. I, line 17. Sipt wine from silver, praising God. As the bird drinks he holds up his neck. There is accordingly an old English say- ing about the cock "praising God" when he drinks. P. no, col. I, line 22. That kmcckled at the taw. A phrase that every boy knows from the game of marbles. P. no, col. 2, line 45. , ana, Shak- speariana, Scaligerana, etc. [Swarm'd, caused to swarm. — Ed.] P. Ill, col. I, line 40. Old boxes. The pews where the diners sit [which have been transferred to the new "Cock Tavern." — Ed.]. P. Ill, col. 2, line 21. [One of the ancient "pint-pots neatly graven" was presented to my father by the proprietors when the old tavern was pulled down. — Ed.] P. III. Lady Clare. [First pub- lished in 1842. — Ed.] Founded on Miss Ferrier's novel of The Inheritance. The following stanza was originally in place of the existing first two stanzas, and the poem began : Lord Ronald courted Lady Clare, I trow they did not part in scorn, Lord Ronald her cousin courted her. And they will wed the morrow morn. P. Ill, col. 2, line 26. as I live by bread was a common phrase. Cf. "As true as I am aHve." P. 112, col. I, line 3. [Peter Bayne wrote to my father in 1890: "A serious flaw has been allowed by you to remain in one of your master- pieces, in quality if not in size. When Lady Clare's nurse tells her that she is her own child, she, Lady Clare, uses in reply the words, 'If I'm a beggar born.' The criticism of my heart tells me that Lady Clare could never have said that." To which my father replies u "You make no allowance for the shock of the fall from being Lady Clare to finding herself the child of a nurse. She speaks besides not without a certain anger. 'Peasant-born' would be tame and passionless." — Ed.] P. 112. The Captain. A Legend of THE Navy. [First published in 1865. — Ed.] Possibly suggested by the story told of the ship Hermione (1797). Published first in my Selections, 1865. P. 113. The Lord of Burleigh. [First published in 1842. — Ed.] Line 8. And a village maiden she. Sarah Hoggins, a Shropshire maiden, became wife of the ninth Earl of Exeter in 1791. [She is said, locally, to have often talked to her dairy-maids, and told them how much happier she was in old times. Edward FitzGerald writes: "When this Poem was read from MS. in 1835 I remember the Author doubting if it were not too familiar with its 'Let us see the handsome houses, etc.,' for public Taste. But a Sister, he said, had liked it: we never got it out of our heads from the first hearing; and now, is there a greater favourite where Enghsh is spoken ? " — 'Ed.] 904 NOTES P. 114, col. I, lines 7, 8. As it were with shame she blushes. And her spirit changed within. The mood changes from happiness to unhappiness, and the present tense changes to the past. P. 114. The Voyage. [First pubUshed in 1864. — Ed.] Life is the seai;ch after the ideal. See Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir, p. 120: "What growth there is in the man mentally ! How he has caught the spirit of the age in The Voyage ! I thought he had fallen ofif into the didactic-dramatic mood that grows on poetic souls with advancing years ; but how wonderful — to me — is the lyricised thought of verse 9. I cannot get it out of my head : Now high on waves that idly burst Like Heavenly Hope she crown'd the sea, And now, the bloodless point reversed, She bore the blade of Liberty. How sad — but a chastened sadness, our sadness — that of the second half of the 19th century — no ' Verzweiflung.' The dream in City Clerks [Sea Dreams] is as good; but, you know, I am always most moved by lyrics." P. 115, col. I, Hne 7. the whole sea burn'd, i.e. with phosphorescence. P. IIS, col. 2, line 21. laws of nature were our scorn. [We felt that the Free Will is not bound by the Laws that govern the Material Universe. — Ed.] P. IIS, col. 2, Kne 5. the whirlwind's heart of peace, the calm centre of the whirlwind. P. IIS. Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere. [First published in 1842. See The Coming of Arthur : And Lancelot past away among the flowers, (For then was latter April) and retum'd Among the flowers, in May. Edward Fitz Gerald notes: "Some verses of Sir Launcelot' s Courtship were handed about among us in 1832 (I think) at Cambridge : Life of the Life within my Blood, Light of the Light within mine Eyes, The May begins to breathe and bud. And softly blow the balmy skies : Bathe with me in the fiery Flood, And mingle Kisses, Tears, and Sighs — Life of the Life within my Blood, Light of the Light within mine Eyes !" Ed.] P. IIS, line 12. sparhawk, sparrow- hawk. P. 116. A Farewell. [To the brook at Somersby. First pubUshed in 1842. — Ed.] P. 116. The Beggar Maid. [First pubhshed in 1842. — Ed.] "Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim, When Kling Cophetua loved the beggar- maid." Rom. and Jul. 11. i. 14. P. 116. The Eagle. [First published in 1851. — Ed.] P. 116. Move eastward, happy earth, and leave. [First published in 1842. — Ed.] Line 6. Thy silver sister- world, the moon. P. 116. Come not, when I am dead. [First pubUshed in The Keepsake, 1S51. — Ed.] The first printed "But go thou by" was an error of the printers for "But thou, go by." P. 117. The Letters. [First pubUshed in i8s5- — Ed.] P. 117. The Vision of Sin. [First pubUshed in 1842. Edward FitzGerald writes: "Oddly enough, Johnson's 'Long- expected One-and-Twenty ' has the swing, and something of the Spirit of the old Sinner's Lyric." — Ed.] This describes the soul of a youth who has given himself up to pleasure and Epicureanism. He at length is worn out and wrapt in the mists of satiety. Afterwards he grows into a cynical old man afflicted with the "curse of nature," and joining in the Feast of Death. Then we see the landscape which symbolizes God, Law and the future life. P. 120, col. I, line 32. Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time. The sensuaUst becomes worn out by his senses. NOTES 90s [Two lines are omitted here which were published in 1865, and were intended by my father to make the thought clearer: Another answer'd : "But a crime of sense? Give him new nerves with old experience." Ed.] P. 120, col. 2, line 6. an awful rose of dawn. [I have heard my father say that he "would rather know that he was to-be lost eternally than not know that the whole human race was to live eternally"; and when he speaks of "faintly trusting ihe larger hope," he means by "the larger hope" that the whole human race would through, perhaps, ages of suffering be at length purified and saved, even those who "better not with time"; so that at the end of this Vision we read : God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. Ed.] P. 120. To . [First pubhshed in The Examiner, March 24, 1849. My father was indignant that Keats' wild love- letters should have been published ; but he said that he did not v/ish the public to think that this poem had been written with any particular reference to Letters and Literary Remains of Keats (published in 1848), by Lord Houghton. — Ed.] P. 121. To E. L., ON HIS Travels in Greece. [First published in 1853. — Ed.] Edward Lear, the well-known landscape painter and author of Journals of a Land- scape Painter in Albania and Illyria, in Calabria and in Corsica, and of the Book of Nonsense. P. 121. Break, break, break. [First pubUshed in 1842. — Ed.] This poem first saw the light along with the dawn in a Lincolnshire lane at 5 o'clock in the morning. P. 121. The Poet's Song. [First published in 1842. — Ed.] P. 122. Enoch Arden. [Written in a httle summer-house in the meadow called Maiden's Croft looking over Freshwater Bay and toward the downs. First pub- lished in 1864. — Ed.] Enoch Arden (like Aylmer's Field) is founded on a theme given me by the sculptor Woolner. I believe that his particular story came out of Suffolk, but something like the same Story is told in Brittany and elsewhere. I have had several similar true stories sent me since I wrote Enoch Arden. [Of this poem there are nine German translations, eight French, as well as Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Danish, Hungarian and Bavarian versions. — Ed.] P. 122, line 7. Danish barrows. [Cf. Tithonus: And grassy barrows of the happier dead. There are several on the Freshwater downs. — Ed.] P. 123, col. 2, line 9. peacock-yewtree. Cut in the form of a peacock. P. 124, col. I, line 4. And isles a light in the offing. This Une was made at Brighton, from the islands of light on the sea on a day of sunshine and clouds. P. 127, col. 2, line 18. whitening. When the breeze blows, it turns upward the silver>^ under-part of the leaf. P. 130, col. I, line 10. She slipt across the summer of the world. The Equator. P. 131, col. I, Hne 26. dewy-glooming, dewy and dark. P. 131, col. I, Une 29. in the ringing of his ears. (Cf. Eothen, chap, xvii.) Mr. Kinglake told me that he had heard his own parish bells in the midst of an Eastern desert, not knowing at the time that it was Sunday, when they would have been ringing the bells at home; and added, "I might have had a ringing in my ears, and the imaginative memory did the rest." [My father would say that there is nothing really supernatural, mechanically or otherwise, in Enoch Arden's hearing bells ; tho' he most probably did intend the passage to tell upon the reader mystically. — Ed.] P. 131, col. 2, line 25. sweet water. Cf. Intus aquae dulces vivoque sediUa saxo. Virgil, Aen. i. 167. 9o6 NOTES P. 132, col. 2, line i. last, as it seemed, a great mist-blotted light. From Philip's house, the latest house to landward. P. 13s, col. 2, line 33. There came so loud a calling of the sea. "The calUng of the sea," a term used, I believe, chiefly in the western parts of England, to signify a ground swell. When this occurs on a windless night, the echo of it rings thro' the timbers of old houses in a haven, and is often heard many miles inland. P. 136, col. I, line 3. Had seldom seen a costlier funeral. The costly funeral is all that poor Annie could do for him after he was gone. This is entirely introduced for her sake, and, in my opinion, quite necessary to the per- fection of the Poem and the simplicity of the narrative. P. 136. The Brook. [First published in 1855. — Ed.] Not the brook near Somersby mentioned in The Ode to Memory. P. 136, line 14. When all the wood stands in a mist of green. This I remember as particularly beautiful one spring at Park House, Kent. P. 136, col. 2, line 28. grigs, crickets. P. 137, col. I, line 14. Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam. The arch of the bridge over the stream, through which you can look. P. 137, col. 2, line 5.' a wizard penta- gram. [A star-like five-pointed figure which was used by astrologers in the Middle Ages. — Ed.] P. 138, col. I, line 3. Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail. This Une made in the New Forest. P. 138, col. 2, line 12. . I make the netted sunbeam dance. Long after this line was written we * saw 1 [My father and I. — Ed.) the "netted sunbeam" dance in a marvellous way in the Silent Pool near Guildford as the stream poured from the chalk over the green-sand. P. 138, col. 2, lines 25, 26. the dome Of Brunelleschi. The Duomo or cathedral at Florence, the dome the work of Brunelleschi (1407). P. 138, col. 2, line 32. converse-seasons was too sibilant in sound, so I wrote April-autumns. [My father said: "I hate sibilation in verse. Always kick the hissing geese if you can out of the boat." — Ed.] The summers in Australia are of course the v/inter- tides of Europe. P. 139, col. I, lines 28, 29. My brother James is in the harvest-field: But she — you will be welcome — 0, come in! The Father is dead. P. 139. Aylmer's Field. [Written at Farringford, and first pubUshed in 1864. — Ed.] Line 3. Like that long-buried body of the king. This happened on opening an Etruscan tomb at the city of Tarquinii in Italy. [The warrior was seen for a moment stretched on the couch of stone, and then vanished as soon as the air touched him, — Ed.] P. 139, line 17. wyvern [winged two- legged dragon of heraldry. — Ed.]. P. 140, col. 2, line 2. that islet in the chestnut-bloom. [The rosy spot in the flower. — Ed.] P. 140, col. 2, line 9. Shone like a mystic star between the less. The variable star of astronomy with its maximums and minimums of brightness, e.g.^ Persei or Algol and many others. P. 140, col. 2, line 27. fairy footings, fairy rings. P. 140, col. 2, line 31. What looked a flight of fairy arrows. The seeds from the dandelion globe. Cf. Gareth and Lynette : the flower That blows a globe of after arrowlets. NOTES 907 P. 141, col. I, line 6. Temple-eaten terms. [Terms spent as a student in the Temple, when he has to eat so many dinners to keep his terms. — Ed.] P. 141, col. I, line 11. The tented winter-field. Referring to the way in which the hop poles are stacked in winter. P. 141, col. I, line 14. burr and bine refer to the hop-plant. "Burr," the rough cone; "bine," the climbing stem. P. 141, col. 2, line 20. parcel-bearded, partly bearded. Cf. "parcel-gilt" (Shake- speare, 2 Henry /F. 11. i. 94). P. 142, col. I, line 26. close ecliptic, sun of tropics. P. 143, col. I, line 28. blacksmith border-marriage. At Gretna Green for many years a blacksmith married the runaway couples by Scotch law. In 1856 these marriages were made illegal. P. 146, col. I, line 26. the gardens of that rival rose. The Temple garden where Somerset picked the red, Plantagenet the white roses. Cf. i Henry VI. 11. iv. P. 146, col. I, line 29. Far purelier, when the city was smaller and less smoky. P. 146, col. 2, line i. Ran a Malayan amuck against the times. "Amuck." Made an attack Uke those Malays who rush about in a frenzy and attack their fellow-men, yelling, "Amook." P. 147, col. I, lines 10-12. What amulet drew her down to that old oak, So old, that twenty years before, a part Falling had let appear the brand of John. In cutting down trees in Sherwood Forest, letters have been foimd in the heart of the trees, showing the brands of particvdar reigns — those of James I., William and Mar>', and one of King John. King John's was eighteen inches within the bark. P. 147, col. I, line 14. The broken base. [The trunk of the tree was hollow and decayed, with only one branch in leaf. — Ed.] P. 147, col. I, line 33. frothfly from the fescue. The fly that lives in the cuckoo spit on the meadow fescue, a kind of gras^ Festuca pratensis. P. 148, col. 2, line 4. And being used to find her pastor texts. It is implied that she had given Averill the text upon which he preached. P. 148, col. 2, line 8. mock sunshine. A day without sun, the only faint resem- blance to sunshine being the bright yellow of the faded autumn leaves. P. 148, col. 2, Une 20. greenish glim- merings, greenish glass of the lancet windows. P. 149, col. I, line 17. No coarse and blockish God of acreage. The Roman god Terminus, who presided over the boundaries of private properties. P. 149, col. I, line 27. deathless ruler, the soul. P. 149, col. 2, line 21. wasting his forgotten heart, lavishing his neglected feelings of love. P. 151, col. I, line 2. the twelve- divided concubine. Judges xix. 29. P. 151, col. I, line 7. They cling together. He alludes to the report, hor- rible and hardly credible, that when the heads were taken out of the sack, two were sometimes found clinging together, one having bitten into the other in the momentary convulsion that followed de- capitation. P. 152, col. I, line 20. retinue. Accent on the penultimate. Shakesp>eare and Milton accented this word in the same way. [Cf. The Princess, in. : Went forth in long retinue following up, and Guinevere : Of his and her retinue moving, they. Ed.) P. 152, col. I, line 23. Pity, the violet on the tyrant's grave. A chance parallel (like many others quoted in these notes). Cf. Persius, Sat. i. 39: Nunc non e tumulo fortunataque favilla Nascentur violae ? 9o8 NOTES P. 152, col, I, lines 30, 31. The slow-worm creeps, and the thin weasel there Follows the mouse. Original reading — There the thin weasel, with faint hunting cry Follows his game. The Duke of Argyll says of them that in hunting rabbits, in packs, they give a "faint hunting cry." P. 152. Sea Dreams. [First pub- lished in Macmillan's Magazine, January, i860. — Ed.] The glorification of honest labour, whether of head or hand, no hasting to be rich, no bowing down to any idol. P. 152, line 4. germander eye. Blue like the Germander Speedwell. P. 153, col. I, line 3. large air. Largior hie campos aether et lumine vestit Purpureo. Virg. Aen. vi. 640, 641. P. 153, col. I, line 21. upjetted. On Bray Head, at the end of the Island of Valentia, where I lay in 1848, with all the revolutions of Europe behind me, the waves appeared like ghosts playing at hide and seek as they leapt above the cliffs. This passage was not, however, made at that time, but later. P. 155, col. 2, line 19. That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more. The ages that go on with their illumina- tion breaking down everything. P. 156, col. I, line 2. With that sweet note. The great music of the World. P. 156, col. I, line 7. men of stone. "The statues, king or saint or founder" on the cathedrals which the worshippers worshipt. P. 156, col. 2, line 3. The dimpled flounce' of the sea-furbelow flap. The reference is to a long dark-green seaweed, one of the Laminaria, called the "sea-furbelow," with dimpled flounce-like edges. Boys sometimes running along the sand against the wind with this seaweed in their hands make it flap for sport. The name "sea-furbelow" is not generally known. P. 157, col. I, line i. What does little birdie say. This song ends joyfully. Sullivan in his setting makes it end dolefully. P. 157. Lucretius. [First published in Macmillan's Magazine, August 1868. See Jerome's addition to the Eusebian Chronicle under date 94 B.C.: "Titus Lucretius poeta nascitur qui postea amatorio poculo in furorem versus, cum aUquot hbros per intervalla insaniae con- scripsisset, quos postea Cicero emendavit, propria se manu interfecit anno aetatis XLiv." — Ed.] Munro said that everything was Lucretian thro' this poem, and that there was no suggestion which he could make. He, however, did suggest the alteration of "shepherds" to "neat-herds." Lucretius is portrayed in this poem as having taken the love- philtre of Lucilia his wife, who imagines him cold to her from brooding over his philosophies. Thus a loving and beautiful nature — that delights in friends, the universe, the birds and the flowers — is distraught by the poison. He is haunted by the doubt, which from his affection for Epicurus, "whom he held divine," had long been kept in check: The Gods, the Gods ! If all be atoms, how then should the Gods Being atomic not be dissoluble. Not follow the great law ? He himself had always aimed at "divine tranquillity," and now is tortured by un- rest. The unrest drives him to frenzy and he kills himself. ["As a masterly study of the great Roman sceptic," writes Andrew Lang, "it (the poem) is beyond praise." "No prose commentary on the 'De Rerura Natura,' however long and learned, con- veys so clearly as this concise study in verse the sense of magnificent mingled ruin in the mind and power of the Roman." — Ed.] P. 157, col. 2, line 27. / saw the flaring atom-streams, etc. [De Rer. Nat. i. 999 ff. — Ed.] NOTES 909 P. 157, col. 2, lines 33, 34. as the dog With inward yelp. [De Rer. Nat. iv. qqi flf. : Venantumque canes in moUi saepe quiete Jactant crura, etc. Ed.] P. 158, col. I, line 7. Hetairai, courtezans. P. 158, col. I, line 9. mulberry-faced Dictator. [Sylla in his later life. Cf. Plutarch, Sulla, ii. 451 : avKdfjiivdp iad' 6 SuWas a\(plT(^ irewaa- fxivov Clough's Plutarch's Lives, vol. iii. p. 142, "Sylla": "The scurrilous jesters at Athens made the verse upon him : Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled over with meal." Ed.] P. 158, col. I, line 23. Because I would not one of thine own doves, etc. [De Rer. Nat. v. 1198 flf. — Ed:] P. 158, col. I, hne 25. my rich procemion. [De Rer. Nat. i. i ff . — Ed.] P. 158, col. 2, hne 5. Mavors, Mars. Cf. De Rer. Nat. i. 31 ff- P. 158, col. 2, line 16. great Sicilian. [Empedocles. — Ed.] De Rer. Nat. i. 729-733. See for reference to Kypris, KrjTrpidos opfiiadeTo-a reXelois ev Xifxivea-ai and elsewhere. P. 158, col. 2, line 19. That popular name of thine. [Cf. De Rer. Nat. i. 2 flf. — Ed.] P. 158, col. 2, line 27. The Gods, who haunt. Cf. Homer, Od. iv. 566. P. 159, col. I, line 9. That Gods there are. [Cf. De Rer. Nat. v. 146-194, 1161- 1291. — Ed.] P. 159, col. I, line 10. / prest my foot- steps into his. [De Rer. Nat. iii. i flf. — Ed.] P. 159, col. I, line 11. my Memmius. \ [Caius Memmius Gemellus, to whom the j De Rerum Natura was dedicated. — Ed.] P. 159, col. 2, line 5. Or lend an ear i to Plato, etc. Cf. Phaedo, vi. ["We men j are as it were in ward, and a man ought I not to free himself from it, or to run away." — Ed.] P. 160, col. I, line 17. him I proved impossible. [De Rer. Nat. ii. 700; v. 837 ff., 878ff. — Ed.] P. 160, col. 2, line 5. Laid along the grass. [Cf. De Rer. Nat. ii. 29 flf. : Cum tamen inter se prostrati in gramine molh, etc. Ed.] P. 160, col. 2, line 9. Of settled, sweet, Epicurean life. [Cf. De Rer. Nat. iii. 66: "Dulci vita stabilique." — Ed.] P. 160, col. 2, line 15. Or Heliconian honey. [Cf. De Rer. Nat. i. 936 flf.; iv. II flf. — Ed.] P. 160, col. 2, Hne 26. not he, who bears one name with her. "Her" is Lucretia. P. 160, col. 2, line 34. the womb and tomb of all. [Cf . De Rer. Nat. v. 258 : Omniparens eadem rerum commune sepul- chrum. Ed.] P. 161, col. I, lines 5, 6. But till this cosmic order everywhere Shattered into one earthquake in one day, etc. [De Rer. Nat. v. 94 flf. — Ed.] P. 161, col. I, line 15. My golden work, etc. [De Rer. Nat. iv. 8, 9 ff . ; iii. 978-1023. — Ed.] THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTORY NOTES In the Prologue the "Tale from mouth to mouth" was a game which I have more than once played when I was at Trinity College, Cambridge, with my brother- undergraduates. Of course, if he "that inherited the tale" had not attended very carefully to his predecessors, there were contradictions; and if the story were his- torical, occasional anachronisms. In defence of what some have called the too poetical passages, it should be recol- lected that the poet of the party was requested to "dress the tale up poetically," QIO NOTES and he was full of the "gallant and heroic chronicle." A parable is perhaps the teacher that can most surely enter in at all doors. In 1 85 1 the "weird seizures" of the Prince were inserted. Moreover, the words "dream- shadow," "were and were not" doubtless refer to the anachronisms and improbabiUties of the story. Compare the Prologue : Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream, and p. 198, col. i, line 22 : And like a flash the weird aflfection came : I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts. And doing battle with forgotten ghosts. To dream myself the shadow of a dream. It may be remarked that there is scarcely anything in the story which is not prophetic- ally glanced at in the Prologue. The child is the link thro' the parts, as shown in the Songs (inserted 1850), which are the best interpreters of the poem. Some of my remarks on passages in The Princess have been published by Dawson of Canada (1885), who copied them from the following letter which I wrote to him criticising his edition of The Princess. I thank you for your able and thoughtful essay on The Princess. You have seen amongst other things that if women ever were to play such freaks, the burlesque and the tragic might go hand in hand. . . ; Your explanatory notes are very much to the purpose, and I do not object to yoiu: finding parallelisms. They must always occur. A man (a Chinese scholar) some time ago wrote to me saying that in an imknown, imtrans- lated Chinese poem there were two whole lines 1 of mine almost word for word. Why not? Are not human eyes all over the world looking at the same objects, and must there not consequently be coincidences of thought and impressions and ex- pressions ? It is scarcely possible for any one to say or write anything in this late time of the world to which, in the rest of the literature of the world, a parallel could not somewhere be found. But, when you say that this passage or that was suggested by Wordsworth or Shelley or another, I demur; and more, I wholly disagree. There was a period in my life when, as an artist, Turner for instance, takes rough sketches of landskip, etc. , in order to work them eventually into some great picture, so I was in the habit of chronicling, in four or five words or more, whatever might strike me as picturesque in Nature. I never put 1 The Peak is high, and the stars are high. And the thought of a man is higher. The Voice and the Peak. these down, and many and many a line has gone away on the north wind, but some remain : e.g. A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight. Suggestion. The sea one night at Torquay, when Torquay was the most lovely sea- village in England, tho' now a smoky town. The sky was covered with thin vapour, and the moon behind it. A great black cloud Drags inward from the deep. Suggestion. A coming storm seen from the top of Snowdon. In the Idylls of the King. With all Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies. Suggestion. A storm which came upon us in the middle of the North Sea. As the water-lily starts and slides. Suggestion. Water-lilies in my own pond, seen on a gusty day with my own eyes. They did start and slide in the sudden puffs of wind till caught and stayed by the tether of their own stalks, quite as true as Wordsworth's simile and more in detail. A wild wind shook, — Follow, follow, thou shall win. Suggestion. I was walking in the New Forest. A wind did arise and Shake the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks Of the wild woods together. The wind I believe was a west wind, but because I wished the Prince to go south, I turned the wind to the south, and naturally the wind said "follow." I believe the resemblance which you note is just a chance one. Shelley's lines are not familiar to me, tho' of course, if they occur in the Prometheus,^ I must have read them. I could multiply instances, but I will not bore you, and far indeed am I from asserting that books as well as Nature are not, and ought not to be, suggestive to the poet. I am sure that I myself, and many others, find a peculiar charm in those passages of such great masters as Virgil or Milton where they adopt the creation of a bygone poet, and reclothe it, more or less, according to their own fancy. But there is, I fear, a prosaic set growing up among U3, editors of booklets,book-worms, index- hunters, or men of great memories and no imagination, who impute themselves to the poet, and so believe that he, too, has no imagination, but is for ever poking his nose between the pages of some old volume in order to see what he can appropriate. They will not allow one to say "Ring the bell" without finding that we have taken it from Sir P. Sidney, or even to use such a simple expression as the ocean "roars," without finding out the precise verse in Homer or Horace from which we have plagiarised it (fact). 1 a' wind arose among the pines, etc. . NOTES 911 I have known an old fish-wife, who had lost two sons at sea, clench her fist at the advancing tide on a stormy day, and cry out, "Ay! roar, do ! how I hates to see thee show thy white teeth." Now if I had adopted her exclamation and put it into the mouth of some old woman in one of my poems, I daresay the critics would have thought it original enough, but would most likely have ^advised me to go to Nature for my old women and not to my own imagination ; 1 and indeed it is a strong figure. Here is another anecdote about suggestion. When I was about twenty or twenty-one I went on a tour to the Pyrenees. Lying among these mountams before a waterfall * that comes down one thousand or twelve hundred feet I sketched it (according to my custom then) in these words: Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn. When I printed this, a critic informed me that "lawn" was the material used in theatres to imitate a waterfall, and graciously added, " Mr. .T. should not go to the boards of a theatre but to Nature herself for his suggestions." And I had gone to Nature herself. I think it is a moot point whether, if I had known how that effect was produced on the stage, I should have ventured to publish the line. I find that I have written, quite contrary to my custom, a letter, when I had merely intended to thank you for your interesting commentary. Thanking you again for it, I beg you to believe me Very faithfully yours, A. Tennyson. Before the first edition came out, I deliberated with myself whether I should put songs between the separate divisions of the poem; again I thought that the poem would explain itself, but the public did not see the drift. The first song I wrote was named "The Losing of the Child." The child was sitting on the bank Upon a stormy day. He loved the river's roaring soimd ; The river rose and burst his bound. Flooded fifty leagues around, Took the child from off the ground. And bore the child away. O the child so meek and wise, Who made us wise and mild ! All was strife at home about him. Nothing could be done without him ; Father, mother, sister, brother. All accusing one another ; O to lose the child ! 1 He used to compare with this the Norfolk saying which he heard when we were staying with the Rev. C. T. Digby at Warham: "The sea's a-moanin'; she's lost the wind." * In the Cirque de Gavamie. The river left the child unhurt, But far within the wild. Then we brought him home again, Peace and order come again. The river sought his bound again The child was lost and foimd again. And we will keep the child. Another old song of mine I intended to insert was that of "The Doctor's Daughter": Sweet Kitty Sandilands, The daughter of the doctor. We drest her in the Proctor's bands, And past her for the Proctor; All the men ran from her That would have hasten'd to her. All the men ran from her That would have come to woo her. Up the street we took her As far as to the Castle, Jauntily sat the Proctor's cap And from it himg the tassel. "Sir Ralph" is another song which I omitted : Ralph would fight in Edith's sight, For Ralph was Edith's lover, Ralph went down like a fire to the fight, Struck to the left and struck to the right, Roll'd them over and over. "Gallant Sir Ralph," said the king. Casques were crack'd and hauberks hack'd Lances snapt in sunder. Rang the stroke and sprang the blood. Knights were thwack'd and riven, and hew'd Like broad oaks with thunder. "O what an arm," said the king. Edith bow'd her stately head. Saw them lie confounded, Edith Montfort bow'd her head, Crown'd her knight's, and flush'd as red As poppies when she crown'd it. "Take her. Sir Ralph," said the king. So Lilia sang. I thought she was possess'd She struck such warbling fire into the notes. [Charles Kingsley writes in Fraser's Magazine, September 1850: — "At the end of the first canto, fresh from the description of the female college, with 912 NOTES its professoresses and hostler esses, and other Utopian monsters, we turn the page, and — As through the land at eve we went. O there above the little grave We kiss'd again with tears. Between the next two cantos intervenes the well-known cradle-song, perhaps the best of all ; and at the next interval is the equally well-known bugle-song, the idea of which is that of twin-labour and twin- fame in a pair of lovers. In the next the memory Of wife and child inspirits the soldier on the field; in the next the sight of the fallen hero's child opens the sluices of his widow's tears ; and in the last ('Ask me no more') the poet has succeeded in superadding a new form of emotion to a canto in which he seemed to have ex- hausted every resource of pathos which his subject allowed." — Ed.] P. i6i. Tbte Princess; a Medley. PubUshed in 1847. Dedicated to Henry Lushington in 1848. [Dawson of Canada, who edited The Princess, and to whom my father wrote as stated above, says: "At the time of the publication of The Princess the surface- thought of England was intent solely upon Irish famines, corn-laws and free-trade. It was only after many years that it became conscious of anything being wrong in the position of women. . . . No doubt such ideas were at the time 'in the air' in England, but the dominant, practical Philistinism scoffed at them as 'ideas' banished to America, that refuge for exploded European absurdities. I beUeve the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792), first turned the attention of the people of England to the 'wrongs of women.' " The plan of The Princess ma> have suggested itself when the project of a Women's College was in my father's mind (1839), or it may have arisen in its mock- heroic form from a Cambridge joke, such as he commemorated in the lines, "The Doctor's Daughter." See above, p. 927. — Ed.J The Prologue The Prologue was written about a feast of the Mechanics' Institute held in the Lushington's grounds at Park House, near Maidstone, 6th July 1842. P. 161, col. 2, line 8. calumets. Long- fellow sent me one of these pii)es of peace, which belonged to a Red Indian chief. P. 163, col. I, line 28. And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs. Made the proctor's attendants out of breath. P. 163, col. 2, line 25. Emperor-moths, Saturnia Carpini. Canto I P. 165, col. 2, line 10. Galen, the great doctor of Pergamus, a.d. 131 to 200. P. 165, col. 2, line 24. Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf. The proxy of the king used to place his bare leg imder the coverlet of the king's betrothed. [Bacon in his Henry VII. writes of the proxy marriage of Maximilian, the king of the Romans, with Anne of Brittany, 1489 : "For she was not only publicly con- tracted, but stated as a bride, and solemnly bedded ; and after she was laid, there came in Maximilian's ambassador, with letters of procuration, and in the presence of sundry noble personages, men and women, put his leg, stript naked to the knee, between the espousal sheets; to the end that the ceremony might be thought to amoimt to a consummation and actual knowledge." — Ed.] P. 166, col. 2, lines 24-25. A wind arose and rush'd upon the South, And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks Of the wild woods together. See letter to Dawson, p. 926. P. 167, col. I, line 6. blowing bosks, blossoming thickets. P. 167, col. 2, line 19. Her brethren, — accusative after "see." P. 168, col. I, line 2. the liberties. [Blackstone in his Commentaries, ii. 37, defines a "liberty" as a "Royal privilege NOTES 913 or branch of the King's prerogative, sub- sisting in the hands of a subject." The term "hberties" is here applied to the estate over which the privilege can be exercised. — Ed.] P. 169, col. 2, line 11. A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight. See letter to Dawson, p. 926. Canto II P. 170, col. I, line 20. Sleek Odalisques, female slaves of the harem. P. 170, col. I, lines 21, 22. • but she That taught the Sabine how to rule. The wood-nymph Egeria, who was said to have given the laws to Numa Pompilius. ["And in all that he did, he knew that he should please the gods; for he did everything by the direction of the nymph Egeria, i^ho honoured him so much that she took him to be her husband, and taught him in her sacred grove, by the spring that welled out from the rock, all that he was to do towards the gods and towards men." Arnold's History of Rome, vol. i. ch. i.; Livy, i. 19; Ovid. Fasti, iii. 276. — Ed.] P. 170, col. I, line 23. The foundress of the Babylonian wall. Semiramis. [Diodorus, 11. viii. — Ed.] P. 170, col. I, line 24. The Carian Artemisia strong in war. She who fought so bravely for Xerxes at Salamis that he said* that his women had become men and his men women. [Herod, viii. 88: 'iS!,ip^7]v 8^ eiirai XiyeruL irpbs tcl (ppa^Sfxeva' Ot fiiv c^vdpes yeySpaai /xol yvvacKes, ai 8^ yvvalKes dvdpes. — Ed.] P. 170, col. I, line 30. The Rhodope, that built the pyramid. A celebrated Greek courtesan of Thracian origin, who was said to have built a pyramid near Memphis. iElian -relates that she married Psammetichus, King of Egypt. "A statelier pyramis to her I'll rear Than Rhodope's or Memphis' ever was." I Henry VI. i. vi. 22. 3N Doricha was probably her real name (she is so called by Sappho), and she perhaps received that of Rhodopis, "rosy-cheeked," on account of her beauty. P. 170, col. I, line 26. Clelia, who swam the Tiber in escaping from Porsenna's camp (Livy, ii. 13). P. 170, col. I, line 26. Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi. P. 170, col. I, line 26. Palmyrene. Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. [See Gibbon, ch. xi. sub anno a.d. 272. — Ed.] P. 170, col. I, line 28. Agrippina, grand-daughter of Augustus, married to Germanicus. P. 170, col. 2, line 19. headed like a star, with bright golden hair. [Cf. //. vi, 401 : dXLyKLov aar^pL Kay (a. — Ed.] P. 170, col. 2, lines 22, 23. but no livelier than the dame That whispered ^ Asses ^ ears.' Midas in The Wyf of Bathe's Tale con- fides the secret of his hairy asses' ears only to his wife. [The good dame could not resist telling it to a neighbouring "mareys" in a whisper. And as a bitore bombleth in the myre She leyde hir mouth unto the water doun : 'Biwreye me nat, thou water, with thy soun,' Quod she, ' to thee I telle it and namo, — Myn housbonde hath longe asses erys two.' Ed.] P. 170, col. 2, line 26. This world was once a fluid haze of light, etc. The nebular theory as formulated by Laplace. [Cf . In Memoriam, cxviii. iii. ; Lxxxix. xii. — Ed.] P. 171, col. I, line i. Appraised the Lycian custom. Herodotus (i. 173) says that the Lycians took their names from their mothers instead of their fathers. P. 171, col. I, line 2. [Lar or Lars, as in Lars Porsena, signifies noble. — Ed.] P. 171, col. I, line 2. Lucumo is an Etruscan prince or priest. 914 NOTES P. 171, col. I, line 6. Salique. The laws of the Salian Franks forbad inherit- ance by women. P. 171, col. I, lines 7, 8. touched . . . contempt. Had she heard that, according to the Mohammedan doctrine, hell was chiefly occupied by women ? P. 171, col. I, line 24. if more was more. Greater in size meant greater in power. P. 172, col. 2, line 13. As he bestrode my Grandsir^. In defence. [Cf. Shakespeare, I Henry IV. v. i. 122, and Comedy of Errors, v. i. 192: "When I bestrid thee in the wars." — Ed.] P. 173, col. I, line 20. The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind ? Who condemned his sons to death for conspiracy against the city (Livy, ii. 5). P. 173, col. 2, line 26. That clad her like an April daffodilly. The Quarterly Review objected to "April daffodilly." Daffodils in the North of England belong as much to April as to March. 1 On the 15th of April in the streets of Dublin I remember a man presenting me with a handful of daffodils ; and in 1887 at Farringford I saw daffodils still in bloom in May. P. 173, col. 2, line 29. As bottom agates, etc. It has been said that I took this simile partly from Beaumont and Fletcher, partly from Shakespeare, whereas I made it while I was bathing in Wales. P. 175, col. 2, line 7. The long hall glittered like a bed of flowers. Lady Psyche's "side" (pupils) wore lilac robes, and Lady Blanche's robes of daffodil colour. P. 175, col. 2, line 29. Astrcean. Astraea, daughter of Zeus and Themis, is to come back first of the celestials on the return of the Golden Age [even as she was the last to leave earth in the Age of Iron : Victa jacet pietas, et virgo caede madentes Ultima caelestum terras Astraea reliquit. Ov. Met. i. 150. — Ed.] 1 March the poet calls " the roaring moon of daflfodil and crocus" in his Prefatory Sonnet to the " Nineteenth Century." Canto III P. 177, col. I, line 30. Consonant . . . note. If two stringed instruments are together, and a note is struck on one, the other will vibrate with the same harmony. P. 177, col. 2, line 21. The Samian Here. The Greek Here, whose favourite abode was Samos. P. 177, col. 2, line 22. A Memnon smitten with the morning Sun. The statue in Egypt which gave forth a musical note when "smitten with the morning sun." [Cf. Pausanias i. 42 and The Palace of Art: And from her lips, as morn from Memnon, drew Rivers of melodies. Ed.] P. 178, col. 2, line 13. ran up his furrowy forks. The early editions have "dark-blue forks" or peaks. P. 179, col. 2, line 6. 