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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
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 SONGS OF THE HEIGHTS AND DEEPS.
 
 SONGS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HEIGHTS AND DEEPS. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 HON. RODEN NOEL, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 1 A LITTLE CHILD'S MONUMENT," " THE HOUSE OF RAVENSBURG,' 
 
 " RED FLAG," " LIVINGSTONE IN AFRICA." 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C 
 
 1885.
 
 5"/// 
 X6 
 
 gtbicateb 
 
 TO 
 
 MY SISTER. 
 
 858200
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A LAY OF CIVILIZATION | OR, LONDON - - I 
 
 EARLY LOVE - - - - - - - 34 
 
 LOVE HIDING - - - - - - - 37 
 
 ROSE AND BUTTERFLY- - - - - - 39 
 
 SWING-SONG - - - - - - - 40 
 
 MAGIC LANTERN - - - - - - 42 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF SORROW - - - - - 44 
 
 THE GEMONIAN STAIRS - - - - - 60 
 
 SEA, LAKE, AND MOUNTAIN. 
 
 THALATTA - - - - - - -65 
 
 BY THE SEA ... - - 76 
 
 TINTADGEL - - - - - - - 77 
 
 SUSPIRIA - - - - - - - 8l 
 
 AUTUMN - - - - - - - 92 
 
 MONTE ROSA - - - - - - - 99 
 
 TO ERIC FROM THE ALPS ..... 104 
 
 IN THE DOLOMITES ------ 105 
 
 MELCHA ....... 106 
 
 the agnostic ------- 164 
 
 the death of livingstone- - - - - 170 
 
 bvron's grave - - - - - - 177 
 
 SNOWDROPS - - ... I 7 g
 
 viii Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 NOCTURNE - - -' I SO 
 
 BEETHOVEN - - - - - - 183 
 
 NORTHERN SPRING - - - - - 1S7 
 
 THE TWO MAGDALENES - - - - - 1 92 
 
 WINTER- ----- - 194 
 
 IN ITALY - - - - " - -I98 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 POLITICAL SONNETS ... - 201 
 
 ELY CATHEDRAL .----- 204 
 
 VERY DEATH - - - - 205 
 
 MADNESS 
 
 - 206 
 
 THE SANCTUARY ....-- 207
 
 A LAY OF CIVILIZATION : OR LONDON. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 CITY of light and shadow, height and deep, 
 Yawning abysm sundering rich and poor ! 
 One upon velvet pile or marble floor 
 Feasts, while another starves, whom even sleep 
 Flieth as God-abandoned ; children weep 
 Around their mother ; at the rich man's door 
 She cursing God and man dies : ye who keep 
 High festival with morning, temple, tower, 
 Broad palace, rather in congenial night 
 Avoid ashamed the level eyes of light ! 
 Cower hidden ! royal river in your pride, 
 With world-wealth mantling on your stately tide, 
 Steal muffled in deep gloom ! slow bells be tolled .' 
 Thou on the proud dome, glistering cross of gold, 
 Thy life is changed to hard death bought and sold. 
 Art thou the hilt of a death-drinking sword 
 Plunged in Earth's heart by some infernal Lord ? 
 
 I
 
 2 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 Brethren of Him who fainted on the wood, 
 What help is found in yon devouring rood ? 
 
 What help ? what hope ? a sceptred Woman bows 
 Under a lowly lintel, and none knows ; 
 Humbly she helpeth bitter loathly need, 
 Beareth the burden, dons the lowly weed. 
 Babes the high honour of their trust confer 
 Upon this royal lady, and by her 
 Perchance the city may be saved from fire, 
 That lurid lurks, and threats to make it one red 
 funeral pyre ! 
 
 Under awakening woods I heard the birds 
 
 With no reserve unbosom all their joy : 
 
 Even as a beam reveals the limpid deep 
 
 Of a pure pool, sweet song revealed their heart, 
 
 A shadowless illimitable bliss 
 
 Of innocent love ; the joy of wakening woods 
 
 Welled over in soft frills of fairy leaves, 
 
 Glossy and tender flakelets of green light, 
 
 Infolded mutually ; fair forest aisles 
 
 Dawn to leaf-laughter silent and serene ; 
 
 One would surmise the new-born delicate leaves 
 
 Thronged to the ends of all the twigs to hear 
 
 Innumerable bird-song, called from sleep 
 
 By many a plumed Orpheus ; their blithe notes
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 3 
 
 Weave webs of music multitudinous, 
 Even as a leafing tracery of stems 
 With wayward bronze embroiders the blue air. 
 It seems afar one smoke above the silver 
 Of birchen boles ; beneath, the English flower, 
 The flower so dear to English hearts, nor least 
 When we abide among the sunnier blooms 
 Of alien lands, the pure and pale primrose, 
 Gathers in sisterhoods upon the breast 
 Of greening earth, her still abiding smiles, 
 Fair with assurance of humility. 
 And when their pale cool flame is far effused, 
 Earth in her lowlihood may vie with Heaven, 
 With Heaven, what time the dawning East con- 
 ceives 
 A half-awakened light hued like the flower. 
 
 Down a green dale I heard some children roam, 
 Merrily laughing by a rivulet ; 
 Then a hawk hovered, and sweet songs were hushed 
 In the grove under. 
 
 All the scene grew dim, 
 Appeared to melt before mine eyes, and change. 
 I heard, and heard not, for the land dissolved, 
 And clouding slowly, lo ! another sound, 
 Akin to the sea-sound, was in mine ears, 
 Resembling some huge roar of a far furnace, 
 Whose sullen flare through wallowing mists impure 
 
 1 — 2
 
 4 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 Burned like the fire-flush from those realms of Dis 
 In that deep-mouthed verse of the Mantuan. 
 Huge murmur from the throat of Babylon ! 
 Illimitable leagues of piles confused, 
 Dome, tower, and steeple, stately palaces, 
 Islanded in a welter of dim street ; 
 Mean habitations, warrens of dun life, 
 Tortuous, swarming ; sullied, pale, cramped life, 
 With, in the midst, a large imperial River, 
 Turbid and troubled, the town's artery, 
 Spanned by tumultuous bridges ; o'er them clang 
 Steam-dragon, chariot, horse, and laden wain, 
 With hurrying people of the human hive ; 
 Whose shores are thronged with warehouse, opulent 
 
 wharf, 
 Whose turbulent tide upbuoyeth bark and barge, 
 Throbbing, foam-trailing steamer, russet sail, 
 And stately ships from far sea-sundered lands. 
 But over all a brown Plutonian gloom 
 Of murk air dismal and defiled, the breath 
 Of our so monstrous town — her visible sin, 
 And weight of wan woe, blotting out sweet 
 
 heaven! 
 Behold the River ! a guilt-laden ghost, 
 How he hurries all unlingering below, 
 Away, away, through horror of deep night, 
 Pale with the guilty secret of the city !
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 5 
 
 Like that sin-burdened victim, driven forth 
 
 In Israel to the wilds, ashamed Thames 
 
 Rolls headlong, tarries nor to look, nor listen, 
 
 Hastens to hide himself in the great Deep, 
 
 There to confide, unbosom, bury there, 
 
 The tomb, the womb, the unfathomed other-world, 
 
 Absolving and absorbing Mother Ocean, 
 
 The ineffable oppression at his heart, 
 
 The horror of unutterable wrong ! 
 
 How changed, O Thames ! from in thine earlier hour 
 
 Of child-like dallying among reeds and lilies, 
 
 WhiteswanSjandflowers^ndboatsoflingeringlovers, 
 
 By Marlow, Maidenhead, or Cliveden Grove ! 
 
 But darkness deepens : by the parapet 
 Of that great platform which embanks the tide, 
 While sudden lights leap to assuage the gloom, 
 Wavering on the water, and loud trains 
 Turn cloudy fiery serpents on the bridge, 
 I note the faded features of a girl, 
 Who clasps a pining infant to her breast, 
 And my heart, gazing into that wan face, 
 Named her Despair; no other name she bore 
 Surely among the angels, or the fiends, 
 Whose hate environs earth : she mounts the wall ; 
 Springs, and two lives have vanished in the void ! 
 
 Happy birds fluting in the leafy woods, 
 And children playing by the rivulet !
 
 6 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 Hard by, the glare and Babel-roar, where men 
 With women drink fire of forgetfulness, 
 Flying from ash-pale spectres of dim life 
 Into the burning bosom of mad fiends — 
 Hard by, within the gloom of the low lane, 
 Else empty, slouches a dun-vestured form 
 Of one who peers, like some gaunt beast of prey, 
 Yonder upon the pavement ; for he deems 
 He sees within the tract of lamplit stone 
 A morsel of soiled food, fallen casually 
 From Plenty satiated ; pouncing on it, 
 He ravenously feeds ; but one who passed 
 Bestows a coin within the skeleton claw 
 Of him, who murmurs some faint sound of joy; 
 And then, himself unseen, the benefactor 
 Saw the man kneel bare-headed on the flags, 
 And lift clasped hands of gratitude to God. 
 It is not far to where the lordly street 
 Hath wares luxuriant myriad-fold displayed 
 Behind illumined panes ; the hurrying throngs 
 Tramp with their broken talk ; they whirl on 
 
 wheels, 
 Soft-raimented, gems flashing from white shoulders, 
 Or swarm from forth the stately spectacle, 
 Embathed in yellow lustre of the lamps. 
 
 It is a gala-night ; they laugh, they dance, 
 In perfumed chamber youth low whispers love ;
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 7 
 
 At high doors lounge the sumptuous serving-men ; 
 While glowing globes of emerald or ruby 
 Adorn, disposed with manifold design, 
 Each ample thoroughfare ; the crimson hangs 
 From all high windows ; launched from every 
 
 steeple 
 Roll blazoned banners ; floods of light beneath 
 Hail floods of sound aloft delirious, 
 Pealed from wild reeling bells in dome and tower ; 
 For some imperial pageantry hath passed, 
 With blare of scarlet, festival and pomp 
 Of martial music, horse-tramp, and clanked sabre : 
 Our arms perchance have triumphed on far fields ; 
 Or it may be the birthday of a king. 
 And yet my sombre heart reverts to him 
 Who snatched that offal from the pavement, sees 
 White retrograded faces of the crowd, 
 The outraged, foundered womanhood of towns ; 
 Cold women huddling on the stately stairs, 
 Who cower in shadow with their babes, till one 
 Bids them begone ; there is no room for them. 
 
 And who is here ? a hunger-withered girl, 
 In grip of some black myrmidon of law. 
 Her crime, I pray you ? She hath stolen a flower 
 From a rich lord's immeasurable land. 
 Her mother, poor and bedridden, so longed 
 To see and smell a flower : " I took it for her ;
 
 8 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 She has no friend, sir, very little food." 
 
 The girl low weeps ; the mother waits her child. 
 
 Then was I taken through some noisome lanes, 
 Among ill faces bleared, unhumanized, 
 Like hideous apparitions from the tomb, 
 That hoarsely chaffered by lit market-stalls, 
 Into a dwelling, meanest of the mean, 
 Where a young child lay weeping ; crippled frame, 
 And hopeless face told plainly of one refused 
 Bodily sustenance, untended, maimed, 
 Scarred with habitual blows ; while cruel cold 
 Looks, and harsh words have laid waste her young 
 
 life. 
 A man weak-visaged cowered before a woman 
 Inflamed with drink, and choler — father, mother, 
 Men named the pair — and save for reeking rags 
 Upon the floor, a broken chair, some shards 
 Of littered food, the filthy room was bare ! 
 But pale Death looked with pity on the child. . . . 
 .... In a vault hard by of some deserted house 
 There lies the body of a murdered girl, 
 None knowing, save night-hearted murderers ; 
 Unowned, unwept by any man, or woman 
 In this confused, loud-battling multitude. 
 
 Is there indeed no more than doth appear ? 
 An outraged and extinguished human soul, 
 Four blank dead walls, a silent senseless night —
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 9 
 
 Senseless and silent, save for our loud ears — 
 
 Around the ruin of what seemed a child ? 
 
 Foul insult hath been proffered here to Man ! 
 
 In all yon vain expanse of impotent worlds, 
 
 May none be found to avenge, or make amends ? 
 
 Nay ! if there are no Presences unseen 
 
 By mortals, unbelievable by sense, 
 
 Who have the child in charge, who bore her home, 
 
 Then from this dead-alive mad charnel-dance 
 
 Of earth let us depart, where all most wise, 
 
 Kind and heroic souls may not avail 
 
 To make our life endurable, though they, 
 
 With their poor lowly cups of cool clear water, 
 
 In this despair, and dearth, and dissonance, 
 
 Rendering fair Love palpable by loving, 
 
 Be the sole salt of our dark world's corruption ! 
 
 Happy birds fluting in the leafy woods, 
 And children playing by the rivulet ! 
 
 Next into neighbouring tenements I came, 
 Where hideous Lust with venal Force conspired 
 To outrage fair and feeble innocence, 
 By parents sold to ruin for base coin, .... 
 .... Then a voice spake : " Consider where you 
 
 are !" 
 And sore amazed, I found me in a church ; 
 But the voice said : " Lo ! here they do as there !" 
 Here well-attired smooth dames and cavaliers
 
 io A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 Assisted, while bland mother and smug sire 
 Delivered their young maiden to a lord 
 Of broad rich acres, and deep-dyed ill-fame, 
 Plague-dabbled ermine, and smirched coronet ; 
 Her a demure priest, silver-syllabled, 
 Profaning holiest word and ordinance, 
 Offered before the altar to low gods 
 Of Pelf, Position, Power. The sires of old, 
 Jephthah and Agamemnon, immolated, 
 Weeping, fair daughters for the common weal, 
 And those pure virgins bowed the patient head, 
 Young victims aureoled with martyr fire ; 
 But these, degenerate, degrade their child, 
 Starved on base offal-maxims of the world, 
 Yea, prostitute her heart to infamy, 
 Hunting their hollow bubbles of ill greed ! 
 
 Yonder, for guerdon of a life-long toil, 
 That heeds no hunger of the infinite soul, 
 Faint parents watch their little ones devoured 
 By famine ; for the scanty wage, 
 That serves for summer shelter, fails to shield 
 From searching winter blasts of accident, 
 Old age, or illness ; then the poor must beg, 
 Or steal, or starve, and watch their children die. 
 
 But are not indignation, and deep ruth, 
 Baffled recoil, loud passionate appeal
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 1 1 
 
 From earth's confusion to a starry sphere 
 
 Of holier Order, mirrored in the soul, 
 
 Faint and aloof, are they not very God ? 
 
 More than ill-breathing nightmares, and dull coils 
 
 Of gorged contentment, or the infinite Void, 
 
 Thronged with fair semblance ? Yea, by right 
 
 divine, 
 These are but slaves, and those commanding kings ; 
 They travail till the God be formed in man ; 
 Yea, realms of rapine, limbos, are in labour, 
 Till very God be born within their womb. 
 The Soul compels rude rebels of the night, 
 Passions, Ambitions, Evil aim, Denial, 
 To hew wood and draw water for Her need ; 
 All kingdoms crowned Her in the Heavens of old ; 
 Hers are the glory, and predominant power ! 
 O'er you lemures, vampires, and grim ghouls, 
 The tranquil Queen moves, ruling turbulent tides 
 Of human tempest, and the outer deep 
 Of your wild, heaving, dark dominion. 
 Infernal empires, billowing in gloom, 
 Altho' you rise athwart the calm pale orb, 
 Foamingly threatening her soft sweet face, 
 Ye feel the mild monitions of her eye ! 
 And Faith hath power to compass her own Vision, 
 Herself the fair fruit come to birth in us, 
 Earliest green point of the flower to be.
 
 j 2 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 Idlers indifferent, prosperous, full-fed, 
 On well-worn usage easefully reclined 
 In vasty mansion ; j ostlers for more gold, 
 Or place, or power, in senate, change, and church, 
 Immersed in worship, sport, or spectacle, 
 Methought I visited ; poor homeless folk 
 Cowering unclothed by temple-porch and palace, 
 With pining babes half-hidden in their rags, 
 While painted harlots flaunt their own pollution, 
 And forms more formidable prowl ; they skulk, 
 Desperate, plotting cruel desperate deeds 
 For private greed, or violent overthrow 
 Of that immense, hoar, consecrated Pile, 
 Where the jammed People standing scarce may 
 
 breathe, 
 Wide-mouthed aware of pomp of priest and king. 
 Then I looked stifling up to the earth-pall ; 
 A death-shroud, one contamination, wrapped 
 Round human plague, thick-woven of sin and 
 sorrow ! 
 
 Yet there be wafts of heavenlier effluence 
 From the ten righteous Abraham desired. 
 For Human Love moves in the lazar-house 
 Of our poor planet, gentle minister. 
 The cloudy pall moves, lifting from the city ; 
 Sun gleams through rents in it on her thronged life, 
 On tower and temple, and the lordly river.
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 13 
 
 Lo ! little children playing on the green, 
 Or noisome alley, changed to paradise 
 By young enchantments of fresh fantasy ; 
 In airy school they learn, with happy faces : 
 There note the humanizing spectacle, 
 Grave for life-lore, and for amusement gay : 
 While kindly Opulence with aching Need 
 Shares verier wealth than gold, the gentle lady, 
 Whom we on earth name Mercy, bends to heal 
 A mortal Pain, who turns to kiss Her shadow. 
 And hear sweet Music hovering like a dove 
 Over the weary ! Yet are all but gleams 
 In lurid fume that suffocates the sun ? 
 This huge black whirlpool of the city sucks, 
 And swallows, and encroaches evermore 
 On vernal field, pure air, and wholesome heaven — 
 A vast dim province, ever under cloud, 
 O'er whose immeasurable unloveliness 
 His own foul breath broods sinister, like Fate. 
 And yet what wealth of wisdom, and rich lore, 
 Swift lightnings of keen-edged encountering wit, 
 Fair tribute of all periods, all lands, 
 Wide walls alive with hues of genius ! 
 Our pale West here meets mellow Orient, 
 Flowing with warm-hued raiment, redolent 
 Of perfume, eyed with slow luxurious fire. 
 All realms send sons, elect ambassadors, 
 For interchange of many-moulded mind.
 
 1 4 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 And rarely, deep indrawn from the mad whirl 
 Of dissonant motion round me, face to face, 
 'Mid comelier architecture than our own, 
 I find me with the venerable shades, 
 Mankind consents to honour — legislator, 
 Iconoclast, bard, warrior, king, queen : 
 Richard the Lion, Alfred, the Black Prince, 
 That armoured conqueror of Agincourt, 
 And She who gained a nobler victory, 
 By Calais, over a revengeful heart, 
 True queen, true woman, Mercy's minister ; 
 Mailed knight, with baron proud from Runnymede, 
 Dan Chaucer, Wyclif, Cromwell, Hampden, Charles. 
 There speeds boy Chatterton, elate with hope, 
 There droops, pale, sullen, near the agony ! 
 Shakespeare, the human ; Milton, ocean-toned ; 
 Ariel Shelley ; Byron, the volcano ; 
 Our Voice of hills and lakes ; the luminous-eyed 
 Young Greek, astray in our dim century ! 
 
 Beyond the Saxon, Norman, Roman town, 
 (For each whelms, founds itself on what fore-ran ; 
 So all lie deep entombed beneath the stones) 
 Where London roars, there slept the lonely wild, 
 Where London roars, the lonely wild will sleep. 
 Ourselves are founded on the lives before, 
 Founding the future ; will the world grow wise 
 With all the long-accumulating years ?
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 1 5 
 
 A train sped on a road banked o'er the lanes, 
 And courts ignoble of our monstrous East ; 
 Wherefrom glad children, laden with spring flowers, 
 Fluttered white kerchiefs cheering ; at a window 
 Of one of those poor dwellings a pale child 
 Waved his lean arm responsive ; his hurrah 
 Was drowned in theirs ; they saw not the wan 
 
 smile 
 Of that seven-year- old cripple ; in a cot, 
 That seemed an orange-case disused, he lay, 
 Propped high for him to see the bright live trains 
 Rush past with human freight ; an ancient dame 
 Tended the child, his grandmother ; they two 
 Lived ever here ; the boy knew no green fields; 
 Through the long days, and late into the nights, 
 (When her frail charge lay peacefully in sleep, 
 And when to wakeful voyagers by rail 
 The shadow of the love-invented cot 
 On the illumined blind appeared to be 
 That of a little coffin ; ah ! great Love ! 
 Wilt thou soon lay the lad in such a cot ?) 
 The old woman plied her scissors and her needle 
 For a poor pittance ; one rich offering 
 Of sweet burned incense, all her selfless soul 
 Is offered up to Heaven for the child. 
 The dame hath taught her helpless one to read, 
 Buying him Noah's ark and picture-book,
 
 1 6 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 And she hath helped him order on the floor 
 A mimic park with turfs from a lark's cage, 
 Wherein are planted perpendicular 
 Thin sticks of deal, their foliage woolly shreds 
 From old frayed borders of the grandame's gown ; 
 A baking-dish contains the mimic lake, 
 And, swimming there, a dinted bird, once white. 
 These are unbeautiful ; the neighbouring scene 
 Affronts our every sense ; Plague, Famine lurk 
 With heads obscene, with sly lack-lustre eyes, 
 Couching at every threshold motionless. 
 Yet, here, yea, here, not where the lark pours joy, 
 Evermore pouring ecstasies in air 
 Of rapturous blue, nor where a throstle wafts 
 His incense of clear notes upon the breeze, 
 O'erquavered by soft shadows of young leaves ; 
 Nor where, with age-long rapture, holy men 
 Dream swooning visions in Himalayan snows — 
 Not there, but here I find me at Heaven's gate, 
 Open to let the eternal Sun shine through 
 On our sad Earth ; fair angels come and go 
 In this poor hovel, for Queen Love lives here, 
 With dear handmaidens, Patience, Tenderness, 
 And her fair warrior-knight, young Fortitude. 
 Behold ! how many graceless roofs and walls 
 Are glowing with a rarer, heavenlier grace 
 From martyr-deaths, and lowly hero-lives !
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 17 
 
 A boy lay suffering in hospital, 
 His members crushed and mangled by a wain, 
 Whose wheels passed o'er him playing in the street- 
 Scarce can he bear the thought that he must die, 
 His mother's darling ; she is kneeling near. 
 Later the father came — the man well loved 
 His little son, but he was harsh to her, 
 Paying her patient drudgery with blows. 
 " My lad, I cannot, will not part with thee !" 
 By the white bed he sobbed, to whom the child : 
 " Father, they tell me I must leave you both ; 
 I feel it very hard, but I shall die 
 Content, I think, if thou wilt promise me 
 One thing before I go " — to whom the sire 
 " Yes, if it lie within my power, lad !" 
 " Promise thou never wilt ill-use, or strike, 
 Or be unkind to mother when I'm gone !" 
 The man did promise, faltering, and then 
 Peace passing understanding, like still light, 
 Illumined the pale face of him who died. 
 
 A widow woman nursed her ingrate son 
 In his long illness to the final hour, 
 With inextinguishable tenderness, 
 He little heeding, snatching as a due 
 Love's gracious offices, a graceless churl ; 
 She had bestowed on him from birth till now 
 
 2
 
 1 8 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 Through all the helpless years of his great need, 
 
 Freely her innermost, her sacred self, 
 
 And later fair solicitudes of love 
 
 Still proffered ; but, a pauper of the heart, 
 
 A boor in spirit, he had thrown from him 
 
 The pure celestial jewel of high heaven, 
 
 Which is the substance of the throne of God. 
 
 Rarely he brought his earnings home to her, 
 
 Squandering them on transitory sense ; 
 
 But her clear love welled on perennial, 
 
 Until the man died ; then the pillow soft, 
 
 Whereof she had despoiled herself for him, 
 
 Was placed by her beneath the wasted corse 
 
 Within the coffin, for she said to one 
 
 *' I know well that he will not want it now 
 
 Under his thin back, yet, sir, I shall feel it ; 
 
 I could not bear to rest on it to-night, 
 
 Knowing him laid upon the cold hard wood, 
 
 And he so tired, worn to skin and bone !" 
 
 She did not long survive the man, but when 
 
 She went, her heart still turned to serving John. 
 
 And surely Love will work deliverance 
 
 In Love's own time, for time belongs to Love. 
 
 Down-trodden woman, mother, mistress, wife, 
 Monotonously toiling for his weal, 
 Who slays you, swift or slowly, ye would shield 
 Him whose vile blows deform you ; now I see
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 19 
 
 In you my God, who died upon the Cross, 
 
 I hear the seraphs choiring in your heart ! 
 
 Barren the bowers of Elysium ; 
 
 Our very God is born from human woe ! 
 
 Yea, golden fruit of the Hesperides, 
 
 A hundred-headed, tumult-breathing Beast, 
 
 A dragon-chaos guards ; the Hero dares ! 
 
 Fearlessly storms he the fell forest-hold, 
 
 Crags lapped in fire, or never might he find 
 
 And kiss Brunhild in her enchanted sleep, 
 
 Awakening the maid to nuptial love. 
 
 Nor was the Volsung found invulnerable 
 
 Until he bathed him in the monster's blood, 
 
 Whom erst he braved with his good brand, and slew. 
 
 Yea, Sirius, excelling our great Sun 
 
 Twofold in splendour, Sirius the fair, 
 
 How were his mighty drift imaginable, 
 
 Or lordly functions in the hierarchy 
 
 Of all Sun-gods, and their obedient worlds, 
 
 Or offices for man, without the dark 
 
 Stupendous Brother-orb invisible, 
 
 From age to age sublime companion ? 
 
 And blest are ye, dark heralds of new dawn, 
 Rebels, who beard the tyrant, for all souls 
 Claiming free-growth to their own height, with form 
 Predestinated from eternity. 
 So Pride, thrust back within the boundary, 
 
 2 — 2
 
 20 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 May learn at length to recognise the Body, 
 
 Whereof we are but functioned cells, for fear 
 
 He perish isolated in the cold. 
 
 So thunders Revolution ! Hail ! unnamed, 2 
 
 Unconsecrate Melchizedek, thou priest 
 
 Of the Most High God, though thou know Him not, 
 
 Yea, and blasphemest idols we adore, 
 
 Who have usurped in Temples His great Name ; 
 
 Without or sire, or mother, or descent, 
 
 Never enrolled among the ranks of men, 
 
 Among the living of thy land unknown, 
 
 So best to serve the people of thy love, 
 
 Young martyr, self-immured in a rank prison, 
 
 That saps the vitals, withers the rose-bloom ! 
 
 There also fade thy fellows, delicate girls, 
 
 Who fondle Death with desperate white hand, 
 
 And with gay smile salute Annihilation, 
 
 Enamoured of one flame-eyed lover, Him 
 
 They serve with indefatigable joy, 
 
 Whose lofty name is Martyrdom for Man ! 
 
 Howe'er insane or violent your aim, 
 
 Deniers of our Lord, I worship Him 
 
 Alive in you, Knights-errant of the Poor, 
 
 Whom His decrepit Church adores, but dead. 
 
 And yet reserve some reverence for ranks 
 Of men, who guard with dedicated lives 
 Our holy, our inalienable Past,
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 2 1 
 
 Their heads bowed low before that ancient throne 
 Of long-descended hoar Authority! 
 These have mine honour also, for I know 
 That not one cause, but rival camps in arms 
 Hold Sons of Belial, and true friends of God ; 
 While from loud shocks of terrible crossed steel 
 Leaps the live flame that ministers to man 
 
 .... A stately palace, whose immense demesne 
 
 Of vivid verdure is ablaze with bloom, 
 
 Whose halls are animate with radiant forms 
 
 Of picturing genius, luxuriant 
 
 With wealth of loom, and mine, art-elevate, 
 
 And sacred from the hopeless hands of toil. 
 
 The windows of the lordly pile behold 
 
 A silver water ; o'er wide miles of park 
 
 Fair antlered deer browse in the fragrant fern, 
 
 Under huge oaks, whose age-long reverie, 
 
 And leafy secrecies of summer sound 
 
 Hold more than meeteth mortal ear and eye. 
 
 But all is hushed now, save for weird, far calls 
 
 Of owls, and plashing fountain ; the lithe forms 
 
 Of statues on the terrace in the moon 
 
 Are not so beautiful as living maid 
 
 And youth, who linger under whispering leaves 
 
 And by the flowery frondage ; her light garb 
 
 Seems airy foam, a woof of silken sheen,
 
 22 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 And delicate lace about her warm white throat. 
 Each leans to each with deep and dewy eyes : 
 The wedding-day is near ; I hear low words : 
 " Was ever happiness like ours ? the clock, 
 Silverly chiming from the ivied tower, 
 Tells how the bells will peal full soon ; come 
 
 death, 
 We shall have lived, my darling, we have lived !" 
 
 Then all was blurred ; the happy vision faded, 
 As if the potion of slow-poisoning Time 
 Were concentrated in one murderous draught, 
 Of power to wither suddenly ; I hear 
 Again the troubled surge of London town. 
 
 I pass the teeming dens where herds of men, 
 Shamefully heaped promiscuous, unshamed, 
 Are thrust by their stern gaoler, Poverty, 
 With scorn refused the luxury of Virtue. 
 
 The vision taketh small account of Time, 
 For Time is creature of the mind that knows, 
 Varying with it ; what was shown me now ? 
 In a confined low garret droops a maid, 
 Wearily sewing with red eyes, and pale, 
 A withering flower, reft of air and light ; 
 But she is very beautiful ; her face 
 And form are moulded for young joy of love, 
 Tho' the rare undulation and rich lines 
 Be thwarted by a niggard nourishment,
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 23 
 
 And the worn faded raiment be no mate 
 
 For her moon-fair imperial loveliness. 
 
 Deftly her needle plies ; the long night wears ; 
 
 Orion solemn passeth, and hath rest ; 
 
 The weary girl may sleep not : lo ! she holds 
 
 A delicate sheeny fabric as of foam, 
 
 A virginal rich raiment ; surely this 
 
 Should be the very garment I beheld 
 
 Enhance the beauty of the soft betrothed 
 
 That summer evening in the calm domain, 
 
 And easeful pleasaunce of prosperity. 
 
