ia $008 CM UNIY6RS1TY Of CALIFORNIA LIBRARY c \ =.. "A SONGS AND SONNETS PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON SONGS AND SONNETS BY PHILIP ACTON (fMtimi LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO, AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST j6 th STREET 1889 All rights reserved TO THE MEMORY ELIZABETH ACTON 396058 When in your arms your mother you entwine ', Parading all your paradise in view, As with a spear you pierce me through and through, Reminding me of her who once was mine And like your watchful angel would incline In silent admiration. Mine were, too, Those silver locks and eyes offender blue, That fragile form and countenance divine. This is the one immedicable scar That will not heal, nor even healing crave, Which neither time nor balm of fortune rare Can cicatrise yet I though pierced forgave, Seeing in yours, reflexion of the star That gilds for me my mother's silent grave! CONTENTS PAGE PAGE Grace Darling . I Constancy . . 68 Johnnys Grave . . . 7 Dreaming and Waking . 70 The Marmosets . 10 To Clinton . . 72 An Old Maid . . . 12 Kallista . 74 The Sisters 17 The Semi-detachment . 77 School . . ... 2O Stella 79 Ilicet . . . . 22 harps and Hearts . 81 Astbury Bells . . . 24 Three Brothers . 83 Morecambe Bay 27 Stricken . 86 The Loss of the Captain'. 31 To-morrow . 88 Maximilian 34 Where? . 90 Fatherland . . . 36 The Wave 93 Sunday in the Desert 39 Enough . 94 Memnon an$ his Mate . 42 Music - 95 Phila . 49 The Nightingale . . 96 The Eremite . . . 53 Jenny Lind 97 Ilion .... 56 Shakespeare . . 98 A Valentine . . . 59 Livingstone 99 To a Needle 61 Noblemen . 100 The Violet .... 63 Ireland . . 101 Good-bye . 65 The Silent Hour . . 102 SONGS AND SONNZTS Christmas New Year's Eve . The Rainbow . St. Paul's Bell . The Irreparable The Bolted Door . Vita Brevis Vita Brevior Vita Brevissima Burial The Church of England The Deity . PAGE . 103 . 104 . 105 . 106 . 107 . 1 08 . 109 . no . in . 112 "3 . 114 PAGE The Bible . . . .115 Satan . . . . 116 Hopes and Fears . .117 Evolution . . . . 118 Prayer and Praise . .119 Praise and Prayer . . 1 20 The Two Rivers . .121 The Star of Bethlehem . . 122 Reveillee . . . .123 The Coming Struggle . .124 On Immortality . .125 Farewell! . . . . 139 TUMULTUOUS rose the northern gale, The sea ran mountains high : Alike unfit to steam or sail, Beneath the midnight sky The leaking vessel drifted back For leagues along her former track. She drifted back with wind and tide, Her engine out of gear, Striving through Piper Gut, inside The Fame, her course to steer, Then struck, with a terrific shock, And broke in two on Harker Rock ! B GRACE DARLING Grace Darling in the Longstone lay, But sleep her eyes forsook ; All night the blast and driving spray The stable lighthouse shook : She thought amid that tempest wild She heard the screaming of a child ! Ere break of day she roused her sire, ' Father, I cannot sleep ! The storm is rising high and higher, There 's drowning on the deep ! For I can hear above the gale Some sinking creature's piteous wail ! ' ' Thou could'st not, child ! The wind would take The sound another way, Tis but the shriek the sea-gulls make At dawning of the day, Or else the echo of the roar Of breakers breaking on the shore ! ' GRACE DARLING The father rose and swept the tide And islands with his glass, Then closed it suddenly and cried, 1 Why, Grace ! thou 'rt right, my lass ! A steamer, drifting right astarn, Has gone to pieces on the Fame ! ' ' Father ! be quick, and launch the boat ! ' ' Girl ! art thou light o' brain ? Our little coble would not float An instant on the main ! ' She wound her shawl about her neck, 1 Father ! let 's try and reach the wreck ! ' By pity and his daughter's hope More than his own consent, The man persuaded, loosed the rope And forth the coble went, And through the sea's tremendous trough The father and the girl rowed off ! GRACE DARLING Now all ye angels bending o'er The islands and the main, Spread your protecting wings before The noble-hearted twain ! And Thou who bad'st the waves be still, Tame now their fury at Thy will ! The roaring billows crouched and leapt Impatient to devour, Then pausing cowed they backward swept, As by Almighty power Fled all the sea along their track, As if 'twere Jordan driven back ! The father plied a double oar, The girl a steering stroke, The ebbing tide was washing o'er The surf-enshrouded rock Where largely loomed upon their view The wretches of the shipwrecked crew ! GRACE DARLING Ashore alone old Darling leapt, Nor skill nor prudence lacked, While Grace herself the coble kept With head to sea intact, Lest the poor creatures on the cliff Should crowd aboard and swamp the skiff, A woman one, had striven to save The infants at her breast, But they, beneath the seething wave, Lay peacefully at rest ! Nor ever Grace beheld the child That waked her in that midnight wild ! And when with their united power The voyage back was made, And safely to the lighthouse tower The rest had been conveyed, 'Twas she that inly grieved the most, Because the children had been lost ! GRACE DARLING And Grace herself for fifty years Has slept beneath the mould, Yet still with mingled pride and tears The story oft is told, A tale to loose a dumb man's tongue, And almost make an old man young ! A SUNDAY late I wandered round By contemplation led Where Brompton's living myriads bound Their city of the dead. Majestic tombs around me rose With many a sculptured niche. Where in their marble beds repose The noble and the rich. There wandering on, at length I came To corners more obscure, Where crowded lie with scarce a name The undistinguished poor, JOHNNY'S GRAVE A simple mound to mark the spot Deformed by winter showers, With, here and there, a little knot Of faded summer flowers. There chanced I on an infant's shrine That touched me to the quick, The tiny mound was kept in line By one small bended stick, A blackened board announcement made With letters scrambled o'er, That it presided o'er the grave Of 'Johnny aged four.' Against that strip of mournful wood, As if in deep remorse And pity for its master, stood A broken wooden horse, And on a heap of shells thereat All tattered and forlorn There lay the little felted hat That ' Johnny ' once had worn. JOHNNY'S GRAVE The paint is washed by frequent rain From that afflicted nag, The hat defaced by rent and stain Is nothing but a rag. A broken toy a ruined hat A little heap of shells And this is all of ' Johnny ' that His mausoleum tells ! O Johnny! in the silent grave Wherein thou dost recline, An elegy I would not crave More eloquent than thine. It must have been an angel led The hand, however coarse, That laid upon thy baby bed Thy little hat, and horse ! 10 THEY came from the land where the sunshine rare The forest primeval frets, And they crossed the sea under kindest care To be a fair lady's pets, Two young brothers, and they were a pair Of bright little marmosets. They chattered and swung through the autumn days, Fed by their mistress' hand, And if ever they recked of the sun's bright blaze Or the joys of their native land, She gave them nuts, their spirits to raise, And nuts they could not withstand. THE MARMOSETS n But winter came with its icy breath To that hyperborean shore, And one fell night the demon of death Entered their cage's door, And they shivered and curled their tails beneath, Till one could uncurl no more. And the other was seized with a deep dismay When his brother never replied, So he gathered him up, all cold as he lay, Hugging him close to his side, And he nursed that body a night and a day, l Then himself curled up and died ! And their spirits have flown in that last embrace To the realms they wandered from, Haply to haunt the umbrageous place Where their brothers and sisters come, While their two little bodies are stuffed, in a case In a Dorsetshire dining-room ! i A fact. 12 THE silence of the tomb Throughout the house its sovereignty keeps, Hush ! for at last in her close-curtained room My lady sleeps ! My lady sleeps, for she Was ready for repose and very tired, Sleep was for her the one felicity To be desired. She had sat up too long, The flowers had faded and the lights were dim, Alike to her were hymeneal song And funeral hymn. AN OLD MAID 13 Her festival was o'er, She had tired out her partners, one by one, And though she long had bravely kept the floor, The dance was done. Twas dark and very late, Her drowsy eyes with weariness were red, Wherefore she would unrobe her of her state And so to bed Then, slowly were unbound The satin and the velvet and the lace, And all the jewelries were laid around Each in its place. For fourscore years and more My lady had her constant vigil kept, Until at last her wakefulness was o'er, And then she slept. 