A LOST EPIC 
 
A LOST EPIC 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM CANTON 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 MDCCCLXXXVII 
 
SS3 
 C23Z 
 
 Jt 
 
TO 
 HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN. 
 
 1837- -1887 
 
 When God enthroned You, fifty years ago, 
 And the grey Dukes in homage would have knelt, 
 
 Yoti rose up to prevent them, blushing 
 
 "No, 
 I am your niece Victoria ! " 
 
 England felt 
 
 Her heart beat ; England loved You ! It was good 
 So great a Queen should be a girl so true! 
 
 Madam, these Realms praise God and reverence You- 
 For Fifty Years of Sovereign Womanhood. 
 
 A Q1 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A LOST EPIC, I 
 
 THROUGH THE AGES. 1 4- 
 
 THE DEATH OF ANAXAGORAS, .... 25 
 
 THE LATTER LAW, 32 
 
 THE GOD AND THE SCHOOLBOY, .... 36 
 
 AN INDIAN COWRIE, 4! 
 
 THE WOODWELE, ....... 46 
 
 PARTING, 49 
 
 MORNING, 50 
 
 HOW SHOULD YOU MY TRUE LOVE KNOW? . . 52 
 
 RINGED WITH BLUE MOUNTAINS, .... 53 
 THE LEGEND OF THE ARK 
 
 I. THE GREAT WITNESS, .... 54 
 
 II. THE PENITENT, 6l 
 
 III. THE VOICES, 67 
 
 IV. THE WATERS, 71 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 KOZMA THE SMITH, 
 
 73 
 
 JOHN CALVIN'S DREAM, . 
 
 . . . 82 
 
 TWO LIVES, . 
 
 88 
 
 WAYSIDE VIGNETTES 
 
 
 FLOWER FANCIES, . 
 
 90 
 
 BEYOND, 
 
 91 
 
 THE CROW, 
 
 92 
 
 A DESERTED GARDEN, 
 
 93 
 
 A BIRD'S FLIGHT, 
 
 94 
 
 THE WEIR, . 
 
 95 
 
 JANUARY AND JUNE, 
 
 , . . . 96 
 
 COCKCROW, . 
 
 97 
 
 FAIRY HEAVENS, 
 
 . . . 98 
 
 PINE AND PALM, 
 
 100 
 
 DAY-DREAMS, . 
 
 102 
 
 THE BROOK, . 
 
 103 
 
 LOVE AND LABOUR, . 
 
 104 
 
 WOODLAND WINDOWS, 
 
 . 105 
 
 A RUSSIAN GUN, 
 
 . . 106 
 
 UNDER TWO TREES, . 
 
 . 107 
 
 ON THE SHORE, 
 
 . 108 
 
 TWILIGHT MEMORIES, 
 
 no 
 
 BY MOONLIGHT, 
 
 III 
 
 IN THE SHADOW, 
 
 112 
 
 IN THE FALL, . 
 
 U3 
 
 KARMA, 
 
 
 COMFORT ON PELION, 
 
 117 
 
Contents. ix 
 
 POEMS OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 LAUS INFANTIUM, 150 
 
 ANY FATHER, 152 
 
 ANY MOTHER, I$3 
 
 A PHILOSOPHER, 154 
 
 A POET, 156 
 
 APPLE-BLOOM AND APPLE, .... l6o 
 
 THE WINTER SLEEP, 163 
 
 AN APRIL GRIEF, 164 
 
 THE GREAT WORLD, l6$ 
 
 A NEW POET, 169 
 
 THE LADDER, 171 
 
 THE UPWARD LOOK, 1 72 
 
 THE ROBIN, 174 
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH, 176 
 
 SUSPIRIUM, 178 
 
 THE STONE FACE, 179 
 
 MAKING MORNING-MIRTH, . . . . . 186 
 
 MENA THE LIBYAN, 187 
 
 PEARLS AND SIMPLES, 193 
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE, 2O$ 
 
 ANNO DOMINI XXXVII., 211 
 
T 
 
 A LOST EPIC. 
 
 HIS is his little grandchild ! . . . Run away, 
 And pluck the gentleman a bunch of 
 flowers ! 
 
 A pretty tot ! Poem he never wrote 
 
 To match in freshness and in winning grace 
 
 That rosy little slip of roguery ! 
 
 Here are his poems all he gave the world 
 A crown octavo, thin and printed wide 
 Forgotten now, but forty years ago 
 Noted with wonder as a new-seen star, 
 Deemed sweet as snowdrops after months of snow, 
 And simple as snowdrops too ! He prized them 
 
 not 
 
 "The babble o' green fields in his feverish youth ; 
 Mere chirps and fluted trills because the earth 
 
2 A Lost Epic. 
 
 Was sunny and blossom-blithe, and but to live 
 A very joy ; " for he'd outgrown the broad 
 Untutored heart of homely man and maid, 
 And, heedless of the common work-day life 
 Which prompts the poems all the world can feel, 
 Could scorn the only pages left to keep 
 His name in kindly memory. 
 
 Take the book ; 
 
 And since I prize his gift no doubt, no doubt ! 
 Still, have a more than special care of this ! 
 
 Four years ago he came and brought the child, 
 A prattling three-year-old, and lived alone 
 An aged maid for housekeeper and nurse 
 In yon small cottage, where the beechwood shrinks 
 From over-keen blown kisses of the sea. 
 
 A tall, mild, wise-eyed, silver-bearded man 
 The sea-wind scattering down our village street 
 His sixtieth autumn's crimson leaves he moved 
 Among us, noting all our seaboard ways, 
 Stealing our little people's hearts with sweets, 
 And through the children winning all the wives ; 
 But when the men, rough storm-flushed fellows, 
 smiled 
 
A Lost Epic. 3 
 
 With slightly pitying, half-amused contempt, 
 Their homespun wits he startled to respect 
 By better knowledge of the things they knew, 
 Till all our ale-house sages, pipe in cheek, 
 Confessed " the Doctor " knew a sight o' things 
 Beyond their weather-gage, and last of all 
 Our gaunt old whaler, ear-ringed and tattooed, 
 Bragged less of outland folk and foreign ports. 
 Nay, I, too, when the gracious Sunday bell * 
 Gathered our village little children all 
 Around a common knee began to feel 
 An undefined attraction to the man, 
 And found my sermon three-parts preached to him ; 
 While he, with reverend hair and solemn beard, 
 A sprig or flower-bud at his button-hole, 
 Would sit, his grandchild's tiny hand in his, 
 Listening and musing, musing most, I thought, 
 Patient if not improved, until the close. 
 I came to like the man who liked him not? 
 And watched his tall grey figure as he passed 
 Seaward along the bright side of the street, 
 Wee flax-head trotting gaily at his side 
 In crimson .cloak and buckled crimson shoes ; 
 Watched, and surprised him on the breezy downs 
 Poring through lenses o'er the silvery frost 
 
4 A Lost Epic. 
 
 Of lichens on some ice-scored boulder-stone, 
 And oft at sunset met, a furlong off, 
 His spare stretched shadow on the glittering sands, 
 And then himself the little one asleep, 
 Nestled in flaxen hair and hoary beard. 
 
 The village folk, with that blank bovine stare 
 
 Which never seems to see the thing it scans, 
 
 Observed and gossiped, wondered, and surmised, 
 
 But found no evil in the lonely man 
 
 Whose life seemed wholly bound up in his child ; 
 
 And, tired of vain conjecture, grew content 
 
 To love him merely, and let him hold his way 
 
 Mysterious and unquestioned. So the year 
 
 From autumn round to autumn rolled ; and then, 
 
 Whether it were he felt the social need 
 
 Or simply liked me out of liberal heart, 
 
 The Doctor lost his strangeness and reserve, 
 
 At length cast all the anchors of his trust, 
 
 Nor found me lack that gracious temper of youth 
 
 Which worships lofty aims in patient lives. 
 
 A poet, heart and brain, the man but lived 
 
 To write one book which no man yet had dared ; 
 
 One life-work, one colossal poem, fraught 
 
 With all the joy and travail of mankind, 
 
A Lost Epic. 
 
 Enriched with all the lore of all the years 
 
 " The Epic of the Pageants of the World." 
 
 Smiling, 'twas so he named it for the nonce ; 
 
 And truly as he sat in dreamy mood 
 
 And sketched the vasty outlines of his theme, 
 
 I, grown from very sympathy a bard, 
 
 Saw, as he spoke, strange masquerades of Time 
 
 Sweep past in awful splendour. 
 
 Years had fled, 
 
 Ay, forty years of florid life, since first 
 He planned this large majestic epopee ; 
 And years must still be spent in search and 
 
 thought ; 
 
 And years, perchance, in waiting, sail outspread, 
 To catch the ever-imminent breeze of song ; 
 Years on the voyage through that sea of dreams ; 
 Years and the man who had thought and wrought, 
 
 too rapt 
 
 To note the years, forgot that he was old ! 
 Small wonder ! For his eye, grown keen to scan 
 The cosmic cycles from the nebular dawn, 
 Was dulled to human epochs, mortal dates. 
 Why, Rome was thatched and fenced but yesterday ! 
 
6 A Lost Epic. 
 
 The Pyramids were reared a year ago ? 
 
 Nay, mark, those fiery -blossomed weeds have 
 
 flamed 
 
 Along the furrows of an Aryan plough ; 
 These ripples wash the self-same water-line 
 As when the dwellers on the reed-roofed piles 
 Moulded clay crescents of the holy Moon ! 
 
 What pageants these of his ! He spoke of Art ; 
 And the sea -crinkled, ice-cragged, palm -plumed 
 
 world 
 
 Spread like a marvellous map before the eye ; 
 And vaguely seen in dimly shimmering light, 
 Lo ! Man the Artist wrought. Before his cave 
 Th' autochthon sketched upon a mammoth's tooth 
 The picture of a mammoth, chipped the flint 
 To shape of prehistoric man or beast. 
 Tribes perished, forests crumbled, sea and land 
 Changed places, and the stars changed colour and 
 
 place 
 
 In changing skies, but Man the Artist lived 
 Scratched, whittled, painted, grew in eye and hand ; 
 Pictured the river-bluffs, the rocky walls 
 Of sea-carved creeks, the snow-capped precipice, 
 The ice-borne boulder on the tropic isle, 
 
A Lost Epic. 7 
 
 Till sun and moon, fish, reptile, bird and flower, 
 Mammal and Man, on ivory, slate, horn, rock, 
 Ringed with strange zodiacs all the savage globe ! 
 And nations perished, cities rose and fell, 
 And Man the Artist lived and wrought and throve, 
 Grew bold in thought and opulent in means, 
 Survived all wreck, till Titian, Raphael came 
 For life indeed is short and art is long ! 
 
 All this was but an episode conceive ! 
 In some transcendent pageant he had named 
 " The Song of Colour." He began his strain 
 Far backward in the green Devonian Age, 
 When no bright blossom hung on any tree 
 Its crimson petals or its golden bell; 
 No single fruit gleamed ruddy in the sun, 
 But all the jungle- waste of primal growth, 
 Gigantic marestails, ferns, and ancient pines, 
 Rolled one susurrent sea of endless green ; 
 And giant May-flies poised on gauzy wing 
 O'er tepid swamps, and antique grasshoppers 
 Chirruped the oldest music of the world. 
 Threading that green and gloomy forest floor, 
 He marked, as emerald age succeeded age, 
 The slowly kindling dawn of sylvan love ; 
 
8 A Lost Epic. 
 
 The pines and cycads sighed with tender need, 
 The grasses beckoned with their feathery plumes, 
 And whispered, " Hasten, sweetest, or we die." 
 And through the woods for centuries the wind 
 Drifted the amorous pollen, till the waste 
 Was checked by Colour, and th' instinctive tree 
 Hung out its lamps of blossom, wooed and won 
 The aid of myriad-murmuring insect swarms 
 In the vast stress and strain of leafy life ; 
 Hung out its glowing fruit, that beast and bird 
 Might guard its life, assist its kindly race 
 In conquest of the hungry continents. 
 So kindled through the centuries the world ! 
 For love of brilliant food awoke a love 
 For brilliant mates ; and beetle and butterfly 
 Changed into creeping gem and fluttering flower, 
 And feather and fur were shot with luring tints ; 
 And plucking from the hospitable boughs 
 A coloured feast, the ancestry of Man 
 Bequeathed to Man the love of coloured things, 
 And Man became the Artist. 
 
 Such he deemed 
 
 The genesis of Art so vast the time, 
 So slow and subtly intricate the toil, 
 Ere God could make a Raphael ! Ponder that ! 
 
A Lost Epic. 9 
 
 Sublime it was but sad, this tardy growth, 
 This infinite waste of means to shape an end, 
 This frigid scorn of time, this recklessness 
 Of life potential and of potent life. 
 Nature, he felt, was ruthless, tyrannous, 
 Extravagant of pain ; and in a song, 
 BLOSSOM AND BABE, he touched the human stop 
 In the vast organ-music of his theme. 
 