 Whose feet are on the stair ? she starts ; she 
 
 quivers, 
 Rose-colouring ; the dewy, lustrous eyes 
 Flash luminous, the while she mutters low, 
 " He comes : I can no more : I wrestled long ! 
 Why doom my prisoned youth to wither here, 
 Shut from all sweet fruition of my years ? 
 How have I earned this ? Honourable toil 
 Is ever paid here with a long dull death ; 
 And I will live ! I will be rich like her ! 
 And wear fine jewelled clothing, aye, be loved, 
 Adpred, enjoy my life before I die ! 
 Ah ! mother, pardon ! if thou wert but here !" 
 A knock : one enters : he displays rare gems, 
 Whose lustre blinds the miserable den : 
 He wraps her round with passionate fierce fire ;
 
 24 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 Delicious flame consumes her ; eagerly, 
 Headlong she plunges down the abyss of ruin. 
 
 Sisters, and brothers, ye who name the Christ, 
 How may ye suffer such foul shame to be ? 
 We would be leisured, good, accomplished, wise, 
 Charming, and charitable ; the rank soil 
 That breeds the exotic is a brother's blood ! 
 Inevitable ills arraign the Heavens : 
 Some wrongs accuse mankind ; we challenge them. 
 
 From where our patriot sailor on his column 
 Stands, with the lion of England at his feet, 
 Among the fountains, looking toward the towers, 
 The banded towers of Westminster, beyond 
 Green trees, by Thames, to Lambeth, London roars 
 Eastward, loud leagues of palaces for men 
 Who toil to accumulate, around the dome, 
 Where warrjor Wellington by Nelson sleeps, 
 Flows to four towers, phantoms of the past, 
 In whose dread dungeons linger shadowy sighs 
 From ruined lives of all the slow sad years ; 
 On, where the navies largesse of world-wealth 
 Lavish on quays vociferous (yet we 
 Pine ever ailing, surfeited, unfed), 
 By that great arsenal of war-weapons, 
 Forged with tremendous clangour, to God's sea. 
 
 And westward, London roars round congregated 
 Palaces, where men squander. Of the crowds
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 25 
 
 Our eyes encounter, some are sorrowful, 
 
 Long uncompanioned of sweet Hope, the bride, 
 
 Withering mournful ; some are jubilant, 
 
 Sunny and strong with youth, or strenuous, 
 
 Of glad demeanour ; listless, languid these ; 
 
 But most are weary in this Babylon, 
 
 Whether men idle, or contend for bubbles ; 
 
 The happiest are they who minister. 
 
 Beyond these regions, reaches of dim street, 
 
 A sullen labyrinth of ill-omened hovels : 
 
 Ah ! dull, grey, grovelling populations, ye 
 
 That are rank human soil, wherein we force 
 
 Our poor pale virtues, and our venomous sins 
 
 Of gorgeous growth, our proxy-piety, 
 
 Official food, that yields no sustenance, 
 
 But chokes with outworn fantasy free life, 
 
 What hope, O people ? Red convulsive strife 
 
 With those whom circumstance made masters, then 
 
 Brief moaning silence under other lords ? 
 
 And yet what ask ye ? Sick men from a feast 
 
 Rise loathing ; health can relish his poor crust. 
 
 The pure soul hath her panoply of light, 
 
 In direst dungeon radiating heaven ; 
 
 Ensphered in her own atmosphere of joy 
 
 Sees no deformity ; while tyrants tread 
 
 Their marble halls, to find them torture-chambers ; 
 
 A graceless prison all his fair demesne
 
 26 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 To some illiberal, illustrious fool. 
 Perchance ye, ground to powder in God's mill, 
 May serve more than who sleep in delicate death, 
 With rarest incense in the mummy-fold. 
 
 O whirling wheels ! O throngs of murmuring 
 men ! 
 Where is the goal of infinite endeavour ? 
 And where your haven, O ye fleeting faces ? 
 High Westminster, like some tall ghostly father 
 Of olden time, stands wildered, while for crowds 
 Of modern men, swift eddying at his feet, 
 His reverend grandeur void of consolation 
 Broods ; for no warriors, consecrated kings, 
 Kings who were crowned here through the centuries, 
 Nor bard, nor saint, emblazoned on the pane, 
 Canopied under marble in the aisle, 
 Whose shadowy memories haunt his heart, may help. 
 These are unsceptred ; time trends otherwhere ; 
 Their slumber is by channels long deserted ! 
 His hoary towers, with melancholy eyes, 
 Dream in their own world, impotent for ours ; 
 Or if he speak, who may interpret now ? 
 He wakes in vain, who slept for centuries, 
 For he awakens in some alien world. 
 
 Doth Hope inhabit, then, the sister-pile, 
 Whose stately height hath grown to overshadow 
 That hoary minster ? This in sooth avails.
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 2j 
 
 And yet methinks more health is in the old, 
 Renewing youth from fountains of the new, 
 Than in rash overthrow of all men built, 
 With salt of insolence sown in holy places. 
 
 Therefore, O secular, and sacred towers, 
 Confound your glories by the river-shore, 
 And marry mighty tones in ordering time ! 
 Cathedral organ, roll insurgent sound, 
 As though the archangel would arouse the dead ! 
 Our firm foundations on the invisible, 
 Build we the ever ampler, loftier state, 
 Till unaware we walk the City of God ! 
 Yea, for I deem the fathers we revere, 
 Shrined in cathedral glooms, embolden us 
 With eyes of silent counsel, and dumb power, 
 Approving backs turned on their empty tomb. 
 But who may slay the irrevocable Past ? 
 The Past, our venerable Sire, that girds 
 Bright armour round us, like some grand old knight, 
 With benediction sending forth fair youth 
 To battle, crowning what himself began ! 
 
 When England bathes in shadow, the tall tower 
 Of that great palace of the people shines, 
 Shines to the midnight like a midnight sun. 
 While crowned inherited incompetence, 
 And while law-making men laborious 
 Through long night-watches, in their golden 
 chamber,
 
 28 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 Wage wordy wars of faction, help the State, 
 
 The dreadful river rolls in darkness under, 
 
 Whirling our human lights to wild witch-gleam ! 
 
 See yellow lamps in formidable gloom 
 
 Of both the shores, night-hearted haunts of men ; 
 
 Terrible water heaped about great piers 
 
 Of arches, gliding, gurgling, ominous ! 
 
 But on the vasty parapet above 
 
 Those Titan tunnels, ghastlier for the glare 
 
 Of our electric mockery of moons, 
 
 Appears a moment a fate-hunted face — 
 
 Wan Desolation, plunging to the Void. 
 
 Then swirls a form dishonoured among gleams, 
 
 Which eddy as light-headed ; what was man, 
 
 With other offal flotsam, flounders, rolls. 
 
 But now for one who mused upon the bridge, 
 Of pier and arch tremendous, the huge reek, 
 And sin-breathed exhalations of the city, 
 Transfigured by an alchemy of power, 
 Burned with all colour ; the broad river rose 
 Aslant horizonward, and heavenward, 
 One calm aerial glory of still dream ; 
 Thronged habitations on the shadowy shore 
 Blend solemn, disembodied to a bloom 
 Ethereal, bathed in evening ; fair enchased, 
 Or diapered upon the delicate air,
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 29 
 
 Hull, mast, sail, tiny bark, or barge, or steamer, 
 
 Poised darkly in mid primrose of the tide, 
 
 Like carven fretwork on a golden shrine. 
 
 All monstrous hostels, with interminable 
 
 Glazed bulks that over-roof the clanging train, 
 
 And all our builded chaos doth repent, 
 
 Converting into beauty ; while I muse, 
 
 The mild, and modulated cadences 
 
 Of lemon fruit, shy violet, dove-down, 
 
 Deepen to very pomp and festival 
 
 Of dyes magnificent ; one diapason 
 
 Of hues resplendent, crimson, gold, and green, 
 
 And purple gorgeous, like robes of kings, 
 
 Or caves of sun-illumined sea-treasure, 
 
 Or glories blazoned in Cathedral aisle, 
 
 Heart of white lily, fruit of passion-flower, 
 
 Or fervid eagle-eyes ; a parable, 
 
 One nuptial-feast of marrying glow and gloom, 
 
 A wondrous parable of life through death ! 
 
 While yonder haughty heights of Westminster, 
 Where once fierce feuds of our illustrious dead 
 Sleep reconciled in monumental calm, 
 Mary reposing by Elizabeth, 
 And where with throes of living loud debate 
 Are brought to birth the still behests of Heaven ; 
 With ancient consecrated privilege 
 Of lordly Lambeth on his stately sward ;
 
 30 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 These, and the grand dome, and the four grim towers, 
 Haunted by phantoms of long-wandering crime, 
 And harbours thronged with navies of the world, 
 Glow fair a moment with supernal fire. 
 
 I am on the country-side again ; but ah ! 
 Nor here may I escape the treacherous 
 Flat viper-head that lurks behind all joy. 
 The World god-fronted hath a dragon-train, 
 Long loathsome coil, gold-cinctured, with a heart, 
 Now hot with love or hate, and now dead-cold. 
 Yea, under budding pear and cherry tree, 
 Preluding silent anthems of white bloom, 
 Under a nest of mellow-throated thrush, 
 Who warbles out his soul to a soft mate, 
 Her own warmth luring life from the frail egg ; 
 Here one deemed woman drowns a trustful child, 
 Pleading in vain, for she is all one stone 
 To his close-clinging, wild, appealing woe. 
 Where did she drown him ? Whence the bubbling 
 
 cry? 
 In a pure lingering stream, that mirrors well 
 Fresh grass and flowers, whose home is on his bank; 
 He takes them to his heart, he shrines them there ! 
 Nor ever bolt leaps shattering from the blue ; 
 A plumy pomp of cloud in azure air 
 Sails undismayed ; Earth shudders not for shame ; 
 Nor yawns to engulph her — gulphs the innocent.
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 3 1 
 
 Only a zephyr dimples with young joy 
 Yon vivid verdure overstarred with gold ! 
 
 Poor paralytic human Pity ! what 
 Canst thou in this confusion ? Wring thy hands, 
 And weep, like Rachel, for thy little ones, 
 Or fumble thy conjectural remedies, 
 That may be poisons, and experiment ! 
 A human sire, on whom a child relies, 
 Asleep in perfect trust upon his heart — 
 Would he not give his body to be burned, 
 And all his soul to Satan for the child ? 
 Death shall devour it, even in his arms, 
 Or Ruin rend, he lying impotent ! 
 
 But Thou, O Father, if these are thy Sons, 
 Canst Thou behold them prostrate in such plight 
 Unmoved ? nor rend the heavens and come down ? 
 Or art Thou sleeping, on a journey, or 
 Hast Thou deserted these thine orphans, Lord ? 
 Nay, who but Heaven commissioneth dim Plague, 
 Death, Sorrow, Madness, dire ancestral Sin, 
 Cancer, long torments unimaginable, 
 And all the brood of ever-ravening ills, 
 That devastate mankind ? No bribe can tame them, 
 Unguessed, innumerous, invincible. 
 So clings some awful beast to a faint fawn, 
 Galloping maddened o'er the indifferent wild. 
 By wells, and pleasant pasturage the Doom
 
 32 A Lay of Civilization. 
 
 Cowers in his ambush, springs from the blue air, 
 Falls like a thunderbolt ; O men, can ye 
 Rival your Mother in accomplished crime ? 
 Who perpetrates what freezes the warm blood, 
 Masked in light laughter, kissing while she stabs I 
 And yet, because the still small voice within 
 Reveals God more than storm, or earthquake, we, 
 Bettering Her rude ways, give sense the lie, 
 Nor will believe Her what she only seems. 
 O Thou dread Silence, dumbly do we bow ; 
 In silence we commend Thy world to Thee. 
 
 Most awful Spirit of the Universe ! 
 Kneeling before Thy throne we grovel low, 
 Yea, wrestle with Thee through the long night hours, 
 Unknowing Thy dread Name ; we will not let 
 Thee go until Thou loose the cloudy fold 
 From that veiled countenance ! Hath Love, or 
 
 Hate, 
 Or dead Indifference his temple there ? 
 Now sweet, now bitter waters, night and day, 
 Anguish and joy, strong radiant righteousness, 
 With sin malformed, and folly, motley crew, 
 Stream from Thy bosom all impartially ! 
 We know not; but of old a Man who bore 
 Upon His shoulder the world's weight of woe, 
 Whom men name wisest, He announced Thee 
 
 Father,
 
 A Lay of Civilization. 3? 
 
 j 
 
 Praying, " Not My will, but Thine own be done !" 
 Yea, and through mystic change, or swift or slow, 
 Within the general bosom, and in ours, 
 Faith's inarticulate reason may grow clear 
 Fair utterable vision : the wild dance, 
 The strange phantasmagory of ill-dream, 
 Named sin and sorrow, may appear birth-pangs 
 Of life consummate, else impossible ! 
 
 Therefore, dear birds, in leafy woods ye warble, 
 And you, my children, by the rivulet 
 Play, laughing merrily, because the world 
 Is sound at heart, howe'er it seems to ail. 
 God-fronted, dragon -trained, 'tis but a marred 
 Image in souls, who travail yet ungrown, 
 Who, ruffled, slowly waver into rest. 
 And why we arise or fall, no mortal knows, 
 Save that by change alone the unchanged abides ; 
 Love breathes amid the ruin of red wrong. 
 For a moment only of our infinite life 
 With one wild wing-pulse cleaving earth's rent air, 
 Oh ! lift we one another from this hell 
 Of blindly-battling ignorance to God !
 
 EARLY LOVE. 
 
 Our early love was only dream ! 
 
 Still a dream too fair for earth, 
 Hallowed in a faint far gleam, 
 
 Where the fairest flowers have birth, 
 Let it rest ! no stain e'er trouble 
 Magic murmur, limpid bubble ! 
 
 There two spirits in the calm 
 Of moonlight memory may go, 
 
 Finding pure refreshing balm, 
 When life traileth wounded, slow 
 
 Along dim ways of common dust, 
 
 As dull lives of mortals must. 
 
 Early love, fair fount of waters, 
 Ever by enchantment flowing, 
 
 Where two snakes, her innocent daughters, 
 Were wont to swim among the blowing, 
 
 Wilding flowers thou knowest well, 
 
 In the wood of our sweet spell !
 
 Early Love. 35 
 
 Never Fear found out the place, 
 
 Never eyes nor feet profane ! 
 Of our innocent youth and grace 
 
 Love was born ; if born to wane, 
 We will keep remembrance holy 
 From the soil of care and folly. 
 
 No weariness of life made wise, 
 No canker in the youngling bud, 
 
 No lustre failing from our eyes, 
 Nor ardour paling in the blood ! 
 
 Neither ever seemed less fair 
 
 To the other playing there. 
 
 Still asleep, we drift asunder, 
 
 Who met and loved but in a dream ; 
 
 Nor kissing closely, woke to wonder 
 Why we are not what we seem ! 
 
 Fairy bloom dies when we press 
 
 Wings young zephyr may caress. 
 
 Fare you well ! more might have been ! 
 
 Nay, we know more might not be ! 
 A moment only I may lean 
 
 O.i your bosom, ere you flee, 
 Ere the weary sultry day 
 Hi\ e my morning and my May ! 
 
 3—2
 
 36 Early Love. 
 
 Yet a fairy fountain glistens 
 Under soft moon-lighted leaves, 
 
 And my wistful spirit listens 
 
 For a voice that glows and grieves, 
 
 Breathing, when my heart would fail, 
 
 Youth from yonder fairy vale, 
 
 Where sings a nightingale.
 
 LOVE HIDING. 
 
 LOVE was playing hide and seek, 
 And we deemed that he was gone, 
 
 Tears were on my withered cheek 
 For the setting of our sun ; 
 
 Dark it was around, above, 
 
 But he came again, my love! 
 
 Chill and drear in wan November, 
 
 We recall the happy spring, 
 While bewildered we remember 
 
 When the woods began to sing, 
 
 All alive with leaf and wing, 
 Leafless lay the silent grove ; 
 But He came again, my love ! 
 
 And our melancholy frost 
 
 Woke to radiance in His rays, 
 Who wore the look of one we lost 
 
 In the faraway dim clays ; 
 No prayer, we sighed, the dead may move, 
 Yet he came again, my love !
 
 38 Love Hiding. 
 
 Love went to sleep, but not for ever, 
 And we deemed that he was dead ; 
 
 Nay, shall aught avail to sever 
 
 Hearts who once indeed were wed ? 
 
 Garlands for his grave we wove, 
 
 But he came again, my love !
 
 ROSE AND BUTTERFLY. 
 
 A butterfly flew to the heart of a rose, 
 
 Ah ! more than he longed for the flower will 
 yield ! 
 
 Soft fans of Ariel close, unclose, 
 
 Unknowing how long he may dwell in our field. 
 
 He is here ! he is yonder ! the rose will weep, 
 1 If you may not abide with us, child of air, 
 
 For ever enfolded in memory sleep, 
 Here in the heart of me, oh my fair !' 
 
 Chill wind breathes, with a mist and a rain, 
 Shedding the sweet petal, every one ; 
 
 Now where is the heart of the flower so fain, 
 And the winged blue summer elf, where is he 
 gone ? 
 
 Rose-lover, remember, though delicate wings, 
 Deep-dyed in a wonderful azure of heaven, 
 
 Be turned into dust of inanimate things, 
 
 Very soon from your own life you will be for- 
 given !
 
 SWING-SONG. 
 
 Swing ! swing ! 
 Birds in the budding wood, birds on the wing 
 Fill sweet soft air with carolling ; 
 The woods no more contain their glee, 
 Joy brims over on every tree 
 In a flutter of leaves hilariously, 
 
 Swing ! swing ! 
 
 Early primroses awake from sleep, 
 In many a dewy dale they peep ; 
 Lo ! populous land, far field and grove, 
 Aerial as clouds that move 
 In labyrinthine drifts above ! 
 Swing ! swing ! 
 
 Anemone-flakes of a veined snow 
 Lie over the sunny herbs below, 
 Lie over brown bents, woven and wet, 
 Where yellow-eyed white violet 
 With moss and strawberry hath met, 
 Swing ! swing !
 
 Swing-Song. 4 * 
 
 Spring waves her youngling leaves for token 
 Dark winter's deadlier spells are broken ; 
 The firry roofs, with low sea-sound, 
 Welcome to their calm profound 
 The dove's long call in a love-swound, 
 Swing ! swing ! 
 
 Baby-boy lies on a sisterly arm 
 
 Of little maid Mary, safe from harm, 
 
 Little boy Willy will push the pair, 
 
 Hark ! how they laugh as they rush through the 
 
 air! 
 All the young world laughs, oh, how fair ! 
 Swing ! swing !
 
 MAGIC-LANTERN. 
 
 I WAS within a darkened chamber, 
 
 Full of children small ; 
 Upon my knees I felt him clamber, 
 
 One of the least of all, 
 
 Answering my call. 
 
 He was a baby of the people, 
 
 Nor aught of him I knew j 
 Only the shadow of one steeple 
 
 Abode upon us two ; 
 
 His arms around me grew. 
 
 Quaint figure, battle, bark, snow-mountain, 
 
 The lantern-wizardry, 
 Arouse joy's hidden silver fountain 
 
 To pretty wondering glee, 
 
 Plashing full merrily.
 
 Magic-Lantern. 
 
 Albeit nor now, before, nor after, 
 
 Mine eyes beheld the boy, 
 When he so pealed with innocent laughter, 
 
 Methought my own, my joy, 
 
 Awhile with me did toy. 
 
 Athwart the drear unwarmed abysses 
 
 Of all the later years, 
 He leaned awhile from angel blisses, 
 
 To calm my foolish fears, 
 
 To kiss away my tears.
 
 THE TEMPLE OF SORROW. 3 
 
 The Minster glory lies engulphed in gloom, 
 With mournful music throbbing deep and low, 
 And all the jewelled joy within Her eyes 
 Slumbers suffused ; the saint, the warrior, 
 On tomb recumbent, kneeling panoplied, 
 Blend far-away mysterious presences 
 With a wide-seething multitude, alive 
 Through all the pillared grandeur of the nave, 
 A human sea ; the gorgeous full pomp 
 Of civil, militant, imperial pride, 
 And sacerdotal splendour, cloth of gold, 
 Chalice bejewelled, silks imbued with morn, 
 Flows in blue twilight of a perfumed air, 
 Flows, flashing into momentary gleam 
 By altar and shrine, for lustre of the lamps, 
 Silver and gold suspended, or mild shine 
 Of tall white wax around a central Night 
 In the mid-transept ; there the Catafalque, 
 The Shadow dominates, reigns paramount 
 O'er all the temple ; 'tis the hollow heart,
 
 The Temple of Sorrow. 45 
 
 Dispensing Darkness through the frame supine 
 Of that colossal Cross, which is the Fane. 
 The huge vault under yavvneth, a deep wound, 
 Filled full with Horror ; Death abideth there : 
 Aye, with our lost Ideals, our lost Loves, 
 Baffled Aim, palsied Faith, Hope atrophied ! 
 All the circumfluent glory-glow of Life 
 Mere tributary to the awful throne 
 Of this dread Power ; all cast their crowns before It 
 Yea, as blithe waters from the abysmal womb 
 Of caverned Earth dance buoyant into Day, 
 So here from fountains of primeval Night 
 In very deed Life seemeth effluent. 
 
 And some there be most honoured in the 
 crowd, 
 From whom illustrious prince, with emperor 
 And noble stand obeisantly aside. 
 Who are they ? for they wear no bravery, 
 Nor badge of high estate within the realm, 
 Whose garb uncourtly sombre shows and mean. 
 No confident bearing, claiming deference, 
 As of right full-conceded, suns itself 
 Proudly on these ; we judge them of the herd 
 Of rugged toilers, whom the stroke of Fate 
 Despoils of floral honours and green leaves, 
 Fells for rough use, not leaves for leisured grace,
 
 46 The Temple of Sorrow. 
 
 Or putting forth the loveliest that is theirs. 
 Lowly their port, whose dull and earthward eyes, 
 Heavy with weeping, droop beneath rude brows, 
 Whose light is with their heart, quenched in the 
 
 abyss 
 That holds their best beloved, torn from them 
 In fierce embraces of devouring fire ; 
 Whose souls were so inextricably involved 
 With these that perished, in the ghastly fall 
 They too were wrenched low from the living 
 
 light 
 Of placid, self-possessed familiar day 
 Down to a desolate disconsolate wild, 
 Haunt of grim Madness, hollow Doubt, Despair : 
 Only the dead, more happy, seem to glide 
 Lower to nether caverns of cool sleep. 
 
 Grief is their patent of nobility ; 
 Sorrow the charter of their right to honour. 
 Smitten to earth, behold them cowering, 
 Mocked, buffeted, spurned, spat upon, effaced 
 Under the blood-red executioner, 
 Whom some name Nature, and some God, the 
 
 Lord. 
 These do but threaten feebly with a mouth 
 Or hand, more feeble than a delicate beast, 
 Lashed for hell-torment by a learned man, 
 Lashed for hell-torment in the torture-trough ;
 
 The Temple of Sorrow. 47 
 
 The unregarded Sudras of the world, 
 Bleeding to slow death from an inward wound, 
 Deep and immedicable evermore. 
 
 To these the proud and prosperous of earth 
 Pay reverent homage ! it is marvellous ! 
 And yet no marvel ! such fate-stricken men 
 Are armed, and robed imperially with awe ! 
 Who flame sublime to momentary wrath, 
 Peal with mad mirth, then grovel impotent ; 
 Who affirm not their own selves, who falter lost, 
 Like foam blown inland on the whirlwind's wing 
 From ocean, there dissolving tremulous 
 Where kindred foam evanished only now, 
 So they in the lapsed being of their dead. 
 They are one with these they cherished and adored, 
 Not separate, individual any more : 
 Lieges are they of Sorrow, pale crowned Queen 
 Over man's miserable mad universe. 
 
 What might have been fair Body grows to 
 Soul : 
 From false-appearing palace halls of sense 
 They are delivered, into mournful worlds 
 Of Peradventures all unfathomable, 
 Forebodings infinite, wild hope, surmise, 
 Faith, love, sweet longing ; yea, they are disturbed
 
 48 The Temple of Sorrow. 
 
 From dull content with earth's inanities 
 
 By revelation of what hollow hearts, 
 
 And loathly shapes they hide ; afire with thirst, 
 
 Now will they sound the eternal deeps within 
 
 For living water, clouded and disused, 
 
 Cumbered with ruin ; their dull eyes are roused 
 
 From low rank plains to interrogate the height 
 
 Of perilous attainment or endeavour, 
 
 Where snows hold high communion with stars, 
 
 Where from aerial eyrie sails the eagle, 
 
 Calm in clear air, familiar with Heaven. 
 
 They are made free of God's eternal spirit, 
 
 Ever abounding, inexhaustible ; 
 
 Consumed, that they themselves may truly be. 
 
 Behold ! the Minster cruciform and grand, 
 Grows human, more than human, as I muse, 
 The Holy House of Life, the Crucified ! 
 What seems the World, the Body of the Lord ! 
 Expanded arms, and frame pulsate with blood, 
 Close-thronging individual lives ; His Heart, 
 Death, haloed with pale anguish and desire. 
 Even so the Sun eclipsed, a sable sphere, 
 Is ringed around with his corona flame, 
 Wherein appear weird members of red fire. 
 But as the Sun behind this ominous orb, 
 That is the spectral shadow of our moon,
 
 The Temple of Sorrow. 49 
 
 • 
 Smiles evermore beneficent, so Love 
 Veils Him in gloom sepulchral for awhile, 
 That we who sound the abysses of Despair 
 May weave pure pearls, Her awful bosom hides, 
 Into a coronal for our pale brows, 
 And He Himself, descending to the deep, 
 Bearing our burden, may win lovelier grace 
 Of Love's own tears, which are the gems of God. 
 
 Ever the plangent ocean of low sound 
 Fills all with midnight, overwhelms my heart. 
 Lit tapers faint around the Catafalque, 
 And fair-wrought lamp in sanctuary and shrine. 
 The wan expanse seems labouring confused 
 With what feels like some glutinous chill mist, 
 Close cobweb-woof; the great Cathedral quakes, 
 As from sick earthquake throes ; the pillars tall 
 Heave, like huge forest-peers, that agonize 
 In tides of roaring tempest : will the pile 
 Vanish anon to assume an alien form ? 
 For all the pillars hurtle aloft to flame 
 Flamboyant, cloven, pallid, while the roof 
 Reels riven ; yet there is not any sound. 
 Lo ! every Christ on every crucifix 
 Glares with the swordblade glare of Antichrist ! 
 While on the immense-hewn flanking masonry, 
 Scrawled, as by finger supernatural, 
 
 4
 
 50 The Temple of Sorrow. 
 
 As in Belshazzar's banquet-hall of old, 
 Behold the " Mene ! menc /" but the realm 
 Divided is the royal realm, the soul ! 
 The guilty soul, ingorged by the dim fiend 
 Of loathsome, limbless bulk, Insanity ! 
 In dusk recesses how the shadows wax 
 Palpable, till they palpitate obscene, 
 Clinging, half-severed ; our sick souls are ware 
 Of some live Leprosy, that heaves and breathes 
 Audibly in the impenetrable gloom. 
 
 Hear ye the moans of muffled agony 
 By yonder altars of the infernal aisle ? 
 Marmoreal pavements slippery with blood ! 
 While all the ghastly-lit ensanguined space 
 Quickening teems with foul abnormal births ; 
 Corpse faces scowling, wound about with shrouds, 
 Sniffing thick orgy fumes of cruelty, 
 Steal out, or slink behind in the shamed air. 
 Vast arteries of the dilating pile 
 Pulsate with ever denser atom-lives 
 Unhappy ; do mine eyes indeed behold 
 Those holy innocents, whom she of yore, 
 The Voice in Ramah, wept so bitterly, 
 Rachel, sweet spirit-mother of their race ? 
 They are holy innocents of many a clime, 
 And many a time, some murdered yesterday,
 
 The Temple of Sorrow. 5 1 
 
 And some still languishing in present pain : 
 Dumb women, with marred faces eloquent, 
 Hold their wan hands ; while all around, beneath 
 Among their feet, what seems a harried crowd 
 Of gentle beings, who are man's meek friends. 
 They in the reeking shadow yonder fawn 
 Upon dyed knees of things in human shape, 
 All hell's heat smouldering in lurid eyes, 
 And Cain's ensanguined brand upon their brow, 
 Who on Christ-altars, prostitute to sin, 
 Offer these innocents to fiends whose names, 
 Obsequious to the inconstant moods of man, 
 Vary elusive, and deluding ; now 
 They are called Moloch, Baal, Ashtaroth, 
 Hatred, Revenge, War, Lust, Greed, Might-is-Right, 
 Now Church, the Truth, the Virgin, or the Christ, 
 But in a later time Expediency, 
 Weal of Man, Nature, Lust of Curious Lore. 
 The accurst oblation of fair alien lives, 
 None of their own, they pour to satiate 
 The hydra-headed, demon brood obscene. 
 These are devoured with ever subtler pangs 
 Cunningly heightened, fuelled, nursed, prolonged 
 By cold, harsh hearts, one adamant to woe, 
 Or cruel, infamous appetite for pain. 
 Ay, and of horrors loathlier than these 
 The verse dares name not, thrust on beautiful 
 
 4—2
 
 52 The Temple of Sorrow. 
 
 Maidens and babes defenceless, of such feasts 
 The God-deserted souls are gluttonous — 
 All Nature pales at Satan's carnival ! 
 
