THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 A 
 
 Voice 
 from 
 the 
 Trees
 
 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 And Other Poems 
 
 By 
 
 Charles Herbert Frogley 
 
 (1876-1914) 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 Philip H. Wicksteed, M.A., Litt.D. 
 
 And Two Photographs by the Author 
 
 London 
 
 A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.G. 
 1915
 
 PRINTED BY WK. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND.
 
 Contents 
 
 " Sunrise." Photo, by Author . . Frontispiece 
 
 " Beneath the Trees" Photo, by Author . To face p. 59 
 Introduction, by Philip H. Wicksteed . . . page 7 4 Gt s jl . 
 
 Page 
 
 Apology ........ 15 
 
 " The Morning's Cup " 1 8 
 
 Desire 19 
 
 Strength ........ 20 
 
 The Stars 21 
 
 The Morning Star 22 
 
 The Message ....... 25 
 
 Invocation ........ 26 
 
 The Thrush 27 
 
 The Aconite ....... 29 
 
 Invitation . . . . . . . 31 
 
 Spring's Forenote . . . . . -33 
 
 The New Day ....... 34 
 
 March . 35 
 
 The East Wind . . . . . . -. 36 
 
 Spring . . . .... . .37 
 
 Spring's Return . . . . * . . . 38 
 
 The Nightingale . . . . . . . 40 
 
 To a Rose ....... 41 
 
 On Finding Two Cowslips Blooming in August . 42 
 A Harvest Evening ...... 43 
 
 Autumn ........ 44 
 
 To the Swallows . . . . . -45 
 
 The Swallows' Departure . . * . -45 
 
 October . -47 
 
 November . . ... . . -47 
 
 The Dying Year . . . . . .48 
 
 To Winter ........ 50 
 
 A Roadside Blossom . . . . . '1 
 
 &&O
 
 6 Contents 
 
 Page 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven . . . . 5 2 
 
 The Sweetest Sound 53 
 
 The Play-Hour 54 
 
 " The Sun Child " 55 
 
 Sunbeam ........ 5^ 
 
 " The Blossom " 57 
 
 Farewell ! . 5^ 
 
 A Voice from the Trees . . . . -59 
 To the Trees . . . . . . 9 1 
 
 War 93 
 
 The Thought-clad Trees . ... 95 
 
 "Let us make Man in our Image,after our Likeness" 97 
 
 "The Debt Immense" 99 
 
 Two Women ....... 102 
 
 Class 103 
 
 To Emerson ..... . 103 
 
 " On Two Shells cast up by the Tide" . . 104 
 
 Life 104 
 
 Reverence . . . . . . .105 
 
 Jahveh . . . . . . . . Io6 
 
 Prayer loj 
 
 The Awakening . . . . . 1 08 
 
 Good Friday . . . . . . Iio 
 
 Nature 112 
 
 The Request 114 
 
 Complaint IIO 
 
 To Anyone 118 
 
 Water, Water, Everywhere . . . .120 
 " But that so oft she comes" .... 121 
 
 To a Friend . 122 
 
 The Visit 123 
 
 Friendship . . . . . . .124 
 
 " Grieve not, dear Friend " . . . -125 
 
 The Stars . . . . . . .126
 
 Introduction 
 
 (CHARLES HERBERT FROGLEY (born June loth, 
 1876, died April i7th, 1914) left a number of poems 
 behind him, some printed and others in various stages 
 of completeness, typed or in manuscript. He wrote 
 out of " the feeling of having more enjoyment in beauty 
 than one knows how to contain." Life itself was to him 
 " so truly and absolutely a joy and a delight " that the 
 drab monotony of the lives that most of us live seemed 
 nothing short of tragic. Hence he was impelled to 
 arrest his " moments of intense inward delight " by 
 attempting a " record of beauty in terms of beauty," and 
 was inspired by the hope that in so doing he might open 
 up to one or another the deeper sources of joy at which 
 he himself drank. As to the value of his work he had 
 many doubts. He more than suspected that "there is 
 placed in the mind of all utterers an exaggerated idea of 
 the importance of their message, to ensure its being 
 uttered at all, on the same principle as that of the 
 multiplication of seed to ensure the survival of the 
 species." But he never for a moment doubted the 
 validity of his own sense for " every sunrise and sunset, 
 every cloud in the sky, every product and habit of 
 nature" as a direct access to that real life which is in 
 itself absolute bliss ; and he could not relinquish the 
 hope that, since he loved these things so deeply, he 
 might be able to "sing them into recognition" as he 
 believed that an artist friend (from his correspondence
 
 8 Introduction 
 
 with whom most of the extracts in this prefatory note 
 are taken) had already been able to " limn them so that 
 folk must look and admire." 
 
 Frogley's verse, whatever may be thought of it, was 
 at any rate the direct product of his experience. 
 Literary influences or suggestions had hardly so much 
 as a secondary share in the impulse that drove him to 
 write ; and literary ambition was altogether foreign to 
 his nature. Indeed his reading had never leant to the 
 poetic or purely literary side. Science (he was fond of 
 his telescope), philosophy and sociology attracted him 
 more ; and his speculations often haunted the region of 
 " border land " psychology. His favourite art was 
 music, for which he had an ear, untrained technically, 
 but of extraordinary analytical power and delicacy. 
 Painting too moved him deeply. But the only poet who 
 had seriously impressed him was Walt Whitman ; and 
 though few men were better qualified to understand and 
 enjoy Wordsworth, Frogley had practically no acquaint- 
 ance with his work until (after he had printed his 
 longest poem) one friend after another spoke to him of 
 the close kinship between his own sense for nature and 
 Wordsworth's. Then he opened the treasure-house and 
 appreciated the treasure to the full. 
 
 No doubt the fact that he drew nearly all his poetry 
 direct from nature and not from the poets is connected 
 with a certain contempt for literary form which his 
 correspondence here and there betrays, and which is to 
 be traced clearly enough in unevenness, lapses, and
 
 Introduction 9 
 
 occasional flagging, even in some of his best work. 
 But it is hardly possible to regret it, for it shows us the 
 rare spectacle of a genuine poet, not captured by the 
 inherent charm of the music and rhythm of language on 
 its own account, but discovering its capacities under pressure 
 of the imperative demand for an instrument of utterance. 
 
 Indeed as a rule it was only under the direct and 
 immediate impact of nature that Frogley could write. 
 Nearly everything that he cared to preserve was written 
 out of doors. Hence he read chiefly in the winter and 
 wrote in the summer half of the year; and he played 
 with his camera as a means of preserving his impressions 
 for the eye almost as affectionately as he did with the 
 graving tool of verse that registered them on his mind. 
 Two reproductions of his " tree " work are introduced 
 into this volume. 
 
 It is probably an effect of this dependence upon im- 
 mediate out-door contacts, coupled with the fact that 
 Frogley was never physically robust, rather than any lack 
 of sympathy with the wilder and more boisterous aspects 
 of nature that limits the range of his nature poems. 
 Speaking of writing in the open air, in a letter dated 
 in the middle of March, he says : " Of course it isn't 
 possible yet, least of all in boisterous March ; not but 
 that the face of dear Nature is inspiring enough if one's 
 body would put up with the temperature conditions." 
 
 But nature is not the only subject of his verse. The 
 "pressing need of sharing one's overflowing delight," 
 which he regarded as the normal and primary source of
 
 io Introduction 
 
 all poetic utterance, was characteristic of him in every 
 aspect of his life. And hence, inevitably, his mind 
 passed from the enjoyment of nature and such kindly 
 offices as the village life invited (his evenings were 
 generally spent in the village reading-room which he had 
 established, and he was the universal children's friend) to 
 the consideration of social problems. " Sometimes I find 
 myself wondering," he writes to his friend, after speak- 
 ing of his beloved trees, " if these silent friends will by 
 their influence lead you, as they led me, away onward 
 from themselves to men and women and social tangles. 
 I cannot but believe that they will, while retaining their 
 own appeal." And again, " To me every additional 
 acquisition, comfort or pleasure seems a reminder that 
 things are not as they should be." But the protest that 
 was seething in his veins had scarcely become articulate. 
 He hated commercialism, he hated class privilege, he 
 hated war, and he believed that they all hung together. 
 But so far from professing socialism he appears to have 
 felt as much intellectual dissatisfaction with any theories 
 he had met under that name as moral indignation against 
 the evils which they assailed. Several of the poems to 
 be found towards the end of this volume reflect this 
 sense of social misery and wrong, and the author's 
 attempt to find the terms of reconciliation or relation 
 between his perception of the inherent beauty of life and 
 the pressure of its cruel conditions. That he had not 
 yet come to any clarity on these matters he was himself 
 fully aware, and as his principal direct effort to express
 
 Introduction 1 1 
 
 himself about them (the latter part of the poem entitled 
 "War") was very far from satisfying him it has not 
 been included in this volume. 
 
 He did not live to see the war that is now desolating 
 Europe. But during the Balkan war he wrote : " The 
 autumn colourings are grand around here. It is hard to 
 drag oneself indoors for meals, leaving such feasts and 
 banquets outside. I was quite carried away by the 
 beauty of it all to-day ; telling myself that here indeed 
 was Heaven, even to the degree of the sublime imagina- 
 tion of the Prophet, for did I not walk upon emerald 
 ways and were not the trees of gold and ruby, and did 
 not God * shine in heaven as the sun,' and for choir did 
 not the heart sing wild rhapsodies of delight ? All these 
 thoughts came rushing in to confirm the present and 
 perfect realisation of the Prophet's vision of the new 
 City of God, till I remembered how not many hundred 
 miles away men were thirsting for each other's blood 
 and rushing at each other's throats, whilst they who 
 could prevent such horrors stood idly watching, afraid 
 of their own rapacity, afraid to interfere lest among 
 themselves popular passions should embroil half the 
 world in the flames of war." 
 
 Little remains to be said. "A Voice from the Trees," 
 in many respects Frogley's most characteristic poem, 
 reveals clearly enough both his alienation from all 
 established ecclesiasticisms and his profound devoutness 
 of heart. Trees, stars and children (together with 
 music and painting) were sacrament and ritual to him.
 
 1 2 Introduction 
 
 But it is interesting to find in one of his latest letters a 
 record of the deep impression produced upon his mind 
 by a casual visit to Romsey Abbey, where he took 
 refuge from a storm. He had not been inside a church 
 for eight years, he says. His own temple must always 
 be the open sky or the vault of the trees. But he will 
 henceforth seek a more sympathetic attitude of mind 
 towards those who find in some august work of man 
 the most moving invitation to prayer. A poem, too in- 
 complete for inclusion here, renders an earnest tribute 
 to an aged clerical friend recently deceased, in which he 
 owns that that friend has stood to one soul, sick with 
 hollow manifestations of faith, for the lustre of its 
 inward truth ; and, maybe, to have done so, he says, is 
 one added gem in his crown. 
 
 In selecting and arranging the poems for publication, 
 the editor has respected a few departures from metrical 
 rule or convention, which he had reason to believe were 
 deliberate. But where, either in printed or manuscript 
 poems, there seemed to be obvious oversights that 
 admitted of easy rectification he has endeavoured to 
 correct them. The instances are very few in which 
 such liberties have been taken, and only once has the 
 omission of a part of a poem necessitated a verbal 
 alteration in the portion printed. The author's own 
 alterations of printed poems have in every case been 
 adopted. 
 
 PHILIP H. WICKSTEED 
 
 CHII.DREY 
 
 May i$th, 1915
 
 A 
 
 Voice 
 
 from 
 
 the 
 
 Trees
 
 A Voice from the Trees 
 And other poems 
 
 Apology 
 
 SPHERE came a thought which asked me how I dared 
 
 To speak for Truth ; how I, who oft had fared 
 Away from Truth's high call, could scorn the life 
 Of mere utility, and join the strife 
 Of facts, within the open field of thought. 
 For such an one life's ends were fitter sought 
 In humbler ways ; 'twere more consistent aim 
 On some immediate good to lay my claim ; 
 I had small right to leave the lowlier call, 
 That weds man to the mart, and doth instal 
 Its own high code of laws and worthy ends 
 That well employs man's restless mind, and bends 
 Beneath the ordered course and trend of things 
 To serve the Scheme full well as he who sings. 
 "Why fret my mind with tasks, which but involve 
 The press of problems past my power to solve ? 
 I was amazed, and for a time ashamed ; 
 I groped for answer, and my lips I framed 
 For some excuse ; then finding naught to say 
 To such a well-earned charge, I turned away. 
 And as I turned, an answer came indeed 
 Surging within, and fashioned to my need. 
 
 IS
 
 1 6 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 For turning, gently met my hungering gaze 
 
 A sun-enraptured valley, pearled in haze, 
 
 Where trees and happy meadows laughed and sang 
 
 In shimmering radiance ; wafted whence there sprang, 
 
 To still my trembling lips, the soft caress 
 
 Of honey-nectared breeze, whose sweet impress 
 
 Silenced a half-born sob and choking sigh 
 
 For what had seemed a life's futility. 
 
 The trees with love seemed quivering, as the air 
 
 With song of bird, and sight, with beauty rare 
 
 Beyond all power to sense, much less to voice. 
 
 The path I tread is scarcely one of choice. 
 
 A power has given me eyes impelled to see 
 
 Its Beauty everywhere, in flower and tree, 
 
 In cloud and shine, in form and sound and sense ; 
 
 The whole creation throbs with joys intense 
 
 For me. How can I stay the raptured song 
 
 That will not be denied the press and throng 
 
 Of utterances of love, whereby I gain 
 
 Expression of the thought that it were pain 
 
 To hold unuttered ? Yet I ne'er can rest 
 
 Content with shows, I straightway must invest 
 
 With that I see, some fact which glows behind 
 
 The outward form. Tho' sight and sound combin'd 
 
 Can please the mind awhile, I soon do tire 
 
 Of these for their own sake ; for I aspire 
 
 To recognise in shows their several facts, 
 
 Relate them in their source, where each reacts 
 
 On each, engendering so a fact beyond, 
 
 Which outward sight, unaided, ne'er had conn'd. 
 
 In this resolve, I spend my life in thought, 
 
 Apart from men I seek to serve. I've caught 
 
 From this employment all the joy the years,
 
 Apology 1 7 
 
 So far, have yielded me. 'Tis this that cheers 
 My flagging spirit onward, maugre doubt, 
 The wage of meaner hour ; all which I scout 
 Upon the grounds that joy would surely crown 
 No work of mine, unless that work were grown 
 From out my very nature. Hence I plod 
 Patiently onward ; and it may be, God, 
 Who works thro' mind of man, and every hap 
 Doth turn to serve His ends, will somehow wrap 
 Within my songs a germ of use and worth, 
 Which shall expand and justify their birth.
 
 1 8 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 " The Morning's Cup " 
 
 I_I OLD to the morn as sacred ; 'tis a time 
 
 When unto all things comes a sweet rebirth, 
 Attained without travailing or pain. 
 When naked from Eternity's deep womb 
 The pristine life emerges and enjoys 
 The paradise of childhood. 'Tis the hour 
 When courted joys stand forth in true appraisement 
 And to the soul reborn come welling up 
 Sweet intimations from its native clime ; 
 And filled at secret springs the potent cup 
 Of holy inspiration is held forth 
 For all pure souls to drink in sacrament. 
 Anew each morn God walks His garden world ; 
 And paints afresh the flowers and tunes the lark, 
 Feedeth the worm and spreads on all His dew ; 
 To sign His Universal Charity.
 
 Desire 1 9 
 
 Desire 
 
 T AM athirst, O Living Stream, rise up 
 ' Within my soul and fill the waiting cup 
 That here I proffer in this heart of mine, 
 And stay its aching with a draught divine ; 
 Pour in the rose-red wine of love and brim 
 Its hollow circlet to the utmost rim ; 
 Then catch me up in Thy divine embrace 
 And in the heavenly sunbeams bathe my face. 
 Upon my brow imprint the kiss that fills 
 My every sense with sweetest rapture-thrills 
 And piercing through the senses' utmost bound, 
 Breaks forth in splendour on the world around, 
 And tunes the heart to song thro' joy that sees 
 Thy glory bursting thro' the fields and trees ; 
 For oh, indeed, I cannot, cannot rest 
 Shrunken in soul and empty of the zest 
 That builds up heaven from an earthly state, 
 And every thought and act doth consecrate. 
 O plunge me in Thy love's refining fire, 
 And pluck me forth a brand of pure desire, 
 Single and constant, passionate and strong 
 To burn all feeling in the flame of song, 
 And fire the heart with a far subtler power 
 To forge new feeling for each songful hour. 
 Then press, oh press me to Thy glowing breast 
 And fill me full of Thy divine unrest, 
 Yea, fill me full of a sublime endeavour 
 To press to Thee for ever and for ever.
 
 so A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Strength 
 
 OE strong ! Build up your soul 
 
 To serve itself and be its own delight ; 
 To rear its own fair children to console 
 With discourse sweet, in solitude's despite. 
 
