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SONGS, BALLADS, 
 
 LONDON 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
DEAR MABEL, A long while ago, when we 
 had the courage of youth and our opinions, you 
 once confided to me thai you had no quarrel against 
 poetry, for a change, "when it was short and had a 
 tale in if.' 9 In this little took I think all the 
 pieces are short , or else they are a story ; and so, 
 dear Novelist (in memory of the days when you 
 meant to be nearly everything else under the sun, 
 but never a novelist}, take this book, which may 
 remind you that even then you liked a tale. 
 
 Ah, but your tales are of a different order. You 
 are a Realist ; and how shall I recommend to you 
 these superficial and fantastic ballads, which only 
 pretend to be adventures, except when they are 
 allegories f and that alternative, I fear, will 
 scarcely recommend them. Shall I tell you that 
 they are founded upon fact ? That Kungvon der 
 Rosen, Mary Harcourt, Saint Elizabeth and 
 Jocufi of Arc really lived and underwent, more 
 or less, these adventures ? Shall I tell you that 
 the Legends of Servia still preserve a sort of 
 
6 DEDICATION. 
 
 warrant for the story of St. Maur ? That I, too, 
 have my documents and my authorities ; a line of 
 Shahied the Bactrian in the Stars ; a verse of the 
 quaint "Ballade du Christ" in the last of my 
 ballads ; and that a well-known passage of M. 
 Kenans suggested the Antiphon which will seem 
 so faint and weak to you ? But in the act of making 
 it, I forego this apology, perceiving that upon all 
 this solid foundation I have only raised a bubble of 
 subjective verse while you, happy creature^ out of 
 an airy image conjure a reality that mocks this 
 phantasmal world in which we move. 
 
 So I will give you the book merely because you 
 liked the " Tower of St. Maur" you, first critic, 
 earliest audience, of so many of my verses and 
 because the little Garden Play may recall to you 
 one happy afternoon, more than a year ago, when 
 Vernon and you and I walked up and down the 
 sunny Epsom garden and laid a deep plan for the 
 acting of that trifle. The only real things, you 
 know, are the things that never happen ; and so it 
 will always seem to me that the Play belongs to 
 you and Vernon and to the Epsom garden* 
 
 TORQUAY, Feb. 27, 1888. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SONGS .OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 p 
 
 'AGE 
 
 ETRUSCAN TOMBS . 
 
 13 
 
 ADAM AND EVE 
 
 17 
 
 THE DEPARTURE . 
 
 18 
 
 ARNOLD VON WINKELRIED 
 
 19 
 20 
 
 SPANISH STARS . 
 
 21 
 
 TUBEROSES . 
 
 22 
 
 LOVE IN THE WORLD 
 
 25 
 
 A REFLECTION . 
 
 26 
 
 HONOUR 
 
 27 
 
 GOD IN A HEART .... 
 
 28 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE (continued). 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HOPE . , . . 30 
 
 WRITING HISTORY ... $1 
 
 THE ALEMBIC .... 32 
 
 IN AFFLICTION ... 33 
 
 MELANCHOLIA . . 34 
 
 THE WALL . 35 
 
 THE IDEA 36 
 
 THE STARS .... 37 
 
 DARWINISM 40 
 
 ANTIPHON TO THE HOLY SPIRIT 4! 
 
 SPRING SONGS. 
 
 LA BELLE AU BOIS DORMANT . 47 
 
 SPRING 50 
 
 GOING SOUTH , . . 52 
 
 PROMISE 53 
 
 A JINGLE 54 
 
 LA CALIFORNIE ... 55 
 
 AN ORCHARD AT AVIGNON . . 56 
 
CONTENTS. 9 
 
 ROMANTIC BALLADS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SIR HUGH AND THE SWANS . 6l 
 
 THE TOWER OF ST. MAUR . 65 
 
 THE DUKE OF GUELDRES' WEDDING 76 
 
 RUDEL AND THE LADY OF TRIPOLI 85 
 
 A BALLAD OF ORLEANS . . 99 
 
 THE DEAD MOTHER . . . IO2 
 
 THE KING OF HUNGARY'S DAUGHTER IO7 
 
 O UR LAD Y OF THE BROKEN HEAR T. 
 
 A GARDEN PLAY . . . 11$ 
 
$ONQ OF THE INNER J-(IFE. 
 
 Toda la vida es szieno 
 Y los sueftos stteno son. 
 
 ovap ij[jLep6<j)avTov dXmVtt. 
 
 ESCHYLUS. 
 
ETRUSCAN TOMBS. 
 
 I. 
 
 To think the face we love shall ever die, 
 And be the indifferent earth, and know us 
 not! 
 
 To think that one of us shall live to cry 
 On one long buried in a distant spot ! 
 
 O wise Etruscans, faded in the night [trace, 
 Yourselves, with scarce a rose-leaf on your 
 
 You kept the ashes of the dead in sight, 
 And shaped the vase to seem the vanished 
 face. 
 
 But, O my Love, my life is such an urn 
 
 That tender memories mould with constant 
 touch, 
 
 Until the dust and earth of it they turn 
 To your dear image that I love so much : 
 
 A sacred urn, filled with the sacred past, 
 That shall recall you while the clay shall last. 
 
14 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 II. 
 
 These cinerary urns with human head 
 And human arms that dangle at their sides, 
 
 The earliest potters made them or their dead, 
 To keep the mother's ashes or the bride's. 
 
 O rude attempt of some long-spent despair 
 With symbol and with emblem discontent 
 
 To keep the dead alive and as they were, 
 The actual features and the glance that 
 went ! 
 
 The anguish of your art was not in vain, 
 For lo, upon these alien shelves removed 
 
 The sad immortal images remain, 
 
 And show that once they lived and once 
 you loved. 
 
 But oh, when I am dead may none for me 
 Invoke so drear an immortality ! 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 15 
 
 III. 
 
 Beneath the branches of the olive yard 
 Are roots where cyclamen and violet grow ; 
 
 Beneath the roots the earth is deep and hard, 
 And there a king was buried long ago. 
 
 The peasants digging deeply in the mould 
 Cast up the autumn soil about the place, 
 
 And saw a gleam of unexpected gold, 
 And underneath the earth a living face. 
 
 With sleeping lids and rosy lips he lay 
 
 Among the wreaths and gems that mark the 
 
 king 
 
 One moment ; then a little dust and clay 
 Fell shrivelled over wreath and urn and 
 ring. 
 
 A carven slab recalls his name and deeds, 
 Writ in a language no man living reads. 
 
16 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Here lies the tablet graven in the past, 
 
 Clear-charactered and firm and fresh of line. 
 
 See, not a word is gone ; and yet how fast **, 
 The secret no man living may divine ! 
 
 What did he choose for witness in the grave ? 
 
 A record of his glory on the earth ? 
 The wail of friends? The Paeans of the 
 brave ? 
 
 The sacred promise of the second birth ? 
 
 The tombs of ancient Greeks in Sicily 
 Are sown with slender discs of graven 
 
 gold 
 Filled with the praise of Death: "Thrice 
 
 happy he 
 
 Wrapt in the milk-soft sleep of dreams 
 untold ! " 
 
 They sleep their patient sleep in altered 
 
 lands, 
 The golden promise in then: fleshless hands. 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 17 
 
 ADAM AND EVE. 
 
 WHEN Adam fell asleep in Paradise 
 
 He made himself a helpmeet as he dreamed ; 
 
 And, lo ! she stood before his waking eyes, 
 And was the woman that his vision seemed* 
 
 She knelt beside him there in tender awe 
 To find the living fountain of her soul, 
 
 And so in cither's eyes the other saw 
 
 The light they missed in Heaven, and knew 
 the goal. 
 
 Thrice-blessed Adam, husband of thine Eve ! 
 She brought thee for her dowry death and 
 
 shame ; 
 
 She taught thee one may worship and deceive ; 
 But yet thy dream and she were still the 
 
 same; 
 
 Nor ever in the desert turned thine eyes 
 Towards Lilith by the brooks of Paradise. 
 2 
 
1 8 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 THE DEPARTURE. 
 
 THE night wears on, the lawns are grey with 
 dew, 
 
 The Easter of the dawn will soon be here : 
 And I must leave the happy world I knew, 
 
 And front the Heaven I worship and I fear. 
 
 Dawn that in awe and trembling I desire, 
 Bloom in the skies as flaming and as bright 
 
 As Enoch saw the chariot-wheels of fire 
 Divide the darkness of the desert night. 
 
 Ah, when beside that palm tree in the sand 
 The fiery swiftness trembled, did his will 
 
 Grow faint, to leave the long familiar land ? 
 Or did he feel a dizzie terror still 
 
 Lest, like a dream, that chariot should be gone 
 And leave him in the wilderness alone ? 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 19 
 
 ARNOLD VON WINKELRIED. 
 
 THE great things that I love I cannot do, 
 The little things I do I cannot love ! 
 Far from the goal I wander, and above 
 
 The voice is mute of Him I never knew. 
 
 Nothing is sweet, I find, and nothing true, 
 And none of all my dreams is dear enough 
 And only one is worth the dreaming of; 
 
 If I could give my life and die for you ! 
 
 O easy death, surrounded with alarms, 
 
 Blue ranks of serried spears that swerve and 
 
 start 
 Where heroes clench their eyes and catch 
 
 their breath ! 
 To clasp a score of lances in my arms 
 
 And from your front to turn them in my heart 
 And die, and do you service in my death ! 
 
20 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 NIGHT. 
 
 O NIGHT eternal and blue, 
 
 Holy and soft above, 
 You seem to lay on my forehead 
 
 The touch of an infinite love 
 
 The touch of a love that never 
 Will understand me aright 
 
 Why should you touch me and love me, 
 O tender and delicate night ? 
 
 O night look in with your stars 
 On the wintry face of despair, 
 
 And your stars will eddy and shrivel 
 As leaves in a gust of the air. 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 21 
 
 SPANISH STARS. 
 (FOR A PICTURE.) 
 
 THESE stars that gleam so white and pale 
 Through coil on coil of tragic skies 
 Are like a serpent's Argus-eyes, 
 
 And venomous, and full of bale. 
 
 They throb and pulse in all the night, 
 Like Life that pulses in a wound, 
 Until the unhappy earth has swoon'd 
 
 In aching languor out of sight. 
 
 cruel Life ! O gleaming Asp ! 
 That holds the earth in sick control, 
 
 1 know thee, Serpent of the Soul, 
 
 And all thy poison well enough, 
 
 Who cannot love the thing I clasp, 
 
 Nor ever clasp the thing I love. 
 
22 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 TUBEROSES. 
 I. 
 
 THE Tuberose you left me yesterday 
 
 Leans yellowing in the glass we set it in ; 
 
 It could not live when you were gone away, 
 Poor spike of withering sweetness changed 
 and thin. 
 
 And all the fragrance of the dying flower 
 Is grown too faint and poisoned at the source, 
 
 Like passion that survives a guilty hour, 
 To find its sweetness heavy with remorse. 
 
 What shall we do, my dear, with dying roses ? 
 
 Shut them in weighty tomes where none will 
 
 look 
 To wonder when theunfrequent page uncloses 
 
 Who shut the wither'd blossoms in the 
 
 book ? 
 
 [perish, 
 
 What shall we do, my dear, with things that 
 Memory, roses, love we feel and cherish ? 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 23 
 
 II. 
 
 Alive and white, we praised the Tuberose, 
 So sweet it fill'd the garden with its breath 
 
 A spike of waxy bloom that grows and grows 
 Until at length it blooms itself to death. 
 
 Everything dies that lives everything dies ; 
 
 How shall we keep the flower we lov'd so 
 
 long? 
 O press to death the transient thing we prize, 
 
 Crush it, and shut the elixir in a song. 
 
 A song is neither live nor sweet nor white. 
 
 It hath no heavenly blossom tall and pure, 
 No fragrance can it breathe for our delight, 
 
 It grows not, neither lives ; it may endure. 
 
 Sweet Tuberose, adieu ! you fade too fast ! 
 Only a dream, only a thought, can last. 
 
24 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 III. 
 
 Who'd stay to muse if Death could never 
 wither ? [pass ? 
 
 Who dream a dream if Passion did not 
 But, once deceived, poor mortals hasten hither 
 
 To watch the world in Fancy's magic glass. 
 
 Truly your city, O men, hath no abiding ! 
 
 Built on the sand it crumbles, as it must ; 
 And as you build, above your praise and 
 chiding, 
 
 The columns fall to crush you to the dust. 
 
