6013 
 
 6796A17 
 1901 
 
 aliforni; 
 
 ?ional 
 
 ility
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 POEMS.
 
 A. ROMNEY GREEN 
 
 A. C. CURTIS 
 THE ASTOLAT PRESS GUILDFORD 
 
 BRIMLEY JOHNSON 
 
 LONDON OFFICE 
 
 MDCCCCI
 
 fcO/2. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Dedication . 
 
 Natal. An Ode 
 
 The World's Wisdom . 
 
 The Tryst . 
 
 Amor in Extremis 
 
 A Farewell 
 
 The Autumn Wind 
 
 Phyllis to Demophoon . 
 
 The Burns Centenary 
 
 Meroz. An Ode, 1895 . 
 
 Epilegomena 
 
 Sonnets : 
 
 The Warrior Hero 
 
 Degeneration 
 
 Another England 
 
 The Wrath of Heaven 
 
 Jonah 
 
 The Righteous Ten. . 
 
 The Curse 
 Sea Memories 
 Sonnets : 
 
 Anima Mundi 
 
 Martyrs . 
 
 Nirvana . 
 
 Misgivings 
 
 To a Fair Abstraction . 
 
 Cynthia . 
 
 Love 
 
 A Flower of the Ages . 
 
 To my Nephew Christopher 
 
 To Margaret 
 
 To My Wife 
 
 Spring . 
 
 To my Daughter Beatrice 
 
 To Muriel 
 
 The Straits 
 
 The Pilgrim's Return . 
 
 The Queen 
 Anima Veris 
 A Night on the Dart 
 The Maiden Sacrifice 
 In Tenebris 
 Heirloom . 
 
 PAGE 
 
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 SEVEN COPIES OF THIS 
 EDITION ON JAPANESE 
 VELLUM AND 800 ON 
 HANDMADE ONLY FOR 
 SALE PRINTEDBYHAND 
 AT THE ASTOLAT PRESS 
 GUILDFORDANDTHERE 
 PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 
 NINETEEN HUNDRED & 
 ONE. 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 A. ROMNEY GREEN
 
 T 
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 TO MY MOTHER. 
 
 IO thee, in whom the seed of fire divine 
 
 Took hold, and quickened, and began to be, 
 I yield the first fruits ; what is justly thine 
 How can I choose but dedicate to thee ? 
 
 The natural heir aught that is clear and sweet 
 
 Is of thy own untutored melodies ; 
 Aught that is deep and true from that rich sheet, 
 
 The poem of thy life, transcribed is, 
 
 If aught there be : and surely not a child 
 Of thine but drank of that ethereal stream 
 
 That flows in thee. O, pure and undefiled 
 To use the spirit and express the dream 
 
 We owe to thee ; where we have failed the blame 
 Is ours, where prospered thine should be the fame. 
 
 VII
 
 NATAL 
 
 AN ODE. 
 
 In respect to its theory of the war this poem may 
 be regarded as a pendant to " Meroz, An Ode." 
 
 I NEVER dreamed, sweet summer- belted Land, 
 Though winter- capped, whose uplands parched brown 
 Or grassy hills with many a torrent spruit 
 From thy mysterious Berg come rolling down 
 To the rich coast and that voluptuous town ; 
 Whose flowery shores upon the Indian sea 
 Dream all day long, and every luscious fruit 
 Bear to the constant sun ; whose odours fanned 
 By thy warm gales the grateful soul expand 
 With thoughts of heaven where with my lovely bride 
 To other ends I came in fond pursuit 
 Of orange-wreathed peace beneath a sky 
 For ever blue ; where stood our pleasant home 
 On those green heights that overlook the foam, 
 And languish for the purple sea ; where I 
 Dreamed many things fair Land, I did not dream 
 That thy young life would first regenerate be 
 In this too rude but not unwelcome stream 
 Of cleansing war the dread medicament 
 Of spirits cloyed with dull prosperity, 
 And sweet luxurious peace. The crimson tide 
 Of battle pours from every mountain side,
 
 2 NATAL. 
 
 The blood of men that perish to redeem 
 
 The souls of men the blood of nations bent, 
 
 One on a mighty struggle to be free, 
 
 The other her great freedom so to use 
 
 Ev'n as, to uses natural or divine, 
 
 In this half-light by which we are toiling still 
 
 With barbarous tools but no unkindly will, 
 
 A people's conscience and the civic Muse 
 
 Direct. Fair Land, the odour and the bloom, 
 
 Each aromatic shrub and flowering tree 
 
 With whose sweet name we shall remember thee ; 
 
 Fields of banana, sugar, maize, and pine ; 
 
 Groves where the orange and the lemon shine 
 
 Like stars out of their shadowy firmament ; 
 
 Those feathery cusps of scarlet flower that plume 
 
 The leafless grey stems of the kafir boom ; 
 
 The prickly cactus ; the delicious scent 
 
 Of the great blue-gums ; the perpetual sigh 
 
 Of ocean rising from that angry bar 
 
 To whisper in our wreathed balcony ; 
 
 At night soft tales beneath an alien star 
 
 Of homes beyond that whispering ocean far ; 
 
 And the white moon-flowers shedding through the gloom 
 
 Waves of intoxicating sweet perfume 
 
 These sights, and sounds, and scents remembered are 
 
 With trampling armies and the noise of war. 
 
 Like a rich mist they rise, and in their room 
 
 Armed men that spring to meet a warrior's doom 
 
 Or find renown, with aspirations high 
 
 Inflame the soul and fill the charmed eye. 
 
 We ached for war ; the soldiers diet spare, 
 
 The march, the star-beholding camp, to share ;
 
 NATAL. 
 
 The desk, the office, and the bower to fly, 
 Haunts of pale avarice and dark-eyed care, 
 Unhonoured ease and hateful luxury ; 
 Whilst oversea her sunburned patriots come 
 For love the Empire's quarrel to assume. 
 O, fair Natal ! thou beauteous Land for whom 
 Men have at last remembered how to die, 
 O, flourish bravely o'er the soldiers' tomb, 
 Make good his dreams, keep green his memory.
 
 THE WORLD'S WISDOM. 
 
 YOU warn me kindly, doubtless, you intend 
 That what I now have set my hand to do, 
 Others, with heads as clear and hearts as true, 
 In venturing suffered such, or such, an end ; 
 And well might their impetuous folly mend 
 The world's poor wisdom, such as this from you : 
 
 Considerate wisdom how to curb and tame 
 The aspiring soul, to point the dolorous tale 
 Less faith to dare than prudence not to fail 
 Where this pale cast of wisdom spoiled his flame, 
 Who hath been found, the least of those who claim, 
 Our cautious emulation, to prevail ? 
 
 This is thy wisdom of the worldly wise ; 
 
 To err not from the straitened ways of use ; 
 
 Even a generous sanction to refuse 
 To that high purpose in the pleading eyes 
 Of those who seek some nobler enterprise, 
 
 Some less familiar destiny would choose. 
 
 Such must their own experience fulfil ; 
 
 But wherefore make it harder than need be 
 
 For want of help that might have come from thee ? 
 
 Provoke the indomitable blind " I will," 
 
 The only office thine, whose wisdom still 
 
 Prevents like night the soul that would be free ?
 
 THE WORLD'S WISDOM. 5 
 
 Let come what will ; in failure though I chance 
 More than the loss of that I hoped to win, 
 With scorn or pity, yet the light within 
 Is fed by noble failure ; men may glance 
 Derisively nay, friends may look askance, 
 When I least conscious am of shame or sin. 
 
 Judge no man by his action ; were I told 
 
 To-morrow of some proven friend's disgrace 
 Failure or, worse, some deed unquestioned base : 
 
 Do noisy facts the secret truth unfold? 
 
 And shall I judge, who knew him from of old, 
 I, who have read his nature in his face ? 
 
 So I should justify my deed in vain 
 To those best judges who have loved me best ; 
 They will absolve my purpose unconfessed ; 
 
 And, when the chaff is winnowed from the grain, 
 
 If but a few so proved my friends remain, 
 I shall be well content to spare the rest. 
 
 Who seems to fail how often most succeeds ! 
 Who seems successful most how often wrought 
 Only the dream and shadow of his thought ! 
 High purposes in his imperfect deeds 
 Are all that man can boast ; but these he needs, 
 
 Lest what great power he have should come to nought, 
 
 Insatiable, pure ; that not his own 
 
 Desire of ease prescribes, nor greed of place 
 In the industrious world ; to these we trace 
 All high and fearless action ; hence alone 
 The immortal artist borrows light unknown 
 To the mere use of art, the poet grace.
 
 6 THE WORLD'S WISDOM. 
 
 For us, however of a lesser breed, 
 The universal law holds none the less ; 
 He questions not of failure or success 
 
 Whose nobler purpose hath inspired the deed ; 
 
 The consequence by righteous heaven decreed 
 He will abide, and in the end shall bless. 
 
 Look not too far ; it doth demean the soul ; 
 But to its virtue thy fair enterprise 
 Commend with instant faith ; have only eyes 
 
 For the strait path and for the shining goal ; 
 
 What thou must, suffer ; what thou canst, controul ; 
 But let misfortune take thee by surprise. 
 
 However hazardous the issue be 
 My purpose holds the adventure to pursue ; 
 The soul may live, and weather all things through- 
 Make all experience welcome as the sea 
 To prove her course undriven there, and free, 
 Her starry loves significant and true.
 
 THE TRYST. 
 
 HOURS of the long blue summer day 
 Have passed in tedious splendour by ; 
 The last pale rose hath Hushed away 
 
 Out of the western sky. 
 Deep in their shadowy sylvan bower 
 A lover waits the appointed hour ; 
 
 His heart is beating high ; 
 He waits, but has not long to wait ; 
 His Love is at the garden gate, 
 And they will steal an hour from Fate 
 Although it were to die. 
 
 A field unseen had she to pass 
 
 Ere just below that sheltering oak 
 Her footsteps in the moving grass 
 
 On his faint spirit broke. 
 She comes from the devouring light 
 Of festal halls into the night ; 
 
 Beneath her rich white cloak 
 Are flowers and jewels the amorous air 
 Of heaven is in her starlit hair 
 Light-footed, eager-hearted, fair 
 
 She comes upon the stroke. 
 
 Their deathless vow, in any word 
 
 Unbreathed, but spoken from their eyes 
 Only those listening stars have heard
 
 8 THE TRYST. 
 
 That shape our destinies. 
 If with the stars they could foreknow 
 The pains of love, the starry woe, 
 
 How fortunate and wise 
 They two would seem if they might stand 
 Thus heart to heart, and hand in hand, 
 Forever in that charmed land 
 
 That shadowy paradise.
 
 AMOR IN EXTREMIS. 
 
 THOU askest if it be indeed a sin 
 To let the indomitable tyrant in, 
 Or whether sin with Love can never be ? 
 Is it a sin if some tremendous tide 
 Sweep down the bulwarks of presumptuous pride 
 That man builds up against the eternal sea ? 
 
 Ambition some, some poverty, disease, 
 Or filial piety, forbid to please 
 
 This tyrant too importunate : and still 
 Their monitors conspire with curious art 
 To guard that virgin citadel, the heart, 
 
 And raise up walls about the faltering will. 
 
 O, let them fall ! for, not to be withstood, 
 
 Sweet heaven commands to trust the mighty flood, 
 
 The tide of love, which constant is to heaven, 
 Whilst from our feet the great world slips away, 
 Blindly revolving its laborious day, 
 
 With all that we have hoped for, feared, or striven. 
 
 Seductive, sweet, as to the sea the moon, 
 
 Though earth forbid, doth heaven present the boon 
 
 Of love, the crown of life ; who hesitates 
 Must serious reason use ; 'twere not unwise 
 With sudden hands to wrest so fair a prize 
 
 From the arbitrament of doubtful Fates.
 
 io AMOR IN EXTREMIS. 
 
 Nay, that we love at all ; that love to us 
 Appears so fair by ways so dangerous, 
 
 Must argue heaven-ordained occasion here 
 Of our true heritage, which to have proved 
 Ours by desert and loyalty unremoved 
 
 Shall make it doubly ours and doubly dear. 
 
 And yet thou knowest I had no wilful scheme 
 In this rash love save to indulge a dream 
 
 Unknown to thee ; our stars in heaven have erred 
 Each to the other from its broken arc ; 
 Just so a pair of children in the dark 
 
 Had met, and so caught hands without a word. 
 
 So fair thou art, so loved ; and blest with all 
 That could so fair and loved a thing befall ; 
 
 So native here, but to the world so new, 
 Where various trouble is, and wasting care : 
 Is't not a sin the rose so rich and rare 
 
 To pluck from these bright gardens where it grew ? 
 
 But, unadorning these, to which belong 
 Thy so loved graces, dost thou fear to wrong 
 
 Me, who shall wrong thee how should I withold, 
 When thy dear will chimes with my own desire ? 
 That " ill-bestowed," thou sayest, my love will tire, 
 
 Or thine become less precious than of old ? 
 
 Or dost thou bid me seek the world is wide 
 An easier, say, but not a fairer bride 
 
 The rose without a thorn ? O, vain debate ! 
 Had I not found, as I have surely done, 
 The best and loveliest underneath the sun, 
 
 In finding thee I owe enough to Fate.
 
 AMOR IN EXTREMIS. u 
 
 Thou sayest and through all thy sweet advice 
 Runs womanlike the thirst for sacrifice, 
 
 The fear of wilful, undeserved, joy 
 That not alone their ban forbids our love, 
 But thy unworthiness ; that use must prove 
 
 How poor thy virtues, time thy charms destroy. 
 
