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 l^HiVERSlTY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 T. J. POWYS. 
 
 LONDON: 
 KEG AN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER A- CO., Ltp. 
 
 1891.
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 The aspirate ' in the second line of the Greek motto to the 
 Dedication should be ' 
 
 Page 20, line 4, for is his read in his 
 
 Page 20, last line but one, for they read thy 
 
 Page 69, line 1, for in all read all in ' 
 
 Page 82, line 11, for fancies read Dreamland's 
 
 Page 91, line 14, for looked read look 
 
 Page 114, line 13, 7-ead In stocks within a pound impounded 
 with 
 
 Page 126, line 9, for smiled read grinne<l 
 
 [The frontispiece is a photograph by Mayall, reproduced 
 by a process, as to whicli we are informed that its one defect 
 is, that it produces spots and blotches supplied by itself.]
 
 OvTO^ KPATISTOS tVr" di'vp, oi TopyUi, 
 Oari^ AAIKEISeAI nAEIST 'Eni^TATAI (ifjoTC^u. 
 
 Menander. 
 
 i3ctricatct» 
 
 to the memory of 
 
 a j^'reat Poet, 
 
 Sir IIEXRY TAYLOR 
 
 (author of Isaac Comnenus, Edxcin the Fair, etc.) 
 
 who wrote 
 
 ^^ The world hnoics nothing of its greatest men,^^ 
 
 and is himself rilready almost forgotten.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 -se?-a, tamen respexit- 
 
 Some of the pieces now published were printed 
 (a very Kmited number of copies) many years ago, 
 but not widely circulated, or advertised, or offered 
 for review. 
 
 It may be pleaded, as an apology for offering 
 them to the public now, that although much 
 encouragement, such as may be implied from the 
 interesting and characteristic letters* of Walter 
 Savage Landor, photographed for the embellish- 
 ment of this little book, was accorded to the then 
 young author, he has not hastily acted upon it, 
 or even made mention of it : he had, in fact, 
 absolutely forgotten the existence of the most 
 
 * The postmark of Mr. Landor' s letter dated " Bath .Tune 2." 
 i8 Bath Ju 2 1857 ; that of his undated one Batu Jy 3 58,
 
 11. 
 
 interesting of those letters until recently, having 
 laid them entirely aside for more than a quarter 
 of a century. 
 
 Mr. Landor, it will he seen, readily sanctioned 
 any use of his testimon}^ ; Init the author, who 
 had hecome much engaged at the English Bar (not 
 under the name which appears on the title-page), 
 almost at once decided not to avail himself of the 
 permission ; and thenceforth suhordinated all 
 thought of higher things to professional duty, 
 and the " low " material objects " enjoyed " during 
 many years of " grind " at uninteresting briefs, 
 with happy immunity from any dangerous imputa- 
 tion of a weakness for literature, and from the 
 deadly suspicion of poetry. 
 
 The unfinished dramatic poem " Uriel," to which 
 Mr. Landor more particularly refers, lias never 
 been continued, notwithstanding his kind request 
 for " the sequel ;" and it appears to the author to 
 require so much revision, that it is not reprinted 
 now.
 
 Ul. 
 
 There is a temptation to mention a letter from 
 Charlotte Brontii, as interesting and characteristic 
 as Mr. Lander's, and to much the same effect in 
 its favourable criticism, and that Mrs. Browning 
 expressed her opinion in terms which to cite 
 would naturally argue fatuous vanity and a total 
 w^ant of " sense of proportion." 
 
 The only other name ("such names mingled !") 
 of a too gracious critic whicli shall be paraded is 
 that of Mr. A. Hayward ; who spoke (wrote) of 
 assured success (sed non ego crcdulus), and who 
 was not chiefly known as a critic too much dis- 
 posed to express enthusiasm at all like that of 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning or Charlotte Bronte.* 
 
 * If there may be a single exception to the rule that no living 
 critic or authority shall be mentioned, the illustrious name of 
 James Anthony Froude must adorn this paije, in recognition of 
 the encouragement which he also volunteered both in the distant 
 days referred to and since.
 
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 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Starlight . .... 1 
 
 Sappho - - - - - - 2 
 
 For Cl ..... 3 
 
 For Alice Theodora Raikes - - - 6 
 
 Between Life and Death ... 9 
 
 Owen the Valiant - - - .13 
 
 The good news from Geralp - • - - 29 
 
 The Hall - - - - - 34 
 
 The Wood - ... - 39 
 
 vortioern - - - - - 42 
 
 DuLCE EST QUOD TERRA TEGIT - - - 47 
 
 British India, 1857 - - - - 50 
 
 Egeria ..... 53 
 
 The Martyr - - - - - 01 
 
 The Dream of Pilate's Wife - - - 71 
 
 The Damsel possessed - - - - 75 
 
 Never More ----- 77 
 
 Lake - - - - - - 82 
 
 Sea - - - - - - 83 
 
 "This LONGING after Immortality ' ' - - 84 
 
 Flux and Reflux .... 85 
 
 Partant pour la Syrie - - - - 87 
 
 Mount Carmel . . . , 94
 
 PAGK, 
 
 Nazareth - - - - . !)(; 
 
 Mount Tabor - - - - 07 
 
 Sorrow without Hope - - - - !>!• 
 
 "This is not your rest" - - - 103 
 
 Guy Grey - - - - - 107 
 
 Midnight ; Midwinter - . - - 131 
 
 lovelost ..... 136 
 
 The Grave of Burns - - - 145 
 
 Tay Bridge .... - 151 
 
 Fragment. Greece and Rome - - - 154 
 
 Fragment. Hills and Streams - - - 155 
 
 The Kilkenny Cats ... - 15G 
 
 ERRATA, 
 
 The accent ' in tlie second line of the motto to the Dedication 
 
 should be ' . 
 Page 120, line 9, for smiled read grinned.
 
 STAlUJGliT. 
 
 Millions of worlds and ugcs,* spreiid in light, 
 
 Space, time*' — depths undiviucd — 
 Alike unfathomable, co-inlinite. 
 
 And where the Mind ? 
 
 And where, oh ! where the Heart ? — for \\hut the rest 
 
 If that in vain we crave ? 
 All is but measure of a wider waste, 
 A deeper grave. 
 
 * " We penetrate alike througli the boundaries of time and space ; 
 we measure the former through the hitter .... the light of 
 remote heavenly bodius [)rescnts us witli tlie most ancient perceptible 
 evidence of tiie existence of matter." — liumbuldt, (A>s}uu^, vol. i., 
 p. i-14-5 (vol. iv., p. ooO).
 
 SAPPHO. 
 
 O ' 
 
 She Las girded lier lyre, yet burning, 
 To the throb of her bosom deep,* 
 
 With the pressure of arms of yeaniiu 
 And she poises her on the steep. 
 
 There's a wavy while robe descending ; 
 
 And a note like a sad song's ending. 
 
 It is gone — the gleam, the singing : 
 
 There is nothing near or far 
 But a swan through the blue air winging 
 
 Away to the western star, 
 And a last note fleeting, dying, 
 With the white swan starward Hying. 
 
 *'" Bf(Oi'/io\;rov.
 
 For CL- 
 
 "Was there no presage '? Had my restless heart, 
 
 That stirred, I think, as with some dreamy sense 
 
 Of dawn as yet unrisen, had it then 
 
 No prescience, as we stood, that Julian morn. 
 
 By the deep-flowing river, dark, strong Dee, 
 
 Deep, but unresting, rapid, like the flow 
 
 Of passionate thoughts that seek that other heart, 
 
 That union, as the river seeks the sea ? — 
 
 ^«o prescience of the new and better life, 
 
 The world made brighter in the light than then 
 
 Dawned from dark eyes, that speak the vivid mind 
 
 With thought's mute eloquence, and speak the soul 
 
 Of gentleness and goodness ? 
 
 With that day. 
 
 So darkened once,* and then, as years lagged on. 
 
 Still dawning dark on memory, with that day 
 
 Began new life, which never since has waned 
 
 Prom that first light, and shall not set ; or if 
 
 To set on this world's dim and circumscribed 
 
 And ever near horizon, shall but set 
 
 In hues prophetic of another day 
 
 And brighter, hues reflected from afar. 
 
 * 15th July, 1808.
 
 That summer day, that holiday, \\c went 
 
 Among the hills, and all was fairy-land. 
 
 That day ! — how oft have I recalled it, straying 
 
 Among the mountains and the mountain streams' 
 
 Love-murmuring waters, as they poured their tale, 
 
 Sped through the flowery woodlands with the pulse 
 
 Born in their lofty source ! how oft looked back, 
 
 Tar hack, and then far forward, as with eyes 
 
 Unsealed, and touched with holy eujjhrasy. 
 
 Heart stilled and soothed, and mind attuned hy lie;irt, 
 
 Looked hack with calmest scorn on all that once 
 
 Had angered at the ingrate and malign,* 
 
 liemitting, pitying all'^-" — full well content 
 
 That they, unwitting, blindly shaping ends 
 
 Of ever-present Providence, had wrought 
 
 ^ly best deliverance, and, estranging me. 
 
 Had thither turned my steps where I had found 
 
 One that redeemed and blessed, won back, relumed 
 
 That faith in goodness Avhich had been belied, 
 
 That loving trust which had been so betrayed ; 
 
 One that by all that friend on earth can show 
 
 Of leal devotion, purest tenderness. 
 
 Has taught how votaries see and how revere 
 
 T'heir friends in Heaven, whom they as saints invoke; 
 
 Has stablished in a sternly judging mind 
 
 The boundless blessing of a boundless faith, 
 
 And made my heart a shrine that shall endure 
 
 Beyond the ages that outlast the hills. 
 
 * " O pardun me, thou bleeding i)iece of earth, 
 
 That 1 am meek and i?entlo with tliose butchers." 
 
 — JuH'i.is Comir, Act 111., ac. 1.
 
 That word '"' Beyond /"--a mystic sonnd, a spoil— 
 
 The far " Beyond "—it haunted me, a child. 
 
 I gazed beyond those hills, that hounded then 
 
 My world, and in the unexplored hcheld 
 
 Another world— far other than my own, 
 
 Or all my own, a world within my mind. 
 
 And after lapse of long and trouhled years, 
 
 I stood with her upon the mountain height, 
 
 My childhood's false horizon, and we watched 
 
 The summer day, that there had dawned, go down 
 
 Beyond the further west, in kindling hues 
 
 That seemed to glow with love, and gleam with hope. 
 
 And well content was I with silent thoughts 
 
 That followed lite and light beyond the bourn 
 
 That Fancy fixes in its faithless awe 
 
 At Time's departure, followed Love and Hope 
 
 lieyond that western sky, the grave of day ; 
 
 Full well content, and more, to think that she 
 
 Then (for I go) alone, yet not alone. 
 
 Shall watch the setting suns of future days. 
 
 And take the parting light into her heart, 
 
 Pledge of its sure revival in the east ; 
 
 And breathe the summer morn among the flowers. 
 
 Among the voices of the birds and brooks ; 
 
 And stray in autumn evening in the wood, 
 
 And tind the green blade and the earliest bud 
 
 Glance through the white shroud of the re-born year, 
 
 That stirs iu earth at whisper of the spring ;
 
 6 
 
 And muse iu holy moouliglit as it lies 
 
 Shed from blue midnight, through the solemn trees 
 
 And shadows, on the grey historic walls 
 
 Whence, age by age, the brave and fair have gone ; 
 
 And think that I am with her still, and share 
 
 Her thoughtSj'and share her hope, and know it sure. 
 
 Fob ALICE XnEODOPtA RxiTKES.* 
 
 CIIPvISTATAS, 1888. 
 
 The stars of Christmas Eve shone smiling, bright 
 As on that eve when star-bright choirs iu heaven 
 Shed blissful influence on the earth in strains 
 Undreamt of when the sage of old was fain 
 To dream he heard the music of the spheres. 
 But while the night sped on tow'rd Christmas morn 
 Gloom gathered o'er me and the skies I watched ; 
 And waned away the stars, and sank from sight, 
 Though, in their far-off, unseen azure, clear 
 And lucent as the thoughts of heavenly minds 
 That, uneclipsed by death, still light our own 
 Amid the mist and maze of mortal life. 
 
 * V 
 
 Now Mrs. Arthur Wilson-Fox.
 
 They waned away from sight, and seemed to sink, 
 As many a human heart has felt its hopes 
 And happiness depart when winter cloud 
 Has overcast its sl^y, and seemed to quench 
 The stars of Christmas, that to eyes which j?aze 
 Through tears of " mortal yearnings" set on eai-tli 
 So early, while in Heaven they burn and shine 
 Serene and steadfast in th' eternal blue. 
 
 Hark !— Karth has still, then, echoes in her heart 
 Of hymns of Heaven : the very air of earth 
 Is resonant with Christmas joy again. 
 The dark and desert air of winter night 
 Gleams constellated, glows with all the stars 
 That gather in the Christian's festal Morn, 
 Rendering their homage to the Light re-born 
 Light of the world ; their choral Hail ! acelaim'd 
 As at Creation's dawning, when they sang. 
 And now the Day-spring, long a buried hope, 
 Long promised by the prescient star of morn, 
 Arises in the mystic, magic East, 
 And earth and sky lie spell-struck, bare and briglit 
 And all is Christmas Morning. 
 
 And the Day 
 Still grows, and brightens ; and the radiant shafts 
 Pierce, and, perchance, dispel, the pale phantasms 
 And darker memories of the haunted night 
 Where weary thoughts strayed lone among the lost ; 
 And through the melting mist rise tender hopes,
 
 8 
 
 As flo^Yel•s from eartli where "Winter laid the loved, 
 Xew hopes, if not for self, for those who come. 
 Love-led, to win and wear a rose-wreathed meed — 
 New pleasures in prophetic view of theirs, 
 Of Jicr's, in following forth that fair young life 
 Beyond my span, in restful trust that it 
 Shall hroathe the sweetness and reflect the light 
 Of this fair Christmas morn. 
 
 Clear-mirrored now 
 "Within my mind, that, as hefore her, lies 
 Clear hecause calm, I seem her lot to see, 
 Bright as her look, and as her nature sweet. 
 That smiles upon the world, and ever comes 
 To brighten and to bless. And now, in this 
 The world's midwinter, hut the Zenith day 
 Of the great Christian year, when slumbering Earth 
 Already stirs with presage of the sun, 
 In the sweet " turn," stirs with a dream of spring, 
 Of mid-May greenwood and the breath of June, 
 Ttises the thought, a Christmas flower of hope, 
 Upspringing in the wintry wilderness. 
 That ere another Christmas sun shall dawn, 
 AVhethcr on me or on my place of rest, 
 She from her girlhood's graced and happy home 
 To one, her own, still happier, shall have passed : 
 All loving thoughts attending her, and fain 
 To lay them votive on her flowering path.
 
 BETWEEN LTEE AND DEATH 
 
 "Ego (lorniio ot cor mourn vigilal." — Yulgatc. 
 "I sleep, l)iit Tiiy heart wakotli." — Caniiclea, v., 2. 
 
 Once, in a drefim, so s^Yeet that, while I dreamt, 
 
 I feared 'twas but a dream, and, dreaming, said, 
 
 " I fear I dream," and " But if this be so. 
 
 It is a chance which docs redeem all sorrows 
 
 That ever I have felt.""" — once, in that dream, 
 
 I lived true life again. I woke too soon. 
 
 Yet shall the dream prove truth ; perhaps ere long. 
 
 And now I fain would dream again ; not wake, 
 
 ]*>ut dream another life of dreams made real. 
 
 These things of earth seem now to me less real 
 
 Than those I dream. Not nature now to me, 
 
 Xot hill or valle}', sea or sky, can seem 
 
 Aught other than a land which I have left 
 
 Far off, behind : tlie lovely lights and hues 
 
 Have failed and faded ; and the melody 
 
 No more makes echo. I shall breathe no strain 
 
 To sunset hills or moonlight dells again. 
 
 To Fancy's forms, or Passion's, or to Her. 
 
 * King Lear,
 
 10 
 
 Farewell the mountains, and farewell the stars, 
 And farewell, fairest, last, and not for long. 
 " A sleep and a forgetting," a long sleep, 
 That is bat as a moment past, is his 
 Who lies forgetting, and who wakes to find 
 All real, regained, redressed, and nothing lost. 
 
 I deem not that we read a mystic lore 
 
 With dying eyes, or by the ebbing light 
 
 Of sinking life ; but bending o'er the verge 
 
 Of this the world we leave, we seem, perchance. 
 
 To see some space beyond — nor dark nor void. 
 
 I seemed to kno7v some things I had hnt felt, 
 
 Or had but guessed, or hoped. Long hours I lay, 
 
 And looked and listened through the breathless night, 
 
 Through the calm starlight. I have lain, nay, stood 
 
 Steadfast, I think, and strong in spirit, stood,* 
 
 Once, twice, and yet again, well-nigh within 
 
 The wide, dark portal, not to be repassed, 
 
 "Which opens on eternity. And lights 
 
 Gleamed through it. I have seen. And I have heard 
 
 The sound of far-oft' music, far, but once 
 
 More near, and sweeter still. I felt the flow, 
 
 The pure waves lapping on my spirit's sense. 
 
 Like the soft, languorous throb of Southern seas. 
 
 And earth seemed passing, past ; and life was lulled 
 
 To longed-for rest ; and I so well content 
 
 To lie so lulled for ever, to be left — 
 
 * " Imperatorem ait stantem inori oportere." Sueton. Vespas.
 
 11 
 
 Pride, passion, all the fitful fever laid — 
 AVitli but one meek memorial, Pardon, Peace ; 
 Well, though hut all alone in that last hour. 
 What if last lulled by murmured words of love, 
 Last sounds of this world's life, half heard, perhaps, 
 ^Vith some stranjije, hoverinc: doubt if last of earth, 
 Or first of Heaven : and held by tender hands, 
 Sweet as her voice, and loving as her words ? 
 AVhat if borne far, through that dim land of sleep, 
 To that fair land of rest, on angel wings 
 Of some bright dream which I would die to dream, 
 Some angel winging tow'rds the morn that wakes 
 On unknown shores, on worlds that at His smile 
 Rise in the blue Pacific of the stars ? 
 
 Yain dreams — Atlantic realms in fai-ry seas, 
 Cloud-built by sage or seer, still undiscerned. 
 And still to be, alike by thought and eye ? 
 
 Not so. Though eye nor ear have seen or heard, 
 Deep things of God there arc.* A dream was dreamt 
 With open ej'es, and things far off were seen 
 Which men belowf beheld not. 
 
 Not in vain 
 Has Nature's poet breathed his noble faith, 
 " Knowing that Nature never did betray 
 
 'n 
 
 1 Cor., ii„ 0, 10. t Num., xxiii., 28.
 
 12 
 
 The heart tlmt loved hor." Not in vain shall hearts 
 That trust in Nature's Lord believe that they 
 Know whom they trust. 
 
 So .s//e shall live ; and siJie 
 Be blest, beloved of Him who sees and knows 
 All that she is and shall be : she His own, 
 Who gave her beauty, and who guards her heart 
 And guides her mind. 
 
 What care if I lie low, 
 Forgotten or remembered, so she live 
 Her happy life at last, and so I rest 
 In silence and in darkness, sight nor sound 
 Of earth Isuown there, where earth to earth returns ? 
 What if no dream of love, love strong as death, 
 Of light in darkness, dawn that wakes the dead, 
 ^lay yet revive and visit that long sleep ? 
 The dream, the thought, the thing has once been mine. 
 The thought that has been life shall still be mine, 
 Still gleaming through the deepening gloom, a star, 
 (" Fairest of stars, last in the train of night. 
 If better thou belong not to the dawn ") 
 And lidit me whither I must go alone.* 
 
 * " Wc must all die alone." — Pascal.
 
 13 
 
 OWEN THE VALIANT. 
 
 "Tlicycarc 1108 . . . , Catlogan ap Bktliyn made a 
 fireat feast iu Chiistmas, and had all tlie Lords of the countrie to 
 Ills house ill Dyuct, among ■whom came Owen his sonne, wlio 
 . . . . hearing the beautie of ^Xest wife to Gerald, Steward 
 (if Peubrooke ])raiscd above tdl the women in the land, was 
 meruelons desirous to sec hir .... & hading the trutli to 
 sunnount the fame, he came home till inliamcd Avith hir loue, and 
 in that doting moode the same night returning thither again, with 
 a sort of wild companions .... took hir and hir two sons 
 and carried them awaie to I'owys, and so burning tlic 
 castcll tlicy spoiled all tlie countrie. Kow when Cadogan hard 
 this, he was verie sorie, and feared the king's displeasure, and 
 forthwith Avent to Powys, and willed his sonne to send, home to 
 Gerald, his wife and children willi liis goods : but Owen in no 
 wise would depart with the woman, yet at liir lequcst he sent to 
 Gerald liis children again." — Chronicle of the Princes of Wales, 
 p. IGo, 4. ed. 1.384. 
 
 A slab, laid in the live rock, in a wood at Eglwyseg Manor 
 House (formerly called '* Havod Cadwgan " = " Cadogan's 
 Summer Dwelling-place "), is inscribed as follows : 
 
 This 2^oth was, according to local tradition, a road along which 
 
 Owen son of Cadogan {son of Bleddgn ah Ci/ncyn, Jcing of North 
 
 IVales and Powys \.d. MLXIV. — Ml^XXIIl.) led his men to rear. 
 
 He hurncd P^mbro/ce Castle and carried away Nest wife of Gerald 
 
 de Windsor A.n. !MCV11I. and was slain heading his men against 
 
 seven to one A.n. MCXVI. 
 
 The"seauen to one ^^ {Chronicle, y. 182) -were licaded by 
 the much- wronged Gerald, p. 181.
 
 14 
 
 I. 
 
 "Lord Owcii, tliou'rt The Valiant; tli}^ lofty, far-sped name 
 Is blazoned like the war-fire, the beacon's brightest flame. 
 Born warrior, true Pendragon, ever boldest of the bold, 
 Thou has faced the yelling wolf-pack in the snow upon the 
 
 wold ; 
 Thou has checked the mighty boar's rush, crashing on thee 
 
 through the wood ; 
 "With thy quicker spear and deadlier thou hast broached his 
 
 fiery blood : 
 Ever foremost, from thy boyhood, in the fight as in the chase, 
 First to win the bristling rampart, first to cede to us the 
 
 praise. 
 Thou has pierced the Xorman hauberk, and cloven helm and 
 
 brain : 
 Thou hast but delight in danger, and for death hast but 
 
 disdain. 
 But this, the deed thou wiliest, this wild and dark emprise, 
 This night-assault on stronghold that storm or siege defies, 
 On Gerald's guarded fortress, the warder on the wall — 
 No wakeful ban-dog warier, and roused and ready all ; 
 We, these few glaives and javelins, wild, wildered in the night, 
 'Gainst those mailed Norman numbers, well ranged as well 
 
 bedight — 
 Well — be it : lead. Lord Owen : wc follow at thy word ; 
 At thy least word we follow ; 'tis as the clarion heard. 
 What man may do we give thee — we shall but strive and die ; 
 And all in vain, and only shamed, thou, these, thy friends, 
 
 and I ;
 
 15 
 
 Hurled licadloug from the battlements, cruslicdj mauglcd, we 
 
 sbull lull : 
 And thou, our best and bravest, as ever, first of all. 
 And we shall not avenge thee ; and be, the Norman high, 
 Will mock thee ; and the lady — she shall but smile or sigh. 
 She, still his own, shall hear him exultant in our avoc, 
 Within his strong arms lying, while thou and these lie low. 
 Our cold, dishonoured bodies by dogs and ravens torn ; 
 Our hot souls by the tiends : their fangs less keen than 
 
 Gerald's scorn. 
 Thus be it, if thou will, then — not else than thus it may, 
 Though thou, that art The Valiant, dost lead and light the 
 
 way." 
 
 II. 
 " Yea, Madoc ; yea, 'tis peril ; dark, deadly peril 'tis : 
 Ye know it well, my warriors ; ye love it well, I wis. 
 And thus, thus Avould I win her, thus perilling my life. 
 My soul, my friends, my honour — my honour ! t/icrc's the 
 
 strife — 
 All, all for her ; and, winning — and win I will or die — 
 Such deed, such crime of passion, that soared so strong and 
 
 high, 
 May seem less crime than passion in the gentle lady's eye. 
 And if, full fain, believe it — I spare your bright young blood, 
 I'riends tried so well already in field, and fire, and flood, 
 Then I alone will win her or I alone will fall ; 
 This single sword shall seek her, and find, in bower or hall. 
 Before yon setting crescent, now piercing hills and sky, 
 Shall shine an orb, that lady within these arms shall lie ;
 
 16 
 
 Or I shall lie nndrcamiiig of nights upon her breast, 
 
 And the heart that burns within mc shall in holy earth have 
 
 rest. 
 And be it that I perish, when this little life is o'er, 
 Then the thoughts that thrill and tear mc shall thrill and 
 
 throb no more." 
 