 But fashion'd in the mirage of a dream, 
 
 Having nor life nor sense, a bubble of 
 nought, 
 
 The enchanted City of the Things that seem 
 Keeps till the end of time the eternal Thought. 
 
 Forswear to-day, forswearing joy and sorrow, 
 Forswear to-day, O man, and take to-morrow. 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 25 
 
 LOVE IN THE WORLD. 
 
 THE olives where we walk to-day 
 
 In the olive-groves are white and grey, 
 
 And underneath the shimmering trees 
 
 One almond -bough is faintly pink, 
 And lilac blow the anemones. 
 
 In all the flowers, in all the leaves, 
 The secret of their pallor heaves : 
 A tender hint of vanished bliss. 
 
 A rapture just beyond the brink 
 Of feeling, which we still must miss. 
 
 Perhaps when we are dead, my dear, 
 Our phantoms still shall wander here, 
 And breathe in this Elysian wood 
 
 (As others breathe for us, I think), 
 A beauty dimly understood. 
 
26 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 A REFLECTION. 
 
 THIS song I wrote ah me, how long ago ! 
 
 When up the stair of Heaven and down 
 again 
 
 (For even then I did not long remain), 
 With happy feet I used to come and go. 
 
 This ode I sang beneath a laurel-bough 
 
 Where I had sought for Truth among the 
 
 dead ; 
 This little verse, and still the page is red, 
 
 To soothe some easier pang forgotten now. 
 
 I took the dew of lilies grown apart, 
 
 The scanty wine of Amphoras and, bright 
 And clear, the blood that flows from trivial 
 scars. 
 
 But with the bitter ink of mine own heart 
 I have not written and I must not write, 
 Lest rust and acid dim the eternal stars. 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 27 
 
 HONOUR. 
 
 ONE star at least, one star still breaks the 
 night, 
 
 Sinister, pallid, as the peace of death. 
 And, through the rain and wind, a little light 
 
 Streams fitfully across the windy heath. 
 
 All round me from the towering seas beneath 
 Atlantic billows dash their storms of white, 
 
 Among the rocks the angry waters seethe 
 Tormented, and my star is out of sight. 
 
 Yet shine again, O white Divinity, 
 
 And wheresoe'er thou leadest I will go 
 What, down? Over the cliff's edge? 
 Forth and down ? 
 
 There shines the path I follow ! yet I know 
 The infamous blind creatures of the sea 
 Swim dimly with wide faces where I drown. 
 
28 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 GOD IN A HEART. 
 I. 
 
 ONCE, where the unentered Temple stood, at 
 noon [aisle, 
 
 No sun ray pierced the dim unwindowed 
 And all the flooding whiteness of the moon 
 
 Could only bathe the outer peristyle. 
 
 And as we passed we praised the Temple front, 
 But one went in ; with careless feet he trod 
 
 The long-forgotten pavement moss'd and blunt 
 And found the altar of the unprayed-to God. 
 
 He reached and lit the tapers of the shrine 
 And let their radiance flood the vault ob- 
 scure, 
 But ah ! upon what evil things to shine, 
 
 Blind, crawling, chill, discoloured, and im- 
 pure. 
 
 And as the Light burns clearer through the 
 
 gloom, [room. 
 
 More foul, more deathly, shows the illumined 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 29 
 
 II. 
 
 O Light of God, lit in the heart of man, 
 More welcome than the well in desert sands, 
 
 We bless thee fallen hither for a span 
 To glorify the Temple made with hands. 
 
 We did not dream how foul the Temple was, 
 Until thou visitedst the untended shrine : 
 
 Thy glory is not peace for us, alas, 
 Illumination tragic and divine. 
 
 Yet unrelenting pour, revealing Light ! 
 
 Scare and annihilate all our blind desires, 
 Shine through our thoughts, and purify the 
 
 night, 
 
 And burn us clean with thy transcendent 
 fires, 
 
 Until thou leavest us renewed and whole 
 Thy mortal Temple of the transient Soul. 
 
30 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 HOPE. 
 (FOR A PICTURE.) 
 
 DEAR Angel of the painter, who beheld 
 The soul that moves the dusty world we see, 
 O clothed-upon with soft humility 
 
 Thou patient Hope of kind unvanquished Eld ! 
 
 Come thou to me, dear Hope, though I be 
 held 
 
 Nor good, nor old, nor of thy company ; 
 
 Yet breathe upon mine eyes and let them be 
 Clear as thine eyes, of every mist dispell'd. 
 
 Dear, selfless Hope ! Although thine orb is 
 
 spent, 
 
 The poor grey ashes of a vanished star, 
 And from the lyre thou bendest o'er are 
 
 gone 
 
 All of the long- worn strings but only one ; 
 Thou knowest, beyond the broken instrument, 
 The Flame, the Music, undisturbed afar. 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 3 1 
 
 WRITING HISTORY. 
 
 THE profit of my living long ago 
 I dedicated to the unloving dead, 
 
 Though all my service they shall never know 
 Whose world is vanished and their name 
 unsaidi 
 
 For none remembers now the good, the ill 
 They did, the deeds they thought should last 
 for aye : 
 
 But in the little room my voice can fill 
 They shall not be forgotten till I die. 
 
 So, in a lonely churchyard by the shore, 
 The sea winds drift the sand across the 
 mounds 
 
 And those forgotten graves are found no more, 
 And no man knows the churchyard's holy 
 
 bounds. 
 
 [hands 
 
 Till one come by and stoop with reverent 
 To clear the graves of their encumbering sands. 
 
32 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 THE ALEMBIC. 
 
 IN this alembic have I cast my youth, 
 For here I do believe if anywhere, 
 Here where the fires of death burn all things 
 bare 
 
 I may distil the eternal gold of Truth. 
 
 Therefore the future is an empty name, 
 And life to me a dream that will not last, 
 And all my care is only for the Past, 
 
 Veiled with the veil of no man's ruth or 
 shame. 
 
 Yea, Death that hast the secret Life withholds, 
 Thy meek and patient servitor am I, 
 
 And, from thine alchemy I will not cease 
 Until I find amid thine essences, 
 Writ in a little sand of divers golds, 
 The answer to the eternal How and Why. 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LlfiE 33 
 
 IN AFFLICTION. 
 
 I WATCH the happier people of the house 
 Come in and out and talk and go their 
 ways ; 
 
 I sit and gaze at them ; I cannot rouse 
 My heavy mind to share their busy days. 
 
 I watch them glide like skaters on a stream 
 Across the brilliant surface of the world ; 
 
 But I am underneath ; they do not dream 
 How deep below the eddying flood is whirl'd. 
 
 They cannot come to me, nor I to them ; 
 
 But, if a mightier arm could reach and save, 
 Should I forget the tide I had to stem ? 
 
 Should I, like these, ignore the abysmal 
 
 wave ? 
 
 Yes ! In the radiant air how could I know 
 How black it is, how fast it is, below ? 
 3 
 
34 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 MELANCHOLIA. 
 (For an Engraving by Albrecht Durer.) 
 
 So many years I toiled like Caliban 
 To fetch the stones and earth to build my 
 
 fane ; 
 So many years I thought before the brain 
 
 Reluctant would divulge the final plan. 
 
 Years upon years to forge the invented tools 
 Novel, as all my temple should be new ; 
 Years upon years to fashion and to hew 
 
 The stones that should astound a world of 
 fools. 
 
 Now shall I build ? Cut bono ? lo, the salt 
 
 Has lost its savour and I have no will : 
 What reck I now of gate or dome or vault ? 
 
 Among the ruins of the thing undone 
 I sit and ask myself Cut bono ? till 
 The sun sets, and a bat flies past the sun. 
 
SOXGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 35 
 
 THE WALL. 
 
 THE sun falls through the olive-trees 
 And shines upon the wall below, 
 And lights the wall which cannot know 
 
 The Sunlight that it never sees. 
 
 I lie and dream ; the Eternal Mind 
 Rains down on me and fills me full 
 With secrets high and wonderful ; 
 
 And still my soul is deaf and blind. 
 
36 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 THE IDEA. 
 
 BENEATH this world of stars and flowers 
 
 That rolls in visible deity, 
 I dream another world is ours 
 
 And is the soul of all we see. 
 
 It hath no form, it hath no spirit ; 
 
 It is perchance the Eternal Mind ; 
 Beyond the sense that we inherit 
 
 I feel it dim and undefined. 
 
 How far below the depth of being, 
 How wide beyond the starry bound ; 
 
 It rolls unconscious and unseeing, 
 And is as Number or as Sound. 
 
 And through the vast fantastic visions 
 
 Of all this actual universe, 
 It moves unswerved by our decisions, 
 
 And is the play that we rehearse. 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 37 
 
 THE STARS. ' 
 (To J. D.) 
 
 SESTINA. 
 
 STARS in the sky, fold upon fold of stars ! 
 And still beyond the stars those gulfs of air 
 Flecked soft and pale with milkier stars be- 
 yond, 
 
 Millions of miles above our dusky world : 
 Pale stars, whose light down the unplumbed 
 
 abyss 
 
 Falls, ere it reach us, through a thousand 
 years. 
 
 There was a God in the unwritten years 
 Who lit the flaming order of the stars : 
 
 1 This piece, Darwinism, and Melancholia, first 
 appeared in the " Poe"sies de Mary Robinson 
 traduites de 1'Anglais par James Darmesteter. " 
 Paris, Lemerre, 1888. 
 
38 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 Let there be Light ! He said, and lo ! the 
 
 abyss 
 
 Grew live and tremulous with rustling air, 
 Grew bright with stars and moons and each a 
 
 world 
 Shining, a light to other worlds beyond. 
 
 O were you even as we, bright orbs beyond 
 Who shine and shed your glory all these 
 
 years, 
 Not light, but smoke would fall from every 
 
 world ; 
 
 Smoke, black with human evil, black, O stars 
 With His neglect who lit the sparkling air, 
 But left within unformed and void the Abyss. 
 
 O stars that dance indifferent in the Abyss, 
 Our Earth may seem as bright to you beyond ; 
 Yourselves, to them that breathe your delicate 
 
 air, 
 
 As desolate ; Life in the Lunar years 
 As long : and the straight rivers of the stars 
 And primal snows divide as drear a world. 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 39 
 
 And men, perchance, as we, in every world 
 Fill with their dreams the bright and vast 
 
 abyss : 
 
 A Christ has died in vain on all the stars, 
 And each, unhappy, seeks a star beyond 
 Where God rewards the dead through endless 
 
 years. . . . 
 And so we circle, dumb, in the silent air. 
 
 What shall we find more holy in all the air ? 
 Lo, when the first, huge, incandescent world 
 Burst out of Chaos and flamed a million years, 
 Until, with too much flaming, thro' the abyss 
 Flake after flake dropped off and flamed be- 
 yond : 
 That was the God who lit the world of stars ! 
 
 For Light, the stars ; for breath, the realms 
 
 of air ; 
 For Hope, beyond this dark and suffering 
 
 world, 
 Nought in the Abyss, nor ought in the endless 
 
 years. 
 
40 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 DARWINISM. 
 
 WHEN first the unflowering Fern-forest 
 Shadowed the dim lagoons of old, 
 
 A vague unconscious long unrest 
 
 Swayed the great fronds of green and gold. 
 
 Until the flexible stem grew rude, 
 
 The fronds began to branch and bower, 
 
 And lo ! upon the unblossoming wood 
 There breaks a dawn of apple-flower. 
 
 Then on the fruitful Forest-boughs 
 
 For ages long the unquiet ape 
 Swung happy in his airy house 
 
 And plucked the apple and sucked the grape. 
 
 Until in him at length there stirred 
 The old, unchanged, remote distress, 
 
 That pierced his world of wind and bird 
 With some divine unhappiness. 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 41 
 
 Not Love, nor the wild fruits he sought ; 
 
 Nor the fierce battles of his clan 
 Could still the unborn and aching thought 
 
 Until the brute became the man. 
 
 Long since. . . . And now the same unrest 
 Goads to the same invisible goal, 
 
 Till some new gift, undreamed, unguessed 
 End the new travail of the soul. 
 
42 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 ANTIPHON TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. 1 
 
 (Men and Women sing.) 
 
 Men. 
 O THOU that movest all, O Power 
 
 That bringest life where'er Thou art, 
 O Breath of God in star and flower, 
 
 Mysterious aim of soul and heart ; 
 Within the thought that cannot grasp Thee 
 
 In its unfathomable hold, 
 We worship Thee who may not clasp Thee, 
 
 O God, unreckoned and untold ! 
 
 Women. 
 