14 AN OLD MAID To rouse her from her sleep Few have the will and none shall have the power, Though she hath fallen upon slumber deep Hardly an hour. Like marble now she lies, For death has ironed from her placid brow The furrows Time had scored about her eyes With his long plough. Her lips no longer part, Nor faintest murmur doth her bosom move, Her wasted arms are folded on her heart In peace and love. Of that pacific breast The fountains never bubbled o'er with bliss, Child of her own ne'er knew within that nest A mother's kiss ! AN OLD MAID 15 She lived and died unwed, No lover ever clasped her in his arms. Yet may ye mark upon her latest bed Her early charms. Still ye may stand and trace The lineaments that nature had designed To be perpetuated in a race Of her own kind. It was not so allowed, But think not therefore she was left alone, She was surrounded by a loving crowd No less her own. What after all is death ? When 'tis the sleep of nature, free from pain, Tis but the expiration of a breath Unbreathed again ! 1 6 AN OLD MAID And what indeed is life ? A little flower, a little day that blooms: Though it escape the gardener's pruning knife, The evening comes ! Yet on the midnight wind Sometimes the withered vestiges are borne, Leaving a sweet presentiment behind Of coming morn ! Sisters NOT in the bright noontide, Not in the rain or snow, When it seems so cruel to turn aside And leave the loved one there to abide, As the mourners homeward go, But late in the afternoon Of an exquisite autumn day, In the luminous haze of the setting sun, When the work of life was over and done, And the shadows had vanished away. Where like a dream on high Hung Astbury's magic spire, 1 8 THE SISTERS With its sacred fabric looming nigh, The battlements cut in the crimson sky And the windows all afire. There, while the deep bell tolled And the organ tunefully played, Through the dead leaves heaped up brown and gold, She was tenderly borne to the upturned mould, And close to her sister laid. \ It seemed but as yesterday That sister was laid in her tomb, And we thought we could almost hear her say With her deferent air, in her accents gay, ' Sister, at last I come ! ' We covered her over deep With flowers unbedewed by tears, We felt we had hardly need to weep, For why should she not be left to sleep After so many years ? THK SISTERS 19 Lives unto fame unknown ! Bound in sisterly cords, Battled together the world alone, True to each other, and now this stone Only your name records ! 20 WE bought him a box for his books and things, And a cricket-bag for his bat, And he looked the brightest and best of kings Under his new straw hat. We handed him into the railway train With a troop of his young compeers, And we made as though it were dust or rain Was filling our eyes with tears. We looked in his innocent face to see The sign of a sorrowful heart, But he only shouldered his bat with glee, And wondered when they would start ! SCHOOL 21 Twas not that he loved not as heretofore, For the boy was tender and kind But his was a world that was all before And ours was a world behind. Twas not that his fluttering heart was cold, For the child was loyal and true, But the parents love the love that is old, And the children the love that is new. And we came to know that Love is a flower That chiefly groweth down, And we scarcely spoke for the space of an hour As we drove back through the town. 22 Jfiat THE old, old house behind its silver trees Resounded with a concourse indistinct Of many voices like the hum of bees, Laughter and long-forgotten outcries linked With sound ' of weeping heard and loud lament, Confined within that ancient tenement. Then all at once I heard, as in a dream, The sound of a familiar voice that spoke The word ' Ilicet,' * and as the bold stream Tumultuous bounds exulting from the rock, A sudden rush of babbling youth broke forth From that old-fashioned fountain in the North. 1 You may go. I LICET 23 And some went down amid the jungle red With vigorous blood, some in the sea that scorns To render up the census of its dead, Others sank lifeless at the very horns Of pious altars, some at the dull shrine Of mammon deemed by mortals more divine. And some, by evil, made themselves a name, Others, for good, disclaimed the name they had, And some received their recompense of shame, And some put on the purple that makes glad Successful souls, but most put on the dress That makes invisible in nothingness. Then last the reverend Master of the flock, In pastoral offices grown old and grey, Rose up himself, what time the word he spoke, And closed the door and slowly passed away. His work was done, ' Ilicet,' he is gone, And o'er the ancient school a spell is thrown ! CHIME of my childhood, Astbury bells ! Sinking and swelling the live-long day, Deep in my bosom thy music dwells, Slowly and sadly passing away. One, two, three, four, three, two, one, Chime of my childhood, where art thou gone ? Many a couple by true love led Have listened to thee in their blissful spells, In Astbury Church my parents were wed, And loved for ever the Astbury bells. Three, two, one, four, one, two, three, Astbury bells, ye are sweet to me ! ASTBURY BELLS 25 Gaily I trotted, a little lad, Over the Congleton hills and dells, Glad, yet knowing not why so glad, As danced my heart to the Astbury bells. Two, one, four, three, one, three, two, Still I dreamily listen for you ! Now my sons may follow, like me, The silvery sound of that matchless chime, Soon their sons as joyous may see That sacred spire of the olden time. Four, three, two, one, two, three, four, Dust of their fathers chiming o'er. Still goes on the joining of hands, Still go up the funeral knells, Still goes on the ploughing of lands, Still bees hum to the sound of the bells. Three, four, one, two, four, two, three, Soon, ah ! soon they may toll for me ! 26 AST BURY BELLS Thus doth race succeed to race, Families rise and flourish and die, Sons grow up in their fathers' place, Sires at rest in the churchyard lie. One, two, three, four, three, two, one, Astbury bells go chiming on ! THE sky was overcast, and day Was closing both its eyes : Beneath the sands of Morecambe Bay The tide began to rise, When I, more headstrong than my horse, Set out at night upon my course. A wilful man will go his way Forewarned but not forearmed, As late as this, a former day, I went the road unharmed : Though time was short, my steed was strong, And I was gay and both were young. 28 MORECAMBE BAY What if the path be false, methought, That leads the wanderer home, Be there but tender eyes to court His advent in the gloam, And loving lips to kiss away The crystals of the salt sea spray ? But Morecambe sands are false indeed, Whose most insidious tide Like tiger crouching in his greed Steals up with silent stride, And long before I reached the shore It was upon me with its roar ! I saw the gravelly bottom stir, The sinuous channels steal, Till like a sheet of quicksilver The water passed my wheel, And, flooding over all, the sea Was level with my axle-tree ! MORECAMBE BAY 2Q It was a very fearful race That night the ocean ran Over its own abiding place, With me, a lonely man, A pallid man a frantic steed, And none to help them in their need ! Before, behind, a watery waste ! Beneath, a sinking shoal ! The trembling beast, worn out at last, Was settling in a hole, And scarce a stone-cast from the shore Twas mine to feel that all was o'er ! It was an instant deemed my last, 1 And in that instant flew The panorama of my past Like lightning into view, With all the thoughts of all my years Like thunder pealing on my ears ! 30 MORECAMBE BAY When suddenly across the night There flashed a lantern's ray, A voice that cried, ' Drive to the right, Drive to the right, I say ! ' And struggling through the quicks I turned And reached the bank, and safety earned ! And many a time of mortal strife Since that deliverance I When struggling in the quicks of life, Have heard that cheering cry, And seen that friendly lantern-light, And turned my footsteps to the Right ! 0f % * Captain THE fleet was under sail, Close-order and close-hauled, When in an unpredicted gale The midnight watch was called In the ' Captain ' there, Off Finisterre ! They piped the middle watch In gusts of wind and rain, And cheerily from every hatch The seamen stepped amain In the ' Captain ' there, Off Finisterre ! 32 THE Loss OF THE ' CAPTAIN' She bent beneath the squall And she lay upon her beam, For the orders of the Admiral Were not to get up steam In the l Captain ' there, Off Finisterre ! She heeled, and lurched, and then She rolled into the wave, And half a thousand Englishmen found a watery grave In the ' Captain ' there, Off Finisterre ! Yea ! half a thousand hands In half a moment lay Imbedded in the Spanish sands That bottom Vigo Bay, In the ' Captain ' there, Off Finisterre ! THE Loss OF THE 'CAPTAIN' 33 Yea ! half a thousand souls All gone aloft to join In glory with undaunted Coles And valiant Burgoyne, In the ' Captain ' there, Off Finisterre ! 