 III. 
 
 Then another : " Not of danger, not of death, to thee we speak, 
 We to thee, our chief, Lord Owen, thee, with whom wc both 
 
 would seek. 
 Born of Britain's high Pcndragons, thou wouldst that rich 
 
 blood outpour 
 As to bard thy lordly largess, or in bounty all thy store. 
 Thou art noble, and thou knowest what the noble man 
 
 should be. 
 iS^ot of peril, but of honour, speak I, my chief, to thee. 
 Less to thee than aught is peril ; so should honour still be 
 
 more ; 
 More than aught that saint or singer can in faith or hope 
 
 explore ; 
 More than aught on earth, or yonder ; more than life, or 
 
 death, or love — 
 Yea, than Jove, than love. Lord Owen ; yea, than her's thou 
 
 dreamest of. 
 I will speak, my chief. Thou earnest good Sir Gerald's 
 
 honoured guest ; 
 xit his own board thou hast pledged him ] and his frank 
 
 hand thou hast pressed.
 
 17 
 
 Thou art kin ; in thee the lady saw the brother, he the friend. 
 Yea, they saw thy noble nature ; be it thine unto the end. 
 "Were it not dishonour deeper than the danger, than the grave, 
 To revisit him at midnight as a felon — sheath thy glaive. 
 Sheath it here ; my heart is open ; I will speak my thought 
 
 or die. 
 Would I live to see my chieftain all his lofty self belie. 
 To hear, to know, dishonoured, and in him his friends and 
 
 race, 
 Him, the champion, him the hero — to behold him branded 
 
 base, 
 "Who for Gerald's Christmas welcome, slunk back to steal 
 
 his wife. 
 To requite his trust with outrage on his love and on his life ?" 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Oh, Mervyn ! well I know it : I knew it all full well. 
 It uill be deep dishonour; 'twill darken earth and hell ; 
 For I to hell shall bear it : a heaven on earth I seek, 
 And God, if here I gain it, His wrath in hell will wreak. 
 Yea, Mervyn, 'tis dishonour ; and or I win or die, 
 Dishonoured I shall stand, or dishonoured I shall lie. 
 Deed of daring — but the daring shall not atone the deed ; 
 Nor all my blood shall purge me, though at her feet I bleed ; 
 Nor though my lone, lost spirit shall weep its burning tears 
 Throughout the weary ages, beyond the tale of years. 
 Yet, Mervyn, I will have her, or striving for her die. 
 I live but for the venture : that only thought have I.
 
 18 
 
 Tlio noble Norman has her ; but her he shall resign. 
 All else be his, all honour ; and she and shame be mine. 
 I leave him life and glory, and I have her alone — 
 Well won, in wreck and ruin, so she be all my own." 
 
 V. 
 
 Then Idwal, priest, but noble, and boldest warrior's peer, 
 Lord Owen's foster-brother, and more than brother dear ; 
 And late his fellow, foremost in each wild path he trod. 
 In peril or in pleasure ; now changed, and brought to God, 
 Long time laid low, and tended by holy ones and fair. 
 Where battle-hurts and sin's remorse had all their Church's 
 
 care. 
 Came he this night unbidden '? or not unsought by some 
 Who bent on deed of daring, and facing instant doom, 
 Might somewhat fain half bow them before the priest, that he 
 ]Miglit hear most frank confession, and shrive them fresh and 
 
 free ? 
 Thus Idwal — " Not of peril, which to thee seems beacon 
 
 bright. 
 Not of enrthly shame or honour, speak I to Ihee to-night. 
 I, though the most unworthy of all that serve and laud, 
 And wield His awful warnings, I speak to thee of God. 
 Thy soul is His ; and angels and fiends around it stand, 
 And what if tliej* this midnight thy soul of thee demand ?" 
 
 The Authorised Version fails to render the solemn force of the 
 original ; and tlie Revised only refers to the Greek in the margin.
 
 19 
 
 VI. 
 *' I think tbcy will, my brother; and I to God and Her 
 Will yield it up ; and, haply, my fate her heart may stir." 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Say, to God and to Oar Lady." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " To Gerald's. She is his ; 
 But his she shall not long be, if I " 
 
 IX. 
 
 " "What man is this — 
 The weak, wild-raving lover, whose heart can only boat 
 With throb of evil passion at a woman's dreamt-of feet — 
 And she the matron-consort of another, and thy kin, 
 She whom thou canst hope for never but with triple crime 
 
 and sin .'' 
 What man art thou becoming if thy heart and soul of fire 
 Sink from bright and soaring passion to the glov/ of base 
 
 desire ? 
 Shall the slimy tempter lure thee, and drag thee to the dust, 
 And subdue thine eagle-spirit with the clinging curse of lust ? 
 Thou art Owen, born of Powys : unto whom but man like thee 
 Should thy Cymru"^ look for champion, for the far-seen King 
 
 to he? 
 Upon thee we saw her gazing with hope and trust and pride; 
 And — shalt thou not soon show it .'* — thou hast not her hope 
 
 belied. 
 
 * Cambria.
 
 20 
 
 To t'linc ardent, lofty spirit, to thy strong, skilled, con- 
 quering hand, 
 To thy genius, swift and subtle, keen and piercing as thy 
 
 brand, 
 Turns in trust the fair, torn, bleeding, trampled life of this 
 
 thy land. 
 Wilt thou say — the foe prevailing, resistless is his weight, 
 Or we so rent and broken, that ourselves we make our fate — 
 Wilt thou say that more thou canst not than thou vainly 
 
 hast essayed, 
 That chiefs and warriors all in vain have glorious story made ? 
 But not in vain, warrior-chief, Christ's warrior if thou be. 
 To give thine heart and all to God, Who gave Himself for 
 
 thee ; 
 For whom the best and bravest of every Christian race, 
 Have fought and died in Holy Land, and won His brightest 
 
 grace. 
 Far off in Holy Laud they lie, in holy earth they sleep. 
 Who won His sacred Sepulchre, and bowed them there to 
 
 weep ; 
 There bowed them, blood- dyed warriors, there laid them 
 
 down to die 
 Where He whose cross they wore had lain, and rose beyond 
 
 the sky. 
 Once, twice, thyself hast almost willed to spread Crusader's 
 
 sail. 
 The brighter Red Cross blazoned upon thy shining mail ; 
 And, vowed upon the sacred sign that consecrates they steel. 
 To strike the valiant Paynim, and at the Tomb to kneel ;
 
 21 
 
 Aud, if so willed on high, to take tby kst and blessed rest 
 Where sleep tlie champions of the cross, the bravest aud 
 
 the best. 
 Far rather so, my brother, for thou art noble aye, 
 Far rather so than perish in some ignoble fray — 
 Strife and source alike ignoble, the force as base as fraud — 
 Slain hot in sin, sent sudden before the judging God ; 
 Slain as vilest midnight felon, as outlaw red of hand. 
 In foul attempted outrage on a lady of the land ; 
 She, consort of the gracious lord who hailed thee guest and 
 
 friend ; 
 Thyself a noble sprung from heights whence thou sliould'st 
 
 ne'er descend. 
 Sucb shame as that, such scorn and hate as all, and cbiefest 
 
 she. 
 Should ever brand thy name withal, — shall such be sought 
 
 by thee ?" 
 
 X. 
 
 •* Ah ! that, e'en that — I know it — may me beful, to die, 
 Struck down, down-trodden, at his feet, shamed, scorned, at 
 
 hers to lie ; 
 Scorned, loathed, in memory yet to live, undying as a name 
 Made mock through all the ages, who dreamt of deathless 
 
 fame ; 
 I, brave Cadogan's heir, who felt the blood that oft has dyed 
 Oar well-won fields, beat higher still than with Pendragon 
 
 pride,
 
 I, who, tliou say'st, liave thought and willed the better 
 
 things and days 
 Than these of proud and reckless youth, or warrior's clanging 
 
 praise ; 
 Who once and yet again, thou kuow'st, as brother, not as 
 
 priest, 
 Have turned from strife and riot, my burning heart appeased ; 
 Lain soothed with blessed dreamings as his whose heart was 
 
 pure, 
 The good knight Galahad (but his, because he was, were 
 
 sure), 
 Bright dreams of deeds of daring for God in Morn-Land done, 
 Of surging hosts encountered, and fields from Paynim won : 
 The Red-Cross borne and brandished as the meteor-sword 
 
 of God, 
 Borne high on Zion's ramparts, to fling its blaze abroad. 
 Who shall storm thy ramparts, Zion ? who f^hall say, ' That 
 
 deed be mine ?' 
 Who shall grasp the Red-cross banner, crying, ' Follow !' ?" 
 
 XL 
 
 ** That be thine." 
 XII. 
 
 " Not yet ! not yet ! Not Heaven's, but Her's, I reck not 
 
 aught till she 
 Has lain long hours within these arms, nor till she turn to 
 
 me ; 
 Once all mine own, mine own at last : all else beneath the 
 
 Bky— 
 Earth, hell, and Heaven— alike to me. I win her, or I die.
 
 2^ 
 
 No more ! Whose licarts are mine, whose hantls for 
 
 warriors' hearts can speak, 
 And know to find the Saxon's or the Norman's when they 
 
 seek, — 
 Up, Cyravy ! hither ! hither ! and thither, where she lies ! 
 Not long shall he — We parley ! He holds her, and ho 
 
 dies." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 They are rushing through the darkness : 'tis hiackcst 
 
 midnight there ; 
 But darker their fell purpose, to daze it with a glare. 
 With the glare of conflagration, that shall light the land 
 
 and deep, 
 And flaming turrets, whence they think to see white 
 
 maidens leap : 
 Not many, these hlack bandits, but they the boldest, worst, 
 Of that fierce race, hot-blooded, deep-glowing, aye as erst : 
 Hearts higher than their mountains, than the peak where 
 
 winter lags 
 Till the Bel-Tan sun is setting, and sterner than their 
 
 crags ; 
 Hard as the steel that quivers, eager in their clutching 
 
 hands, 
 And keen their flashing spirits as their bright, fresh-grinded 
 
 brands ; 
 Sped by that kindling ardour, caught by that contagion 
 
 strong. 
 Of the fiery heart of Owen, where careering demons throng.
 
 24 
 
 l)arkly on they plunge ; Priest Idwal beboldiug as they go 
 Dark devils their track pursuing, through the fair, pure 
 Christmas snow ; 
 
 On, on ! the fiends may follow, or may front them : on they 
 
 press ; 
 Strongly breast the blast, and strongly stem, and strike 
 
 through all its stress. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 It is done, the deed of darkness : it is writ in blood and 
 
 fire. 
 *Tis writ in hell ; and there shall he recall fulfilled desire. 
 They have ravaged halls and bowers with rapacious sword 
 
 and flame : 
 He that feasted them scarce 'scapes them, stoops to 'scape 
 
 with ruth and shame ; 
 Perhaps of that day thinking, that one day worth a life, 
 That shall see him strike for vengeance, sure and full, in 
 
 fairer strife. 
 When his sword or shaft, that glance not from hauberk 
 
 howso tried. 
 Shall find the false, foul felon who bears away his bride ; 
 Who tore her, pale and trembling, from her sweet and 
 
 sacred rest, 
 
 And 
 
 XV. 
 
 Life or death — what recks it ? He has won her, he is blest. 
 He beheld her in her beauty, and shall ever see her so. 
 Living, dying, that contents him : it endureth evermo.
 
 1>5 
 
 lie beheld her perfect beauty : he made her all his own. 
 That alone he souj:;ht. lie has it. He has all in that alone. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Away ! away ! the brave black steed, that knows no lord 
 
 but one, 
 And knows or needs no goading heel, comes flashing and is 
 
 gone; 
 And flashes through the darkness, and thunders through 
 
 the night ; 
 And bears his lord, who bears his prey, far on with eagle- 
 flight, 
 Far northward, where the seven bright stars, that shine 
 
 where Powys lies, 
 Shall shine again for him when he shall garner there his 
 
 prize ; 
 There lay at last the priceless spoil he won in Gerald's 
 
 bower ; 
 
 And plead for pardon, plead for more, in some sweet 
 
 starlight hour. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 They meet strong Teivi, hurling his waters to the deep — 
 
 Down rushing he, they wending up Ceredig's dreary steep. 
 
 They gaze on swollen Ystwith, and seek the doubtful ford. 
 
 1'hey breast black, thundering Rheidol, and she clasps her 
 
 gladdened lord. 
 
 Let it rage, the roaring river, strong as all its kin, that spring 
 
 From the heart of wild Plinlimmon,* so the lady closer cling ! 
 
 *The Severn, the Wye, and the Rheidol rise in Plinlimmon.
 
 26 
 
 Fairer Bovey, smiling, meets them, tlie lover and the briJe ; 
 ]) right Dovey hastes to welcome the chieftain in his pride. 
 It is Powys here, his Powys : it is homeward that they go. 
 That is Dinas of the princes : that is Aran's crown of snow. 
 *' Thou seest yon wandering waters, twin streams, that 
 
 soon shall meet 
 And mingle — and shall murmur love-homage at thy feet — 
 Know'st thou, love, that ancient river? hast heard of holy Dee? 
 'Tis our own ancestral river : shall it not be dear to thee ? 
 Through the lake that lies before thee, as the moonrise 
 
 meets thee now, 
 Stray the gentle blended waters, fain to mirror thy fair brow." 
 But onward yet ! and onward ! Edernion's placid vale, 
 And Glyndwr's (long hereafter made theme that shall not fail) 
 Alike in vain would woo them on-speeding to their goal. 
 Along dark Berwyn's ridges and their river's rush and roll. 
 And at last they leave their river. Not yet, but soon, the 
 
 pause. 
 'Tis the Stone of blood-bought Powys--' ; 'tis the Valley of 
 
 the Cross, 
 That lies among the valleys where heroes f died and rest. 
 In Rhiw V'elen, in Llau Gollen, laid unknown, but not unblest. 
 
 * The inscription on the " Pillar of Eliaejf " (properly Elised), 
 now almost effaced, appears to have recorded that Elised recovered 
 his inheritance, Powys (Povosia), by his sword (" HEREDITATEM 
 PUVOS . . . GLADIO sue ").—Goui,di's Camden, vol. III., 
 p. 215. Pennant, writing about Eliseg and tlie Pillar, makes three 
 of his gross and ridiculous blunders within the space of a few lines ; 
 and they remain uncorrected and unnoticed in the last edition. 
 t " Bedh Guell yn y Rhiw Velen, 
 Bedh Sawyl yn Llan Gollen." 
 
 Llowarch Hen.
 
 2? 
 
 XVIII. 
 " Not to yon grim strongliold frowning from the height 
 
 where tempests dwell, 
 Not to Din-Bran will I bear ihee ; but it still shall guard us 
 
 well. 
 We will follow yet, some bow-shots, those Northern stars 
 
 that wheel 
 O'er the mighty hill that rises where the mingling waters peal, 
 That shall lull thee in the stillness when thou layest that 
 
 dear head 
 Where thou lindest home, and ownest, and the blessed word 
 
 hast said. 
 We shall find it soft and smiling where the stern rock- 
 barriers stand, 
 And the narrowed vale ends sudden, but we no pass demand ; 
 And we rest, and ask no wider, and ask no fairer, land. 
 To the deep heart of the mountains, to the inmost vale we 
 
 come ; 
 In the depths of rock and forest we find our mountain home ; 
 That vale of rest rock-sheltered, that hill-side forest-clad, 
 Each month seems there the fairest, and every season glad ; 
 In Cadogan's summer-pleasance* we will winter ; and the 
 
 night 
 Of the dying year shall speed it like a revel ; but the light 
 Of thy sweet presence only would make all seasons bright." 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Is it conscience-haunted darkness that gathers o'er their way '? 
 Do they see pale spectres peering in the ghostly crag-walls grey? 
 
 * flavod Cadwgan.
 
 28 
 
 Xot the bantlit-cbief, not Owen : lie bids ber look and see 
 How tbe lordly Rock of Artbur, King tbat was and is to be, 
 Stands among tbe stars of morning, and asserts its noble 
 
 name ; 
 Stands stately, kingly, mystic ; tbrougb tbe ages still tbe 
 
 same. 
 
 XX. 
 Happy valley ! * Husbed in slumber tbey tbeir bappy 
 
 vale bave found ; 
 Husbed in boly calm as solemn as tbe dreamy beigbts 
 
 around : 
 Not a ripple in tbe silence, save tbe rippling of tbe rill. 
 Hark ! tbe distant falling water, beard fitful. All is still. 
 Hark ! tbe lone owl in tbe forest — tbe fox upon tbe bill. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 And tbe moon, tbat long bas wandered, belated in ber quest, 
 O'er tbe wide-spread, lawny mountains tbat rise against tbe 
 
 east, 
 Comes, and looks o'er lofty Forwyn ; and be tells bis love 
 
 tbat ne'er 
 Has rising moon or setting sbed rays on face so fair ; 
 And tells ber — be bad said it— "I reck not augbt till sbe 
 Has lain long bours witbin mine arms, nor till she turn 
 
 to me." 
 
 xxn. 
 
 " Nay, Owen — nay, Lord Owen " 
 
 # « » « « 
 
 * The vale uf Eglwyseg is somewhere called " The Happy Valley."
 
 29 
 
 THE GOOD NEWS FROM GERALD. 
 
 I. 
 
 To the sweet spouse of Gerald, who— fie the foul wrong! — 
 
 Had lain in the fierce grip of Owen so long. 
 
 To the fair one by grace of Our Lady restored, 
 
 All blushes and tears, to her still loving lord, 
 
 They bear the glad tidings that vengeance at last 
 
 Hath stricken the strong arms that held her so fast; 
 
 That at last the day dawned on the vigil of bain, 
 
 Wherein, with the fire in his heart and his brain, 
 
 lie had brooded and bided — the day that so bright 
 
 Shewed the mail of the foeman, and lit the keen flight 
 
 Of Sir Gerald's sure shaft, that so soon slaked its thirst, 
 
 And found the false heart of the felon who erst 
 
 On the joyance of Christmas, which late he had shared, 
 
 ]5urst with sword and with flame and the fiends that ne'er 
 
 spared, 
 And tore the pale lovely one forth as his prize, 
 And beheld her white beauty, and smiled at her cries. 
 They tell her that Owen lies low, in his blood, 
 That his band lie around him, each man where he stood ; 
 That Gerald the noble fares homeward with speed, 
 Unscathed and exultant, to claim a sweet meed,
 
 30 
 
 "When the lady shall spring to the arms of her knight, 
 
 And haste to unbuckle his quiver so light, 
 
 His arrows well spent where they rust in the dead, 
 
 For whom not a prayer, not a sigh shall be sped. 
 
 And they leave her, to pour her thanksgivings, they ween, 
 
 To Gerald's Preserver, Avenger, and Queen, 
 
 To the holy Maid-Matron, who sees from on high, 
 
 And hath bless'd her ; nor note they her lip nor her eye. 
 
 II. 
 
 ** And Owen The Valiant lies low in his blood ; 
 And his true men around him, each man where he stood, 
 And Sir Gerald the noble (my maidens, 'tis ye 
 That dub him) Sir Gerald fares homeward to me. 
 Unscathed and exultant. Sir Gerald stood high, 
 And watched the far flight of his shaft with calm eye ; 
 Stood firm, well away (praise the Saints !) from the sweep 
 Of the sword of The Valiant that made widows weep. 
 Ay ! 'tis thus, then ! — the Norman deals death from afar, 
 Or whelms with mailed legions the true sons of war f^ 
 
 * " Yet not even under circumstances so adverse did the 
 descendants of the ancient Britons renounce tlieir defence, or 
 forfeit their old hereditary privile<^e to be called The Bravest of 
 Mankind."— Scott, The Betrothed, ch. 9. 
 
 Giraldus Cainbiensis (Gerald de Barri, son of William de Barri 
 and Auyharad, daui^hter of Nesta, wife of Gerald de Windsor) says 
 {Descriptio (Jamhriai, lib. I., c. 8, written 1204-5,) " King Henry 
 the Second, on answering enquiries of Emanuel, Emperor of Con- 
 stantinople among other remarkable circumstances, 
 
 mentioned the following : That in a certain part of the island there 
 was a people called Welsh, so bcjld and so ferocious, that when 
 unarmed they did not fear to encounter an armed force, being 
 ready to shed their blood in defence of their country, and to 
 sacriticu their Uvea for renown." — Sir II. C. Iluare, vol. II., p. 290.
 
 31 
 
 And thus that the ]]riton, true lord of the hmd,* 
 
 Dies with scorn in his eye, and with sword in his hand. 
 
 And here, in the bower that the Norman hath built, 
 
 Whose stones have been laid in the blood he hath spilt, 
 
 I, daughter of Dynevorf — thrall of th' abhorr'd, 
 
 Wait the slayer of Owen of Powys, my Lord ; 
 
 Must hiiil him, and — horror ! — here, now, when my heart, 
 
 That shrinks from his look, and would welcome his dart, 
 
 Speeds far from this hold of the Norman, and strays 
 
 In the vale that I love, in the flowery wood-ways. 
 
 In the lone happy valley, tliat now, as so oft, 
 
 Lies fair in the moonlight, as sweet and as soft 
 
 As then — that for-ever blue midnight — when * ice ' 
 
 (Ah, the word ! — do I say it ?) when Owen and she 
 
 \\^hom he bore through the slaughter and fire, bore away, 
 
 From the poor haughty Norman, the bold Briton's prey ; 
 
 When first we beheld it, our long, fiery flight 
 
 At last at its goal, whoic our Christmas shone bright. 
 
 In the home of his race, which they won by their might. 
 
 III. 
 
 *' Not there ! oh, not there !— not on beauty or bliss, 
 Not on hours that, now gone, shed but darkness on this ; 
 Not with thee dwell my thoughts, though the memories 
 
 come o'er. 
 Oh, vale of Saint Egla ! miue now never more. 
 
 * See the very curious passage in Giraldus Itin. Cambr. 1. I., 
 c. 23 ; Hoare, vol. 1., p. 37-8. 
 
 t Nesta was daughter of Rhys ab Tudor, Prince of South Wales 
 (Dinevawr Dynevor), slain in battle 1091 ; and her mother was 
 cousin of Owen's falhei', Cadogan,
 
 32 
 
 But there, where tby lord, who was light and was life, 
 Thine Owen The Valiant, unmatched in the strife. 
 Lies stricken by hand that with his never strove. 
 Lies far from his valley, his home, and his love ; 
 Lies lone, with the barb in the heart that beat high, 
 Lone and cold on the dark earth, beneath the dark sky ; 
 There, where Gerald the Norman hath bidden his kind. 
 The wolf and the raven, to glut his own mind. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " And when Gerald the slayer comes home in his pride. 
 Shall I say, ' Where is he from whose face thou didst hide ? 
 Where is Owen The Valiant, the vanquishless ? where 
 Hast thou left the high chieftain, the hundred kings"" heir ?' 
 
 V. 
 
 "And shall not I tend him, my kin, though he lie 
 Where he fell, by the dart, with his face to the sky. 
 As aye to the foe, when the foe dared to face ? 
 (Bold Gerald dared look, across broad middle space) 
 And shall not he sleep the last sleep of the brave 
 In the long-hallow'd earth that his forefathers gave ? 
 And shall not the fane that they raised, and that rings 
 With the loud pealing anthem o'er warriors and kings, 
 
 * " Because he at whom I aimed my blow," said the Briton, his 
 eye glancing fiei'cely from the King to De Lacy and back, "had 
 spilled the blood of the descendant I of a thousand kings ; to which 
 his own gore, or thine, proud Count of Anjou, is but as the puddle 
 of the highway to the silver fountain." — Scott. T/te Bd rothed, 
 oh. 31. See also Girald. iJescr. Carnbr., lib. II., c. 10. Hoare, 
 vol. II., p. 360. 
 
 t Gwenwynwyn, Prince of Powys, kinsman of Owen ab Cadogan,
 
 33 
 
 Resound the deep Requiem, though Jie shall not hear 
 Till tho trumpet onco more thrills the warrior's car ? 
 
 VI. 
 
 " That thou shalt — thou shalt yet take thine only true rest 
 
 In the holiest earth that the Church ever bless'd. 
 
 Yet, dearer — oh ! dearer how far ! — now to lie 
 
 There, where thou, love, art lying, beneath the cold sky, 
 
 To be torn by the wolf and the raven, and, strewn 
 
 On the glade in the wild wood, where now the pale moon 
 
 Beholds thee, to whiten and waste into dust. 
 
 Than to live, as for one holy duty I must ; 
 
 Than to live but to lay thee in earth, and to know 
 
 That there, even there, we shall meet never mo ; 
 
 That, though love would fail fain seek the dark by its light. 
 