 Who are the lost souls ? Legion is their name. 
 Noble, pope, cardinal, king, refuse vile 
 Of crime-infested cities. I behold 
 Borgia, Caligula, Napoleon, 
 Marat, De Retz, and he that did to death 
 The royal child, who heard the angels call 
 Him home, soft singing, dying, ere he died. 
 And some are here who cumber earth to-day 
 Flesh-girt ; their name shall not profane the page. 
 There go seducers, they who lightly break 
 Warm simple hearts who trust them : there are 
 
 some 
 Who wither women slowly with harsh looks, 
 111 words, or blows, inflamed, obsessed by fiends, 
 Wearing the semblance of a flask of fire. 
 Yonder fair dames white-bodied, and dark-souled ! 
 Mothers we find, who can withhold unshamed 
 The high and holy dues, that all beside 
 Of animated nature punctually, 
 With rapturous devotion, consecrates, 
 The dear debt to the fruit of our own womb, 
 What strength owes to dependent feebleness, 
 Reason full-orbed to shyly-opening sense,
 
 The Temple of Sorrow. 53 
 
 Confided and confiding : even now 
 Their mothers gave themselves for these, and God 
 Bestows Himself on every living thing 
 For ever : these will starve, or drown their babes, 
 Enthral them to a ghastlier than death, 
 That he may work on them his loathly will, 
 Corrupting soul and body. Drop the veil ! 
 All here, foul traitors ! all betrayed the trust 
 Nature imposed, while only dyed less deep, 
 Who, passing, drawled, "Am I my brother's 
 keeper ?" 
 
 White victims, immolated for the world ! 
 Ye tyrants, ye alone are miserable ! 
 For whom Hate hath left loving, though a beast, 
 Is nearer God than you, removed from Him 
 By all the hierarchies of all worlds ! 
 But these have fallen to abysms of pain, 
 And you to sloughs of inmost infamy, 
 That all the spheres may learn for evermore 
 The treachery of sweet ways that are not Love. 
 Yet if some God be lingering in you, 
 Your own eternal selves consenting not, 
 (Which are by lapse, and by recovery) 
 Touching the lowest deep ye shall recoil ! 
 When in the furnace heated sevenfold 
 More than the wont, fierce furnace of God's wrath,
 
 54 The Temple of Sorrow. 
 
 Blasted, ye shrivel, your inhuman pride 
 Stern, stubborn metal swooning to weak air 
 In the white heat of Love's intolerable, 
 Ah ! then will not the innocence ye wronged, 
 Leaving her own bliss for you, fly from heaven 
 To heal you by forgiveness ? May it be ! 
 
 Yea, there are fleeting gleams from the All-fair, 
 Playing of children, larks, and lovers gay, 
 Beautiful image, grand heroic deed, 
 Cheery content ; but ah ! the grim World-woe 
 Absorbs all vision, overwhelms the heart ! 
 A few, with seraph pity in clear eyes, 
 And flashing swords retributive unsheathed, 
 Sore-pressed and wounded, wrestle with the foe, 
 Defeated, slain, delivering ; while aloft 
 We seize anon some glimpses of august, 
 Benignant countenances, with white wings, 
 As of Heaven's host invisible drawn up 
 For battle ; but I know not who prevail. 
 A few pale stars in chasms of wild storm ! 
 Aliens, alas ! no potentates of ours. 
 We are in the power of Darkness and Dismay, 
 Anguishing God-forsaken on the cross ! 
 Yea, sons of Belial with jaunty jeer 
 Ask where thou hidest, Lord ! the Avenger ! God ! 
 Devils a priestly scare to them, who know not
 
 The Temple of Sorrow. 55 
 
 Devils allure them blind into the pit. 
 
 Could they but hear low ghastly mirth convulse 
 
 Shadowy flanks of these live Plagues in air ! 
 
 Mine eyeballs seared with horror, and my heart 
 One writhing flame, I prayed that I might die, 
 And lay me down to sleep with him for ever ! 
 A sevenfold darkness weighs upon my soul : 
 I hear no groans, no music ; all is still, 
 Even as the grave : one whispers of the Dawn : 
 Once I surmised the morning gray, not now : 
 Nor in the chancel, whose wide wakeful orb, 
 Solemnly waiting, ever fronts the East, 
 Nor in the cold clerestories of the nave. 
 One whispers of the lark j I hear no bird. 
 And yet I know the seraph eyes of Dawn 
 Find in her last, lone hollow the veiled Night. 
 
 Hearken ! a long, low toll appals the gloom ! 
 Like a slow welling blood from a death-wound 
 In the world's heart, that never will be staunched, 
 Crimsoning the void with waste expense of pain ! 
 Another, and another, vibrating ! 
 A phantom bell tolls in the abysmal dark 
 The funeral of all living things that be. 
 I, turning toward the Catafalque, desire, 
 Plunging within the gulf, to be no more. . . .
 
 56 The Temple of Sorrow. 
 
 When, lo ! some touch as of a healing hand. 
 For while I knew the mourners only saw 
 Flowers on fair corses and closed coffin-lid, 
 I grew aware of souls regenerate 
 1 Afar, sweet spirits raimented in white, 
 Who leaned above the Terror with calm eyes ; 
 And for a moment their purged vision cleared 
 Earth-humours from mine own, till I beheld 
 No deadly Dark — a lake of living Light, 
 A mystic sphere, the Apocalyptic main ! 
 Heaving with happiness that breathes, a home 
 For all dear spirits of the faded flowers 
 Outrageous men have pulled and thrown away ; 
 Clouds in blue air reflected in a mere, 
 Or roseflush in rose-opal, a shy dawn 
 In lakes at morning, so the souls appeared. 
 
 My little children, do I find you here ? 
 All here ! Among you smiles our very own. 
 Each little one hath, nestled in his bosom, 
 A delicate bird, or elfin animal. 
 White-clustered lilies, beautiful as morn, 
 In wayward luxury of love's own light 
 Eddying, abandoned to love-liberty ! 
 Joy-pulses of young hearts unsulliable 
 Weave warbling music, a low lullaby. 
 I fancy they have syllabled a song :
 
 The Temple of Sorrow. 57 
 
 We are fain, are fain, 
 
 Of mortal pain, 
 We are fain of heavenly sorrow, 
 
 As a gentle rain, 
 
 She will sustain, 
 Wait only till to-morrow ! 
 
 Among death-pearls 
 
 Of dewy curls, 
 O little ones in anguish ! 
 
 The Lord hath kissed, 
 
 I would ye wist 
 For all the world ye languish ! 
 
 The loveless world 
 
 Lies love-impearled 
 From innocency weeping ; 
 
 Wan wings be furled, 
 
 And you lie curled 
 In Love's warm haven sleeping. 
 
 For when ye know 
 
 What glories flow 
 For all from childly sorrow, 
 
 A flower will blow 
 
 From your wan woe 
 Within the wounded furrow.
 
 5§ The Temple of Sorrow. 
 
 We are fain, are fain 
 
 Of mortal pain, 
 We are fain of heavenly sorrow ; 
 
 As a gentle rain 
 
 She will sustain, 
 Wait only till to-morrow ! 
 
 So pure, pellucid fays enjoy the calm 
 Of summer seas, and woven waterlights 
 In faery cavern, where the emerald heart 
 Lies heaving, or blue sheen on a warm wave. 
 And ye are fair-surrounded with lost Love, 
 Celestial Vision, vanished Hope, Desire, 
 Lovelier recovered, gloriously fulfilled 
 With a Divine fulfilment; more than ours. 
 
 There, in the midst, the likeness of a Lamb, 
 That had been slain, whose passion heals our hurt, 
 Wearing a thorn crown, breathing into bloom ! 
 Lo ! if ye listen intently by the light, 
 Ye hear a winnowing of angel wings, 
 N earing, or waning : while from far away, 
 I'the Heart of all, what revelation falls ? . . . . 
 A sound, oh marvel ! like a sound of tears ! 
 
 Pain ever deepens with the deepening life, 
 Though fair Love modulate the whole to joy.
 
 The Temple of Sorrow. 5 9 
 
 A myriad darkling points of dolorous gloom 
 Startle to live light ; subtle infinite veins 
 Of world-wide Anguish glow, a noonlit leaf. 
 
 All vanish : there is dawn within the fane ; 
 Born slowly from the wan reluctant gloom 
 Conquering emerges a grand Cross of Gold, 
 And all the nations range around serene.
 
 THE GEMONIAN STAIRS. 4 
 
 Only a slave in Rome of old, 
 
 A slave for whom none cares ! 
 Slaughtered in dungeon-deeps, and rolled 
 
 Down the Gemonian stairs ; 
 Insulted, marred, exposed to view, 
 
 With other human lumber, 
 There in the Forum, where the Roman concourse 
 grew 
 
 Around his mortal slumber. 
 There in the Forum, by the mighty walls, 
 
 And columns hero-crowned, 
 Whose mourning voice upon the slumberer calls ? 
 
 The whine of a poor hound ! 
 He will not leave the swarthy clay, 
 
 He licks the rigid face ; 
 Harsh-laughing, stern men in long-robed array 
 
 Gather about the place : 
 One pitying hath offered bread ; 
 
 The dog but lays it down
 
 The Gemonian Stairs. 61 
 
 Before the dumb mouth of the master dead ; 
 
 Whose body later thrown 
 In turbid Tiber's flood he follows, 
 
 Borne headlong by the river, 
 To lift it from the strong, loud gulf that swallows, 
 
 Struggling, till both have sunk for ever. 
 
 A gleam is for a moment cast 
 
 Over oblivion : 
 The dead slave, whose dog holds him fast, 
 
 Drifts, passes, — all are gone 
 
 .... Behold ! yon broken-hearted hare, 
 With hounds and hunters after her ! 
 
 And sweet, shy poet-birds of air, 
 Startling from man the murderer ! 
 And seals we flay for their sleek fur ! 
 
 Ah ! what a wail of agony is torn 
 From all these innocent martyr-races, 
 
 Writhing beneath man's cruel scorn, 
 
 Whose tyrannous hell distorts their faces ! 
 
 A cloud of shame clothes earth forlorn, 
 Shrouds her among the starry spaces.
 
 SEA. LAKE, AND MOUNTAIN.
 
 THALATTA. 
 
 WHEN Love is fading from thy path, a faint re- 
 membered gleam, 
 
 Whose wond'rous glory crowned thy crest in 
 youth's triumphal morn, 
 
 When Friendship yields a willow-wand, once in 
 Love's generous dream, 
 
 Leaned on with all thy weight of soul, defying 
 doubt and scorn, 
 
 Once deemed inviolable, divine, an oaken staff, a 
 stay, 
 
 Never to fail thee at thy need in all the perilous 
 way ; 
 
 When thou art tossed from surge to surge, a help- 
 less waif of ocean, 
 
 While hell-born lusts and base-born gusts befool 
 thee with vain motion ; 
 
 When foolish wants and angers in ignoble eddies 
 whirl 
 
 A human spirit, formed to front God's glory un- 
 ashamed ; 
 
 5
 
 66 Thalatta. 
 
 Nor any Cause colossal, like a catapult, may hurl 
 
 To splendid goals all powerful souls, chafing, un- 
 loved, unnamed : 
 
 Then, poet, seek alone resounding hollows of the sea, 
 
 And plunge thy sullen soul in ocean's grand im- 
 mensity ! 
 
 Dare to scale the water mountains ! let 
 them topple in loud ruin 
 
 O'er thee, lusty swimming from clifi-harboured 
 sandy coves ; 
 
 Though stress of tides impetuous threaten thine 
 undoing, 
 
 Or violent swirl of undertow, where seething 
 emerald moves 
 
 Around rude reefs and promontories, menace with 
 swift death, 
 
 Confront the glorious wild Power, who plays with 
 human breath ! 
 
 Yea, let thy reckless shallop dare seas rushing 
 round the caves, 
 
 Smite with straining oar the kindling heavy night 
 of waves ! 
 
 Climb the sea-crag, hand and foot, little careful of 
 a fall ! 
 
 Storm shall be thy requiem, fairy foam thy pall. 
 
 Ah ! mighty boisterous blown breath, your siren 
 song for me !
 
 Thalatta. 67 
 
 I quaff exhilarating draughts of wine from forth 
 the sea, 
 
 Soft seething masses of fair froth luring deliciously ! 
 
 Vaporous blast ! voice of vast long sibilant sea- 
 thunder ! 
 
 Bellowing explosions in abysmal cavern-halls ! 
 
 Storm my sense with sound imperial, with a joy 
 sublime and wonder ! 
 
 Throned aloft in perilous places unto me the 
 Mother calls. 
 
 Hear Her ! tremble not ! but echo to the glowing 
 spirit's core ; 
 
 It is Her voice ; Her sons rejoice ; they shout to 
 Her again : 
 
 By sacred river-fountains, in the desert blast, and 
 roar 
 
 Of bounding cataracts, in forest, by foam-moun- 
 tains of the main, 
 
 In the grand Atlantic chaos, in his elemental war, 
 
 She converses; I have heard Her; I would hearken 
 evermore ! 
 
 Ye, my brothers, loved and worshipped ; all your 
 music rolls with hers ! 
 
 Human sounds inform the wind that like a trumpet 
 stirs ! 
 
 .... Verily I deem I hear above the tumult of 
 the blast, 
 
 5—2
 
 68 Thalatta. 
 
 That takes my breath, and dashes all the salt spray- 
 over me, 
 
 Not the sea-mew's cry, nor wind's wail, 
 
 eerie tones of some who 
 
 passed, 
 
 Wailing in the wind's wail, shadows drifting deso- 
 lately ! 
 
 For they say the drowned must wander on the 
 cliffs or on the wave, 
 
 Where the fatal moment plunged them in their 
 " wandering grave." 
 
 Travelling mountain range, following moun- 
 tain range ! 
 
 Now the foremost wavering green crest begins to 
 smoke ; 
 
 Breaks at one place, and suffers dark precipitous 
 change, 
 
 Arching slowly, solemnly ; under where it broke 
 
 A heavy shadow haunteth the grim wall ; till 
 emerald, 
 
 All the cliff falls over, tumbles a dead weight 
 
 Of crushed and crashing water 
 
 .... yonder unenthralled, 
 
 A monstrous buffalo in headlong strong tumul- 
 tuous hate, 
 
 Plunging wild hatred upon the rock! immense 
 white tongues of fire
 
 Thalatta. 69 
 
 Are hurled around, enshroud, envelope with a 
 
 cloud ; 
 Lo ! where springs to Heaven a fairy fretted spire ! 
 Or is it a wan warrior's arms thrown up in death's 
 
 despair ? 
 Death-white, baffled in grey air ! ... . 
 Shattered upon his iron Doom in armoured onset 
 
 there ! 
 Niagaras upthundering, foamy avalanches, 
 Beetling, flickering huge crags of seething snowy 
 
 spume, 
 Wherein are caverns of green tint among pale 
 
 coral branches, 
 And white comets thwart more shadowy froth-pre- 
 cipice's gloom ! 
 Dark founded isles evanish in the flying mountain 
 
 tomb ; 
 Albeit their wave-sculptured forms defiantly abide 
 Under grey vapours hurrying o'er the sombre 
 
 tide : 
 Torn from parent shores, around their pillowed 
 
 isolation 
 Ocean revelling roars with terrible elation ! 
 
 Afar, in the dull offing of a furrowed sullen 
 sea, 
 O'er yon rock-rooted Pharos rises awfully, 
 Like a Phantom, rises slowly a white cloud,
 
 70 Thalatta. 
 
 Scales the lofty lanthorn where three human hearts 
 
 are bowed, 
 Bowed awhile, involved within the Sea-Plume that 
 
 ascends, 
 Swallowing a hundred feet of granite ere it bends. 
 Behold ! the sweep of mighty crags, whose 
 league-long fortress front, 
 Whose frowning granite arc defies with stature tall 
 
 and steep 
 Ocean's embattled billows : these have borne the 
 
 brunt 
 Of terrible assaults ! the cannon thunders, and a leap 
 Of smoke ascends the ramparts of a breached and 
 
 broken keep, 
 At each discharge : 
 
 The Titan targe hath pinnacle 
 
 and tower : 
 Or is the whole an organ for the surge to smite 
 
 with power, 
 That hath the turbulent storm-music for everlasting 
 
 dower ? 
 
 Cathedral Heights of Titans, hewn by 
 colossal Hands, 
 Millennial ministers of flood and frost, wild earth- 
 quake and fierce fire ! 
 Lo ! where a porphyry portal of the mountain 
 
 heart expands,
 
 Thalatta. 7 l 
 
 Portentous shadowy buttress, weather-goldened 
 
 spire ; 
 There multitudinous waters wander greyly in the 
 
 gloom ; 
 Within the high sea-sanctuary a god dispenses 
 
 doom ; 
 In and out they wander, sombre courtiers by the 
 
 gate, 
 Where a dim Sea-Presence broodeth in solemn 
 
 sullen state — 
 Where no mortal breath dare whisper, only hollow 
 
 sounding surges, 
 A welter of wild waters with their melancholy 
 dirges. 
 
 Behold they rave in echoing cave their 
 wrath rent long ago, 
 Rent for a lair, where grim Despair rolls shoulder- 
 ing to and fro ; 
 To and fro they furious roll prodigious boulders, 
 Rounding them like pebbles with huge Atlantean 
 shoulders. 
 
 Beyond one vast rock-sentinel guarding the 
 awful court, 
 Surrounded and o'ershadowed by walls perpendi- 
 cular, 
 Before those palace-portals foamy serpents huge 
 resort,
 
 7 2 Thalatta. 
 
 Wallowing upon the wilderness, grey and cold afar; 
 While among the tumbled boulders, before the 
 
 giant cave, 
 Robed in royal purple, royal raiment of the wave, 
 Lie crunched and shattered timbers, ribs of mighty 
 
 ships ; 
 Yea, and limbs of some who, craving one more kiss 
 
 of loving lips, 
 Were stifled in the violent froth, jammed beneath 
 
 black stones, 
 Whose glossy weed may dally with their coral- 
 crusted bones. 
 
 Tall, gaunt Phantom yonder, warding portals 
 of the night, 
 With silent, sweeping stature growing from the 
 
 eastern wall, 
 Lank long arms upraised, and curving with the 
 
 vasty cavern's height, 
 A beaked monster face between them, looking 
 
 downward to appal ! 
 Art thou stone, or art thou spirit, fearful Shadow 
 
 weird and grey, 
 Daring mortals to advance beyond their precincts 
 
 of the day ? 
 
 All the cliffs are shrouded to the waist, or 
 only loom 
 Head and shoulders through a death-mist, but 
 
 where the rollers boom
 
 Thalatta. 73 
 
 Their feet are bare and stern : pale sand I discern 
 Near their ruined grandeur ; a chrysoprase pale 
 
 green 
 Narrow water isles it, with a restless flow ; 
 The tidal heave advances ; cormorants of swarthy 
 
 mien 
 Squat on rocks about the cave, or dive in deeps 
 
 below. 
 
 While sweet samphire, with tufted thrift, 
 glows in clefts above, 
 Ever and anon a sound, with ominous power to 
 
 move, 
 Wanders from the wilderness, a very mournful 
 
 spell : 
 Through the wind and wave embroilment ever tolls 
 
 a passing bell. 
 Whence the warning ? what imports it ? When I 
 
 clamber, when I rest, 
 It seems to breathe foreboding in a fading air. 
 Is it from the sombre church in lonely glen de- 
 
 prest ? 
 There, by old cross and coffin-stone, on immemorial 
 
 chair 
 Of rude grey granite, hoary ghosts in dark conclave 
 
 may brood : 
 Nay! but the tolling tolleth from the turbulent flood
 
 74 Thalatta. 
 
 Not from where the giants hewed them vasty seats 
 
 of solid rock, 
 Or Druid with poured human blood adored the 
 
 Logan block : 
 Not from where the Cromlech ponderous, and 
 
 hoary cirque remain, 
 Though we know no more who reared them, Celt 
 
 or Dane, or Athelstane ; 
 Nor whose the mouldered dust in yonder urns of 
 
 perished prime, 
 Bard's, or warrior's, who flared a moment in the 
 
 hollow Night of Time ! 
 — There on dreary moorland haunteth owl and 
 
 raven ; 
 There at moonrise hoots the rocky earn, to con- 
 found the craven, 
 While fiends are hunting dark lost souls who are 
 
 shut out from Heaven — 
 The knell is knolled by wild white arms of surges 
 
 ramping round 
 The fatal reef, where mariners are drifted to be 
 
 drowned ! 
 It is the Rundlestone! He knolls for passing 
 
 human souls : 
 It is the voice of Doom from forth profound 
 
 Eternity ! 
 
 Weird dragon forms, roughened in storms, a 
 foamy beryl rolls
 
 Thalatta. 75 
 
 Ever around you, dumb and blind stones, who con- 
 front the sky ! 
 I feel that in your soul there slumbers a dim Deity. 
 .... Were it not better to dissolve this chaos of 
 
 the mind, 
 And in the twilight of your world long consolation 
 
 find, 
 Restoring the proud Spirit to your elemental 
 
 Powers, 
 Dying into cliff, and cloud, and snowdrift of sea 
 
 flowers ? 
 . . ■ . Vanishes the storm-rack in the gleaming 
 
 West : 
 A long wide chasm, glowing like a World of Rest, 
 O'er the dusk horizon opens, whereinto 
 Visionary domes arise, and towers of tender hue ! 
 A holy realm of Silence, a city of deep Peace, 
 Where Death leads all poor prisoners who have 
 
 won release ! 
 Long ranks of high surges, heaving dark against 
 
 the bright 
 Heaven, fall illumed 'thwart iron crags, whose 
 
 frown relents to Light. 
 
 Land's End, 1875.
 
 BY THE SEA. 
 
 Ah ! wherefore do I haunt the shadowy tomb, 
 My joyless days and nights among the dead ? 
 Know you not He, my radiant Sun, who fled 
 With hope uncertain soothes yon awful gloom 
 Afar, upon the weltering sea's wan lead ? 
 Behold ! faint, tremulous, ghostly gleam illume 
 The unrevealing mystery of Doom, 
 Ashpale dumb wastes, impenetrable, dread, 
 O'erwhelming purple incumbent o'er the coast. 
 Into the Presence-Chamber of dim Death 
 He hath been summoned ! and I hold my post 
 Here on the threshold, thirsty for one breath 
 Released from yonder ! Leave me ! I love my 
 
 night, 
 More than abounding pulses of your light !
 
 TINTADGEL. 
 
 TlNTADGEL, from thy precipice of rock 
 
 Thou frownest back the vast Atlantic shock ! 
 
 Yet purple twilight in cathedral caves, 
 
 Moulded to the similitude of waves 
 
 Tempestuous by awful hands of storm, 
 
 Along whose height the formidable form 
 
 Of some tall phantom stands on guard ; huge 
 
 boulders 
 From iron crags reft, toys of ocean shoulders, 
 And thine own venerable keep that yields 
 To slow persuasion ancient Nature wields, 
 Inevitably sure, forbode thy fall : 
 For she compels the individual 
 To merge in the full manifold of Her 
 His cherished privacy of character : 
 And therefore Arthur's ancient ramparts range 
 From human fellowship to nature, change 
 To semblance of the fretted weathered stone, 
 Upreared by mystic elements alone.
 
 78 Tintadgel. 
 
 That old grey church upon the sheer black crag, 
 Where generations under the worn flag, 
 Or in God's acre sleep ! There one dark morn 
 I worshipped — heights of heaven all forlorn 
 With drift confused, wild wind, and the blown rain — 
 I mused of those who in the lonely fane 
 Halted world-weary through the centuries ; 
 Kelt, Saxon, Norman, English ; on their eyes 
 The dust of Death ; Oblivion holds the psalms, 
 Where now in turn we celebrate the calms, 
 The Sabbath calms with hymns, and chanted prayer. 
 But what indignant wail of wild despair 
 Storms at the doors and windows, shakes the walls ? 
 Before the void unsouled sound that appals, 
 Our human hymns in that dim sheltered place 
 Seem to fall low, to cower, and hide the face. 
 Awhile faint praise wins victory ; uproars 
 On overshadowing vans without the doors 
 Whirlwind insurgent, as in awful scorn, 
 To be controlled no longer, nor forborne, 
 Of poor brief fluttering human hopes and breath, 
 Played with a moment by the winds of death, 
 Ere dissolution and dismemberment 
 In the undivine, dim void where all lie shent ; 
 A shivering foam-flake, or a timid light 
 Spat upon by the rains, extinguished quite ! 
 We laughin fair pavilions of light Love, 
 Or worship in the solemn, sacred Grove,
 
 TintadgeL 79 
 
 We rest in warm Affection built to last : 
 And all will leave us naked to the blast ! 
 
 What means the wind ? Yon ruin's proud decay — 
 We know not who in far off years did lay 
 The strong foundations : Arthur, Guinevere, 
 And Lancelot, were they indeed once here ? 
 Are all fair shadows of a poet's dream, 
 Or did they ride in the early morning beam, 
 Armed, and resplendent, radiant within, 
 Champion redressors, quelling tyrant Sin, 
 Slaying grim dragon Wrongs, who held in ward 
 The maiden Innocence ; from Joyous-Guard, 
 Camelot, or Tintadgel, brave and glad, 
 Did they indeed ride, Lancelot, Galahad ? 
 Have lawless love, and Modred swept to ground 
 That glorious order of the Table Round ? 
 Who knows ? they are but creatures of the brain ; 
 Or if they were, behold our mightiest wane, 
 With all their sounding praise, like dream- 
 shadows, 
 Storm-rack that drifts, or billowy foam ! none 
 
 knows 
 Whether they were, or were not ; sombre keep, 
 And chapel crown twin crags, one ruin-heap, 
 While the sea thunders under, and between, 
 And cliffs no hand hewed mimic what hath 
 been
 
 80 Tintadgel. 
 
 In weathered buttress, pinnacle, and tower' 
 Where now the prancing steed, the lady's bower ? 
 No clang of arms, no battle bugle blown, 
 Only in sounding cave the wild sea clarion ! 
 
 But then my heart responded to the blast, 
 I deem that in those clouds of the dim past 
 Tall god-like forms loom verily ; with us 
 Dwell souls who are not less magnanimous. 
 They pass, yet only to be self-fulfilled ; 
 They pass, yet only as the All hath willed, 
 To enter on their full-earned heritage, 
 More righteous, and momentous wars to wage ; 
 And if those heroes were not, then the mind 
 That holds high visions of our human kind 
 Is mightier than mighty winds and waves, 
 And lovelier than emerald floors of caves. 
 Nature Herself is the high utterance 
 Of holy gods ; we, half awake in trance, 
 Hear it confused ; through some half-open door 
 We hear an awful murmur, and no more : 
 We are under some enchantment ; lift the spell, 
 What mortal then the wondrous tale may tell ? 
 
 Tintadgel, 1884.
 
 SUSPIRIA. 5 
 
 Li?ies addressed to H. F. B. 
 
 Do you remember the billowy roar of tumultuous 
 ocean, 
 Darkling, emerald, eager under vaults of the cave, 
 Shattered to simmer of foam on a boulder of 
 delicate lilac, 
 Disenchantless youth of the clear, immortal wave ? 
 Labyrinths begemmed with fairy lives of the water, 
 Sea-sounding palace halls far statelier than a 
 King's, 
 Seethe of illumined floor with a never-wearying 
 motion, 
 Oozy enchased live walls, where a seamusic rings? 
 
 Do you remember the battle our brown- 
 winged arrowy vessel 
 Waged with wind and tide, a foaming billowy 
 night, 
 To a sound as of minute guns, when gloomy hearts 
 of the hollows 
 With sullen pride rebuffed invading Ocean's 
 might ?
 
 82 Suspiria. 
 
 Do you remember the Altarlet towers that front 
 the cathedral, 
 Dark and scarred sheer crag, flashed o'er by the 
 wild sea-mews ? 
 How they wheel aloft lamenting, souls of the 
 ululant tempest ! 
 And the lightning billows clash in the welter 
 Odin brews ! 
 
 A sinister livid glare from under brows 
 of the Storm-Sun ! 
 Brows of piled-up cloud, threatening grim Bre- 
 chou, 
 Bleaching to ghastly pale the turbulent trouble of 
 water, 
 While the ineffable burden of grey world o'er 
 me grew ! 
 Yea, all the weary waste of cloud confused with 
 the ocean 
 Fell full-charged with Doom on a foundering 
 human heart : 
 Our souls were moved asunder, away to an infinite 
 distance, 
 While all the love that warmed me waned, and 
 will depart. 
 Fiends of the whirlwind howl for a wild carousal 
 of slaughter
 
 Suspiria. 83 
 
 Of all that is holy and fair, so shrills the demon 
 wail ; 
 Ruin of love and youth, with all we have deemed 
 immortal ! 
 My child lies dead in the dark, and I begin to 
 fail! 
 Wonderful visions wane, tall towers of phantasy 
 tumble; 
 I shrink from the frown without me, there is no 
 smile within ; 
 I cower by the tireless hearth of an uninhabited 
 chamber, 
 Alone with Desolation, and the dumb ghost of 
 my sin. 
 
 I have conversed with the aged ; once 
 their souls were a furnace ; 
 Now they are gleams in mouldered vaults of the 
 memory : 
 All the long sound of the Human wanes to wails of 
 a shipwreck, 
 Drowned in the terrible roar of violent sons of 
 
 the sea ! 
 In the immense storm-chaunt of winds and waves 
 of the sea ! 
 And if we have won some way in our weary toil to 
 the summit, 
 
 6-2
 
 84 Suspiria. 
 
 Do we not slidder ever back to the mouth of 
 the pit ? 
 When I behold the random doom that engulphs 
 the creature, 
 I wonder, is the irony of God perchance in it ? 
 Tis a hideous spectacle to shake the sides of fiends 
 with laughter, 
 Where in the amphitheatre of our red world 
 they sit ! 
 Yea, and the rosiest Love in a songful heart of a 
 lover, 
 Child of Affinity, Joy, Occasion, beautiful May, 
 May sour to a wrinkled Hate, may wear and wane 
 to Indifference, 
 Ah ! Love an' thou be mortal, all will soon go 
 grey! 
 O when our all on earth is wrecked on reefs of 
 disaster, 
 May the loud Night that whelms be found 
 indeed God's Day ! 
 
 Our aims but half our own, we are drifted 
 hither and thither ; 
 The quarry so fiercely hunted rests unheeded 
 now ; 
 And if we seized our bauble, it is fallen to ashes, 
 But a fresh illusion haunts the ever-aching brow.
 