 BLOSSOM AND BABE. 
 
 O happy little English cot ! O rustic-sweet vignette 
 
 Of red brick walls and thatched roof, in apple- 
 blossom set ! 
 
 O happy Devon meadows, how you come to me again ! 
 
 And I am riding as I rode along the cool green lane, 
 
 A-dreaming and a-dreaming ; and behold ! I see once 
 more 
 
 The fair young mother with her babe beside the 
 shaded door. 
 
 How bright it was! No blossom trembled in the 
 hot blue noon, 
 
 And grasshoppers were thrilling all the drowsy 
 heart of June ! 
 
 O babe upon the bosom, O blossom on the tree ! 
 
io A Lost Epic. 
 
 And as I passed, the stridulous incessant jangle ran 
 Along the hedgerow following me, until my brain 
 
 began 
 
 To mingle in a waking dream the baby at the breast. 
 The woman and the apple-bloom, the shrilly sounding 
 
 pest, 
 To blend them with that great green age of trees 
 
 which never shed 
 
 A bell of gold or purple or a petal of white or red, 
 When all the music of the world a world too young 
 
 to sing 
 Was such a piercing riot made by such an insect 
 
 wing. 
 
 O babe upon the bosom, O blossom on the tree ! 
 
 And then I thought of all the ages, all the waste of 
 
 power, 
 That went to tinge one pulpy fruit, to flush one little 
 
 flower ; 
 And just in this same wise, I mused, the Human too 
 
 must grow 
 Through waste of life, through blood and tears, 
 
 through centuries of woe, 
 To reach the perfect -flower and fruit ; for Nature 
 
 does not scan, 
 
A Lost Epic. 1 1 
 
 More than the individual tree, the individual man; 
 A myriad blossoms shall be lavished, if but one shall 
 
 give 
 The onward impulse to the thought that Nature 
 
 means to live. 
 
 O babe upon the bosom, O blossom on the tree ! 
 
 O fair young mother, far removed from visions of 
 
 unrest, 
 Be happy in the baby blossom flushing at thy 
 
 breast ! 
 The bles seder condition thine, that thou canst never 
 
 see 
 The strife, the cruel waste, the cyclic growth in man 
 
 and tree ; 
 That thou canst trust a heart, more kind than ever 
 
 Nature shows, 
 Will gather each baby bloom that falls, will cherish 
 
 each that blows ; 
 Canst need no solace from the faith, that since the 
 
 world began 
 The Brute hath reached the Human through the 
 
 martyrdom of man. 
 
 O babe upon the bosom, O blossom on the tree I 
 
1 2 A Lost Epic. 
 
 Why should I tire you with his dreams ? And yet 
 To me they bring the saddest hours I know. 
 His pageant of migrations swarming hosts 
 Of plant, beast, insect, man, in ceaseless march 
 Netting with footprints all the restless world 
 Age after age ; his vision of the tombs 
 Caves, barrows, rings and avenues of stone, 
 Ship-mounds and pyramids, by sea-washed shore, 
 Far inland, by the river, in the waste, 
 On snow-peaked mountain and on grassy plain, 
 On continent and isle, here one all lone, 
 There grouped in multitudes, till all the earth 
 Seemed one vast graveyard whence the Spirit of 
 
 Man 
 
 Cried unto God for immortality ; 
 His pageant of the altars yearning arms 
 Stretched to the spirits of the kindly dead, 
 The blood-drenched idols and the shrieking fires, 
 The magic drums why speak of these, of aught ? 
 The song of BLOSSOM AND BABE was all he wrote 
 Of this stupendous Epic of the World. 
 Last spring he died, left me his grandchild there, 
 His fossils, books, and manuscripts. The last 
 I searched with eagerness, and found the song 
 A single arrow-head in heaps of flakes, 
 
A Lost Epic. 1 3 
 
 Notes, observations, comments, chips of thought ! 
 
 His heart was light unto the last : he felt 
 
 A joyous confidence that all was well. 
 
 No premonition saddened his decline ; 
 
 And, dying, he believed in years of love 
 
 To lavish on his poem and his child. 
 
 The mighty Epic that had filled his brain, 
 
 Absorbed his very being forty years, 
 
 He took away with him. A larger life 
 
 May yield it larger utterance who can fell ? 
 
 Yes, give them to the gentleman, my dear ! 
 
THROUGH THE AGES. 
 
 *A LEGEND OF A STONE AXE. 
 
 O 
 
 R the swamp in the forest 
 The sunset is red ; 
 And the sad reedy waters, 
 In black mirrors spread, 
 
 Are aflame with the great crimson tree-tops o'er- 
 head. 
 
 By the swamp in the forest 
 The oak-branches groan, 
 As the Savage primeval, 
 
 With russet hair thrown 
 
 O'er his huge naked limbs, swings his hatchet of 
 stone. 
 
Through the Ages. 1 5 
 
 By the swamp in the forest 
 
 Sings shrilly in glee 
 The stark forester's lass 
 
 Plucking mast in a tree 
 And hairy and brown as a squirrel is she ! 
 
 With the strokes of the flint axe 
 
 The blind woodland rings, 
 And the echoes laugh back as 
 
 The sylvan girl sings : 
 
 And the Sabre-tooth growls in his lair ere he 
 springs ! 
 
 Like two stars of green splendour, 
 
 His great eyeballs burn 
 As he crawls ! Chilled to silence, 
 
 The girl can discern 
 
 The fierce pantings which thrill through the fronds 
 of the fern. 
 
 And the brown frolic face of 
 The girl has grown white, 
 As the large fronds are swayed in 
 
 The weird crimson light, 
 
 And she sobs with the strained throbbing dumb- 
 ness of fright. 
 
1 6 Through the Ages. 
 
 With his blue eyes agleam, and 
 
 His wild russet hair 
 Streaming back, the Man travails, 
 
 Unwarned, unaware 
 
 Of the lithe shape that crouches, the green eyes 
 that glare. 
 
 And now, hark ! as he drives with 
 
 A last mighty swing 
 The stone blade of the axe through 
 
 The oak's central ring, 
 
 From the blanched lips what screams of wild 
 agony spring ! 
 
 There's a rush through the fern-fronds 
 
 A yell of affright 
 And the Savage and Sabre-tooth 
 
 Close in fierce fight : 
 And^the red sunset smoulders and blackens to night. 
 
 On the swamp in the forest 
 One clear star is shown, 
 And the reeds fill the night with 
 
 A long troubled moan 
 And the girl sits and sobs in the darkness, alone ! 
 
Through the Ages. 17 
 
 The great dim centuries of long ago 
 
 Sweep past with rain and fire, with wind and snow, 
 
 And where the Savage swung his axe of stone 
 
 The blue clay silts on Titan trunks o'erthrown, 
 
 O'er mammoth's tusks, in river-horse's lair; 
 
 And, armed with deer-horn, clad in girdled hair, 
 
 A later savage in his hollow tree 
 
 Hunts the strange broods of a primeval sea. 
 
 And yet the great dim centuries again 
 
 Sweep past with snow and fire, with wind and rain 
 
 And where that warm primeval ocean rolled 
 
 A second forest buds, blooms broad, grows old; 
 
 And a new race of prehistoric men 
 
 Springs from the mystic soil, and once again 
 
 Fades like a wood mist through the woodlands hoar. 
 
 For lo ! the great dim centuries once more 
 
 With wind and fire, with rain and snow sweep by ; 
 
 And where the forest stood, an empty sky 
 
 Arches with lonely blue a lonely land. 
 
 The great white stilted storks in silence stand 
 
 Far from each other, motionless as stone, 
 
 And melancholy leagues of marsh-reeds moan, 
 
 And dead tarns blacken 'neath the mournful blue. 
 
1 8 Through the Ages. 
 
 The ages speed ! And now the skin canoe 
 
 Darts with swift paddle through the drear morass, 
 
 But ere the painted fisherman can pass, 
 
 The brazen horns ring out ; a thund'rous throng 
 
 Bronzed faces, brazen helmets sweeps along, 
 
 The silver Eagles flash and disappear 
 
 Across the Roman causeway ! 
 
 Year by year 
 
 The dim time lapses till that vesper hour 
 Broods o'er the summer lake with peaceful power, 
 When the carved galley through the sunset floats, 
 The rowers, with chains of gold about their throats, 
 Hang on their dripping oars, and sweet and clear 
 The sound of singing steals across the mere, 
 And rising with glad face and outstretched hand, 
 " Row, Knights, a little nearer to the land, 
 And let us hear these monks of Ely sing ; " 
 Says KNUT, the King. 
 
 In the dim years what fateful hour arrives, 
 And who is this rides Fenward from St Ives ? 
 A man of massive presence, bluff and stern. 
 Beneath their craggy brows his deep eyes burn 
 With awful thoughts and purposes sublime. 
 The face is one to abash the front of time, 
 
Through the Ages. 19 
 
 Hewn of red rock, so vital, even now 
 
 One sees the wart above that shaggy brow. 
 
 At Ely there in these idyllic days 
 
 His sickles reap, his sheep and oxen graze, 
 
 And all the ambition of his sober life 
 
 Is but to please Elizabeth his wife, 
 
 To drain the Fens and magnify the Lord. 
 
 So in his plain cloth suit, with close-tucked sword, 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL, fated but unknown, 
 
 Rides where the Savage swung his axe of stone. 
 
 In the class-room blue-eyed Phemie 
 Sits, half listening, hushed and dreamy, 
 To the grey-haired pinched Professor droning to 
 his class of girls. 
 
 And around her in their places 
 Rows of arch and sweet young faces 
 Seem to fill the air with colour shed from eyes 
 and lips and curls ! 
 
 Eyes of every shade of splendour, 
 Brown and bashful, blue and tender, 
 Grey and giddy, black and throbbing with a deep 
 impassioned light : 
 
2O Through the Ages. 
 
 Golden ringlets, raven clusters, 
 Auburn braids with sunny lustres 
 Falling on white necks, plump shoulders clothed 
 in green and blue and white. 
 
 And the sun with leafy reflex 
 Of the rustling linden-tree flecks 
 All the glass doors of the cases ranged along the 
 class-room wall 
 
 Flecks with shadow and gold the Teacher's 
 Thin grey hair and worn pinched features, : 
 And the pupils' heads, and sends a thrill of July 
 over all. 
 
 And the leafy golden tremor 
 Witches so the blue-eyed dreamer 
 That the room seems filling straightway with a 
 forest green and old; 
 
 And the grey Professor's speech is 
 Heard like wind among the beeches 
 Murmuring wondrous cosmic secrets never quite 
 distinctly told; 
 
Through the Ages. 2 1 
 
 And the girls around seem turning 
 Into trees laburnums burning, 
 Graceful ashes, silver birches but through all the 
 glamour and change 
 
 Phemie is conscious that those cases 
 Hold reliques of vanished races, 
 The pre-Adamitic fossils of a dead world grim and 
 strange. 
 
 Labelled shells suggest the motion, 
 Moan, and glimmer of that ocean 
 Where the belemnites dropped spindles and the 
 sand-stars shed their rays ; 
 
 Monstrous birds stalk stilted by as 
 She perceives the slab of Trias 
 Scrawled with hieroglyphic claw - tracks of the 
 mesozoic days; 
 
 And before her she sees dawn a 
 Pageant of an awful fauna 
 
 While across Silurian ages the Professor's lecture 
 blows. 
 
22 Through the Ages. 
 
 All the while a soft and pleasant 
 Rustle of dresses, an incessant 
 Buzz of smothered frolic rises underneath his 
 meagre nose. 
 
 And one pretty plague has during 
 All the class been caricaturing 
 Her short-sighted good old Master with a world 
 of wicked zest ; 
 
 And the madcaps blush and titter 
 As they see the unconscious sitter 
 Sketched as Allophylian Savage spectacled but 
 much undressed. 
 
 But the old man turns the pages 
 Of the rock-illumined ages, 
 
 Tracing from earth's mystic missal the antiquity of 
 Man : 
 
 Not six thousand years but eras. 
 Ages, eons disappear as 
 
 Groping back we touch the system where the Human 
 first began. 
 
Through the Ages. 23 
 
 Centuries, as we retrogress, are 
 Dwarfed to days, says the Professor, 
 And our lineage was hoary ere Eve's apple-tree grew 
 green ; 
 
 For the Bee, whose drowsy humming 
 Was prophetic of Man's coming, 
 Lies in gem - like tomb of amber, buried in the 
 Miocene. 
 
 At what point Man came, I know not, 
 Logic proves not, fossils show not, 
 But his dim remote existence is a fact beyond 
 dispute. 
 
 Look! And from among some thirty 
 Arrow barbs of quartz and chert he 
 Takes the flint head of a hatchet, and the girls 
 grow hushed and mute. 
 