'Alas your Highness breathes full East,' I said. A playful reference to the cold manner of an Eastern queen and the east wind. P. 180, col. I, line 8. pou sto. dbs tov (XtG) Kal Kbffixov KLvqaw ("Give me where I may stand and I will move the world"), an often-quoted saying of Archimedes. P. 180, col. I, line 24. gynceceum, women's quarters in a Greek house. P. 180, col. 2, line 4. shook the woods. They shook in the wind made by the cataract. • P. 180, col. 2, line 19. Diotima. Said to have been an instructress of Socrates. She was a priestess of Mantinea. (Cf. Plato's Symposium.) P. 180, col. 2, line 23. And cram him with the fragments of the grave. See Hogarth's picture in the "Stages of Cruelty." It was asserted that they used to give dogs the remnants of the dissecting- room. P. 181, col. 2, line 23. Elysian lawns are the lawns of Elysium and have nothing to do with Troy, as some critics explain, NOTES 915 or perhaps they. refer to the Islands of the Blest. Cf. Pindar, Olympia, ii. 128. P. 181, col. I, line 30. Corinna. She is the Boeotian poetess who is said to have triumphed over Pindar in poetical com- petition (Pausanias, ix. 22). The Princess probably exaggerates. Canto IV The opening song was written after hearing the echoes at Killamey in 1848. When I was there I heard a bugle blown beneath the "Eagle's Nest," and eight distinct echoes. P. 181, col. I, line 19. There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun. Norman Lockyer says that this is a true description of the sun. P. 182, col. I, line 21. Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. This song came to me on the yellowing autumn -tide at Tin tern Abbey, full for me of its bygone memories. It is the sense of the abiding in the transient. [My father thought that his brother Charles Tennyson Turner's sonnet "Time and TwiUght "had the same sort of mystic damonisch feeling, "the Passion of the Past." TIME AND TWILIGHT In the dark twiUght of an autumn mom I stood within a little country-town, Wherefrom a long acquainted path went down To the dear village haunts where I was born ; The low of oxen on the rainy wind, Death and the Past, came up the well- known road, And bathed my heart with tears, but stirred my mind To tread once more the track so long imtrod ; But I was warned, "Regrets which are not thrust Upon thee, seek not; for this sobbing breeze Will but unman thee: thou art bold to trust Thy woe-worn thoughts among these roar- ing trees, And gleams of by-gone playgrounds. Is't no crime To rush by night into the arms of Time?" Ed.]- P. 182, col. 2, Une 19. rough hex, hemlock. [Cf. "kecksies," Henry V. v. ii. 52. — Ed.] P. 182, col. 2, lines 20, 21. beard-blown goat Hang on tJte shaft. The wind blew his beard on the height of the ruined pillar. [Wild figtree split, etc. Cf. Juvenal, X. 145. — Ed.] P. 183, col. I, lines 31, 32. Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time, . . . laughed with alien lips. [Cf. Odyssey, xx. 347 : ol 8' tJSt) yvadnotcTL yeXdojv dWoTpioiatv. Ed.] P. 183, col. 2, line i. meadow-crak^, corn-crake or landrail. P. 183, col. 2, Une 16. Valkyrian hymns. [Like those sung by the Valkyrian maidens, "the choosers of the slain," in the Northern mythology. — Ed.] P. 184, col. 2, line 12. Caryatids. "female figures used as bearing shafts" (Vitruv. i.), e.g. the maidens supporting the light entablature of the portico of the Erechtheum at Athens. P. 184, col. 2, lines 14, 15. Of open-work in which the hunter rued His rash intrusion. Actaeon turned into a stag for looking on Diana bathing. P. 185, col. 2, lines 5, 6. But as the waterlily starts and slides Upon the level in little pujfs of wind. Waterlilies in my own pond, and seen by me on' a gusty day. They started and slid in the sudden puffs of wind till caught and stayed by the tether of their own stalks. (See supra, letter to Dawson.) P. 185, col. 2, line 16. Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not. 9i6 NOTES When I was in a friend's garden in Yorkshire, I heard a nightingale singing with such a frenzy of passion that it was unconscious of everything else, and not frightened though I came and stood quite close beside it. I saw its eye flashing and felt the air bubble in my ear through the vibration. P. 185, col. 2, line 19. Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, mother of the Muses. P. 185, col. 2, line 24. mystic fire, St. Elmo's fire. [St. Elmo's phosphorescent light flickers on the tops of masts when a storm is brewing. Cf. Tempest, i. ii. 197, and Longfellow's Golden Legend : "Last night I saw St. Elmo's stars, With their glimmering lanterns all at play. On the tops of the masts, and the tips of the spars. And I knew we should have foul weather to-day." Ed.] P. 185, col. 2, line 29. blowzed, blown-red. P. 186, col. 2, line 10. A lidless watcher of the public weal. Lidless = wakeful, wide-eyed. P. 187, col. I, line 24. A Niobean daughter. Niobe was proud of her twelve children, and in consequence boasted her- seK as superior to Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis, who in revenge shot them all dead. P. 187, col. 2, lines 7, 8. When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens. I remember seeing thirty ricks burning near Cambridge, and I helped to pass the bucket from the well to help to quench the fire. [Cf. To Mary Boyle, verse vii. and verse x. — Ed.] P. 188, col. 2, line 2. dwarfs of presage. [Afterwards seen to be far short of ex- pectation. — Ed.] P. 189, col. I, lines 13-15- Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye Glares ruin, etc. [Cf . Enoch Arden : Allured him, as the beacon-blaze allures The bird of passage, till he madly strikes Against it, and beats out his weary Ufe. Ed.] P. 190. Song beginning Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums. Cf. Sedgwick's Life, ii. 103. — Extract of a letter from J. Eaton, a private serving in the Battle of Aliwal, 1846, and a son of two of Sedgwick's servants : "Also, my dear mother, tell Rhoda Harding I thought of her in the battle's heat, and that as I cut at the enemy and parried their thrusts my arm was strong on her account ; for I felt at that moment that I loved her more than ever, and may God Almighty bless her." Sedgwick's comment: "This is, I think, exquisitely beautiful, for it is the strong language of pure feeling in the hour of severest trial." My first version of this song was pub- lished in Selections, 1865 : Lady, let the rolling dnuns Beat to battle where thy v/arrior stands ; Now thy face across his fancy comes And gives the battle to his hands. Lady, let the trumpets blow, Clasp thy little babes about thy knee : Now their warrior father meets the foe And strikes him dead for thine and thee. Canto V P. 191, col. I, line 4. glimmering lanes refers to the lines of tents just visible in the darkness. P. 191, col. I, line 23. mawkin, kitchen- wench. [Cf. "malkin," Coriolanus, 11. i. 224. — Ed.] P. 193, col. I, line 16. mammoth bulk'd in ice, bulky mamijioth buried in ice. P. 194, col. 2, line 25. the airy Giant's zone, the stars in the belt of Orion. P. 194, col. 2, line 29. morions [steel helmets (Spanish, morrion). — Ed.]. P. 19s, col. I, line 28. Her that talk'd down the fifty wisest men. St. Catherine of Alexandria, niece o! NOTES 917 Constantine the Great. [The Emperor Maxentius during his persecution is related to have sent fifty of his wisest men to con- vert her from Christianity, but she com- bated and confuted them all. — Ed.] P. ig6, col. I, Unes 21, 22. and standing like a stately Pine Set in a cataract on an island-crag. Taken from a torrent above Cauteretz. [Cf. Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, Sept. 7, 1861, p. 269: "Cauterets, September 7. — I have been out for a walk with A. T. to a sort of island between two waterfalls, with pines on it, of which he retained a recollection from his visit thirty -one years ago, and which, moreover, furnished a simile to The Princess. He is very fond of the place evidently, as it is more in the mountains than any other, and so far superior." In 1875 he took me to this same island and talked of Arthur Hallam and Clough. — Ed.] P. 196, col. 2, line 8. Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae, who cut off the head of Cyrus the Great after defeating him, and dipped it in a skin which she had filled with blood and bade him, as he was in- satiate of blood, to drink his fill, gorge* himself with blood. [Cf. Herod, i. 212: •^ fi^v ae iy'. It was written as a universal apologue, and NOTES 923 the people do not as yet call my flower a weed. [Mrs. Richard Ward, daughter of Sir John Simeon, wrote to me of this poem: "However absorbed Tennyson might be in earnest talk, his eye and ear were always alive to the natural objects around him. I have often known him stop short in a sentence to listen to a blackbird's song, to watch the sunlight glint on a butterfly's wing, or to examine a field-flower at his feet. The lines of The Flower weie the result of an investigation of the 'love-in- idleness' growing at Farringford. He made them nearly all on the spot, and said them to me (as they are) next day." — Ed.] P. 230. Requiescat. [First published in 1864. — Ed.] P. 230. The Sailor Boy. First pub- lished in the Victoria Regia, edited by Miss Emily Faithfull, 1861. . P. 230, line 12. scrawl, the young of the dog-crab. P. 231. The Islet. [First published in 1864. — Ed.] A mountain islet pointed and peaked; Waves on a diamond shingle dash. Cataract brooks to the ocean run, F airily-delicate palaces skitie Mixt with myrtle and clad with vine, And overstream'd and silvery-streak' d With many a rivulet high against the Sun The facets of the glorious mountain flash Above the valleys of palm and pine. These lines, a fragment, were the nucleus of the poem, and perhaps it would have been better not to have expanded them into the singer and his wife. P. 231. Child Songs. [First pub- lished in St. Nicholas, February 1880; set to music by my mother. — Ed.] I. The City Child. Rejected from The Princess. II. Minnie and Winnie. Rejected from The Princess. P. 232. The Spiteful Letter. First published in Once a Week, January 1868. It is no particular letter that I meant. I have had dozens of them from one quarter and another. P. 232. Literary Squabbles. [First published in Punch, March 7, 1846. — Ed.] P. 232. The Victim. [Printed in 1867 at the Guest Printing Press, Wimbome, and first published in Good Words, January 1869. — Ed.] I read the story in Miss Yonge's Golden Deeds, and made it Scandi- P. 232, line 3. thorpe and byre, town and farm. P. 233. Wages. [First pubHshed in Macmillan's Magazine, February 1868. — Ed.] P. 234. The Higher Pantheism. [Written for the Metaphysical Society in 1869, and first published in 1869. — Ed.] P. 234. The Voice and the Peak. [First published in 1874. — Ed.] Line 4. Green-rushing from the rosy thrones of dawn I This line was made in the Val d'Anzasca after looking at Monte Rosa flushed by the dawn and rising above the chestnuts and I walnuts (Sept. 4, 1873). i P. 235. Flower in the crannied WALL. [First pubUshed in 1869. — Ed.] The flower was plucked out of a wall at "Waggoners WeUs," near Haslemere. P. 235. A Dedication. [First pub- lished in 1864. Written at Farringford, and addressed to my mother. — Ed.] P. 235. BoADiCEA. [Written at Far- ringford, and first pubUshed in 1864. — - Ed.] This is a far-off echo of the metre of the Attis of Catullus. P. 235, line 6. Yell'd and shriek'd betwien her daughters o'er a wild confederacy is accented as I mark the accents. Let it be read straight like prose and it will come all right. [Farmy Kemble writes: "I do not think any reading of Tennyson's can ever be as striking and impressive as that 'Curse of Boadicea' that he intoned to us, while the oak-trees were writhing in the storm that lashed the windows and swept over Blackdown the day we were there." — ■ Ed.] 924 NOTES P. 236, line 38. miserable in ignominy is metrically equivalent to Catullus', for I put a tribrach where Catullus has a trochee. P. 237. [The translation from Homer and the experiments in quantity first pub- lished in the CornhiU Magazine, December 1863. — Ed.] P. 237. Hexameters and Pentameters (in English) do not run well. See Cole- ridge's shockingly bad couplet as far as quantity goes — with the pentameter. In the pentameter aye falling In mel6dy back. Much better would be Up goes Hexameter with might as a foun- tain arising, Lightly thg fountain falls, lightly the penta- meter. It is noteworthy that in English doubling the consonant generally makes the foot preceding short, e.g. valley, etc. [My father thought that quantitative English Hexameters were as a rule only fit for comic subjects, though he said: "Of course you might go on with perfect Hex- ameters of the following kind, but they would grow monotonous : 'High woods roaring above me, dark leaves falling about me.'" Some of the Hexameters in two quanti- tative experiments, "Jack and the Bean- stalk" and "Bluebeard," published by me anonymously in Miss Thackeray's Blue- beard's Keys, were made or amended by him. Throughout the Hexameters, by his advice, quantitj'^, except here and there for the sake of variety, coincides with accent. — Ed.] P. 237. Alcaics. My Alcaics are not intended for Horatian Alcaics, nor are Horace's Alcaics the Greek Alcaics, nor are his Sapphics, which are vastly inferior to Sappho's, the Greek Sapphics. The Horatian Alcaic is perhaps the stateliest metre in the world except the Virgilian hexameter at its best ; but the Greek Alcaic, if we may judge from the two or three specimens left, had a much freer and lighter movement : and I have no doubt that an old Greek if he knew our language would admit my Alcaics as legitimate, only Milton must not be pronounced Mil/'w. di>T\r)p eTrel /ce vdos ifi^q. (Alcaeus). Is that very Horatian? I did once begin an Horatian Alcaic Ode to a great painter, of which I only recollect one line : "Munificently rewarded Artist." P. 237, line 3. God-gifted organ-voice of England. Mr. Calverley attacked the "an" in "organ" as being too short, forgetting that in the few third Hnes of the stanzas left by Alcaeus this syllable is more than once short. fjL^\tXpov, avrap dfj-cpl Kbpcrq. again : & BiJ/cx', (pdpfxaKov 3' dpicrrou. Look at Sappho's third line in the only Alcaic left of hers : afSws K^ §ter passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills. Taken from my own observation — the rapids of the Wye are stilled by the in- coming sea. P. 248. Section xxn. Verse i. four sweet years. [1828-32. — Ed.] P. 248. Section xxm. Verse ii. Who keeps the keys of all the creeds. After death we shall learn the truth of all beliefs. P. 248. Section xxm. Verse v. And all the secret of the Spring. Re-awakening of life. P. 248. Section xxiv. Verse i. wander- ing isles of night, sim-spots. P. 248. Section xxiv. Verse iv. And orb into the perfect star, etc. [Cf. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After: Hesper — Venus — were we native to that splendour or in Mars, We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening stars. Ed.] P, 248. Section xxv. Verse i. this was Life — chequered, but the burden was shared. P. 249. Section xxvi. Verse ii. And if thai eye which watcher guilt, etc. The Eternal Now. I AM. 30 P. 249. Section xxvi. Verse iii. And Love the indifference to be.. [And that the present Love will end in future indifference. — Ed.] P. 249. Section xxvi. Verse iv. Then might I fitid, ere yet the morn Breaks hither over Indian seas. [Cf. Midsummer-Night's Dream, 11, ii. 10, and Comiis, 140 : "Ere the blabbing eastern scout. The nice mom on the Indian steep, From her cabin'd loophole peep." Then might I was in the original MS. So might I. — Ed.] my proper scorn, scorn of myself. P. 249. Section xxvii. Verse iii. \want- begotten rest means rest — the result of some deficiency or narrowness. — Ed.] P. 249. Section xxvii. Verse iv. Tw better to have loved and lost, etc. [My father regretted that Clough imitated these Unes in Alteram Partem: 'Tis better to have fought and lost Than never to have fought at all. Ed.] P. 249. Section xxvm. Verse v. The merry merry bells of Yule. They always used to ring on Xmas Eve. P. 249. Section xxlx. [Original reading of first verse (MS.) : With such compeUing cause to grieve As that which drains our days of peace, And fetters thought to his decease. How dare we keep our Christmas-eve. Ed.] P. 249. Section xxrx. [Original read- ing of third verse (MS.) : But this — to keep it like the last, To keep it even for his sake ; Lest one more link should seem to break, And Death sweep all into the Past. Ed.] P. 250. Section xxx. Verse ii. the hall was the dining-room at Somersby which my father [the Rev. G. C. Tennyson] built. P. 250. Section xxx. Verse vii. Rapt from the fickle and the frail. 930 NOTES {Cf. The Ring: No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man, But thro' the Will of One who knows and rules — And utter knowledge is but utter love — Ionian Evolution, swift or slow. Thro' all the Spheres — an ever opening height. An ever lessening earth. Cf. Memoir, ii. 365. — Ed.] Rapt, taken. P. 250. Section xxx. Verse viii. when Hope was born. [My father often said : "The cardinal point of Christianity is the life after death." — Ed.] P. 250. Section xxxi. "She goeth unto the grave to weep there" (St. John xi. 31). P. 250. Section xxxi. Verse ii. Had surely added praise to praise. [Would have doubled our sense of thanks- giving. — Ed.] P. 250. Section xxxi. Verse iv. [He is Lazarus. — Ed.] P. 250. Section xxxiii. Verse ii. A life that leads melodious days. Cf. Statins, Silv. i. 3 : ceu veritus turbare Vopisci Pieriosque dies et habentes carmina somnos. P. 251. Section xxxiii. Verse iv. In holding by the law within. [In holding an intellectual faith which does not care "to fix itself to form." — Ed.] P. 251. Section xxxi v. Verse i. See Introduction, Eversley Edition, pp. 218-19. P. 251. Section xxxv. Verse i. the narrow house, the grave. P. 251. Section xxxv. Verse iii. Monian hills, the everlasting hills. The vastness of the Ages to come may seem to militate against that Love. [Cf. cxxiii. ii. — Ed.] P. 251. Section xxxv. Verse iv. The sound of that forgetful shore. "The land where all things are forgotten." P. 251. Section xxxvi. See Introduc- tion, Eversley Edition, p. 222. P. 251. Section xxxvi. Verse ii. For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, Where truth in closest words shall fail, When truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors. For divine Wisdom had to deal with the limited powers of humam'ty, to which truth logically argued out would be ineffectual, whereas truth coming in the story of the Gospel can influence the poorest. P. 251. Section xxxvi. Verse iii. the Word. [As in the first chapter of St. John's Gospel — the Revelation of the Eternal Thought of the Universe. — Ed.] P. 251. Section xxxvi. Verse i v. those wild eyes. By this is intended the Pacific Islanders, "wild" having a sense of "bar- barian" in it. P. 251. Section xxxvii. The Heavenly muse bids the poet's muse sing on a less lofty theme. [Melpomene, the earthly muse of tragedy, answers for the poet: "I am compelled to speak — as I think of the dead and of his words — of the comfort in the creed of creeds, although I feel myself unworthy to speak of such mysteries."] ^ P. 252. Section xxx vii. Verse v. [The original reading in first edition : And dear as sacramental wine. Ed.] P. 252. Section xxxvii. Verse vi. master's field, the province of Christianity (see XXXVI.). P. 252. Section xxxviii. Verse ii. the blowing season, the blossoming season. P. 252. Section xxxvni. Verse iii. [// any care for what is here Survive in spirits rendered free. Cf. Aen. iv. 34: Id cinerem aut Manes credis curare sepultos ? . Ed.] P. 252. Section XXXIX. Verse i. smoke. This section was added in 1869. The yew, when flowering, in a wind or if struck ^ Note by my mother. NOTES 931 sends up its pollen like smoke. [Cf. The Holy Grail: Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half The cloisters, on a gustful April morn That puff'd the swaying branches into smoke. Cf. Memoir, ii. 53. — Ed.] P. 252. Section xxxix. Verse ii. When flower is feeling after flower. [The yew is dicecious. — Ed.] P. 252. Section xxxtx. Verse iii. In Section n., as in the two last lines of this section. Sorrow only saw the winter gloom of the foliage. P. 252. Section XL. Verse vii. [would have told means — would desire to be told. — Ed.] P. 252. Section XL. Verse viii. I have parted with thee until I die, and my paths are in the fields I know, whilst thine are in lands which I do not know. [Cf. "the undiscovered country," Hamlet, iii. i. — Ed.] P. 252. Section XLi. [This section alludes to the doctrine which from first to last, and in so many ways and images, my father proclaimed — "the upward and on- ward progress of life." — Ed.] P. 253. Section xLi. Verse iv. The howlings from forgotten fields. The eternal miseries of the Inferno. [More especially, I feel sure, a reminis- cence of Dante's Inferno, Canto iii. lines 25-51, which he often quoted as giving terribly the horror of it all. They describe those wretched beings, who for ever shriek and wail and beat their breasts because they are despised, and forgotten, and con- signed to everlasting nothingness on ac- count of their colourlessness and indiflfer- ence during life : Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa ; Misericordia e giustizia gli sdegna ; Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa. Ed.] P. 253. Section xli. Verse vi. sectdar to-be, aeons of the future. [Cf. lxxvi. ii. : The secular abyss to come. Ed.] P. 253. Section xliii. If the immediate life after death be only sleep, and the spirit between this life and the next should be folded like a flower in a night slumber, then the remembrance of the past might remain, as the smell and colour do in the sleeping flower; and in that case the memory of our love would last as true, and would live pure and whole within the spirit of my friend until it was unfolded at ' the breaking of the morn, when the sleep was over. P. 253. Section xliii. Verse i. Thro' all its intervital gloom. In the passage between this life and the next. P. 253. Section xlui. Verse iv. And at the spiritual prime. Dawn of the spiritual life hereafter. P. 253'^ Section xliv. Verse i. God shut the doonvays of his head. Closing of the skull after babyhood. The dead after this life may have no remembrance of life, like the living babe who forgets the time before the sutures of the skull are closed, yet the living babe grows in knowledge, and though the remembrance of his earliegt days has vanished, yet with his increasing knowledge there comes a dreamy vision of what has been; it may be so with the dead; if so, resolve my doubts, etc. P. 254. Section xlv. Verse iv. This use may lie in blood and breath. [The purpose of the life here may be to realise personal consciousness. — Ed.] P. 254. Section xlvi. [The original reading of first verse (MS.) : — In travelling thro' this lower clime. With reason our memorial power Is shadow' d by the growing hour. Lest this should be too much for timi . It is better for us who go forward on the path of life that the past should in the main grow dim. — Ed.] P. 254. Section xlvi. Verse iv. Original reading of first line was : O me, Love's province were not large. 932 NOTES Love, a brooding star. As if Lord of the whole life. [Memory fails here, but memory in the next life must have all our being and exist- ence clearly in view; and will see Love shine forth as if Lord of the whole life (not merely of those five years of friend- ship), — the wider landscape aglow with the sunrise of "that deep dawn behind the tomb." For the use of 'Look,' cf. Dedication, 'Dear, near and true.' 'Which in our winter woodland looks a flower.' — Ed.] P. 254. Section xlvii. The individu- ality lasts after death, and we are not utterly absorbed into the Godhead. If we are to be finally merged in the Universal Soul, Love asks to have at least one more parting before we lose ourselves. P. 254. Section xlviii. Verse iii. shame to draw The deepest measure. [For there are "thoughts that do often lie too deep for " mere poetic words. — Ed.] P. 254. Section xlix. Verse ii. crisp [curl, ripple. Cf. To watch the crisping ripples on the beach. , The Lotos-Eaters. — Ed.]. P. 255. Section Li. Verse iv. [See Memoir, i. 481. The Queen quoted this verse to my father about the Prince Consort, just after his death, and told him that it had brought her great comfort. — Ed.] P. 255. Section Lii. [T cannot love thee as I ought, for human nature is frail, and cannot be perfect like Christ's. Yet it is the ideal, and truth to the ideal, which make the wealth of life.^ The more direct line of thought is that not even the Gospel tale keeps man wholly true to the ideal of Christ. But nothing — no shortcoming of frail humanity — can move that Spirit of the highest love from our side which bids us endure and abide the issue. — Ed.] P. 255. Section lii. Verse iv. Abide, wait without wearying. P. 255. Section liii. Verses ii., iii., iv. And dare we to this fancy give. 1 Note by my mother. There is a passionate heat of nature in a rake sometimes. The nature that yields emotionally may turn out stfaighter than a prig's. Yet we must not be making excuses, but we must set before us a rule of good for young as for old. P. 255. Section liii. Verse iv. divine Philosophy. [Cf . xxiii. vi. — Ed.] P. 256. Section lv. Verse i. The likest God within the soul. The inner consciousness — the divine in man. P. 256. Section LV. Verse iii. And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear. "Fifty" should be "myriad." P. 256. Section LV. Verse v. the larger hope. [My father means by "the larger hope" that the whole human race would, through, perhaps, ages of suffering, be at length purified and saved, even those who now "better not with time," so that at the end of The Vision of Sin we read : God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. Ed.] P. 256. Section lvi. Verse vi. Dragons of the prime. The geologic monsters of the early ages. P. 256. Section LVii. [Cf. The Grave. See supra, p. 926. — Ed.] P. 256. Section lvii. Verse ii. / shall pass; my work will fail. The poet speaks of these poems. Methinks I have built a rich shrine to my friend, but it will not last. P. 256. Section lvii. Verse iv. Ave, Ave. Cf. Catullus, Carm.- ci. 10, these terribly pathetic lines : Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu Atque in perpetuum frater Ave atque Vale. [My father wrote: "Nor can any modern elegy, so long as men retain the least hope in the after-life of those whom they loved, equal in pathos the desolation of that everlasting farewell." — Ed.] P. 257. Section lviii. Ulysses was written soon after Arthur Ilallam's death, and gave my feeUngs about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in In Memoriam. NOTES 933 P. 257. Section lix. [Inserted in 185 1 as a pendant to Section in. — Ed.] P. 257. Section lxi. In power of love not even the greatest deed can surpass the poet. P. 257. Section lxi. Verse i. [Cf. xxxvni. iii. — Ed.] P. 257. Section lxi. Verse iii. doubt- ful shore. [Cf. and that which should be man, From that one light no man can look upon, Drew to this shore lit by the suns and moons And all the shadows. De Profundis. And: And we, the poor earth's dying race, and yet No phantoms, watching from a phantom shore. Await the last and largest sense to make The phantom walls of this illusion fade, And show us that the world is wholly fair. The Ancient Sage. — Ed.] P. 258. Section lxiv. [This section was composed by my father when he was walking up and down the Strand and Fleet Street. — Ed.] P. 258. Section lxiv. Verse iii. golden keys [keys of office of State. — Ed.]. P. 258. Section lxvii. Verse i. By that broad water of the west. The Severn. P. 258. Section Lxvn. Verse iv. I my- self did not see Clevedon till years after the burial of A. H. H. (Jan. 3, 1834), and then in later editions of In Memoriam I altered the word "chancel" (, which was the word used by Mr. Hallam in his Memoir) to "dark church." P. 259. Section lxviii. Verse i. Death's twin-brother. " Consanguineus Leti Sopor" (Aen. vi. 278). [Cf. //. xiv. 231 ; II. xvi. 672 and 682. — Ed.] P. 259. Section LXix. To write poems about death and grief is "to wear a crown of thorns," which the people say ought to be laid aside. . P. 259. Section lxix. V.?rse iv. f found an angel of the night. But the Divine Thing in the gloom brought comfort. P. 259. Section Lxxi. [The original reading of first verse (MS.) : Old things are clear in waking trance. And thou, O Sleep, hast made at last A night-long Present of the Past In which we went thro' svmny France. Ed.] we went [in 1832 (see Memoir, i. 51 foil., and the poem In the Valley of Cauteretz. — ^ Ed.]. P. 259. Section lxxi. [The original reading of last verse (MS.) : Beside the river's wooded reach. The meadow set with summer flags. The cataract clashing from the crags. The breaker breaking on the beach. Ed.] P. 259. " Section lxxi. Verse iv. The cataract flashing from the bridge. [That is, from under the bridge. — Ed.] P. 260. Section lxxii. Hallam's death- day, September the 15th. [Cf. xcix. — Ed.] P. 260. Section lxxii. Verse iv. yet look'd. [Yet wouldst have looked. — Ed.] P 260. Section lxxii. Verse vii. thy dull goal of joyless gray [the dull sunset. — Ed.]. P. 260. Section Lxxiii. Verse ii. For nothing is that errs from law. Cf. Zoroaster's saying, "Nought errs. from law." P. 260. Section lxxiii. Verse iv. A nd self -infolds the large results Of force that would have forged a name. [And conserves the strength which would have gone to the making of a name. Cf. Ode on the Death of the Duke of Welling- ton: Gone ; but nothing can bereave him Of the force he made his own Being here, and foil. — Ed.] P. 260. Section lxxv. Verse iii. the breeze of song. Cf. Pindar, Pyth. iv. 3: ovpov Vfiviav. 934 NOTES P. 261. Section lxxv. Verse iv. Thy leaf has perish'd in the green. At twenty-three. P. 261. Section lxxvi. Verse i. Take wings of fancy, and ascend, A nd in a moment set thy face Where all the starry heavens of space Are sharpen'' d to a needless end. So distant in void space that all our firma- ment would appear to be a needle-point thence. P. 261. Section lxxvi. Verse ii. The secular abyss to come = the ages upon ages to be (cf. Sect. xo. vi.). P. 261. Section lxxvi. Verse iii. the. matin songs. The great early poets. P. 261. Section LXXVI. Verse iv. these remain. [The yew and oak. — Ed.] P. 261. Section Lxxvii. Verse iii. then changed to something else. [The grief that is no longer a grief. — Ed.] P. 261. Section lxxviii. Verse iii. The mimic picture's breathing grace. Tableaux vivants. P. 261. Section lxxviii. Verse iii. hoodman-blind, blind man's bufif. [Cf. "What devil was't That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman- blind ? " Hamlet, m. iv. 77. — Ed.] P. 261. Section Lxxix. The section is addressed to my brother Charles (Tenny- son Turner). [My father wrote to Mr. Gladstone: "He was almost the most lovable human being I have ever met." — Ed.] P. 261. Section lxxix. Verse i. in fee [in possession. Cf. Wordsworth's sonnet on Venice : "Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee." Ed.]. P. 262. Section lxxix. Verse iv. kin- dred brows was originally "brother brows." P. 262. Section lxxxi. Verse i. Could I have said while he was here — Would that I could have said, etc. [I printed this explanatory note, which my father read and did not alter; and he told me, as far as I remember, that a note of exclamation had been omitted by acci- dent after "ear" (thus, "ear!"). James Spedding, in a pencil note on the MS. of In Memoriam, writes, "Could I have said" — meaning, "I wish I could." — Ed.] P. 262. Section lxxxi. Verse ii. Love, then. [Love at that time. — Ed.] P. 262. Section lxxxii. Verse ii. From state to state the spirit walks. [Cf. Sect. XXX. vi. and vii., and Some draught of Lethe might await The slipping thro' from state to state. The Two Voices. — Ed.] P. 263. Section lxxxiv. Verse iii. When thou should'st link thy life with one Of mine own house. The projected marriage of A. H. H. with Emily Tennyson. P. 263. Section lxxxiv. Verse xi. A rrive at last the blessed goal. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. ii. : "ere he arrive The happy isle." P. 263. Section lxxxiv. Verse xii. back- ward. [Looking back on what might have been. — Ed.] P. 263. Section lxxxv. Verse vi. The great Intelligences fair. Cf . Lycidas : "There entertain him all the Saints above In solemn troops, and sweet societies, That sing, and singing in their glory move. And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. " [Cf. Milton, Par. Lost, v. 407, and Dante, // Convito, ii. 5 : Intelligenze, le quali la volgare gente chiama Angeli. Ed.] P. 263. Section lxxxv. Verse vii. cycled times [earthly periods. — Ed.]. P. 264. Section lxxxv. Verse x. Yet none could better know than I, How much of act at human hands The sense of human will demands. Yet I know that the knowledge that we have free will demands from us action. NOTES 935 P. 264. Section lxxxv. Verse xiv. imaginative woe. [The imaginative and speculative sorrow of the poet. Cf. infra, verse xxiv. : And pining life be fancy-fed. Ed.] P. 264.. Section lxxxv. Verse xxiii. [Think of me as having reached the final goal of bliss, and as triumphing in the one far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves. Ed.] P. 264. Section lxxxv. Verse xxvi., line I. [With love as true, if not so fresh. Ed.] P. 264. Section lxxxv. Verse xxvii. hold apart. [Set by itself, above rivalry. — Ed.] P. 264. Section lxxxv. Verse xxix., refers to his 'bride to be,' Emily Sell wood. P. 265. Section lxxxvi. Written at Barmouth. P. 265. Section lxxxvi. Verse i. am- brosial air. It was a west wind. P. 265. Section Lxxx\a. Verse ii. the horned flood. Between two promontories. P. 265. Section lxxxvi. Verse iv. orient star. Any rising star is here intended. P. 265. Section lxxxvii. Trinity Col- lege, Cambridge. P. 265. Section Lxxxvn. Verse iv. the rooms. Which were in New Court, Trinity. [Now "3 G. — Ed.] P. 265. Section lxxxvii. Verse x. The bar of Michael Angelo. The broad bar of frontal bone over the eyes of Michael Angelo. P. 265. Section lxxxviii. To the Nightingale. P. 265. Section lxxxviii. Verse i. quicks [quickset thorn. — Ed.]. P. 266. Section lxxxix. Somersby. P. 266. Section lxxxix. Verse i. counterchange [chequer. — Ed.]. The "towering sycamore" is cut down, and the four poplars are gone, and the lawn is no longer flat. P. 266. Section lxxxix. Verse xii. Before the crimson-circled star Had falVn into her father's grave. Before Venus, the evening star, had dipt into the sunset. The planets, according to Laplace, were evolved from the sun. P. 266. Section xc. [He who first suggested that the dead would not be welcome if they came to life again knew not the highest love. Cf. For surely now our household hearths are cold: Oiu" sons inherit us : our looks are strange : And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. The Lotos-Eaters. — Ed.] P. 267. Section xci. Verse i. Flits by the sea-blue bird of March. Darts the sea-shining bird of March would best suit the Kingfisher. 1 used to see him in our brook first in March. He came up from the sea. aXiirdpcpvpos etapos 6pvis (Alcman). Cf. Memoir, ii. 4. — Ed .J P. 267. Section xcii. Verse iv. Ami such refractiov of events As often rises erv lliey rise. The heavenly bodies are seen above the horizon, by refraction, before they actually rise. P. 267. Section xciii. Verse ii. Where all the fierve of sense is numb. [This spiritual state is described in Sect, xciv. — Ed.] P. 267. Section xciu. Verse iii. With gods in unconjectured bliss. [Cf . Camus, 1 1 : "Among the enthroned gods on sainted seats." Ed.] tenfold-complicated. ' [Refers to the ten heavens of Dante. Cf. Paradiso, xxviii. 15 foil. — Ed.] P. 267. Section xciv. Verse iii. They haunt the silence of the breast. This was what I felt. P. 267. Section xcv. Verse ii. The brook alone far-off was heard. It was a marvellously still night, and I 936 NOTES asked my brother Charles to listen to the brook, which we had never heard so far off before, P. 268. Section xcv. Verse iii. lit the filmy shapes That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes And woolly breasts and beaded eyes. Moths; perhaps the ermine or the puss- moth. P. 268. Section xcv. Verse ix. The living soul. The Deity, maybe. The first reading, "his living soul," troubled me, as perhaps giving a wrong impression. [The old passage that troubled him was : His living soul was flash' d on mine. And mine in' his was wound, and whirl' d About empyreal heights of thought, And came on that which is. With reference to the later reading, my father would say: "Of course the greater Soul may include the less." He preferred, however, for fear of giving a wrong im- pression, the vaguer and more abstract later reading; and his further comment was: "I have often had that feeling of being whirled up and rapt into the Great Soul." — Ed.] P. 268. Section xcv. Verse x. that which is. IT6 6v, the Absolute Reality. — Ed.] P. 268. Section xcv. Verse xi. The trance came to an end in a moment of critical doubt, but the doubt was dispelled by the glory of the dawn of the "boundless day." P. 268. Section xcvi. Verse ii. / know not: one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touched a jarring lyre at first. But ever strove to make it true. A. H. H. P. 269. Section xcvi. Verse vi. Cf. Exod. xix. 16, "And it came to pass on the third day, in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud." [The thought suggested in this verse is that the stronger faith of Moses — found in the darkness of the cloud through commune with the Power therein dwelling — is of a higher order than the creeds of those who walk by sight rather than by insight. — Ed.] P. 269. Section xcvii. The relation of one on earth to one in the other and higher world. Not my relation to him here. He looked up to me as I looked up to him. The spirit yet in the flesh but united in love with the spirit out of the flesh re- sembles the wife of a great man of science. She looks up to him — but what he knows is, a mystery to her. [Love finds his image everywhere. The relation of one on earth to one in the other world is as a wife's love for her husband after a love which has been at first de- monstrative. Now he is compelled to be wrapt in matters dark and deep. Although he seems distant, she knows that he loves her as well as before, for she loves him in all true faith.] ^ P. 269. Section xcvii. Verse i. His own vast shadow glory-crown' d. Like the spectre of the Brocken. P. 269. Section xcviii. Verse i. You leave us. "You" is imaginary. P. 269. Section xcviii. Verse ii. wisp, ignis-fatuus. P. 269. Section XCVIII. Verse v. Gnarr, snarl. P. 269. Section xcviii. Verse vi. mother town, metropolis. P. 270. Section xcix. Verse i. Day, when I lost the flower of men. September the isth. Cf. lxxii. ii. P. 270. Section xcix. Verse iii. coming care [the hardship of winter. — Ed.]. P. 270. Section xcix. Verse v. Betwixt the slumber of the poles. The ends of the axis of the earth, which move so slowly that they seem not to move, but slumber. P. 270. Section c. (1837.) Verse i. / climb the hill. Hill above Somersby. P. 270. Section c. Verse iv. Nor runlet tinkling from the rock. The rock in Holywell, which is a wooded ravine, commonly called there "the Glen." 1 Note by my mother. NOTES- 937 P. 270. Section ci. Verse iii. The brook. [The brook at Somersby, the charm and beauty of which was a joy to my father all his life. — Ed.] or when the lesser wain. [My father would often spend his nights wandering about the wolds, gazing at the stars. Edward FitzGerald writes: "Like Words- worth on the mountains, Alfred too, when a lad abroad on the wold, sometimes of a night with the shepherd, watched not only the flock on the greensward, but also the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas." Cf. Memoir, i. 19. — Ed.] P. 271. Section en. Verse ii. Two spirits of a diverse love. First, the love of the native place ; second, this enhanced by the memory of A. H. H. P. 271. Section cin. [I have a dream which comforts me on leaving the old home and brings me content. The departure suggests the departure of death, and my reunion with him. I have grown in spiritual grace as he has. The gorgeous sky at the end of the section typifies the glory of the hope in that which is to be.] ^ P. 271. Section cni. Verse ii. Methought I dwelt within a hall, And maidens with me. They are the Muses, poetry, arts — all that made life beautiful here, which we hope will pass with us beyond the grave. hidden summits, the divine. river, life. P. 271. Section cm. Verse iv. sea, eternity. P. 271. Section cm. Verse vii. The Progress of the Age. P. 271. Section cm. Verse ix. The great hopes of hvmianity and science. P. 272. Section civ. Verse i. A single church below the hill. Waltham Abbey church. P. 272. Section crv. Verse iii. But all is new unhallow'd ground. 1 Note by my mother. High Beech, Epping Forest (where we were Uvingj. [Cf. xcix. ii. — Ed.] P. 272. Section cv. Verse iii. abuse. [Cf . XXX. ii. In the old sense — wrong. — Ed.] P. 272. Section cv. Verses vi.