34 HE rose up as the day was born Knowing it was his latest morn, And the mass was said, and duly shriven He fed on the sacred food of heaven. He went forth in the morning sun, With eyes unbound, for he was not one To shrink from death with a veiled face, Or shudder to meet the coup de grace. Of the blood of the Hapsburgs he was bred, With holy oil upon his head. He could not waver, he would not wince, But died, as he always lived, a prince. MAXIMILIAN 3 5 With steady eye and a tranquil brow, 'To liberty, friends,' he said, 'we bow/ Then knelt him down, God help the word, On the liberty-loving Mexican sward. And next he pressed, his lips between, The lineaments of his absent queen, Absent in mind and body both, And plighted anew his sacred troth. And then he uttered the blessed word That marks the martyrs of the Lord, * Mexico ! mayst thou still be free ! And, Lopez ! even I pardon thee ! ' When the smoke of the volley had cleared away At the foot of the cross Maximilian lay. Mexicans ! worst of the devil's brood ! What can ever wash out that blood ? D 2 WHAT is this English Fatherland? Where do its lasting landmarks stand ? Not only in these isles of rain That float in the Atlantic main, Where clouds are constant, suns are rare, And winds are strong, not only there ! Not only where the tempests roar Around the rocks of Labrador, Or where the lengthening billows roll In icy pastures to the Pole, Where Arctic winters, bleak and bare, Perpetual reign, not only there ! FATHERLAND 37 Not only where the sun beguiles The children of the Western isles, Where Siren breezes woo the sail To rend in Caribbean gale, And Orinoco's steeds uprear Their fleecy manes, not only there ! Not only where the seas enthral The wild Kaffraria, or Natal, Or where Antarctic whirlwinds post Along the vast Australian coast, Or linger round Tasmania fair, With sounds of home, not only there ! Not only where the fountains play In Cashmere and the Himalaye, Where Ganges, Indus, downward pour Their golden streams to either shore, And soft Ceylon perfumes the air With spicy gales, not only there ! 38 FA THERLAND Nor tyrant sea nor slavish land Restrict our English Fatherland, Nor rivers bound nor lakes divide, Nor mountains sever in their pride : J Tis vain to ask or answer, where ? It is not here, it is not there ! Tis where the fire of Freedom starts From steady eyes and steadfast hearts That, when the waves of license roll, Upheave the rock of self-control To stem, to shelter, and to bear, Our English Fatherland is there ! Where'er we stand, where'er we range, Our soil but not our soul we change ; Where hearts are true and eyes are pure, And hands are firm and faith is sure, Where life is sacred, love is grand, There is our English Fatherland ! 39 m As I rode upon my camel In the Oriental land, Swinging and ringing, Across the desert sand, A phantasy of music Across my spirit stole, And I felt as though an angel Were singing to my soul I The sun in all his fury Was pouring on my head, Weighing and slaying, Like a sheet of molten lead, 4O SUNDAY IN THE DESEKT In the weary wady dazzled Or blinded with the chalk, All shadowless my camel Went slower in her walk. Twas then, on the horizon, I saw the silver sea, Whitening and brightening, Like a blest eternity, While on its bosom lonely Ships floated looming large : But I knew that it was only A vision of mirage. Then too there rose around me, As if in happy dells, Swinging and ringing, The sound of Sunday bells. I saw the people bending Their heads beneath the glare, And my camel seemed as wending Her pious way to prayer. SUNDAY IN THE DESERT 41 But the church it was the wilderness By mortals seldom trod, And the preacher was a teacher, And the Teacher it was God ! For the sabbath of the desert Is every day in seven, And the summons is unending Of the bells that ring in heaven ! ON Tube's vasty plain forlorn Day's earliest daughter yet unborn, i Unseen as yet of laughing morn The shadow of a smile, The croaking chorus tired and dumb, The temples largening in the gloom, Old earth was slumbering in her tomb Beside the banks of Nile. With fertilising largesse fraught, And secrets from the tropics brought, The weird waves glided swift as thought And silently as time, MEMNON AND HIS MATE 43 While through the leaves of spectral palms The night-wind sighed in feeble qualms, Expiring in its fitful psalms Of melancholy rhyme. To shore the drooping Cangia clung With folded wing and yard unslung, A cradle of the Live among The chambers of the Dead, Nor was there breath enough to float The pennant of that river boat, To wake the firefly on the lote, The cicade on the blade. It was the hour, nor night nor day, When if you fail, as old sheikhs say, To tell the white horse from the grey It is the peep of morn : But sheikh and steed had taken flight To realms of neither day nor night, And scoured the desert, out of sight, On wings of slumber borne. 44 MEMNON AND HIS MATE 'Twas such an hour, nor night nor day, When these my feet conspired to stray Along the pathless sacred way That girds dark Acheron, What time my heart with hope did beat That Memnon still might wake to greet, With olden music soft and sweet, Once more, the rising sun. As o'er the fertile plain I pressed, A lark shot startled from her nest, And lo ! half-naked, from the West There came an Arab maid, A maiden like the morning star, Of gleaming eyes and clouded hair, Erect as Egypt's daughters are, With lupins on her head. And as she neared, she seemed to me The Genius of antiquity, A swarthy Venus from a sea Of beans, and as we met MEMNON AND HIS MATE 45 She drew her wimple, to deny Her graces to a stranger's eye, But hailed me with the ancient cry, ' Y J Howaga salamet ! ' l Then o'er the East a roseate hue Intense and yet intenser grew, Reflected in the flashing dew Through which my ankles trod : And as I laboured through the corn, The silver spikes of golden morn Shot sudden up, the world to warn It was the coming god ! There sat the everlasting Pair Full twenty cubits in the air, Each in his monumental chair, A superhuman pile ! 1 Salutation ! O, traveller ! 46 MEMNON AND HIS MATE A million morns had come and gone Since first those sentinels of stone Sat each upon his ponderous throne Beside the banks of Nile ! Graved on their massive feet sedate Were marks of the departed great Who, ages back, stood there to wait The strain at morning-tide : The asp of her that most fair queen, The quip of Grecian libertine, And Caesar's symbol carved between His freedman and his bride ! A spark upon an eagle's wing ! A palm-tree swiftly burnishing ! And pregnant with the fervid ring The heavenly gates flew wide ! Lifted their heads those heavenly gates, And all the cliff where Athor waits To clasp her monarch when he sets Was in the radiance dyed ! MEMNON AND HIS MATE 47 Then from each spacious brow, the cold And dusky curtain downward rolled, And all the statue, bathed in gold, Sent forth a sound that day. Whether my ears were sharply set Or Memnon did indeed abet, These are the strains that haunt me yet A thousand leagues away : ' When Egypt's sun was on the wane, And fierce Cambyses strove in vain To cleave my ponderous bulk in twain And pierce the warder's heart, Then first Aurora failed to fire The golden sinews of my lyre, But hope was tardier to expire Than music to depart. ' No more my shattered bosom poured Sweet numbers from the fractured chord, To greet the old ascending lord Who mocked my scattered stones ! 48 MEMNON AND HIS MATE Yet though despair was all around I watched and waited on the ground, Still crouching, like the faithful hound That guards his master's bones ! ' And so I hearkened, not in vain, That morn on Tebe's vasty plain, But learned the lesson, to my gain, Of waiting long in woe, To watch with hope whate'er betide To wait with patience and abide, How long soe'er the ebbing tide, How late soe'er the flow ! 