 Thou wilt still lie alone, as thou licst to-night. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Thou shalt lie in my heart till it lies 'neath the stone. 
 Thou shalt shine on my dreams, that shall make thee mine 
 
 own ; 
 Thou shalt shine in my soul when I wake from this dream, 
 This life that is no life, these things that but seem. 
 And where'er thou may'st wander, a spirit, or lie. 
 In light or in darkness, there, Owen, would I."
 
 'M 
 
 THE HALL. 
 
 I. 
 
 Rose the bard, a bard of battle, who bad pierc'd as far in fight 
 As the bard of King Cadvvallon when the Dragon blaz'd so 
 
 bright. 
 As the bard of dread Cadwallon, bold Avan*, bard of blood, 
 When they thunder'd on the Northland, and flash'd from 
 
 flood to flood. 
 Rose the bard before the chieftain ; then sat and harp'd and 
 
 sang, 
 Long and loud, until the rafters like a tower at storming rang. 
 And the gleaming arms around him rang choral on the wall, 
 And the steel hearts of the warmen rang high reverberant all, 
 Rang as oft on helm of Saxon had rung the Brython blade, 
 Which not the Saxon buckler and not the helm had stay'd, 
 As oft on mail of Norman had clash'd the brazen mace, 
 Which not the Dane's broad axes had warded from his face. 
 And the hand was on the hilt, and the steel throbb'd for the 
 
 word. 
 And they turned them to the chieftain ; and the chieftain 
 
 sat and heard. 
 
 * Avan of the Bloody Spear, bard of Cadwallon ap Cadvan,
 
 35 
 
 II. 
 
 And the bard rose in his fury, and soar'd with fiery speed 
 To the viewless upper ages, to the height of fabled deed ; 
 Then descended in the whirlwind to the dawn within his ken, 
 And adown the generations, to the days of godlike men. 
 And he sang of ancient empire, that had wan'd but had not 
 
 ccas'd ; 
 Of the immemorial Sun-king of the mighty, mystic East ; 
 Of the first bold westward voyagers who had track'd him 
 
 o'er the waste, 
 Far across the world of waters, to the evening-land of rest. 
 And he sang the glorious Belyns of the sunbright orient 
 
 crown,* 
 And the golden sunbright blazon that with their race came 
 
 down ; 
 Of the Sun and orient Dragon,! borne high, in beacon light, 
 To the isles of utmost ocean, to the Occident and Night. 
 And he bade the loud Gododin of the stormy North resound ; 
 And he sang of Cymric conquest, and of Cymry conquest- 
 
 crown'd. 
 And the Cymric sword comes flashing, and the lands their 
 
 true lords hail ; 
 And the Twelve dispart the kingdoms; and Caswallon smites 
 
 the Gael ; 
 
 * "In former times they wore Crowns in form of the Suns Beams, 
 because they were Suns, and as flaming Lights, for the whole workl 
 was led by them and their Examples. Jupiter 3 such Crowns in 
 Pale Sol born by Bely Maure, the last king of Britain." — Randle 
 Holme, Academtf of Anno nj ami liUc.un. 
 
 t See Gwarchcui Maelderw, 2. Davies, Mytliologij and Bites oj the 
 British Dniids, p. 583, 4 ; but also the note t p. 584. Davies, 
 Mythdoijii, P- 437.
 
 ;36 
 
 And be saug the song of triumph that had rung in Cymric 
 
 halls 
 Ere the bolt had scath'd Deganwy,'" or the Saxon tried its 
 
 walls. 
 And he sang the slaughter'd Saxon, the ruin far and wide, 
 When the sword of Ehun the royal swept the land like 
 
 Conway's tide, 
 When the men of stern, strong Arvon, where the tempest 
 
 dwells on high, 
 Bore the thunders of Eryri, and fir'd the morning sky. 
 And he sang of Cymric Mervyn, and of thrice-great Eodri's 
 
 might, 
 And the battle-deaths and heirship, and of Rodri'sVengeancef 
 
 bright ; 
 And of Tudwal thron'd in Dyved, and of himt who smote 
 
 the Dane 
 When the dire black pagan's§ Raven swooped on lone 
 
 Menevia's fane. 
 
 * A.D. 812. " Decantorum " {v.l. Degannoe) " ictu fulmim's 
 comburit." — AnnaJe.-^ Cambria'. 
 
 t Rodii Mawr (Roderic the Great) was slain in battle by the 
 Saxons, a.d. 877 (Bint y Tjuvij-iogion, Aiuudes CarnbrUt), as was his 
 father Mervyn, a.d. 844 {lb. ib.) Anarawd, his son, obtaining a 
 victory, in 880, called it "Dial Rodri," " Vengeance of Rodri." 
 (" Gueit Conguoy digal Rotri a Deo.'' — Ana. Camh. " Weith 
 Conwy y dial Rodri o Duw." — Brut.) 
 
 * Gwaithvoed, ancestor of Oliver Cromwell, and of several Welsh 
 families. He is said to have been wounded in defending the temple 
 of St. David against a ScytJilan. infidel. — Noble's Memoirs of the 
 Protectoral House of Cromwell, vol. i., p, 3. 
 
 § In the Annales Cambriie the Danes are usually styled gentiles, or 
 gentiles nigri; and in the Brut, Pagaiiyeit genedyl, pobloed, and 
 hencdloed duoii (the Normans, Nordmani and Normanycit dnon.)
 
 37 
 
 III. 
 
 So he sang a race of heroes — the long race heroic all 
 Since the royal Cumbrian wautkrcr sang his peerless heio's 
 
 fall—* 
 Kings and bardsf and well-sung warriors, men whose spirits 
 
 songs had stirr'd, 
 And whom song had borne to glory ; and the chieftain s:it 
 
 and heard. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " ! the land is Wales as ever, and the land is Britain's 
 
 boast ; 
 And the hills are high and huught)-, and they spurn each 
 
 surging host. 
 And the children of the mountains shall sally from on high 
 With their thunders and their torrents that are born in 
 
 purple sky.+ 
 And the moonlight lies as lovely o'er the lovely land below, 
 O'er the wide Powysiau Marches, as a dreaming maiden's glow. 
 And the fords of Dee and Severn lie bright among the woods : 
 And the thousand brave would breast them though they 
 
 foam'd with all their floods. 
 And the plains of warlike England lie ripe and broad and fair. 
 And the flower of English maidens breathes ripe as harvest 
 
 there. 
 
 * Gwen, son of Llowarch Hen. 
 
 t Several Welsh princes were distinguished bards. 
 
 {"The deep aerial bhies " of North Wales, t^c., — " those deep 
 blues which Londoners think unnatural in pictures." — Life of 
 atothard.
 
 38 
 
 And watchful is the Norman, and a nohle foe withal ; 
 And strong are Norman castles and high the Norman wall. 
 And proudly waves his banner ; and proud in topmost tower 
 Sat the lovely Norman lady with the sunset in her bower. 
 And she smil'd on knightly champion ; and folded now in 
 
 rest 
 Lies the lovely Norman lady, with the moonlight on her 
 
 breast. 
 And the bard should sing her vespers in the shade of yon 
 
 dim grove. 
 And the red lips of the maiden should glow to British love." 
 So he sang, and aim'd his song-shafts, he the bard who had 
 
 not err'd, 
 So they said, in many aimiugs ; and the chieftain sat and 
 
 heard. 
 
 And again the bard rose mighty, rose in storm and rose in 
 
 fire, 
 Like a prophet in the spirit, like a prophet in his ire ; 
 Strong and fierce as swollen torrent when it sweeps away 
 
 the flocks. 
 When it whirls away its barriers and raves around the rocks ; 
 Fierce as fire that tears the forest, as the thunder on the hills 
 When it launches flaming glances and a gather'd wrath fulfils, 
 So the Awen''' rose within him, so it swell'd and so it sped. 
 And they saw the bard of battle in the glory of the dead. 
 
 * Bardic inspiration.
 
 39 
 
 Then it sauk ; tlicu liovcr'd, floatcil, in the air, that 
 
 trembllDg Uiy : 
 'Twas the wailing of a spirit that must licet and pass away. 
 Then it tbrohb'd along the harp-stiings, that had thrill'd as 
 
 thrills a heart : 
 'Twas the moaning of a spirit that must to its fate depart. 
 Then it died upon the harp-strings like a last, sweet dying 
 
 word. 
 And it iinger'd, and it fleeted ; and the chieftain sat and 
 
 heard. 
 
 THE WOOD. 
 
 It was earliest summer morning, and the halls were hush'd 
 
 at last. 
 And the chieftain sought the woodlands, and thro' the 
 
 silence pass'd. 
 Better this the balmy morning and the waking bird's low 
 
 trill 
 Than the roar of heated revel or the bard's tumultuous thrill. 
 Better yet were fiery tempest the dark oak-forest rending, 
 Or the rush of swollen waters from the savafjc hills 
 
 descending,
 
 40 
 
 Or the black, stern, brooding stillness of the tarn that none 
 
 explore, 
 Or the thuijcler-voice of ocean warring on a rocky shore. 
 But he walked among the shadows, spray and bole of 
 
 antique mass. 
 Where the white, melting moonlight lay along the dewy 
 
 grass. 
 Oh the sweetness and the sadness of the beauty of the dawn, 
 Of the dreamy golden star-night waking, waning, into morn ! 
 Oh the darkness of the spirit that, in sleepless soul-disease, 
 Not in thought and not in action can its aching need 
 
 appease ! 
 " Now no more the toil or daring — day of deed no more for 
 
 me ! 
 And what is thought but anguish, when I can but think of 
 
 thee? 
 I have ridden deep -in battle : I have tried — I could not die. 
 I have watch'd by night beside thee : the cold night-wind 
 
 went by. 
 I have heard the soaring anthem : it sank upon thy grave. 
 I heard the hollow Requiem, which to her who rests they 
 
 gave. 
 I have heard the priest, and heard ihem all — the preaching 
 
 and the prayer. 
 Did they tell me I should meet her ? did they bid me wait ? 
 
 and where ? 
 Did they tell me uhere to seek her, and hoic to bide the 
 
 while ? 
 And ivheii that Resurrection shall restore her buried smile?
 
 11 
 
 Bid tlicy tell mc she lovgavc him who was happy far away, 
 That her heart was mine and with mc when in lonely death 
 
 she lay '? 
 Lost for me, and lost for ever !— I will live the loss to hear. 
 I will live because 'tis bitter. I will live because I dure. 
 Would'st thou bid me think of solace, if thou this hour 
 
 could'st see ? 
 And where shall I lind solace ? for where shall I lind thee ? 
 Shall I seek thee where thou slecpest in thy lowly, lovely 
 
 faith ? 
 Ah ! but ichere in all the darkness, in the vast dark land of 
 
 death ? 
 I may lose the very memory — all that now to me thou art. 
 I would press it and its anguish still closer to my heart. 
 I may lose thee if I follow, lose all that yet I have. 
 I must cherish this the one thought that blooms upon the 
 
 grave. 
 This that now is all ray being, all that in the wide world's 
 
 dearth 
 Breathes of her that was divincst and is now a thing of 
 
 earth. 
 I must live : my one meet penance is to bear this heart 
 
 alone. 
 Could she see it, she would bid mc die now upon her own."
 
 42 
 
 VORTIGERN. 
 
 " Voriiqeni's Valley, the immense hollow, to which Vortigern 
 is reported to have fled from the rage of his subjects, and where it 
 was said that he and his castle were consumed with lightning. . . 
 Fancy cannot frame a place more fit" — etc. "Embosomed in a 
 lofty mountain, on two sides bounded by stony steeps, on which 
 no vegetables appear but the blasted heath and stunted gorse ; the 
 third side exhibits a most tremendous front of black precipice, with 
 the loftiest part of the mountain Eifl soaring above ; and the only 
 opening to this secluded spot is towards the sea, a northern aspect !" 
 etc. Pennant, Tour in Wales. Vide Nenn. Hist. c. 37, 39, sqq. 
 Gild. Hist. c. 23. H. Huntendun. Hist. Angl. lib. 2. 
 
 'Twas late in autumn evening : storms had pass'd, 
 And the sunk sun a pale, faint farewell given. 
 
 Dark clouds lower'd o'er bis fall, dark, weighty, vast, 
 Like fates of empire pois'd in angry heaven. 
 
 And the cold, sullen sea, its wrath scarce o'er, 
 
 Surg'd heavily along the wild, worn shore. 
 
 And drear and dark along the drear, dark sea 
 Rose the great mountains to their triple height ; 
 
 Then, for one moment, like lost royalty, 
 Touch'd by the gleam, a diadem of light. 
 
 Bare the lone hill that heaves as " Maiden's Breast " 
 
 Lay to the lurid sky that on it press'd.
 
 43 
 
 There, to the utmost verge of his wide land, 
 
 With steps long stay'd in many a field of strife, 
 
 With long-tried warriors, still his own true hand, 
 With sore-tried heart, still strong in pride and life, 
 
 Came the doom'd king, steel'd to endure and dare. 
 
 Came as comes decp-gor'd lion to his lair ; 
 
 Came Vortigern, the royal and tli' accurs'd. 
 
 The proud Pendragou, Britain's hoast and hale, 
 
 Her tyrant and hetrayer, all-aspers'd, 
 
 And twice acclaim'd her lord, whate'er the talc — 
 
 Talc of wild passion, dark with deadly war, 
 
 And since, alas ! yet more unhallow'd far. 
 
 He came, and by him, leaning to his heart, 
 Came one — one nearest, who had come too near— 
 
 So young, so fair — so fair that gazers start. 
 And, ah ! so like her lover that they fear. 
 
 And on his regal front th' imperial child 
 
 Bent eyes of pride and love that glow'd and smil'd. 
 
 He came as exile to the wildest West ; 
 
 But king, and not as king discrown'd, came he ; 
 Nor darken'd yet of aspect, if of breast : 
 
 'Twas Yortigcru, twice lord of land and sea ; 
 Fear'd oft and sought ; the subtle one and strong ; 
 And steadfast now, in ruin and in wrong.
 
 44 
 
 Firm now, fix'il there,'''' be fronted swooping Fate, 
 With brow that seem'd to brave the thunder-flame ; 
 
 And kingly in the calm of ancient state 
 Bore the dark glories of his evil fame ; 
 
 Bore high that broad, thonght-throbbiug brow which sin 
 
 And cares and toils that blasted from within. 
 
 The}' walk'd apart, the lover and his child, 
 
 "While camp'd their warriors on the hill-side high. 
 
 They sought the shore — their hearts the wide and wild ; 
 They gaz'd upon the waters and the sky — 
 
 Gaz'd, and on them the stormy hills gloom'd down. 
 
 The soaring Eivl cast his haughty frown. 
 
 Strength, pride, and sin, the darkness and the splendour 
 Of some great fate, the forefelt fate severe 
 
 Of fiery hearts and natures fine and tender — 
 Love, anguish, desolation — all were there. 
 
 And there tliey stood, and fac'd their destiny. 
 
 In the cold nightfall, by the surging sea. 
 
 Then each on other look'd the love each gave. 
 
 And looked their then one thought, " We come to die ;" 
 
 Then darkly on the valley of their grave, 
 On the dark valley, on the lowering sky. 
 
 Then rose the brow that he to her had given. 
 
 As rose the mountains 'gainst the gloom of heaven ; 
 
 * Juv. xiii., 240.
 
 45 
 
 Still, haught, indom'tablc— far up, away : 
 No shown defiance there, nor aught unmeet 
 
 In mien of true born-nobles high as they : 
 
 Theirs blood too proud for plaint, or boast, or threat — 
 
 Deep hearts all will, great hearts that, torn and broken, 
 
 Die in stern silence, die and give no token. 
 
 Love, pride, ambition, guilt — love over all — 
 Ev'n o'er his guilt — oh ! only too much love — 
 
 Those things made that strong self, and those his fall. 
 And she — she was his own, but far above. 
 
 She look'd into his face, and, looking, laid 
 
 Her hand upon his hilt, and nothing said. 
 
 He spoke : " And now upon the marge we stand ; 
 
 And now the western waters 'gainst us flow. 
 This, this, then, is my last of British land ; 
 
 And here my last of Britons bide the foe. 
 And all is passing, all is pass'd, from me ; 
 And I have all, and more, for I have thee. 
 
 And let them come — come all, come conquering Fate. 
 
 And let the churchmen praise their heavenly hosts, 
 And curse us by their gods with Christian hate, 
 
 And doom us to the hell their mercy boasts, 
 And charge their chronicles with monk-made wares 
 As true as tales of fire from heaven or bears."''' 
 
 *Vortigern, in a recognised spirit of prophecy, alludes, \yith 
 affected indifference, to his own chronicled fate, and with undisguised 
 profanity to 2 Kings, i., 10-12, and ii., 23-4.
 
 46 
 
 Not these nor those — nor monks, nor warriors — now 
 Shall vex us long ; nor perils of the day, 
 
 Nor loud alarms hy night, nor toils of hrow, 
 Nor throes of heart, nor loss of ancient sway — 
 
 Memory nor future— no, nor — no, nor aught 
 
 Unquiet in our own self-searching thought. 
 
 Here may we bide our evening, here our night. 
 
 Our sunset hills shall yield us space for rest, 
 And space for many a foeman. Eyes of light 
 
 Shall watch us, with the fair star of the West. 
 And we shall sleep a deep, sweet sleep, and «'e 
 Lie long i' the valley by the sounding sea. 
 
 We shall not rest the less for what men say. 
 Though all the hollow ages echo blame : 
 
 And once some far-off time of others' sway, 
 
 When still may beat this blood as whence it came, 
 
 Shall echo us, 'neath some dark autumn sky, 
 
 To lone one lingering o'er us where we lie."
 
 47 
 
 DULCE EST QUOD TERRA TEGIT. 
 
 [Near Syracuse, January, 1876.] 
 
 nXor'TO? aftrono<i. — iRscnYLUS. 
 
 Where my treasure, there my heart is lying ; 
 
 There where I my earthly treasure laid 
 "When I heard " I am the Resurrection," 
 
 Then that " Earth to earth,'' and all was said ; 
 
 Where my thoughts through weary days and wanderings, 
 Through the nights of long, long years, have lain. 
 
 Lying as my head, in dreams, long after, 
 On the little coffin lay again ; 
 
 Where the darkness, where the sacred silence 
 
 Of bis slumber in the holy earth. 
 In the chamber where he lies with dear ones, 
 
 Wait my winging from the world's wide dearth. 
 
 Here, where all divine Sicilian beauty, 
 Sun and sea, this fairest morning smil'd 
 
 Ev'n on me, one hour, 'tis o'er : I turn me, 
 Still beholding, still, a dying child. 
 
 Where they laid my lost lies all my treasure. 
 
 There lies all that can be aught to me. 
 To the heart that lies, still quick, beside him. 
 
 In that darkness, nothing bright can be.
 
 48 
 
 Yet were things of earth to me as treasure, — 
 Words of great oaes, lovely dreams of Art, 
 
 Alps and torrents, sunset, shore, and forest, 
 Thoughts and summits from the world apart ; 
 
 Rome and Hellas, Nile and boundless Desert, 
 
 Cyclad Isles, and this my Sicily ; 
 Forms and memories stateliest, sweetest, treasur'd— 
 
 Failing treasures ! — there with him they lie. 
 
 There, then, all ! 
 
 ..•• .*» »»» j» 
 
 *\- *%' *t- •." 
 
 Yet have I guarded treasure 
 In the heart that there lies buried deep. 
 Faith, relum'd, shall lead through all the darkness ; 
 Hopes reviv'd shall watch that holy sleep. 
 
 He who taught that where we lay our treasure 
 There the heart lies with it — it was He 
 
 Told of treasure, true, unfailing, garner'd 
 Where alone fruition true may be. 
 
 When He said, " Because I live" He pledg'd us 
 Words of life that shall not pass away. 
 
 In the Love that life and death transcended 
 Bcam'd the Truth of His eternal Day. 
 
 -f a- t- «
 
 49 
 
 Well — wc raurmnr — words nvc words — we falter, 
 Well — we face the worst : uay, that is past. 
 
 Let despair be comfort : all is over : 
 All is darkness, silence, peace at last. 
 
 i:- 
 
 Yet, not so ! not so to minds the highest, 
 Hearts the noblest, looms the mystery. 
 
 On the heights of thought and loftier feeling 
 Dawns bright earnest of tho fiir To be. 
 
 J]y the grave He stood with human sorrows ; 
 
 Mortal yearning there won tears divine. 
 Flowers of Heaven shall wake and bloom above it ; 
 
 And the vernal Dayspring comes to mine. 
 
 .<» .•* Ja .'* 
 
 «r '«• Vr *i- 
 
 Dreams ! — I gaze : 'tis but the world before me, — 
 J3cauteous still — Sicilian shores and skies — 
 
 Beauteous most, and blessed, now, reflecting 
 Those bright words, " To-day in Paradise."
 
 60 
 
 BRITISH INDIA, 1857. 
 
 "Qua; neque Dardaniis campis potuere perire, 
 Nee quura capta capi, nee quum combusta cremari." 
 
 Ennius. 
 
 It passes, with the clanging peal* 
 
 Toll'd out from many a tower, 
 While wanes yon changeful orient moon, 
 
 Pale spirit of the hour. 
 
 It passes, echoing deeply down 
 
 All memories, stern or tender — 
 That heavy year of England's fates, 
 
 Of sorrows and of splendour. 
 
 And tltey have pass'd, and they sleep well 
 
 In yon dark Land of Morning, 
 Who know no more those thousand deaths 
 
 And wait the Life-Light's dawning. 
 
 Oh, not for sins of theirs fell they, 
 
 Fair child and fairer maiden, 
 Who, dash'd to hell, went up to God, 
 
 With wordless anguish laden ; 
 
 Written in London while the old year was being " rung out."
 
 51 
 
 "Who, tried by keener pangs than fire, 
 
 Rose bright in sacrifice, 
 An incense like the flowers of earth, 
 
 A glory like the sky's. 
 
 And not for them — for they sleep on — 
 
 Remain to writhe and reek 
 The thoughts that burn in manhood's heart 
 
 And stain rough manhood's cheek ; 
 
 And strike sharp flame in each true breast 
 
 That beats with English life, 
 And speed the spirit o'er the sphere, 
 
 And speed it to the strife. 
 
 Oh, let them pass, those writhing thoughts 
 That haunt the long night-watches. 
 
 And cry for God's own vengeance still. 
 And chide its slow, dark marches. 
 
 Yet shall not they from memory pass 
 
 Who calm and cold are lying, 
 Who blazon'd England with their blood, 
 
 With light and hues undying. 
 
 0, they shall live who died so well, 
 Live shrin'd in heart and spirit. 
 
 And after-ages far away 
 Their glory shall inherit,
 
 52 
 
 Till Greece forget the Greeks that lie 
 
 Where Asian hosts were riven, 
 And till the sea of Salamis 
 
 Shall glass no star of heaven, 
 
 Till in the East shall pale and sink 
 
 Yon star of England's might. 
 Which now shall rise with meteor-orb 
 
 And soar with eagle-flight. 
 
 Shine, star of England, in thy strength 
 
 Far o'er her world of waves ; 
 Shine splendent on the brighter green 
 
 Of yon far English graves. 
 
 Strike light and fire, strike fiery light, 
 
 Far into future time, 
 Far as when constellations new 
 
 Shall smite our Boreal clime ; 
 
 "SVhen Vega,* thron'd in polar state, 
 
 Shall burn in Arctic heaven. 
 And the Four splendours of the Cross 
 
 Shall to the North be given. 
 
 Shine on, and light the lands afar, 
 
 And pjoplcs who shall rise 
 When England's name, though not her work. 
 
 Shall cease beneath the skies. 
 
 * 111 12,000 years.— ^lumboldt, Cosmos, vol. i.
 
 53 
 
 Shine, golden prescience of the dawn, 
 
 Flush'd, fervid with thy mission. 
 Shine, bri<,'ht as dying martyr's hope. 
 
 As prophet's vastest vision. 
 
 Shine, through the tears and through the mist, 
 
 Star that art sun to nations ; 
 And only set when earth shall sink 
 
 And stars forego their stations. 
 
 EGEEIA. 
 
 I. 
 
 Was it here, Muse or Oread,'"' in the murmuroijs grove by 
 
 llome,t 
 Or in shades of Alban valley "+ that the Sabine in his gloom. 
 When he wander'd through the loueness § that the lost had 
 
 left to him, 
 Found the dreamt divine one mirror'd in his spirit deep and 
 
 dim? 
 
 * "Opafia Oeuv rivo^ rj vvfi(pii'i upciwi. Plutarch. Num. 13. 
 t Juv. iii. 12. 
 
 : Ov. Fa^t. iii. 263. 3Id. xv. 487. Virg. .i"/(. vii. 761. 
 § Plut. Xum. 4. ■
 
 54 
 
 Are the waters thine, Egeria, in their pure, perennial birth, 
 
 Or the flowers that breathe poetic from the holy heart of 
 
 earth ? 
 