-vii. No dance, no motion, save alone What lightens in the lucid east Of rising worlds by yonder wood. The scintillating motion of the stars that rise. P. 272. Section cv. Verse vii. [Run out your measured arcs, and lead The closing cycle. Fulfil your appointed revolutions, and bring the closing period "rich in good." Cf . Virgil, Eel. iv. 4 : Ultima Cymaei venit jam carminis aetas. Ed.] P. 272. Section cvi. Verse viii. Ring in the Christ that is to be. The broader Christianity of the future. P. 272. Section cvii. Verse i. // is the day when he was born. February i, 181 1. P. 273. Section cvii. Verse iii. grides, grates. P. 273. Section cvii. Verse iv. drifts. [Fine snow which passes in squalls to fall into the breaker, and darkens before melting in the sea. Cf. The Progress of Spring, III. — Ed.] P. 273. Section cvm. Verse i. / will notjhut me from my kind. Grief shall not make me a hermit, and I will not indulge in vacant yearnings and barren aspirations; it is useless trying to find him in the other worlds — I find nothing but the reflections of myself ; I had better learn the lesson that sorrow teaches. P. 273. Section cvm. -Verse iv. [The original reading of last line (MS.) : Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee. Cf. cxm. i. A pencil note by James Spedding on the MS. of In Memoriam says: "You might give the thought a turn of this kind : 'The wisdom that died with you is lost for 938 •NOTES ever, but out of the loss itself some other wisdom may be gained.'" — Ed.] P. 273. Section cix. [My father wrote to Henry Hallam on February 14, 1834: "That you intend to print some of my friend's remains (tho' only for private circulation) has given me greater pleasure than anything I have experienced for a length of time. I attempted to draw up a memoir of his life and character, but I failed to do him justice. I failed even to please myself. I could scarcely have pleased you. I hope to be able at a future period to concentrate whatever powers I may possess on the construction of some tribute to those high speculative endowments and comprehensive sympathies which I ever loved to contemplate ; but at present, tho' somewhat ashamed at my own weakness, I find the object yet is too near me to permit of any very accurate deUneation. You, with your clear insight into human nature, may perhaps not wonder that in the dearest service I could have been employed in, I should be found most deficient. ... I know not whether among the prose pieces you would include the one which he was accustomed to call his Theodicean Essay. I am inclined to think it does great honour to his originality of thought. Among the poems — if you print the one entitled Timbuctoo — I would request you, for my sake, to omit the initiatory note. The poem is everyway so much better than that wild and unmethod- ized performance of my own, that even his praise on such a subject v/ould be painful." 1 The judgment on Hallam of his contemporaries coincided with that of my father. See Memoir, i. 105-08. — Ed.] P. 273. Section CIX. Verse i. Heart-affluence in discursive talk From household fountains never dry. [Cf. The Princess, p. 173, col. 2, line 15: and betwixt them blossom'd up From out a common vein of memory Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth, And far allusion. 1 From an unpuhlii'icl letter in possession of Mr. Arthur Lee, M.P. See also Coleridge, Dejection, an Ode: "I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within." Ed.] P. 273. Section cix. Verse vi. Nor let thy wisdom make me wise. If I do not let thy wisdom make me wise. P. 273. Section ex. Verse i. The men of rathe and riper years. ["Rathe," Anglo-Saxon hrceth, "early." Cf. Lancelot and Elaine: "Till rathe she rose." Ed.] P. 274. Section cxi. Verse v. Drew in [contracted, narrowed. — Ed.]. Where God and Nature met in light. Cf. Lxxxvii. Verse ix. : The God within him light his face. P. 274. Section CXI. Verse vi. charlatan. From Ital. ciarlatano, a mountebank; hence the accent on the last syllable. P. 274. Section cxii. Verse i. [High wisdom is ironical. "High wisdom" has been twitting the poet that although he gazes with calm and indulgent eyes on unaccomplished greatness, yet he rnakes light of narrower natures more perfect in their own small way. — Ed.] glorious insufficiencies. Unaccomplished greatness such as Arthur Hallam's. Set light by, make light of. [In answer to "high wisdom" the poet says: "The power and grasp and origin- aHty of A. H. H.'s intellect, and the great- ness of his nature [which are not mere "glorious insufficiencies"], make me seem careless about those that have a narrower perfectness."] ^ P. 274. Section cxii. Verse ii. the lesser lords of doom. Those that have free-will, but less intellect. P. 274. Section cxiii. Verse i. [Cf. cviii. iv. — Ed.] P. 274. Section cxiv. Verse i. Who shall fix Her pillars ? "Wisdcm hath builded her house, she 1 Note by my mother. NOTES 939 hath hewn out her seven pillars" (Pro v. ix. i). P. 275. Section cxv. Verse i. burgeons, buds. maze of quick, quickset tangle. squares. [Ci. The Ring: the down, that sees A thousand squares of com and meadow, far As the gray deep. Ed.] P. 275. Section cxvi. Verse i. crescent prime, growing spring. P. 275. Section cx\ai. Verse iii. And every span of shade that steals. The sim-dial. And every kiss of toothed wheels. The clock. P. 276. Section cxvin. Verse iv. [type, represent. Cf. The Princess, p. 209, col. 2, lines 12, 13: Dear, but let us type them now In our own lives. Ed.] P. 276. Section cxviii. Verse v. [By gradual self-development, or by sorrows and fierce strivings and calamities. — Ed.] P. 276. Section cxrx. [Cf. vn. — Ed.] P. 276. Section cxx. Verse i. Like Paul with beasts. "If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me ? " (i Cor. xv. 32). P. 276. Section cxx. Verse iii. Let him, the wiser man who springs Hereafter, up from childhood shape His action like the greater ape. Spoken ironically against mere materialism, not against evolution. born to other things. [Cf. By an Evolu- tionist: The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man, And the man said "Am I your debtor?" And the Lord — " Not yet : but make it as clean as you can. And then I will let you a better." Ed.] P. 276. Section cxxi. [Written at Ship- lake, where my father and mother were married. — Ed.] P. 276. Section cxxi. Verse v. Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name. The evening star is also the morning star, death and sorrow brighten into death and hope. P. 276. Section cxxii. Verse i. doom — that of grief. P. 277. Section cxxii. Verse v. And every dew-drop paints a bow. Every dew-drop turns into a miniature rainbow. P. 277; Section cxxin. Geologic changes. [All material things are unsubstantial,' yet there is that in myself which assures me that the spiritual part of man abides, and that we shall meet again.] ^ P. 277. Section cxxin. Verse i. The stillness of the central sea. Balloonists say that even in a storm the middle sea is noiseless. [Professor George Darwin writes: "Peo- ple always talk at sea of the howling of the wind and lashing of the sea, but it is the ship that makes it all. A man clinging to a spar in a heavy sea would only hear a Uttle gentle swishing from the 'white horses.'" — Ed.] P. 277. Section cxxm. Verse iii. For tho' my lips may breathe adieu, I cannot think the thing farewell. [Cf. note to Lvii. iv., and the poem Prater Ave atque Vale. — Ed.] P. 277. Section cxxiv. Verse v. [blind clamour refers to I heard a voice 'believe no more' And heard an ever-brealcing shore That tumbled in the Godless deep. Ed.] P. 277. Section cxxvi. [The following was originally the second verse (MS.) : Love is my king, nor here alone. But where I see the distance loom. For in the field behind the tomb There rests the shadow of his throne. Ed.] 1 Note by my mother. 940 NOTES P. 278. Section cxxvi. [The following was originally the third verse (MS.) : And here at times a sentinel That moves about from place to place And whispers to the vast of space Among the worlds, that all is well. Ed.] P. 278. Section cxxvii. Verse iv. brute earth. [Cf. "bruta tellus," the heavy, inert earth (Hor. Carm. i. xxxiv.). — Ed.] P. 278. Section cxxviii. [In comrade- ship with Love that is all the stronger for facing Death, the Faith which believes in the progress of the world sees that all in the individual as in the race is working to one great result, however retrograde the eddies of the world-currents may at times appear to be.] ^ (This section must be read in 'close connection with cxxvi. and CXXVII.) P. 278. Section cxxix. [These two faiths are in reality the same. The thought of thee as human and divine mingles with all great thoughts as to the destiny of the world (cf. cxxx.).] 2 He "shall live though he die." ^ P. 278. Section cxxxi. [The following words were uttered by my father in January 1869, and bear upon this section : — "Yes, it is true that there are moments when the flesh is nothing to me, when I feel and know the flesh to be the vision, God and the Spiritual the only real and true. Depend upon it, the Spiritual is the real : it belongs to one more than the hand and the foot. You may tell me that my hand and my foot are only imaginary symbols of my existence, I could beheve you; but you never, never can convince me that the I is not an eternal Reahty, and that the Spiritual is not the true and real part of me." These words he spoke with such passionate earnest- ness that a solemn silence fell on us as he left the room. — Ed.] P. 278. Section cxxxi. Verse i. living will. That which we know as Free-will in man. spiritual rock. [Cf. i Cor. x. 4. — Ed.] P. ■279. Section cxxxi. Verse ii. con- 1 Note by my mother. 2 Note by my mother. quer'd years. [Cf. "Victor Hours," i. iv. — Ed.] P. 279. Conclusion. The marriage of Edmund Lushington and Cecilia Tennyson, Oct. 10, 1842. [These two verses were probably written at this time : SPEAK TO ME Speak to me from the stormy sky ! . The wind is loud in holt and hill, It is not kind to be so still : Speak to me, dearest, lest I die. Speak to me, let me hear or see ! Alas, my life is frail and weak : Seest thou my faults and wilt not speak ? They are not want of love for thee. Ed.] P. 281. Maud; a Monodrama. [First pubUshed in 1855. My father Uked reading aloud this poem, a "Drama of the Soul," set in a landscape glorified by Love, and, according to Lowell, "The anti- phonal voice to Iti Memoriam," which is the "Way of the Soul." The whole of it, except "O that 'twere possible" (see Note on Part II. iv. and Introduction), was written at Farringford. — Ed.] The stanzas where he is mad in Bedlam, from 'Dead, long dead' to 'Deeper, ever so little deeper,' were written in twenty minutes, and some mad doctor wrote to me that nothing since Shakespeare has been so good for madness as this. "At the opening of the drama, the chief person or hero of the action is introduced with scenery and incidents artistically dis- posed around his figure, so as to make the reader at once acquainted with certain facts in his history. Although still a young man, he has lost his father some years before by a sudden and violent death, following im- mediately upon unforeseen ruin brought about by an unfortunate speculation in which the deceased had engaged. Whether the death was the result of accident, or self-inflicted in a moment of despair, no one knows, but the son's mind has been painfully possessed -by a suspicion of viUainy and foul play somewhere, because an old friend of his family became suddenly and unaccountably rich by the same transaction that had brought ruin to the dead. Shortly NOTES ' 941 after the decease of his father, the bereaved young man, by the death of his mother, is left quite alone in the world. He continues thenceforth to reside in -the retired village in which his early days have been spent, but the sad experiences of his youth have confirmed the bent of a mind constitu- tionally prone to depression and melancholy. Brooding in loneliness upon miserable memories and bitter fancies, his tempera- ment as a matter of course becomes more and more morbid and irritable. He can see nothing in human affairs that does not awaken in him disgust and contempt. Evil glares out from all social arrangements, and unqualified meanness and selfishness appear in every human form, and he keeps to himself and chews the cud of cynicism and discontent apart from his kind. Such in rough outline is the figure the poet has sketched as the foundation and centre of his plan. . , . Since the days of his early youth up to the period when the immediate action of the poem is supposed to com- mence, the dreamy recluse has seen nothing of the family of the man to whom circumstances have inclined him to attri- bute his misfortunes. This individual, although since his accession to prosperity the possessor of the neighbouring hall and of the manorial lands of the village, has been residing abroad. Just at this time, however, there are workmen up at the dark old place, and a rumour spreads that the absentees are about to return. This rumour, as a matter of course, stirs up afresh rankling memories in the breast of the recluse, and reawakens there old griefs. But with the group of associated recollec- tions that come crowding forth, there is one of the child Maud, who was in happier days his merry playfellow. She will now, however, be a child no longer." — Robert James Mann, M.D., F.R.A.S., etc. Part I [The division into Parts does not exist in the original 1855 edition, which contains XXVI. Sections. — Ed.] P. 281. I. Before the arrival of Maud. P. 281. I. Verse i. blood-red heath. [My father would say that in calling heath "blood "-red the hero showed his extra- vagant fancy, which is already on the road to madness. — Ed.] P. 383. Verse xix. [My father allowed me to print in these notes some few of the variorum readings for which his friends had asked, but he said to me, "Very often what is published in my poems as the latest edition has been the original version in the first manuscript, so that there is no possibility of really tracing the history of what may seem to be a new word or passage. For instance, in the first edition of Maud I wrote 'I will bury myself in my books and the Devil may pipe to his own,' which was afterwards altered, to 'I will bury myself in myself ,' etc. This was highly commended by the critics as an improvement on the original reading, whereas it was actually in the first MS. draft of the poem. Great works have been entirely spoilt for me by the modern habit of giving every various reading along with the text." — Ed.] P. 283. II. First sight of Maud. P. 283. III. Visions of the night. Broad- flung shipwrecking roar. In the Isle of Wight the roar can be heard nine miles away from the beach. [Many of the descriptions of Nature are taken from observations of natural phenomena at Farringford, although the locaUties in the poem are all imaginary. — Ed.] P. 284. IV. Mood of bitterness after fancied disdain. P. 284. rv. Verse vi. A monstrous eft, the great old lizards of geolog>^ P. 285. IV. Verse viii. an I sis hid by the veil. The great Goddess of the Egyptians. 'E7Ci» el/XL irav t6 yeyovds, Kai 6p, Kai ecrSnevov, Kai t6v ifxbp iriir\ov ovdels ttw dvTjrbs aireKi\v\pe. P. 285. V. He fights against his growing passion. P. 286. VI. First interview with Maud. P. 286. VI. Verse vi. Assyrian Bull. With hair curled like that of the bulls on Assyrian sculpture. P. 287. VII. He remembers his father and her father talking just before the birth of Maud. 942 NOTES P. 287. vin. It cannot be pride that she did not return his bow. (Sec. iv. verse iii.) P. 287. DC. First sight of the young lord. P. 288. X. Verse iii. Last week came one to the county town. The Westminster Review said this was an attack on John Bright. I did not even know at the time that he was a Quaker. [It was not against Quakers but against peace-at-all-price men that the hero ful- minates.] This was originally verse iii., but I omitted it : Will she smile if he presses her hand, This lord-captain up at the Hall ? Captain ! he to hold a command ! He can hold a cue, he can pocket a ball ; And sure not a bantam cockerel lives With a weaker crow upon English land, Whether he boast of a horse that gains, Or cackle his own applause. . . . What use for a single mouth to rage At the rotten creak of the State-machine ; Tho' it makes friends weep and enemies smile, That here in the face of a watchful age. The sons of a gray-beard-ridden isle Should dance in a round of an old routine. P. 289. XII. Interview with Maud. P. 289. XII. Verse i. Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud. Like the rook's caw. P. 289. XII. Verse iii. Maud is here, here, here. Like the call of the little birds. P. 289. XII. Verse vi. And left the daisies rosy. Because if you tread on the daisy, it turns up a rosy underside. P. 289. xni. Morbidly prophetic. He sees Maud's brother, who will not recognize him. P. 290. XVI. He will declare his love. P. 291. XVII. Accepted. P. 291. xviii. Happy. The sigh in the cedar branches seems to chime in with his own yearning. P. 292. xviii. Verse iv. The sad astrology is modern astronomy, for of old -astrology was thought to sympathise with and rule man's fate. The stars are "cold fires," for tho' they emit light of the highest intensity, no perceptible warmth reaches us. His newer astrology describes them (verse viii.) as "soft splendours." P. 292. xviii. Verse vii. Not die; but live a life of truest breath. This is the central idea — the holy power of Love. P. 292. xviii. Verse vii. The dusky strand of Death inwoven here. Image taken from the coloured strands inwoven in coloured ropes, e.g. in the Admiralty rope. P. 294. XXI. Before the Ball. P. 295. XXII. In the Hall-Garden. Part II P. 296. I. The Phantom (after the duel with Maud's brother). P. 296. II. In Brittany. The shell undestroyed amid the storm perhaps sym- bolises to him his own first and highest nature preserved amid the storms of passion. P. 297. II. Verse vi. But that of Lamech is mine. "I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt" (Gen. iv. 23). P. 297. III. He felt himself going mad. P. 297. IV. Haunted (after Maud's death). "O that 'twere possible" appeared first in the Tribute, 1837. Sir John Simeon years after begged me to weave a story round this poem, and so Maud came into being. P. 299. V. In the madhouse. P. 299. v. Verse iv. Who told him we were there? i.e. the brother. P. 299. v. Verse v. gray old wolf. [Cf. Part I. XIII. iii. — Ed.] NOTES 943 P. 299. V. Verse v. Crack them now for yourself. For his son is, he thinks, dead. P. 299. V. Verse vi. And curse me the British vermin, the rat. The Norwegian rat has driven out the old EngUsh rat. [The Jacobites asserted that the brown Norwegian rat came to England with the House of Hanover, 17 14, and hence called it "the Hanover rat." — Ed.] P. 300. V. Verse viii. the keeper = the brother. P. 300. V. Verse viii. a dead man, that is, himself in his fancy. P. 300. V. Verse ix. what will the old man say? Maud's father. The second corpse is Maud's brother, ' the lover's father being the first corpse, whom the lover thinks that Maud's father murdered. Part III P. 300. VI. Sane, but shattered. Written when the cannon was heard booming from the battleships in the Solent before the Crimean War. [Some of the reviews accused my father of loving war, and urging the country to war, charges which he suflSciently answered in the "Epilogue to the Heavy Brigade": And who loves War for War's own sake " Is fool, or crazed, or worse ; But let the patriot-soldier take His meed of fame in verse. Indeed, he looked passionately forward to the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. What the hero in Maud says is that the sins of the nation, "civil war" as he calls them, are deadlier in their effect than what is commonly called war, and that they may be in a measure subdued by the war between nations, which is an evil more easily ■ recognised. Cf. Gladstone's Glean- ings, vol. ii., on Maud. — Ed.] P. 300. VI. [On the i6th of March 1854 my father was looking through his (Farringford) study window at the planet Mars, "as he glow'd like a ruddy shield on the Lion's breast," and so determined to name his second son, who was born on that day, Lionel. — Ed.] THE IDYLLS OF THE KING INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE EDITOR The earhest prose fragment about King Arthur that I can find among my father's MSS. was probably written about 1833. I give it as it stands. King Arthur On the latest limit of the West in the land of Lyonnesse, where, save the rocky Isles of Scilly, all is now wild sea, rose the sacred Mount of Camelot. It rose from the deeps with gardens and bowers and palaces, and at the top of the Mount was King Arthur's hall, and the holy Minster with the Cross of gold. Here dwelt the King, in glory apart, while the Saxons whom he had overthrown in twelve battles ravaged the land, and ever came nearer and nearer. The Mount was the most beautiful in the world, sometimes green and fresh in the beam of morning, sometimes all one splendour, folded in the golden mists of the West. But all underneath it was hollow, and the mountain trembled, when the seas rushed bellowing through the p>orphyry caves ; and there ran a prophecy that the mountain and the city on some wild morning would topple into the abyss and be no more. It was night. The King sat in his Hall. Beside him sat the sumptuous Guinevere and about him were all his lords and knights of the Table Round. There they feasted, and when the feast was over the Bards sang to the King's glory. The following memorandum was given by my father to Sir James Knowles at Aldworth on October i, 1869, who told him that it was between thirty and forty years old. It was probably written at the same time as the fragment which I have just quoted. However, the allegorical drift here marked out was fundamentally changed in the later scheme of the Idylls. 944 NOTES From an Original MS., about 1833. NOTES 945 Before 1840 it is evident that my father wavered between casting the Arthurian legends into the form of an epic or into that of a musical masque; for in one of his 1 833-1 840 MS. books there is the following first rough draft of a scenario, into which the Lancelot and Elaine scenes were afterwards introduced. First Act Sir Mordred and his party. Mordred inveighs against the King and the Round Table. The knights, and the quest. Mordred scoffs at the Ladies of the Lake, doubts whether they are supernatural beings, etc. Mordred's cringing interview with Guinevere. Mordred and the Lady of the Lake. Arthur lands in Albyn. Second Act Lancelot's embassy and Guinevere. The Lady of the Lake meets Arthur and en- deavours to persuade him not to fight with Sir Mordred. Arthur will not be moved from his purpose. Lamentation of the Lady of the Lake. Elaine. Marriage of Arthur. ^, . , . Third Act Oak tomb of Merlin. The song of Nimue. Sir Mordred comes to consult Merlin. Coming away meets Arthur. Their fierce dialogue. Arthur consults Sir L. and Sir Bedivere. Arthur weeps over Merlin and is reproved by Nimue, who inveighs against Merlin. Arthur asks Merlin the issue of the battle. MerUn will not enlighten him. Nimue requests Arthur to question Merlin again. Merlin tells him he shall bear rule again, but that the Ladies of the Lake can return no more. Guine- vere . throws away the diamonds into the river. The Court and the dead Elaine. Fourth Act Discovery by Mordred and Nimue of Lancelot and Guinevere. Arthur and Guinevere's meeting and parting. Fifth Act The battle. Chorus of the Ladies of the Lake. The throwing away of Excali- bur and departure of Arthur. After this my father began to study the epical King Arthur in earnest. He had 3P travelled in Wales, and meditated a tour in Cornwall. He thought, read, talked about King Arthur. He made a poem on Lancelot's quest of the San Graal; "in as good verse," he said, " as I ever wrote — no, I did not write, I made it in my head, and it has altogether slipt out of memory." ^ What he called "the greatest of all poetical subjects" perpetually haunted him. But it was not till 1855 that he determined upon something like the final shape of the poem, and not until 1859 that he published the first instalment, Enid,^ Vivien, Elaine, Guinevere. In spite of the public applause he did not rush headlong into the other Idylls of the King, although he had carried a more or less perfected scheme of them in his head over thirty years. For one thing, he did not consider that the time was ripe. In addition to this, he did not find himself in the proper mood to write them, and he never could work except at what his heart impelled him to do. — Then, however, he devoted himself with all his energies and with infinite enthusiasm to that work alone. Gladstone says : ^ We know not where to look in history or in letters for a nobler or more overpowering concep- tion of man as he might be, than in the Arthur of this volume. Wherever he appears, it is as the great pillar of the moral order, and the resplendent top of human excellence. But even he only reaches to his climax in these two really wonderful speeches [at the end of Guinevere]. They will not bear mutilation : they must be read, ahd pondered, to be known. Most explanations and analyses, although eagerly asked for by some readers, appeared to my father somewhat to dwarf and limit the life and scope of the great Arthurian tragedy; and therefore I will add no more, except what Jowett wrote in 1893 : "Tennyson has made the Arthur legend a great revelation of human experi- ence, and of the thoughts of many hearts." P. 302. Dedication. To the Prince Consort. [First published in the edition of 18.62. — Ed.] 1 Letter from my father to the Duke of Argyll, 1859. 2 He found out that the "E" in "Enid" was pronounced short (as if it were spelt "Ennid"), and so altered the phrase in the proofs "weddecl Enid" to "married Enid." Had married Enid, Yniol's only child. ^Gleanings of Past Years, vol. ii. p. 166, 946 NOTES P. 302, col. I, line 5. Idylls. Regard- ing the Greek derivation, I spelt my Idylls with two /'s mainly to divide them from the ordinary pastoral idyls usually spelt with one /. These idylls group themselves round one central figure. P. 302, col. I, line 6. Scarce other than my king's ideal knight. [The first reading, "my own ideal knight," was altered because Leslie Stephen and others called King Arthur a portrait of the Prince Consort. — Ed.] P. 302, col. I, line 12. the gloom of imminent war. Owing to the Trent affair, when two Southern Commissioners accredited to Great Britain and France by the Confederate States were taken off a British steamship, the Trent, by the captain of the Federal man-of-war San Jacinto. The Queen and the Prince Consort were said to have averted war by their modification of a dispatch. P. 302, col. 2, lines 14, 15. [Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace refers to the Prince Consort's work in the planning of the International Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862. — Ed.] You brought a vast design to pass When Europe and the scatter'd ends Of oiir fierce world were mixt as friends And brethren in her walls of glass were lines that I wrote about the 1851 Exhibition. P. 302, col. 2, line 18. thy land is Saxe-Coburg Gotha, whence Prince Albert came. P. 303. The Coming of Arthur. [First published in the Holy Grail volume, 1869. In this Idyll the poet lays bare the main lines of his story and of his parable. — Ed.] How much of history we have in the story of Arthur is doubtful. Let not my readers press too hardly on details whether for history or for allegory. Some think that King Arthur may be taken to typify conscience. He is anyhow meant to be a man who spent himself in the cause of I honour, duty and self-sacrifice, who felt and aspired with his nobler knights, though with a stronger and a clearer "conscience than any of them, "reveren- cing his conscience as his king." "In short, God has not made since Adam was, the man more perfect than Arthur," as an old writer says. 'Major praeteritis majorque futuris Regibus." The vision of Arthur as I have drawn him came upon me when, little more than a boy, I first lighted upon Malory. ]>e time co \>e wes icoren : i>a wes Ar'Sur iboren. Sone swa he com an eor^e: aluen hine iuengen. heo bigolen ]?at child : mid galdere swiS'e stronge heo 5eue him mihte : to beon bezst aire cnihten. heo Seuen him an o^er Wng : |>at he scolde beon riche king. heo giuen hi l^at i^ridde : ]>at he scolde longe libben. heo gisen him J^at kine-bem : custen swi'Se gode. Ijat he wes mete-custi : of alle quikemonnen. t>is \>e alus him gef : And al swa hat child il'aeh. Layamon's Brut, Madden, vol. ii. 384. (The time came that was chosen, then was Arthur born. So soon as he came on earth, elves took him ; they enchanted the child with magic most strong, they gave him might to be the best of all knights; they gave him another thing, that he should be a rich king; they gave him the third, that he should live long ; they gave to him, the child, virtues most good, so that he was most generous of all men alive: This the elves gave him, and thus the child thrived.) The blank verse throughout each of the twelve Idylls varies according to the subject. [Examples of blank verse : With three beats — And Balin by the banneret of his hdm. With four beats — For hdte and ]6athing would have pass'd him by. NOTES 947 With five beats — In which he scarce could spy the Christ for saints. With six beats — What, wear ye still the same crown- scandalous ? With seven beats — The two-cell'd heart beating with one full stroke. Ed.] P- 303> col. I, line 5. For many a petty king. This explains the existence of Leodogran, one of the petty princes. "Cameliard is apparently," according to Wright, "the district called CarmeUde in the English metrical romance of Merlin, on the border of which was a town called 'Breckenho' (Brecknock)." —T. Wright's edition of the Mort d'Arthure (London : J. R. Smith), vol. i. p. 40. P. 303, col. I, line 13. For first Aurelius. Aurelius (Emrys) Ambrosius was brother of King Uther. [For the histories of Aurelius and Uther see Geoffrey of Mon- mouth's Chronicle, Bks. v. and vi. — Ed.] P. 303, col. I, hne 17. Table Round. A table called King Arthur's is kept at Winchester. It was supposed to symbolize the world, being flat and round. P. 303, col. I, line 18. Drew all their petty princedoms under him. The several petty princedoms were under one head, the "pendragon." P. 303, col. 2, line 8. mock their foster- mother. Imitate the wolf by going on four feet. P. 303, col. 2, line 9. Till, straightened, they greiv up to wolf-like men. Compare what is told of in some parts of India {Journal of Anthropological Society of Bombay, vol. i.), and of the loup-garous and were- wolves of France and Germany. P- 303, col. 2, line 11. Groaned for the Roman legions. Cf. Groans of the Britons, by Gildas. • . P. 303, col. 2, line 13. Urien. King of North Wales. P. 304, col. I, line 5. The golden symbol of his kinglihood. The golden dragon. P. 304, col. I, line 14. The heathen. Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. P. 305, col. I, line 17. his warrior whom he loved. [Cf. p. 310, col. i, lines 8, 9. — Ed.] P. 306, col. I, line 15. Tintagil castle by the Cornish sea. [T have a note of my father's touching a vf?it to Tintagil in 1887: "The woman who inhabits the house below the castle knew me again in 1887, after forty years, and began quoting passages from the Idylls. We were nearly swamped landing in Arthur's cave. After landing I was pulled up the cliff by the barefooted sailors." He pictured to himself Iseult there when the cliff was "crown'd with towers." He examined what he called "the secret PDst€m" arch, through which the babe Arthur had been handed to Merlin. All the old memories and visions of the Idylls came upon him, and he regarded the whole place with a kind of first-love feeling. — Ed.] P. 306, col. I, line 18. the Queen of Orkney. The kingdom of Orkney and Lothian composed the North and East of Scotland. P. 306, col. 2, line 29. the people clamour'd for a king. Wherefore all the commons cried at once, "We will have Arthur unto our king" (Malory, Bk. i.). P. 307, col. I, line 13. body enow = strength. P. 307, col. 2, line 25. three fair queens. [Cf. note to Morte d' Arthur, p. 896. — Ed.] P. 307, col. 2, line 12. the Lady of the Lake in the old legends is the Church. P. 307, col. 2, line 20. A voice as of the waters. Cf. "I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters" (Rev. xiv. 2). P. 307, col. 2. line 24. Excalibur. Said to mean "cut-steel." In the Romance of Merlin the sword bore the following inscription : "Ich am y-hote Escalabore Vnto a king a fair tresore." and it is added : "On Inglis is this writing Kerve steel and yren and al thing." 948 NOTES P. 309, col. I, line 6. [Every ninth wave is supposed by the Welsh bards to be larger than those that go before. — Ed.] P. 309, col. I, line 32. Rain, rain, and sun! [The truth appears in different guise to different persons — either (i) with spiritual significance as a rainbow in the sky, or as (2) with earthly significance as a rainbow on the lea in the dewy grass.] The one fact is that man comes from the great deep and returns to it. This is an echo of the triads of the Welsh bards. [Cf. Gareth and Lynette, p. 316, col. i, line 22 : Know ye not then the Riddhng of the Bards ? ' Confusion, and illusion, and relation. Elusion, and occasion, and evasion'? Ed.] P. 310, col. I, line 14. Dubric, Arch- bishop of Caerleon. His crozier is said to be at St. David's. P. 310, col. I, line 16. The stateliest of her altar-shrines. According to Malory, the Church of St. Stephen at Camelot. P. 310, col. 2, lines 7, 8. Great Lords from Rome before the portal stood, In scornful stillness gazing as they past. Because Rome had been the Lord of Britain. P. 310, col. 2, line 13. Blow trumpet, etc. [My father wrote to my mother that this Viking song, a pendant to MerUn's song, "rings like a grand music." This and Leodogran's dream give the drift and grip of the poem, which describes the aspirations and ambitions of Arthur and his knights, doomed to downfall — the hints of coming doom being heard throughout. — Ed.] P. 311, col. I, line 3. for our Sun is mightier day by day. [Contrast p. 459, col. 2, line 23, "Burn'd at his lowest." — Ed.] P. 311, col. 2, line 5. your Roman wall. A line of forts built by Agricola betwixt the Firth of Forth and the Clyde, forty miles long. P. 311, col. 2, line 11. twelve great battles. [See Lancelot and Elaine, pp. 392, 393. — Ed.] THE ROUND TABLE P. 311. Gareth and Lynette. [The story is founded on Malory, Book vii. First published in 1872. Mostly written at Aldworth. My mother writes, Oct. 7th, 1869: "He gave me his beginning of Beaumains (Sir Gareth) (the golden time of Arthur's Court) to read (written, as was said jokingly, 'to describe a pattern youth for his boys')." Edward FitzGerald's comment is: "I have a word to say about 'Gareth.' I don't think it is mere Perversity which makes me like it better than all its Pre- decessors, except of course the old 'Morte.' The subject, the young Knight who can endure and conquer, interests me more than all the Heroines of the ist Volume. I do not know if I admire more Separate Passages in this Idyll than in the others: for I have admired Many in All. But I do admire Several here very much : — The Journey to Camelot, All Gareth' s Vassalage, Departure with Lynette, Sitting at Table with the Barons, Phantom of Past Life, and many other Passages and Expressions quae nunc perscribere longum est." — Ed.] P. 311, col. I, line 3. the spate, the river in flood. P. 311, col. 2, line 6. Heaven yield her for it. ["Yield" = reward, cf. Hamlet, IV. V. 41, and Antony and Cleopatra, iv. ii. 33. — Ed.] P. 311, col. 2, line 9. In ever-highering eagle-circles up. He invents a verb in his youthful exuber- ance. P. 311, col. 2, line 13. Gawain. Gawain and Modred, brothers of Gareth. P. 312, col. I, line 26. leash of kings, three kings. Cf. a leash of dogs. P. 314, col. 2, line 2. his outward pur- pose = his purpose to go. P. 315, col. I, line 13. The Lady of the Lake. ' The Lady of the Lake in the old romances of Lancelot instructs him in the mysteries of the Christian faith. P. 315, col. I, line 26. those three Queens. [Cf. note to Mprte d' Arthur, p. 896. — Ed.] NOTES 949 P. 315, col. 2, line i. dragon-boughts , bends (German Beugen), folds of the dragons' tails. ["His huge long tayle, wownd up in hundred foldes, Does overspred his long bras-scaly back, Whose wreathed boughtes whenever he unfoldes, And thick entangled knots adown does slack. . . ." Spenser's Faery Queen, Bk. I. Canto XI. Ver. xi. "And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs. Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce. In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out. . . ." Milton's V Allegro, 139. — Ed.] . P. 315, col. 2, line 8. From out thereunder came an ancient man. Merlin. P. 315, col. 2, lines 21, 22. / have seen the good ship sail Keel upward, and mast downward, in the heavens. Refraction by mirage. P. 315, col. 2, line 25. Take thou the truth as thou hast told it me is ironical. P. 315, col. 2, line 29. Toward the sunrise. The religions and the arts that came from the East. P. 316, col. I, lines 11, 12. but abide Without, among the cattle of the field. Be a mere beast. P. 316, col. I, lines 14, 15. They are building still, seeing the city is built To music. By the Muses. * P. 316, col. 2, line 15. spire to heaven. Symbolizing the divine. P. 317, col. 2, line 8. Sir Kay, the seneschal. In the Roman de la Rose Sir Kay is given as a pattern of rough dis- courtesy : En Keux le seneschal te mire Qui jadis par son mokeis Fu mal renommes et hais. Tant cum Gauvains li bien apris , Par sa courtoisie ot le pris, Autretant ot de blasme Keus, Por ce qu'il fu fel et crueus, Ramponieres et mal-parliers Desus tous autres chevaliers. 2ICX)-2Io8. P. 317, col. 2, lines 9 flf. A boon, Sir King, etc. ["Now aske,' said King Ar- thur, "and yee shall have your petition." "Now, sir," said he, "this is my petition for this feast that ye shall give me meate and drinke sufficiently for these twelve monethes, and at that day I will aske mine other two giftes." "My faire sonne," said King Arthur, "aske better I counsaile thee, for this is but a simple asking, for my heart giveth mee to thee greatly that thou art come of men of worship, and greatly my conceit faileth me but thou shalt prove a man of right great worship" (Malory). — Ed.] P. 319, col. I, lines 5, 6. Wan-sallow as the plant that feels itself Root-bitten by white lichen. One of my cypresses at Farringford died in this way. P. 319, col. I, line 8. brewis, broth. P. 319, col. I, line 26. Sir Fair-hands. [Kay says in the Morte d' Arthur, "And sithen he hath no name, I shall give him a name, that shall be Beaumains — that is to say, Faire hands." — Ed.] P. 319, col. 2, line II. broach, spit. P. 319, col, 2, line 25. Caer-Eryri. Snowdon. P. 322, col. 2, lines 22, 23. DuU-coated things, that making slide apart Their dusk wing-cases. Certain insects which have brilliant bodies underneath dull wing-cases. [Cf. The Two Voices, p. 30, lines 8-15 : 'To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie. 950 NOTES An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk : from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. He dried his wings : like gauze they grew ; Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of light he flew.' Ed.-] P. 323, col. I, lines 7-1 1. bui as the cur Pluckt from the cur he fights with, ere his cause Be cool'd by fighting, follows, being named. His owner, but remembers all, and growls Remembering. When we lived in Kent we had two large dogs, one a large white one, an un- educated rufiian always chained to an apple-tree, the other a larger black one and much more of a gentleman. One day while I was passing with this last too near the tree, the white one seized hold of him and tore his ear. Then followed a duel. I separated them with some difficulty and then took my dark friend on a walk of some six miles. All the way out and half the way back he growled and swore to himself about every five minutes. P. 823, col. 2, line 20. agaric in the holt, an evil-smelling fungus of the wood com- mon at Aldworth. P. 324, col. I, line 2. shoulder-slipt , shoulder-dislocated . P. 324, col. 2, lines 13-28. there brake a serving-man to oilily bubbled up the mere. ["So as they thus rode in the wood, there came a man flying all that he might. 'Whither wilt thou?' said Beaumains. 'O lord,' said he, 'helpe mee, for hereby in a shade are six theeves which have taken my lord, and bound him, and I am afraid least they will slay him.' 