CHfilST'S COMPANY 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER POEMS.
 
 CHRIST'S COMPANT 
 
 T 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHEE POEMS 
 
 BT 
 
 RICHAED WATSON DIXON, M.A., 
 
 OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 
 
 M.DCCC.LXI. 
 
 \The right of Translation is reserved.^
 
 
 TO 
 
 HIS FATHER, 
 
 JAMES DIXON, D.D., 
 
 ABE DEDICATED BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 SGJJ^Sl
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Christ's Company- 
 
 page 
 
 St. Paul ...... 1 
 
 6t. John . . . . ... 14 
 
 St. Peter ...... 36 
 
 Mary MagdaIe'ne . . . . . . 42 
 
 The Holy Mother at the Cross . . .46 
 
 Poems. 
 A Lenten Mystery . . . . . . 49 
 
 Eunice ....... 56 
 
 Dream . . . . . . . . 58 
 
 The Wizard's Funeral . . . . .60 
 
 Eeflection . . . . . . . 61 
 
 The Soul's World . . . . .63 
 
 The Wanderer , . , . . . 65 
 
 The Pilgrim of Love . . , . .73 
 
 Dawning . . . . . . . 75 
 
 The Sole Survivor , . . . .77 
 
 Proserpine . . . . . . . 78 
 
 In the Woods . . . . .81
 
 via CONTENTS. 
 
 TAGS 
 
 i^ovK's Consolation . . . . . , 83 
 
 Waiting ....... 101 
 
 A Nun's Story — Modern Rome . . . . 105 
 
 A Monk's Story . . . . . .107 
 
 Ballad . . . , . . 110 
 
 La Faerie, or Lovers' World . . . .113 
 
 Mother and Daughter . . . . . 134 
 
 The Groomsman . . . . . .137 
 
 Despair . . '. . . . . 139 
 
 Sonnet . . . . . . .141 
 
 The Crusader's Monument . . . . 142 
 
 Romance ....... 144 
 
 The Judgment of the May . . . . 147 
 
 Song . . . . . , .148 
 
 A Song of Three Maidens . . . . . 150 
 
 To Shadow , . . . . .151 
 
 Ode to Joy . . . . . . . 154 
 
 The Vision of Thebes . . . . .156 
 
 Babylon and Nineveh . . . . . 167
 
 d^hiiLU'B dj m II a IT J. 
 
 PART OF AN EPISTLE FROM GALLIO, THE DEPUTY 
 OF ACHAIA, TO HIS BROTHER SENECA. 
 
 Yes ; I am grovra incapable, 'tis true, 
 
 To comprehend our fathers what they "were ; 
 
 But so are all men now, and so are you. 
 
 This fallen age can neither see nor hear 
 
 The heroic strength of thought which laid 
 
 Itself to work, and conquest made 
 
 From the wide Infinite displayed 
 
 To its wide eyes, and in that trade 
 
 Of region conquest carried men by tribes 
 
 To people its new colonies : upbraid, 
 
 Banter not me, my Stoic, for thy gibes 
 
 Be double-edged; I mean that thought 
 
 Of Homer or of Plato brought 
 
 A tract unknown, perhaps unsought, 
 
 To man's domains ; and men upcaught, 
 
 ? 1
 
 2 cheist's company. 
 
 As in a bark, by such thoughts' mightiness, 
 
 Were rapt together to the new-found port, 
 
 And there got apanage, with no dangerous press 
 
 Of numbers, and no famine, for 
 
 Such thought was as the harvest store 
 
 Of diverse grains for usance, or 
 
 Such tliat each man could bite its core — 
 
 Each of a milhon ; yes, that was the age 
 
 Of Argonauts ; but we who now explore, 
 
 We who are Avriting up the present page 
 
 In earth's accounts, can only just 
 
 Sharpen a thought which may or must 
 
 Touch one soul only to its lust: 
 
 No region conquest here, no trust 
 
 In each of millions that we speak for him ; 
 
 Can more than one find room upon the thrust 
 Point of a pin ? We make a splinter trim. 
 
 Yes, and we subdivide at best 
 
 The realms of old at large possessed ; 
 
 This truth stings you like all the rest : 
 
 We are not great, it is confessed. 
 
 But there's another danger, solemner ; 
 
 The thoughts that work within our children's breast, 
 
 Shall we miss these ? Our children make demur 
 
 To thy sad creed, e'en while we see 
 
 The old age rotting utterly, 
 
 And we in ruin well agree. 
 
 Yes, there is hope of things to be ;
 
 ST. PAUL. o 
 
 Here, while our legionaries from this hill 
 
 Look lazily along the languid sea, 
 
 Where the white sails wear windward, waving still 
 
 With flagging arms to one another: 
 
 What bring the galleys as they row there, — 
 
 Ind spice, or Cretan grit ; or smother 
 
 Isle slaves in the monoxylo there ? 
 
 Yields earth no more to earth's monopolizer 
 
 Than such cheap tribute ? Nothing rarer, loather. 
 
 Than these mean gains? Sad earth! dost thou despise her, 
 
 Ostian-mouthed Eome, so much as this ? 
 
 Dost thou demand no more ? Dost miss 
 
 No gifts of earth, but tithe anise, 
 
 Still murmuring. Let be what is ? 
 
 I say, a thought brain-warm and new may grow 
 In any skull to light up the abyss 
 Of any nature, till it overflow 
 (I'll tell you something by and by) 
 On all the nations, and oflF-wry 
 Our business-like supremacy. 
 For instance, our belief is high ; 
 We are the few for whom the many work : 
 Suppose it should be bruited in reply. 
 That nature moves the world in equal cirque; 
 How wildly should we retograde 
 Confounded from the web we've made 
 O'er all the world with spear and spade ! 
 Again, our creed is now our trade, 
 
 1—2
 
 4 CHRIST'S COMPANY. 
 
 That the brute multitude may croiich and pray 
 
 At popular altars, little reverence paid 
 
 By us, who supervise the popular way, 
 
 Aristocrats, philosophers : 
 
 Suppose an intimation stirs 
 
 That God holds by His worshippers, 
 
 The swine are right and wisdom errs: 
 
 Then, all are right but thou and I and I, 
 
 And there is hooting where a fool occurs ; 
 
 Brother, behold a possibiKty ! 
 
 Changes may come ; see how the air 
 
 Stirs curls that leave the forehead bare 
 
 Of your Domitian, so aware. 
 
 While you by hint and dint prepare 
 
 His soul with Stoic maxims for the world. 
 
 And with Greek dramas and such other fare 
 
 For growing upwards rightly trimmed and curled. 
 
 You Stoic poet, is it well 
 
 To blow the wrong end of the shell, 
 
 Concluding with a Stoic spell 
 
 All life as in a citadel, 
 
 Half active, and half theoretic ; so. 
 
 Just as the father of your porch did tell ? 
 
 At least you rightly keep your creed, to go 
 Retracing with poetic skill 
 The springs Castalian rill by rill ! 
 Those stories anciently did thrill 
 The blind man of Olympus hill.
 
 ST. PAUL. 
 
 Your Hercules I've read, as good almost 
 As if in Trachis written ; still, yet still 
 An age whose greatest poet is a post 
 Of that old porch, is a strange age, 
 
 I am no Stoic, yet a sage, 
 Living in Greece here, where yet rage 
 Some flatterers 'gainst yonr iron cage : 
 We are Platonists in Greece here, we maintain 
 A various expectation, which bids gauge 
 The world as not set in this state and strain 
 For ever ; hold in spite of sin 
 A chastity of mind wherein 
 Some glimpse of that reserve we win, 
 Wliich Essence holds amidst the din 
 Of outward life and death : since man is base, 
 Is nature base, doth God fail ? Not so thin 
 Of faith am I ; nay, though I grant this phase, 
 This present, which we all abhor, 
 May be the last save one that o'er 
 The world shall pass, yet I ignore 
 Thy sentence, " There remains no more." 
 Nay, there's an infinite nothing ; we shall come 
 Thither at least, and have not reached that shore ; 
 We have at least then so much floating room. 
 
 Now with your leave let me rehearse 
 In brief what prompts me, the reverse 
 Of your conclusion ; why I nurse 
 This hope of better out of worse.
 
 () CHRIST S COMPANY. 
 
 Five days ago held I a curule hall : 
 A heap of Jews rushed, mad as if the thyrse 
 Drave them : they haled along a certain Paul 
 As prisoner, whom they did accuse 
 Of those strange questions of the Jews 
 Of which I gave you lately news : 
 Their laws, they said, he did refuse 
 To worship by ; among their heretics 
 Numbered him ; but what chiefly served to bruise 
 Their Jew galls was that he had dared to mix 
 Them with the Gentiles ; he had said 
 That all men have one common Head, 
 One common law, one common bread, 
 Life, death, flesh, spirit, hope, and dread. 
 These wretched Jews are quite as proud as we ; 
 Moreover, Paul affirmed one, sometime dead 
 By Eoman law, a seer of Galilee, 
 To be alive : I think I wrote 
 Something of this report remote 
 To illustrate this very thought 
 That the dead die not ; — time will show 't. 
 This seer then Paul affirmed to be the Christ, 
 Or prophet, for whose advent the Jews doat. 
 
 All this so angered me, I seized one priest 
 And scourged him, drove the rest away, 
 Dismissed their prisoner — hold here — stay — 
 Their prisoner — what may I say ? 
 Describe those features ? He did sway
 
 ST. PAUL. 
 
 An arm and side towards his slanderers, 
 
 And fixed an eye upon me like the ray 
 
 Of humid star ; a certain reverence errs 
 
 From further portrait, but he seemed, 
 
 A fire-calm soul ; a something dreamed 
 
 Between us, as his eyeballs gleamed 
 
 With inner vision, which outbeamed 
 
 And sunned him, as I had beheld a man 
 
 Had gone through all the forms of thought esteemed 
 
 Amongst us, by the which we think we can 
 
 Gain the truth's truth ; I think that he 
 
 Had taken from them all the fee, 
 
 Nor failed to find not one to be 
 
 The knowledge, but had found the key 
 
 Some other way, he looked beyond them all, 
 
 Yet far from sadness, confident and free, 
 
 As if he held them still, let nothing fall 
 
 Of all that ever he had learned, 
 
 But jll by inner force had turned 
 
 To one harmonic ; I discerned 
 
 A pathos which not flamed but burned — 
 
 A pathos which consisted in the truth, 
 
 As I should call it, not from passion churned, 
 
 Not tearful pathos suddenly vmcouth, 
 
 But rising from the very might, 
 
 With which he held the Infinite ; 
 
 As if some moment past his night 
 
 Had changed to glory in a blight
 
 8 CHRIST'S COMPANY. 
 
 Which withered all desire except to tell 
 How God did once through all his senses smite. 
 I am too old to think old things : 'tis Avell ; 
 Such men would die^ for what they hold ; 
 He has seen that which doth enfold 
 His eyesight always, yea, upmould 
 His natm-e, which nor heat nor cold 
 Can suffer in the welding glow of faith. 
 
 I questioned Barrhus why he lowered the gold 
 Spiral upon my lituus, which he hath, 
 Until Paul's exit, doing force 
 To Eome's majesty ; this of course 
 Insufferable by the laws 
 Divine and human; — whence the source 
 Of such a strange neglect I had observed ? 
 Barrhus, my oldest of apparitors. 
 Fixed his grim head towards me, never swerved, 
 Weeping stone tears from Scythian eyes, 
 And clipped me such a mint of lies — 
 Or ti"uths^heart-told in any wise, 
 About Paul's preaching; — novelties 
 I almost thought, until I thought again 
 You say that nothing new can ever rise ; 
 He said that Paul was one of many men. 
 Who words and works and wonders show, 
 In name of Him their nation slew. 
 Whom they aver to live anew, 
 Whom they allege to Greek and Jew,
 
 ST. PAUL. 
 
 In whose name they do bid all men repent, 
 
 With many other doctrines which ensue 
 
 From this ; even Barrhus spoke as he were sent 
 
 To sound this one word to me then 
 
 Straight out from heaven, not as if men 
 
 Had taught it him, and he again 
 
 Taught me a secondhand refrain. 
 
 The sum of all Avas hope in things to come, 
 
 And faith that gives hope substance in our pain, 
 
 And love that perfects faith ; yes, love the sum 
 
 Of sums : the sweetness in the thing 
 
 Seemed here, that love was named the ring 
 
 Whicli linketh man to God, the wing 
 
 Which strikes the eternal shadowing 
 
 With one firm shadow ; the great category 
 
 (Rest here, rest here) from which the truth doth sing. 
 
 Through every other form with brightest glory. 
 
 Winds weary with the old sea tune 
 Slide inland Avith some cloud, and soon 
 From woods that whisper summer noon. 
 Weigh their wight wings with odour boon ; 
 So I, long salted in our ocean drear 
 Of disbelief that Essence can be won 
 By any form of thought invented here, 
 Felt such a gush of joy about 
 My heart-roots, as if in and out 
 'Twas life-blood billowed ; and as stout 
 As once we sent the battle-shout,
 
 10 cheist's company. 
 
 Pitching clear notes against barbaric din, — 
 
 Oh, brother, my soul's voice against the rout 
 
 Of unbeliefs a man doth nurse ■svithin, 
 
 Arising and protesting wild, 
 
 Spake, speaking out untruth defiled ; 
 
 Spake, speaking in the truth exiled ; 
 
 Spake, Little head and weary child. 
 
 Come home, God loves, God loves through sin and shame ; 
 
 Come home, God loves his world: and thy so-styled 
 
 Instincts, which whispered this even in the name 
 
 Of doubts and of carnalities, 
 
 "Were true conclusions, nature-wise; 
 
 In thy old scorned formalities 
 
 And creeds, God looks thee in thine eyes ! 
 
 Wherefore believe again thine ancient lore. 
 For whatsoever Eeason doth devise. 
 Her fiery wings and fire-cloud cars to soar, 
 They truly gain the living height. 
 Because as their most proper freight 
 They carry love, the infinite 
 Of man, up to the rapturous site 
 Of love, the infinite in nature spread. 
 Shall forms in nature always play at sleight 
 With forms in man, that nature's chief and head ? 
 Nay, God is an authority. 
 We deem, in nature ; let Him be 
 Authority in us, that we 
 Hold this for certainty, that He
 
 ST. PAUL. 1 1 
 
 Yields up Himself to all our grasps of thought — 
 
 Our little nets cast in the shoreless sea, 
 
 Our dartles launched in skilled or skilless sort, 
 
 Oui- reason in its many modes, 
 
 Its paths lead to the star abodes, 
 
 Spherical music lights those roads 
 
 To love's true ending, which is God's. 
 
 O Love, thou art the secret of our God ; 
 
 Thou art, O Love, the centre of heaven's codes ; 
 
 The due thou art by all to all things owed ! 
 This love within me grew alive 
 
 So late in this my life, I strive 
 
 To give it language ; do thou give 
 
 Me audience ; we so late arrive 
 
 Where we have been so many years agone ; 
 
 Yet think of this, with whom should God connive 
 
 At such a madman as would gather stone 
 
 For his own grave ? Eather be built 
 
 Houses for dwelling with the silt 
 
 Of every creed and knowledge, spilt 
 
 From the deep waters, which do lilt 
 
 With prescient music unto mortal ears, — 
 
 Plena sunt omnia Dei ; in our guilt, 
 
 Failure and pain this very love inheres. 
 
 I wrote all this to thee last night 
 Beneath my lonely chamber light. 
 Impelled through the long hours to write 
 Up to this point, at which the blight
 
 12 CHRIST'S COMPANY. 
 
 Of the stealthy morning withered my pale lamp. 
 
 And in my vases all the fir-cones lite 
 
 Drew their brown mouths a little wider, ramp 
 
 Sweet briars with all their berries red, 
 
 A palsy took the arbute dead 
 
 Asleep till now ; he shook and said, 
 
 It is high morning overhead. 
 
 Where are my birds that sported in my boughs ? 
 
 The nearer cones no answer breathed, afraid 
 
 To lose an instant of their dear carouse 
 
 Of the new morning's life divine ; 
 
 Then first I slept amid the shine 
 
 Of all my loving flowers quirine ; 
 
 And then Paul's face, which did decline 
 
 All through the broken waters of my sleejj, 
 
 Changed wonderfully in a magic sign, 
 
 Became in part another's, part did peep 
 
 A visage at me terrible, — 
 
 'Twas my own look, I knew half well, 
 
 My very self; dead mutterings tell 
 
 This truth to me ; and then the spell 
 
 Wrought so that throvigh one ghostly countenance 
 
 Two souls did strive to speak, to think, to quell 
 
 Each other ; then I woke and tell my chance. 
 
 Paul spake of One : Avhat man is He, 
 We ask ; what other could He be 
 Save whom I saw, whom all may see 
 Of us — another and the Me ?
 
 ST. PAUL. 13 
 
 Thou wouldst inquire concerning Him, of whom 
 
 Spake Paul — the Christ ? My dream I tell to thee, 
 
 I saw another striving to become 
 
 Myself in self; this was the Christ 
 
 I think, be sure I have not missed 
 
 Paul's meaning, that God's Word uprist 
 
 Doth grant the truth to all who list. 
 
 Oh, just, and pious, and pitiful heart of God ! 
 
 There is one Word of Truth who makes acquist 
 
 Of human words pronounced in our exode, 
 
 From other unto other faith — 
 
 Most holy word, as Philo saith 
 
 (Another Jew) doth knit the rath 
 
 Unto the late with equal breath. 
 
 God grant He may have whispered unto me. 
 For some fulfilment this poor soul to graith ; 
 God grant He may have walked in Galilee, 
 For there belike my love may dwell ; 
 From this full morning breathes the smell 
 Of olden years ; from hidden dell 
 A wind breathes over deserts fell 
 With whitened bones. Farewell, farewell.
 
 14 CHEIST'S COMPANY. 
 
 i Joltn. 
 
 <i2 
 
 NoTHiNa has come to the night except the 'inoon : 
 I see her now; the black and heavy clouds 
 
 Rustle in foam before her, tossed and strewn, 
 
 As when at first God's word the clammy crowds, 
 
 Half mist, half water, and all ghost, upfroze, 
 And bared for man the nether firmament 
 Between the sea and sky, what time the rent 
 
 II. 
 
 Clouds Hke a garment parted from it, and close 
 The dark fogs sauntered earthwards ; now as soon 
 
 Yon clouds part upwards, downwards ; aad outflows 
 Vast amber, and the night in happy boon 
 
 Is happy now, solemn and clear and cold ; 
 
 And full of happy love, broods love — possessed 
 O'er the dark world, like dove upon her nest.
 
 ST. JOHN. 15 
 
 III. 
 
 And I am happy now, so manifold 
 
 The past is, and the present so serene : 
 Thought I my soul was ready for the gold 
 
 Of visions ? but they come not ; therefore e'en 
 As ever, let me think to keep my soul 
 
 Fixed on the whole circumference, which weds 
 
 The centre ever to itself, and spreads 
 
 rv. 
 
 In light like waves for ever; on the whole 
 Of love in love divinely multiplied ; 
 
 Not generated in the onward roll 
 
 Of ages, though to men 'tis centuried; 
 
 But rather in all points of time perfected, 
 As in the bosom of the mind divine. 
 So in the thoughts of life which thence outshine 
 
 V. 
 
 And thirdly, in the sparkles thence deflected 
 Into the bosom of this world of man ; 
 
 In oracles and laws of grace connected 
 
 Through the six ages ; God alone, who can 
 
 Ivuow how the stream of time doth measure round 
 Into a breathing circle held within — 
 The eternal circle which doth both begin
 
 16 CHRIST'S COMPANY. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And end it ; He alone can know tlie sound 
 
 Which that glad circle in its rounding makes 
 In both my ears : for say, was I not found 
 
 In the blest bosom of that love, which slakes 
 Our human thirst, when all the rest at gaze 
 
 "With distant eyes were murmuring. Is it I ? 
 
 Lord, is it I ? And think ye no reply 
 
 \TI. 
 
 Did make me nearer to the hidden ways 
 Of love, no response beat into my ear 
 
 From that deep heart which pulsed the awful rays 
 To the eyes beneath whose cilrve I did upsteer 
 
 My reverend gaze, whilst holding solemn state 
 In the upper room; — no benediction pressed 
 Like a spear's head of bliss into my breast ? 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Yea, truly, as I then beheld elate 
 The very form itself of love indeed ; 
 
 And comprehended in a moment's fate 
 
 That which all comprehending doth exceed, 
 
 By science all incomprehensible ; 
 
 Incomprehensible things comprehending. 
 So ever since that saintly ray's first sending
 
 ST. JOHN. 17 
 
 IX. 
 
 The bliss renews itself in visions stiU, 
 
 And urges me for ever to aspire 
 To that great knowledge which drew out my will 
 
 To ecstasy, as fire to flame draws fire ; 
 And thus last night the triple period 
 
 Saw I of love ; beheld I love in man, 
 
 In angels, and in God; that love began 
 
 In agony, lived in service, but in God 
 Existed in a wise no tongue may tell; 
 
 That, as flowers issue from the underclod, 
 Man's anguish gives angelic love its shell 
 
 Of service ; whence the angels owe to man 
 
 Much bliss ; of love and anguish God doth mix 
 Peace, which He gives His world in golden pyx. 
 
 XI. 
 
 I saw last night three boding crows which ran 
 Before my feet ; I followed, and they sped 
 
 Their flight ; I followed still each flapping van, 
 That washed like nearer waves above my head, 
 
 Like nearer waves of the dark sea of night, 
 Almost against my face their raven spray, 
 As down I followed by a narrow way. 
 
 2
 
 18 CHRIST'S COMPiJNT. 
 
 xn. 
 
 I saw a garden full of flowers so bright, 
 That emeralds set around deep ruby dyes, 
 
 And seed of pearl in golden agraffes piglit, 
 To them were dim; the lion's glowing eyes 
 
 Reflected on the tiger's head and tongue 
 
 Were dim : with starry glow their dartles burst 
 The night mists, and with purple grain traversed. 
 
 xm. 
 