 Lest like some schooner shorn 
 
 By sudden squall of rudder or of sail, 
 
 Thou should'st lie drifting, helpless and forlorn, 
 
 With naught to fill the hour or fly the gale. 
 
 Yet do not shun the press, 
 
 Finding with men no niche to fit thy whim : 
 
 Make not an idol of thy loneliness, 
 
 But serve thy friend whilst in the way with him. 
 
 And still be sure of this, 
 Thou art a whole ; within thyself abides 
 A universe complete with every bliss, 
 And bosom'd deep in Heaven's eternal tides.
 
 The Stars 21 
 
 The Stars 
 
 We are one with the stars. MEREDITH. 
 Love lights the star. ROSSETTI. 
 
 t>E strong ! Be great ! Yet lest thou think thy might 
 
 In aught but seeming wholly is thine own, 
 Or that thou art, save in the infinite sown, 
 Go, scan the heavens some still and starry night, 
 And feast thy reverence on the wondrous sight ! 
 What part was thine, when forth the spheres were thrown, 
 And tuned to song the fire-bespangled zone ? 
 Helped thy thought build these glittering orbs of light ? 
 Engulfed in space to depths no thought can span, 
 These gemmed galaxies type and measure man. 
 With every need endowed from pole to pole 
 Each unit limns the likeness of the Whole. 
 Each, seeming perfect and self-caused to shine, 
 Is poised and piloted by Love Divine.
 
 22 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The Morning Star 
 
 T WOKE this morn as the first pulse of hope 
 
 Came trembling upward o'er the eastern slope ; 
 And morning, treading on the heels of night, 
 Faint-tinged her dusky robe with flecks of light. 
 I woke ; and yet had not the doorway past 
 That now wide opes the sense, now shuts it fast, 
 Till memory found me on the threshold's brink 
 And gave the thrust that woke me wide, to think 
 Of that pure beam of joy, misnamed a star, 
 That late lay anchored at the sunset's bar, 
 But now had crossed the flaming boundary line 
 And might perchance be in the east ashine. 
 Straight from the thought I left my couch and flung 
 The window wide and instantly was wrung 
 With an o'erwhelming surge of speechless awe, 
 Wrought by the majesty of what I saw ; 
 For there athwart the mid south-east was spread, 
 Pendent in heaven, like jewels on a thread, 
 Orion's matchless galaxy of light, 
 A radiant necklace on the breast of night, 
 Each gem aflame and with a gentle motion 
 Seeming to rise and fall on love's vast ocean. 
 Spellbound I stood and felt my soul dilate 
 To bounds that paused but at the day's closed gate ; 
 Then as I to that roseate portal drew, 
 Behold I sank beneath joy's flail anew ; 
 As softly from its bed of chaste repose,
 
 The Morning Star 23 
 
 Love's own sweet star in blushing splendour rose, 
 And mounted slowly in her soaring car 
 To rule the dawn and reign as morning star. 
 And as I watched, my soul spread forth her wings 
 And burst the veil that screens the heart of things ; 
 Till soaring through the star's soft rosy light, 
 I saw the world, with backward bending sight, 
 Not as it is but as it shall be viewed 
 When it shall be with love's own soul imbued. 
 I cannot tell. No power was given me then 
 That might bring back the vision unto men ; 
 Joy's very self blurred with excess of joy 
 The eager powers this service would employ ; 
 Speech has no trap to catch with bait of sound 
 The glorious light that lapped the world around, 
 Nor could my eyes long bear the focussed rays 
 That distance blent into one tremulous blaze, 
 But fell as falls the glance of him who tries 
 To front the mastering glance of stronger eyes. 
 Then as my gaze fell from the glorious star, 
 Behold day's door stood tremblingly ajar ; 
 And like the dreams whence late I did awake, 
 So paled the vision at the glad day's break. 
 Yet much it pained me as that tender ray 
 So swiftly fainted in the light of day, 
 To think how love, mid stress of social strife, 
 Decks but the early morn of human life 
 Only too often, and how pale her beam 
 Beneath the glare of warring wants doth seem. 
 "Would that indeed it were our constant mood, 
 That for dead weakling talk of brotherhood, 
 We might smite down the cursed social weed 
 That battens on each man's essential need j
 
 24 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 So that sweet love might from her throne come down 
 And in men's hearts accede unto her own. 
 But now each morn cold commerce takes the knife 
 And severs heart from heart and love from life.
 
 The Message 25 
 
 The Message 
 
 'TPHIS morn, as rose my soul from out the deep 
 
 And earthward swept to break the bands of sleep, 
 Methought one sense awoke a span too soon 
 Or that some deeper sense forgot to swoon ; 
 And thus, it seemed to me, my wakeful mind 
 Faint-glimpsed the life that waking leaves behind. 
 Be how it may, interpret as thou wilt, 
 As some new wine of truth o'er darkness spilt 
 Or as some chance coincident accord 
 Of dream with sanity and pregnant word 
 From deepest sleep I suddenly awoke 
 To instant wareness of a voice that broke 
 Like distant waters falling from a height, 
 Heard in the calm solemnity of night. 
 A voice of veiled majesty, whose tone 
 Seemed none the less, in some strange way, my own ; 
 Authoritative, dreadful, reverent, high, 
 Myself, yet vaster than this personal "I" 
 Spoke forth a message, which no art of mine 
 Shall twist to fit the measure of my line.
 
 26 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Invocation 
 
 ^\ COME again, Thou Spirit of the light 
 
 ^^7 That shines within ; Thou Herald of that day 
 
 Whose dawn exceeds the sun's diurnal ray 
 As the high noon excels the deeps of night. 
 Surge up within, Thou Flame of pure delight 
 
 And fire my soul to utterance ; let my lay 
 
 Burn with the heavenly passion, whose full sway 
 Alone inspires and tunes the heart aright. 
 O, come again and to my thirsting lips 
 
 Hold Thou the one true nectar ; let me drink 
 Deep of the heavenly wisdom ; lift me up, 
 Nor let me leave a drop within the cup 
 
 Nor stay my hold upon the chalice brink 
 Till I am steeped unto the finger tips.
 
 The Thrush 27 
 
 The Thrush 
 
 pJARK to the sound that bids the spirit wake 
 New lively hopes for those late hid beneath 
 The old year's shroud, and for its withered wreath 
 
 Of joys foregone, new flowers of promise take. 
 
 Hark to it ! Hark ! Such melody must make 
 Even the very buds catch up their breath 
 And thrill with hope beneath their seeming death ; 
 
 Whilst all enchanted seems the echoing brake. 
 Arise, sweet visions of all life renewed ! 
 
 The glad fields starred with flowers from Spring's full 
 lap, 
 
 The scents of moistened earth and rising sap, 
 
 And frail translucent leaves all morn-bedewed ! 
 
 Sweet visions, rise, nor flee as I remember 
 
 The thrush I hear is singing in December. 
 
 To the Same 
 
 C WEET spirit to the daybreak singing, 
 Your whole soul into music flinging, 
 Whence comes that wild ecstatic rush 
 Sent out to greet the morn's first blush, 
 And whence that answering leap within 
 That sways me as your song melts in ? 
 For there is something in your note
 
 28 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 That springs in regions more remote 
 
 Than mere delight in sensuous things ; 
 
 Not merely your soft utterings 
 
 The external sign of hopes astir 
 
 Already for the unborn year, 
 
 That brings again love's beaming tide, 
 
 The sweet companion at your side. 
 
 And that quick echo of delight, 
 
 That sudden burst of inner light, 
 
 That rift-like gleam of hidden bliss 
 
 Of happier, fairer scenes than this, 
 
 That wakes within the listening mind 
 
 Is not the shallow fleeting kind 
 
 That finds full causal explanation 
 
 In a mere outward revelation ; 
 
 It has its meanings deeper down 
 
 And is in life's essentials sown. 
 
 The thrill of joy you give and take, 
 
 The sudden sense of hope you wake 
 
 Refers us to a vaster spring 
 
 Than that of which men think you sing. 
 
 Hail to thee, heavenly singer, hail, 
 
 That bidst our brighter thoughts prevail ! 
 
 Hail to your clear prophetic eye 
 
 That glimpses immortality.
 
 The Aconite 29 
 
 The Aconite 
 
 C WEET flower, no longer be unsung 
 
 Unhonoured of the poet's tongue, 
 Whilst all the later flowers of spring 
 Have made so many singers sing. 
 The snowdrop and the violet 
 Have oft in jewelled song been set, 
 Whilst thou hast scarcely found a place 
 In song, who art the first to trace 
 Thy cheery cypher in the soil, 
 Pure gold within an emerald foil. 
 Thou dost not wait until the sun, 
 His spendthrift southern roaming done, 
 A prodigal repentant turns 
 To lands where joy more lightly burns. 
 But ere the year's first youngling hour, 
 Whilst frosts are keen and skies are dour, 
 Dost thrust thy crown up through the earth 
 To prophesy the spring's rebirth ; 
 And onward, springward, many a day, 
 Unnoticed art content to stay. 
 Surely, sweet blossom, thou must be 
 Close kindred to the thrush, for he 
 Is singing from the branch when thou 
 Art budding from the grass below. 
 Perchance, each floweret of your throng 
 Was once a note within his song,
 
 30 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 That sinking to the ground raised up, 
 Like answering echoes, each pure cup. 
 For often I have thought his call 
 Far, far too sweet to fruitless fall ; 
 Well may it even be that God 
 Sets forth thy token in the sod 
 To tell that sweet melodious bird 
 His morning song of praise is heard.
 
 Invitation 3 1 
 
 Invitation 
 
 'T'HE blackbird now hath bathed his yellow feet 
 
 In the bright spangles of the dewy lawn, 
 And seeks a topmost branch whence he may greet 
 With songs of joy the coming of the dawn. 
 
 Come then, my soul, together let us sip 
 
 The morning's glory 'neath the misty trees, 
 
 Ere yet the diamond on the rose's lip 
 
 Melts in the sun or dies upon the breeze. 
 
 Come, let us at day's threshold stand and wait 
 
 The precious meed of inspiration's hour, 
 While yet thy ward is at the senses' gate, 
 Or yet the bloom is brushed from off the flower, 
 
 That springs each morn from out the soil of sleep, 
 The rose of life, faint seen thro' rift-like gleams 
 
 By the dull sense, as thou, my soul, dost sweep 
 Back from that land we call the land of dreams. 
 
 While yet the mind is kneeling to love's spell, 
 While yet the spirit craveth to be fed, 
 
 Come let us trace the mist-enchanted dell 
 
 And hear the lark's song, lost in light o'erhead.
 
 32 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Come let us through the sacrament of dawn 
 Receive the wine that to a heedless world 
 
 Daily in love is offered and withdrawn 
 Into Love's beaming bosom far infurled. 
 
 Come let us graap the chalice, drain the cup, 
 Drink in its rapture with a thirst of fire, 
 
 Till deep within its wealth is gathered up 
 And satisfied is all the heart's desire.
 
 Spring's Forenote 33 
 
 Spring's Forenote 
 
 HpHE blackbird is greeting the morn with his song, 
 
 A theme from the lark he has taken; 
 He carols of spring that is speeding along 
 Dear Nature from dreams to awaken. 
 
 Too long she has slumbered and slept 'neath the shroud 
 That winter has woven around her ; 
 Yet soon the deep laugh of her lord will ring loud, 
 When the sun in his love-quest has found her. 
 
 For lo ! she already half wakes from her dream, 
 Where thought is with fantasy vieing, 
 As flashes athwart her the quickening beam 
 That fills e'en her slumber with sighing. 
 
 The laugh of the sun and the song of the bird 
 With the sighings of Nature do mingle ; 
 And hearts are from lethargy quickened and stirred 
 With love and with joy all a-tingle. 
 
 So charms the sweet songster the dawn with his lay, 
 A rippling rondel of laughter. 
 He knows that the dawn is the herald of day ; 
 Spring comes and the summer comes after.
 
 34 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The New Day 
 
 T 1 
 
 'HERE is a spirit moving o'er the earth ; 
 I feel it breathing in the barren lanes, 
 
 Riding the wind, and through its plaintive strains 
 Weaving a subtle thread of hope and mirth. 
 I see the promise of its beauteous worth 
 
 In every byway, where beneath the stains 
 
 Of withered leaves and splash of miry rains, 
 Bright spears and crowns of gold spring up to birth. 
 
 And hidden by the husks of faith's decay, 
 Of mental lumber and of sterile toil, 
 
 I see a vaster spirit thrust its ray 
 Up through the barren and reluctant soil : 
 
 May no late frosts of hate the hour oppose 
 
 That decks earth's desert with its promised rose.
 
 March 3 5 
 
 March 
 
 lusty March is here, and see ! the elms 
 Are deck'd in filmy veils of russet red, 
 And life returns and song to earthly realms. 
 
 Now sweet buds shoot, and from their chilly bed, 
 Golden with hope, upshoot the daffodils, 
 For joy is come and winter's tears are shed. 
 
 The frosts have flown and freed the gurgling rills 
 
 To run a tinkling race towards the brooks, 
 
 And seaward glide between th' embosoming hills. 
 
 All Nature is astir, the busy rooks 
 
 Do scrape the air with unpretentious cry, 
 
 And violets ope their eyes in shelter'd nooks. 
 
 The clouds snow-bosom'd, racing o'er the sky 
 Call to the lark to leave the stable earth, 
 And flood the quivering air with melody. 
 
 Oh happy, hopeful time, when life's rebirth 
 Kisses the drooping earth to blushing joy 
 And changes all our grieving into mirth.
 
 36 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The East Wind 
 
 A PRIL is come, yet o'er the cowering fields 
 ** The angry east with iron-shod heel doth rage 
 High o'er his head a blinding sword he wields, 
 Laying to waste the Spring's fair heritage. 
 
 To all fair forms of beauty void of ruth, 
 Heedless of joy, exulting in each sigh, 
 He bans all song and with his iron tooth 
 Gnaws at the vitals of humanity. 
 
 His parching breath, piercing with dagger smart, 
 Blackens the grass and all the tender shoots ; 
 And cramping agues shrivel up the heart, 
 And chill life's sap and blight its very roots. 
 
 The daffodils lie prone, their gentle breath 
 Has westward flown ; the primrose, April's pride, 
 Pierced to the quick lies innocent in death, 
 And sorrow shrouds the woodland far and wide. 
 
 O Gentle Power ! O Spring, beloved Spring ! 
 Hasten thy footsteps, let the hungering sward 
 Laugh 'neath thy kiss so light yet lingering, 
 And ban chill winter with his icy sword.
 
 Spring 
 
 37 
 
 Spring 
 
 tell me not this April morn 
 That life is built of pain, 
 For hearts with winter's blasts now torn 
 The spring shall bind again ; 
 As summer's leaves and autumn's sheaves 
 Shall come life's joys amain. 
 
 The cloudy frowns the landscape wears 
 
 Shall yield to shimmering rays ; 
 
 And lips now dumb with doubts and fears 
 
 Shall leap with joy and praise. 
 
 As keen and bright as rays of light 
 
 Come smiles of happier days. 
 
 Oh hark ! the fields and woods among 
 
 And all the valleys through, 
 
 Spring trips her merry way along 
 
 Beflowering earth anew 
 
 Till life be drenched with sun and song 
 
 As the fields are drench'd with dew.
 
 38 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Spring's Return 
 
 N ( 
 
 r OW Spring returns o'er the southern hills, 
 
 And out from her lap a-laughing spills 
 The honied blossoms of sweet content, 
 With songs and cries of merriment. 
 
 She drives out the pains of the winter past, 
 As Easter expels the Lenten fast, 
 And in place of its greys she flings a stain 
 Of dainty green o'er the valleys again. 
 
 She trips o'er the meadows and under her feet 
 Spring daisies and cowslips and buttercups sweet. 
 She stoops to the brooks and ever there blows 
 The iris and primrose wherever she goes. 
 
 She kisses the trees and the cerements fall 
 That shielded the shoots from the wintry squall ; 
 She woos and teases in merry strife, 
 Laughing their tender leaves to life. 
 