'Bring me thither,' said Sir Beaumains. And so they came there as the knight was bound, and then he rode into the theeves, and strake one at the first stroke to death, and then another, and the third strooke he slew the third theefe; and then the other three fled, and hee rod after and overtooke them, and then these three theeves turned again and hard assailed Sir Beaumains: but at the last bee slew them; and then returned and unbound the knight" (Malory). — Ed.] P. 325, col. 2, line 11. frontless, shame- less. P. 325, col. 2, line 21. peacock in his pride, brought in on the trencher with his tail-feathers left. [When it was served, "all the guests, male and female, took a solemn vow; the knights vowing bravery, and the ladies engaging to be loving and faithful" (Stanley's History of Birds).— Et).] P. 326, col. I, lines 22, 23. My fortunes all as fair as hers who lay Among the ashes and wedded the King's son. "Hers" is Cinderella's. P. 326, col. I, line 24. one of those long loops. The three loops of the river typify the three ages of life ; and the guardians at the crossing the temptations of these ages. P. 326, col. 2, line 2. Lent-lily, daffodil. P. 326, col. 2, line 21. Like sparkles in the stone Avanturine. Avanturine, sometimes called the Panther- stone — a kind of gray-green or brown quartz with sparkles in it. [The first reading was : Like stars within the stone Avanturine. This simile was taken from a fine piece of the stone Avanturine, set in an etui-case belonging to my mother. "Look at it," my father said, "see the stars in it, worlds within worlds." — Ed.] P. 328, col. I, lines 26, 27. As if the flower, That blows a globe of after arr owlets. The dandelion. P. 329, col. I, line 2. unhappiness, mischance. P. 329, col. I, line 20. twice my love hath smiled on me. [Because of his having overthrown two krfights. A light has broken on her. Her morning dream has twice proved true, that she should find a worthy champion. — Ed.] P. 329, col. 2, line 10. only wrapt in hardened skins. Allegory of habit. P. 329, col. 2, line 14. O brother-star, why shine ye here so low ? [Gareth has taken the shield of the Morning-Star (p. 327). — Ed.] NOTES 951 P. 331, col. I, lines 28-30. Hath left crag-caroen o'er the streaming Gelt — 'PHOSPHORUS,' then 'MERIDIES' — 'HESPERUS' — 'NOX' — 'MORS,' beneath five figures, armed men. [Symbolical of the temptations of youth, of middle-age, of later life, and of death overcome by the youthful and joyous Gareth. — Ed.] Years ago, when I was visiting the Howards at Naworth Castle, I drove over to the little river Gelt to see the inscription carved upon the crags. It seemed to me very pathetic, this sole record of the vexillary or standard-bearer of the sacred Legion (Augusta) . This is the inscription : VEX • LLEG • II AVG • ON • AP • APRO E M-AXIMO CONSULIBUS SUB AGRICOLA OP • OFICINA MERCATI. P. 332, col. 2, lines 19-21, Good lord, how sweetly smells the honeysuckle In the hush'd night, as if the world were one Of utter peace, and love, and gentleness I Lines made at Aldworth on a summer night on the lawn about the honeysuckle that climbs up the house. P- 333, col. I, line 13. Arthur's harp, Lyra. P. 334, col. I, line 4. glooming crimson, sunrise. P- 334, col. I, lines 14-18. ["'Sir,' said the damosel Lynet unto Sir Beaumains, 'look that yee be merry and light, for yonder is your deadly enemy, and at yonder window is my lady my sister dame Lyones.' 'Where?' said Sir Beaumains. 'Yonder,' said the damosell, and pointed with her finger. 'That is sooth,' said Sir Beaimiains, 'shee seemeth afarre the fairest lady that I ever looked uppn, and truely,' said hee, 'I aske no better quarrell than now to doe battaile, for truely shee shall bee my lady, and for her will I fight'" (Malory). — Ed.] P- 334, col. I, line 22. And crown'd with fleshless laughter. With a grinning skull. P- 335, col. I, lines 7, 9. [He that told the tale in older times — Malory. He that told it later — my father. — Ed.] P- 335- The Marriage of Geraint. [In 1857 six copies of Enid and Nimu'e: the True and the False were printed. This Idyll is founded on Geraint, son of Erbin, in the Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest, and has "brought the story within compass." It was begun on April i6th, 1856, and first published in 1859 in the Idylls of the King. My father had also read Erec and Enid, by Chrestien de Troyes. The greater part of the Idylls contained in the volume of 1859 was written at Farringford. But the end of Geraint and Enid was written in July and August of 1856 in Wales, where he read, in the original, Hanes Cymru (Welsh his- tory), the Mabinogion, and Llywarch Hen. The first four Idylls were, as Edward FitzGerald notes of the earlier poems, "written on foolscap folio Parchment, bound blank books such as Accounts are kept on (only not ruled), which I used to call 'The Butcher's Book.' The Poems were written in A. T.'s very fine Hand (he once said, not thinking of himself, that Great Men generally write 'terse' hands) toward one Side of the large Page : the unoccupied Pages and Edges and Corners being often stript down for pipe-lights, taking care to save the MS., as A. T. once seriously observed." The other Idylls were written on smaller blue and red bound books, bound by my mother. — Ed.] P- 335, col. 2, hne 20. Of Severn. Geraint was at Caerleon, and would have to cross the Bristol Channel to go to Devon. P- 335, col. 2, line 20. past. I hke the / — the strong perfect in verbs ending in s, p, and X — past, slipt, vext. P. 336, col. I, line 14. As slopes a wild brook. I made this simile from a stream, and it is 'different, tho' like Theo- critus, Idyll xxii. 48 ff. : iv bk fiOes (rTepeoiffi jS/oax^ocrti' &Kpov iir'' € col. I, line 5. sprigs of summer, lavender. P- 337. col. I, line 13. Caerleon. Arthur's capital, "castra Legionis," is in Monmouthshire on the Usk, which flows into the Bristol Channel. P- 337. col. 2, line 17. of deepest mouth. Cf. "match'd in mouth like bells" {Mid- summer-Night's Dream, rv. i. 128). P- 339, col. I, line 4. pips, a bird- disease. P- 339, col. 2, line 17. And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers. These lines were made at Middleham Castle. 'P- 339, col. 2, line 21. Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms. Tintem Abbey. P-. 340, col. I, line 8. Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud. [This song of noble and enduring womanhood has its refrain in Pero giri Fortuna la sua ruota, Come le place. Dante, Inf. xv. 95. — Ed.] P. 340, col. 2, line 2. hy God's rood. Rood (originally the same as "rod") is the old word for cross. P. 340, col. 2, line 20. costrel, a bottle with ear or ears, by which it could be hung from the waist (costrer, by the side), hence sometimes called "pilgrim's bottle." P. 340, col. 2, line 23. manchet bread, little loaves or rolls made of fine wheat flour. P. 341, col. 2, line 17. When I that knew, etc. [In the Mabinogion Earl Yniol is the wrong-doer, and has earned his reward; but the poet has made the story more interesting and more poetic by mak- ing the tale of wrong-doing a calumny on the part of the Earl's nephew. "And when they had finished eating, Geraint talked with the hoary -headed man, and he asked him in the first place, to whom belonged the palace that he was in. 'Truly,' said he, 'it was I that built it, and to me also belonged the city and the castle which thou sawest.' 'Alas!' said Geraint, ' how is it that thou hast lost them now?' 'I lost a great earldom as well as these,' said he, 'and this is how I lost them. I had a nephew, the son of my brother, and I took his possessions to my- self; and when he came to his strength, he demanded of me his property, but I withheld it from him. So he made war upon me, and wrested from me all that I possessed'" (Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, p. 147). In the Idyll, for the greater unity of the tale, the nephew and the knight of the Sparrow-hawk are one. — Ed.] P. 342, col. 2, lines 28, 29. ever fail' d to draw The quiet night into her blood. [Cf. neque unquam Solvitur in somnos, oculisve aut pectore noctem Accipit. Virgil, ylew. iv. 529. — ^Ed.] P. 342, col. 2, hne 34. jousts. From juxtare. Low Latin, to approach. P. 343, col. I, line 5. chair of Idris. Idris was one of the three primitive Bards. Cader Idris, the noblest mountain next to Snowdon in N. Wales. [My mother writes, Sept. 8th, 1856: "A. climbed Cader Idris. Pouring rain came on. . . . I heard the roar of waters, streams and cataracts, and I never saw anything more awful than that great veil of rain drawn straight over Cader Idris, pale light at the lower edge. It looked as if death were behind it." — Ed.] P. 343, col. I, lines 27, 28. from distant walls There came a clapping. This is the echo of the sword-clash. NOTES 953 P. 344, col. I, line 2. Made a low splendour, eh;. [In the dim yellow light of dawn at Farringford my father used to delight in watching the dancing shadows of the birds and of the long swaying fingers of the cedar tree on the door opposite his bed. — Ed.] Pp. 344, 345 flf. [This episode is founded on the following passage in Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion (p. 85) : "'Where is the Earl Yniol,' said Geraint, 'and his wife, and his daughter?' 'They are in the chamber yonder,' said the Earl's chamberlain, 'arraying themselves in gar- ments which the Earl has caused to be brought for them.' 'Let not the damsel array herself,' said he, 'except in her vest and her veil, until she come to the court of King Arthur, to be clad by Gwenhwy^^ar, in such garments as she may choose.' So the maiden did not array herself." — Ed.] P. 346, col. I, line 16. that maiden in the tale. The tale of Math, son of Math- onwy. "So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadowsweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her and gave her the name of Blodenwedd (flower- vision)." — Mabinogion, p. 426. P. 346, col. I, line 18. the bride of Cassivelaun. [The love of a British maiden named Flur, who was betrothed to Cassivelaimus, according to the Welsh legend, led Caesar to invade Britain (Mabinogion, p. 392). — Ed.] P. 346, col. 2, line 6. flaws in summer. [Cf. Hamlet, v. i. 239, "the winter's flaw" = gusts of wind. — Ed.] P. 346, col. 2, line 16. As carefid robins eye the delver^s toil. [This line was made one day while my father was digging, as was his wont then, in the kitchen garden at Farringford, when he was much amused by the many watch- ful robins round him. — Ed.] P. 347, col. I, line 27. gaudy-day. [Holiday — now only used of special feast- days at the Universities, — Ed.] P. 347. Geraint and Enid. [First published in 1859. The Marriage of Geraint and Geraint and Enid were originally one poem, and were divided into two Idylls in 1888. The sin of Lancelot and Guinevere begins to breed, even among those who woiUd "rather die than doubt," despair and want of trust in God and man. — Ed.] P. 347, line I. purblind race of miserable men, etc. [Cf. Lucretius, ii. 14 : O miseras hominum mentes, O pectora caeca, etc. Ed.] P. 350, col. 2, lines 11-15. as one. That listens near a torrent mountain-brook. All thro' the crash of the near cataract hears The drumming thunder of the huger fall At distance, were the soldiers wont to hear His voice in battle. A memory of what I heard near Festiniog, but the scenery imagined is vaster. [My father agreed with Wordsworth that much of poetry takes its origin from emotion remembered in tranquillity. — Ed.] P. 351, col. 2, line 23. doom, judgment. P- 353, col. I, line 15. My malice is no deeper than a moat. [= I will not kill him, but I wiU put him in prison. — Ed.] P- 353. col. 2, line 28. the red cock shouting to the light. [Cf. Before the red cock crows from the farm upon the hill. May Queen, p. 49. — Ed.] P. 354, col. 2, line 33. like a thunder- cloud. The horse's mane is compared to the skirts of the rain-cloud. P- 355, col. I, line 29. shall we fast, or dine? Shall we go hungry, or shall we take his spoils and pay for our dinner with them? P- 355, col. I, line 30. No? — then do thou. Enid shrinks from taking anything from her old lover. P- 357, col. I, line 31. as the worm draws in the withered leaf. I used to watch worms 954 NOTES drawing in withered leaves on the lawn at Farringford. [My father would quote this simile as good, and that in Merlin and Vivien, p. 387, col. 2, line 25 : The pale blood of the wizard at her touch Took gayer colours, like an opal warm'd. Ed.] P. 358, col. I, line 15. This silken rag, this beggar-woman's weed. "Weed," A.S. woed, garment. [Cf. Midsummer-Night's Dream, 11. i. 256 : "Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in," and elsewhere in Shakespeare. — Ed.] P. 358, col. I, lines 24, 25. Play'd into green, and thicker down the front With jewels than the sward with drops of dew. I made these lines on the High Down one morning at Freshwater. P. 358, col. I, Une 30. their day of power. The worst tyrants are those who have long been tyrannized over, if they have tyrannous natures. P. 362, col. I, line 4. the sacred Dee. Cf. "Where Deva spreads her wizard stream." Lycidas, 55. P. 362, col. I, line 10. weed the white horse. The white horse near Wantage on the Berkshire hills which commemorates the victorj' at Ashdown of the English under Alfred over the Danes (871). The white horse was the emblem of the English or Saxons, as the raven was of the Danes, and as the dragon was of the Britons. P. 362, col. 2, line 8. A hapPy life with a fair death. [Llywarch Hen's elegy on Geraint's death in the battle of Llongborth, beUeved by some to have been Portsmouth, is well known. See Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion, vol. ii. pp. 150-151: — " Before Geraint, the terror of the foe, I saw steeds fatigued with the toil of battle. And after the shout was given, how dreadful was the onset. At Llongborth I saw the tvmiult And the slain drenched in gore. And red-stained warriors from the assault of the foe. Before Geraint, the scourge of the enemy, I saw steeds white with foam, And after the shout of battle, a fearful torrent. At Llongborth I saw the raging of slaughter And an excessive carnage. And warriors blood-stained from the assault of Geraint. At Llongborth was Geraint slain, A valiant warrior from the woodlands of Devon Slaughtering his foes as he fell." Ed.] P. 362. Balin and Balan. [Partly founded on Bk. ii. of Malory, written mostly at Aldworth, soon after Gareth and Lynette, and first published in 1885. The story of the poem is largely original. "Loyal natures are wrought to anger and madness against the world." — Ed.] P. 363, col. I, lines 1-3. to right and left the spring, that down, From underneath a plume of lady-fern. Sang, and the sand danced at the bottom of it. [Suggested by a spring which rises near t!ie house at Aldworth. — Ed.] P. 364, col. 2, lines 2-5. his soul Became a Fiend, which, as the man in life Was wounded by blind tongues he saw not whence. Strikes from behind. [Symbolic of Slander. — Ed.] P. 365, col. 2, line 7. Langued gules [red-tongued — language of heraldry. — Ed.]. P. 366, col. I, lines 8 ff. [This simile beginning Thus as a hearth lit in a mountain home was suggested by what he often saw from his own study at Aldworth : the fire in the grate at night reflected in the window, and seemingly a fire raging in the wood- land below. — Ed.] P. 368, col. I, lines 21 ff. [The goblet is embossed with scenes from the story of Joseph of Arimathea, his voyage, and the NOTES 955 wattle-built church he raised at Glaston- bury. King Pellam represents the type of asceticism and superstition. — Ed.1 Pp. 368-369. See for a passage of rapid blank verse (wHere the pauses are light, and the accentuated syllables under the average — some being short in quantity, and the narrative brief and animated). He rose, descended to face to ground. P. 373. Merlin and Vivien. [For the name of Vivien my father is indebted to the old Romance of Merlin. Begun in February and finished on March 31st, 1856, and first pubhshed in 1859. "Some even among the highest intellects become the slaves of the evil which is at first half disdained." My father created- the character of Vivien with much care — as the evil genius of the Round Table 1 — who in her lustfulness of the flesh could not believe in anything either good or great. The story of the poem of Merlin and Vivien is essentially original, and was founded on the following passage from Malory : "Merlin was assetted and doted on one of the ladies of the lake (Nimue). But Merlin would let her have no rest, but always he would be with her. . . . And always Merlin lay about the lady to have her love. . . . But she was ever passing weary of him, and fain would have been delivered of him, for she was afeard of him because he was a devil's son, and she could not put him away by no means. And so on a time it happed that Merlin shewed to her in a rock, whereas was a great wonder and wrought by enchantment that went under a great stone. So by her subtle working she made Merlin to go under that stone, to let her wit of the marvels there, but she wrought so there for him that he came never out for all the craft that he could do. And so she departed and left MerUn." — Bk. iv. ch. i. — Ed.] P. 373, line 2. Broceliande. The forest of Broceliand in Brittany near St. Malo. P. 374, col. 2, line 28. Ride, ride and dream until ye wake — to me ! 1 Even to the last. See Guinevere, p. 448, col. I, lines 4, 5. The only real bit of feeling, and the only pathetic line which Vivien speaks. P- 375, col. I, lines 6-8. [Seeling, sewing up eyes of hawk. Jesses, straps of leather fastened to legs. Check at pies, fly at magpies. Nor will she rake, nor will she fly at other game. — Ed.] P- 375, col. I, line 12. tower' d, soared. P- 375, col. I, line 16. pounced her quarry [swooped on her game. — Ed.]. P- 375, col. I, lines 28, 29. Thereafter as an enemy that has left Death in the living waters. Poisoned the wells. P. 376, col. I, line 13. An ever-meaning battle in the mist. The vision of the battle at the end. P. 376, col. 2, line 17. As on a dull day in an Ocean cave. This simile is taken from what I saw in- the Caves of Ballybunion. P- 377, col. 2, lines 9-1 1. did ye never lie upon the shore, And watch the curVd white of the coming wave Glass' d in the slippery sand before it breaks? I thought of these lines at Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight if anywhere. P. 379, col. I, line 23. Like sunlight on the plain behind a shower. As seen from a hill in Yorkshire. P. 379, col. I, line 25. Far ether was the song that once I heard. The song about the clang of battle- axes, etc.. in the Coming of Arthur. P. 380, col. 2, line 32 to p. 381, col. i, line 3. a single misty star. Which is the second in a line of stars That seem a sword beneath a belt of three. d Orionis — the nebula in which is im- bedded the great multiple star. When this was written some astronomers fancied that this nebula in Orion was the vastest object in the Universe — a firmament of suns too far away to be resolved into stars by the telescope, and yet so huge as to be seen by the naked eye. 9S6 NOTES [My father often pondered on the nothingness of human fame by comparison with the charm of those immense spatial and temporal cosmic weavings and wav- ings. — Ed.] P. 381, col. 2, line 9 to p. 382, col. i, line 22. There lived a king to the gateway towers. People have tried to discover this legend, but there is no legend of the kind that I know of. P. 382, col. 2, line 5 to p. 383, col. i, line 7. He answered laughing to came down to me. Nor is this a legend to be found. P. 382, col. 2, line 22. lashed, like an eyelash. A German translation has peitschte (whipt it), but — "eye " and "eye- lid" having immediately preceded — the translator might have guessed better. P. 384, col. I, line 2. the reckling [the puny infant. — Ed.]. P. 384, col. 2, line 30. holy king, David. P. 387, col. 2, line 15. white-listed, striped with white. P. 388. Lancelot and Elaine. [Begun at the home of G. F. Watts, R.A., and of the Prinseps, Little Holland House, Kensington, in July 1858, and first pubhshed in 1859. "The tenderest of all natures sinks under the blight, that which is of the highest in her working her doom." See Malory, xviii. ch. 9-20. Jowett wrote of this Idyll : "It moves me like the love of Juliet in Shakespeare. . . . There are hundreds and hundreds of all ages (and men as well as women) who, although they have not died for love (have no intention of doing so), will find there a sort of ideal consolation of their own troubles and remembrances." — Ed.] P. 388, line 2. Astolat, said to be Guildford. P. 388, col. 2, line 21. Lyonnesse. A land that is said to have stretched between Land's End and Scilly, and to have con- tained some of Cornwall as well. P. 392, col. 2, lines 16-18. That some one put this diamond in her hand, And that it was too slippery to be held, And slipt and Jell into some pool or stream. A vision prophetic of Guinevere hurling the diamonds into the Thames. Pp. 392-393. [For these battles see Nen- nius, Hist. Brit. § 50, in Bohn's translation : "Thus it was that the magnanimous Arthur, with all the kings and military force of Britain, fought against the Saxons. And though there were many more noble than himself, yet he was twelve times chosen their commander, and was as often conqueror. The first battle in which he was engaged was at the mouth of the river Glem. The second, third, fourth, and fifth were on another river, by the Britons called Duglas, in the region Linuis. The sixth on the river Bassas. The seventh in the wood Celidon, which the Birtons call Cat Colt Celidon. The eighth was near Gumion Castle, where Arthur bore the image of the Holy Virgin, mother of God, upon his shoulders, and through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the holy Mary, put the Saxons to flight, and pursued them the whole day with great slaughter. The ninth was at the City of Legion, which is called Caerleon. The tenth was on the banks of the river Trat Treuroit. The eleventh was on the mountain Breguoin, which we call Cat Bregion. The twelfth was a most severe contest, when Arthur penetrated to the hill of Badon. In this engagement, nine hundred and forty fell by his hand alone, no one but the Lord affording him assist- ance. In all these engagements the Britons were successful. For no strength can avail against the will of the Almighty." — Ed.] P- 393, col. I, line 3. white Horse. [See note on p. 362, col. i, line 10. — Ed.] P. 393, col. 2, line 10. rathe, early (thence "rather"). P. 393, col. 2, line 13. Down the \long tow\er-stairs,\hesit\ating. "Stairs" is to be read as a monosyllable, with a pause after it. [Spedding writes: "The art with which A. T. has represented Elaine's action by the slow and fingering movement, the sudden arrest, and the hesitating advance of the metre, has been altogether lost on some critics." -^ Ed.] P. 393, col. 2, line 30 to p. 394» col. i, line 6. [" So thus as shee came too and fro, NOTES shee was so hoot in her love that shee besought Sir Launcelot to weare upon him at the justes a token of hers. 'Faire damosell,' said Sir Launcelot, 'and if I graunt you that, yee ma> say I doe more for your love than ever I did for lady or damosell.' . . . And then hee said, 'Faire damosell, I will graunt you to weare a token of yours upon my helmet, and therefore what it is, show me.' 'Sir,' said shee, 'it is a red sleeve of mine of scarlet, well-embroadered with great pearles.' And so shee brought it him" (Malory). — Ed.] P. 395, col. 2, lines 19-22. Bare, as a wild wave in the wide North-sea, Green- glimmering toward the summit, bears, with all Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies, Down on a bark. Seen on a voyage of mine to Norway. ["Next day (July 24th, 1858) very fine but in the night toward morning storm arose and our top-mast was broken off. I stood next morning a long time by the cabin door and watched the green sea looking like a mountainous country, far- off waves with foam at the top looking like snowy mountains bounding the scene; one great wave, green-shining, past with all its crests smoking high up beside the vessel. As I stood there came a sudden hurricane and roared drearily in the funnel for twenty seconds and past away" {Letter from my father to my mother). — Ed.] P. 402, col. I, hne 18. ghostly grace. Vision of Guinevere. P. 402, col. I, line 27. Then as a little helpless innocent bird. Chaffinch. Pp. 402-403. ["'My lord Sir Launcelot, now I see that yee will depart : faire and curteous knight, have mercy upon mee, and suffer mee not to die for your love.' 'What would yee that I did?' said Sir Launcelot. 'I would have you unto my hu.sband,' said the maide Elaine. 'Faire damosell, I thanke you,' said Sir Launcelot ; 'but certainly,' said he, 'I cast mee never to be married.' . . . 'Alas,' said she, 'then must I needes die for your love'" (Malory). — Ed.] P. 405, col. 2, lines 3, 4. never yet Was noble tnan but made ignoble talk. The noblest are ever subject to calumny. P. 401, col. I, line i. / hear of rumours flying thro' your court. Rumoiirs of his love for Elaine. P. 408, col. I, lines 19-29. ["Most noble knight, my lord Sir Launcelot du Lake, now hath death made us two at debate for your love; I was your lover, that men called the faire maiden of Astolat : therefore unto all ladies I make my moane ; yet for my soule that yee pray, and bury me at the least, and offer yee my masse- peny. This is my last request: and a cleane maide I died, I take God to my witnesse. Pray for my soule. Sir Launce- lot, as thou art a knight pearles" (Malory). — Ed.] P. 409, col. I, lines g-17. So toward that shrine which then in all the realm Was richest, Arthur leading, slowly went The marshalVd Order of their Table Round, And Launcelot sad beyond his wont, to see The maiden buried, not as one unknown, Nor meanly, but with gorgeous obsequies. And mass, and rolling music, like a queen. And when the knights had laid her comely head Low in the dust of half-forgotten kings. This passage and the "tower-stair" passage (p. 393) are among the best blank verse in Lancelot dnd Elaine, I think. [I asked my father why he did not write an Idyll "How Sir Lancelot came unto the hermitage, and how he took the habit unto him ; how he went to Almesbury and found Queen Guinevere dead, whom they brought to Glastonbury; and how Sir Lancelot died a holy man"; and he answered, "Because it could not be done better than by Malory." My father loved his own great imaginative knight, the Lancelot of the Idylls. — Ed.] P. 410. The Holy Grail. [First pubhshed in 1869. See Malory, 13-17. The story of this Idyll is full of my father's invention and imagination. "Faith de- clines, religion in many turns from practical 958 NOTES goodness to the quest after the supernatural and marvellous and selfish rehgious excite- ment. Few are those for whom the quest is a source of spiritual strength." My mother notes in her Journal : " 1868, r Sept. qih. A. read a bit of his San Graal, / which he has just begun. Sept, i^ih. He has almost finished the San Graal. It came like a breath of inspiration. Sept. 23rd. We took Lionel to Eton. ... At Dr. Warre's request A. read the San Graal MS. complete in the garden. 1869, May iSth. A. read the San Graal. I doubt Vtfhether the San Graal would have been written but for my endeavour, and the Queen's wish, and that of the Crown Princess. Thank God for it. He has had the subject in his mind for years, ever since he began to write about Arthur and his knights." About this poem my father said to me: "At twenty-four I meant to write an epic or a drama of King Arthur, and I thought that I should take twenty years about the work. They will no^ say that I have been forty years about it. The Holy Grail is one of the most imaginative of my poems. I have expressed there my strong feeling as to the Reality of the Unseen. The end, where the King speaks of his work and of his visions, is intended to be the summing up of all in the highest note by the highest of men." These three lines (pp. 424-425) in Arthur's speech are the (spiritually) central lines of the poem : In moments when he feek he cannot die, And knows himself no vision to himself, Nor the high God a vision. Sir James Knowles writes to me : — I was introduced to your father by King Arthur — for my little book on the Arthur legends, dedi- cated to him, first brought me to his acquaintance thirty-five years ago — and this probably explains why he chose to give me so much of his con- fidence on the subject of his Idylls of the King. He used to say (in jest), "I know more about Arthur than any other man in England, and you know next most," and when, in 1867 and after- wards, he became our frequent guest at Clapham Common, he would talk with me for hours upon the subject, and I always urged him to resume his forsaken project of making a whole great poem on it. The recent and immense success of his first four Idylls helped my cause greatly, but he would constantly protest that it was next to im- possible now to put the thing properly together, because he had taken up with a fragmentary mode of treatment instead of the continuous sym- bolic epic he had meditated in his youth, and "which the Reviews had knocked out of him." Frequent importunity, however, had its effect, and in the end he came to admit that the plan of a series of separate pictures connected by a pur- ' pose running through them all, as a thread connects beads, had its merits, and, under the circumstances, had better be tried. He resumed his great scheme with The Holy Grail. As the revised plan took more and more shape and drew towards completion, he would some- times point his finger at me with a grim smile, and say : "I had given it all up long ago, though I was often urged to go on with it ; and then this beast said 'Do it,' and I did it." He always told me that he had from the begin- ning meant to make Arthur something more and other than a mystic or historic king, but that he had changed his mind from his original meaning. In 1869 he gave me a memorandum written in his own hand which he told me was then thirty or forty years old. He said that in those early days (about 1830) the poem was to be a sort of allegory of the Church, but that now King Arthur was to stand in a symbolic way for the Soul, and his Knights for the human passions which the Soul was to order and subdue. He encouraged me to write a short paper, in the form of a letter to the Spectator,^ on the inner meaning of the whole poem, v/hich I did, simply upon the lines he himself indicated. He often said, however, that an allegory should never be pressed too far, and that "there were many glancing meanings in everything he wrote." Considerable trouble and changing with pub- lishers went on during the production of the Idylls (of 1869), and he was so anxious about misprints that, for the greater security against errors, he caused the proofs of them to be sent to me, as well as to himself. He would go over them with me in the most minute manner, and afterwards would write such letters as the following : Farringford, Freshwater, Isle of Wight, April 5, 1872. Gareth is not finished yet. I left him off once altogether, finding him more difficult to deal with than anything I had ever tried, excepting perhaps Aylmer's Field. If I were at liberty, which I think I am not, to print the names of the speakers "Gareth," "Linette," over the short snip-snap of their talk, and so avoid the' perpetual "said" and its varieties, the work would be much easier. I have made out the plan, however, and perhaps some day it will be completed; and it will be then to consider whether or no it should go into the Contemporary or elsewhere. Edward FitzGerald's comment on The Holy Grail is: "The whole myth of Arthur's Round Table Dynasty in Britain » See Appendix, Tennyson and his Friends. NOTES 9SQ presents itself before me with a sort of cloudy, Stonehenge grandeur. I am not sure if the old knights' Adventures do not tell upon me better, touched in some Lyric Way, like your own Lady of Shalott. I never could care for Spenser, Tasso, Ariosto, whose epic has a ballad ring about it. But I never could care much for the old Prose Romances either, except Don Quixote. . . . They talk of 'meta- physical Depth and Subtlety.' Pray, is there none in The Palace of Art, The Vision of Sin (which last touches on the Limit of Disgust without ever faUing in), Locksley Hall also, with some little Passion, I think ! only that all these being clear to the Bottom, as well as beautiful, do not seem to Cockney eyes so deep as Muddy Waters?" — Ed.] P. 411, col. I, line i. O brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke. The pollen in Spring, which, blown abroad by the wind, looks like smoke. Cf. Memoir, vol. ii. p. 53, and In Memoriam, xxxix. P. 411, col. I, line 31. Aromat. Ari- mathea, the home of Joseph of Arimathea, who, according to the legend, received in the Grail the blood that flowed from our Lord's side. P. 411, col. 2, lines i, 2. when the dead Went wandering o'er Moriah. [Cf. St. Matthew xxvii. 50 ff. — Ed.] P. 411, col. 2, lines 4, 5. To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn Blossoms at Christmas. [It was believed to have been grown from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea. ^ Ed.] P. 413, col. I, line 24. 'The Siege perilous.' The perilous seat which stands for the spiritual imagination. ["And anon he brought him unto the Siege Perilous, where beside sat Sir Launcelot. And the good old man lift up the cloth, and found there letters that said, 'This is the siege of Sir Galahad, the good knight.' 'Sir,' said the old man, 'wit yea well this place is yours.' And tha then hee set him down surely in siege" (Malory). — Ed.] P. 413, col, 2, line 31. shining hai{r. [Cf. irXoKd/jLovs (paeivo6s (II. xiv. 176) -v Ed.] P. 414, col. I, line 22. [The four zones represent human progress : the savage state of society; the state where man lords it over the beast; the full development of man ; the progress toward spiritual ideals. — Ed.] P. 414, col. 2, line 16. In unremorseful folds of rolling fire. This line gives onomatopoeically the "unremorseful flames." i P. 415, col. I, lines 18, 19. \ 'Ah, Galahad, Galahad,' said the Kint, 'for such As thou art is the vision, not for these.' The king thought that most men ought to do the duty that lies closest to them, and that to few only is given the spiritual en- thusiasm. Those who have it not ought not to afifect it. P. 415, col. 2, line 4. White Horse. [See note on p. 368, col. 2, line 30. — Ed.] P. 416, col. I, line 13. wyvern, two- legged dragon. Old French wivre, viper. P. 416, col. 2, lines 2a- 23. But even while I drank the brook, and ate The goodly apples, all these things at once Fell into dust, and I was left alone, And thirsting, in a land of sand and thorns. The gratification of sensual appetite brings Per ci vale no content. P. 416, col. 2, lines 24 to p. 417, col. i, line 2 . Nor does wifely love and the love of the family. P. 417, col. I, lines 3-10. Nor does wealth, which is worshipt by labour. P. 417, col. I, lines 11-22. Nor does glory. \ P. 417, col. I, line 23 to col. 2, line 11. Nor does Fame. P. 417, col. 2, line 25. Led on the gray-hair'd wisdom of the east. The Magi. NOTES fP. 418, col. 2, line 34. sacring, con- saoration. i P. 418, col. I, line 3. / saiv the fiery face as of a child. [See Malory, xvii, 20: "And then he took an ubbly (a cake of the Sacrament), which was made in the likenesse of bread; and at the Ufting up there came a figure in the likenesse of a child, and the visage was as bright and red as any fire, and smote himself into that bread, so that they all saw that the bread was formed of a fleshly man." — Ed.] P. 418, col. I, line 28. S'torm at the top, and ivhen we gain'd it, ) storm. li was a time of storm when men could ionagine miracles, and so storm is em- phasized. ! P. 418, col. I, hne 34. [My father looked on this description of Sir Galahad's quest, and on that of Sir Lancelot's, as among the best blank verse he had written. He pointed out the difference between the five visions of the Grail, as seen by the Holy ]S{un, Sir Galahad, Sir Percivale, Sir Lancelot, Sir Bors, according to their different, their own peculiar natures and circumstances, their selflessness, and the perfection or imperfection of their Christian- ity. He dwelt on the mystical treatment of every part of his subject, and said the key is to be found in a careful reading of Sir Percivale's visions. He would also call attention to the babbling homely utterances of the village priest Ambrosius as a contrast to the sweeping passages of blank verse that set forth the visions of spiritual en- thusiasm. — Ed.] P. 421, col. I, Hnes 3, 4. Paynim amid their circles, and the stones They pitch up straight to heaven. The temples and upright stones of the Druidic religion. . P. 421, col. I, line 9. A mocking fire. The sun-worshippers that were said to dwell on Lyonnesse scoffed at Perceval. P. 421, col. I, line 23. The seven clear stars of Arthur's Table Round. The Great Bear. P. 421, col. 2, lines 4, 5. the sweet Grail Glided and past. It might have been a meteor. P. 421, col. 2, lines 10, 11. Sir Bors it was Who spake so low. [Cf. p. 411, col. I, lines 23, 24: Yet one of your own knights, a guest of ours, Told us of this in our refectory. Ed.] P. 421, col. 2, line 28. basilisks, the fabulous crown'd serpent whose look killed. P. 421, col. 2, line 28. cockatrices. In heraldry, winged snakes. P. 421, col. 2, line 29. talbots, heraldic dogs. Pp. 430, 431. ["And there he said, 'My sinne and my wretch ednesse hath brought me unto great dishonour; for when I sought worldly adventures, and worldly desires, I ever achieved them, and had the better in every place, and never was I discomfited in no quarrell, were it right or wrong. And now I take upon me the adventures of holy things: and now I see and uijderstan that mine old sinne hindreth mee, and also_ shameth mee, so that I had no power to stire nor to speak when the holy blood appeared before mee.' So thus hee sorrowed till it was day, and heard the f oules of the ayre sing ; then was hee somewhat comforted " (Malory) . — Ed.] P. 423, col. 2, lines 13, 14. only the rounded moon Thro' the tall oriel on the rolling sea. [My father was fond of quoting these lines for the beauty of the sound. "The lark" in the tower toward the rising sun symbolizes Hope. — Ed.] P. 424, col. I, line 13. deafer than the blue-eyed cat. [Cf. Darwin's Origin of Species, ch. i. : "Thus cats which are entirely white and have blue eyes are generally deaf; but it has lately been pointed out by Mr. Tait that this is confined to the males." — Ed.] P. 424, col. 2, line 3. [And spake I not too truly, my knights, etc. refers to King Arthur's speech (pp. 291- NOTES 961 299), given in Malory as follows:-^ "'Alas!' said King Arthur unto Sir Gawaine, 'yee have nigh slaine me with the vowe and promise that yee have made; for through you yee have bereft mee of the fairest fellowship and the truest of knighthood that ever were scene together in any realme of the world. For when they shall depart from hence, I am sure that all shall never meete more in this world, for there shall many die in the quest, and so it forethinketh me a little; for I have loved them as well as my Ufe, wherefore it shall grieve me right sore the separation of this fellowship, for I have had an old custome to have them in my fellowship. And therewith teares fell into his eyes." — Ed.] P. 424, col. 2, line 24 to p. 425, col. i, line 2. Arthur suggests that all the material universe may be but vision. [As far back as 1839 my father had written to my mother: "Annihilate within yourself these two dreams of Space and Time." "I think," he said, "matter is merely the shadow of something greater than itself, which we poor short-sighted creatures cannot see." — Ed.] P. 424, col. -2, line 31 to p. 425, col. i, line I. In moments when he feels he cannot die, And knows himself no vision to himself, Nor the high God a vision. [Cf. The Ancient Sage: for more than once when I Sat all alone, revolving in myself The word that is the symbol of myself. The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, And past into the Nameless, as a cloud Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs Were strange not mine — and yet no shade of doubt, But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self The gain of such large life as match'd with ours Were Sun to spark. Ed.] P. 425, col. I, lines i, 2. nor that One Who rose again. [My father said (I think) about this passage: "There is something miraculous 3Q in man, and there is more in Christianity than some people think. It is enough to look on Christ as Divine and Ideal without defining more. They will not easily beat the character of Christ, that imion of man and woman, strength and sweetness." — Ed.] P. 425. Pelleas and Ettarre. [First published in 1869. See Malory, iv. 20-23. — Ed.] Almost the saddest of the Idylls. The breaking of the storm. P. 425, col. 2, lines 4, 5. It seem'd to Pelleas that the fern without Burnt as a living fire of emeralds. Seen as I lay in the New Forest. [This whole passage is descriptive of the New Forest, which he called "the finest bit of old England left, the most peculiar." — Ed.] P. 430, col. 2, line 9. prowest, noblest. P. 431, col. 2, line 29. lurdatie, from Old French lourdin, heavy. [Cf. Scott's Abbot, iv. : "I found the careless lurdane feeding him with 'unwashed flesh." — Ed.) P. 432, col. I, line 24. And the sword of the tourney across her throat. The line gives the quiver of the sword across their throats. ["And when he cam to the pavilions he tied his horse to a tree, and pulled out his sword naked in his hand, and went straight to them where as they lay together, and yet he thought that it were great shame for him to sley them sleeping, and laid the naked sword overthwart both their throates, and then he tooke his horse, and rod forth his way, making great and wofull lamenta- tion" (Malory). — Ed.] P. 434, col. I, line 28. Yea, between thy lips — and sharp. [Cf. Cymbeline, ni. iv. 35. -Ed.] P. 435. The Last Tournament. [First published in The Contemporary Review, December 1871. The bare out- line of the story and of the vengeance of Mark is taken from Malory; my father often referred with pleasure to his creation of the half-hum9rous, half -pathetic fool Dagonet. — Ep.] 962 NOTES P. 436, col. I, line 8. strangers to the tongue, rough. P. 436, col. 2, line 8. bluni stump, where the hand had been cut off and the stump had been pitched. P. 436, col. I, line 12. the Red Knight. Pelleas. P. 436, col. 2. [Cf. Isaiah xiv. 13. — Ed.] P. 437, col. I, lines 15, 16. [See Mer- lin's song in The Coming of Arthur, p. 309. — Ed.] P. 437, col. 2, line 4. vaiVd, drooped. [Cf . Hamlet, i. ii. 70 : "Do not for ever with thy vailed lids Seek for thy noble father in the dust." Ed.] • P. 437, col. 2, line 7. Of Autumn thunder, the autumn of the Round Table. P. 437, col. I, lines 28, 29. A spear, a harp, a bugle — Tristram — late From overseas in Brittany returned. He was a harper and a hunter. ["And so Tristram learned to be an harper passing all other, that there was none such called in no countrey. And so in harping and in instruments of musike hee applied himself in his youth for to learne, and after as he growed in his might and strength, he laboured ever in hunting and hawking, so that we never read of no gentleman more that so used himself therein. . . . "And every day Sir Tristram would ride in hunting; for Sir Tristram was that time called the best chacer of the world, and the noblest blower of an home of all manner of measures. For as bookes re- port, of Sir Tristram came all the good termes of vencry and of hunting, and the sises and measures of blowing of an home. And of him we had first all the termes of hawking, and which were beasts of chace and beasts of venery, and what were vermines, and all the blasts that long to all manner of games. First to the uncoupeling, to the seeking, to the rechace, to the flight, to the death, and to strak, and many other blasts and termes, that all manner of gentlemen have cause to the world's end to praise Sir Tristram and to pray for his soule" (Malory). — Ed.] P. 438, col. I, line 14. Art thou the purest, brother? Because the Queen had said: "The purest of thy knights May use them for the purest of my mdds." P. 438, col. I, lines 27-28 to col. 2, lines 1-6. It was the law to give the prize to some lady on the field, but the laws are broken, and Tristram the courteous has lost his courtesy, for the great sin of Lancelot was sapping the Round Table. P. 438, col. 2, line 14. The snowdrop only, flowering thro^ the year. Because they were dressed in white. P. 438, col. 2, lines 21, 22. Liken' d them, saying, as when an hour of cold Falls on the mountain in- midsummer snows. Seen by me at Miirren in Switzerland. P. 439, col. 2, line 28. Her daintier namesake down in Brittany. Isolt of the white hands. P. 439, col. 2, line ^^. shell, husk. P. 440, col. I, line 26. Paynim bard, Orpheus. P. 440, col. 2, line 3. harp of Arthur, Lyra. P. 440, col. 2, line 27. burning spurge, the juice of the common spurge. I re- member two early lines of mine : Spurge with fairy crescent set Like the flower of Mahomet. P. 441, col. I, line 8. outer eye, the hunter's eye. P. 441, col. I, line 13. slot, trail. P. 44 1, col. I, line 13. fewmets, droppings, P. 442, col. I, line 27. the name,. Pelleas. P. 442, col. 2, lines 2-5. Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave,. Heard in dead night along that table-shore. Drops flat, and after the great waters break Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves, NOTES 963 Far over sands marbled mth moon and cloud, From less and less to nothing. As I have heard and seen the sea on the shore of Mablethorpe. P. 442, col. 2, line 20. Alioth and Alcor, two stars in the Great Bear. P. 442, col. 2, line 22. as the water Moab saw. [Cf. 2 Kings iii. 22. — Ed.] P. 443, col. I, line 8. What, if she hate me now? "She" is his wife. P. 443, col. I, line 14. roky [misty. Cf. Macbeth, iii. ii. 51 — Ed.]. P. 443, col. I, line 22. The spiring stone that scaled about her tower. Winding stone staircase. P. 444, col. I, line 7. Sailing from Ireland. Tristram had told his uncle Mark of the beauty of Isolt, when he saw her in Ireland, so Mark demanded her hand in marriage, which he obtained. Then Mark sent Tristram to fetch her as in my Idylls Arthur sent Lancelot for Guinevere. P. 445, col. I, line 24. malkin in the mast, slut among the beech nuts. P. 446, col. I, line 10. Believed himself a greater than himself. When the man had an ideal before him. P. 446, col. I, line 30. The ptarmigan that whitens ere his hour. Seen by me in the Museum at Christiania in Norway. P. 446, col. I, line 33. yaffingale. Old word, and still provincial for the green wood-pecker (so called from its laughter). In Sussex "yaffel." P. 446, col. 2, line 30 to p. 447, col. i, line 7. Like an old Gaelic song — the two stars symbolic of the two Isolts. P. 447, col. I, lines 22, 23. ["Also that false traitour King Marke slew the noble knight Sir Tristram as he sat harping before his lady La beale Isoud, with a trenchant glaive, for whose death was much bewaiUng of every knight that ever was in King Arthur's dales. . . . And La Beale Isoud died swooning upon the cross of Sir Tristram, whereof was great pity" (Malory). — Ed.] P. 447. Guinevere. [First published in 1859. This Idyll is largely original, being founded on the following passage from Malory: "And so shee went to Almesbury, and there shee let make her- self a nunne and ware white cloathes and blacke. And great pennance shee tooke as ever did sinfull lady in this land: and never creature could make her merry, but lived in fastings, prayers, and almes deedes, that all manner of people mervailed how vertuously shee was changed. Now leave wee Queene Guenever in Almesbury, that was a nunne in white cloathes and blacke; and there she was abbesse and ruler, as reason would." Guinevere was called Gwenhwyvar (the white ghost) by the bards, and is said by Taliessin to have been "of a haughty disposition even in her youth." Malory calls her the daughter of Leodogran of the land of Camelyard. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, "Guanhumara" was "descended from a noble family of Romans, and educated under Duke Cador of Cornwall, and surpassed in beauty all the women of the island." "Some one," writes my father, "asks how long it took to write Guinevere? About a fortnight." He used to say something of this kind: "Perfection in art is perhaps more sudden than we think ; but then the long preparation for it, that unseen germination, that is what we ignore, and forget." My mother notes in her Journal : "/«/y Qth, 1857. A. has brought me as a birth- day present the first two lines that he has made of Guinevere, which might be the nucleus of a great poem. Arthur is parting from Guinevere, and says: But hither shall I never come again. Never lie by thy side ; see thee no more ; Farewell!" Ed.] P. 447, line 2. Almesbury, near Stone- henge, now Amesbury. P. 449, col. 2, line 23. housel. Anglo- Saxon husel, the Eucharist. P. 451, col. 2, line 21. spigol, the bung. 964 NOTES P. 452, col. I, line 12. Bude and Bos. North of Tintagil. P. 453, col. 2, line 15. That seem'd the heavens. [This simile was made from the hyacinths in the Wilderness at Farringford. — Ed.] P. 456, col. 2, line 14. Pendragonship. The headship of the tribes who had con- federated against the Lords of the White Horse. "Pendragon" not a dactyl as some make it, but Pen-dragon. Tho' in the first edition of the Palace of Art, I ended one line with Pendragon. I never in reading pronounced it dactylically, but Pendragon. P. 457, col. 2, line 14. vail. See p. 437, col. 2, line 4. P. 458. The Passing of Arthur. ["The temporary triumph of evil, the confusion of moral order, closing in the Great Battle of the West." This complete Idyll was published in 1869. 169 lines at the beginning and 30 lines at the end were added to the Morte d' Arthur, originally published in 1842. Cf. Notes on the "Morte d' Arthur," Memoir, vol. i. pp. 384-390- — Ed.] P. 458. line 14. lesser god. Cf. the demiurge of Plato, and the gnostic belief that lesser Powers created the world. P. 458, col. 2, lines 11, 12. blown Along a wandering wind. aliae panduntur inanes Suspensae ad ventos. Virgil, A en. vi. 740-741. P. 459, col. I, lines 13, 14. me, my King, let pass whatever will, Elves, and the harmless glamour of the field. The legends which cluster round the King's name. P. 459, col. I, line 19. for the ghost is as the man. The spirit. P. 459, col. 2, line 16. fragments of forgotten peoples. Perhaps old Celts. P. 459, col. 2, line 23. Burn'd at his lowest in the rolling year. The winter solstice. P. 459, col. 2, line 23. rolling year. [Cf. irepiTrXofJiivov ipiavToO. — Ed.] P. '459, col. 2, lines 25, 26. Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west. A Vision of Death. P. 460, col. I, line 13. monstrous blasphemies. Cf. Rev. xvi., the battle of Armageddon. P. 460, col. 2, lines 2, 3. And rolling far along the gloomy shores The voice of days of old and days to be. This grim battle in the mist contrasts with Arthur's glorious battle in the Coming of Arthur, fought on a bright day when "he saw the smallest rock far on the faintest hill." P. 463, col. I, line 16. And flashing . ... in an arch. The extra syllable gives the rush of the sword as it is whirled in parabolic curve. P. 463, col. I, line 17. Shot like a streamer of the northern morn. The Aurora Borealis., P. 463, col. I, line 18. the moving isles of winter, icebergs. P. 463, col. I, line 26. drawing thicker breath, breathing more heavily. P. 463, col. 2, line 18. As in a picture. [Cf. ws ^v 7/3a0a?s (Aesch. Ag. 241). — Ed.] P. 464, col. I, line 31. like the withered moon, when smitten by the rising sun. Cf. Fatima, "Like a dazzled morning moon." P. 465, col. 2, line 5. From the great deep to the great deep he goes. See Merlin's song in The Coming of Arthur, P- 315. P. 465, col. 2, line 17. Then from the dawn it seem'd there came, but faint. From (the dawn) the East, whence have sprung all the great religions of the world. A triumph of welcome is given to him who has proved himself "more than conqueror." NOTES 96s P. 465, col. 2, line 24. an arch of hand. [Cf. Soph. Oed. Col. 1650: * dvuKTa 5' avrbv d/uL/xdrcov iiricKLOV Xet/o' avrix^^"^^ Kpards. Ed.] P. 465, col. 2, line 28. From less to less and vanish into light. The purpose of the individual man may fail for a time, but his work cannot die. [To this my father would add: "There are two beliefs I have always held — that there is Someone Who knows — God watch- ing over all, — and that Death is not the end-all of Man's existence.'' — Ed.] Cf. Malory: "Yet somme say in many partyes of Englond that King Arthur is not deed, But had by the wylle of our Lord Jhesu in to another place, and men say that he shal come ageyn and he shall Wynne the holy crosse." And cf. what Arthur says in Layamon's Brut, 28619, Madden's edition, vol. iii. p. 144: "And seothe ich cumen wuUe to mine kineriche, and wunien mid Brutten, mid muchelere wunne." (And afterwards I will come (again) to my kingdom, and dwell with the Britons with much joy.) P. 466. To THE Queen. [First printed in Strahan's Library Edition, my father's favourite edition of his works, in 1872-3. — Ed.] P. 466, line 3. rememberahle day. When the Queen and the Prince of Wales went to the thanksgiving at St. Paul's (after the Prince's dangerous illness) in February 1872. P. 466, col. I, Hne 14. true North, Canada. A leading London journal had written advocating that Canada should sever her connection with Great Britain, as she was "too costly": hence these lines. P. 466, col. I, line 20. Hougoumont. Waterloo. P. 466, col. 2, line 7. For one to whom I made it o'er his grave. [Referring to the Dedication to the Prince Consort. — Ed.] P. 466, col. 2, line 11. Rather than that gray king. [The legendary Arthur from whom many mountains, hills, and cairns throughout Great Britain are named. — Ed.] P. 466, col. 2, line 14. Geoffrey's, Geoffrey of Monmouth's. P. 466, col. 2, Hne 14. Malleor. Malory's name is given as Maleorye, Maleore, and Malleor. Some passages of the Idylls were first written in prose. See "The Dolorous Stroke," Memoir, vol. ii. p. 134. P. 467. The Lover's Tale. The original Preface to The Lover's Tale states that it was composed in my nineteenth year. Two only of the three parts then written were printed, when, feeling the im- perfection of the poem, I withdrew it from the press. One of my friends however who, boylike, admired the boy's work, distributed among our common associates of that hour some copies of these two parts, without my knowledge, without the omis- sions and amendments which I had in contemplation, and marred by the many misprints of the compositor. Seeing that these two parts have been mercilessly pirated, and that what I had deemed scarce worthy to live is not allowed to die, may I not be pardoned if I suffer the whole poem at last to come into the light — accom- panied with a reprint of the sequel — a work of my mature life — The Golden Supper / [My father said: "'The Lover's Tale' was written before I had ever seen Shelley, though it is called Shelley an" — from the character of the verse, and the luxuriance and exuberance of the imagery. " Allowance must be made for abundance of youth. It is rich and full, but there are mistakes in it. The poem is the breath of young Love." Andrew Lang says: "Perhaps not even Keats in his earliest work displayed more of promise, and gave more assurance of genius. Here and there come turns and phrases, 'all the charm of all the Muses,' which remind a reader of things later well known in poems more mature. Such lines are — Strange to me and sweet, Sweet thro' strange years, — 966 NOTES and Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky — Hung round with ragged rims and burning folds — and Like sounds without the twilight realm of dreams, Which wander roimd the bases of the hills." Ed.] P. 490. The First Quarrel. [First published in Ballads and other Poems, 1880, dedicated to his grandson Alfred Browning Stanley Tennyson, born 1878. — Ed.] Founded on facts told me by Dr. Dabbs, who is the doctor. The poor woman quarrelled with her husband. He started the night of the quarrel for Jersey; the boat, in which he was, struck a reef and went down. [More than once in his life my father lived much among fisher folk both on the east and on the south coast. Carlyle's comment on the poem was: "Ah, but that's a dreary tragic tale. Poor fellow, he was just an honest plain man, and she was a curious production of the century, and I am sorry for that poor girl too." — Ed.] P. 492. RizPAH. [First published in 1880. For the title see 2 Samuel xxi. — Ed.] Founded on a paragraph which I read in a penny magazine. Old Brighton (lent me by my friend and neighbour Mrs. Brotherton), about a poor woman at Brighthelmstone groping for the body of her son at nights on the Downs. He had been hung in chains for highway robbery, and his corpse had been left on the gallows, as was customary in the eighteenth century. ("When the elements had caused the clothes and flesh to decay, his aged mother," night after night, in all weathers, and the more tempestuous the weather the more frequent the visits, made a sacred pilgrim- age to the lonely spot on the Downs, and it was noticed that on her return she always brought something away with her in her apron. Upon being watched it was discovered that the bones of the hanging man were the objects of her search, and as the wind and rain scattered them on the ground she conveyed them to her home. .There she kept them, and, when the gibbet was stripped of its horrid burden, in the dead silence of the night she interred them in the hallowed enclosure of old Shoreham Churchyard. What a sad story of a Brighton Rizpah!" {Old Brighton). — Ed.] P. 494. The Northern Cobbler. [First pubhshed in 1880. — Ed.] Founded on a fact that I heard in early youth. A man set up a bottle of gin in his window when he gave up drinking. A village drunkard, hearing this poem read at a Village Reading, rose from his seat and left the room. "Sally," I suppose, got on his brain, and he was heard to grumble out, "Women knaws too mooch nowa- daays." P. 494. Verse iii. fettle and clump [mend and put new soles to. — Ed.]. P. 494. Verse iv. squad [dirt. — Ed.]. P. 494. Verse iv. scrawm'd an'' scratted [clawed and scratched. — Ed.], P. 495. Verse v. wedr'd [spent. — Ed.]. P. 495. Verse ix. tew [stew. — Ed.]. P. 495. Verse xi. num-cumpus, non- compos. P. 496. Verse xiv. snaggy [ill-tempered. — Ed.]. P. 497. The Revenge; A Ballad OF THE Fleet. [First published in The Nineteenth Century, March 1878, under the title of "Sir Richard Grenville: a Ballad of the Fleet" ; afterwards published in Ballads and Poems, 1880. The line At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay was on my father's desk for two years, but he set to work and finished the ballad at last all at once in a day or two. He wrote to my mother: "Sir Richard Grenville, in one ship, The Revenge, fought fifty-three Spanish ships of the line for fifteen hours : a tremendous story, out- rivalling Agincourt." Carlyle's comment on the poem was: "Eh! Alfred, you have got the grip of it." — Ed.] This tremendous story is told finely by Walter Raleigh in his Report of the truth of the fight about the Isles of Azores this last summer, and by PVoude — also by NOTES 967 Bacon. "The action," says Froude, "struck a deeper terror, though* it was but the action of a single ship, into the hearts of the Spanish people; it dealt a more deadly blow upon their fame and moral strength than the Armada itself." Sir Richard Grenville commanded Sir Walter Raleigh's first colony which went out to Virginia. He was always re- garded with .superstitious reverence by the Spaniards, who declared for instance that he would carouse three or four glasses of wine, and take the glasses between his teeth and crush them to pieces and swallow them down. The Revenge was the same ship of 500 tons in which Drake had sailed against the Armada three years before this sea-fight .1 Flores is a dissyllable, Azores a trisyllable. P. 498. Verse vii. galleons. Pro- nounced like "allion" in "medallion" (derived fiom galea). P. 499. Sir Richard "commanded the master gunner, whom he knew to be a most resolute man, to split and sink the ship, that thereby nothing might remain of glory or victory to the Spaniards, seeing in so many hours they were not able to take her, having had about fifteen hours' time, fifteen thousand men, and fifty-three sail of men of war to perform it withal" (Raleigh). P. 499. Verse xiii. '/ have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my duly as a man is bound to do: With a joyful spirit ' I Sir Richard Grenville die ! ' "His exact words were: 'Here die I, Richard Greenfield, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended mj'^ life as a tnie soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his country, Queen, religion, and honour. Whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall iSee R. L. Stevenson, "The English Ad- mirals," in Virginibus Puerisque, p. 205: "I must tell one more story, which has lately been made familiar to us all, and that in one of the noblest ballads in the English language. I had written my prose abstract, I shall beg the reader to believe, when I had no notion that the sacred bard designed an immortality for Grenville." always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do.' When he had finished these or such other like words, he gave up the Ghost with a great and stout courage, and no man could perceive any true sign of heaviness in him." (Jan Huygen van Linschoten, translated into English 1598.) P. 499. Verse xiv. When a wind from the lands they had ruined awoke from, sleep. West Indies. "A fleet of merchantmen joined the Armada immediately after the battle, forming in all 140 sail; and of these 140 only 32 ever saw Spanish harbour." Gervase Markham wrote a poem entitled The Most Honourable Tragedie of Sir Richard Grenuile, Knight, in 1595, and in his postscript to the poem writes: "What became of the Revenge after Sir Richard's death, divers report diversly, but the most probable and sufficient proof e sayeth, that within fewe dayes after the knightes death, there arose a great storme from the West and North-West, that all the Fleet was dispersed, as well the Indian Fleet, which were then come unto them, as all the rest of the Armada, which attended their arivall; of which fourteen sayle, together with the Revenge, and her two hundred Spanyards were cast away uponn the He of St. Michaels; so it pleased them to honour the buriall of that renowned ship the Revenge, not suffering her to perrish alone, for the great honour shee atchieved in her Ufe-time." P. 499. The Sisters. [First pub- lished in 1880. Partly founded on a story, known to my father, of a girl who consented to be bridesmaid to her sister, although she secretly loved the bridegroom. The night after the wedding the unhappy bridesmaid ran away from home. They searched for her high and low, and at last she was found, knocking at the church door, in the "pitiless rush of autumn rain," her wits gone — The great Tragedian, that had quench 'd herself In that assumption of the bridesmaid. The scene of the picnic was a personal 968 NOTES experience in the New Forest. He would oiten quote as his own belief these lines: My God, I would not live Save that I think this gross hard-seeming world Is our misshaping vision of the Powers Behind the world, that make our griefs our gains. Ed.] P. 501, col. I, lines 7-n. A moonless night with storm — one light- ning-fork Flashed out the lake; and tho' I loiter' d there The full day after, yet in retrospect That less than momentary thunder-sketch Of lake and mountain conquers all the day. What I saw myself at Llanberis, in North Wales. P. 504. The Village Wife; or, The Entail. [First published in 1880. — Ed.] The village wife herself is the only portrait in the Lincolnshire poems that is drawn from life. P. 504. Verse iii. tfie fault 0' that ere madle. By delauU of the heir male. P. 505. Verse ix. ^Ouse [Workhouse, — Ed.]. P. 505. Verse xi. Heaps an' heaps 0' boooks. This really happened to some of the most valuable books in the great library formed by Johnson's friend, Bennet Langton. P. 506. Verse xv. Siver the mou'ds. [However, the earth rattled down on poor old Squire's coffin. — Ed.] P. 506. Verse xix. roomlin' [rumbling. — Ed.]. P. 507. In the Children's Hospital. [First published in 1880. — Ed.] A true story told me by Mary Gladstone. The doctors and hospital are unknown to me. The two children are the only characters taken from life in this little dramatic poem, in which the hospital nurse and not the poet is speaking throughout. P. 507. Verse i. oorali or curari (ex- tracted from the Strychnos toxifera), which paralyzes the nerves while still the victim feels. P. 508. Dedicatory Poem to the Princess Alice. [First published with The Defence of Lucknow in The Nineteenth Century, April 1879, afterwards in Ballads and Poems, 1880. — Ed-.] P. 508, line 2. fatal kiss. Princess Alice (Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt) died of kissing her child, who was ill with diphtheria (December 14th, 1878). P. 508, line II. Thy Soldier-brother's. [The Duke of Connaught, married on March 13th, 1879, to Louise Marguerite, Princess of Prussia. — Ed.] P. 509. The Defence of Lucknow. The old* flag, used during the defence of the Residency, was hoisted on the Lucknow flagstaff by General Wilson, and the soldiers who still survived from the siege were all mustered on parade, in honour of this poem, when my son Lionel (who died on his journey from India) visited Lucknow. A tribute overwhelmingly touch- ing. P. 509. Verse ii. Lawrence. Sir Henry Lawrence died of his wounds on July 4th, 1857. P. 510. Verse vi. Ever the mine and assault, our sallies, their lying alarms. 3292 feet of gallery alone was dug out. See Outram's account and Colonel Inglis's modest manly record. Lucknow was relieved on Sept. 25th by Havelock and Outram. P. sxi. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord CoBHAM. [First pubHshed in 1880. — Ed.] I took as subject of this poem Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, because he is a fine historical figure. He was named by the people "the good Lord Cobham," a friend of Henry V. As a follower of Wycliff, he was cited before a great council of the Church, which was presided over by Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canter- bury, and was condemned to be burnt alive for heresy. He escaped from the Tower to Wales, and four years later was captured and burnt in chains. P. six, col. 2, line 13. ^Dim Saesneg.' Welsh for 'No English.' NOTES 969 P. 512, col. 2, line 13. John of Beverley, burnt Jan. 19th, 1414. P. 512, col. 2, line 22. My boon com- panion. This passage has reference to the story that Sir John Falstaff was Sir John Oldcastle. For Oldcastle, etc., see Epilogue to 2 Henry IV. P. 512, col. 2, line 28. Or Amurath of tJie East? [Cf. 2 Henry IV. v. ii. 48: "This is the. English, not the Turkish . court ; Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds. But Harry Harry." Ed.] P. 514, col. I, line 4. Sylvester was Pope from 314 to 335 and received the Donation from Constantine. P. 514. Columbus. [First published in 1880. — Ed.] Columbus on his return into Spain was thrown into chains. My poem of Columbus was founded on the following passage in Washington Irving's Life of Columbus: — "The caravels set sail early in October, bearing oflf Columbus shackled like the vilest of culprits, amid the scoffs and shouts of a miscreant rabble, who took a brutal joy in heaping insults on his venerable head, and ' sent curses after him from the island he had so recently added to the civilized world. The worthy Villejo, as well as Andreas Martin, the master of the caravel, felt deeply grieved at his situation. They would have taken off his irons, but to this he would not consent. 'No,' said he proudly, 'their Majesties commanded me by letter to submit to whatever Bobadillo should order in their name ; by their authority he has put upon me these chains; I will wear them until they shall order them to be taken off, and I will afterwards preserve them as relics and memorials of the reward of my services.' 'He did so,' adds his son Fernando in his history. 'I saw them always hanging in his cabinet, and he requested that, when he died, they might be buried with him.' " P. 515, col. I, line 11. the Dragon's mouth. [Bocca del Drago, the channel so named by Columbus between the island of Trinidad and South America. — Ed.] P. 515, col. I, line 12. the Mountain of the World. [Adam's Peak in Ceylon. — Ed.] P. 515, col. 2, line 2. King David, etc. [Cf. Psalm civ. 2. — Ed.] P. 515, col. 2, Une 4. Lactantius. [A famous Christian apologist of the fourth century, called by some the Christian Cicero. — Ed.] P. 515, col. 2, line 30. Guanahani. [Native name of the first island discovered by Columbus. — Ed.] P. 516, col. I, line SS- Cambalu. [Cf. " Cambalu, seat of Cathayan Can." Paradise Lost, xi. 388. Ed.] P. 516, col. 2, line 2. Prester John. [Cf. "I will fetch you a tooth- picker now from the furthest inch of Asia, bring you the length of Prester John's foot" {Much Ado, II. i. 274). Prester John was a legendary Christian king. — Ed.] P. 516, col. 2, line 10. Hispaniola. [The name given to Hayti by Columbus. — - Ed.] P. 517, col. I, line 5. Veragua. [A Spanish province of New Grenada in South America. — Ed.] P. 517, col. 2, line 19. Catalonian Minorite. [Bernard Buil, a Benedictine monk sent by the Pope to the West Indies in June 1493 as Apostolic Vicar. He con- tinually tried to thwart Columbus. — Ed.] P. 518. The Voyage of Maeldune. [First published in 1880. By this story my father intended to represent, in his own original way, the Celtic genius; and en- joyed writing the poem as he had a genuine love for the peculiar exuberance of the Irish genius. — Ed.] The oldest form of Maeldune is in The Book of the Dun Cow (a.d. 1160). I read the legend in Joyce's Old Celtic Romances, but most of the details are mine. [It was in 1878 at Kilkee that Mr. Perceval Graves recommended to my father this book ; because he said that he desired to write an Irish poem. "When telling Tennyson of Joyce's book," he writes, "and several of the tales which relate to Finn and his heroic companions, I had hoped he would have treated one of them, by 970 NOTES choice Oisin (Ossian) in Tirrnanoge (The Land of Youth) rather than 'The voyage of Maeldune.' For the mention of Ossian has started him off into an expression of admiration of some passages in Macpher- son's work for which I was not prepared. 'Listen to this,' he said: 'O thou, that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers ! Whence are thy beams, O Sun ? thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty ; the stars hide them- selves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks on the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a com- panion of thy course? The vales of the mountain fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven; but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempest, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds and laughest at the storm." — Ed.] P. 519. Verse iii. jliUermouse. A bat. P. 520. Verse viii. Finn was the most famous of old Irish leaders. He was com- mander of the Feni of Erin and was father of the poet Ossian. He was killed, a.d. 284, at Athbrea on the Boyne. P. 520. Verse x. [Symbolical of the contest between Roman Catholics and Protestants. — Ed.] P. 521. Verse xi. St. Brendan sailed on his voyage .some time in the sixth century from Kerry, and some say he visited America. P. 521, De Profundis. [Begun at the birth of his son Hallam, Aug. nth, 1852; first pubhshed in The Nineteenth Century, May 1880. — Ed.] NOTE ON DE PROFUNDIS^ By Mr. Wilfrid Ward He (Tennyson) had often said he would go through the "De Profundis" with me line by line, and he did so late in January or 1 From Problems and Persons, by Wilfrid Ward, published here by his kind permission and that of Longmans, Green & Co. early in February 1889, when I was staying at Farringford. He was still very ill, having had rheumatic fever in the previous year; and neither he nor his friends expected that he would recover after his many relapses. He could scarcely move his limbs, and his fingers were tied with bandages. We moved him from bed to sofa, but he could not sit up. His mind, however, was quite clear. He read through the "De Profundis," and gave the sub- stance of the explanation I have written down. He began languidly, but soon got deeply interested. When he reached the prayer at the end, he said: "A B" (naming a well-known Positivist thinker) "exclaimed, when I read it to him, 'Do leave that prayer out; I like all the rest of it.' " I proceed to set down the account of the poem written (in substance) im- mediately after his explanation of it. The mystery of life as a whole which so constantly exercised him is here most fully dealt with. He supposes a child just born, and considers the problems of human existence as presented by the thought of the child's birth, and the child's future life with all its possibiUties. The poem takes the form of two greetings to the new-born child. In the first greeting life is viewed as we see it in the world, and as we know it by physical science as a phenomenon; as the materialist might view it; not indeed coarsely, but as an outcome of all the physical forces of the universe, which have ever contained in themselves the potentiality of all that was to come — "all that was to be in all that was." These vast and wondrous forces have now issued in this newly given life — this child born into the world. There is the sense of mystery in our greeting to it; but it is of the mysteries of the physical Universe and nothing beyond; the sense of awe fitting to finite man at the thought of infinite Time, of the countless years before human life was at all, during which the fixed laws of Nature were ruling and framing the earth as we know it, of the countless years earlier still, during which, on the nebular hypK)- thesis, Nature's laws were working before our planet was separated off from the mass of the sun's light, and before the similar NOTES 971 differentiation took place in the rest of the ''vast waste dawn of multitudinous eddy- ing light." Again, there is awe in con- templating the vastness of space; in the thoughts which in ascending scale rise from the new-born infant to the great globe of which he is so small a part, from that to the whole solar system, from that again to the myriad similar systems "glimmering up the heights beyond" us which we partly see in the Milky Way ; from that to those others which human sight can never descry. Forces in Time and Space as nearly infinite as our imagination can con- ceive, have been leading up to this one birth, with the short life of a single man before it. May that life be happy and noble ! Viewing it still as the course determined by Nature's laws — a course unknown to us and yet unalterably fixed — we sigh forth the hope that our child may pass unscathed through youth, may have a full and prosperpus time on earth, blessed by man for good done to man, and may pass peacefully at last to rest. Such is the first greeting — full of the poetry of life, of its wondrous causes, of the overwhelming greatness of the Universe of which this new-given baby is the child, cared for, preserved hitherto unscathed amid these awful powers, all in all to its parents, in- spiring the hope which new-given joy makes sanguine, that fortune may be kind to it, that happiness may be as great, sorrow and pain as little, as the chances of the world allow. After his explanation, he read the first greeting to the child. And then comes the second greeting. A deeper chord is struck. The listener, who has, perhaps, felt as if the first greet- ing contained all — all the mystery of birth, of life, of death — hears a sound unknown, unimagined before. A new range of ideas is opened to us. The starry firmament disappears for the moment. The "deep" of infinite time and space is forgotten. A fresh sense is awakened, a deeper depth disclosed. We leave this wondrous world of appearances. We gaze into that other deep — the world of spirit, the world of realities; we see the new-born babe coming to us from that true world, with all the "abysmal depths of personality," no longer a mere link in the chain of causes, with a fated course through the events of life, but a moral being, with the awful power of making or marring its own destiny and that of others. The propor- tions are abruptly reversed. The child is no longer the minute outcome of natural forces so much greater than itself. It is the "spirit," the moral bdng, a reality which impinges on the world of appear- ances. Never can I forget the change of voice, the change of manner, as Lord Tennyson passed from the first greeting, with its purely human thoughts, to the second, so full of awe at the conception of the world behind the veil and the moral nature of man; an awe which seemed to culminate when he paused before the word "Spirit" in the seventh line and then gave it in deeper and more piercing tones: "Out of the deep — Spirit,— out of the deep." This second greeting is in two parts. Note that the second greeting considers the leality of the child's life and its mean- ing, the first only its appearance. The great deep of the spiritual world is "that true world within the world we see, Whereof our world is but the bounding shore." And this indication that the second greeting gives the deeper and truer view, is preserved in some of the side touches of description. In the first greet- ing, for example, the moon is spoken of as "touch'd with earth's light"; in the second the truer and less obvious fact is suggested. It "sends the hidden sun down yon dark sea." The material view again looks at bright and hopeful appear- ances in life, and it notes the new-born babe "breaking with laughter from the dark." The spiritual view foresees the woes which, if Byron is right in calling melancholy the "telescope of truth," are truer than the joys. It notes no longer the child's laughter, but rather its tears, "Thou wailest being born and banished into mystery." Life, in the spiritual view, is in part a veiling and obscuring of the true self as it is, in a world of appearances. The soul is "half lost" in the body which is part of the phenomenal world, "in thine own shadow and in this fleshy sign that thou . art thou." The suns and moons. 972 NOTES too, are but shadows, as the body of the child itself is but a shadow — shadows of the spirit- world and of God Himself. The physical life is before the child ; but not as a fatally determined course. Choice of the good is to lead the spirit ever nearer God. The wonders of the material Uni- verse are still recognized: "Sun, sun, and sun, thro' finite-infinite space, in finite- infinite Time"; but they vanish into insignificance when compared to the two great facts of the spirit-world which con- sciousness tells us unrhistakably — the facts of personahty and of a responsible will. The great mystery is "Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite," but "this main-miracle, that thou art thou, with power on thine own act and on the world." "Out of the deep" — in this conception of the true "deep" of the world behind the veil we have the thought which recurs so often, as in the "Passing of Arthur" and in "Crossing the Bar" ^ — of birth and death as the coming from and return- ing to the spirit-world and God Himself. Birth 2 is the coming to land from- that deep; "of which our world is but the bounding shore"; death the re-embarking on the same infinite sea, for the home of truth and light. He seemed so much better when he had finished his explanation that I asked him to read the poem through again. This he did, more beautifully than I ever heard him read. I felt as though his long illness and his expectation of death gave more intensity and force to his rendering of this wonderful poem on the mystery of life. He began quietly, and read the concluding lines of the first "greeting," the brief descrip- tion of a peaceful old age and death, from the human standpoint, with a very tender pathos. Then he gathered force, and his voice deepened as the greeting to the immortal soul of the man was read. He raised his eyes from the book at the seventh line and 1 " Froid the great deep to the great deep he goes ; and "when that which drew from out the boundless deep turns again home." * For in the world which is not ours, they said, "Let us make man," and that which should be a man. From that one light no man can look upon, Drew to this shore, lit by the suns and moons And all the shadows. looked for a moment at his hearer with an indescribable expression of awe before he uttered the word "spirit"; "Out of the deep — Spirit, — out of the deep." When he had finished the second greeting he was trembling much. Then be read the prayer — a prayer he had told me of self-pros- tration before the Infinite. I think he intended it as a contrast to the analytical and reflective character of the rest. It is an outpouring of the simplest and most intense self-abandonment to the Creator. P. 522. Part II. At times I have possessed the power of making my in- dividuality as it were dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest of the clear- est, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laugh- able impossibility, and the loss of per- sonality, if so it were, seeming no alteration but the only true life. (See The Holy Grail, ad fin.) P. 522. Prefatory Sonnet to the 'Nineteenth Century.' [First pub- Ushed in the first number of The Nine- teenth Century, March 1877, afterwards in Ballads and other Poems, 1880. — Ed.] P. 522, Hne 3. their old craft. The Contemporary Review. P. 522, line 7. . Here, in this roaring moon of daffodil. Written in March. P. 522. To the Rev. W. H. Brook- field. [First published in Lord Lyttelton's Preface to Brookfield's Sermons, afterwards in Ballads and other Poems, 1880. Dr. Thompson, the Master of Trinity, wrote: "He was far the most amusing man I ever met, or shall meet. At my age it is not likely that I shall ever again see a whole party lying on the floor for purposes of unrestrained laughter, while one of their number is pouring forth, with a per- fectly grave face, a succession of imaginary dialogues between characters, real and fictitious, one exceeding another in humour and drollery." — Ed.] P. 523. Montenegro, [Written after talking with Gladstone about the bravery of the Montenegrins, and first published in The Nineteenth Century, March 1877, NOTES 973 afterwards in Ballads and other Poems, 1880. — Ed.] P.