 This is the task of Love : that he refine 
 Clay the most human to the most divine 
 
 Unto the need of one enamoured soul. 
 Love asks the fond, the pure and faithful, heart ; 
 Of one frail nature by that heavenlier part 
 
 He is content to know and judge the whole. 
 
 And thy sweet seniority a grace 
 More to adorn thy soul, but in thy face 
 
 All unperceived what could more deeply move 
 Faith, passion, chivalry ? so wondrous fair, 
 Inviolate still, thou to attend my prayer 
 
 Stayed in mid-heaven, nay, made a child, by love ! 
 
 Say thou hast but ten years the sweetest ten 
 Of womanhood that is vouchsafed to men 
 
 Ere those rich charms do pale : the rose of June 
 No lovelier is than the frail autumn leaf; 
 Nor were there lawful cause to see with grief 
 
 That sunlike beauty changed to the moon, 
 
 Less prodigal of warmth and light, a guise 
 More eloquent to my admiring eyes 
 
 Of thy pure history and the eternal law 
 Which the deep heavens obey a face to wean 
 My spirit from the earth to things unseen, 
 
 Even as those waters the pale moon doth draw.
 
 12 AMOR IN EXTREMIS. 
 
 Once fair and well-beloved, the envious wage 
 Is never forfeited to wasting age 
 
 Still to be fair ; but if more sacred ties 
 Do not avail thee in the after years, 
 If all in vain the tribute of thy tears, 
 
 These hard-won meetings, desperate "goodbyes," 
 
 Then vain are all things beautiful and deep, 
 And love a dream, and life a fevered sleep 
 
 Well lost in that profounder sleep to be. 
 But should my loyal devotion, early faith, 
 Tire for a day, think how the mournful wraith 
 
 Of thy loved form at night would steal on me, 
 
 Mysteriously fair, as first it stole, 
 Insidiously, sweetly, on my soul, 
 
 As ne'er before insidious and sweet : 
 Dost thou not think that face, those wistful eyes, 
 Where no reproach, but only pardon, lies, 
 
 Would win me back again to these dear feet ? 
 
 Though Love, who dwells with his prophetic eye 
 On every omen, of a morning sky 
 
 So red and angry well may augur rain, 
 Could aught in nature so unlovely be 
 That love should ever be desired by thee, 
 
 And, where thy lover is, desired in vain ? 
 
 A summer day of its exceeding heat 
 
 May changed be'to thunder ; love, too sweet, 
 
 By its own paosion clouded ; heaven, too near 
 The unstable earth, may banefully excite 
 Humours and heats, its deadly opposite, 
 
 Which break down all the electric atmosphere ;
 
 AMOR IN EXTREMIS. 13 
 
 And love be seamed with fire, and judgment done ; 
 But o'er those warring elements the sun 
 
 Is shining still, whose witnesses they are ; 
 And life and love brought terribly to birth 
 Where that great peace is broken by the earth 
 
 Which doth prevail in heaven from star to star : 
 
 Where soul in flesh takes wondrous power and form ; 
 And not the laws which govern tide and storm 
 
 Are marvellous then as those which rule the soul 
 Rule from the tropic lightenings of its youth 
 To where, in that vast silence north and south, 
 
 The aurora streams above the frozen pole. 
 
 Life is distraught with dangers ever fresh 
 'Twixt heaven and earth, the spirit and the flesh, 
 
 But Love the pilot of that shadowy clime 
 The ambassador of heaven, lest we forget 
 Our lineage high, through all the world to set 
 
 His royal standard o'er the sons of Time. 
 
 A self-taught power and providence to use, 
 Shall we the bright insignia refuse, 
 
 The starry privilege of love forego ? 
 Can such affections on the heart prevail 
 Only to prove the will that must not fail 
 
 Is it for nothing that I love thee so ? 
 
 Start at thy coming, and divinely burn 
 With every gesture of thy fondness learn 
 
 Thy instant soul in each unspoken thought 
 That lightens inwardly celestial grace, 
 And vanishes across the perfect face 
 
 To that pure spirit so expressly wrought ?
 
 14 AMOR IN EXTREMIS. 
 
 Feel every delicate colour, scent, and sound, 
 Blent evermore with thee, and broken round 
 
 Thy melting path, like moonlight on the sea 
 From the dark world a fragrant incense drawn, 
 Even as its shining vapours to the dawn, 
 
 And all my being lost in prayer to thee ? 
 
 Is it to voyage with those pale faces set 
 Across the sea, that travel and forget 
 
 Strive to forget that they have ever known 
 Such perilous joy, such cruel beauty ; torn 
 By sleepless passion ; through a world forlorn 
 
 Of hope and comfort wandering alone ? 
 
 Sometimes, star-gazing there, they will be caught 
 Out of their woe into the heaven of thought, 
 
 Till love grow far away and little worth ; 
 Sometimes they will be faithful ; sometimes, numb 
 With that long agony, they will succumb 
 
 Pleasure to seek of the unhallowed earth. 
 
 I think that all thy lovers of the sweet 
 Spring days gone by are kneeling at thy feet 
 
 To urge my cause ; to plead against the doom 
 How cruel they know ; whilst every poet's heart 
 That loved and suffered leaps to take my part 
 
 With stern entreaties from the loveless tomb ; 
 
 His, the halt poet, that cruel fair could sting 
 The world to wander like a wounded thing ; 
 
 And his to whom Beatrice the shades of Hell 
 Made easy, and the steep ascent to heaven ; 
 And his, the unfortunate, ignobly driven 
 
 By Leonora to a maniac's cell.
 
 AMOR IN EXTREMIS. 15 
 
 And other two there be, with faces pale 
 And sweet from musing on a different tale, 
 
 Who died in one another's arms ; they learned 
 The luxury, and they would dare the pain 
 Giovani's knife and Dante's hell again, 
 
 Of desperate love that is not unreturned. 
 
 Wilt thou not learn of these ? must those pure eyes 
 Make so unkind a Providence be wise 
 
 To smile at love, as even those that prove 
 Victorious dare not smile whilst heaven and hell 
 A cloud of such dire witnesses compel 
 
 To urge the headlong argument of love ? 
 
 Wilt thou not learn of these ? the mighty flood, 
 The tide of love, is full ; 'tis time we stood 
 
 To sea ; the ebb, they say, will leave behind 
 No haven here, but empty channels strewn 
 With shadowy wrecks beneath a waning moon, 
 
 The dry and empty bottoms of the mind. 
 
 Cold blows the wind ; the sky is overcast 
 With driving clouds ; the voices of the past, 
 
 The curlews' cries, are borne from shore to shore ; 
 The salt pools glimmer to the moon ; afar 
 The milk-white breakers thunder on the bar, 
 
 Through the long night returning nevermore. 
 
 Through the long night returning not to us : 
 Black river bottoms places hideous 
 
 And bare, where once there flowed the living tide 
 Of passion 'tis a world of ghastly dreams, 
 Where loveless lives are spent like those thin streams 
 
 The interminable sandy flats divide.
 
 16 AMOR IN EXTREMIS. 
 
 In that dark world no ray of hope can reach 
 The abandoned soul ; each interest new and each 
 
 New joy serves only to renew his loss. 
 Nothing I did but I should wish for thee 
 The scheme to praise or the result to see, 
 
 Which without thee were dull and empty dross. 
 
 Do thou but hear them, Sweet, and in thy breast 
 Permit, as it is pure, each deep behest 
 
 Of Nature ; breathe no heavier cloud between 
 Our loves, unsure of satisfaction here, 
 Which yet, to some diviner purpose dear, 
 
 Can never be as if they had not been. 
 
 O, pitiful, between those slow replies, 
 
 But, O, how sweet, that face, those far off eyes, 
 
 Where all thy soul is set to understand ! 
 Distressed in choice ; most fearful of the wrong 
 Where most inclined ; but willing to be strong 
 
 But happy, since I hold the little hand - 
 
 Was ever any face so fair before ? 
 Or I thy lover if I still forbore 
 
 Thee to advise too warmly, thee to woo ? 
 So tender, and so infinitely sweet, 
 That I could die in kissing these dear feet, 
 
 Who am not worthy to unloose thy shoe. 
 
 O, if sweet death and sudden were decreed 
 To all mankind, how all their hearts that bleed 
 
 With long desire would hasten to obey 
 The one great law, and with delicious sighs 
 Each to his love, and with adoring eyes, 
 
 The whole creation breathe itself away.
 
 AMOR IN EXTREMIS. 17 
 
 'Tis Love shall turn the world to God ; as soon 
 From making these laborious days the moon 
 
 Shall lay the earth to rest ; the tides that run 
 So fiercely now, and in such narrow ways, 
 Shall have their will, and bring the earth to gaze 
 
 Mutely beneath a steadfast seeming sun.
 
 
 A FAREWELL. 
 
 SUMMER, so sweetly ushered in, 
 Hath passed, my Love, hath passed away ; 
 And if to love hath been a sin 
 Judgment is done to day. 
 Would it were death, and swiftly done 
 Ere those dark clouds have veiled the sun ! 
 
 How can we ever say 
 Slow words, a death in life to knell, 
 Of agonizing, long, " farewell ? " 
 
 That we must always love, our chief 
 
 Desire and woe, our faith so fair, 
 Shall with the fading autumn leaf 
 
 Make sweetness of despair. 
 At eventide before my eyes 
 The vision of thy face shall rise, 
 
 And float above me there, 
 As when the evening star appears 
 More beautiful through mists of tears. 
 
 Thy mourned loveliness shall haunt 
 
 My heart through many a wintry hour ; 
 O'er mine thy dreaming soul shall vaunt 
 
 Its old mysterious power. 
 The silvering buds shall all unsheathe 
 Dim lights of thee a perfume breathe 
 
 Of thee from every flower, 
 And whispers from the early green 
 Of what hath been, of what hath been.
 
 THE AUTUMN WIND. 
 
 'T" r HE sad, the wild, the Autumn Wind, 
 1 All vanished sweet things 
 
 From the dark heaven I call to mind ; 
 
 The deathly odour clings 
 Of summers that are left behind 
 
 On my tempestuous wings. 
 
 Awhile from leafy bough to bough 
 
 I led the summer on ; 
 And many a lover's whispered vow 
 
 Bore to the joyful sun ; 
 But all the sweets of summer now, 
 
 The sweets of love are gone. 
 
 And now, to speak their general grief 
 
 In one severer strain, 
 From places of the withered leaf 
 
 I mourn the life, how vain, 
 The loves, the joys of men, how brief, 
 
 Through all the night complain ; 
 
 Their spring, how desperately sweet 
 With promise only given 
 
 The summer of a short conceit 
 
 Their leaf-like souls, how driven, 
 
 When earth is dead beneath their feet, 
 On all the winds of heaven !
 
 PHYLLIS TO DEMOPHOON 
 
 AFTER OVID. 
 
 TNEMOPHOON, thy royal hostess, I, 
 J-X Phyllis of Rhodope, a just complaint 
 
 Make of thy absence now too long. When first 
 That horned moon grew to the full, we said, 
 Thy moored ships were to be mine. But now 
 Four times the moon hath waned, four times fulfilled 
 Her shining sphere, and the Sithonian seas 
 Murmur no tidings of the ships of Greece. 
 
 If thou countest the days which we in love 
 Reckon so carefully, thou wilt perceive 
 That my rebuke comes not before its time. 
 Hope lingered long ; for ever are we slow 
 That to believe which to believe is pain 
 Pain to the loyal and unwilling heart 
 Of love. I have deceived myself for thee ; 
 And often have I thought the stormy south 
 Would hurry back thy sails ; and I have cursed 
 Theseus because he would not let thee go 
 If it was Theseus who detained thee thus ; 
 Or off the shoals of Hebrus I have feared 
 Thy ship was swallowed in the foaming sea. 
 For thee, O faithless, I have tired the Gods 
 With prayer before their incense -burning shrines ; 
 And often, when the sea and sky grew fair 
 With some propitious wind, said to myself,
 
 PHYLLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 21 
 
 " If he is living surely he will come." 
 My trusting love hath now imagined all 
 Misfortunes that can stay the course of love ; 
 All fond excuses I have made for thee. 
 
 But thou art absent still ; nor do the Gods, 
 By whom thou swearedst, favour or thy love 
 For Phyllis doth not urge thy safe return. 
 Demophoon, alike thy words, thy sails, 
 Thou gavest to the wind words that were void, 
 Sails whose return I still await in vain. 
 Tell me what have I done save that I loved 
 Thee all unwisely ? by that very sin 
 I should have more endeared myself to thee : 
 My only fault, O faithless, that I gave 
 Thee hospitality and too much love 
 Fault that should find favour at least with thee ! 
 Where are thy vows, thy honor, and the hand 
 That clasped my own in love ? where is the God 
 That was so often on thy perjured lips ? 
 Where now is Hymen, pledge of bliss to be, 
 The sponsor for long years of wedded love ? 
 To me thou swearedst by the stormy sea, 
 Which, having sailed so often, thou mightest hope 
 Safely to sail again ; by thy grandsire 
 Of the white horses if 'tis truly he 
 Who calms the stormy sea, thou swearedst too ; 
 By Venus and her weapons, lamp and bow, 
 So direfully strong against myself ; 
 By Juno, genial goddess, who presides 
 O'er wedded happiness ; and by the rites 
 The mystic rites of her who bears the torch.
 
 22 PHYLLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 
 
 If every deity outraged by thee 
 
 Should wreak their wrath on thee, thou, one alone, 
 
 Would' st not suffice their fury to appease. 
 