 O Source and Sea of Love, O Spirit 
 That makest every soul akin, 
 
 Comforter whom we inherit, 
 
 We turn and worship Thee within ! 
 
 1 M. Ernest Renan in the church at Quimper 
 imagined the men and women of the earth sing- 
 ing a continual Amiphon to the Unknown God. 
 
SONGS OF THE INNER LIFE. 43 
 
 To give beyond all dreams of giving, 
 To lose ourselves as Thou in us, 
 
 We long, for Thou, O Fount of living, 
 Art lost in Thy creation thus ! 
 
 Men. 
 The mass of unborn matter knew Thee, 
 
 And, lo ! the splendid, silent sun 
 Sprang out to be a witness to Thee 
 
 Who art the All, who art the One ; 
 The airy plants unseen that flourish 
 
 Their floating strands of filmy rose, 
 Too small for sight, are Thine to nourish ; 
 
 For Thou art all that breathes and grows. 
 
 Women. 
 Thou art the ripening of the fallows, 
 
 The swelling of the buds in rain ; 
 Thou art the joy of birth that hallows 
 
 The rending of the flesh in twain ; 
 O Life, O Love, how undivided 
 
 Thou broodest o'er this world of Thine, 
 Obscure and strange, yet surely guided 
 
 To reach a distant end divine ! 
 
44 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 Men. 
 We know Thee in the doubt and terror 
 
 That reels before the world we see ; 
 We knew Thee in the faiths of error, 
 
 We know Thee most who most are free. 
 This phantom of the world around Thee 
 
 Is vast, divine, but not the whole : 
 We worship Thee, and we have found Thee 
 
 In all that satisfies the soul ! 
 
 Men and Women. 
 How shall we serve, how shall we own Thee, 
 
 O Breath of Love and Life and Thought? 
 How shall we praise, who are not shown Thee ? 
 
 How shall we serve, who are as nought ? 
 Ah, though Thy worlds maintain unbroken 
 
 The silence of their awful round, 
 A voice within our souls hath spoken, 
 
 And we who seek have more than found. 
 
" The earth we pace 
 Again appears to be 
 
 An unsubstantial faery place." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
SPRING SONGS. 47 
 
 LA BELLE AU BOIS DORMANT. 
 
 DOWN the enchanted Forest grey, 
 Hark, a dreamy note is borne ! 
 'Tis the winding of a horn 
 
 Far away ! 
 
 Boughs of oak and boughs of thorn 
 
 Stir and sway. 
 
 Yet the wood is haunted, 
 Silent many a year ; 
 
 Only long-enchanted 
 Dreamers linger here. 
 
 : Tis a Forest thick and dim, 
 Overgrown and hoar indeed, 
 Hung with lichen, choked with weed, 
 
 To the brim. 
 
 Sleeps the knight and sleeps the steed 
 
 Under him. 
 
48 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 Here the pale princesses 
 Lying on the green, 
 
 Pillow with their tresses 
 Their enchanted Queen. 
 
 Where the barren branches meet 
 Still they sleep, and none behold 
 Robes of dim brocaded gold, 
 
 Sandalled feet, 
 
 Languid arms and lips a-cold 
 
 Pale and sweet. 
 
 Here the wind is noiseless, 
 Here the fountain stops, 
 
 Hanging blank and voiceless 
 Her enchanted drops. 
 
 Hark, along the unwonted gale 
 
 Rings the winding of a horn ; 
 
 Rings thro' all a world forlorn 
 Glad Reveil. 
 
 Till the blossom studs the thorn, 
 Thick as hail. 
 
SPRING SONGS. 49 
 
 Hark the awaken'd thrushes ! 
 
 Lo ! the deer awake, 
 Leaping from the rushes, 
 
 Through the windy brake* 
 
 Till beneath the flowering tree, 
 
 Novel music in her ears, 
 
 Lo, asleep a thousand years, 
 It is She ! 
 
 Blow thy clarion, Spring ; she hears ! 
 She is free ! 
 
 Break, O bower above her* 
 Briar and thorn divide. 
 
 Hark, the Eternal Lover 
 Calls the Enchanted Bride ! 
 
50 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 SPRING. 
 
 SPRING, the tender maiden, 
 
 Like a girl who greets her lover, 
 Comes, her apron laden 
 
 Deep with leaf and flower we liked of old. 
 Not a sprig forgetting 
 
 That we then demanded of her, 
 Changing not nor setting 
 
 Out of place the tiniest frill or fold. 
 
 See, the aspen still is 
 
 Hung awry to droop and falter, 
 Still the leaves of lilies 
 
 Lift aloft their tall and tender sheath. 
 Wiser than the sages, 
 
 Spring would never dare to alter 
 What so many ages 
 
 Showed already right in bloom and wreath. 
 
SPRING SONGS. 51 
 
 Ah, could Spring remember 
 
 Every thrill and fancy perished 
 In the soul's December, 
 
 Lost for ever, faded from the truth ; 
 Holy things and tender, 
 
 Dead, alas, however cherished. 
 Breathe, O Spring, and render 
 
 That forgotten radiance of our youth ! 
 
52 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 GOING SOUTH. 
 
 A LITTLE grey swallow 
 
 I fled to the vales 
 
 Of the nightingales 
 And the haunts of Apollo. 
 
 Behind me lie the sheer white cliffs, the hollow 
 Green waves that break at home, the northern 
 
 gales, 
 The oaks above the homesteads in the vales, 
 
 For all my home is far, and cannot follow. 
 
 O nightingale voices ! 
 O lemons in flower ! 
 O branches of laurel ! 
 
 You all are here, but ah not here my choice is: 
 Fain would I pluck one pink-vein'd bloom 
 
 of sorrel, 
 Or hear the wrens build in some hazel bower. 
 
SPRING SONGS. 53 
 
 PROMISE. 
 
 UNDER the olives the armour-blue aloes 
 Are fountains of colour alive in the grey ; 
 
 Over the haven a sickle-moon hallows 
 The skies of the noon and is dimmer than 
 they. 
 
 The moon has no ray and the aloe no slender 
 
 Pale spike of a blossom to slant up on high. 
 
 ( When will you flower ; my Song^ in your 
 
 splendour ? 
 
 When will you Jill with your radiance the 
 sky?) 
 
54 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 A JINGLE. 
 
 BUNCHES of tansy 
 
 And violet and pansy 
 Pluck from the garden to make me a bed. 
 
 Carry me slowly, 
 
 Lay me there lowly, 
 Leave me alone with the stars overhead. 
 
 Make me a pillow 
 
 Of branches of willow 
 Cover'd with rose-petals softer than down. 
 
 Strew me all over 
 
 With sweet-smelling clover ; 
 I shall be dead when the blossoms are brown ! 
 
SPRING SONGS. 55 
 
 LA CALIFORNIA 
 (To E. S.) 
 
 AN arid place, I would not call it fair, 
 Low-lying marshes dappled with the sea. 
 A raised white road that reaches endlessly 
 
 Across the sunshine in a lilac glare. 
 
 One liquid shadow marks the only house, 
 Sunsmitten, white, below the causeway edge, 
 Screen'd from the seawinds with a broken 
 hedge 
 
 Of straggling Cyprus rearing dusty boughs. 
 
 Nought else, save only where the wind breaks 
 through [plains, 
 
 Those Indian reeds that end the sun-baked 
 Divides the yellow thicket of the canes, 
 
 And dazzles with a sudden breadth of blue. 
 
 Sea, marsh, and sun ; and 'tis something less 
 
 than fair. 
 And yet, my Dear, we were so happy there. 
 
56 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 AN ORCHARD AT AVIGNON. 
 
 THE hills are white, but not with snow : 
 They are as pale in summer time, 
 
 For herb or grass may never grow 
 Upon their slopes of lime. 
 
 Within the circle of the hills 
 
 A ring, all flowering in a round, 
 
 An orchard-ring of almond fills 
 The plot of stony ground. 
 
 More fair than happier trees, I think, 
 Grown in well- watered pasture land, 
 
 These parched and stunted branches, pink 
 Above the stones and sand. 
 
 O white, austere, ideal place, 
 
 Where very few will care to come, 
 
 Where spring hath lost the waving grace 
 She wears for us at home ! 
 
SPRING SONGS. 57 
 
 Fain would I sit and watch for hours 
 The holy whiteness of thy hills, 
 
 Their wreath of pale auroral flowers, 
 Their peace the silence fills. 
 
 A place of secret peace thou art, 
 
 Such peace as in an hour of pain 
 
 One moment fills the amazed heart, 
 And never comes again. 
 
ROMANTIC 
 
 " Old unhappy Jar-off things, 
 And battles long ago" 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 ri TOVTO. TTwQtiv dii ; Trapoixerai 7rovo, 
 TTttjOoixtrai ^, rolffi piv reOvriKooiv, 
 TO priTtQT 'at0i fiyd' avaffrfvai peXeiv. 
 
 ESCHYLUS. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 61 
 
 SIR HUGH AND THE SWANS. 
 (KUNG VON DER ROSEN. BRUGES, 1488.) 
 
 THE wintry nights in Flanders 
 
 Lie thick about the grass ; 
 We stole between the sentinels, 
 
 They never saw us pass. 
 
 The mist was blue on field and fen, 
 And ridged the dykes with white ; 
 
 The camp-fires of the soldiers 
 Burned holes into the night. 
 
 They could not see us through the mirk : 
 
 We saw them i' the glow. 
 A price was on our either head 
 
 And stealthy did we go. 
 
 We crept along the inner banks 
 
 Close to the waters grey 
 We reached the castle at dawn, the castle 
 
 Where Max in prison lay. 
 
62 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 (We blew the golden trumpets all 
 
 For joy, a year agone : 
 * ' Long live the King o' the Romans ! " 
 
 The people cried as one. 
 
 Now, for the king in prison, 
 
 There's two will dare to die. 
 There's Hugh o' the Rose, the Jester, 
 
 Sir Hugh o j the Rose, and I.) 
 
 We came upon the castle moat 
 
 As the dawn was weak and grey : [Rose, 
 " There's still an hour," quoth Hugh o' the 
 
 " An hour till break of day. 
 
 " Give me the files, the muted files, 
 
 Give me the rope to fling ; 
 I'll swim to the prison window, 
 
 And hand them to the king. 
 
 " I'll swim to the castle and back, Sir John, 
 
 Before the morn is light, 
 And we'll both lie hid i' the rushes here 
 
 Till we take the boat to-night." 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 63 
 
 We tied the files, we tied the rope, 
 
 In a little leather sack. 
 Sir Hugh struck off from the mirky bank, 
 
 The satchel on his back. 
 
 I watched him cleave the wan water 
 
 A bold swimmer was he. 
 My heart beat high in my bosom, 
 
 For I thought the king was free. 
 
 I watched him shoot the middle stream 
 
 And reach the other side 
 " Fling up the rope, Sir Hugh o' the Rose " 
 
 It was the king that cried. 
 
 But what's the bird that screeches so shrill ? 
 
 What's the whirr and the scream ? 
 The air's astir with dim white wings, 
 
 Like angels in a dream ! 
 
 The sun uprist beyond the dyke, 
 
 Red in the ghostly air 
 'Twas only the swans o' the castle 
 
 Screaming and battling there ! 
 
64 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 But then I saw them stretch their necks 
 
 And hiss, as traitors do ; 
 I saw them arch their evil wings 
 
 And strike and stun Sir Hugh. 
 
 The king looked out o' the window bars, 
 
 And he was sad belike ; 
 But I could not see my lord the king 
 
 For the drowned face in the dyke. 
 
 The sleepy warders woke and stirred, 
 " The swans are mad in the moat ! " 
 
 I lifted up Sir Hugh o' the Rose 
 And laid him in the boat. 
 
 I made him a sark of rushes, 
 
 With stones at the feet and head. . . 
 
 In the deepest dyke of Flanders 
 Sir Hugh o' the Rose lies dead. 
 
 Feb. 2, 1888. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 
 
 THE TOWER OF ST. MAUR* 
 
 44 WHERE'S my little son, Nourrice, 
 
 And whither is he gone ? 
 The youngest son of all I have, 
 
 He should not gang alone. 1 ' 
 
 * ' The child is safe enough, lady ; 
 
 He's barely gone an hour : 
 He's gone to see the mason-men, 
 
 Are building at the tower." 
 
 ** You should have kept him here, Nourrice j 
 
 If I was sleeping then 
 He's over young to gang alone 
 
 Among the mason-men." 
 