 Old, he says, art thou strange stone ! Nor 
 Less antique thy primal owner ! 
 When the Fens were drained this axe was found 
 below two forests sunk. 
 
24 Through the Ages. 
 
 Underneath a bed of sea day 
 And two forests this relique lay 
 Where some Allophylian Savage left it in a half- 
 hewn trunk! 
 
 Does the old Professor notice 
 Large eyes, blue as myosotis, 
 Raised to him in startled wonder as those fateful 
 words are said ? 
 
 But for Phemie, through the trees in 
 Her dream forest, fact and reason 
 Blend with fancy, and her vision grows complete 
 and clear and dread : 
 
 By the swamp in the forest 
 
 The sylvan girl sings 
 As his flint-headed hatchet 
 
 The wild Woodman swings, 
 But the hatchet cleaves fast in the trunk he has 
 
 riven 
 
 The Man stands unarmed as the Sabre -tooth 
 springs ! 
 
THE DEATH OF ANAXAGORAS. 
 
 "Lampsacum postea profectus, illic diem suum obiit; ubi 
 rogantibus eum principibus civitatis, Numquid fieri mandaret, 
 jussisse ferunt ut pueri quotannis quo mense defecisset ludere 
 permitterentur, servarique et hodie consuetudinem. " DlOG. 
 LAERT., De Vita Philosoph. ; Anaxagoras. 
 
 CLEON of Lampsacus to Pericles : 
 Of him she banished now let Athens 
 boast; 
 
 Let now th' Athenians raise to him they stoned 
 A statue; Anaxagoras is dead! 
 
 To you who mourn the Master, called him friend, 
 Beat back th' Athenian wolves who fanged his 
 
 throat, 
 
 And risked your own to save him, Pericles 
 I now unfold the manner of his end. 
 
 
26 The Death of Anaxagoras. 
 
 The aged man, who found in sixty years 
 Scant cause for laughter, laughed before he died 
 And died still smiling : Athens vexed him not ! 
 Not he, but your Athenians, he would say, 
 Were banished in his exile ! 
 
 When the dawn 
 
 First glimmers white o'er Lesser Asia, 
 And little birds are twittering in the grass, 
 And all the sea lies hollow and grey with mist, 
 And in the streets the ancient watchmen doze, 
 The Master woke with cold. His feet were chill 
 And reft of sense ; and we who watched him knew 
 The fever had not wholly left his brain, 
 For he was wandering, seeking nests of birds 
 An urchin from the green Ionian town 
 Where he was born. We chafed his clay-cold limbs : 
 And so he dozed, nor dreamed, until the sun 
 Laughed out broad day and flushed the garden 
 
 gods 
 
 Who bless our fruits and vines in Lampsacus. 
 Feeble, but sane and cheerful, he awoke 
 And took our hands and asked to feel the sun; 
 And where the ilex spreads a gracious shade 
 We placed him, wrapped and pillowed ; and he 
 
 heard 
 
The Death of Anaxagoras. 27 
 
 The charm of birds, the social whisper of vines, 
 The ripple of the blue Propontic sea. 
 Placid and pleased he lay ; but we were sad 
 To see the snowy hair and silver beard 
 Like withering mosses on a fallen oak, 
 And feel that he, whose vast philosophy 
 Had cast such sacred branches o'er the fields 
 Where Athens pastures her dull sheep, lay fallen 
 And never more should know the spring ! 
 
 Confess, 
 
 You too had grieved to see it, Pericles ! 
 But Anaxagoras owned no sense of wrong ; 
 And when we called the plagues of all your 
 
 gods 
 
 On your ungrateful city, he but smiled : 
 " Be patient, children ! Where would be the gain 
 Of wisdom and divine astronomy, 
 Could we not school our fretful minds to bear 
 The ills all life inherits? /can smile 
 To think of Athens ! Were they much to blame ? 
 Had I not slain Apollo ? Plucked the beard 
 Of Jove himself? Poor rabble, who have yet 
 Outgrown so little the green grasshoppers 
 From whom they boast descent, are they to 
 
 blame ? 
 
28 The Death of Anaxagoras. 
 
 How could they dream, or how believe when 
 
 taught 
 
 The sun a red-hot iron ball, in bulk 
 Not less than Peloponnesus ? How believe 
 The moon, no silver goddess girt for chace, 
 But earth and stones, with caverns, hills, and vales ? 
 Poor grasshoppers ! who deem the gods absorbed 
 In all their babble, shrilling in the grass, 
 What wonder if they rage, should one but hint 
 That thunder and lightning, born of clashing clouds, 
 Might happen even with Jove in pleasant mood, 
 Not thinking of Athenians at all ! " 
 
 He paused ; and blowing softly from the sea, 
 The fresh wind stirred the ilex, shaking down 
 Through chinks of sunny leaves blue gems of sky; 
 And lying in the shadow, all his mind 
 O'ershadowed by our grief, once more he spoke : 
 " Let not your hearts be troubled ! All my days 
 Hath all my care been fixed on this vast blue 
 So still above us ; now my days are done, 
 Let it have care of me ! Be patient ; meek ; 
 Not puffed with doctrine! Nothing can be known; 
 Nought grasped for certain; sense is circumscribed; 
 The intellect is weak ; and life is short ! " 
 
The Death of Anaxagoras. 29 
 
 He ceased and mused a little, while we wept. 
 " And yet be nowise downcast ; seek, pursue j 
 The lover's rapture and the sage's gain 
 Less in attainment lie than in approach. 
 Look forward to the time which is to come ! 
 All things are mutable ; and change alone 
 Unchangeable. But knowledge grows ! The gods 
 Are drifting from the earth like morning mist ; 
 The days are surely at the doors when men 
 Shall see but human actions in the world ! 
 Yea, even these hills of Lampsacus shall be 
 The isles of some new sea, if time not fail ! " 
 
 And now the reverend fathers of our town 
 Had heard the Master's end was very near, 
 And came to do him homage at the close, 
 And ask what wish of his they might fulfil. 
 But he, divining that they thought his heart 
 Might yearn to Athens for a resting-place, 
 Said gently : " Nay, from everywhere the way 
 To that dark land you wot of is the same. 
 I feel no care ; I have no wish. The Greeks 
 Will never quite forget my Pericles, 
 And when they think of him will say of me, 
 'Twas Anaxagoras taught him ! " 
 
30 The Death of Anaxagoras. 
 
 Loath to go, 
 
 No kindly office done, yet once again 
 The reverend fathers pressed him for a wish. 
 Then laughed the Master : " Nay, if still you urge, 
 And since 'twere churlish to reject goodwill, 
 I pray you, every year when time brings back 
 The month in which I left you, let the boys 
 All boys and girls in this your happy town 
 Be free of task and school for that one month." 
 
 He lay back smiling, and the reverend men 
 Departed, heavy at heart. He spoke no more, 
 But haply musing on his truant days, 
 Passed from us, and was smiling when he died. 
 
 Thus wrote to Pericles from Lampsacus 
 The poet Cleon ; and the Master's words, 
 Wherein he spoke of change unchangeable, 
 Hold good for great things but hold ill for small ; 
 For lo ! six hundred fateful years have sped 
 And Greece is but a Roman province now, 
 Whereas through those six centuries, year by year 
 When summer and the sun brought back the time, 
 
The Death of Anaxagoras. 31 
 
 The lads and lasses, free of task and school, 
 Have held their revelry in Lampsacus, 
 A fact so ripe with grave moralities, 
 That I, Diogenes, have deemed it fit 
 To note in my " DE VITA ET MORIBUS." 
 
THE LATTER LAW. 
 
 WHEN, schooled to resignation, I had ceased 
 To yearn for my lost Eden; when I 
 knew 
 
 No loving Spirit brooded in the blue, 
 And none should see His coming in the East, 
 I looked for comfort in my creed ; I sought 
 To draw all nature nearer, to replace 
 The sweet old myths, the tenderness, the grace 
 Of God's dead world of faith and reverent thought. 
 
 Oh, joy ! I found the stern new Law reveal 
 Romance more rare than poesy creates : 
 Your blood, it said, is kindred with the sap 
 Which throbs within the cedar, and mayhap 
 In some dim wise the tree reciprocates, 
 Even as a Dryad, all the love you feel ! 
 
The Latter Law. 33 
 
 n. 
 
 You and the great glad Earth are kith and kin, 
 There is one base, one scheme of life, one hope 
 On that and this side of the microscope. 
 
 All things, now wholes, have parts of many been, 
 
 And all shall be. A disk of Homer's blood 
 May redden a daisy on an English lawn, 
 And what was Chaucer glimmer in the dawn 
 
 To-morrow o'er the plains where Ilion stood. 
 
 No jot is lost, or scorned, or disallowed ; 
 
 One Law reigns over all. Take you no care, 
 For while all beings change one life endures, 
 And a new cycle waits for you and yours 
 To melt away, like streaks of morning cloud, 
 Into the infinite azure of things that were. 
 
34 The Latter Law. 
 
 in. 
 
 And soon the selfish clinging unto sense, 
 The longing that this ME should never fail, 
 Loosed quivering hands, for oh ! of what avail 
 
 Were such survival of intelligence, 
 
 If all the great and good of days gone by 
 Plato, Hypatia, Shakespeare had surceased, 
 Had mingled with the cloud, the plant, the 
 beast, 
 
 And God were but a mythos of the sky ? 
 
 And when I thought, o'ershadowed with strange 
 
 awe, 
 
 How Christ was dead had ceased in utter woe, 
 With that great cry " Forsaken ! " on the 
 
 cross, 
 
 I felt at first a sense of bitter loss, 
 And then grew passive, saying, " Be it so ! 
 Tis one with Christ and Judas. 'Tis the law ! " 
 
The Latter Law. 35 
 
 IV. 
 
 But when my child, my one girl-babe lay dead 
 The blossom of me, my dream and my desire 
 And unshed tears burned in my eyes like fire, 
 
 And when my wife subdued her sobs, and said 
 
 Oh ! husband, do not grieve, be comforted, 
 She is with Christ! I laughed in my despair. 
 With Christ ! O God ! and where is Christ, 
 and where 
 
 My poor dead babe? And where the countless 
 dead? 
 
 The great glad Earth my kin ! is glad as though 
 No child had ever died ; the heaven of May 
 Leans like a laughing face above my grief. 
 Is she clean lost for ever? How shall I know? 
 O Christ ! art thou still Christ ? And shall I 
 
 pray 
 For fulness of belief or unbelief? 
 
THE GOD AND THE SCHOOLBOY. 
 
 THROUGHOUT the land and sea from an- 
 cient days 
 
 The wonder had been rumoured, that the god 
 Born on the radiant hills i' the dazzle of dawn 
 Asklepios healed the sick and raised the dead. 
 The world gave credence gladly. Human faith 
 With human anguish grew ; and, doubtless, God 
 Was pitiful in heaven, when unaware 
 Of Whom they sought, men called Asklepios. 
 
 Thus, four-and- twenty centuries ago, 
 
 At Epidaurus, on that rocky point 
 
 Washed north and south with violet sea, the sick 
 
 Struck sail. Beyond the corn-fields, vineyards, 
 
 olive-groves 
 
 And hamlets of the Dusty-feet for so 
 Our townsmen named the rustic folk who tilled 
 
The God and the Schoolboy. 37 
 
 The sweet brown earth 'twixt mountain-cirque and 
 
 sea 
 
 A green gorge opened on the beautiful 
 Hushed valley in the flowery heart o' the hills, 
 Where, throned on gold and ivory, the god 
 Chryselephantine, mighty-bearded, ringed 
 With golden head-rays held his knotty staff 
 In one hand, and in one his serpent, wreathed 
 In shining coils, while near his footstool lay 
 The first dumb friend man found among the brute. 
 
 Oh, beautiful among the purple peaks 
 Glittered the long white marble terrace-walls, 
 The pillared aisles, the gardens of the god, 
 The altars white, and white immortal shapes 
 Half-seen in fragrant bowers where pine and plane 
 Assuaged with shade the jewelled blaze of noon. 
 
 And hither out of furthest lands and isles 
 
 Amid remote dim sea-ways came the blind, 
 
 The dumb, the deaf, the palsied, scald, and 
 
 maimed 
 
 All loathsome shapes of pain and broken strength 
 And hopeless wasting if perchance the god 
 Might heal their stricken bodies. 
 
38 The God and the Schoolboy. 
 
 Shafts of stone 
 
 Bore of the midnight vision and the cure 
 Full many a marvellous record. One who came 
 From far green-gardened Lampsacus the god 
 Had graciously made whole ; from Halike 
 A town whereof none now in all the world 
 Aught knoweth save the graven name came one ; 
 And one from cold Torone in the north, 
 From joyous Mytilene one, and one 
 From that Hermione, whence Hades-ward 
 So short the downward way that never coin 
 Is laid upon the dead man's tongue to pay 
 The shadowy oarsman. 
 