« 523, col. 2, line 3. Tsernogora (Black mountain). The Slavonic name for Montenegro. P. 523. To Victor Hugo. [Published in The Nineteenth Century, June 1877, afterwards in Ballads and other Poems, 1880. — Ed.] After my son Lionel's visit to him in Paris. [Victor Hugo thanked my father in the following letter : — MON EMINENT ET CHER CONFRERE, Je lis avec emotion vos vers superbes, c'est un reflet de gloire que vous m'envoyez. Comment n'aimerais-je pas I'Angleterre qui produit des hommes tels que vous ! I'Angleterre de Wilberforce ! I'Angleterre de Milton et de Newton ! I'Angleterre de Shakespeare ! France et Angleterre sont pour moi un seul peuple comme Verite et Liberte sont une seule lumiere. Je crois a 1 'unite divine. J'aime tous les peuples et tous les hommes et j'admire vos nobles vers. Recevez mon cordial serrement de main. Victor Hugo. J'ai ete heureux de connaitre votre charmant fils — il m'a semble, que serrer sa main, c'etait presser la votre. Ed.] P. 523. Battle of Brunanburh. [First published in 1880. — Ed.] I have more or less availed myself of my son's prose translation of this poem in The Contemporary Review, November 1876. ["But tell your father that, when I saw his version of your Battle of Brunanburh, I said t© myself, and afterwards to others, 'There's the way to render ^Eschylus' Chorus at last ! ' unless indeed it might overpower any blank verse dialogue" {Edward FitzGerald to Hallam Tennyson). — Ed.] P. 525. Achilles over the Trench. [First published in The Nineteenth Century, August 1877. — Ed.] P. 526. To Princess Frederica on her Marriage. [Written on the marriage of Princess Frederica, daughter of George v., the blind King of Hanover, with Baron von Pawel-Rammingen at Windsor, April 24th, 1880. Published in 1880. — Ed.] P. 526. Sir John Franklin. [Written in 1877 for the cenotaph in Westminster Abbey, and published in Ballads and other Poems, 1880. — Ed.] P. 526. To Dante. [Written for the sixth anniversary of Dante's birth at the request of the people of Florence, May 14th, 1865, and published in Ballads and other Poems, 1880. The few lines addressed to Dante have a curious history. In 1865 Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) met a brother of my father's friend Canon Warburton, and said to him, "Tennjson is not going to the Dante Centenary, but he has given me some lines which I am to recite to the Florentines," and he then repeated the lines. The same evening Canon Warburton met his brother, who observed, "Milnes has just been saying to me some lines which Tennyson has given him to recite at the Centenary, for he is not going himself." He then repeated the lines. Some fifteen years or so later, my father was talking to the Canon about the probably short-lived duration of all modern poetical fame. "Who," said he, "will read Alfred Tennyson one hundred years hence? And look at Dante after six hundred years!" "That," Warburton answered, "is a renewal of the garland- of-a-day superstition." "What do you mean?" "Your own words!" "What can you mean?" "Don't you remember those Hues you gave to Milnes to recite for you at the Dante Centenary ? " My father had quite forgotten the lines, whereupon Warburton then wrote them out as far as he could nemember them. Shortly after- wards I was able to send the Canon a letter, telling him that my father had recalled the correct version of the poem. My father would say: "One must dis- tinguish from among the poets the great sage poets of all, who are both great thinkers and great artists, like ^schylus, Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe." — Ed.] P. 526. [TiRESIAS AND OTHER POEMS was affectionately dedicated "To my good friend, Robert Browning, whose genius and geniality will best appreciate what 974 NOTES may be best, and make most allowance for what may be worst." Browning had previously dedicated a Selection of his own poems to my father : To Alfred Tennyson In poetry illustrious and consummate, In friendship noble and sincere. These brother-poets revelled as it were in each other's praise, and were always most loyal to one another. For example, on one occasion Browning v/as very angry because an anonj^mous critic had accused my father of plagiarism ; and, knowing the wealth of similes and metaphors in his poems and in his ordinary conversation, said to Lecky: "Tennyson suspected of plagiarism ! why, you might as well suspect the Rothschilds of picking pockets." — Ed.] P. 526. To E. FitzGerald. [First pubHshed in 1885. Written after our visit to Woodbridge, 1876, when we sailed down the river Orwell with Edward Fitz- Gerald. He died before Tiresias was published. His vegetarianism had interested my father, and he was charmed by the picture of the lonely philosopher, a "man of humorous-melancholy mark," with his gray floating locks, sitting among his doves, which perched about him on head and shoulder and knee, and cooed to him as he sat in the sunshine beneath his roses. FitzGerald wrote to Fanny Kemble of our visit Sept. 21st, 1876: "Who should send in his card to me last week, but the old poet himself — he and his elder son Hallam passing through Woodbridge from a town in Norfolk. 'Dear old Fitz,' ran the card in pencil, 'we are passing thro.' I had not seen him for twenty years — he looked much the same, except for his fallen locks ; and what really surprised me was, that we fell at once into the old humour, as if we had only been parted twenty days instead of so many years. I suppose this is a sign of age — not al- together desirable. But so it was. He stayed two days, and we went over the same old grounds of debate, told some of the old stories, and all was well. I suppose I may never see him again." The dream, to which allusion is made in the poem, my father related to us in these words : "I never saw any landscape that came up to the landscapes I have seen in my dreams. The mountains of Switzerland seem insignificant compared with the mountains I have imagined. One of the most wonderful experiences I ever had was this. I had gone without meat for six weeks, living only on vegetables; and at the end of the time, when I came to eat a mutton-chop, I shall never forget the sensation. I never felt such joy in my blood. When I went to sleep, I dreamt that I saw the vines of the South, with huge Eshcol branches, traiUng over the glaciers of the North." — Ed.] P. 526, col. I, line 15. ' a thing enskied.' [See Measure for Measure, i. iv. 34. — Ed.] P. 526, col. 2, line 12. golden. [Fitz- Gerald's translation of the Rubdiydt of Omar Khayyam. — Ed.] P. 527. Tiresias. [Partly written at the same time as Ulysses; first published in 1885. — Ed.] Pp. 529-530. For the close of the poem cf. Pindar, Frag. x. No. i. of the QpTjvoi. : Toiai \dfxirei /j^v /iivos deXlov tclp ivddde v^KTa Kdroo (f>oiutKop68oi^ rivl Xei/juliveaa-i irpodcmov avrCjv Kal XtjSdj'Cfj (TKiapq. Kal xP^<^^ols Kapirocs ^i^pidev. Kal Tol jxkv Linrois yv/xvaaloL^ re, toI 5^ Tol 5^ (f>opiJ.lyyea-ai T^pwovTai, irapd S^ (T(pi.(XLv evavdrjs diras ridaXev 6X/3os' ddfjLCL 5' iparbv Kara x^pof KLdparai alei dOa fiiyvtJVTOjp irvpl rrjXecpavei iravrota OeCov ipi /3a>/xots. P. 530. The Wreck. [First published in 1885. The catastrophe (see viii.) which happened to an Italian vessel, named the Rosina, bound from Catania for New York, was the nucleus of the poem. One da/, at the end of October, she was nearly capsized by a sudden squall in the middle of the Atlantic. All hands were summoned instantly to take in sail, and all, together with the captain, were actively engaged, NOTES 975 when an enormous wave swept the deck of every Uving person, leaving only one of the crew who happened to be below. For eight days he struggled against wind and sea, without taking an instant's re- pose, when the Marianna, a Portuguese brigantine, boj-e down upon her, as she was sinking, and rescued him. — Ed.] P. 531. Verse vi. Mother, one morning a bird with a warble plaintively sweet Pcrch'd on the shrouds, and tfien fell fluttering doivn at my feet. This happened in the Pembroke Castle on our voyage to Copenhagen in 1883 with the Gladstones. P- 533- Verse xii. The broad white brow of the Isle — that bay with the coloured sand. Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight. P- 533- Despair. [First pubHshed in The Nineteenth Century, November 1881, afterwards in Tiresias, 1885. — Ed.] P- 533- Verse iv. See, we were nursed in the drear night- fold of your fatalist creed. In my boyhood I came across this Calvinist creed — and assuredly, however unfathomable the mystery, if one cannot believe in the freedom of the human will as of the divine, life is hardly worth the living. P. 536. The Ancient S.^ge. [First published in 1885. My father considered this as one of his best later poems. — Ed.] What the Ancient Sage says is not the philosophy of the Chinese philosopher Laot-ze, but it was written after reading his life and maxims. ["What I might have believed," my father said, "about the deeper problems of life 'A thousand summers ere the birth of Christ.' In my old age, I think I have a stronger faith in God and human good than I had in youth." Compare with this poem The Mystic, written in his .boyhood, which records his early intimations, or indistinct visions, af the mind's power to pass be- yond the shadows of the world — to pierce beyond the enveloping clouds of ignorance and illusion, and to reach some region of pure light and untroubled calm, where perfect knowledge shall have extinguished doubt. -pjjg MYSTIC Angels have talked with him, and showed him thrones : - Ye knew him not : he was not one of ye. Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn ; Ye could not read the marvel in his eye, The still serene abstraction ; he hath felt The vanities of after and before ; Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart The .stem experiences of converse lives. The linked woes of many a fiery change Had purified, and chastened, and made free. Always there stood before him, night and day. Of wayward vary colored circumstance, The imperishable presences serene Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound. Dim shadows but unwaning presences Fourf aced to four comers of the sky ; And yet again, three shadows, fronting one. One forward, one respectant, three but one; And yet again, again and evermore. For the two first were not, but only seemed, One shadow in the midst of a great light, One reflex from eternity on time. One mighty countenance of perfect calm, Awful with most invariable eyes. For him the silent congregated hours. Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath Severe and youthful brows, with shining eyes Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent hght Of earliest youth pierced through and through with all- Keen knowledges of low-embowed eld) Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud Which droops low hung on either gate of life. Both birth and death; he in the centre fixt. Saw far on each side through the grated gates Most pale and clear and lovely distances. He often lying broad awake, and yet Remaining from the body, and apart In intellect and power and will, hath heard Time flowing in the middle of the night, And all things creeping to a day of doom. 976 NOTES How could ye know him? Ye were yet within The narrower circle; he had wellnigh reached The last, with which a region of white flame, Pure without heat, into a larger air Upburning, and an ether of black blue, Investeth and ingirds all other lives. Ed.] P. 538, col. 2, hne 15. The phantom walls of this illusion fade. Or may I make use of a parable? Man's Free-will is but a bird in a cage; he can stop at the lower perch, or he can mount to a higher. Then that which is and knows — for it has always seemed to me there must be that which knows — will enlarge his cage, give him a higher and a higher perch, and at last break off the top of his cage, and let him out to be one with the only Free-will of the Universe. P. 539, col. I, line 19. 'The Passion of the Past.' The whole poem is very personal. This Passion of the Past I used to feel when a boy. [See Far — far — away, p. 873. — Ed.] P. 539, col. 2, line 5. But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self- This is also a personal experience which I have had more than once. [Professor Tyndall wrote : In the year 1885 . . . were published Tiresias and other Poems, by Alfred Lord Tennyson. For a copy of this remarkable volume I am indebted to its author. It contains a poem called The Ancient Sage. My special purpose in introducing this poem, however, is to call your attention to a passage further on which greatly interested me. The poem is, throughout, a discussion between a believer in immortality and one who is unable to believe. The method pursued is this. The Sage reads a portion of the scroll, which he has taken from the hands of his follower, and then brings his own arguments to bear upon that portion, with a view to neutralising the scepticism of the younger man. Let me here remark that I read the whole series of poems published under the title Tiresias, full of admiration for their fresh- ness and vigour. Seven years after I had first read them your father died, and you, his son, asked me to contribute a chapter to the book which you contemplate publishing. I knew that I had some small store of references to rny interview with your father carefully written in ancient journals. On the receipt of your request, I looked up the account of my first visit to Farringford, and there, to my profound astonish- ment, I found described that experience of your father's which, in the mouth of the Ancient Sage, was made the ground of an important argument against materialism and in favour of personal immortality eight-and-twenty years afterwards. I had completely forgotten it, but here it was recorded in black and white. If you turn to your father's account of the wonderful state of consciousness superinduced by» thinking of his own name, and compare it with the argument of the Ancient Sage, you will see that they refer to one and the same phenomenon. And more, my son ! for more than once when I Sat all alone, revolving in myself The word that is the symbol of myself, The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, And past into the Nameless, as a cloud Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs Were strange not mine — and yet no shade of doubt, But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self The gain of such large life as match 'd with ours Were Sun to spark — unshadowable in words,- Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world. Ed.] P. 540. The Flight. [First pubHshed in 1885. — Ed.] This is a very early poem. P. 543. Tomorrow. [First published in 1885. — Ed.] This story was told me by Aubrey de Vere. [The body of a young man was laid out on the grass by the door of a chapel in the West of Ireland, and an old woman came, and recognized it as that of her young lover, who had been lost in a peat-bog many years before : the peat having kept him fresh and fair as when she last saw him. He corrected his Irish from Carleton's admirable Truths of the Irish Peasantry. "Tennyson," writes Mr. Perceval Graves, "certainly could not have written that intensely dramatic poem, had he not been de^ly sensible of the tragic side of Irish peasant life, as he saw it with his own eyes so shortly after the potato famine. How gracefully too he presses into his service the poetic imagery of the Western Gael. It is moreover an interesting assertion of his belief in the artistic value of Irish dialect in verse — 'Irish Doric,' as he once wrote of it to me." — Ed.] P. 545. The Spinster's Sweet-Arts. [First published in 1885. — Ed.] P. 547. Verse xvi. Jackman V purple a rodbin' the 'ouse like a Queedn. Clematis Jackmanni. NOTES 977 P. 548. LOcKSLEY Hall Sixty Years After. [First published in 1886, and dedicated to my mother, partly because it seemed to my father that the two Locksley Halls were Hkely to be in the future two of the most historically interesting of his poems, as descriptive of the tone of the age at two distant periods of his life: partly because the following lines were written immediately after the death of my brother, and described his chief character- istics : Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt, being true as he was brave ; Good, for Good is Good, he foUow'd, yet he look'd beyond the grave ! Truth for Truth, and Good for Good! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just! Take the charm "For ever" from them and they crumble into dust, Ed.] A dramatic poem, and the Dramatis Personae are imaginary. Since it is so much the fashion in these days to regard each poem and story as a story of the poet's life, or part of it, may I not be allowed to remind my readers of the possibility, that some event which comes to the poet's knowledge, some hint flashed from another mind, some thought or feeling arising in his own, or some mood coming — he knows not whence or how — may strike a chord from which a poem evolves its life, and that this to other eyes may bear small relation to the thought or tact or feeling to which the poem owes its birth, whether the tenor be dramatic or given as a parable ? Gladstone says: "The method in the old Locksley Hall and the new is the same. In each the maker is outside his work, and in each we have to deal with it as strictly 'impersonal'") Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1887). P. 548, line 13. In the hall there hangs a painting. These four lines were the nucleus of the poem, and were written fifty years ago. P. 549, line 10. Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day. 3R [My father always quoted this line as the most imaginative in the poem. — Ed.] P. 550, line 27. peasants maim. The modern Irish cruelties. P. 551, line 17. Plowmen, Shepherds, etc. and the three following verses show that the hero does not (as has been said) by any means dislike the democracy. P. 552, line 17. Jacquerie. Originally a revolt in 1358 against the Picardy nobles; and afterwards appUed to insur- rections of the mob. This and the eight following verses show that he is not a pessimist, I think. P. 553, line 9. Bringer home. [See note on Leonine Elegiacs, p. 896. — Ed.] P. 556. Prologue to General Hamley. [First published in 1885. — Ed.] Written from Aldworth, Black- down. P. 556, line 28. Tel-el-KeUr. [Where Lord Wolseley defeated the Egyptians under Arabi Pasha, September 13th, 1882. — Ed.] P. 556. The Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava. [First published in Macmillan's Magazine, March 1882 ; afterwards, in 1885, in Tiresias. — Ed.] Written at the request of Mr. Kinglake. An ofl&cer, who was in this charge, said that it was "the finest excitement" he had ever known, and that "gambling and horse-racing were nothing to it." [The following is what Kinglake wrote for my father at the time : — 1ST Instant. Scarlett seeing the enemy and preparing to confront him. Scarlett is marching eastward with his "300" in marching order, when, casting his eyes towards the heights on his left, i.e. towards the north, he sees a host of Russians breaking over the sky-line and presently advancing downhill towards the south. Thereupon he instantly gives the order, "Left wheel into line!" The effect of this is to make the "300" no longer 978 NOTES show their flank to the enemy, but confront him. ^e the order, AfUr the order. D- O CJ- One peculiarity attending that ist In- stant was that apparently the idea of not accepting battle on terms of one to ten did not occur to anybody ! 2ND Instant. Suspense. The acreage of Russian horsemen is de- scending the hill-side at a trot-, and the "300" confronting them are deliberately dressing their line, the regimental officers directing the process with their faces to their men as in a barrack-yard. This in the presence of a vast mass of cavalry coming down the hill-side to assail them was an interesting and, as I imagine, a rare phenomenon. 3RD Instant. The Russian halt and Scarlett's de- termination. The Russians slacken and halt. Scarlett, all things considered, determines that he will lead the charge, and for that purpose takes the usual course, i.e. places himself in front of the line with his aide-de-camp, followed by his trumpeter and one orderly. Orders to charge. His passage over the intervening space marked only, so far as observers could tell, by one shout of " Come on ! " and one wave of his sword. 4TH Instant. The combat maintained by the four. This personal, and like something medi- aeval, and not yet involving the tumult of battle. The four penetrate so deeply into the column as to be secure from the ap- proaching crash that will follow when their own line comes up. STH Instant. The crashing charge of the Greys one squadron of tlte Inniskillingers. and 6th Instant. The fight within the column. The 2nd squadron of the Inniskillings, hearing on the outside their comrades of the I St squadron, crash in on the right. Ed.] P. 558. Epilogue. Col. i, lines i, 2. '/ will strike,'' said he, ' The stars with head sublime.' See Hor. Od. 1, i. 35, 36 ; Quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres, Sublimi feriam sidera vertice. P. 558. To Virgil. [Was written at the request of the Mantuans for the nine- teenth centenary of Virgil's death, and first published in The Nineteenth Century, Sept. 1882, and afterwards in Tiresias, 1885. There was a curious misprint in the first printed copies of the poem: "Thou that singest . . .. tithe and vine- yard" instead of "tilth and vineyard." — Ed.] P- 559- Verse ix. sunder' d once from all the human race. [Cf. Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos. Virg. Eel. i. 67. — Ed.] P- 559- Verse x. Mantovano, Mantuan. Cf. Dante, Purg. vi. 74. — Ed.] P. '559. The Dead Prophet. [First published in Tiresias, 1885. — Ed.] About no particular prophet. [My father said when writing this poem : "While I live the owls ! When I die the ghouls ! ! " He had a strong conviction that the world likes to know about the roughnesses, eccentricities, and defects of a man of genius, rather than what he really is. At this time he said of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle : "I am sure that Froude is wrong. I saw a great deal of them. They were always NOTES 979 'chafl&ng' one another, and they could not have done that if they had got on so ' badly together' as Froude thinks." — Ed.] P. 560. Early Spring. [An early poem, slightly altered, first published in The Youth's Companion, Boston, U.S.A., 1884, afterwards in Tiresias, 1885. Mary Brotherton, in the following lines on my father, written after his death, well ex- pressed his attitude toward Nature : — "He look'd'on Nature's lowest thing For some sublime God's word ; And lived for ever listening Lest God should speak unheard." Ed.] P. 561. Prefatory Poem to my Brother's Sonnets. [PubHshed in 1880. — Ed.] Addressed to my brother, Charles Tennyson Turner, who died at Cheltenham on April 25th, 1879, after a life spent with his wafe among his parishioners in Grasby, Linconshire. [His sonnets, Letty^s Globe, Time and Twilight, On seeing a child blush on his first view of a corpse, The Buoy Bell, The Schoolboy's Dream, On shooting a swallow in early youth, had in my father's judgment all the tenderness of the Greek epigram, and he ranked sonnets such as Time and Twilight, and The Holy Emerald, among the noblest in the language. My uncle with his aquihne nose, dark eyes and black hair was very like my father, and Thackeray seeing him in middle life called him a "Velasquez tout crache." No one who reads his poems can fail to see the "alma beata e bella" breathing thiough them. The poem was written as a preface to the Collected Sonnets, published in 1880. — Ed.] P. 561. 'Frater Ave atque Vale.' [Written in 1880 when my father and I visited Sirmione, the peninsula of Catullus on the Lago di Garda. He rejoiced in the old olives, the old ruins, and the greensward stretching down to the blue lake with the mountains beyond. First published in The Nineteenth Century, March 1883, and afterwards in Tiresias and other Poems, 1885. — Ed.] P. 561, line 4. where the purple flowers grow. [Refers to a very beautiful Iris with deep purple flowers {Iris benacensis) which grows beneath the ruins near the Lake of Garda. — Ed.] P. 561. Helen's Tower. [Written in 1 86 1 for Lord Dufferin in answer to the following letter : — Clanjjeboy, Belfast, Sept. 24th, 1861. My DEAR Mr. Tennyson — I wonder if you will think me very presumptuous for doing what at last, after many months' hesitation, I have determined to do. You must know that here in my park in Ireland there rises a high hill, from the top of which 1 look down not only on an extensive tract of Irish land, but also on St. George's Channel, ? long blue line of Scotch coast, and the mountains of the Isle of Man. On the summit of this hill I have built an old- world tower which I have called after my mother "Helen's Tower." In it I have placed on a golden tablet the birthday verses which my mother wrote to me on the day I came of age, and I have spared no pains in beautifying it with aU imaginable de- vices. In fact my tower is a little "Palace of Art." Beneath is a rough outline of its form and situation. Now there is only one thing wanting to make it a perfect little gem of architecture and decora- tion and that is "a voice." It is now ten years since it was built and all that time it has stood silent. Yet if he chose there is one person in the world able to endow it with this priceless gift, and by sending me some little short distich for it to crown it for ever with a glory it cannot other- wise obtain, and render it a memorial of the personal friendship which its builder felt for the great poet of our age. — Yours ever, Dufferin. Afterwards published in Tiresias and other Poems, 1885. — Ed.] P. 562, col. I, line 4. earth's recurring Paradise. The fancy of some poets and theologians that Paradise is to be the reno- vated earth. P. 562. Epitaphs on Lord Stratford DE Redcliefe, General Gordon, and Caxton. [Published in Tiresias and other Poems, 1885. The epitaph on General Gordon (first published in the Times, May 7, 1885) was written in answer to a request made by the American poet^ Whittier. — Ed.] P. 562. To THE Duke of Argyll. [Written when the Duke resigned the office of Privy Seal (1881) on account of liis- vehement opposition to Gladstone's Irish Bill. First published in Tiresias and other Poems, 1885. — Ed.] gSo NOTES P. 562. Hands all Round. When this poem was recast and published in 1882 it was sung all over the Empire on the Queen's birthday. [Set to music by my mother ; arranged by Sir Charles Stanford. Edward FitzGerald writes of the first edition (Eversley Edition, vol. ii. 322-4) that my father said to him : "I know I wrote these lines with the Tears running down my Cheeks." — Ed.] P. 563. Freedom. [First published in the New York Independent, 1884, and in Macmillan's Magaaine, December 1884, afterwards in Tiresias and other Poems, 1885. — Ed.] "It were good that men in their innova- tions should follow the example of Time itself, which indeed innovateth greatly but quietly, and by degrees, scarce to be per- ceived. ... It is good also not to try ex- periments in States except the necessity be urgent, or the utility evident : and well to beware that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the desire of change that pretendeth the change" (Bacon). P- 563. Verse i. pillar'd Parthenon. Misprinted "column'd Parthenon." P. 563. To H.R.H. Princess Bea- trice. On her marriage with Prince Henry of Battenberg, July 23rd, 1885 [and first published in the Times, July 23rd, 1885, and afterwards in Tiresias and other Poems. My father sent the poem to Queen Victoria, and she wrote to him about the wedding as follows : — From the Queen Osborne, Aug. 7th, 1885. Dear Lord Tennyson — ... As I gazed on the happy young couple, and on my two sons Alfred and Arthur and their bonnie bairns, I could not but feel sad in thinking that their hour of trial might come, and earnestly prayed God would spare my sweet Beatrice and the husband she so truly loves and confides in, for long, long to each other. Till sixty-one no real inroad of any kind had been made in our circle, and how heavy has God's hand been since then on me ! Mother, husband, children, truest friends, all have been taken from me, and yet I must "still endure," and I shall try to do so. Your beautiful • lines have been greatly admired. I wish you could have seen the wedding, for every one says it was the prettiest they ever saw. The simple, pretty, little village church, all decorated with flowers, the sweet young bride, the handsome young husband, the ten brides- maids, six of them quite children with flowing fair hair, the brilliant sunshine and the blue sea, all made up pictures not to be forgotten. — Believe me always yours affectionately, V. R. I. And he answered thus : Aldworth, Aug. Qlh, 1885. As to the sufferings of this momentary life, we can but trust that in some after-state when v/e see clearer, we shall thank the Supreme Power for having made us, thro' these, higher and greater beings. Still it surely cannot be unlawful to pray that our children, and our children's children, may pass thro' smoother waters to the other shore. The wedding must have been beautiful, the Peace of Heaven seemed on the day. Your Majesty's affectionate subject, Tennyson. Ed.] P. 563, line I. Two Suns. [Sir George Darwin writes: "There are in the heavens many double Suns — twin Suns revolving about one another. We may well im- agine that such systems may have planets attached to them, of course invisible to us. Each of such planets would have a double day, one arising from the illumi- nation of one Sun, and the other from the other Sun. Your father was not con- cerned with computing the orbit of such a planet, moving under the attraction of two centres instead of one as in our case. The conception seems to me very fine, and fits in admirably with the rest of the poem." — Ed.] P. 564. The Fleet. [First published in the Times, April 23rd, 1885, afterwards in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 1886. — Ed.] P. 564. Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition by the Queen, May 4th, 1886. [First published in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 1886. This ode was written under the shadow of a great grief, as his son Tionel was very ill in India, and died on April 20th. — Ed.] P. 565. Poets and their Biblio- graphies. [First published in Tiresias and other Poems, 1885. — Ed.] P. 565, line 2. Virgil. [Cf. Prof. H. Nettleship's Vergil, pp. 71 and 76: "Vergil was engaged upon the Aeneid from 29 to 19 B.C. We have the testimony of Sue- NOTES 981 tonius that he first drafted it in prose, and then wrote different parts in no certain order, but just as the fancy took him. The division into twelve books was part of his original plan. . . . When writing the Geor^ics we are told that he would dictate a great number of verses in the morning, and spend the rest of the day in reducing them to the smallest possible quantity, Ucking them, as he himself said, into shape, as a bear does its cub." Cf. also Tiberii Claudii Donati Vita P. Vergilii Maronis, ix., and Quintilian, Inst. Oral. x. 3. 8: "Vergilium quoque paucissimos die com- posuisse versus, auctor est Varus." — Ed.] P. 565, col. 2, line 3. Horace. [See De Arte Poetica, line 386 -et seq. : si quid tamen olim Scripseris, in Metii descendat iudicis aures Et patris et nostras, nonumque prematur in annum, Membranis intus positis. Ed.] P. 565, col. 2, line 6. Catullus. [See "De Smyrna Cinnae poetae," xcv. Hues 1,2: Smyrna mei Cinnae nonam post denique messem Quam coepta est nonamque edita post hiemem, etc. Ed.1 NOTES ON QUEEN MARY P. 566. Queen Mary. [First pub- lished in 1875. Played at the Lyceum in 1876, April i8th to May 13th, Henry Irving as PhiUp and Mrs. Crowe as Mary, with incidental music by Sir Charles Stanford. "Philip" was one of Irving's best characters. During 1874 and 1875 my father worked hard and unceasingly at his Queen Mary, "more of a chronicle-play" he called it. The first list of books which he read on the subject is written down in his note-book: "Collier's Ecclesiastical History, Fuller's Church History, Burnet's Reformation, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Hayward's Edward, Cave's P. X. Y., Hooker, Neale's History of the Puri- tans, Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, Strype's Cranmer, Strype's Parker, Phillips' Pole, Primitive Fathers No Papists, Lingard's History of England, Church Historians of England, Zurich Letters, and Original Letters and Corre- spondence of Archbishop Parker (pubUshed by the Parker Society)," in addition to Froude, Holinshed, and Camden. The well-known critic Mons. Augustin Filon writes in Le Theatre contemporain (1895): "Vienne une main pieuse qui degage ces deux drames (Queen Mary and Harold), fasse circuler I'air et la lumiere autour de leurs lignes essentielles: vienne un grand acteur qui compresse et Lncarne Harold, une grande actrice qui se passionne pour le caractere de Marie, et, sans effort, Tennyson prendra sa place parmi les dramaturges." The plays also seem to have appealed to no less an authority than Mons. Jules Claretie, who has described them as "beaux drames, et nobles inventions theatrales." See Sir Richard Jebb's essays on Queen Mary, Harold, and Becket in the Eversley Edition. — Ed.] P. 572, col. I, line 4. (Act i. Sc. iv.) ELIZABETH. Why do you go so gay then ? COURTNEY. Velvet and gold. [The Queen treated Courtenay as a child, and forbad him to dine abroad with- out permission, or to wear his velvet and gold dress which he had had made to take his seat in. Renard feared him as a rival to PhiUp. (Renard to Charles V., Sept. iQ. 1553. Rolls House MSS., and Froude's History of England, vol. vi. p. 97.) — Ed.] P. 574, col. I, line 17. (Act i. Sc. iv.) To the Pleiads, uncle; they have lost a sister. [The Pleiads were daughters of Atlas, and were placed among the stars by Zeus. One of them, Electra, left her place in the heavens that she might not witness the fall of Troy, which her son Dardanus had founded. — Ed.] P. 579, col. I, line 16. (Act i. Sc. v.) / am English Queen, not Roman Emperor was always much cheered in the theatre, for the play came out when Queen Victoria had been lately proclaimed Empress of India. P. 583, col. I, line 9. (Act 11. Sc i.) [Alington Castle, on the Medway. My 982 NOTES father often visited this castle (built by the father of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Henry Wyatt) when he was staying with his brother-in-law, Edmund Lushington, at Park House. Thomas Wyatt, the poet, was born here in 1503, and died in 1542, and left it to his son, who is the Wyatt of the play. — Ed.] P. 584, col. 2, line 12. (Act ii. Sc. ii.) For Queen Mary's speech, In mine own person, see Holinshed. [She spoke in a deep voice like a man. La voce grossa et quasi de huomo. Giovanni Michele, Ellis, vol. ii. series 2. Ed.] P. 590. (Act in. Sc. i.) [Nine Worthies, Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaius, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon. — Ed.] P. SQO, col. 2, line 9. (Act iii. Sc. i.) the tree in Virgil. See Aeneid, vi. 206. P. 595, col. 2, line 4. (Act iii. Sc. ii.) the heathen giant [Antaeus. — Ed.] P. 599, col. 2, line 8. (Act iii. Sc. iii.) For ourselves we do ,protest. [For Pole's speech see Froude's History of England, vol. vi. pp. 276-281 : "I confess to you that I have the keys — not as mine own keys, but as the keys of him that sent me: and yet I cannot open, not for want of power in me to give, but for certain impediments in you to receive, which must be taken away before my commission can take effect. This I protest before you, my commission is not of prejudice to any person. I am come not to destroy but to build; I come to re- concile, not to condemn; I am not come to compel but to call again; I am not come to call anything in question already done; but my commission is of grace and clemency to such as will receive it — for, touching all matters that be past, they shall be as things cast into the sea of for- getfulness. But the mean whereby you shall receive this benefit is to revoke and repeal those laws and statutes which be impediments, blocks, and bars to the execution of my commission. For, like as I myself had neither place nor voice to speak here amongst you, but was in all respects a banished man, till such time as ye had repv^aled those laws that lay in my way, even 30 cannot you receive the benefit and grace offered from the Apostolic See until the abrogation of such laws whereby you had disjoined and dissevered yourselves from the unity of Chiist's Church." — Ed.] P. 601, col. I, lines 9, 10. (Act iii. Sc. iv.) an amphisbcena, Each end a sting. [Cf. "Scorpion and asp and amphisbaena dire." Par. Lost, x. 524. — Ed.] P. 608, col. I, lines 3, 4. (Act in, Sc. vi.) like the wild hedge-rose Of a soft winter, possible, noi probable. [My father made this simile from a wild- rose bush at Freshwater which was in full blossom in January. — Ed.] P. 609, col. I, line 20. (Act in. Sc. vi.) what Virgil sings. Cf. Virgil's Aeneid, iv. 569. P. 610. (Act III. Sc. vi.) [Philip was weary of England and of his childless queen. "He told her that his father wanted to see him, but that his absence would npt be extended beyond a fortnight or three weeks ; she should go with him to Dover; and if she desired she could wait there for his return" (Noailles, vol. v. pp. 77-82 ; Froude's History of England, vol. vi. p. 362). — Ed.] P. 616, col. 2, line 17. (Act iv. Sc. iii.) What saith St. John? i John ii. 15. P. 617, col. I, line 12. (Act iv. Sc. iii.) And now, and forasmuch as I have come. ["And now, forasmuch as I am come to the last end of my life, whereupon hangeth all my life past and all my life to come, either to Uve with my Saviour Christ in joy, or else to be ever in pain with wicked devils in hell; and I see before mine eyes presently either heaven" {pointing up- wards) "or hell" {pointing downwards) "ready to swallow me. I shall therefore declare unto you my very faith, without colour or dissimulation; for now it is no NOTES 983 time to dissemble. I believe in God the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth ; in every article of the Catholic faith; every word and sentence taught by our Saviour Christ, his apostles and pro- phets, in the Old and New Testament. And now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever I said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth, which here I now renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death to save my life, if it might be; and that is, all such bills and papers as I have written and signed with my hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue; and foras- much as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall first be punished; for if I may come to the fire, it shall be the first burnt." (See Harleian MSS. 417 and 422, and Froude's History of England, vol. vi. pp. 426-428.) — Ed.] P. 618, col. 2, lines 19, 20. (Act iv. Sc. iii.) And Ignorance crying in the streets, and all men. Regarding her. [Cf . Proverbs i. 20. — Ed.] Pp. 619-620. (Act IV. Sc. iii.) [The Berkshire dialect of Joan and Tib was corrected for my father by Tom Hughes, author of Tom Brown's Schooldays. — • Ed.] P. 622, col. I, line 3. (Act v. Sc. i.) hwer our kingly flag. See Prescott's History of Philip the Second, vol. i. p. 113: "Lord Howard is said to have fired a gun, as he approached Philip's squadron, in order to compel it to lower its topsails in acknowledgment of the supremacy of the English on the narrow seas." P- 633, col. 2, line 25. Thou light a torch that never will go out ! [She refers to Latimer's words to Ridley when they were burnt at the stake: "We shall this day Hght such a candle, by God's grace, as I trust shall never be put out." — Ed.] P. 634, col. 2, line 7. (Act. v. Sc. v.) After Mary's speech, ending "Help me hence," the end of the last Act of the Act- ing Edition ' ran thus : [Falls into the arms of Lady Clarence. Alice. The hand of God hath help'd her hence. L.vdy Clarence. Not yet. [To Elizabeth as she enters. Speak, speak, a word of yours may wake her. Elizabeth {kneeling at her sister's knee). Mary! Mary. Mary ! who calls? 