 "Lie still, lie still, my sweet lady, 
 
 There's nought to sorrow for ; 
 The child is safe enough, I think, 
 
 I' the keeping of St. Maur 1 " 
 5 
 
66 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 An hour's gone by, an hour or two, 
 And still they're out-of-door 
 
 " I wish they'd come at last, Nourrice, 
 My heart is sick and sore." 
 
 " Now hush, lady, my sweet lady, 
 The moon,'s still small and young ; 
 
 If they're home before the curfew bell 
 They'll not ha' stayed too long." 
 
 St. Maur has ta'en his youngest son, 
 
 To the riverside they're gone, 
 To see the busy mason-men 
 
 Building a tower of stone. 
 
 " O why do they build the tower so strong 
 
 Against the riverside ? 
 I never saw the wall, father, 
 
 That was so strong and wide." 
 
 " God knows the tower had need be strong 
 
 Between my foes and thee ? 
 Should once Lord Armour enter, child, 
 
 An ill death would ye dee." 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 67 
 
 " We need not fear Lord Armour, father, 
 
 Nor any of his kin ; 
 Since God has given us such a wall, 
 
 They cannot enter in." 
 
 " O twice, my babe, and thrice, my babe, 
 
 Ere ever that I was born, 
 Lord Armour's men have entered in 
 
 Betwixt the night and the morn. 
 
 " And once I found my nurse's room 
 Was red with bloody men . . . 
 
 I would not have thy mother die 
 As died my mother then. 
 
 " And 'tis not seven nights ago, 
 
 I heard, clear in a dream, 
 The bugle cry of Armour, 
 
 Shrill over wood and stream^" 
 
 " But if so foul a raid, father, 
 
 Fell out so long agone, 
 Why did they never build before 
 
 A wall and tower of stone?" 
 
68 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 " Many's the time, my pretty babe, 
 
 Ere ever this way you went, 
 We built the tower both thick and broad- 
 
 An J we might as well ha' stent. 
 
 " Many's the time we built the tower, 
 Wi' the grey stone and the brown. 
 
 But aye the floods in autumn 
 Washed all the building down. 
 
 " And in my mind I see the morn 
 When we'll be brought to dee 
 
 Yoursel' and your seven brothers, 
 And your young mother, and me. 
 
 "And oh, were it any but Armour, 
 Oh God, were it any but she 
 
 Before the Lord, my eyes grow dark 
 With the ill sight that I see." 
 
 Among the busy mason-men, 
 
 Are building at the tower, 
 There's a swarthy gipsy mason, 
 
 A lean man and a dour. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 69 
 
 He's lain the hammer down at last 
 
 Out of his bony hand . . . 
 " Did ye never hear the spell, St Maur, 
 
 Gars any tower to stand ? " 
 
 " O what's the spell, thou black gipsy, 
 
 I prithee rede it now : 
 There never was any mason -man 
 
 Shall earn such wage as thou." 
 
 " I dare not speak the spell, St. Maur, 
 
 Lest you should do me an ill, 
 For a cruel spell, and an evil spell, 
 
 Is the spell that works your will." 
 
 " There's no spell but I'll risk it, man, 
 An' the price were half my lands 
 
 To keep my wife and children safe 
 Out of Lord Armour's hands." 
 
 " O, more than lands, and more than fee, 
 You'll pay me for the spell " [blood, 
 
 "An' the price were half my heart's red 
 I'd pay it down as well." 
 
70 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 11 O what's the blood of a sinful heart 
 
 To bind the stones that fall ? 
 St. Maur, you'll build your christened child 
 
 Alive into the wall." 
 
 St. Maur has turned on his heel so light, 
 
 And angry he turns away : 
 " Gang to the devil another time 
 
 When ye ask what ye ask to-day." 
 
 He's ta'en his young son by the hand 
 
 He's opened wide the gate, 
 " Your mother's been sick a month by now, 
 
 And she'll mourn sore if we're late." 
 
 They had not gone a little way, 
 
 An' the child began to call 
 " See how the flood runs high, father, 
 
 And washes at the wall ! " 
 
 They had not gone a mickle way, 
 
 St. Maur began to brood, 
 " 'Tis the bugle cry of Armour, 
 
 Shrill over stream and wood." 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 71 
 
 " And must they slay me, father dear, 
 
 And my seven brothers tall ? " 
 " Gin that's the blast of Armour, laddie, 
 
 I fear they'll slay us all." 
 
 " And will they slay my mother, then, 
 That looks so bonny and small ? " 
 
 "Come back, come back, thou little lad 
 To the masons at the wall." 
 
 The flood runs high and still more high, 
 And washes stone from stone 
 
 11 In another hour," say the masons, 
 "Our work is all undone." 
 
 The flood runs high and still more high, 
 
 And the bugle rings anear ; 
 The masons looking o'er the wall 
 
 Are blue and stark with fear. 
 
 There's one that's neither stark nor wan, 
 But never he looked so well ; [cries, 
 
 " Shall I gang to the devil, St. Maur ? " he 
 " Or say, shall I gang to yoursel'?" 
 
72 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 He's set the child high in the air 
 
 Upon his shoulder bone ; 
 " Shall I leave them all for Armour, 
 
 Or shall I take but one?" 
 
 Never an answer spake St. Maur, 
 
 And never a word he said : 
 There was not one o' the mason men 
 
 Looked half so wan and dead. 
 
 The gipsy's ta'en the frighted child 
 
 And set him in the wall : 
 " There's a bonny game to play, little man, 
 
 The bonniest game of all. 
 
 " You'll stand so still and stark, my lad ; 
 
 I'll build in two's and three's ; 
 And I'll throw you a red, red apple in, 
 
 When the stones reach to your knees. 
 
 " You'll stand so still and stark, my lad ; 
 
 I'll lay the stones in haste ; 
 And I'll throw you the forester's whistle 
 
 When they reach above your waist. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 73 
 
 " You'll stand so still and stark, my lad, 
 You'll watch the stones that rise ; 
 
 And I'll throw you in your father's sword, 
 When they reach above your eyes. 
 
 " And if you tire o' the play, my lad, 
 
 You've but to raise a shout : 
 At the least word o' your father's mouth, 
 
 I'll stop and pluck ) r ou out." 
 
 The gipsy-man builds quick and light, 
 
 As if he played a play, 
 And the child laughs with a frighted laugh, 
 
 And the tower ceases to sway. 
 
 St. Maur stares out of his bloodshot eyes, 
 Like one that's well nigh mad ; [high 
 
 The tower stands fast, and the stones rise 
 About the little lad. 
 
 " O father, father, lift me out ! 
 
 The stones reach over my eyes, 
 And I cannot see you now, father, 
 
 So swift the walls uprise. 
 
74 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 " O father, lift me out, father ! 
 
 I cannot breathe at all, 
 For the stones reach up beyond my head, 
 
 And its dark down i' the wall." 
 
 But never an answer spake St. Maur, 
 Never a word but one : [mason, 
 
 "Have you finished your devil's work, 
 Or when will the deed be done ? " 
 
 " Oh, the work is done that ye wished, St. 
 Maur, 
 
 'Twill last for many a year ; 
 There's scarce a sound in the wall by now 
 
 A mother might not hear. 
 
 " Gang home, gang home in peace, St. Maur, 
 
 And sleep sound if you can ; 
 There's never a flood shall rock this tower, 
 
 And never a mortal man. 
 
 " Gang home and kiss your bonny wife, 
 And bid her mourn and fast . . 
 
 She'll weep a year for her youngest child, 
 But she'll dry her eyes at last. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 75 
 
 " You'll say he fell in the flood, St. Maur, 
 But you'll not deceive yoursel', 
 
 For you've lost the bonniest thing you had, 
 And you'll remember well. 
 
 "Your wife will mourn him a year, St. 
 Maur, 
 
 You'll mourn him all your life, 
 For you've lost the bonniest thing you had, 
 
 Better than bairns or wife." 
 
 Feb. 8, 1888. 
 
76 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 THE DUKE OF GUELDRES' 
 WEDDING. 
 
 GUELDRES, A.D., 1405. 
 
 THE Queen and all her waiting-maids 
 
 Are playing at the ball ; 
 Mary Harcourt, the King's cousin, 
 
 Is fairest of them all. 
 
 The Queen and all her waiting-maids 
 
 Are out on Paris Green ; 
 Mary Harcourt, the King's cousin, 
 
 Is fairer than the Queen. , 
 
 The King sits in his council room, 
 The grey lords at his side ; 
 
 And through the open window-pane, 
 He sees the game outside. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 77 
 
 The King sits in the Council-room, 
 
 The young lords at his feet ; 
 And through the pane he sees the ball, 
 
 And the ladies young and fleet. 
 
 ** O bonny Mary Harcourt 
 
 Is seventeen to-day ; 
 'Tis time a lover courted her, 
 
 And carried her away. 
 
 " Where shall I give my own cousin? 
 
 Where shall I give my kin ? 
 And who shall be the peer of France 
 
 Her lily hand to win ? " 
 
 Then up and spake an old grey lord, 
 And keen, keen was his eye : 
 
 *' Your friends ye have already, Sire, 
 Your foes ye'll have to buy. " 
 
 Then up and spake that old grey lord, 
 And keen, keen was his glance : 
 
 " Marry the girl to Gueldres, Sire, 
 And gain a friend to France ! " 
 
78 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 " O how shall I wed my own cousin 
 To a little Flemish Lord ? " 
 
 " Nay ; Gueldres is a gallant Duke, 
 And girt with many a sword." 
 
 " What will the Duke of Limburg say 
 If such a deed be done ? " [lord, 
 
 " Last night your foes were twain, my 
 To-day there'll be but one ! " 
 
 " Yet Limburg is a jealous man, 
 And Gueldre's quick and wroth ! " 
 
 " To-morrow they'll hew each other 
 
 down, 
 And you'll be quit of both ! " 
 
 O blithe was Mary Harcourt, 
 The blithest of them all ; [lord, 
 
 When forth there stepped that old grey 
 Out of the Council-hall. 
 
 O sad was Mary Harcourt, 
 
 And sorry was her face, [lord, 
 
 When back there stepped that old grey 
 
 And left her in her place. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 79 
 
 " O shall I leave my own country, 
 
 And shall I leave my kin? " 
 O strange will be the Flemish streets 
 
 My feet shall wander in ! 
 
 " O shall I learn to brace a sword, 
 
 And brighten up a lance ? 
 I've learned to pull the flowers all day, 
 
 All night I've learned to dance ! 
 
 " O shall I marry a Flemish knight, 
 And learn a Flemish tongue ? 
 
 Would I had died an hour ago, 
 When I was blithe and young? " 
 
 Twice the moon and thrice the moon 
 Has waxed and waned away, 
 
 And all the streets of Gueldres shine 
 With sammet and wich say ; 
 
 And out of every window hang 
 The crimson squares of silk ; 
 
 The fountains run with claret wine, 
 The runnels flow with milk. 
 
So SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 The ladies and the knights of France, 
 
 How gallantly they ride ! 
 But all in silk and red roses, 
 
 The fairest is the Bride. 
 
 " O welcome Mary Harcourt, 
 Thrice welcome lady mine ; 
 
 There's not a knight in all the world 
 Shall be so true as thine. 
 
 " There's venison in the aumbry, Mary, 
 
 There's claret in the vat ; 
 Come in and breakfast in the hall 
 
 Where once my mother sat." 
 
 O red, red is the wine that flows, 
 And sweet the minstrels play ; 
 
 But white is Mary Harcourt 
 Upon her wedding-day. 
 
 O merry are the wedding-guests 
 
 That sit on either side ; 
 But pale below her crimson flowers, 
 
 And homesick is the Bride. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 8t 
 
 They had not filled or drank a cup, 
 
 A cup but barely three, 
 When the Duke of Limburg's herald 
 
 Came riding furiously. 
 
 They had not filled or drank a cup, 
 
 A cup but barely four, 
 When the Duke of Limburg's herald 
 
 Came riding to the door. 
 
 " O where's the Duke of Gueldre-land, 
 O where's the groom so gay ? 
 
 My master sends a wedding-glove 
 To grace the wedding-day ! 
 
 " O where's the Duke of Gueldre-land, 
 And where's the bride so sweet ? 
 
 That I may lift this iron gloVe 
 And hurl it to their feet. 
 
 " To-day you drink the wine, Gueldres } 
 
 Your true-love at your side ; 
 You'll lie in the grave to-morrow night^ 
 
 And Limbnrg with the bride ! " 
 6 
 
8? SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 Gueldres is a gallant knight, 
 
 Gallant and good to see ; 
 So swift he bends to raise the glove, 
 
 Lifting it courteously. 
 