 O'erfreighted with guerdons of happy hours, 
 She fills the buds of the shrunken flowers 
 With the sweet surcharge of her joy's excess 
 Till they burst into bowers of loveliness.
 
 Spring's Return 39 
 
 The overflow of her heart's delight 
 Is the dew that begems the sward at night. 
 The toss of her head and its tumble of tresses 
 Is the scented rain that the young corn blesses. 
 
 She chastely singeth her song till June 
 Cometh and calls for a lustier tune ; 
 And the kiss of farewell from her lips as she goes 
 Is the bloom of the cherry and blush of the rose.
 
 40 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The Nightingale 
 
 nightingale is awake, 
 
 Altho' the night 
 Enwraps the echoing brake 
 
 Away from sight, 
 My senses quiver and faint 
 
 With joy's sweet spell, 
 While his rapt passionate plaint 
 
 Floods all the dell. 
 
 Oh listen, my heart, and drink 
 
 Dry in the cup, 
 Nor stay thy lips at the brink 
 
 Of that sweet sup, 
 That leaps from love's lips and laves 
 
 The listening night 
 With ecstasy's sparkling waves 
 
 Of pure delight. 
 
 Oh read me, my soul, his song, 
 
 Which knows no stay ; 
 And tell me why all night long 
 
 He sings of day. 
 Why leaves he never the dark 
 
 To love's sweet rest, 
 But sings on until the lark 
 
 Soars from his nest.
 
 To a Rose 41 
 
 To a Rose 
 
 '""THOU marvel of a flower ! To think 
 
 Thy blushing depths of rose and pink, 
 Thy melody of light and shade 
 A little rain and sunshine made. 
 
 Thou sweet and tender link 
 'Twixt evanescent things that pass 
 And That which passes not, Thou glass 
 Bright to reflect a boundless Love 
 That doth my soul to worship move, 
 
 Thou art a rift a chink 
 Thro' which I catch a glimpse of Heaven. 
 Thine is that Beauty which doth leaven, 
 Lump by lump, this world of ours, 
 The which, as thou 'neath sun and showers, 
 'Neath summer's glare and winter's chill, 
 'Neath solid good and seeming ill, 
 
 Shall grow until it flowers. 
 
 Sweet flower, thou art a prophecy 
 Of man, as God will have him be ! 
 Thou art a living prayer ! 
 
 Pray God for me, 
 
 That He will mould my life, till He 
 Shall see it daily grow more fair ; 
 Pray that He make my soul to shine, 
 A creature radiant with His light, 
 As fair and lovely in His sight 
 As thou art, now, in mine.
 
 42 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 On Finding Two Cowslips Blooming 
 in August 
 
 "\X7HY, what are these ? I thought the Spring had 
 
 flown, 
 
 Since lusty June and brawny-armed July 
 Have homeward gone and August's flowing robe 
 Drapes all the fields in waving folds of gold. 
 Yet here beneath the laden chestnut tree, 
 Pure as the first faint breath of dawn that stirs 
 The soul to worship, and far sweeter than 
 The choicest incense or the costliest nard, 
 Two cowslips tip their tiny vases up, 
 Full to the brim with Spring's rich loving-cup, 
 Cloying the air with scents ambrosial. 
 What do ye here, ye trumpeters of joy, 
 Ye heralds of the summer's pageant ? 
 What do ye here when all your kin have flown, 
 Ye solitaries, in the year's decline ? 
 Surely 'twas here that first the snowy tips 
 Of young Spring's feet surprised the sleeping sward, 
 And that full thrill that then the glad earth felt 
 With tingling nurture still doth fill your life. 
 Or was it else that here one lush May morn, 
 Two souls foredestined for each other's love 
 Mingled and plighted pure and faithful troth ? 
 Or yet again, perchance, it was that here 
 Some poet treading on his own high thought, 
 Was caught ecstatic to the realm of song, 
 And sinking thence by sheer excess of gain,
 
 A Harvest Evening 43 
 
 Fell back like one a-swooning with the tones 
 That filled his soul and overflowed his lips, 
 And here the surplus that he could not hold 
 Or store in haste upon his tablets' page 
 Sank to the ground and flushed your rooty springs 
 So that ye too taste immortality. 
 
 A Harvest Evening 
 
 N' 
 
 r OW sinks the weary lark from out the steep 
 
 And sings on earth his last few faltering trills 
 Sweet odours rise and hues of evening creep 
 With velvet feet along the purpling hills. 
 
 Now the ripe laughter of the corn is hushed, 
 Stilled is the breeze that frolick'd with its gold ; 
 
 And the wild poppy in the sheaf lies crushed ; 
 The tale its beauty lived to tell is told. 
 
 Now leave the gleaner rooks the stubbly plain 
 And homeward fly towards the fading west j 
 
 Soft silence falls like comfort after pain 
 And woos the valley like a child to rest. 
 
 Now like an odour lingering ere it dies, 
 The last faint flush of opalescent light 
 
 Sinks in the west ; day droops her drowsy eyes 
 And turns for sleep ; one sigh and it is night.
 
 44 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Autumn 
 
 all the corn is reaped and stored ; 
 The plough lays bare the mouse's hoard 
 The wizard rooks with jaunty gait 
 Hard on the ploughman's footsteps wait. 
 
 Down in the valley's sheltering dip, 
 Where corn ricks jostle hip to hip, 
 The droning thresher's hungry maw 
 Chams out the grain from chaff and straw. 
 
 Nearby the steam's laborious growl 
 Mimics the winds that nightly howl 
 And choked by smoke and fiery force 
 Coughs like a broken-winded horse. 
 
 Old Time has stroked the year's full brow 
 And chilled the sweet sap's gentle flow, 
 His touch has blanched the lime with dread 
 And flushed the beech with hectic red. 
 
 Each sweet-breathed morn the eye doth reap 
 A feast of colour grown more deep, 
 Till day takes equal steps with night 
 And tempest blears the vision bright.
 
 The Swallows' Departure 45 
 
 To the Swallows 
 
 yet, frail sailors of billows, 
 
 White, purple and jet, 
 Sweet lovers of poplars and willows 
 
 Leave us not yet, 
 Nor sadden our hearts with your message 
 
 That summer has set. 
 
 Why crowd ye all there on the wires 
 
 Like pearls on a thread ? 
 Are ye tired of our marshes and mires 
 
 That ye haste to be sped, 
 Taking to strangers the nurslings 
 
 Our summer has fed ? 
 
 Is it a song ye are singing, 
 
 A song or a sigh, 
 Or naught but the cleave of your winging 
 
 I hear in the sky ? 
 Or is it your daily good-morrow, 
 
 Oh sorrow, or is it good-bye ? 
 
 The Swallows' Departure 
 
 OUT yesterday, because the wind blew cold 
 
 And dripping leaves were quivering on the tree, 
 And Autumn's spectre haunted all the wold, 
 Filling all feeling with its prophecy,
 
 46 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 I saw them on the housetops press together 
 And fill my pear tree with their restless crowd, 
 Anon on wing to cleave the blustering weather 
 And flee in whirling masses 'fore the cloud. 
 
 And yet this morn, beneath a kindlier glow, 
 A backward glance of summer loth to leave, 
 I saw their bow and arrows heavenward go 
 And on the blue a mazy pattern weave ; 
 
 So that I thought I had misread the sign 
 Their congregation gave me yesterday 
 And forthwith took poetic rod and line 
 "Within thought's stream to angle for a lay, 
 
 In praise of summer thus in love returning 
 (For did not summer's bird still haunt the skies ?) 
 Kissing the hills and o'er the valleys yearning 
 Ere from our shores reluctantly she flies. 
 
 But when I pricked the thought-bound sense of sight 
 And bade it lend a fulcrum to my wit, 
 Flinging it up to scan the swallows' flight, 
 Behold the skies were empty. 
 
 For while I wrote the swallows had departed 
 Leaving a sense of sorrow on the breeze, 
 Leaving the fields and valleys wintry-hearted, 
 And with the summer crossed the southern seas.
 
 October 47 
 
 October 
 
 /~\CTOBER wanes, and still the elms are green 
 ^*^ With summer's lingering touch ; well might it be 
 The month of June for all that can be seen 
 Of winter's blanching breath. No other tree 
 So stoutly bears the fierce assaults of cold ; 
 They wear e'en yet the hue that decks the shows 
 Of summer's prime ; no fleck of brown or gold 
 Betrays the year is hastening to its close. 
 
 November 
 
 N' 
 
 TOW 'tis November, yet the sturdy elms 
 
 Cling to their robes of green ; tho' winter's power 
 Is firmly camped within the very keep 
 Of vanquish'd summer, ruling o'er her realms, 
 And many a dingled nook and shady bower 
 Is tenantless, in leafy ruin deep. 
 The tender breath of sycamore and lime, 
 And beech, the queen of trees, is quench'd and still. 
 Of all the sun-born shapes that life immures, 
 The elm now stands alone and laughs at time. 
 Thus early pass the fair and lovely, while 
 The form of mass and ruggedness endures.
 
 48 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The Dying Year 
 
 'T'HE trees are stark, the leaves are shed 
 
 And sere in suggy mire lie dead ; 
 The blustering West with angry roar 
 Rattles and rankles at the door. 
 
 The shrunken sun winks o'er the hill ; 
 The barren ways are cold and chill ; 
 The tatter'd cloud yields up its load, 
 And streamlets gutter down the road. 
 
 True to the dawn's prophetic red 
 That warns the shepherd ris'n from bed, 
 The wind's wild clamour swells with day ; 
 The fields are whipt with scudding spray. 
 
 The palsied forms of summer's thought 
 Up from their beds are reft distraught ; 
 All mad with grief they scour the ground 
 And whirl in eddies round and round. 
 
 Wizen'd and torn they reach at last 
 The thorny hedge, and there held fast 
 By cold embraces of the wind 
 Brief anchorage and respite find.
 
 The Dying Year 49 
 
 The tortured air wails out its woe; 
 The moaning trees rock to and fro ; 
 With tight-braced thews the oak stands fast 
 To wrestle boldly with the blast. 
 
 The tempest rushes to the shock ; 
 At grips the giants writhe and rock ; 
 The oak tho' stagger'd by the blow 
 Turns ever back to face his foe. 
 
 The weary day wears on ; at length 
 The thriftless gale expends its strength ; 
 And chafing at unwished-for rest, 
 Sulks sullen in the barrier'd west. 
 
 Thro' misty wrack day's bleary eye 
 At eve peers thro' the riven sky, 
 And with its last weak arrows sped 
 Shrinks shuddering to its murky bed. 
 
 Now day is stricken to its knees, 
 And night comes sobbing thro' the trees ; 
 The wind sinks down the vale a-sighing ; 
 The year in Autumn's lap lies dying.
 
 50 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 To Winter 
 
 I 
 
 S it inevitable then that I, 
 
 Mute, uncomplaining as the patient tree, 
 Bow to the cold implacable decree 
 Of Winter's herald ; watching from on high 
 The leaves fall down or on the wind go by, 
 Leaving me voiceless ? No ! I will not be 
 In this the sport of time, nor bend the knee 
 To the cold frown he flings me from the sky ! 
 Henceforth I smile defiance, setting bounds 
 To his o'erproud presumption. Sullen looks 
 That strike the birds all dumb, and clamp the brooks' 
 Wild melody, shall meet a glance more strong. 
 For in my heart a deeper summer sounds 
 That now awakes and trembles into song.
 
 A Roadside Blossom 5 1 
 
 A Roadside Blossom 
 
 T FOUND it on the roadside 
 Pearl'd with the morning dew ; 
 
 The sweetest flower of loveliness 
 The Roadman ever grew. 
 
 It was so fair I won not 
 
 To pluck it as I pass'd, 
 Yet many a lingering backward glance 
 
 A-down the road I cast. 
 
 And when the winding roadway 
 
 Had hid it from my view, 
 Its beauty fed the mind with light 
 
 And kept the heart-strings true. 
 
 It nursed my budding vision 
 And tuned my early song ; 
 
 It drew my spirit through the sense, 
 Yet kept the senses strong. 
 
 And still it is a guerdon 
 
 Tho' passionless and light 
 That lends a glory to the day, 
 
 And visions to the night.
 
 52 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven 
 
 ''TPWAS in the street that the vision came 
 
 That seemed to quench the sun's bright flame 
 And flood the street with a wondrous light 
 A thousandfold than day more bright. 
 I stood entranced as the glory spread 
 And over all its radiance shed, 
 Yet felt no shadow of surprise 
 Nor sought to veil or screen my eyes, 
 Laying my whole soul out to guess 
 The meaning of such loveliness. 
 Then as the sheeted splendour grew 
 Robing the world in youth anew, 
 The vision of the seer of old, 
 Recorded in Earth's book of gold, 
 Kindled the flash of thought to birth, 
 " 'Tis the kingdom of Heaven come down to earth." 
 And with the thought that was almost a cry, 
 A sound at first scarce more than a sigh 
 Swelled swiftly up till the whole world trembled 
 With song as of angels in choir assembled, 
 Till it seemed as though the very skies 
 Shook with the sound, and then with sighs 
 It fell soft echoing on the trees 
 And slowly fainted on the breeze ; 
 Passing at last from sense away, 
 As the light sank back to the light of day. 
 And I stood alone in the village street, 
 In spell to the music of tiny feet
 
 The Sweetest Sound 53 
 
 That tripped and tinkled with echoes light 
 Then passed with their tiny cause from sight. 
 
 For the kingdom of Heaven that I saw come 
 Was a child, the flower of a humble home ; 
 The light that was more than the light of day, 
 Was the tender glance that she cast my way ; 
 And the sound that set the whole world ringing, 
 Was just the song I heard her singing. 
 
 The Sweetest Sound 
 
 sweetest sound that echo ever wakes ! 
 Far sweeter than all symphonies that spring 
 
 From master skill poured out on lute or string, 
 E'en sweeter than the hymn the throstle makes 
 When roused to rapture as the glad day breaks, 
 
 Or even than the song the tall trees sing 
 
 Wooed by the West's importunate whispering 
 Is children's laughter. 'Tis a sound that shakes 
 The soul's hid sanctuaries with soft thrills 
 
 Of bell-like music. It unseals the ear 
 
 To heaven's own harmonies, whose tones more clear 
 Win through the peerless heart where innocence 
 
 Keeps the bright door ajar and tuneless ills 
 
 Cloud not as yet its love-lit radiance.
 
 54 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The Play-Hour 
 
 "\X7HAT sound could be more sweet or scene more 
 
 fair ! 
 
 From yonder haven in the wooded swell 
 Of earth's mild bosom, where the hill and dell 
 Melt in each other's flowing lines, and where, 
 Straight upward through the sun-lit winter air, 
 Blue wisps of smoke in sleepy silence tell 
 Where simple wants and peaceful labours dwell, 
 Come the glad cries of children. Who would care 
 Who once has learned to love such scenes as this, 
 To toil for coin in those vast human hives, 
 
 Where squalor holds the whip and hunger drives, 
 And pleasure, crowned a king, the sceptre wields ; 
 Where men know not earth's primal founts of bliss 
 Nor that deep peace the sweet-breathed country 
 yields.
 
 "The Sun Child" 55 
 
 The Sun Child " 
 
 '"PEN summers' suns have kissed her, 
 
 Ten summers and no more, 
 Yet not one ray has missed her 
 
 Of all their golden store, 
 Till none can look upon her 
 
 But looking must adore. 
 
 The sun within her tresses 
 
 Revels from hour to hour, 
 Hides in their soft recesses, 
 
 Laughs from their golden shower, 
 As though to leave their sweetness 
 
 Were quite beyond his power. 
 
 She gathers from his kisses 
 
 The spiritual fire, 
 That builds all earthly blisses 
 
 And tunes the heavenly lyre, 
 That raises the ignoble, 
 
 And bids all hearts aspire. 
 
 For beauty shines from out her 
 
 In love compelling throes, 
 And makes a heaven about her, 
 
 Like scents around a rose, 
 That soothes the soul and giveth 
 
 An infinite repose.
 
 56 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Sunbeam 
 
 T LAY a-dreaming 
 Or was it seeming ? 
 Methought I saw a sunbeam gleaming. 
 
 Its life was won 
 
 Ere the world was spun, 
 
 Already born at the birth of the sun. 
 
 It had its start 
 
 In the fiery Heart 
 
 Of the Flame that doth all life impart. 
 
 It sought the earth 
 
 For fuller birth, 
 
 And blossom'd forth from souls of worth. 
 