 But within the shrine 
 
 Hung costly gifts of men made glad to live 
 Great vases, gems and mirrors; jewelled eyes, 
 Fingers of silver, arms and legs of gold ; 
 Rich models of invaluable parts, 
 And precious images of fleshly ills 
 From which no quittance were too highly priced ; 
 And, mixed with these, rude gifts of grateful hearts 
 Whose poverty was not ashamed to give. 
 
The God and the Schoolboy. 39 
 
 Upon a time, among the folk who sought 
 
 Surcease of suffering from Asklepios, 
 
 Was brought a schoolboy from the white -walled 
 
 town 
 
 Upon the rocky point Euphanes frail, 
 And fever-flushed, and weak with grievous pain ; 
 And as the lad, beneath the clement stars, 
 Lay wandering in his mind, and dreamed per- 
 chance 
 
 Of sailing little triremes on the shore, 
 Or making, it might be, a locust-cage 
 With reeds and stalks of asphodel beneath 
 The trellised vines, it seemed as though the god 
 Stood by him in the holy night and spoke : 
 16 What wilt thou give me, little playfellow, 
 If I shall cure thy sickness ? " And the lad, 
 Thinking what pleasure schoolboys have in these, 
 Replied : " I'll give thee my ten marbles, god ! " 
 Asklepios laughed, right gladdened with the gift, 
 And said : " Then, truly, I will make thee well ! " 
 And lo ! when morning whitened on the hills, 
 And in the valley's dusk the sacred cock 
 Clapped wings and sang, the urchin went forth 
 whole ! 
 
40 The God and the Schoolboy. 
 
 Full four-and-twenty centuries ago 
 
 Euphanes saw the god ; and yesterday 
 
 The pillar bearing record of the cure 
 
 Was dug from wreck of war and drift of years. 
 
 " Ten marbles ! quoth the child. Asklepios laughed; 
 
 But on the morrow forth the lad went whole" 
 
 Thus closely had the Greek in ancient times 
 
 Through some prophetic prompting of pure love 
 
 God's unfulfilled events divining drawn 
 
 Man's heart unto the human heart in God. 
 
AN INDIAN COWRIE. 
 
 (FOUND IN A CORNISH BARROW AT THE 
 LAND'S END.) 
 
 A GENTLE creature grew 
 -/JL Within this cell of pearly blue 
 How many centuries ago 
 No seer can tell us. We can only know 
 It found life pleasant, moved, and took its ease 
 By palmy island shores in distant Indian seas. 
 
 The world has changed since then ! 
 Tongues have died out ; and tribes of men 
 Have clamoured, and have passed away, 
 Like crow-flights through the sunset of a day ; 
 No pillar marks where gorgeous cities fell ; 
 But this small speechless life hath left its storied 
 shell. 
 
42 An Indian Cowrie. 
 
 What matters now to seek 
 How man in that dim dawn antique 
 First owned it ; whether fisher spread 
 His snare of palm-tree leaves and baited thread, 
 Or leaf-girt negress, whistling in her speech, 
 Gathered an empty husk upon a tangled beach ? 
 
 It profits not ; and yet, 
 Methinks, some cave-dwarf, carved in jet, 
 With blubber lips and woolly hair, 
 Wagged a huge head, as at some Aryan fair, 
 He bartered for a shred, a copper bead, 
 This shell, whose story is a world's, could we but 
 read. 
 
 How many a kindred hand 
 Hath, as it passed from land to land, 
 Touched it, and left a pulse to thrill 
 The Aryan blood which leaps within us still ; 
 What memories of all that then befell 
 Are, like an Iliad, shut within this little shell ! 
 
 Apply it to your ear, 
 
 And listen ! No, you cannot hear ; 
 
An Indian Cowrie. 43 
 
 Yet how the arrow-heads of stone 
 
 Sang ; how the bronze swords rang ; how shriek 
 
 and groan 
 
 Followed the stone celt's thud, as wave by wave, 
 The Aryan exodus for ever westward drave ? 
 
 For ever westward ! New 
 Wild worlds still opened ; but the Blue 
 That brooded o'er them was the same 
 Unchanging God that brooded whence they 
 
 came. 
 
 For ever westward ! And the shell was cast 
 Westward ; and great fresh waves still swept be- 
 yond the last. 
 
 Across the infinite plains 
 White cattle draw the lumbering wains ; 
 Huge lop-eared mastiffs guard and keep 
 The silky goats and heavy horned sheep ; 
 Dark lines of life crawl where the great lakes shine, 
 And close against the sunset creeps a fainter line. 
 
 The rosy peaks of snow 
 Arise, and like a pageant go ; 
 
44 An Indian Cowrie. 
 
 Primeval forest, pathless fen, 
 
 Dragons, and hordes of brutal-visaged men 
 Fleet past ; and ever where the dark lines turn, 
 In sudden fields of wheat the scarlet poppies burn. 
 
 Hark ! in the dead of night, 
 What cries are these ? What crimson light 
 Leaps o'er the mere, and redly streaks 
 The snowy pine-wood and the icy peaks ? 
 
 What splashing paddles these ? The morn will 
 
 break 
 On tree-piled hovels smouldering in an Alpine lake. 
 
 Still westward ! And the sun, 
 Burning o'er Jutland, has begun 
 To bleach the many-cycled firs ! 
 A fresher life-sap through the forest stirs, 
 And tall and green the little oaks have grown 
 Round the Bronze Man at death-grips with the 
 Man of Stone ! 
 
 What year was it that blew 
 
 The Aryan's wicker-work canoe 
 Which brought the shell to English land ? 
 What prehistoric man or woman's hand, 
 
An Indian Cowrie. 45 
 
 With what intent, consigned it to this grave 
 This barrow set in sound of the Ancient World's 
 last wave ? 
 
 Beside it in the mound 
 A charmed bead of flint was found. 
 Some woman surely in this place, 
 Covered with flowers a little baby-face, 
 And laid the cowrie on the cold dead breast ; 
 And, weeping, turned for comfort to the landless 
 West? 
 
 Was it a jewel meant 
 To mark deep love or high descent ; 
 A many-virtued amulet ; 
 A sign to know the child by when they met ; 
 A coin for that last journey through the night 
 A coin of little worth, a childless widow's mite ? 
 
 No man shall ever know ! 
 It happened all so long ago 
 That this same childless woman may 
 Have stood upon the cliffs around the bay 
 And watched for tin-ships that no longer came, 
 Nor knew that Carthage had gone down in Roman 
 flame. 
 
4 6 
 
 THE WOODWELE. 
 
 I HEAR you in the orchard hid in clouds of 
 apple-flower, 
 I hear you tapping, tapping, busy Woodwele, in 
 
 my tree ; 
 
 My heart is glad to hear you in this golden morn- 
 ing hour, 
 Your tapping is you cannot know, how sweet 
 
 a sound to me. 
 The old man hears you, and he lifts his head as 
 
 white as snow, 
 
 And dreams he is the passionate heart of fifty years 
 ago! 
 
 The glad church bells were ringing then as they 
 
 are ringing now ; 
 
 The orchard was in bloom, and there was Sun- 
 day in the air ; 
 
The Woodwele. 47 
 
 My dear love's face was sweeter than the blossom 
 
 on the bough 
 'Twas bluest May-time in her eyelids and her 
 
 golden hair ! 
 We leaned together, lips to lips ; we heard, but 
 
 could not see, 
 A Woodwele 'twas not you, friend tapping in 
 
 that apple-tree ! 
 
 Although 'twas Sunday, still, I thought, no Sab- 
 bath-breaker he ; 
 
 And though to-day is Sunday too, no Sabbath- 
 breaker you ; 
 
 You cannot break, but you can make, a holy day 
 
 for me : 
 
 Your tapping crowds my trees with bloom, and 
 fills my skies with blue. 
 
 I hear you, and my cheek is flushed ; my button- 
 hole is gay ; 
 
 I stride erect what need have I of any staff to-day ? 
 
 Oh, Woodwele, with the laughing note, I feel my 
 
 heart beat fast, 
 
 My eyes are dim, my cheek is wet, my head 
 grows white again ; 
 
48 The Woodwele. 
 
 For I remember, in the light of that long-vanished 
 
 past, 
 How kindly Life has dealt with me, how hard 
 
 with better men. 
 For those church bells, that orchard bloom, that 
 
 Woodwele in the tree, 
 And all that plighted happiness have kept their 
 
 pledge to me ! 
 
 My dear love's eyes are faded and her face is 
 
 wrinkled now, 
 
 And all the golden colour changed to silver in 
 her hair ; 
 
 But when she smiles ah, then you see the blos- 
 som on the bough ; 
 
 And when she speaks, you feel a sense of May- 
 time in the air ! 
 
 Through all disguise, my dear old wife, be sure 
 I see and know 
 
 The pretty maid who loved a poet fifty years ago. 
 
49 
 
 PARTING. 
 
 WHERE'ER you go, on ground or grass, 
 May ne'er you lack a loving lass, 
 With tender lips and honest eyes, 
 To make you happy and keep you wise 
 Where'er you go. 
 
 Where'er you go, on grass or ground, 
 No truer maid will e'er be found 
 Than she, whose heart will follow you 
 With love and sorrow enough for two 
 And will you go ? 
 
 Where'er you go (oh, foolish eyes 
 Let not the blinding tears arise !) 
 Where'er you go (for maidhood's sake, 
 Oh heart, be quiet, and do not break !) 
 You shall not go ! 
 D 
 
MORNING. 
 
 OH, glad and red, the light of morn 
 Across the field of battle broke, 
 And showed the waste of trampled corn 
 
 And smouldering farmsteads wrapped in smoke ; 
 And cold and stark the soldier lay, 
 
 Shot down beside his shattered gun ; 
 And, grimly splashed with blood and clay, 
 His face looked ghastly in the sun. 
 
 Oh, glad and red, the morning shone 
 
 In happy England far away, 
 Where knelt a bright-haired little one 
 
 Beside her mother's knee to pray ; 
 And prompting each fond faltering word, 
 
 The soldier's wife was glad and smiled 
 She knew not 'twas a widow heard 
 
 The prattle of an orphan child. 
 
Morning. 5 1 
 
 Oh, glad and red, oh, glad and red 
 
 The morning light glowed everywhere : 
 And one beam touched the father dead, 
 
 And one the child who knelt in prayer ; 
 And from the trampled corn and clay 
 
 A skylark sprang with joyous breast 
 For shot and shell had spared that day 
 
 Its four brown eggs and little nest. 
 
SONG. 
 
 HOW should you my true love know 
 From another one ? 
 Rosy face and breast of snow 
 Cannot make her known. 
 
 Brightest hair and bluest eyes 
 
 Cannot be a sign 
 Many men might recognise 
 
 Other maids than mine. 
 
 But if you the fairest scan, 
 
 My true love is she 
 Who can jest with any man 
 
 Any man but me. 
 
 When we meet with whispered names, 
 
 Grave and hushed she grows 
 At the thought of all she claims 
 
 All that she bestows ! 
 
S3 
 
 SONG. 
 
 RINGED with blue mountains, 
 Oft when a little lad 
 Dreamed I of something glad 
 
 Hidden beyond ; 
 Ships and the shining sea, 
 Towns and towers haunted me, 
 Dreams made me glad and sad 
 Life lay beyond ! 
 
 Ringed with blue welkin, 
 Oft now, as when a lad, 
 Dream I of something glad 
 
 Hidden beyond ; 
 Something I cannot see 
 Haunts and entices me ; 
 Dreams make me glad and sad 
 
 What lies beyond ? 
 
54 
 
 THE LEGEND OF THE ARK. 
 
 I. THE GREAT WITNESS. 
 
 ' ' And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the 
 earth. . . . And it repented the Lord that He had made man 
 on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord 
 said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of 
 the earth ; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and 
 the fowls of the air." 
 
 L 
 
 O ! sixteen centuries had passed away ! 
 
 When God drove forth the pair, they fell a prey 
 
 To darkness and the panic of the night. 
 
 On three sides crouched their dread. In front, a 
 
 light 
 
 A fire a sword smote every way to keep , 
 The Tree of Life. Their terror made them creep 
 Nearer the sword. They maddened to escape 
 The horror without hands and without shape 
 That lurked in nature, waiting them. The twain 
 Crept closer. 'Twere less dreadful to be slain 
 
The Great Witness. 55 
 
 By that fierce splendour, in each other's sight, 
 Than perish in the vast unhuman night. 
 They lay beneath the sword ; they felt the wind 
 It made. 
 
 This Man and Woman were mankind. 
 
 The sword showed him the Woman's face*, showed her 
 The Man's. They shrank apart. Their faces were 
 More fearful than the darkness, than the sword. 
 
 Then God in pity gave them fire ; the Lord 
 Gave them the fire for solace and a stay. 
 
 When sixteen hundred years had passed -away 
 The whole earth was fulfilled of evil and woe. 
 