 His coat is of the white velvet, 
 
 His cap is of the black, 
 A cloak of gold and silver work 
 
 Hangs streaming at his back. 
 
 He's ta'en the cloak from his shoulders, 
 
 As gallant as may be : 
 " Take this, take this, Sir Messenger, 
 
 You've ridden far for me !^ 
 
 " And welcome, welcome, is your glove, 
 And welcome is your word ; 
 
 Bright are my lady's bonny eyes. 
 And brighter is the sword. 
 
 " Now speed you back to Limburg 
 
 As quickly as you may, 
 I'll meet your lord to-morrow morn, 
 
 To-day's my wedding-day." 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 83 
 
 The morrow Mary Harcourt 
 
 Is standing at the door : 
 " I let him go with an angry word, 
 
 And I'll see him never more. 
 
 " Mickle I wept to leave my kin, 
 
 Mickle I wept to stay 
 Alone in foreign Gueldres, when 
 
 My ladies rode away. 
 
 " With tears I wet my wedding-sheets, 
 That were so fine and white 
 
 But for one glint of your eye, Gueldres, 
 I'd give my soul to-night ! " 
 
 O long waits Mary Harcourt, 
 
 Until the sun is down ; 
 The mist creeps up along the street, 
 
 And darkens all the town. 
 
 O long waits Mary Harcourt, 
 Till grey the dawn up springs ; 
 
 But who is this that rides so fast 
 That all the pavement rings ? 
 
84 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 " Is that yourself in the dawn, Gueldres ? 
 
 Or is it your ghost so wan?" 
 " O hush ye, hush ye, my bonny bride, 
 
 'T is I, a living man. 
 
 " There's blood upon my hands, Mary, 
 There's blood upon my lance ; 
 
 Go in, and leave a rougher knight 
 Than e'er you met in France ! " 
 
 t( O what's the blood of a foe, Gueldres, 
 
 That I should keep away ? 
 I did not love you yester morn, 
 
 I'd die for you to-day. 
 
 "I'll hold your dripping horse, Gueldres, 
 
 I'll hold your heavy lance ; 
 I'd rather die your serving-maid 
 
 Than live the Queen of France ! " 
 
 He's caught her in his happy arms, 
 
 He's clasped her to his side. 
 May God give every gallant knight 
 
 So blithe and bonny a bride ! 
 April 27, 1887. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 85 
 
 RUDEL AND THE LADY OF 
 TRIPOLI. 
 
 (PROVENCE, 1150.) 
 
 THERE was in all the world of France 
 
 No singer half so sweet : 
 The first note of his viol brought 
 
 A crowd into the street. 
 
 He stepped as young and bright and glad 
 
 As the Angel Gabriel ; 
 And only when we heard him sing 
 
 Our eyes forgot Rudel. 
 
 And as he sat in Avignon 
 
 With princes at their wine, 
 In all that lusty company 
 
 Was none so fresh and fine. 
 
86 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 His kirtle's of the Arras-blue, 
 
 His cap of pearls and green, 
 His golden curls fall tumbling round 
 
 The fairest face I've seen. 
 
 But hark ! the lords are laughing loud 
 
 And lusty in their mirth, 
 For each has pledged his own lady, 
 
 The fairest on the earth. 
 
 " Now, hey, Rudel ! You singer, Rudel ! 
 
 Say, who's the fairest lass ? 
 I'll wager many a lady's eyes 
 
 Have been your looking-glass ! " 
 
 And loud the silver goblets rang, 
 And clattered chain and sword, 
 
 His lady's portrait each has ta'en, 
 And dashed it on the board. 
 
 Then half he smiled and half he sighed, 
 His laughing eye was blurred ; 
 
 He took the pictures in his hand, 
 Nor ever spake a word. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 87 
 
 For in the woods of Tarascon, 
 
 Where grey the olives bow, 
 There dwelt a slender maiden, 
 
 Whom he remembered now. 
 
 O painted eyes and painted locks, 
 
 And look of dainty wile ; 
 He lifts them up and lays them down 
 
 With that remembering smile. 
 
 O frame of gold and frame of pearls, 
 
 Ivory carven and cleft ; 
 He lifts them up and lays them down 
 
 Till only one is left. 
 
 There's only a twist of silver 
 
 About a parchment skin 
 That's lain so close against a heart 
 
 The colour's worn and thin. 
 
 There's only a twist of foreign wire 
 
 There's only a faded face 
 What ails, what ails Geoffrey Rudel ? 
 
 He 's fallen from his place. 
 
S8 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 He's fallen plumb across the board 
 
 Without a word or sign ; 
 The golden curls that hide his face 
 
 Are dappled in the wine. 
 
 He's fallen numb and dumb as death, 
 While all the princes stare 
 
 Then up one old Crusading Knight 
 Arose, and touched his hair : 
 
 " Rudel, Rudel, Geoffrey Rudel, 
 Give me the picture back ! 
 
 Without her face against my breast 
 The world grows dim and black. 
 
 " Rudel, Rudel, Geoffrey Rudel, 
 
 Give back my life to me ! 
 Or I will kill you where you lie, 
 
 And take it desperately ! " 
 
 Then straight awoke and rose Rudel 
 And hey, but he was white, 
 
 And thin and fierce his lips were set ; 
 His eyes were cold and bright. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 89 
 
 The picture's in his left hand, 
 
 The dagger's in the right. 
 Stabbed to the core, upon the floor 
 
 Fell down that stranger -knight. 
 
 Rang loud the swords in the scabbards, 
 
 The voices loud and high 
 "Let pass, let pass !" cried out Rudel, 
 " Let pass before he die " 
 
 The lords fell back in grim array 
 
 Around the dying man : 
 " For pity and pardon let him kneel 
 
 And pray, if so he can ! " 
 
 But never a word said Geoffrey 
 
 Save only, " Who is she ? " 
 One moment smiled the dying man 
 
 "The Lady of Tripoli!" 
 
 He opened wide his sea-blue eyes, 
 
 Dead, in a face of stone. . . . 
 Out to the windy dark Rudel, 
 
 Unhindered, rushed alone. 
 
90 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 ALONE, alone, goes young Rudel 
 Beside the unflowering sea 
 
 The stars begin to point the blue, 
 And still alone is he. 
 
 In vain for him the minstrels pipe, 
 
 And all in vain for him 
 The ladies dance by candle-light 
 
 Until the dawn is dim. 
 
 In vain for him the huntsmen blow 
 Their revels on the horn, 
 
 The hunters dash across the sands 
 Unnoticed in the morn. 
 
 He's gone to seek the dreary moor, 
 Where no man lives or stirs, 
 
 Only the wheeling moor-fowl 
 That rise out of the furze. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 91 
 
 He's gone to seek the lonely tarns 
 
 That nothing earthly fills, 
 Only the rains of Heaven 
 
 That fall upon the hills. 
 
 And none above the Cyprus wine 
 
 Can chaunt a roundelay, 
 And boast, while others stoop to hear, 
 
 " Rudel's new song to-day ! " 
 
 For silent is the ballad now, 
 
 And silent is the song, 
 And all alone above the sea 
 
 He wanders all day long. 
 
 At noon, when heathen pilgrims pray 
 
 About her Eastern place, 
 He draws the parchment from his breast 
 
 And gazes on her face. 
 
 Then in his gaunt and hollow eyes 
 
 A tender smile will spring, 
 Like the first faint flush of almond bloom 
 
 On leafless woods in spring. 
 
92 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 And humbled to the very heart, 
 
 He looks across the sea, 
 And images beyond the waves 
 
 The domes of Tripoli. 
 "And who am I," he grieves, "alas, 
 
 To sing of such as she ! " 
 
 And so, and even so for years, 
 
 For years and every day, 
 Like pilgrims to the Holy Land, 
 
 He wears his life away. 
 
 Faded with all the rains of Heaven, 
 His tattered cloak of green; 
 
 And torn his locks, and dark his brow, 
 And altered is his mien. 
 
 And none of all his friends of old 
 Who praised and loved him well, 
 
 Would turn to meet this ragged man 
 And laugh, and cry " Rudel ! " 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 93 
 
 PART III. 
 
 " HEW the timbers of sandal wood, 
 
 And planks of ivory ; 
 Rear up the shining masts of gold, 
 
 And let us put to sea. 
 
 " Sew the sails with a silken thread 
 
 That all are silken too, 
 Sew them with scarlet pomegranates, 
 
 Upon a sheet of blue. 
 
 " Rig the ship with a rope of gold, 
 
 And let us put to sea 
 And now good-bye to good Marseilles, 
 
 And hey for Tripoli ! " 
 
 All the harbour's full of boats, 
 
 A crowd is on the strand, 
 "Adieu, Rudel ! adieu, Rudel !" 
 
 Comes echoing from the land. 
 
94 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 " Why did you leave us, dear Rudel, 
 
 To roam for seven year 
 And come and sing one golden song 
 
 And go and leave us here ? 
 
 f ' Why did you ever hush so long, 
 
 If you can sing so well ? 
 A song ! one other perfect song ! 
 
 One other song, Rudel ! " 
 
 Up and down the golden ship 
 
 That's sailing to the south, 
 Rudel goes singing to himself, 
 
 A smile about his mouth. 
 
 And up the masts and on the bridge 
 
 The sailors stop to hear : 
 There's not a lark in the May-heaven 
 
 Can sing so high and clear ! 
 
 There's not a thrush or a nightingale 
 
 Can sing so full and glad. 
 Yet there's the sigh of a soul in the song, 
 
 And the soul is wise and sad. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 95 
 
 Rudel goes singing to himself 
 
 As he looks across the sea 
 " Lady," he says, "I'll sing at last, 
 
 Please God, in Tripoli." 
 
 For pale across the wan water 
 
 A shining wonder grows, 
 As pale as on the murky night 
 
 The dawn of grey and rose. 
 
 And dim across the flood so grey 
 
 A city 'gins to rise, 
 A pale, enchanted Eastern place, 
 
 White under radiant skies. 
 
 O domes and spires, O minarets, 
 
 O heavy-headed drowse 
 Of nodding palms, O strangling rose 
 
 Sweet in the cypress boughs ! 
 
 " Heave-to, O mariners, heave ashore 
 
 As swiftly as may be. 
 Go, now, my stripling page, along 
 
 The streets of Tripoli, 
 
96 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 And say Rudel, Rudel, has come, 
 And say that I am he." 
 
 The page-boy runs along the streets, 
 
 The mariners gear the ship ; 
 Rudel sits down at a gold tressel, 
 
 A wine cup at his lip. 
 
 "And when, and when, O when," he cries, 
 " Shall I see my heart's delight? " 
 
 And lo, there glides along the quay 
 A lady like a light. 
 
 " And when, O Mary in Heaven ! " he cries, 
 " Shall I hear her speak my name?" 
 
 And lo, there moves towards the ship 
 A lady like a flame. 
 
 You could not tell how tall she was, 
 
 So heaved the light and fell : 
 The shining of enchanted gems, 
 
 The waving of a veil, 
 She drifts across the golden deck, 
 
 And stands before Rudel. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 97 
 
 But, as she bends to clasp Rudel, 
 
 He sees her snow-white hair 
 Ravelled in many a ring about 
 
 Her shoulders gaunt and bare. 
 
 And as she bends to kiss Rudel 
 
 He meets her gleaming eyes, 
 That glitter in her ancient skin 
 
 Like Fire that never dies. 
 
 And as she calls his name aloud, 
 Her voice is thin and strange, 
 
 As night-winds in the standing reeds 
 When the moon's about to change. 
 
 She's opened wide her bridal arms. 
 
 She's bent her wintry face ; 
 What ails, what ails Geoffrey Rudel ? 
 
 He has fallen from his place. 
 
 He's fallen plumb across the board 
 
 Without a word or sign, 
 His golden locks that stream so bright, 
 
 Are dappled in the wine. 
 7 
 
98 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 He's fallen from her straining arms 
 Dead as the senseless stone . . . 
 
 Out of the world, into the dark, 
 His spirit flits alone, 
 
 Aprils, 1887. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 99 
 
 A BALLAD OF ORLEANS. 
 1429. 
 
 THE fray began at the middle-gate, 
 
 Between the night and the day ; 
 Before the matin bell was rung 
 
 The foe was far away. 
 There was no knight in the land of France 
 
 Could gar that foe to flee, 
 Till up there rose a young maiden, 
 
 And drove them to the sea. 
 
 Sixty forts around Orleans town. 
 
 And sixty forts of stone ! 
 Sixty forts at our gates last night 
 
 To-day there is not one! 
 