 I saw where some were red as glutted prong, 
 To which the blood doth cling in ruddy beads, 
 
 Sanguinely gleaming, with jagged leaves and long. 
 And whispered one another round the meads, 
 
 Wliich held in fiery travail all their wrath : 
 
 I would have asked if they would wake all night. 
 But got no answer, for to my aifright 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Those were not crows: unto an inner path. 
 
 Which greenly wound within the sanguine belt, 
 
 A shining serpent lured me ; he his bath 
 
 Chose in the coolest green, whose sweets he smelt, 
 
 And there beheld the gecko with his spots 
 
 Move sideways underneath the crumbling frond, 
 Where the white woody fibres blazed the bond
 
 ST. JOHN. 19 
 
 XV. 
 
 Hit in the scrannel wind-bit knees and knots ; 
 
 That serpent flew upon the gecko, swift 
 As evil thoughts do fly on evil thoughts: 
 
 The lizard both its stings at once did lift 
 At head and tail ; "while, circling it, the lithe 
 
 Wheel of the serpent surged and spun and quaked, 
 
 The lizard shuddering like a body naked 
 
 XVI. 
 
 In hues of fear, which down his corse did writhe, 
 
 Alternating in motion, till the snake 
 Struck, and the gecko stung, each almost blithe 
 
 To feel the wounds such threatening coxild make. 
 Thus they two fought together, till I saw 
 
 What I do say, that they did bite and clip 
 
 And poison one another, till the whip 
 
 XVII. , 
 
 Of fury wrought against their nature's law ; 
 
 Immingled each in each they lay deformed, 
 Each of his own dimension ; then the maw 
 
 Of the dragon 'gan to hiss, the snake outwormed 
 Into the dragon's head and double tail ; 
 
 Thus they transchanged their natures, and again 
 
 The snake pursued, the gecko fled in vain. 
 
 2—2
 
 20 CHRIST'S COMPAlSrY. 
 
 XVIII, 
 
 Then from the venom, which did foam and fail 
 Into the ground, my trembling eyeballs saw 
 
 A straight and pulp-leaved shoot spring up, and trail 
 A hurtful form in the thick air, and draw 
 
 Its rankness to the rotten soil beneath: 
 
 It grew with bristly spots of hair, whose tops 
 Bore berries green, gathered in pending drops, 
 
 XIX. 
 
 In act to fall from out their careless sheath, 
 Like caterpillars curled in greenish balls 
 
 Before they loose from plants their greedy. teeth : 
 This plant grew upwards as a serpent crawls, 
 
 And like a lizard was its lateral bend, 
 
 And in its substance 'twas a man ; its face 
 Dwelt upon wickedness, so crafty base, 
 
 XX. 
 
 I thought a mandrake would itself extend 
 No other way from its old womb of earth ; 
 
 Then saw I that this belt of green did trend 
 
 With growths no other than had had their birth 
 
 From the dull strife of those two veuomed things : 
 Very satyrs did they hurtle in the press. 
 And shouldered one another motionless,
 
 ST. JOHN. 21 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Tempting me : one I grasped through all its stings, 
 And crushed my hand into its pulpy cells ; 
 
 But soon drew back in horror, for two wings 
 
 Whirred out and shrieked above me, and the bells 
 
 "Wept in white tears, to which a thousand flies 
 
 Flew, and would blacken them with swarming specks, 
 Before the night could feel white tears to vex 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Her wicked heart : these wings whirred circle-wise 
 
 Above me, and I cannot tell till now 
 What wings they were ; I give you this surmise. 
 
 That they did spring out of the wounded bough, 
 As from Medusa's blood the father sprung 
 
 Of half the Grecian fiends ; then did 1 flee 
 
 From that green hideous belt, and sheltered me 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 In a white brake beyond a space of dung. 
 
 Which wound within the green belt ; there I walked 
 
 Softly awhile before I felt the lung 
 
 Of the deep night breathe on the lengthy stalked 
 
 Flowers, faintly faring in their families : 
 
 As white were these as those I left were green. 
 And bathed in pearl-white light ; and as the scene
 
 22 CHRIST'S COMPANY. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 i 
 
 Of the broad moon, o'erhanging its own rise, 
 "Were to be peopled by tlie swarming brood 
 
 Of larvas, lenures, and anatomies, 
 
 Whicli should o'ercross her, and remain subdued, 
 
 Tortured and writhing in the searching beam ; 
 So saw I o'er these flowers so smoothly hewn 
 A great light rising whiter than the moon, 
 
 XXV. 
 
 So did the fogs and mists take heart to gleam 
 
 Round that white fire, but could not live upon 't ; 
 
 So did the bats and owls leave their night theme 
 And ramp and scream, but could not bear to haunt 
 
 Upon it, but whirred madly up and down, 
 
 And all the ground was fell alive with snakes, 
 So that great terror seized me in the brakes, 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 And I went forward towards that light'ning crown 
 Over the innumerous ghostly flowers of night ; 
 
 Until I reached it, and beheld full blown 
 A mighty flower of flowers dressed in white, 
 
 In very heart of that translucent flame, 
 
 Without one leaf it rose up from the ground, 
 And gloriously issued in its white flower round.
 
 ST. JOHN. 23 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Then even as I looked that flower became 
 A glorious lady, standing in meek pride, 
 
 Upon whose front, " called out of Misraim," 
 I read, written in blood : "I am the Bride 
 
 Wpn by my knight Christ with the sword of wood. 
 The thorns, the nails, the spear." She spoke, and her 
 Two hands fell round the cross, her ransomer. 
 
 xxvin. 
 
 Upon the lotus of her face I stood 
 
 Long meditating ; while I scanned her robes 
 
 Of whitest samite, striped with stripes like blood, 
 And partly soiled with ashes, sad as Job's, 
 
 Whom Satan did reprove with many a stroke ; 
 And all the seam was wrought with little crosses 
 Of brightest flame, which pierced little bosses 
 
 xxix. 
 
 Of hearts that seemed like eyes, and wept and spoke. 
 
 Her form was beautiful and wondrous tall, 
 Her eyes were like half-moons in cloudy smoke, 
 
 Her height was as a pillar in a wall. 
 Her hair was as a flowery banner free. 
 
 Her glory like a fountain in the rocks. 
 
 Her graciousness like vines to tender flocks,
 
 24 CHRIST'S COMPAKT. 
 
 XXX, 
 
 Her eyes like lilies shaken by the bees, 
 Her hair a net of moonbearas in a cloud, 
 
 Her thinness like a row of youngling trees, 
 
 And golden bees hummed round her in a crowd, 
 
 And "pascit inter hlia," she sung. 
 
 Her voice was as the sound of water borne 
 
 From draw-wells deep, and poured among the corn. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Then I, " Ah, loose to me that heavenly tongue. 
 And tell me what it is that I have seen, 
 
 Ah, spouse, ah, sister of my Lord, upstrung 
 In spirit have I reached the very queen. 
 
 As many times before in other scene 
 
 Thou hast enlightened me with heavenly mien. 
 Now mayest thou also to thy servant deign. 
 
 XXXII. * 
 
 " Now tell me what the triple belt doth mean. 
 
 With the three kinds of flowers, red, green, and white ; 
 And wherefore dost thou tarry here, serene. 
 
 Who mightest worship in the very height 
 Beside the rainbow, most blessed ?" She sung, " Behold 
 
 I feed among the lilies, and they grow 
 
 Again, without the sense of any woe."
 
 ST. JOHN. . 25 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 With temperate joy her smile rose gently cold, 
 
 As if the wind should bid a sough-reed work 
 Its circle-ripples in the water-wold ; 
 
 " I am God's love in anguish in the mirk 
 Plains which the king of hell usurped, and hath ; 
 
 And not my lilies do I comfort only, 
 
 But every flower, bell-formed, long- leaved, or conely. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 " The ruddy flowers are sons of strife and wrath, 
 Right seldom do they see the praise of God ; 
 
 The green flowers flourish but for Satan's swath, 
 God doth not bid them occupy the sod: 
 
 Yet one time shall I dwell among them, fain 
 To stay their greenness from its venom food. 
 And Christ's true mysteries shall purge their blood. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 " The white flowers are my children, by the rain 
 
 Of blood and water nourished ; they are sad 
 And faint, thou seest ; but they have life in pain : 
 
 Hereafter shalt thou view me pure and glad, 
 Yea, throned and gloried in the Seraphin, 
 
 My ministers, who guard me in their guise ; 
 
 Christ's body hath chief glory in the skies."
 
 26 Christ's company. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Those golden bees, which all this time within 
 Eeach of her balmy breath clung murmuringly, 
 
 Like dance of gnats, which in the morning spin 
 Their maze beneath some widely spreading tree, 
 
 In spite of aU the spider's cruel eyes. 
 
 And dare not venture foi'th their wanderings 
 Lest the new air should damp their gauzy wings. 
 
 xxxvn. 
 
 These golden bees in such a wondrous wise 
 Did now increase their lustre, and about 
 
 That dame did flash such splendid ministries, 
 
 And spun with such swift motion, that their rout 
 
 Dazzled her from my eyesight clean away ; 
 Nor aught could I discern a little space. 
 But groped in darkness, with a stumbling pace 
 
 xxxvni. 
 
 Leaving that spot and tottering on my way. 
 Until I felt my garment drag behind 
 
 Over rough stones ; and there knelt I to pray. 
 And there the freshness of a river Avind 
 
 Rise to my face, and on my hands and knees 
 I leaned, and felt cold water creep along, 
 Up to my wrists, the while a mighty gong
 
 ST. JOHN. 27 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Burst awfully from out the very breeze : 
 At length I could look up, and to a sea 
 
 Of fire wavetops ; not wavetops of these seas 
 ^gean, Avhite wavetops or black ; the lee 
 
 Shore where I stood received a fiery train 
 Of phosphor billows, which did seethe so free, 
 They made that river boundless as the sea. 
 
 XL. 
 
 Then leaped I in, impelled by secret pain ; 
 
 This was the way in which I won the heaven ; 
 The many billows heard my breath complain. 
 
 Then bore me downwards with a mighty steven : 
 Like a pale man just dead, in peace my corse 
 
 Rolled downwards like a log o'ercharged with weeds 
 
 To where the widening river bed recedes 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Into the ocean ; there the tidal force 
 
 Cast me upon this island lone and drear. 
 
 When as I oped mine eyes I saw the course 
 Of heaven begin : a mountain rose i' the air 
 
 Cut with strict stairs of jasper, and along 
 Its windings downwards coming did I see 
 A heavenly throng in glorious panoply.
 
 28 cheist's company. 
 
 XLH. 
 
 Yea, that great glory sweeping in a throng 
 Of aureoles before me ; saints were there 
 
 Bowed till their wings o'ercrossed them ; while a song 
 Streamed from their lips apart, which never were 
 
 Stirred from that curve of rapture tremulous ; 
 
 And they rose heads o'er heads, on high, on high, 
 Gold, golden glory, to the verge of sky ; 
 
 XLm, 
 
 From which they issued multitudinous ; 
 
 Wherein appeared a glow of ruby bright. 
 And clear sweet sapphire ; 'twas the very house 
 
 Of veiling ; whence on all the raiment white, 
 On golden glories and on golden hair 
 
 Spread thickly like a golden fleece about 
 
 On virgin shoulders, and so threaded out 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 On lilies with their gold crowns crumbled fair, 
 
 And solemn leaves curled with some thought severe, 
 
 Or heads bowed forward with the weight of prayer, 
 On heads uplifted backwards to revere. 
 
 Streamed forth a mighty blessing from above, 
 Streamed forth a sj^lendour from the ruby red, 
 And a great pureness from the sapphire dread.
 
 ST. JOHN. 29 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Ranged row on row they come ; the light of love 
 Burned softly in their eyes, row ranged on row 
 
 Of men in heavenly panoply, a grove 
 
 Of violet plumes and lifted swords ; below 
 
 And- through, 'twixt arm and shoixlder, and between 
 Plumed helm and helm, wild eyes and golden hair 
 And passionate lips ; with throngings here and there, 
 
 XL VI. 
 
 The goodly people of that heavenly queen, 
 Blessedest, sweetest, holiest, fairest, all ; 
 
 Unto me and below me as I ween, 
 
 WLilst I beyond them upwards to the wall 
 
 Of heaven did gaze, where as if unawares 
 A mystery passed in the light of light 
 Along the whole length of the heaven's height. 
 
 XL VII. 
 
 The wall rose solemnly in many squares, 
 
 Of scarlet brick, above a moated space 
 Of water clear ; and by unending stairs 
 
 This company was crossing to my place, 
 Their splendours ever reaching lower and lower, 
 
 I gazing higher and higher, for my chin 
 
 An angel lifted, and 'twas from within
 
 30 CHEIST'S COMPAir?. 
 
 xLviir. 
 
 His golden wings that veiled his sight that hour, 
 
 That I too looked and saw a mystery 
 Proceed, while mightily shone out the flower 
 
 Of the gold wings upon the violet sky. 
 Came in their battles, all the seraphim 
 
 With giant plumes, with glory-beaming eyes. 
 
 Long bands and wrapping robes, in solemn guise, 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Came Michael, and an army followed him ; 
 
 His sword, two-handed, carried he before. 
 His vast eyes on the hilt, his shield's broad rim 
 
 Swung half of it behind him ; in the score 
 Of his knights followed all the cherubim ; 
 
 And half the stars shone in his banner wide 
 
 And in it all the winds were multiplied. 
 
 L. 
 
 Came Gabriel, with his banner over him, 
 
 White Klies, brass-bright flowers, and leaves of green ; 
 A lily, too, he carried seemed to brim, 
 
 With golden flames, which mounted pure and clean 
 To touch his blessed mouth, and then would trim 
 
 Themselves within the lily leaf again : 
 
 Gabriel's fair head sank even with dream-pain
 
 ST. JOHN. 31 
 
 LI. 
 
 Came Raphael, and au army followed him ; 
 
 His staff was in his hand, as he strode on ; 
 His gourd was slung behind ; one mighty limb 
 
 Showed itself bare in passing ; and upon 
 His track came many a knightly palmer grim : 
 
 On horses these, their horses well beseen 
 
 As those who fight on earth for heaven's queen. 
 
 LTI. 
 
 Came Uriel, and his banner over him — 
 
 Eed-pointed flames that lightened on the field 
 
 Of steadfast judgment, sapphirine, till dim 
 The eyesight, and the brain behind it reeled ; 
 
 Behind him walked the strong robed seraphim; 
 A roll and book in his two hands he bore, 
 At which great trembling all my entrails tore. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Came Chamuel, and his banner over him, 
 
 Half red, half blue, and barred with golden bars ; 
 Upon a seat of cloud he seemed to swim, 
 
 Red, yellow, grey, and passed across the stars ; 
 Across his knees, in both his hands, a slim, 
 
 Long quivering rod, with sword leaves at the end ; 
 
 Chamuel went swiftly, seeming to ascend.
 
 32 CHRIST'S COMPANY. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Came Jophiel, and an army followed him : 
 
 In his right hand a sword gleamed sharp and clear, 
 
 Whose edge he felt with his left hand, and grim 
 Smiled he to find it biting very sheer ; 
 
 His thousands thronged behind of seraphim, 
 Armed likewise all ; his fiery footsteps cleft 
 The little white clouds on the pathway weft. 
 
 LV. 
 
 Come Zadkiel, and an army followed him ; 
 
 Closed were their hands, and wings half shut to sail : 
 Grey and much crimson seemed their vesture, dim, 
 
 Much like a dream, as when the light doth fail 
 In melancholy wrack and crimson bar 
 
 Above a storm; his army flitted on 
 
 Like falling leaves ; some sadness, all were gone. 
 
 LVl. 
 
 These all went solemnly, as if to war; 
 
 The seven archangels, with his army each ; 
 They drifted in their march away, till far 
 
 In the blind sky together in one reach. 
 Like a great flight of birds : I watching, saw 
 
 Their great pavilions set far off" like palls, 
 
 Beyond the utmost circle of heaven's walls.
 
 ST. JOHN. 33 
 
 LVII. 
 
 High to the west three cloudlike palls I saw ; 
 
 The highest, foamy flakes of gray and rose; 
 The next long strips of blue Avith saffron flaw ; 
 
 The last of gray, and over it clear glows 
 Of yellow vapour : 'neath them all a vast 
 
 Blue lake, and under it a long grey shore, 
 
 And so another lake, paler; then more 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Of long gray shore, with pale fire-fringe, that passed 
 
 Beneath it, folding in another lake 
 Of water blue ; and to grim hills at last, 
 
 Whose upper parts were white with many a flake 
 Of shining lava ; and their slopes were gray, 
 
 And ended in the earth with one great wild 
 
 Border of lurid sulphur triply piled. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Thither did all God's angels pass away, 
 And then a voice cried, "Woe, Jerusalem : 
 
 And by this time I saw myself; I say, 
 
 Could see myself the way that I saw them, 
 
 Drawn by my two arms upwards, lifted straight 
 Upward, and laid upon a thick red cloud, 
 Like blood soaked into snow, and overbowed 
 
 3
 
 34 cheist's company. 
 
 LX. 
 
 By horrid frost, and bruised by heavy weight: 
 How weak was I with visions, O Lord God, » 
 
 Not having eaten for so long ! my fate 
 Alone of men to quake beneath the rod 
 
 Of coming woes ; yea still to gaze and hear 
 The four beasts answer even whei-e I lay, 
 And great cloud angels rend themselves away 
 
 LXI. 
 
 From the four corners of my cloudy bier : 
 
 Above which rose the great white throne, and shook 
 And muttered like a cauldron: deadly near 
 
 It was ; and straight the senses all forsook 
 This trunk ; like as when foam spreads heavily 
 
 On tides, some spume clings in a small shore-bay 
 
 Some little time, so clung I where I lay. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 I and my cloud : the rest was mystery. 
 
 Oh, humble heart, forbear to speak at all ; 
 Yet verily the love-beam beamed on me. 
 
 Then like a rainbow did that lady call, — 
 " For ever shalt thou teach God's love to man 
 
 In wondrous fulness both of joy and pain. 
 
 Apostle of the Lamb that once was slain,
 
 ST. JOHN. 35 
 
 LXIU. 
 
 " And prophet thou ! — apostle, thou dost scan 
 
 The round of love in triple period, 
 Prophet — not any prophet is so wan — 
 
 Tell out the vials of the wrath of God." 
 I gather that beyond these coasts ^gean 
 
 Beyond this little world of Greeks, where nought 
 
 But man exists, nor knowledge save of thought, 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 The throne of love waves in the empyrean, 
 
 In angel clouds, flame hues, sharp crystal wracks ; 
 
 In mountain spears uplifted as a paean, 
 
 In mighty rivers sent through golden tracks. 
 
 In lands unknown, where, yet a little while 
 And men shall pray: lo, now, a sorrow-smile. 
 The purple cloud swells over isle and isle. 
 
 3—2
 
 36 CHRIST'S COMPAJSTY. 
 
 i P^tn. 
 
 Thou brightness of the everlasting light, 
 Unspotted mirror of the power divine, 
 
 Wisdom and Word, thou Son of God, 
 My heart is broken like a clod, 
 My tears are falling on the sod. 
 Whereas through this long period, 
 
 Says sorrow, 
 
 They all forsook Thee, and alike we fled ; 
 
 Ah, how am I so much behind them all ? 
 Thy Master, ah, thy thrice denied. 
 Even now they shall have crucified ; 
 Wherefore this sobbing may divide 
 The weight thou feelest in heart and side. 
 
 Says sorrow. 
 
 John saith that they who love do fear the most; 
 
 In truth, that very love makes faint and weak ; 
 The truest sometimes fail the most; 
 He left Thee in that traitor host. 
 When torches frayed the olive coast. 
 The oUves witnessing, " Thou know'st," 
 
 In darkness.
 
 ST. PETER. 37 
 
 Saith Philip, that the mortal body weighs 
 The spirit with much trouble to the earth ; 
 The senses flatter and perplex, 
 And lust the understanding wrecks, 
 This oenomel the false flower decks, 
 Wliose sweets rise up through waxen necks 
 
 In darkness. 
 
 Lazarus says he saw a hand stretch forth 
 
 From end to end of heaven instantly; 
 And holy beams were working out 
 Great scrolls that lightened all about, 
 The mighty sky, which seemed, in doubt, 
 To darken inwards, but without 
 
 To glory. 
 
 And on these beams a glory suddenly 
 Rose in the heaven of heavens immeasured height, 
 Which brightened them as if upon 
 Some plain of d«dal flowers, which spun 
 Darkly within the wind, the sun 
 Had paled, and then at once begun 
 
 To glory. 
 
 This comforts me the most, O Master great, 
 Oh, worker ever, as it may be seen, 
 
 In anguish, as Thou dost fidfil 
 
 Composedly the mighty will. 
 
 Which pierceth as a mighty drill 
 
 The fashions of the ages, till 
 
 Through ages
 
 38 CHEIST'S COMPAIIY. 
 
 The one design connects : ah, still the sod 
 Bids me drain out my tears and wash it through ; 
 O Lord, it bids mine eyes renew 
 Their sorrow, for thine eyes so true, 
 As the sad rain might mesh the hue 
 Of flowers tenderer than grew 
 
 Through ages. 
 
 Sadly the grassy sod sobs to the leaves ; 
 Come down to me, and I will bury you ; 
 
 In my deep bosom* ye shall lie ; 
 
 Too long ye wave and flag on high ; 
 
 The dews drop softly from the sky 
 
 Like syllables, "weep, weep, and die;" 
 
 The leaves fall. 
 
 The little trefoils twinkle their sweet eyes ; 
 
 The little banks of grass together thrust 
 
 With shrivelled points, wiU never tear you, 
 On their small poignards they shall bear you. 
 Frittered like flame their points shall spare you. 
 The binding weed shall gently snare you 
 
 , (The leaves fall) 
 
 Down to my fresh moss heart, where ye shall watch 
 Your scarlet purple mother branches gleam ; 
 While worm and emmet work anon. 
 To trace in each its skeleton. 
 And all heaven's curdling clouds roll on 
 O'er fruits which, lurid, sanguine, dun, 
 
 (The leaves fall,)
 
 ST. PETER. 39 
 
 Droop lower and lower towards me : ah, come down, 
 Ye stay and flutter all too long ! the fig 
 
 Swoops in large circles, and where frets 
 
 The anxious vine, she sadly sets 
 
 The ashy spider with his nets 
 
 To do her watching while she lets 
 
 The leaves fall. 
 