 Suspiria. 85 
 
 Is the world a welter of dream, with ne'er an end, 
 nor an issue, 
 Or doth One weave Dark Night, with Morning's 
 
 golden strand, 
 To a Harmony with sure hand ? 
 Ah ! for a vision of God ! for a mighty grasp of 
 the real, 
 Feet firm based on granite in place of crumbling 
 sand ! 
 O to be face to face, and heart to heart with our 
 dearest, 
 Lost in mortal mists of the unrevealing land ! 
 Oh ! were we disenthralled from casual moods of 
 the outward, 
 Slaves to the smile or frown of tyrant, mutable 
 Time ! 
 Might we abide unmoved in central deeps of the 
 Spirit, 
 Where the mystic jewel Calm glows evermore 
 sublime ! 
 The dizzying shows of the world, that fall and 
 tumble to chaos, 
 Dwell irradiate there in everlasting prime. 
 But the innermost spirit of man, who is one with 
 the Universal, 
 Yearns to exhaust, to prove, the Immense of 
 Experience,
 
 86 Suspiria. 
 
 Explores, recedes, makes way, distils a food from 
 a poison, 
 From strife with Death wrings power, and sea- 
 soned confidence. 
 : er the awakening infant, drowsing eld, and the 
 mindless, 
 Their individual Spirit glows enthroned in 
 Heaven, 
 Albeit at dawn, or even, or from confusion of 
 cloudland, 
 Earth of their full radiance may remain bereaven : 
 Yea, under God's grand eyes all souls lie pure 
 and shriven. 
 
 Nay ! friend beloved ! remember purple 
 robes of the cavern, 
 And all the wonderful dyes in dusky halls of the 
 sea, 
 When a lucid lapse of the water lent thrills of 
 exquisite pleasure, 
 A tangle of Hying lights all over us tenderly, 
 When our stilly bark lay floating, or we were 
 lipping the water, 
 Breast to breast with the glowing, ardent heart 
 of the deep ! 
 That was a lovelier hour, whispering hope to the 
 spirit,
 
 Suspiria. Sy 
 
 Breathing a halcyon calm, that lulled despair to 
 sleep ; 
 Fairy flowers of the ocean, opening innermost 
 wonder, 
 Kindle a rosy morn impearled in the waterways, 
 A myriad tiny diamond founts arise in the coralline, 
 Anemones love to be laved in the life of the 
 chrysoprase : 
 The happy heart of the water in many unknown 
 recesses 
 Childly babbled, and freely to glad companions : 
 We will be patient, friend, through all the moods of 
 the terror, 
 Waiting in solemn hope resurrection of our suns ! 
 
 Cherish loves that are left, pathetic stars 
 in the gloaming ; 
 Howe'er they may wax and wane, they are with 
 us to the end ; 
 The Past is all secure, the happy hours and the 
 mournful 
 Involved i' the very truth of God Himself, my 
 friend ! 
 It is well to wait in the darkness for the Deliverer's 
 moment, 
 With a hand in the hand of God, strong Sire of 
 the universe ;
 
 88 Suspiria. 
 
 It is well to work our work, with cheering tones 
 for a brother, 
 Whose poor bowed soul, like ours, the horrible 
 gulfs immerse ; 
 Then dare all gods to the battle ! Who of them all 
 may shame us? 
 The very shows of the world have fleeting form 
 from thee : 
 Discover but thy task, embrace it firm with a 
 purpose ; 
 Find, and hold by Love, for Love is Eternity. 
 
 Sark, 1 88 1. 
 
 O to be sure for ever ! weary of hopes 
 and guesses, 
 I would the film might fall that veils our orbs in 
 night ! 
 At eve grey phantom armies guard the mighty 
 mountain, 
 Denying free approach to wistful wondering 
 sight : 
 A Presence dim divined through blind impalpable 
 motion, 
 An awful formless Form, i' the core of change 
 unmoved,
 
 Suspiria. 89 
 
 No more was ours, until the grand invincible 
 Angel, 
 The clear-eyed North blew bare Heaven's azure 
 heights, and proved 
 Hope's heavenliest flight weak-winged ; his breath 
 with clangorous challenge 
 Dissolved the cloud-battalions, withering shamed 
 away : 
 Behold, in sunrise dyed, a wondrous vision of high 
 crag, 
 Spires of leaping flame arrested in mid-play ; 
 Peak, rock-tower, and dome ; huge peals of an 
 ocean of thunder 
 Assumed a bodily form in yonder wild array ! 
 And the long continuous roll of cloudy storm 
 subsiding 
 Was tranced to awful slopes of smooth grey 
 precipice, 
 While over all up-soared, retiring into the heavens, 
 Ever higher and higher, snows and gleaming ice! 
 Plain beyond plain, the strophes of a glorious 
 poem, 
 Voyaging stately and calm to heights of the 
 argument .... 
 How to be sure for ever ? deepening all our being, 
 And emptying self of self, with Truth we shall 
 be blent.
 
 90 Suspiria. 
 
 Yon hierarchy sublime of calm ethereal 
 mountain 
 Was born of earth's fierce passion, world-con- 
 founding throes, 
 Fire, and battle, and gloom ; the livid demon of 
 lightning 
 Flashed his zigzag blaze to be a norm for those ; 
 Birth and death, monotonous toil in deeps of the 
 ocean, 
 Co-operant blind to fashion a far-off repose. 
 Whose brief earth-hour may taste ripe future fruit 
 of the ages ? 
 Gauge with a life's one pace the march of the 
 armies of God ? 
 Forestall results of time, flash all the sun from a 
 dew-drop ? 
 But where the Sire hath willed, there every foot- 
 step trod. 
 
 Tis only a little we know ; but ah ! the 
 Saviour knoweth ; 
 I will lay the head of a passionate child on His 
 gentle breast, 
 I poured out with the wave, He founded firm with 
 the mountain ; 
 In the calm of His infinite eyes I have sought 
 and found my rest.
 
 Suspiria. 9 1 
 
 O to be still on the heart of the God we know in 
 the Saviour, 
 Feeling Him more than all the noblest gifts He 
 gave ! 
 To be is more than to know ; we near the Holy of 
 Holies 
 In coming home to Love; we shall know beyond 
 the grave. 
 
 Ah ! the peace of the beautiful realm, like 
 dew, sinks into my spirit ; 
 True and tender friend, I love to be here with 
 thee. 
 The pines, tall fragrant columns of a magnificent 
 temple, 
 Are ranged before the ethereal mountain majesty: 
 While a dove-coloured lapse of the water merrily 
 murmurs a confidence 
 Into a quiet ear of twilit beautiful bowers ; 
 Sweet breath of the pyrola woos us, white waxen 
 elf of the woodland, 
 And two tired hearts may play awhile with the 
 innocent flowers. 
 
 San Martina, 1882.
 
 AUTUMN. 
 
 I. — ALONE. 
 
 Leaves from lofty elms on high 
 In pale air swim shadowy ; 
 Fall, 
 
 Till, level with a weathered wall, 
 Glow their autumn colours all ; 
 Faintly rustle, touching earth ; 
 Where, in mimicry of mirth, 
 With a crisper rustle dance, 
 When the viewless winds advance, 
 Driven leaves, decayed and brown, 
 Eddying as they are blown. 
 Dear illusions perish so, 
 Summer nurslings, ere the snow ; 
 Loosen from a fading youth, 
 Leave us barren to the truth. 
 Nay, they blossom forth again ! 
 Spring from winter, joy from pain, 
 Again !
 
 Autumn. 9; 
 
 How yon leaflet floats, returning 
 To the tree where leaves are burning ! 
 Or is it a small dark bird 
 Nestling in the boughs unheard ? 
 Lo ! a latticed height of planes, 
 Green athwart blue skyey lanes, 
 Blue laving continents of cloud, 
 Violet vapour thunder-browed : 
 Yellowing foliage is fair, 
 Gold-green as an evening air, 
 Thronged upon a deep dove-grey; 
 Higher up the halls of day, 
 Light darkens, yet doth not consume 
 Boughs waving in a fiery tomb, 
 In a gash of brazen fire, 
 Early sunset's ruddy pyre. 
 
 II. — LOVERS ON THE RIVER. 
 
 Floating on a slender river, 
 A pale violet flame, 
 Windless air, a violet flame, 
 Clear reflections only quiver, 
 Flickering with margin blurred ! 
 Whisper, bird, 
 A word !
 
 94 Autumn. 
 
 Through a mossy arch impearled, 
 
 Rounded in the water-world, 
 
 Love ! behold a little boat, 
 
 With a white sail, stilly float 
 
 Far off, even 
 
 In Heaven; 
 
 For the river-reach appears 
 
 To mount a violet air ; 
 
 A spirit's wings in violet air, 
 
 Free from human woes and fears, 
 
 In our dreams 
 
 It seems ! 
 
 While yon kine upon the marge, 
 
 On the meadowy marge, 
 
 Greenly-glowing pasture large, 
 
 Send their gleam of coloured shadow 
 
 Beyond a green bank from the meadow, 
 
 Where rushes are, 
 
 Afar! 
 
 Perished all sweet summer posies ; 
 
 Yet a radiant air 
 
 Lavishes more fair 
 
 Roseflush from windwoven roses 
 
 Rich and rare. 
 
 Now we float in orchard closes, 
 
 Darkly, magically green, 
 
 Ne'er an apple seen : 
 
 Till the water winds between
 
 Autumn. 95 
 
 Beechen hills, 
 
 And leaf-fed rills, 
 
 Whose rich furnace chestnut-gold 
 
 Dowers the wave with wealth untold ; 
 
 Flakes of burning gold 
 
 Lying on the vivid grass 
 
 Gorgeous, while we softly pass. 
 
 Lo ! slim aspens yellow-pale, 
 
 Inlaying far mist while we sail : 
 
 Whisper, bird, 
 
 A word ! 
 
 Whisper, murmur, never move 
 
 From thy pillow, love ! 
 
 From my bosom, tender dove ! 
 
 Lying quiet, hand in hand, 
 
 We will dream we need not land 
 
 Upon the shore, 
 
 Where evermore 
 
 Love, a rainbow, dear illusion, 
 
 Melts into the world's confusion ! 
 
 We will dream no chance may sever 
 
 Two fond hearts upon the river 
 
 Of their own felicity ! 
 
 We will dream Love need not die ; 
 
 Only fly, 
 
 In the even, 
 
 To Heaven !
 
 96 Autumn. 
 
 III.— IN THE GLENS. 
 
 Upon the huge rock-rooted elm we stood, 
 That hangs and murmurs o'er a shadowy deep, 
 Where a dim glen lies silently in sleep. 
 There one tall ash, crowned queen of all the wood 
 Rises above a labyrinthine brood, 
 Verdurous underglooms, adown the steep 
 Riverward falling : nightdews well and weep 
 In their rich bowers of odorous solitude. 
 Boulders block leafy cataracts, that brave 
 With rebel surge the crag's commanding wall : 
 Beeches burn brilliant against a grave 
 Mist-sombred russet foliage, that all 
 Seems, like a surf, to mount the steep, nor fall ; 
 Climbs the high cliffs, a never-refluent wave. 
 
 We swung beneath the rugged antlered form ; 
 Clambering, plunged into a green profound, 
 Ash-pale rent vapours gathering around 
 Those vast elm-arms upvvrithen to the storm ; 
 Till we beheld a cliff's grey bulk enorm, 
 Crimson beyond the woodland where we wound, 
 Whose boughs half veiled the grandeur sunset- 
 warm ; 
 High cliff that doth the tidal Avon bound.
 
 Autumn. 97 
 
 Here, where steep rocks are riven abrupt and gory, 
 Where leans, weird thyrsus, a thin branchless tree, 
 Ivied, discrowned, athwart their promontory, 
 Midmost all rank and fleshy growths that be, 
 Nightshade, worn tumbled stones, and trunks mist- 
 hoary, 
 Satyrs and fauns may hold strange revelry ! 
 
 Then we emerged upon a slumbering tide, 
 Where sounding fire-ships to the populous port 
 Draw vessels laden ; there white birds resort, 
 Whom light discovers, or hill-shadows hide, 
 While slowly in aerial maze they glide. 
 Gorgeous Autumn holds her stately court, 
 A solemn queen, like Tragedy; gold-wrought, 
 Her train fills all the glens ; she is Death's bride ; 
 For soon she shall be robed in a white shroud. 
 But we, fond friends, we dared to breathe aloud 
 Vows of a love undying ; though a cloud 
 Gathered, passed over, melted in the blue ; 
 Though withering worlds, like leaves, around us 
 
 flew ; 
 And all the abysses yawned upon us two. 
 
 All awful Forces of the Universe, 
 
 Within, beneath, around us, and above, 
 
 Dark armoured Phantoms, frowned upon our love, 
 
 7
 
 98 Atttumti. 
 
 Breathing cold scorn thereover, for a curse. 
 
 Behold ! how blind wild hurricanes disperse 
 
 A foam-flake, inland blown from a sea-cove ; 
 
 So man's fair hopes inviolable prove. 
 
 Cling, hearts, a moment ere the gulfs immerse ! 
 
 For Self, and Sin, with all that sundereth, 
 
 Mad Chance, and Change, faint Absence, and dim 
 
 Death, 
 A ghostly army, leagued against Love's breath, 
 Have sworn to annihilate ; life's shadows close : 
 But Love, whose blossom fleeteth as it blows, 
 Rests in the heart of a Divine repose.
 
 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 ROSA ! thy battlement of beaming ice 
 Burns, like the battlement of Paradise ! 
 One block of long white light unsulliable 
 Glows in deep azure, Heaven's cathedral wall, 
 Gleams, a pure loveliness of angel thought, 
 With Heaven's inviolable ardour fraught. 
 A myriad flowers play fearless at thy feet, 
 And many a flying fairy sips their sweet, 
 While with the Sun of souls, the Paraclete, 
 Thou communest up yonder, rapt from earth, 
 Robed in the evening-gold, or morning-mirth. 
 One cloudy surge from thy tremendous steep 
 Recoils, and hangs a warder o'er thy sleep, 
 Whose awful spirit in deep reverie 
 Above the world abides eternally : 
 While seraphs roam around thy silver slope, 
 Nestle in thy hollows, and. with fair-flying hope 
 Temper the intolerable severity 
 Of holiest Purpose ; many a floweret blows 
 In the unearthly Honour of thy snows, 
 
 7—2
 
 ioo Monte Rosa. 
 
 Like innocent loves in souls erect, sublime, 
 
 Who breathe above the tainted air of time : 
 
 While many a falling water kisses 
 
 Tinkling emerald abysses 
 
 Of shadowy cavern with cool rain, 
 
 Clear gliding rills in polished porcelain 
 
 Channels descending o'er a crystal plain 
 
 From the Frost-Spirit's palace bowers 
 
 Of sea-green pinnacles, and toppling towers, 
 
 And grim white bastion defiled 
 
 With rocky ruin of the wild : 
 
 While over all thy luminous pure ice 
 
 Rears the stupendous radiant precipice, 
 
 High terraces the seraphim have trod, 
 
 Stairs dwindling fainter, as they near the abode, 
 
 Where in light unimaginable dwells God. 
 
 But now around thee sullen, murmuring Storm 
 Flings his dark mantle ; such around the form 
 Of awful Samuel, summoned from the tomb, 
 At Endor rose : then all is rayless gloom 
 About thy Presence for a little while ; 
 Until God draws in His cathedral aisle 
 The folding shroud from thy dread countenance. 
 Behold ! above the storm, as in a trance, 
 Thy grand, pale Face abides, regarding us, 
 As from Death's realm afar, like risen Lazarus !
 
 Monte Rosa. 101 
 
 Isled in dusk blue, one star thrills faintly shining 
 Over thy crest in mournful day's declining : 
 Far away glens deep solitary blanch 
 With snow fresh fallen of the avalanche ; 
 Forested prowls the haggard wolf, the craven, 
 While o'er me croaking weirdly wheels the raven ; 
 Yonder in twilight, fretted with fierce fire, 
 Lower vast vans of hungering lammergeyer ! 
 Dark vassal crags, who guard thine awful throne, 
 Wearing dim forests for a sounding zone, 
 Divide to let thy torrent coursers flee 
 With thunderous embassage to the great Sea. 
 
 Behold ! on grand long summits bowed 
 A huge ghost-cataract of cloud ! 
 Niagara motionless, unvoiced, 
 In dim rapt air portentous poised ! 
 But ruffled plumes of Tempest lower 
 Where the giant cliffs uptower, 
 While their impregnable fort frowns 
 Defiant, and their haughty crowns 
 Their vapoury veils, 
 Livid ice-ribs, and wolf-fanged teeth 
 Threaten implacable with death 
 Rash mortal who assails ! 
 Beneath them the heart fails. 
 One rayless wilderness of stone 
 Upreared, they warn from their bleak throne ;
 
 102 Monte Rosa. 
 
 Ruined halls of lonely storms, 
 Whose are weird dishevelled forms, 
 Dark as eerie crags that loom, 
 Brooding haggard in the gloom, 
 Assuming semblance of rent thunder, 
 While they wait expectant under. 
 
 Lo ! one wide ocean of tumultuous sound 
 
 Terrific bursts ! flooding Heaven's profound, 
 
 Shatters the concave ! hark ! how, one by one, 
 
 Each monarch mountain on his far white throne, 
 
 Shocked, buffeted by that infernal word, 
 
 His own portentous utterance hath roared, 
 
 Tearing night, startled with flame-sweep of sword, 
 
 And bellowing fierce frantic wrath 
 
 Into the steam of that hell-broth 
 
 Around : white fires flash swift unfurled 
 
 Over dim ruin of a watery world ! 
 
 Hark ! huge war-standards ponderous unrolling 
 
 Over wild surges of tempestuous blast ! 
 
 While storm-stifled bells are tolling 
 
 For souls of pilgrims who have passed 
 
 Home at last ! 
 
 But here amid earthquaking shocks, 
 
 Whirlwinds rave around the rocks : 
 
 Great pines, agonizing horrent 
 
 O'er the white terror of the torrent,
 
 1^ 
 
 Monte Rosa. 103 
 
 In wild lightning-fits leap out 
 
 From death's womb, a ghostly rout, 
 
 And all wild demon-chariots roll, 
 
 Hurtling, chaotic, blind, reft from control ; 
 
 Until the elemental rage subsides ; 
 
 Ebbs the fell fury of ethereal tides ; 
 
 Atlantic billows of slow sullen sound 
 
 Subsiding wander o'er the immeasurable Profound. 
 
 .... Rosa ! the Moon soothes thine unearthly 
 rest, 
 And Peace pervades the snows upon thy breast ! 
 
 Val Anzasca.
 
 TO ERIC FROM THE ALPS. 
 
 THE fragrant pines are green, love, 
 
 The pines are fair and tall, 
 Dear is the Alpine scene, love, 
 
 Peak, flower, and waterfall ; 
 But my heart's tendrils favour 
 
 Humbler pines at home, 
 For there the weak feet waver, 
 
 That never learned to roam. 
 One day about the wood, dear, 
 
 Thy steps began to go, 
 And all my stony mood, dear, 
 
 Was moved to happy flow ; 
 But when they ceased from pleasure 
 
 Upon the woodland floor, 
 Silence in deeper measure 
 
 Than e'er was known before 
 Returned for evermore, dear, 
 
 Returned for evermore.
 
 IN THE DOLOMITES. 
 
 One haughty, precipitous peak, enveloped, em- 
 braced in a white cloud, 
 Hath freed himself from the clasp, and flung 
 the cloud into space ; 
 A woman, I deem, once loved ! now all uncrowned 
 and degraded, 
 She lies a white heap dishevelled, not too far 
 from his face. 
 Later I looked, and lo ! at his iron feet she hath 
 grovelled, 
 The cloud-bride cannot believe she is thrown for 
 ever away ! 
 Hath she not lain in his bosom ? all for the fault of 
 a moment ! 
 The stern crag heeds her not, relentless facing 
 the day.
 
 MELCHA. 6 
 
 I. 
 MANY have longed for a maiden fair, 
 Who still is free as summer air : 
 Longing youths are strong and bright ; 
 She is free as summer light. 
 " Melcha, Melcha," parents say, 
 " Time flies, my child ! no more delay ! 
 Young Geraldine would lead thee home ; 
 Worthier wooer will not come." 
 Half her young heart may playful lean 
 To the love of the love of Geraldine ; 
 But little she cares for rout or ball, 
 With flushing face and soft footfall ; 
 She plies her needle, churns her cream, 
 Milks a heifer of snowy gleam, 
 And more than all the pensive child 
 Loves to wander alone and wild, 
 With her own kindred bee or bird, 
 Far from all the human herd, 
 Over heather, over hill, 
 By the torrent, by the still
 
 Melcha. 107 
 
 Lake-margin, in a noonday trance, 
 Brooding over old romance. 
 
 Melcha favours with her love 
 
 Every flowery nook and cove ; 
 
 Floats upon the placid stream, 
 
 Silvern as a silver bream, 
 
 Flying from a common life 
 
 All too full of soil and strife ; 
 
 Till once her shallop drifted to a cave 
 
 That looks upon Lough Lean's cool whis- 
 pering wave, 
 
 Where silent water-light for loving eyes 
 
 Weaves mazy melodies 
 
 Over pellucid filmy fern, 
 
 Whose is many a fairy urn, 
 
 Festooning fair the rocky cavern-wall, 
 
 And glowing in a trickling waterfall, 
 
 Among sweet closely-woven mosses, 
 
 Where a rainbow globelet crosses 
 
 Ever to supply the losses, 
 
 Growing from long ferny nerves, 
 
 Like a meteor, 
 
 Startling merrily upon a flowery floor 
 
 A blue-eyed blossom, till it thrills and 
 swerves'! 
 Ruddied with the fiery globe, 
 
 Autumn's gorgeous golden robe
 
 1 08 Melcha. 
 
 Involves majestic mountain forms, 
 
 Crags familiar with storms, 
 
 Grandly towering a-glow, 
 
 Burning tranquil waves below, 
 
 Purpled here with miles of heather, 
 
 Shadowed often altogether. 
 
 Yonder shines the Eagle's Nest 
 
 In a glorious verdure-vest : 
 
 She hath climbed his rocky crest ; 
 
 Seen the stately eagle hover, 
 
 Imperial-poised, a thunder -cloud above her, 
 
 Whom a pearly sunbeam found 
 
 Luminous-brown, with all around 
 
 Opal air, and o'er the glens 
 
 Under, and o'er all the fens. 
 
 It eagles are monarchs of air, 
 Red deer are lords of the glen ! 
 
 Behold ! a stag over there, 
 Defiant of hounds and men, 
 
 In a lair of tall Osmunda, 
 
 Antlered, large-eyed, a wonder. 
 
 She looked upon the luminous lake, 
 Seeing tufts of bilberry shake 
 In a wandering breeze 
 O'er their images ; 
 Red-boled luxuriant arbute-trees,
 
 Melcha. 1 09 
 
 With white flower and crimson fruit, 
 
 Glossy-leaved lave their root, 
 
 Darkening all the glass ; 
 
 Saw the languid lake-lives waver 
 
 Below in a luminous water-quaver, 
 
 Where shadowy fishes pass ; 
 
 Heard the lapping wavelets kiss, 
 
 While she dreamed of that or this — 
 
 Dreamed of old romance, 
 
 While light elf-like droppings dance, 
 
 Twinkling play 
 
 In a fairy spray. 
 
 " I would fly the vulgar toil ; 
 
 I would fly the strife and soil ; 
 
 I would slumber, and awake 
 
 In the bosom of the lake !" 
 
 She is lulled to sweet repose 
 
 By a far-off mellow chime, 
 
 By the water's murmured rhyme, 
 
 By the wild bee in the thyme, 
 
 Till her eye-lids close. 
 
 Hark ! a long sweet note resounding, 
 From the mountain clear rebounding ! 
 Hills are all alive with voices, 
 With soft spirit noises. 
 Naiads of the shadowy water, 
 Every gentle woodland daughter,
 
 no Melcha. 
 
 All ye lovely fays who are 
 
 In the valleys of Glenaa ! 
 
 All who haunt the Purple Mountain, 
 
 Souls of many a far-off fountain, 
 
 All in air, or underground, 
 
 Or in hollow cliff spellbound, 
 
 Breathe your delicate spirit-voices ! 
 
 Eagle's Nest is all alive, 
 
 As though he were a fairies' hive ; 
 
 Musically ruffled he rejoices ; 
 
 Hurrying notes in sweet confusion, 
 
 Marrying with soft collusion ; 
 
 Awful, solemn-toned, and loud ; 
 
 Low as from beneath a shroud ; 
 
 Pausing now for a reply 
 
 From far crags and cliffs that lie 
 
 Underneath another sky ! 
 
 Now they fall to slumber, murmuring un- 
 
 quietly. 
 High Carantuohil is the last to hear, 
 Murmuring from his cloud, and solitary sphere. 
 
 What is the mild mystic trouble, 
 Where in the lake 
 Sun floats, a flashing double ? 
 Maiden, awake !
 
 Melcha. 1 1 1 
 
 One emerges from the flood, 
 
 A snowy steed and rider, with pure radiance 
 
 imbued ! 
 He doth not seem of mortal mould, 
 Whose lineaments, how grave and pale ! 
 Beam from a raised visor of gold, 
 Whose silver dripping mail, 
 And lofty plume him tall reveal 
 More than all sons of mortals ; his white steed 
 Stately paces the blue mead. 
 Slowly toward fair Melcha's nook 
 His majestic course he took : 
 Delighted wonder made her start ; 
 Fearless flutters her young heart. 
 " So my long-fondled tales are true : 
 Here is Lord O'Donoghue !" 
 He, swift leaping from his horse, 
 Seized her hand with gentle force : 
 She, gazing in the awful eyes, 
 Found them full of loving light ; 
 Lovely seemed to her the knight ; 
 Then she veiled her maiden eyes ; 
 And her tender heart was taken, 
 Taken ere she was aware, 
 By the spirit tall and white, 
 Ere he spake, " O maiden fair !" 
 Spake with accent soft and rare,
 
 1 1 2 Melcha. 
 
 " Wilt thou wed the waters blue ? 
 
 Wilt thou love O'Donoghue ? 
 
 Wilt thou love me, maiden mild ? 
 
 Fair my dwelling, gentle child ! 
 
 Under the blue water ! 
 
 Yet, 'tis weird, and vast, and cold ; 
 
 I desire a mortal daughter 
 
 To enfold ! 
 
 But I know not if the wave 
 
 Unto thee would prove a grave : . . . . 
 
 .... All those wonders shall be thine, 
 
 If thou wilt be mine !" 
 
 "Thine!" 
 
 So the little Melcha breathed ; 
 
 And the spirit's arms enwreathed 
 
 Her a moment, as he won her : 
 
 " Darling, meet me when May morning, 
 
 Earth with bridal wreaths adorning, 
 
 Opens earliest eyes upon her ! 
 
 Wait /me on the tufted rock : 
 
 Well thou knowest I will not mock .... 
 
 .... From your white bosom give me yon 
 
 silk scarf like flame !" 
 He stole it, she allowing, and he vanished as 
 
 he came.
 
 Melcha. 1 1 3 
 
 O ! how poor is our dull earth, 
 Till the happy morn have birth. 
 And Melcha's father's bitter wife 
 Doth not sweeten Melcha's life ! 
 With such unearthly eyes she moved, it roused 
 
 a dark derision ; 
 She stumbled o'er her daily tasks i' the 
 
 glamour of her vision. 
 She moved as one who is amazed, 
 With a sudden splendour dazed: 
 " Dare I with a spirit go 
 To the crystal realms below ? 
 And will he keep faith with me, 
 Far lowlier than he ? 
 I deem he was a monarch mild ; 
 And yet a Paynim, I a Christian child ! 
 May I wed a fairy undefiled ? 
 But he is glorious and true ! 
 I told the priest of our sweet interview, 
 Under close confession-seal : 
 He deemed it some hallucination ; 
 ' Our Lady hover over thee, and heal ! 
 Flee very verges of damnation ! 
 I know thou dost prefer thy nook 
 By yonder lake to holy book, 
 Or holy ordinance ; be wary ! 
 Dally not with Paynim fairy !' 
 
 8
 
 1 14 Melcha. 
 
 Nay, my love's a holy feast ! 
 
 He but dotes, our aged priest : 
 
 And since I know he must be good, 
 
 I will tell him of the rood ! 
 
 What a noble conquest this ! 
 
 He shall taste eternal bliss, 
 
 By his love for little me ; 
 
 And, for reward, what wonders he 
 
 Will reveal to my glad mind, 
 
 By the many undivined ! 
 
 Yet do I sleep, or do I wake ? 
 
 Shall I live beneath the lake? . . . 
 
 He told me 'twas like Heaven there . . . 
 
 With him I will fly anywhere !" 
 
 But Melcha had a younger sister, 
 Whom she cherished ; and she kissed her 
 With strange tenderness that night 
 Of April, ere the eventful light. 
 Misting tears are in her eyes, 
 Looking on her ere she flies ; 
 Looking in toward the bed, 
 Where a fair and dreamless head 
 Slumbers on without a sorrow, 
 Blithe to-day, and blithe to-morrow. 
 Little Melcha cannot sleep. 
 Shall she laugh, or shall she weep ? 

 
 Melcha. 
 
 She must leave her virgin chamber, 
 Where she taught a rose to clamber ; 
 She must leave her little bird, 
 Who in a sweet May dawn is stirred, 
 And the snowy folds of fume, 
 That curtain frail her beamy room, 
 Yea, and leave the mother's grave, 
 Her young grief was wont to lave. 
 
 Ere the sun she flies away : 
 Is it not the first of May ? 
 But she hath a favourite fawn 
 Silver-clear as a May dawn ; 
 Tho' he must leave her at the lake, 
 Till the last he'll not forsake ! 
 Still a silver twinkling star 
 Laughs over woodlands of Glenaa ; 
 Yet the merry bird hath warbled 
 O'er his five eggs wine-immarbled, 
 Notes that fall a rich perfume 
 Over orchards in white bloom ; 
 These festoon a violet air, 
 As she looks among the boughs, 
 In her bridal gossamer, 
 Where no costly jewel glows, 
 Save some dews that fall on her 
 From young foliage and fir. 
 
 8—2 
 
 115
 
 1 1 6 Melcha. 
 