 And I in madness even re-equipped 
 Thy broken fleet, that safely might depart 
 The ship in which thou left'st me ; oars beside 
 I gave to urge thy flight ; my hurt, alas ! 
 My own goodwill inflicted on myself. 
 I trusted in the soothing words of which 
 Thou had'st so many ; in thy name and race ;_ 
 I trusted in thy tears and are they too 
 Taught to deceive ? are they too false, to flow 
 As they are bid ? I trusted in the Gods ; 
 Wherefore so many pledges ? I had been 
 Enough deceived by any one of them. 
 
 And yet I grieve not that I gave to thee 
 Harbour and hospitality ; but these 
 Ought to have been the limit of my gift. 
 How shamed I am I added unto these 
 The gift of my own self; ah, how I wish 
 The night before that one had been my last, 
 Whilst yet I might have died a virgin queen. 
 I hoped the best thinking it was my due 
 A hope how just that looks but for desert ! 
 In truth it is no glory to betray 
 A trusting girl ; surely my innocence 
 Deserved respect ; yet by thy lying words 
 I was deceived, a woman, and in love. 
 May the Gods grant this deed of thine to be 
 The summit of thy fame ; and may there stand 
 Thy statue in thy city midst the race
 
 PHYLLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 33 
 
 Of old Aegeus ; and thy noble sire's, 
 
 Magnificent with titles, opposite. 
 
 Where shall be read of Scyron and the great 
 
 Procrustes, Sinis, and the Minotaur ; 
 
 Of Thebes subdued in war ; and Centaurs too, 
 
 A monstrous brood, despatched ; and the reverse 
 
 Of Pluto's dusky arms ; but hard at hand 
 
 Thine with these words : " The man by whom a queen 
 
 " Suffered herself to be deceived in love." 
 
 From that brave record of thy father's deeds 
 Was Ariadne's foul betrayal all 
 
 Thou could 'st admire ? that deed which calls alone 
 For censure or excuse the only one 
 That thou could' st imitate ? thy sire's false faith 
 All he bequeathed, false-hearted son, to thee ? 
 She has at last I do not envy her 
 A better husband ; and she sits aloft 
 Drawn by tamed tigers ; but the Thracian youth, 
 Those whom I scorned of old, avoid me now, 
 Saying that I preferred a foreigner : 
 Saying, " Let her to learned Athens go ; 
 '* Some other one shall rule o'er warlike Thrace." 
 All things are judged by the event : be all 
 His hopes in vain who argues thus, and his 
 Deep purposes all uneventful be. 
 If now the sea were foaming with thine oars 
 I should be quickly said to have desired 
 My people's welfare even as my own. 
 And yet I never dreamed of them ; nor will 
 My dream be crowned, nor ever will my baths 
 And festal palaces resound with thee.
 
 24 PHYLLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 
 
 That form of thine for ever is impressed 
 Upon my eyes, tearing thyself away, 
 When off the sick and dizzy shore thy fleet 
 Hung just about to sail ; and thou didst dare 
 To embrace me, and to fall upon my neck 
 With kisses passionate and fond as though 
 Thou could' st not bear to part ; and with my tears 
 To intermingle thine, and to complain 
 Of such a cruelly propitious wind ; 
 And, breaking off at last, " Phyllis," thou said'st, 
 " Most certainly expect again thy own 
 " Demophoon." Ah, me ! should I expect 
 Thee who didst leave me never to return, 
 And those white sails that o'er the faint blue edge 
 Of ocean dropped for ever ? 
 
 Yet I do 
 
 Expect thee still ; O come, though late, to her 
 
 Who loves thee so, that thou may'st keep thy pledge 
 
 In all except the time. Ah, what am I, 
 
 I that am so unhappy, praying for ? 
 
 Ev'n now perhaps some other wife is thine, 
 
 Some other love ill-omened for me. 
 
 No Phyllis did'st thou know, I ween, so soon 
 
 As I was lost to thy forgetful eyes. 
 
 Ah me ! should' st thou enquire who Phyllis is, 
 
 Or whence she comes ? I, who did give to thee, 
 
 Demophoon, in thy extreme distress, 
 
 Our Thracian harbours and a splendid home ; 
 
 Whose wealth my own increased ; whose want my wealth 
 
 Gave many gifts and would have given more ; 
 
 I who, a queen, subjected unto thee 
 
 The very realms that King Lycurgus ruled
 
 PHYLLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 25 
 
 So niggardly of yore, too great to brook 
 
 A woman's power ; from ice -clad Rhodope 
 
 Stretching to where Haemus with pleasant groves 
 
 Is shadowy, and the sacred Hebrus rolls 
 
 His waters to the sea ; I who, a maid, 
 
 Gave my own self to thee, whose girdle thou 
 
 Unfastened with thy perfidious hand. 
 
 Over those bridals croaked the ill-omened bird 
 
 A warning hoarse, and pale Tisiphone 
 
 For vengeance shrieked upon the accursed deed. 
 
 Alecto too was there, her tresses wreathed 
 
 With writhing snakes ; and like to funereal brands 
 
 Our torches glowed upon the ghastly night. 
 
 Now in my agony I pace the rocks, 
 The reedy dunes, and every height from which 
 The open sea is spread before mine eyes. 
 Whether day gladdens the earth, or the chill stars 
 Are bright above, for ever do I watch 
 What winds are on the ocean ; when I see 
 Sails far away at once I think the Gods 
 Are kind to me at last ; down to the sea 
 I run, and scarce the fickle waves that beat 
 The everlasting shore can turn me back ; 
 And, as the sails draw nearer, less and less 
 Firmly I stand, and faint away and fall 
 At last into my maiden's outstretched arms. 
 
 There is a bay curved like a bended bow, 
 With lofty headlands jagged and abrupt. 
 Hence have I thought to hurl my body down 
 Into the waves below ; if thou dost still
 
 26 PHYLLIS TO DEMOPHOON. 
 
 Delay thy coming this will be the end. 
 
 There will the tides conspire and bear my body 
 
 Unburied to thee, where, 'fore thine eyes, 
 
 It shall compel thy pity at the last. 
 
 For though thou should' st excell iron and flint 
 
 And thy own self in hardness, thou wilt say, 
 
 " Not thus, O Phyllis, should'st thou follow me." 
 
 A fire within me burns for nothing less 
 
 Than death to end my shame ; and on my tomb 
 
 Shall be inscribed thy name thy name by whom 
 
 I was betrayed ; such envious words as these 
 
 Shall keep alive thy fame : " Demophoon, 
 
 " Her guest, of his royal bride's unhappy death 
 
 *' The treacherous cause became ; a victim she 
 
 " Of her deep love and his inconstancy."
 
 THE BURNS CENTENARY. 
 
 O FICKLE is the Muse, and hard, 
 t Who hath by many a latter bard 
 Thy envious laurel richly starred, 
 
 If I may share 
 No such her genial regard, 
 And tuneful care ! 
 
 For though long since thy great compeer 
 Had ravished every heart and ear 
 Of those to whom thy memory dear 
 
 Can never die ; 
 And moved the quick insidious tear, 
 
 The reverie high ; 
 
 Though he, in fame and hapless fate 
 So soon in heaven to be thy mate, 
 Came that fair eve to dedicate 
 
 A lovely bloom 
 Himself how lowly, thee how great 
 
 Upon thy tomb ; 
 
 (Soon 'neath the quiet tomb he slept, 
 Himself no less divinely wept; 
 Himself the would-be love-adept, 
 
 The sufferer lone, 
 No friendlier spirit could have leapt 
 
 To greet thy own.)
 
 28 THE BURNS CENTENARY. 
 
 Superfluous now, and less divine 
 Sons of the long illustrious line, 
 We emulate the high design 
 
 To sing thy praise ; 
 And more with alien splendours shine 
 
 Those deathless bays. 
 
 Since it has thus become the mode, 
 Forgive, from thy august abode 
 That I should here increase the load, 
 
 And swell the crime, 
 Of flatteries so much bestowed 
 
 In honied rhyme. 
 
 I think, of all the laurelled host 
 Wandering Elysian fields, that most 
 Thy else not unattainted ghost 
 
 To aspirants here 
 Of our peculiar sin might boast 
 
 A spirit clear. 
 
 Untaught, O happy soul and wise, 
 The vacant- glorious verse to prize ; 
 Untaught to polish and revise, 
 
 Or how to use 
 The arts that attitudinize 
 
 Our modern Muse ; 
 
 Taught to exhale, as the fresh earth 
 To utter flowers, thy natural mirth ; 
 As hurricanes the bitter north 
 
 To speak thy woe, 
 Thy lays reveal the artless worth 
 
 Of long ago.
 
 THE BURNS CENTENARY. 29 
 
 No ruder breath thy Atlantic curled ; 
 With such untutored sweetness purled 
 The river whence that book was hurled 
 
 Which did not woo 
 The homage a degenerate world 
 
 Contends to do. 
 
 Since Shakespere's not a soul so clear 
 Of mean ambitions ; quick to hear 
 The immortal harmonies severe 
 
 Of love and pain 
 Earth had brought forth ; and now thy peer 
 
 Doth not remain. 
 
 To Wordsworth, Byron, each some trace 
 Of thought or passion thine ; some grace 
 Or splendour of thy Titan race 
 
 Thou didst bequeathe ; 
 A soul that in these latter days 
 
 We hardly breathe. 
 
 Unhealthy spirits, undevout, 
 
 We boast our various -sided doubt ; 
 
 We write discursively about 
 
 The things ye proved, 
 Or suffered, ere ye sang them out 
 
 So much beloved. 
 
 And over our laborious art 
 Presides a genius less the heart 
 Than that pale demon of the Mart 
 
 That sucks our power, 
 And in our very love bears part 
 
 To blight the flower.
 
 THE BURNS CENTENARY. 
 
 Thou, to glad Nature more akin, 
 And used the generous love to win 
 Of many a rustic heroine, 
 
 Wouldst often tell 
 Some rude desire, impetuous sin, 
 
 Or wild farewell. 
 
 But sweetly, naturally told, 
 
 Those loves were never bought for gold, 
 
 Nor written only to be sold ; 
 
 The will malign, 
 Offending where the heart is cold, 
 
 Was never thine ; 
 
 But native virtue, still preserved 
 Without the law ; or, if thou swerved 
 Thence, by some direful chance unnerved 
 
 Ah, who shall blame 
 Whatever deep experience served 
 
 The sacred flame ? 
 
 We see and love thee ; leaving now 
 
 The brilliant throng that wreathed thy brow 
 
 To reassume a youthful vow, 
 
 A rustic life ; 
 Thy hand again upon the plough, 
 
 And Jean thy wife. 
 
 And now the sire we fondly see 
 Thy sons instructing at thy knee ; 
 And now the truant lover, free 
 
 Among the groves 
 Where to be loved immortally, 
 
 Thy Chloris roves.
 
 THE BURNS CENTENARY. 31 
 
 And though by each too passionate sense 
 Borne to the earth, deriving thence 
 Antaeus-like thy spirit intense 
 
 To strive and shine ; 
 Recruiting thence each large expense 
 
 Of power divine. 
 
 And now upon thy untimely end, 
 Dissentient all, our hearts attend 
 With woe ; the thunder-clouds descend 
 
 Upon thy head ; 
 To happier realms our prayers commend 
 
 The mighty dead. 
 
 Thou couldst not prosper here ; subdue 
 A soul to loftier dictates true 
 The ignoble interests to pursue, 
 
 The arts contrive, 
 Which, save with some insatiate few, 
 
 Suffice and thrive ; 
 
 Nor yet renounce the world with those 
 Who less regard its flattering shows, 
 And for its thorns condemn the rose 
 
 Of youth and love, 
 Some heavenlier virtue to propose, 
 
 Or joy to prove. 
 
 Unskilled to rule, but not content 
 To serve the flesh ; improvident, 
 But uncorrupt, thy spirit went 
 
 A devious course ; 
 In virtuous effort foiled, or spent 
 
 In vain remorse.
 
 33 THE BURNS CENTENARY. 
 
 But how to Judge thee ! shall we chide 
 Great Nature ; for their laughing pride 
 Her roses ; for its headlong tide 
 
 The mountain stream ; 
 The poet's life, the poet's bride, 
 
 The poet's dream? 
 
 Nay, for herself she wields the scourge 
 Her own too sweet excess to purge ; 
 Her starry purposes converge 
 
 Beyond the sphere 
 Of passion or ruin to which they urge 
 
 Her creatures here. 
 
 Her poets least do they require 
 Our censure to the withering fire 
 Of their rich life and long desire 
 
 A hapless prey, 
 As from a slow funereal pyre, 
 
 Consume away. 
 
 Thy soul is to the empyrean gone ; 
 The verse in which it strove and shone, 
 Quickened so painfully, lives on, 
 
 And lightens forth, 
 To shed a lustre never wan 
 
 About the North.
 
 MEROZ. 
 
 AN ODE. 1895. 
 
 "Curse ye Meroz, saith the angel of the Lord, curse 
 ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof ; because they came 
 not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord 
 against the mighty." 
 
 YE victims, cruelly forsaken, dead, 
 And unavenged, whose dust and ashes piled 
 In murderous drifts the winter through have been 
 Unwept, unburied, on your desert hills ; 
 Or whom to weep, and dress your mouldering bed 
 With some poor weed, in those sparse vales but green 
 That once you loved, new- coming April mild 
 Perhaps from heaven a gentle shower distils ; 
 Or, hurled from desperate crags, whose bones unseen 
 Lie sepulchred in many a dark ravine, 
 Washed by the melting snow ; you, spoiled of bread, 
 Disarm6d, broken-hearted, crushed by dread 
 Insensate force, by hideous art beguiled ; 
 Whose streaming blood by infidels was shed, 
 That stains the Orient red, 
 And that great river to the Persian sea, 
 Your martyrdom is also on our head ! 
 Though of your blood all seeming undefiled, 
 Their dumb accomplices perfidious we, 
 Who left the tyrants still unvisited
 
 34 MEROZ. 
 
 To indulge and flatter their malignant wills. 
 