 And there it lay 
 
 In the fragrant hay, 
 
 With tumbling curls, a child at play. 
 
 And I fell in trance 
 
 To the dazzling glance 
 
 Of the lustrous gold in its romping dance. 
 
 So proved my dreaming 
 
 More than seeming 
 
 That 'fore my eyes, O vision bright ! 
 
 A golden toss of tangled light 
 
 With leaping life and laughter beaming 
 
 A very sunbeam lay a-gleaming.
 
 " The Blossom " 57 
 
 " The Blossom " 
 
 CHE is fragrant with the sweetness 
 
 Of violets all a-blow, 
 And decked in dainty neatness 
 As snowdrop in the snow. 
 
 Her features all are moulded 
 
 As delicate and fair 
 As rosebud half unfolded 
 
 Unto the summer air. 
 
 She has a way of drooping 
 
 Her pretty little head, 
 Like to the harebell stooping 
 
 Over its dewy bed. 
 
 Sometimes I hear her crooning 
 Such happy little themes, 
 
 My head is set a-swooning 
 Into the land of dreams. 
 
 Demurely when she meets me 
 She slips her hand in mine, 
 
 And innocently greets me , 
 You see, she's only nine.
 
 58 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Farewell ! 
 
 HPHEY are taking away my sunshine, 
 
 They are taking that away, 
 That more ti - uly than the sunshine 
 
 Lent glory to the day j 
 And the very life within me 
 
 Shines with a feebler ray. 
 
 Flown is the daily pleasure 
 
 Of greetings at my door ; 
 The sweet confiding treasure 
 
 Of childish love is o'er ; 
 Her grace and dainty beauty 
 
 Shall be my joy no more. 
 
 Speak not of heavens hereafter, 
 
 For just with her to be, 
 To hear her sunny laughter, 
 
 To swing her 'neath the tree, 
 And tell her fairy tales 
 
 Was heaven enough for me. 
 
 One note from the chord of gladness, 
 One string of the heart's delight, 
 
 One check on the swell of sadness, 
 One charm from the sense of sight, 
 
 One spell of the world's enchantment 
 Fails with to-morrow's light.
 
 A Voice from the Trees 59 
 
 Prologue 
 
 'T'O thoughtful minds this utterance I consign, 
 
 Not so much championing its claim to art, 
 For oft from use and rule it doth depart, 
 Nor yet as always to my deep design 
 Conforming ; Truth and word so ill combine ; 
 But that it welled from out an o'er-full heart, 
 And seemed to force my utterance with its smart, 
 Falling self-marshalled into metered line. 
 
 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 5'T'IS May, and Nature's birth to life anew 
 
 Is now with joy attained ; a paean of praise 
 Vibrates throughout the country's breadth, and ways 
 We late did shun now tempt our willing feet. 
 The woodlands' plaintive note doth bid us pause 
 From sordid barter and the market's beat, 
 And commune with ourselves, to see if we, 
 Whilst nature's thousand throats are stretched with 
 
 praise, 
 
 Cannot from o'ercharged heart some surplus raise 
 In silent adoration. 
 
 'Neath the trees 
 
 I early walk, to drink the morning's cup 
 Of nectared purity ; whilst all around
 
 60 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 A subtle sense of peace pervades the air j 
 
 'Twould seem I'd caught the morn upon its knees ; 
 
 So tense with beauty's worship is the scene ; 
 
 For one brief moment, silence falls, a hush, 
 
 As tho' embodiment of soul through form, 
 
 In all the varied shapes of Nature round, 
 
 Had caught its breath, in tranced ecstasy ; 
 
 Nor were it strange if now unto mine ear 
 
 A voice should sound to bid me take my shoes 
 
 From off my feet, for surely this fair spot 
 
 Is holy ground. 
 
 But who are these who come 
 And hurry on their way this early hour, 
 Adown the beaten by-way skirting round 
 This shady grove, as, looking not aside, 
 With faces fixed and set, they press their course ? 
 It is the day that man has set apart 
 For rest and worship ; these, of zealous mind, 
 Would not be late in rendering of their store 
 The service which they feel it joy to make. 
 And yet a strain of wonderment doth rise 
 Within my heart, that they can pass this way, 
 Nor see that here are met and blent together 
 All th' elements and fibre of their need 
 To worship God. Or am I wrong in this 
 And is God 'stranged from Nature ? Has He left 
 His work to dwell in man's ? 
 
 I watch them pass, 
 Nor lack I charity to render them 
 The honour that's their due, I do but muse, 
 And lost awhile in labyrinthal thought 
 Upon the inconsistencies of life, 
 Walk softly on beneath the shady way.
 
 A Voice from the Trees 61 
 
 The morning deepens, with increasing stir 
 
 The tiny serfs of nature are on wing, 
 
 Filling the air with busy harmony, 
 
 Fluttering from store to store of pollened flower. 
 
 Lost in the sky, the lark his morning song 
 
 Is singing, while from hidden leafy nook 
 
 And echoing copse, his feathered kindred thrill 
 
 The bursting sense with throbbing happiness. 
 
 And I for company and converse true 
 
 Do not go lacking, for from every tree 
 
 I pass beneath rapt voices seem to fall, 
 
 And speak to me in sweet solicitude. 
 
 Ah yes, when these sequestered paths I tread 
 
 A peace descends upon me, past all power 
 
 To comprehend, a peace that wraps my soul 
 
 In purest reverie ; whilst all my care 
 
 Drops from me like a cloak ; till loosed and free 
 
 My spirit leaps to silent contemplation. 
 
 Oft I renew, oft I recall the joys 
 
 That here I reap, and I shall ne'er forget 
 
 These friends who alter not, who oft have smoothed 
 
 My ruffled mind to calm serenity. 
 
 Ye works of art divine, the trees I love, 
 
 Beauty materialised, I would I had 
 
 Art of the singer to immortalise 
 
 Your stately avenues of perfect form 
 
 Down which I oft-time walked with reverent step, 
 
 Thinking out thoughts of import to the soul. 
 
 Ah ! Temple, church and altar all were ye, 
 
 Balm to my sickened soul to surfeit fed 
 
 With the vain shows and blindnesses of men, 
 
 Who bind upon the lowly cast of mind 
 
 J
 
 62 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Burdens too grievous to be borne, and teach 
 
 An omnipresent God, who yet must be 
 
 Approached and served in one man-fashioned way. 
 
 Ah ! so I cannot serve I cannot praise ; 
 
 'Neath other forms I cannot help but see 
 
 My God there, where His ever-acting laws 
 
 Limn out in infinite diversity 
 
 The symbols of His Word, made flesh or flower, 
 
 Or shower or shine, or winged thing ; I love 
 
 These forms alive with power, warm from His hand. 
 
 Ever to me the tree and flower are voiced 
 
 With utterance divine. 
 
 Here 'neath the shade 
 The spirit anthems never cease to ring, 
 And every leaf reveals the mighty Mind, 
 Who made it thus to be a passing form 
 Of a Reality that passes not, 
 And thus because it is just what it is, 
 It cannot help but sing and beauteous be. 
 What other forms are needed for our aid 
 Than here are found, unmarred by erring man, 
 Free of all false adornment from without, 
 Clad only in the chastity of thoughts, 
 Expressed in curving bough and clustering leaf 
 A-droop, in lowly wise, and answering 
 With sighs and smiles to every whispering breeze ? 
 What marvels ye of strength and beauty wed, 
 Of power and love in perfect balance set, 
 All yielding to the gale, yet not to break ! 
 Oh, beeches straight and lithe with arched crowns, 
 Bending your graceful limbs in tranced poise 
 Down to the spellbound sward, as tho' to pluck 
 The buttercups that grow around your feet ;
 
 A Voice from the Trees 63 
 
 As some fair Psyche stepping from the bath, 
 
 Bedecked with pearls, the homage of the pool, 
 
 And radiant with the joy of perfect health, 
 
 Casts forth on all around the sweetest scents 
 
 Born of chaste thought, the flowering of life. 
 
 Vain symboling ! as well I might have shown 
 
 The beauty that adheres to human form 
 
 By reference to thee ; I strive in vain, 
 
 Nor can I hope, all tongue-tied as I am, 
 
 To find befitting words for facts so fair, 
 
 Such rapturous portrayal here set forth 
 
 Throughout the heavenly Craftsman's flawless work. 
 
 Ye elms of mighty girth and rigid strength, 
 
 Begnarled and scarred by many a tempest stemmed, 
 
 More marred than beech because ye will not bend, 
 
 So proud ye are and scornful of the blast ; 
 
 Like dauntless giants with huge and brawny thighs, 
 
 Standing erect in frowning wakefulness 
 
 To face all strain and battle of the storm ! 
 
 Sweet friends ! sweet friends ! of changeless love to me, 
 
 Giving me ever that which from my kind 
 
 I ne'er have known, Love unconditional ; 
 
 How oft in press and travail of the soul, 
 
 Have I not sought your voiceless sympathy, 
 
 Drawing sweet comfort and fresh power to bear 
 
 The jars and buffets of this world of nays, 
 
 Where high resolves oft fail and hope nigh dies. 
 
 Yes, temple, church and altar all were ye, 
 
 The sacrament of whose pure intercourse 
 
 Sufficed me for forgiveness and fulfilled 
 
 Love's deepest call for service or for praise. 
 
 Oh, strange indeed and past all reason's bounds 
 
 That men should turn aside from works of God,
 
 64 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Alive and vibrant with Indwelling Power, 
 
 Stamped with the signet of creative Mind, 
 
 To enter gloomy piles of brick and stone ; 
 
 As though the Master's works in Nature seen, 
 
 Unworthy were and needed art of man 
 
 Ere they a fitting house might form for Him. 
 
 Awake ! all ye who look for truth in creed, 
 
 In doctrine, myth, or method made of man ! 
 
 Train ye your eyes all forms alike to solve 
 
 Into the mystic substance of the soul, 
 
 Which is a spirit, and by spirit sees. 
 
 Seek ye in open air and pastures free, 
 
 In dewy vale, or upland wild, or where 
 
 The cloud rides through the sky and rainbow spans 
 
 The distant scene. Seek there if ye would find 
 
 The Power, who is all forms unto all minds. 
 
 If service you would give, confine it not 
 
 In any strictured dogma, creed or rule. 
 
 Know that all times and quarters of the earth 
 
 Are holy days and holy place enough 
 
 In which to render to th' almighty Love 
 
 The service which, altho' He needs it not, 
 
 (Since all things of their essence render praise), 
 
 He yet rewards with joy beyond all gauge. 
 
 Where'er is found a heart abrim with love 
 
 Or impulse to adore and serve, there stand 
 
 A church and altar, sacred unto God, 
 
 Holy as holiest temple built of man. 
 
 Our fathers have cast ashes in our eyes, 
 
 The dust of ages moulders all our thought ; 
 
 We cannot see, we cannot think ; a crust 
 
 Of hardened letter all the truth conceals, 
 
 And man in blindness gropes, submissive yields
 
 A Voice from the Trees 65 
 
 His priceless mind, a slave beneath the yoke 
 
 Of guidance from without ; and speaks of faith 
 
 As somewhat that commends his ready gift 
 
 Of credence all unquestion'd to such facts 
 
 As he, from having lost his power of sight, 
 
 From ever seeing Truth by borrowed light, 
 
 Doth fail to understand. Oh blindfold man ! 
 
 Thy spirit sleeps ; thy mind, as spirit's home 
 
 Fast hypnotised to dogma and report 
 
 Ere yet thy lips could lisp a single word, 
 
 Is yet unborn. What serves thee for a mind 
 
 Is not thine own ; 'tis but an alien growth ; 
 
 Yet thou dost let it stead thee in thy prime. 
 
 Mark well the growth of seeds ! The embryo plant 
 
 Ere it can gain a grip upon the soil 
 
 In which it is to grow, feeds for a while 
 
 Upon the tiny store its parent bare 
 
 And housed within a husk, to nurse its span 
 
 Of brief dependence. Yet the day soon comes 
 
 When of itself it draws first-hand its sap 
 
 From out the fertile bosom of the earth. 
 
 Thine adult ripeness bids thee so take root 
 
 And feed thy soul with insight, not with faith. 
 
 The limb or sense that's lost thou canst not use, 
 
 Nor yet if thou refuse to use the limb 
 
 Or sense thou hast, shall it remain to thee, 
 
 But 'twill grow weak and pass ; and even so, 
 
 If thou wouldst see, and find thy spirit wings 
 
 To soar aloft and use thy birthright here, 
 
 As son of God, a son's unhindered right 
 
 Straight to his Father's heart to win, nor need 
 
 Some lifeless form or priest to go between 
 
 Thy Father's love and thee, rise up and claim
 
 66 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Thine inborn power, now use the inner eye, 
 Press to the truth within thyself and gain 
 Thy liberty. 
 
 Now open thou thine eyes 
 
 From which have dropt for aye the scales, that fear, 
 The child of ignorance, has interposed. 
 Now may'st thou learn that all the earth is blessed, 
 And every wind-swept space a court of God. 
 All places, times and actions, if thy will 
 Be pure, are sacred through thy use of them. 
 Thou knowest not thy power, thy godlike mind, 
 That can of any action make a prayer. 
 Whate'er thou dost as 'neath the eye of Heaven, 
 Is holy service done within its doors ; 
 And wheresoe'er thou deemest God to dwell, 
 Lo ! there He dwells whilst thou dost seek Him there. 
 Make not of one paved court or four square walls 
 The mean and narrow limit of His throne, 
 Nor set apart a single day of seven, 
 Cramming thy worship into one short shrift. 
 Open thine eyes, on every inch of earth 
 Is writ His signet in a thousand forms, 
 And miracles unnumbered wait thy ken, 
 Wouldst thou but pause and ponder on awhile 
 The myriad facts and visions of the field, 
 "When thou dost walk therein. 
 
 What seekest thou 
 
 Within the man-blessed doors that Nature lacks ? 
 Tradition ? God ? a holy place ? I say 
 Thou livest now, thy revelation find . . . 
 Now, in thine own life, thine own soul and time ; 
 Lean never on report, each hour repeats 
 The quoted past, and plants the future here.
 
 A Voice from the Trees 67 
 
 That God creates the earth anew, and makes 
 Of former things a scarce-remembered dream, 
 That hell for the evil yawns, that heaven awaits 
 Thy claim, the cheated grave, the spiritual world 
 Are facts for thee to-day. Why wilt thou draw 
 Upon the past alone to build thy faith ? 
 Art thou content before the frequent scoffer 
 Some text or quoted book in proof to place ? 
 Perchance his doubt is honest 'tis at least 
 His own, whilst thy belief on hearsay stands. 
 And yet there breathes to-day for heavenly truth 
 A living witness Nature, whence men turn 
 To a past that's dead the letter of the Light, 
 And find no shrine on all God's beauteous earth, 
 Save in some church, 'fore which to bend the knee. 
 A. greater witness still, is thine own soul 
 Wherethrough the perfect light of heaven itself 
 Streams to the pure, in loving voice of God. 
 All facts for loss or gain are here and now ; 
 Out in the sunlit fields God walks and speaks. 
 Where may'st thou find cathedral domed so high 
 As thou dost build where'er thy reverent thought 
 Soars upward. 
 
 What sayest thou, that only so 
 The very noblest cast of mind can serve ? 
 Oh God ! ... and I ... 
 But thou art not my judge ; I will but drop 
 My face into my hands, and silence keep. 
 'Tis not the place that's holy, 'tis the mind, 
 The attitude of thought thou bringest there. 
 'Twas early pressed on thy then pliant mind 
 Only the purest thought, with reverent mien, 
 Into the church to take, and thus it is
 
 68 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Thou makest of thyself a sanctuary there. 
 
 But how is it with Nature ? Thou dost here 
 
 Thy thoughtless moments spend, and thrust on her 
 
 Thy lowest mood, thy selfish mean desire, 
 
 Dost on her pour the refuse of thy soul. 
 
 She all receives and turns to pure account, 
 
 E'en as she will receive, some future day, 
 
 Thy rotting corpse all rank with vile decay, 
 
 To turn to uses new, set free from taint. 
 
 But bring to her the mind thou giv'st the church, 
 
 And then thou'lt find, wherever thou dost go, 
 
 An altar high enough to bear aloft 
 
 The sacrifice of thy sublimest praise. 
 
 Oh, happy trees, wise, whispering, thought-clad trees ! 
 
 All questions of the soul ye answer well, 
 
 All facts of life and after-life ye show, 
 
 Endurance, hope and trust ye always teach, 
 
 And by a straining upward constant build 
 
 A beauty upon beauty, which, to tell 
 
 As 't rightly should be told, well, I should need 
 
 The tongue of angel and his power as well. 
 