 The hoary nightshade drops her berries here, 
 The tragacanth with purple eyeHds weeps. 
 The ivy-thorn his leaves depends 
 To where the comfort woodbine wends 
 To rescue from the briar her friends ; 
 'Tis sadly thinking for what ends 
 
 'Twas borrowed. 
 
 For my Lord's brow — my tears fall last of all ; 
 My bitter weeping closes up the night ; 
 
 I cannot hear, I weep so sore 
 
 The thorn lamenting evermore 
 
 To thin leaves stirring on the floor 
 
 Of moss that trembles to the core, 
 
 'Twas borrowed. 
 
 Yet have I secret comforts in my soul, 
 
 I think my soul finds comfort in strange ways, 
 
 Where others would but die, or sink 
 
 Depth after depth from the first brink 
 
 Of sinning ; this, as I must think. 
 
 Doth distance me at least a link 
 
 From others,
 
 40 CHRIST'S COMPANY. 
 
 From traitorous movitlis which do but hide the truth, 
 As clouds that hold no water hide the heavens, 
 And slip from guilt to guilt hke beasts 
 In tracks, as Pharisees and priests, 
 Who strive the greatest's, not the least's, 
 Sedile to occupy at feasts 
 
 From others. 
 
 Then jostle one another and devour ; 
 
 So these composed souls, being set one way. 
 If they transgress, pursue the wrong 
 Sleekly from guile to guile along 
 A path well downwards, in a throng — 
 So common 'tis — like swine the prong 
 
 Drives onward 
 
 Without reprieve ; they do but overbear 
 
 The one course which their nature gave at first, 
 
 While I, though in me was made breach, 
 
 Because I hate them, rally reach ; 
 
 I fell before their hoot and screech, 
 
 Because I hate the ways that each 
 
 Drives onward. 
 
 Oh, coward, coward, coward ! But this I know. 
 That love in God is goodness, and in Christ 
 That love is mercy, and in man 
 That love is sorrow ; I shall plan, 
 Unplan, and grasp, and gasp, and scan, 
 From this my life out ; who shall ban 
 
 My sorrow ?
 
 ST. PETER. 41 
 
 Not earth that drinks my tears ; not heavenly sky, 
 Not they who took with me the bread and wine ; 
 
 Perhaps not God who looks on me, 
 
 The Father, thinking of the tree 
 
 Of cursing in me rooted, see 
 
 The flinders ; not the victim. He, 
 
 My sorrow I
 
 42 CHRIST'S COMPANY. 
 
 H- Parn Parjdul^nc* 
 
 Kneeling before the altar step, 
 
 Her white face stretched above her hands ; 
 In one great Hne her body thin 
 Rose robed right upwards to her chin ; 
 Her hair rebelled in golden bands, 
 And filled her hands ; 
 
 Which likewise held a casket rare 
 
 Of alabaster at that tide ; 
 Simeon was there and looked at her, 
 Trancedly kneeling, sick and fair ; 
 Three parts the light her features tried, 
 She rest implied. 
 
 Strong singing reached her from within, 
 Discordant, but with weighty rhymes; 
 Her swaying body kept the stave ; 
 Then all the woods about her wave, 
 She heard, and saw, in mystic mimes, 
 Herself three times.
 
 ST. MAEY MAGDALENE. 43 
 
 Once, in the doorway of a house, 
 
 With yellow lintels painted fair. 
 Very far oflp, where no men pass, 
 Green and red banners hung in mass 
 Above scorched woodwork wormed and bare, 
 And spider's snare. 
 
 « 
 
 She, scarlet in her form and gold, 
 
 Fallen down upon her hands and knees. 
 Her arms and bosom bare and white, 
 Her long hair streaming wild with light. 
 Felt all the waving of the trees. 
 And hum of bees. 
 
 A rout of mirth within the house, 
 
 Upon the ear of madness fell, 
 Stunned with its dread, yet made intense ; 
 A moment, and might issue thence 
 Upon the prey they quested well. 
 Seven fiends of hell. 
 
 She grovelled on her hands and knees, 
 She bit her breath against that rout ; 
 Seven devils inhabited within, 
 Each acting upon each his sin. 
 Limb locked in limb, snout turning snout. 
 And these would out.
 
 44 CHRIST'S COMPAIfY. 
 
 Twice, and the woods lay far behind, 
 
 Gold corn spread broad from slope to slope ; 
 The copses rounded in faint light, 
 Far from her pathway gleaming white, 
 Which gleamed and wound in narrow scope, 
 Her narrow hope. 
 
 She on the valley stood and hung, 
 
 Then downward swept with steady haste ; 
 The steady wind behind her sent 
 Her robe before her as she went ; 
 Descending on the wind, she chased 
 The form she traced. 
 
 She, with her blue eyes blind with flight. 
 
 Rising and falling in their cells. 
 Hands held as though she played a harp, 
 Teeth glistening as in laughter sharp. 
 Flew ghostly on, a strength like hell's, 
 When it rebels. 
 
 Behind her, flaming on and on. 
 
 Rushing and streaming as she flew ; 
 Moved over hill as if through vale, 
 Through vale as if o'er hill, no fail ; 
 Her bosom trembled as she drew 
 Her long breath through.
 
 ST. MARY MAGDALENE. 45 
 
 Thrice, "with an arcliway overhead, 
 
 Beneath, what might have seemed a tomb ; 
 White garments fallen fold on fold. 
 As if limbs yet were in their hold, 
 Drew the light farther in the gloom. 
 Of the dark room. 
 
 She, fallen without thought or care, 
 Heard, as it were, a ceaseless flow 
 Of converse muttered in her ear. 
 Like waters so1)bing wide and near, 
 About things happened long ago 
 Of utter woe.
 
 46 CHRIST'S COMPAIJT. 
 
 \t loin Hlotluiii at ilu dfrojis. 
 
 -•o*- 
 
 Of Mary's pains may now learn whoso will, 
 
 When she stood imderneath the groaning tree 
 Round which the true Vine clung : three hours the mill 
 
 Of hours rolled round ; she saw in visions three 
 The shadows walking underneath the sun, 
 
 And these seemed all so very faint to be. 
 That she could scarcely tell how each begun, 
 
 And went its way, minuting each degree 
 That it existed on the dial stone : 
 
 For drop by drop of wine unfalteringly, 
 Not stroke by stroke in blood, the three hours gone 
 
 She seemed to see. 
 
 Three hours she stood beneath the cross ; it seemed 
 
 To be a wondi-ous dial stone, for while 
 Upon the two long arms the sunbeams teemed, 
 
 So was the head-piece hke a centre stile ; 
 Like to the dial where the judges sat 
 
 Upon the grades, and the king crowned the pile, 
 In Zion town, that most miraculous plat 
 
 On which the shadow backward did defile ;
 
 THE HOLY MOTHER AT THE CROSS. 47 
 
 And now towards the thii-d hour the sun enornie 
 Dressed up all shadow to a bickering smile 
 
 I' the heat, and in its midst the form of form 
 Lay like an isle. 
 
 Because that time so heavily beat and slow 
 
 That fancy in each beat was come and gone ; 
 Because that light went singing to and fro, 
 
 A blissful song in every beam that shone ; 
 Because that on the flesh a httle tongue 
 
 Instantly played, and spake in lurid tone ; 
 Because that saintly shapes with harp and gong 
 
 Told the three hours, whose telling made them one ; 
 Half hid, involved in alternating beams, 
 
 Half mute, they held the plectrum to the zone. 
 Therefore, as God her senses shield, it seems 
 
 A dial stone. 
 
 Three hours she stood beside the cross ; it seemed 
 
 A splendid flower ; for red dews on the edge 
 Stood dropping ; petals doubly four she deemed 
 
 Shot out like steel knives from the central wedge. 
 Which quadranted their perfect circle so 
 
 As if four anthers should a vast flower hedge 
 Into four parts, and in its bosom, lo, 
 
 The form lay, as the seed-heart holding pledge 
 Of future flowers ; yea, in the midst was borne 
 
 The head low drooped upon the swollen ledge 
 Of the torn breast ; there was the ring of thorn ; 
 
 This flower was fledge.
 
 48 CHRIST'S COMPANY. 
 
 Because her woe stood all about her now, 
 
 No longer like a stream as ran the hour ; 
 Because her cleft heart parted into two, 
 
 No more a mill-wheel spinning to time's power ; 
 Because all motion seemed to be suspense ; 
 
 Because one ray did other rays devour ; 
 Because the sum of tilings rose o'er her sense, 
 
 She standing 'neath its dome as in a bower ; 
 Because from one thing all things seemed to spiune, 
 
 As from one mouth the fountain's hollow shower ; 
 Therefore it seemed His and her own heart's bloom, 
 
 A splendid flower. 
 
 Now it was finished ; shrivelled were the leaves 
 
 Of that pain-flower, and wasted all its bloom. 
 She felt what she had felt then ; as receives, 
 
 "When heaven is capable, the cloudy stroom 
 The edge of the white garment of the moon ; 
 
 So felt she that she had received that doom ; 
 And as an outer circle spins in tune, 
 
 Born of the inner on the sky's wide room, 
 Thinner and wider, that doom's memories, 
 
 Broken and thin and wild, began to come 
 As soon as this : St. John unwrapt his eyes, 
 
 And led her home.
 
 49 
 
 i> m Ji. 
 
 3l Sent^tt Pgdug. 
 
 / FIDES IN DEO OPTIMA. 
 
 In the dread Patmos of the town 
 
 I heard a voice from heaven corae down ; 
 
 Then found me in a desert place 
 
 Of kneaded clay-field, poor and base, 
 
 With a crowd flowing at its edge. 
 
 Then did the voice great things allege 
 
 Against the town in bitter rhyme. 
 
 The Voice. 
 
 God his eternity on time, 
 
 God his infinity on space, 
 
 Casts : God proceeds in all earth's ways, 
 
 In aU that He hath made God lurks, 
 
 He waiteth man in all his works : 
 
 4
 
 50 A LEXTEN MYSTERY. 
 
 Dost thou in anywise observe 
 His presence as the living nerve 
 Of life, and dost thou reverence 
 For His sake every form of sense, 
 And strive to take each for thine own ? 
 
 Jonah. 
 We answer not, we know not j one 
 With twisted eyes of blue I saw 
 Look this way for a moment; awe 
 Lowered for a moment half his lids, 
 But he knows not ; that other bids 
 Thee mock thyself with what he is, 
 Being a fiend with infamies 
 Unnumbered eating up his soul ; 
 But all know nothing, in the whole 
 Mass of them is not one that knows. 
 
 The Voice. 
 How mightily heaven overflows. 
 How countlessly doth God indite 
 Himself in darkness and in light. 
 And all that grows between these two — 
 Star-formed, and written on the blue 
 Void of the all-embracing shade — 
 Shade-formed, and solemnly inlaid 
 Between bright forms of life that crawl 
 In and out the mother womb of all 
 The solemn all-embracing shade.
 
 A LENTEN MYSTERY. 51 
 
 Jonah. 
 
 We know not, Lord, what Thou hast said, 
 Ah, what, O Lord, can these men know ? 
 
 The Voice. 
 
 God seemed as man long time ago. 
 His going was in Eden heard 
 Among the trees, his presence scared 
 Blood-shedding Cain ; again, again 
 Godi felt as man, felt human pain. 
 And pity, wrath, and jealousy ; 
 God spake as man, this finally : 
 The Word made flesh among us dwelt. 
 Great glory from the heavens did melt 
 Into the blood of human kings. 
 
 Jonah. 
 
 Ah, now we wake, yet the lie clings 
 Sordidly, makes the truth a lie. 
 
 The Voice. 
 
 Which three things live continually, 
 God seemed as man, yea felt, yea lived ; 
 Still, still God walketh undeceived 
 About the Eden of his earth, 
 And still holds solemn wrath or mirth 
 At things which happen in this time ; 
 
 4—2
 
 52 A LENTEN MYSTERY. 
 
 And still He liveth in man's clime, 
 And speaketli words wliicla do remain ; 
 Christ-God hatli come to make them plain, 
 Christ-God, to seal this sacrament. 
 
 Jonah. 
 Alive now ? What is their intent ? 
 Crossing their thumbs with writhing lips, 
 And eyes set grimly. One upwhips 
 His arm-long club, and fell and full 
 Closes upon the shaggy skull 
 Of his own ass, already cut 
 To the white bone. 
 
 The Voice. 
 This doth outshut 
 All infinites, that Christ left His, 
 Yet brings it to His sacrifice, 
 (O mystery of mysteries. 
 Leaving His infinities. 
 And entering into space and time, 
 The Godhead !) this transcends sublime, 
 That through man's nature He transfuse 
 What soul and corpse alike renews, 
 The perfect God and perfect Man ! 
 
 Jonah. 
 Now this enrages, Avho can scan 
 Such rage, and us not hate therefore ?
 
 a lenten mystery. 53 
 
 The Voice. 
 
 All-loving life, He doth restore 
 
 Through man's own spirit-spring of faith, 
 
 "What man himself hath lost in death, 
 
 The life eternal, incorrupt. 
 
 Which He, all-living love, once scooped 
 
 From His own being, which remains 
 
 Sunk, but not lost, amid the pains 
 
 Of death long dying, which revives 
 
 Under His cordials, breaks its gyves, 
 
 Adds to itself all foi-ms of life. 
 
 Jonah. 
 
 Ah, foully we express our strife, 
 Ah, sicklily we grow malign. 
 
 The Voice, 
 
 And stands at last, complex and fine, 
 
 A perfect man, recovered all. 
 
 And strong, yea, strong enough to fall 
 
 Full-breasted on the Infinite. 
 
 Know ye these issues, feel their light, 
 
 Breaking from far for those who sit 
 
 In darkness ; how that Christ doth knit 
 
 In love to love the life once lost ? 
 
 Rage, chafe ye then, because this most 
 
 Solemn of things in light is lit ?
 
 54: A LENTEN MYSTERY. 
 
 Jonah. 
 Behold a mountain, chasm-split, 
 Pine-darkened, ashen with white snows ; 
 In every gash a snow-stream flows, 
 A snow-veil slowly breaks and weeps, 
 A snow-rock ghostly wakes and sleeps ; 
 Bears limp along its pathless snow, 
 Along its deserts white wolves go. 
 Like flights of ravens in the air ; 
 I see four men come forth and glare 
 From grisly caverns where they lie: 
 These gave Christ-God his agony — 
 Pontius Pilatus, and Judas, 
 Herodes, Caiaphas. 
 
 Judas Iscariotes, Caiaphas, Pontius Pilatus, Herodes. 
 
 Judas. 
 Take thou this money, Caiaphas, 
 I pray thee now for shame, whereas 
 Thou hast betrayed me ; I, alas, 
 My Master dear betrayed. 
 
 Caiaphas. 
 Much gold to many paid I when 
 I was made priest, to many men ; 
 To thee for Christ but pieces ten 
 Of silver thrice I paid.
 
 A LENTEN MYSTERY. 55 
 
 Pontius Pilatus. 
 
 One came and begged his body here 
 To lay it in a sepulchre ; 
 I granted freely his desire, 
 
 And they have buried him. 
 
 Herodes. 
 
 It is great marvel he is dead ; 
 Three years ago he came and said 
 That he went up to lay his head 
 Within Jerusalem.
 
 56 
 
 (Buni4^* 
 
 -«t>*- 
 
 When her holy life was ended 
 
 Eunice lay upon her side ; 
 When her holy death was ended 
 
 Eunice died. 
 
 Then a spirit raised her spirit 
 From the urn of dripping tears : 
 
 And a spirit from her spirit 
 Soothed the fears. 
 
 And upon her spirit lightly — 
 
 Spirit upon spirit-wrote ; 
 And she rose to worlds eternal, 
 
 Taking note. 
 
 First she joined the world eternal 
 Which is never seen of men ; 
 
 Through its climes she wandered lightly, 
 Happy then.
 
 EFisriCE. 57 
 
 Then she learned a song of comfort 
 
 For the loves she left behind, 
 Children kissing one another, 
 
 Husband kind. 
 
 I have joined the world of spirit, 
 
 Wliich the flesh does never see ; 
 But to you a realm is open 
 
 As to me. 
 
 World invisible of spirit 
 
 Doth invisible remain 
 Not less certainly to angels 
 
 Than to men. 
 
 As you see it not on earth 
 
 I behold it not in heaven ; 
 Yet to both of us alike 
 
 It is given. 
 
 For we both may walk within it. 
 
 And meet blindfolded above ; 
 'Tis the world of thought and feeling 
 
 And of love. 
 
 Enter then this world of spirit ; 
 
 It is yours by right of birth. 
 Mine by death : let heaven possess it, 
 
 And let earth.
 
 58 
 
 9 r i[ a m. 
 
 -»<»- 
 
 With camel's hair I clothed my skin, 
 I fed my mouth with honey wild ; 
 
 And set me scarlet wool to spin, 
 
 And all my breast with hyssop filled ; 
 
 Upon my brow and cheeks and chin 
 A bird's blood spilled. 
 
 I took a broken reed to hold, 
 I took a sponge of gall to press ; 
 
 I took weak water- weeds to fold 
 About my sacrificial dress. 
 
 I took the grasses of the field, 
 
 The flax was boiled upon my crine ; 
 
 And ivy thorn and wild grapes healed 
 To make good wine. 
 
 I took my scrip of manna sweet. 
 My cruse of water did I bless ; 
 
 I took the white dove by the feet. 
 And flew into the wilderness.
 
 DEEAM. 59 
 
 II. 
 
 The tiger came and played ; 
 
 Uprose the lion in his mane ; 
 
 The jackal's tawny nose 
 
 And sanguine dripping tongue 
 
 Out of the desert rose 
 
 And plunged its sands among; 
 
 The bear came striding o'er the desert plain. 
 
 Uprose the horn and eyes 
 
 And quivering flank of the great unicorn. 
 
 And galloped round and round ; 
 
 Uprose the gleaming claw 
 
 Of the leviathan, and woimd 
 
 In steadfast march did di-aw 
 
 Its course away beyond the desert's bourn. 
 
 I stood within a maze 
 
 Woven round about me by a magic art, 
 
 And ordered circle-wise: 
 
 The bear more near did tread, 
 
 And with two fiery eyes, 
 
 And with a wolfish head. 
 
 Did close the circle round in every part. 
 
 ra. 
 With scarlet corded horn, 
 With frail wrecked knees and stumbling pace, 
 The scapegoat came : 
 
 His eyes took flesh and spirit dread in flame 
 At once, and he died looking towards my face.
 
 60 
 
 ik Wikm[ii*<i 4uniii;al 
 
 For me, for me, two horses wait, 
 
 Two horses stand before my gate : 
 
 Their vast black plumes on high are cast, 
 
 Their black manes swing in the midnight blast, 
 
 Eed sparkles from their eyes fly fast. 
 
 But can they drag the hearse behind, 
 
 Whose black plumes mystify the wind ? 
 
 What a thing for this heap of bones and hair ! 
 
 Despair, despair 1 
 
 Yet think of half the world's winged shapes 
 
 Which have come to thee wondering : 
 
 At thee the terrible idiot gapes. 
 
 At thee the running devil japes, 
 
 And angels stoop to thee and sing 
 
 From the soft midnight that enwraps 
 
 Their limbs, so gently, sadly fair ; — 
 
 Thou seest the stars shine through their hair. 
 
 The blast again, ho, ho, the blast ! 
 
 I go to a mansion that shall outlast ; 
 
 And the stoled priest who steps before 
 
 Shall turn and welcome me at the door.
 
 61 
 
 |l«p£rtiott. 
 
 There are two natures make one soul : 
 The sea with many floods, 
 The earth with countless woods : 
 
 Bring the waves of the sea, 
 
 Sings the earth, unto me ; 
 
 Bring the waves of the tree 
 
 Unto me, says the sea. 
 
 There are two halves that make the whole : 
 The heaven with clouds that drops, 
 The earth with mountain tops. 
 
 Crying, Give me of the cloud 
 My nakedness to shroud, 
 "While the heaven replies as loud. 
 Let me rest each cloud — each cloud. 
 
 And what art thou, O Death ? 
 For thou seemest to gather breath 
 From the crystal spasm 
 
 Of the mountain, 
 Leavinc; bare a chasm 
 
 White and lonely as a fountain.
 
 62 EEFLECTION. 
 
 Sea from land — what remain ? 
 Desert cavern, arid plain, 
 And the tears that pour 
 From the tottering shore. 
 
 Heaven from earth — 
 What result has birth ? 
 Earth is made hell, 
 Is heaven made earth ? 
 
 Thou art sprung from the writhing 
 Of the lonely low or high thing ; 
 And, O Death, thou art cursed 
 To be last, or to be first.
 
 63 
 
 i^h f^uFfj WiovU. 
 
 Art thou standing on the shore 
 Which the spirits tremble o'er, 
 Ere they take the plunge for ever 
 In the bottomless receiver : 
 This commencing dissidence 
 Ere it cleave us hence and hence ; 
 Ere the first hour stays its sands 
 Since the life-pulse left thy hands ; 
 Art thou there, and dost thou cast 
 Thy strange glance, the first and last, 
 On the world which thou didst fill 
 "With thy essence : on my will — 
 'Twas an ocean, and its tide 
 Euled by thee: therein did ride 
 Fruitful reason — 'twas an isle 
 Eendered happy by thy smile; 
 On each process of my brain 
 'Twas the travailing in pain 
 Of creations which uprose. 
 Founded each on other's close: 
 
 V^f 
 
 fv3v
 
 64 THE soul's world. 
 
 On my hopes, my joys, my pains; — 
 These were mountains, valleys, plains ; 
 On my intellect whicli fed ; — 
 'Twas a river's sinuous head 
 Eating out into the sea: 
 On my spirit's entity ; 
 Which embraced as its own essence 
 Thy whole mystery of presence; — 
 'Twas the full and rounded sphere 
 In its ether bright and clear. 
 Many a chasm in this thy world 
 Mayest thou view in crystal furled, 
 Many a rent and gristly knot, 
 Many a melting lava grot. 
 Many a white and ghastly waste 
 In thy smiling garden placed, 
 Many an earthquake catching breath 
 * From the savage fires beneath. 
 Many a seam of pain and crime, 
 Much of wreck and much of time. 
 Ah, sweet soul of all, then turn 
 From the dark things thou must descern ; 
 Quit me not in hate for ever. 
 Plunge not in the deathless river 
 Of the bottomless receiver.
 