 O, faithless that we are, and pitiless, 
 
 How shall our ancient name be reconciled, 
 
 And its long tenure of a glory fled ? 
 
 Our memory by the ages unreviled, 
 
 In whose ill-gotten custody you bled ? 
 
 How shall sweet nature purify and bless 
 
 Once more the wilderness 
 
 Incarnadine, whose thirsty soul was fed 
 
 With rivers of your blood ? its fields are spread 
 
 'Neath heavens that smile no more, of loveliness 
 
 And joy for ever disinherited. 
 
 The wind now mourns you there with void alarms 
 
 Of death by night ; and now more awful calms 
 
 Than death ; ere this dire end to your distress 
 
 Could not you move the blasts of heaven your wild 
 
 Entreaties to address 
 
 To the four quarters of the earth in arms ? 
 
 They heard, but might not be solicited ; 
 
 And o'er the victims of its vile excess 
 
 That hideous soldiery smiled. 
 
 Your wives, your daughters, suffered nothing less 
 
 Than your strong men, but there was no redress ; 
 
 Your very mothers were not spared with child. 
 
 From your blood-stained mountain solitude 
 You called upon our laggard arms in vain ; 
 And over many a fruitful vale and plain, 
 O'er many a smiling sea and mellowing wood, 
 There ebbed away unheard that piteous strain ; 
 Or in our ears the long complaint would rise 
 Only to fall again.
 
 MEROZ. 35 
 
 For men pursue, as they have still pursued, 
 
 Unmoved, through many a blind vicissitude 
 
 Of joy, desire, and pain, 
 
 Each that vain shadow, burying like a hood 
 
 His soul in darkness, that too envious good 
 
 Self-chosen next ; and, in a softer mood, 
 
 If some high motive, generous, pure, and wise, 
 
 Employ a chord to which the heart replies, 
 
 This earth-born progeny, an impious brood, 
 
 Of hopes and fears, with base solicitude, 
 
 Correct the will, the impulsive hand refrain. 
 
 Or, newly burning from the tale of blood, 
 
 With wrath, and fear, and pity, in their eyes, 
 
 Fired by the tale of those death agonies, 
 
 Some furious prophet on the platform stood, 
 
 The priest his prayer, the merchant gave his dole ; 
 
 Unprofitable charities, for where 
 
 The heart is sick the members are not whole. 
 
 Our old heroic virtue fails and dies ; 
 
 Our soul is drugged with small philosophies, 
 
 Yea, dead to indignation or surprise. 
 
 And such a race, despoiled by time, that thief 
 
 Of power unused by love, unmoved by grief, 
 
 Shall not escape the avenging destinies. 
 
 The inevitable curse we too must share 
 
 Here to accomplish that prophetic scroll 
 
 Of what has been ; this way the high green leaf 
 
 Is faded, and a people lose controul 
 
 Among the nations, and the arts, their chief 
 
 Glory and use, decay ; but whilst they spare 
 
 The oppressed and weak, whilst they espouse or dare 
 
 Some cause forlorn, some arduous enterprise,
 
 36 MEROZ. 
 
 The fair but unsuspected flowers arise, 
 
 To adorn the state, or to instruct the soul, 
 
 Of art, the child of virtue ; flowers how brief, 
 
 Now they are forced with vain expense and care, 
 
 Our various arts and letters ! nothing worth 
 
 Fair- seeming, ineffectual, as are 
 
 These diplomatic, slow, humanities. 
 
 For want of public virtue to compare 
 
 With their sick dreams, for want of purer air, 
 
 Our feverish imaginations breed 
 
 Unexercised by love, and only bear 
 
 Exotic blossom or luxuriant weed, 
 
 False to adorn, or shameless to declare, 
 
 The lean or filthy soil on which they feed ; 
 
 That speak our poverty of soul ; the dearth 
 
 Of high and noble thought ; the insatiate greed 
 
 Of wealth and power and place ; the poor disguise 
 
 Of cruelty and sin, whose monstrous birth 
 
 Is suffered now upon the groaning earth 
 
 With none to avenge it and with few to heed 
 
 The riotous passions and unholy mirth 
 
 Of all men summed in one tremendous deed. 
 
 And Nature too was passive ; vengeance none 
 She uttered there, discovered no surprise ; 
 Too blind and regular to seek or shun 
 Our weal or woe, to all entreaty proof, 
 From that unequal strife she held aloof, 
 She wrought no omen in the orient skies ; 
 But o'er that massacre the morning sun, 
 From fields of blood to feed on crystal dew,
 
 MEROZ. 37 
 
 Rose daily, and was unashamed to rise, 
 
 Upon our careless eyes. 
 
 The heaven from height to height of stainless blue 
 
 Melted as though with love ; the harvest grew 
 
 Golden upon the hills ; and Day, at least 
 
 With sanguine feet begun, 
 
 And awful eyes from that embattled East, 
 
 Was resolute her smiling course to run 
 
 Where courage, faith, and pity, were deceased. 
 
 And could she find no voice for your despair, 
 Dumb Nature, that should move these hearts of stone ? 
 In syllables of thunder rend the air 
 Of stifling capitals your desperate ills 
 Write in the starry firmament, nor moan 
 Your woes upon the tempest ? move the wills 
 Of princes to a noble rage for war, 
 And call the nations your distress to bear 
 Nor breathe a whisper of your futile prayer 
 To one rapt dreamer on the lonely hills ? 
 Had she no harmony of undertone 
 Set to some other sadness than his own 
 Deep in the music of her woods and rills ? 
 No message from her heavenward- dreaming firs, 
 Acquainted much with death, and death with you, 
 On his faint spirit blown 
 Not even the uneasy phantasy that stirs 
 The soul presentient of a grief unknown ? 
 Though privy she with those dark ministers 
 Of sleep to all your woe ; and nowise new 
 He to her mystic lore set there alone, 
 Where through that spiral foliage, and through
 
 38 MEROZ. 
 
 Pale interspaces of mysterious blue, 
 
 His soul dissolved away to mix with hers. 
 
 If from the people of that stricken shore 
 Came any sound of wailing over sea, 
 By our dull senses it was undivined ; 
 So many a burthen of our own we bore, 
 Enduring many a pitiless degree. 
 And when the days of summer were declined, 
 The woods of summer in their yellow leaf, 
 We thought the face of nature only wore 
 That visage to the temper of our grief ; 
 We thought that mournful radiance only shone 
 Each for his heart's expression and relief ; 
 And many a sufferer that the woods resigned 
 Their glory on the wind 
 To suit the winter, deathlier cold and wan, 
 Through which his heart, that fain would die, lived on, 
 Remembering still some glory that was gone. 
 
 The visionary thus too far engrossed 
 With his voluptuous grief his mood perceives 
 In lovely Nature ; but some innermost 
 Sad meaning incommunicable grieves 
 Her spirit ; some vaster sentiment pervades 
 The Autumn Isle ; for Albion's shrunken coast 
 Hath forfeited the boast, 
 And broods upon her glory that is lost, 
 Where heaven appoints to wield an arm6d host. 
 In humiliation and remorse she weaves 
 A crown of mystic leaves, 
 Whose woe to match the lover's or the maid's
 
 MEROZ. 39 
 
 Our small imagination misconceives. 
 
 Vainly above her woodland aisles and glades, 
 
 Her crumbling abbeys, ivy-mantled halls, 
 
 And immemorial shades 
 
 Of oak and pine, the fair domains that fed 
 
 Her mighty wars, her chivalrous crusades, 
 
 Which the victorious infidel bereaves 
 
 Of old renown, she wore that wreath, and shed 
 
 That wreath in vain o'er many a careless head, 
 
 Remembering on dark autumnal eves 
 
 The people she deserted and their dead. 
 
 The winds begin ; the last sere oak leaf falls, 
 
 And rain, and snow, upon a country red 
 
 With blood that is not hers ; the sea-bird calls 
 
 Along a coast banked high with threatening cloud, 
 
 To wrathful winter dedicated, loud 
 
 With hurricanes ; the indignant sea upbraids 
 
 That coast significant the granite walls, 
 
 The unstable beaches, and the hollow caves 
 
 Of hearts by no divine compassion bowed, 
 
 With dreadful rumours that were stolen and spread 
 
 Far by the tide ; and, not to be gainsaid, 
 
 Doubtless your ghosts out of their weltering graves 
 
 These pale and perjured shores have visited 
 
 Some pity of your woeful plight to win ; 
 
 Doubtless across the succour-tarrying waves 
 
 The land of your dire persecution fled, 
 
 And in the winter tempests wailed our sin. 
 
 Long time we lay in iron winter bound, 
 Unwitting how our traitor front declared 
 Our traitor heart in lands that must resound
 
 40 MEROZ. 
 
 Through all the ages with the crime we shared. 
 
 And though all night o'er the tempestuous deep 
 
 Those spectral visitants were eddying round 
 
 They did not vex our sleep,. 
 
 And wept all night, though never heard to weep, 
 
 Our shame, and mingled darkly in the storm 
 
 That shed our laurels, spirits far renowned 
 
 Out of the warlike past ; each awful form 
 
 Of warrior, monarch, bard, and prophet crowned 
 
 With leaves that are, whatever winters roll 
 
 Above their graves, unwithered ; for the soul 
 
 Aspires most bravely where the blood runs warm 
 
 From battle ; with winged words Maeonides 
 
 Consents, whilst he who fought at Marathon, 
 
 And those less warlike bards, of classic fame 
 
 Therefore less fortunate, the truth proclaim. 
 
 And gazed out of the winter heaven profound 
 
 A patriot's eyes with quenchless fire that shone, 
 
 And dark prognostications, ill at ease ; 
 
 The immortal voice that strove with Macedon 
 
 Appeals once more nor that heart- stirring sound 
 
 Was all in vain to ignominous Greece ; 
 
 Whilst for her loss of wide dominion 
 
 Rome's stalwart warriors rose up to blame 
 
 The fatal arts and luxuries of peace. 
 
 And scarred yet with many a glorious wound, 
 
 Their testimony high to bear with these, 
 
 Those knights who sought the East in arms and came, 
 
 Though unvictorious, home vast piles to found, 
 
 And towers of learning, the illustrious name 
 
 Recite of him who first our stammering speech 
 
 In sweet melodious numbers taught to run ;
 
 MEROZ. 41 
 
 And his of Italy, who still doth teach 
 
 The world a music ever new begun. 
 
 And more importunate for vengeance none 
 
 That city of the sea-girt palaces 
 
 Lepanto urged, with her inveterate flame 
 
 Of hate to arm the mistress of the seas. 
 
 Next that Plantagenet, who long ago 
 
 Of his French Katherine desired a son 
 
 To beard the Turk, extols the royal game 
 
 Of war and venturous Agincourt to shame 
 
 Our cold deliberation and the breach 
 
 Of treaties thrice performed. And he who sung 
 
 That warrior king, and saw our navies reach 
 
 Through the bright west a virgin world, aglow 
 
 With new desire, and saw them overthrow 
 
 Their rival too presumptuous, first became 
 
 With human things perplexed, and could not frame 
 
 A language for his woe, 
 
 That such a race should ever speak the tongue 
 
 That Shakespeare spake with men who did not know 
 
 Fear of a mortal foe. 
 
 That poet next, the awful Puritan, 
 
 In classic numbers called upon the Lord 
 
 To avenge his slaughtered saints ; and to and fro 
 
 Across the sea a brood of giants poured 
 
 Remonstrative the bards and heroes sprung 
 
 From that world struggle with the tyrant who 
 
 Himself was reared in war ; a mighty chord 
 
 They struck upon the storm : what men can do, 
 
 And how thereby a nation's lyre is strung, 
 
 Trafalgar arguing and Waterloo. 
 
 And the tempestuous sea took up the word
 
 42 MEROZ. 
 
 Which knows what men can dare, and how they can, 
 
 When refuge none the riven planks afford, 
 
 Their indifferent souls above the deep suspend, 
 
 Self-centred, luminous, meditative, hung 
 
 Like stars in heaven to see the approaching end. 
 
 In war the soul of nations, as of man 
 
 In desperate straits, brought face to face with death, 
 
 Is disembodied, self-collected, stung 
 
 To moods divine, and starlike in the van 
 
 Of action sits contemplative ; the breath 
 
 Of life from each heroic deed she draws ; 
 
 She glows to hear the tumult of applause ; 
 
 And crowns the race with an immortal wreath 
 
 Of Pericles or of Elizabeth. 
 
 War do not not seek : but if a noble cause 
 
 Be offered let the scourge of war descend ; 
 
 Let men be ruined ; let their hearts be wrung 
 
 With sorrow for their lovely dead ; thus saith 
 
 The Muse, and thus the choral edict ran 
 
 Commending war, in which with one accord 
 
 Poets and warriors dead their voices blend 
 
 With His, the Voice divine, who came to send 
 
 Not peace unto the nations but a sword. 
 
 Spring comes at last ; that winter surge might fret 
 The rocks, and reach out of the midnight vast 
 White hands to threaten all the guilty shore ; 
 But man's iniquity hath never set 
 A term to spring that she should come no more. 
 Reluctantly that funeral robe she wore 
 The earth puts off at last 
 For veils of tender green ; but not before
 
 MEROZ. 43 
 
 We knew our guilt your woe could she forget ; 
 
 Nay, with her future rooted in her past, 
 
 Sadness pervades her flowering woodlands yet. 
 