 Apt emblems ye of life, as life should be ; 
 
 The downward draught on earth, the upward strain ; 
 
 Fed of the soil for body, yet for breath, 
 
 Stretching your leaves out quivering with desire 
 
 Up to the azure vault of God's blue sky ; 
 
 Your spirit fact up-building of the thoughts 
 
 Which from the higher realms of sweetened air 
 
 Ye so draw down. 
 
 How oft beneath the shade 
 Resemblances I see 'twixt tree and man. 
 How oft below its standard man oft falls, 
 Curst with desires engendered of the soil ;
 
 A Voice from the Trees 69 
 
 Ah, fed and bred of earth, beyond escape 
 
 From tendency to evil body's dower, 
 
 Man yet must yearn and upward strain to God. 
 
 That man is blessed and happy in his life 
 
 Who knows aright to choose and imitate 
 
 In nature's ways, and where he must transcend. 
 
 At-one with God, the soul of man transforms 
 
 The outer world, and every true desire 
 
 For intercourse opens the inner eye, 
 
 Blots out illusion, and the real lays bare, 
 
 Till all the myriad forms in field and brake 
 
 Are seen as spirit-words abrim with truth. 
 
 The soul of man is man's interpreter 
 
 Which ever from within gives utterance to, 
 
 And faithful Revelation of the Word, 
 
 Which is, in him, through flesh made manifest. 
 
 But man from Self shrinks ever back ashamed, 
 
 From having wandered so, and 'smirched his soul 
 
 With evils, born of ignorance, long ingrained, 
 
 An ignorance of his Source and Origin ; 
 
 And looks for God without him, far in space ; 
 
 Nor will he recognise the truth that Christ 
 
 Announced, that God is found within, altho' 
 
 He calls himself a Christian. Would he read 
 
 That inner revelation of the Word 
 
 That in him wells, the very presence there 
 
 Of mystery so vast his very self 
 
 A son of God, I say, this conscious fact 
 
 Would all his ills disperse, and set him free 
 
 To do the right in liberty divine. 
 
 Why is it so ? Why takes this peerless dawn 
 
 So long to break ? Why do men's slothful souls
 
 70 A Voicefrom the Trees 
 
 So far through working hours in slumber sleep ? 
 Ah ! men their fetters love, nor care to shake 
 From off their darkened mind the brazen cap 
 That all their thought benumbs ; keeping a crutch 
 To stay their weakling mind its rightful toil ; 
 Because, forsooth, it so much easier is 
 To lean, than of their nerveless selves to stand 
 Upright. 
 
 Beside all this, they have no time 
 To spend on Self, the higher Self within j 
 They have a business wed, besides a wife ; 
 Their soul can wait, this life they pledge to gain, 
 Selling immortal souls for shams and dross. 
 Assume thine inborn right to read the Word 
 And fearless break, but yet with reverence, 
 The seal that priests have placed thereon, and creeds 
 Have magnified. Shake off the dwarfing weights 
 Of superstitions old ; expand thy thought 
 And flood with bounding health thy spirit form 
 With spirit fact from nature gleaned, which now 
 With gain of clearer sight, thou see'st divine. 
 Oft with another, walking 'neath the green, 
 A silence comes upon me, and the sense 
 Of spirit voices speaking from the trees 
 Puts fetters on my feet and bends my head. 
 Then he beside me walking oft will seek 
 By look or word for reason for the seal 
 That locks my lips and inward turns my thought, 
 While he, my friend, would friendly converse make. 
 He knows not that in church my spirit bends, 
 And words offend and are irreverent. 
 Oh, for a perfect friend attuned to feel 
 The sanctity of silence ! Such an one
 
 A Voice from the Trees 71 
 
 'Twere joy to hold. How oft from heaven we turn 
 
 And fall to earth in bitterness and pain 
 
 Through spoken word ; for silence often shames 
 
 Our purest utterance, and half our words 
 
 Are needless ; wheresoe'er attuned hearts 
 
 In perfect understanding dwell, a look 
 
 A touch is speech enough. 
 
 The highest facts 
 
 Are ever past the power of spoken word ; 
 The deep communications of the soul 
 In silence and in solitude arise. 
 Words are the froth of life, if they be used 
 To break a silence for the breaking's sake. 
 Hush thou thy lips, from Nature lessons take. 
 The voice of God, a-ring in field and brake, 
 Gives grander utterance far than ever thou 
 Canst hope to make. 
 
 Oh, to the woodland come, 
 And reverent spread a pure expectant mind 
 With wisdom fed, in silence 'neath the trees : 
 God walks these timbered aisles no less, nay more 
 Than in the sunless house that men have built, 
 And think by empty speech or forms to bless. 
 Come thou apart, thine own desire to praise 
 Thine own fair temple builds, and floods with strains 
 Of harmony its boundless aisles and naves. 
 Come where the fiat of His mind unfolds, 
 In perfect symbol and through perfect laws, 
 The highest facts the only Fact, that we, 
 Here or hereafter, e'er can hope to know 
 Of Him who is not named or understood 
 By any name or symbol men have coined. 
 Why wilt thou use the hide-bound forms and words
 
 72 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Of bygone age ? Awake, and use thine own. 
 
 Why use the symbol of another's thought, 
 
 Begging thy vision of the truth ? Arise, 
 
 Stand upright of thyself, use thine own eyes ; 
 
 The self-same power, that in the seer of old 
 
 Saw facts divine, sees now no less through thine. 
 
 God's one with man : thyself thy saviour art ; 
 
 And yet the power is God's. Thou prayest Him 
 
 To mend thy ways ! Yet that is thine own work. 
 
 Look thou within for strength, which inward wells, 
 
 Wouldst thou but claim thine own, do thine own part ! 
 
 If pray thou must, the only prayer that serves 
 
 With possibility of answer here, 
 
 Is life and act, no mere desire avails ; 
 
 For present, past and future circumstance, 
 
 All, all are born to cause and birthed of law ; 
 
 There is no chance j so set the cause to work, 
 
 And cease to beg or hope to cheat the laws. 
 
 " But God is cause " thou say'st, and so dost hope 
 
 By prayer to Him to reap an unearned gift. 
 
 In part 'tis true j He gives, indeed, whilst thou 
 
 Canst never really earn ; but yet He gives 
 
 Through thine own act and virtuous willing. 
 
 For God helps those who strive to help themselves. 
 
 The highest prayer is Love a love that binds 
 
 The thought to act man to his Source, so that 
 
 At one with Power thro' love of Right 
 
 The right in man prevails. Thou art a tower 
 
 Of strength when thou dost make thine acts to pray. 
 
 Wouldst thou to virtue win thine upland way ? 
 
 Pray ! if it help thy mind to hold, undimmed, 
 
 The goal in sight. Not vain this impulse set 
 
 Deep-rooted in our souls ; for tho' within
 
 A Voice from the Trees 73 
 
 God surges in deep tides as native power, 
 We are as fractions of a mighty Whole, 
 And are as helpless all as speechless babes, 
 When we would act alone, unblent in Him, 
 Who, tho' He ever towers above beyond, 
 Must yet be sought within, as each man's own, 
 Self-forged, self-wielded will. 
 
 Pray if thou must, 
 
 No less remains it true, that acts of God, 
 (If acts they be, of God, as men conceive) 
 Called answer unto prayer, are never shown 
 In alien gift of power : to interfere 
 'Twixt cause and sure result He never deigns, 
 Since that whereby facts press from cause to end 
 Is God. If answer comes unto our prayer 
 'Tis power to bear : God works no miracle 
 To cure our pain, but sends unto our need 
 Himself, that so we may as gods endure. 
 
 Turn not to brother man to tell thine ills, 
 
 Nor think that through some person interposed 
 
 'Twixt cause and end, thy sins may be absolved ; 
 
 Nor yet that any facts outside thy will 
 
 Or act can " save thy soul," as some do say. 
 
 Unto thyself absolve thyself; the most 
 
 That man can do or say unto thy need 
 
 Is patchwork act and hearsay, whilst the least 
 
 That thou must do is evil ways to hate ; 
 
 For till thou dost, thou canst not 'scape their grip ; 
 
 But like as love a union is, so hate's 
 
 Disseverance, and when thou risest up 
 
 In native strength to hate thine error's ways, 
 
 The chains of habit fall from off thy feet,
 
 74 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Cleft link from link by the all-cleaving sword 
 
 Of thy pure willing ; nor can aught be found, 
 
 Save this, to snap the chain thy past has forged. 
 
 What will awry did form pure will must break. 
 
 But man by blind man led doth shuffling creep 
 
 To others blind, and in his readiness 
 
 To snatch the smallest ray of light or hope, 
 
 Cleaves unto that which doth but bind anew 
 
 Fresh burdens on his back. I know the weak 
 
 Must priests and leaders have, but why wilt thou 
 
 Be weak ? 'Tis time to wake to find thy strength 
 
 And don thy spirit robes, that fall to thee 
 
 By heavenly call and right, surpassing all 
 
 The vested power of priests. Why wilt thou place 
 
 Thy princely neck beneath the foot of man, 
 
 When thou shouldst nod and bow thy mind to none 
 
 Of mortal birth, but only unto God ? 
 
 True priests there are, I know, and still must be, 
 
 Protectors of the weakly, guides unto 
 
 The blind, and if thou seekest such, then mark 
 
 The sign, for signs they bear, tho' 'tis not formed 
 
 Of cloth or any robe that they may wear. 
 
 Such shall not point to truth from out a book 
 
 Nor call thee to some form, in which there's need 
 
 For him to act, and by such things as these 
 
 Enslave thee to a creed, or banded sect 
 
 That doth him feed. Not thus the rightful priest, 
 
 Who doth not lord, but serve his brother man, 
 
 Who doth by right divine his office hold, 
 
 And has not gained his brief to teach the Truth 
 
 From touch and word through man-appointed form, 
 
 But ever from within himself doth draw 
 
 To sate his brother's need that light of truth
 
 A Voice from the Trees 75 
 
 That sets him loosed and free from outer law 
 And stands him on his feet, erect and strong, 
 To serve himself and be his own high priest ; 
 Doth ever seek to put him into touch 
 With native force within his inmost Self, 
 That he may of himself, in deep self-trust, 
 His own salvation win. 
 
 If overmuch 
 
 I seem to press this fact, that here is writ 
 With oft-recurring trend of thought and pen, 
 "Tis that I know, that tho' this truth is aged 
 Twain thousand years, it still doth waiting stand, 
 Rejected and contemned ; and this despite 
 That wondrous-fashioned life, that once was spent 
 Out to its heart's last sweated drop of love 
 And self-rejection, that this saving fact 
 Might stamp its truth upon the minds of men. 
 The centuries go by and epochs wane, 
 Whilst life and death, in ceaseless interchange 
 Of opportunity, all fruitless fall ; 
 And paupered man, despite that treasured wealth, 
 Those pearls of priceless worth in truth's true coin 
 Bequeathed him by the sages of the past, 
 Doth beg and steal in abject bankruptcy ; 
 Doth look for worth midst straws and mouldering rags, 
 Nor sees, forsooth, the circ of studded gems 
 By patient angels held above his head 
 Waiting to crown him king of life and fate. 
 For look you ! if this power be not in man, 
 How then can man be free ? How, if the truth 
 Be not in man, his native heritance, 
 How then can he, with all his vaunted powers, 
 Perceive the truth ? For we can never see
 
 76 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 But what we are, and all the splendoured sense 
 Of outer facts is but the mirrored sight 
 Of facts within. 
 
 Around this inner core 
 Of truth and power in man lies all his claim 
 To freedom of the will, if 'tis not there, 
 Then we should haste to cast as best we may 
 This mockery of life aside, nor care 
 To spend a moment's thought on right and wrong. 
 Then if the truth and power be both in man, 
 What other words are these than if we say 
 That God doth dwell in man, not separate 
 And twain, but one, the very Self of him ? 
 This is the Great Idea which seeks to print 
 Its beauteous will upon the world of sense, 
 And waits to plant, in patience absolute 
 (Since time and eons of time are nought to it), 
 Its virtues manifold and attributes 
 Divine, without or let or hindrances 
 Upon the mind, and thro' the mind, upon 
 The form and features of evolving man. 
 Why help to stay this leaning Pisa tower 
 Of leaners leaning ever, where each man 
 Refers to man, and he again to man, 
 While all refuse to net upon the truth 
 Of God in man, altho' indeed 'tis claimed 
 By churches here that they this truth do teach. 
 They teach indeed, tho' 'tis not Christ the fact 
 But unto Christ the person do they reach. 
 The base enlaid of old still firm doth stand, 
 Still scintillates with gems of living fact ; 
 But built upon the Rock of Truth, false men 
 This house, which might have stood throughout all time,
 
 A Voice from the Trees 77 
 
 Have built a-lean to suit their slothful mind. 
 
 Oh, trust thyself to win alone to power ; 
 
 For thou art anchored in the infinite, 
 
 And hast command, thro' Will, of all its store ; 
 
 But love, but will aright, and there's no flower 
 
 Of virtue grown but thou may'st pluck and wear, 
 
 No thorn or briar of thought or habit base 
 
 But thou may'st snatch it from thy bosom forth, 
 
 Tho' it by time and use be rooted there. 
 
 Cease for the past to weep, resolve anew ; 
 
 The tender seed thou hast so often set 
 
 With many a prayer into the furrowed scar 
 
 Remorse has cleft, only to blight and fade, 
 
 Choked of the weed and bramble growing there, 
 
 Or parched in arid waste, or worse than all, 
 
 Burnt to an ash with passion's fiery glare, 
 
 Shall one day shoot and push its roots amain 
 
 Forth into every cranny of thy heart, 
 
 Shall blossom there with flower of heavenly hue. 
 
 Oh, yield not to despair, resolve anew, 
 
 And instant from thy fainting soul are swept 
 
 The stains of wrong, whate'er the body's blight. 
 
 Yet know that through thy willed or thoughtless act 
 
 An immanent cause doth build ; there's no event 
 
 Uncaused, no act without its sure result ; 
 
 Look thou to it ; cast from thy mind all thoughts 
 
 Which be not such as thou wouldst speak aloud 
 
 To dearest friend, and that is God Himself. 
 
 And what is this thou dost forgiveness call ? 
 What ! Think'st thou that the past can be out-writ ? 
 The smallest act or thought unfruitful fall ? 
 Not so, not so, by no means can the past
 
 78 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Be wholly nulled, thou canst but modify 
 
 By act and thought anew for right and good, 
 
 For sake of right, effect of past misdeed. 
 
 The inner fact which men forgiveness call 
 
 Of thine own will is born the instant thou 
 
 Dost will for right anew ; by this one act, 
 
 If sure it be, thou art at-one with God. 
 
 That which in substance of the mind is built 
 
 Into the fabric of thy life by deed 
 
 Is fixed and set ; waste not thy time in tears, 
 
 Thy plumb-line steadfast cast, setting thine aim 
 
 Straight for the zenith, there thy journey lies. 
 
 Be sure of this, thine own amended will 
 
 Alone avails to set at-one with God 
 
 Thy sundered life, thy soul with Maya blind ; 
 
 Look not from self away, none but thyself 
 
 Can save thyself, this is the God within. 
 
 And this for comfort take, lest thou shouldst grieve 
 
 Too sorely for the ills and thousand crimes 
 
 And vagaries of men, or think that right 
 
 Lies vanquished by the triumph of the wrong 
 
 Wrong triumphs not, nor are the ills of life, 
 
 Its tragedies and tears, its sins and griefs 
 
 Of final fact ; they are indeed, but yet 
 
 Are means to lofty end ; and being facts 
 
 That pass, have no reality or life. 
 
 Stir not thy mind to hot ferment, nor lose 
 
 The level balance of a settled calm, 
 
 Because the wrong exists and vaunts itself. 
 
 Be not dismayed, leave to the craven, blind 
 
 With ignorance, belief that things go wrong ; 
 
 I say they cannot, howsoe'er they may 
 
 Appear to here. The scheme all perfect is,
 
 A Voice from the Trees 79 
 
 A Mind presides, there is no rift nor flaw, 
 
 Where every act or possibility 
 
 Of failure's fact is all provided for. 
 
 And say'st thou then, that granting this as true 
 
 We are but puppets, and our life as such 
 
 With all its cruelties is purposeless ? 
 