 Is there anght of thee that lingers in the meadow or the rill ? 
 
 Is there aught in this blue spring-day that respires Egeria 
 
 still ? 
 
 II. 
 
 It avails us not to question her, or to know her birth or 
 
 home, 
 Whether there, by Nemi's water, or here, by Numa's Rome. 
 And it is not disenchantment to behold her thro' her beams : 
 There's a loveliness that lingers in the dying light of dreams. 
 'Tis the legend that is sacred ; 'tis the fancy that's divine ; 
 'lis the tale itself suffices : 'tis a transubstantiate sign : 
 There is all that heart may thirst for in the poet's mystic 
 
 wine. 
 There was— ah ! there is, no goddess : the grey world has 
 
 lost its youth : 
 And there stands no holy Numa in the presence of the truth. 
 But there's still for us the poetry, the thing that does not 
 
 die — 
 Earth and air, Italian beauty, the spring-tlowers and the sky. 
 There remain no fair Camence ; but the beauty thought 
 
 could frame 
 Is a thing and is enduring, though Carmenta but a name. 
 Never nymph of dell or mountain has bloom'd to earthly eye ; 
 Never lady rose from fountain, never voice came from the sky. 
 Yet is poetry divine, if divine aught here may be ; 
 And perhaps a power prophetic, and perhaps reality.
 
 III. 
 
 Was it then a thing prophetic, then when bards were seers 
 
 who saw, 
 And, in light of inspiration, " look' J before and after " far — 
 Y'dv before them, up the ages, to the Titan times on high. 
 Far adown the days unrisen^ down the dark, starr'd morning 
 
 sky? 
 'Twas a power, a Pythian ardour, a consuming flame of 
 
 soul, 
 In a vast anticipation, in a bound, upon the goal ; 
 Seizing space and time, beholding all ages* in an hour. 
 And evoking echo-music from the heart of unseen Power, 
 Ank exploring earth and Hades by the bard's strong spirit 
 
 riven, 
 And sweeping o'er the skylands, to the shining halls of 
 
 Heaven. 
 
 IV. 
 
 O Camenfc of Italia, of the ancient faiths that were. 
 Ye that yet haunt this fair Italy, this Komau earth and air. 
 Ah, Muses ! were ye beings, as once ye well-nigh were. 
 Ye should yield to invocation, to the deep spell-power of 
 
 prayer. 
 Of the lore wherewith we dower'd ye when we gave ye spirit- 
 life 
 Ye should cede some lovely secrets to the human spirit's 
 strife. 
 
 * " Venit aitaa omnis" — etc. Lucan. rJiara. v. 177.
 
 56 
 
 HoAv wonkl barcl or sage invoke yc, were ye aught he might 
 
 implore 
 To reveal the truth and beauty that are veil'il in myths of 
 
 yore, 
 To reveal the key, the secret, of the mystery of the world. 
 That weighs upon the spirit tho' its wings he wide unfurl'd ! 
 Ah that voice from grove or fountain might pierce the clue- 
 less maze ! 
 That the elements might answer to the seeker of their 
 
 ways, 
 And announce the spell energic, adaptation or design, 
 Of this universal Nature, up to aught that is Divine — 
 All the sum, the long, close series of the tale of cosmic time — 
 What has been and what shall follow while the spheres their 
 
 cycles chime — 
 All the working and the making of the world and of the 
 
 skies, 
 Woven forms of subtle forces, endless web of destinies — 
 Life, accretion, growth, development, sex, species, soul 
 
 God-given — 
 The mystic, the poetic, love, adoration, Heaven — 
 All the phases of progression till the heart made heaven its 
 
 sphere, 
 Till the sage had his Egeria in the starry midnight here — 
 What changes aye are working in the earth and its profound, 
 What ceaseless revolution in the stellar world around, 
 In the glimmering golden distance, where orbs roll dark or 
 
 bright, 
 Ever waxing, ever waning, thro' the changeless infinite —
 
 57 
 
 All tlu! myatcry of the multiplex, the fated or the free, 
 The fates of spheres iiiul spirits — what has been and Avhat 
 
 shall be. 
 
 V. 
 ]Cgcria of the vision ! born of mind and heart ! 
 Thou that all the lore of royally to thy lover didst impart, 
 Is there none, no true Egeria, of earth, or air, or heaven. 
 To whom a revelation, an utterance, has been given '? 
 Tell, oil ! tell us, true Egeria, some truths of law and power : 
 Rise to him who waits thy dawning in the dim world's silent 
 
 hour. 
 Bid him who darkly dreams her awaken and arise, 
 And see his soul's Egeria and lift to her his eyes. 
 Tell him what of truth and duty he may stablish strong 
 
 and sure. 
 What of knowledge and of beauty he may see and may 
 
 secure ; 
 lie who sees so slow, so little, and who breathes so cold a 
 
 clime, 
 Where he watches, standing, sinking, on the crumbling 
 
 verge of Time, 
 Only seeing that he sees not, that things but shift and seem, 
 That the world is wasting, waning, with his wasting life 
 
 from him. 
 And that all is girt with darkness and lost in starless gloom ; 
 >Still a Avider, deeper darkness as the limits wider loom ; 
 ytill a deeper depth of darkness as the bounds of sight expand. 
 While the night when no man worketh descends o'er all the 
 
 land.
 
 58 
 
 VI. 
 
 Oh thou dream of an Egeria ! be reality at last : 
 
 Be there yet some revelation, tho' the clay of dreams be past. 
 
 Tho' the truth of things be searchless, and all that may be 
 
 known 
 Must be sought in science only, in Nature's ways alone, 
 Tho' the many golden key-thoughts be reserved for workers 
 
 slower, 
 Yet, oh ! yet, be something ceded to the poet's lawless power. 
 Let the hope forestall the ages and antedate their gains, 
 And high o'erleap the thinker left to perish in his pains. 
 Let it overtake the toilers with its subtle fire and light, 
 \yith the force and with the fleetness of fire of Heart bedight ; 
 And thread the maze of mysteiies with an intuition sure. 
 And traverse trackless starlands and the starless void obscure. 
 And career beyond the cycles that measure spirits' time. 
 And beyond the grave of Nature, if it ken another clime, 
 Far beyond the world of elements, the change of forms, the 
 
 play 
 Of forces, forms of motion that own'd but Fate's self-sway. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Oh the fair, fond, fled Eeligions, that have gone as 
 
 shadows go, 
 Bream of Naiad, Muse, and Oread, of Egeria's midnight 
 
 glow ! 
 beheld in moonlight beauty beneath the mystic shade, 
 How ye pale as golden Morning gleams arrowy down the 
 
 glade !
 
 59 
 
 How ye fade and fleet and vanish at the stern uprise of 
 
 Tbougbt ! 
 Be, then, Thought the Truth redeeming all the ruin it has 
 
 wrought. 
 Give us, Thought, the truths that Fancy docs but image on 
 
 a stream ; 
 Shew us broad and bright the story of tbe ancient ages 
 
 dim, 
 Of the mighty past of nations, of the old Italic days, 
 Tale of Ligur, Umbrian, Oscau, of Ausonia's primal race, 
 \YhoEe times had past from memory ere we fabled Saturn's 
 
 birth, 
 ^Vho have perish'd, if aught perish ; who were men and 
 
 who are earth — 
 Tale of wide Pelasgian wanderings, of vast Pelasgian walls, 
 Of dark Etruria's marvels, her buried and their halls. 
 Of the rush from Rha'tian valleys over lands of corn and wine. 
 Of the Sabine and the Latin, the arx, the Palatine, 
 Of unspelt brazen archives, of trackless Tyrian sails, 
 Of Alban hills and forests, Sicilian shores and vales. 
 Of many a tameless hero, of many a nameless king. 
 Of many a maiden's musings where Egerian waters spring. 
 
 VIII. 
 Thou that swcep'st the soul of poet as the master smites 
 
 the lyre, 
 Be thou more than thought, strong Spirit ; Aspiration, 
 
 grasp thy fire ;
 
 60 
 
 From the spirit weave a body, cliarge the cloud with flume 
 
 and force, 
 Give the poet-heart puissance, give it conquest, give it 
 
 course. 
 Bring a waking to our dreaming ; of our winter make a May 
 Like this bright resurgent verdure, this divine Italian day. 
 Be the herald, be the presence, of the long'd-for loftier life : 
 Let a vernal resurrection dawn o'er all the world of strife. 
 Bear afar the thoughts of thinkers who have far outsped 
 
 their time ; 
 Bear them on, across the ages, to some clear, genial clime. 
 To the true ones, who to true thoughts may strength and 
 
 growth afford. 
 Bear the prophecy, the promise, that has long for them 
 
 been stor'd. 
 Bear the thoughts that rose in silence from a source in 
 
 some dim dell 
 When the thinker's soul sat brooding by the bright 
 
 Egerian well ; 
 Where he mus'd on past and future, and seem'd to see 
 
 within 
 What the beauty, what the knowledge, that the afterdays 
 
 may win. 
 What the power that once from Nature shall be won by 
 
 stress of thought, 
 What the power of heart and spirit, and the work that shall 
 
 be wrought. 
 What the one and true religion of a " glorious liberty,"* 
 
 * Horn. viii.
 
 61 
 
 If ever a religion one anil pure and sure shall be ; 
 
 What shall still endure of buried love when yet ten 
 
 thousand years 
 Shall have set on mortal passion in the mist of human 
 
 tears ; 
 What thoughts of an Egcria mny in varying forms remain 
 When he that watched her waters shall long unknown have 
 
 lain. 
 
 THE MAKTYR. 
 
 -" pcrtinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem " 
 
 — Plin. Ej^i^i' X. 07. 
 
 I. 
 
 " Then, to-morrow to the lions ; — let the red arena shake 
 With the fiercer roar of thousands, who the Christian's soul 
 
 would break, 
 With the yell of hate and triumph, that shall rend the sky 
 
 for him 
 W^ho shall gaze on things of glory as the things of earth 
 
 grow dim. 
 So, to-morrow, in the noon-glare, 1 fall that I may rise ; 
 And to-morrow eve the starlight and the dews of Paradise.
 
 62 
 
 Fare tlicc well, then, thee, the fairest of our fair Ionian clime, 
 Of the flowers that bloom for Heaven in the tearful vale of 
 
 Time. 
 We have liv'd our hour of love-light : thou hast bless'cl me, 
 
 and I go : 
 Let us think that He shall lead us where the living waters 
 
 flow. 
 Live — it is thy lot — live, yielding the pure incense of thy 
 
 life. 
 I to Christ my God go glorious, as a warrior through the 
 
 strife." 
 
 II. 
 
 " I can go with thee, my warrior: — that I can and that I shall. 
 Yet, oh! yet, would I thus hold thee, ere by such a fate wc fall. 
 I would think that yet for us, yes, for us, might life rise 
 
 blight. 
 In a realm beyond the Roman, in a land of purer light. 
 Oh ! our life was sweet and holy, when our spirits free could 
 
 rove 
 In the lovely lore of Hellas, in the lovelier lore of love. 
 Oh ! the flowery world is fairer, and the starry sky is higher. 
 Than the gloom and glow of deadly faith, that makes of 
 
 earth a pyre." 
 
 III. 
 
 " Would, O God of my salvation, would that myriad lives 
 
 were mine 
 So might I to Thee outpour them, as didst Thou for sinners 
 
 Thine !
 
 03 
 
 Thou, the Victim— Tliou, the Victor, Thou has bid mc rise 
 
 and come ; 
 Take, oh ! take us to Thy hosom, where the weary find their 
 
 home. 
 Thou, that here to me arc dearest, and art this world's only 
 
 worth, 
 "Would'st thou win from Him His rausom'd, win me back 
 
 from heaven to earth ?" 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Oh, if thou wcrt leading onward, for right and truth to die. 
 If for freedom, if for Hellas, would I stay thy step ? would I ? 
 my hero ! I would deck thee, and our sires should give 
 
 the wreath. 
 They that kept the straits of CEta against the Mode till death, 
 They that made their grave a landmark by the mountains 
 
 and the sea, 
 And that made their blood-bought Marathon a watchword 
 
 for the free 
 That shall rise beyond the mountains and shall spread 
 
 beyond the wave. 
 Till the skies forget their splendours and mankind forget 
 
 the brave. 
 For the cause of ancient honour, for a hope of glories gone, 
 I would bid thee pour thy best blood, as freely as my own. 
 But, for this thy faith — oh ! tell me, dost thou read it 
 
 writ on high ? 
 Look ! the stars of God are shining — there's scripture in 
 the sky.
 
 64 
 
 ! His world is not Judea, not the thing that sects decree ; 
 Not so dark and not so strait as you Essenian Galilee. 
 In the sunbright sky of Hellas, in the heaven of poet- 
 thought, 
 There's a wide and fair religion, there's a sense of God 
 
 untaught. 
 ^Ye may cast some grains of incense on an altar humbly 
 
 rais'd 
 To the God Unknown of Athens, whom the Greek has 
 
 lov'd and prais'd, 
 To the bright superne ideal, by what name soe'er it shine, 
 To the universal Father, to the Lord of light divine. 
 They, the Jove that smiles in summer-day, the Apollo 
 
 Jove-endued, 
 They are not cold, gloomy demons sworn to covenants of 
 
 blood. 
 Thou may'st think a thought in honour of the glorious 
 
 Titan Bound 
 On the Calvary of Imaus with gazing gods around, 
 Of the bearer of the life-light, the champion of our race. 
 And of him, the far-borne"'-" Saver, whose coming brought 
 
 release, 
 Him, the victim-victor hero of the zodiac-splendent toils. 
 Him who smote and spoil'd the lion and dissolv'd the 
 
 dragon's coils, 
 Him, the God-like man, most mighty, who his anguish 
 
 quench'd in fire. 
 From the mountain-altar rising to the seat of Jove his sire." 
 * See Bacon, Wisdom of the Ancients, Prometheus.
 
 V. 
 
 " Would'st tliou mate the uames of idols, tliiugs of hollow 
 
 phantasy, 
 With the God who spake from Siuai and who came as man 
 
 to die. 
 Came among us, wept the sleeper where the tears of sisters 
 
 fell. 
 Sat and pour'd His living truth by the deep Samariau well ; 
 Who was seen of eyes adoring as He rose. Who rose and 
 
 reigns, 
 And has left His quickening Spirit, and in spirit still 
 
 remains ? " 
 
 VI. 
 
 " He was good and he was holy, and his heart was pure and 
 
 high; 
 And he taught the truth he gather'd, and he died as true 
 
 ones die. 
 He arose against the priesthood and the rule of form that 
 
 kill'd f 
 And they killed him, and he perish'd for the good he gave 
 
 or will'd. 
 And he lies in earth, and passes, while his thoughts roll 
 
 thron'd sublime : 
 And the talc of that ascension was a tale of sequent time. 
 'Twas but in the hours ' fultUled ' of begirt Jerusalem 
 
 "O' 
 
 That evangelists remembered what the gone had told to 
 them. 
 
 ' " The letter that killeth."
 
 06 
 
 'Tis but now that myth and mystic have transfigur'd in 
 
 their haze 
 To a God the nobler manhood whom as Son his Paul would 
 
 praise — 
 Sou — * for we too are the children,' of his Father and his 
 
 God— 
 'First,' we say, ' of many brethren,' and co-heir of empire 
 
 broad." 
 
 VII. 
 *' Stands He not in starry splendour o'er the world which 
 
 He has won, 
 In the glory of the Father, with whom the Son is one ? 
 See'st thou not the equal Saviour as Creator beaming bright ? 
 Shine, God of God ! upon her — let her see Thee in Thy 
 
 light." 
 
 VIII. 
 " ! believe it, we may raise us to the godlike e'en as man. 
 We can rise beyond the mortal : thou can'st that, and 
 
 woman can. 
 Never nobler, holier nature may have sprung of David's line 
 Than the freedman Epictetus, than Aurelian Antonine, 
 Than the Greek who died bequeathing to his Plato and all 
 
 time 
 Thoughts that light the soul like prescience of its destiny 
 
 sublime. 
 Man has earth and sky before him ; he has strength and he 
 
 has scope ; 
 And his future shall be fairer than the Promised Lands of 
 
 Hope.
 
 07 
 
 Be thou wliat thou art : forget not tLy diviuo Lumunity. 
 Kise bcyoud yon dark Moriali ; live tLo life that is for tlicc. 
 Do wc honour to the true God, or to one who by llim 
 
 wrought, 
 When wc deify ideals and ordain what He did not V 
 
 IX. 
 
 " What be human, heathen virtues, and the vain self- 
 strength of man ? 
 
 What avail von few weak twiuklers '? would thev lead the 
 Morning's van ? 
 
 God hath come, and light lies dawning o'er the dim world's 
 heaving sleep, 
 
 As Elohim's brooding Spirit o'er the waters of the deep. 
 
 He hath come to break down idols, and to quell the pagan's 
 pride. 
 
 And to bear good-will and blessing to all hearts of will aUitJtI. 
 
 And he died in glorious darkness, quenching yon great sun 
 in blood ; 
 
 Aiid to Ilim shall die His martyr, and in Him shall rise 
 
 renew'd." 
 
 X. 
 
 " There's a truth, a deep and solemn, that in that faith 
 seems to dwell, 
 
 And inspires a now new impulse flowing far with spring- 
 tide swell. 
 
 And may touch the heart of suflcriug, and may seem to 
 bring release ; 
 
 And the worn and weary bow them, and sink and dream of 
 peace.
 
 68 
 
 But 'tis still, alas ! too human : it is not aught divine, 
 
 It is mixed with human falsehood, and shall wane, and 
 
 cease to shine. 
 And the nohle once and vivid shall effete and faint be seen, 
 And become but as the faiths that have long religions been. 
 And the children of the ages all too soon, too well shall see 
 How belief may grow idolatrous and a bloody tyranny. 
 And the city of the Csesars shall enshrine it and shall dower, 
 As a thing of state imperial, and ascribe to it her power. 
 And at last — oh ! very weary, men shall find the far-oflf Cause, 
 And shall see their God through Nature, and their Sinai in 
 
 its Laws, 
 And a glorious revelation in the truths that Time shall yield. 
 And the Logos* in Experience— so, and only so, revealed." 
 
 XL 
 
 "Art thou, tJwu, the evil prophet? dost thou darken 
 
 counsel thus ? 
 Must I curse thee, who must bless thee ? must my God, 
 
 Who hears, curse us ?" 
 
 XII. 
 
 ** Oh ! I fear it ; but it shall not, and it cannot. Him belie, 
 Cannot fail or rot if real— by its fruit we it may try— 
 Cannot but be warp'd and blighted if of godless growth it be, 
 Konie shall show if God be with her, and the martyr'd 
 world shall see. 
 
 Reason. Oersted, Soul in Nature, The Spiritual in the Material.
 
 69 
 
 And when Rome shall sink from state-strength, Faith shall 
 
 sink, and in all vain 
 Cast across the rising waters the broken links of chain. 
 She may scourge, but shall not bind, them when the arm of 
 
 flesh shall fuil her. 
 And the Truth shall come unclouded, and man at last shall 
 
 hail her." 
 
 XIII. 
 " I have truth in God's great mission to the world of sin 
 
 and lies. 
 'Tis the holy lore of Suffering, 'tis the creed of Sacrifice. 
 'Tis the faith and strength of martyrs when they perish 
 
 unsubdued. 
 Wilt thou doubt the truth they witness when they seal it 
 
 with their blood ?" 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " ! I know that to the noble, to him whose heart's on high. 
 To the warrior, to the martyr, it is not much to die ; 
 That the soul has exaltations when the presence of a Thought 
 Makes the world and time as shadows, turns the sense of 
 
 Self to nought. 
 Men will die for anyfixncies,foreach cause, though but a word; 
 They will die as well for idols as can Christian for his Lord. 
 Myriad martyrs to thy Martyr shall die well, in many an age, 
 As the thousand for him perish by the present pagan's rage. 
 There shall long be willing martyrs who for only truth shall 
 
 look 
 Down their shatter'd lives of trial, and nor bribe nor threat 
 
 shall brook ;
 
 70 
 
 "Who in lone and brave long-suffering shall — ! not as 
 
 Qiristians — hear 
 Hate of priests and scorn of people proud its chains of lead 
 
 to wear, 
 And the grief of friends and dearest, taught to shrink from 
 
 all lov'd best, 
 And perhaps the curse in dying — but it shall not reach 
 
 their rest." 
 
 XV. 
 
 " Must I curse thee in my dying ? — let the Christian's 
 
 curse be this — 
 To behold him die as martyr, and to hope a death like his, 
 And to love his Christian memory, to remember that he 
 
 died 
 In the strength of God his Grlory, of Christ the Crucified. 
 Go, and live a life of lyrics in thy dreams of heathen Greece. 
 Go, and gain the height of Plato : try if tliat will yield thee 
 
 peace. 
 Take thy flowers, and bear them votive to thy dim Lucretian 
 
 gods: 
 See if tJtey will give thee answer from their echoless abodes. 
 See if yon cold soul of Nature will accord response to thine 
 When thou seek'st her in thy sorrow, when thy chill 'd heart 
 
 owns decline. 
 Tliinlc if ^Jir will lull its throbbings to a sleep as sweet as 
 
 theirs 
 "Whom the love that passeth woman's to the Father's bosom 
 
 bears."
 
 71 
 
 XVI. 
 
 "Now the last dark day is looming along the blood-strcak'd 
 
 sky; 
 And we leave the world its mystery, its gloom and glare, 
 
 and die. 
 Shall not Nature fair enfold us, though wo gain no grave in 
 
 Rome ? 
 Shall not One receive His children in His universal home ?" 
 
 THE DEEAM OF PILATE'S WIFE. 
 
 Dare thou not to deal on him 
 "Whom I met in vision dim, 
 AVith a presage, with an awe — 
 Him whom in my sleep I saw, 
 Him whom in my dream I felt, 
 And to whom my spirit knelt. 
 
 Many things I suftered there, 
 In that heavy midnight air. 
 Many woes of One apart 
 Came upon me, crushed my heart — 
 Shames and sorrows, toils and pains — 
 Meed that bold and true one gains —
 
 72 
 
 Striving still for others' good, 
 Still by them and hell withstood ; 
 Hunted to the hills and rocks, 
 To the homes of kite and fox ; 
 Haunted in the deadly gloom 
 By the evil ones that come 
 With the sense of coming doom ; 
 AVhere his very soul, one wound, 
 "Wept hot blood upon the ground ; 
 Sold, betiay'd to priestly hate, 
 Scourg'd and borne to felon's fate. 
 
 And I heard that agony. 
 And I heard that last, loud cry. 
 And I felt the darkness fall 
 O'er the dying Grod, his pall. 
 And I felt the earthquake's tread, 
 Felt the earth give forth its dead. 
 
 Earth shuts o'er him : him they lock 
 In the darkness of the rock. 
 Oh the black abysm of death ! 
 Oh the formful void beneath ! 
 
 And I felt the third day's rise. 
 Felt the air and felt the skies. 
 And I throbb'd with some strange strife 
 In some agony of life ; 
 Borne beyond our mortal sphere, 
 Hearing things that spirits hear. 
 
 Oh ! I sufTered many things. 
 Years and ages spread wide wings
 
 73 
 
 Darkly onward, and I saw 
 Things of horror, things of awe. 
 All rcviv'd in Roman power, 
 Yon Jew Priesthood rul'd the hour, 
 Rul'd the world in Name divine. 
 Made that very name a sign 
 Of whate'er is most malign. 
 And I felt the long, strong strife 
 Of the heart for its true life — 
 Pangs of brain and spirit riven. 
 Yearnings for the day of Heaven, 
 Hopes forlorn of noble will, 
 Still on-striving, baffled still ; 
 While the churchmen and their kind 
 Trail'd through all the breadth of mind, 
 Coil'd around the world's young heart, 
 Wrung it, piere'd it as with dart, 
 Pierc'd it through with lethal lore, 
 Striking poison to its core. 
 Oh ! I felt the pang that grew, 
 Like the Titan's ever new, 
 In the heart of Him the true, 
 While He writh'd, still crucified 
 By the priests of hate and pride. 
 
 And I sank. That darkest night 
 Own'd at last some lines of light : 
 Some slow signs of some new vision 
 Dawn'd along the far horizon. 
 And I started from my sleep,
 
 74 
 
 From that dreaming wild and deep ; 
 And I woke with " Is it so ?" 
 
 And the tumult rang below — 
 Clang of arms and harsher cry, 
 And the priest-taught " Crucify !" 
 And I saw — I see it now — 
 That broad, pale, heroic brow, 
 That calm sphere of heavenly light, 
 Gemm'd with heavy blood-drops bright. 
 And I shrank, with hands in vain 
 Clasp'd across my eyeballs' pain, 
 Press'd upon the visual brain. 
 