 And even here are many souls that mourn, 
 
 Though seeing this beauty here of bud and leaf 
 
 We may assuage the tyranny of grief 
 
 And salve the memories of old regret. 
 
 But on your hills forlorn 
 
 How should there come the untainted April morn 
 
 With sweetness from their verdurous thickets borne ? 
 
 Of rape and murder and the midnight thief 
 
 They reek to heaven ; and if the purer breath 
 
 Even of spring, were not infected too 
 
 What but your graves should her fresh flowers adorn ? 
 
 For you who still remain, distressed and worn 
 
 By fear, cold, hunger ; pining for relief 
 
 That never comes ; the bitterness of death 
 
 Tasting so many times what should you do 
 
 With flowers before you die ? They only woo 
 
 The soul that in itself has some reserves 
 
 Of strength or consolation ; they require 
 
 Peace ere they come with delicate scent and hue, 
 
 Like oil and wine, upon the very nerves 
 
 Of virtue, meditation, and desire. 
 
 But how should you, poor sufferers, construe 
 
 These hints of lovely Nature ? at your feet 
 
 The very flowers ashamed must all retire 
 
 Soft eyes from your distress ; and no more you 
 
 With their divine intelligence to greet 
 
 Your hills are kindled in the morning blue, 
 
 Your mountain air is vigorous and sweet.
 
 44 MEROZ. 
 
 Weep not that she is fallen now so low 
 Armenia she, if anything she hears, 
 On earth, can spare the insult of our tears. 
 Our wrathful incredulity was slow 
 To own, as futile to avenge her woe, 
 And still our grief is idle ; but the years 
 Of that destruction into which she fell 
 Must hold us guiltiest of all our peers ; 
 And still from many a foetid dungeon cell 
 Is darkly rumoured that which not to know 
 Were bliss, though chequered by our deadliest fears ; 
 No fables that have been conceived of Hell 
 Could surfeit more our disinclined ears.
 
 EPILEGOMENA. 
 
 Riddle of the World shall thou refuse 
 A To hear the arraigned virtue to contest ? 
 
 My ear the adventurous Muse 
 Thus to her great perennial theme addressed ; 
 And thine whom ever that large interest 
 From things particular, however small, 
 At once compels to lose 
 Thy soul in contemplations general : 
 Thou, for whomever the ethereal hues 
 Of morning with a guileless charm invest 
 The accused earth, in whom the orient skies 
 Thy faith restore, thy judgments readvise 
 The Riddle of the World shalt thou refuse 
 To hear, to ponder and resolve, that lies 
 In this dark page so terribly expressed ? 
 Be not faint-hearted ; do not think to rest 
 So soon thy tir6d wings : some divine use 
 Pain surely has ; by each in his own breast 
 The trial is suffered and the truth confessed. 
 This we believe : and if a single one 
 Must suffer anywhere beneath the sun 
 Thousands as well may suffer ; if at all, 
 Little or much the pathos unaware 
 That may be read into the wistful eyes 
 Of some fair child the mortal agonies 
 Of those strong men what matters to the abstruse 
 Intelligence ? Let not the ingenuous quest
 
 46 MEROZ. 
 
 Of truth transformed be to pale despair 
 
 Like his, the all-knowing bard, skilled in the laws 
 
 Of nature, yet too pitiful withal, 
 
 Who, meditating long upon the fall 
 
 Of Lisbon, lost his God ; or his, the mild 
 
 And great philosopher, who yet, because 
 
 Of those famed reptiles, horribly destroyed 
 
 As well by beasts as men, the shuddering void 
 
 Of unbelief crossed as a little child 
 
 The dark O, suffer not such blind despair, 
 
 Born of this horror of insatiate Death, 
 
 On thy aspiring wings to give thee pause 
 
 And dash thee headlong from the upper air 
 
 Of truth, my habitation unde filed, 
 
 My element. But that the world is fair 
 
 Believe believe, though darkling underneath 
 
 Those open gates of heaven there gape the jaws 
 
 Of hell yea, though to each mysterious end 
 
 Its scythed wheels so cruelly ascend, 
 
 Though its victorious arms are bathed in blood, 
 
 The great soul of the World is fair and good. 
 
 The great soul of the universe, the breath 
 
 Of nature, the informing will, the cause 
 
 Of all that shall be, is, or ever was, 
 
 Judge as a friend, judged only by the best 
 
 He is or does, not by those actions base, 
 
 Or cruel, or vain, that contradict the grace 
 
 Of thought and purpose written in his face. 
 
 Judge at high noon ; judge in the sunset hour ; 
 
 Nor in the sombre night thy faith deny ; 
 
 But on the ulterior truth and equity 
 
 Of that great power inscrutable depend
 
 EPILEGOMENA. 47 
 
 As on the love and wisdom of a friend. 
 
 Beneficent and terrible, that Power 
 
 Who rules the sunset and creates the flower, 
 
 Inspires the bird with song, and paints on high 
 
 That many coloured bow across the sky ; 
 
 Who makes the wind a voice, the stars a goal, 
 
 To the unrestful and aspiring soul 
 
 Of man, his dreadful counterpart, a strain 
 
 Contrives the while of undercurrent pain, 
 
 A mystery of woe yea, though he wreathe 
 
 The harp with flowers that grave Musician draws 
 
 From every trembling string ; by his decree 
 
 Race preys on tortured race ; the weak must die 
 
 To serve the strong ; and thus a monstrous brood 
 
 Of creatures he begets to seek their food, 
 
 The snake with poisonous fangs, the shark with teeth, 
 
 The tiger arms with cruel teeth and claws, 
 
 To war below ; the falcon from above 
 
 With taloned heels to strike the alarm6d dove ; 
 
 The fierce barbarian to the ancient feud 
 
 With blind hereditary lusts endued 
 
 Yea, with dire appetites akin to love 
 
 The flesh to prosper and the soul to prove, 
 
 The purposes of heaven and earth to blend, 
 
 He armed man, the angel and the fiend ; 
 
 And nature against man, and man to seek 
 
 His bread in that rough market where the weak 
 
 Go to the wall, with instruments as rude, 
 
 The passions and the elements ; virtues 
 
 Primeval, vices reputable, send 
 
 Man to contend with man ; the storm winds rend 
 
 His sails, and like a mist upon the flood
 
 48 MEROZ. 
 
 He disappears ; by pestilence and war 
 
 He perishes ; towards the hungry pole, 
 
 As moths about a flame, his chiefs contend 
 
 Brave crews to venture, precious lives to spend ; 
 
 And now against the Turk what scions remain 
 
 Of Christian faith or warlike chivalry 
 
 Must ache to die ; even to him who fears 
 
 Death death must come at last ; the race 
 
 Must perish ; the bereaved earth shall roll 
 
 For ages through the azure fields of space 
 
 Disconsolate, insensate, unpossessed ; 
 
 Her lord, the sun, his fire shall cool and wane. 
 
 All things their Maker doth unmake and mar 
 
 In Godlike scorn of each particular 
 
 Till thou mayst only close thy wings to set 
 
 Thy feet on that high star 
 
 Where of their types and processes he rears 
 
 The monuments in heaven, beneath thee far 
 
 Things what they seem, deposed without regret, 
 
 Above thee and about thee what they are. 
 
 Thence the great earth invisible to thy 
 
 Frail sense, or thence a point of light appears, 
 
 Or thence behind its time ten thousand years, 
 
 In its primeval loveliness, and yet 
 
 So soon to die, so easy to forget. 
 
 Thence are the heavens before thee as a scroll 
 
 Spread out, and some deep meaning in the whole 
 
 Is all divulged ; that music of the spheres 
 
 Which is eternal yea, though there be none 
 
 To hear it which, if any mortal hears, 
 
 The discords of that awful harmony 
 
 Vex not his charmed ears.
 
 MEROZ. 49 
 
 Wouldst thou all things created should exist 
 
 For ever whilst in bright Orion glows, 
 
 Dear to the prophet's heart, that fiery mist 
 
 Of worlds unborn ? wouldst thou the wondrous throes 
 
 Of birth and death wouldst thou the sense of tears 
 
 In human things remit ? On some high mood 
 
 Just to be born the spectacle to see, 
 
 And to resolve in counsel with thy peers, 
 
 Were immortality enough for thee. 
 
 Pain without death, death without pain these own 
 Our argument a first rude stepping stone 
 One to ascend the intellectual throne 
 From which the other is despised ; these twain 
 Unite red death by fire and sword to make 
 The old, the eternal question heard again ; 
 This of the other some fresh sting to take, 
 Some fruit to render vain. Not to assume 
 That upon which the oracles are dumb, 
 Uncertain, fabulous, or disagreed, 
 A life beyond the tomb ; 
 Not to assume in thy adventurous creed 
 More than the least sufficient aught that may 
 Ever become ev'n as a broken reed 
 To mortals yet unborn ; Oh, for the sake 
 Of mortals born to die, and hearts to break 
 With sheer compassion, thou from what is plain 
 To all that virtue cannot be in vain 
 That God exists do thou make manifest 
 Good in this ill ; once more essay to bend 
 This bow beyond their strength ; Ulysses be 
 Perhaps to some forlorn Penelope, 
 Some faith that hangs perplexed upon the loom
 
 50 EPILEGOMENA. 
 
 Of night and day, where solitary night 
 
 Undoes the work of day ; once more intend 
 
 Thy soul to pierce this mystery indeed 
 
 A dreadful gloom, but that must needs be bright 
 
 Which throws the shadow, intercepts the light. 
 
 Often, when we out of the evening gloom 
 
 Of some deep vale on to a sunlit height 
 
 Have issued, thence according to our wont 
 
 To watch whilst universal Nature dwells 
 
 In joy, and love, and wonderful delight 
 
 O'er the great pageant watch the bloom that grows 
 
 On earth of shadowy green and gold, the bloom 
 
 In heaven of violet, daffodil, and rose 
 
 Like faith a gorgeous fabric on the loom 
 
 Of night and day perplexed the sun ere he 
 
 Descended made us clear cut parables 
 
 Of night ; for there, like giants at a hunt, 
 
 Turned the same way to mark his lair, there stood 
 
 Gray crags and grassy knolls, with blushing heath 
 
 Crowned, or with high and leafy citadels, 
 
 To catch the sun, and golden in the front 
 
 Of their long shadows on the purple fells. 
 
 Thus are the hemispheres of night and day 
 
 Each by the other bounded every way, 
 
 And this ethereal cone of darkness shod 
 
 With light, as crowned with splendours infinite. 
 
 Thus every shadow of disease or vice, 
 
 Sorrow or death, a front of paradise, 
 
 Though from its own dark tenement unguessed, 
 
 Bears for a season to the flaming west. 
 
 And when, obedient to the level ray, 
 
 The shadows lengthen giant souls, that else
 
 MEROZ. 
 
 Were unobserved rise up to seek for God. 
 
 Like mountains to the giddy edge they rise, 
 
 That traversed all day long the motley disc 
 
 Of earth unmarked, a moment opposite 
 
 The sun to stand and disappear. Each crest 
 
 Of purple rock, each rosy obelisk, 
 
 Tremendous crater, sharp cut precipice, 
 
 Flushed with the sunset, mounts in turn to write 
 
 His character in heaven transform6d quite 
 
 To change the mind of God yea, to impose 
 
 His image on the stars before he goes 
 
 Into the dark, into the great unknown. 
 
 The earth their footstool is, the stars their crown 
 
 Stars in that clear celestial ether thrice 
 
 Distinct and glorious, jewels without price, 
 
 Daggers and swords and crosses, shooting fires 
 
 And palpitating lustres hopes, desires, 
 
 Renunciations flames of sacrifice 
 
 And stars of love. One with the woof and warp 
 
 Of heaven we are ; a Spirit that is one 
 
 In all that's suffered, or enjoyed, or done, 
 
 The fabric weaves, the harmony inspires. 
 
 Through short-lived instruments of various tone 
 
 The music breathes, the Spirit ebbs and flows, 
 
 And breaks the tortured frames and snaps the wires. 
 
 But of Himself and to Himself alone 
 
 Justice the instant Deity requires ; 
 
 And finds in that wild music and is gone, 
 
 A strain now tremulous with joy, now sharp 
 
 And loud, a wailing of tempestuous woes, 
 
 Ev'n as the wind from an /Eolian harp, 
 
 Whither is none that knows.
 
 5* SONNETS. 
 
 THE WARRIOR HERO. 
 
 1895- 
 
 WHERE is the warrior hero in our land 
 Whom this dire crisis, lovely as a bride, 
 Conies to rejoice ; comes grateful to his pride, 
 Finding the heart that loves to understand 
 And swift resources ready to his hand 
 Of action ; who prevails the adverse tide 
 Of circumstance triumphantly to ride, 
 The man who comes, and sees, and take command ? 
 
 Let him arise, and like the morning sun 
 Disperse these vapours of inglorious fear, 
 
 Who'd rather his compatriots one by one 
 Should perish to a man than buy too dear 
 
 Peace with dishonour, perjured lives that none, 
 Whilst Islam stands, can cherish or revere.
 
 SONNETS. 53 
 
 DEGENERATION. 
 
 THE swords were sheathed, the purple blazon furled, 
 Of chivalry, the minstrels passed away, 
 Whilst maidens were dishonoured day by day 
 And martyrs slain by fire and sword, or hurled 
 From rocky height and steep ; the lips were curled 
 Of Islam in contempt, whilst round him lay 
 And watched that violence they feared to stay 
 The armaments and navies of the world. 
 