 The Man and Woman wandered to and fro 
 
 In hordes and tribes and nations. They did eat 
 
 Of every beast and tree. The track of feet 
 
 Lay wide through polar snow and tropic sand. 
 
 No ocean beat on any utmost land 
 
 But some wild fisher watched the heaving blue. 
 
 Tribes thronged the sunset and the dawn. They 
 
 knew 
 
 The glow of arctic and antarctic skies. 
 In savage lands they lived in wolfish wise. 
 
5 6 The L egend of the A rk : 
 
 The tree, the hanging rock, the cavern gave 
 
 Shelter for fire and slumber and a grave. 
 
 Time changed them colour and stature, hair and 
 
 skin. 
 They knew not whence they came. They owned 
 
 no kin. 
 
 The Man and Woman in them had forgot 
 All ancient days, the sad primeval lot, 
 The brotherhood of dust, the sword of fire. 
 
 Their god was hunger, and their law desire. 
 
 In ancient realms, from golden cities, bright 
 
 With lamps of revel, roared into the night 
 
 The orgies of the giants of the earth. 
 
 And men and beasts, by day, to make them mirth. 
 
 Slew and were slain. Their spearmen, early and late, 
 
 Drove virgin troops from every land to sate 
 
 The tigerish greed of their delirious lust. 
 
 The evil of their fame was blown, like dust 
 
 A blinding drouth through all the world's broad 
 
 ways. 
 
 And they too had forgot the olden days, 
 The kinship of mankind, the sword of fire. 
 
 Their god was luxury, their law desire. 
 
UNIVERSITY/' 
 
 ..' 
 IFQRS\^X 
 
 The Great Witness. 57 
 
 Between the cities and the savage waste 
 
 Were men in myriads. These were they who 
 
 chased 
 
 The elephant and ostrich ; they who fed 
 On marrow of lions on the watershed 
 Of mighty rivers ; they who lived on canes 
 And locusts; they who roamed in sail -drawn 
 
 wains 
 With flocks and herds, and made the heavens 
 
 their fold ; 
 
 And serpent-eaters, wearing coils of gold ; 
 And fisher-folk, who slept on rafts of logs, 
 And throve on river-fish and milk of dogs ; 
 And last, in regions green with sun and rain, 
 The husbandmen who planted roots and grain, 
 And dwelt in huts of water-reeds and mud. 
 And all these had forgot the brotherhood 
 Of man, the Garden days, the sword of fire. 
 
 Their god was turbulence, their law desire. 
 
 And now, when after sixteen hundred years, 
 Beneath the whole wide heaven men's blood and 
 tears 
 
5 8 The Legend of the A rk : 
 
 Cried out to God ; and God the Lord looked forth 
 And saw the violence that filled the earth, 
 The bloody worship and lascivious glee 
 Around the boulder and beneath the tree, 
 And all men's wickedness, it grieved the Lord 
 That He had made man's image. He abhorred 
 All flesh on earth, both man and creeping thing, 
 And every beast, and bird of every wing. 
 And God prepared the vengeance of His rain 
 To slay them, that all evil might be slain 
 And utterly destroyed before His face. 
 
 But Noah, who had walked with God, found 
 
 grace- 
 Both Noah and his house. 
 
 And Noah hewed 
 
 Great trees within the forest, gopher-wood ; 
 And mighty oxen travailed through the years 
 To draw the timber home. 
 
 In all men's ears 
 The fame of this and Noah's name made mirth. 
 
 But lo ! an ancient of the morn o' the earth 
 Hoary as winter, imperishable as stone, 
 O'ershadowing as a cloud which all alone 
 
The Great Witness. 59 
 
 Glooms half a realm for half a summer day 
 Leaned on his spear, and watched his grandson 
 
 lay 
 The Ark's foundations. 
 
 This was that sublime 
 Presentment of humanity and time, 
 Methuselah the living man, whose eyes 
 Had seen the living Adam. Centuries 
 And nations near the figure of his life 
 Were dwarfed to pigmy images. 
 
 A strife 
 Of wrath and sorrow raged within his mind. 
 
 He felt himself the conscience of mankind 
 God's evidence against man's evil. Lo ! 
 Like God he knew if God were just or no. 
 His memory was an iron book wherein 
 Was graved a thousand years of human sin 
 A thousand years of patience, mercy, love, 
 Outraged and scorned. 
 
 " Ye clouds, grow great above ; 
 Be swift, ye waters, to obey his nod ; 
 Break, thou great deep, and rain, thou rain of 
 God!" 
 
60 The Legend of the A rk : 
 
 Thus spoke he in his wrath, yet while he spoke, 
 The motherhood of Eve within him woke. 
 What man was he that he should curse the race 
 Her breasts had suckled ! 
 
 Down his rugged face 
 The great tears of a world-wide pity ran. 
 All time and all good men in that one man 
 Seemed weeping. 
 
 Day by day for many years 
 That hoary Sorrow, gazing through his tears, 
 Watched the long toil, nor spoke to any one. 
 But when at last th' enormous work was done, 
 And all the Ark was wrought, on that same day 
 They saw the man's vast stature rock and sway, 
 Then fall his length. Without a cry or groan 
 He fell. He fell, as falleth some high stone 
 Pillared for worship as a god, and hurled 
 Headlong by God. 
 
 God took him from a world 
 All evil ere the doom of evil burst 
 One grief was spared him he who had seen the first 
 Saw not the last o' the race no prayer could save. 
 
 The sons of Noah dug his giant grave. 
 
The Penitent. 61 
 
 II. THE PENITENT. 
 
 1 ' For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the 
 earth. . . . And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two 
 and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life : . . . and 
 the Lord shut him in." 
 
 GOD shut him in. 
 
 If some great angel came 
 By night or day, in wind or cloud or flame ; 
 Or God Himself leaned out of heaven to close 
 The refuge of the Ark no mortal knows. 
 
 God shut him in. The Lord God sealed his door. 
 Whom God shuts in is safe for evermore. 
 
 For yet seven days did God the Lord restrain 
 The vengeance of the deep and of the rain. 
 There was a noise of viols in the earth, 
 Eating and drinking, pomp and bridal mirth, 
 And violence, and cries of captives sold, 
 And worshippings of stone and wood and gold. 
 
 Through all the golden cities, the unholy ; 
 Through regions of broad rivers winding slowly ; 
 
62 . The Legend of the A rk : 
 
 To savage mountain-gorge and far-off strand 
 Strange rumours spread, how forth of every land, 
 From under every star and cloud, there came 
 Innumerable creatures wild and tame, 
 Known and unnamable ; hordes, flocks, flights, 
 
 swarms ; 
 
 An endless pageant of bewildering forms 
 And wondrous colours ; monstrous and minute ; 
 Grotesque, ferocious, lovely ; beast and brute, 
 Bird, reptile, insect, mollusc ; life in fur 
 And life in feather, leather, horny bur, 
 And shell, and hair, and scales. 
 
 For many days 
 
 Their myriad-marching clouded distant ways 
 With dust, and filled the land with hoarse wild 
 
 sound. 
 
 Men marvelled ; but of all not one was found 
 To read the portent or to heed the sign. 
 
 But lust o' the eyes and frolic born of wine 
 Led forth one wanton rout to hear and see 
 Princes and captains riding royally ; 
 Lewd girls with tinkling feet and jewelled ears ; 
 And singing-men ; archers and men with spears ; 
 
The Penitent. 63 
 
 And in the midst one Woman, tall and white 
 
 Beautiful, wondrous splendid as a light 
 
 On some black headland, when the sea-folk make 
 
 High beacons in the darkness for the sake 
 
 Of their sweet goddess-maid, the Moon. 
 
 Behold ! 
 
 This was that mightiest Harlot of the old 
 Corrupted earth before the great Flood came. 
 Enchantment fell on those who heard her name ; 
 Her eyes made mad ; the breath of her desire 
 Was wild as wind, inexorable as fire. 
 Man knew no shame who gazed upon her face. 
 She broke the giants in the fierce embrace 
 Of her white limbs, laughing for amorousness. 
 The young men were as grapes beneath the press ; 
 She crushed their youth, and flung the skins away. 
 
 Laughing, she came with all that lewd array, 
 And stared with mocking eyes upon the Ark. 
 
 Around, the ancient woods were hushed and dark. 
 The Ark was closed. No cry of beast or bird 
 Was heard within. No stir, no sound was heard. 
 
64 The Legend of the A rk : 
 
 Hushed were the heavens, and dark with brooding 
 cloud. 
 
 The stillness smote her heart. She called aloud 
 And bade them smite the Ark. 
 
 The soldier's spear 
 Thundered. Then all was still. 
 
 Deep awe and fear 
 
 Fell on the Woman's soul. They smote once more 
 And beat upon the walls and sealed door. 
 But no one answered. Not a sound was heard. 
 The dark heavens whist. No leaf o' the forest stirred. 
 
 The Woman felt her limbs grow heavy as stone. 
 
 She bade her people leave her there alone. 
 She watched them go ; with scared dilated eyes 
 She followed them beneath the lowering skies, 
 And saw them riding far across the land. 
 
 She turned and struck the door with trembling 
 
 hand, 
 
 And listened trembling. " Man within," she cried, 
 "Answer; I am alone." 
 
 No voice replied. 
 
The Penitent. 6$ 
 
 Then plucked she from her brows the moon, and 
 
 tore 
 
 Her dyed attire ; and, beating on the door, 
 Shrieked : " Answer, answer, answer ! " 
 
 All was still. 
 
 The awful silence made her being thrill. 
 She gathered dust and strewed it on her hair, 
 And, striking hands together in despair, 
 Shrieked : " Speak, ere terror blabs abroad my 
 
 shame, 
 For dread hath seized on me." 
 
 No answer came. 
 
 Then from the Woman rose a piercing cry : 
 
 " Hear, earth ; ye heavens, hearken ! here am I, 
 
 The world's great Harlot, who have snared and 
 
 slain 
 
 The last old giants of the seed of Cain, 
 And reddened all my robes with youthful blood. 
 And now the Lord will chase me with His flood, 
 And hunt me as a beast ; and though He spare 
 The beast, will spare not me, but clutch my hair, 
 And slay me without mercy for my sin-! 
 E 
 
66 The Legend of the A rk : 
 
 I came to mock thee, O thou man within, 
 But fear hath fallen upon me. Now I know 
 That anguish and unutterable woe 
 And sure destruction are at hand." 
 
 No sound 
 
 Was heard, save bitter weeping on the ground, 
 Where, sobbing with her face among the dust, 
 The Harlot moaned : " The Lord is just is just ! " 
 
 Then spoke a voice, gentle, compassionate : 
 "Why weepest thou?" 
 
 " Because it is too late." 
 " It never is too late to mourn for sin." 
 "Then open." 
 
 " Nay, the Lord hath shut me in." 
 " Must I then perish ? " 
 
 " Nay, thy flesh alone 
 Shall for thine evil in the flesh atone ! " 
 
The Voices. 67 
 
 There was a noise of viols in the earth : 
 Eating and drinking, pomp, and bridal mirth. 
 But day and night the Harlot, weeping sore, 
 Crouched in the dust before the sealed door. 
 
 III. THE VOICES. 
 
 "And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon 
 the earth ; . . . and the mountains were covered. And all 
 flesh died, . . . and every man : . . . and Noah only 
 remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. " 
 
 THE air was filled with sound of rain ; the ground 
 With sound of water; and amid the sound 
 Were heard two awful Voices. 
 
 " Look ! " one cried ; 
 ! What see'st thou ? " 
 
68 The Legend of the A rk : 
 
 And the other Voice replied : 
 
 " The smoke of tumbling waters ; rain that smites 
 The waters into smoke. 
 
 Upon the heights 
 
 Crowding and flight and s tumult beasts and 
 men." 
 
 "What is it thou canst see? Look forth again." 
 
 " I see a marble temple, white and fair. 
 The black waves lash the steps. In mad despair 
 The priests are flinging to the roaring sea 
 Their gods of gold and silver. Now they flee ; 
 They seek the clefts o' the rocks. They flee, they 
 
 seek 
 
 Refuge from rocky cleft and rugged peak. 
 They howl with terror." 
 
 * 
 
The Voices. 69 
 
 " Look yet forth again. 
 Whatsee'stthou?" 
 
 " A smoking crater ; haggard men. 
 Each glares at each with red and wolfish eyes. 
 They cast their lots, for still the waters rise." 
 
 " Forbear ; no more ! " 
 
 T* T *T* 
 
 " Now look. What see'st thou ? " 
 
 " Lo ! 
 
 A single summit, hoar with ice and snow j 
 No other land. The vast sea rolls beneath. 
 A tigress, with her cub between her teeth, 
 Stands on the summit panting, wild with fear." 
 
 " Yet once again. What dost thou see or hear ? " 
 
70 The L egend of the A rk : 
 
 " Drifting of giant clouds ; encircling sea ; 
 Great waves ; a raft of tree made fast to tree ; 
 Upon the raft a man. 
 