 65 
 
 Pie Mantl([rer» 
 
 Oh, that remote and lonely shore, 
 Between the river and the sea, 
 Towards which my boat was drifting me. 
 
 Never again, oh, nevermore 
 Let me behold it : 'tis the grave 
 
 Of a cast nature ; yet I have 
 
 Dream times to think of it, and feel 
 
 How sweet beneath its cirque of trees 
 The islet lay ! The sunbeams stole 
 
 Downwards, and strove to uncongeal 
 The voiceless magic which did weave 
 
 The lonely island to my soul. 
 
 The sunset crowned its cirque of trees. 
 
 Upon its limbs did shadow cleave, 
 And round its sloping terraces 
 The mists curled like a lawny frieze. 
 
 5
 
 66 THE WAJSTDERER. 
 
 II. 
 
 My shallop parted the tall rushes, * 
 
 The boat's head rustled through the flags ; 
 I was alone, 
 All, all were gone ; 
 Dead ere its prime, 
 The morning time ; 
 Strange bearded men 
 Were out of ken ; 
 I had rowed with them 
 Up the river amain ; 
 1 had fled from them 
 Down the river again. 
 I grasped the overhanging bushes, 
 And drew myself upon the crags. 
 
 III. 
 
 I came beside a still lagoon 
 
 Of inky blackness, whereupon, 
 Like a lake-lily, lay the moon. 
 
 White, ere her reign of gold begun. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I came through vales of level flowers, 
 Sunstruck with glory o'er the grass, 
 Clipped by the winds and the mists in a mass, 
 
 And silkily, sulkily, hued for the showers.
 
 THE WAJSTDEKER. 67 
 
 I looked upon the wildness blooming, 
 At thronging stems to distance looming, 
 Dim-outlined shadows nearer coming, 
 Dark foliage, more darkly glooming. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Then said I, " Every day will bring 
 From the wide rolling of the waves, 
 From the Avarm breathing of the winds, 
 Some fresh delight, some newer thing, 
 
 And nature will increase in kinds, 
 And I will be her king. 
 
 Yes ; field, and rock, and flower, and tree. 
 Shall with my presence peopled be. 
 As with a deeper entity. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I had been passion- seared, and tost 
 On the blind waves of accident ; 
 Had played with chance and always lost, 
 
 Had loved, and been heart-shent ; 
 Had tasted pleasure's after-pain. 
 
 Had looked for sweet, and found but gall, 
 Had wrestled with my fellow-men, ^ 
 
 And risen baffled from the fall : 
 
 I said, I here will have abode, 
 Where never foot of man hath trod. 
 
 5—2
 
 68 THE WANDERER. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And I will love all beauty here, 
 But beauty sliall be everywhere ; 
 
 And over all my love shall change, 
 Shall flit and hover ceaselessly. 
 
 And broaden with its wider range. 
 Always intense, but wildly free ; 
 
 But never will I seek return 
 For equal love so widely spent, 
 
 Oh, never, never let me bum 
 With special passion in me pent ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 1 had fled away, ere my heart should change, 
 From the men who hated me more and more ; 
 They toiled afloat 
 In their labouring boat. 
 In their solemn copes, 
 With their arms Hke ropes : 
 They sat in their ranks 
 On the rowing planks, 
 And they rose and fell 
 To the time of the oar ; 
 Black eyes and curt hair ; 
 Black eyes watched me well 
 On wave and on shore, 
 Everywhere !
 
 THE WAJSTDERER. 69 
 
 I had fled away that my heart might range, 
 From the unendurable sorrow it bore. 
 
 Now very stilly 
 
 Lay the lake lily, 
 
 And not so chilly 
 
 The covert hilly; 
 
 The meadow riUy 
 
 Was not so chilly. 
 I had fled away with the presage strange, 
 Of rest to be won on a secret shore. 
 
 X. 
 
 Through forests wide I wandered, 
 
 Where large-leaved flowers had grown to head, 
 
 Where fluctuated endless shade. 
 
 XI. 
 
 And everywhere my human sense. 
 Fraught with its dread intelligence. 
 Worked with the power reflected thence. 
 
 xn. 
 
 I said, " These rocks, and trees, and flowers 
 Have grown and changed, but still remained 
 
 Mere daughters of the suns and showers, 
 Most beautiful, but ne'er have gained 
 
 The presence of a human soul,
 
 70 THE WANDERER. 
 
 They know not pity, they know not dole, 
 
 They know not passion's mystery. 
 Lo ! I am here a human soul, 
 And I will clothe them in human stole, 
 Will give to each most subtle reach 
 Of sorrow and of sympathy." 
 
 xin. 
 So day by day I wrought my will 
 
 Upon wide nature's open face; 
 My thought informed each particle 
 
 Of being throvighout all the place ; 
 For day by day, when the great sun 
 
 Was greatest, would I keep the shade 
 Of rocky hollows in the dun 
 
 And sleepy light by lichen made, 
 And there my thoughts Avould truant run, 
 
 While wreaths of fancy round me played. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 But when the dews had fallen soft. 
 
 And night had fallen on the dews ; 
 And when the moon was far aloft. 
 
 Then forth I wandered, not to lose 
 The thoughtfulness of brooding rest, 
 
 For still emotive power would ooze 
 From the full feelings of my breast; 
 
 But forth I went through dell and croft. 
 Through all the gloom from east to west.
 
 THE WAJTOEREK. 71 
 
 XV. 
 
 Oft by the marsh's quaggy edge 
 
 I heard the wind-swept rushes fall ; 
 Where through an overgrowth of sedge 
 
 Eolled the slow mere funereal: 
 I heard the music of the leaves 
 
 Unto the night wind's fingering, 
 I saw the dropping forest eaves 
 
 Make in the mere their water-ring. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 And so I fared, until, upstaying 
 
 My thoughts on richer blooms, that gained 
 My eyes, and thence no further strajdng, 
 
 Wliole solemn hours have I remained. 
 Wreaths of fine fancies round me playing, 
 
 With advents strange and vanishings ; 
 Half in my inmost soul delaying, 
 
 Half bodied upon outer things. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 But day by day about the marge 
 
 Of this slow-brooding dreaminess, 
 The shadow of the past lay large. 
 
 And brooded low and lustreless; 
 Then vanished as I looked on it. 
 
 Yet back returned with wider sweep. 
 And broad upon my soul would sit. 
 
 Like a storm-cloud above the deep.
 
 72 THE WAJ^DEKER. 
 
 XVIII. 
 Yea, subtle, word-banned memories, 
 
 Heart-surges of black bitterness, 
 Untouched by sorrow's softer dyes, 
 
 About my brain would throng and press : 
 I found I could not alchemize 
 
 And purge away the dross of facts, 
 And I was mad for human cries. 
 
 For human sorrows, hiiman acts. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " I see," I cried, " the waste of waves, 
 
 That shifts from out the western tracts; 
 I see the sun that ever laves 
 
 With liquid gold their cataracts; 
 And night by night I see the moon 
 
 Career and thwart the waves of cloud ; 
 I see great nature burgeon 
 
 Through all her seasons, laughter-browed. 
 But what are these things unto me ? 
 
 They lack not me, they are full-planned. 
 I must have love in my degree, 
 
 A human heart, a human hand ; 
 For oh ! 'tis better far to share, 
 
 Though life all dark, all bitter be. 
 With human bosoms human care : " 
 
 I launched my boat upon the sea.
 
 73 
 
 i« filijiiim of f otuj. 
 
 -*o*- 
 
 What I had seen a far-away white cloud 
 
 So long, had grown a mountain by the morn ; 
 
 A thousand torrents at its feet were loud, 
 And rolled one volume o'er its lowest horn, 
 
 Which gloried like one whitened wave of sea; 
 
 And far above the mountain crags were pitched, 
 Like a white mocking hand which beckoned me 
 
 In gesture, answered by the boat's prow twitched 
 
 Back o'er the lake, leaving me standing there 
 Alone upon the taunting mountain shore: 
 
 Now for my life, methought ; and first my care 
 Was given to tread the shattered valley o'er, 
 
 With its rude waste of stones like lions couched 
 Upon the desert ; then 1 reached, indeed. 
 
 The mountain, where its mighty spur debouched, 
 A vast earth dragon, whose coils half recede
 
 74 THE PILGRIM OF LOVE. 
 
 Into the bowels of its awful motlier ; 
 
 And on its bulk my little patliway wound ; *■ 
 
 Point after point of grisly light did smother 
 
 The horror which they could not fully sound. 
 
 And I ascended till I met the wrath 
 
 Of white snow, dabbled on the gnashing teeth 
 
 Of slate rocks in the avalanche's path ; 
 
 Then stayed, and looked above, and looked beneath. 
 
 Above — stand up the crystal spears of rock, 
 Heaven's army, ever charging into light, 
 
 Ketreating into cloud ; not less than flock 
 
 Of dreadful angels from the Sapphirine height ; 
 
 And not in that frank mystery, pretence 
 Of wing or palm, or radiant hands or feet : 
 
 I see the clear-aired crystal, and the sense 
 Of spiritual presence grows complete. 
 
 Below — two figures in the morning mist 
 
 Move up for ever to the mountain's shoulder, 
 
 On which my rest is settled ; then they list, 
 To fade for ever over spur and boulder. 
 
 I cannot track the light within their eyes, 
 I cannot track the marching of their feet ; 
 
 I only know, whenever they arise. 
 
 The sense of human presence grows complete.
 
 75 
 
 Itiuttting. 
 
 Over the hill T have watched the dawning, 
 
 I have watched the dawn of morning light, 
 
 Because I cannot well sleep by night, 
 
 Every day I have watched the dawning. 
 
 And to-day very early my window shook 
 
 With the cold wind fresh from the ghastly brook, 
 
 And I left my bed to watch the dawning. 
 
 Very cold was the light, very pale, very still. 
 
 And the wind blew great clouds over the hill 
 
 Towards the wet place of the dying dawning ; 
 
 It blew them over towards the east 
 
 In heavier charge as the light increased, 
 
 From the very death of the dying dawning. 
 
 Whence did the clouds come over the hiU ? 
 
 I cannot tell, for no clouds did fill 
 
 The clear space opposite the dawning 
 
 Right over the hill, long, low, and pearl-grey, 
 
 Set in the wind to live as it may ;
 
 76 DAWNING. 
 
 And as the light increased from the dawning, 
 
 The cold, cold brook unto my seeming 
 
 Did intermit its ghastly gleaming 
 
 And ran forth brighter in the dawning. 
 
 The wall-fruit stretched along the wall, 
 
 The pear-tree waved its banners tall ; 
 
 Then close beside me in the dawning, 
 
 I saw thy face so stonily grey, 
 
 And the close lips no word did say. 
 
 The eyes confessed not in the dawning. 
 
 I saw a man ride through the light 
 
 Upon the hill-top, out of sight 
 
 Of me and thee and all the dawning.
 
 77 
 
 §\\i[ fob f unJiii0ii. 
 
 Blood, blood, blood in the morning sky, 
 
 Dropping from the clouds on liigh 
 
 Down into the sea beneath. 
 
 Death, death is in the slaty storm, 
 
 Whose latest volume vanisheth ; 
 
 In the heart of its wild form 
 
 It rolls the fragment of my wreck : 
 
 The moon above it waits to die. 
 
 Waning to a ghostly speck 
 
 In the bloody morning sky, 
 
 Ghost of those who fled in death 
 
 And whose grave is underneath. 
 
 I am very lone. 
 
 The cold blue billows race along 
 
 These abject sands in ceaseless throng ; 
 
 If the sun should rise to-day 
 
 They will be purple and scarlet grey : 
 
 I only feel alone. 
 
 If I did leap into the sea. 
 
 They would do the same to me.
 
 78 
 
 §ro^fSiV,]^int 
 
 The dragon earth with labyrinthine toils, 
 
 Terrace on terrace wound her stony coils, 
 
 And traversed towards a hollow deeply sunk, 
 
 With writhing stone-beds bordered : there had shrunk 
 
 Wide mouths that did volcanic flames embower 
 
 To blossom, as young spring's first yellow flower 
 
 Cleaves out its pathway through the blackened ridge ; 
 
 From this the white roads sped away to bridge 
 
 The bare lean-hearted hills ; and in their midst 
 
 Lo Demeter ! Sad goddess, wherefore didst 
 
 With thy small company of savage men, 
 
 Autochthonic, that night invade the den 
 
 Of dragon darkness and of nether light ? 
 
 For, lo ! the circling mists, grown infinite. 
 
 Do round themselves to many a torch and lamp ; 
 
 And with wild gleams of limbs, with rolling tramp, 
 
 With shoutings, pours thy pomp : it nears the spot 
 
 Where the deep earth-fires sleep awakened not.
 
 PEOSERPINE. 79 
 
 r 
 
 Higli in her cLariot rode the goddess, crowned 
 
 With golden harvest fruits that spread around 
 
 Her shoulder, and her silver sickle's gleam 
 
 Arched lucidly her forehead, that supreme 
 
 She rode ; and now the wild diviner takes 
 
 The lustral lavers and the salted cakes; 
 
 And in the hollow, folded coil on coil, 
 
 Showing earth's roots encumbered with white spoil, — 
 
 Hollow enormous, holding murky light, 
 
 Giving for ever one side severed quite 
 
 From other by the fierce sheer intervals 
 
 Of duskiness, o'er which in sullen sprawls 
 
 The red flame casts itself to colour slime, 
 
 He sang — 
 
 Oh, prisoned where the earth doth climb 
 To upper air, in cavern halls, 
 Where flame-like wing and writhing limb 
 Whirl round thy throne, where thousand falls 
 Of Stygian waters eye thee cold, 
 Where the dull font of days outdoled 
 To mortal men drains dry and old, 
 Lethe's unaided brim. 
 
 Oh, throned beside the dragon black. 
 
 Who dies at his own mystery, 
 
 Being a god ; oh, folded back 
 
 Where ghosts and larves do shriek and fly,
 
 80 PEOSEEPINE. 
 
 Where the four rivers of thy throne, 
 Phlegethon, Lethe, Styx, Acheron, 
 Cause earth's profaned womb to groan, 
 Echidna's brood to cry 1 
 
 Lo ! here the blood of the black bull 
 
 Drips towards thee from thy mother's hearse ; 
 
 Daughter of earth, be merciful 
 
 In Hades to our hopes and fears ; 
 
 Art thou not orphaned on thy throne, 
 
 Far from the happy light that shone. 
 
 Far from thy ravished maiden zone. 
 
 Far from thy mother's tears !
 
 81 
 
 lit Hit moods. 
 
 A STERNLY subtle horror grew within 
 
 The deep and shaggy wood ; it seemed akin 
 
 To my sad thoughts ; went on with scarce a turn 
 
 The timber pathway, till a sullen burn 
 
 Spread sideways like a white and whispering ghost, 
 
 So rippling into darkness and so lost. 
 
 Above the swamp the giant trees embrace 
 
 Like wrestling dragons, underneath the lace 
 
 Of their broad pennons ; here a sullen bough 
 
 Short-lopped, gleams whitely, threatening throxigh the 
 
 sough 
 Of all the distant tree-tops, bids me cast 
 My weary expectation here at last. 
 I fall, I sink, beneath the leafy walls. 
 Which clash a little as the water falls 
 From bedded roots, and as the wistful wind 
 Once more bends back the trees : as if a blind 
 Sunbeam dashed yellow o'er the gloomy frond, 
 A strange decay is stealing over yond 
 
 6
 
 82 IN THE WOODS. 
 
 Sycamore, touching half its leaves with green 
 
 Of sickly paleness, as I lie between * 
 
 High springing grasses headed with small flowers. 
 
 The foxglove drops the beU the bee devours, 
 
 And lo ! a keener pang in my lost peace 
 
 Speaks meaningly ; the woodland terrors cease 
 
 As the wild bee from the deserted bell 
 
 Hums fiercely forth ; the stern clouds upward swell, 
 
 The ghostly water whispers now no more, 
 
 The twining trees are hidden on the shore. 
 
 As the light dies too ; rolling rank on rank, 
 
 The waves of darkness swallow up in blank 
 
 Submersion all things: then within my soul 
 
 Awoke a harmony that blent the whole 
 
 Of life — can death do more, shall death do less ? 
 
 O soul of my past life ! the bitterness 
 
 Of thy past pain hurts not the thing I am 
 
 In this deep hour ; the senses cannot cram 
 
 The spirit with fresh food for memories ; 
 
 No object now to eye or ear can rise, 
 
 And so the spirit settles into peace 
 
 Self-drawn, or drawn from Him who makes to cease 
 
 All trouble, and the inmost spirit bids 
 
 Consist in peace ; who nightly seals our lids 
 
 For this, and gives us timely hours like those, 
 
 When even the heart the spirit's calm o'erflows. 
 
 With whitest robes, whenever death shall come, 
 
 Shall both his hands be filled. We travel home.
 
 83 
 
 Sotie's dfonsolatiott. 
 
 BY THE MONK OF OSNEYFORD. 
 
 The tliorn-tree keeps its leaves for ever green 
 
 All the year round ; and when the wind blows keen, 
 
 And strips all trees the summer's pride and chief, 
 
 This holdeth fast, and will not quit one leaf. 
 
 Likewise when Christ had worn the thorny crown, 
 
 That year the sorry thorn-tree trickled down 
 
 With drops of blood, and ever since hath worn 
 
 Those bleeding berries in its leaves of thorn. 
 
 Wherefore all doleful lovers prize that tree, 
 
 Both for its sorrow and its constancy; 
 
 And all they say that it is good to wear 
 
 Its leaves so sharp and green upon their hair, 
 
 As Christ did then ; for Christ who loved us died 
 
 In love of us, and whoso would abide 
 
 His baptism, must in loving die also, 
 
 That life may rise again from deathly woe. 
 
 6—2
 
 84 love's consolation. 
 
 It is great marvel to me that I keep 
 Mj hand in Avriting tales of love and sleep, ' 
 
 And life and God; for long ago has ceased 
 The stir of things in me ; I stand released 
 A long time now from all that coil severe 
 Which knitteth heart to heart : I have grown clear 
 Perchance in watching our old Abbot's eyes, 
 Burn softly like a dove's, when he replies 
 To us who ask his blessing in the hall : 
 He gives the same old gift to great and small, 
 Just peering with his old mouth and white hair 
 At what you are, a moment; and, you swear, 
 As instantly forgetting: howsoe'er 
 The quiet of our life here day by day 
 Has somehow won on me to put away 
 All other thought save to write on and on, 
 Between the prayer times, as if life were gone 
 In threescore years for me as from the rest ; 
 Alas 1 that earnest e'er should grow a jest! 
 
 So let me reason how I first began 
 To write my tales in praise of those who ran 
 Furthest in love ; of what did set me on 
 To make my body lean, and my face wan 
 In praising that which was my utter woe 
 A long time past ; hear, and ye well shall know 
 That I fulfil my life in writing well 
 Of love and God, and life, the tales I tell.
 
 love's consolation. 85 
 
 It being then the happy Christmas time, 
 And all the orchards thick with frosty rime, 
 I took me by the happy paths that go 
 Along the dumb and frozen river, so 
 That I might taste the goodness of the day ; 
 Passing through many meadows on my way, 
 Where all the grass and flowers were dead asleep. 
 Through many sheepfolds full of bleating sheep, 
 By many watercourses, Avhereby grew 
 The little-headed willows, two and two, 
 And also poplars : onward thus I sped, 
 Until the pathway reached a little head 
 Of brushwood, screening up a wicket gate, 
 Whereat I entered, and beheld elate 
 A wide and scattered wood of late-leaved beech 
 And oaks and thorn-trees, standing on the reach 
 Of long- withdrawing glades : at sight of these 
 And the snow-dabbled grass, and broken knees 
 Of large red ferns in patches, as I went. 
 Felt I great exaltation and consent 
 Unto the sweetness of the place and day : 
 The robin called the merle, who was away, 
 And yet the robin answered from his bough : 
 The squirrel dropt from branch to branch, although 
 Few leaves did screen him ; and with frequent bounds 
 The rabbits visited each others' mounds. 
 And o'er the dead leaves pattered. Thus I went 
 Until I reached a little thorn-tree bent —
 
 86 love's consolation. 
 
 A thorn-tree knotted like a human throat, 
 
 Set so, and all its leaves together smote "^ 
 
 Out the resemblance of a saddened face 
 
 Eaised on two knotty arms, thrust, as for grace, 
 
 Among wild hair : the tree was such I saw, 
 
 And crossed the glades for, thinking with much awe 
 
 About the time of year ; for in seven days 
 
 Would be the shortest day ; and last year's haze 
 
 Rose all about me then ; last year that day 
 
 Found I that I was given all away 
 
 For nought ; and all that winter had I gone 
 
 In loneliness, and when the summer shone. 
 
 Sadder was I to see the buds drawn out 
 
 On the long branches till they tossed about 
 
 In perfect flower ; making me but more sad 
 
 To see the sweet completeness all things had. 
 
 And I remember, sleeping in my bed, 
 
 A mighty clap of thunder shook my head 
 
 About laburnum time ; and I awoke 
 
 And watched the lightning make a great white stroke 
 
 Three hours above the poplar tops, and then 
 
 Came morning and the writing of a pen 
 
 Telling me that my love and reverence 
 
 Three days before had sold herself for pence 
 
 Unto a clown who riches had in store ; 
 
 Yea, sold herself for that three days before. 
 