49 FAR south, where the Nubian sandseas creep To the brimming Nile, And the scalpless boulders are piled on heap In a bay where the torpid offspring sleep Of the crocodile : Where the gritstone echoes the wailing tide On the Sakia racked, And the ebony damsels, safe astride On the bark of a palm-log, race and ride Down the cataract : Bright in the blaze of the mid-day glare Or the moon-beam pale, E 50 A desolate island floating there '\ Levies a toll on the priceless air Of the shivering sail. Cinctured round with a fringe of date, It is Pharaoh's Bed All but sunk with its temple freight, Vast, hypaethral, inordinate, Untenanted Save by the lizard and sand-asp small, Save by the bat, And the monstrous giants that stride the wall Flanking the everlasting hall Where deities sat. Two-crowned terrible Rameses see Brandishing rods Over a nation on bended knee, Up to the Pylon furiously Bearding the gods. PHILJE 5 1 See from her barge on the sculptured wave Cleopatra come ! The leman of Antony, fain to crave Of the tutelar deities space for a slave In her scornful womb. Solemnly stalk the obsequious file Of Ptolemy kings, For a fruitful flow of the lagging Nile Bribing the Nameless-one, with a pile Of savoury things. Nilus o'er water-plants busily prone Binding a sheaf, First of the orders of sculptured stone Fashioning there in the simple one Of the lotus leaf. Ram-headed Amoun, whose mystery lies Unfathomed, unsaid, E 2 52 PHIL& Ptha, the intelligent, Thoth, the all-wise, Sun-bearing Re with the falcon eyes, And Crocodile-head. Grappled to death with the Spirit of ill, In the cataract drowned, Blest Osiris, conqueror still In the rise of the life-laden waters that fill The valleys around. Cow-horned Isis nursing her brood, Horus the young, Gleams of the Trine and the Holy Rood, And the deathless struggle of evil and good, Faintly pictured, as understood In an unknown tongue ! S3 Cf) $nm\it IN a wild cleft of Sinaitic rock, Impracticable even for the flock Of wandering ibex, on a ledge too bare To lure the poising pirate of the air Or the light footfall of the midnight forager, Two fetters and a ring, untouched it lay, As though it had been left there yesterday, The lengthened iron indicating well The posture of the hermit in his cell When in his last convulse its tenant fainting fell. When he fell blinded with his matted mane And with the drops of agonising rain, 54 THE EREMITE And the nude Nabathaean closed his eye, Saying, * It is enough, now let me die ! ' His soul unshackling in a gasp of ecstasy. If o'er the wan recesses of his face A mute attendant hovered for a space, It was the raven's grandsire, then decay And the fierce noontide bleaching, last the day Of sandstorm spiriting the vestiges away. The tempests yearly in the south were born, Raking the Red Sea to its either horn, The single cypress on the mountain bowed, And all the surface shifted like a cloud Save the stern fragments of the hermit's iron shroud. There through slow years it lay, and there it lies, On Djebel Mousa far from human eyes, And, if a casual foot have found it, mocks The pomp of tombs pretentious in the rocks, Of storied pride the parody a paradox THE EREMITE 55 Teaching that man resolved to dust again May best be deemed immortal in the chain He bore about him, in what form soe'er The universal fetters he may wear, Haply his mark on earth thereby may best appear. (From the Hecuba ' of Euripides.} TRUCE, Ilion, to thine ancient boast, Inviolate no more, The lances of the Argive host Becloud thy landscape o'er, Thy coronet of towers is lost Amid the flames of war ! Midnight it was, when sleep's soft foot With drowsy pinion flies, The dancing-girl had left her lute To close her wearied eyes, The chorus-singer's voice was mute, Extinct the sacrifice. I LI ON 57 Curled on the couch my husband lay, His javelin over-head, No more as if for sudden fray Beside his elbow laid. The Argive host had sailed away, 'Twas confidently said. I, in the gold-encircled glass That glittered far and wide, My last long amber-gleaming tress Within its fillet tied, Weary and faint, about to press The pillow at his side. When, as devoted Troy slept on, , There fell the sudden blow, And through her startled streets had flown The cheering of the foe, * Sons of the Greeks, sack, sack the town, And home at last we go ! ' 5 8 I LI ON Forth from the sacred marriage-bed My swiftness I incline, Bare-kneed like Spartan maid I fled, To chaste Diana's shrine, Ah, me ! how little profited Those nimble feet of mine ! Spared but to see my husband lie Expiring in his blood, And doomed from Ilion's arms to fly An exile o'er the flood, I felt it was captivity, And fainted where I stood ! Cursed be the fatal Helen ! cursed Her direful paramour, Whose nuptials, like the storm-fiend, burst Ill-fated Ilion o'er ; Far from the home where she was nurse d May she, like me, for ever thirst To see her native shore ! 59 OF such a lovely mother thou The daughter lovelier still, Which with the palm shall I endow ? For which shall I the saintly vow Of Valentine fulfil ? For which shall I my blissful lays To kindling music set ? Richenda's beauty, or the praise Of thee, O sprite of early days, Sweet little Margaret ? When first I saw thy mother's face, Ere bridal bells had rung, 60 A VALENTINE The vision seemed so full of grace, It left me gazing into space And robbed me of my tongue. Permitted now to venture near By kinder fortune blessed, My love can cast away its fear And admiration in her ear May boldly be confessed. For then I watched her as a bright And vivid meteor soar, That flashed across my dazzled sight To disappear, and leave my night E'en darker than before. But now I view her as a star Benignant, fixed and bright, And while she sheds her beams afar, I see thee clinging to her car, Thou little satellite ! 6i (After Bonefonius. ) WHY dost thou thus, O needle fierce, So often and so sharply pierce The white hand of my love ? A hand as lustrous as the spray Of whitethorn in the month of May That blossoms in the grove ! What have those little fingers done To 'be tormented one by one, And made to bleed and smart ? Ah ! it is not her finger quick, Or tender hand that thou should'st prick. But her enamelled heart ! 62 To A NEEDLE There deep and deeper drive thy sting, And should'st thou puncture it, I'll sing Thy glory and thy praise, For thou would'st penetrate a heart Which Cupid's most insidious dart Could never even graze ! TWAS no unfeeling hand, fair flower ! Cut short the parsimonious hour Ungenerous nature gave : The eye that saw thy dainty charms Expanding sweetly in her arms, Knows how to see and save ! 'Twas Pity, that impending death Should drain so soon thy fragrant breath And steal thy tints away, While I a kind protectress knew For thee, thou daughter of the dew, And darling of the day ! 64 THE VIOLET And Hope, that when thy beauty lies In odour faint beneath her eyes, Thine innocence may plead For trembling me with her whose heart, Where'er accorded, must impart A redolence indeed ! And Love, that, when to thy frail leaves My cynosure acceptance gives, Her loveliness may see That pure as thy expiring sweets, And modest as thy beauty, beats The heart expressed by thee ! THE sun arose With gold upon his wings, but not for me Reluctant rising from a tired repose Did all his pioneers insensibly Their radiance disclose : On my sad eyes The cloud that gathered o'er me in the night More darkly drove across my waking skies And interposed before the only light My day could recognise. Vain birds to hear Intoxicated with the morning dew 66 GOOD-BYE Ring their tumultuous notes so loud and clear, As, to and fro, my casement past they flew, How could my heart-strings bear ? The reckless wind That furrowed up the river in its trail, As if to mock the current of my mind Where over-swept a melancholy gale, How was it too unkind ! And yet a prey To keener pangs than these became my breast, When down at last I slowly made my way, And must dissemble at the world's behest And smiling wish * Good-day ' ! 1 Good-day ! ' ' good-night ' For me 'twas rather ! Soon that night set in, The interval sequestered all my light, And day itself has since so darksome been That blindness were as bright ! GOOD-BYE 67 A tender hand That pressed its ' God-be-with-you ' on my brain, A snow-white signal as I turned, that fanned My sunrise to its noon, and once again Came midnight o'er the land ! F 2 68 (For music. ) NOT only when the dawn is high And skies are shining clear And breezes tremble to a sigh, Upon thy listening ear My beating heart would testify That thou art dear ! Not only while thy life is gay And suns upon thee shine And gladness sheds its golden ray On that fair face of thine Where happy smiles so often play, I'd make thee mine ! CONSTANCY 69 But when the clouds, at midnight, form Along the wintry coast And wild tempestuous gales deform The landscape we have lost, Amid the darkness and the storm I'd love thee most ! Not in thy brightest, briefest hour My constancy Fd prove, But if thy youthful sky should lower And grief thy bosom move, Then o'er thy fainting soul I'd shower The largesse of my love ! mttr Making (Air Sunday on the Rhine. ) WHEN first I worshipt thee I kept My secret from thy sight, Or breathed it only as I slept When dreaming in the night : But now I know that thou art mine From dreaming I arise, For I can see that I am thine By gazing in thine eyes ! By every glance, by every word, By every lingering touch ; I little thought thou couldst afford To sacrifice so much : DREAMING AND WAKING 71 And whether dreaming of thy sake Or waking, now I seem As though 'twere dreaming when I wake And waking when I dream ! I little dreamt thou wouldst for me Turn darkness into light Or hoped to realise in thee My vision of the night. No more I dream, for I proclaim My love without alarms, And publish thy beloved name While sinking in thine arms ! C0 Clinton (After Martial. ) THE things that make a perfect wife, O