 The man in rage 
 Hath gnawed his flesh his famine to assuage." 
 
 " What doth the man ? " 
 
 " He sits with covered head." 
 " Is the man weeping ? " 
 
 " Lord, the man is dead." 
 
 " What see'st thou now? " 
 
 " Sky, sea ; betwixt the twain, 
 The Ark." 
 

 The Waters. 71 
 
 " Doth any living thing remain ? " 
 "Not one of all that Thou didst make of yore." 
 The awful Voice responded : " Look no more ! " 
 
 IV. THE WATERS. 
 
 "And he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters were 
 abated from off the face of the ground ; but the dove found no 
 rest for the sole of her foot." 
 
 AROUND the globe one wave, from pole to pole, 
 
 Rolled on, and found no shore to break its roll. 
 
 One awful water mirrored everywhere 
 
 The silent, blue, illimitable air ; 
 
 And glassed at one same hour the midnight moon, 
 
 Sunrise, and sunset, and the sun at noon. 
 
 Beneath the noontide sun 'twas still as death. 
 Within the dawn no living thing drew breath. 
 Beneath the cold white moon the cold blue wave 
 Sealed with an icy hush the old world's grave. 
 
72 The Legend of the A rk. 
 
 But, hark ! upon the sunset's edge were heard, 
 Afar and faint, the cries of beast and bird. 
 
 Afar, between the sunset and the dark, 
 
 The lions had awakened in the Ark. 
 
 Across the great red splendour white wings flew, 
 
 Weary of wandering where no green leaf grew ; 
 
 Weary of searching for that unfound shore 
 
 From which the Raven had returned no more. 
 
 And as the white wings laboured slowly back, 
 And down the huge orb sank, a speck of black 
 Stood fluttering in the circle of the sun, 
 While the long billows, passing one by one, 
 Lifted and lowered in the crimson blaze 
 A dead queen of the old and evil days. 
 
 One gold-clasped arm lay beautiful and bare ; 
 The gold of power gleamed in her floating hair ; 
 Her jewelled raiment in the glassy swell 
 Glittered : and ever as she rose and fell, 
 And o'er his reddened claws the ripple broke, 
 The Raven fluttered with uneasy croak. 
 
73 
 
 KOZMA THE SMITH. 
 
 A RUSSIAN FAIRY STORY. 
 
 ' ' The Rusalkas are female water-spirits. . . , They are gen- 
 erally represented under the form of beauteous maidens, with 
 full and snow-white bosoms, and with long and slender limbs. 
 . . . Their hair is long and thick and wavy, and green as is the 
 grass. . . . Besides the full-grown Rusalkas there are little ones, 
 having the appearance of seven-year-old girls. These are sup- 
 posed, by the Russian peasants, to be the ghosts of still-born 
 children, or such as have died before there was time to baptise 
 them. ... If any person who hears one of them lamenting will 
 exclaim, 'I baptise thee in the name of the Father,' &c., the soul 
 of that child will be saved, and will go straight to heaven. 
 Dead children are supposed to come back in the spring to their 
 native village under the semblance of swallows and other small 
 birds, and to seek by soft twittering or song to console their 
 sorrowing parents." See Ralston's 'Songs of the Russian 
 People,' pp. 118, 144, 213, et passim. 
 
 ALL the fair maidens are out in the street, 
 Singing all night till the blushing of morn, 
 Singing a welcome, in cadences sweet, 
 
 Unto the spring-rain, the flax, and the corn : 
 
74 Kozma the Smith. 
 
 For the Gold Plough has passed over valley and hill, 
 With the Lord God holding the oxen in hand ; 
 
 While St Peter beside, with his goad, whistled shrill ; 
 And the Mother of Christ cast the seed o'er the 
 land; 
 
 And the marmot has crept from his winter sleep, 
 And the steppe is alive with his whistling cry; 
 
 And the rook has sailed from across the blue deep ; 
 And the lark, from a little white cloud, fills the 
 sky; 
 
 And the pike's sent his tail through the spongy ice; 
 
 And the swallows come flying from Paradise ; 
 
 And the cricket's astir ; and the bear in his den 
 
 Wakes, yawning, and feels it is spring among men. 
 
 Beautiful Spring ! sing the girls in the street 
 
 Sweet rain of the Spring ! dear blue of the sky ! 
 O rain, pour over the grandfather's wheat, 
 
 The maiden's flax, and the grandmother's rye ! 
 O Spring, give the birch her silver chemise, 
 
 Give the noble horse-chestnut his gloves of red ; 
 Bring safely all little birds over the seas 
 
 All little winged souls of the babes that are dead ! 
 
 Oh, the village is glad 'mid the rustle of wings, 
 And the fragrance and murmur of growing things ! 
 
Kozma the Smith. 75 
 
 And all poor mothers with children dead 
 Spread the piece of white linen with crumbs of bread 
 Outside for their birds on the window-sill. 
 In the dim russet morning when all is still, 
 They can hear their little ones twitter and sing ; 
 And they weep, and are solaced, and bless the 
 Spring ! 
 
 But Kozma the Smith is weary of life, 
 And heart-sick with thoughts of his dear dead wife, 
 And the little girl-babe who was born and died 
 On the mother's cold bosom last Whitsuntide. 
 Heart-sick is Kozma the Smith, as he stands 
 With a hammer and red-hot bar in his hands, 
 Gazing on vacancy thinking he heard 
 His little one's cry in the cry of a bird. 
 
 And his brawny throat aches, and his eyes are red, 
 As he spreads the linen and crumbles the bread 
 On the ledge of the window then lies awake 
 Listening till day for his little girl's sake. 
 
 But his crumbs lie untouched : day slips after day, 
 And never a little bird takes one away; 
 And never at morning, when all is still, 
 Does he hear a chirp on the window-sill ! 
 
76 Kozma the Smith. 
 
 Then Kozma the Smith lifts his tear-blinded eyes, 
 With a cry: "What to me are the green of the 
 
 grass, 
 
 The flowers and the birds, and the laugh of the skies, 
 If the Spring has not brought me my own little 
 lass?" 
 
 And Kozma the Smith casts him down with a groan : 
 " Dear wife, dost thou lie in the dark ground alone ? 
 Is the little one stolen ? ... It lay in its place, 
 Covered over with flowers to its sweet waxen face, 
 When they beat down the nails of the coffin-lid. 
 Have the water-sprites found where my darling was 
 
 hid 
 In the darkness, dear wife, in the flowers, at thy 
 
 side?" 
 And he thinks in dumb pain how the little one 
 
 died 
 
 Unbaptised, unanointed, an outcast from grace ! 
 And Kozma goes forth with a haggard face, 
 And the light in his eyes is unearthly and wild 
 For he knows the Rusalkas have taken the child. 
 
 In the dead of the night, when the pines on the 
 
 hill 
 Stand asleep in the mist, and the valley is still ; 
 
Kozma the Smith. 77 
 
 When the pulses of being so peacefully beat, 
 One almost can hear the grass grow in the street ; 
 When the hearthstone is black, and the cricket 
 
 asleep, 
 And the dew hangs in drops on the fleece of the 
 
 sheep ; 
 When the great ruddy moon is just sinking, and 
 
 shines 
 Through the white misty ridge of the topmost 
 
 pines, 
 
 In the dead of the night Kozma wakes with a start, 
 And springs to the window with beating heart ; 
 Flings it wide gazes wildly at forest and sky 
 And hears oh, listen ! his little one's cry. 
 
 Through the forest the great setting moon smoul- 
 ders red, 
 
 And the pine-branches lean dusky crimson o'erhead; 
 
 The cold stars glimmer through, and a long leafy 
 sigh 
 
 Runs before him as Kozma the Smith hurries by. 
 
 On the boughs hang the thread and the fluttering 
 
 rags 
 Which the villagers leave for the water-sprite. 
 
 With his wild gleaming eyes and blown hair Kozma 
 speeds, 
 
78 Kozma the Smith. 
 
 Till he hears the weird sough of the water-flags, 
 And sees the marsh -mist trailing ghostly and 
 
 white, 
 
 And catches among the black pools in the reeds 
 The glint of a marsh-lamp, the light of a star. 
 Then he pauses and listens. The wind murmurs by; 
 The water flags moan; and how faint and how 
 
 far 
 Oh, hearken once more ! comes the little one's cry ! 
 
 The spongy marsh-mosses spirt up from his tread ; 
 The moon has gone down in the mist, round and red; 
 The great stars dilate, and the blue sky grows dark, 
 And the weird whispering swamp glooms before 
 
 him when, hark ! 
 
 From the black reedy water a bird, out of sight, 
 Sends a bright silvery tinkle of song through the 
 
 night ; 
 And for leagues o'er the marshes, beneath the dark 
 
 sky, 
 From each bulrush a bird trills a silvery reply. 
 
 Then the dusk air is fluttered with flurries of wings, 
 And jangles of music ; and now oh, behold ! 
 
 The morass is on fire with strange stars, floating 
 
 rings, 
 Flaming ribbons of sapphire and scarlet and gold ; 
 
Kozma the Smith. 79 
 
 And the water-flag trembles with blossoms of fire; 
 And the bulrush is tufted with clusters of pearls ; 
 And the bird-charm is changed to a fairy choir- 
 To prattle of children and laughter of girls ; 
 And Kozma the Smith breathes the Holy Name, 
 As he sees in the circles of flowers and flame 
 The glittering limbs and the green waving curls, 
 The blue eyes and white breasts, of the water-girls. 
 They are combing their hair with a jewelled comb, 
 
 They are plucking the brightest lilies in blow, 
 They are splashing each other with shiny foam, 
 They are tossing the water-babes to and fro ; 
 They are laughing and singing and drifting by 
 When he hears through their frolic the little one's 
 
 cry. 
 Then Kozma the Smith, in a voice hoarse and 
 
 wild 
 
 " In the name of the Holy One, give me the 
 child ! " 
 
 Lo ! a great silence follows that cry of despair. 
 
 The revel is hushed ! Not a living thing 
 Draws a breath in the stillness ; but Kozma's aware 
 
 That a garland of rosebuds, a tremulous ring 
 Of blossomy splendour, is woven and blown 
 
 O'er the lit glassy marsh by the water-girls. 
 
80 Kozma the Smith. 
 
 And there, with the roses about her strown, 
 
 With her tiny head pillowed on emerald curls, 
 Floats the sweet girl-babe who was born and died 
 On his wife's cold bosom last Whitsuntide. 
 Oh, spring through the water-flags, clasp and redeem 
 Thy little one, Smith, if this be not a dream ! 
 He has sprung : she is saved ! With a low laugh- 
 ing moan, 
 "My darling!" he sobs draws her face to his 
 
 own 
 
 When round him rings laughter, derisive and harsh, 
 And then, in a flash, all is black on the marsh ! 
 
 " Hilliho, hilliho ! " How the clear echoes go 
 Through the pine-woods, and bring back the shout, 
 "Hilliho!" 
 
 'Tis the hunter halloos, and he clutches his gun 
 Where the swamp's eerie waters have shrunk in the 
 sun. 
 
 " Ho, comrades ! be speedy, and come to me 
 
 here!" 
 What is it he sees that a hunter should fear ? 
 
Kozma the Smith, 81 
 
 The water-flags flutter their ribbons of green 
 Round the black peaty marge where the waters 
 have been. 
 
 What is it that lies in the flags on its face 
 And rivets the hunter's fixed gaze to the place ? 
 
 "God be thanked, you have come, friends! The 
 
 man ! he is dead ! " 
 
 The water-flags flutter. With slow fearful tread 
 They trample the reeds where the dark horror 
 
 lies- 
 Touch the corpse and then turn the dead face to 
 
 the skies. 
 
 " God have mercy ! 'tis Kozma the Smith ! He 
 
 was missed 
 In the Spring. How he clutches those weeds in 
 
 his fist ! " 
 
82 
 
 JOHN CALVIN'S DREAM. 
 
 books had been closed and the Judgment 
 -L was done ; 
 The stars had fallen, and black was the sun ; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 And heaven and earth had been swept away 
 In the blood-red storm of the Judgment-day; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God 7 
 
 And behold ! in the heaven and earth made new 
 The Tree of Life by the water grew; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 And under its branches was sorrow unknown ; 
 And all the Angels stood round the Throne; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
John Calvin's Dream. 83 
 
 And clothed in white raiment a countless throng 
 Waved shining palms and sang a new song ; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God 7 
 
 And shawm and timbrel and psaltery and fife 
 Shook the golden boughs of the Tree of Life ; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 And lo ! though heaven and earth were glad 
 The great human heart of Christ was sad ; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 And He looked at the Blest : " Of all that were 
 
 dear 
 Of all that I died for how few are here ! " 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 And in the glad silence, 'twixt psalm and psalm, 
 Vague murmurs He heard in the heavenly calm ; 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 And faint far echoes of wailing came 
 
 From the outer dark and the deathless flame ; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
84 John Calvin's Dream, 
 
 Save Christ's human heart, there was none that 
 
 heard 
 The faint cry of anguish, the bitter word ; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God 7 
 
 But ever some voice between psalm and psalm 
 Sent a throb of pain through the blissful calm : 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God 7 
 
 " It was not for us that He died," one said \ 
 " Or ever He came we were doomed and 
 dead ! " 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God! 
 