 I have suffer'd : hear thou me : 
 Suffering bears me up to thee. 
 Not on us be that pure blood : 
 He is holy, he is good. 
 Shall it fall for priestly greed ? 
 Roman, be not thine the deed. 
 Leave to Jews the crime and curse. 
 Be not thou their tool and worse. 
 
 Rather, Roman, lay thine hand 
 On that altar rais'd to stand 
 Undefil'd within the breast — 
 Heart of Roman, not of priest : 
 Vow Ihee there to duty : there 
 Thou thine oracle slialt hear. 
 Be thou noble as thou art : 
 my Roman ! act thy part. 
 Bid yon priests and other base
 
 75 
 
 Crouch before him, crave his {:jrace. 
 Comes he not their promised King ? 
 Is not Eight the royal thing ? 
 Doth not Sufiering's wisdom gain 
 Sovereign strength and grace to reign ? 
 
 I have suffer'd : I have learn'd 
 Many things, and something earn'd. 
 
 I have spoken : hear thou me. 
 He is just : be thou aa he. 
 
 THE DAMSEL POSSESSED WITH A SPIRIT 
 OF DIVINATION. 
 
 "11 ri'f ol cv^it/uv)] 7ro\i>ap>]70<i Ocb-.- ■ijXOci' 
 
 OvpavoOcv Kaiajia^, c^ci Se fuv i]f.iain Travia, — Odyss. Z' 280. 
 
 What is this, that o'er my soul 
 Comes with some supreme control ? 
 Wherefore faints my spirit now ? 
 What is this ? and who art thou ? 
 Art thou That we look'd to see ? 
 Art thou That ?— oh ! art Thou lie ? 
 
 All that ever earth could feel 
 Seems evanish'd, seems unreal —
 
 76 • 
 
 All illusion, as the haze 
 Gold and purple to the gaze ; 
 As the gleams of cloudland grey 
 Heralding the King of Day. 
 
 Art thou sunk, oh ! Light of mine. 
 Oh ! my Lord and Love divine ? 
 Dost thou leave me lorn below ? 
 Oh my Delian ! dost thou go ? 
 Art thou gone, with all thy glory, 
 Bright through shrine and song and story- 
 All thy far-fell inspiration, 
 All the dire and glorious passion ? 
 Whither fleets, that glow'd so high, 
 That infus'd divinity ? 
 
 What is this within my breast ? 
 Is there sun-rise in the west ? 
 Is there other day below ? 
 What is this my vision now ? 
 
 Are the fair and bright ones fled ? 
 And is Pan the Mighty dead ? 
 And is One who died arisen ? 
 And is earth no more our prison ? 
 And is He the Life and bearer 
 Of a new light, brighter, fairer. 
 Bringing from his Sabbath rest 
 Day that wanes not in the west. 
 Bringing from the depths he won 
 Day that dies not with the sun — 
 To the weary world he trod
 
 77 
 
 Bringing ransom, bringing God — 
 To the bound the spell " lie frco " — 
 Light to darkness, hope to me ? 
 Is it — shall it once be so ? 
 Is there God ? and shall I know ? 
 Hath He sent ? and haih He spoken ? 
 Shall the sunless gloom be broken ? 
 And is she that lay in night, 
 Yearning for the dreamt one bright, 
 Touch'd at last by One afar, 
 Once at last oracular ? 
 
 NEVER MORE. 
 
 That one thought 1 — it gleam'd, and it is over. 
 
 In one hallowed hour of night it rose : 
 In the starry night it seemed to hover, 
 
 Buoy'd with brightness, in the blue repose. 
 
 That one thought — that fancy fairest, fleetest !- 
 Shall I ever dream that dream again ? 
 
 I will dream of some deep sleep and sweetest, 
 In this world-isle, or beyond the main. 
 
 % * * * *
 
 78 
 
 There I lay, with Plato's words immortal ; 
 
 And the Dying, in the sunset* bright, 
 Spake with friends of hope beyond the portal 
 
 Where we pass from dreamy day to night. 
 
 And I strayed among the thoughts they pondered 
 
 In the poet-thinker's purple ev'n; 
 And the world wan'd from me as I wandered ; 
 
 And I sank, and then I woke in heav'n, 
 
 By the deep, calm How of Life unbroken ; 
 
 Then I dreamt that dream that comes no more. 
 Do I dare remember things unspoken. 
 
 Things nor seer nor mystic may explore ? 
 
 'Twas the spirit's sabbath f : I was spirit ; 
 
 Rais'd, ennobled, thought-sped to the goal. 
 She had made me worthy, giv'u me merit, 
 
 Borne me to her own bright sphere of soul. 
 
 I reveal not ! but I remember — 
 
 What that angel of my rest reveal'd. ' 
 
 Oh, my spirit's angel ! is the chamber 
 Of that mystery now for ever seal'J ? 
 
 Oh ! she told me Would we turn the pages 
 
 Of a story worn with tear and kiss ? 
 
 I unlcarn'd the bitter lore of ages ; 
 I forgot the truth that was and is. 
 
 * Plat. Phacd. 65. 
 t "1 was in the Spirit on the Lord's clay." — Eev. i. 10.
 
 79 
 
 All the past was past ; tlie low^ year lonely — 
 All was then unreal, forgotten then. 
 
 She, her own self, not that image only, 
 All the blessing of my life had been. 
 
 She had seen that sunset, brcath'd that morning, 
 
 Stray'd or sat where I but thoughts had found- 
 In the wood-walks at the violet's dawning, 
 
 liy the lire-light, with the books around- 
 Far within the ringing woodlands roaming 
 
 In the flowery childhood of the year — 
 In the wasted woodlands deep at gloaming, 
 
 When I trod the storm-swept oak-leaves sere. 
 
 She had dwelt on looks of buried faces, 
 On the old home-memories, bright or dim ; 
 
 Dwelt in calm on things of time that passes. 
 On the Future in a glorious dream. 
 
 o' 
 
 We had look'd ond listen'd (" tee " — I hear her !) 
 Through the ages, far as when, by night, 
 
 Hearts beat thick as heavy hoofs struck nearer, 
 Bearing blood-dye of the Boswortli fight — 
 
 Far as when the immemorial mountains, 
 Darkening now on ruins by the Iklie, 
 
 Brcath'd Avild echoes to the bard's recount iugs — 
 Ancient music, such as mountains make —
 
 80 
 
 Wlieu the dragou-banuer, gleaming, glowing, 
 
 Ages ere the llironging leopards sprang, 
 Shook old splendours o'er the burst of Aweu, 
 
 And the steel at fiery harpings rang. 
 
 JSi n. -x- ■» ■» 
 
 She had paced my paths, at her sweet pleasure. 
 
 She had breathed fair Florence that first hour, 
 Wben loud midnight shook the starry azure, 
 
 Clanging from the mighty marble tower. 
 
 She with me had strayed where I but sought her. 
 
 I with her to each sought spot had come ; 
 Wandered by that wide Volsinian water. 
 
 Won that height, and gazed, and uttered " Rome ! 
 
 All a life — but soon to set, and never, 
 
 In this life, to dawn again on me. 
 While I It was over, and for ever ; 
 
 And the deep, dull bell was beating three. 
 
 Through the twain wide open windows streaming, 
 riow'd the moonlight, mix'd with dewy dawn : 
 
 From the garden, half in moonlight gleaming, 
 Floated odours of the summer morn. 
 
 All the mighty city round me slumber'd — 
 
 Not a sound among the millions all, 
 Save the throb of tidal Thames, that uumber'd 
 
 Full pulsations, surging on the wall. 
 
 *****
 
 81 
 
 This, then, this is what ray waking owes me ! 
 
 'Tis for this I wake to earth and skies. 
 This is what Ihc light of morning shows me — 
 
 That the one thought never more shall rise. 
 
 That one thought, which once shed moonlight o'er me- 
 That thought never shall depart, or wane : 
 
 It shall ever smile its gleam hefore me : 
 And it never shall seem real ap^ain. 
 
 ■a- -a- if i:- * 
 
 I, that wasted years in desert fancies. 
 
 Yet may find some impulse high and pure. 
 
 While the age with orient God advances, 
 Now discerning purpose grand and sure. 
 
 And whate'cr of good may hless my doing, 
 Following late where once my strong will trod. 
 
 Shall he done, if not within her viewing. 
 Yet done for her, votive as to God. 
 
 * i:- * * * 
 
 So decreed ! — a void of time and distance. 
 
 Man must nerve his heart till time he o'er, 
 Steel it to the stern truths of existence. 
 
 Dream, or murmur dreamings, never more.
 
 82 
 
 LAKE. 
 
 That time lies calm in memory now : that time, 
 
 With all its tronblecl moments, mirror'cl true, 
 
 But only mirror'cl, only to one sense 
 
 Existent ; like a fair-spread mountain-side 
 
 Seen broad upon the bosom of a lake : 
 
 All imag'd there distinct — the lights and shades. 
 
 Green mosses, and grey rocks — there the white rage 
 
 Of waterfalls in all their passionate force. 
 
 But silent there ; seen only : all seen there — 
 
 E'en lightest clouds, and subtlest, fleetest hues. 
 
 Like Fairyland's, like fancies all lie there — 
 
 Near, yet remote, exact, and yet unreal. 
 In that new hemisphere, that other world.
 
 83 
 
 SEA. 
 
 That life lies now before me like an isle 
 Where inland traveller, ever and anon 
 Some wide low level passing, or some height 
 Attaining, sees the blue circumfluent sea, 
 Between hold headlands or along the coast ; 
 Oft but a moment : the far convex blue 
 Still lost, still unbeheld : so lies that life, 
 Seen maplike, in a broad, circumfluous deep 
 Of love— love oft evanishing and oft 
 Forgotten, and still there, still th' element 
 Wherein life lies : life some mid-space between 
 The blue of heaven and mingled hue of love.
 
 84 
 
 THIS LONGING AFTEE IMMORTALITY." 
 
 Hark ! from far off, adown the mountain side, 
 Comes, wafted soft, the choral homeward song ; 
 
 Now nearer, streaming on with gentle tide, 
 Bears the blent spirits of the happy throng. 
 
 It sinks, it swells ; now seems to full, to fleet ; 
 
 Now, rising, floats among the whispering trees. 
 — Yes ! 'tis the Sabbath morrow's hymn, and sweet 
 
 As Ave Mary borne o'er Southern seas. 
 
 "\yhat, while the simple Sabbath song flows by. 
 Breathes here — a sense that a religion makes — 
 
 A sadness, like the air of even's sigh, 
 
 A sweetness, like the incense that it wakes ? 
 
 "What swells within the heart, and seems to rise 
 As with the angels' song in happy dying. 
 
 Then, from the full heart ebbing to the eyes, 
 
 Dwells on the deep earth, where the gone are lying ? 
 
 Is it some heaven-born instinct, some true token, 
 Sense, earnest, pledge, of immortality. 
 
 Of some far Sabbath lands where dwell unbroken 
 This summer beauty and these thoughts of thee ?
 
 85 
 
 I dreamt, fair girl, of tbce and love of thine ; 
 
 And in that dreara I woke from visions vain, 
 From all I had dreamt ere thee I could divine ; 
 
 And then I woke indeed : — 'twas earth again. 
 
 I thought, Though she should love me, I must die ; 
 
 And she too, she must pass as pass her flowers, 
 And with the lilies and the violets lie, 
 
 And wait the Voice that wakes the vernal Hours. 
 
 If she should love me, I should die so soon. 
 And she would never know how lov'd she was. 
 
 Was ! — Is this instinct but a fancied boon ? 
 And sinks this sense with yon sweet singers' pause ? 
 
 Flow forth again, sweet singing — back to me. 
 
 Flow, sweet, sad thoughts that dwelt on her and fate. 
 Rise, dream of her and immortality ; 
 
 And linger with me while my night I wait. 
 
 FLUX AND REFLUX. 
 
 It was golden autumn evening, and I wander'd by the waters ; 
 
 And on either side of ocean stretched the wavy mountain 
 
 coast ; 
 
 There a dream of far-off Idris, and the blue Silurian borders. 
 
 Here the hills of Lleyn and headlands, there the great 
 
 Snowdonian host.
 
 86 
 
 And I watch'd the throbbing waters in their hcaven-impell'd 
 emotion : 
 And they flow'd, and they receded, and they still came 
 on to me. 
 And I bade my fancy teach me that the world is as the 
 ocean, 
 As the ocean in its on-flow, as the constant Pontic sea.^ 
 
 And it was but flux and reflux — all but change and oscilla- 
 tion ; 
 And to-morrow morn the sea-bed shall lie bare and dry 
 and drear. 
 And I saw that all around me is but mutiplex vibration, 
 Play of impulse, play of forces woven dark in heaven and 
 here. 
 
 Then the choral stars met o'er me, like angels earth descrying: 
 But I knew the stars were shifting, rising, sinking, with 
 the hours ; 
 And I knew that worlds are cloudlands, waxing, waning, 
 born and dying, 
 In the golden hanging-gardens as on earth the sheeny 
 flowers. 
 
 * " the Pontic sea, 
 
 Whose icy current and compulsive course 
 Ne'er keeps retiring ebb, but keeps due on 
 To the Propontic and the Hellespont."
 
 87 
 
 And I saw that all is wlicehvork, cycle-fluxiou, alternation, 
 Nothing constant, nothing stable, in the whirl of earth 
 and sky. 
 And I anchor'd in the one thought that my being's con- 
 summation 
 Is to love thee as I love thee and to love thee till I die. 
 
 PAETANT POUR LA SYRIE. 
 
 I. 
 
 So, Fate, or circumstance and thoughts that are, 
 And should be, strong as Fate — Truth's, man's right 
 
 pride — 
 Decree it — yes ! I hear : Forego ; forget ! 
 "What care ? — perhaps it is but one life lost. 
 Therefore, farewell. Farewell, farewell, at last. 
 
 II. 
 
 Farewell ; but no forgetting — not till life 
 Ebbs with the dearer memory of thy voice. 
 Thy look, thy love. Nor yet farewell to this 
 Yet lingering thought that there, that tkerCy beyond 
 This fitful flow and staunchless ebb of life, 
 That memory yet may gleam, an ocean-light, 
 Along some palm-crown'd new- Atlantic shore, 
 Far in the setting spirit's kindling West.
 
 88 
 
 III. 
 
 Shall I forget ? Can I, in life or death, 
 Forget that sweet fair face, that tender voice. 
 That grace of goodness and poetic mind ? 
 Shall I forget that heamy, parting look, 
 Those murmur'd words, that pressure, soft and warm. 
 Of thy frank, priceless hand ? "When I forget, 
 When I forego that impress, which I wear 
 So deep within, of thy pure nature's charm, 
 When I forget thee, whom so well I know 
 Gentle as true, nor steadfast less than sweet. 
 Then, cease all memory, cease all thoughts of love, 
 Of truth, of beauty ! fade, fair earth and skies. 
 And let me lie where never flower shall dawn, 
 Nor star of midnight gleam, nor star of morn ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 To see thee is to know : the limpid look 
 
 Reveals the mind ; the sweet voice breathes the soul. 
 
 To know thee is to love : and to love tJiee 
 
 Is to be thine from that first hour. Not once. 
 
 Since I beheld thee as thou art, not once 
 
 Has sun gone doAvn on day unvisited 
 
 By thoughts of thee ; nor once has morn arisen 
 
 On me from night that has not imag'd thee. 
 
 In the great city, in the palace-halls, 
 
 In the day-din, and in the starlight lull.
 
 89 
 
 How oft, sGlf-still'd some moments, have I licanl 
 Thy low voice-music, and with answering eye, 
 Unmark'd, averted from the scene as clos'd. 
 Seen that fair face before me, seen but thee ! 
 When the worn mind has own'd world-weariness. 
 Or in the tumult of the senses laps'd, 
 How oft have those pure tones, that starlight look, 
 Breath'd, beam'd upon me, and reviv'd, relum'd 
 Some hopelike thoughts of better things and higher, 
 Sweet as thy sweetness, thoughts like love of good, 
 Like love of God — lov'd then, perhaps, in thee ! 
 When, at late even, in the land of hills, 
 The pines rose dark against the pale, calm West, 
 And the great oaks, spread o'er the dewy grass, 
 And when the moon went low behind the tower, 
 And all was stillness like a buried heart's, 
 It was with thee I walk'd, \\ith thee stray'd forth, 
 Far forth in dreams of beauty and of love, — 
 With thoughts of thee came back to long unrest. 
 It was by light of love, by light of thine, 
 I saw, methought, the mystery of the world, 
 God's governance, God's spirit, interfus'd, 
 Made manifest ; and saw, or felt, through thee 
 Some mortal mystery sacred and sublime, 
 Some mingled memories, lovely, dark, divine, 
 Of Bethany and of Gethsemane — 
 Some faith found beauteous as beheld in thee. 
 * *i * * *
 
 90 
 
 V. 
 
 — Might I ? — Perhaps — Shall I repent me, then ? 
 Not so ! though now, to-night, perhaps, to-night — 
 Not so — though — yes ! I could achieve a crime, 
 And bear a curse, for thee. I could not do 
 That wrong. No baseness for a heart that's thine ! 
 Therefore I lose. And this is well — even this : 
 And I die true, true to myself and thee. 
 'Tis well. To live for thee were heaven indeed ; 
 But farewell heaven ! And now I feel, I know, 
 That I can say " / love " — thou little know'st 
 With what a love. Farewell ! I will not be 
 Yet more unworthy, and I will die true. 
 
 VI. 
 
 'Tis o'er ; " then, wed thee to an exile's lot :" 
 
 •' Why turn, why linger, why look back, my heart ?" 
 
 " 'Tis done : all words are idle." Even here 
 
 I am but exile : 'tis my fathers' home. 
 
 But " not my rest." And now I wander forth, 
 
 To bear that image over lauds and seas, 
 
 As founders bore their household deities, 
 
 But never more to shrine it in a home. 
 
 VII. 
 
 But I shall bear it shrin'd within my heart. 
 Bright in the dark, true charm and talisman. 
 Far over earth and ocean. Stars shall rise 
 In unfamiliar signs, and set, while I 
 O'er southern seas that sweet star-image bear 
 Which shall not set.
 
 91 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I turn again to thcc, 
 Oh, " Paradise of exiles, Italy !" 
 Again my steps, at pensive pace, explore 
 Etruscan cities, and my faltering thoughts 
 Their dateless days of old. I stand and gazo 
 On mysteries of the past eternity 
 In wide Tarquinii's iield, and, hewn in rock. 
 Far up that valley* of the dustless dead. 
 I sit, and seem to sit and speak with her, 
 At Baia), at Sorrento, and on her 
 I muse at Pa3stum while the moon glides white 
 Through the great temples of Italian Greece ; 
 On her, still her, when from -(3^gina's height 
 I looked tow'rd Athens, Corinth, Salamis. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Before I once — if ever once — see Iter, 
 
 "What beauty, and what sadness, shall I see, — 
 
 Time's, Nature's, man's ! — what memories shall I 
 
 trace ! 
 "What waste, what desolation, far and near ! 
 Ere once again I see her, I shall sit 
 In Ephesus ; and in the desert halt ; 
 And stray in Tadmor, and in Petra's shades. 
 And the wide ruin, and the Arab's wilds. 
 Shall fade before me while I gaze through space 
 And time, and through the heart's drear wilderness, 
 
 * Norchia.
 
 92 
 
 There still beholdiug one fair English girl ; 
 Who once, perchance, and yet again, shall turn, 
 In gentle musings, to the far-off East. 
 
 X. 
 
 But on ! — To Zion ! I will halt and rest 
 Where vow'd crusaders, bearing oft within 
 The bleeding, burning heart of earthly love, 
 Cast down, not love, but life, and, blood-bright, died 
 Champions ot Christ, Who died in love divine. 
 
 XL 
 
 And thou shalt then lie soft, perhaps in dreams 
 Of other love. And I shall sit by night 
 In the lone gloom where One, whom angels watch'd, 
 Press'd the cold earth with anguish dark as death. 
 And I nor kneel nor pray ; but in my heart 
 Thoughts not unworthy, thoughts of thee, arise ; 
 And thou, the angel, shalt descend on me. 
 
 XII. 
 
 So shall I stray, so gaze, and dwell on thee, 
 And scale the blood- stain'd steps of exile ; so 
 Drain the deep bitter chalice, ere again 
 I see thee— Shall I ever see thee more ? 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " A gentle vision comes by night."^' And then 
 I fear I dream. I wake, and she is gone. 
 
 * " A gentle vision comes by night, 
 
 My lonely widow' d heart to cheer. "— Leyden.
 
 93 
 
 But the night cometh. I may dream agnin, 
 And wake no more. I seem to see my rest 
 In some far land whence none return, where none 
 Shall dream of distant heaven and wake to earth. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 I think we meet no more. T think my fate 
 
 Is fix'd, and that there now is one life lost. 
 
 Therefore, farewell. Let that last word to thee 
 
 Be but the blessing, fare thee well. To God 
 
 I leave thee, my beloved ; then, adieu. 
 
 Leave thou the love, and leave the pain, to me. 
 
 Be blest ; and, if thou wilt, and if 'twere Avell, 
 
 Forget me — yes, for ever. And for me, 
 
 Enough that I have seen thee, heard thee, held 
 
 Thy gentle hand, and felt its warmth in mine. 
 
 Enough then, if it must, and should, be so. 
 
 And what if there, far off, beyond the wave. 
 
 Beyond that Laud of jNIorning which I seek. 
 
 Rise some true Orient, where we wake from dreams ?
 
 94 
 
 MOUNT CARMEL. 
 
 In Holy Land ! at last, in Holy Land, 
 I look from Cavmel o'er the mystic realm 
 Of those high prophets, those deep-seeing seers 
 Whose open'd eyes beheld the world of God 
 Behind, within, earth's elements, beheld 
 Their champion God, Jehovah's bright array, 
 Th' embattled hosts of Heaven that fiU'd with fire 
 The desert air, and all the mountain side. 
 
 I stand on Carmel : they on Carmel stood ; 
 And in those caves below, within this rock. 
 Sought refuge from the wrath of priests and kings. 
 
 I pass'd through flowery Carmel's blooming wastes, 
 Through the lush beauty to the bare, bold height, 
 That, central in a wide horizon, broods 
 On sea and shore ; and there lie fields of fame ; 
 And Kishon sweeps, as on that day of arms, 
 " Kishon, that ancient river." And I look 
 Forth o'er the western waters ; and I muse, 
 Far sped, along the many-peopled past.
 
 95 
 
 And now I muse what soavchings, subtle, strong, 
 
 Tried those heroic hearts, what thoughts throng'd thick 
 
 In those great minds of old ; what visions rose 
 
 Upon the gaze of men well-styl'd " of God," 
 
 When seers of Israel, hards of Judah, look'd 
 
 O'er yon dim lands, o'er yon then mystic West, 
 
 O'er the wide world, and through the depths of Time. 
 
 And now I turn from blended sea and sky ; 
 And now before me lies that Holy Land. 
 And I shall tread that land in steps of One 
 Who sought it from on high ; and I shall seek 
 His Nazareth ; and think I track His path, 
 In pensive eve and ardent after-glow ; 
 And watch His stars clear-mirrorr'd in His lake ; 
 And hear the roll of Jordan, rushing strong, 
 Far heard along the lonely glens and woods. 
 And I shall watch by night at Endor, halt 
 At noon by Sychem's well : all Holy Land 
 Lies now before me ; and before me rise 
 High Zion's ramparts, each true pilgrim's goal.
 
 96 
 
 NAZARETH. 
 
 He dwelt at Nazareth Who, ere He came 
 
 In mortal guise, yet God, to Galilee, 
 
 Dwelt, Lord of worlds, among the stars of heaven. 
 
 He trod these paths ; He walked among the flowers 
 
 Again re-born in vernal beauty now. 
 
 His eyes beheld these hills, these then to His 
 
 As now to ours. He saw the sunrise break 
 
 There, where this morn it broke. Yon sunset hues 
 
 Glow as beheld by Him. His eyes and thoughts 
 
 Dwelt on the stars of midnight here : His home 
 
 Tliere, and still here. He liv'd our life, and here, 
 
 A gentle child, became a man ; and here, 
 
 Man, not of men, long meditated things 
 
 Loftier than man and holier ; and went forth 
 
 Into the world a martyr, born to doom. 
 
 Into the grave a conqueror ; from the grave 
 
 To dawn the day-star of the world's new life, 
 
 Shall not I bear these thouglits from Nazareth, 
 His Nazareth, within my wandering heart, 
 Far through the days before me ; far, perhaps, 
 Into the wider night beyond ; and thence 
 Into new lands of morning — all still 1 1 is — 
 Beyond the sunset, and beyond the sun ?
 
 97 
 
 MOUNT TABOll. 
 