 Now, if our dead might ere repeat a stroke, 
 Should from their scabbards leap those angry blades 
 That wrought so bravely in our old crusades ; 
 
 If ever from the tomb they even spoke 
 This were sufficient the tremendous shades 
 
 Of Milton, Wordsworth, Byron, to evoke.
 
 54 SONNETS. 
 
 ANOTHER ENGLAND. 
 
 ANOTHER England in my dream I knew ; 
 Like this of ours dominion wide she bore, 
 Her sceptre and her arms from shore to shore 
 Of continent and ocean ; but to do 
 Against all odds the tasks that empire threw 
 Upon her was her aim ; and thus she wore 
 A front the guilty nations cowered before 
 And triumphed always with the just and true. 
 
 But see her now ! in solemn treaty sworn 
 The champion of a cause her heart alone, 
 If not a common faith, should make her own, 
 This perjured name become ; for which the scorn 
 She hath procured by mortals yet unborn 
 Shall justly be preserved and handed down.
 
 SONNETS. 55 
 
 THE WRATH OF HEAVEN. 
 
 THE wrath of heaven may like our own be slow 
 But, surer than our own, shall come though late 
 The Moslem tyrant to precipitate 
 From his abused seat ; to overthrow 
 That dynasty of Hell ; and we, who know 
 Ourselves the instrument, yet idly wait, 
 Shall in the general ruin participate, 
 And that obstructed vengeance undergo. 
 
 For those whom heaven her deputy hath made 
 Must hold themselves erected more, a tower 
 
 Of Justice, Truth and Virtue unafraid. 
 Once be they disconcerted, from that hour 
 Their doom shall be assured ; their sceptred power 
 
 Be withered from their hands, their strength dismayed.
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 JONAH. 
 
 THOUGH sorrow, fear, and shame for thee immerse 
 My soul, until I wish my pen a sword, 
 And that slow coming vengeance of the Lord 
 With thy too well deserved woe rehearse, 
 My country dear ! what profits this poor verse, 
 When he to thy dark capital, whose word 
 Was beauty, virtue, love, must now afford 
 This shade prophetic of a monstrous curse. 
 
 Step from thy canvas, thou stupendous Shade ! 
 
 As once to Nineveh thy voice be sent, 
 " Yet forty days " ; O, make our hearts afraid ; 
 
 Our sins chastize ; our impious thoughts prevent ; 
 In dust and ashes we may yet persuade 
 
 The Lord of his great mercy to repent.
 
 SONNETS. 57 
 
 THE RIGHTEOUS TEN. 
 
 'T'HE hour of help gone by, I dropped my pen, 
 JL Expecting fire from heaven ; not once nor twice 
 
 I sought fresh signs and images of vice ; 
 And I who thought to find the world a den 
 Of thieves and liars, fell on valiant men, 
 Sweet and true women, jewels without price, 
 And not a scape-goat for the sacrifice, 
 But everywhere I met the righteous ten. 
 
 Merciful God ! who knowest the human soul 
 What riddle's here ? what poison at the root 
 Of lives so fair can yield such bitter fruit ? 
 Over the form and action of the whole 
 Have these, the beauteous members, no control ? 
 Be Thou our dreadful Judge ; let us be mute.
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 THE CURSE. 
 
 1 THOUGHT the curse repealed ; I looked again ; 
 Fair leaves the tree displayed, but meagre fruit, 
 And a small worm in every tender shoot 
 Preyed greedily, and made her buds in vain. 
 The curse had fallen ; and the curse was plain 
 In arts and letters cankered at the root 
 By vile self-love ; in lives that wore the suit 
 Of virtue not without an eye to gain. 
 
 Knowledge that men forget to consecrate 
 In noble use ; the power that men employ 
 
 To selfish ends of avarice, lust, and hate; 
 The tools of war become an idle toy, 
 
 Corrupt, that should have edified the state 
 As means of love and instruments of joy.
 
 SEA MEMORIES. 
 
 HERE in these old sea-gazing haunts the weight 
 Of thought, the tyrannies of hope and fear, 
 To memories sweet give place, the toils of Fate 
 To memories sweet give place, and disappear : 
 How in the golden days of childhood here 
 Morning and evening thus I loved to roam, 
 
 And watch the dense blue slumberous ocean rear 
 Those lines of league-long rollers, wreathed in foam, 
 Up the steep barriers of its rock-bound home. 
 
 Here the old miracles are practised still ; 
 
 In crucibles of heaven the day is fast 
 Resolved ; the ethereal hues of sunset fill 
 
 The deep, the pure, the illimitable vast. 
 
 Here all my heart is softened with the past, 
 And things that were become as things that are, 
 
 And fair as those which shall be at the last ; 
 Quit of the tedious world I am, yea, far 
 Remote and alien as the evening star. 
 
 On th6se red-crumbling but luxuriant heights 
 
 In childhood thus I often paused to see 
 The long coast slumbering in the western lights 
 
 And dreamed that 'neath those setting suns might be 
 
 A fairy land girt by a fairy sea. 
 That fairy world I found ; the very air 
 
 Of paradise it breathed how mild and free 
 The summer nights, and how beyond compare 
 The dawns were fragrant and the days were fair I
 
 60 SEA MEMORIES. 
 
 How often where that charmed land doth rest, 
 Girt by its charmed ocean many a mile, 
 
 Have I sailed deep into the purple west 
 And dropped along the coast from isle to isle 
 With full drawn sails ; or drifted in the smile 
 
 Of dead- calm ocean noondays ; or assayed 
 The embowered river mouths, a little while 
 
 Mooring my light^white-winged craft, home-made, 
 
 'Neath wooded shores of cool voluptuous shade, 
 
 Where as she lay the dark green water laughed 
 And dimpled round her in the shadowy cove ; 
 
 Home-made she was, the light white-winged craft ; 
 The planks I cut, the bolts and nails I drove, 
 Wild wind and wave ere now had sought to prove ; 
 
 My home, my bed she was ; from the great deep 
 My lenten fare she furnished ; free to rove 
 
 Ev'n as I would she made me, free to keep 
 
 What hours I would, and when I would to sleep. 
 
 I wandered on with joy for ever new 
 
 In seeking still some ever lovelier place ; 
 The very wind rippled the dancing blue 
 
 And my white sails wrought into curves that trace- 
 
 Ev'n as the lines upon a human face 
 Express the soul within the purpose fair 
 
 Of Nature, yearning always to embrace 
 Beauty and joy ev'n to conceive and bear 
 Children of beauty to the formless air. 
 
 And when the shining world was all asleep 
 
 In the hushed loveliness of summer nights ; 
 When the full moon was hung above the deep
 
 SEA MEMORIES.* 61 
 
 Intensely still in star-forsaken heights ; 
 
 And in the coast succeeding harbour lights 
 Would open for a little and be gone ; 
 
 Moving alone through such tranced summer nights 
 Over the luminous sea my sails held on 
 Till in the dawn the moon grew pale and wan. 
 
 Or, when the wind was high, the night was dark, 
 
 And then the tardy day desired most, 
 On the wild waste my solitary bark 
 
 The streaky dawn discovered like a ghost, 
 
 And lying heaped with cloud the angry coast : 
 And memories many a fair or dreadful one 
 
 The mariner's admiring soul may boast, 
 But, now most dreadful, now the loveliest, none 
 To match the sea beneath a rising sun. 
 
 And I have spent upon the lone sand dune 
 
 The autumn night ; across the gusty sky 
 The driving clouds revealed or hid the moon, 
 
 And not another human soul was by ; 
 
 Only from where the ebbing tide left dry 
 The river flats there came upon the wind 
 
 The curlew's moving and mysterious cry, 
 And in that plaintive music more defined 
 Some superstitious spectre of the mind. 
 
 (O, winged sorrow ! melancholy bird ! 
 Some poet's wandering ghost thou surely art, 
 
 Unseen by ignorant eyes ; remotely heard 
 Over the sea at night ; become a part 
 Of nature and the grief that broke thy heart.
 
 62 SEA MEMORIES. 
 
 Familiar as a ghost to come and go 
 
 'Twixt nature and the spirit-world thou art, 
 With secret consolation, if to know, 
 Or to have known, the worst can heal thy woe.) 
 
 I slept ; and waking in the very place 
 Where Nature so forbidding seemed before, 
 
 Wondered how easily another face 
 
 She wears, and all the dark mysterious shore 
 Is changed ; and there the autumn twilight hoar, 
 
 Through a cold fog o'er hill and river drawn, 
 
 I watched ; and still it brightened more and more 
 
 Till the pale moon sank o'er the wooded lawn, 
 
 And earth and sea grew silver with the dawn. 
 
 The winds had fallen, and the curlew gone ; 
 
 Those bare mud flats up to the verdurous brim 
 The spring-tide filled ; in its smooth bosom shone 
 
 The steel blue heaven ; the gulls that wheel or swim 
 
 Thereon are wrought the ships, tall masted, trim, 
 Rigged all as if in silver filigree ; 
 
 Till presently behold the scarlet rim 
 Of the great sun, the power and life to be 
 Of that cold world, spring from the eastern sea ! 
 
 O, that my sails were once again unfurled 
 
 Upon the salt sea winds that I might flee 
 Far from the work and turmoil of the world, 
 
 Far o'er the life and languor of the sea ! 
 
 O, that my white sails and myself might be 
 There where my dreaming spirit doth abide ; 
 
 There where my keel, swift as my will and free,
 
 SEA MEMORIES. 63 
 
 Might drive, and fall, and musically slide 
 In troughs of foam over the heaving tide ! 
 
 O, once again for hours of gracious ease 
 
 On the blue sea to watch the shining day, 
 Subject no more to these sharp tyrannies 
 
 Of earth that wear the living soul away : 
 
 Having boon Nature only to obey ; 
 No love, no vain ambition, no vile greed 
 
 Of wealth, no idle hope nor blank dismay 
 In these wild projects, once achieved that breed 
 Some new desire, some more imperious need. 
 
 If love, such love as sailors learn to use 
 
 On the wide sea ; love that can do no wrong, 
 But on its own sweet dreams doth feed and muse 
 
 With lips that move in sad perpetual song ; 
 
 Love purified by separations long 
 Of selfish care and dull satiety ; 
 
 Love that not only tender is but strong, 
 And in the bitterness of each " goodbye " 
 Hath learnt the dreadful secret, How to die. 
 
 The curlew whistles, and the night comes down ; 
 
 And far the comfortable homes appear 
 That beckon kindly from the lighted town, 
 
 And not another human soul is near ; 
 
 But through my limbs a cold delicious fear 
 Begins to steal, and from eternity 
 
 Great Nature asks the soul, " What dost thou here ? 
 " Canst thou endure my naked face to see 
 " And learn, The world was never made for thee ? ff
 
 64 SONNETS. 
 
 ANIMA MUNDI. 
 
 THE Soul that labours blindly to escape 
 From the dark bonds of Matter, issuing through 
 With power in that perpetual birth to shape 
 All nature to the beautiful anew ; 
 
 The Soul that strove in flower and bird and beast 
 Since out of chaos first the world began, 
 
 From that long travail found herself released, 
 To finer issues in the Soul of Man. 
 
 She knew herself the soul of all she saw ; 
 
 Through heaven and earth diffused, from pole to pole, 
 The Beautiful in nature and the Law 
 
 Were forms and motions of the human soul, 
 
 Wherein she ranged at will wherein she grew 
 Familiar with herself, the Pure, the True.
 
 SONNETS. 65 
 
 MARTYRS. 
 
 T OVERS, though dear to Nature's heart, who bear 
 I/ A mortal pain so often at their own ; 
 
 Poets, women, saints their cruel illusions fair, 
 As she requires, conceived or overthrown ; 
 
 By passion, creed, imagination fond, . 
 
 Driven every way to ill-endured extremes ; 
 Enthusiasts sweet, prone to her subtle wand, 
 
 Men serve the deep enchantress in their dreams. 
 
 Darkly consulting Nature ! Could she trust 
 
 A share of larger vision to her child, 
 Then might his unafflicted will be just, 
 
 His warring inclinations reconciled, 
 
 And her converging purposes require 
 Martyrs no more to faith nor blind desire.
 
 66 SONNETS. 
 
 NIRVANA. 
 
 TO that high heaven, O could my soul expire, 
 Where not the loveliest dreams of earth remain, 
 In contemplation to escape desire, 
 And disappoint the ministers of pain ; 
 
 I know, scorning at once thy glorious veil 
 
 Of flesh, a spirit of immortal light, 
 That thou, pale temptress of my peace, would'st sail 
 
 Above me still, invading every height 
 
 Of thought or vision ere my soul possessed 
 Her stern advantage, thinking to be free ; 
 
 For I that heaven where thou art not my quest 
 Can only meditate in terms of thee 
 
 A heaven that's all, like mountains in the sun, 
 Afire with thee when I have thought thee gone.
 
 SONNETS. 67 
 
 MISGIVINGS. 
 
 WHEN I of some too passionate desire 
 Become the prey ; or melt away and flow 
 Like water uncontained before some dire 
 Result, some dark presentiment, of woe ; 
 
 Or, if the Gods their sumptuous gifts increase, 
 
 Am fearful still, incredulous of joy, 
 I know within my soul the eternal peace 
 
 She craves is hers to make or to destroy ; 
 
 That this unrest not heaven inflicts but I, 
 Too curious where earth is broad and sweet 
 
 To meddle with the secrets of the sky, 
 Or choose the road beneath my inconstant feet ; 
 
 For where the road's most steep and high the air 
 Of heaven is pure, of earth the prospect fair.
 
 68 SONNETS. 
 
 TO A FAIR ABSTRACTION. 
 