 Now a rosy gleam hath tinged 
 Waters fair, and forest-fringed ; 
 Far away tall Carantuohil 
 Glows in Heaven, a lonely jewel ! 
 There a moment let her falter, 
 There before the woodland altar, 
 Where a lamp for ever burns 
 In a chapel among the ferns, 
 Asking of the carven Christ : 
 " Do I well to keep the tryst ?" 
 
 She is at the tufted rock, 
 Hearing gentle water shock 
 Clear beneath her ; a careering hawk 
 Hangs o'er abrupt dark-wooded heights of 
 
 Tore ! 
 At whose rich feet tall ash, hawthorn, and 
 
 holly, 
 Hang shadowy bowers over waters melancholy. 
 Dinis isle, and many an isle, 
 Fair await the morning smile ; 
 Between the hills a purple light fills heavenly 
 
 chalices ; 
 Till lo ! the Sun Himself enthroned in 
 mountain palaces ! 
 
 And when He touched the flashing flood, 
 Music welled from wave and wood ;
 
 ^ =^H^M^i^*« 
 
 Melcha. 1 1 7 
 
 A celestial harmony- 
 Floated over earth and sky. . . . 
 While from burning waves of blue 
 Burst the spirit O'Donoghue ! 
 Beautiful youths and maidens, lovely water- 
 powers, 
 All envvreathed with heavenly flowers, 
 Like airy fancies from a poet's bowers, 
 Undulating o'er the gay 
 Crystal glory, many a fay, 
 Follow the war-horse as he prances, 
 Foam dancing all around him as he dances ! 
 She beholds her crimson scarf 
 In the beams of morning laugh, 
 Bound about her stately charmer, 
 Bound about his radiant armour — 
 Now they are near the trysting-place ; 
 Melcha' s heart is like a leaf ; 
 But when her lover looks into her face, 
 Those glorious amorous eyes are her relief. 
 He opens wide his arms to take her ! 
 She will dare the fatal leap ! 
 From his alluring nought shall shake her. . . 
 She hath plunged into the deep ! . . . 
 And the fairy fawn must weep. 
 Held to his heart she dares the dive ; 
 Explores a waterworld alive !
 
 ! 
 
 1 1 8 Melcha. 
 
 Only a vapour seems to glide, 
 Where O'Donoghue won his bride 
 
 II. 
 
 How shall a mortal dare to tell 
 What there the little maid befell ? 
 Nought she knows within the grasp, 
 Save that it is her lover's clasp. . . . 
 Released, she finds herself in wondrous 
 
 columned halls, 
 Whose grand infinitude her slender soul 
 
 appals. 
 Many a water-green, self-luminous column 
 Stupendous rises in dim heights and solemn. 
 Their labyrinths for evermore extend 
 In hollow-echoing chambers with no end. 
 Self-luminous are they, and yet very dim : 
 She turns, and hides her timid face in him. 
 " Is it not splendid, love, my water-dwelling ? 
 With spheral music all around thee welling ? 
 My rainbow pillars, glowing with soft light, 
 Soaring till lost in Heaven's infinite ?" 
 " Alas !" she said," I hear low sounds unlinked ; 
 Nor seem your columns with blithe colours 
 
 tinct.
 
 Melcha. 1 1 9 
 
 For all is sombre-hued, though beautiful. 
 Alas ! my hearing and mine eyes are dull !" 
 
 "Nay, come, for thou art dazzled !" he replied, 
 In gentle tones of love to his young bride ; 
 Then bore her over the dim-shining floor 
 To where climbed, like a giant conqueror, 
 One of the columns, faintly tinged with rose. 
 " Melcha ! behold ! how glorious it glows! 
 Here, with the rose-hue, hues of the young apple, 
 And of young pear leaves, blend, as by the chapel 
 Near your sweet home, my love ; and violet, 
 With many other flower souls, have met, 
 Soft interchanging delicate qualities, 
 Alliance and imminglement of dyes. 
 They ever move with music from beneath, 
 Flower souls to bloom in many a fragrant wreath 
 Up yonder, in your visible world of light ; 
 But here in mine they are married ere the flight. 
 Ever the Life from caverned gloom swift flushes, 
 Mantling, as though through stalks of water-rushes, 
 Here through these columnsinyourworldtoblossom, 
 Innumerably fair from Night's own bosom. 
 Now these have changed to a wave of breezy ocean, 
 Now to a river of full mazy motion ; 
 Here clouds arise, their hearts relieved in rain ; 
 Here two young forms, ere beauty's blossom wane 
 Clasp one another in pure loveliness ;
 
 1 20 Melcha. 
 
 Here treachery murders, feigning a caress : 
 
 All genders a confused, life-labouring sound, 
 
 As Vulcan wrought in stithys underground. 
 
 Here element to element fond hies, 
 
 Or with a hatred of repulsion flies, 
 
 Each following his own affinities. 
 
 The rhythmic molecule, that only moves, 
 
 Foreknows blithe genius, who sings and loves; 
 
 Crystal snowfiower, albumen ocean-floor, 
 
 Are faint foreshadowing of cells, and more, 
 
 Hold in their womb alcyon, moss, or rose ; 
 
 Yea, rosier virgins lovelier than those ! 
 
 There yawns no blank unfathomable abysm 
 
 Between the man, the sunbeam, and the prism ! 
 
 Heaving impartial, Night engendered! 
 
 Genius crowned, and Love with rosy wreath ; 
 
 Madness all haggard ; bloody Hate ; pale Death ; 
 
 Or Sun, and Moon, and Stars, whose semblance dim 
 
 With man, and beast, and bird of shadowy limb, 
 
 Follow in bewildering swift change ; 
 
 All into one another find free range ; 
 
 Yet, save the flower-souls, they all appear 
 
 As in their embryo, phantasmal here." 
 
 But Melcha very faintly may discern 
 Those ardours, even where they brightly burn, 
 Needing some sweet assistance of his eyes : 
 So to another column-stalk he flies.
 
 Melcha. 1 2 1 
 
 Here he revealed the bowels of old Earth ; 
 
 Fire, and slow water-growths, and many a birth 
 
 Forgotten, long bereft of grief or mirth. 
 
 There, in a third, intolerably royal, 
 
 A soul of Sunlight bursteth, while the loyal 
 
 Planets obeisant with their moons are moving ; 
 
 Systems through solitary spaces roving 
 
 In primal order, while young nebulae 
 
 Blindly brood over worlds of grief and glee. 
 
 While these are clearest glories, yet there follow 
 
 All most prevailing in a sister hollow. 
 
 There follow faintly other forms and colours, 
 
 Herbs, and live things with many joys and dolours. 
 
 For every magic column hath a class 
 
 Of powers prevailing in his mystic glass : 
 
 This towering droops with wealth of many a world, 
 
 Like some vast palm, whose boughs are night- 
 
 impearled, 
 Or richly laden with dates' golden clusters ; 
 So fountainous in ether float the starry lustres; 
 Even as a Geyser, or a fountain shoots 
 In one straight water from perennial roots ; 
 Falls in blue air with myriad diamonds fair hurled. 
 
 In yet another pillar he discovers 
 Swarming low lives ; the animal world; with lovers ; 
 Shadowy presentment of fair youths and maidens, 
 Lovingly marrying in fresh flowering aidenns ;
 
 122 
 
 Mclcha. 
 
 With little babes, who laughing reach soft arms 
 
 To where above them mother's eyelight warms ; 
 
 All roseate dissolving ; pale wild-eyed 
 
 Faces of saint, or seeker ; there harsh Pride, 
 
 Horror, and Shame ; there Lust, and Cruelty 
 
 Deformed arise in mists of lurid dye. 
 
 Here springs the growth supreme of Good and Evil, 
 
 Twin-birth indissoluble : angel, devil, 
 
 Eternal hierachies infinite, 
 
 Animal, human ; sorrow and delight 
 
 Issue in morning-gold, or sanguine gloom, 
 
 From one divine unfathomable Womb ; 
 
 Neither, and both, and more than both ; the Whole, 
 
 Adored in silence of the fainting soul. 
 
 Hearken ! a sound of restless-hearted ocean ; 
 
 Or of a city's far-off heard emotion ! 
 
 But little Melcha shrinking hides in him. 
 " I faint !" she cries, " for though mine eyes be 
 
 dim, 
 I cannot bear these awful sights and sounds, 
 Where all immingling my poor sense confounds." 
 
 " Nay, here/' he chaunted, her own demon 
 lover, 
 While in his arms more loosely he enwove her, 
 " Here in solemn halls of Thought, 
 The marvel of the World is ever wrought ! 
 Famine, a vulture, glares on men to ruin brought ;
 
 Melcha. 123 
 
 Here loud volcanoes whelm with fiery lava ; 
 
 Sin desolates a groaning earth with blood ; 
 
 Here men and women loll by mango and lush 
 
 guava ; 
 Fair Bacchanals are reeling near a winy wave or 
 
 wood ; 
 Yea ! and the Man Divine dies for alien good." 
 
 "Ah!" she exclaimeth, "where is then the 
 Rood ? 
 I lose my Lord in your sublime turmoil ! 
 Not so I learned Him on my native soil." 
 
 " Yet is He here in heavenlier raiment dressed ; 
 More nobly than in your old forms expressed ! 
 But now behold ! for thou must needs admire 
 Monuments wrought, as though from living fire ! 
 Among these columns rising into real 
 Stand fair enchantments of Thought's own ideal : 
 And lo ! among them, wandering pale-browed, 
 Mighty creators, with raised eyes or bowed, 
 Silently brooding, clothed in solemn cloud ! 
 Here at a Plato's, or a Newton's gaze, 
 To luminous order from a nebulous haze 
 Gleams many a column : here Spinoza wanders 
 Schelling, the Stagyrite, or Hegel, ponders ; 
 Kepler, or Galileo, crowned with stars ; 
 All Hero-shatterers of prison bars ; 
 Columbus, and our earth-discoverers :
 
 124 Melcha. 
 
 Eagle-eyed martyrs of the quest for truth, 
 
 Whose effort bloometh in immortal youth : 
 
 Men dowered with the world's rank insult and hot 
 
 hate, 
 Because they dared to smite our swollen state, 
 Whose idol-wheels a human blood must lubricate ! 
 Tyndale, Mazzini, Regulus, or Tell ; 
 And they who by the Malian water fell ! 
 Cato, and Manlius ; patriots who died ; 
 Harmodius, and all who brave a tyrant's purple 
 
 pride ! 
 Gems in the crown of Freedom set ; 
 Washington, or Lafayette ! 
 Here walks the wisest of Athenian teachers, 
 And here the mightiest of Hebrew preachers ; 
 Founders of all the commonwealths of earth ; 
 Founders from whom world-shadowing faiths have 
 
 birth. 
 Moses, Mohammed, with the Indian : 
 
 Beethoven, Angelo, or Titian 
 
 Whose spirit stalks alone ? the worldworn man, 
 
 Florentine Dante ! he the third grand ghost, 
 
 Who seems to rise above the glorious host 
 
 Of Daedal poets — third — there are two others ; 
 
 Homer, with Avon's bard ; and yet some brothers 
 
 Have scarce a lowlier post, from Orient 
 
 And western climes; they form of sound, or 
 
 stone,
 
 Melcha. 125 
 
 Or metal, colour, word, a monument, 
 
 Wherein their own essential selves have grown. 
 
 Perishing sea-lives leave the coral-forest 
 
 Fair from their hearts ; like these on whom thou 
 
 porest ; 
 And glory of the rainbow-rippled shells 
 Flows from a lowly life that ever wells. 
 Luxuriant labyrinths of sound are floated 
 From choirs of viewless harmonists full-throated ! 
 Rearers of Temples, and Cathedrals grand, 
 Whom earth remembers not, imperial band, 
 Behold ! with Pheidias, and Praxiteles ; 
 And many who left no memory with these." 
 But when the Knight beheld some members of the 
 
 throng, 
 Impetuously he burst forth into song : 
 
 " Builders of the warning tower, 
 Whose flashing eye commands the storm, 
 When thunderous wild waves fling foaming arms 
 
 of power, 
 To hurl below, to shatter, the tall Saviour form ! 
 Fathers of fire-souled mechanic 
 Demons whirlwind-limbed are ye ; 
 Of wrought-iron tubes Titanic, 
 Thrown 'thwart rivers, and the free 
 Heretofore unfettered sea !
 
 126 Melcha. 
 
 " Armoured monsters on the deep, 
 Grim whale-like islands, formidably sleep : 
 Your resolute fire-ships throbbing sweep ! 
 I' the teeth of howling solid blasts, 
 And billowy cataracts hoar ocean casts 
 To overwhelm, ye find the Pole, 
 Guard a world-wide empire whole ; 
 Quell the foes of freedom with indomitable soul ! 
 
 " Sensitive needle in a crystal shrine, 
 Who dost, like Conscience, evermore incline 
 Toward one Eternal Pole, although the cloud 
 From storm-tossed mariner His radiance shroud ! 
 By thee Gama dares to round 
 Afric's awful utmost bound ! 
 And the Genoese discovers 
 A morning-land for Liberty's blithe lovers ! 
 
 " Your magic glass reveals a realm 
 Too far, too fine, for human eyes ! 
 While suns, and planets, and fair moons o'erwhelm, 
 In fairy-like societies, 
 Under our feet, in our own frames, 
 One organizing Reason flames ! 
 Man shrinks abashed within his shell, 
 Abashed by atom, world, and cell ; 
 Yet magnifies the mighty Mind, 
 Subtler than light, more swift than wind, 
 That tangles in Her ordered prisms
 
 Alelcha. 127 
 
 Rays of unvoyageable abysms, 
 
 Pulsing a million years through strange illimitable 
 
 places, 
 Hurled from hot hearts of stars, far homes of un- 
 imaginable races ! 
 
 " Iron-souled Inventors, you 
 Are of earth's illustrious few ! 
 Conquerors of reluctant Nature, 
 Adding to man's pigmy stature ; 
 With delver's lamp, and axe, and power-loom, 
 Your spirit broods upon the gloom ; 
 Ye have arisen 
 
 To irradiate the serfs' dull prison ! 
 Ye are they who forge the chain, 
 Flashing thought from brain to brain, 
 Not to bind, 
 But liberate mankind ! 
 Ye have winged the fiery dragon, 
 Thundering to feast or drouth, 
 Ye who pass life's foaming flagon 
 Tumultuously from mouth to mouth, 
 Rushing North and rushing South ! 
 Who devastate with rumbling tumbril-wheel, 
 Rifle, cannon, shell, or steel, 
 Human frames, and human hearts ; 
 While our wharves, and all our marts 
 Glow wealthier from your arts :
 
 128 Melcha. 
 
 With hideous scurf, with lurid smoke unblest, 
 Ye devastate earth's flowery rest, 
 Her virginal sweet vest ! 
 Life's a journey ; 
 Life's a tourney ; 
 Swift we go ! 
 
 Hail ! wild wind of our strong speed, 
 Lightning, and a clangorous thunder ! 
 Farm or village, town or mead, 
 Flashing past, earth trembles under ; 
 Autumn leaves about us twirling, 
 Tumultuous clouds around us whirling, 
 Ringing axles eager to burst forth in flame ! 
 Who shall tame us ? 
 Praise or blame us ! 
 Shrieking onward, 
 Hurrying sunward, 
 Swift we go, 
 
 Reeling, jarring, or with crash of horrible overthrow, 
 Darkly travelling, ever nearing yonder Orient 
 aglow !" 
 
 Some ghosts, in gazing on a crystal tower, 
 Where man, or animal, or herb, or flower 
 More dominates, or sea, or earth, or sun, 
 Convert the several Powers they gaze upon
 
 Melcha. 129 
 
 To gods of aspect glorious and strange, 
 Bewraying each his nature in the change ; 
 Benign now; now malevolent they range. 
 
 And Melcha saw somespirits wandering there, 
 Whose bodies yet abode i' the upper air. 
 Her lover, he who disappeared from earth 
 By other portals than Death's mystic birth 
 Into an alien land, so' silent seeming ; 
 As stars seem silent, or dim forests teeming 
 With infinite fairy-like societies, 
 Whose rich life-dramas we may faint surmise ; 
 Her lover, he may view the spirits moving, 
 And she by him ; but earthly souls, in roving 
 Through the stupendous halls that never end, 
 Perceive not those who died, although they wend 
 Their ways beside them, nor some beings nigh 
 Of another order in the hierarchy. 
 It may be few perceive them ; yet all here 
 Assemble, each from his own natal sphere. 
 Only a dweller in a foreign star 
 Hath his more wonted haunts from these afar ; 
 In other realms of Nature's laboratory. 
 Nor of the dead may all distinguish well 
 Their dead companions ; for souls from hell, 
 And souls from heaven mutually repel. 
 But all seems peopled with impalpable pale hosts, 
 
 9
 
 no 
 
 Melcha. 
 
 A common crowd, and even with less than human 
 ghosts. 
 
 No word is breathed between the shapes who 
 wander : 
 
 On one another's work they reverently ponder ; 
 
 Knowing the Lord all over it and under. 
 
 The wisest ask no homage for their names, 
 To One all-bounteous yielding private claims. 
 
 And where some organizing thought, long gleaming 
 Upon a column's core, hath left it beaming, 
 For ever after, when a follower gazes, 
 Reason's high hallowing remains, and blazes 
 I' the core of these enchanted chrysoprases. 
 
 The lovers first behold a Daedal thought, 
 With the world's buoyant youth sublimely fraught. 
 Here, as in purest marble white, 
 Though with a sunrise faintly flushing, 
 Are nobly-moulded forms who fight, 
 Chariots and steeds to battle rushing. 
 Here glorious Achilles mourns his friend, 
 Embracing a young warrior's corse, 
 While, with head bowed to earth, each generous 
 
 horse 
 Of race divine who brought him mourns Patroclus' 
 
 end. 
 There Hector flies the avenging Champion, 
 Roused from his sullen rest upon the plain ;
 
 Melcha. 1 \ i 
 
 o 
 
 Thrice round Troy-ramparts, by Achilles slain, 
 Lashed to his car, before proud Ilion, 
 Her hero, with most cruel contumely, 
 Is dragged, in sight of poor Andromache. 
 
 Odysseus, deemed long dead, clad in rude 
 weeds, 
 Growling low in his lion soul, yet feeds 
 With little insolent men beneath the dome 
 Pertaining to him, his ancestral home : 
 They dare his queen, and his young heir offend : 
 But now he draws the bow none save himself can 
 
 bend ; 
 And while they cower, divining the dread end, 
 Throws off concealment, towers in his own hall, 
 And turns the twanging death upon them all ! 
 
 A kind of mighty pedestal upholds 
 This living imagery with green folds, 
 As were they heavings of an emerald ocean, 
 Ever young, resonant with stormful motion. 
 
 Further, as on a mass of diamond, 
 Some figures of colossal port arise, 
 With tragic face and form ; fixed by a bond 
 Of art inviolable their mournful guise 
 Of guilt and agony ; they seem to glow 
 Darkly as bronze late molten, or like some 
 Whelmed in fire-floods of Herculaneum. 
 
 9—2
 
 1 3 2 Melcha. 
 
 Hangs the god-Titan, hurling scorn at Jove, 
 Torn by Heaven's ravening bird, implacable in 
 love. 
 
 There generous-hearted CEdipus, who mocks 
 Sinister breathings of impending doom, 
 Staggers beneath accumulating shocks 
 Of Destiny Divine ; then bows in gloom, 
 As a brave man with youthful strength adorned 
 Yields to a purple smothering Simoom, 
 Or snowy whirlwinds, that he blithely scorned 
 At morning on a mountain ; 
 
 here Antigone 
 Supports her father blind ; there one with lavish 
 
 locks, 
 Her brother slain, entombs, defying tyranny ; 
 Perishing in her youth with splendid piety. 
 
 "These works are wonderful/* avowed the 
 bride, 
 " I love to explore their glories with my love ; 
 But I should tremble if I left your side — ■ — " 
 " Nay, thou shalt be at home here, O my dove ! 
 Even as one of us — once more behold 
 What marvel yonder chasm may unfold !" 
 
 A lurid haze upsteams from an Abyss, 
 Immense, profound, down-narrowing gradual: 
 There, as in ruby wrought, souls reft of bliss
 
 Melcha. 1 3 3 
 
 Agonize all around the furnace wall, 
 
 Clean-carven in relief, as on a gem 
 
 Blood red ; so one grim thought hath imaged them. 
 
 And lo ! that awful Shade himself stood nigh 
 
 Gazing abstracted, with dread light upon 
 
 His haggard features : then he raised his face ; 
 
 And those two lovers noted the full grace 
 
 Of all the seer, with Beatrice by, 
 
 Beheld in Heaven, where spirits who have won 
 
 Their crown of glory form a snow-white rose, 
 
 Ethereal jewels ; every petal glows 
 
 Beamingly loving, or their ardours cluster 
 
 To a mighty eagle of empyreal lustre, 
 
 And to a Cross immense ; aloft they noted those. 
 
 " Now let us pause," the mortal urges ; " all 
 My brain reels with the marvels that appal, 
 How fair soever !" the Knight folding her, 
 A grateful shade involved them, and they sank 
 In one another's arms, with no demur 
 From either lover : 
 
 When they woke from slumber, 
 When loving eyes of hers the lovclight drank 
 From his wild orbs, did any sorrow cumber 
 Their lakelike splendour ? — but he sighed and said : 
 " To a strange bridegroom thou in sooth art wed ! 
 Even in my Pagan monarchy of old,
 
 1 3 4 Melcha. 
 
 No letter of a priestly creed might hold 
 
 My soul, who will her ample wings unfold. 
 
 Yet ere Christ's Planet in the Orient rose, 
 
 Justly and wisely did I rule my land, 
 
 Yonder on earth ; till my rapt words disclose, 
 
 One sunny eve within my castle hall, 
 
 (Lapping its portal silver waters doze) 
 
 The phantom Future, whose far-off footfall 
 
 Mine ears prophetic on faint-sounding sand 
 
 Of present time laid listening discern. 
 
 And while the chiefs around all hearkening burn 
 
 With inspiration of my words, I rise, 
 
 And seem to vanish from their wondering eyes 
 
 Within the waters of our tranquil lake. 
 
 Mightier rulers follow in my wake ; 
 
 A Faith Diviner, subtler joys and woes ; 
 
 Yet ever more my wistful longing grows 
 
 For some dear feminine heart to dwell with me 
 
 Here in Thought's own profound tranquillity. 
 
 I want a fresh, a guileless Christian spirit 
 
 To breathe an ampler, a diviner air, 
 
 Than in her lowly cell she may inherit ; 
 
 So mine imperial burden one may share, 
 
 And faithful Love's unshamed simplicity 
 
 Direct the challenge of keen Reason's eye. 
 
 So I make more, and purify my pleasure, 
 
 By halving our unfathomable treasure.
 
 Melcha. 135 
 
 " In summer, or in stormier weather, 
 We will explore God's wondrous worlds together. 
 How often have I failed to baffle wrong, 
 Because thou wast not nigh to make me strong ! 
 Wrestling with loathsome coils about me prest, 
 How oft the mortal Hydra mocked my rest ! 
 One withering glance of thine had scotched the 
 
 Pest! 
 Shall not a child from our two selves be born, 
 Who shall annihilate Error with blithe scorn ? 
 And yet, alas ! I doubt if thou canst breathe 
 Freely in these my realms : they leave thee pale 
 
 with death !" 
 
 " Nay, I will strive to help thee, and to live : 
 I chose thee : I have dared the dimlit dive ! 
 And yet, in sooth, my spirit seems confused 
 As one who, falling far, lies dazed and bruised. 
 I only fear lest, from my native sphere 
 Deserting, I may find no haven here I" 
 
 Lo ! living mimes of all the human drama ! 
 Swift shifting scenes of life's weird panorama ! 
 Silent succeeding groups of figures gathered 
 From forth dim air, and slowly vanishing: 
 In various forms all these the semblance bring 
 Of very men and women, yet are fathered 
 Of human Art, not nature ; all are moulded,
 
 136 Melcha. 
 
 So that their inner being lies unfolded 
 In many a moment of concentrate life, 
 Wherewith their mutual-moving moods are rife. 
 
 By night, upon the rock-built platform 
 standing, 
 Hamlet hath heard the sire's dread shade command- 
 ing; 
 Unwilling scattereth his life-love-blossom, 
 
 Whose sweet shed petals flutter in his bosom : 
 Here in her haunted room adjures the mother ; 
 Here wrestles desolate, alone with fury- fates that 
 
 smother : 
 Till smiting down the evil with a tardy random 
 
 doom, 
 He and the innocent sink with them in the same 
 
 dull tomb ! 
 
 There a fiend-woman with red hand upbraids 
 The lingering manhood, that so swiftly fades 
 Under Hell's own exorcism, when the twain 
 Their royal reverend guest have foully slain, 
 Who slept the just man's sleep beneath their roof: 
 And there Macbeth's dyed soul is put to proof, 
 When at the banquet rises a pale ghost, 
 To upbraid the horror-faced usurping host. 
 
 With Romeo on her heart young Juliet, 
 In Love's own garden, swears no morning yet
 
 Melcha. 137 
 
 Troubles the cool blue air of summer night, 
 Or moon, or stars, or Philomel's delight ! 
 That was no lark-note ! bird of envious morn ! . . . 
 Death meets them, and all lovers, with his chilling 
 scorn ! 
 
 Further, wild laughter in stained lips and eyes, 
 Fat Falstaff, full of merry jests and lies, 
 Carouses with a prince of generous blood, 
 Where in Old London a quaint tavern stood. 
 
 Cordelia implores her poor mad Lear 
 To know her for his faithful-hearted child, 
 Nor longer do her wrong ; he cannot clear 
 In his dark mind, all shattered and defiled 
 By traitor cruelty, reflect her love, 
 Once in his own blind arrogance reviled : 
 And when she dawns within his soul, the dove 
 Death sneering snatches from him ; he may moan, 
 Yearning remorseful for her — she is gone. 
 All lost to love and light, he may but die . . . 
 So, cursing, laughing, weeping, passes Life's grim 
 pageantry. 
 
 Behold ! what seems the ruin of the Past, 
 Sport of an earthquake, or a whirlwind-blast ! 
 Where golden crosses, jewelled shrines and chalices 
 Mingle with wrecks of sumptuous royal palaces.
 
 138 Melcha. 
 
 Rare alabaster, with embossed rich pyx, 
 From dainty lady's chamber sardonyx, 
 Enamel, and flushed porcelain immix : 
 Silk from far looms, with proud emblazonries, 
 Banner, and arras, glass of rainbow dyes, 
 Drums of great column, sculptured architrave, 
 Red dust of monarch from cathedral nave ; 
 Ruby and sapphire, raiment sown with pearl, 
 Worn by fair scions of emperor and earl ; 
 King's ancient crowns, and ermines, and tiaras, 
 Mid blocks from towers fallen on the wearers. 
 The Samson-strength of Peoples hath arisen, 
 Hurling to dust the palace and the prison : 
 Goaded to madness the blind giant bowed, 
 Till all the Commonwealth's huge pillars crashed 
 
 with ruin loud ! 
 Such chaos weltered when with furious cries 
 Mobs held blood-orgies in the Tuilleries ! 
 But many a wilding bryony and bramble 
 Over the wilderness hath learned to ramble : 
 So grass, germander, violet, may vie 
 With malachite, or lapis lazuli, 
 In Rome, in Caesar's palace, or grey baths 
 Of Caracalla ; among sweet green paths, 
 Anemones and lilies fair enshrine 
 Red porphyries, or rich aventurine.
 
 Melcha. 139 
 
 Upon a crowning cornice crumbling grey 
 Stand two young lovers, beautiful as day. 
 Their lips meet, and their delicate limbs are twin- 
 in 0- ■ 
 Psyche and Eros so were carven inclining. 
 There falls a sunset blush upon their whiteness, 
 While ever and anon a pulse of over-passionate 
 
 brightness 
 Lightning-like thrills the rosy-flushing forms. 
 Opposite gazed a visage dark with storms, 
 All marred and riven, a crag tempest-worn ; 
 Gazed with alternate joy, and grief, and scorn. 
 Like a fallen angel, it hath terrible beauty ; 
 While fain to breathe an empyrean of Duty, 
 Its frame colossal, and sublimely moulded 
 Strains ever and anon from sloughs that hold it 
 Among these ruins, waving a wide pinion 
 Of snowy plume, that pants to have dominion ; 
 Yet fails to free the angel altogether, 
 Who seems an eagle taunted by a tether — 
 A mire, alive with myriad coiling things, 
 Draining the life-blood, mocking the white wings ! 
 Those swarthy limbs appear like lava, yet 
 Smouldering sullen : they were a fire-jet 
 From some volcano ; ye, white wings of snow ! 
 Love formed you of yonder Alp, that from below 
 Soars in high Heaven, with pure eve aglow.
 
 140 Melcha. 
 
 Tis as though ye were broken of a shaft, 
 Aimed by some cruel jealous god, who laughed, 
 Seeing how true it speeded : writhe, O man ! 
 Presumptuous Titan, thou Promethean ! 
 
 Not far hence a pure Alp abides in light, 
 Gemmed with live sapphires, cloven with torrents, 
 
 yonder 
 Girdled with forests : how he soars in mi^ht. 
 While ocean at his feet makes everlasting thunder ! 
 Most wistfully the man contemplates Nature's glory; 
 And now the undying idyl of a lover's story ; 
 Now with a bitter smile beholds an altar, 
 Betwixt him and the pair ; Fate will not falter, 
 Offering youth, sweet sacrifice to Death ! 
 The very twain, whose delicate arms enwreathe 
 Before him as alive, he sees low laid 
 Here, as on some revolt's red barricade 
 Young men and maidens, lately bold and hot, 
 With hoary sire and little child, lie shot ; 
 So these have ceased from loving, and are not, 
 Lying fair-frozen in a mortal shade. 
 Their names are manifold; yet these may be, 
 Who loved in isles Ionian, Juan and Haidee. 
 While he who stands, a sunset-smitten tower, 
 Leaning aside now, reaching hands of power, 
 Is called Childe Harold; Manfred; Cain; the Giaour.
 