 Ala ! Lord, thy lightnings should have wakened me 
 
 Three nights before they did : more bitterly
 
 love's consolation. 87 
 
 "Was nothing ever done; and all the moons 
 
 The golden apples ripened, came long swoons^ 
 
 Of utter woe and ti'ouble, shot across 
 
 By roaring and sad weeping for my loss. 
 
 Nor found I quiet till the autumn time 
 
 Was finished, and brought back the frosty rime ; 
 
 And knights rode forth to quest upon the leas, 
 
 And seek adventure underneath the keys 
 
 Of the bare ash-trees, and by wayside stones, 
 
 And where roads met ; and then I thought my moans 
 
 Had been ill-spent, and half my pain was crime ; 
 
 For while I was lamenting all the time, 
 
 I might have been at tennis, or have made 
 
 Six pictures, or twelve stories; so I said. 
 
 Love hath great store of sweetness, and 'tis well ; 
 A moment's heaven' pays back an age of hell : 
 All who have loved, be sure of this from me, 
 That to have touched one little ripple free 
 Of golden hair, or held a little hand 
 Very long since, is better than to stand 
 Rolled up in vestures stiff with golden thread, 
 Upon a throne o'er many a bowing head 
 Of adulators; yea, and to have seen 
 Thy lady walking in a garden green. 
 Mid apple blossoms and green twisted boughs, 
 Along the golden gravel path, to house 
 Herself, where thou art watching far below, 
 Deep in thy bower impervious, even though
 
 88 love's consolation. 
 
 Thou never give lier kisses after that, 
 
 Is sweeteij'than to never break the flat 
 
 Of thy soul's rising, like a river tide 
 
 That never foams; yea, if thy lady chide 
 
 Cruelly thy service, and indeed becomes 
 
 A wretch, whose false eyes haunt thee in aU rooms, 
 
 'Tis better so, than never to have been 
 
 An hour in love; than never to have seen 
 
 Thine own heart's worthiness to shrink and shake, 
 
 Like silver quick, all for thy lady's sake. 
 
 Weighty with truth, Avith gentleness as bright. 
 
 Moreover, let sad lovers take delight 
 In this, that time will bring at last their peace: 
 We watch great passions in their huge increase. 
 Until they fill our hearts, so that we say, 
 " Let go this, and I die ; " yet nay and nay. 
 We find them leave us strangely quiet then. 
 When they must quit ; one lion leaves the den, 
 Another enters ; wherefore thus I cross 
 All lovers pale and starving with their loss. 
 
 And yet, and yet, and yet, how long I tore 
 My heart, love ! how long, O love ! before 
 I could endure to think of peace, and call 
 For remedy, from what time thou didst all 
 Shatter with one bad word, and bitter ruth 
 Didst mete me for my patience and my truth. 
 That way thou hadst : once, cutting like a knife, 
 Thy hand sheared off what seemed my very life,
 
 love's consolation. 89 
 
 And I felt outside coldness bite within : 
 
 The lumpish axe that scales away false skin 
 
 Of some corruption clumped upon the bark, 
 
 Leaves the tree aching with the pale round mark, 
 
 And sweating till the wound be overshot 
 
 By the gums swelling out into a blot. 
 
 Where the bees lose their wings, and dead leaves stick. 
 
 Even so, O love, my flesh Avas sore and quick 
 
 From that astonishment, when I seemed flayed, 
 
 Torn piecemeal up, and shred abroad, and made 
 
 A victim to some brutal lack of skill ; 
 
 Yet kissing still the hand so rough to kill. 
 
 So, so ; I never meant but to live on 
 
 The old, old way ; now the old life is gone — 
 
 Has it ? — and left me living ! This I thought, 
 
 Kneeling before the thorn-bush, over fraught 
 
 With many memories, when I saw the sweet 
 
 Eed berries hanging in it, and its feet 
 
 Rolled up in withered moss ; also I saw 
 
 Birds sit among its sharp green leaves and caw. 
 
 Gently I drew a branch of berries down, 
 
 And severed it to be my very own. 
 
 And on a pine log, lying full hard by. 
 
 Cast I myself and looked upon the sky. 
 
 Oh, then behold a glorious vision fair, 
 Which came to comfort me in that despair ; 
 Bi-anched in the clouds I saw a mighty tree. 
 As dearly twisted as the thorn, as free.
 
 ,90 love's consolation. 
 
 As kindly wild, clear springing through the green 
 
 Fields of the frosty Orient, and between * 
 
 Four great hills rooted, where the earth upreared 
 
 Herself into the sky ; and as this cleared 
 
 I looked towards the thorn-tree standing there, 
 
 So happy, with the woods about all bare. 
 
 And then nine gentle forms did I behold — 
 
 Five men and four sweet ladies, as I told — 
 
 All walking towards me, with a gentle pace, 
 
 Eound from the thorn, all with full solemn face. 
 
 And head bent solemnly : to me they came, 
 
 One led the band, the rest led each his dame. 
 
 The first who came waved forth a long green wand, 
 Whereat the others in fair show did stand 
 Divided, four on either side, a knight 
 And queen together, on the left and right. 
 Those knights had golden crowns upon their heads, 
 And their long hair drawn out with golden threads, 
 And rightly were they harnessed, and each bore 
 A coronal of thorn leaves, with good store 
 Of berries red, which shone like drops of wine 
 Amongst the green leaves and the gold wire fine. 
 Those four queens wore the thorn-leaves ; I saw there 
 Red berries spread about upon their hair : 
 Their crisped tresses hung more clear and fine 
 Than yellow amber holding gold-red wine ; 
 Their looks were wildly gentle, and more fair 
 Than full-eyed fawn just shaken from her lair; 
 
 I
 
 love's consolation. 91 
 
 Wild looks of sorrow, wildly worn and past; 
 
 Wild looks of wild peace, wildly won at last : 
 
 One wore a white robe, like a thin white cloud, 
 
 Through which strange drops of crimson slowly ploughed ; 
 
 One wore a white robe with a crimson seam. 
 
 In which strange quivering shapes did hang and gleam ; 
 
 One wore a robe of dark deep violet. 
 
 In which, like eyes, gold passion-flowers were set ; 
 
 One wore a robe of saiFron, shot and stained 
 
 With willow leaves, and wolfsbane purple-veined : 
 
 Each stood contented, with a tender white 
 
 Hand in the reverent holding of a knight. 
 
 At sight of this fair worship I had dropped 
 Upon my knees, and then uprose and stopped, 
 Until they stood more near, and then again 
 Knelt down before them, being very fain 
 To gaze upon their glory all so nigh. 
 Then he who led them, with a bitter sigh, 
 Began to chide me gently for my fault 
 In leaving love, and making that revolt 
 From him, since not a man shall miss reward 
 From love, who pays true service and regard. 
 " Ah, sir," said I, " how in God's truth and mine, 
 How I have loved, never canst thou divine. 
 If I blame love I do not scorn his might, 
 And have no other done in love than right. 
 Nay, I so truly dealt with my false dame. 
 And spent such pains, that many cried her shame
 
 92 love's consolation. 
 
 Because she paid me noiiglit for my long quest. 
 I hold that love lights love in gentle breast; 
 Now hath she left me nought but scorn and loss. 
 Oh, never meet with love ; oh, never cross 
 A fair false face to torture all your thoughts, 
 For ever brooding, fiend-like, on the thwarts 
 Of all the paths you move in ; better far 
 To wage with fortune such a cruel war 
 As makes all joy to be a sin and crime : 
 Oh, to live rankly were a blessed time 
 In such a beggar's filth and press of wants 
 As gives no leave for wasting royal grants 
 Of love upon some brainless beauty-snare, 
 As sweet as false : so he is sure to fare, 
 Who trusts a woman, — save the worship sweet 
 Of these dear ladies, who with pity meet 
 My cui'sed complaining : can I not suppress 
 Some, bitterness of soul, this tide and stress?" 
 
 " Thou slialt not need," replied his sovereign voice ; 
 " Behold how they with pity droop in poise 
 Of their sweet heads ; for drop by drop thy rain 
 Has filled their cups, until they stoop and drain 
 Upon the ground their fulness — thy bestowing; 
 Then rise, — unemptied, but no more o'erflowing. 
 Ah ! lilies, ah ! sweet friends, weep not so sore ; 
 He who can rail in love hath yet good store 
 Of Hghtness left him, whensoe'er he take 
 Good counsel, good advisement, and awake
 
 love's consolation. 93 
 
 Unto himself, see what he hath, let pass 
 This frenzy, this lewd mist blown on the glass 
 Wherein his clear eyes should behold themselves. 
 Now take this counsel from me : wise man delves 
 In his own heart for comforts ; never seeks 
 Outside himself ; and falls not when fate wreaks 
 Herself on what he hath, but cannot smutch 
 That which he is : he hath his creed ; not much 
 To say, but cons it shortly, and so holds : 
 Being forearmed, 'tis drawdng fast the folds 
 Of mail that hung unrivetted for air. 
 Hast not thou such a creed ? thou hast ? prepare 
 To hear me con it to thee, lest thou cause 
 Ladies weep for thee ; nay, shouldst make a pause 
 In nature's kindness for thee, and go mad, 
 And swash about in madness, thinly clad, 
 A violent creature sinning. Think this o'er : 
 Wouldst in a vase of many crannies pour 
 And say the liquor should not flow throughout, 
 But keep in certain hollows ? Have no doubt 
 Up to its level it will flood the whole : 
 So does the tide of love o'erflood the soul 
 Admitting it, and so to dumbness fill 
 With very fulness ; thou canst not distil 
 Into the air one sound not muffled up 
 In love ; as after being filled, the cup 
 Gives not its crystal echo to the stroke 
 The same as empty : now in furious smoke
 
 94 love's consolation. 
 
 Thy love hath whirled itself away, and left 
 The vessel of thy nature all bereft 
 And emptied quite : now therefore it is due, 
 That it ring out its ancient tone as true 
 As at the first, ring loud and merrily, 
 Singing of old things in the time gone by, 
 Most precious to thy heart, recalling all. 
 With little pain for what is past recall." 
 
 " O gentle ladies ! I have worship done," 
 I answered, " even when I made my moan ; 
 knights ! I long had known your name and state, 
 Had not this lay prevented, with debate 
 Of my st tnis : noAV tell me who ye be, 
 Which I in part already seem to see." 
 
 " Nine lovers are we, who have lost our loves. 
 Alike we are in that, and us behoves 
 To hold together, for by unhappiness. 
 Not by our faxilt, we fell beneath the press 
 Of the monster time, that ever coils about 
 The universe, and beats life in and out, 
 Being one living flail, and quick and fierce, 
 And full of hideous fancies : sometimes steers 
 His bulk straight onwards to the flying life. 
 With blood-fret head produced before the grife 
 Wave of his monster trunk, as shoots a spar 
 Of some wave-wallowing wreck before the far 
 Rush of the savage tides that urge it on ; 
 Sometimes o'ertakes his prey, and straight is gone
 
 love's consolation. 95 
 
 In one quick flash of serpent head, and tongue, 
 
 And eyes, and then surrounds, and lashes strong 
 
 His sinewy tail before the victim's eyes, 
 
 In hideous gambols ; all the while snake- wise, 
 
 His head is japing close behind. Now we 
 
 Were played with thus : Jules there, who secretly 
 
 Torments the hand of Ellen till he grow 
 
 To feel a need of her, enough to know 
 
 That no one can replace his need of needs ; 
 
 And Ellen, knowing well that still she feeds 
 
 With her own heart a fire that Jules can ne'er 
 
 Become the food for ; Mark, who in despair 
 
 Long ago calm holds only by the cross 
 
 Upon his sword, and thinks not of his loss, 
 
 Save joined with all that God must be ; Lucrece, 
 
 Whose eyes now gain beginnings of great peace. 
 
 Watching her thin hands and the flowers they hold ; 
 
 Gilbert, who stands half ruffled, feeling bold 
 
 To say and do what he would never do 
 
 Were the time come ; Madoline looking so 
 
 Having done great self-sacrifice in love, 
 
 Yet thinking rather of the cost than of 
 
 The joy that shotdd be hers from nobleness; 
 
 Miles, whose eyes pale before the glorious dress 
 
 Of Colmnbe's hair, but she means nought for him, 
 
 Nor he indeed for her ; they scarcely dream. 
 
 All these are waiting ever — we all wait — 
 
 For some completion to fill up the date
 
 96 love's consolation. 
 
 Of life as yet unfinished ; yet I say, 
 
 Perhaps in vain, as thou too ; best are they 
 
 Who love their life in all things: is not life 
 
 Its own fvilfilment ? Steadfast marble rife 
 
 "With knotty veins, like thoughts, inscrutable, 
 
 Broods on the altar's frontel, takes the spell 
 
 Of every taper pure caressing it. 
 
 Of every sun that warms the shadow-fit 
 
 From its pale, tranquil, capable, cold face ; 
 
 Lives under sun and shadow, lets light trace 
 
 Its crumbled grain, and darkness thicken on't, 
 
 Struck blind by neither, neither is its want. 
 
 Man should do more than marble ; make meet change 
 
 For day and night within himself, estrange 
 
 His heart from nought that meets him, even laugh 
 
 When bitter roots are given him to grafF 
 
 Upon joy's stem, yea, even if it bear 
 
 Yew leaves and berries weighty on the air, 
 
 And dropping on the sleek soil underneath, 
 
 Where dead things rankle, — 'tis a bloom from Death, 
 
 And true souls always are hilarious, 
 
 They see the way-marks on their exodus 
 
 From better unto better ; still they say, 
 
 Lo 1 the new law, when old things pass away ; 
 
 Still keep themselves well guarded, nothing swerve 
 
 From the great purposes to which they serve 
 
 Scarce knowingly ; stiU smile and take delight
 
 love's consolation. 97 
 
 In arduous things, as brave men when they fight 
 Take joy in feeling one another's might. 
 Ah ! now, poor woimded man, drag not thy coils 
 In shattered volume sadly through the toils, 
 Backward and forward, tearing more and more 
 Each torn quick part, and adding to the sore 
 That earth-clods stick in, like a mangled worm. 
 There is one way for thee ; but one ; inform 
 Thyself of it ; pursue it ; one way each 
 Soul hath by which the infinite in reach 
 Lieth before him ; seek and ye shall find : 
 To each the way is plain ; that way the wind 
 Points all the trees along ; that way run down 
 Loud singing streams ; that way pour on and on 
 A thousand headlands with their cataracts 
 Of toppling flowers ; that way the sun enacts 
 His travel, and the moon and all the stars 
 Soar ; and the tides move towards it ; nothing bars 
 A man who goes the way that he should go ; 
 That which comes soonest is the thins; to do. 
 Thousand light-shadows in the rippling sand 
 Joy the true soul ; the waves along the strand 
 Whiten beyond his eyes ; the trees tossed back 
 Show him the sky ; or, heaped upon his track 
 In a black wave, wind-heaped, point onward still 
 His one, one way. O joy, joy, joy, to fill 
 The day with leagues ! Go thy way, all things say, 
 Thou hast thy way to go, thou hast thy day 
 
 7
 
 98 love's consolatiox. 
 
 To live ; thou hast thy need of thee to make 
 
 In the hearts of others ; do thy thing ; yes, slake 
 
 The world's great thirst for yet another man ! 
 
 And be thou sure of this ; no other can 
 
 Do for thee that appointed thee of God; 
 
 Not any light shall shine upon thy road 
 
 For other eyes ; and thou mayest not pursue 
 
 The track of other feet, although they drew 
 
 Lucidly o'er wide waters, like the dip 
 
 Of speeding paddles, like the diamond drip 
 
 Of a white wing upon a lake struck dead 
 
 With shadows ; no, though the innumerous head 
 
 Of flowers should curtain up the foot that falls. 
 
 Thou shalt not follow ; thee the angel calls, 
 
 As he calls others ; and thy life to thee 
 
 Is precious as the greatest's life can be 
 
 To him ; so live thy life, and go thy way. 
 
 Now we have gained this knowledge by essay, 
 In part ; some struggling yet, for we all thought 
 To gain another, hand in hand, upcaught. 
 Drawn onwards our soul's path ; and of us some 
 About our hearts meshed the loved hair Avith comb 
 Of our great love, to twine and glisten there, 
 And when 'twas stiffened in our life blood dear, 
 Then was it rent away; (ah ! so with thee;) 
 We learn to pardon those Avho could not be 
 A part of us, their way lying different ; 
 And learn to waste no grief on our intent
 
 love's consolation. 99 
 
 Thus warped; but live on bravely ; tend the sore 
 
 Just at odd moments, when it oozes gore 
 
 Less sufferably: how our eyes draw fire 
 
 From the fire foxmt of pain ! Our wounds grow 
 
 drier, 
 And memories walk beside us, as a shade 
 Walks by a great magician in his trade, 
 When deep night falls on all the paths, and he 
 Discourses to his friend, invisibly 
 Accompanied ; our memories walk by us, 
 Stand by us, when we look on others thus. 
 Face upon face ; steal from us half ovir thoughts. 
 Flake after flake ; us therefore it imports 
 To make them our good servants, as the mage 
 Uses his shadows upon service sage. 
 O faithful gobetweens ! knit each to each ; 
 O memories ! give to dead lips living speech. 
 Limbs motion, eyes their spirit-pulse ; bestow 
 On everything its value ; grow and glow 
 A white intensity of chastest flame, 
 That all things may but seem to make the same 
 Great undulation of a wave of heaven 
 That flowed to us; so giving and so given, 
 May we pass on to death ! 
 
 Now, therefore, write 
 Tales of our true love ; both of those who quite 
 Bootlessly thought that love unto their love 
 Must knit itself ; and those who, happier, strove 
 
 7—2
 
 100 love's consolation. 
 
 Only with fortune, overcast at length 
 By death alone, and walking in the strength 
 Of meat long eaten in the desert since. 
 First act is over, and the next begins, 
 Yet proves the same again, for us and thee. 
 What next ? Why, all is ended." 
 
 " Plaudite 
 Remains," I cried, " though your five tragic acts 
 That should have been, are shortened : fate enacts 
 A two-act farce, the dream and the awaking." 
 " Farewell," said he, "give largely ; we are staking 
 A httle on thy mercy. Do thou write ; 
 Let thine eye soften o'er the page ; let spite. 
 And hate, and over-sadness die away ; 
 Thou shalt see others calming in the sway 
 Of all within them. Love, too, blossoms out 
 More perfectly from agony and doubt; 
 Hath wider ranges, and a kind of laugh 
 At human things in him ; in short, can quaff 
 Easier of joy; can grasp the world and use; 
 Is kindlier to all living life ; would lose 
 Not one process of nature ; but o'erspreads 
 In genial current all things ; hath no dreads. 
 No hates, no self-tormenting; cherishes, 
 Blesses, and gives great teaching, for it frees: 
 Thus much more precious is love's after-birth." 
 Wind and much wintry blue then swept the earth.
 
 101 
 
 '^(tttttt0. 
 
 By the ancient sluice's gate 
 
 Here I wait, here I wait; 
 
 Here is the sluice with its cramped stone, 
 
 Which the shadows dance upon. 
 
 Here I wait. 
 
 Stone, with time-blots red and blue, 
 And white, the shadows tremble through. 
 When the sun strikes out through the poplars tall, 
 And the sun strikes out upon the wall. 
 
 Here I wait. 
 
 From the sluice the stream descends 
 A bowshot ; then its running ends 
 In flags and marsh flowers ; then it runs 
 Bright and broad beneath the suns. 
 
 Here I wait.
 
 102 WAITING. 
 
 And to one side of it come down 
 The walls and roofs of our good town ; 
 The other side for miles away 
 The willows prick it short and grey. 
 
 Here I wait. 
 
 Any moment I might see 
 My lady in her majesty 
 Moving on from tree to tree 
 Where the river runs from me. 
 
 Here I wait. 
 
 Any moment she might rise 
 From the hedgerow, where my eyes 
 Wait for her without surprise, 
 While the first bat starts and flies. 
 
 Here I wait. 
 
 Here I lie along the trunk 
 
 That swings the heavy sluice-door sunk 
 
 In the water, which outstreams 
 
 In little runlets from its seams. 
 
 Here I wait. 
 
 The last yellowhammer flits, 
 The winds begin to shake by fits; 
 More coldly swing the mists and chase : 
 Thinking of my lady's face 
 
 Here I wait.
 
 WAITING. 103 
 
 Like a tower so standeth she, 
 Built of solid ivory ; 
 Her sad eyes well opened be, 
 Her wide hair runs darkly free. 
 
 Here I wait. 
 
 Her eyes are like to water-birds 
 On little rivers, and her words 
 As little as the lark, which girds 
 His wings to measure out his words. 
 
 Here I wait. 
 
 Here the crows come flying late — 
 One flies past me ; past the gate 
 Of the old sluice another flies ; 
 Heavily upwards they do rise. 
 
 Here I wait. 
 
 I am growing thoughtful now; 
 Will she never kiss my brow ? 
 Solemnly I sit and feel 
 The edge upon my sword of steel. 
 
 Here I wait. 
 
 If she come, her feet will sound 
 Not at all upon the ground; 
 I think upon thy feet, my love, 
 Eed as feet of any dove. 
 
 Here I wait.
 
 104 WAITING. 
 
 Here my face is white and cold, 
 Here my empty arms I fold; 
 Here float down the beds of weeds, 
 With the fly that on them feeds. 
 
 Here I wait.
 