 Talbot, Suffolk, and Pole are fled 
 
 Beyond the Loire, in fear 
 Many a captain who would not drink, 
 
 Hath drunken deeply there 
 
loo SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 Many a captain is fallen and drowned, 
 
 And many a knight is dead, 
 And many die in the misty dawn 
 
 While the forts are burning red. 
 
 Sixty forts around Orleans town, 
 And sixty forts of stone ! 
 
 Sixty forts at otir gates last night 
 To-day there is not one / 
 
 The blood ran off our spears all night 
 
 As the rain runs off 'the roofs 
 God rest their souls that fell i' the fight 
 
 Among our horses' hoofs ! 
 They came to rob us of our own 
 
 With sword and spear and lance, 
 They fell and clutched the stubborn earth, 
 
 And bit the dust of France ! 
 
 Sixty forts around Orleans town, 
 And sixty forts of stone ! 
 
 Sixty forts at our gates last night 
 To-day there is not one . 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. i 
 
 We fought across the moonless dark 
 
 Against their unseen hands 
 A knight came out of Paradise 
 
 And fought among our bands. 
 Fight on, O maiden knight of God, 
 
 Fight on and do not tire 
 For lo ! the misty break o' the day 
 
 Sees all their forts on fire ! 
 
 Sixty forts around Orleans town, 
 
 And sixty forts of stone ! 
 Sixty forts at our gates last night 
 
 To-day there is not one I 
 1886. 
 
102 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 THE DEAD MOTHER. 
 (NORTHUMBERLAND, A.D. 1290.) 
 
 LORD ROLAND on his roan horse 
 
 Is riding far and fast, 
 Though white the eddying snow is driven 
 
 Along the northern blast. 
 
 There's snow upon the holly-bush, 
 
 There's snow upon the pine, 
 There's many a bough beneath the snow 
 
 He had not thought so fine 
 For last time Roland crossed the moor 
 
 He rode to Palestine. 
 
 Now pale across the windy hills 
 
 A castle 'gins to rise, 
 With unsubstantial turrets thin, 
 
 Against the windy skies. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 10; 
 
 " Welcome, O welcome, Towers of Sands, 
 
 I welcome you again ! 
 Yet often in my Syrian tent 
 
 I saw you far more plain." 
 
 Lord Roland spurs his roan horse 
 Through all the snow and wind 
 
 And soon he's reached those towers so gray, 
 And left the moor behind. 
 
 " Welcome, Sir John the Steward ! 
 
 How oft in Eastern lands 
 I've called to mind your English face, 
 
 And sighed to think of Sands. 
 
 " If still you love your old play-mate 
 
 You loved so well of yore 
 Go up and tell my mother now 
 
 That Roland's at the door." 
 
 " O how shall I tell you, Lord Roland, 
 The news that you must know ? 
 
 Your mother is dead, Lord Roland 
 She died a month ago." 
 
104 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 About the middle of the night, 
 When all things turn to sleep, 
 
 Lord Roland in the darkness 
 Learned that a man can weep. 
 
 1 ( O why did I stay so long away, 
 
 And tarry so many a year 
 And now your face I cannot see, 
 
 Your voice I cannot hear. 
 
 " In the battle-ranks of Palestine 
 
 I saw you clear and plain ; 
 But now I sob and stretch mine arms 
 
 And close mine eyes in vain. 
 
 " There's a flood of death between us now 
 And its waves are dark and dour, 
 
 But if my voice can reach across, 
 And if the dead have power, 
 
 Come back, come back from Heaven, 
 
 mother, 
 An' it be but for an hour ! " 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 105 
 
 It's a long, long road from Heaven to Earth, 
 
 And a weary road, I ween, 
 For them that passed the Gates of Death 
 
 To reach those gardens green ; 
 
 It's a long road from the heart of the grave, 
 To the home where kinsmen sleep 
 
 But a mother thinks no road is long, 
 That hears her children weep. 
 
 The wind has dropt behind the moor, 
 
 The night is quiet and still, 
 What makes the flesh of Lord Roland 
 
 To shudder and turn chill ? 
 
 A breeze blows in at the door, so white, 
 And the fire burns sullen and red, 
 
 And out of the wind he hears a voice, 
 And he knows the voice is dead. 
 
 And something stirs in the firelight, 
 
 Drifting nigher and nigher 
 " My hands are blue," says the pale voice, 
 
 " I'll warm them at the fire." 
 
io6 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 Lord Roland stares across the dusk 
 
 With stern and terrible eyes, 
 But there's only a wind in the firelight, 
 
 A wind that shudders and sighs. 
 
 " My limbs are faint," sighs the weary voice, 
 " My feet are bruised and torn 
 
 It's long I've seen no linen sheets, 
 I'll rest me here till morn." 
 
 There's a pale shape in the chamber now, 
 
 And shadowy feet that move, 
 The fire goes out in a sullen ash, 
 
 Like the angry end of love 
 
 And out of doors the red cock cries, 
 And then the white and the gray 
 
 Where one spirit crossed Whinny-moor, 
 There's two that hurry away. 
 
 And still Lord Roland sits alone, 
 
 Stiff, with a look of dread ; 
 And the cold beams of the morning fall 
 
 About the dead man's head. 
 
 July 5, 1887. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 107 
 
 THE KING OF HUNGARY'S 
 DAUGHTER. 
 
 THE King of Hungary's daughter wanders 
 
 down her garden green, 
 The roses hang in the apple boughs, the lilacs 
 
 stand between. 
 
 She wanders singing to herselt, at peace in the 
 
 early day, 
 " Glory to God " she sings as clear as saints 
 
 in Heaven may. 
 
 The King of Hungary's daughter wanders 
 
 singing to the gate, 
 And there she hears an angry brawl that stops 
 
 her singing straight. 
 
 " O what's the din at the gate, my lords ? " 
 
 she passes through the door, 
 And there she sees a beggar man that's fallen 
 
 to the floor. 
 
io8 SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 All white above his blinded eyes an evil 
 
 stripe goes round ; 
 The staff has fallen from his hands, he faints 
 
 in a deathly swound. 
 
 There's not a knight i' the castle-yard but 
 
 spurns the thing that moans, 
 A huddled stain of rags and wounds upon the 
 
 whited stones. 
 
 There's not a squire i' the castle-yard but 
 
 strikes his steely foot, 
 And points his jest at Lazarus that makes such 
 
 humble suit. 
 
 " O knights, for the love of Christ who died, 
 
 O gentle ladies all, 
 Is there none will give me a crust of bread, a 
 
 stale crust and a small ? " 
 
 " There's other mouths for our crusts, beggar, 
 there's dogs and hounds enow, 
 
 They bring us hares from hunting home, but 
 thou what bringest thou ? " 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 109 
 
 " O knights, there's a time to die, a time to 
 
 sorrow, a time to jest. 
 Is there never a hole in all your barns where a 
 
 man may die at rest ? " 
 
 " How darest thou ask the boon, beggar, a 
 
 plague upon thy pride ! 
 What horse would lie in the straw, forsooth, 
 
 whereon a leper died ? " 
 
 The King of Hungary's daughter hears and 
 
 reaches out her hand, 
 * ' Rise up, rise up, thou weary guest, an' thou'st 
 
 the strength to stand. 
 
 "I'll lead thee to my chamber, there I'll set 
 
 the meat and wine, 
 Thou shalt not lie in the] horses' beds, thou'llt 
 
 sleep more sound in mine." 
 
 She's ta'en the beggar by the hand ; and all 
 
 the courtiers stare, 
 " And what will the king say now? ' r they cry; 
 
 " and what will a maiden dare ? " 
 
I io SONGS AND BALLADS. 
 
 " And who shall tell the bonny prince that she 
 
 is bound to wed ? 
 How will he like a leper laid within his lady's 
 
 bed ? " 
 
 They're gone in gangs to spread the news, 
 
 they whisper loud and sly : 
 The king and all those gentlemen to the 
 
 maiden's chamber hie. 
 
 They burst the unlatchet door, and lo ! they 
 
 fall before the bed. 
 Then turned the king's young daughter : "And 
 
 why do you kneel ? " she said. 
 
 " There's nothing strange i* the room, I think, 
 but the poor sick man you know, 
 
 You did not kneel i' the yard downstairs ; why 
 are you kneeling now ? " 
 
 She looks at all the fainting knights with wide 
 
 and wondering eyes, 
 She looks towards the bed whereon the Christ 
 
 in glory lies. 
 
ROMANTIC BALLADS. 1 1 1 
 
 But she, who sees the Christ in all that suffers, 
 
 does not see 
 The awful splendour of His crown, the terror 
 
 of Deity. 
 
 The knights are blind, they cannot breathe in 
 
 that unearthly air : 
 The King of Hungary's daughter alone is 
 
 unaware. 
 
 Feb. 12, 1888. 
 
OUR J-(ADY OF THE BROKEN 
 
 " Love seeketh not itself to please, 
 Nor for itself hath any care, 
 But for another gives its ease, 
 
 And builds a heaven in helFs despair" 
 
 BLAKE. 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. 115 
 
 ACT I. 
 
 SCENE I. An Italian Garden : a terrace ; to the left, an 
 Arbour ; to the right, an Ilex-grove and Shrine. 
 
 TIME. Seventeenth Century ', or any time. 
 
 Hilarion \alone seated in an arbour, in the Public Garden}. 
 And so my April-minded Bellamy 
 Is happy with my friend, and he with her. 
 'Tis well ; and yet 'tis pity ; for, alas, 
 I would not lose her yet, so young she is ! 
 And 'tis a sudden fancy. Scarce a month 
 Since either heard the other's voice at first 
 And started, thinking it a rarer music 
 Than they had known before. 
 
 Ah, Julian, Bellamy* 
 You are both happy ; but I happier, 
 Because in silence and without reward 
 I love the dearest woman in the world ; 
 Oh, worth a thousand sisters ! 
 
ii6 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 [Hesperia passes.] Can it be ! 
 
 dream turned truth, change not in air again. 
 How long have I looked forward to this hour, 
 And dare not now believe my love-sick eyes 
 That see things all one colour. 
 
 Hesp. \coming nearer]. Hilarion ? 
 
 Hil. Hesperia ! ('tis she !) 
 
 I am glad to meet you. 
 
 Hesp. Well met indeed ! My father, ailing lately, 
 And sightless now, you know, will second me 
 In welcomes to you. 
 
 Hil. It is very long 
 
 Since last I saw him. Is he unwell ? 
 
 Hesp. I fear 
 
 He never will be better this side Heaven. 
 And he is all I have ! 
 
 Hil. Sigh not, dear lady. 
 
 1 hope that he may live for many years ; 
 The old are long a-dying. 
 
 Hesp. He's far from well 
 
 I think his blindness creeps upon his spirit. 
 
 Hil. Yet grieve not ere the hour ; for Grief, being come, 
 Is less intolerable than is the dread 
 
A GARDEN FLA Y. 117 
 
 We have of it. "Tis easy to be sad, 
 When sadness must be, and most natural. 
 It is the fear of Sorrow in happy hours 
 That eats the heart away and cankers life. 
 
 Hesp. Ay, you were ever melancholy ! 
 
 Hil. I trust not. 
 
 I bring you remedies for melancholy. 
 
 Hesp. You're sad indeed, if such sad thoughts console you ! 
 Have you no holier cures ? 
 
 Hil. None for myself. 
 
 For you that lovely are and well-beloved 
 I never hope to need one. 
 
 Hesp. Nay, I fear 
 
 You are unskilled in comfort, for indeed 
 My father's blind this year and dying now ; 
 And I, that sit all day and watch and dread 
 The terrible oncoming of the end. 
 I cannot mind to be considered fair 
 Who am not fortunate. 
 
 Hil. There is more love 
 
 I' the world than fathers give ! 
 
 Hesp. But none thus sole 
 
 And treasurable. Peace to my forebodings ! 
 
Ii8 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 Poor welcome to an old friend newly met ! 
 Tell me, how have you fared, Hilarion ? 
 
 Hil. As ever in your absence bearing life 
 With fortitude, I trust, but as a burden. 
 
 Hesp. You are very courtly, sir ! I think you younger 
 By a month or so than I, who have out-grown 
 These compliments. Come, tell me of the friends 
 We had at Pisa. How is Frederic Julian. 
 
 Hil. The last is here with me. 
 
 Hesp. What Julian here ? 
 
 Back from his home in England. Julian here. 
 And I've not seen him ! Tell me, is he well, 
 Strong, happy ? 
 