 Far, far from fact is this, for " part of fate 
 
 Is man's free will " ; 'tis counted in the scheme ; 
 
 And if my words would seem to bid thee rest 
 
 Always content with life, with all its wrongs, 
 
 I mean not this, far from it ; man's free will 
 
 A power is of itself, a cause ; and thus 
 
 He helps to make the world just what it is ; 
 
 And should he stand aside and cease to act, 
 
 Saying that all is well, and there's no need 
 
 For his small part ; his very idleness 
 
 A factor then becomes ; he cannot 'scape 
 
 His share for good or ill, in the vast work 
 
 Which God through man and nature doth promote. 
 
 Our wills are free, but being only parts 
 
 Of one great whole, are blent and modified 
 
 Each with each other, and excess with lack, 
 
 In an Inscrutable, Unerring Way, 
 
 Which ever through vast solitudes of time, 
 
 Unhindered by the element that men 
 
 In their near-sightedness have evil called, 
 
 Right forward presses to a mighty End, 
 
 So wondrous, beautiful and good, that e'en 
 
 The purest or the wisest of our kind 
 
 Have never dreamed or dared to think upon. 
 
 For all that happens here is overruled, 
 
 No matter how we plan or think to weave 
 
 Some set design that we have preconceived;
 
 8o A Voice from the Trees 
 
 r 
 
 A pattern's formed indeed, but 'tis not ours ; 
 
 A defter hand than ours the shuttle wields ; 
 
 Some local colouring we give 'tis true ; 
 
 We may co-operate, we may delay. 
 
 God is ; Life is, and Heaven ; through thy free will 
 
 Thou mayest enter in and really Be. 
 
 So waste not on the past thine innate force 
 
 In vain regrets ; self-censure, magnified 
 
 By constant self-reflection, easy breeds 
 
 Distrust in self ; believe that thou art strong 
 
 And strong thou art. 
 
 And what indeed at last 
 Are error's ways but mist before the Sun ; 
 A little earth-born vapour o'er our eyes 
 That clouds from sight the source of all our life, 
 That makes us see as some dark bodiment 
 Of penal laws, by fog all magnified, 
 The light of truth and love ; for God // Love. 
 For since 'tis known all facts from cause do spring, 
 And thou art conscious of a universe 
 In perfect balance and by perfect laws 
 Maintained and ruled, if thou canst look on life, 
 Canst cast away for once that misty veil 
 Familiarity, that dims all sight, 
 Canst realise the miracle it is ; 
 
 Know thus that through all substance runs a thread, 
 An essence, inconceivable to thought 
 Unless as Love. If for one moment's time 
 This Love could cease to rule, the universe 
 Would straight asunder fall, and chaos reign. 
 For Love's that subtle principle that wields 
 The spheres in ceaseless rhythm through the sky, 
 And keeps the solid earth from bursting forth
 
 A Voice from the Trees 81 
 
 Into the void ; that tilts the opening bud 
 
 Towards the sun to catch the kiss of life, 
 
 And smile its rapture forth in peerless flower. 
 
 The same this power with that which bids us seek 
 
 Ourselves in other hearts at one with us ; 
 
 Draws man to woman, mother to her babe. 
 
 There are not diverse powers, all power is one, 
 
 In diverse planes and manners infinite 
 
 Portrayed and manifested, Love Divine. 
 
 Hadst thou but eyes to see, e'en now thou couldst 
 
 In this dull commonplace reality 
 
 Of daily toil, beneath the outer veil 
 
 Of first appearance, find a perfect Now. 
 
 Thou may'st see through the plan, as favoured one 
 
 Is let into the secret of a play ; 
 
 May'st ope the doors and pass behind the scenes ; 
 
 When, shouldst thou tremble at the perilled case 
 
 Of thy immortal soul, here, all is changed 
 
 And thy too frequent fears are seen to be 
 
 But painted semblances upon a screen 
 
 Of make-believe, but parts within the play 
 
 Borne by the actor Time, who tramps the boards 
 
 And gravely doth gesticulate awhile, 
 
 With sorry mask and false accoutrements, 
 
 Until the play is o'er. 
 
 E'en now we may 
 
 In imperfection's husk see perfect seed 
 For future perfect blossoming ; and this 
 Is not alone for some eternity 
 Of life beyond the grave, but shall be born 
 Of Time and cradled on the lap of earth 
 Through mind of man. If anything is sure 
 Then this is sure ; for earthly seed may fail
 
 82 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 And fruitless fall, but Word of God dies never ; 
 What He has oped His lips to say He will 
 Most surely finish, and to base so vast 
 Give fitting fane, with spire as high as Love, 
 As deep and broad as truth. 
 
 And this it is 
 
 That frees the wondrous scheme from every taint 
 Or charge of wantonness, tho' other pleas 
 There are of equal point ; for tho' I dwell 
 So oft in peace and even now do speak 
 From o'er-full heart of heavenly happiness, 
 I yet do know, the while I liken life 
 To some poor play or show, this is not all 
 The fact, nor half of it. We are not pressed 
 Into this vast arena of the world 
 For ends so paltry or for test alone. 
 Ah no ! I see the bended back, the hands 
 By labour worn, the body sickened oft 
 With want or pain, I see man's heart as well, 
 Its aching need, its sense of higher aim 
 Which here we cannot win, the perfect love 
 We vision as our due and duty too. 
 All this I see and know, yet know as well 
 These pains and sweated toils are but the signs 
 Of travailing for birth, from whence shall come 
 The perfect child the ages shall bring forth. 
 Millennium, Utopia, the states 
 Of Plato, More, or Fichte, all are one 
 With other heavens, to be e'en here and now 
 Anticipated by each single soul 
 Through virtuous will, and as a future fact 
 On earth, in Time, tho' we shall see it not ; 
 Unless 'tis true, as eastern sages say,
 
 A Voice from the Trees 83 
 
 That souls are born again to forms of clay 
 Till they do body forth the perfect will, 
 Express through form the pure Idea Divine. 
 
 Reck not of evils, for they are but goads 
 
 To prick us on to fresh endeavouring. 
 
 Talk not of hell, this lying nightmare lay 
 
 In trusting wakefulness. There is no fact 
 
 Or circumstance throughout thy life, which thou, 
 
 In thy last reckoning, shall count as loss. 
 
 All, all shall bend and twist beneath a Will 
 
 Of swerveless purpose to a glorious end 
 
 Of good that none escape and all shall win. 
 
 Talk never more of sin or hell or death ; 
 
 If thou wilt only be, thou canst not die, 
 
 For naught that really is can ever end ; 
 
 That only dies that is already dead ; 
 
 Thus if thou art, thou art for ever bound 
 
 To be; but find thy soul thy surety 
 
 For life, and thou wilt never doubt again. 
 
 The trees that grow the strongest and most fair 
 
 Do stand alone, while those within the grove 
 
 Are weaklings all ; the plant that clings and preys 
 
 We call a parasite. Be not as these ! 
 
 But rather imitate the noble pine, 
 
 Which straight up to the zenith casts her thought, 
 
 To draw from thence her power to grow upright. 
 
 'Twere well at times if we could close and lock 
 
 The fivefold doors, wherethro' our wandering thought 
 
 Is lured to thriftless prodigality. 
 
 So might we learn again to seek for power 
 
 Within ourselves, so might our trespass cease
 
 84 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 On barren planes of past dead lettering, 
 
 So might we 'scape from Maya and illusion. 
 
 Oh, tear from time and space, save here and now, 
 
 The laws and modes of truth and man's salvation ! 
 
 Repay thy loans, erase thy copied script 
 
 From out thy mind ; reform and recreate 
 
 Thy world anew and weld its fluid form 
 
 To fashion of thy will, and inner view 
 
 Of what is fair and good ; confine thy aim 
 
 Not only to the beautiful and good, 
 
 But also have for end and purpose use! 
 
 Come out from dead conformity ; arise ! 
 
 And of thine own free force, create ! create ! 
 
 For now 'tis day and we are adult grown, 
 
 High time it is we doffed our infant thought 
 
 And donned the shimmering robes with which the truth 
 
 Doth drape our quickened souls. 
 
 'Tis to thy shame 
 
 That thou dost grudge the time and sweat of mind 
 To find the light which ever in thee shines, 
 Which wells and springs from God's high heaven of 
 
 Truth. 
 
 " Thus saith the Lord " spake forth the seers of old, 
 Nor would they point to God without, in space, 
 Who knew He dwelt within and used their lips. 
 And Jesus the Divine doth likewise speak ; 
 " I and My Father, We are one." Yet so 
 There might no error creep into His words 
 " Why dost thou call Me good, there is none good 
 Save God " ; again He saith, " The words I speak 
 I speak not of Myself, but He, My Father 
 Who dwells in Me, 'tis He who doth the works.' 
 The word of God must ever flesh assume
 
 A Voice from the Trees 85 
 
 Ere flesh can hear, nor has there ever come 
 This word of truth from heaven above to man 
 Save through the mind of man. 
 
 This is that Light 
 
 That lights the world, the spirit light of God ; 
 This is that light that blinds the worldly-wise 
 Reveals itself to babes, and those that are 
 Of simple mind ; this is that light that men, 
 Who others thrall in slaveries of form, 
 Essay to hide beneath a bushel, when 
 Its rays should light the world and minds of men. 
 Man fears to trust the light when it doth spread 
 Its liberating beams upon his thought ; 
 He has been taught to shut his mind to thoughts 
 That tally not with " articles of faith," 
 The light of reason, when it touches facts 
 That bear upon his faith, he must distrust. 
 I pray you for your very manhood's sake 
 To change all this and trust your thought to win 
 Its own and unique way to truth, which wears 
 To every single mind, a. form unique ! 
 Fear not to think the highest of thyself 
 For thou shalt ever find a Higher yet ! 
 E'en tho' thy heart should dare in some high flight 
 Of exaltation rare, to call thyself 
 A god, a Higher Power thou still wilt feel 
 To tower above thy ken, beyond all heights 
 That thou, on winged feet, hast ever trod ! 
 
 One word before I go, since I have said 
 So much for that deep wisdom, which each man 
 May gain from intercourse with Nature's wilds, 
 From trees and fields, from sun and air and sky ;
 
 86 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Yet one word more to qualify the whole. 
 Believe not what I say, howe'er I may 
 By happy turn of word or metred line 
 Perchance give force to it ; believe it not, 
 Unless an answering stir doth rise within 
 Thy soul, for that is wiser than all books 
 And words of men ! 
 
 And this besides, as said 
 
 The Man of God, go search the scriptures old. 
 And not that script alone which Hebrew seers 
 (More grandly than all else, 'tis true) have writ ; 
 But all the holy books of every land, 
 The scriptures that arose in hoary time 
 In farthest east, the cradle of our race, 
 The Veds sublime, and others older yet ! 
 Within them all thou'lt find a subtle thread 
 Of semblance, 'midst a mass of symbols strange, 
 That shows how men, in every clime and age, 
 When face to face with life's perennial Riddle, 
 Find rest within the same deep principles. 
 Go read them when thou may'st, and carry them 
 To Nature's heart for test of truthfulness, 
 For She, a wax impression of the truth 
 As God has fashioned it, can never lie. 
 The spirit elements, that clime and race 
 Have welded into mind and human force, 
 Determine all the symbols of the thought 
 That flows from out that race ; and so it is, 
 That 'twixt these scriptures old a difference 
 Exists, which ne'ertheless is one of face 
 And surface only ; and I often think 
 That all our differences are such as lie 
 As shallow and as light, at last, as these ;
 
 A Voice from the Trees 87 
 
 At least 'tis so when from the heart of hearts 
 
 We strive to clothe with words our deep convictions. 
 
 We fight on phantom fields for phantom cause, 
 
 And oft mistake for foe a friendly heart. 
 
 For truth doth light all hearts, and truth is one, 
 
 And all our warring difference, perchance, 
 
 Is never more than difference of terms. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 The men of ancient time in southern land 
 
 Did symbol forth the beauty of the field, 
 
 And of the truths that are in Nature found, 
 
 In the conception of a land of rest 
 
 For souls, beyond the bar of time, and called 
 
 The land Arcadia, where the souls of men 
 
 At will could roam through sunny fields of flowers, 
 
 Where Nature was intensified in wealth, 
 
 And earth's most beauteous paradise of vale 
 
 And wooded hill was seen all glorified. 
 
 Here all the flowers could talk and speech was found 
 
 In bird and beast and fish and insect small, 
 
 Alike in leafy tree and waving corn ; 
 
 And man with all the forms of Nature wild 
 
 Communion held, while friendship's jewelled chain 
 
 Enlinked him to the animal and tree, 
 
 Whose origin he shares, with diverse power. 
 
 Here too all men and women ever dwelt 
 
 In purest amity ; nor evil thought, 
 
 Nor avarice knew, for coin's base, perjured face 
 
 Ne'er entered there, vile discord to conceive. 
 
 Nor yet was lying word e'er uttered, where
 
 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The Truth from all sides spoke from leaf and sod. 
 
 Arcadia, Heaven, is here, in Time and Space ; 
 
 E'en now we may begin this land to find 
 
 Which deep within us lies ; and which when found 
 
 Creates anew to semblance of its own 
 
 Fair beauty, all the world of sense without. 
 
 Out in the woodland wild the truth is found, 
 
 And spirit voices speak to listening ear 
 
 Through every living form. Naught but the truth 
 
 We still may hear, translatable to mind 
 
 In Nature immanent. If thou hast doubts 
 
 To clear, or some hard problem of the soul 
 
 To solve ; or question facts thou hast of book 
 
 Or teacher heard, and doubt if they be true ; 
 
 Ask not another's thought to set thy doubts 
 
 At rest, but come to Nature's solitudes, 
 
 And wrestle there, till thou wring out the truth 
 
 From semblances and cast the dross aside ! 
 
 Ah ! men may call him wise who learning great 
 
 Has gathered from without, by rote from books, 
 
 Whose brain is crammed with facts and figures dry ; 
 
 He only 's truly wise, who from within 
 
 Has gleaned his store, whose mind with wisdom brims, 
 
 Distilled of silence falling pearl by pearl 
 
 Down from the infinite within his soul ; 
 
 Who hath from Nature oft seen mirrored back 
 
 The high divinity within him set, 
 
 And moulds his acts according. Call him wise 
 
 Who knows enough to know he nothing knows 
 
 Save what within his soul the Spirit speaks. 
 
 Ever the truth a liberator is, 
 
 And I, if I may win some faintest word 
 
 From that pure source to draw and utter forth,
 
 A Voice from the Trees 89 
 
 Would cut the thought of men adrift and free 
 
 Of all false props and visions of the truth 
 
 Acquired of other men, would set them free 
 
 And strong in their own self-found, soul-wrought way 
 
 To serve their God ; and from the vast within, 
 
 That ocean boundless, which in every man 
 
 Its own deep tides and motions doth control, 
 
 Their own redemption win and truth to see, 
 
 Which never yet in one set way or form 
 
 Was seen of any twain nor e'er can be. 
 
 The blind of old did ask the Man Divine, 
 
 Who highest word of God the world has heard 
 
 Did teach, " From whence hast thou authority ? " 
 
 And I who here have aimed in my poor way 
 
 At truth, if I be asked to tell the source 
 
 Of that I speak, not to some written word 
 
 In page or book compiled of brother man 
 
 Will point ; but to that wondrous canvas stretched 
 
 Wide o'er the universe, where he who runs 
 
 May read. 
 
 Envapoured in the morning's dew 
 Or hymned in praise of bird or singing breeze, 
 Voiced of the silent stars, in boundless space, 
 Alike in every fact or thought or sense, 
 The Spirit dwells and highest truth is seen. 
 But chief to me have come these thoughts sublime 
 Which wrap the soul in flame of ecstasy, 
 And are themselves their own authority, 
 While silent I have walked beneath the trees, 
 The whispering, sun-kissed, thought-clad, God-built 
 
 trees. 
 
 And when I shall have passed the barrier dark, 
 And am no longer seen of mortal eye,
 
 90 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 If one there be who doth my memory keep, 
 And fain would hear, but for one moment's span, 
 The voice now silent, come beneath the trees, 
 Thou'lt find my spirit there beneath the trees.
 