 105 
 
 gl gun's ^torn-Podiirtt 'S^mu, 
 
 Before the great house on the Palatine 
 
 The blood as yet is purple on the vine, 
 
 Nor has it faded from the leather belt 
 
 On which 'twas poured when cursed Guido dealt 
 
 Last night his blow. Ah, Guido ! down below 
 
 Lorenzo's grave they're digging by a row 
 
 Of broken wine-jars on the cellar shelf; 
 
 And there the snow-white body keeps itself; 
 
 And here above does Lady Catherine sit, 
 
 And watch the vine that points to her and it : 
 
 Two stories has the vine — her ear to please — 
 
 Two lovers walk beneath a cirque of trees 
 
 Which closes round a pool of water-lilies, 
 
 Whose bank so steep almost a little hill is ; 
 
 And she will gather one of those white flowers — 
 
 No danger, yet his very spirit cowers 
 
 At thought of it for her ; upon his knees 
 
 He nerves himself, and holds her hand in his ;
 
 106 A nun's story — MODERN ROME. 
 
 Then forth they walk in bliss, but after them 
 
 A staggering shadow steals, a flashing gem 
 
 Curves through the dusky air, — Lorenzo falls, 
 
 Dyeing the grass ; then to these cloistered halls 
 
 They drag her, force the habit o'er her head, 
 
 And leave her senseless on her novice bed. 
 
 These are the vine's two stories; just awake. 
 
 She hears them for the first time, scarcely quake 
 
 Her eyes, but gaze far, far beyond the hills 
 
 In meditation how the deep air fills 
 
 With sea-like purple all the hollow land. 
 
 Poor angel ! quickly wilt thou imderstand, 
 
 Oft wilt thou hear them with a wild despair 
 
 Too awfal, writhing, shuddering, sobbing there, — 
 
 "Would thou couldst die ; and yet, if souls can guess, 
 
 I think that o'er death's purple haziness 
 
 A great white cloud is floating, heavenly fair, 
 
 On which she sits, as purely white ; her hair 
 
 Blessed with the rainbow, and her feet just dipped 
 
 In the dark flood beneath ; and, lo ! now slipped 
 
 From some high heaven his spirit headlong falls. 
 
 To clasp her round the neck ; alas! it palls. 
 
 And the long years by moments 'gin to fly — 
 
 Alas ! poor angel, would that thou couldst die !
 
 107 
 
 % lionirs ^toru. 
 
 I SAW to-day a man upon his back 
 Beneath a tree, watching the sailing track 
 Of quails and pigeons in the smoke-blue sky ; 
 And as their wings dipt deeper or more high 
 Above the shining leaves, I knew the man 
 With dizzying eyes more thoughtfully would scan 
 The heaven's blue burning till he fell asleep. 
 For all the day the heavens with light grow deep. 
 I knew that if a bittern or a quail 
 With shortened -wings and pouncing feet should sail 
 Down through the air and settle on the tree, 
 The man would sleep no more, but suddenly 
 Spring up and drag his bow-case from his head. 
 Behold me in the hfe I sometime led ! 
 
 I know not how I sinned : what man can know 
 All he has sinned ? but very long ago, 
 In the beginning of my bootless tale. 
 Found I myself weeping without avail. 
 As who begins to live, and with a sense 
 Of long, long love, now reaching prevalence.
 
 108 A monk's story. 
 
 One lay beside me on a little mound, 
 
 Marsh marigolds and river reeds were round, '' 
 
 And three hours ere the snnset, and not far 
 
 A river rippling over a sandbar ; 
 
 Gleaming the spacious shallows of its tide. 
 
 As if the moving were a breeze inside ; 
 
 The purple shadows trembling through and through, 
 
 Above, around us, who were trembling too. 
 
 Who lay beside me on the little mound ? 
 
 My hands were beating on the harmless ground : 
 
 Weeping, why wept I in the golden air. 
 
 So passioned in the depths of what despair ? 
 
 He, strange companion, heeded not at all ; 
 
 Prostrate he lay, as he were past recall 
 
 For weariness ; one knee was bent and raised. 
 
 And ever upwards at the blue he gazed 
 
 Where small white clouds went on. How bitter-sweet. 
 
 How bitter ; but I will not use deceit, 
 
 I will not hide, nor tell how, after this 
 
 Long years, betrayed by a Judas kiss. 
 
 Sent me kiss-stung and madding through the world : 
 
 For who would curse ? Have I found peace upcurled 
 
 In yond volumen I illuminate ? 
 
 I will not bid my saint a moment wait, 
 
 Whilst I in his grim acts interpolate 
 
 A weaker man and unappointed fate. 
 
 So there's my monogram in silence put 
 
 Upon the page in which my life is — shut :
 
 A monk's stoey. 109 
 
 And when ye take ray volume from the shelves, 
 
 And stare upon it while ye cross yourselves, 
 
 Think thus upon the painter, simple friends : — 
 
 He was a man at quiet war with fiends, 
 
 Ora pro animd^ he painted here : 
 
 This is a morn in spring ; how high uprear 
 
 To meet the blue our white-brown convent walls. 
 
 And from them a translucent shadow falls 
 
 O'er half the cell ; and what a diaper 
 
 The little leaves and branches all astir 
 
 With sunshine, pour upon the picture screen ! 
 
 He painted here, happy he must have been ; 
 
 He was a good man and did visions see, 
 
 A quiet man without a history ; 
 
 Think thus, and pity me, and pray for me. 
 
 Ay, and this morn in spring, midst this design 
 To which I thought was given this life of mine, 
 Stirring the quiet sunshine of my cell, 
 Something across the blazoned parchment fell : 
 A shadow, not flung down from swinging bough, 
 I caught it ; 'twas the arching of a brow, 
 And gloss of purple hair was what I saw. 
 And stealing footsteps, which could not withdraw : 
 Wliat ! she, that trembler whom one sees about 
 Our gates, who bows and tries to look devout ? 
 And he, oui- latest joined, whose flesh is weak ? 
 Well, sin no more; I am not one to speak.
 
 110 
 
 a Had. 
 
 Lord Robert and fair Ellen both 
 Came flying on a horse of might : 
 
 They left five brethren on the groimd 
 Before they fled from hall that night. 
 
 The first river they came unto, 
 
 It did but wet the horse's feet : 
 It was as sad as the ashes of fire ; 
 
 Long time they tarried in its street. 
 
 " And oh I fair Ellen," Lord Eobert said, 
 " I had slain but four instead of five ! " 
 
 " Now rest thee well, Lord Robert," she said, 
 " For thou and I are here alive." 
 
 The next river they came unto 
 It went up to the horse's knees ; 
 
 The ice was broken all about ; 
 
 It shone like the sun on the leaves of trees.
 
 BALLAD. Ill 
 
 " And would for thy sake we both had died, 
 
 Before I stood Anthin thy bower ! " 
 " I greeted thee well, Lord Robert," she Said, 
 
 "And better to think of the sweet than the sour." 
 
 The third river they came unto 
 
 To the middle of the flank increased ; 
 
 The ice was sailing all around, 
 
 It shone hke the smi on the fell of a beast. 
 
 " Ah ! where is thy false nurse Jan this night. 
 Who kept the watch above thy bower ?" 
 
 " Nurse Jan needs watch no more," she said, 
 " And better to think of seed than sower." 
 
 The next river they rode unto. 
 
 Over the wither-band did break ; 
 The ice did break on fair Ellen's foot. 
 
 It shone like the sun on a coiling snake. 
 
 " We never have met, I swear to thee, 
 
 Alas ! and we are woe together." 
 " Have courage, my lord," fair Ellen said, 
 
 " We two shall merrily win this weather." 
 
 The next river they came unto. 
 
 The stream ran over the horse's flank ; 
 
 The ice poured down from side to side, 
 It shone like shore-grass dry and lauk.
 
 112 BALLAD. 
 
 He never spake a word again, 
 
 But drew her arm right through his own ; 
 She bent her white hand in his hand, 
 
 Until it pressed on his breast-bone. 
 
 The next river they came unto, 
 It rose up to the horse's head ; 
 
 A fire upon the midst did burn, 
 
 The waves hke rolling meadows spread. 
 
 The ice rolled heavily about, 
 Like briny monsters of the sea : 
 
 He drew her round him on the horse, 
 And there they two well buried be.
 
 113 
 
 Sa <^dii\'% or Soiii>rs' %Qi^lL 
 
 ARGCiiENT.— Mark, while uncertain about his own destiny, sees La Faerie in 
 a dream, and hears two of its inhabitants relate their story in conver- 
 sation \rith one another. Their union liad been opposed, the lover 
 unT\lliingly slew a rival of whom he had no fears, and after three years 
 kiDed himself, on a report of the lady's forced marriage. On his death 
 the lady retired to a convent, and after nine years died. 
 
 Sat Mark within the shadow of a gloom 
 Made by his banner hung against the sun, 
 
 Woven blue and green ; beside him in the room 
 Another chair, whereon were made to run 
 
 Strange beasts, and on the top a white, white dove 
 Strained always its spread wings towards that serene 
 Heaven of the banner woven blue and green, 
 
 II. 
 
 At that time went the clouds from far above, 
 Wind-grouped, to pause with golden ministries 
 
 About the sun ; at that time no remove 
 From very life were those hued images 
 
 And whelming sounds one has who dreams, yet wakes. 
 Musing about the inmost core of things. 
 The land of wonder and its splendorings. 
 
 8
 
 114 ~ LA FAERIE. 
 
 III. 
 
 About high hills embowering endless lakes, 
 About strange mariners on savage shores, 
 
 About sea-billows swelling with huge aches, 
 About black murders done on secret moors, 
 
 About the panic dances in the night. 
 
 About stern booming sounds in solitudes. 
 
 And moon-made goblins seen in shuddering woods. 
 
 IV. 
 
 To Mark that sunset shaped its end aright, 
 
 Coming to this, that in the chair by Mark 
 His lady sat, no later than last night. 
 
 When they two sat together until dark, 
 He, kissing at her shadow in his heart. 
 
 She, perfect in her hues ; he, heart-elate ; 
 
 Both silent, like the love-bird and its mate. 
 
 V. 
 
 We nothing understand for our sad part 
 
 How what has been, becomes what is to be : 
 
 We wake from cabin dreams with bodeful start 
 And find ourselves at welter in the sea ; 
 
 So miserable, prayer might feel afraid 
 Of God, except that ever Fancy leaves 
 Some slippery trail of joy while she deceives.
 
 LA FAERIE. 115 
 
 71. 
 
 Now on Mark's eyes a husky shadow preyed, 
 
 In which his eyeballs smouldered black and fierce ; 
 And presently he bit his banner's braid, 
 
 Straining it tighter lest some glint should pierce 
 And make less holy that which was his thought : 
 
 He would as soon have spoken of his dreams 
 
 As opened them to unabated beams. 
 
 VII. 
 
 So onward flires in dreams till he is brought 
 To life and death, in summit of them both ; 
 
 Tottering upon half thoughts, pale, scarcely raught, 
 Clinging upon him, frantical to clothe 
 
 Their thinness in the shadow substances 
 
 In which his soul was ravelled, tissue-wise, — 
 
 Live memories, sweetest thoughts, and glad surprise. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Now hither, moonbeams, in your essences 
 
 Fading from night, ere night herself can close : 
 
 Now Boreals, splintered on ice palaces 
 In twenty sunsets and a million glows ; 
 
 Now hither all sweet lights and ravishments 
 Of colour, primes, and germs, and slow decays. 
 And stealing time-marks, and uncertain sways. 
 
 8—2
 
 116 LA FAERIE. 
 
 IX. 
 
 And vast and mighty overfalls and rents 
 
 In tawny clouds, through which the pale sun shows 
 A revelation — give me sacraments 
 
 Of poetry to swear on ; for by those, 
 And other such-like mighty mysteries 
 
 Dream-born, dream-nursed, my lady's life hath grown 
 
 To be the marvel we shall gaze upon. 
 
 X. 
 
 Whence cometh she ? for sure again his eyes 
 Are fed on her, the chair again enfolds 
 
 His love, his sweetest ; yet he scarce descries 
 His lady in the shadow he beholds ; 
 
 His lady there, not perfect in her hues. 
 
 Too pale for her ; but ere his passion speaks. 
 The crimson, flagging slowly to her cheeks, 
 
 XI. 
 
 There fluctuates in tongues of flame that use 
 
 Their splendours on the heart's weak blood to feed 
 
 Back, forward, backward ; utterly suffuse 
 The heavenly places where it is their need ; 
 
 And now the circles of sweet violet 
 
 Are traced beneath her mystical blue eyes : 
 Oh, let her lift them ere her lover dies !
 
 LA FAERIE. 117 
 
 XII. 
 
 My lady lives in perfect glory set, 
 My lady lives all perfect in her hues, 
 
 And is yon orb La Faerie, Avhich doth fi'et 
 
 With little glints the stillness which doth muse, 
 
 And lightens vainly on her presence meek 
 Yet mighty in its saddened majesty, — 
 A statue always heaving with a sigh ! 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Herewith that lover felt his passion speak, 
 Beginning, "An angel out of paradise," 
 
 Yet marks her lips apart ere he can wreak 
 The pains within him on the ecstacies; 
 
 And she is shaken through her presence sweet, 
 Yet on he breaks impetuous : " Rosalys ! " 
 (First to pronounce that music be it his), 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " love ! love ! O sweet ! let me but meet 
 Thy hand in mine, and we shall be the thing 
 
 That poets sing of in their highest heat, 
 
 And, therefore, more than poets, journeying — 
 
 Oh ! thus and thvis ; I bless thee, thus and thus : 
 I'll bear thee, dearest, tenderly alive, 
 Where'er yon orb of swiftness shall arrive.
 
 118 LA FAERIE. 
 
 XV. 
 
 "For see, it grew most largely over ns, 
 
 Put forth two wings, and glowed with presences, 
 
 Shaking with spangles, thronged, tumultuous, 
 With happy faces, like the waves of seas, 
 
 Still changing as it moved, and one serene 
 Bright ray of redness touched upon thy face, 
 Then vanished starlike, with a final trace 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " Of blue that glided swiftly into green ; 
 
 It is La Faerie, that happy place ; 
 And all those happy faces we have seen 
 
 Are lovers proved and worthy of their grace. 
 I take this token for our summoning ; 
 
 Wherefore, O love, 'tis now to flee away, 
 
 Leaving the dead world and the dying day." 
 
 XVII. 
 
 This passion was a dream, I think, to cling 
 About the heart, and never come to deed; 
 
 There are some passions which do only ring 
 An inward voice, and inly are decreed ; 
 
 This passion faded quickly, being spent 
 Before the coming on of words wherein 
 Its argentine completedness to win.
 
 LA FAERIE. 119 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 But this no dream, that ever as he leant 
 
 Full-browed towards her, swift as is the flight 
 
 Of white doves from some resting eminent 
 
 Towards the green beneath, where they alight 
 
 After one cleaving of the air with wings, 
 Two lovers, as they seemed, together sped 
 Down through the still air in the twilight spread. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Coming as from La Faerie, which with rings 
 Of amethyst darker belting its thick blues 
 
 And hinted greens, across heaven's quarterings, 
 Beyond the sunset pours its bickering hues, 
 
 Like runes, and fuses all things to the point, 
 Where all things seem to keep good company, 
 And yet may change, nor lose one just degree. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Those lovers twain, be very sure, did join 't. 
 That fellowship of beauty, and they sat 
 
 In front of all its harmonies ; Aroynt, 
 You could not say at such a time as that 
 
 To any evil thing, for there was nought 
 
 But seemed at one with all things, no surprise 
 In that vast scape of mingled forms and dyes.
 
 120 LA FAEEIE. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Presently ran a thread of talk inwrought 
 
 Into the silence, which was musical, 
 From those paired lips, rich-purpled, overfi-aught 
 
 With kisses, hanging only till the fall 
 Of converse : then she answered unto him : — 
 
 " All that long time they were tormenting me, 
 
 My lip? formed silently the name of thee. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " Those three with their pressed brows curved, and the rim 
 Of their long eyes settled in watchful scorn ; 
 
 And he, who could not, like them, always dim 
 His fury in the cruel system, worn 
 
 By them, of scorn, which masked a killing rage ; 
 Sisters and father : spite of scorn and blame, 
 My lips were curving ever with thy name. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " And so I kept me, looking not on age 
 Defaced with fury, nor on that tiger-like 
 
 Contempt crouched ring on ring ! a weary stage 
 Of life it was; — one watching how to strike. 
 
 One silent in prevention ; once alone 
 
 Did they surprise me. Shall I tell you it, 
 That triumph of those cruel women's wit ?
 
 LA FAERIE. 121 
 
 XXIV, 
 
 " My strife was at its height a day, when one 
 Of them came pitying to nie, that she knew 
 
 And sorrowed for my heart; her softened tone 
 
 Touched me as the baked earth is touched by dew ; 
 
 Wherefore I loosened from my hold on calm, 
 Suddenly fluttered in hah" joy, half shame, 
 And broke my heart in uttering out thy name. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " Whereat they laughed trom ambush, and her palm 
 
 Smote me to redness on my cheek ; for me, 
 I wept along, regardless, on my arm. 
 
 Amidst the laughter of the cruel three." 
 '• O love, O suffering love ! " Can I rehearse 
 
 How they two kissed in memory of her wrong ? 
 
 Then took she up her sequel like a song. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " Until the old man leaped out with a curse. 
 
 To see me in my constant weeping there. 
 Making confession, bearing all his worse. 
 
 Because my better gave me grace to spare ; 
 So drove me home in my still place to yearn." 
 
 He.—'' We met." She.—'' Yes, yes." He.—" Ah, 
 after that you gave 
 
 Dear prayers to me to pity and to save.
 
 122 LA FAERIEc 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " Yet after wouldst not, dearest, in my turn, 
 Though I prayed, lover-like, with eye and lip; 
 
 I chill, I chill; thou wouldst not, wouldst not learn 
 My plan ; so let that indignation slip, 
 
 Wliich should have wrought deliverance. Oh, thou sweet, 
 Why wouldst not listen ? Almost am I grieving 
 To think of all that gladness of our leaving." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 She. — " And yet sometimes it happened us to meet, 
 And sure the sudden rapture of a look. 
 
 On which we lived whole days in thought, complete 
 In filling up what should have been, partook 
 
 Of ecstasy, threefold of ecstasy." 
 
 He. — " O me ! you know not, love, how terrible 
 To see thy heaven ; then wi-ithe alone in hell. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 *' For you, as women can, went tranquilly 
 Among them all ; I knew not how you beat 
 
 To fold me closely, as I beat for thee ; 
 
 You left me always maddening in my heat." 
 
 She. — " Well, well, sometimes we met." He. — " Yes, 
 yes, we met; 
 Once when the olives, like blue smoke, were faint, 
 I saw you coming towards me, like a saint.
 
 LA FAERIE. 123 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " How you were there, I there, I know not ; let 
 This knowledge serve ; how anguishing we clung 
 
 On one another ; 'twas something, that." She. — Ah 1 fret 
 No more ; bethink thee of that time you swung 
 
 Up to my window, and that pale, pale lad 
 Watching you in and out ; and never spoke, 
 Nor crossed your path, but looked as if he woke. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " What joy had he compared with what you had; 
 
 He, looking for my eyes the whole day long, 
 He, sickening for my hands." He. — " It makes me mad." 
 
 She. — " He ne'er had aught fi-om me — could I belong 
 To two at once ? he cast himself away 
 
 On me and thee." He. — " It makes me very sad 
 
 To think of all the bitterness he had." 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 She. — " Poor face, poor face ! Yes, still I see the glow 
 On his lithe lips whenever I came near ; 
 
 Give love for love, at last he said ; and No 
 I answered, but I stroked his long lank hair. 
 
 And that was welL" ZTe.— " 'Twas well." She.— '' Audi 
 then my sire 
 Cut me with querulous curses, and the three 
 Sprang from their tiger-lair, and tore at me.
 
 124 LA FAERIE. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " Had they not so, 1 know not but the wire 
 Of pity had been strung to love for him : 
 
 Therefore we do not blame them." He. — " No, suspire 
 With pity for that phantom grey and grim ; 
 
 Once was our meeting in the narrow street, 
 
 Thy sire chafed fiercely, palsying with his sword 
 At mules and servants, as became a lord. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 " You, gold and velvet falling to your feet, 
 
 You, golden cinctures floating round your head ; 
 
 And still the crowd drove us together, sweet, 
 I saw but you amid the hustling tread 
 
 Of those sworn servitors and their fierce chief. 
 Who thrust right furiously against my breast. 
 And clutched upon and tore aside my vest. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 *' Were the three with you then ? " She. — " Another grief 
 We had, that sometimes if we heard a bell. 
 
 Or all things shook together in change, or if 
 Some splendour just seen vanished as it fell 
 
 From heaven with sweet superb upon the green, 
 We saw, and saw not, sickened, all in vain. 
 We cried aloud, as children cry in pain."
 
 LA FAERIE. 125 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 He. — " Yes; one time in the church, I think you mean. 
 
 In my sick longing for your face I watched 
 How one sat always reading in the screen 
 
 A book of saints where gold and crimson matched ; 
 And lo! you came, yet came not: shadow-shade 
 
 Darkened upon the windows, and a trance 
 
 Baffled me for a moment in its dance. 
 
 XXX. VII. 
 
 " Like to a blind man holding out his head 
 To solemn night, one sat within the porch, 
 
 Who starting at some noise which had been made. 
 At that time, I remember, in the church. 
 
 Turned slowly his look inwards with his eyes 
 Full, yet of dreamlight, oh ! so weird and wan, 
 Still musing of the thing he dreamed upon. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " I would have passed, knowing him, but sighs, 
 
 Which either breathed, made pause between us twain, 
 
 We looked at one another ; his surprise 
 
 Grew full within him ; but the sense of pain 
 
 Steadied him, and his words came hot and fast — 
 ' Thou canst not love, thou dost not love, as I, 
 I seek for death, the one of u.s shall die ! '
 
 126 LA FAERIE. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 i 
 
 " Well, I was sad ; and yet I would have passed; 
 
 And yet my sword was out; his sword swung thick 
 Hissing about my head ; I struck at last, 
 
 And felt my sword slide instant to the quick, 
 Then drag through bitten flesh, all wet and cold ; 
 
 His blood spun out and burst against the wall ; 
 
 I listened afterwards to hear it fall. 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Thence thrice had new things swallowed up the old, 
 Thrice had the summer boughs drooped down with song, 
 
 Three summers had consumed spring's manifold 
 Incenses in their fervid censers hung, 
 
 And it was now the autumn yellow-haired, 
 When died I for thy love ; for they had said 
 Three years before t.iiit you perforce were wed. 
 