'tis long since any one Has called me Mary — she — There in the dark she sits and calls for me — She that should wear her state before the world. My father's own true wife. Ay, madam. Hark! For she will call again. Elizabeth. Mary, my sister ! Mary. That's not the voice ! Who is it steps between me and the light? [Puts her arm round Elizabeth's neck. I held her in my arms a guileless babe, And mourn 'd her orphan doom along with mine. The crown ! she comes for that ! take it and feel it ! It stings the touch ! It is not gold but thorns ! [Mary starts up. The crown of crowns ! Play not with holy things ! [Clasps her hands and kneels. Keep you the faith ! . . . yea, mother, yea I come ! _ [Dies. Lady Clarence. She is dead. Elizabeth {kneeling by the body). Poor sister ! Peace be with the dead. [Curtain. 1 As produced at the Lyceum Theatre with Irving as Philip, and Miss Kate Bateman as Queen Mary. On the AustraUan stage Miss Dargon won a triumph in Queen Mary. It was very popular when produced at the Melbourne Theatre-Royal, and had a long run; and when reproduced at the Bijou Theatre in the same city had a second long run. 984 NOTES APPENDIX TO NOTES ON QUEEN MARY Letters from Robert Browning 19 Warwick Crescent, W., June 30th, 1875. My dear Tennyson — - Thank you very much for Queen Mary, the gift, and even more for Queen Mary, the poem : it is astonishingly fine. Conception, execution, the whole and the parts, I see nowhere the shade of a fault, thank you once again ! I am going to begin it afresh now. What a joy it is that such a poem should be, and be yours ! All affectionate regards to Mrs. Tennyson from yours ever, Robert Browning. 19 Warwick Crescent, W., April igth, 1876. My dear Tennyson — I want to be among the earliest who assure you of the complete success of your Queen Mary last night. I have more than once seen a more satisfactory performance of it, to be sure, in what Carlyle calls "the Private Theatre under my own hat," because there and then not a line nor a word was left out; nay, there were abundant "encores" of half the speeches; still whatever was left by the stage scissors suggested what a quantity of "cuttings" would furnish one with an after-feast. Irving was very good indeed, and the others did their best, nor so badly. The love as well as admiration for the author was conspicuous, indeed, I don't know whether you ought to have been present to enjoy it, or were not safer in absence from a smothering of flowers and deafening "tumult of acclaim," out Hallam was there to report, and Mrs. Tennyson is with you to believe. All congratulations to you both from yours affectionately ever, Robert Browning. NOTES ON HAROLD By the Author P. 636. Harold. [First published in 1876, dated 1877. "A tragedy of Doom" my father called it. — Ed.] P. 637, col. I, lines 5, 6. (Act. i. Sc. i.) Look you, there\s a star That dances in it as mad with agony! [My mother writes, October 4th, 1858, of my father: "He went to meet Mr. and Mrs. Roebuck at dinner at Swainston; and the comet was grand, with Arcturus shining brightly over the nucleus. At dinner he said he must leave the table to look at it, and they all followed. They saw Arcturus seemingly dance as if mad when it passed out of the comet's tail. H'i said of the comet's tail, 'It is like a besom of destruction sweeping the sky.'" — Ed.] P. 637, col. 2, line 9. (Act i. Sc. i.) Did ye not outlaw your archbishop Robert? Robert, a monk of Jumieges in Nor- mandy, was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Edward the Confessor. He was the head of the Norman, as Earl Godwin was of the national party in Eng- land; and he so far wrought upon the Norman predilections of the. king that in the end he procured the banishment of Godwin and all his sons. After a while, however, these returned with a formidable force, but the Enghsh would not fight for King Edward against them. It was then settled that the matters of quarrel between Edward and Godwin should be referred to a Gemot or Great National Council. The Normans throughout the kingdom knew well what would be the vote of this Council, and, not daring to abide by the result, fled, and among the rest Robert of Jumieges. He, it is said, escaped by the east gate of London, and killing or wound- ing all that stayed him, reached Walton- on-the-Naze, whence he took ship, and past overseas never to come back. Of all the Norman bishops, William, the Bishop of London, alone retained his bishopric. P. 637, col, 2, line 25. (Act. i. Sc. i.) Who had my pallium from an Antipo'pe ! On the death of Stephen IX. in 1058, the Imperial party at Rome sent a humble message to the Empress Agnes, asking her to nominate a new Pope. Meanwhile the old Roman feudatory barons elected an anti-Pope of their own, the Cardinal Bishop of Velletri (Benedict X.), whom they hastily inaugurated, and enthroned by night. This was resented by the Empress as an act of usurpation, whereupon she empowered Hildebrand to take measures for a fresh election. Accordingly Gerard, Archbishop of Florence, was chosen, who is known by the name of Nicholas II. I quote from Milman's Latin Christianity the pathetic history of Benedict's subse- quent degradation : "Hildebrand the archdeacon seized him (Benedict) by force, and placed him before NOTES 98s Nicholas and a council in the Lateran* Church. They stripped him before the altar of his pontifical robes (in which he had been again invested), set him thus de- spoiled before the synod, put a writing in his hand, containing a long confession of every kind of wickedness. He resisted a long time, knowing himself perfectly inno- cent of such crimes: he was compelled to read it with very many tears and groans. His mother stood by, her hair dishevelled, and her bosom bare, with many sobs and lamentations. His kindred stood weeping around. Hildebrand then cried aloud to the people: 'These are the deeds of the Pope whom ye have chosen ! ' They re- arrayed him in the pontifical robes, and formally deposed him. He was allowed to retire to the monastery of St. Agnes, where he lived in the utmost wretchedness. They prohibited him from all holy functions, would not allow him to enter the choir. By the intercession of the Archpresbyter of St. Anastasia he was permitted at length to read the Epistle; a short time after, the Gospel; but never suffered to read mass. He lived to the Pontificate of Hildebrand, who, when informed of his death, said, 'In an evil hour did I behold him; I have committed great sin.' Hildebrand com- manded that he should be buried with Pontifical honours" (Milman, viii. p. 48). It was from this Benedict that Stigand received the pallium, or sacred badge of the archiepiscopate. P. 639, col. I, line 35. (Act. i. Sc. i.) Is not my brother Wulfnoth hostage there? One version of the story relates that Godwin, after his reconcilation with Edward, gave hostages for his good con- duct, and among them his son Wulfnoth, and that these were handed over by the king to Count William for their better custody. P. G45, col. 2, line 14. (Act. 11. Sc. ii.) He was thine host in England when I went. Malet was half-Norman, half-English. P. 646, col. I, hne 17. (Act 11. Sc. ii.) Haled thy shore-swallow' d, armour'd Nor- mans up. In that section of the Bayeux tapestry which depicts William's war against Conan of Brittany, Harold is seen plucking the Norman soldiers two at a time from the quicksands below Mont St. Michel where the river Coesnon flows into the sea. P. 647, col. I, lines i, 2. (Act 11. Sc. i.) The voice of any people is the sword That guards them, or the sword that beats them down. [Two favourite lines of Mr. Gladstone's. — Ed.] P. 650, col. 2, line 19. (Act it. Sc. ii.) Some said it was thy father's deed. Alfred, the son of Emma (who was also mother of Edward the Confessor, and great- aunt of William the Conqueror), coming into England during the reign of Harold the Dane, the son of Cnut, was seized and blinded. This crime was imputed to Godwin; but the Witan acquitted him of the charge. P. 651, col. I, line 24. (Act 11. Sc. ii.) The Atheling is nearest to the throne. Edgar the Atheling was grandson of Edmund Ironside, and the last male repre- sentative of the House of Cerdic. P. 652, col. 2, line 13. (Act 11. Sc. ii.) Behold the jewel of St. Pancr alius. Concerning this jewel of Saint Pancratius, "gemma tam speciosa quam spatiosa,!' see Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. iii. p. 686. P. 659, col. 2, line 12. (Act iii. Sc. ii.) The Pope and that Archdeacon Hildebrand. [Alexander II., and Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII. (1073)- — Ed.] P. 665, col. I, line 12. (Act iv. Sc. iii.) Let him come ! Let him come ! Bublie crient e weissel E laticome e drincheheil, Drinc Hindrewart e Drintome Drinc Helf e drinc tome. Roman de Rou, 12473. P. 667, col. I, lines 19, 20. (Act v. Sc. i.) Waltham, my foundation For men who serve the neighbour, not them- selves. "Of his liberahty his great foundation at 986 NOTES Waltham is an everlasting monument, and it is a monument not more of his liberality than of his wisdom. To the monastic orders Harold seems not to have been specially liberal ; his bounty took another and a better chosen direction. The toundation of a great secular college, in days when all the world seemed mad after monks, when King Eadward and Earl Leofric vied with each other in lavish gifts to religious houses at home and abroad, was in itself an act dis- playing no small vigour and independence of mind. The details, too, of the founda- tion were such as showed that the creation of Waltham was not the act of a moment of superstitious dread or of reckless bounty, but the deliberate deed of a man who felt the responsibilities of lofty rank and bound- less wealth, and who earnestly sought the welfare of his Church and nation in all things" (Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. ii. p. 41). P. 668, col. I, lines 30, 31. (Act v. Sc. i.) that old song of Brunanburg Where England conquered. Constantinus, King of the Scots, after having sworn allegiance to Athelstan, allied himself with the Danes of Ireland under Anlaf, and invading England, was defeated by Athelstan and his brother Edmund with great slaughter at Brunanburh in the year 937. See my translation of the Song of Brunanburh (entitled Battle of Brunan- burh, p. 534). In rendering this Old Enghsh war-song into modern language and alliterative rhythm I have made free use of the dactylic beat. I suppose that the original was chanted to a slow, swing- ing recitative. P. 671, col. I, line 25. (Act v. Sc. i.) Come as Goliath came of yore. Taillefer the minstrel, a man of gigantic stature, who rode out alone in front of the Norman army chanting : Taillefer, ki mult ben cantout, Sor un cheval ki tost alout, Devant li Dus alout cantant De Karlemaine e de RoUant E d' Oliver e des vassals Ki morurent en Renchevals. Roman de Ron, 13 149. P. 673, col. 2, line 18. (Act v. Sc. ii.) Then all the dead fell on him. Alluding to her dream in Act i. Sc. ii. : and all The dead men made at thee to murder thee. APPENDIX TO NOTES ON HAROLD Letter from Robert Browning 19 Warwick Crescent, Dec. 2ist, 1876. My dear Tennyson — True thanks again, this time for the best of Christmas presents, another great work, wise, good and beautiful. The scene where Harold is overborne to take the oath is perfect, for one instance. What a fine new ray of light you are entwining with your many coloured wreath ! I know the Conqueror's Country pretty well : stood last year in his Castle of Bonneville, on the spot where tradition is that Harold took the oath ; and I have passed through Dives, the place of William's embarcation, perhaps twenty times: and more than once visited the church there, built by him, where still are inscribed the names of the Norman knights who accompanied him in his expedition. You light this up again for me. All happiness befall you and yours, this good season and ever. — Yours affectionately, R. Browning. NOTES ON BECKET By the Editor In 1879 my father printed the first proofs of his tragedy of Becket, which he had begun in December 1876. But he con- sidered that the time was not ripe for its publication ; and this therefore was deferred until December 1884. We had visited Canterbury in August 1877, and gone over each separate scene of Becket's martyrdom. "Admirers of Becket," my father notes,- "will find that Becket's letters, and the writings of Herbert of Bosham, Fitzstephen, and John of Salisbury throw great light on those days. Bishop Lightfoot found out about Rosamund for me." The play is so accurate a representation of the personages and of the time, that J. R. Green said that all his researches into the annals of the twelfth century had not given him "so vivid a conception of the character of Henry II. and his court as was embodied in Tennyson's Becket." My father's view of Becket was as fol- NOTES 987 lows : Becket was a really great and impul- sive man, with a firm sense of duty, and, when he renounced the world, looked upon himself as the head oi that Church which was the people's "tower of strength, their bulwark against throne and baronage." This idea so far wrought in his dominant nature as to betray him into many rash acts: and later he lost himself in the idea. His enthusiasm reached a spiritual ecstasy which carries the historian along with it; and his humanity and abiding tenderness for the poor, the weak and the unprotected, heighten the impression so much as to make the poet feel passionately the wronged Rosamund's reverential devotion for him (most touchingly rendered by Ellen Terr>'), when she knelt praying over his body in Canterbury Cathedral. In 1879 Irving refused the play: but in 1 89 1 he asked leave to produce it, holding that the taste of the theatre-going public had changed in the interval, and that it was now likely to be a success on the stage. He writes to me U893) : We have passed the fiftieth performance of Becket (produced Feb. 6, 1893). which is in the heyday of its success. I think that I may, with- out hereafter being credited with any inferior motive, give again the opinion which I previously expressed to your loved and honoured father. To me Becket is a very noble play, with some- thing of that lofty feeling and that far-reaching influence, which belong to a '"passion play." There are in it moments of passion and pathos which are the aim and end of dramatic art, and which, when they exist, atone to an audience for the endurance of long acts. Some of the scenes and passages, especially in the list act, are full of sublime feeling, and are with regard to both their dramatic effectiveness and their poetic beauty as fine as anything in our language. I know that such a play has an ennobling influence on both the audience who see it and the actors who play in it. Some of the last lines which my father ever wrote are at the end of the North- ampton scene, an anthem-speech written for Irving : The voice of the Lord is in the voice of the people. The voice of the Lord is on the warring flood, And He will lead His people into peace ! The voice of the Lord will shake the wilderness. The barren wilderness of unbelief ! The voice of the Lord will break the cedar- trees, The Kings and Rulers that have closed their ears Against the Voice, and at their hour of doom The voice of the Lord will hush the hounds of Hell In everlasting silence. The play had a long run and was after- wards frequently played in the provinces and America. The incidental music was written by Sir Charles Stanford. His identification of Becket with the Gre- gorian melody "Telluris ingens conditor" is particularly impressive. UNPUBLISHED SONNET (Written originally as a Preface to "Becket") Old ghosts whose day was done ere mine began, If earth be seen from your conjectured heaven, Ye knov/ that History is half-dream — ay even The man's life in the letters of the man. There lies the letter, but it is not he As he retires into himself and is : Sender and sent-to go to make up this, Their offspring of this union. And on me Frown not, old ghosts, if I be one of those Who make you utter things you did not say. And mould you all awry and mar your worth ; For whatsoever knows us truly, knows Thiit none can truly write his single day. And none can write it for him upon earth. P. 676. (Prologue.) Becket as chess- player. John of Salisbury and Fitzstephen describe him as an accomplished che^ss- player, a master in hunting and falconry, and other manly exercises. P. 677, col. 2, lines 5, 6. (Prologue.) nor my confessor yet. I would to God thou werl. Archbishop Theobald writes to Becket (John of Salisbury, Ep. 78): "It sounds in the ears and mouths of people that you and the king are one heart and soul." He helped Henry to improve the state of 988 NOTES the country, and to lighten many of the oppressive laws and enactments (Lingard, vol. ii.)- P. 677, col. 2, line 14. (Prologue.) A dish-designer. When Becket went to Paris, all the French were astonished at his sumptuous living. One dish of eels alone was said to have cost 100 shillings (Fitzstephen, 197, 8, 9). P. 682. (Act I. Sc. i.) Chamber barely furnished. John of Salisbury says, "Con- secratus autem statim veterem exuit hominem, cilicium et monachum induit." P. 682, col. I, line 21. (Act i. Sc. i.) scutage. The acceptance of a money com- pensation for military service dates from this time (1159). See Freeman's Norman Conquest. P. 686. (Act I. Sc. iii.) In this great scene at Northampton (J. R. Green writes) "his life was said to be in danger, and all urged him to submit. But in the presence of danger the courage of the man rose to its full height. Grasping his archiepiscopal cross he entered the royal court, forbade the nobles to condemn him, and appealed to the Papal See. Shouts of 'Traitor! traitor ! ' followed him as he retired. The Primate turned fiercely at the word : ' Were I a knight,' he retorted, 'my sword should answer that foul taunt.' " — Short History of the English People, p. 108. P. 687. (Act I. Sc. iii.) "He (Henry II.) wished to put an end to the disgrace- ful state of things which had arisen, by subjecting clerical offenders against the public peace to the same jurisdiction with the criminals, and, with a view to this, he now required that clerks accused of any outrage should be tried in his own courts; that, on conviction or confession, they should be degraded by the Church, and that they then should be remanded to the secular officers for the execution of the sentence which had been passed upon them. On the other hand, the Archbishop, although unsupported by his brethren in general, who dreaded a risk of a breach with the State while the Church was divided by a schism, considered himself bound to offer the most strenuous resistance to a proposal which tended to lessen the privileges of the hierarchy; and on this quarrel the whole of the subsequent history turned" {Becket, by Canon Robertson, PP- 76, 77). P. 690, col. I, line 9. (Act i. Sc. iii.) False to myself — it is the will of God. "It is the Lord's will that I perjure myself" (Foliot, v. 271, 2). P. 692, col. 2, line i. (Act i. Sc. iii.) A worldly follower of the worldly strong. Foliot fasted much, and was famous for his learning, for his subtle trickery, and flattery of persons in high station. When he was plotting against Becket, he is said to have heard "an exceeding terrible voice: O Gilberte Foliot Dum resolvis tot et tot, Deus tuus est Ashtaroth." (Roger Wendover, ii. 323.) P. 693, col. I, line 31. (Act i. Sc. iii.) Hence, Satan ! See Alan of Tewkesbury, i- 347. P. 694, col. 2, lines 13, 14. (Act i. Sc. iii.) But I that threw the mightiest knight of France, Sir Engelram de Trie. In 1 1 59 Becket, in cuirass and helmet, marched at the head of his troops against the County of Toulouse, which had passed to Henry on his marriage with Eleanor, and there he unhorsed in single combat Sir Engelram de Trie. P. 694, col. 2, line 19. (Act i. Sc. iii.) Deal gently with the young man Absalom. (Fitzstephen, i. 236; Foliot, iii. 280; Roger of Hoveden, 284.) P. 644. (Act I. vSc. iv.) For Becket's entertainment of the poor and his washing of their feet see Fitzstephen, 204; John of SaUsbury, 324; Herbert of Bosham, 24. My father regretted the excision of this scene and of his Walter Map scenes from the Acting Edition. P. 696, col. I, line 41. (Act i. Sc. iv.) / must fly to France to-night. Not long after he landed in France, under the assumed name of Brother Christian, a boy, who was standing by the roadside with a hawk on NOTES 989 his wrist, was attracted by the evident pleasure with which the stranger eyed his bird, and cried out, "Here goes the Arch- bishop." At Gravelines the landlord of the inn where he spent the night had longer time for observation, and recognised him, as Herbert of Bosham says, "by liis re- markably tall figure, his high forehead, the stern expression of his beautiful counten- ance, and, above all, by the exquisite delicacy of his hands" (Hurrell Froude's Remains, vol. iv. p. 91). P. 698, col. I, line 34, col. 2, line i. (Act II. Sc. i.) I have sent his folk, His kin, all his belongings, overseas. Edward Grim of Cambridge writes: "Those of whom God especially styles Him- self the Father and Judge — orphans, widows, children altogether innocent, and unknow- ing of any discord, aged men, women with their little ones hanging at their breasts, clerks, and lay folk of whatever age and sex, of the Archbishop's kindred, and some of his friends, were seized in the depth of winter, and mercilessly transported beyond sea, after having been obliged to swear that they would seek him out" (Grim, 1-51). P. 702, col. I, line 32. (Act 11. Sc. ii.) Saving God's honour. Becket substituted this phrase in place of " salvo ordine nostro, " which had been objected to by Henry. The King would not allow any diiGference, and burst into uncontrollable fury (John of Salisbury, ii.). Becket wrote to the Pope after Montmirail: "We answered ... we were prepared to yield him (the king) every service, even more than our pre- decessors had done saving my order; but that new obligations, unbeknown to the Church, and such as my predecessors were never bound by, ought not to be under- taken by us : first, because it was bad as a precedent; secondly, because, when in the city of Sens, your Holiness' self absolved me from the observance of these Usages, hatefvd to God and to the Church, and from the pledge which force and fear had extorted from me in a special manner ; and after a grave rebuke, which, by God's grace, shall never pass from my mind, prohibited me from ever again obliging myself to any one on a like cause except saving God's honour and my order. You added too, if you are pleased to recollect, that not even to save his life should a Bishop oblige himself, saving God's honour and his order" (Hurrell Froude's Remains, vol. iv. p. 389). P. 703, col. 2, line 6. (Act 11. Sc. ii.) let a stranger spoil his heritage. Cf. Psalm cix. P. 703, col. 2, line 26 ff. (Act n. Sc. ii.) My father's note is: "The description of Bosham was made as we (my son Hallam and I) saw the little fishing village on a summer's day." P. 711, col. I, line 2. (Act iii. Sc. iii.) The daughter of Zion lies beside the way. Lamentations i.-ii. P. 711, col. I, lines i, 2. (Act in. Sc. iii.) The spouse of the Great King, thy King, hath fallen — The daughter of Zion lies beside the way. See Becket's Ep. i. 63, in Hurrell Froude's Remains, iv. 139. The Arch- bishop to the King of England: "I entreat you, my Lord, to bear with me for a while that by the grace of God I may disburden my conscience, to the benefit of my soul. . . . My Lord, the daughter of Zion is held captive in thy kingdom. The spouse of the Great King is oppressed by her enemies, afflicted by those who ought most to honour her, and especially by you." See, too, the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope (after Freteval), Hurrell Froude's Remains, iv. 503 : " God hath looked with an eye of pity on His Church, and changed at length her sorrow into joy. The King of England, as soon as he had received your last letters, and understood that you would no longer spare him, even as you had not spared the Emperor Frederic, but would lay his territories under an Interdict, forthwith made peace with us, to the honour of God, as we would hope, and the great advantage of His Church. The Usages which were once so insisted upon, he did not even allude to. He exacted no oath of us, or any belonging to us. He restored to us the possessions which we had been deprived of, according to the enumeration of them in our own schedule; and, with them, peace and 990 NOTES security, and a return from our exile to all our companions; and even promised the kiss, if we wished to press him so far. In short he gave way in everything, insomuch that some called him perjured, who had heard him swear that he would not admit us to the kiss that day." P. 711, col. I, line 17. (Act iii. Sc. iii.) And thou shall crown my Henry o'er again. Upon this Becket dismounted and pre- pared to throw himself at Henry's feet, but Henry also dismounted, and em- braced the Archbishop, and held his stirrup for him in order that he might remount. P. 713. (Act IV. Sc. ii.) "That Rosa- mund was not killed may be ascertained by the charters . . ." (see vol. i. p. 213, Miss Strickland's Lives of Queens of England) . P. 722, col. 2, line 15. (Act v. Sc. ii.) uxor pauperis Ibyci (Horace, Carm. iii. XV. i). P. 723, col. I, line 3. (Act v. Sc. ii.) From "On a Tuesday was I born" to the end of the play is founded on the graphic accounts by Fitzstephen, and Grim, the monk of Cambridge, who was with Becket in Scenes ii. and iii, P. 725, col. I, line 33. (Act v. Sc. ii.) When God makes up his jewels. Malachi iii. 17. APPENDIX TO NOTES ON BECKET Letter from The Right Honourable J. Bryce As I have been abroad for some time it was only a little while ago that I obtained and read your Becket. Will you, since you were so kind as to read me some of it last July, let me tell you how much enjoyment and light it has given me? Impressive as were the parts read, it impresses one incomparably more when studied as a whole. One cannot imagine a more vivid, a more per- fectly faithful picture than it gives both of Henry and of Thomas. Truth in history is naturally truth in poetry; but you have made the characters of the two men shine out in a way which, while it never deviates from the im- pression history gives of them, goes beyond and perfects history. This is eminently conspicuous m the way their relations to one another are traced; and in the delineation of the influence on Thomas of the conception of the Church, blending with his own haughty spirit and sanctifying it to his own conscience. There is not, it seems to me, anything in modern poetry which helps us to realize, as your drama does, the sort of power the Church exerted on her ministers: and this is the central fact of the earlier middle ages. I wish you were writing a play on Hildebrand also. Venturing to say this to you from the point of view of a student of history, I scarcely presume to speak of the drama on its more purely literary side, how full of strength and beauty and delicacy it is, because you must have heard this often already from more competent critics. NOTES ON THE CUP By the Editor Founded on a story in Plutarch. The story was first read by my father in Lecky : A powerful noble once solicited the hand of a Galatian lady named Camma, who, faithful to her husband, resisted all his entreaties. Re- solved at any hazard to succeed, he caused her husband to be assassinated, and when she took refuge in the temple of Diana, and enrolled her- self among the priestesses, he sent noble after noble to induce her to relent. After a time he ventured himself into her presence. She feigned a willingness to yield, but told him it was first necessary to make a libation to the goddess. She appeared as a priestess before the altar bearing in her hand a cup of wine, which she had poisoned. She drank half of it herself, handed the remainder to her guilty lover, and when he had drained the cup to the dregs, burst into a fierce thanksgiving that she had been per- mitted to avenge, and was soon to rejoin, her murdered husband. (Plutarch, De Mulier. Virt.) The Cup was first published with The Falcon in 1884; planned in March 1879, begun in November 1879, and printed late in 1880. Produced at the Lyceum, Jan. 3, 1 88 1, and ran for one hundred and twenty- eight nights. At Irving's request three short speeches for Synorix were added. Act i. Sc. iii. ; and at the end of Act i. Sc. ii., pp. 207- 208, the quarrel between Sinnatus and Synorix was lengthened by two Hues, and Camma was made to interrogate Sinnatus as to what Synorix had said, and three or four entrances were made less abrupt. Irving inserted most of the stage-directions, and devised the magnificent scenery, and the drama was produced by him with signal success at the Lyceum, and played to crowded houses. He wrote to my father: "I hope that the splendid success of your grand Tragedy will be followed by other triumphs equally great." NOTES 991 While Miss Mary Anderson was acting in The Winter's Tale in London she signed an agreement to revive The Cup. My father reinserted from his first MS. four lines for her, to be sung by the priestesses as they enter the Temple : Artemis, Artemis, hear us, O mother, hear us and bless us ! Artemis, thou that art life to the wind, to the wave, to the glebe, to the fire, Hear thy people who praise thee ! O help us from all that oppress us. Hear thy priestesses hymn thy glory ! O yield them all their desire. P. 731, col. 2, line 31. (Act i. Sc. i.) I here return like Tarquin — for a crown. This refers to Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome, who was expelled 510 B.C. 4n consequence of the outrage by his son on Lucretia, the wife of his cousin, Tarquinius CoUatinus. The last effort of Tarquin to recover his crown was ex- hausted by the decisive victory gained by the Romans over him at Lake Regillus, 490 B.C. It is related that he died miser- ably at Curaae. P. 732, col. I, line 15. (Act i. Sc. i.) the net, — the net. Cf. Horace, Ode i. i. 28 f/ passim. P. 734, col. 2, line 25. (Act i. Sc. ii.) "Some friends of mind" in first edition misprint for "Some friends of mine." P. 745, col. I, line 13. (Act n.) some old Greek. See Plato's Apology, Church's translation: "And if we reflect in another way, we shall see that we may well hope that death is a good. For the state of death is one of two things: either the dead whoUy cease to be and lose all sensa- tion, or death (as is commonly beUeved) a change and a migration of the soul into another place. Now if death is the absence of all sensation, and life a dream- less sleep, it will be a wonderful gain. . . . But if it is a passing to another place, and the common belief be true, that all who have died are there, what could be greater than this? . . . What one would not give to converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer ! I am willing to die many times if this be true.*' P. 745, col. 2, line 14. (Act 11.) 'Camma, Camma!' Sinnatus, Sinnatusl The blank verse ending the play, with only four beats, gives the passion of Gamma's death-cry. NOTES ON THE FALCON By the Editor P. 746. The Falcon. First published in 1884. Founded on a story in Boc- caccio (the ninth novel of the fifth day of the' Decameron), and produced by Mr. and Mrs. Kendal at the St. James' Theatre, who played it for sixty-seven nights. HazUtt first suggested the story as suit- able for stage treatment. Fanny Kemble called the play "an exquisite little idyll in action Uke one of A. de Musset's." Mrs. Brotherton writes to me: "Well do I remember your father reading The Falcon to me (still in MS.), in a Uttle attic at Farringford. The ivy outside was blowing against the casement like pattering rain, all the time. When he had finished he softly closed the simple 'copy-book' it was written in, and said softly, 'Stately and tender, isn't it ? ' exactly as if he were com- menting on another man's work — and no more just comment could have come from the whole world of critics." NOTES ON THE PROMISE OF MAY By the Editor First prose version printed in 1882, and revised and pubUshed in 1886 with Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. It was produced by Mrs. Bernard Beere at the Globe Theatre on Nov. nth, 1882, and ran until Dec. isth. The first printed copies in prose, which were used for stage pur- F>oses, were not pubUshed in 1882, as my father wished to write part of the drama in poetry for the reading pubUc. Edgar is "a surface man of theories true to none." I subjoin the analysis of the hero's character by my brother, as it best gives my father's conception. 992 NOTES Edgar is not, as the critics will have it, a free- thinker, drawn into crime by his Communistic theories; Edgar is not even an honest Radical, ' nor a sincere follower of Schopenhauer; he is nothing thorough and nothing sincere. He has no conscience until he is brought face to face with the consequences of his crime, and in the awaken- ing of that conscience the poet has manifested his fullest and subtlest strength. At our first intro- duction to Edgar, we see him perplexed with the haunting of a pleasure that has sated him. " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrojv we die " has been his motto; but we can detect that his appetite, for all pleasure has begun to pall. He repeats wearily the formuL-e of a philosophy which he has followed because it suits his mode of life. He plays with these formulae, but they do not satisfy him. So long as he had on him the zest of liber- tinism he did not, in all probability, troiAle him- self with philosophy. But now his selfishness compels him to take a step of which he feels the wickedness and repugnancy. He must endeavour to justify himself to himself. The companionship of the girl he has betrayed no longer gives him pleasure ; he hates her tears because they remind him of himself — his proper self. He abandons her with a pretence of satisfaction ; but the philo- sophical formulae he repeats no more satisfy him than they satisfy the poor girl whom he deserts. Her innocence has not, however, been wantonly sacrificed by the dramatist. She has sown the seed of repentance in her seducer, though the fruit is slow in ripening. Years after he returns, like the ghost of a murderer to the scene of his crime. He feels remorse. He is ashamed of it ; he battles against it ; he hurls the old formulae at it ; he acts the cynic more thoroughly than ever. But he is changed. He feels a desire to "make amends." Yet that desire is still only a form of selfishness. He has abandoned the "Utopian Idiocy" of Communism. Perhaps, as he says, with a self- mockery that makes the character so individual and remarkable, "because he has inherited estates." His position of gentleman is forced on his notice ; he would qualify himself for it, selfishly and without doing excessive penance. To marry the surviving sister and rescue the old father from ruin would be a meritorious act. He sets himself to perform it. At first everything goes well for him ; the old weapons of fascination, that had worked the younger sister's ruin, now con- quer the heart of the elder. He is comfortable in his scheme of reparation, and lays that flatter- ing "unction to his soul." Suddenly, however, the girl whom he has be- trayed, and whom he thought dead, returns; she hears him repeating to another the words of love she herself had heard from him and believed. "Edgar !" she cries, and staggers forth from her concealment, as she forgives him with her last breath. Then, and not till then, the true soul of the man rushes to his lips ; he recognizes his wicked- ness, he knows the blankness of his life. That is his punishment. He feels then, and will always feel, aspirations after good which he can never or only imperfectly fulfil. The position of independence, on which he prided himself, is wrested from him, he is humiliated. The instrument of his selfish repent- ance turns on him with a forgiveness that annihil- ates him ; the bluff and honest farmer whom he despises triumphs over him, not with the brute force of an avenging hand, but with the pre- eminence of superior morality. Edgar quits the scene, never again, we can believe, to renew his libertine existence, but to expiate with lifelong contrition the monstrous wickedness of the past. My father drew his characters from the Lincolnshire country life of his boyhood carefully, and wrote, when the play was violently attacked by Lord Queensberry: "I had a feeling that I would at least strive in my plays to bring the true drama of life and character back again. I gave them one leaf out of the great book of Truth and Nature." P. 759, col. I, line ii. (Act i.) What are we, says the blind old man in Lear? Cf . King Lear, iv, i. 38 : As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport. P. 767, col. 2, line 17. (Act 11.) Scizzars an' Pumpy. Caisar and Pompey. P. 772, col. I, line 9. (Act in.) man, forgive thy mortal foe. This is the only hymn my father has written, except "The Human Cry" at the end of De Profundis (p. 533), which he wrote at Jowett's request. In 1 89 1 he said to Dr. Warren, the present Professor of Poetry at Oxford: "A good hymn is the most difficult thing in the world to write. In a good hymn you have to be commonplace and poetical. The monient you cease to be commonplace and put in any expression at all out of the common, it ceases to be a hymn. Of hymns I like Heber's 'Holy, Holy, Holy' better than most — it is a fine metre too." He said that Jowett had hked the simple hymn for children in The Promise of May. He would often quote this passage from the version of the Psalms by Stemhold and Hopkins : "And on the wings of all the winds Came flying all abroad." P- 773, col. I, line 24. (Act in.) the Queen's Real Hard Tillery. The Royal Artillery. * NOTES 993 P. 781. [Demeter and other Poems was dedicated to Lord Dufferin as a tribute of affection and of gratitude for the unre- mitting kindness shown by Lady Dufterin and himself to my brother Lionel during bis last fatal illness in India. From earliest childhood Lionel's had always been an affectionate and beautiful nature. None of his age in the India Office, where he was for some time a clerk, knew more about India, and i have not a few letters from bis chiefs, speaking in the warmest terms of his ability, and of the high place that, had he lived, he would have made for him- self. While shooting in Assam he caught jungle fever. On his return to Calcutta he fell dangerously ill, and never recovered. He started for home at the beginning of April, and passed away peacefully at three in the afternoon of April 20th. The burial service was at nine that same evening, under a great silver moon. The ship stopped off Perim, in the Red Sea, and the coffin was lowered into the phosphorescent waves. — Ed.] P. 781. To THE Marquis of Dufferin AND AvA. [First published in 1889. See Memoir, vol. ii. pp. 322-323. — Ed.] P. 782. On the Jubilee of Queen ViCTORL\. [Published in pamphlet form and in MacmiUaris Magazine, April 1887, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Queen's coronation. — Ed.] P. 783. To Professor Jebb. [First published in 1889. My father met Jebb at Cambridge for the first time in 1872. He gave him the following Sapphic in English with the Greek cadence, because Jebb admired it : Faded ev'ry violet, aU the roses ; Gone the glorious promise ; and the victim, Broken in this anger of Aphrodite, Yields to the victor. What impressed my father most in this visit to Cambridge was the change in the relations between don and undergraduate.. While he was keeping his terms (1828- 1831) there was "a great gulf fixed" be- tween the teacher and the taught. As he said to Dr. Butler, the present Master of Trinity: "There was a want of love in Cambridge then;" and in consequence he 3S had written in 1830 these denunciatory lines : Therefore your Halls, your ancient Colleges, Your portals statued with old kings and queens. Your gardens, myriad-volumed libraries. Wax-lighted chapels, and rich carven screens. Your doctors, and your proctors, and your deans. Shall not avail you, when the Day-beam sports New-risen o'er awaken'd Albion. No ! Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow Melodious thunders thro' your vacant courts At noon and eve, because your manner sorts Not with this age wherefrom ye stand apart, Because the lips of little children preach Against you, you that do profess to teach And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart. Ed.] P. 783. Demeter and Persephone. [First published in 1889. Cf. the Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Hesiod, Theog. 