 To the Trees 91 
 
 To the Trees 
 
 , nay, sweet sharers of my solitude, 
 Ye trees in bowery concourse all astir ! 
 I pray you cease your clamorous appeal, 
 To claim mine ear in some less urgent hour. 
 I come to-day, my mind a teeming womb 
 Of vague yet passionate thoughts, all ripe for birth, 
 Of no near kin to you, whom now I seek, 
 That in your peaceful groves I may with toil 
 Bring to the birth these struggling themes of mine. 
 Yet having come I find no peace but hear 
 On every hand whisperings importunate. 
 A wider theme it was that drove me forth, 
 Hot with impatient powers, to leave my kind 
 And find with you silence and solitude. 
 O, tell me why these boons are me denied. 
 Have ye so soon forgotten that long lay 
 That late I sang, urged on by your appeal ; 
 And do ye press me yet, unsatisfied ? 
 Indeed, then must I yield, confessing so 
 The power of beauty o'er the poet's mind, 
 Nor will I seek (I know 'twere all in vain) 
 To find in fathomless seas of agent cause 
 The germ and kernel of your forceful call. 
 I do but know, and this doth all suffice, 
 That beauty like a robe divinely spun 
 Enwraps you round ; that oft the laughing sun 
 Sports with elusive shades within your leaves, 
 Making their bright forms dance a golden dance
 
 92 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Of purest ecstasy, that leaps and flies 
 And catches up my spirit till it sings, 
 And singing finds an infinite repose. 
 
 Full oft I wonder if in space remote, 
 Among the myriad stars afire by night, 
 Whirled by their might upon its circling race, 
 Perchance there be a world with hill and dale, 
 Field, stream and hedgerow, flowers and trees 
 The half as fair as these ; for must we deem 
 That He who fashioned here such beauteous forms 
 Might also weave as fair or e'en more fair 
 In other worlds. Yet if He so doth weave, 
 Methinks I could not dare to dwell therein ; 
 Scarce could I bear delights surpassing these. 
 O beauteous shapes, O miracles of art, 
 
 blissful, restful paths and dingled glades, 
 If, when I die, my spirit shall remain 
 
 Or roam, at times, the world that gave it form, 
 Truly within such scenes shall be my home ; 
 That from your drooping branches fresh and sweet, 
 And from your beckoning arms inviting rest 
 
 1 may exhale a presence and a peace 
 
 And shower upon all lovers of your shade 
 Sweet intimations of the heavenly joys 
 And kisses of delight.
 
 War 93 
 
 War 
 
 T WANDERED in a pleasant wood 
 
 In happy yet in pensive mood, 
 What time young April's merry cry 
 Brings back the swallow to our sky. 
 A gentle comrade at my side 
 With converse checked the pensive tide, 
 And o'er its stress contrived to fling 
 The tender span of friendship's wing. 
 Around our feet a dancing band 
 Of bluebells spread a sapphire strand, 
 Through which the playful breezes swept 
 And bees from bell to bonnet leapt. 
 Above our heads a merry throng, 
 The oak and alder boughs among, 
 Shed sweetest showers of April song. 
 There was no cloud within the blue ; 
 All things took on a joyful hue j 
 There came no sound from heaven or earth 
 To mar the pageant of rebirth 
 Till War burst in upon our way 
 And with reiterate raucous bray 
 Shattered the sanctity of day. 
 For ever and anon the thud 
 Of booming cannon checked the blood, 
 And clarion notes of hate's disease 
 Awoke wild echoes from the trees, 
 Who thrust away in hot rebound 
 The dread, accurs'd and hateful sound. 
 Not that our England lay that day
 
 94 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 To foreign foe an open prey, 
 
 But merely that in mimic fray, 
 
 Hired echoes of the nation's will, 
 
 Mind-sick with War's hypnotic thrill, 
 
 On bugle brayed th' ironic bar 
 
 " In times of peace prepare for war." 
 
 So in the woods and o'er the plain 
 
 There lurked a hidden scarlet stain, 
 
 Where all had else been heaven that day 
 
 And joy held undisputed sway. 
 
 To Nature's mood and reverent tone 
 
 Through keys of speech we tuned our own ; 
 
 And often pausing in our walk 
 
 To suit the measure of our talk, 
 
 We drifted far from common things 
 
 To speak of those deep questionings 
 
 That rise like ripples in the soul, 
 
 Yet seldom last until they reach 
 
 Their ruby port and onward roll 
 
 To break upon the shore of speech. 
 
 For yoked to our conspiring thought, 
 
 Our youth and fair surroundings brought 
 
 Unprompted themes whose mood inclin'd 
 
 To task the highest powers of mind, 
 
 And bore us in enchanted car 
 
 Away from sorry thoughts of war. 
 
 Yet ever as sweet friendship lent 
 
 Its leaves of silence and content, 
 
 The rifle's crack and clarion's blare 
 
 Cast o'er our minds a random snare 
 
 To catch our thought and tie it down 
 
 To themes as sordid as their own.
 
 The Thought-clad Trees 95 
 
 The Thought-clad Trees 
 
 '"THOUGHT-CLAD ? Ah yes, but now all stript and 
 
 bare 
 
 Naked they stand, moaning, disconsolate. 
 Strewn on the ground the leaves lie everywhere, 
 Sere and inanimate. 
 
 Musing I tread the carpeted decay, 
 The tattered robes of glory now departed, 
 Pondering how I am reft and bare as they 
 And all as empty hearted. 
 
 Each leaf I spurn was once a ripen'd thought, 
 That burgeon'd through the bud to leafy shading ; 
 In warmth and life the miracle was wrought 
 In forms that now are fading. 
 
 While summer sang, I too could sing and see 
 On every hand the sign of Love's announcement ; 
 And from the deeps of Truth's immensity 
 Could image its pronouncement. 
 
 Where are those thoughts that forced my lips to song, 
 Clothing their rapt appeal in rhythmic shrouding ? 
 Pressed in the mire or whirl'd by wind along 
 Beneath the wintry clouding.
 
 96 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The winter of the heart ; what obdurate spell 
 Drives forth to naked wastes the soul still thirsting, 
 E'er scarce the lips have sipped at Truth's pure well, 
 And still arc parched and bursting ? 
 
 How brief the hour in which we rise and soar ! 
 How fleet the vision of pervading gladness ! 
 Oh life, how soon thy flood-tide leaves the shore 
 And bares the sands of sadness !
 
 " Let us make Man " 97 
 
 " Let us make Man in our Image, 
 after our Likeness " 
 
 CPIRIT of Power and Beauty ! Lo, I burn, 
 
 I am consumed by fire unquenchable, 
 I melt, I pass, the substance of my life 
 Becomes diffuse and fluid with a love 
 And reverence unspeakably sublime ! 
 Oh, give me words to utter that I feel, 
 Deliver me, o'erburden'd with my thought, 
 And let me win by utterance to release 
 The bursting tide of worship that I feel 
 Upsurging from within. 
 
 I long to tell 
 
 The glories of that temple thou dost build, 
 That shrine of alabaster all a-thrill 
 With pulse of sapphire rivulets and streams 
 That walks the earth a miracle of life, 
 Stamped with the glory of the Infinite ; 
 That palace of delight, that holiest shrine, 
 So gloriously human, yet divine, 
 That form of forms, that acme of Thine art, 
 That apex of the scheme, that crown of earth, 
 The confluent stream of all that did precede, 
 And that contains the fruit of every seed 
 That ever rose to ripeness on the earth, 
 All weft and woven to a melody 
 Of music all divine the human form.
 
 98 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 What words can aid my stiff and stumbling thought 
 To speak of this Thy marvel of design, 
 The which as oft I meet in child or youth, 
 In budding maidenhood or ripened prime, 
 Begirt with innate majesty and grace, 
 A speaking rhapsody of flowing lines, 
 I long to kneel and 'fore the creature art 
 To worship Thee the Craftsman uncreate.
 
 " The Debt Immense " 99 
 
 "The Debt Immense" 
 
 tJUMANITY ! Oh, let me be thy slave, 
 
 It were no bondage to remit the loan 
 Of whatsoe'er of talent I have shown, 
 For every whit I hold thy toiling gave. 
 My brothers ! We are rushing to the grave, 
 A little while, and you and I shall own 
 Naught but our virtues and the love we've sown ; 
 Since what we give, 'tis that alone we save. 
 I have a talent let me spend its worth 
 In love for you ye toilers of the earth ! 
 Paid beyond measure if my songs but wake 
 A thrill of pleasure in the hearts that ache. 
 I care not whose the house I halt before, 
 Tho' it would glad me most to ope the cottage door. 
 
 II 
 
 If I have leisure to engraft a store 
 Of wisdom's treasures delved from out the past, 
 My ease remains but while thy labours last, 
 And human effort forged all ancient lore. 
 Thou dost thy work ; we give the scrap of ore, 
 And deem that so we make the bargain fast ; 
 We need thy ware, tho' little 'tis thou hast, 
 We pay a price, yet do not clear the score*
 
 ioo A Voice from the Trees 
 
 For who shall set a value on or tell 
 
 All that thou lackest, where thou shouldst excel ? 
 
 Within thy mind who stays to cast a flower, 
 
 To wake thy soul to beauty's priceless dower ? 
 
 How shall we pay thee for these boons denied 
 
 Which we may build at will with tools by thee supplied ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 Inadequate my powers, yet I hope 
 
 To win with love where'er my skill may fail ; 
 
 For tho' my arrowed thought may not impale 
 
 Its purposed mark, ill-feathered with a trope, 
 
 And tho' my bow of verse may fail to cope 
 
 With winds of error that the task assail, 
 
 I yet may urge some abler bard prevail 
 
 To ends of truth, where I but blindly grope. 
 
 There is no need for love to speak at all ; 
 
 It is, itself, a force that can instal 
 
 Its naked purpose on the throne of fact, 
 
 Nor wait dependent on some agent act. 
 
 I do not need assurances I know 
 
 No seed that's sown of love can ever fail to grow. 
 
 rv 
 
 We all are poets eloquent to pour 
 The soul's impassioned music on the air, 
 When, in the cause of right, for love we bear 
 Arms militant, as did the seers of yore ; 
 Arms fashioned not of fire and earthly ore, 
 But welded by a flame for ends more fair, 
 That love and sweet compassion bid us wear, 
 When the soul's promptings stir us to the core.
 
 " The Debt Immense " 101 
 
 For then the spirit, leaping o'er all bound, 
 Reveals its beauty through the power of sound ; 
 Recks not of custom, heeds not time or place, 
 Lives in the eternal for a fleeting space, 
 And drawing thence a flood of symbols new, 
 Restores all forms to likeness of the good and true. 
 
 Oh Source of Light Immortal, let me keep 
 Undimmed the goal to which I do aspire ! 
 I would not be a wastrel of thy fire, 
 Feeding my heart on mummeries of sleep. 
 I cannot toil just coin on coin to heap ; 
 This is to me to let my soul on hire. 
 One end alone can sate my full desire 
 Facts from the field of heavenly truth to reap. 
 Thou know'st my heart I do not seek renown, 
 I seek thy Truth, believing that 'tis shown 
 Thro' Nature and the common facts of life. 
 To think that thou with Reason art at strife 
 Staggers and daunts me, till all blind and dumb, 
 My soul falls fainting to the earth, inert and numb.
 
 IO2 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Two Women 
 I 
 
 YKT'OMAN, superbly human, yet divine ! 
 Robed in the glory of thy loveliness, 
 
 Thy beauty pains me with its chaste excess, 
 Making my senses reel as tho' with wine ; 
 Thy heart I know not, yet thy form doth sign 
 
 A warrant for the truth I would express ; 
 
 A great Idea through human toil doth press, 
 Till all things tally with Its vast design. 
 Thou poem of form ! Thou sculptured melody ! 
 
 Thou earthly joy and heavenly prophecy ! 
 
 The centuries have toiled to build thy grace, 
 And limn their lofty promise in thy face ! 
 
 Thou jewel of culture, gem supremely rare 
 
 In Earth's proud diadem, pre-eminently fair ! 
 
 II 
 
 Poor little drudge, cast in a humbler mould, 
 
 Slattern and graceless, mazed with changeless toil ! 
 Who bade thee be to thoughtless ease a foil, 
 
 Selling thy birthright for a mite of gold ? 
 
 Not that thy labour brands thee, for I hold 
 All work is worship ; but I would uncoil 
 The bands of ignorance, and enrich the soil 
 
 Wherein thy mind grows stunted, nerveless, cold. 
 
 Tho' poets sing for thee and minstrels play, 
 Lo ! thou art heedless of their joyful lay. 
 A thousand facts of beauty round thee lie ; 
 
 Thou seest them not and sadly passest by. 
 A heaven of gladness waits within thy mind, 
 Couldst thou but enter there and leave the world behind.
 
 To Emerson 103 
 
 Class 
 
 DREACHER, you take your text and preach in vain. 
 
 How shall that love of God for which you plead 
 Take root in man whilst pride of place and greed 
 
 Have cleft love's human sanctuary in twain ? 
 
 Much better it were to strive to close again 
 These gaps in life's fair garden, that the seed 
 Of social reverence might grow up to feed 
 
 That higher reverence which you seek to train. 
 
 But ye, the keepers of our social health, 
 Who should be first to bid the virus stay, 
 Yourselves, save for a few, have fallen prey 
 
 Unto that subtle ill that conies by stealth. 
 
 Ye have given terms to Class, love's first decay, 
 And made unholy truce with War and Wealth. 
 
 To Emerson 
 
 HpRUE poet-priest ! 'Twould seem as if the bound 
 
 'Twixt heaven and man in thee were overslept, 
 That in thy soul all meaner passions slept, 
 
 So that heaven's beam came through thee pure and found 
 
 Nothing to stint or mar its perfect round. 
 
 This dowered thy soaring mind with wings that swept 
 Instant to truth, which being embraced was kept 
 
 And clothed by thee in words of deathless sound. 
 
 Rich was the seed that thou on Earth didst sow ; 
 Immortal spirit ! Already earth is free 
 Of many spectres that thou didst outbrave 
 
 And blooms the fairer for it ; so that thou 
 
 May'st well look back from where thou art and see 
 Eternal blossoms springing from thy grave.
 
 IO4 A Voice from the Trees 
 " On Two Shells cast up by the Tide " 
 
 \X7'OM AN, how could'st thou,dower'd with such a face 
 As might have made base men bow down in awe 
 
 And bound them constant unto virtue's law, 
 So give the lie to all thine outward grace ? 
 How could'st thou traffic with thy love and trace 
 
 The paths of shame until the hidden flaw 
 
 Had widen'd to a pit, whose whirlpool-draw 
 Gulfed thee at last in murderous embrace ? 
 And thou, vile victim of thine own excess, 
 
 How could'st thou add thy strength to bait the snare 
 
 Already far too strong, for one so fair, 
 Tho' frail and false to all true loveliness ? 
 
 But thou hast paid the price, and she, O God ! 
 
 Must soon, like thee, lie rotting in the sod. 
 
 Life 
 
 T IFE is for ever life. Saw you last night 
 
 With what surpassing splendour sank the sun ; 
 
 How when the east announced that day was done, 
 Still from the west soft fan-shaped bows of light 
 Shot up whole quiversful of arrows bright ; 
 
 As tho' day's star, now that his rest was won, 
 
 Spurned it away with untired pinion 
 And turned new flushed with power for further flight ? 
 
 Such is our life ; beyond death's fleeting sting, 
 We still pursue our heaven-appointed quest. 
 
 For like the night, death is a shadow thing 
 Cast by excess of life ; its seeming rest 
 
 Shall find us, when it comes, with untired wing 
 
 And hope still uppermost within our breast.
 
 Reverence 1 05 
 
 Reverence 
 
 (~)H them who from the past's hypnotic glare 
 And bonds of custom's bias art set free, 
 
 Whose adult thought, soaring in liberty, 
 Searches for Truth that forms not, oh, take care 
 Lest thy full manhood, lifted now to tear 
 
 The veiling forms from off Truth's purity, 
 
 Waxing o'erbold its inmost soul to see, 
 Snatch reverence last of all, to see Truth bare. 
 For with the grip that takes in pride the boon 
 
 That Love for love alloweth, thou shalt race 
 Down from the vision headlong in a swoon 
 
 Of coldly mirror'd half-truth, doom'd to trace 
 Around its glory like a sickly moon 
 
 A deadly orbit with averted face.
 
 io6 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Jahveh 
 
 I 
 
 STOOD with Moses in the ancient time 
 And with him step by step the mount did climb ; 
 And through his eyes survey'd that mystic sight, 
 The Bush afire with the Primeval Light ; 
 And when I had caught up my swooning mind, 
 Screening my eyes that screenless had been blind, 
 And summon'd whiten'd lip and shrunken tongue 
 To ask whence such a miracle was sprung, 
 A fiery formless vapour leapt around 
 And melted on the senses into sound. 
 