 Here, on this p;lorious height, glorious in gaze 
 O'er hill and dale and plain, almost beyond 
 All else of Earth — 'tis here, tradition tells, 
 That He, Divine and human, ^Yhosc true light 
 Shines through the rising ages, and shall shine 
 AVhile worlds and stars arid constellated suns 
 Fulfil their sumless cycles and are quench'd, 
 Was once beheld transfigur'd with a light — 
 "White," " the white radiance of Eternity " — 
 Which shone for earthly eyes ; that here lie spake 
 With those gone great ones who in His bright hour 
 Thrill'd in their sleep of death, awaken'd by 
 That brightness, as the world by sunrise, rose, 
 Came from the grave, spake of His looming fate. 
 Spake of the gloom and glory of His path 
 To Zion and to death. 
 
 So Tabor siood 
 Supreme of Earth's great hills, supreme of all 
 Her holy heights, enthrou'cl in long belief. 
 Yet was not this the scene : it was not here 
 That He, still man, array'd mortality 
 In His own light : that fond belief was vain.
 
 98 
 
 So Tabor stands in Nature's beauty, lone, 
 Discrown'il, disrob'd of lovely legend, bare 
 To the cold eye of legciid-quelling Truth. 
 
 Yet is not this, and is not Holy Land, 
 
 Her hills and valleys, ^Yhere He trod and taught, 
 
 Is not all earth, which is His world, the scene 
 
 Of true Transfiguration ? Is there not 
 
 In Him, in words that shall not pass away, 
 
 Light that shall bathe, baptize the total world 
 
 In holy fire, in wide true knowledge spread 
 
 Like ocean's waters ? They to us seem spread 
 
 Co-ample with the starry firmament. 
 
 And starr'd like heaven ; but that which is, not seems. 
 
 Is His true peace, from heart-sought knowledge won ; 
 
 That peace the calm that mirrors stars of thought. 
 
 Its wide horizon blended earth and heaven.
 
 99 
 
 SORROW WITHOUT HOPE. 
 
 KiTTtv ovu y yiapOa irfWi luv '{ifaoin' ' Ki'/J<e, ct ijs wCe^ — - 
 
 They pass ; and now the last white plume is gone. 
 
 And now she has look'd her last : there's nothing more ; 
 
 No, not another glimpse ; and not a sound, 
 
 Save the dull hell, that, slow and heavy swung. 
 
 Tolls through the gloomy, rainy autumn ev'n 
 
 From the far churchyard ; where her child shall lie 
 
 While many merry marriage peals are rung, 
 
 And many mothers follow earth to earth. 
 
 Last week, that night, when all at length were still, 
 
 She rose from watching, and she went apart, 
 
 Lest he should hear her weep — for when he slept 
 
 She felt her heart give way — she went aside. 
 
 To yield herself a moment to herself, 
 
 To prayer — if wild ahandonment of hope 
 
 On earth he prayer — and so, with clasp'd, clench'd hands, 
 
 And flung-forth arms, and all those choking tears 
 
 Pour'd from the hurstiug, breaking heart at last. 
 
 She cast herself upon the earth, and said
 
 100 
 
 She cast herself on Heaven, and thought she pray'd — 
 Pray'd and despair'd : such prayer is but the cry, 
 Th' articulate pang, th' extremest utterance 
 Of human agony hurl'd up to God. 
 
 She pray'd the Heavens — the silent starry sky — 
 The cold, stern midnight air — she pray'd her God, 
 Once to look down upon her. And the sky 
 Look'd, and beheld her with its thousand eves, 
 All tearless, all unpitying — calm and bright. 
 
 She pray'd Him but to spare that little life. 
 Those little limbs that anguish. She had sinn'd, 
 And she would suffer — oh ! forgive such sin. 
 If these w'ild words be blasphemy — but he — 
 Oh, yes ! he must have sinn'd, and all was just ; 
 But he Avas yet so young — scarce three short springs, 
 And he had suffer'd very much and long, 
 And all for sins of hers and not his own ; 
 And she too, she had suffered : had she not ? 
 
 She pray'd the Power, All-Merciful, All-Good, 
 To spare but him — to take her and destro}- — 
 Life, body, soul — but spare him yet a while. 
 He had liv'd so little, seen so little yet 
 Of this fair world of God, had known of pain 
 So much, and so few pleasures ; scarce had heard 
 Of God, whom she would teach him to adare 
 And love for all His goodness.
 
 101 
 
 So she pray'd, 
 And wept, and pray'd again ; and kneeling secm'd 
 To rise ; and beeni'd to lliug her spirit forth 
 Fur as the shy ; then scem'd to cast it forth 
 Upon the winds. 
 
 She ccas'd. 
 
 It uds the wind ; 
 'Twas hat the wind. 
 
 And then she pray'd again, 
 And wildly as the hillow beats the rock, 
 And vainly as the billow threats the stars. 
 And vainly as the surge of ocean swells 
 To Her in heaven who smiles ou flux and ebb. 
 And vainly as the lone one gazes now 
 Down the drear valley, up the drear, dark sky, 
 And madly as she gazes down her mind, 
 Where now she feels all shaken— all her thoughts, 
 Care, hope, and trust — all things of earth or heaven ; 
 For now she sees no more, but, stuun'd and blind, 
 Eeels in the presence of the Fate that here 
 Has ris'n before her, black against the light, 
 Eclipsing God — Fate, for she dares not deem 
 That this her fate is aught of God, of Him 
 Whom she so lov'd. Who scem'd to give what Death 
 So soon has taken. 
 
 She is calm at last. 
 What more to feel or fear has she whose all 
 Is gone for ever, whose one hope lies there 
 Where hearts lie still, and know not what they lost ?
 
 102 
 
 Lie still — To-night the cliamber will be dark, 
 Dark, dark, and still as where he lies to-night, 
 Where oh But peace ! he is not far away. 
 
 The night will pass ; the hours will strike their steps 
 Across the darkness, and the day will dawn ; 
 And we shall rise : the bright new day will dawn 
 Upon his grave, and birds and flowers will wake. 
 
 No little feet will patter on the floor, 
 No silver voice will ring along the rooms, 
 Nor down the stair, to greet the merry morn. 
 And you may see the playthings scatter'd there ; 
 And you may meet some looks that tell of tears, 
 Tears spent last night, and swelling tears unshed ; 
 And if you speak, there may be answer meet. 
 Perhaps in tearful accents, thick and low. 
 
 And so shall pass the nights, of one sole hue, 
 
 And so shall come the morrows, born of night 
 
 To-morrow, and to-morrow, and the rest. 
 
 And friends shall come with comfort made of words, 
 
 And tell her all is well and all is best, 
 
 And tell her that the parted meet again ; 
 
 And all their story, long and trite as life ; 
 
 Nor cease from troubling till the weary rest.
 
 103 
 
 "THIS IS NOT YOUH llEST."* 
 
 [a MAUSOLLUM IX A WELSU VALLEY.] 
 
 " The thought of death sits light upon the man 
 Who has been born and dies among the mountains." 
 
 — WOKDSWORTU. 
 
 Where the rippling flood of sunset, gleaming 
 On the boar rock-ramparts of the vale, 
 
 On the lawny mountains later lingering, 
 Ebbs, soft splendour, from the inner dale, 
 
 Where the mountain-shadows spread the gloaming 
 Through the greenwood that beholds the lake. 
 
 Where the songsters' farewell, echoing, ending. 
 Leaves the brook to warble to the brake — 
 
 There the love-light sank and set that never 
 Ebb'd or paled till Life deserted Love ; 
 
 There those hearts harmonious pause that ever, 
 Till the chords were snapt, their concords wove. 
 
 • Micah iii 10.
 
 104 
 
 There the light and there the music slumbers, 
 Where those hearts lie lull'd in slumbers sweet ; 
 
 There they rest whose dearest thought in dying 
 Was that they in that soft sleep should meet. 
 
 There they laid him, where he will'd to wait her, 
 In the dell where they so oft had stray'd ; 
 
 Thither, when she lov'd no more, they bore her, 
 W^here her heart she long with him had laid. 
 
 And the mountain-shadows softly shroud them. 
 And the sunset smiles with morn-like light, 
 
 And for them the birds their love-lays scatter. 
 And the brook m.akes music through the night. 
 
 And the moon, upon the mountains rising, 
 Still revisits yon deep shadowy glen ; 
 
 And the stars of midnight watch the sleepers, 
 And the star of morning comes again. 
 
 Far around the faiiry dells and meadows 
 Rise and spread the dark wilds of the fell ; 
 
 And the silence of the hills enfolds them 
 Who in that lone valley sleep so well. 
 
 There they rest among the strength and beauty. 
 
 Into holy nature now received ; 
 There, among the rocks and woods and waters, 
 
 Where his childhood, where his last he lived.
 
 105 
 
 Here his boyliood chas'd its vagrant fancies, 
 Sped by some vague joy in hills and streams ; 
 
 Here proud sorrows, here pale passion wandcr'd, 
 Shadowing all the lovely land with dreams ; 
 
 On the downs in summer noontide brooding, 
 On the crags that sternly watch the ^Yest; 
 
 From the twilight of the dells beholding 
 Blood-red sunsets burning like his breast. 
 
 Here on her he mused at noon and even, 
 She, like him, still wandering in a waste ; 
 
 She, the long, slow, weary while, revolving 
 Nights and day-dreams in a drear unrest. 
 
 O'er yon hills, where oft the day's departing 
 Glow'd like passion's fiery purple light, 
 
 Darken'd years went down the past's abysm, 
 Set in clouds, and sought the land of night. 
 
 Rose at last the day-star, rose the morning. 
 On the vigil of the prescient heart ; 
 
 Came the day that God for them had garner'd, 
 And they met and now no more they part. 
 
 Not till Life had Life's best sweetness yielded — • 
 Kich amends for all their years unblest — 
 
 Not till earth had been to them as Eden, 
 
 Came the ^Yarning— " This is not your rcsV
 
 106 
 
 Tbeu he weut, tbat deeper vale exploriug, 
 To the silence where the parted meet ; 
 
 On her lips his spirit's earnest leaving, 
 On her bosom luU'd to slumber sweet. 
 
 Is it lonely — that green glen of burial ? 
 
 Is it darksome — that still place of rest ? 
 Is not earth a world wherein He shineth, 
 
 He whom earth its Easter Morn confess'd ? 
 
 As, among the mountains, in the starlight. 
 Lies their lake who dream of glassier sea,* 
 
 So, beneath His skies, among His mountains, 
 Smiles to Heaven His lake of Galilee. 
 
 As, beneath the summer moon at midnight 
 Sleeps the hillside where they mused their fate, 
 
 So, beneath the same sweet moon that saw Him 
 Once in anguish, sleeps His Olivet. 
 
 As the world, now His, though still it slumber. 
 Still may dream of dawn because He rose,t 
 
 So the sleepers in the vale t may wait Him, 
 Wait the hour which He Who Liveth knows. § 
 
 * " A sea of glass, like crystal. "^Rev. iv, G. 
 
 t " Because I live, ye shall live also." [On a monument in the 
 English burial-ground at Rome ; on another side of which are the 
 Avords, " Until tJic day daimii^'^ 
 
 i Ezek. xxxvii. 1. § Ezek. xxxvii. 3.
 
 107 
 
 GUY GKEY. 
 
 I. 
 
 Guy Grey, a yeoman, and a yeoman's son, 
 Own'd one small farm at Ashby Grey : his race 
 Tirae-bonour'd tlierc already when Sir Guy, 
 Sir Guy de Grey, died well in Holy Land, 
 Steeping the Red Cross with his own best blood. 
 John Grey, first yeoman of the line, was son, 
 Sole 8on, but scantly heir, of John, last squire ; 
 Whose weighty burdens, dowagers and aunts, 
 And daughters eight, left little for himself, 
 A thriftless, careless, easy, soft good man, 
 "Wherewith to cope with litigant as strong 
 As the great lord who, stirr'd by Lawyer Dicks, 
 Made claims, pick'd quarrel, dragg'd him on and on. 
 From court to court, and down and down, till Death 
 Sign'd judgment, and the lawyers shar'd the spoil ; 
 And the great lord was sorry at the fall 
 Of the old house, nor less when he beheld 
 His own miraculous Bill of Costs, " as 'tween 
 'torney and client." One small farm escap'd 
 Even Lawyer Dicks, and Guy possess'd it still.
 
 108 
 
 II. 
 
 Plain man was he, and humble, meek ; in all 
 Externals, merest yeoman ; but a man 
 ►Strong, high, and noble in himself, a man 
 In stature, strength, and bearing ; high he bore 
 A head for sculptor's study ; high his heart 
 As Eome or Sparta, high with that true pride, 
 And that alone, which is the stateliness 
 Of conscious honour in a Christian man. 
 
 III. 
 
 Not many stages (these were early days ; 
 
 " Good " Greorge the Third was king) lay Ashby Grey 
 
 From where the village Ilampdens and the mute 
 
 Inglorious Miltons, as the poet dreamt. 
 
 Slept in the yew-tree's shade. Of such, perchance, 
 
 Was Grey : perhaps he dreamt it. Be that so, 
 
 Or be it not, he strove, from child to boy, 
 
 From boy to man, for knowledge, for the light. 
 
 And for the power, whereof, within his mind, 
 
 He seem'd to find some earnest. Those few fields 
 
 (He little reck'd his petty heritage ; 
 
 His well-worn books were dukedom large enougL) 
 
 He never till'd, but with the rents— so small, 
 
 Yet greater than his wants — was rich and free. 
 
 IV. 
 
 He wedded early. She, too, was the child 
 Of honest people of the soil : she, too,
 
 109 
 
 Gracious, and kind, and good, and dowei'd with gifts 
 Of mind and body ; and with some small store 
 Of yeoman's wealth, small, hut sufTicing both. 
 He lov'd her, and she knew it ; and she lov'd 
 Him as such women love such men, albeit 
 She knew, or deem'd, that never woman could 
 By mortal man be lov'd as was their child 
 By that great ardent heart of his, that mind, 
 That soul, that strength : she brooded o'er and o'er 
 Those words, those texts — that love of God — and oft 
 Sigh'd, silent, to her own half-boding heart 
 " I fear, I fear, he loves, we love, that child 
 Too much, too much." 
 
 V. 
 
 The child grew more and more 
 A thing of beauty and of joy. And now 
 The mind seem'd daily dawning, brighter still, 
 And brighter yet, and beaming clearer through 
 The fair boy's pure pale face ( — " too pale — too bright !" 
 Some murmur'd) ; and as Guy bent o'er and scann'd 
 The broad white brow, he seem'd to see, to scan 
 A mind that moulds, informs, exalts, sublimes 
 Mankind's ; and he, that never for himself 
 Had cherish'd an ambition, save desire 
 To learn and know, so to possess his soul 
 Self-satisfied, in settled wealth of thought, 
 Now throbb'd and yearn'd for all that might avail
 
 110 
 
 In that youDg spirit's wide and high career. 
 ** He must see all ; learn all : he must not feel 
 What / have felt, and never yet o'ercome, 
 In my blind, feeble struggle, must not strive 
 With petty cares like mine, or waste his powers 
 As I have wasted powers and years and hopes. 
 AYhat can I give you, Willie ? — I will — what ? 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Then, prayer is heard, and all we ask'd, and more, 
 
 Is granted now ; and now the darling child 
 
 Will learn the tongues — more than Sir William Jones- 
 
 And write like Doctor Samuel Johnson, speak 
 
 Like Mr. Burke, and be — who knows ? — as great 
 
 As that great Earl of Chatham." ** And as good, 
 
 Dear Mary, let us hope, as our great Pitt." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! and better, dear, than Mr. Fox." 
 
 A letter from the Indies, letters, too, 
 
 And documents official, partly print, 
 
 From London, notified that by the will 
 
 Of kinsman long oblivious of all kiu, 
 
 Now some seven months deceas'd, Guy Grey became 
 
 Possess'd — entitled, rather — terms distinct — 
 
 To all that stock ct altera, all those sums 
 
 Et ccetera, and the rest ; much, but as yet 
 
 Scarce well in hand. Need was that he (or who ?) 
 
 Should go, secure and bring it. Well, he went, 
 
 After long question, long debate, with her,
 
 Ill 
 
 And with himself, with his own harcl-rack'd mintl, 
 And sad, sad heart. 
 
 " And when will you come back, 
 Father ? and will you come to me as soon, 
 As soon as ever you come back ? Perhaps, 
 It will be dark ; but, father, wake me then. 
 Perhaps I shall be fast asleep. I'm sure 
 I shall be dreaming of you. I shall know 
 That you are there. I wonder, father, dear, 
 Where I shall be when you come back again." 
 And Willie smil'd, and, smiling, clasp'd him fast, 
 And held him long ; but as he hid his face 
 Press'd close and closer, sobb'd, and then broke forth 
 In tears — such flooding tears as only flow 
 From passionate despair. Such passion seem'd 
 So strange in that pale child, that they, who bent 
 Above him, shar'd some strange and secret awe. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Days went, and weeks, and many months : the breadth 
 Of half the world between them, those true hearts 
 Beat with one pulse of love, throbb'd, ach'd alike 
 With cares, and hopes, and fears, and many pangs, 
 Many and keen, but borne, borne well, or, say, 
 Borne silent, as the sunset which he watch'd 
 From far Bengal, with England in the West, 
 Borne silent as the churchyard grass, where she 
 Sat oft, with Willie in her arms, at cvo.
 
 112 
 
 VITI. 
 
 Months, many weary month?!, went by : no word, 
 Came once from India to the Avife left lone. 
 "Word came, indeed, to Ashby Grey, came oft 
 As, in those lumbering Georgian days, might be, 
 Words of good cheer to darling wife and child, 
 ^Yords of bright life, as hers to him, he wrote. 
 Were ever : but in vain she watch'd and. pined 
 For aught of life or cheer. No single line 
 Of Guy's, through all those many weary months, 
 Pass'd once beyond the careful eyes and hands 
 Of Mrs. Blakeway, much respected dame, 
 Postmistress sole at Ashby ; nay, some few 
 Attaiu'd such honour as to lie before 
 The cold and high, but sharp and curious, ken 
 Of man most grand, and more than "Venerable " 
 (Though scarce in years : he had but fifty-seven). 
 Archdeacon Fuff, the Vicar. That great man 
 (Great at all times, in every place and phase, 
 Alike, as when in what he pleas'd to call 
 " The Service of the Sanctuary " he rear'd 
 His bald majestic numskull — bald ? not so ; 
 Coarse carrot, paled to turnip, still strove hard 
 To shade it, as with moulting cherub's wings), 
 That great, good man had had a parlour-maid, 
 Now Mrs. Blakeway, grocer's widow, long 
 Presiding o'er Grey Ashby's scanty post. 
 She had been very young : she now was staid, 
 PiouS; and false, and spiteful - skittish ? no !
 
 113 
 
 Who ever said so ? Skittish ! Most uutruc ; 
 
 And so unlikely ! We repeat that she 
 
 Was staid and pious, as she needs must be, 
 
 Still high in favour where the good alono 
 
 Could hope to tread, the sanctum, where — but hush ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 Both hated Guy and Mary. Guy knew well 
 
 Why Mrs. Blakeway with a bitter hate 
 
 Him hated, and his wife with bitterer. Ilim 
 
 She had by no means hated years ago, 
 
 Until he prov'd so stupid : he had lov'd 
 
 But once, and then for ever. She, so good, 
 
 Most justly, then, both scorn 'd and hated them. 
 
 But the great Vicar, no less great than good, 
 
 Why hated he so mean a thing as Grey ? 
 
 Well, the great churchman, dull and pompous, slow 
 
 Of heart and brain, had yet, full quick and keen. 
 
 The vermin-instinct of the dull, who see 
 
 And feel and hate the brighter ; only see 
 
 And feel to hate ; and think they scorn because 
 
 They feel, or think, themselves are scorn'd : no scorn 
 
 Had Guy for any, save the base or mean ; 
 
 Though true it is — and pity 'tis 'tis true — 
 
 That e'en Queen Charlotte in his eyes was less 
 
 Than his own purring tabby, or his dog. 
 
 Pufi 'd with the poor, bad pride of weak, mean men 
 
 Whose pride it is to show it, and to wound 
 
 Wherever they can make it felt^ this priest
 
 114 
 
 Slow strutting in bis small, stiff, narrow mind, 
 
 Look'd loftily askance at such a man 
 
 As the plain, quiet, studious yeoman, deep 
 
 In books beyond bim and beyond bis class, 
 
 As be bimself bad told bim wbeu be came, 
 
 Witb true respect, some years ago, to ask 
 
 His learned pastor's aid in some Greek text 
 
 Too bard tor bim : tbe explanation too 
 
 Would be, so said tbe Vicar, cold and dry, 
 
 And so witbbeld it. More, and worse, — tbougb Grey 
 
 Sat weekly at bis apostolic feet, 
 
 And meekly listen'd (better to bave sat 
 
 In stocks witbin some pound impounding too 
 
 A brayful ass), tbougb Grey, like all bis race. 
 
 Was cburcbman true (but Cbristian first : tbe priest 
 
 Was cburcbman first and last) and tbougb no taint, 
 
 No trace of sect or scbism migbt be discern'd. 
 
 Or guess'd, tbe Vicar sbook bis addled bead. 
 
 X. 
 
 Once, years ago — 'twas now five years — wben Guy, 
 Some few montbs wedded, was a wbile away, 
 Kemote, on business, Mrs. Blakeway's eye 
 Fell keenly on a letter to bis wife. 
 Sbe first witbbeld it only (lied, of course) ; 
 Then, after one uneasy nigbt, made free, 
 And witb a practis'd band and no mean skill, 
 Prevail'd upon tbe seal to render up
 
 115 
 
 Sweet secrets. How she Hush'J, and paled, and tlubli'd 
 Again, and burn'd, and bit her lip, and stamp'd, 
 And crush'd the lover's letter ! On the fire 
 (By luck, not burning bright) she dash'd it once, 
 But snalch'd it back. That day she read no more ; 
 Nor slept that night. Came evil thoughts — her mind 
 Was base, and all her nature — on and on 
 Came evil thoughts and fancies. Once again. 
 Next day, she read ; and then she smil'd, and then 
 She took the letter, smoolh'd, but all uns-eal'd. 
 To the good Vicar. 
 
 XI. 
 
 And he read it twice. 
 
 XII. 
 
 *' Yes, sir : it came just so — quite open, so — 
 
 And is it not a shame, sir, that a man 
 
 Should write such things, and send them to his ivife ? 
 
 Or e'en to any woman, grown or girl ? 
 
 And send them open — all wide open, so — 
 
 I'm sure he only made-believe to seal — 
 
 For any one to read ! Such things ! why, sir, 
 
 I could not half believe my eyes until 
 
 I'd read it four times over — every time 
 
 More shock'd and more. I hope you'll take it, sir, 
 
 And read it over to that wife of his, 
 
 And read her such a lecture on the shame, 
 
 The sin."
 
 116 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The good man smil'd : perhaps bis smile 
 Was half a wink : among his votaries, 
 All feminine, and mostly fools, his smile 
 Was quite a spell — so sweet, so sly. 
 
 " Why, no ! 
 She's not the kind of woman I — and he — 
 No, Jenny ! no ! And, then, my dear, you see, 
 It's not, perhaps, so very certain that 
 This letter, which he meant, perhaps, to seal, 
 Came quite so open to your hands. I think 
 'Twere best to make it right — no doubt you can — 
 And let her have it." " But, sir, if I can't — 
 What shall I do with it ? what shall I do ?" 
 ** Always, dear Jenny, always what is right, 
 And what you find is prudent " (here he smiled). 
 " That's the best rule. And if again, by chance, 
 You find these open letters, do not come 
 With them to me (you know what's right, and know 
 That I've no liking for such things), unless 
 You find them still so very bad that you 
 Require advice and comfort. Now, good night." 
 
 XIV. 
 
 So, not one line from Guy to Mary's hands 
 Came ever, through the long, long months. That year 
 Went down in gloom and silence ; and the next — 
 Spring flowerless, summer sunless, so it seem'd — 
 That year went too : no word came once from him*
 
 117 
 
 After a while, her letters too were stopp'd, 
 Read, aud then burnt. 
 
 XV. 
 