 XLI. ^ 
 
 " Three years I saw you never, yet I spared 
 To slay myself, and then it was enough ; 
 
 I ne'er should see you, and no longer cared; 
 Joyfully died I, thus I gave rebuff 
 
 To the foul lie that j.nkered in my brain, 
 That love was dead within me, for I knew 
 'Twas still in me that love should pierce me through.
 
 LA FAERIE. 127 
 
 XLII. 
 
 *' Even as of old when thrilled I with sweet pain 
 Of love, but now the old love, overborne 
 
 By faces new and those long years, seemed fain 
 To lurk in secret places and to mourn 
 
 Its potence lost ; and yet I knew full well 
 That it was there, and might revive at once, 
 If anything should touch it for the nonce, 
 
 XLiir. 
 
 " If any breath should breathe that ancient spell, 
 If any look shovild give thy face recall; 
 
 But still the occasion came not which should quell 
 The unmeaning present, and 'twas natural 
 
 That I should die, for such a life was death, — 
 That I should let my sluggish soul have scope 
 To find despair, since it abandoned hope. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 ♦' Oh! one might live in anguish, and draw breath 
 Of liquid flume, unshrinking ; but to feel 
 
 The heart freeze harder, while o'erflourisheth 
 The life of sense, and that to uncongeal. 
 
 Awaits the blindness of some accident. 
 
 This is the death indeed. Ah! who would wend 
 Through years of lifeless Ufe to such an end ? "
 
 128 LA FAEEIE. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 She. — " But thrice three years were counted in event 
 Of patience strong in its grave monotone ; 
 
 Nine solemn years fell over, ere / leant 
 To give deliverance to my soul outgrown ; 
 
 Nine years the sunbeams saddened into night, 
 Nine years the moonbeams tasted my sad cheek, 
 Nine years the visions left me wan and weak. 
 
 XL VI. 
 
 " What, you were dead ? I died too, and outright 
 I buried me, where might I evermore 
 
 See visionary change of shadow-light 
 
 Steal through my prison, telling o'er and o'er 
 
 The crevices and hues of grey-cold stone. 
 
 That anguish might be dulled by watching so, 
 And slowly, slower, cease my pulses slow. 
 
 • XLVII, 
 
 " And if at any time some vision lone 
 
 Should shape towards me, it might solemner 
 
 Pass over that cold mirror, and be gone 
 Without surprise, joining the wistful stir 
 
 Of gentle death within me ; mystical 
 
 I watched the moon-forms in the unstirred nights, 
 Trembling upon each other with delights
 
 LA FAERIE. 129 
 
 XL VIII, 
 
 " Which touched me to the core, and drew the fall 
 Of tears, soon checked, one flutter and its pause ; 
 
 Dear heart, I cried for thee whene'er the pall 
 
 Drawn from my heart gave me such sudden cause ; 
 
 A dread time was the day, severe and dull, 
 
 Ministering of nought, but with the night came hot 
 Reflections from the life which now was not. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 "Wherefore I wandered forth by night, brimful 
 Of fiery thought, which ever overbrimmed 
 
 Like a fire-fountain in its rise and lull, 
 
 Dewing the fair locks of the vapour-dimmed 
 
 White-raimented sweet saints who bosomed round; 
 I sought the wild path of the soaring moon, 
 My star, my fate, who gave me all that boon. 
 
 " But when she levelled with the horizon's mound 
 Her speckled mirror, speeding fast away. 
 
 Then every spot and tuft upon the ground, 
 
 Rounded with shadow, domed and coned, and gray, 
 
 And shaking with the secrets of the wind. 
 Circled my feet so lovingly, and made 
 Their signs to me, that I no farther strayed ; 
 
 9
 
 130 LA FAERIE. 
 
 LI. 
 
 «. 
 
 Until the lion colour, •which had skinned 
 
 The nether clouds, had left them black and vast 
 In the moon's setting ; then too paled and thinned 
 
 The unshaped purpose which had bound me fast ; 
 And all was withered, dark, and gray again ; 
 
 Except that sadness, ere she took her place. 
 
 Granted me to bemoan my minished space." 
 
 LII. 
 
 " ' Then,' cried I out, impatient in my pain, 
 
 ' Earth has her need of heaven, to order right 
 The many wrongs of which she bears the stain : 
 
 God ! God of heaven ! again 'tis night, 
 Now all things wear their weird and pallid look ; 
 
 1 wait for something which will never come ; 
 Let the heavens answer ; be no longer dumb 
 
 LIII. 
 
 " It was as when one gazes on a book ; 
 
 Those agonies foredoomed, like Aveary thought, 
 Came with the power of ravishment, and took 
 
 The passive nature, which resisted nought, 
 Caught it, and bore it onwards, and anon 
 
 Let fall, let sink, upon the former state 
 
 Of intense apathy completing fate.
 
 LA FAEEIE. 131 
 
 LIV. 
 
 " Now those nine years had all my bloom foredone, 
 
 And sapped my form, and left me stooped and wan. 
 When those nine years at length upon me shone, 
 
 Flashed out the strange road I had journeyed on, 
 And towards the end I wondered what the end 
 
 Would be, astonished at that period 
 
 Of mad self-torture, the forgotten God 
 
 LV. 
 
 " By silence making for Himself amends 
 Upon my silence: ' God,' I shrieked aloud, 
 
 ' My life, my life ! oh, give me life to spend, 
 Give back the life I've murdered in the cloud ! ' 
 
 This was my waking ; with wild eyes I saw 
 Before me nothing, not one step to take : 
 Ah ! best have prayed, still sleeping, not to wake ! 
 
 LVI. 
 
 " No voices anywhere, which is the law ; 
 
 No answer, save the silence of the heaven ; 
 No consolation, save the awe in awe ; 
 
 No hope, save portion with the unforgiven ; 
 No love, for thy dear image in that hour 
 
 Seemed loosened from my heart; I groaned, and said, 
 
 < Where art thou, love, now that I am dismayed ? ' 
 
 9—2
 
 132 LA FAEEIE. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 i 
 
 " But in that winter time I marked the tower 
 Of ashen light — the snow had clad the pine 
 
 Upon the mountain — how the glens did pour 
 
 Like cataracts downwards towards the gorged ravine, 
 
 Leap after leap, snow-shadow and snow-light, 
 
 And steppe on steppe; and upwards, pine on pine. 
 The snowy mountain rose up crystalline. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 " And panic-struck I watched the changeful height 
 Until the sunset mocked me with its rose. 
 
 Until that rose was blenched in utter night, 
 And all was gray and barren on the snows. 
 
 I lay upon a little mound below, 
 
 I ceased not gazing on the darkened hne 
 Where heaven o'erhung the mountain palatine. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 " And then outwent there. Like a whisper's flow, 
 
 A little stir of light about the sky ; 
 The mountain's head came out by touches slow, 
 
 And the moon took her clouds, and wrought thereby 
 A vision's bed, and presently she came, 
 
 My star, my fate, all hurried to my sight, 
 
 And on my weak sense burst the Infinite.
 
 LA FAERIE. 133 
 
 LX. 
 
 " Oh, 1 was lapped in gold, and dipped in flame, 
 Those billowy-bosomed clouds were all aglow 
 
 With presences, and I beheld the same. 
 
 Those ministrants came crowding row on row, 
 
 And in their sovereignties thy face was plain ; 
 Flame hands and voices calling me away — 
 I gathered up my soul and left the clay." 
 
 LXI. 
 
 Who hath despaired let him despair again ; 
 
 What hath been shall be, and our very life 
 Is reproduction ; pleastire's shadow, pain ; 
 
 Earth's destiny, to live and die in strife; 
 Man's reason, but the tracer of God's will, 
 
 A faint and scarcely faithful shadow thrown 
 
 From the all-Reason who abides alone. 
 
 Lxn. 
 
 God's reason, — Let alone this evil still; 
 
 Let heaven stiU stand above the earth, apart. 
 As though the heaven were brass, inflexible, 
 
 As though the earth were not the heaven's heart. 
 Mark rose as if from dreams, and sadly prayed. 
 With night's thick darkness poured upon his head ; 
 Of him I saw no more: consider this. 
 How long ago died Mark and Rosalys.
 
 184 
 
 othi[r and iauDlilen 
 
 -•o»- 
 
 Hear now, my daughter, what I say; 
 I came into that house one day, 
 The twisting apple-trees were bloom, 
 I sat a long time in that room ; 
 The house rose just above the stream 
 Upon the bottom of a seam 
 Of hill that rises high beyond, 
 All bare except the Uttle bond 
 Of apple-yard enclosed behind 
 The house, and all so steep inclined, 
 The highest apple-tree appeared 
 One level with the gable reared ; 
 And need had I to think, I ween. 
 The twinkling flax was living green. 
 With fleecy moss and misletoe 
 Those trees will now be gray, I know ; 
 But then they had a wondrous glow. 
 Their roots were in the earth below, 
 Their blossom in the heaven above. 
 The blue wind rose and gently clove
 
 MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 135 
 
 The pearl-green leafage from the glume, 
 And bore it to the brook to bloom ; 
 And need had I to think, I ween, 
 About your gold hair's glorious sheen, 
 Yet not so fair as mine had been ; 
 And your eye living in the noon 
 Of Ufe, yet singing no such tune 
 Of life, I thought, as mine did once ; 
 Of thee, sweet virgm, for the nonce 
 Unbroken in thy heart, my maid. 
 
 My virgin, from my bowels flayed. 
 Of thy sweet peace as yet unpained, 
 
 Of thy sweet mercy yet unstained. 
 
 Of thy sweet angel yet unfrayed, 
 
 Of thy sweet service, to be paid. 
 
 Of thy sweet humour, not yet dim. 
 
 Of thy sweet blessings made for him ; 
 
 'Twere need, I ween, to think of these 
 
 Beneath the apple-trees. 
 
 His spirit there before me stood. 
 
 It dropped out of the apple wood, 
 
 It went before me where I sat. 
 
 Through the house and past the cat. 
 
 It passed the brook, it passed the road, 
 
 But led me towards our old abode ; 
 
 And at the turnstile turned, and saw 
 
 Me following, then took its law
 
 136 MOTHEE AND DAUGHTER. 
 
 Of vanishing from mortal sight ; 
 I kept that way with steady might, 
 And came upon you both, and found 
 What I had wished — his arms around 
 Your golden head, while muttering burned 
 His lips upon your lips upturned. 
 He's dead, and I am forty year ; 
 You are a mother now, my dear.
 
 137 
 
 Wh (ircomsman. 
 
 Her bridal feast is fairly set, 
 
 She smiles with innocence and joy, 
 
 She smiles into her bridegroom's heart, 
 Innocent girl and happy boy. 
 
 What pity can she have for me ? 
 
 Why am I here to walk behind, 
 
 And hold his handkerchief or glove ; 
 
 The vow which gives him heart and life 
 To me but gives a sister's love. 
 
 What pity can she have for me ? 
 
 All that a man can do is done ; 
 
 I met her in the cedar wood : 
 To all that I could say or pray 
 
 Her sorrow wept, her purpose stood : 
 
 What pity can she have for me ?
 
 138 THE GROOMSMAN. 
 
 And now she smiles : ah ! happiness, 
 Thou cruel child, thou bitter joy : 
 
 She knows not if my heart be rent : 
 Innocent girl and happy boy. 
 
 What pity can she have for me ?
 
 139 
 
 i<isuaiii. 
 
 I FIND myself by a black spring and cold, 
 
 Which slowly bursts from this rock's heavy head, 
 Like drops of sweat wrung from our God of old, 
 
 And plashes dead 
 Into a basin hollowed from the mould. 
 
 I trace this fountain rolling deeply down — 
 
 Dark is the night, my pathway ruinous — 
 Here foam the muddy billows thick and brown. 
 
 Then issue thus 
 Into a lake where all the world might drown. 
 
 I mark the mountains stand about and brood — 
 
 The lake and they togethei-, God, remain. 
 As black and deep and steep as walls of mud 
 
 On some vast plain 
 Block out and brood upon a swimming drain.
 
 140 DESPAIR. 
 
 I mark a woman on the farther shore 
 
 Walk ghost-like ; her I shriek to with my might ; 
 Ghostlike she walketh ever more and more ; 
 
 Her face how white ! 
 How small between us seems the Infinite ! 
 
 I call her, but she ever tacks and veers 
 
 Like some wan sail that sails in the salt seas 
 Unheeding all the shore's strained eyes and ears ; 
 
 Must this not cease ? 
 Ah ! hear my cry, dear soul, and give me peace. 
 
 I call her ; never may she heed or note : 
 
 Is this the end? Just Judge, this place is cursed! 
 Each breath I draw within my beating throat 
 
 Doth make and burst 
 Bubbles of blood. Death, death ! Death last and first.
 
 141 
 
 n tt ^ 1. 
 
 Give me the darkest corner of a cloud, 
 
 Placed high upon some lonely mountain's head, 
 Craggy and harsh with ruin ; let me shroud 
 
 My life in horror, for I wish me dead. 
 No gentle lowland known and loved of old, 
 
 Lure me to life back through the gate of tears ; 
 But long time drenched with rain and numb with cold. 
 
 May I forget the solace of the years : 
 No trees by streams, no light and warmth of day, 
 
 No white clouds pausing o'er the happy town ; 
 But wind and rain, and fogbanks slow and gray, 
 
 And stony wastes, and uplands scalped and brown; 
 No life, but only death in life: a grave 
 As cold and bleak as thine, dear soul, I crave.
 
 142 
 
 §\u ^rmwH^fn Ponumtnt. 
 
 Hands at rest 
 
 Cross my breast, 
 Left arm closes sword to side ; 
 
 Thus I slept 
 
 When we leapt 
 From the saddle at eventide. 
 
 Like a tent, 
 
 My monument 
 Soars o'er me to its height of arch ; 
 
 My burgonet 
 
 Is rivelled yet. 
 As if against the morrow's march. 
 
 Morning's beam 
 Strikes a gleam 
 From my shield hung up on high : 
 Had a foe 
 Struck that blow, 
 Should I start to arms and issue try ?
 
 THE crusader's MONUMENT. liB 
 
 Here the rood 
 
 Years hath stood, 
 As it shook over me in the clanging strife ; 
 
 All ! poor knight, 
 
 Thou dost fight 
 For holy cross another life. 
 
 Work was mine 
 
 In Palestine, 
 When the Paynims howled round me as I lay; 
 
 Here they pray 
 
 Night and day, 
 But I fight with long fiends since my dying day.
 
 144 
 
 %oinnnc e. 
 
 Look you be sure, 
 
 Take here the lure ; 
 Eide you there, ride you for one two and three. 
 
 Down the king's fist 
 
 With the drag of the wrist, 
 Dragged down the pomegranates pierced with the bee. 
 
 I 
 
 There he sits thinking, 
 
 Stolid and bliiilvins:. 
 While the recorder doth read the decree; 
 
 Courtiers unto him 
 
 Talk the thing, view him ; 
 There he sits gartered well under the knee. 
 
 Rightly be swift. 
 
 Lightly let lift 
 Bridle, and ride to the tower of the sea ; 
 
 On the queen's face 
 
 Sorrow to trace 
 Seeds of the pomegranate sanguine and free.
 
 ROMANCE. 145 
 
 There she lies faintly, 
 
 On her breast quaintly 
 Lies her plumed peacock fan ; dead she may be : 
 
 With her together 
 
 One loosened feather 
 Waves near her mouth : she has drawn up her knee. 
 
 On to your courser, 
 
 Spare not his horsehair ; 
 Ride to the knight of the tower of the sea ; 
 
 Long ago bade he 
 
 Carry my lady 
 Into his tower; carry her, carry me. 
 
 There he sits waiting, 
 
 Counting and rating 
 Sunflowers that grow by his wall on the lea: 
 
 Sees the long grasses, 
 
 Browsed on by asses. 
 While he makes songs with his harp on his knee. 
 
 Now he is gone; 
 
 Cross-bolt or stone 
 Swiftlier fled never, think I, than he : 
 
 Hark how the feet 
 
 Lessen their beat: 
 Four dies to two ; so there, give me the key. 
 
 10
 
 146 
 
 ROIitANCE. 
 
 There he emerges 
 
 Close where the verge is; 
 
 Now he is shot past our furthest off tree; 
 Grant he come back, 
 (Riding not slack,) 
 
 I, maiden Alice, will stand at his knee.
 
 147 
 
 i^hfi Jitd^mettf of i\u M^^ 
 
 Come to the judgment, golden threads 
 Upon golden hair in rich array; 
 
 Many a chesnut shakes its heads, 
 Many a lupine at this day, 
 
 Many a white rose in our beds 
 Waits the judgment of the May. 
 
 Oh, like white roses, great white queen, 
 Come to the judgment, come to-day. 
 
 The white stars on thy robes of green 
 Are like white roses on trees in May : 
 
 By me thy stars and flowers are seen, 
 But now thou seemest far away. 
 
 10-
 
 148 
 
 n 3. 
 
 Brightly glance the beech-tree tops, 
 
 The aspen quivers bright ; 
 The poplar swings from out the copse 
 
 And lashes into white. 
 
 Brightly glance the clover tops, 
 
 The hedge-rows glisten sweet. 
 Where freely climb the flowering hops. 
 
 And bells and flower-buds meet. 
 
 Brightly glance the willow heads, 
 
 The stream comes gleaming down and raving ; 
 Beside it wave the osier beds, 
 
 But love is more than all their waving. 
 
 Brightly glance the tops of the oaks, 
 
 The branch of the ash is black and bitter ; 
 
 Eound the sun's blue course the fire-cloud smokes, 
 To me earth's darkness were dearer and fitter.
 
 SONG. 149 
 
 Brightly glance the tops of the broom, 
 Bright swells the thicket's side; 
 
 The clustering branches give no room: 
 Oh, where may love abide !
 
 150 
 
 31 ^0nu 0| Wlxxu Paitos. 
 
 Of maidens three but one I knew, 
 I dream about the other two : 
 Sometimes I dream and then I see 
 My maidens three. 
 
 When white primrose at last begin'th 
 To yield to wild blue hyacinth, 
 Then does the vision come to me 
 Of maidens three. 
 
 When apple blossom falls away, 
 And lilies feel the first decay, 
 Then shall the vision finished be 
 Of maidens three.
 
 151 
 
 Wo ^Iiadoui. 
 
 If ever thou didst creep 
 
 From out the world of sleep, 
 
 When the sun slips and the moon dips, 
 
 If ever thou wast born ; 
 
 Or upon the starving lips 
 
 Of the gray uncoloured morn. 
 
 If ever thou didst fly 
 
 In the darkness of the sky. 
 
 When it was shaded and cloud-invaded, 
 
 And thou didst form and flit 
 
 By the wild wind aided. 
 
 Like a phantom shed from it. 
 
 If ever thou didst fall 
 
 Less and less upon the wall, 
 
 When the noon heat gathered and beat ; 
 
 And if thou didst grow amain 
 
 To thy former size complete, 
 
 As the hours increased again.
 
 152 TO SHADOW. 
 
 If ever thou didst hover 
 
 Large and larger, till thy cover 
 
 Hid all things hence from the "world's sense, 
 
 So that we said no more 
 
 (In thy total prevalence) 
 
 Art thou here as before. 
 
 If ever thou wast broken 
 
 By the moon which gave her token, 
 
 When she broke thee, that she woke thee, 
 
 And restored thee to our sight 
 
 By the many rays which stroke thee 
 
 Of her interfluent light. 
 
 If ever thou didst pass 
 
 Into blue along the grass, 
 
 And into blue the long wood through, 
 
 When the sunset lay within 't, 
 
 And thou hast touched anew 
 
 Into softness every tint. 
 
 If ever thou didst fling 
 Omens from the bird's grey wing, 
 (As certain these as Oscines,) 
 If there be a lover dying, 
 And he sigh upon his knees, 
 Bring him comfort in his sighing.
 
 TO SHADOW. 153 
 
 If ever thou didst seance 
 In a wayward wistful dance 
 Up and down like a frown, 
 On the wall with giant scrawl, 
 Till the soul would sink and drown 
 In the waste and glimmering wall: 
 
 If ever thou didst stand 
 
 In a staircase stark and grand. 
 
 And on that spot in ghastly knot 
 
 Didst seem to stir and squeak ; 
 
 Affright that lover not, 
 
 If he with death be weak. 
 
 For if his love should weep 
 In some violet-lidded sleep, 
 The tears arise in her sweet eyes 
 Like a golden shadow-fit ; 
 And her blush it flits and flies 
 As the shadows fly and flit. 
 
 And what is likest thee ? 
 
 What makes thee dear to me ? 
 
 The blush and tremble which fain dissemble 
 
 How much of mine is hers ; 
 
 The very blush and tremble 
 
 Which her sweet pride demurs.
 
 IM 
 
 Mt to |OJT. 
 
 Too long hast thou been lost ; the cup has left 
 
 My pallid lips; too bitter overlong 
 The draught had grown ; a hideous poison eft 
 
 Swam upwards towards the quaffing mouth, a wrong 
 Was done by nature's nectar to my youth; 
 
 So with us all; a pallid spectral troop, 
 Whose thoughts are grey ere age be come in sooth, 
 
 We sit together, and together stoop. 
 Hiding with hands our faces, when the cloud 
 
 Of memory fi-om the deep with thunderous rain 
 Swells up against us; then, ah, then we shroud 
 
 Our faces from the iron-driving pain, 
 In horror bowed. 
 
 A ghostly company, be sure, are we ; 
 
 At thought of joy our eyes are full of tears ; 
 We cannot walk with lovers on the lea, 
 
 We dare not have sweet music in our ears :
 
 ODE TO JOY, 155 
 
 We toiled through spring for summer's golden sTieaf, 
 
 And for our harvest found we hemlock strewn; 
 Ah, why, when we were cursed beyond belief. 
 
 For other hearts should Fortune keep her boon ? 
 Not so, believe us, sorrow is the lot 
 
 Of all who look for joy beneath the moon; 
 Come, pace the shore that leads thee to our grot. 
 
 While o'er blue waters dies the bygone tune, 
 Rejoicing not. 
 