912 ff.; and Ovid, Met. v. 341, and Fasti, iv. 419 ff. The poem was written at my request, because I knew that my father con- sidered Demeter one of the most beautiful types of womanhood. He said: "I will write it, but when I write an antique like this I must put it into a frame — something modern about it. It is no use giving a mere rechauffe of old legends." He would give as an example of the frame : Yet I, Earth-Goddess, am but ill-content And all the Shadow die into the Light. To Signor Francisco Clementi, who translated this poem into Italian and told my father that the Italian youth were grate- ful to him and had profited much by his work, he wrote, Feb. 4th, 1891: "I send you my best thanks for your kind and generous cpmmentarj'. ' If I have done any good to your countrymen or others, by what I have written, that is more grate- ful to me than any modem fame, which to a man nearing 82 — r for I was born in 1809 — seems somewhat pale and colourless." — Ed.] 994 NOTES P. 784, col. I, lines 10, 11. gave thy breast, the breast which had suckled thee. P. 784, col. 2, lines 11-14. 'Where'? and I heard one voice from all the three 'We know not, for we spin the lives of men, And not of Gods, and know not why we spin ! There is a Fate beyond us J Cf. 'Talia saecla,' suis dixerunt, 'currite,' fusis Concordes stabili fatorum numine Parcae. -J, Virgil, Eel. iv. 46. P. 785, col. I, line 27. bear us down. [Cf. Aesch. Prom. Vinct. 907, etc. : ^ fxrjp eTL Zeus, Kaiirep audddrjs (ftpevdv ecrrai TaTreLvds, k.t.X. Ed.] P. 785. OwD RoA. [First published in 1889. — Ed.] I read in one of the daily papers of a child saved by a black retriever from a burning house. The details in this story are, of course, mine. When the Spectator, reviewing The Northern Farmer, etc., remarked that I must have found these poems difl&cult ^to accomplish, as b^ing out of my way, I wrote to a friend that they were easy enough, for I knew the men — by which I meant the kind of men and their manner of speaking, not any par- ticular individual. P. 788, col. I, line 10. Or like tother Eangel, etc. See Judges xiii. 20. P. 788. Vastness. [First published in The Nineteenth Century, November 1885 ; afterwards in Demeter and other Poems, 1889. — Ed.] The last line means "What matters anything in this world without faith in the immortality of the soul and of Love ? " P. 790. The Ring. [First published in 1889. — Ed.] P. 790, col. 2, lines 21-28. the Voices of the day Are heard across the Voices of the dark. No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man. But thro' the Will of One who knows and rules — And utter knowledge is but utter love — jEonian Evolution, swift or slow, Thro' all the Spheres — an ever opening height, An ever lessening earth. [My father would quote these lines as giving his own belief that "the after-life is one of progress." — Ed.] P. 791, col. I, line 12. The lonely maiden-Princess of the wood. See The Day-Dream. P. 792, col. I, line 23, A thousand squares of corn and meadow, far As the gray deep, a landscape which your eyes Have many a time ranged over when a babe. [The view from Aldworth. — Ed.] P. 797, col. I, lines i, 2. A red mark ran All round one finger. Mr. Lowell told me this legend, or some- thing like it, of a house near where he had once lived. [In answer to a letter respecting the legend Mr. Lowell writes: "I shall only be too glad to be in any the remotest way the moving cause of a new poem by one to whom we are all so nobly indebted. Henry James, by the way, to whom I told the legend many years ago, made it the subject of a short story. But this would be no objection, for the poet wovild make it his own by right of eminent domain." — Ed.] P. 797. Forlorn. [An early poem, first pubUshed in 1889. — Ed.] P. 798. Happy. [First published in 1889. On the Power of Spiritual Love. — Ed.] P. 802. To Ulysses. Ulysses was the title of a volume of Palgrave's essays. He died at Monte Video before seeing my poem. [First published in 1889. My father used to say: "Gififord Palgrave is the cleverest man I ever saw." — Ed.] P. 802. Verse vii. Or watch the waving pine which here The warrior of Caprera set. NOTES 995 A Wellingtonia which Garibaldi planted when at Farringford in April 1864. Gari- baldi said to me, alluding to his barren island (Caprera), "I wish I had your trees." See Introduction. P. 803. To Masy Boyle. [Written at Farringford and first published in 1889. Mary Boyle was an aunt of my wife's (Audrey Tennyson, nee Boyle). In 1883 my father wrote to her: "I verily believe that the better heart of me beats stronger at 74 than ever it did at 18." — Ed.] , P. 803. Verse iv. your Marian. Lady Marian Alford. P. 803. Verse x. an English home- stead Hell. Near Cambridge, 1830. [See Memoir, vol. i. p. 41. Cf. The Princess, IV.: As of some fire against a stormy cloud, When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens. Ed.] P. 804. The Progress of Spring. [Written in early youth. First published in 1889. — Ed.] P. 805. Verse v. The starling claps his tiny castanets. [My father said, in 1889: "This hne was written fifty-six years ago under the elms on the sloping field at Somersby, and then four or five years ago I see the same phrase (before the poem was published) in a modem novel, not taken from the poem, I presume, but I suppose the critics would not beUeve that." — Ed.] P. 806. Merlin and the Gleam. [First published in 1889. — Ed.] In the story of Merlin and Nimu'e I have read that Nimue means the "Gleam," which signifies in my poem the higher poetic imagination. Verse iv. is the early imagination; Verse v. alludes to the Pastorals. [For those who cared to know about his literary history he wrote Merlin and the Gleam. From his boyhood he had felt the magic of Merlin — that spirit of poetry — which bade him know his power and follow throughout his work a pure and high ideal, with a simple and single devotedness and a desire to ennoble the life of the world, and which helped him through doubts and difficulties to "endure as seeing Him who is invisible." Great the Master, And sweet the Magic, When over the valley, In early summers, Over the mountain, On human faces. And all around me, Moving to melody. Floated the Gleam. In his youth he sang of the brook flowing through his upland valley, of the "ridged wolds" that rose above his home, of the mountain-glen and snowy summits of his early dreams, and of the beings, heroes and fairies, with which his imaginary world was peopled. Then was heard the "croak of the raven," the harsh voice of those who were imsympathetic — The light retreated, The landskip darken'd. The melody deaden'd. The Master whisper'd "Follow the Gleam." Still the inward voice told him not to be faint-hearted but to follow his ideal. And by the delight in his own romantic fancy, and by the harmonies of nature, "the warble of water," and "cataract music of falUng torrents," the inspiration of the poet was renewed. His Eclogues and Enghsh Idyls followed, when he sang the songs of country life and the joys and griefs of coimtry folk, which he knew through and through. Innocent maidens. Garrulous children, Homestead and harvest, Reaper and gleaner. And rough-ruddy faces Of lowly labour. By degrees, having learnt somewhat of the real philosophy of life and of humanity from his own experience, he rose to a melody "stronger and statelier." He celebrated the glory of "human love and of hvunan heroism" and of human thought, ' and began what he had already devised, his Epic of King Arthur, "typifying above all things the life of man," wherein he had 996 NOTES intended to represent some of the great religions of the world. He had purposed that this was to be the chief work of his manhood. Yet the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam, and the consequent darken- ing of the whole world for him made him almost fail in this purpose ; nor any longer for a while did he rejoice in the splendour of his spiritual visions, nor in the Gleam that had "waned to a wintry glimmer." Clouds and darkness Closed upon Camelot ; Arthur had vanish'd I knew not whither. The king who loved me, And cannot die. Here my father united the two Arthurs, the Arthur of the Idylls and the Arthur "the man he held as half divine." He himself had fought with death, and had come out victorious to find "a stronger faith his own," and a hope for himself, for all those in sorrow and for universal humankind, that never forsook him through the future years. And broader and brighter The Gleam flying onward. Wed to the melody, Sang thro' the world. I saw, whenever In passing it glanced upon Hamlet or city. That under the Crosses The dead man's garden, The mortal hillock. Would break into blossom ; And so to the land's Last limit I came. Up to the end he faced deatli with the same earnest and unfailing courage that he had always shown, but with an added sense of the awe and the mystery of the Infinite. I can no longer. But die rejoicing. For thro' the Magic Of Him the Mighty, Who taught me in childhood, There on the border Of boundless Ocean, And all but in Heaven Hovers the Gleam. That is the reading of the poet's riddle as he gave it to me. He thought that Merlin and the Gleam would probably be enough of biograph^^ for those friends who urged him to write about himself. — Ed.] P. 807. Rom:ney's Remorse. [First pubUshed in 1889. — Ed.] P. 809, col. 2, line 7. With Milton's amaranth. "Lowly reverent Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground With solemn adoration down they cast Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold. Immortal amarant, a flower which once In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life, Began to bloom; but, soon for Man's offence To Heaven removed where first it grew, there grows And flowers aloft, shading the Fount of Life, etc. Par. Lost, iii. 349-357- P. 810, col. I, line 9. my Indian brother. When his brother arrived from India, Romney did not know him. P. 810, col. I, line 16. He said it . . • in the play. Cf. Measure for Measure, m. i. 2 : "The miserable have'no other medicine But only hope." P. 810. Parnassus. [First published in 1889. Norman Lockyer visited him in October 1890, and said of my father: "His mind is saturated with astronomy." — Ed.] P. 810. By AN Evolutionist. [Written at Farxingford, and first pub- lished in 1.889. My father brought " Evolu- tion" into Poetry. Ever since his Cam- bridge days he believed in it. Andrew Lang notes: "It was part of the origin- ality of Tennyson, as a philosophic poet, that he had brooded from boyhood on these early theories of evolution, in an age when they were practically unknown to the literary, and were not patronised by the scientific world." He has given, perhaps, the best expression of this belief in a remarkable passage in Sea Dreams, beginning "But round the North, a NOTES Wt light," p. 159. There we have a dream of the restless spirit of progress throughout the ages, and the "note never out of tune" underlying it. — Ed.] P. 811. Far — FA-R — AWAY. (For Music.) Before I could read I was in the habit on a stormy day of spreading my arms to the wind and crying out, "I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind," and the words "far, far away" had always a strange charm for me. [First published in 1889. My father wrote this after his severe illness in 1888. As he was lying on his sofa in the window at Aldworth, and looking out on the great landscape of the weald of Sussex, he said that he had wonderful thoughts about God and the Universe, and felt as if looking into the other world. Distant bells always charmed him with their "lin-lan-lone," and when heard over a sea or a lake, he was never tired of listening to them. — Ed.] P. 811. Politics. [Addressed to Glad- stone, and first published in 1889. — Ed.] P. 811. Beautiful City. Paris. [First published in 1889. ■ — Ed.] P. 812. The Roses on the Terrace. At Aldworth. [First published in 1889. About this time he sent the following lines to E. V. B. (Mrs. Richard Boyle) for her Ros Rosarum: THE ROSEBUD The night with sudden odour reel'd, The southern stars a music peal'd. Warm beams across the meadow stole ; For love flew over grove and field, Said, "Open, Rosebud, open, yield Thy fragrant soul." See also letter from my father to Dean Hole from Aldworth: "The Book of Roses was heartily welcomed by me : I do not worship the yellow but the Rosy Roses — rosy means red, not yellow — and the homage of my youth was given to what I must ever look up to as the Queen of Roses — the Provence — but then you as a great Rose master may not agree with me. I never see my Queen of Roses anywhere now. We have just been planting a garden of Roses, and were glad to find that out of our native wit we had associated the berberis with them as you advise." — Ed.] P. 812. The Play, and On One \^m^o affected an Effeminate Manner. [First published in 1889. — Ed.] P. 812. To One who ran down the English. [Written at Aldworth, and first pubUshed in 1889. — Ed.] P. 812. The Snowdrop. [Written at Farringford about i860, and first pub- Ushed in 1889. — Ed.] P. 812. The Throstle. [First pub- lished in the New Review, October 1889, and misprinted; afterwards in Demetcr and other iPoems, 1889. My father had been writing his poem. By an Evolutionist, between severe attacks of gout in the winter of 1889. He fed the thrushes and other birds as usual out of his window at Farringford. Toward the end of Feb- ruary he sat in his kitchen-garden summer- house, listening attentively to the different notes of the thrush, and finishing his song of The Throstle, which had been begun in the same garden years ago : Summer is coming, is coming, my dear, And all the winters are hidden. Talking of hopefulness, he said: "Hope is the kiss of the Future." — Ed.] P. 812. The Oak. [First published in 1889. My father called this poem "clean-cut like a Greek epigram." The allusion is to the gold of the young oak leaves in spring, and to the autumnal gold of the fading leaves (at Aldworth) . — Ed.] P. 813. In Memoriam. — W. G. Ward. [First published in The Athenceum. May nth, 1889. Ward was a neighbour of my father's at Freshwater. He had been one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, and afterwards of the CathoUc Revival. He died in 1882. — Ed.] NOTES ON THE FORESTERS By the Editor Written eleven years before publication in 1 881. First published and perfonned 998 NOTES On March 25 th The Foresters was pro- duced at New York by Daly, the incidental music being by Sir Arthur Sullivan. It gave my father great pleasure to hear that American people were "appreciative of the fancy and of the beauty, and especially of the songs and of the wise sayings about life in which the woodland play abounds." ^ The houses were packed and the play had a long and most successful run. Before the production my father wrote to Daly : I wish you all success with my Robin Hood and Maid Marian. From what I know of Miss Ada Rehan I am sure that she will play her part to perfection, and I am certain that under your management, with the music by one so popular as Sir Arthur Sullivan, with the costumes fashioned after the old designs in the British Museum, with the woodland scenes taken from Mr. Whymper's beautiful pictures of the Sherwood of to-day. my play will be produced to advantage both in America and in England. I am told that your company is good, and that Mr. Jefferson once belonged to it. When he was in England, I saw him play Rip Van Winkle, and assuredly nothing could have been better. With all cordial greetings to my American friends, I remain faithfully yours, Tennyson. And after the production he received the following from Miss Ada Rehan : Let me add my congratulations to the many on the success of The Foresters. I cannot tell you how delighted I was when I felt and saw, from the first, the joy it was giving to our large audience. Its charm is felt by all. Let me thank you for myself for the honour of playing your Maid Marian, which I have learned to love, for while I am playing the part I feel all its beauty and simplicity and sweetness, which make me feel for the time a happier and a better womaa. I am indeed proud of its great success for your sake as well as my own. P.S. — The play is now one week old, and each audience has been larger than the last, and all as sympathetic as the first. And Professor Jebb wrote: Being here on my way to the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, where I have some Lec- tures to give, I naturally went to see The Foresters at Augustin Daly's last night. The Theatre, which is of moderate size, was densely packed, and as I had not engaged my seat by cablegram from Liverpool, I bore no resemblance, in respect of spacious comfort, to the ideal spectator, the masher or "dude," depicted on the play -bill which I send you by this post. I was a highly compressed and squalid object in a back seat, 1 Jowett. amid a seething mass of humanity, but I saw the play very well. It was very cordially received and was well acted, I thought, especially by Ada Rehan and Drew. The fairy scene in the third Act was perfectly lovely, and the lyrics were everywhere beautifully given. The mounting of the play was excellent throughout. The criticism of The Foresters which pleased my father most was in a letter addressed to Lady Martin [Miss Helen Faucit] by the eminent Shakespearian scholar, Mr. Horace Fumess of Phil- adelphia, when the piece was being per- formed in New York : After dinner we went to see The Foresters. Men and women — of a different time, to be sure, but none too good "for human nature's daily food" — live their idyllic lives before you, and you feel that all is good, very good. The atmo- sphere is so real, and we fall into it so completely, that, Americans though we be through and through, we can listen with hearty assent to the chorus that "There is no land like England," and that "There are no wives like English wives." Nay, come to think of it, that song was encored. It was charming, charming from beginning to end. And Miss Rehan acted to perfection. I had to leave in the midnight train for home, and during two hours' driving through the black night, I smoked and reflected on the unalloyed charm of such a drama. And to see the popularity, too ! It had been running many weeks — six, I think — and the theatre was full, not a seat unoccupied. I do revel, I confess, in such a proof as this that there will always be a full response to what is fine and good, and that the modern sensational French drama is not our true exponent. P. 821. (Act I. Sc. iii.) To Sleep. First published in New Review, 1891, and set to music by my mother. (See Mile. Janotha's edition of Lady Tennyson's songs, published by Novello.) P. 825, coL I, line 15. (Act 11. Sc. i.) wickentree, mountain-ash. P. 831. Act ir. Sc. ii. ad finem. The whole stage lights up, and fairies are seen swinging on boughs and nestling in hollow trunks, etc. My father said to Mr. Daly: "I don't care for The Foresters as I do for Becket and Harold. Irving suggested the fairies in my Robir. Hood, else I should not have dreamed of trenching on Shakespeare's ground in that way. Then Irving wrote to me that the play was not 'sensational' enough for an English public. It is a woodland play — a pastoral without shep- NOTES 999 herds. The great stage-drama is wholly unlike most of the drama of modem times. I do not hke the idea of every scene being obhged to end with a bang." About "There is no land like England," he added, "I wrote that song when I was nine- teen. It has a beastly chorus against the French, and I must alter that if you will have it." P. 833, col. I, line 18. (Act iii. Sc. i.) torrents of eddying bark. I heard my father first use these words about the great trunks of the Spanish chestnuts in Cowdray Park near Midhurst. He and I stayed in Sher- wood Forest in 1881, at the time when he was writing The Foresters. P. 835, col. I, line 25. (Act m. Sc. i.) Instead of the short scene between Robin and Marian, beginning "Honour to thee, brave Marian," to "my will, and made it thine," my father had written in the first proof of the play the following lively and charming scene, which he cut out when Miss Mary Anderson was to have acted Marian ^ : — Robin Honour to thee, brave Marian, and thy Kate. I know them arrant knaves in Nottingham. One half of this shall go to those that they have wrong'd. One half shall pass into our treasury. Marian My father has none with him. See to him, Kate. [Exit Kate. Robin Where lies that cask of wine whereof we plunder'd The Norman prelate ? Little John In that oak, where twelve Can stand upright, nor touch each other.2 1 She fell ill and left the stage, else she was to have played in The Foresters and The Cup. 2 The oak described here was standing in Sherwood Forest when we visited it in 1881. ^^^^^ Good! Roll it in here. These beggars and these friars Shall drink the health of our new woodland Queen. [Exeunt Robin's men. {To Marian) And now that thou hast triumph'd as our Queen, I have a mind to embrace thee as our Queen. Marian (frantically) Quiet, Robin, quiet. You lovers are such summer flies, always buzzing at the face of your lady. Robin Say rather we are bees that fly to the flower for honey. M.ARIAN Your soul should worship her soul, your heart her heart, and all your thoughts should be higher-winged in the spiritual heaven of love. Robin Ay, but we lovers are not cherubim, wings and no more. Marian True, Robin, thou art plimip enough for my robin, but thy face is too gaunt for a cherub's. Robin Yet I would I were a winged cherub, that I might fly and hide myself in thy bosom. Marian Ay, but, cherub, if thou flewest so close as that, I should fly like the maid in the heathen fable when the would-be god lost his nymph in the wood. Robin What was she ? Marian I forget. The Maid [Marian of these times behke. Robin And how did he lose her ? NOTES Maioan As many men lose many women if they fly too near — as thou mayest lose me in this forest. She turned herself into a laurel. Robin I would have gathered the leaves, and made a crown of it. Marian And the laurel would have withered in a day, and the nymph would have been dead wood to thee for ever. Robin No, no; I would have clasped and kissed, and warmed the dead wood till it broke again into living leaf. Marian Well, well, to tell love's truth, I sighed for a touch of thy lips a year ago, but the Sheriff has come between us. Is it not all over now — gone like a deer that hath escaped from thine arrow ? Robin What deer, when I have marked him, ever escaped from mine arrow? The Sheriff — over is it ? Wilt thou give me thy hand upon that ? Marian Take it. Robin The Sheriff ! [Kisses her hand. This ring cries out against thee. Say it again. And by this ring, the lips that never breathed Love's falsehood to true maid will seal love's truth On those sweet lips that dare to dally with it. P. 851. June Bracken and Heather. [First published in 1892, written on Black- down, and dedicated to my mother. Cf. the poem my father addressed on his wedding-day to his old friend Drummond Rawnsley, the Vicar of Shiplake (June 13, 1850), by whom they were married: TO THE VICAR OF SHIPLAKE Vicar of that pleasant spot, Where it was my chance to marry. Happy, happy be your lot In the Vicarage by the quarry : You. were he that knit the knot. Sweetly, smoothly flow your life. Never parish feud perplex you. Tithe unpaid, or party strife. All things please you, nothing vex you; You have given me such a wife. Have I seen in one so near Aught but sweetness aye prevailing ? Or, thro' more than half a year. Half the fraction of a failing ? Therefore bless you, Drummond dear. Good she is, and pure and just. Being conquer'd by her sweetness I shall come thro' her, I trust. Into fuller-orb'd completeness; Tho' but made of erring dust. You, meanwhile, shall day by day Watch your standard roses blowing, And your three young things at play And your triple terrace growing Green and greener every May. Smoothly flow your life with Kate's,^ Glancing off from all things evil, Smooth as Thames below your gates, Thames along the silent level Streaming thro' his osier'd aits. Ed.] P. 851, col. I, line i. the down. Black- down, on which Aldworth stands. P. 851. The Death of (Enone, [With Dedication to the Master of Balliol (Professor Jowett). First published in 1892. Sir Richard Jebb wrote to me for my father's information : — Aug. 8, 1889. I had meant to write yesterday, but was in- terrupted. The principal extant source for the story of Paris and (Enone is an epic poem called Td iJ.ed'\)fjLrjpov ("Posthomerica"), by Quintus "Smyrnaeus," so called because he seems to have lived in or near Smyrna. (In old books you will find him called Quintus "Calaber," for no other reason than that the MS. by which his work first became known in modern times was found at Otranto in Calabria.) The idea of his 1 Mrs. Drummond Rawnsley. NOTES epic is to continue the Iliad, from the death of AchUles to the fall of Troy, — just as some of the older "Cyclic" poets had done. He wrote perhaps about 350-400 a.d., though some have assigned him to the fifth century. His epic is in fourteen books. The episode of (Enone occurs in Book X. Paris having been wounded by a poisoned arrow from the bow of Philoctetes, comes to CEnone^ and makes a speech to her, to the effect that he hopes she will forget his odious behaviour, and nurse him (284-305). She replies that she will see him somewhere first (308-327). He goes away lamenting, and dies in the wilds of Ida. She hears of his death, and comes to his funeral pyre. When she sees the corpse, she utters no cry, but hides her face in her robe, and throws herself on the flames (467). Thus the wh61e story in Quintus occupies a little less than 200 lines. He is an exceedingly feeble and frigid writer. Ed.] P. 853. St. Telemachus. [First pub- lished in 1892. My father thought of also writing the story of St. Perpetua in verse as a companion poem. — Ed.] P- 853, col. I, line 22. some fiery peak. These lines were suggested by the memory of the eruption of Krakatoa, between Java and vSumatra, when the volcanic dust was swirled round the earth and made the sun- sets extraordinarily brilliant. P. 853, col. 2, line 6. Vicisti Galilcee. [Julian, who restored the heathen worship and persecuted the Christians, is reported to have said these words when dying. — Ed.] P. 854 col. I, line 11. blood-red awning. [The velaritmi, which shaded the spectators from the sun. — Ed.] P. 854. Akbar's Dream. [First pub- lished in 1892. Sir Alfred Lyall writes: "The general conception of his (Akbar's) character and position is drawn in grand outUne." ^ Ed.] P. 856, col. I, lines 26-31. [when creed and race Shall bear false witness, each of each, no more. But find their limits by that larger light, And overstep them, moving easily Thro' after-ages in the love of Truth, The truth of Love give my father's strong and deep feeling, that in the end Christianity without bigotry will triumph, when the controversies of creeds shall have vanished, and that "in the roll of the ages" the spirit of Christ will still grow from more to more. — Ed.] P. 856, col. 2, Hne 22 to p. 857, col. 1, line 10. A7i4 what are forms? Make but one music, harmonising ^'PrayJ' [My father said: "I dread the losing hold of forms. I have expressed this in my Akbar. There must be forms, yet I hate the need for so many sects and separate services." — Ed.] P. 857. Hymn. [My father began this hymn to the sun in a new metre at Dulverton, and finished it on board Colonel Crozier's yacht, the Assegai, on his return voyage to the Isle of Wight. "A magnifi- cent metre," he said; "I should Hke to write a long poem in it." The philosophies of the East had a great fascination for him, and he felt -that the Western reUgion might learn from them much of spirituality. During one of the Bishop of Ripon's last visits my father said to him: "Looked at from one point of view, I can understand the Persian dualism; there is much which looks like the conflict of the powers of light and darkness." About that time he wrote the following sketch of an unpublished poem, Ormuzd and Ahriman: — "In the eternal day before the days were, the Almighty created Freewill in the two great spirits Ormuzd and Ahriman. "And these two came before the throne of the Almighty, and spoke to Him, say- ing, 'Thou hast shown thyself of Al- mightiness to make us free; now therefore to be free is to act, how should we be idle ? ' "And the Lord said to them, 'The ele- ments are in your hands.' "And they answered and said, 'W^e will make the world.' "And the Lord said, 'One of you is dark, and one is bright, and ye will con- tend each against each, and your work will be evil. Ormuzd will put pleasure into that which he does, and Ahriman will put pain." "And Ormuzd said, 'The pleasuie will overbear the pain.' And Ahriman said, 'The pain will overbear the pleasure.' And the Lord said to Ahriman, ' Why wilt thou work against Ormuzd?' And Ahriman NOTES said, 'I know not, Thou hast made me.' And the Lord said, 'I know why I have made thee, -but thou know est not.' And the two went forth from before the Lord, and made the world." — Ed.] P. 859. The Bandit's Death. [First pubUshed in 1892. This story is taken from Sir Walter Scott's last Journal. My father said of him : " Scott is the most chivalrous Uterary figure of this century, and the author with the widest range since Shake- speare." He would read two or three of his novels every year. Old Mortality he thought "his greatest novel." In his boyhood he wrote the following poem after reading The Bride of Lammermoor, which he also ranked high : — THE BRIDAL The lamps were bright and gay On the merry bridal-day, When the merry bridegroom Bore the bride away ! A merry, merry bridal, A merry bridal-day ! And the chapel's vaulted gloom Was misted with perfume. "Now, tell me, mother, pray, Why the bride is white as clay, Although the merry bridegroom Bears the bride away. On a merry, merry bridal, A merry bridal-day ? And why her black eyes burn With a hght so wild and stern?" **They revel as they may," That skinny witch did say, "For — now the merry bridegroom Hath borne the bride away — Her thoughts have found their wings In the dreaming of past things : And though girt in glad array. Yet her own deep soul says nay : For tho' the merry bridegroom Hath borne the bride away, A dark form glances quick Thro' her worn brain, hot and sick." And so she said her say — This was her roundelay — That tho' the merry bridegroom Might lead the bride away, Dim grief did wait upon her, In glory and in honour. - j In the hall, at close of day. Did the people dance and play, For now the merry bridegroom Hath borne the bride away. He from the dance hath gone But the revel still goes on. Then a scream of wild dismay Thro' the deep hall forced its way, Altho' the merry bridegroom Hath borne the bride away ; And, staring as in a trance, « They were shaken from the dance. Then they foimd him where he lay Whom the wedded wife did slay, Tho' he a merry bridegroom Had borne the bride away, And they saw her standing by, With a laughing crazed eye. On the bitter, bitter bridal, The bitter bridal-day. Ed.] P. 860. The Churchwarden and THE Curate. [First pubUshed in 1892. On June 23rd, 1890, I have an entry in my diary: "Walked on the Common (Blackdown). My father is working at his Lincolnshire poem, The Church-warden, and laughed heartily at 'the humorous passages as he made them." It was founded on two sayings which Canon Rawnsley told him. One of a "Lincolnshire Church- warden," who addressed him: "There's no daub (sham) about you, I know. Thou'lt be maain and plaain and straaight, I know, but hooiver, tek my adivce, doant thou saay nowt to nobody for a year or more, but crip and crawl and git along under the hedge- bottoms for a bit, and they'll maake a bishop on ye yit." The other, that of a Lincolnshire farmer who had lost a cow: "The poor thing was bound to die, drat it. I blaam them howry owd Baptises fur it all, coming and pizening my pond by leavin' their nasty owd sins behint them. It's nowt nobbut their dippin' as did it, we may be very sartain sewer." — Ed.] P. 862. Charity. [Founded on a true story. First pubUshed in 1892. — Ed.] P. 863. Kapiolani. [First pubUshed in 1892. My father read the story in I Miss Yonge's Golden Deeds. — Ed.] NOTES 1003 Pp. 864 ff. The Dawn, The Making OF Man, The Dreamer, Faith, The Silent Voices, God and the Uni- verse. [This group of poems was written at the end of his life, and first published in 1892. — Ed.] P. 865. Mechanophilus. [W^ritten at the time of the first railways, and first published in 1892. — Ed.] P. S66. Riflemen form ! [First published in The Times, Aug. 9th, 18^9, when it rang like a trumpet-call through the land. — Ed.] P. 866. The Tourney. [One of the poems rejected 'from the songs of Th^ Princess, and first published in 1892. — Ed.] P. 867. Poets and Critics. [First published in 1892. — Ed.] P. 867. A Voice spake out of the Skies. [First published in 1892. — Ed.] P. 867. Doubt and Prayer. [An early sonnet, altered and first published in 1892. — Ed.] P. 867, col. 2, line 26. My Father, and my Brother, and my God! [My father's view of the Trinity of Love. — Ed.] P. 868. Faith. [My father said: "It is hard to believe in God; but it is harder not to believe in God. My most passionate desire is to have a clearer and fuller vision of God." — Ed.] P. 868. The Silent Voices. [A melody in F minor,i written by my mother at my father's express desire, and arranged for foiu- voices by Sir Frederick Bridge, was sung at his funeral in the Abbey. — Ed.] P. 868. God and the Universe. [As he was dying on Oct. 5th, 1892, he exclaimed: "I have opened it." Whether this referred to the Cymbeline opened by him at "Hang there like fruit, my soul, Till the tree die," 1 See Appendix to Notes. which he always called among the tenderest lines in Shakespeare, or to the dirge in Cymbeline; or whether these lines, which he often repeated, were running through his head, I cannot tell : Thro' the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what is higher, Wait till Death has flung them open ; and Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great. Nor the myriad world. His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate. Ed.] P. 868. The Death of the Duke OF Clarence and Avondale, [First published in The Nineteenth Century, February 1892. This poem began to bring on my father's final illness, as he worked feeling tired. He wrote it at that time, so as to bring some comfort to the poor mother. He wanted G. F. Watts to paint this great picture — The face of Death is toward the Sun of Life, His shadow darkens earth. He sent the poem, with the following letter, to Queen Victoria : — Madam — I venture to write, but I do not know how to express the profound sympathy of myself and my family with the great sorrow which has befallen your Majesty and your children. I know that your Majesty has a perfect trust in the Love and Wisdom which order the circumstances of our life, and in this alone is there comfort. — I am always your Majesty's affectionate servant, Tennyson. . Ed.] P. 869. Crossing the Bar. [Made in my father's eighty-first year, in October 1889, on crossing the Solent after his serious illness in 1888-9. When he re- peated it to me in the evening, I said, "That is the crown of j'our life's work." He answered, "It came in a moment." — Ed.] P. 869. Verse iv. / hope to see my Pilot face to face. The pilot has been on board all the while, but in the dark I have not seen him. [We now know the pilot only by faith — I004 NOTES we shall then see him face to face. My father had often watched the pilots from Southampton Water climb down from the great mail-ships into their cutters oflf Headon Hill, near the Needles. He explained the Pilot as "that Divine and Unseen Who is always guiding us." A few days before his death he said to me, "Mind you put my Crossing the Bar at the end of all editions of my poems." This poem. Merlin and the Gleam, The Death of the Duke of Clarence, The Dawn, The Making of Man, The Dreamer (expressive of Hope in the Light that leads us), Th; Wanderer, A Voice spake out of the Skies, Doubt and Prayer, Faith, God and ths Universe, and The Silent Voices, breath- ing peace and courage and hope and faith, were felt by my father, when he wrote them, to be his last testament to the world. — Ed.] "Poetry," my father wrote, "should be the flower and fruit of a man's Hfe, in whatever stage of it, to be a worthy offer- ing to the world." APPENDIX TO NOTES ^be Silent IDoices BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON MUSIC BY EMILY, LADY TENNYSON ARRANGED FOR FOUR VOICES FOR Zbc funeral ot XorD tTenni^gon IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, OCTOBER 12, 1892 BY J. FREDERICK BRIDGE, Mus.D. ioo6 APPENDIX TO NOTES TLbc Silent Voices Words by Lord Tennyson. Slowly and ivith solemnity, Music by Lady Tennyson. ^. f=f 3^ 3^Eg^ *: TC-f Voices. When the dumb Hour, clothed in black, Brings the Dreams a mf jjfcfee^^^EEjBg .J^;. Slowly and with solemnity. Organ. to/ Ife: S ='^3- '& S: -S- * f : 3^^ ^^ rTT p-i- ^■ *i^|E?±E^: Ie^eI^^ PP- bout my bed, Call me not so I 1 1 ^f-f-rr of - ten back, Si - lent Voi-ces ^ r I I 1 k ^EEE^. ^--=\ S=&«=f=±li? j>p w^- a^: SEEfEg: senza PetZ. Ped. p^p^f^^P of the dead. Toward the lowland ways behind me. And the sunlight 9^-- J^_ 1^-r J— J— 1_U f-^' :3S=, J_J.JJ_-^-L'J: -I T f=F I J J cr^sJ i^ -v , , J J J J -== =— APPENDIX TO NOTES 1007 ^ that is gone 1 ^ :^= I II I I I I I si -lent voi-ces I. i I. Call me ra - ther, si -lent voi-ces. *=i: f^Pp^^^^^^p ^i J»i ^^ J^_J ^^^^ 1/1, J--^^-=^^r-j=d-^ ist & 2nd Sopranos. For-ward to the star - ry track ^.- — ' — 1 — k^K^i^— {• — f» — r^tz — Glim-mer-ing up the ■ F— z± ■4 J 'j-^ — ^— -=j- J-^ i jU §i^=d i [r^.J f ^, 1- — ==-1^ i=^-=^=^=-:=p_— =g- rail. ^W ^EE^NEEEi s — t— heights be - yond me On and al - ways on ! ^ :?= ^. :p2= ioo8 APPENDIX TO NOTES The following is one of my father's later poems, and was by inadvertence never published by him. RETICENCE Not to Silence would I build A temple in her naked field ; Not to her would raise a shrine : She no goddess is of mine ; But to one of finer sense. Her half sister, Reticence. Latest of her worshippers, I would shrine her in my verse! Not like Silence shall she stand, Finger-lipt, but with right hand Moving toward her lip, and there Hovering, thoughtful, poised in air. Her garment slips, the left hand holds Her up-gather'd garment folds, And veils a breast more fair to me Than aught of Anadyomene ! Near the shrine, but half in sun, I would have a river run. Such as never overflows With flush of rain, or molten snows. Often shallow, pierced with light. Often deep beyond the sight. Here and there about the "lawn Wholly mute, but ever drawn Under either grassy brink In many a silver loop and link Variously from its far spring. With long tracts of murmuring, Partly river, partly brook. Which in one delicious nook, Where the doubtful shadows play. Lightly lisping, breaks away ; Thence, across the summit hurl'd, Showers in a whisper o'er the world. itM ,r^ %^ k ne ?n-> 4r rot, iff} fW ^Cdw^ t^/rjW'j f]w4^ kJtXto h^jni. *^ ^ /5it^wc^) .C£. INDEX TO THE FIRST LINES. A CITY clerk, but gently born and bred, 152. Aci first, this Earth, a stage so gloom'd with woe, 812. Ah God ! the petty fools of rhyme, 232. Airy, fairy Lilian, 6. [229 All along the valley, stream that flashest white, Along this glimmering gallery, 875. Altho* I be the basest of mankind, 83. And Willy, my eldest born, is gone, you say, little Anne? 220. A plague upon the people fell, 232. Are those the far-famed Victor Hours, 877 Are you sleeping? have you forgotten? do not sleep, my sister dear ! 540. A spirit haunts the year's last hours, 12. A still small voice spake unto me, 30. A storm was coming, but the winds were still, 373. As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood, 24. ^ [lay, 497. At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville At Francis Allen's on the Christmas Eve, 66. Athelstan King, 523. A thousand summers ere the time of Christ, 536, At times our Britain cannot rest, 781. A Voice spake out of the skies, 867. Banner of England, not for a season, O banner of Britain, hast thou, 509. ■ Beat, little heart — I give you this and this,' 807. Beautiful city, the centre and crater, 8:1. Below the thunders of the upper deep, 5. Be thou a-gawin' to the long barn, 756 Bold Havelock marched, 877. Break, break, break, 121. [best, 522. Brooks, for they call'd you so that knew you Bury the Great Duke, 212, Caress'd or chidden by the slender hand, 25. Chains, my good lord : in your raised brows I read, 514. Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn, 8. Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing, 3. Come not, when I am dead, 116. Come, when no graver cares employ, 229. Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn, 95. * Courage ! ' he said, and pointed toward the land, 53. Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his moo