 At last, when March was come. 
 In the third j'car, came Guy. It was not then 
 The savage March of normal English year, 
 Worse than November, or than English May. 
 The wintry blasts had pass'd, the sweet south-west 
 Seem'd blent with sunshine in the soft, warm air. 
 Felt in the new giecn leaves, in bud and bark ; 
 Felt in the blood, aud breathing to the heart. 
 The birds were singing ; every spray seem'd rife 
 With love-song ; children chas'd the butterfly. 
 And lambs chas'd lambs along the spangled meads. 
 'Twas sunset, and the glowing west gleam'd bright 
 Behind the churchyard elms : a parting ray 
 Shot through the yew, then left it dense and dark 
 Against the desert sky. Then o'er the scene — 
 Or was it o'er the heart ? — came some wan shade, 
 Not sad, or sweet if sad. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Guy Grey came home 
 In that sweet hour : a happy man he came, 
 Though grave and anxious ; happy, for he came 
 Home to his own, and bore a buoyant heirt, 
 Long tried, long rack'd, but steadfast, brave, aud high, 
 By nature. Now, far lauds aud seas o'erpast,
 
 118 
 
 And weary months, and many a risk and chance, 
 Safe, sound, a prosperous man and rich, he came 
 To Ashby, long his fathers' home, and long 
 His and his child's to be ; for he had wealth, 
 And Willie should be Grey of Ashby Grey. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 His house stood nearest on the road by which 
 
 He (walking some short way, for so he chose 
 
 To come alone) approach'd the hamlet ; his, 
 
 A cottage, in a garden all embower'd. 
 
 Stood solitary, scarce in sight of those 
 
 "Which, clustering round the church, were Ashby Grey. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 He op'd the gate, and mark'd, though passing quick. 
 
 Flowers, shrubs untended, straggling, all forlorn. 
 
 The door w^as fast, and when he tapp'd and knock'd, 
 
 None came, none answer'd ; sign of life was none. 
 
 But light shone through the window, and he saw 
 
 The cheerful fire, and by it stood one chair. 
 
 Both had gone out, 'twas plain : they could not know 
 
 His coming : when he last had written (vain 
 
 It seem'd to write at all, miscarriage still 
 
 His every letter's fate) he could not know 
 
 What winds would waft him homeward or oppose. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 He paus'd ; he waited, till the passion grew 
 Too strong, and he must seek and know at once.
 
 119 
 
 He rushed away, but found no face until 
 (Some moments seeming hours) he found himself 
 Under the churchyard porch, and saw some form 
 Before him, and would question, but stood mute, 
 Another form beholding. It was she. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Under that yew tree gently heav'd a grave 
 
 Scarce green, but all thick-set with early flowers, 
 
 Pale primrose, faded snowdrops, late so fair, 
 
 And dark pathetic violets, that seem 
 
 Spring's mourning for the child that died in spring, 
 
 So sweet, so meek, and of the holy hue 
 
 Of starry midnight, where we watch the lost ; 
 
 A little grave : the child lull'd there, we thought, 
 
 Might some four, five bright springs, brief springs, have 
 
 bloom'd . 
 Upon that grave, spread black among the flowers, 
 Knelt, lay, flung wildly forward, with her face 
 Pressed on the sod, one — one who could but be 
 The mother. 
 
 That was Mary, that strange shape 
 Of bodied anguish ; more ii bpirit now 
 Than mortal ; not alone because her frame 
 Was worn to shadow, and her weary eyes 
 Seem'd wandering in another world afar : 
 Whoso look'd there would see that in this world 
 No part had she. 'Twas so, save when she found. 
 Day after day, still sought, and daily found
 
 120 
 
 As if new-made, with ever fresh despair, 
 That one sole spot, where he lay cold iu earth 
 "While spring-flowers bloom'd above him. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " Mary ! " Twice, 
 
 Kneeling beside her, with the gentlest hand 
 
 On the dear head, he whisper'd, fearing much 
 
 To trust himself, his weakness, at the sound 
 
 Of the dear name, and strongly holding down 
 
 His straining heart. They rose ; she held his hands 
 
 And gaz'd, at first with vague and doubtful look. 
 
 As knowing, yet scarce knowing, whom she saw, 
 
 And trying to recall some vanish'd dream ; 
 
 Then with more earnest eyes, lit up, it seem'd, 
 
 At his, and reading his, and reading him. 
 
 Long time had he, so silent, far away, 
 
 Been claim'd from her by Heaven, and only there 
 
 Was she again to see him ; she to Heaven 
 
 Had all that hope remanded ; and to him, 
 
 That other, all her rest of life had given. 
 
 In liim laid all : then Death had come, and then — 
 
 Then all was darkness : all her thoughts drawn down, 
 
 All buried, and for ever, there, in earth. 
 
 In earth, that only renders flowers for tears. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 She saw ; she knew : she from his hands unclasp'd 
 Hers, and outspread her arms, as to enfold 
 A total bliss at once ; then to her heart
 
 121 
 
 Hold him, and press'd to his ; then, but not soon, 
 
 Not soon, if time be measur'd, as it is, 
 
 By what is felt, by moments of the mind. 
 
 Wept, as she nestled in his neck ; wept long, 
 
 And passionately ; wept as one would weep 
 
 Who fain would weep away her heart and life. 
 
 But when, at length, the strong man's self grew pale 
 
 Beneath such stress of passion, hers and his. 
 
 She summ'd her loving spirit, staunch'd her tears, 
 
 Smiled, very sweetly, very sadly, said, 
 
 " But you are come — come home ;" and they went home. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Home ? where ? They left the grave beneath the yew : 
 'Twas to their house they went. 
 
 * * *' * * 
 
 And Guy took out. 
 So slowly, tenderly, some packages 
 
 Of pretty things from India, packages 
 
 Never to be unpack'd, and lock'd them up 
 
 With little Willie's toys. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Faith fail'd them not : they read, they had '* by heart," 
 
 In the true sense, what John, what Paul beheld ; 
 
 The humble man and simple woman saw 
 
 Almost, perhaps, as clearly in their hope 
 
 As he in Patnios, he in Third of Heavens. 
 
 They knew that this their world, and all its forms 
 
 Of life and death were but a dream, to fade
 
 122 
 
 In the true light ; earth, heaven to pass awaj', 
 
 But not His Word ; they knew that they were souls, 
 
 And that 'tis but Eteinity which is 
 
 The life of spirits ; and that earth and heaven 
 
 Fail, fleet, evanish (" as a scroll," " as smoke ") 
 
 In moments of the life of spirits : this. 
 
 All this, they knew by heart— this and the rest. 
 
 They knew that little AVillie was in Heaven. 
 
 But— 
 
 They wanted little AVillie in the house. 
 
 And while they hoped and trusted Mary died. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 She died while yet the violet of the spring 
 Smiled on the grave. But Guy lived on so long, 
 'Twas to himself a marvel and a shame : 
 So strong the man, so full of life, of soul, 
 Of spirit so puissant, with a frame 
 Of iron or of temper'd steel, long steep'd 
 In trial, that his grief, and even his will 
 (His one will was to die) scarce overcame 
 His scorn'd and hated mortal part, that still 
 Lagg'd slow behind them who were gone so long. 
 His " quantity of love " and grief — his love 
 The measure of his anguish — would have killed 
 Ten common men. This man, had he lain deep 
 In dungeon, chain'd and fumish'd twenty years, 
 "Would never once have cower'd, not once have ceas'd 
 To strive in spirit and to plan escape :
 
 123 
 
 He was so bard to break. And so bis beavt 
 
 i^roke not as yet ; or, if it broke and died 
 
 AVitbin bira, some yet unqnencb'd fire of youtb, 
 
 Tbe vigour of bis vivid animal life, 
 
 Upbore, onbore bim yet a wbile, albeit 
 
 He seem'd to bend bis mind, witli all its force, 
 
 All stress of will, against bis bodily part, 
 
 And bade it crusb tbe life out. Still be lived ; 
 
 But be would die. It migbt be sin ; it migbt 
 
 Be, as sin is, self's vain revolt from God, 
 
 Still and for ever, sclf-aveng'd on self. 
 
 Deatb, self-decreed, migbt be but tliis despair 
 
 Still darker, lonelier, longer, in tbe grave. 
 
 He knew noL ; be would try ; be would trust God. 
 
 God knew tbat be bad borne enougb ; God knew 
 
 Tbat be could bear no more. TJiey were witb God. 
 
 Sbould not bo seek tbem ? 
 
 Darker tbougbts, too, passed 
 Across bis reeling mind. 
 
 Well, they were gone : 
 Tbat, tbat alone be knew ; and he would go. 
 And wbitber ? Tbat be reck'd not. Tbev would be 
 In deatb togetber. Tliey were tbere, bcneatb 
 Tbe cburcbyard yew : be would die tbere, and tbere 
 Lie — let it be for ever : let tbe world 
 Go on, and go its way, and leave tbem tbere. 
 
 * ii^ ■:(■ a- * 
 
 And now bis mind was fix'd, and now grew calm. 
 Grew clear, it seem'd, and brigbten'd. He could see
 
 124 
 
 Hope by the light of love : God's love he felt 
 
 o full}', that he only thought of God 
 As Love ; and in the light of that sweet love 
 Saw things so bright before him. Brighter climes 
 Than Indian isles rose, dawning, from the deep, 
 From the dark deep ; and he should meet them there ; 
 There, on the shore, he saw them ; he was near. 
 
 * ir A- * * 
 
 No page except his Bible's had he turn'd 
 
 Since, while on board, up Channel, he had conn'd 
 
 His uecond Bible, Shakspeare, but he there 
 
 Had read (remember'd now, and resonant), 
 
 — " My dreams presage some joyful news at hand : 
 
 " My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne. 
 
 *' I dreamt my lady came, and found me dead, 
 
 " And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips, 
 
 " That I reviv'd and was an emperor." 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Night came ; and never deeper night descended 
 
 On a lost battle-field, or on the grave 
 
 Of love ; nor blast more savage ever raged 
 
 Through the dense darkness, scourging the black frost 
 
 Into still keener bite, than when Guy Grey 
 
 Lay down to die, among the dead spring-flowers : 
 
 There, in the deadly gloom of that last night 
 
 Of that cold world, with summer in his heart; 
 
 For he should soon sleep well, and then should wake. 
 
 With them, among the starry asphodel 
 
 And amaranth hues of heaven. Perhaps his mind,
 
 125 
 
 Worn, waste, was wiidcr'd, but bis v.ill was fix'd. 
 
 Slow hours he lay ; and now was little left 
 
 Of life, or sense of snficring, sense of augbt, 
 
 Till something touch'd his bands, then touch'd bis face, 
 
 Then, humbly, it might seem, and lovingly. 
 
 Came close : t'was Bly, his dog (her name was ** Blithe "— 
 
 Most beauteous of the collie kind, and best). 
 
 Bly, too, had there lain long : he knew it not. 
 
 Bly, trembling, quivering, gently pull'd his sleeve, 
 
 And well he knew she whiu'd, " Come, come away; 
 
 Come home ;" and half his dying heart went out 
 
 Tow'rds that last friend on earth ; and half be will'd 
 
 Then to resign his own desir'd near death, 
 
 And to take home that night the poor starv'd dog. 
 
 But, no. They wait him : he would die that night. 
 
 And so — but let that pass — and then he died. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Day : the dog walch'd the dead. 
 
 Which when the Vicar from his chamber saw, 
 
 And saw anon (not hurrying, for 'twas but 
 
 A dead man, or a drunken, and a dog. 
 
 And breakfast waited) that the man was Grey, 
 
 Words fail'd his sacerdotal scorn and ire. 
 
 And when some, pitying, breath'd the thought, the fear, 
 
 That the poor dead had died because his heart 
 
 Had long been buried with his own lov'd dead, 
 
 And life a burden more than he could bear, 
 
 'Twas overmuch, and all the priest o'crflow'd.
 
 126 
 
 " Die lil<e a dog ! and die iu my churchyard ! 
 
 And with a dog, a heathen's heathen dog, 
 
 Iu his last hour ! and this in my churchyard ! 
 
 He wants to rest with them ? That shall he not. 
 
 A suicide, a felon, he shall lie 
 
 At the cross-roads, sh- ; not iu my churchyard. 
 
 He shall be buried like a dog, by night 
 
 (He liked to die at night — eh, Dan ! " but Dan, 
 
 For once, scarce smiled his duty at the wit). 
 
 " By midnight, with no service — not one word — 
 
 I'll go to bed — and with a good sharp stake 
 
 Driven through his harden'd heart." (It happen'd, though, 
 
 That the good Vicar err'd : a jury sat 
 
 More merciful than he ; and Guy was laid 
 
 There where he will'd ; and man not Reverend less, 
 
 A meek grey curate, with a heart and head, 
 
 Breath'd blessing on his grave : Archdeacon Fuff 
 
 AVas busy at Sir Bingo's, plying hard 
 
 For more preferment ; mean and servile there, 
 
 Of course, as elsewhere harsh and arrogant). 
 
 "And this starv'd cur, that cowers and cringes so " 
 
 (Kicks Bly) — " I won't have dogs in my churchyard." 
 
 (The Vicar's cow graz'd there ; the Vicar's pigs 
 
 Disported at their own sweet will ; and sheep 
 
 Were pastur'd, and were paid for ; dogs no good 
 
 In his churchyard.) *' I won't have dogs, I say, 
 
 In my churchyard. Don't let that dog sneak out. 
 
 Here, Daniel, get a rope, and hang that dog, 
 
 There, on that yew-tree, just above that grave."
 
 1J7 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Thiug easier said than done. John Jones was there. 
 
 John Jones hoard "hang that dog." John Jones hlasphem'd. 
 
 lie swore an oath so large, so round, so full, 
 
 That if llecording Angel minded were 
 
 To blot it out, much need that he should drop 
 
 Tears ponderous as " the biggest gooseberry " — 
 
 Swore [heu et proli .') beneath the very shade 
 
 Of Church, and of the Vicar's sacred nose ; 
 
 Who, meek, good man, how scandaliz'd soe'er, 
 
 Put up a prayer ; said " God forgive him ! " — prayer 
 
 So breath'd, so snarl'd, that 'twas the bitterer curse. 
 
 John Jones ? "We have heard the name ; but who was 
 
 he? 
 The parish doctor. AVorthier fellow ne'er 
 Rode hard through midnight storm to poorest cot 
 For slenderest fee, or certainty of none. 
 No stauncher ever laugh'd a loud, rude laugh, 
 Or swore a sound old oath, or draiu'd a pot 
 Down to its deepest drop ; or lov'd to stroke 
 A kitten, or to baste a raging bull. 
 Big, burly, rough as a rugged'st Eussiau bear, 
 Yet with a hand, a touch, as nice as firm. 
 And with a sense of humour tine and keen 
 As his best lancet, he, who, when he came 
 From some child's deathbed, and sat down at home. 
 Alone at last, would wipe his eyes, that then 
 Own'd all his weakness, he so lov'd a joke, 
 That he his foe the Vicar could have lov'd
 
 128 
 
 Had that great mau but made a joke, though bad 
 As his best sermon ; and 'twas told that he, 
 Much to the scandal of the good, had joked 
 A dying sinner, cramm'd with dire despair, 
 Out of all dread of Bogy, sent him down 
 Half chuckling at the doctor's last good thing ; 
 And that (but this was unconfirm'd, and pass'd, 
 With some, for simple fiction, white or black — 
 " One of Archdeacon Fuft's ") a patient once 
 Had died of laughter and of loss of blood 
 For that the worthy surgeon, much in beer 
 Had op'd an artery by mischance, and smiled 
 Remarking that he was not in the vein. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 John Jones, then, heard and saw, and swiftly strode, 
 With scant obeisance, right across the path 
 Of him who said " Go, hang that dog " to him 
 Who went to do it. " Drop that dog, Dan Blogo, 
 Or I'll drop you.'' Dan made his choice, and dropp'd 
 The dog ; but well-nigh dropped himself, beneath 
 The glaring wrath of master there, drawn up 
 Swolu into twice a Dean with noble rage, 
 Amazement, indignation, stung, still worse. 
 With some vile sense of impotence absurd 
 (" So as a painted tyrant Pyrrhus stood, 
 "And like a neutral to his will and matter, 
 " Did nothing.") 
 
 He, this parish Caiaphas,
 
 129 
 
 Being Iligh-Pricst, could prophesy, and so 
 
 Foreknow, within his own prophetic soul, 
 
 Foresaw that cv'n his sacred self (great God !), 
 
 His own great self, to that irreverent man, 
 
 That coarse John Jones, hot-headed Welshman, miglit. 
 
 And more than might, be but as Daniel Blogg. 
 
 Let him, John Jones, go hang, and take the dog. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 He took her home, and kept her at his side. 
 One night (a sudden summons to a friend 
 Far off arous'd him) Ely broke quick away ; 
 And when, returning, forty weary miles 
 Of heavy snow twice travell'd, he, by light 
 Of the late-setting moon, explor'd the spot, 
 The dog lay dead upon the grave. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " That dog 
 Shall lie beneath that yew-tree ; that dear dog 
 Shall rest with him that was so dear." So said 
 John Jones, irreverent ; and he kept his word. 
 If he had said, " Archdeacon Fuff shall eat 
 That dog," he would have kept it : 'twas his way. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 A little girl died of a rare disease 
 Of interest deep and high to men of lore, 
 To Science, to Humanity. 'Twas then 
 No very mighty matter just to take.
 
 130 
 
 Nay, nor to " snatch," a body, for the good 
 Of Science and Humanity — so thought 
 The learned, and the curious, and the rest. 
 Ev'n students medical, for love of lore. 
 And love of fun and guineas, tried their hands. 
 And won applause for pretty little pranks 
 Ev'n in the graveyards. So, John Jones, one night 
 (Not hard for him, the doctor and the friend), 
 The precious " subject " to secure contriv'd, 
 And left poor Bly, in lead and woollen lapp'd, 
 The substitute (and saw the lid screw'd down), 
 And follow'd to the grave beneath the yew. 
 The Vicar read — " Man that is horn " . . (John Jones 
 Stood by) . . " tJie soul of our dear sister here " . . 
 . . " In sure and certain liopc " . . . "0/ TJiine 
 
 vLCCv • • • 
 
 The mourners wept, their well-mopp'd ftices bow'd, 
 And the good doctor hid his own — his frame, 
 The crowd saw pitying, shaken as he sobb'd. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 And the good Vicar left poor Bly to rest 
 
 Fast by the lowly grave of those that lov'd, 
 
 And love, we think, for ever. Do we think 
 
 Love ever faileth ? Do we think that earth 
 
 Has any spot too sacred for the heart. 
 
 Or for one humbler fellow-creature's love ? 
 
 " Lo ! the poor Indian ... in that equal sky 
 
 " His faithful dog shall bear him company."
 
 131 
 
 MIDNIGHT ; MIDWINTER : 
 
 A STRAY CAT MEWING AT MY DOOR IN THE TEMPLE. 
 
 0*iiii^icv '•{up uri TTuaa ij Kiiai'i auaievu'^n k«< avvuicivei f^XP' "^^^ vov. 
 
 — B.om. vlii., 22. 
 
 " Tau!,'ht by the Power that pities me, 
 I learn to pity them." — Goh>smitii. 
 
 -" I would also deem 
 
 That goodness is no name, and liai)pines3 no dreini." — BvRON. 
 
 " Although a subtler sphinx renew 
 Riddle3 of death Thebes never knew."— Shelley. 
 
 T. 
 
 The mystic midiiigbt of the world of man, 
 The dawn still far away, the stars of morn 
 Still unawaking, sunk in pierceless gloom 
 
 II. 
 
 Fain would I tiud within my wildcred thought 
 Some guiding gleam, relumed as consciousness 
 Gains re-possession, in reviving sense 
 Of that perpetual Presence, which to all 
 "Who own it as the heart may learn to own, 
 Is light, and universal light would he 
 Though all the suns evanished as a spark.
 
 132 
 
 III. 
 Fain would I staunch the surging doubts that wako 
 Like midnight fears, and throb against my heart, 
 That tries to arm it* and repel the tide. 
 Fain would I stem the darkness of the hour, 
 Thus haunted by the foe, whose hour it is,f 
 Fain rest in loving faith, and wait the light. 
 
 lY. 
 
 But dark. to me, and darker (nor alone 
 In this dark, lonely hour of night, but oft 
 In garish, worldly day, full oft, when I 
 Have brooded on my sorrows, and on theirs, 
 The humble, harmless creatures, that endure 
 Without the strength of reason or of hope 
 Sustaining, all the ills they never earned. 
 Cold, hunger, pain, all pains that baser man, 
 Their " lord," unworthy and unjust, can wreak 
 Upon their mute, meek helplessness), to me 
 In many an hour, both in the world of men 
 By day, and midst the worlds of God by night. 
 Darker to mind, and deeper far to heart. 
 That moral mystery of His work than aught 
 That tries our reason in the rugged realms 
 Of Scripture, science, history, whereof 
 I know the mazes, rocks, and storms, and syrts, 
 The depths and shallows, having long and far 
 
 ''• 'Ols\!^ov, Ka^h'a.—Mcd. 1242. 
 t Luke xxii., ho.
 
 133 
 
 Sought strength aiul light, sought " treasure," which to 
 
 win 
 I staked all care and cost and hope, staked all 
 For truth, and won it, as I still will deem. 
 
 V. 
 
 " We see in part " — alas ! how much we see 
 
 Of suffering and its mj'stery, which is. 
 
 Among so much, a pang the not least keen. 
 
 " We know in part " — how little do we know 
 
 Of God's great scheme ! how much that mind of man 
 
 Can never, never save as evil see ! 
 
 We cannot, oh ! we cannot understand 
 
 How such a world of woes (not ours alone, 
 
 Which man, we hear, has merited, but theirs — 
 
 "What have they done, these sheep ? "*--thc things of life 
 
 That live to suffer and to die and go). 
 
 How such a world, with ceaseless anguish racked 
 
 Through ages unimaginably vast, 
 
 Can stand in His bright presence, can in Him 
 
 Live, move, and have its being. Well I know 
 
 Full many a beauteous system theorized 
 
 By seers who of the purpose saw so much 
 
 And felt so little of the pain. Full well 
 
 I know and loathe them ; and full fain would frame 
 
 Some other, which should less perplex the mind. 
 
 Less vex the heart. 
 
 * 2 Sam., xxiv., 7. 
 Cf. Ovid. Mdam. xv. "Quid meruistis, ovcs, placidum pccus ?"
 
 ISi 
 
 -" Shall see it, but not now.* 
 
 Thou art so near, and yet so far away. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Muslim worships The j\Iost Merciful ; 
 
 The bard of Judah sang — and echoing hearts 
 
 Rise resonant — His mercy over all. 
 
 But this mid-winter midnight and the woes 
 
 That cry where none but kindred wretches hear, 
 
 And none can succour, this the present world, 
 
 That lies, this Yule, in midnight black and frore 
 
 ^Vhere *' little ones," God's creatures, harmless things 
 
 That never sinned, lie perishing — What word 
 
 Of comfort comes ? — " How long ? oh, Lord ! how long '?" 
 
 VII. 
 
 To whom, then, shall we turn, unless to Thee ? 
 
 And can we but cry, " I believe : help Thou 
 
 Mine unbelief?'' Thou knowest. What Thou doest 
 
 We know not noAv ; but Thou Thyself hast said 
 
 That we shall know hereafter. So I gaze 
 
 Through the black midnight and the starless gloom, 
 
 And seek some source of light, light uncreate, 
 
 Far, far beyond the sun, the light of love 
 
 That yet may kindle faith ; though still, oh ! still, 
 
 I find so much in this wide howling waste 
 
 Too hard for reason, all too hard for heart — 
 
 Almost for faith ; but faith, whose name is trust. 
 
 Trust loving, generous, brave, could find no scope
 
 135 
 
 If reason, bargaining for solid proof, 
 
 Saw certitude. Wc strain dimmed, weary eyes 
 
 Tow'rds where, 'tis told, all tears arc wiped away. 
 
 There must they rest ; or where ? Where, save in love ? 
 
 Love trusts in Love ; and trust is Faith, and Faith 
 
 Holds all our hope ; and hope may bear with life, 
 
 And rise remanded to Redress above. 
 
 VIIL 
 
 And Love Divine has walked the world of man, 
 And smiled upon " these little ones," and said 
 That what we do for one " the least of these " 
 Is done for Him ; that not a sparrow falls 
 Unmarked of God ; that unto Him live all. 
 
 IX. 
 
 No, puss : I did not leave you at the door, 
 Out in the cold, while I with blank, blank verse 
 Echoed your cry, so much more mewsical.
 
 136 
 
 LOVELOST. 
 
 An August sunlight slanted from the west 
 Over broad, long-rang'd roofs of squares and streets 
 In a far suburb — many a glittering pane 
 Spangled the early evening — streaming rays 
 Came smilelike through the chamber where she lay, 
 That fair, pale, dying girl. Sunward she look'd 
 Through the shut window : then she look'd on him 
 Who sat beside her ; and she spoke : her voice — 
 A sweet voice — tremulous at once and calm, 
 Like ri':any galher'd whispers summ'd to speech. 
 " You must be very weary. You have now 
 Sat six hours by me, six long, silent hours. 
 And it must irk you : no, it irks you not, 
 For you are very good ; the more that, as 
 I know too well, it is not love — not love 
 Such as was once our love. Ob, no ! no ! no ! 
 You do not love me now ; and it is long, 
 Long since you could." — " Not love you now ? " — 
 
 " No, not. 
 Ah ! what a sad, faint smile ! You have not yet 
 Learnt to smile false ; you shall not so for me. 
 Yes, you are very good to try to seem
 
 137 
 
 Still mine ; but uo, my friend ! I see too well. 
 We see so mucli, we dying ones." And then 
 She smil'd, and laid a linger on his lips, 
 And sadly shook her head ; and then took back 
 Her linger from his lips, and then again 
 There laid it, with a kiss upon it. Then 
 She look'd along the sunlight to the west, 
 Look'd, and lay silent : then she seem d to sum 
 Her failing spirits — summ'd herself, it secm'd, 
 To some new firmness— found some inner force. 
 And, after yet some musing silence, rais'd 
 Her bare, bright head a little, turu'd her eyes 
 Upon him, gaz'd far into his, and spoke. 
 