 Hil. Have we met at last, at last, 
 
 To speak of Julian ? Tell me of yourself. 
 And we will talk and listen of old days 
 Together. 
 
 Hesp. Nay, take care ; they are full of Julian ! 
 
 Hil. No matter so you speak. Say anything ! 
 
 Hesp. Nay, it is you must talk. I have no news. 
 Tell me, I pray, how come you here with Julian ? 
 I do suppose he thinks I am at Pisa, 
 And goes to find me there. 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. 119 
 
 Hil. To find you ? Julian ? 
 
 Hesp. Ay. Did he never tell you of our secret ? 
 We were contracted ere he went to England, 
 A year ago when his old father died. 
 My father still was lecturer at Pisa, 
 And Julian ever was his favourite 
 Of all the students. But I thought you knew 
 How our long friendship blazed to sudden love 
 At the ominous threat of parting. Now I hope 
 The worst of that is over. 
 
 Hil. I never knew it ! 
 
 I do assure you, lady. I never knew it ! 
 
 Hesp. Nay, nay, it is no matter ! I had thought 
 That Julian would have told you long ago. 
 But he is English, of a sterner make 
 Than we Italians. Tell me now of Julian. 
 
 Hil. [aside]. O my sweet outraged sister. O my heart, 
 What can I tell ? 
 
 [Aloud], I think they are false, these English. 
 
 Hesp. Nay, sir. I will not speak again with you. 
 'Tis you are false that are so courteous, 
 And yet so quick to blight an absent friend. 
 Take heed, take heed. Nay, I will never scold ; 
 
120 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 I give you a good -morrow ; my father calls me. 
 
 [Exit Hesperia. 
 
 Hil. \alone~\. O my sweet sister ! O my broken heart ! 
 And O Hesperia, wronged the most of all ! 
 How has this triple traitor bound our lives 
 Into one cord of woe. Bellamy ! Bellamy ! 
 My little, childish, and so happy child, 
 Whom none has ever crossed in all the world, 
 Will you grow pale and die perhaps, or sicken 
 At heart with vague and maddening melancholy 
 When he shall marry my Hesperia ? 
 And yet, my sister, if he's true to you 
 He'll wrong the dearest woman in all the world, 
 And break her faithful heart. O treacherous friend ! 
 There is no way but misery out of this. 
 I can not save the nearest things I have 
 From certain sorrow. Heaven, give me counsel, 
 And show me any way that saves them both, 
 Howe'er it break my heart. O patience, patience ! 
 Be quiet, hands, and feel not for the sword 
 That will not cut this knot. Oh, I'll be patient, 
 For God wills all, and in His will is rest. 
 If ill be ours, content with ill is best ! 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. 
 
 SCENE II. On the Terrace, Far off the sea. 
 JULIAN and BELLAMY. 
 
 Bell. There sets the sun 1 Look how the waters turn ! 
 And see the moon how large and white arising 
 Leaps up the fiery sky ! 
 
 Jul. So sudden Love, 
 
 When first I saw you, in my passionate heart, 
 Shone out and made it holy. 
 
 Bell. Still the moon, 
 
 Julian, is but a feeble luminary ; 
 And I am very jealous of the sun, 
 By whose remembered light I shine. What, silent ? 
 And did you never love before you saw me ? 
 
 Jul. Oft with my fancy, never with my heart. 
 
 Bell. Still, you have loved. I am sorry. See the sky 
 Is grown quite dark and frightened. 
 
 Jul. Courage, sweet. 
 
 'Twas but a cloud ; there shines the moon again 
 Like Love on sorrow. 
 
122 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 Bell. Then I'll be your moon. 
 
 I'll swear you told those other women all 
 And each, she was your sun but none your moon 
 Merely ! Nay, frown not. . . . From the harbour's edge 
 The fishers push their boats sheer off to sea. 
 Listen, the plashing oars ! ... Ah, there I heard 
 A word of the song they sing. All day they rest, 
 They rest and waste the common golden hours ; 
 For with moon-rising their life's work begins. 
 Julian, I'll be your moon ! Or, if too little, 
 The pale, small evening star ! 
 
 Jul. (starting} Nay, would you mock me ? 
 
 Bell. Love? 
 
 Jul. Were I worthy of you, Bellamy ! 
 
 My heart is a black night for you to shine in ! 
 
 Bell. You come from talking with Hilarion 
 Surely ? Why, that's the very trick of his tongue ! 
 Nay, it is hard on me to be so taxed 
 With a merry heart and a melancholy lover. 
 Be cheered, because I know no way to cheer you 
 I that was never clever ! 
 
 Jul. Oh, forgive me. 
 
 Bell. You are forgiven, Sire, for being sad ! 
 Why, here's the Arch-mourner here's Hilarion, 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. 123 
 
 My brother, whose one jest lies in his name 
 (And that's as fit as a farce at a funeral !) 
 The chief Apostle of Misery ! He's in earnest. 
 Last week he laughed at lovers ; but on Thursday 
 You and I quarrelled, Julian ; and thereat, 
 From the strangeness of his speech, I do believe 
 He fell in love to be more miserable ; 
 But, silence. Here he comes. 
 
 Jul. Good even, Hilarion. 
 
 Bell. This rose I'll give you for your thoughts, my brother. 
 
 HU. I take your rose, and give you leave to guess them. 
 
 Bell. Oh ! How the sun's no great light after all 
 But a lantern riddled with the lucky shots 
 Of you philosophers. Or how this rose 
 Is a pleasant bed for a cankerworm to lie in. 
 What reck I of your dreams ? 
 
 Hil. Not much, I think. 
 
 'Tis late, my little sister I 
 
 Bell. Well, good-night. 
 
 You would talk secrets with my Julian. 
 And so you cheer him better than I can. 
 I'll not be jealous. 
 
 [Turns t with a curtsey, to Julian^ ivho stands apart musing. 
 So your moon retires. 
 
124 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 JuL Good-night. 
 
 [Exit Bellamy. Julian and Hilarion walk on together, silent. 
 Suddenly, 
 
 HiL There Hesper shines ! Star of my lady, hail ! 
 Dearest of planets, shine and shame the moon 
 With holier beams ! 
 
 [To Julian] Do you remember her? 
 
 JuL Remember whom, thou high-fantastical lover ? 
 
 HiL The angel of my memory, Hesperia. 
 
 [A pause. 
 
 What, will you pale to hear another praised 
 That is not Bellamy ? Oh, lover's ardour ! 
 
 Jul. Nay, nothing ails. Go on. 
 
 HiL \with scrutiny} . But you are faint. 
 
 J uL Nothing it is nothing ! Tell me of your lady. 
 
 HiL You know Sebastian the Humanist 
 Who lectured on philosophy at Pisa 
 In the University when we were there ? 
 After you left he went stone blind ; and then 
 He earned his bread by teaching for some while, 
 Earning much work, scant praise, and scanter bread. 
 But happily Hesperia his daughter 
 
 JuL \aside~\. Hesperia. 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. 125 
 
 Hit. [markedly] . You must remember her. 
 
 Jul. \after a pause]. Yes. I remember 
 A piece of sainted nature. 
 
 Hit. I am glad 
 
 You say so. 
 
 Jul. Yet I wonder that you love her. 
 
 I think I ever fancied her a creature 
 To pray to, not to love. 
 
 Hil. Are you in earnest ? 
 
 Jul. What do you mean ? 
 
 Hil. Nothing an idle question ! 
 
 Jul. "Pis true, I had a holy fancy for her 
 When we were boy and girl ; before I knew 
 How much less good, how very much less fair, 
 An angel is than a woman. 
 
 But I think 
 
 She has forgotten me, as I have her. 
 It is so long ago. 
 
 Hil. I would make sure on't. 
 
 Jul. I will ; but, piythee, tell me how she rescued 
 Her father at this pass. 
 
 Hil. I am too glad 
 
 To have the chance to dwell upon her praises. 
 
126 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 I do not think there is a better theme 
 In all the world, or any nobler service. 
 Well, in Sebastian's poverty she learned 
 All that the old man, dispossessed and blind, 
 Taught in his frequent leisure ; and so well, 
 That in a year she knew the curious types 
 Grown dark to him, could read, collect, survey 
 With patience and quick inference and love 
 Unwearied. 
 
 JuL \impatiently]. As your own is weariful 
 
 When comes the point to this exordium 
 On female knowledge ? 
 
 HiL Now : Hesperia, 
 
 Being grown, in fine, more sensible eyes to him 
 Than those he lost, the University 
 Proclaimed him Lecturer again. . . . When last 
 I saw Hesperia 
 
 JuL When? Where? 
 
 Hil. \slowly\ . To-day ! 
 
 [a pause] Julian, she is a very noble lady ! 
 If any wronged her, I were wroth with him 
 Even to death. 
 
 Jul. Why do you tell me this? 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. 127 
 
 Hil. I speak from a full heart I love Hesperia, 
 And wish her well more than I wish myself : 
 More than I wish my little Bellamy, 
 (My sunshine and the eyes I see it with) 
 Who were with less content 
 
 I love Hesperia ! 
 
 Julian, in all this Heaven there are no stars 
 That shine so bright as Honour and Hesperia ! 
 
 Jul. I will not bear this rant ! 
 
 What do you mean 
 With your veiled words and smooth Italian way ? 
 
 HiL I only tell you of a noble lady 
 As sweet as any are that live in Heaven, 
 As true and patient as they were on earth. 
 I only say how dearly I do love her 
 (But only as a friend, an honest friend) ; 
 And how I would indeed avenge to death 
 A slight that any villain laid upon her. 
 
 JuL I like it not. 
 
 HiL But since you are so dull 
 
 And callous of her praise, I say farewell t' you. 
 Have you a word, perchance, for Bellamy ? 
 I take her home to Pisa in the morning 
 
128 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 Jul. Take Bellamy? 
 
 Hil. Ay and I leave Hesperia ! 
 
 Nay, hast thou never loved, that thou must start 
 To hear the ravings of a lover's heart ! [Exit Hilarion. 
 
 JuL [alone]. I do believe he has some plain suspicion 
 Of that most hasty and ill-omened contract 
 Which binds me to Hesperia. Oh, I know 
 That such a bond is little less than marriage 
 In this fastidious Italy. I know 
 That breaking it would blot Hesperia 
 And brush the glory from her aureole 
 Must I then marry her ? that cold, pale beauty. 
 I do not love her now, I never loved her ; 
 And I do not believe she loved me either 
 Surely I never loved, till Bellamy 
 With her sweet laughter and her girlish eyes 
 Stole in my heart. 
 
 O cold Hesperia ! 
 
 To think of you is like the chill of death 
 O hateful ghost ! I feel you take my hand 
 And slip your icy ring on its hot pulses, 
 And lead me far away from Bellamy 
 Bellamy, I'll go sing to you, sweet Bellamy 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. 129 
 
 They take away to-morrow. One last song, 
 
 One last sweet music fraught with hope and dreams 
 
 And then, I'll either see you never more 
 
 Or win my longed-for freedom from Hesperia ! [Exit Julian. 
 
 SCENE III. The same night. HESPERIA and SEBASTIAN in 
 an arbour. Outside, under the shadow of a cypress hedge, 
 JULIAN, tuning and practising a mandoline. 
 
 Hesp. \reading aloud~\. 
 
 " Where walk the Nymphs, the Bacchanals ; where flows 
 The fount of Castaly" 
 
 Nay, 'tis not there 
 (Some one is playing surely in the garden 
 Upon an instrument ?) Oh, here's the line : 
 
 [reads} ' ' Now, since the city and its people sicken, 
 
 Come Thou with healing steps across the slopes 
 Of steep Parnassus, over thundering straits " 
 
 Father, I find the chorus difficult. 
 Sebas. Nay, girl, go on 'Tis very near the end. 
 
130 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART, 
 
 Hesp. Is that a mandoline they play outside ? 
 [reads} " Thou, the Master of the Quire of stars, 
 
 The bright flame-breathing stars ! O Leader, thou 
 Of all the voices that do sing by night ^ 
 Deign to appear" 
 
 It is a mandoline ! 
 Sebas. What then ? 
 Hesp. I know that air, 
 
 Sebas. No doubt you know it. 
 
 Some tune the students sing o' nights in Pisa ; 
 Go on, I prithee, daughter. 
 
 Hesp. [reads}. " appear, 
 
 Thou Son of God, with following Naxian girls 
 That in a maddening frenzy all night long 
 Shall wildly dance to thee and wildly sing 
 And call thee, lacchus ! " 
 
 Nay, I cannot, father. 
 I think there is some magic in the tune 
 They play in the garden there ... I know it well. 
 