 Melcha. 141 
 
 The limed, morass-entangled, floundering 
 angel, 
 A devil, as some deem, hath his evangel ! 
 He sinks, he rises, he hath freed one foot — 
 Reaching a hand to lift some Manlike Brute — 
 Which is it ? maimed and stunted in its growth ; 
 From sheer disuse its eyeballs blinded both ! 
 Like some weird reptile's from Carinthian caves, 
 A human thrall in subterranean graves. 
 Rags flutter from a shagged and leathern frame : 
 Its food was blows, its daily wage was shame : 
 Famine mid mortal wrongs long kept it tame. 
 Shut from free light and air 'neath church and palace, 
 This human thing lay cramped of human malice, 
 Through dull, slow centuries, till it retrograded, 
 Toward brute brows and jowls, the manhood 
 
 faded. 
 See ! how it crawls from forth a rift amid the ruin, 
 Gnawing and burrowing ! alas ! this wrought the 
 
 terrible undoing! 
 
 Now from the fingers of his other hand 
 The form colossal filters a fine sand, 
 Which seems a dust of all in the wide world, 
 Immingled with red dust that hath been human : 
 And while in smoke all vanishes, lips curled 
 Appear to scoff: Behold ! O man, and woman, 
 Your hopes, your longings into ruin hurled !
 
 142 Melcha. 
 
 But some illustrious spirits may be seen, 
 Where that disaster of the creeds hath been. 
 Bouddha, Rousseau, bold Luther, with rude 
 
 Knox, 
 Iena, with Konisberg unwandering eyes 
 Bend where huge moveless adamantine blocks 
 Rest undisturbed, though the fair fabric flies, 
 That hath been reared thereover, like a mist, 
 Before a blast from God's old Anarchist. 
 Even as on the Lebanonian plain 
 A man beholds foundations vast remain, 
 Whose every stone Cyclopean hath length 
 Of sixty feet, being measured ; ruin-fraught 
 Temples were raised upon them ; all the strength 
 Of Genii, by Solomon compelled,, 
 Hath poised the ponderous platform that re- 
 belled, 
 Thwarting man's power to found, 
 One with very ground ! 
 So Tadmor's mighty stones were brought ; 
 So Duty, and Love abide, with Postulates of 
 Thought. 
 
 Beside these souls illustrious are more, 
 Kneeling, or standing proud ; but all adore. 
 Divine Love, very Christ, they worship all, 
 Whether or no upon His Name they call.
 
 Melcha. 143 
 
 Upon a cloud-car, vaporous alabaster, 
 Swift, though the rider longs to travel faster, 
 Stood one, ethereal-limbed like Ariel, 
 Whose spear, the sunbeam of Ithuriel, 
 Touched many a bulk of pompous purple pride, 
 That lay imposing, overswollen beside 
 His chariot-course ; when lo ! an infant's bubble, 
 Each bursting freed the burdened air from trouble. 
 His car was winged with plumes of sunny snow, 
 Edgeless and downy ; but the front below, 
 Isled in deep azure, wore a soft dove-grey, 
 Heaved and recessed, with many a tender play 
 Of hyacinth or harebell ; visionary changes, 
 As subtle-fancy'd amorous wind arranges ; 
 While white rims of the rear, resolved to spray, 
 Evanish all in oceans of deep day. 
 One-half sun's rondure the cloud-chariot stole 
 From vision ; half burned wheel-like ; aureole, 
 Relieved on opaline, of slant slim ray, 
 Streamed up aloft behind the angel form, 
 Whose wild eyes ever yearned to where a storm 
 Of ominous thunder hath a rainbow arch, 
 Shining from falling showers before his march : 
 Surely he held them rain of human tears, 
 Falling from founts of human woes and fears. 
 In this fair Form, like Hopes, or Memories, 
 Cythna, Alastor, Laon, meet the lovers' eyes.
 
 1 44 Melcha. 
 
 During long weary, dreary intervals 
 The spirit was compelled in his vast halls 
 To leave his bride alone, while he explored 
 Realms of a world wherein he was a lord. 
 Realms of lone terrors, of bewildering awe, 
 That fascinate adventuring souls, and draw, 
 As with lodestones, or glittering weird eyes 
 Of anaconda, one to snatch the prize, 
 The jewel Truth from clefts of the crag Danger, 
 Up sheer and giddy cliffs a solitary ranger : 
 On steep snow-walls, where a mere whispered 
 
 breath 
 May rouse the slumbering avalanche of death ; 
 In dark grim chasms where daylight never 
 
 cheers, 
 Only the lammergeyer, or corven peers ; 
 In wintry caverns roofed with frozen tears, 
 Where mystic murmuring chill waters flow, 
 Rivers that are the souls of realms unrolled 
 
 below. 
 He plucks the glory of the edelweiss, 
 Planting his feet in perpendicular ice ; 
 Upward he clambers with stern axe and pole : 
 What shall daunt the indomitable soul ? 
 Clouds may beleaguer with bewildering error, 
 Torrents may thunder, cataracts of terror, 
 But he will mount, till on the proudest crest
 
 Melcha. 145 
 
 Sun-crowned he stands, a conqueror confessed, 
 Or hurled to atoms in the abyss unbaffled he will 
 rest. 
 
 Behold ! he flounders in a forest foul, 
 Where balefire eyes from stealthy things that prowl 
 Glare on him, as he girds him unto war ; 
 And though his love must yet abide afar 
 From him contending, yet her soul, a star, 
 Beams on him holy influence from yonder, 
 Nerving his own to quell the lion-thunder. 
 Yet there too in strange frondage, or lush blossom 
 Hide youths and maidens with soft limbs and 
 
 bosom, 
 Who with Circean spells would lure among them 
 Pilgrims for revelry ; sweet songs they sung 
 
 them ; 
 Yet if one rested there, a mad desire 
 Possessed him, a fierce marrow-feeding fire. 
 
 Or he must toil upon a salt-scurf plain, 
 Whose barren light beats on the burning brain : 
 A sullen sea sleeps bitter to the taste ; 
 Gaunt skeletons are strewn upon a bitter hcrbless 
 
 waste : 
 So forth must fare sweet Mclcha's errant knight ; 
 Nor free from stain shines out that armour white. 
 
 10
 
 146 Melcha. 
 
 And she would travel with him to the strife ; 
 
 But wars and wanderings would wither her young 
 
 life. 
 Yet she may pray for him, yea, send her love 
 Hovering o'er him like a holy dove, 
 And he behold faint glimmers from her ark. 
 The while he welters, lost in waters dark. 
 
 She strove to assimilate when he was gone 
 The food that he would have her feed upon ; 
 Pondered his words, or would retrace some scene, 
 Where with him her companioned feet have been. 
 Alas ! the more she strove, the more she knew 
 Abysms impassable betwixt them two ! 
 Not even those shades relieved the loneliness, 
 That did upon her fainting spirit press. 
 She could discern no shadowy moving throng 
 Those vast interminable aisles among. 
 Shadowy twilight ! a cold prison crypt ! 
 Eternal silence ! awful glooms that slept ! 
 Death weighed upon her, as she cowered, and wept. 
 Ah ! very faintly she beheld the splendours ; 
 And hardly her bewildered memory renders 
 Account to her of what dim ways impart 
 Views of the grand creative forms of art. 
 So, unfamiliar with some ancient pile, 
 A wandering guest may lose himself, the while 
 He seeks his chamber in a twilit tangle
 
 Melcha. 147 
 
 Of corridor, and banquet-hall, dim cloister, and 
 
 quadrangle. 
 She heard some murmuring of cold blind springs 
 Under huge crags, haunted by condor wings, 
 Where pine, or cedar to the sheer steep clings, 
 Nor ever ray of sunlight falls 
 Between stupendous granite walls. 
 
 Then she recalled what her confessor spake, 
 Warning her of weird lords below the lake. 
 For eerie things, whose semblances she saw 
 Lately within the columns, thrust a claw, 
 Or a dead hand to seize her ; so it seemed, 
 When for a moment a tall column gleamed ; 
 Muffled friar from shadowy cowl 
 Glaring with unearthly scowl. 
 Yea, once she met with one who seemed her 
 
 Knight, 
 Victorious returning from the fight ; 
 She throws her in his arms, all happiness ; 
 And lo ! she peers in horrible eyes deadwhite ; 
 The caverned bosom crumbles in her caress! 
 
 " Yet ah !" she sighed, " if he would only 
 stay 
 H umbly with me in mine own earthly day ! 
 
 10 — 2
 
 1 48 Melcha. 
 
 Can I not lure him to abide in peace 
 
 In my forefather's land ? win him release 
 
 From this eternal proud disquietude ? 
 
 Lead him to rest beneath our holy rood ? 
 
 I fear, for all the glories that so gleam, 
 
 It is the unholy glamour of a dream ! . . . 
 
 Though some profound black possibility 
 
 Opens before me when my Knight is nigh — 
 
 I dare not sound it ! Madness yawns thereby ! . . . 
 
 How may I breathe here underneath the wave ? 
 
 Or I must fly, or lure him from the cave !" 
 
 So now she strove with eloquent sobs to win 
 Her fairy lover from the halls of sin ; 
 For so she deemed them, weeping o'er the loss 
 Of her own homely sanctuary-cross — 
 " I cannot mock my glorious destiny," 
 He answered, a fierce lightning in his eye ; 
 " No, not for love, nor comfort, nor a bride ! 
 Wilt thou not share with me my throne, my 
 
 pride ?" 
 Then he spake bitter words of foolish gall 
 Anent her faith ; the faith of a mere thrall, 
 He dared aver, till she herself felt anger, 
 And there arose a hybrid-born vain clangour 
 Betwixt their loves ; dull mist enveloped all. 
 A chilling feud arose from good and evil;
 
 Melcha. 149 
 
 Love's limpid springs were poisoned by the devil. 
 u I deem that what thine incantation vaunts 
 May be but water, and long waterplants ! 
 I fear thee ! there be stains upon thine armour ! 
 What realms hast haunted ? art thou mine own 
 
 charmer ? 
 Hast thou not sinned ? art thou the paragon 
 I lately set my faith upon ? . . . 
 Nay, if vague rumour muttered of some sin, 
 Vile men malign us, and I hoped to win 
 Thee from the peril : thou wilt not be ruled ! 
 Courting the wily foe, thou wilt be fooled ! 
 Why leave me here in darkness over long, 
 In chase of some conundrum, or a song ? 
 Why wage in ghostly realms a shadowy war, 
 Scorning the warm world for a phantom far? 
 I fear to lose my footing, and my goal ! 
 Yea, thou hast robbed me of my rest, my soul ! 
 While thy proud thoughts through all the world 
 
 would roll ! . . . 
 Thy gloomy pavements heave beneath my feet, 
 And all thy pillars rocking seem to meet ! . . . 
 Why did I leave my native sphere above ? 
 Thou wilt be lost too ! fly with me, my love ! 
 And thou shalt be no more a wandering wraith, 
 But our own stalwart champion of the faith I"
 
 1 50 Mclcha. 
 
 " Unworthy of this royal realm of mine ! 
 I snatched you from the dust to make you mine. 
 I deemed the sacred fire within your spirit 
 Smouldered ; mine eager, breathing love may 
 
 stir it — 
 No queen ! mere common clay, for all fair 
 
 seeming ! 
 Of toys, and dress, and dross for ever dreaming ; 
 In highest Heaven longing for the sound 
 Of beasts of burden on the common ground, 
 At their monotonous unsoulful toil ; 
 Drawing mere water, ploughing stubborn soil ; 
 That hinds, or royal, or rich, or clothed in rags, 
 May gnaw roots, if their plodding never flags ! 
 May only masks and mummeries delight you, 
 Though to full feasts of Reason I invite you ? 
 Will you not let me couch your filmed eyes ? 
 For all your Atys' priests' insensate lies, 
 Trust me ! God's day, when one is used thereto, 
 Strikes grander than mere spangles red and blue ; 
 Or ghostly spawn of humours in sick blood ! 
 Though all your sacred books pronounce them 
 
 good, 
 
 And God's veracious ambient air profane 
 
 Come forth, and all your juggling ghosts will 
 
 wane ! — 
 Come from your blinded dungeons ! — or remain !"
 
 Melcha. 1 5 1 
 
 " Shall I resign my soul, my life, my hope, 
 Among mere shadowy fancies here to grope 
 For ever ? why calumniate my creed ? 
 You wise ones know not all our bitter need ! 
 See yon dim millions of human lives, 
 Swarming in labour's dun defiled hives, 
 Stunned with base sounds, immersed in dingy 
 
 crafts ! 
 Dare not disdain the star, the flower that wafts 
 Our unimprisoned souls ! a moment lifts 
 From reeking pestilent squalors, through what rifts 
 So-ever, to blue skies, and woodlands fair, 
 Fresh flowing water, and sweet liberal air ! 
 Hail ! soiled flower, dim star among the smoke 
 O'er ruinous roofs ! faint heaven-dawn that broke, 
 Luminous pearl above man's misery, 
 Mute for a moment, now, where lewd huts lie, 
 Surprised to shame of their own shamelessness, 
 Deep degradation, and Hells' hopelessness, 
 By the young Angel, Morning ! 
 
 Lo ! one wonders, 
 Wakes unaware, and sees God, while she ponders ; 
 Ere yet long, thin, black throats of factories 
 Soil with brown breath yon virginal pure skies ; 
 While, by the pearly river flowing fast, 
 She muses on a mole, with many a mast 
 Of wealth-gorged hulls from foreign lands around 
 
 her :
 
 1 5 2 Mclcha. 
 
 Diseased, debauched, God's youthful Morning 
 
 found her ! 
 Wilt block these from the ray above their roof, 
 Or hold them from the Saviour flower aloof, 
 Till they have fathomed your astronomy, 
 Or learn to babble jargonous botany ? 
 Jesus, and Mary, human wants have met ! 
 Why will ye rob poor souls of their one amulet ? 
 For me, my lot is low ! I will fall prone, 
 With those dull worshippers thou dost disown !" 
 
 He held her in his arms : he groaned : he fled. 
 But on the floors of Night she reeled, she stumbled, 
 and fell dead. 
 
 Arousing, Melcha slowly gazed around : 
 Grey forms gigantic stand, with ne'er a sound ; 
 Every ghost, relieved against a column, 
 Hath one vast-moulded hand enclasping solemn 
 The other arm, whose hand the visage muffled. 
 Their heads are bowed, their rocky robes unruffled 
 Fall, like a mountain flank, with gorge profound 
 Grey riven : columns congregated here 
 Have thunderous amplitude : aloft they rear 
 To heights unknown, roofed over with dim fear, 
 Forming one vasty chamber of sphered gloom, 
 On whose faint heart there weighs a huge dark 
 Tomb :
 
 Mclcha. 153 
 
 Hewn out of solid Night it seemed, in form 
 
 Resembling some sarcophagus enorm 
 
 Of Bull Osirian, disinterred by Nile 
 
 From dull oblivion of Time's ponderous pile. 
 
 As Melcha gazed, she felt One had been there, 
 
 To whom the world clings with sublime despair. 
 
 "If He be there still, all is doubt and doom ; 
 
 I deemed that He was risen from the tomb" . . . 
 
 Stay ! did she hear within the sepulchre 
 
 A sound ? . . . " Wilt thou arise, Deliverer ?" 
 
 . . . She hears her own loud heart; nought else 
 
 astir. 
 'But I will ask these guardians," she said, 
 "If He indeed be risen from the dead !" 
 Then, in a whisper, daring scarce to frame 
 The syllables of that beloved Name, 
 " Tell me !" she murmured : " Is the Saviour risen ?" 
 . . . From yonder Forms, from hollows of the prison, 
 In weird unearthly tones, the sound "Arisen !" 
 Rolled in upon her soul . . . Ah ! how to gauge 
 The dark significance of such reply ? 
 Despair's own long-drawn wail of inarticulate agony ! 
 Shall this the soul's deep yearning doubt assuage ? 
 Behold ! reverberations infinite 
 All the vast vaults and labyrinths affright 
 To conscious desolation, fatherless, profound, 
 Whom dull Oblivion's anodyne consoled with 
 
 slumber sound !
 
 154 Melcha. 
 
 Lulled on its dungeon floor, the world's Despair 
 Wakes with a wail ! "Arisen ! would He were !" 
 
 And then it seemed as though, from all the 
 goolm 
 Of never-ending hollows round the tomb, 
 A never-ending multitude of souls, 
 Inwardly weeping, cloaked in mournful stoles, 
 Moved from one point toward the silent grave 
 Of Him who came our ruined race to save. 
 Passing, each turned ; all haggard ; some in tears : 
 Everyone, moving silent, disappears, 
 A hopeless mourner, in the Darkness facing 
 That Night, whence he emerged with melancholy 
 
 pacing. 
 But one who laughed in that dim hall 
 Ghastlier seemed to her than all ! 
 
 At length she moaned, with voice of one that 
 dies : 
 
 " Innumerable throng 
 
 Of human generations manifold ! how long ? 
 
 For ever shall I see your hopeless eyes ? 
 
 Ah ! let me perish ! Ah ! for mine own skies 1" . . 
 
 Dreamfully she hears the swells 
 
 Of water-muffled peals of bells.
 
 Melcha. 
 
 in. 
 
 DO 
 
 And with this utterance of all her being, 
 
 The appearance-world thereunto swift agreeing 
 
 Melcha flies ! 
 
 . . . Lo ! now she lies 
 
 In sunny grass : 
 
 Her own dear lake-land ! in a water-glass 
 
 Shadows of green herbage flowing, 
 
 Whose leaning blades quench one another 
 
 glowing ! 
 On snowy petal of a frail windflower 
 Golden anthers hint the hour 
 By tremulously shadowing; 
 Blue shadows to air-ruffled verges cling. 
 Here she buries her pale face, 
 Rendering ecstasy for grace, 
 Sensible of only this, 
 That spring woodlands are a bliss. 
 Now the birch from bronzy stems 
 Buds alternate emerald gems, 
 Whose leaflets glossy glistening 
 Fairy-fanned are listening 
 Unto mellow-throated elves, 
 Merrily sunning their small selves, 
 Where a flutter of a rain 
 Of slim branches moves a stain
 
 is 6 Melcha. 
 
 o 
 
 On the delicate lady- skin, 
 Pinky silver shadowed thin. 
 How she hears the turtle coo, 
 And a soft call of cuckoo, 
 The lake-ripple lisping, 
 Bluely, blithely crisping ; 
 Views yon delicate larch-clouds 
 Heaving like the masted shrouds, 
 Vivid green in azure sky, 
 Murmuring how tranquilly ! 
 Cherry, and pink apple blossom 
 Hanging foam in air's blue bosom ; 
 How she scents the woodland smell, 
 She remembereth so well ; 
 Lying silent in a trance, 
 As in hours of old romance ! 
 While already croziered fern 
 In the sun begins to burn, 
 Though dim morning rime impearl 
 Wings of mavis and of merle. 
 . . . But at length upon her mind 
 The hell she hath left behind 
 Glareth dimly from afar, 
 Like eclipse, or baleful star, 
 While she gradually remembers 
 How her soul hath been hell's embers ! 
 "I will humbly seek confession !
 
 Mclcha. 1 5 7 
 
 So relieve this dire oppression !" 
 Thinking thus, she took her way 
 To where above the placid bay- 
 Stands her well-beloved chapel, 
 Near her home among the apple. 
 The lake lay yonder as before ; 
 Yet she knew the land no more ! 
 What hath come to wood and field ? 
 No answer may her musing yield. 
 There the sanctuary appears : 
 . . . Doth it totter as with years ? 
 Lo ! the crucifix of wood 
 Shrined where it hath ever stood : 
 She is on her knees before it . . . 
 But what awful change comes o'er it ? 
 The bleeding head bowed on the breast 
 Turns away from her request ; 
 Turns from her who would be blest ! 
 And she feels she cannot pray ; 
 Cannot find what she shall say ! 
 
 Then she enters grief-amazed 
 The rude chapel ruin-crazed ; 
 Weathered beams and walls inclined 
 To and fro, as in a wind. 
 All her wild tale she reveals 
 To the priest, nor aught conceals.
 
 158 Melcka. 
 
 He, much moved, and sore astonished, 
 His weird penitent admonished 
 She was wound in mortal sin ; 
 And, would she salvation win, 
 Hardest penance must endure ; 
 Make herself a holy nun ; 
 Banish all which might allure 
 Memory of that evil one, 
 Who in guise of a white angel 
 Drew her from the pure evangel ! 
 " For evermore thou shalt forsake 
 Those enchantments of the lake!" 
 This was not the aged priest, 
 Wont to serve her holy feast, 
 Before she fled away from earth ; 
 And Melcha felt a very dearth 
 In her heart, when he so stern 
 Bade her love for ever turn 
 From all memory of him, 
 Yonder in the waters dim. 
 Yet she feared the fatal spell — 
 Christ and Heaven ! Love and Hell ! 
 " We may scorn not common ground : 
 God hath wisely fenced us round : 
 Within I bleed from a deep wound !" . 
 
 When she hath arrived at home, 
 A stranger maiden sees her come,
 
 Melcha. 159 
 
 (How the aged house did lean ! 
 
 Other was the garden scene :) 
 
 Who on Melcha's face and dress 
 
 Looks wide-eyed ; while with no less 
 
 Marvel Melcha looks on hers. 
 
 She with the strange maid confers ; 
 
 And, naming her own family, 
 
 Asks if sister, or her sire, 
 
 Be in the house, or near the byre ? 
 
 The maid, with terror in her eye, 
 
 Replies : '"Tis near a century, 
 
 Since, as they tell me, one so named 
 
 Lived here — there is a portrait framed 
 
 In the old mansion, dim with age, 
 
 That often doth my mind engage, 
 
 Hanging in the parlour old ; 
 
 A lady, of whom strange things are told — 
 
 How she eloped with our lake-fairy . . . 
 
 Like you the picture looks ! ah ! Holy Mary !" 
 
 Then Melcha in a mournful dream 
 Turned away from where the gleam 
 Of her old home promised rest 
 To the weary and distressed ; 
 While the maiden scared and pale 
 Fled within to tc)l her tale. 
 
 And Melcha went with drooping face 
 To her mother's resting-place.
 
 1 60 Melcha. 
 
 But she found not the old stone ; 
 
 In its place a whiter one, 
 
 Commemorative of some other, 
 
 Not her well-beloved mother ! 
 
 And confusion o'er her grew, 
 
 When the dates thereon she knew. 
 
 While on a headstone sunk among 
 
 Grass and darnel growing long, 
 
 Where weather-stains and lichen gather, 
 
 She spells the name of her old father . . . 
 
 And now the dear name of her sister. 
 
 Alas ! how often in fond hope she kissed her 
 
 Melcha lies in the warm sun, 
 
 Murmuring, " I must be a nun !" 
 
 So she made herself a nun ; 
 And a high repute she won 
 Among pale devotees who fast, 
 Afflict their souls, and bodies cast 
 Scourged upon the midnight stone, 
 Supplicating, making moan, 
 Lacerated with remorse 
 For sin's dark tyrannic force. 
 Yet, alas, ! the demon doubt 
 Was not utterly cast out. 
 Still her exorcised devil 
 Would return to hold his revel ; 

 
 Melcha. 1 6 1 
 
 And where slept Love's own warm grace 
 
 Alas ! now was a desolate place ; 
 
 In that lone hollow of her heart 
 
 Fiery fangs of serpent dart ; 
 
 Nor Heaven's mild and holy balm 
 
 Fills her wounded soul with calm. 
 
 Yet fellow-feeling with the poor, 
 
 Enslaved and sorrowful, half wrought a cure : 
 
 The world-wide mystery of Fate 
 
 Fell upon her with all its weight ; 
 
 But gleams of Love, and Righteousness 
 
 Over the welter of distress 
 
 From unimaginable quarters 
 
 Looked here and there upon the waters, 
 
 Deep, wan waters of our sorrow, 
 
 Murmuring of dark to-morrow. 
 
 Yea, and kindly thought for all 
 
 Lifts from sorrow's lonely pall. 
 
 But they who reft of consolation live 
 Feel the sad impotence of penury, 
 When, longing some sweet cordial to give, 
 Helpless, and dumb, and void they hear the cry: 
 "A drop to cool our tongues in this flame's 
 
 misery !" 
 As one awaking after night, 
 Blind with blaze of sudden light, 
 
 II
 
 1 62 Jllelcha. 
 
 To chaos was her nature hurled, 
 Paralysed for either world, 
 Since her wild audacious flight. 
 
 Now once more a gleam Elysian 
 Dawns upon her, a new vision, 
 Other than the sight of old, 
 Wondrous, wide, more manifold. 
 Then she cried, "How bitter, love ! 
 Aching hollows where should be 
 Love, and His tranquillity ! 
 Alas ! my soul would climb above ! 
 Yet if thou sink for need of me ? 
 Did I well to fly away, 
 Leaving thee alone to stray 
 Ever further from sweet day ? 
 In those awful wilds art lost ? 
 
 to clasp thee, tempest-tost ! 
 Ah ! my Lord ! Ah ! not for ever 
 From mine own thou wilt me sever : 
 Nay ! my husband, thou shalt prove 
 
 A mightier arm, though mine remove ! . . . 
 Two hearts tangled in Love's girdle golden ! 
 Who dreams they shall not be holden ? 
 
 1 am faint : I seem to feel 
 
 Some new change, for woe or weal." 
 Then she wandered through the brake,
 
 Melcha. 163 
 
 Till she came upon the lake : 
 
 How wistfully she gazed, and gazed 
 
 Where the auroral billow blazed ! 
 
 Ah ! what is the wild thrilling trouble 
 In the sun's blithe water-double ? . . . 
 Behold, from forth the waters blue 
 Burst the spirit O'Donoghue ! 
 
 He openeth wide longing arms — 
 
 Though where are now the earlier charms ? 
 
 How she wavereth on the brink ! 
 
 In mortal faint she seems to sink ; 
 
 Yet looking on him, whispereth : " He is 
 
 risen !" 
 Then, all transfigured, yields her to the prison 
 Of his embrace ! but this her lover now 
 Shines radiant, as never he hath shone. 
 " Yea, He is risen — though I know not how !" 
 Answers the other . . . and the twain are gone 
 Under the sun-reverberant tide : 
 The fairy Knight hath won his bride ! 
 
 11— 2
 
 THE AGNOSTIC. 
 
 A GIRL, who dared not say the Christian creed, 
 Tho' rich in kindly heart and valorous deed, 
 Sang me a simple hymn with reverent tone. 
 Later, before Beethoven's cloudy throne 
 Symphonic, I stood, rapt and marvelling; 
 And there a vision loomed on shadowy wing. 
 
 The Maiden fair in spirit I beheld, 
 Her eyes pure shrines of loftiest intent, 
 Indomitable endeavour, never quelled 
 By violent misfortune, nor repelled 
 By dull resistance of indifferent 
 Vicissitude, but ever buoyant ; her 
 On a frail arch of slow dissolving ice, 
 I saw mid mountains robed in snowy fur, 
 All inaccessible, a precipice 
 At either end inexorably steep, 
 Banning approach ; around her slender form 
 Unfathomable abysses of the deep,
 
 The Agnostic. 165 
 
 O'er her involved embroilment of the storm, 
 Thundering cloud ; methought she stooped anon 
 With cordial of her glance to yield support 
 Unto some faltering or fallen one 
 Upon life's painful perilous pass, full fraught 
 With fear, convoying from nowhere to nowhither ; 
 So teach the later sages, and her mind, 
 Swayed by the mastering Magia breathing thither 
 From the Time-Spirit, so believes ; or blind, 
 Or eagle-orbed, He rules the answering helm 
 Of man's opinion; but the mellow tones 
 Of her sweet anthem fill the frozen realm 
 With human longing ; the unhearing stones 
 Prolong the strains within their hollow hearts 
 Unknowing ; 'tis a hymn of piteous prayer 
 For help from Him Who of His Life imparts, 
 Some hold, to mortals ; but the maiden there 
 So deems not; wherefore I feel wonderment. 
 Whether she sang, because the melody 
 Held soothing for her soul, or if she bent 
 Her loftier flight, sustaining some who fly 
 On lowlier pinion faint and falteringly 
 With infant cradlesong they love to hear, 
 I know not, but her mellow-toned appeal 
 Wanders an orphan through a world of fear, 
 Where none regards, nor can regard, nor feel 
 With mortal man, emitting a faint ray
 
 1 66 The Agnostic. 
 
 Of conscious hope within the soulless gloom, 
 That feebly quavers but a little way, 
 For a brief while in the eternal tomb, 
 That is the fathomless and infinite 
 Mother of all. And still serene the smiles ! 
 
 But how sustains her the eternal Night ? 
 With what poor toys, with what illusive wiles ? 
 There were some flowers in the ice-crevices 
 Some tiny flowers of dear seraphic blue, 
 And rifts in tempest ; but are those, or these, 
 Sisters to them in deep cerulean hue, 
 Evanishing when born, howe'er they please, 
 Sustainers of her very light of life? 
 Or is she strong for her unequal strife 
 Through yonder gleams of gold upon the rock ? 
 Nay, they are elf-gleams glimmering to mock ! 
 
 But she adores twin visionary Stars, 
 That in the abysmal hollows wax and wane, 
 Strange progeny of elemental wars, 
 Ravening in chasms of the unsouled Inane ! 
 Duty, and Love, fair sister, and bold brother, 
 To spring in very deed from such a Mother ! 
 Yea, spiritual tides of boundless being 
 Are billowing in the soul, a moment fleeing 
 From naught to naught unfathomably still : 
 Ghost from the gloom the miracle of Will !
 
 The Agnostic. 167 
 
 A lovely child played on the crystal bridge, 
 And she played with him, they loved one another ; 
 Alas ! he faded from the icy ridge, 
 Like some soft flower, his delicate fleeting brother ; 
 He swooned into the unholy void, he perished ! 
 While she with anguish wept the flower she 
 
 cherished. 
 