 " Oh that fair, distant West ! that lovely land — 
 Your lovely land, and mine — yes, mine, once mine — 
 Yours then and mine at once. Ah, tJiOi .' — those times. 
 Those lovers' golden days ! — Do you remember ? 
 You took me with you through the summer hills ; 
 And I — oh, yes ! I was so happ}- — I 
 Was well content to veil me, or to turn 
 My face aside, when some I knew might see, 
 And often almost well content to seem 
 What — what I was, and almost uuabash'd : — 
 It was such pleasure, and I was so young. 
 Ah ! those bright mornings — born of summer nights— 
 Those ramblings by the rivers and the lakes — 
 The lone, dark gorges and the loud, white falls ! — 
 How boldly did we press our still fresh search 
 For something still more beauteous — some far nook
 
 138 
 
 Of wilder, rarer charm, some secret dell, 
 Some cave or chasm, or summit hid in heaven ! 
 You ever lov'd to seek, and so we found. 
 Do you remember when we cHmb'd, and I 
 Look'd back and shudder'd, and would yet look down 
 Once more — it was so wondrous — and I then 
 Grew faint and dizzy, and you bore me up 
 And laid me on the moss — do you remember ? " 
 
 And then she stopp'd, and crimson'd. — *' How I 
 talk !— 
 I know not what " — And then she paused some space. 
 
 " I wish you loved me still ; I wish you could 
 Love yet a little while. But 'twas enough — 
 It shall be so — it will be — that you once 
 Lov'd as you did — oh, yes ! you lov'd me then. 
 And I lov'd then, as now, and evermore. 
 
 'Tis meet I should. How much I owe you ! — nay"— 
 (For then he turn'd his head and wrung her hand) 
 " Indeed I owe you much of happiness. 
 And much of knowledge." Then she sigh'd ; then said 
 " 'Tis well to know, and what has been was well. 
 
 And if 'twere yes, it should be so again — 
 
 I know it would. Why, what a peasant girl, 
 
 A simple child, I was when first you came 
 
 And took and taught me ! — Ah ! you taught me much— 
 
 Too much — but much of good. You brought me light, 
 
 And made me love the light : and light is good. 
 
 And love of light is good. You bore me up, 
 
 And bore me on : and 'twas from you I learnt
 
 139 
 
 * The love of bi^lier thing's and bettor clays ': 
 And if I gain them not, at least I hop'd, 
 And rose in hope, and liv'd awhile in hope. 
 
 That happy time ! — those hours when first I came 
 Among Ravenna's pines, when first I read : 
 
 * Ah ! surely nothing dies, hut something mourns ' 
 {Shall something mourn 'J) — those hours when first I 
 
 came 
 ^Vith Lambro tow'rds his home, and stood and look'd — 
 "When first I watch'd Ilaidce, there where she lay 
 AVhen ' to the wall she turn'd, as if to warp 
 Her thoughts from sorrow through her heart re-sent,' 
 And where ' no dirge except the hollow sea's 
 Mourns o'er the beauty of the Cyclades ' ! 
 I wander'd with Alastor, and I sat 
 By Adonais, by the graves in Rome. 
 I heard that ' nightingale,' that ' word ' 'forlorn.' 
 'Twas you that brought me through the golden gates 
 Of Eden, you that (' gliding through the even,' 
 Like Uriel) brought me to the moonlight glades 
 When spiritual creatures walk'd the earth with song ; 
 'Twas you that led me down the cypress walk 
 "When lay the earth all Danae to the stars ; 
 And you that led me to the level lake 
 And the long glories of the winter moon. 
 You show'd me all, show'd all that I could see — 
 The pale, worn Dane, the royalty of Lear, 
 Verona, Venice, and th' enchanter's isle ; 
 And something of the thrice great Florentine,
 
 140 
 
 The lovG-lit voyager to the three vast spheres ; 
 And something of the uohlcness of Rome, 
 And something of the gloriousness of Greece ; 
 And all that was the true life of my life, 
 And all that is my solace in my death." 
 
 Again a silence. And she laid her hand, 
 And then her cheek, upon his arm ; and lay 
 Long time, with drooping lashes, lips apart. 
 And soft, slow hreathing ; 'twas not sleep, but rest. 
 Placid, hut pensive : then she mov'd and spoke. 
 
 "And now " — she paused — " now teach me some- 
 thing more. 
 
 You know " and then she slowly raised her head, 
 
 And spoke with alter'd accent, very low, 
 ]}ut all distinct — " They say — I heard it well, 
 Last night, although they whisper'd it — they say 
 That I am dying ; and 'tis true. Feel here. 
 Your hand — what, lips too ? — does it throb to them ? 
 
 Now, tell me what it is to die, and how. 
 I would die well. I would remember now 
 (Where are they ?) those brave sayings, those great 
 
 thoughts, 
 Which once I lov'd to hear and read. And now 
 
 I much forget. Ah ! must I die and go ? 
 
 Oh ! whither, whither ? Y^es, I fear that now 
 
 I almost fear. And must I not believe, 
 And can I not — methinks I would and could— 
 In a sweet Saviour, in his words of love — 
 A Father's bosom and a heavenly home,
 
 141 
 
 Ecst for the weary, ransom for the lost ? 
 
 And was it all but Hrrment, what I knew 
 By heart anil cherisli'd ? — what my childhood learnt, 
 AVas it hut childish '? — what my mother taught, 
 
 Was it but evil ? lell me. Yes, I know — 
 
 I now remember yes, you taught me true ; 
 
 You taught me well : you show'd rae what it was, 
 That Book, those writings— how they grew divine 
 By grace of emperors, votes of Councils — how 
 The true Church argued and prevail'd, and how 
 The hydra Faith so 'stablish'd still survives, 
 Such as it is, and still has so much sway. 
 
 Oh ! then, what have I ? — whom on earth have I, 
 If none in heaven ? — whom now ? — Not you — oh, no ! 
 You are not mine : I know it. Can I choose 
 But think 'twere sweet to lay me and my sins 
 There were the Love that fails not folds its flock ? 
 
 And I have sinn'd, and we have sinn'd : oh ! yes, 
 Those happy hours — and then — that, that was sin. 
 Why would I listen ? — ah ! those echoing words — 
 
 That * pleasure and a dark but sweet ofience ' 
 
 That ' glowing guilt exalting keen delight ' 
 
 I want my faith in One that will forgive, 
 My trust in a Redeemer, who to me 
 Would speak sweet words and bring sweet hope again. 
 
 And have you taken that too from me — that, 
 
 That too, and all ? Forgive me. I talk wild. 
 
 I gave, and shared, and would not now recall. 
 
 But if I may not dream of love divine,
 
 142 
 
 Oh ! let me dream of thj love. Shall I ? no. 
 
 And is not that, then, cruel ? Must I die 
 
 Unlov'd and nnforgiv'n ? — Indeed it seems 
 
 A strange, hard thing to die. How cold, how lone, 
 
 Shall she lie there who Bat the once warm breast 
 
 May there forget its heartache, and the lips 
 The kiss that died away ere she could die. 
 
 Oh ! but — to ' sleep in Jesus ' (do you know 
 
 The stone i' the churchyard — there, beneath the elm, 
 Where she, my sister, lies alone ? — those words 
 Are graven there) to sleep, to rest in God ! 
 
 You ought to love me, you, who yes, you ought. 
 
 And yet you cannot. Yet you love 1 know 
 
 Whom : and I cannot blame you : what am I ? 
 
 And she will hear the birds and watch the flowers ; 
 And she will walk among your trees with you. 
 I only saw the tree-tops from far off. 
 
 I, who but what am I ? — I have but love. 
 
 I have lov'd vou : but my fathers long had serv'd 
 And long lov'd yours : I have lov'd you long and well. 
 What matter ? I should be a stranger there. 
 
 'Tis a strange world : 'tis well to leave it soon. 
 'Tis a hard world. I cannot hate, but I 
 Would leave it now. But whither do I go ? 
 
 Oh, yes ! you ought to be to me what now 
 None other can — none other — no ! not God. 
 
 And do you tell mc of some charmless name 
 Of Nature, some far, actless deity. 
 Some fix'd, inexorable Force or Law ?
 
 143 
 
 I cannot understand it with my heart : 
 And 'tis my heart that knows the need of God : 
 And 'tis my heart that must receive my God. 
 I want tu hear of His love. I am now 
 No stronger and no wiser than T was 
 When first you found me weak and innocent. 
 
 I am but merest woman ; and to her 
 
 The timid and the pious sex, to wliich 
 
 The sneerer said Rehgion owes so much 
 
 Ixeh'gion is much : 'tis her instinct still : 
 And is not woman's instinct ever true ? 
 
 Can yon your airy heights, that tower beyond 
 All temples, hold 'gainst all the storms of life, 
 
 'Gainst thought and sorrow ? you— how will you die ? 
 
 Ah ! not with me : she, she will live, and she 
 Will die, with you : I see death may be sweet — 
 Not sweet to me — nor death nor life to me, 
 Poor child ! — \\ hy did you win me from my home, 
 "Where I was good and happy? You knew well 
 That you could never love me, or not long. 
 
 And she will die within your circling arms. 
 And lie with you among your hard, high race. 
 But then this heart shall be as cold as theirs. 
 
 Come nearer — and forgive me. I have said 
 
 I know not what. ^Yhat was it '? What am I '? 
 
 And where ?— and whither ? 1 am far away. 
 
 And it is very late. And And my thoughts, 
 
 And now my eyes, grow dim ; but you are here. 
 Come closer . . . That is well. But closer still ;
 
 144 
 
 For I must whisper ... Do you hear me now ? 
 
 Do you remember ? Yes, you lov'd me then. 
 
 AikI now And do you ? Yes, you love me now. 
 
 Now let me go. AVhy should I live again ? 
 We lov'd, and we love now ; and what is Death 
 
 That Love should shrink from death ? And there 
 
 were words — 
 I know not where, but I have heard those words. 
 And hear them now . . . IViis mortal shall 'put on 
 That immortality . . . and she lov'd much. 
 And she, the lovelost, is by Love redeemed.''
 
 145 
 
 THE GKAVE OF BUKNS. 
 
 I. 
 
 To him, to this, the true homo, where ho rests 
 After his hard life-task, " his weary way," 
 Son of the soil — star-bright, but born of earth, 
 Its lover and its poet (for he loved, 
 And sang its beauty, in the free blue air. 
 In the broad sunlight, and beneath the moon. 
 In glade or glen), quick Nature's child, and now 
 Given back to her not " unmaternal breast," 
 And lulled among the gracious elements. 
 This sweet spring-time, and all the varied months, 
 Should bring their tribute, bring to this, his grave. 
 For ever green. 
 
 But if we bid sweet spring 
 And sweeter summer bring their brightest bloom, 
 And hues of morn and sunset, for the wreath 
 To bind the brow that ached with brighter thoughts, 
 Yet shall sere autumn follow, with the step 
 Of one that follows what she loved and lost, 
 And lay her votive tresses, as of old 
 The Greek laid lovely locks, upon the tomb. 
 And winter, too, must come ; for there he lies
 
 146 
 
 '' In cold oLstructiou." 
 
 But the winter-gloom 
 Shtill yield that fairest, first-born flower of earth, 
 Whose spring-bright verdure and whose snow-bright 
 
 bloom 
 Gem the wild darkness of the dying year 
 With pledge of starry resurrection soon. 
 
 II. 
 
 Here and afar his name gleams writ in gold : 
 
 He lies in earth, but hallows all his land : 
 
 We leave ** him with his glory." Look again : 
 
 A heavy heart lies there : he lived, he died, 
 
 A man of many sorrows, born to bear 
 
 The pains of passion and the shames of pride. 
 
 That man must sleep if he would cease to dream, 
 
 And die if he would rest : 'tis there — so low — 
 
 The heart that beats so high must seek its peace. 
 
 First give him tears, if you must tread his grave ; 
 
 For he was born a poet ; he was born 
 
 To the true poet's wide inheritance 
 
 Of suffering in a cold and straitened world ; 
 
 And he was sternly cast on evil days. 
 
 Days dim and chill, where all was rude or false ; 
 
 And he was great of nature, grand in heart, 
 
 And flushed with passion like his fiery power, 
 
 And steeped in human sweetness, wasted oft 
 
 As Arab odours wafted o'er the deep, 
 
 O'er the waste waters or the darker wilds ; 
 
 And what he was, the world but little knew ;
 
 147 
 
 And what he felt, the silent, searchless heart, 
 That knoweth its own bitterness, knew well. 
 
 III. 
 
 But he sleeps well ; and long shall thoughts of love 
 And fond heart-fancies tend him where he lies. 
 And the white moon, that beams like angel-love 
 From heaven, shall watch him with her heavenly smilc- 
 The bright, sweet summer moon that smiled on youth 
 And truth and rapture while the lover's plea 
 Passed through the ripe, rich, golden, maiden heart 
 As passed his swift steps through the wavy corn — 
 The wan moon that beheld him when he gazed 
 Far up the skies " to Mary," who from earth 
 Had waned away, and who was his " in Heaven," 
 His, but far oft" in Heaven, far up the skies — 
 Then when all sense of earth or Heaven was lost 
 In mortal anguish, all save love : all sunk 
 And quenched that poet-spirit bright and keen 
 "Whose strains so oft have gladdened, quickened, fired 
 Leal hearts and busy brains in far-oft" lands — 
 Wing'd words sown wide as Britain's spark-like seed 
 ]^eyond the waters — all forgotten then 
 By Mary's grave ; forgotten e'en the scorn. 
 Aye unforgotten by the spite of cant, 
 The scorn for all that, strong in strength of eld, 
 Stood, spectral-sham, meet mark for poet's mirth. 
 Stood, solemn lie, between mankind and Heaven, 
 Between man's conscience and a God of Love.
 
 148 
 
 IV. 
 
 Yes ! he sleeps well in earth as e'er he slept 
 
 Embowered in summer dreams of happy love. 
 
 He lies in earth ; but 'tis his shrine : he lies 
 
 Lapp'd in the starry darkness, with his fame 
 
 Gathered about him like a purple robe 
 
 Thick-sown with gold. He sleeps, but all night long 
 
 His song flows on, along the listening world, 
 
 And echoing hearts keep watch in either sphere. 
 
 And knows he not, and knew he not in life. 
 
 And felt he not, at least in prescient death, 
 
 Some portion of the inborn destiny 
 
 Of that which was not mortal, that which lives 
 
 Among us yet, and is himself indeed ? 
 
 Has not he now some placid consciousness, 
 
 Which soothes, but stirs him not, of what he is 
 
 In this his better, this his truer life — 
 
 Of influences sweet, of lovely lays. 
 
 Perhaps like music heard in summer night 
 
 Far off, or spirits floating in the air — 
 
 Of fiery thoughts sublimed to subtle flame, 
 
 And passionate zeal for freedom, truth, and right. 
 
 Achieving the fruition in its day ? 
 
 V. 
 
 We will believe it : we will dream that he. 
 The buried, lies not lone and dreamless there 
 Where men laid what was man. The poet sleeps, 
 But not in darkness, not unvisited
 
 149 
 
 By bright ones from bis own far native land. 
 
 And bis, ^Ybo loved so ^Yell all lovely tilings, 
 
 Are things of beauty, things of glory, yet — 
 
 Some still sweet sense of flowers of spring above, 
 
 Of soaring song efl'used through wide blue air ; 
 
 And fairer still and brighter — fair and bright 
 
 As poet's dream of golden days of love, 
 
 As visions of the happy after-time 
 
 When poet-thought, with Macedonian march 
 
 Shall gain its utmost Ind, that Future far. 
 
 The life-to-come of poets, sought through death, 
 
 The kingdom that they conquer for their race, 
 
 Who follow, dazed and blind, the sword of fire — 
 
 The Land of Promise, rather, which he sees 
 
 In the dim distance, blended with the blue, 
 
 In the bright Orient, and beholding, dies. 
 
 He dies upon his height, and leaves his bones 
 
 Among us : be they as the talisman"' 
 
 Which the doomed Thcban gave, when to the earth 
 
 He went so weary : be they pledge of peace. 
 
 True peace, sure pledge of victory in the grave. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Pilgrims, from far-off realms, we humbly stand 
 Beside the lowly, lofty poet's grave. 
 What if of that dark tomb his darkened life 
 Was the low, frowning portal ? 
 
 Let us rise. 
 
 *Soph. CEd. a
 
 150 
 
 Look we far forward, through the cloucllancl waste, 
 Tinged with bright fancies, lit by poet-fire, 
 Up to the soaring heights of Morning-Land, 
 Land of high truths, truths human and divine, 
 Touclied first, and first revealed, hy poet-light, 
 Seen first below as visions, ere we own 
 The poet's priesthood and his Day-god's glow. 
 There, in that light, should we the poet seek ; 
 There the true poet should be seen at last ; 
 There, in that highland of the dawn, the dawn 
 Of glorious Truth and love like poet's love. 
 There should he sit, our laurels at his feet ; 
 And there should beaming Beauty smile his meed, 
 And consecrate and crown th' heroic brow : 
 There the true poet's true apotheosis : 
 Long time, perchance, a fancy wild as dreams, 
 But bright as dream poetic, bright as hope. 
 And sure as Science on her star-strewn path ; 
 And, to the steadfast heart, assured as Faith, 
 As faith in man's great future and in God.
 
 161 
 
 TAY BKIDGE. 
 
 December, 1879. 
 
 The winter night, the sterr, sepulchral gloom, 
 The savage hlast, the crash, the terror, all 
 
 "VYill pass away, and spring and summer come, 
 On soft wings, with the sweet South's dying full ; 
 
 And calm and heauty and delight shall be 
 
 Sought, found, among the mountains and the sea. 
 
 Then sobs shall cease, and tears he staunch'd, and then 
 The sorrows for the lost shall silent dwell ; 
 
 And broken hearts shall be at rest again, 
 If in the green and quiet earth, 'tis welL 
 
 And then no more shall dying words be breath'd 
 
 Such as those hearts to heartless ones bequeath'd. 
 
 What words ? Perchance such murmurs as invoke 
 Stern judgment on the Corporate Unhung, 
 
 On homicidal thrift that never woke 
 
 To sense of guilt till sense of cost was stung ; 
 
 On giddy recklesness, on lack of skill, 
 
 On lack of thought, " sae sib " to evil will
 
 152 
 
 Those sobs, those tears, those silent broken hearts, 
 Those utterances of anguish and despair, 
 
 May pass, and vanish all, as life departs. 
 And leave no mark behind, no deeper care 
 
 Thau on the thrifty souls, the giddy brain, 
 
 That mourn the reckonings which for them remain. 
 
 And the fair flow of Tay shall meet again 
 
 Fair scenes, and happy looks, and mirror true 
 
 In smiles ; and, if perchance remember'd then, 
 The deadly blast that dire December blew. 
 
 Shall be but as a rippling thought among 
 
 Light fancies, bright, serene, that glide like song. 
 
 And statelier, stronger, nobler arches there 
 
 May span the summer sea's slow-wandering wave. 
 
 And few recall the rush like dark despair 
 Into the howling jaws of that deep grave, 
 
 Into the stormy water where they rest, 
 
 The lost — not lost, lull'd on the Loving's breast. 
 
 Nor lost the moral, if we watch and wait ; 
 
 Nor if we scoff, nor if unconscious be. 
 What moral here ? Not that blind chance or fate, 
 
 Or others' sin, their doom by dark decree, 
 Whelm'd those poor lost ones in the flood— we know 
 Who warn'd us not to judge disaster so— ^
 
 153 
 
 Still less, if less might be, that aught was there 
 Of that harsh "judgment " on the hapless few 
 
 Which issues, as hyiena from its lair, 
 
 From the dull brain and darker heart that, through 
 
 The storm of woe and horror, dron'd and yell'd, 
 
 And Sawbath wrack with gloating eyes beheld. 
 
 Blind Pharisees ! " fou " leaders of the blind- 
 Let them pour forth, and Hock and herd imbibe, 
 
 And, in the demonolatry they iind 
 
 The true religion of their hearts, ascribe 
 
 Man's wrath, caprice, injustice to the God 
 
 Who brought true Sabbath to the world He trod, 
 
 And clear proclaim'd, " Man not for Sabbath made, 
 But Sabbath made for man ;" and sternly said, 
 
 " Judge not ; condemn not." Moral "? Theirs be laid 
 Among the limbo of their dogmas dead, 
 
 Or where their Calvin's fancy lov'd to dwell, 
 
 With infants crawling on the floor of hell. 
 
 Our moral this, that though the gracious Power 
 " Which wields the world with never-wearied love/' 
 
 And weaves the stars in cycles, and the flower 
 That bends beneath the bee, the Power above. 
 
 Below, around,— though He, for complex cause 
 
 Far, far beyond us, order all by laws,
 
 154 
 
 And now controls, now not arrests, the course 
 Of law-sLapcd causes, He to final good 
 
 Shapes all, in fittest mode ; with subtle force 
 Unseen ; and so, while we, thus darkling, brood 
 
 On chance and change, evokes from foil}-, guilt, 
 
 Disaste]:, misery, from the blood so spilt. 
 
 Evokes the moral which His prescience wrought 
 Among His viewless web of things decreed. 
 
 And which now grows and fructifies in thought, 
 And acts, in fertile thought and honest deed, 
 
 In better rule and care and works, when we 
 
 See "judgments " 2vhere and as we ought to see. 
 
 FHAGMENT. 
 
 GREECE AND ROME. 
 
 To wing yon heights, so distant now and dim- 
 Ionian epos. Victory's soaring Hymn ; 
 To share the loftier life in that weird wild 
 Of crags by Titan ^'l^^scliylus up-pil'd — 
 The vision where he saw her wild and pale. 
 And heard Cassandra pour her wondrous wail — 
 To render forth from all those ages gone 
 Thoughts, things, by quest, by intuition won —
 
 155 
 
 Tlie glow, the rush, the Hght of form anfl face, 
 
 And all the stately, all the lovely grace — 
 
 That early strain (gone back to Gods so long) 
 
 Of Hellas in the sweet spring-time of song — 
 
 That dying fall, those fire-writ Sapphic sighs — 
 
 The dark, soft fire of Sappho's languid eyes — 
 
 The tones of all that thoughts or hearts dictate, 
 
 The thunderbolt iambics' volley'd weight — 
 
 The death-doora'd Spartan's silent, steadfast pride, 
 
 Who kept the straits of Q5ta and who died ; 
 
 The Roman's heart at Zaina, ranks outdrawn. 
 
 The Roman Otho's in the lone, dim dawa"^' — 
 
 The empire spread from Mo na to the Morn, 
 
 The boundless spirit of Olympus born.f 
 
 * *- * * * 
 
 FRAGMENT. 
 
 HILLS AND STREAMS. 
 
 " Hills beyond Pcntland !" rise in starrier blue. 
 
 " Streams beyond Forth !" your purer waters flow 
 
 " With a sweet inland murmur ;" and I hear. 
 
 Waters of Israel ! weary I return 
 
 From rivers of Damascus. 
 
 ■X- ■;.--::■!} * 
 
 * "Luce prima."— Tacit. Hist ii. 49. 
 + " linperiuin terris, animos a;quabit Olympo." 
 " Genus qui ducis Olympo."
 
 156 
 
 THE KILKENNY CATS. 
 
 Kilkenny Electox, December, 1890. 
 
 Cats of Kilkenny ! blessings on your heads, 
 And tails ! and double on your teeth and claws ! 
 
 Bethink ye of the time when on the leads 
 Historic felines (then, as now, the *' cause " 
 
 Was, doubtless, that " teterrima ") discussed 
 
 The question so exhaustively that morn 
 Found nothing (if an Irish tale we trust ; 
 
 Which who but would ?) — found on the field forlorn 
 
 Of glorious strife, no sign at all, at all, 
 Of either warrior-puss, save two poor tails, 
 
 And one poor whiff of " flue " ('tis so they call 
 
 What ice call/«r. Sure, some strange, mingled wails 
 
 Were heard that night ! 
 
 Kilkenny Cats of War ! 
 
 Your high, your grand traditions well ye know. 
 Scratch up to them ! We, like our favourite tar. 
 
 Expect each cat to do his duty so. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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