Clinton, dearest of my life, Are these : pure breath, a spotless skin, White teeth and quiet tongue within, Bright eyes, soft voice, a temper sweet, And dext'rous hands and nimble feet, Tresses well-kempt, a bosom fair, A love of water and of air, A deer by day, a mouse at night, Good pluck and healthy appetite, A housewife careful yet not mean, Nor sinking to a mere machine, Li understanding not a fool Nor yet robust enough to rule, To CLINTON 73 To superstition not inclined Yet of a reverential mind, A Saxon of extraction good, Not of a too prolific brood, Younger in age, for fear thy moon Should wane too fast, or set too soon. Be charms like these with honour sought, Or rich or poor it matters naught, To thee, my son ! shall come to pass Such helpmate as thy father has. 74 JflaJIiata WHAT thing art thou, so small and bright, So far beneath the point of sight, A female dot, an infant sprite, So most minute and yet so fierce, So prepossessing yet perverse, So very sweet, or the reverse ? No such despotic queen e'er swayed, Was so obediently obeyed As thou, O microscopic maid ! I see thee in thy regal seat With dogs and men about thy feet, Preferring such as seems thee meet ; KALLISTA 75 Enforcing thy Draconian laws Amid tumultuous applause, Sometimes with smiles, sometimes with claws. Or else I view thee in the mind To march in state, with all mankind Proceeding in thy train behind, Observant of thy smile or frown And deeming it a high renown To lift thee, should'st thou tumble down. Thou scrap ! to whom we all must bow, Poor hangers on thy fitful brow, A very * Mede and Persian ' thou ! But, little maid, the days are nigh When thou must put thy sceptre by And abdicate thy monarchy. 76 KALLISTA When thou must quit thy royal state, Adopt a less unsteady gait, Be bashful and articulate. Yet still, if poets rightly claim The maid's the mother of the dame, Thou wilt not disavow thy name, Still sweet though sharp, if captious, kind, Still always mistress of thy mind, The womanliest of womankind ! 77 GOOD-BYE ! small house, good-bye ! Though weak in roof and rafter, I would not tell a lie To him who cometh after ; I could not meet a charge of guilt Were I to say thou wert well-built ! Yet art thou sweet, though small, Yet art thou dear, though cracked, While fearing thou might'st fall, Our faith remained intact And lived, superior to our fears, For seven swift matrimonial years. 78 THE SEMI-DETACHMENT Good-bye ! old house, good-bye ! I brought my bride to thee, In thee I taught to fly My little nestlings three, So how can I from thee depart Without a sinking at my heart ? Soaring to other fields, To woods and pastures new, f E'en if the prospect yields A happiness as true, We scarce can be more brightly blest Elsewhere than here, thou ill-built nest ! Come then whate'er betide Hid in the future's womb, I and my seven-years bride Will love our earliest home ! Good-bye ! thou ill-constructed cot, We love, but recommend thee not ! 79 WHEN life is dark and love is crossed And friends have failed and fame is lost, While daily labour drugs the mind And hopes are scattered to the wind, To thee I turn, nor ever yet Have turned with anguish or regret. Not only thine to smooth and spread The pillow for a fevered head, Or with an infinite address To minister to weariness, But thine, with deeper art, to bind The wounds of a distempered mind. 8o STELLA While others with my name make free, My secret soul is known to thee, The ill, the doubtful, and the good Not only known, but understood, The ill ignored, the doubtful deemed Or good, or better than it seemed. O constant star, attracting back The needle of my devious track ! O faithful pilot at my helm When storms arise and seas o'erwhelm ! O pearl of price, enough to own Though all my worldly gear were gone ! Let others boast of wealth or fame Or power or rank or ancient name Or intellect, I care not which, With thee alone I too am rich, Distinguished, learned, wise and great, To none of them subordinate ! 8i OFT unseen, in silence broken, Harps untouched will start, Oft, for want of words unspoken Breaks a lonely heart. Wanton words, like careless fingers, Make discordant strain, Yet if but the feeling lingers, Hearts resound again. Noisy tongues, like summer thunder, Only clear the air, Hearts, like harps, break only under Lack of light and care. G 82 HARPS AND HEARTS Left unstrung, untouched, untended, This is why they part, This why breaks, in anguish ended, Many a lonely heart. Hearts, like harps, may lose their brightness, Gaining in their tone : Let it not be then with lightness They be left alone ! I HAD three brothers to me born. We played together under the thorn To the dewy eve from the dewy morn. One was silver and two were gold, Two were timid and one was bold, All were loving and all are cold. One in sorrow and fear was nursed Till into a golden blossom he burst, And he smiled the sweetest and died the first. We cut his name upon the thorn, And played on still, to eve from morn, As if our brother had never been born, G 2 84 THREE BROTHERS As if our brother had never died, So passionate-hearted and tender-eyed, Of girls the darling, of boys the pride. One lived longer and laughed aloud, Shouldered his way in the gaping crowd, With the face of a sun that knows no cloud. He was silver and he was strong, He was a man mankind among, But ah ! though loudly, he laughed not long ! Ever would soar and soar too high, As if he never could live to die : And he fell like Phaeton out of the sky ! What shall I say of the last of the three With his golden hair, so timid was he And tall, and shrouded in mystery ? THREE BROTHERS 85 He, as proud as the son of a king, Tender withal as -a breeze of spring, Weak as a wearied wild-bird's wing, Wrapt himself in a scornful shroud, Broke in his brooding, never bowed, Lived in a dream and died in a cloud. So there they sleep in their beds below, One, two, three, in a silent row, Where the moon-beams creep and the grasses grow. There they sleep the sleep of the blest, Sleep on now, and take their rest, One, two, three, on their mother's breast ! 86 HE held her in his trembling hand Or wandered to and fro, Nor, to the last, would understand That she could really go. And when she lay among the slain, He would not weep, nor die, But went about the world again With una verted eye. He talked of this, he talked of that, Still wandering to and fro, And scarcely seemed to marvel at The fierceness of the blow. STRICKEN 87 He would not change his household ways Nor care nor pity claim, But made believe, for thirty days, That he was still the same. And then he laid him down and died Within a winter's sun, Rocking himself to sleep beside His youngest, dearest one. Like some poor bird that flies a mile, Though stricken to the heart, He dropped and yet 'twas with a smile We watched his soul depart. THROUGH the valley of our smiling and our sorrow, Like an unimpeded ever-rolling river, To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Our lives are ebbing oceanwards for ever ! And yesterday, and yesterday, is flying In the dimness of the deadness of the past, Like a lake upon a lake behind us lying While the darkness of the night is falling fast ! And to-day is ever coming, ever going, For the present is a figment of the brain," And the river never tarries in its flowing Nor a wave shall wash its former bank again. To-MORRO W 89 We live as if the world were ours for ever, We die as though we left the world a blank ! But the landscape never lacks its ancient river, And the river never lacks its ancient bank. The bell upon the bar is ever tolling, And again we hear the warning and again Forgotten is the river's onward rolling, Forgotten is its melting in the main ! And still upon the present do we borrow, Though the present is the future, or the past, And to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Shall land us in eternity at last ! (After Heine.} O ! WHERE at last for ever Shall the wanderer recline, By the palms of some south river Or the lindens of the Rhine ? Shall I some desert under Be laid by stranger hands, Or where the wild waves thunder, Sleep silent in the sands ? Ah well ! God's heaven will cover me With its resplendent arc, And the stars will hang all over me Like death-lamps in the dark ! SONNETS 93 WAVE of my soul, that washed for many a day The coastline of my stormy life's campaign, Now mantling high, then melting in the main, Now flowing fast, then ebbing far away, Oft have I seen the sun's effulgent ray With gold and blue thy breast transparent stain, Or felt thee sprinkling in the wind and rain Upon my fevered brow thy soothing spray. Now memory, like a slow revolving light, Is all that's left on my horizon's rim, First swiftly shining, penetrating, bright, Then gradually fading, growing dim, For I have seen thee break upon the shore, Where I again may never wander more ! 