 Behold the white clouds roU. along the blue. 
 
 And like the clouds do flocks o'erspread the plain; 
 And like them winds the forest out of view ; 
 
 Shall not Joy's chariot come with splendid train. 
 And he descend and walk the living air, 
 
 With Melody and Peace, and Happy Love, 
 Wing-footed, rosy-limbed, with myrtle rare 
 
 And olive crowned from old Eleusis' grove ? 
 Ah, no, the fury night will soon be here ; 
 
 She comes with storms that drive the flocks away, 
 And takes the large free clouds to make her bier, 
 
 And rends the leaves ; no longer youth can stay 
 Nor joy appear.
 
 156 
 
 ®he Wimn of Wluh^n, 
 
 •*^*- 
 
 True poesy is thought impassioned, 
 
 Moulded of form, sound, colour ; and so wed 
 
 To outer life : she is the pure ideal 
 
 Transferred to use, refiner of the real : 
 
 She sleeps unstirred till won from intellect 
 
 By passion, the great mover, and so deck'd 
 
 In many coloured life : nor loses she 
 
 Aught of her secret grace and purity 
 
 By such strong contact with this outwardness, 
 
 Else were she formless, voiceless, imageless, 
 
 A slumbrous phantom, brighter, subtiler 
 
 Than sunshine upon wide-spun gossamer. 
 
 But void and mute, an unfulfilled decree, 
 
 An aimless power, a realmless deity. 
 
 Yet now she Uves insphered within the world. 
 
 Haunting all time with music, and empearled 
 
 In all the preciousness of outer life. 
 
 The child of beauty, sprung from gentle strife 
 
 Of influences diverse, yet supreme, 
 
 Whereby the soul is joined with heaven's scheme.
 
 THE VISION OF THEBES. 157 
 
 Therefore the past is glorious ; and each place 
 Wherein the past has been, wherein the race 
 Of man hath moved is holy ; 'tis the lair 
 Of passions yet unspent ; therein they swear 
 That oft the wind hath utterance not its own, 
 Pregnant with airy meaning; there have flown 
 Shapes half-seen by their shadows, which but glance, 
 Then mock the sudden eye; there oft the dance 
 Of phantasy is pressed upon the dew ; 
 There whispery fens have music, often too 
 From barren, ruined, wasteful solitudes 
 Great sounds have sprung, swollen on the swell of woods. 
 And mingled with night gushings of far streams. 
 Floated and died ; these were the first stray gleams 
 Of the great dawn of legend, and in sooth 
 It might be so, for legend oft spheres truth. 
 And the great cycle ever hath onroUed, 
 Changeful of form, but certain to unfold 
 "Weird broideries of time ; like as the years 
 Glide in quaternion, still the harbingers 
 Of life and beauty, though in each the dower 
 DiiFers in depth of season, sun, or shower. 
 
 Thus then her chiefest glory earth has won 
 From man's reflected presence, as the sun 
 Flushes with purple heaven's wide westering side. 
 And that again the sea : I oft have tried 
 In sorry sort to image to my sense 
 Fair cities, and the bygone opulence
 
 158 THE VISION OF THEBES. 
 
 Of ruined wastes ; and, certes, howsoe'er 
 Legends be true, yet oft to poet there, 
 Where most the shadows of time's wings have gloomed, 
 Have come sweet dreams, which almost have assumed 
 Bodily shapes, the concourse of swift thought, 
 "Which but for very transience would be nought. 
 Such me befel, a vision of past gladness, 
 Filled with the rayless imagery of sadness, 
 Big with the glories, darkened with the woe 
 Of nations dead, and ages long ago. 
 And I must try a strange and antique theme, 
 The dim remembrance of a flitted dream ; 
 And I must venture on far wanderings. 
 Dimming my soul in underlights of things. 
 I had a vision, and the past came to me ; 
 She touched me with her voice — her voice ran through 
 
 me: 
 She was a shadow, that strange phantasy, 
 
 A trembler upon being, moving wearily ; 
 
 Her voice an echo, shadow's utterance, 
 
 A shadow and an echo ! then a trance 
 
 Fell on my senses, but my spirit sped, 
 
 A mystic pinion, wheresoe'er she led. 
 
 Then came I to an awful place, afar. 
 
 Upon the midmost tide of night, and there 
 
 I saw a stony whiteness answering 
 
 Unto the moon's uncertain glimmering : 
 
 There were dim forms of tower and pyramid 
 
 Narrowing skywards, but all else was hid,
 
 THE VISION OF THEBES. 159 
 
 By the false breadths of the uncertain light : 
 
 Midway a river rolled through the deep night, 
 
 Black, weltering sullenly ; and lo, thereon, 
 
 Cinctured with imaged beams the image of the moon. 
 
 Then entered I the place with secret dread. 
 
 Passing through streets of ruin, where my tread 
 
 Fell drearily, for it was very lone. 
 
 And full of wasteful haunts, and far agone 
 
 In desolation : columns stood there shorn 
 
 Of half their height, and massy fragments torn 
 
 From fallen piles, and crumbling, fissured walls. 
 
 And sunken towers and domes, and capitals 
 
 Broken on bases : there too images 
 
 Of nameless shapes, supporting cornices. 
 
 Stood in half-lights : and to the chill night air 
 
 A few scant trees sighed sadly : everywhere 
 
 Shadows fell black on shadows, but all round 
 
 The outermost, imbroken, reached the ground. 
 
 Much marvelling at this so grievous change 
 
 Upon such grandeur wrought, and giving range 
 
 To many fancies, till the stars were sped 
 
 Far into morn, in that untenanted 
 
 And voiceless place throughout the night I stood. 
 
 But when the dawn betrayed the secret quietude, 
 
 Then saw I clearly all the mystery 
 
 Of obelisk and tower, all emblemry 
 
 Of cornice-couchant sphinx with calm wide eyes, 
 
 All wonders of dim-reaching galleries,
 
 160 THE VISION OP THEBES. 
 
 Of crumbling frieze, of ruining gradinc, 
 Of marbled slab, of moulding palatine ; 
 Moreover when the clearness of daylight 
 Slid into distant haze, there seemed upright, 
 Fronting the east, a giant mass of stone, 
 Shaped into man's rough semblance, whereupon 
 Unto my brain swift recognition ran : 
 Memnon I knew, and Thebes Egyptian. 
 
 Ay, 'twas the glorious city, hundred-gated, 
 The olden one, before which stand abated 
 All puny elegance of modern days. 
 Whose cumbrous grandeur even to our gaze 
 Fills out all myths of founder demigod ; 
 The stony ghost of old, the sea-bank broad, 
 Staying time's waves, which, with its great compeers, 
 Stands forth unwhelmed by the huge tide of years ; 
 Gazing whereon we may uptrace the springs 
 Of human action through the past of things. 
 And scoop the future from the past — such thought 
 Rose in my heart, with fear and wonder fraught, 
 Unshaped in word, till from my breast unpent 
 My voice at length throughout the ruins went. 
 
 All without grief, 'twas thus I cried aloud. 
 Is light and flitting as a rainless cloud ; 
 And thou, fair city, hast a name, and fate 
 Dewing all time with tears, for thou dost mate 
 Thyself unto an inner region 
 Of glory and decay. Ah, once the throne
 
 THE VISION OF THEBES. 161 
 
 Whereon erewhile towered brave humanity 
 Enseated grandly, dost thou prostrate lie ? 
 Alas, not ruined shade of portico 
 Nor fall of turret strength hath brought thee low 
 To this immortal mourning; thou dost show 
 The truth outrolled by rolling centuries 
 Of glorious but changing destinies. 
 The heart of man is one ! throughout all hfe 
 At grasp with circumstance, at endless strife 
 To clothe itself in deed ; but as no brain 
 Hath e'er been found capacious to contain 
 An ultimate ideal, accident 
 Entails itself on all that we invent, 
 Nor aught is perfect, nothing can attain 
 Its final point at once, but still must gain 
 By slow accessions, still must be increased 
 By added strength ; hence nought hath ever ceased, 
 All life is reproduction ; hence upspring 
 Cities, with all their wealthy minist'ring 
 To diverse wants, which ever couchant lie 
 In diiFerent natures; hence society 
 Is holden in the bond of difference 
 And hence compacted; hence, great Thebes, hence, 
 The impulse that created thee still moves 
 Unslumbrous and unspent, for what man loves 
 Is ever changeless, and becomes the centre 
 Whence he draws wider circles ; do thou enter 
 
 11
 
 162 THE VISION OF THEBES. 
 
 Among those wondrous antitypes of soul 
 Which show it like yet diverse, be the goal 
 At once, and starting-point of human thought ! 
 
 Ah ! subtle cause thine overthrow hath wrought, 
 
 AVho whilom sat'st the crown of circumstance, 
 
 Taking joy's tithe from every moment, glance 
 
 Upon thyself, and say, are not the powers 
 
 Of ruin sown within ? Thy sister toAvers 
 
 Stand on in their first strength, by battle's wrack 
 
 Unbroken, by time's ever ruthless track 
 
 Scarce furrowed ; what then was it that hath cast 
 
 Earth's darkness on thee, making thee at last 
 
 A sepulchre for ruin ? Sad, that e'er 
 
 Man's glory should be made his sepulchre ! 
 
 Yea, that one idea driven to excess 
 
 Should be its own destroyer ! Thou didst press 
 
 Thy law of sole dominion questionless 
 
 Unto its furthest; thou didst give no scope 
 
 To individual purpose, interest, hope. 
 
 Those parents of endeavour ; and the want 
 
 Of this one truth it was did disenchant 
 
 Thy solemn halls ; thy stern unsAverving code 
 
 On alien ages sunk its unmeet load, 
 
 Nor knew to fit itself to after years. 
 
 So to its rules old tyranny adheres. 
 
 The season being gone, in fell despite 
 
 Of change and progress, and forgetting quite
 
 THE VISION OF THEBES. 163 
 
 That man's advancing work can never die, 
 And all must share the immortality. 
 
 Thus mused I till the richness of the west, 
 Of hues immingled in a floating rest. 
 Showed like a melted rainbow, till adown 
 Fluttering in thousand stars great night had flown. 
 I mused; I saw the budding moon enshrined 
 By gentlest ofiice of the summer wind, 
 With clouds to couch on; and in that still hour 
 Great visions stood enshaped by the power 
 That works in earnest meditation : lo ! 
 Methought the place so gloom-entranced ere now 
 Had met the noonlight, and a dream in dream 
 Fell on my soul, for all the air did seem 
 Enthronged with uplift shapes of tower and fane, \ 
 Each bearing strange device upon its van 
 Of hieroglyph ; and 'neath them life again 
 Was multiplied in dusky throngs of men. 
 And from collision groups of circumstance 
 Sprang ever chequered; 'twas as though advance 
 Of onward-flowing time had never been 
 Since first that desert was joy's chosen scene. 
 For ruin was not: the great city's smoke 
 Swung heavy in the sky, and voices spoke 
 In the wide-whispering night, borne from beneath 
 To the upper air, far wafted on the breath 
 Of grief or laughter: midst a mighty throng 
 I entered, borne resistlessly along 
 
 11—2
 
 164 THE VISION OF THEBES. 
 
 By the great human concourse, through long streets 
 
 Walled by vast columns and enset with sheets 
 
 Of pale red marble ; ever as I went 
 
 The wonder grew, for all the crowd upsent 
 
 Red pointed flames of torchlight to the sky, 
 
 As on they marched beneath emblazonry 
 
 Hung high from palace roof or pillar tall, 
 
 As suited ancient Thebes upon a festival. 
 
 There were vast forms of calm eternal lines, 
 That brooded ever upon guarded shrines ; 
 There were slight nameless creatures with scythed wings, 
 Embodied thoughts and delicatest things 
 In fretwork, whereon ever flitted past 
 Warm hurried glows and moving shadows cast 
 From torches, and made thinner by the moon ; 
 Unto a temple huge the crowd rolled on. 
 And passed between its valves of crudded gold, 
 Into a foiir-square court wide to enfold 
 The vastest throng that e'er to worship passed, 
 Round which went curtains always interlaced, 
 From shaft to shaft wide floating ; and entraced 
 With tender curves of richest broidery. 
 That showed upon the clear and moony sky. 
 O'erhead the fane loomed hugely, and in front 
 Two doors of inwrought glory nigh a font 
 O'erdrooped by heavy-leaved orient trees. 
 Drew all eyes towards them ; for the mysteries 
 Of Egypt's greatest god were shrined there.
 
 THE VISION OF THEBES. 165 
 
 Now when the joyous torches sunken were, 
 And the glad shoutings hushed for reverence, 
 And one sole voice was telling how immense 
 The glory and the terror and the wrath. 
 And prayer was breathing thoughts unuttered forth. 
 Back I withdrew me from the golden glare. 
 Back from the awM throng, apart to where 
 Was only moonlight in a quiet street. 
 And there the far-off echoes did I meet 
 Of the full-throated response, and stray gleams 
 Of magic lights, and heard the voice of streams. 
 The broad-breast river ran through floating shades, 
 Lapping sheer blocks of granite, colonnades 
 That high upheld long rows of palaces ; 
 And on its eddies glanced light pinnaces 
 With lamps and wafts of music : on I hied, 
 Methought in silence, lone and unespied, 
 Beneath vast groves of sleeping foliage, 
 The stars among their branches ; soft umbrage 
 Moon-flung on sheeny fountains, where there lay 
 Enwalled spaces widened to embay 
 Quaint plots of greenness : then with sudden change 
 Methought I was amid an endless range 
 Of palace fronts, tall shafts, and long arcades, 
 And slabbed steps that led through balustrades 
 Of columns twin on either hand, which spread 
 Into an arched roof high overhead
 
 166 THE VISION OF THEBES. 
 
 Through all the aisled length ; each floor was paven 
 
 "With level squares of marble, gem-engraven, 
 
 Which chilled the moonbeams streaming over them ; 
 
 And on the doors was wealth of gold and gem, 
 
 A solemn wealth, which gave to the moonlight 
 
 Rich molten gleams ; and fountain rillets bright. 
 
 Jetted from marble stems by water elves, 
 
 Came spreaded over smooth and level shelves. 
 
 Wave rippling over wave ; and thence they fell 
 
 With ceaseless murmur and a gentle swell 
 
 Unto the marble limits of their lake. 
 
 Thus momently did I myself betake 
 
 Through golden vestibules and galleries 
 
 Into wide palace courts and breadth of terraces : 
 
 Till in the midst of this wide loveliness 
 
 Close sandalled forms about me 'gan to press, 
 
 And I was in amongst the throng again : 
 
 And that great heart, whence through the whole domain 
 
 Of Egypt, life was pulsed, throbbed mightily. 
 
 In its primeval strength before mine eye. 
 
 But now these visions warm began to pale, ' 
 
 Gradual as fogbank parting from a vale ; 
 The night was sinking, and the stars were dim, 
 And soon the morning light began to swim 
 Slow through the eastern port with saddening gleam ; 
 A hundred fountains twisted the first beam 
 In crystal writhings, then all straight were gone, 
 And all the show, and I was left alone.
 
 167 
 
 labiilon ani ginetielt. 
 
 From desert land tlie Arab sheikh is come across the 
 
 southern sea; 
 And now his camel skirts the wastes that lead him 
 
 through the old Chaldee ; 
 He watches not the ganuet flying over towards the 
 
 setting sun, 
 But marks the bittern and its shadow on the pools of 
 
 Babylon. 
 
 'Twas written in the Burden her destruction should as 
 
 sudden be 
 As Sodom and Gomorrah sunk beneath the waters of 
 
 the sea; 
 And still they say that often he who sails upon those 
 
 languid waves, 
 At ebb sees whitely gleaming palaces and spires in 
 
 ocean caves,
 
 168 BABYLON AND NINEVEH. 
 
 As underneath the ocean are preserved the Cities of the 
 
 Plain, 
 So by the fire preserved to us, the towers of Bel and 
 
 Nin remain; 
 No earthquake could have kept them as the fire that 
 
 wrought their overthrow; 
 And every age has deeper sealed that mortal sleep so 
 
 soft and low. 
 
 And rivers that run swiftly thither from the mountains 
 
 of their birth, 
 Go ever from them slowly, big with slime, and dust, 
 
 and fire-baked earth : 
 Then all their ancient limits on their heedless way they 
 
 overpass, 
 Until at last the plain is swamped beneath the festering 
 
 morass. 
 
 Ah ! once their cry was in their ships ; the old Phoenician 
 
 galleys went 
 From thence ; and Tyre and Sidon were Chaldea's 
 
 mighty monument : 
 Ponders the lonely sheikh, as o'er the waste the 
 
 swinging camel speeds; 
 The Kufa far behind him with its steersman dark and 
 
 gaunt recedes.
 
 BABYLON AND NINEVEH. 
 
 169 
 
 Then here is Babylon: behold the fiery cloud of the 
 
 simoon 
 Hangs o'er its shapeless mounds in vaporous setting of 
 
 the afternoon ; 
 So o'er a lonely gravestone might a widow's dusky 
 
 garments sweep, 
 As that wild Avanderer surveys it from Borsippa's 
 
 crumbled steep. 
 
 Beneath those quiet heaps how many dead are sleeping ; 
 
 there they lie, 
 The old Chaldean glory, all the pomp and all the 
 
 imag'ry ; 
 The temples and the palaces, the hanging gardens and 
 
 the walls. 
 The friezes upon pavements strewn, the bases upon 
 
 capitals. 
 
 Still rises here the Kasr, Nebuchadnezzar reared in 
 
 days fifteen, 
 And fronting it in solemn state the huger Babil mound 
 
 is seen ; 
 And once upon that very place where now he stands 
 
 upon the Tel, 
 Stood bearded kings and sages, and the votive offerings 
 
 smoked to Bel.
 
 170 BABYLON AKD NLNEVEH. 
 
 To the seven planets rose that temple with its chord of 
 
 colours bright; 
 To form the planetary spheres the sacred band of hues 
 
 unite ; 
 Black, orange, red, gold, yellow, blue, the silver symbol 
 
 of the moon, 
 And so sprang the storeys in a mystic harmony of tune. 
 
 From mound to mound the grass is spread, by ruin 
 
 raised in swathes of green ; 
 It leads the eye from height to height o'er all the mute 
 
 and desert scene; 
 And here are recent traces where some roving Arab 
 
 camp was laid : 
 It was the caravan that here one little stage its journey 
 
 stayed. 
 
 Do not these vestiges of man unseal the giant grave 
 
 beneath ? 
 The latest trace of human life interpret best the ancient 
 
 death ? 
 More ghastly are the cinders of the latest fire that here 
 
 was lit. 
 Than mound of ruin sleeping calmly with the smoulder- 
 ing cloud on it.
 
 BABYLON AND NINEVEH. 171 
 
 And 'twixt this generation and the last a distance 
 
 intervenes, 
 More vast than lies between the many centuries the ruin 
 
 screens : 
 Than hes between the king the Persian army slew, and 
 
 Naram-sin, — 
 The king who ruled primevally before the sceptre 
 
 passed to Nin. 
 
 In ruin all confounded lie ; and Erech is their tranquil 
 
 tomb ; 
 Lo ! far on the horizon looms the Babylonian catacomb ; 
 There coffins, piled in mountains, of their ancient sleep 
 
 are dispossessed 
 By hordes of shuddering Moslems and the busy searchers 
 
 of the West. 
 
 They yield them from their cedar shelves and crumble 
 
 from their stony bier ; 
 They sink upon the alien decks ; on river drifts they 
 
 disappear ; 
 And gain far off a foreign home, by stranger eyes and 
 
 hands defiled ; 
 From this depopulated land the very dead shall be 
 
 exiled.
 
 172 BABYLON AND NINEVEH. 
 
 To north, behold, another river pours its life-blood to 
 
 the sea ; 
 Behold another city-circle girding ancient Nineveh ; 
 Most ancient Asshur, holy Calah, Arbil, Khazah, Khor- 
 
 sabad ; 
 Half were capitals, ere Nineveh herself the chief 
 
 dominion had. 
 
 And now they lie around her, now the sorrow of the 
 
 earth on all ; 
 Strange silence that hath long endured, and coldness in 
 
 the charnel hall ; 
 What man dare sit within it, as the tunnelled light is 
 
 stealinsc round 
 On sculptui'ed slabs of pallid stone, that form the walls, 
 
 and strew the ground ? 
 
 The fire-bleached gypsum shines again, the awful 
 
 bearded kings are viewed 
 Amid the courts where once they wrote their deeds in 
 
 living attitude ; 
 'Tis they Avho taught the sword to range in ways before 
 
 unknown to man 
 From Zagros to the Western Sea, from Egypt to the 
 
 Caspian.
 
 BABYLON AND NINEVEH. 173 
 
 On swords this first of empires rose, and not as bringing 
 
 peace by war 
 They ruled o'er prostrate nations, but as warrior o'er 
 
 warrior ; 
 Each king his standard drew along the scene of his 
 
 forefathers' toils. 
 As rends the griffin o'er and o'er the dragon's still 
 
 rebelling coils. 
 
 Each king in god-like battle joy upon his warring 
 
 chariot stands, 
 Scourging the prostrate foe with rain of bitter arrows 
 
 from his hands : 
 They scale the walls of mighty forts, the rivers deep 
 
 and wide they ford ; 
 They cut their way through pathless woods, they build 
 
 their city with the sword. 
 
 The eagle rides upon their rein ; the winged circle with 
 
 them speeds. 
 That living wheel prophetic, prescient, nimbus of eternal 
 
 deeds ; 
 And here behold the votive bulls, in mystic legend 
 
 gravely wrought, 
 Ox-limbed for strength, gier- winged for speed, and 
 
 fronted like a man for thought.
 
 174 BABYLON AJTO NINEVEH. 
 
 Ah ! now they fade at once, in sudden waning of the 
 
 Eastern light, 
 By grave and mound their multitudes are swallowed 
 
 up in kindly night ; 
 And whether night of hours or ages, matters not at all 
 
 to Pul ; 
 Yet that poor Arab waits for daylight in his lodging at 
 
 Mosul. 
 
 THE END.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 
 
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