 And yet methought that in the shrouding 
 storm 
 I could distinguish some ethereal form, 
 As of a fair child often hovering nigh, 
 Albeit no vision met the maiden's eye. 
 Yet on the appealing waves of her sweet hymn 
 Toward her some breathing cohort seemed to swim. 
 Till unaware an ominous sharp sound 
 Foreboded wreck and ruin of the arc ; 
 Startled she gazed into the dusk profound, 
 Then calmly-grave appeared to mark 
 Annihilation's face confronting her, 
 While in a moment with still overthrow 
 Vanished the fair arch, and his eager stir 
 Of life for ever — Nay ! behold the glow 
 Of some divine celestial surprise 
 Dawns in the dewy darkness of her eyes, 
 While unsustaincd she falls ; for lo! the cold 
 Unfathomable hollow-hearted gloom 
 Grew warm hearts throbbing with a love untold ;
 
 1 68 The Agnostic 
 
 <b 
 
 The iron crags, built round her like a tomb, 
 Arms wound to ward with full-assured embrace ; 
 Confused cloud-chaos, vasty vans that brood 
 Expansive o'er the darkness, with a grace 
 Of hallowing benediction for the rude 
 Sullen death-realm, unfounded and unformed, 
 Rousing a life within the grey womb, warmed 
 From their abounding! O grand countenance 
 Of guardian angels! once a drear expanse, 
 High snows aloof, indifferent ! ye stars, 
 Luminous eyes, who gaze through pearly bars 
 Unslumbering ! . . . A childish form floats hither, 
 The same who seemed before her eyes to wither ; 
 She only lost him for a little while ; 
 They greet again with still celestial smile. 
 For righteous Love, tho' visionless she be, 
 Buoys high the Soul o'er death's catastrophe, 
 Bears her triumphant on the central tide 
 Of universal Life, the immortal Bride.
 
 THE DEATH OF LIVINGSTONE. 
 
 i. 
 
 " No mortal power shall turn me : I arise, 
 And will go forward, with my face for ever 
 Toward those fountains of the sacred river, 
 River still guarding from all mortal eyes 
 The hoary mystery of mysteries." 
 So vowed the pilgrim, chief of a strong band, 
 Who toil to wrest from Death the twilight land. 
 A deep resolve, more grand than midnight skies, 
 Glowed in his countenance ; but face and form 
 Were marred and writhen with the lifelong storm. 
 While life's dark winter snowed upon his heart, 
 All wrathful elements howled forth, Depart ! 
 Heaven with remorseless frown above him bowed ; 
 Earth rose in whelming floods to help the cloud. 
 
 II. 
 
 Whelmed in the wild and terrible morass, 
 He wades, he swims, he flounders ; he is borne
 
 1 70 The Death of Livingstone. 
 
 Upon the shoulders of dark men forlorn, 
 
 To whom the grandeurs of his spirit pass 
 
 By glorious contagion ; a foul mass 
 
 Of foes malignant o'er the man outworn 
 
 Clamour ; disease his vitals doth harass, 
 
 Draining the life-blood ; mortal pain hath torn : 
 
 Until his faithfuls weave him a soft bed 
 
 Of boughs, and bear him among flowering reeds 
 
 And lotus-paven waters : overhead, 
 
 Languid from anguish, he in dreaming heeds 
 
 An eagle at dawn, whose ghostly voice is hurled, 
 
 As though he called one from another world. 
 
 in. 
 
 A world of waters — sounds of solemn sea, 
 
 As wind soughs wandering in rushes now : 
 
 But they have built with grass and limber bough 
 
 A hut for him who fainteth mortally. 
 
 " Lord, let not Hell prevail ! be with me Thou ! 
 
 May I sustain the load allotted me ; 
 
 And ere in England falls the winter snow, 
 
 May I be there, at home, with Victory ! . . . 
 
 . . . Deep is the desolation of my soul : 
 
 It may be I am failing ere my task 
 
 Full-ended : in my wake no champion 
 
 Of light is following ; where waters roll
 
 The Death of Livingstone. 171 
 
 On fair Nyassa, Death's dark navies bask ! 
 Mary lies in her forest grave alone ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Alone her face, and one more, dear as hers, 
 Avail red haunting horrors to dispel. 
 
 my dark race, plunged in the abyss of Hell ! 
 Sweet babes and women, beneath slow murderers ! 
 Tortured I start from slumber — weeping blurs 
 Mine eyes for memories no words may tell. 
 
 . . . Ere the young linnet in a soft nest stirs, 
 
 1 would be home, my work accomplished well !" 
 . . . Drearily day faints, moaning into night ; 
 The dark men sadly lose their fading sight, 
 Cowering silent by the watchfire light. 
 
 Beasts growl in jungles of Ilala land ; 
 Far nightbirds wail on Lulimala strand ; 
 Trees fire-illumined murmur, a tall band. 
 
 V. 
 
 " Is it our people who are shouting so ?" 
 
 The dark and tender follower replies, 
 
 "A buffalo from far corn-fields with cries 
 
 Men scare. "... The spirit wanders to and fro, 
 
 Like some dim waters' aimless ebb and flow ; 
 
 1 Is this the Luapula ?" . . . whose surmise
 
 172 The Death of Livingstone. 
 
 Gently the man dissolves : then in a low 
 Alien tongue, and with faint, filming eyes, 
 The weary wanderer wistfully inquires, 
 u How far is Luapula ?" falling soon 
 To slumber. . . . Later, after night's chill noon, 
 His boy-attendant, running toward the fires 
 Out of the hut, where both were sleeping, said, 
 " Come to the Master ! for I am afraid. " 
 
 VI. 
 
 They, rising, hasten to the cabin door ; 
 Where, by a feeble taper, which adheres 
 To a worn wooden travelling-case, appears 
 The form of one who kneels upon the floor, 
 The head bowed in the hands enclasped before 
 The body. Reverent they pause : none hears 
 A sound of breathing ; louder than of yore 
 The low watch-pulse affronts foreboding ears. 
 At length one, timid, touches the grey head. 
 Stone-cold, and silent ! Livingstone is dead ! 
 Lifting his arms to God above the crowd 
 Of trampling furies, broken, but not bowed, 
 His mighty soul went out : the slave in chains 
 Moans : the ghost-eagle calls : Hell laughs : Night 
 reigns !
 
 The Death of Livingstone. 173 
 
 VII. 
 
 The cold hands call upon abysmal Gloom : 
 Strange frondage murmurs in a darkling morn : 
 Orphaned men cower round the fires forlorn : 
 Nile shrouds his fountains : the dim living tomb 
 Of Africa still closed, Death's blank-eyed doom, — 
 No face beloved, no land where he was born, — 
 Guerdons the warrior ! No prayed-for bloom 
 Of home-love crowns him ere the year outworn ; 
 But while faint eyes look far away with trust, 
 Death spurns the soul's quenched altar in the dust ! 
 ... Is all, then, failure ? Lives no Father there ? 
 Do living hearts but supplicate dead air ? 
 Is this the end of the Promethean 
 Indomitable, all-enduring Man ? 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Who calls it failure ? 
 
 God fulfils the prayer : 
 He is at home ; he rests ; the work is done. 
 He hath not failed, who fails like Livingstone ! 
 Radiant diadems all conquerors wear 
 Pale before his magnificent despair; 
 And whatsoever kingdoms men have won, 
 He triumphs dead, defeated, and alone,
 
 174 T/ie Death of Livingstone. 
 
 Who learned sublimely to endure and dare ! 
 For holy labour is the very end, 
 Duty man's crown, and his eternal friend ; 
 Reason from Chaos wards the world's grand whole ; 
 All Nature hath Love's martyrdom for goal. 
 Who nobly toils, though none be nigh to see, 
 He only lives, — he lives eternally. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Night melts in glory ; royal-robed Sun 
 
 Glowingly deepens, like a martial blare, 
 
 Awakening mountain, lake, and forest fair ; 
 
 Assumes all Africa for royal throne. 
 
 Slaves, to the height of their great master grown, 
 
 With souls unfettered, and free limbs, prepare 
 
 The wondrous march, whose Europe-shaming care 
 
 Made all his faithful fortitude our own, 
 
 Enshrined for men the man magnanimous, 
 
 A beacon for all races and for us ! 
 
 Yet if no rumour had survived the grave, 
 
 If all were whelmed in dark Ilala-wave, 
 
 Yon very woods and waters in their dim 
 
 Hearts would have lost no memory of him ! 
 
 They, in their mystic message to all time, 
 
 And all the worlds, have thrilled with the sublime 
 
 Story of man ; God reassumes the life ; 
 
 He crowns unseen the labour and the strife.
 
 The Death of Livingstone. 175 
 
 Labour is full fruition in the bud, 
 
 And faith, possession dimly understood. 
 
 Mortal defeat blows oft the clarion 
 Of resurrection o'er an indolent world 
 Death-dreaming, louder than hath e'er been blown 
 From visible triumph ; the freed soul unfurled 
 A conquering flame, arousing the dull plain 
 Of common souls to kindle in his train, 
 Heroic-moulded, woke the silent dust 
 To songful flowers of helpful love and trust ; 
 Inspired the world's dead heart to throb victoriously; 
 So they awake to life, who warring desperate die ! 
 Yea, in the smile of some Divine deep Peace, 
 Our faithful find from storms of earth release.
 
 BYRON'S GRAVE.? 
 
 Nay ! Byron, nay ! not under where we tread, 
 Dumb weight of stone, lies thine imperial head ! 
 Into no vault lethargic, dark and dank, 
 The splendid strength of thy swift spirit sank : 
 No narrow church in precincts cold and grey 
 Confines the plume, that loved to breast the day : 
 Thy self-consuming, scathing heart of flame 
 Was quenched to feed no silent coffin's shame ! 
 A fierce, glad fire in buoyant hearts art thou, 
 A radiance in auroral spirits now ; 
 A stormy wind, an ever-sounding ocean, 
 A life, a power, a never-wearying motion ! 
 Or deadly gloom, or terrible despair, 
 An earthquake mockery of strong Creeds that were 
 Assured possessions of calm earth and sky, 
 Where doom-distraught pale souls took sanctuary, 
 As in strong temples. The same blocks shall build, 
 Iconoclast! the edifice you spilled, 
 More durable, more fair : O scourge of God, 
 
 12
 
 178 By voii 's Grave. 
 
 It was Himself who urged thee on thy road ; 
 And thou, Don Juan, Harold, Manfred, Cain, 
 Song-crowned within the world's young heart shalt 
 
 reign ! 
 Whene'er we hear embroiled lashed ocean roar, 
 Or thunder echoing among heights all hoar, 
 Brother ! thy mighty measure heightens theirs, 
 While Freedom on her rent red banner bears 
 The deathless names of many a victory won, 
 Inspired by thy death-shattering clarion ! 
 In Love's immortal firmament are set 
 Twin stars of Romeo and Juliet, 
 And their companions young eyes discover 
 In Cycladean Haidee with her lover. 
 
 May all the devastating force be spent ? 
 Or all thy godlike energies lie shent? 
 Nay ! thou art founded in the strength Divine : 
 The Soul's immense eternity is thine ! 
 Profound Beneficence absorbs thy power, 
 While Ages tend the long-maturing flower: 
 Our Sun himself, one tempest of wild flame, 
 For source of joy, and very life men claim 
 In mellowing corn, in bird, and bloom of spring, 
 In leaping lambs, and lovers dallying. 
 Byron ! the whirlwinds rended not in vain ; 
 Aloof behold they nourish and sustain ! 
 In the far end we shall account them gain.
 
 SNOWDROPS. 
 
 O DARLING spirits of the snow, 
 
 Who hide within your heart the green, 
 
 Howe'er the wintry wind may blow, 
 The secret of the summer sheen 
 Ye smile to know ! 
 
 By frozen rills, in woods and mead, 
 A mild pure sisterhood ye grow, 
 
 Who bend the meek and quiet head, 
 And are a token from below 
 From our dear dead, 
 
 As in their turf ye softly shine 
 Of innocent white lives they lead, 
 
 With healing influence Divine 
 
 For souls who on their memory feed, 
 World-worn like mine. 
 
 12 — 2
 
 NOCTURNE. 
 
 The shadowy portals of dim death 
 Unfold alluringly, 
 And all my soul importuneth 
 Unfathomed worlds for thee ! 
 
 ye illimitable realms 
 Of awful amplitude, 
 
 From your immensity that whelms 
 
 1 crave one only good ! 
 From unimaginable wealth 
 My soul demands but this, 
 
 Nor fame, nor power, nor gold, nor health, 
 
 A little child's warm kiss ! 
 
 If I may feel him when I part, 
 
 And if he greets me then, 
 
 Unsorrowing will my weary heart 
 
 Forsake the haunts of men. 
 
 Ah me 1 engulphed in the wild storm, 
 
 That drifts the lost like leaves,
 
 Nocturne. 181 
 
 Mine arms may never clasp thy form, 
 
 Where a still water heaves, 
 
 Where God's own sunlight cleaves to thee, 
 
 My holy little child ! 
 
 Yet through a storm-rent might I see 
 
 Thy joy, my undefiled, 
 
 I deem that I could bear my fate, 
 
 However dark and drear ; 
 
 But I behold no Heaven's gate 
 
 From our confusion here! 
 
 I think the love between us twain 
 
 May raise me for awhile ; 
 
 Yet if the shadow of my pain 
 
 Would only cloud thy smile, 
 
 Ah ! move not near me, till my doom 
 
 Of whirlwind, ice, and fire 
 
 Be all accomplished in the gloom, 
 
 And I be lifted higher ! 
 
 Our Love shall save, whate'er delays, 
 
 And thou be fain of all thy dole ! 
 
 Dear Love hath many secret ways, 
 
 Whereby She steals from soul to soul ; 
 
 Are any hells beyond the rays 
 
 Of Her all-healing miracle ? 
 
 If the Abysses could devour 
 
 Thy love and mine, then ail were lost :
 
 1 82 Nocturne. 
 
 But where Love breathes, a fadeless flower 
 May bloom from Death's inveterate frost ! 
 And though the fiends would whelm me low 
 With mine own sins for ponderous stones, 
 Child-angels all around me flow ; 
 I loved them ; they have heard my moans !
 
 BEETHOVEN. 8 
 
 The mage of music, deaf to outward sound, 
 Rehearsing mighty harmonies within, 
 Waved his light wand ; the full aerial tides 
 Ebbed billowing to rear of him, o'erwhelmed 
 All listening auditors, engulphed, and swept 
 Upon the indomitable, imperial surge 
 To alien realms, and halls of ancient awe, 
 Which are the presence-chambers of dim Death : 
 The grand departed haunt this mountain-sound ! 
 Cliffs, and ravines, and torrent-shadowing pines, 
 A pomp of winds, and waters, and wild cloud 
 The enchanter raises : then the solemn scene 
 Evanishing, lo ! delicate soft calm 
 Of vernal airs, young leaflets, and blithe birds, 
 The cuckoo and the nightingale, with bloom 
 Of myriad flowers, and rills, and water-falls, 
 Or sunlit rains that twinkle through the leaves, 
 And odorous ruffled whirlpools of the rose. 
 Anon, some wondrous petal of a flower,
 
 1S4 Beethoven. 
 
 An ample velvet petal, slides along 
 
 A luminous air of summer, visibly 
 
 Mantling a vermeil glory in the blue ; 
 
 And now thin ice films clearest water ; now 
 
 Our youngest angel whispers out of heaven, 
 
 And all the choir of his companions 
 
 Let loose their rapture on swift sudden wings, 
 
 Sunshine released unhoped-for from a cloud ! 
 
 Slant rays of opal through the clerestory ; 
 
 Dawn over solemn heights of lonely snow, 
 
 Aerial dawn, that deepens into day ; 
 
 A congregating of white seraph throngs, 
 
 Who hold the realms of ether with white plume, 
 
 And with a sweet compulsion lift to heaven ! 
 
 Ye, Harmonies, expand immeasurably 
 
 The temple of our soul, and yet are more, 
 
 Than earth can bear ; within the courts above 
 
 Ye may expatiate majestical, 
 
 Native, at home! poor mortals hide their tears, 
 
 With caught breath, nor may follow : mountain 
 
 stairs, 
 Platform on platform, ye aspire to God ! 
 His infinite Soul who bore you is immortal, 
 And ours, in whom reverberates your appeal ! 
 O music-marvel ! how your royal river 
 Mirrors our life ; there breathes exhaled from it 
 Sorrow and joy, and triumph and despair ;
 
 Beethoven. 185 
 
 Your eagle flight is through the infinite, 
 No barriers to prison from the immense. 
 Yours the large language of the heights of 
 
 Heaven ! 
 Now lonely prows, exploring realms unknown, 
 Unpiloted, beneath wan alien stars, 
 Your strain recalleth, keels of lonely thought, 
 Wandering in some sublime bewilderment, 
 To pioneer where all the world will go, 
 Now merry buoyancy, as of a boat, 
 That dips in billowy foam at morning tide. 
 Ye are alive with yearnings of young love, 
 Or sombre with immeasurable woe, 
 Sombre with all the terror of the world, 
 Wild with the awe and horror of the world, 
 Begloomed like seas empurpled under cloud, 
 Reeling and dark with horror of the wind, 
 Or pale, long heaving under a veiled moon. 
 
 Then, with the fading symphony, the master 
 Drooped, earthward fallen through mortal weariness, 
 From heights empyreal ; he faced the slaves 
 Now silent, with stilled instruments, who wrought 
 A fabric for his high imagination, 
 A chambered palace-pile of echoing sound, 
 A shadowy fane within the realms of sense. 
 Drear Silence seems to him to reign j when lo!
 
 1 86 Beethoven. 
 
 A touch, at which he turns ! the audience, 
 Vast, thronged, innumerous have risen before him ! 
 Unhearing the loud storm of their applause, 
 He sees the tumult of their ocean joy- 
 Thunderously jubilant, in eloquent eyes, 
 And flashing gems, waved kerchiefs, and moved feet! 
 So then the solitary master feels 
 The heart-clasp of our infinite human world, 
 And bows rejoicing not to be alone. 
 
 Ah ! brothers, let us work our work, for love 
 Of what the God in us prevails to do ! 
 And if, when all is done, the unanswering void 
 And silence weigh upon our souls, remember 
 The music of a lonely heart may help 
 How many lonely hearts unknown to him ! 
 The seeming void and silence are aware 
 With audience august, invisible, 
 Who yield thank-offering, encouragement, 
 And strong co-operation ; the dim deep 
 Is awful with the God in Whom we move, 
 Who moulds to consummation where we fail, 
 And saith, "Well done !" to every faithful deed, 
 Who in Himself will full accomplish all.
 
 NORTHERN SPRING. 
 
 Meadow and woodland 
 
 Dwindle away, 
 
 Delicate azure in 
 
 Delicate day, 
 
 An infinite ocean of 
 
 Wave- like woods ; 
 
 Old elms remember 
 
 Earlier moods, 
 
 A young leaf-rapture 
 
 On their gnarled boughs ; 
 
 Thorns sing a carol of 
 
 Soft May-snows ; 
 
 The young laburnum 
 
 Overwells, 
 
 With peals of bloom from 
 
 Inaudible bells ; 
 
 Sweet peals of laughter of 
 
 Noiseless gold 
 
 His leafy bowers 
 
 Delight to hold !
 
 1 88 Northern Spri?zg. 
 
 A crimson May-foam 
 
 Flushes fair, 
 
 Soft yellow falls in a 
 
 Blithe blue air. 
 
 Daisies and kingcups ! 
 
 Children's flowers ! 
 
 They wander, and pull them, 
 
 Hours on hours ; 
 
 A childish laughter 
 
 Delights the day, 
 
 Sweet heavens are happier, 
 
 While they play ; 
 
 Golden boats of the 
 
 Kingcups float, 
 
 The voice of the cuckoo is 
 
 Heard remote, 
 
 With voice of the turtle, 
 
 Sounds so mild, 
 
 They breathe of the spring-time, 
 
 Earth's young child ; 
 
 They breathe of the Peace at the 
 
 Heart of things, 
 
 Who hath taken the wide world 
 
 Under Her wings. 
 
 They tell of my boyhood, 
 
 They tell of my boy, 
 
 They tell of him folded
 
 Northern Spring. 189 
 
 Beyond annoy ; 
 
 The groves are a cloudland 
 
 Of glowing green, 
 
 With borders embosomed in 
 
 Warmer sheen. 
 
 I who longed for the whispering cool of the grove 
 Stole to the valley of verdurous gloom, 
 Where a nightingale sings evermore to his love, 
 As though man knew no sorrow, nor earth e'er a 
 
 tomb. 
 A bird hath a nest in a twilight of leaves, 
 All woven of mosses, and lichen and down ; 
 An eye there is glistening, a bosom there heaves ; 
 You may see there love's miracle, when she hath 
 
 flown — 
 Four delicate ovals, flecked faintly with wine — 
 She is guarding the mystical marvel of life, 
 The wind-flower illumines her bowery shrine, 
 And the pale flame of primrose around her is 
 
 rife. 
 But the nightingale sings! how he sings! what a 
 
 song ! 
 Clear water that falls, or meanders in day ; 
 From a smooth stem of sound, that is mellow and 
 
 long, 
 Notes of fountainous blossom are lavished in play;
 
 190 Northern Spring. 
 
 And one of his delicate silvery measures 
 Recalls one who whips a clear watery glass ; 
 My springs and my summers, aerial pleasures, 
 A fair haze, while I hearken, how fleetingly pass ! 
 And O what a soft-pleached musical woof 
 The innumerous melody weaveth in air ! 
 More subtle and rich than the verdurous roof 
 Of foliage marrying over me fair. 
 Ye enwind with your music, enmeshed, flushed 
 
 with bloom ! 
 I am sheathed, like a chrysalid silken, with joy ; 
 I forget that the world hath a grief or a gloom, 
 Ye scatter your songs on the grave of my boy. 
 Ah ! where are the conflict, the care and the pain, 
 The cruelty, feebleness, folly, or sin ? 
 O Philomel ! pour your melodious rain ! 
 Open your Paradise ! welcome me in ! 
 O lark, wild with ecstasy ! lost in the light, 
 We are ever afar from your shadowless land ! 
 Our Philomel, she is more near to our night, 
 More nigh to her gloaming of green we stand. 
 For while her song-pulses may vie with the stars, 
 We have known in the clear, limpid airs of the South, 
 She hath one long low burden akin to our tears, 
 Wherein joy lieth hid for renewal of youth, 
 Deliciously low, like a plaining flute, 
 Or water in moonlight, of silent foot.
 
 Northern Spring. 191 
 
 Philomel is a child of the daylight and dark ; 
 Where the willow-leaf bathes in the flame of the 
 
 moon, 
 She sings ; all the night listens ; not to the lark 
 Will a sorrowful heart of men turn for a tune ! 
 And I think that the world, if it hold such a glad- 
 ness, 
 Must be sound to the core, whatsoever befall : 
 Our birds, for all wrong, sorrow, wildering madness, 
 Do but echo young hearts in the heaven, who 
 know all !
 
 THE TWO MAGDALENES. 9 
 
 Art thou indeed repentant ? though thy look 
 
 Be concentrated on the holy book ? 
 
 Thy glowing wave of bosom makes it warm ! 
 
 Thine oval face-flower leaneth on an arm 
 
 Luxuriantly moulded, negligent. 
 
 A Mediterranean-blue robe hath lent 
 
 Disclosure to the undulating form, 
 
 Reclining languid in a shadowy place 
 
 Mid murmuring leaves, and there thy mellow grace 
 
 The Sun divines, who, passing through the grove, 
 
 Illumines throat, and bosom with still love. 
 
 Art thou indeed repentant ? all thy youth 
 
 Mantling within thee ! doth the perfect mouth 
 
 Weary of kissing ? Here 'tis cool and fresh 
 
 For musing on the frailty of the flesh, 
 
 For shadowy contemplation, and sweet sorrow ! 
 
 But who may prophesy of thy to-morrow ? 
 
 The seven devils in thee, did they go ?
 
 The Two Magdalenes. 193 
 
 Or do they only sleep that they may grow ? 
 
 Smouldering slumberous in thine almond white, 
 
 They may awake with renovated might ! 
 
 Thou, blessing the brown earth with bare light foot ! 
 
 I think they only parted to recruit. 
 
 When the world leaves you, worn with use, ye turn; 
 
 Nay, rule the world-illusion while ye burn ! 
 
 A later painter showed her otherwise. 
 Under the domination of deep eyes, 
 She knows no more these lovers, for the wings 
 Of lovelier life new-born in her ; she flings 
 The jewels from her, for the Pearl He brings. 
 In presence of her Lord, no fair and sweet 
 She knoweth, save to lay them at His feet. 
 Our splendid world dies, very dull and dim ; 
 The woman in her seeth only Him ! 
 
 13
 
 WINTER. 
 
 Blue-green firs waver in a water wan, 
 Save where red bole, fir-robe unmoved, and dim 
 Show the keen wizard Frost prevails upon 
 Even rivers ; a low clink bewrays a slim 
 Bird, who hath lighted on the marge to drink. 
 Aerial webs invisible, that link 
 Sere, russet fern with glume of yellow grass, 
 And green fir-needle, are palpable star-chains 
 Of fairy jewel ; from furze-point they pass ; 
 Every thin, green lance of broom sustains 
 Like burden ; all are fledged with crystal soft, 
 Mist frozen in plumelets ; many a taper tuft 
 Adorns the wine-stained bramble, and the blade, 
 Or bronzy twigs of trees bereft of shade. 
 
 II. 
 
 Heath white with frost, and orange reeds are fair, 
 Beneath yon sombre masses of cold firs,
 
 Winter. 195 
 
 Wave- mirrored, while a silver birch's hair 
 Hangs, like dark smoke, athwart the leaden air. 
 Winter upon small marish pools confers, 
 As on our panes, with palms and wreaths of hers, 
 A delicate starflower beauty, rivalling 
 All fragile water-petals of sweet spring : 
 Adorns wine-dark, ferruginous fens and ling, 
 Desolate lowlands where the bittern booms. 
 And now at nightfall, from where forest looms, 
 A dragon train wails 'thwart the solitude 
 Flame-breathing, with a long self-luminous brood, 
 And livid, long low steam among grey glooms. 
 
 III. 
 
 Snow falls, hath fallen, all the land is white. 
 Pure snow clings frozen to labyrinths of trees : 
 They, in the narrow lane, aloft unite ; 
 Winter hath clothed with a pure foliage these, 
 Pitying them, bereft of spring's delight. 
 How fairylike their veiled pale silences ! 
 Feathery phantoms a grey mist informing 
 With beauty, as frail corallines dim sea. 
 Some alien planet our earth seems to be ! 
 Earth lies fair in her shroud and slumbereth ; 
 So fair the pure white silence of dim death ! 
 Lo ! the sun's fleeting phantom faintly warming 
 
 I3~2
 
 196 Winter. 
 
 Mists into heaven-blue, while they flush and flee 
 Budding birchsprays hang laughing jewelry 
 Of opal ice athwart the lift that clears ; 
 Clinking it falls, or melts in jubilant tears. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Gaily snow flounceth earthward in the sun, 
 
 Or frozen glistereth with icy edge 
 
 To windward of the elmbole ; birds in dun 
 
 Plumage, fair-formed elves, whistle in the hedge, 
 
 Scatter its ermine mantle ; as they run, 
 
 Dint earth's blithe stainless carpet ; shake the foam 
 
 Splashed upon all green brambles, and red-fruited 
 
 Hollies, or thorns, or briars, where they roam ; 
 
 Our ever sweet-songed robin richly suited, 
 
 And birds reserving for a leafier home, 
 
 And lovelier lands the voice wherein love luted, 
 
 Erewhile in yon dead summer : shadows blue 
 
 Nestle where beast, or man hath trodden deep 
 
 In crisp, starred snow ; fur mantles fair endue 
 
 Thatched roof, wain, barn and byre, while they 
 
 creep 
 To a fringe of diamond icicle ; the waters are 
 
 asleep. 
 No skaters whirr and whirl, as erst, upon the im- 
 prisoned grey
 
 Winter. 197 
 
 Plain of the river; rosy children sliding, shout 
 
 and play: 
 Pile the illumining logs within, and let them 
 
 crackle gay ! 
 Bright holly and green mistletoe cheering our 
 
 hearths we keep : 
 Warm glint the polished chairs and glasses, while 
 
 yule-fires glow deep. 
 But when dear babes lie dreaming, with a halo near 
 
 the moon, 
 And at their nursery doors are left small fairy- 
 appealing shoon, 
 There will float a voice of mystic bells over earth's 
 
 pale swound, 
 And sweet sad fays of memory to haunt us in their 
 
 sound ! 
 
 1874-
 
 IN ITALY. 
 
 By the low light of the moon, love, 
 
 By the low light of the moon, 
 
 From her enchanted swoon, love, 
 
 The cypress woke and sighed, 
 
 Beyond a wooded mountain, the sea that hath 
 
 no tide 
 Murmured to the moon. 
 
 The wilding passion-flower, love, 
 
 The wilding passion-flower, 
 
 Dishevelled in her bower, love, 
 
 Whispered dewy-eyed, 
 
 And thou near vine-immantled column by my 
 
 side 
 Whisperest, my flower !
 
 SONNETS.
 
 POLITICAL SONNETS. 10 
 
 i. 
 
 Great-hearted statesman, eagle-eyed, and pure ! 
 Our folly, weary, as in days of old, 
 With one monotonously just, grew bold 
 To cast thy virtue from them ! We endure, 
 Whose honour once was like the Pole secure, 
 A shameless reign of brazen-faced Untruth, 
 Fair with false hues, the mortal foe to ruth, 
 And equal right. What golden salve may cure 
 These inward wounds ? Our fiery standards wave 
 Over more ravaged lands ; ah, Liberty ! 
 Once, where they dawned auroral, all thy brave 
 Sons rallied round triumphant ; now, the dye 
 Upon them is thy heart's blood — to the grave 
 'Tis England thrusts thee, with cold mockery ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Barren the conquest of rich, populous lands, 
 When the proud conqueror, foredoomed and blind,
 
 202 Political Sonnets. 
 
 Himself the very ground hath undermined 
 Beneath his legions. Wheresoe'er he stands, 
 Earth reels from his unfaith ; brute force com- 
 mands 
 Now but fierce fear, even where men's hearts in- 
 clined 
 Lately to cherish his right rule, with bands 
 Of sober use, and feeling intertwined, 
 Light-bound for mutual service, lord and thrall. 
 O ve stern rocks of either continent, 
 Where we do murderous battle ! will ye fall, 
 And hide from the Lamb's vengeance ? We were 
 
 sent 
 To bless the Lord's own little ones ; we went 
 To roll in blood and flame their homes, and all ! 
 