 Sebas. You are not used to stint me in your reading 
 To please your idler fancy. 
 
 Hesp. [kneeling at his side and taking his hands}. 
 
 Forgive me, father ! 
 I am not well. ... I have heard news to-day . . . 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. 131 
 
 I have heard news to-day that stirs me strangely 
 Ay, news of Julian ! 
 
 Sebas. Has he come to take you ? 
 
 'Tis well you teach me to give up your voice. 
 Let your eyes shut for me be dark again 
 So you will go to England ? 
 
 Hesp. Patience, father. ! . 
 
 Oh, I will never leave you till I die ; 
 If one, or you or Julian, be mine, 
 And only one, I shall know how to choose ! 
 You are my father, and you are alone ; 
 You gave me even the very heart I love with. 
 [She rises up] But Julian ever was your favourite^ 
 And you will gain a son ! 
 
 Sebas. I was not blind then r 
 
 I did not fear so much to lose a daughter. 
 To rob my heart and shut its bird away 
 In a green nest afloat on misty seas, 
 So far, too far, where I can never come 
 But tell me what you heard ? 
 
 Hesp. [goes to stand in the doorway]. Oh, all the night 
 Is full of hope and strange mysterious beauty. 
 The moon that rides so ample in the skies 
 Sends down a flood of light upon the roses^ 
 That smell less sweet by day 
 
132 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 Sebas. So, it is fine, then ? 
 
 Hesp. Ay, finer than it ever was before, 
 When Paris and GEnone walked alone 
 On Ida . . . Oh, my father, Julian's here ! 
 
 Sebas. Here? Where? You are very strange to-night, 
 Hesperia ! 
 
 Hesp. Ay, strange to miss the empty absent ache 
 And sense of loneliness. That word is dead 
 Oh, fallen from my language now ! 
 
 Nay, father, 
 
 Nay, look not pale ! I am a cruel daughter 
 I am unkind, I know ; but never lonely 
 I love you more than any other father 
 Ever was loved in Italy ! 
 
 Sebas. Nay, patience- 
 
 Why you are weeping, child ! 
 
 Hesp. O 'tis for joy 
 
 Father, there is a firefly in the shade 
 Of that aspiring cypress. All this time 
 It has looked green and faint, and poised as still 
 As it was held there by invisible strings ; 
 But, on a sudden, loosed, I know not how 
 It floats up now, up, up, to join the stars, 
 With an unsteady, circling, wavering motion, 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. 133 
 
 No longer green, but gold against the blue 
 It goes to seek. I think my heart is loosed 
 Like that, and floats so dizzily heavenwards. 
 
 Sebas. I do not understand you ! 
 
 Hesp. Oh, hush. The music ! 
 
 JuL [trying his mandoline otttside. Sings} . 
 Were you a star 
 
 Above > 
 Shining too far 
 
 for Love ; 
 Yet were 1 glad \ 
 
 Though yoit rode so above me. 
 
 Dreaming my star 
 
 Did she know me would love me ! 
 Noiv am I sad! 
 
 Hesp. [aside] . Earth swerves beneath. His singing thrills 
 
 the night 
 
 With passion. Stars turn giddy at his voice ! 
 JuL [sings]. 
 
 Were you a pearl. 
 
 Below 
 Stir of the whirl 
 
 and flow ', 
 
134 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 Drowned in the deep, 
 
 Yet a spirit could show me, 
 Hope that my pearl 
 
 Would be mine did she know me. 
 Now must I weep ! 
 Hesp. [still aside]. Not if thou knewest my heart ! Each 
 
 fibre's thine ! 
 
 Now at the top of bliss, I thank thee God, 
 Ensue what may, that thou hast given me life. 
 Jul. \sings\. 
 
 Light of my heart. 
 
 My Dream, 
 Little apart 
 
 We seem ; 
 Nearer the sky 
 
 To the sea's lowest stream is 
 Than to my heart 
 
 My delight and my dream is ! 
 Well may I sigh. 
 Hesp. \aloud}. No more ! No more ! Adieu, concealing 
 
 shame, 
 
 And try no more that true and faithful heart. 
 Julian, my lover, take me, I am thine. 
 
 [Steps from the arbour s hedge. 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. *35 
 
 Jul. [steps forward}. Lady Hesperia ! 
 Hesp. Oh, it is my Julian ! 
 
 [Swoons. 
 
 SCENE IV. Early morning. . . An Ilex grove and shrine 
 with withered garlands. 
 
 Hesp. [alone]. For still it seems to me impossible 
 That while I thus remember, he forgets ; 
 And yet ther was a coldness in his voice, 
 Or else I fancied it. 
 
 Oh, it was fancy ! 
 For I believe it ever must be thus 
 After so long a parting . . . there's a gulf 
 Of absence lies between us. 
 
 [She approaches tht shrine. 
 It is here 
 
 That he will meet me in a little hour. 
 How grey the shadow lies, the ilex-shadow 
 That always looks like death ! . . . The valley sleeps 
 In blue and filmy quiet. ... It is morning, 
 Less passionate than night. 
 
 [She leans her arms on the ledge of the shrine* 
 
136 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 O sad Madonna, 
 
 O pierced at heart with seven cruel swords, 
 There is a sharper sword that never pricked you 
 With shrewd suspicion of the thing you love . . . 
 Too base Hesperia ! 
 
 \She sits down on a stone at the side of the shrine. 
 
 (A girl's voice outside is heard singing :) 
 
 l Strow poppy buds about my qidet head, 
 And pansies on mine eyes ..." 
 
 Hesp. Some poor soul goes singing 
 
 Her song o' the swan ! some girl who's lost her lover, 
 While I have mine again alive and true . . . 
 
 Julian, I will nevermore suspect 
 
 Your truth, that is less tender than the phantom 
 
 1 made of womanish dreams to fill your place 
 In absence with the memory of your smile ! 
 
 ( The voice comes nearer :) 
 " Strow poppy buds about my quiet head, 
 
 And pansies on mine eyes, 
 And rose leaves on the lips that were so red, 
 
 Before they blanched with sighs. " 
 
 Plesp. Sweet singing ! How might I have been like her, 
 And am not. O poor soul, she is very sad ! 
 
A GARDEN PLA Y. 137 
 
 ( Voice still nearer :) 
 " Let gillyflowers breathe their fragrant breath 
 
 Under my tired feet / 
 But do not mock the heart that starved to death 
 
 With aught of fresh or sweet. " 
 
 Hesp. Lo, here she comes ; she is young, and fair, and gentle, 
 But crazed with grief, I fear. 
 
 Enter BELLAMY, pale and dishevelled, boughs of rose and acacia 
 in her arms. 
 
 Bell. I know the maidens 
 
 Bring her more garlands than the other Virgins 
 Through all the month of May ; but it is June, 
 And see, their boughs are withered and their blooms. 
 But I bring more, I think, than any other 
 Ever has brought before. . . . Tis sure she'll hear me ! 
 
 [She lets fall the heap of branches. 
 O Virgin, whom the sorrowing country people 
 Do call Madonna of the Broken Heart, 
 Heal mine a cruel brother broke this morning 
 And keep me safe, and hide me whom they seek 
 To take away from a most virtuous lover. 
 Thou pitying Mother-maid ! 
 
 [She kneels down and sees Hesperia sitting under the shrine. 
 
138 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 Are you an Angel ? 
 
 Or who are you that sit so cool and sweet 
 Under the shadow of the Virgin's shrine ? 
 
 Hesp. Fear not, my flower, for I would never harm you % 
 I only am a maiden like yourself 
 And fain would help you. 
 
 Bell. Oh, I know you now ! 
 
 Divine Madonna, are you come to help me ? 
 
 Hesp. Nay, child. . . . 
 
 Bell. O Virgin, see, I came to seek you. 
 
 See, when the mists were heavy on the garden, 
 While still the dawn was grey, I stole and plucked 
 These crimson roses, and these yellow roses, 
 And these pink delicate roses that run wild ; 
 And all this wealth of heavy-sweet acacia, 
 To honour you and die before your shrine. . . . 
 See how my hands are torn. . . . Ay, and my heart, too. 
 I pray you heal it ! 
 
 Hesp. Thou poor child ! 
 
 Bell. I knew not 
 
 The Virgin used to wander in the woods 
 About her shrine. ... I did not hope to find you, 
 Save in a painted image. . . . I'd not ventured 
 Knowing that I should find you sitting silent 
 Alone upon the hills. 
 
A GARDEN FLAY. 139 
 
 Hesp. O sweet, you wander. 
 
 I am not what you think ! 
 
 Bell. And will you help me ? 
 
 Hesp. Sure, if I can. 
 
 Bell. Then, prithee, help me soon, 
 
 For I am sick at heart, and yesternight 
 I was so happy ! Then Hilarion. . . . 
 
 Hesp. Hilarion ? 
 
 Bell. He is my cruel brother 
 
 Who ever was most tender till last night. 
 He was my father and my mother too, 
 And held my orphan baby hands in his 
 When first I tried to walk. And oh, I loved him. 
 But now he's cruel. 
 
 Hesp. Nay, I do not think so. 
 
 Bell. Indeed he is ; he came to me last night, 
 And solemnly he bade me pray to Heaven 
 I might not even dream o' nights of Julian 
 But quite forget him. 
 
 Hesp. Julian ! 
 
 Bell. Ay, my lover. 
 
 Virgin you know all this, and still I tell you, 
 I am so sick at heart. 
 
 Hesp. For Julian ? 
 
140 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 Bell. Ay. 
 
 Nay, frown not, Holy Mother, look not strange 
 And angry on me, or I shall go mad ; 
 You are my only hope. O never spurn me, 
 Thou Mother of the afflicted ! 
 
 Hesp. Do not rave so. 
 
 There is more quiet in a broken heart. 
 
 Bell. Oh, well I know you have had worse to bear, 
 But you are sainted, and you are Madonna, 
 And have another heart to bear it with. . . . 
 It is for that you can so well console us, 
 O Mary, mother of the miserable, 
 Because your heart still bleeds. . . . 
 
 But I am weak, 
 
 Little and earthly, and I should go mad, 
 Wicked, and kill myself to feel such sorrow. 
 
 Hesp. Ay, is it so ? 
 
 Bell. It is, indeed. 
 
 Hesp. I feared it. 
 
 Bell. And so, indeed, sweet Virgin, you must help me. 
 
 Hesp. I cannot let you die. 
 
 Bell. Madonna ! 
 
 Hesp. Hush ! 
 
 O sweet, be still. ... I cannot bear your voice, yet. 
 
A GARDEN PLAY. 14* 
 
 Bell. True, I would fain be still or else more happy. . . . 
 I pray you, Virgin, give me Julian back, 
 Or else lay down my head upon your heart, 
 And take my hands within your heavenly hands ; 
 I'll shut my lids and you shall breathe upon them, 
 Once, softly, with your cold unearthly breath. 
 And I will wake with you in Paradise. 
 
 Hesp. Nay, maiden. 
 
 Bell. Leave me not. 
 
 Hesp. Nay, sweet, be quiet. 
 
 \She draws a curious ring from her hand, slowly. 
 
 [Aside]. O little ring, O fraught with memories, 
 How have I kissed his ancient kisses from thee. 
 I must not do it more. 
 
 [To Bellamy}. Give me your hand. 
 
 Bell. Is this the seal of death ? I am not frightened. 
 
 Hesp. Nay, little maid : it is the seal of Love, 
 Of youth, and happy love, and tender hopes, 
 Of all that maidens dream of in the night, 
 When through their open window steals a breath 
 Of roses warm in June, or lover's music. . . . 
 (That music was for you.) . . . But I must go 
 Back to my emptied life and leave you here. 
 
 \She stoops and kisses Bellamy. 
 
142 OUR LADY OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 Lie still among your flowers, and pray awhile, 
 
 Till Julian come ; then give him back the kiss 
 
 I gave you. Ah, God ! . . . Show him the ring. . . . 
 
 And he will know your secret. 
 
 [She moves to go but turns back. 
 
 For Hilarion. 
 
 Love him most truly ; he is very noble. 
 Bell. And must you leave me, ever dear Madonna ? 
 Hesp. I must. 
 Bell. My love and dearest thanks attend you. 
 
 [Exit Hesperia, as from the other side Julian enters. 
 Jul. This was the place ; now, courage ! 
 [he discovers Bellamy. "\ Bellamy ? 
 
 Bell. Julian ! 
 
 [They embrace. 
 1878-1886. 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON. 
 
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