 OH, is it to avenge some idle tone 
 Of my rash love that had no right to be, 
 Or to confess a weakness of thy own, 
 That thou hast crossed the illimitable sea 
 
 To vex my sleep? 'tis not in sport the fire 
 Of days gone by thou'dst kindle in my breast ; 
 
 Heaven grant 'twas not thy own unformed desire 
 In the deep night that would not let thee rest. 
 
 With what soft incense, what rude sacrifice, 
 Of love should I appease thy glorious shade, 
 
 Who love yet love thee not ? by what device 
 Enjoy the friend and exorcise the maid ; 
 
 Who than a simple friend may not profess 
 To love thee more, and cannot love thee less ?
 
 SONNETS. 69 
 
 CYNTHIA. 
 
 LONG nights in heaven the winter moon I saw, 
 And, seeing her, I more desired thee ; 
 So strange a power she hath to move and draw 
 My soul, unresting as the tidal sea. 
 
 And now from heaven the winter moon hath gone, 
 And in the early twilight thou art here ; 
 
 May in mid- winter ; moon where moon was none ; 
 In the December morning, dark and drear, 
 
 A light upon wet field and purple wood, 
 
 A fragrance in the misty air all day 
 Before my dreaming eyes thy spirit stood 
 
 In mortal loveliness, and passed away 
 
 At night to rule in heaven again, where soon 
 I saw with strange desire the orbing moon.
 
 7 SONNETS. 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 OLOVE, for whom the tedious days with fear, 
 Desire, and hope, are terrible ; for whom 
 So cruel the separating gulfs appear 
 Of distance, auguring the loveless tomb ; 
 
 Who art, though from eternity a guest, 
 So much the vassal here of Time and Chance ; 
 
 Whose mighty dreams, that will not let thee rest, 
 Such petty cares forbid thee to advance ; 
 
 Much thwarted Tyrant ! this our bondage thou, 
 To make us free, dost bitterly increase ; 
 
 And ere thou set the laurel on our brow 
 Of victory and everlasting peace, 
 
 Wouldst show us how faith, wisdom, peace, might be 
 Unprofitable, easy, but for thee.
 
 SONNETS. 71 
 
 A FLOWER OF THE AGES. 
 
 ITH what mysterious art thy flower-like face, 
 
 Through what long centuries the joy, the care, 
 Of all the passionate founders of the race, 
 Did Love thy mystic elements prepare ? 
 
 Of such tumultuous fires as now they light 
 Thy sweet proportions reminiscent seem ; 
 
 The convolutions of an incense white, 
 Thy face the wistful glory of a dream, 
 
 Which with desire, and joy, and pains untold, 
 The love-learned generations brought to birth, 
 
 Of their aspiring soul the purest mould 
 Breathed visibly upon the plastic earth, 
 
 That Love, through these admiring eyes, might see 
 His dream fulfilled, nay, glorified in thee.
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 TO MY NEPHEW CHRISTOPHER. 
 
 CHRISTOPHER, first of those thy grandsire now 
 V^ In heaven awaits to justify his seed 
 Now to a second issue come, be thou 
 His to the death, be his in thought and deed. 
 
 Doubly descended from the gentle race 
 Of those who keep the spirit pure and whole, 
 
 Thy father's and thy mother's child, a grace 
 Twofold should light upon thy infant soul 
 
 To grant my prayer. Like her who gave thee birth 
 Be pure and true and sweetly serious be ; 
 
 Be as thy father full of kindly mirth, 
 Be strong, be wise, be temperate as he. 
 
 Of thy rich seed, O, yield the hungry bread 
 Who seek in thee the living and the Dead !
 
 SONNETS. 73 
 
 TO MARGARET. 
 
 DEAR, be not sad because the world is cold 
 To this first bloom of thy adventurous art, 
 Blind to these lovely parables that hold 
 Each some ethereal doctrine of thy heart. 
 
 The March winds thus that nip the weaklier shoots 
 Make room thereby for the luxuriant spring ; 
 
 Bow to the wintry blast, but strike thy roots 
 Deeper for that unkindly buffetting. 
 
 Let thine art grow as those sweet wild-flowers still, 
 That grow unseen, careless of praise or blame, 
 
 Yet famous have become against their will, 
 A language rich and beautiful, that name 
 
 Tracts of the earth and seasons of the year, 
 Emblems of love, and things to children dear.
 
 74 SONNETS. 
 
 TO MY WIFE. 
 
 DAUGHTER, my wife, of some patrician house, 
 When I those large and soft blue eyes behold, 
 Those sweetly arched, finely pencilled brows, 
 That hair, thy crown, of immaterial gold 
 
 Thou, robed in blue, against the firelit wall 
 
 On thy low couch reclined ; I inwardly 
 Fostering my half-formed thought, and thou the small 
 
 Dread vehicle of better thoughts to be 
 
 When from my deep but ineffectual dream 
 I raise my thoughts to thee, I know that thou 
 
 Hast joined thy strength with mine in that pure stream 
 Of life my strained purpose to endow 
 
 With power in some new race, in some fresh page 
 All my perplexed thoughts to disengage.
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 75 
 
 I 
 
 SPRING. 
 
 N those blue eyes a softer blue, a clear 
 
 Unclouded heaven in heaven a softer blue- 
 Speaks of that blissful season of the year 
 When all created things their kinds renew. 
 
 Spring comes apace, and thou canst bear to look 
 Now on her generous beauty ; thee no more 
 
 The budding flowers, the nesting birds rebuke ; 
 A sweet confederate in their mystic lore 
 
 They claim thee now a member and a part 
 Of nature ; no more alien and alone 
 
 At the great festival thy woman's heart 
 Shall ache to see an offspring not thy own. 
 
 Of this fair spring thou mayst without alloy 
 Share the rich life, the universal joy.
 
 76 SONNETS. 
 
 TO MY DAUGHTER BEATRICE. 
 
 WHAT glorious omens do attend thy birth, 
 Fair child ! the fruit trees like a white sea foam 
 Brake into flower with thee ; the genial earth 
 Made haste with summer to adorn thy home. 
 
 If by this golden earnest of his prime 
 
 Summer be judged the harvest by the flower 
 
 Thou in the vaward of a beauteous time 
 Art surely come. In this auspicious hour 
 
 Just thirty years ago by thy grandsire 
 
 The tie was formed, the precious seed was sown, 
 
 Of which heaven grant in thee to his desire 
 The fruit be seen, the virtue handed down ; 
 
 Ev'n as in that sweet crescent of the new 
 
 The old moon glows. O, prove the omens true !
 
 SONNETS. 77 
 
 TO MURIEL. 
 
 WHAT shall I wish thee ? now the mystic tale, 
 Thrice seven sweet summers, thou hast made 
 
 complete, 
 
 And not a friend with some good wish can fail 
 To lay his simple offering at thy feet. 
 
 Let others wish thee joy and length of years, 
 Wealth, friends, the great felicities of love ; 
 
 Sweets that do often prove the cause of tears, 
 Fair things that time shall spoil or death remove. 
 
 But I a thing more glorious wish thee now 
 Which nothing but thyself hath power to harm ; 
 
 I wish thee thy sweet self ; be only thou 
 True to thyself of yesterday ; the charm 
 
 Of womanhood to wear, the power to win, 
 O, keep inviolate the Child within !
 
 ;8 SONNETS. 
 
 o 
 
 THE STRAITS. 
 
 IN that dim shore the living day below 
 
 A long desired, a Godlike stranger waits ; 
 And thou a brief and perilous voyage must go 
 To fetch him safe across the shadowy straits 
 
 Which at the portals of the world defer 
 All access hither with tempestuous night ; 
 
 Yea, though a saviour of the world he were, 
 A creature of our dreams, a child of light. 
 
 The adventure great, but great the guerdon is ; 
 
 And thou hast deep reserves on which to draw ; 
 Love for the high, the sweet philosophies, 
 
 Faith in the justice of eternal law, 
 
 To fortify thy soul ere thou embark 
 
 On thy dread voyage through Chaos and the Dark.
 
 SONNETS. 79 
 
 THE PILGRIM'S RETURN. 
 
 Soul returns. O, thrice beloved and sweet, 
 L Thy direful pilgrimage was not in vain, 
 
 Driven like a wild bird to what dim retreat, 
 What shadowy exile, on the wings of pain ! 
 
 There on the borders of the vast abyss 
 Blindly she hovers like a frightened dove ; 
 
 Nothing she knows, and nothing feels, save this ; 
 The means are righteous for the end is love. 
 
 Tossed blindly there, like some ill-fated bark 
 Struck by a cyclone of the Indian seas, 
 
 Through those dread hours of tempest and the dark 
 She feels a God whose wondrous purposes 
 
 Rule the vexed ocean, secretly inform 
 
 The womb of night, the vortex of the storm.
 
 8o SONNETS. 
 
 THE QUEEN. 
 
 N 
 
 IOT to adorn with some unrivalled grace 
 
 Of wit or beauty her imperial throne, 
 But to exalt the virtue of the race 
 She ruled, to make her peoples thoughts her own 
 
 Though wiser than we knew ; our ways of life 
 Her own, but purer than before ; to be 
 
 Such that the stature of the perfect wife 
 And mother in the Queen we learned to see 
 
 This was her glory. Sciences and arts 
 
 The extent and period of her power these shed 
 
 A glamour on the crown ; but most our hearts 
 Mourned for the woman when the queen was dead. 
 
 A Queen so loved, a woman virtuous more, 
 So vast an empire never mourned before.
 
 T 
 
 ANIMA VERIS. 
 
 HE heart's desire to pass the sealed lips 
 
 Is fain as a caged bird to fly ; 
 For Spring is breaking through the bare tree-tips 
 
 With tufts of buds against the silver sky. 
 
 It is the spring, and on all sides I hear 
 The love-notes of the nesting birds ; 
 
 And undertones of music in my ear 
 
 That wait, but wait in vain, for winged words. 
 
 Some depth there is that may not be employed 
 Of speechless thought and vain desire ; 
 
 The strains that draw from that mysterious void 
 Were never caught upon an earthly lyre. 
 
 Through the green woods and on the odorous wind 
 They steal, as anciently they stole ; 
 
 Notes of a harmony still undivined, 
 
 But always half familiar to the soul ; 
 
 From where the dreaming spirit doth abide 
 
 Of music at the heart of things ; 
 And darkly moves that undercurrent tide, 
 
 The source of fair and never failing springs 
 
 That tide that breaks along the world in flower, 
 And in the woods is bursting through, 
 
 From bud to leaf unsheathing hour by hour 
 Their tender foliage to the April blue.
 
 82 ANIMA VERIS. 
 
 We know not God, except that He is Love ; 
 
 Nor Life, except that it is His ; 
 In spring God whispers from the heaven above, 
 
 He breathes and moves in everything that is. 
 
 And in these moments of eternal worth 
 Thou haply shalt become divine 
 
 Of something kindred in the things of earth 
 Unto the things of spirit that are thine. 
 
 The purple tree tops melt in silver haze ; 
 
 A fruitful silence broods over the land ; 
 And doth some tenderness of bygone days 
 
 Not teach at least thy heart to understand ?
 
 A NIGHT ON THE DART. 
 
 t'T'WAS midnight on the ebb ; and soon 
 1 Above a lustrous crest 
 
 Of wooded hills the pale half moon 
 Was falling in the west. 
 On each bright spar and glancing oar 
 The moonlight glitters white and hoar, 
 And broods on each mysterious shore, 
 Of the wide world at rest. 
 
 The moon behind a bank of cloud 
 
 Has set, and gone her light ; 
 Short claps of thunder, sharp and loud, 
 
 Are rattling on the right ; 
 And ever indistinctlier loom 
 Through the increasing depths of gloom 
 Those banks that shut us in a tomb 
 
 Of black and ghastly night. 
 
 Behold ! how the thick veil at last 
 
 Is riven far and wide, 
 And those high river banks aghast 
 
 Reveals on either side. 
 A seed of fire in the dun air 
 Dilates ; a world embracing glare 
 Dazzles, and dies, and leaves us there 
 
 In darkness on the tide. 
 
 And we stiff- stricken to the core 
 
 By that pervading light 
 A long reverberating roar 
 
 Dumbfounds the listening night.
 
 84 A NIGHT ON THE DART. 
 
 As when through Alpine vales the shock 
 Is heard of some far-falling rock, 
 And echoing precipices mock 
 The crash from height to height. 
 
 And then with palpitating shapes 
 
 The dreadful night became 
 Alive distinct with shores and capes, 
 
 But never twice the same. 
 And rocks and trees leapt out among 
 The trembling shadows that they flung, 
 As all about them flashed and hung 
 
 Those blinding shafts of flame. 
 
 It passed ; the storm with lessening peals 
 
 Went muttering o'er the wold ; 
 But wonders more the night reveals 
 
 And wondering eyes behold. 
 For fiercely from the starless train 
 Of storm clouds hissed hard rods of rain, 
 And the dark water lashed again 
 
 To breadths of burnished gold. 
 
 The stream whose gods with heaven conspire 
 
 To keep the pageant bright 
 With leaping rings and sprays of fire 
 
 Is splendid in the night 
 It seems the immortals cannot tire, 
 
 But each his opposite 
 And to a measure wild and sweet 
 The powers of storm and darkness meet 
 Unseen, whose thousand dancing feet 
 
 Are shodden all with light.
 
 THE MAIDEN SACRIFICE. 
 