94 ENOUGH ! I'll seek no longer to persuade, Nor wake this idle tumult in her breast : From this unwelcome onset I will rest And raise a siege that is a mere blockade. But though my worship from her daylight fade, Let love be still her guardian, peace her guest, Nor adverse fate her happiness molest, Nor anxious cares her loveliness invade. Only I would that in the midnight hour To musing dear, when dreaming of the past, She would a backward glance upon me cast As one who offered her a faded flower, And sometimes, in her sleep, remember one Who loved her for herself, herself alone ! 95 I ASKED my teachers Music to define : One said it was the tickling of an ear : Another, that it was the atmosphere Disturbed by little wavelets, that combine And follow in a sympathetic line Our beating hearts : another, with a sneer, Turned to a nightingale that warbled near, And said it was of sex an outward sign. But I believe it is the gift of God, To lift a man above his low desire And animate his dense terrestrial clod With an electric spark of heavenly fire, And rouse him, like a skylark from the sod, To sing the sweeter as he mounts the higher ! 9 6 O NIGHTINGALE ! thou chorister of spring, Thou harbinger of summer ! when I hear Thy silver piping in the moonlight clear, I too, like all the better bards, must bring My little wreath of roses to the king Of songsters ; but I hold thee not so dear For the mere delectation of my ear, As for the loving lesson thou dost sing, Who dost transform the vacillating May Into a constant summer for thy mate, Though won, not therefore to be no more wooed, Consoling her by night as well as day With sweet proximity and passionate Outpouring of thy love's solicitude ! 97 fmir WHERE Malvern's Wynd surveys two counties o'er, Bowered on the point beneath the Beacon's height, I realised my vision of delight In listening to the queen of song once more. Her lustrous eyes beamed tender as of yore, Still throbbed her throat pulsating in my sight, Not with her note sustained that woke the night And filled the world with ecstasy before, But with her gently-warbling swift refrain, As sitting with her grandchild on her knee She poured her soft enchantments in his ear. Sweet Nightingale ! the memory of that strain, Still floating down the age, shall hence to me Be doubly bright and more than doubly dear ! 9 8 IT is not only that he played upon The human heart with an omniscient grace, From lightest treble down to deepest bass Extracting every undeveloped tone, And made the music of the spheres his own, Not that he held a million-mirrored glass To nature, and reflected every face In incomparable comparison, Nor that, like lark, to heaven he could aspire, Descending sweetly singing to the ground, But that, with everlasting glory crowned, He put aside his bays and would retire To the dear Stratford that he loved so well, To live and die beneath his old school-bell ! 99 WHERE rolls the imperious circle of the sun Relentless in his equatorial car To Senegambia from Zanzibar, I saw a grey gaunt figure, marching on A pilgrimage that never shall be done, Around his head a swift-revolving star, Which the whole canon of the calendar Might deem it greater glory to have won : While all the people that in darkness stood Saw in the shining of that wandering light The banner of their liberty unfurled, And heard the gospel of their brotherhood Proclaimed amid the blackness of the night That broods upon a quarter of the world ! 100 WHO are indeed our noblemen ? Not they Who thunder in the senate, or who lead Our armaments to battle, or precede Their fellows in their counties, bearing sway In hunting field or fashion's roundelay, But they who for their poorer brethren plead And help their humble neighbour at his need, Nor, like the Priest and Levite, turn away. Immortal Shaftesbury ! who thought'st it fame To drill thy ragged infantry and warm Their shivering souls with pitying love profound, Or thou who bear'st the bard-ennobled name Of Anson, he whose voice could pierce the storm, Yet tremble at the tale of one man drowned ! lor THERE floats an isle on the Atlantic main Set nobly, mild the air and green the sod, Designed to be an appanage of God Yet doomed to an inheritance of pain, And branded with the cruel mark of Cain, That bids it court and kiss yet curse the rod. He who in ecstasy that land hath trod Still worships it and woos it though in vain. Ireland ! I love thee for thy rocks and streams, Thy beauty and thy prowess and renown, Yet weep to see thee wrapt in idle dreams From which if thou shouldst fitfully awake 'Tis but to writhe round some insidious clown Who flatters thee and tames thee like a snake ! IO2 Silent our AFTER my day's long labour has been done, And all the evening's busy-ness is o'er, When lights are out, and chirping is no more, And wrapt in slumber lies each little one, Then is my secret paradise begun, And with a constant though a slender oar Urging my bark in silence, I explore Delightful climes forbidden to my sun. There all my troubles I forget, and tune My oaten reed in ecstasy to make Its feeble pipings in the Muse's bower ; And whether it be January or June, The echoes of that other life I wake For one brief blissful solitary hour ! 103 Christmas WHETHER the year descends into its grave O'ermantled in a winding sheet of snow, Or whether disobedient flowerets blow, Or boisterous winds across the welkin rave, And blinding showers the empyrean lave, Still Christmas comes, as came he long ago, With hoary locks and eyeballs all aglow, Flooding our breasts with a pacific wave Of sweet celestial music, while we hear Our children's voices sounding loud and gay And church-bells chiming softly on the ear, Reminding us of many a Christmas-day Still echoing with those other voices dear Now dead in dust, and lost, and past away ! 104 ms MAKE not for me, O monitory chime ! Thy music intermixt of prayer and praise : Let the old year die down with all his days, Let the new year come forth in early prime. To me thy message brings no thought sublime : Mine is no intermittent soul, to gaze On epochs or on eras or upraise A superstitious eye to Father Time. Love is my life and years are not its token, Mine is a constant chain of life and love, Some links may not be forged, and some are broken, And some are welded with the stars above, But some are round my neck or on my knee, So ring not, O ye midnight bells, for me ! IDS WHEN autumn changes all the green to gold, And coral berries cluster on the thorn, While infant winter winds his moaning horn And swallows all have fled the coming cold, What time the year is growing weak and old, I see the spirit of my brother borne Upon the wings of Stygian gales forlorn. Then ask I in an agony untold, ' O Wilfrid ! why in springtime didst thou come, So early in our summertide to go ? ' When suddenly there breaks across my gloom The majesty of the meridian glow, And through the tears that rain upon his tomb I see the bright effulgence of the Bow. io6 Si. As daily to my destined task I go By Ludgate's ancient scrap of London wall I hear the mighty tolling of St. Paul Sound through the city tunefully and low. Then all the tides of memory o'er me flow Whilst I the chimes of other days recall, The old school-bell of Congleton the small Quick stroke of Wadham and the sisters slow Of New what time my tingling ear-tips burn And idle tears determine to mine eyes From thoughts too deep to drown, too dear to tell, Of halcyon days that never shall return, Friends loved and lost, and opportunities Gone like the echo of a passing bell ! i c; THE tears that fall upon the whispering tomb Of those we love are not the tears that stain : Furrow the cheek they may, but not with pain, So long as through the veil sweet memories come And love that dies not permeates the gloom. It is not Death that rends our hearts in twain And leaves us hopeless, sorrowing in vain, In anguish steeped, with desolation dumb. The immedicable tears are those that fall Upon the silent and reproachful grave Of those we wronged, and would that wrong recall, Yet ere from whom forgiveness we could crave Death came with his cold hand and closed the door And left us unforgiven for evermore. io8 As one by one the lights go slowly out Of lamps that shone for me in days of yore, Dumbly I gaze upon the bolted door That shuts and leaves me in the crowd without. Then, if I ponder on the past, I doubt Whether the love that compasseth me o'er Can be compared with that which went before : Till I am roused by some tumultuous shout Of youthful voices breaking on my ears, While the great tide of life around me roars And wakes me from my fond and idle dream. Then once again I gather up my oars To keep my bark abreast the flowing stream And row me on in silence and in tears. lop MAN'S life at best is but a summer sun That imperceptibly reveals the morning, With rosy tints the universe adorning Until it centres in a glorious noon Of light and light unlimited ; but soon While yet the clouds its steady rays are scorning The shadows lengthen, with a silent warning That evening shall succeed to afternoon ; Then milder beams illuminate the sky And drowsy whispers permeate the air, While dim forebodings haunt the dying day, And owls begin to hoot, and bats to fly And stars to peep, till in a twilight rare E'en as it rose, it slowly fades away ! no How few there are complete their mortal coil ! For either canker nips us in the bud, Or we are blighted in our plenitude, Overmastered in some miserable broil, Or murdered in division of the spoil : Yea ! even struggling for a livelihood, In making a provision for our brood, We sink beneath the Juggernaut of toil ! By accident of flood or fire or field, Or by disease bequeathed us by our sires Or self-engendered by our youthful fires Or later lusts, the afternoons of men But rarely to a tranquil evening yield Their complement of threescore years and ten ! Ill WHAT a brief space of time we occupy ! We live beloved, and when we are no more, There shall be those who will their loss deplore With broken hearts and speechless agony : It may be years before their tears are dry, But Life at length will have its balm in store. Time limits love ! for who could languish o'er The tomb of his forefather ? even I May live to feel not some small future limb Lopt from my trunk ! the present, it shall praise, The past is fading and the future dim : Pursue them far enough, the brightest rays Will tremble with an evanescent light And vanish in impenetrable night I 112 WHEN I shall sink in everlasting sleep Place not my vestiges upon a pyre To be consumed by scientific fire, Nor plunge them in the whirlpools of the deep, Nor raise around my residue a heap Of brick or stone or plumbers' work, to tire And cheat the little worm of his desire About his poor inheritance to creep : But lay me deep within my mother's breast In such slight coverture as shall embower Yet not withhold me from her fond embrace : There let me naturally take my rest With her embroidered mantle o'er my face, Tissued with many a sprig and tiny flower ! xrf X)N the lashed bosom of a sunlit sea, What time the bell upon the bar was tolling, I saw a noble Vessel slowly rolling Among the hidden breakers, all a-lee, t Split sails, sprung masts, and drifting helplessly, No captain o'er her crowded deck patrolling, No steersman her insane career controlling, Only a foolish vain ship's company. Twas not the tempest drove her to her doom, Twas not the tide that washed them to their death, Twas not the want of compass or sea-room, But mutiny the hatches underneath, And ignorance that mocked the coming gale, And folly, in a whirlwind carrying sail ! THE fool hath ever said within his heart, ' There is no God ! ' and wise indeed were he Who could elucidate the Deity ! We pray, ' Our Father which in heaven art,' Contented to the vision to impart The attributes of our paternity, Or picture Him a judge in equity, King, tyrant, or our own poor counterpart : While wider minds deny the personal, Conceive Him as a law, or wonderful Concomitant of Nature, a fly-wheel To regulate the engine, till they peel The image down to be no God at all, And so the wisest is the greatest fool ! NOT as our fathers viewed it, a Kuran Found in a cave, delivered in a dream, But as a splendid Library we deem These inspirations of immortal man. Though sealed the fount in which its course began, The origin of its transcendent theme, This argosy has floated down the stream Of time uninjured. Scatter ye who can The precious cargo, it shall naught avail : For though it glowed with no celestial fire It still would be the gospel of our race, Proclaiming ever the inspiring tale Of human resolution to aspire To the expression of a god-like grace ! u6 Satetr SERPENT, or Spirit, whatsoe'er thou art, Commander of the rebel caravan That fell before the universe began, Or migratory fiend, that strives to thwart The struggling germ of virtue in the heart, And vitiate the great Creator's plan, Yea ! even pictured as a gentleman Who plays a soft and diplomatic part. These are the images wherewith the mind Would fain impute to some extraneous source Our treachery, our lustfulness, our greed, The selfish abnegation of our kind, Our ignorance, our impotence, our need, Our misery, our madness, our remorse ! 0gts mtir As children must be taught in tender years Their little wayward fancies to restrain By promised pleasure or by threatened pain, And wise alternatives of hopes and fears, So in our ignorance the world appears Best governed by alternate spur and rein. But if mankind should gradually attain Hereafter to the elevated spheres Of knowledge and of reason, we shall woo The good and shun the evil, not in view Of penalty or pleasure, but because We come to comprehend that what we do Itself is pure and beautiful and true And consonant with the eternal laws. 118 WHY should we cavil at the thought that He Who clothed us with this complicated form Perfected it, through troglodyte, from worm And dust, its origin and destiny ? His is a feeble faith who cannot see That the Divine Creator can perform His work as well in silence as in storm, And more by steps than by catastrophe. Which are the sceptics ? they who deem their God Catastrophist, or they who trace His hand In all His works of sky and sea and shore ? He may create a system with a nod, But He doth also aggregate the sand Until it makes a mountain evermore ! WHY pray or praise ? our God who governs all, Better than we knows everything we want, The ill denies, the good will ever grant : Will He reverse His fiat when we call, Or be persuaded by a madrigal ? For being eulogised will He recant, Or importuned review His covenant ? Doth He desire a testimonial ? O ye of little faith ! know prayer and praise Are the two pinions poised on which we rise From our close burrows to the balmy air ! Though clouds impervious hide the blue profound, Tis better to be soaring in the skies Than grovelling mute and hopeless on the ground ! 120 THE reckless lark that riots in the sky, The nightingale that pipeth in the grove, The plaintive plover and the pleading dove Praise all or pray, nor ask the reason why And why should man alone of all deny His joyful anthems to the powers above, With heart as full of melody and love, Nor raise aloft a supplicating eye ? For even though the basis of our breath Be physical, in all the joys of life We still may sound a little note of praise, And in the dust and tumult of the strife, Or in the hour and agony of death, A little prayer we surely may upraise ! 121 WHEN I the watershed of life had won, I saw two ancient rivers flowing free Into the ocean of eternity That sparkles in the everlasting sun. Through life's wide plain those rival rivers run : This is the torpid stream of bigotry, And that the race of infidelity. The mind of logic must embark on one, Whence come those fearful struggles of a soul Too conscientious for a compromise And loth to launch on either, yet perforce On this or that such little barks must roll, While in their wake the following waters rise To overwhelm with stupor, or remorse ! 122 Star uf WHEN the scared mariners by Paxos' coast Heard in the lull the lamentable cry Proclaiming Pan was dead, did they deny Or disbelieve the news that all was lost ? No ! though had vanished all they valued most, They boldly steered beneath the midnight sky And followed, with a flowing sheet, where high The Star of Bethlehem overrode the host Of spangled heaven, and there, behold ! they found A brighter God, who in the straw unfurled A more transcendent banner, and was crowned Thenceforth to be the sovereign of the world ! But if another midnight voice should mar, Where shall we find another guiding star ? 123 SLEEPERS awake ! the night is slowly dying The dawn is breaking on a thousand hills, The truth is trickling in a thousand rills, The phantoms of the past are swiftly flying, The idols ignominiously lying Deep in the dust of self-deluded wills : The legendary righteousness that fills Our bosoms with uncertainty and sighing, The ignorance that knows not, cares not why, The cowardice that trembles at the firing, The selfishness that truckles to a lie, The prejudice that interdicts enquiring. Did God give mind then but to dig a grave Wherein to bury all the gifts He gave ? 124 THE crisis is approaching, and the day Of combat Hark ! for even now I hear The sharpening of the battle-axe and spear, The noise confused of warriors, and the neigh Of chargers champing eager for the fray, With trumpets sounding in the midnight drear. What is the war-cry that is bringing near The armaments to battle ? not the sway Of empires, or of churches, with their strife Of petty rubrics, but the very right Of the Almighty to His ancient throne, The vindication of the Gospel light, The origin and destiny of life, Truth, and our knowledge of the great Unknown ! 