 " He died such long ages before," one cried, 
 " Men knew not for certain that ever He died ! " 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God 7 
 
 " He died for us truly. I saw it ! " one said ; 
 " But only God knew that a God was dead ! " 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God 7 
 
 " Yea, truly, a God ! not a man to know 
 Man in his weakness, man in his woe ! " 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God! 
 
John Calviris Dream. 85 
 
 " Lord Christ, I would pity and spare Thee" one 
 
 said, 
 " Wert Thou, the Lord, man, and I Lord in Thy 
 
 stead!" 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 " Remember me, Christ, for I stood at Thy 
 
 knee 
 When the children were suffered to come unto 
 
 Thee ! " 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God I 
 
 " He forgets how we played," said a low sobbing 
 
 breath, 
 " In the street by the fountain at Nazareth ! " 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 And Christ's heart ached; He felt the tears 
 
 rise 
 And darken out heaven from His human eyes ; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 But ever the shawm and timbrel and fife 
 Shook the golden boughs of the Tree of Life ; 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
86 John Calviris Dream. 
 
 And He said, " Do the men made perfect 
 
 hear 
 No sounds of the Lost who were once so 
 
 dear ? " 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 And the Thousands Signed : " We hear no word ; 
 Tor these which are dead praise not the Lord." 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 Then the Lord Himself said, " Son, let be ; 
 Even as it falleth, so lieth the tree." 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 Eut Christ said, " Once yet again will I die 
 For these which in utter anguish lie ! " 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 " It may not be, Son," the Lord God said, 
 " For sin is cast out and death is dead." 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 Christ rose : " If I cannot die again, 
 
 I will go to my Lost in their endless pain ! " 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
John Calvin's Dream. 87 
 
 And an awful shuddering silence fell 
 As Christ went forth to the gates of hell. 
 
 The Lord is a just and terrible God ! 
 
 And with a cry of terror Calvin woke, 
 
 Spread aguish hands, and raised to heaven a face 
 
 Haggard and wet with agony of soul. 
 
 "Pity me, God ! " he moaned j " nor judge the sin 
 
 Corrupted nature blindly sins in sleep ! 
 
 Deal clemently, nor visit with Thy wrath, 
 
 O Lord, Thou God most terrible and just, 
 
 The raving blasphemy of evil dreams ! " 
 
88 
 
 TWO LIVES. 
 
 AMONG the lonely hills they played ; 
 No other bairns they ever knew ; 
 A little lad, a little maid, 
 
 In sweet companionship they grew. 
 
 They played among the ferns and rocks 
 
 A childish comedy of life 
 Kept house and milked the crimson docks, 
 
 And called each other man and wife. 
 
 They went to school ; they used to go 
 With arms about each other laid ; 
 
 Their flaxen heads, in rain or snow, 
 Were sheltered by a single plaid. 
 
 And so and so it came to pass 
 
 They loved each other ere they knew ; 
 
 His heart was like a blade o' grass, 
 And hers was like its drap o' dew. 
 
Two Lives. 89 
 
 The years went by; the changeful years 
 Brought larger life and toil for life ; 
 
 They parted in the dusk with tears 
 They called each other man and wife. 
 
 They married she another man, 
 
 And he in time another maid ; 
 The story ends as it began ; 
 
 Among the lonely hills fa&j played! 
 
WAYSIDE VIGNETTES. 
 FLOWER FANCIES. 
 
 ERE blossom time had yet begun, 
 When grass scarce hid the brown earth's 
 
 leanness, 
 And fagot hedgerows in the sun 
 
 Were slowly kindling into greenness, 
 
 I met a maiden, small and fair, 
 
 Along the cheerless highway bringing 
 
 Such flowery boughs as mortal ne'er 
 
 Hath seen from earthly tree-trunk springing. 
 
 Too eager to await the pledge 
 
 Of skies so fickle, trees so lazy, 
 She had broken thorn-sticks from the hedge, 
 
 And tipped each prickle with a daisy. 
 
Beyond. 9 1 
 
 Oh, little maid, whose pretty skill 
 
 Turns March to May so well and quickly, 
 
 Teach me thy craft ! my wayward will 
 Hath made life's very daisies prickly. 
 
 BEYOND. 
 
 A DARKENING sky is at my back ; 
 
 Gaunt woods my westward path oppose, 
 But every bough is freaked in black 
 
 Against a heaven of gold and rose. 
 
 'Tis leafless March, and bitter cold ; 
 
 But these stark branches, furred with ice, 
 Blend in that glow of rose and gold 
 
 Like blossomy bowers of Paradise. 
 
 Oh, Life, when all thy bloom and shade 
 
 Are stripped, and age-chilled hearts despond, 
 
 How beautiful thou mayst be made 
 
 By one bright glimpse of heaven beyond ! 
 
92 Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 THE CROW. 
 
 WITH rakish eye and plenished crop, 
 Oblivious of the farmer's gun, 
 
 Upon the naked ash-tree top 
 
 The Crow sits basking in the sun. 
 
 An old ungodly rogue, I wot ! 
 
 For, perched in black against the blue, 
 His feathers, torn with beak and shot, 
 
 Let woful glints of April through. 
 
 The year's new grass, and, golden-eyed, 
 The daisies sparkle underneath, 
 
 And chestnut-trees on either side 
 Have opened every ruddy sheath. 
 
 But doubtful still of frost and snow, 
 The ash alone stands stark and bare, 
 
 And on its topmost twig the Crow 
 Takes the glad morning's sun and air. 
 
A Deserted Garden. 93 
 
 A DESERTED GARDEN. 
 
 A HIGHROAD white with the dust of May ; 
 
 An old red wall, and an iron gate ; 
 A scent of Spring-time : a blossomy spray, 
 
 Thrown over and bowed by the blossom's weight. 
 
 An empty house, and a garden-ground 
 That no one tended ! The flowering trees 
 
 Had grown half wild. With a revel of sound 
 The birds in flocks made merry at ease. 
 
 The gravelled pathways were blurred with green ; 
 
 The flower-beds each into other had run ; 
 'Twas all one ferment of colour and sheen, 
 
 And scent and song, in the glittering sun. 
 
 And yet the place had a rueful look 
 For lack of laughter and pattering feet ; 
 
 The fruit-tree shadowed no maiden's book ; 
 No greybeard dozed on the garden-seat. 
 
94 Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 Methought I saw, as I gazed within, 
 
 An idyl of youth with its bliss and pain 
 
 The empty house of " what might have been " 
 The garden of dreams that were dreamed in vain. 
 
 A BIRD'S FLIGHT. 
 
 FROM some bright cloudlet dropping ; 
 From branch to blossom hopping ; 
 Then drinking from a small brown stone 
 
 That stood alone 
 Amid the brook ; then, singing, 
 
 Upspringing, 
 It soared : my bird had flown. 
 
 A glimpse of beauty only 
 That left the glen more lonely ? 
 Nay, truly ; for its song and flight 
 
 Made earth more bright ! 
 If men were less regretful 
 
 And fretful, 
 Would life yield less delight ? 
 
The Weir. 95 
 
 THE WEIR. 
 
 WHERE mossy boulders make a weir, 
 The brook's brown water is so clear 
 One sees each small brown stone within 
 Distinctly, when the sun is in. 
 
 But when the sun's out, 'tis a glass 
 
 Filled full of leaves and boughs, with grass 
 
 At edge, and here and there a bit 
 
 Of cloud or sky deep down in it. 
 
 Deep down the blue sky seems to be ; 
 
 The poor brown stones you cannot see. 
 
 When little puffs of coolness make 
 The water warp, the foliage shake, 
 A thousand trees seem dancing up 
 From darkness in the crystal cup. 
 
 With soul for water, sense for weir, 
 
 Man sees his mortal image here. 
 
 He counts each poor brown stone within 
 
 Distinctly, when his sun is in. 
 
 With Heaven to help, he feels no less 
 
 Unfathomed depths of loveliness. 
 
96 Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 JANUARY AND JUNE. 
 
 WHEN snowy eaves are jagged with spar, 
 And every brook to crystal turns, 
 
 The frost that cracks the water-jar 
 
 Fills window-panes with flowers and ferns. 
 
 When flocks upon the hills are lost, 
 
 And snow-wreaths block the carrier's wain, 
 
 With silvery flowers and ferns the frost 
 Fills every misted window-pane. 
 
 When cold has stopped the cricket's tune, 
 And ice-bound clocks forget the hours, 
 
 The frost, as though it dreamed of June, 
 Fills all the panes with ferns and flowers. 
 
 When June returns with flowers and ferns 
 It also dreams, for rocks are mossed 
 
 With furry rime, and, as it turns, 
 
 Each willow-leaf seems hoar with frost. 
 
 But agrimony in the hedge 
 
 Most wintrily recalls the time 
 When urchins climbed the window-ledge 
 
 To thaw the flowers and ferns of rime. 
 
Cockcrow. 97 
 
 COCKCROW/ 
 
 WHEN nights are short in early June, 
 We, risen betimes, shall haply see 
 
 The silver sickle of the moon 
 
 Hang gleaming in an eastern tree. 
 
 Poised in the dawn's pure silver-grey, 
 Blue clouds shall wait the gold and red, 
 
 While pallid star-flakes melt away 
 In cold, clear azure overhead. 
 
 The dim brown fields shall seem to sleep 
 Self-shadowed ; mist shall here and there 
 
 Lie white in pools, where dewlap-deep 
 Great kine shall loom i' the twilight air. 
 
 Where trees in hazy blue embower 
 Some distant farm, a sudden cock 
 
 Shall crow ; and faint from city tower 
 Shall float the chimes of three o'clock. 
 
 Then from the meadow, sweet and loud, 
 The morning star of song shall spire, 
 
 And morn shall burst through sky and cloud 
 In one vast flowerage of fire. 
 G 
 
98 Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 Oh, revelling skylark, sing and soar, 
 Rose-winged, rose-bosomed, o'er the morn ! 
 
 But chanticleer and we, once more 
 
 Must scratch the world for gems and corn. 
 
 FAIRY HEAVENS. 
 
 HAVE you seen the forest-pool 
 In the summer? Clear and cool, 
 Glassing, 'mid the trees it lies, 
 Silvery clouds and sapphire skies. 
 
 When in windless August days 
 Not a ripple o'er it plays, 
 One can almost think he sees 
 Through to the Antipodes. 
 
 Mirrored reeds must scarcely know 
 Whether up or down they grow ; 
 And the trees doubt whether they're 
 Crystal-washed or parched in air. 
 
Fairy Heavens. 99 
 
 Brindled Crummie on the brink 
 Pauses as she stoops to drink ; 
 When she drinks, she drinks for two 
 Tis a wondrous thing to do ! 
 
 Swallows, flashing to and fro, 
 Strike the water as they go 
 Hawking insects ? Not a fly ; 
 Only puzzled with that sky. 
 
 East and west, and north and south, 
 Have they flown from dearth and drouth ; 
 'Twould, indeed, be sweet and strange 
 Through those nether heavens to range ! 
 
 Puff ! a sudden whiff of air 
 Stars the mirror everywhere. 
 Myriad ripples, gemmed and curled, 
 Have annulled a fairy world. 
 
 Any clown in summer may 
 View these marvels day by day ; 
 Day by day we pass them by 
 With an undelighted eye. 
 
ioo Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 Were they seen but once an age, 
 Princes would make pilgrimage 
 To the happy hallowed ground 
 Where these double heavens were found ! 
 
 PINE AND PALM. 
 
 "Ein fichtenbaum steht einsam." HEINE. 
 
 A LONELY tree, the rowan grew 
 
 Among the boulders ; long and lone, 
 
 The wild moor heaved beneath the blue 
 In heathery swells of turf and stone. 
 
 They'd wandered east, they'd wandered west, 
 With dance and music, song and mirth, 
 
 That sunburned group who paused to rest 
 On that one spot of shadowy earth. 
 
 With heat and travel overcome, 
 
 The bandsman slumbered. On the grass 
 Lay leathern pipes and cymballed drum, 
 
 And bright peaked hat with bells of brass. 
 
Pine and Palm. 101 
 
 With low soft laughs and whispered fun, 
 Blithe eyes and lips of loving red, 
 
 Two girls sat stringing in the sun 
 The rowan-berries on a thread. 
 
 Against a boulder mossy-grown 
 
 I saw the singing-woman lean 
 Her dark proud head. Upon the stone 
 
 She had placed her gilded tambourine. 
 