 SO that ill-omened King put on the yoke 
 Of brief necessiity ; a treacherous wind, 
 His much wrought soul, too fatally inclined, 
 Set from the cruel North ; dread words he spoke 
 
 Of his adventurous thought, so rashly fired 
 By those dark counsels, that a daughter's life 
 To speed the war that should avenge a wife 
 
 The Virgin Goddess bitterly required ; 
 
 A sacrifice to speed his fleet that lay 
 
 Wind-bound at Aulis. He must undergo 
 
 Those words unblest and fraught with future woe 
 
 Such words bear hard on mortals ; he must slay 
 
 His child ; her prayers, her cries upon the name 
 Of " Father," and her tender years untaught 
 The blissful rites of love, they set at naught, 
 
 Those chiefs, blood-thirsty judges, much to blame. 
 
 They steeled their hearts for all that she was young 
 
 And fair exceedingly ; her maiden zone 
 
 Foully undid the greater to atone 
 The lesser crime whilst other hymns were sung 
 
 Than those of marriage ; then her sweet drawn breath 
 Confined and muffled, lest the victim's curse 
 They should provoke her piteous looks averse 
 
 They hastened her, the trembling bride of Death,
 
 86 THE MAIDEN SACRIFICE, 
 
 Before the altar; at her father's word 
 They raised her, like a helpless kid, aloft, 
 Drooping in spirit, whilst her raiment soft 
 
 Flowed to the earth, and not a sound was heard. 
 
 But she, sore fain to speak, as she lay thus, 
 And to the ground her saffron veil let fall, 
 Fair as some fine- wrought marble, smote them all 
 
 With deeply entreating eyes most piteous, 
 
 Moving their hearts ; for often her pure voice 
 In the high hall, her presence breathing peace, 
 Would grace the third libation, to increase 
 
 Her Father's name in song, and to rejoice 
 
 His heart, now cold, their hearts now moved in vain ;- 
 What need we more relate ? for what befell 
 We neither saw nor much desire to tell ; 
 
 Not unaccomplished was the deadly strain 
 
 Of that old prophet's counsel. Future woe 
 
 Justice requires, and retribution due 
 
 Will come to pass. Then we must see it through ; 
 Till then, grief out of season, let it go.
 
 IN TENEBRIS. 
 
 THE trees are wild to-night ; the wind is loud 
 In all their roaring branches ; on the right 
 A low red moon ; and strangely clear and bright 
 Through shattered fragments of forbidding cloud 
 There wanes and ebbs the windy evening light ; 
 But here the groaning darkness foils my sight 
 Strained for her my ear, intently bowed 
 To catch a footfall in the gusty night, 
 
 But vexed with ominous phantoms ; in the west 
 Across those windswept fields of twilight gray 
 Strange monsters grazing horses stand and stray ; 
 
 One came to snuff my shoulder not a guest 
 That pleased me well, but frightened soon away ; 
 And now the heavens are drained of stormy day ; 
 
 Night still more awful grows on such a quest 
 For the impatient soul to brook delay. 
 
 But, lo, from that dense black tempestuous wood, 
 Behold she comes, O, true beyond compare ! 
 What, feet behind thee, Love ? nay, like to scare 
 
 The boldest heart upon a night so rude 
 Those driven leaves. I thought, But will she dare 
 To come to-night ? A man might well despair 
 
 To watch the mouth and grisly solitude 
 Of dark Avernus for a thing so fair.
 
 HEIRLOOM. 
 
 IN the hour of change and travail we, remembering thy 
 face, 
 Fain would nerve our strained purpose with the 
 
 heaven-descended grace, 
 
 Virtue, strength, in thee perfected, of thy pure and 
 gentle race. 
 
 Ever taught by her who loved thee, there were mingled 
 
 in our blood 
 Those high dreams and aspirations ; thee through her 
 
 we understood : 
 " All his soul was bowed within him worshipping the 
 
 great and good." 
 
 " Much, had he been spared, for heaven, much he would 
 
 have done for man ; 
 " Has the mantle of your Father fallen on his children 
 
 can 
 " You the work to fuller issues carry on which he 
 
 began ? " 
 
 Still to thee, and her aspiring love, O teach us to be 
 
 true ; 
 Thy great work and last commandment let us not forget 
 
 to do; 
 From the old world thy ancestral virtue bringing to the 
 
 new. 
 
 Thine a race, like some clear river, from its far retired 
 source
 
 HEIRLOOM. 89 
 
 Long with cities unfamiliar, held upon an equal course, 
 From the tributary heavens drawing silent strength and 
 force ; 
 
 Not in dissipating uses, shoals of noisy action hurled ; 
 Virtue there, and meditation, lay through flowery 
 
 pastures curled, 
 Peaceful waters undiverted, unpolluted by the world ; 
 
 And, though vowed in all its sources from of old to every 
 
 art, 
 Awed by God, the passion ripened slowly, bearing little 
 
 part 
 In those simple lives, that inward vision, of the pure in 
 
 heart ; 
 
 Who, like lovers to the relic of a passion old and gray, 
 Into ancient forms breathed faith and virtue, clinging 
 
 day by day 
 
 Closer to the sweet tradition as the substance passed 
 away. 
 
 Since thy race in thee was wedded to as fair a sister 
 
 stream, 
 'Twixt new shores, to larger issues, it conducts the early 
 
 dream, 
 Nascent types inaugurating where the old appeared 
 
 supreme ; 
 
 Still, though less direct a witness of eternal God to man, 
 Dreamers, but the poet dreamer rather than the puritan ; 
 Dreamers from the mighty rearward hurried to the 
 drooping van ; 
 
 You from God in heaven, but we from God in you 
 deriving our
 
 go HEIRLOOM. 
 
 Laws, traditions, aspirations power, if ever any power 
 From the father's veins descending, may become the 
 children s' dower. 
 
 Power there is, 4 a draft on virtue ; by the just decrees of 
 
 Fate 
 Virtue labour, genius virtue follows ; state succeeds to 
 
 state ; 
 'Tis the sons of virtuous parents only who are wise or 
 
 great. 
 
 Power there is, a draft on virtue ; genius else were 
 
 genius none 
 Born of love, the consummation of the mystic Three in 
 
 One; 
 God the Holy Ghost proceeding as of old from God the 
 
 Son. 
 
 Labour, the probation first of God the Father, is the 
 
 root, 
 Virtue, love, the glorious flowers of human progress ; 
 
 absolute 
 Truth and beauty, manners, arts, and letters are the 
 
 golden fruit. 
 
 Then, when power self-conscious, genius self-admiring 
 
 grows, and art 
 Self- directed speaks a language not the language of the 
 
 heart ; 
 When her natural grace the maiden forfeits to enact a 
 
 part, 
 
 'Tis the Fall of man the winter of the spirit ; paradise 
 Lost again to erring mortals ; 'tis that sin for which the 
 price
 
 HEIRLOOM. 9 i 
 
 Love must still come down to render in the appointed 
 sacrifice. 
 
 'Tis the tragedy of Eden ever on a higher plane 
 Re-enacted knowledge by the fact of knowledge made 
 
 in vain 
 Ere 'tis disciplined by labour and by love redeemed again. 
 
 Cycles these and epicycles of the spirit ; circular 
 Orbits, loops, and retrogressions linked each to all 
 
 they are, 
 Satellites to shining planets, planets to the parent star. 
 
 Individuals and races, races and the human race 
 
 Thus their mystic evolutions suffer, terms of power and 
 
 grace, 
 Terms of retrogression, punctual each to the assigned 
 
 place. 
 
 You the crescent phase accomplished ; you on the 
 
 ascending arc 
 Left us to complete the shining orbit; you the sacred 
 
 spark 
 Nursed let us fan high the beacon ere it fades into the 
 
 dark. 
 
 From your lovely old-world gardens, spreading many a 
 
 pleasant rood 
 Lawns, white paths, and flowering alleys ; from your 
 
 peaceful homes that stood 
 Ivy-wreathed and massive, monumental of the just and 
 
 good ; 
 
 Homes in many a latter summer linked with our childish 
 loves ;
 
 92 HEIRLOOM. 
 
 Pebbled yards and stabled horses ; morning from the 
 
 garden groves 
 Through our lattice windows streaming murmurous with 
 
 the choral doves ; 
 
 Homes to city nurtured children still a golden memory ; 
 Walls of fruit and crystal fountains ; cedars rearing dark 
 
 and high 
 From the smooth green sward mysterious cones of night 
 
 against the sky ; 
 
 Curious attics, trusty servants; treasures quaint that 
 
 seemed to mock 
 Time and change to breathe and tell us of an old and 
 
 gentle stock ; 
 In the hall the branched antlers, on the stairs the cuckoo 
 
 clock ; 
 
 At the table gentle faces, lovely china, homely fare 
 No base economy, no sinful luxury was suffered there 
 Afterwards the glorious Bible reading and the silent 
 prayer : 
 
 From those homes where virtue native as the virgin 
 
 flowers had been 
 Where, above its wharfs and bridges, some far river 
 
 flows between 
 Wood-embowered hills and fertile pastures ever fresh 
 
 and green, 
 
 Coming as the grateful river cometh to the thirsty plain 
 Cities, where it flows, are founded, harvests planted, not 
 
 in vain 
 With the world of men and fervid city life you mixed 
 
 again.
 
 HEIRLOOM. 03 
 
 Withered facts upon the living waters of the soul in you 
 Lived again to all their ancient uses luminous and true ; 
 Church and state, laws, institutions, arts, and letters, 
 rose anew. 
 
 Parliaments, kings, prophets, priests, and poets all you 
 
 heard and saw 
 Childlike were in you transfigured, coming with 
 
 mysterious awe 
 More divinely to interpret, strictly to fulfill, the law. 
 
 From your unadorned worship, from your hours of silent 
 
 prayer, 
 Having learned the secret meaning, now you came to 
 
 claim a share 
 Of that age-long music unto which the human soul is 
 
 heir ; 
 
 First in solemn rites and symbols learning how frail 
 
 sense affords 
 Strength and rapture to the spirit listening to the 
 
 mighty chords 
 Of some vast cathedral organ wedded to tremendous 
 
 words ; 
 
 Litanies, and psalms, and anthems ; words and voices 
 
 that express 
 Souls of old-world prophets, poets, martyrs ; voices of 
 
 distress ; 
 Words of hope and consolation ; voices lifted up to bless ; 
 
 Valued not by you as perfect truth the wisdom pure 
 
 and whole 
 Of God but man's rude efforts darkly to approach the 
 
 shining goal ;
 
 94 HEIRLOOM. 
 
 Beautiful surmises, fruitful errors, of the human 
 soul. 
 
 But that one pure voice and lonely, for so many drowned 
 
 and lost 
 Midst the world's conflicting voices, you obeyed and 
 
 valued most, 
 " I am God " proclaiming, preaching God in man, the 
 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 As of old to God existing, therefore in your hearts began 
 That sweet doctrine of the eternal sacredness of man to 
 
 man ; 
 Many, thence in need of comfort, where those healing 
 
 waters ran, 
 
 Came before how often disappointed came and 
 
 quenched their thirst ; 
 In your eyes your God apparent with the souls of men 
 
 conversed, 
 What was true in each compelling, what was good 
 
 perceiving first ; 
 
 What you loved receiving gladly ; never thinking to 
 
 pretend 
 Joy in what you loved not ; friendship never seeking for 
 
 an end 
 Not the highest ; therefore never disappointed in a 
 
 friend ; 
 
 What was vile, though disregarded in the light of those 
 
 pure eyes, 
 All more dreadfully confounding; startled from their 
 
 frail disguise
 
 HEIRLOOM. 95 
 
 Evil thoughts and guilty motives steal away in dumb 
 surprise 
 
 In the course of that sheer virtue, found unready, pale 
 
 and blanch, 
 Like a traveller in some tangled passage threatened root 
 
 and branch 
 By the sudden smoke and thunder of an Alpine avalanche. 
 
 And, the meanest, that impending ruin spared, the 
 
 expected rod 
 Of your wrath to mercy turning, less unworthily they 
 
 trod 
 Earth, as though in some dread vision they had nearer 
 
 been to God. 
 
 Not with you the sword descended, nor did you espouse 
 
 the ways, 
 Prone to loud but feeble virtue, of our pulpit platform 
 
 days; 
 Yours the dumb rebuke of knowledge painfully witholding 
 
 praise. 
 
 And, in love with all things lovely, slow to wrath, your 
 
 hearts were warm 
 
 Not alone with loyal passion, nor the heat of blind reform ; 
 But the calm in which you brooded was the calm before 
 
 a storm. 
 
 Coming without observation, from the mighty Past you 
 
 drew 
 To the threshold of the Future, all the virtue summed in 
 
 you 
 Of the old- world's deep intention to the welfare of the 
 
 new.
 
 g6 HEIRLOOM. 
 
 You the storm-cloud were, the shining sword suspended 
 
 by a thread ; 
 You the stream, so long remotely making in its moorland 
 
 bed, 
 Now above the iron harness gathered to a mighty head. 
 
 We, could we the vast pretension kindle with a holy awe 
 On the grace and power within us of a virtuous race to 
 
 draw, 
 Could we but believe the lovely omen and obey the law, 
 
 Were the grateful rain, the rolling thunder, and the 
 
 falling sword ; 
 
 We the current of your long confined meditations poured 
 In music ; the precipitated virtue, and the spoken word. 
 
 When in us your power is waning, teach us what the 
 
 living source ; 
 When in us the warrior planet retrogrades upon his 
 
 course 
 When the tragedy of Eden overtakes us reinforce 
 
 You our lives with single-hearted faith and passion ; 
 
 keep us true 
 To the high traditions, fair examples, we derive from 
 
 you, 
 That in us your cumulative virtue, issuing freely through, 
 
 Purge the world of arts and letters, drive the vast 
 
 machine of state, 
 To our weak resolves and fevered efforts adding force 
 
 and weight, 
 Like a noble head of water falling on the wheel of Fate.

 
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