 III. 
 
 England, a tyrant ! Spirits, who have fought 
 For Progress on the bloodless battle-fields, 
 Where generous Reason's mild persuasion wields 
 A mightier arm than ever anvil wrought ! 
 Ye, who with life man's heritage have bought 
 Upon the block, the stake, the deadly plain, 
 Your Human Fabric, built with souls, to nought 
 Falls, by the ruining hands of men profane ! 
 England, who led the vanguard of God's host, 
 And heralded His rule to the blind world,
 
 Political Sonnets. 203 
 
 Weak, alien races, robber-like, hath hurled 
 Earthward, and grinds with armed heel ! 'Tis lost, 
 The Holy Cause, through Her black treacheries — 
 Freedom's great Temple-pillar prostrate lies. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Lost for a while ! Nay, we repent ! We would 
 
 Cease from inhuman insolence and crime, 
 
 And God's high name profaned, the while we climb 
 
 Stairs of grim Power, and Greed, defiled with blood, 
 
 To lay before their shrine foul idol-food 
 
 Of human welfare murdered. We dare name 
 
 The God who hath abased Himself to shame, 
 
 And want, and death, for Love, upon the Rood, 
 
 Sue for Christ's blessing, while we crucify 
 
 His poor, who are the apple of His eye ! 
 
 Now, England sober, to herself returned 
 
 From orgies of deep, drugged bewilderment, 
 
 Invokes thee, righteous patriot, whom she spurned. 
 
 Come forth, our hope, Achilles ! from thy tent !
 
 THE CATHEDRAL. 
 
 Cathedral heights among the midnight stars, 
 Ye are as mountains in sublimity ! 
 Your phantom towers, aerial forms on high, 
 By whispering groves surrounded, for our wars, 
 And puny whirl of foolish strife, that mars 
 Our poor brief lives, arraign humanity ; 
 The vasty fane through rifts of shadowy tree 
 Some city of departed souls appears. 
 But in the morning, solemn sounds are rolled 
 Through forest gloom of jewelled nave and aisle ; 
 Young tones swift-soaring mazy flowers unfold. 
 Now fall like dew, now float like a sun-smile ; 
 The sweet wind of their music seems to mould 
 Yon high fan-roof that undulates the while. 
 
 Ely, 1884.
 
 VERY DEATH. 
 
 There are worse deaths than Death, for Love 
 
 may die, 
 And Hope, and Joy, and holy Innocency, 
 With Faith ; yea, all we have leaned upon may fly, 
 May fail, may change ; no longer beautiful, 
 A very spirit fade to dark and dull, 
 Withering toward dissolution ; firm-knit mind 
 Weltering in confusion, we may find 
 The large brain narrow, the warm heart unkind ; 
 And there may come an hour when we shall bow 
 Our heads for him, whom we have mourned till now, 
 Thanking the Powers that they resumed his breath, 
 While he was yet a child, unknowing Death, 
 The very death ; ourselves, who are left alone, 
 Praying that we may die, and turn to stone.
 
 MADNESS. 
 
 She spake of madness, telling that the worst, 
 As found incurable, was when men deemed 
 The world all happy, when misfortune seemed 
 Supreme good fortune, and the lot accurst 
 Appeared true bliss ; what lowered repulsive erst 
 Was changed to lovely, all-delightful gleamed, 
 Evil a cloud into blue heaven dispersed : 
 Beyond hope these illusions are esteemed. 
 'Twas spoken in good faith, unheedingly ; 
 Yet they perchance the inner truth divine, 
 And if we hope to heal, the madmen we ! 
 I would such hallowed lunacy were mine, 
 Here, where some say 'tis better not to be ! 
 What fool would cavil o'er this anodyne?
 
 THE SANCTUARY. 
 
 A pastoral scene ! a region of deep peace, 
 Where Nature and the Home dwell hand in hand 
 Harmonious ; one finds a sweet release 
 Here from all evil and the world ; the land 
 Heaves undulating mildly, and the elms 
 Lift murmuring boughs umbrageous in blue air. 
 There is a river moving in the realms 
 Of meadow, fallowland, and harvest fair ; 
 A velvet lawn slopes downward from the home, 
 Illumed with flowers, to meet with a churchyard, 
 That seems a sister ; unaware we roam 
 Athwart the rill's division thitherward, 
 Nor feel a difference; for meek mild flowers 
 On velvet turf love either ; the dear graves 
 Have headstone, or white cross ; the quiet hours 
 Are told, as if in dream, to the green waves, 
 That heave above the sleepers, and soft winds 
 Around the church-tower, by the voice therein. 
 Yon hamlet nested in his orchard finds
 
 2o8 The Sanctuary. 
 
 The sunny pastor hath large heart akin 
 
 To humble joy and sorrow ; where he dwells 
 
 Abideth a warm halcyon atmosphere 
 
 Of hallowed calm, as in lone summer dells. 
 
 Within the house, and in the landscape here, 
 
 All is serenely soothing ; the grave words, 
 
 With looks, and deeds, arise from a deep spring 
 
 Of faith perennial beneath the sense, 
 
 No earthly heats may doom to perishing, 
 
 Because the birth of it is not from hence, 
 
 But in the heart of the eternal hills,, 
 
 Pure child of ocean and eternal sun, 
 
 No fleeting wealth from casual-flowing rills, 
 
 Cool and refreshing when the rest are gone. 
 
 In yonder church the same pervading calm, 
 For troubled souls world-weary very balm ! 
 Here is a sacring of pure lives and prayers, 
 Of holy aspirations, and kind cares ; 
 For here the brethren of the Holy Ghost 
 Worshipped and pondered, battled with the host 
 Infernal ; here, in early morning, while 
 White wings of cloud, enjoying the sun-smile, 
 Pass by the mullioned window-lights in blue, 
 Soft seven-fold flame of tapers will imbue 
 With warm translucency the white wax end 
 Of either; seven-fold flame will upward tend
 
 The Sanctuary. 209 
 
 From candles culminant on either side 
 
 A brazen candelabrum branching wide, 
 
 Over an altar, in a deep twilight 
 
 Of cloth of gold, with broidery bedight, 
 
 Whereon are chalices for holy wine, 
 
 And crucifix of gold, the mystic sign. 
 
 There stands the priest white-robed, and whispers 
 
 low, 
 While men and women reverent below 
 Kneel to receive the emblems ; there is lent 
 Reposeful calm from yonder monument, 
 Where the recumbent forms absorbed in prayer 
 Ever abide in shadowy cool air ; 
 They take no heed of our deluding time, 
 Our dewy eve, midnoon, or morning prime ; 
 They, tranced to marble, ever rest in peace, 
 So that we long to be with them and cease. 
 And here awhile our weary sails are furled, 
 Here in a haven folded from the world ; 
 Here we may taste awhile the bread of life, 
 And breathe an atmosphere aloof from strife ; 
 A ray of comfort steals into our prison 
 From happy souls, who with the Lord are risen. 
 
 14
 
 NOTES 
 
 GENERAL NOTE. 
 
 The author, even where he speaks in his own person, hopes 
 not to be held responsible for all the negations he may have 
 expressed or implied in poems ranging, as regards their date 
 of composition, over several years, a few of them having been 
 written some time before his " Little Child's Monument/' 
 published in 1881. The earlier poems, however, have been 
 revised ; but, save in one instance, only the form of them, not 
 the substance, has been altered. Yet, where not impersonal, 
 all remain as expression of temporary moods, feelings, or 
 ideas. 
 
 His thanks are due to Messrs. Chatto and Windus, 
 Messrs. Isbister, and the proprietors of the Contemporary 
 Review, for permission to republish poems printed in the 
 Contemporary, Gentleman's Magazine, and Good Words. 
 
 Note i, page 15. 
 
 I am indebted for this incident to a writer in the Daily 
 Telegraph. 
 
 14—2
 
 2 I 2 NotCS. 
 
 Note 2, page 20. 
 
 See " Underground Russia," Stepniak, p. 208. 
 
 A young man, the better to guard the secret of the revo- 
 lutionary printing-press, thus effaced himself from all record 
 and recognition among the living, dwelling in a poisoned 
 atmosphere, without ever leaving it, until, the place being 
 discovered and captured by the police, he committed suicide. 
 
 Note 3, page 44. 
 
 Suggested by the fire in the Ring Theatre, at Vienna, 
 after which to the poor, as chief mourners, was allotted the 
 post of honour at the funeral in St. Stephen's. 
 
 Note 4, page 60. 
 See Pliny. 
 
 Note $,page 81. 
 
 The metres of Suspiria and Thalatta were suggested to 
 me by the sound of the sea ; that of Suspiria is of course 
 a modification of the hexameter, with rhyme in the alternate 
 lines. To my ear it appears that the hexameter ought not to 
 be written with two single words in the last (trochaic) foot, 
 but that in this particular, at least, the structure of the 
 verse in its native sources should be respected. 
 
 Note 6, page 106. 
 
 This poem is suggested by old Killarney legends. But 
 though it is to be read primarily as a fairy-tale, it is also in- 
 tended to convey a further meaning. Only that is not to be 
 sought in every detail, because I think that in all works of 
 art, the story, form, or concrete presentment of whatever 
 kind, ought to be paramount, and the inner significance only
 
 Notes. 213 
 
 implicit, or suggested. The reader or spectator, moreover, 
 has cause for complaint if the artist should, by over-insistence 
 on this latter element, foreclose the right of all to find their 
 own lesson or significance in a work of art. Barely didac- 
 tic art there cannot be. But there should be more in a 
 poem of this kind than the maker ever put there. Whether 
 I have here succeeded in doing what I wished is of course 
 another question. Time and Place are not respected in the 
 world of enchantment, which is also that of Thought, whence 
 all Creation issues. And Melcha, once having lived there, can 
 no longer find the same old home-world, to which she was 
 accustomed, when she would fain do so, the quiet, innocent, 
 trustful home of early years. I will add, in order to explain 
 one of the similes, that the Arabs believe the huge substruc- 
 tures of Baalbek and Tadmor were brought by the genii, 
 slaves of Solomon. 
 
 Note 7, page 177. 
 
 At Hucknall Torkard, the sexton said to me, " You are 
 now standing just over where the head lies." 
 
 Note 8, page 183. 
 
 The great composer grew deaf toward the close of his 
 career. And, on one occasion, after conducting one of his 
 own great symphonies, he was touched on the shoulder by 
 another person, in order that he might turn and see the rap- 
 turous welcome which he could not hear. 
 
 Note %page 192. 
 
 The allusion is to the Magdalene, by Correggio, and that 
 by D. G. Rossetti, lately exhibited in the Burlington Club.
 
 214 Notes. 
 
 Note io,page 201. 
 
 Published in the Leeds Mercitry, just before the elections, 
 which gave a majority to the Liberals, in 1880, when Mr. 
 Gladstone had expressed his determination not to take office 
 again.
 
 $n the saute JUtthor. 
 
 THE RED FLAG, 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 Small Svo., 6s. 
 
 " There are poetry and power of a high order in the volume before us. The 
 ' Red Flag ' is a terrible and thunderous poem. There are fine sympathies with 
 the sorrows of London life and wonderful knowledge of them, Perhaps one of 
 the most solemn, awful poems of the present century is ' The Vision of the 
 Desert.' . . . Let his imagination and metaphysical faculty be well yoked and 
 guided by his own cultivated taste, and we must all admit the advent of a great 
 poet."— British Quart* rlylU view. 
 
 "Mr. Noel's new volume marks a decided advance both in clearness of form 
 and in melody of expression upon his earlier collection. He has succeeded in 
 working out more unity of style, in harmonising his thought and feeling, and 
 in producing more sustained effects of music in verse without sacrificing in- 
 dividuality. ... It is probably upon the compositions of the third and fourth 
 sections that the reputation of Mr. Noel as a poet of marked originality will ul- 
 timately rest. The situation of 'The Red Flag' is finely conceived and power- 
 fully presented. The sincerity of the poet, his intense feeling for the terrible, 
 the realism with which he has wrought every detail of his picture, and his 
 jionate sympathy with the oppressed, make the general effect of this poem 
 very impressive. In ' Palingenesis ' and ' Richmond Hill ' and the ' Sea Sym- 
 phony ' Mr. Noel exhibits a rarer quality of artistic production. These poems 
 are steeped in thought and feeling : Nature is represented with the most minute 
 and patient accuracy, yet each description is pervaded with a sense of the divine 
 mysterious life that throbs within the world. We need to travel back to the 
 Bnagavadgita or to take Walt Whitman from the shelf if we seek to match the 
 
 Santheistic enthusiasm of the climax to ' Palingenesis.' The promise of Mr. 
 Toel's earlier poem in this style, ' Pan,' is here fulfilled."— Academy. 
 
 " There is much unpalatable truth in this satire, sometimes very cleverly put 
 . . . We do not think any lover of poetry can read ' The Water Nymph and the 
 Boy,' ' Allerheiligen ' or ' Palingenesis,' without enjoying and admiring the ex- 
 quisitely coloured word-pictures they contain."— Scotsman. 
 
 " A volume of very remarkable poems. There are a richness of thought, a 
 power of language, a wild, rushing, cataract-like movement of melody, and an 
 originality of purpose almost unique among the rising poets of the age, in this 
 volume. It will be Mr. Noel's own fault if he does not take the very highest 
 rank among his contemporary poets."— Dundt < Advi rtiser. 
 
 " A singular book, in which there is much real poetic force and feeling."— 
 Graphic. 
 
 " Our skeleton sketch gives little notion of the earnest power of this noble 
 poem. . . , The volume will reach and please a wider circle than the last, and 
 we believe that future volume will soon make the writer's name familiar to all 
 appreciative readers of good English poetry." — Wt i /.'?/ Bi view. 
 
 "The lines we have italicised seem to us to be worthy of the very foremost of 
 our living poets."— Frt ■ man. 
 
 "The writer has more than that love of nature which spends itself on the 
 beauty of form and colour ; be is alive to thai more spiritual emotion which con- 
 nects the aspects of outward nature with the aspirations ol the human soul. . . . 
 In .spite (jf these faults, lie is capable on occasions of writing noble passages."— 
 ,■5';/.. labor. 
 
 " In striking contrast to the tone and manner and rhythm of the opening 
 poem is the succeeding one, entitled ' April Gleams.' It is dainty as gossamer, 
 fanciful, dreamy, BUggestlve of summer melodies and woodland brooks." — 
 Morning Post. 
 
 C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON.
 
 BEATRICE, 
 
 ;and othee poems. 
 
 Fcap. Svo., 7s. 
 
 "... La distinction -de votre Muse, soit qu'elle se developpe dans des drarnes 
 touchants, soit qu'elle se complaise a de charmants paysages et a des pieces ex- 
 quises comme les June Roses, vous sentez tendrement la nature et vous la rendez 
 d'une maniere bien vive. II y a dans votre volume un morceau a part et que 
 des amis a qui je l'ai rnontre preferent a tout, e'est ce petit chef-d'o3uvre de 
 ' Ganymede.' "—Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 " We have italicised two wonderful bits, but the whole passage should be 
 italicised. The slenderness of the subject conceded, writing more exquisite it 
 would not be easy to find in contemporary poetry. . . . For a companion picture 
 nearly as delicious, and perhaps more compressed, we should have to go back to 
 Coleridge. Out of Coleridge, moreover, it would not be easy to find any philo- 
 sophical poetry finer than certain portions of Mr. Noel's ' Pan ' — a poem very 
 striking and quite original— forming a sort of grandiose pantheistic hymn to 
 Nature. ... As mere blank verse it is very striking, resonant, grandiose, and 
 full of emotion. Some of the lyrics, all of a very fragile intellectual beauty, are 
 very musical indeed. In moods like these— in a softly tinted sentiment, closely 
 akin to his delicately sensuous feeling for natural colour- Mr. Noel has no 
 rival. . . . Although these peculiarities are as yet too indefinitely manifested to 
 warrant any final judgment as to the powers of the writer, it is nevertheless 
 clear that his powers are those of genius, and, what is better, of genius specifi- 
 cally poetic. . . . 'Ganymede,' an idyl thoroughly Greek, a bit of work which 
 reads like Theocritus in the original. Artistically a finished gem, it remains in 
 the eye like a small Turner."— A tht na urn. 
 
 " It is impossible to read ' Beatrice ' through without being powerfully moved. 
 There are passages in it which for intensity and tenderness, clear and vivid 
 vision, spontaneous and delicate sympathy, may be compared with the best 
 eftorts of our best living writers."— Spectator. 
 
 " Beatrice is in many respects a noble poem : it displays a splendour of land- 
 scape painting, a strong definite precision of highly coloured description, which 
 has not often been surpassed. The most intense and tender feelings are realized, 
 and some of the more exquisite and evanescent moments of emotion are seized 
 and represented by the poet with felicity. ... In ' Ganymede ' there is no less 
 faculty of poetic vision than in ' Pan.' So vivid is the representative imagina- 
 tion in this poem that we seem, while reading it, to be looking intently at an old 
 engraving— say of Marc Antonio, after Michael Angelo. In the severity and de- 
 cision of its outline this picture is classical, but the outline is filled in with 
 modern brilliancy of colouring."— Pall Mail Gazette. 
 
 " Beatrice is the heroine of a true love story of great delicacy, power, and 
 passion, in which the author shows his entire mastery of many different kinds 
 of verse, and his intimate acquaintance with the broader workings of human 
 nature. It is a story of power and beauty, told as a poet only can tell it."— 
 Standard. 
 
 " If, as we hope and believe, the Hon. Boden Noel is far from having attained 
 his full poetical development^he may hereafter accomplish really great things 
 in the world of imagination. Even at present he must be recognised as endowed 
 with that power of receiving and imparting ideal impressions which are marks 
 of the born poet. The following lines from a poem called ' Summer Clouds and 
 a Swan ' are, in their own vein, probably as exquisite as any word-picture in the 
 English language. . . . This really splendid passage, in which the subtle har- 
 monies of sense and thought find a worthy expression in clear transparent words, 
 is characteristic. He excels in delicate colour, floating suggestiveness, and 
 dreamy imaginative beauty. . . . But whatever are his occasional shortcomings 
 or transgressions, it must be frankly allowed that he has powers, which, if 
 rightly directed and cultivated, may raise him to a permanently high rank 
 among our poets."— Guardian. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON.
 
 LIVINGSTONE IN AFRICA. 
 
 Small Svo., limp cloth extra, 2s. Gd. 
 
 " There are some striking passages of description."— A thenceum. 
 
 " We should say that if anyone wants to imbue himself, as far as the medium 
 of language will enable him to do so, with the moral and physical nature of this 
 great unknown world, he can hardly do better than study Mr. Noel's poem."— 
 Spectator. 
 
 " The poem throughout is of a high degree of excellence ... is a worthy me- 
 morial of him who laid down his life to open up Africa." — Literary World. 
 
 " Without tumult, but with epic fulness, and definiteness of articulation and 
 relief, and choice of what is most significant in incident or circumstance, the 
 poem moves harmoniously to its close; what is to be noted in its own place 
 being not so much the careful, comprehensive reading upon which this must have 
 been built, as the manner in which it is subordinated to poetic spontaneity. 
 Naturally the descriptions in detail, both of scene and incident, give scope to 
 Mr. Noel's dramatic vigour and luxuriance of imagination. Certainly the purest, 
 and perhaps the most brilliant of modern poetical colourists, he presents us in 
 these transcripts of polymorphous African life with passages of tropical beauty, 
 of tropical grandeur." — Scotsman. 
 
 " The book is beautifully written. Its descriptions glow with the sunshine 
 of the tropics and the rich profusion of forest life. . . . Both for the conception 
 and for the execution of this fine poem Mr. Noel deserves high praise. He shows 
 noble sympathy with the great thoughts and generous deeds of his hero, and 
 sings of them in musical and melodious verse which it is a pleasure to read. 
 We hope that the book will circulate widely, and take the place it deserves in 
 our lasting literature."— Weekly Review. 
 
 " A fine, true effort of genius." — Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 " Mr. Noel has vividly realized all this, and has written a poem of undoubted 
 strength : he has given voice to the thought and sentiment which Africa most 
 powerfully stirs in the modern mind. . . We have read the poem with delight, 
 admiring the versatility and grace and dramatic skill which are everywhere ap- 
 parent in it." — Nonconformist. 
 
 " Mr. Noel has attempted a bold thing in celebrating the career of the great 
 traveller who was so recently laid to rest in Westminster Abbey ; but we are 
 bound to admit that he has in a large measure succeeded in rising to the dignity 
 of his theme. . . . Almost every page contains beautiful touches of poetry. . . . 
 Mr. Noel's excellence as a lyric poet has been already approved, and it is abun- 
 dantly sustained by the several songs or lyrics scattered through this volume." 
 —Echo. 
 
 " Mr. Noel has established his claim to be ranked among the few writers of 
 real poetry in this country. . . . An honest, painstaking, loving work, warm 
 with not a few sparks of poetic fire."— tilmtiinn- Herald. 
 
 "Anyone who knows 'The Vision of the Desert '—one of the most weird, 
 solemn, and awe-inspiring pieces we have read for many a day. . . . All we can 
 say is tliat his style both of thought and expression is large and grand, and that 
 he bus passages containing bursts of emotion, embodiments of ideal concep- 
 tion, pictures of actual fact and broodings of tender sentiment, which would 
 not be unworthy poets of the first order." — Edinburgh Daily RevU w. 
 
 " We cannot pass by without a word this tine contemporary epic. . . . Let us 
 content ourselves with saying that the poem Beems to us to possess some of the 
 high elements of immortality." — School Board Chronicle. 
 
 " < >ur space will not permit us to linger longer over the many beauties of this 
 epic poem." - /.'■ cord. 
 
 " His qualities as a poet appear to be a passionate and catholic sympathy with 
 human life, a power of seeing the romance of contemporary history, a faculty 
 for describing grandiose effects of tropical scenery, and a peculiar skill in the 
 employment of strange and sonorous local names. . . . Pew poets have used 
 scientific guesses or discoveries more felicitously than Mr. Noel in this pas.-. 
 . . . This is surely stately and admirable verse, and it would be easy to find 
 man es to match it in the long soliloquy in which Livingstone reviews 
 
 his Mm. his hopes, his love of humanity, of mystery, and adventure. . . . Pic- 
 tures of the greatest originality. The account of a savage execution lias the 
 vervt and colour of Henri Eegnault's best known work. — Andrew I. am;, in 
 
 [| ml, hi il. 
 
 " There is a loftv spring in the style, and an elaboration in the music of these 
 Cantos, which ought to give the poem a M b place in modern poetry."— Briti ft 
 
 Q '< rly I'.i vu "■ 
 
 iv noble passages will be found in the pages of 'Livingstone in Africa.'" 
 —Morning Po it. 
 
 SAMPSON LOW, MAE8T0N, l.ow ,v ska RLE, Crown Buildings, 
 
 1--, ill- i Si BEET, E.C.
 
 THE HOUSE OF RAVENSBURG: 
 
 A DEAMA. 
 
 "This story is much more powerful than appears in the foregoing narrative, 
 and in its presentation of vague terror recalls the famous verse of Dobell — 
 
 ' Keith of Ravelston, the sorrows of thy line.' 
 
 Portions of the treatment are fine, we might almost say splendid, from the 
 poetical standpoint."— Athenaeum. 
 
 " Taken as a whole, the picture of Sigismund, both before and after death- 
 Mr. Noel assumes Shakespeare's license, and brings Sigismund back to us from 
 the other world, and, even bolder than Shakespeare, undertakes to show us his 
 character still undergoing change in that world— seems to us one of very con- 
 siderable power. The following passage, for instance, spoken by Sigismund the 
 disembodied, and presenting the central idea of the play with great fire, seems 
 to us a noble one. . . . Again, there are one or two beautiful songs, and at least 
 one very fine picture of a mountain sunset. . . . That is very fine verse, and the 
 readers of this imperfect but powerfully conceived drama will find much in it 
 which is equally fine,- and much, too, of far higher meaning."— Spectator. 
 
 " 'The House of Ravensburg' is the first production of its kind we have had 
 from Mr. Noel. It is more complete than any other of his larger poems, and 
 may be taken to indicate a new range in his versatile genius. In point of 
 dramatic power it will compare with any contemporary efforts. . . . The cha- 
 racters of the play are massed very strongly in light and shade, and the piece 
 abounds in rapid transitions, recalling those of Wagner, to whom Mr. Noel has 
 various points of resemblance. Mr. Noel has the faculty, most remarkable in 
 a metaphysical poet, of appealing impressively to the senses, and, as in such 
 situations as the dungeon scene, of putting in the touches with all a painter's 
 instinct for scenical effect."— Scotsman, 
 
 "From the pen of one of the first lyrists of our time."— Edinburgh Daily 
 Review. 
 
 " The scheme of his poems, his line of thought, the rhythm of his verse, are 
 all his own, the direct working out of his own bent."— Examiner. 
 
 " Mr. Noel has here chosen a trying theme, but his genius has not been un- 
 equal to it. . . . Altogether, we are inclined to think Mr. Noel's genius has here 
 reached a considerably higher point than in any of his former works."— British 
 Quarterly Review. 
 
 C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON.
 
 A LITTLE CHILD'S MONUMENT. 
 
 Third Edition, small crown Svo., cloth, Ss. Cd. 
 
 Un Poete Philosophe ex Angleterre.— "Cette sincerite, cette absence 
 de toute pose dans l'expression de la plus intense douleur on la trouve a un 
 degre peu commun dans 'A Little Child's Monument.' . . . Lament qui dans sa 
 simplicite presque sacree, mais dechirante, est d'une incomparable beaute de 
 forme. ... La melodie, la musique du vers est presque toujours d'une grande 
 beaute chez M Roden Noel. ... A cote du pere et du poete, toutefois, il y a le 
 philosophe. Le chercheur, le savant, a sans doute 6te conduit par la souffrance 
 a essayer du moins de penetrer a nouveau le mystere des choses. ... II faut 
 lire ' Southern Spring Carol' pour comprendre comment il sait penetrer jusqu'a 
 lame meme des choses."— From Le Parh <>>• ,tt, Paris, June 10, 1882. 
 
 " We do not know where, in all the range of English Poetry, to look for so 
 forcible an expression of utter grief as is presented in some of the poems."— 
 Scotsman. 
 
 "Mr. Noel's poetry is always well worth reading. He is not nearly as well 
 known as he ought to be."— Westminster Revievi. 
 
 " One of the few remarkably gifted poets of our time. . . . As a poem of the 
 affections, the 'Child's Monument' has hardly ever been surpassed."— Da ily 
 ]:■ view. 
 
 " The wonderful variety of melodies which form this remarkable ' In Memo- 
 riam." . . . Since Edward Irving embalmed in strange, portentous, wondrous 
 words the memory of his little boy, we have not seen such a pathetic monody." 
 —British Quarterly Review. 
 
 " Few poets have reared so pathetic a monument to a little child as Mr. Eoden 
 Noel has done in this fine volume of verse."— Glasgoiu Herald. 
 
 "Very lovely in form are many of the poems . . . while all are exquisite in 
 feeling, much profound philosophy, and a great deal of happy descriptive 
 power."— Cuateiiiimrary Revieiv. 
 
 " It is rare to meet with poetry so spontaneous and genuine as that which Mr. 
 Roden Noel has just published. ... In form and melody these poems are per- 
 haps the most perfect Mr. Noel has yet produced."— Acai> 
 
 " It may fairly tike its place beside ' In Memoriam ' as a book of consolation 
 for the bereaved."— Leeds Mereury. 
 
 "Sweetness and pathos, a keen sense of the beauty of nature, made more 
 intense by the moving contrast between it and human Borrow."— Spectator. 
 
 C. KEG AN PAUL & Co., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON.
 
 THE 
 
 BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW 
 
 ON 
 
 RODEN NOEL'S POEMS. 
 
 "Our survey of Mr. Noel's work has necessarily been desultory 
 and incomplete, and therefore ^inadequate ; but we have probably 
 said enough to indicate that there is in it that which may well com- 
 mand the attention of all lovers of poetry. Recognition may come 
 slowly, but when it comes it will be enduring, because his work has 
 the qualities of endurance. Whatever may be said of his large 
 utterance — which, in its breadth of sympathy, its force of satire, its 
 affluence of music, reminds us of the utterance of Victor Hugo — 
 this, at least, cannot be said of it, that it is a voice and nothing 
 more. For Mr. Noel the cant of 'art for Art's sake' has never 
 had a charm ; his cry would rather be ' art for man's sake ' — for the 
 sake of purity, nobleness, heroism, devotion, faith, all the things 
 which make life worth living — which enable us to prize it as a 
 good, not an evil, thing. To him, as to Carlyle, the true poet is 
 the seer, the sayer, and therefore it is beyond all things indis- 
 pensable that he should have seen something, that he should have 
 something to say. He gives the reader of his best ; what he has 
 toiled and waited for while we slept — teaching what we scarcely 
 desired to know, but what once known we cannot do without. He 
 is not a mere singer of sense, but is alive to the mystic and invisible 
 world. His subjects are worthy and commanding ; he loves better 
 to paint the snowy, cloud-visited Alp than the low-lying pestilent 
 morass ; and last, though hardly least in importance, he possesses 
 the gift of poetic form on its artistic and tuneful sides — his poems 
 have structure and his verses melody. Many are the spells of the 
 singers of the day which are not Mr. Noel's, but he has his own 
 enchantments ; and we have endeavoured to draw within his circle 
 those who, with us, are prepared to welcome any poetry that by 
 virtue of its imaginative force, directness, and breadth, stimulates 
 thought, deepens sympathy, and uplifts and upholds aspiration." — 
 October, 1883. 
 
 ^
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
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