125 HE stood upon an eminence that faced The great Acropolis, where fame had reared Her world-wide monuments, and art appeared Immortal in its prodigies of taste, And there he made a grand oration, graced With Greek philosophy that deftly steered Between the old Pantheon still revered And later types of teaching less debased. 1 men of Athens ! ye are nobly prone ' To immaterial worship, for I found ' An altar sacred " To the God Unknown ! " ' Whom knowing not ye worship, I expound/ But when he spake of rising from the dead, The Stoic only sneered at what he said ! 126 II NEITHER the resurrection of the form Nor the resuscitation of the soul The Greek had looked for : 1 had he heard the whole, The sneering would have swelled into a storm ! Not only that a man had robbed the worm, Evading the inevitable goal, But that the heavens had parted like a scroll, While he, amid an upward-gazing swarm Of witnesses, had mounted to the sky In all the panoply of flesh and blood Wherein he lived and died and rose before ! The Stoic then the Christian mystery In its entirety would have understood, And either sneered or stormed or marvelled more ! 1 The Stoic philosopher believed in the absorption of the soul in the divine essence, the Epicurean, in its extinction. I2 7 III AND this is still the problem to be solved, Which to the Greek was not demonstrated, If Christ be now not risen from the dead, Since every frame must be to dust resolved, Whether the spirit also is dissolved Like wind, or vapour brief, evanished, Or whether it shall breathe again and spread Its essence from its earthliness absolved : Whether we bear within this fragile frame A light that shall survive its lantern's fall In some celestial sphere to shine again, Or whether 'tis a temporary flame That, like a fire-fly, sinks into the main, Extinguished at its little funeral. 128 IV THIS is the thought that hath aroused our race Time immemorial, the fear of death, The hope of life resumption of our breath For pain or pleasure in another place : To bear the penalty of our disgrace Exacted by severe Almighty wrath, Or float in bliss on some celestial path That leads us to eternity in space : Or failing these, the deep instinctive dread Of mere annihilation, our despair At the extinction of the conscious I, At being wholly and for ever dead, As if the individual never were, The perfect vacuum of nonentity ! I2 9 WHEN we enquire, How raised up are the dead, And with what body do they rise again ? The illustration of the bursting grain, Producing each its homogeneous blade, Would seem the actual issue to evade, For it assumes the kernel shall remain, Although the husk to disappear is fain, Whereas the body doth entirely fade, And whether it be incremate by fire, Or whether it dissolve beneath the wave, Or whether it disintegrate in clay, No germ survives to quicken and inspire Aught save the petty grasses of a grave, Or ocean weeds that in their turn decay ! 130 VI WHY now should a philosopher l fear death ? He is no true philosopher who loves Life and the body's pleasure, for it proves What mean conception of delight he hath. Man oft abstains from pleasure, in the faith Of gaining pleasure he the more approves, The pleasure being still the power that moves His willing feet along the stony path, Enjoyment being still the crucial test : And so the true philosopher pursues The future more than the immediate gain, And when his largening sun slopes slowly west And he the illimitable ocean views, He sets in certain trust to rise again ! 1 See Phfsdo of Plato. VII To crave to know the things not understood, To gain the knowledge we possess not now, The why, the whence, the whither, and the how, Is this not now a more ennobling mood ? To stand where the divine Creator stood, Emerging from this miserable slough With His eternal seal upon our brow Of perfect knowledge and completed good ? To float in space on an untiring wing, Discharged from this demoralising war To everlasting peace where planets shine ? To join the sons of morning where they sing In chorus, on some undiscovered star, Their anthems to their ancestor divine ? 132 VIII OR is it worse or better, if we rise, Or fall, to such a consequence as this, To quit this hankering after endless bliss (So we be free from endless agonies) ? The full conception of self-sacrifice All selfish inclination must dismiss, As Curtius gallopt into the abyss, Or Sappho vaulted from the precipice. To abnegate our hope of future life, Our cherished aspirations to resign, To fall like loyal warriors in the strife, And quarter on the battle-field disdain, Is this not a conception more divine Than selfish hope of living o'er again ? 133 IX BUT if we must at any cost attain To this long-looked-for immortality, Is there not an elixir in the eye That shines with love for those who shall remain And for the long unknown unknowing train Who yet shall live, to suffer and to die, Through human nature's future history ? To mitigate the average of pain, To spend a glorious life in doing good, Even to say a word, or write a line That may alleviate another's gloom, To weave a single strand of brotherhood, To leave a cherished name, a sacred tomb, Is this not now a destiny divine ? 134 OR else to sleep ! O beatific word To those who through the night their vigils keep, Or in the morning only wake to weep For days despaired of or for days deplored ! Though not a stone the corner should record Where, in our mother's bosom, soft and deep, Our limbs are laid in the beloved sleep And into their primeval dust restored ! To sleep straight on, from earth's convulsions free And heaven's disturbance and the restless wave Of ocean surging in its ceaseless roar, While all the generations yet to be March in successive ages o'er the grave Wherein we sleep, or slept, for evermore ! 135 XI AY ! but our mortal minds are far too weak, And our poor human hearts are much too warm To be consoled with philosophic balm, Or slumber in an attitude so meek. To touch, to see, to listen, and to speak, To gaze once more on the familiar form, To lean again on the beloved arm, To lay the hand in hand, the cheek to cheek, These are from life inseparable. Touch And sight and speech and hearing are the ties That bind us to the future : these deny, And our eternal feebleness is such That we should only be too glad to die, That we should only be too grieved to rise ! 136 XII NEED we surrender all our treasured heap Of savings and of earnings and the store Bequeathed us by our parents gone before, With long procession of the saints asleep In sure and certain confidence to reap Their joyful harvest on a heavenly shore ? And are the hopes of ages, now no more, Burst all like noiseless bubbles in the deep, The light unquenched, unquenchable, that made Life tolerable, and of its sharp sting Robbed death, and of its victory the grave ? And is it all a visionary thing, And life a mere unmeaning masquerade And we but seaweed floating on the wave ? 137 XIII Is all the old Apocalypse a dream ? The heavenly city and the great white throne, The majesty of Him who sits thereon O'er sun and inoon and stars and earth supreme ? The gates with pearl, the streets with gold that gleam, The harpers harping and the trumpets blown, The chanting of a song before unknown, The voice of many waters by the stream Where white-robed multitudes adoring swing Their golden censers, wave triumphant palms Beside the margin of the glassy sea, And rest not day nor night, but ever sing Ten thousand times ten thousand thousand psalms To Him who was, and is, and is to be ? 138 XIV THE night is dark, the midnight gale is sighing, The white of winter shrouds the landscape o'er, While nearer sounds the cataract's dull roar. The voices of the past, or dead or dying, Across our melancholy minds are flying With memories of the thoughts that are no more, Entreating us to linger by the shore Where all our little barks have long been lying. How frail soe'er the ancient cable be, How bleak soe'er the coast to which we cling, We fear to quit the haven that we know, To drift away upon that awful sea Where philosophic sirens softly sing Their paeans over whitening bones below ! 139 JfawfawII ! The Bromley bells are borne upon the breeze, The great clouds go from Knockholt to the Thames, The western firmament is bright with flames, Where sinks the April sun amid the trees, While birds are ceasing from their minstrelsies^ Save nightingales low-piping to their dames, Or some sad owl that fitfully proclaims His concert with our parting elegies ! Farewell, sweet hill, where we have lived so long ! O Ravensbourne, that laves our citadel With wood and lawn and landscape ever blest ! Farewell, dear friends ! but O ye few fare best Whom we have loved with love too deep and strong Ever to say to you the word ' Farewell ! ' PRINTED BY SPOTT1SWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON 396058 UNIVERSITY Of CALIFORNIA LIBRARY