 T AM the wonder that doth here appear ; 
 I am the seen, the seeing and the seer. 
 My all and little in the world I cram, 
 Yet to all asking answer but I AM. 
 To every why within the seeking mind 
 I fling a cause to doubly blind the blind. 
 Who nighest know Me as I am ask not 
 To find an end unto an endless knot. 
 Thine eyes are partial, partial yet of me, 
 Too partial yet to hold infinity. 
 Yet in thy mind I throne Myself in small 
 That what thou hast of Me may image all. 
 Seekest thou more, then hither must thou push 
 And stand with Me within the burning bush. 
 
 The vision passed and as I woke to fling 
 The net of memory o'er the winged thing
 
 Prayer 107 
 
 And through the mesh of introspective wit 
 To draw the sense and weave a form to it, 
 I fell again into a sphere less high 
 And heard a whisper on the wind go by. 
 
 The bush that burns yet passes not away 
 
 Is the bush of Form upbuilt of word or clay, 
 
 The temporal hiding of the Eternal Word, 
 
 That ever speaketh, yet is never heard ; 
 
 Unknown apart from form yet never found 
 
 Or seen of eye or heard of ear in sound ; 
 
 For Truth is sped as soon as it is spoken, 
 
 And written truth of Truth is but the token ; 
 
 And forms are shroudings which by time's keen rust 
 
 Grow old, decay and crumble into dust. 
 
 There is a fountain of Eternal Youth ; 
 
 Love is that fountain and to drink is Truth. 
 
 Prayer 
 
 T CREPT to Him and craved Him abjectly 
 To loose my bonds and snap my slavery. 
 
 I still did wrong. 
 
 I stood upright and through Him boldly sought 
 My birthright's strength to match my deed to thought. 
 Straight from me fell 
 The chains of hell 
 And forthwith I was strong.
 
 io8 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The Awakening 
 
 r~)H Lord, mend Thou my ways j 
 
 Convert me to the right ; 
 Thus cried I through the night : 
 Oh Lord, mend Thou my ways. 
 
 And when the morn was come, 
 Still to high heaven I cried : 
 Oh let grace be supplied, 
 Turn Thou my footsteps home. 
 
 And 'twixt the labours of the day 
 I still continued thus to pray : 
 Oh Source of Virtue, Source of Light, 
 Plant Thou me steadfast in the Right. 
 
 Then suddenly, and while I seared my soul 
 
 With agonised desire, 
 
 Born of remorse's fire, 
 
 Over my prostrate spirit stole 
 
 Authoritative voice that seem'd my own, 
 
 And yet far mightier, vast its tone 
 
 Transform'd to power and resolute control : 
 
 Arise ! "Why grovel at My feet, my child ? 
 
 Thou son by heavenly right, 
 Assume thy strength as such. I am reviled 
 By prayer that sinks to beggary ; as a blight 
 
 It lights upon My love, 
 
 Who all below above 
 Have made and fill'd with innate force and might.
 
 The Awakening 109 
 
 What would'st them ? That I forced thy wayward will ? 
 CompelPd thee to the good and from the ill ? 
 Thou art no toy, of alien substance built, 
 To please with homage or enrage by guilt. 
 
 Thou art My son, begirt with Mine own power. 
 Why dost thou fear to claim thy heavenly dower ? 
 Thine own free act, self-will'd, of inborn strength 
 Alone can give thee peace and lead, at length, 
 To that for which I fashioned thee, My son ; 
 Thyself must crown the work by Me begun.
 
 no A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Good Friday 
 
 HpELL me, thou Spirit of the woodland dear, 
 
 Do I do wrong to linger here ? 
 What thinkest thou, should I go borrow 
 The threadbare crape of an ancient sorrow, 
 To-day, when from out the peerless blue, 
 The sun laughs loud till the earth laughs too, 
 And all the air is a paean of gladness ? 
 Tell me, why herd my fellows in sadness, 
 Conjuring up the cankering guest 
 Of gloom unasking into their breast ? 
 Will it please the Power who has given to-day 
 The mantle of joy, if I throw it away ? 
 If I turn from the cup His love has inspired 
 To drink the water my feet have mired, 
 Refusing the joy that even the birds 
 Are doing their best to put into words ? 
 Must I leave the song of gladness behind 
 Whose note the wind is trying to find, 
 And flee from the light that sets the daisies 
 All wide agape with rapturous praises, 
 And lifts the lark from the earth away 
 On the breast of the cloud to the lip of the day 
 To steal the sun's first kiss, and capture 
 The swooning notes of the heavenly rapture 
 And madly drench the quivering air 
 From heights that love has led him to dare ? 
 Tell me, ye trees, so old and wise, 
 Do ye, when the sap begins to rise,
 
 Good Friday in 
 
 Cling to the thought of your late decay, 
 Spurning the joyful present away ; 
 Or do ye leap to the pulsing tide, 
 Flinging receptive senses wide, 
 Gazing wide-eyed to the zenith's dome 
 Whence the awakening forces come ? 
 
 Tell me, O Spirit of Nature, tell me 
 
 Who thus with joy dost trance and spell me, 
 
 Do I, in drinking the morning glory, 
 
 Shame thereby the sacred story ? 
 
 Wouldst Thou have me to shun and fly 
 
 Thy universal charity ? 
 
 Lift me, Spirit of the woodland dear, 
 
 Lift me heavenward, fill me, here, 
 
 Beneath the open dome of blue, 
 
 Fill me, drench me through and through 
 
 With the pure sacramental wine 
 
 Of Beauty recognised as Thine 
 
 And worship'd humbly as divine, 
 
 Divine and wholly upbuilt of Thee, 
 
 Thou core of all Divinity.
 
 ii2 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Nature 
 
 Nature, thou bright reflex of the soul ! 
 When pierced the veil of semblance o'er thy face, 
 
 And focussed all thy beams through time and space, 
 How swiftly dost thou ray me back the Whole ! 
 How surely thy deep verities console 
 
 My way-worn spirit and my cares erase ! 
 
 How gently all my sorrows dost thou chase, 
 And of a loving mother take the role ! 
 Oft will I win me to thy tender breast 
 
 To seek the solace of thy soft embrace ; 
 And thou shall be my monitor and test, 
 
 When newer light the older would displace. 
 Of all life's joys, for me it shall be best 
 
 To hearken to thy song and be at rest. 
 
 II 
 
 Who listens oft to Nature's simple tune 
 And finds within an outlet for his need 
 To worship at Truth's throne, apart from creed, 
 
 Who learns aright to read the mystic rune, 
 
 O'er myriad facets of the Cosmos hewn, 
 
 And sees that good lurks e'en within the weed, 
 Since all life's facts one final purpose feed, 
 
 Has reaped from life its long pre-destined boon.
 
 Nature 113 
 
 If constant to the message he has found 
 
 And to that deeper Word unborn of sound, 
 
 If conscious of the real and stable bond 
 That binds this partial life to that beyond, 
 
 His soul has reached the summit of the plan 
 
 That orbed the worlds from thought, and fashioned 
 Man. 
 
 H
 
 H4 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The Request 
 
 muse who art my dower, 
 
 Why dost thou fill my every tuneful hour 
 
 With ethic preaching ? 
 
 Why must I always wear 
 The priestly robe, and voice the hymnal air, 
 
 Who oft would sing 
 
 Light as a lark on wing 
 The joys that spring from earth to heaven up-reaching. 
 
 I would lie wildly prone 
 On the earth's green bosom that is yet heaven's throne, 
 
 An earth-child's crooning, 
 
 Flinging my joys to the skies, 
 Till that deep blue bring blindness to my eyes ; 
 
 I'd voice the flowers 
 
 And fill the sunny hours 
 Full to the brim with joy in rapture swooning. 
 
 Yet when my spirit sings, 
 It seems one comes and o'er my shoulder flings 
 
 The seer's mantle ; 
 
 And when I would indite 
 Some choric song for treble voices light, 
 
 I hear truth's thunder roll 
 
 And fill up all my scroll 
 With sombre chords deep plunged in bassic knell.
 
 The Request 115 
 
 Spirit ! whose interplay 
 Gives soul and substance to my every lay, 
 
 Think not I ask 
 Release from that which is both boon and task 
 
 Yet let me sometimes float 
 
 On streams less deep, and throat 
 
 The joy this earth-world renders 
 
 And all that it engenders 
 
 Of melody and beauty ; 
 
 Lest they who con my pages 
 
 Deem me one of those bloodless sages 
 
 All run to seed and rooty, 
 
 Who tho' they reap the kisses 
 Of spiritual joys and other-worldly blisses 
 
 Yet fling their souls afar 
 
 Seeking some happier star 
 And know not what the happiness of this is.
 
 1 1 6 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Complaint 
 
 TS there then in the simple earthly joys, 
 
 The social human mood, 
 
 Aught that destroys 
 Or closes at its source 
 
 The stream-like force 
 That to the poet is both wine and food ? 
 
 That through the madding drone of days and weeks, 
 
 No rapture thralls my mind 
 
 Or flames my cheeks ; 
 No heaven-dews caught in sips 
 
 Melt on my lips, 
 Leaving sweet residue of song behind. 
 
 That to the surcharged bill old Time doth bring, 
 
 And with a scornful heat 
 
 Before me fling, 
 I can from the mind's purse 
 
 No tithe disburse 
 To reap the solace of the heart's receipt. 
 
 Doth He who gives to individual hearts 
 
 Each its allotted pleasure, 
 
 When He imparts 
 The joy that seemly springs 
 
 From earth-born things, 
 Withdraw and hide the wholly spiritual treasure ?
 
 Complaint 117 
 
 Is't thus with joys, or is it that the poet, 
 
 Most prone to the heart's feeling, 
 
 Must yet forego it, 
 Or if he would aspire 
 
 To visions higher, 
 Must strip his soul and sip its waters kneeling ? 
 
 Is prophecy so cold, so spiritually dear, 
 
 That lone, companionless, 
 
 Must be the seer ; 
 Conies but its passionate mood 
 
 In solitude ; 
 Is Truth ne'er heard save in the wilderness ?
 
 1 1 8 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 To Anyone 
 
 TF thou wouldst be my friend and share my thought, 
 
 Come dream with me love's yet despised dreams. 
 Leave thou that maelstrom pit where all are mad, 
 Deeming that gain that unto love is naught. 
 Come forth with me into that other world 
 Where breathe the souls who crave no other worth 
 Than the pure gem of Truth that Beauty hides 
 Within the rock of Strength. 
 
 If thou wouldst be my friend, then fight my foes 
 
 Pale mumbling Cant and formalistic Code. 
 
 All mummery that aims thro' empty shows 
 
 To give a seeming life to hollow death, 
 
 And call respect on that which is accursed 
 
 The base assumption of the meed that flows 
 
 But rightly unto God. 
 
 All caste and class, those wholly rotten stays 
 
 Whereby men strive to keep the worthy down 
 
 And prop the social edifice awry, 
 
 Rearing on soil of privilege and ease 
 
 The bitter-fruited weed of arrogance, 
 
 A social parasite. 
 
 If thou wouldst be my friend, then love my loves, 
 Who am in love with life where'er its spring 
 Wells forth untainted from its primal core, 
 The morn's beatitude, whether it be
 
 To Anyone 119 
 
 The actual timely boon or symbolled in 
 
 The child, pure foam-flake from the fount of love 
 
 As yet unsullied at the fountain's rim ; 
 
 And all young truth that forth from embered faith 
 
 Wings heavenward phoenix-born. 
 
 If thou wouldst be my friend, this hardest boon 
 I crave, the jewei of unuttered love. 
 Give me not words, mere lumber of the mind, 
 Nor sympathy, nor praise, the salve of babes. 
 But to the spirit that I would express, 
 Tho' failing often, yield thine utmost faith. 
 Nay, love me not save for the goal within 
 To which I struggle.
 
 I2O A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Water, Water, Everywhere 
 
 Water, water, everywhere, 
 Nor any drop to drink. 
 
 " The Ancient Mariner." 
 
 C OME shells for ever on the seashore clink, 
 
 Howe'er they try 
 Within the ocean's bosom deep to sink 
 
 And peaceful lie. 
 
 Some stones are hewn to fit the round well's brink 
 
 For ever dry ; 
 Some eyes but giv'n to press against a chink 
 
 Of heaven and pry. 
 
 God builds some minds to dwell alone, I think, 
 
 Yet wonder why ; 
 And why to such as these a heart to link, 
 
 Of thirst to die.
 
 " But that so oft she comes " 121 
 
 B 
 
 " But that so oft she comes " 
 
 UT that so oft she comes to me in dreams 
 And stirs me as of yore with love's sweet pain 
 
 Scarce could I ever trust a heart again 
 So far estranged from constancy as seems 
 This heart of mine, that given to countless themes 
 
 A beauteous world supplies, doth scarce retain 
 
 In well-filled hours a vestige of the blain 
 That once for love it bore. But night redeems 
 All constancy's cold censures with the bliss 
 
 The inconstant cannot know, and which to reap, 
 Albeit on night's dim fields, assures me this 
 
 That, though time heals, and new-found joys are deep, 
 The hurt, a busy brain may well dismiss, 
 
 Lies deeper, and reveals itself in sleep.
 
 122 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 To a Friend 
 
 ' I 'HE Sun obeisance now has made 
 
 As day's departing guest, 
 His afterglow begins to fade 
 And dwindle in the west. 
 Upon the light's fast ebbing tides 
 The star of eve serenely rides 
 At anchorage at rest. 
 
 Youth's ardent hopes have passed away 
 
 Nor would I them renew. 
 
 The heat of noon has cooled its ray 
 
 To calmer joys and true. 
 
 Upon this calm there shines serene 
 
 An evening star of silver sheen 
 
 'Tis you, sweet friend, 'tis you.
 
 The Visit 123 
 
 The Visit 
 
 Vf OU come again, and with your coming, dear, 
 
 New life is in me burning. 
 Beneath the spell that falls when you are near 
 The summer seems returning. 
 
 Can it be winter when the quickening beams 
 From orbs so softly dawning 
 Melt all the cloudings of my life, as dreams 
 Fade at the flush of morning ? 
 
 Can it be winter where the heavenly flower 
 Of friendship's rose is blowing, 
 And fed by many a converse-laden hour 
 Perennially is growing ? 
 
 Sweet echoes of the Spring around me play, 
 Its joys I do remember ; 
 I hear again the melody of May, 
 Altho' 'tis chill December.
 
 124 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 Friendship 
 
 A S turning from some orb of blinding might 
 ** That balks our vision with its beams intense, 
 
 A darkened image lingers on the sense, 
 And prints its shape where'er our eyes alight ; 
 So haunts me still in oft-recurring sight 
 
 Your memory, Friend ! my life's one recompense, 
 
 To sweetly cheat me with its glad pretence, 
 And deck with flowers of day my hours of night. 
 The echo of your voice within me rings, 
 
 With cadence as of distant pealing bells. 
 The semblance of your step beside me sings, 
 
 As tho' again we traced these woodland dells. 
 The music of your converse oft recurs, 
 And ever into song my spirit stirs.
 
 cc 
 
 Grieve not, dear Friend" 125 
 
 " Grieve not, dear Friend " 
 
 f^ RIEVE not, dear Friend, 
 
 If I should pass whilst thou dost tarry, 
 Grieve not, nor lend 
 Thy gentle mind to thoughts that harry ! 
 If thy heart fret 
 
 That much I rendered all unbidden, 
 Beneath the cloak of friendship hidden 
 Forget ! dear heart, forget ! 
 
 Wrap round my past 
 
 No mantle of thy pity's weaving. 
 
 My songs were cast 
 
 From out no stress with passion heaving. 
 
 I was not foiled. 
 
 True love finds all its joy in spending ; 
 
 A love returned is but a lending. 
 
 I spun, but never toiled.
 
 126 A Voice from the Trees 
 
 The Stars 
 
 11J O W beautiful are the stars ! How calmly they 
 
 Watch over man and guide his destinies ! 
 How like the hope for which man's nature sighs, 
 
 So far yet steadfast is their tender ray. 
 
 Fit nursery for our being's youthful day ! 
 
 There's not a spot throughout the spanless skies 
 But ward is kept there by Love's sleepless eyes 
 
 And life wings upward on its spiral way. 
 
 Much do I love this globe that did me fling 
 Into life's lap, yet oft, methinks that I 
 Could yield without regret my latest sigh, 
 
 So I be free, on thought's unmeasured wing, 
 To thread those jewelled gardens of the sky, 
 
 And hear the song the eternal star-fires sing. 
 
 FINIS
 
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