 Though not asleep, she did but seem 
 Half conscious, for the hot sun kissed 
 
 Her cheek, and wrapped her heart in dream, 
 Like some glad garden wrapped in mist. 
 
 Into the tambourine I dropped 
 
 My modest tribute unto art ; 
 The children, threading berries, stopped ; 
 
 The woman wakened with a start. 
 
 She rose and thanked me, bright and free, 
 Then added : " God is good to-day ! 
 
 One hour I am in Napoli 
 
 And this is Scotland far away ! " 
 
IO2 Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 And I remembered, as I turned, 
 
 How, lone in Norland snows, the pine 
 
 Dreamed of that lonely palm which yearned 
 On burning crags beneath the line. 
 
 DAY-DREAMS. 
 
 BROAD August burns in milky skies, 
 The world is blanched with hazy heat ; 
 
 The vast green pasture, even, lies 
 Too hot and bright for eyes and feet. 
 
 Amid the grassy levels rears 
 The sycamore against the sun 
 
 The dark boughs of a hundred years, 
 The emerald foliage of one. 
 
 Lulled in a dream of shade and sheen, 
 Within the clement twilight thrown 
 
 By that great cloud of floating green, 
 A horse is standing, still as stone. 
 
The Brook. 103 
 
 He stirs nor head nor hoof, although 
 The grass is fresh beneath the branch ; 
 
 His tail alone swings to and fro 
 
 In graceful curves from haunch to haunch. 
 
 He stands quite lost, indifferent 
 
 To rack or pasture, trace or rein ; 
 He feels the vaguely sweet content 
 
 Of perfect sloth in limb and brain. 
 
 THE BROOK. 
 
 OF the Brook the Hazels said, 
 As they whispered on the brink : 
 " Was there ever, do you think, 
 
 Such a bright and nut-brown maid ? " 
 
 Said the Brook : " No shadow grows 
 On the moorlands whence I came ; 
 All the sky's one sapphire flame, 
 
 So I'm sunburnt, I suppose ! " 
 
IO4 Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 LOVE AND LABOUR. 
 
 AT noon he seeks a grassy place 
 
 Beneath the hedgerow from the heat ; 
 
 His wife sits by, with happy face, 
 And makes his homely dinner sweet. 
 
 Upon her lap their baby lies, 
 
 Rosy and plump and stout of limb 
 
 With two great blue unwinking eyes 
 Of stolid wonder watching him. 
 
 The trees are swooning in the heat ; 
 
 No bird has heart for song or flight ; 
 The fiery poppy in the wheat 
 
 Droops, and the blue sky aches with light. 
 
 He empties dish, he empties can ; 
 
 He coaxes baby till she crows ; 
 Then rising up a strengthened man, 
 
 He blithely back to labour goes. 
 
 His hammer clinks through glare and heat 
 With little thought and well content 
 
 He toils and splits for rustic feet 
 Fragments of some old continent. 
 
Woodland Windows. 105 
 
 Homeward he plods, his travail o'er, 
 
 Through sunset lanes, past fragrant farms, 
 
 Till glimpse of heaven ! his cottage-door 
 Frames baby in her mother's arms. 
 
 WOODLAND WINDOWS. 
 
 WHERE tall green elm-trees in a row 
 Their boughs in Gothic arches pleach, 
 
 Two foliage-fretted lancets show 
 A warm blue sea, a summer beach. 
 
 One lancet holds a sunset sky, 
 And, where the glassy ripple rolls, 
 
 An old man hanging nets to dry 
 
 In brown loops from the trestled poles. 
 
 And one, a patch with wild flowers gay, 
 A shoal where green sea-ribbons float, 
 
 And two bright sunburnt tots at play 
 Beside an upturned fishing-boat. 
 
IO6 Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 Within the woodland's pillared shade, 
 I seem from some dim aisle to see 
 
 That shore by whose blue waters played 
 The little lads of Zebedee. 
 
 A RUSSIAN GUN. 
 
 THREE lime-trees, full of drowsy sound 
 And dreamy shadow edged with sun ; 
 
 Amid the trees a grassy mound ; 
 Upon the mound a Russian gun. 
 
 And on the black and massy ring 
 
 Which bound the cannon's murderous throat 
 A little bird had folded wing, 
 
 And shook out crystal note on note. 
 
 The ripe corn shimmered in the heat 
 
 About the little red-roofed town ; 
 And in the silence, clear and sweet, 
 
 That one glad voice trilled up and down 
 
Under t^vo Trees. 107 
 
 In artlesss rapture. As I stood, 
 
 I thought of all the waste of life, 
 The squandered gold, the tears of blood, 
 
 The crime of that Crimean strife. 
 
 The blithe notes seemed to mock mankind ! 
 
 Had nations made the planet ring, 
 That some small English bird might find 
 
 A perch whereon to sit and sing ? 
 
 UNDER TWO TREES. 
 
 UPON the deep green moss I lie, 
 And watch the beech against the sky. 
 
 The sunny boughs are letting through 
 A million little gleams of blue. 
 
 The Tree of Life could never be 
 More full of heaven than this tree ; 
 
 For each green leaf within my view 
 Seems matched with one of shining blue. 
 
io8 Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 I lie and think for who can know 
 What on the other side may grow ? 
 
 What if these gleams of blue were each 
 The leaves of some blue heavenly beech, 
 
 Whose azure top had come to be 
 Blent with the green top of our tree, 
 
 And whose immortal boughs of blue 
 Let gleams of earthly emerald through ; 
 
 And oh ! if underneath that tree 
 
 Lay some one dead, who thought of me ! 
 
 ON THE SHORE. 
 
 NOT lonely though alone, she played 
 
 Between the sea and land ; 
 With shells and meadow-flowers she made 
 
 A garden in the sand. 
 
On the Shore. 109 
 
 In silvery visions from the sea 
 The summer clouds were blown ; 
 
 Sweet voices came from field and tree, 
 Soft sounds from wave and stone. 
 
 She heeded not ; she lived apart ; 
 
 Absorbed in joy she played. 
 Between two worlds her little heart 
 
 A little world had made. 
 
 Ah ! we too on the shore, dear child, 
 
 Are dreamers all, like thee ! 
 By figments of the heart beguiled, 
 
 We cannot hear or see. 
 
 Soft voices call from sea and land, 
 
 But neither world is ours ; 
 Our lives are spent on barren sand 
 
 And plots of rootless flowers. 
 
no Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 TWILIGHT MEMORIES. 
 
 I HEARD at twilight on the bridge 
 
 The plover's melancholy cry ; 
 The moorland reared a sullen ridge 
 
 Against the amber evening sky. 
 
 No farm-light cheered the deepening grey 
 Of those vast sweeps of heath and stone; 
 
 The sky seemed far so far away ; 
 My heart felt utterly alone. 
 
 And as when summer rain is done 
 
 A shower is shaken by a gust 
 From some sad tree, although the sun 
 
 Has long since dried the ground to dust, 
 
 Even so within my mournful mind 
 I felt my manhood's greener years 
 
 Shaken by fitful gusts of wind, 
 
 Which filled my eyes with ancient tears. 
 
By Moonlight. 1 1 1 
 
 And whilst in pleasant pain I wooed 
 
 Old dreams, lost hopes, vain yearnings back, 
 
 Two figures on the sky-line stood, 
 Clear cut from head to foot in black. 
 
 Cut clear against the amber glow, 
 They stood together hand in hand 
 
 A man and woman did they know 
 
 How near to heaven they seemed to stand ? 
 
 That dark ridge seemed the world's end ; they 
 
 The last of lovers. Side by side 
 They gazed ; what radiant prospect lay 
 
 Beyond them, unto me denied ? 
 
 He draws her close ; her arms are twined 
 About his neck ! Oh, happy years, 
 
 Now shaken by this woful wind 
 
 Which fills my eyes with ancient tears ! 
 
 BY MOONLIGHT. 
 
 AFOOT at midnight. All the way 
 
 Is warm and sweet with scents of May. 
 
H2 Wayside Vignettes: 
 
 The cocks are crowing hours too soon, 
 The dogs are barking far and near, 
 The frogs are croaking round the mere ; 
 And in a tree the naked Moon 
 Is crouching down, as though she would 
 Her silvery-bosomed maidenhood 
 Conceal among the leaves, too thin 
 And small to hide her beauty in. 
 
 Dear Moon, 'tis I, thy friend who pray 
 Thy company upon my way. 
 
 IN THE SHADOW. 
 
 NIGHT is the shadow of the Earth, but we 
 
 Lose the fine sense through use, nor thank nor 
 
 praise. 
 
 In the hot summer's blue and windless days 
 Sweet is the grass and dear the shadowing tree, 
 Whence, stretched at ease, we watch with languid 
 
 look 
 
 Birds, insects, flowers, the cloud, the nut-brown 
 brook. 
 
In the Fall. 113 
 
 But all the year and feverish day by day 
 Earth shadows us ; the burden and the heat 
 Are lifted from us ; sweet is night, and sweet 
 
 The stars and silvery clouds, and Milky Way. 
 
 Use teaches thankfulness a sinful thrift ; 
 
 We prize the casual, slight the constant gift. 
 
 IN THE FALL. 
 
 AMONG the bleak, wet woods I tread 
 On leaves of yellow and of red ; 
 The leaves are whirled in wind and rain, 
 The woods are filled with sounds of pain ; 
 No bird is left to sing. 
 
 Man's destiny is blowing wind, 
 A little leaf is all mankind ; 
 The wind blows high, the wind blows low, 
 The leaflet flutters to and fro, 
 And dreams it is a wing. 
 H 
 
114 Wayside Vignettes. 
 
 Amid the blowing of the wind, 
 Amid the drifting of mankind, 
 Among the melancholy rain, 
 And woodlands filled with sounds of pain, 
 No heart is left to sing. 
 
KARMA. 
 
 IN the heart of the white summer mist lay a 
 green little piece of the world ; 
 And the tops of the beeches were lost in the mist, 
 
 and the mist ringed us round ; 
 All the low leaves were silvered with dew, and 
 
 the herbage with dew was impearled ; 
 And the turmoil of life was but vaguely divined 
 through the mist as a sound. 
 
 In the heart of the mist there was warmth for 
 
 the soil full of sun was aglow 
 Like a fruit when it colours and fragrance from 
 
 flowers and a scent from the soil ; 
 And a larnb in the grass, in the flowers, in the dew, 
 
 nibbled whiter than snow ; 
 And the white summer mist was a fold for us both 
 
 against sorrow and toil. 
 
n6 Karma. 
 
 From the fields in the mist came a bleating, a 
 
 sound as of longing and need \ 
 But the lamb from the grass in its little green 
 
 heaven never lifted its head ; 
 It was innocent, whiter than snow ; it was glad in 
 
 the flowers, took no heed ; 
 But the sound from the fields in the mist made me 
 
 grieve as for one that is dead. 
 
 And behold ! 'twas a dream I had dreamed, and a 
 
 voice made me wake with a start j 
 Saying: "Hark! once again in the flesh shall ye 
 
 twain live your life for a span, 
 But since whiteness of snow is as nought in mine 
 
 eyes without pity of heart, 
 Lo ! the lamb shall be born as a wolf, with a 
 
 wolfs heart, but thou as a man ! " 
 
COMFORT ON PELION. 
 
 FROM white lolcos by the sunny sea 
 The Thrall went forth at noon an aged 
 
 man, 
 
 Unkempt and wretched, clad in tattered skins, 
 With clouted leggings bound about his knees, 
 And in his palsied hand an oaken staff. 
 
 Beyond the vineyards and the olive-groves, 
 The flowery slopes and fruitful grassy lawns ; 
 Above the shadowy planes, where bright of leaf 
 And red of fruit the ripe pomegranate bursts ; 
 Above the chestnuts of the lower glens, 
 Yea, high above the oaks and windy pines, 
 The snowy top of Pelion in the sun 
 Glittered ; but there was ever genial shade 
 Within the hollow ivy-fringed rock 
 Where dwelt the strong, glad-hearted friend of men, 
 The Centaur. 
 
1 1 8 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Leaning on his staff, 
 
 The aged Thrall, pricked on by feverish haste, 
 Climbed upward from the valley ; paused to rest, 
 Despite his haste for haste is scant of breath 
 On many a root embowered in bosky bloom, 
 On many an ancient boulder ; paused to drink 
 By many a brook deep-edged with coloured moss, 
 And fringed with stout green rushes ; but in rest 
 Or motion, still he kept his eager eyes 
 Fixed on the glittering peak, and still one thought 
 Shook all his toil - worn limbs with hope and 
 
 fear 
 
 The thought of what immense and awful shape 
 Ruled and had ruled through storied centuries 
 These many -fountain ed glens and forest-slopes. 
 
 And as the Thrall fared on, from rock and tree 
 The little birds sang sweetly. On the tree 
 The burnt cicalas chattered ; on the rock 
 The lizard basked ; and everywhere the soil 
 Laughed out in dimpling depths of grass and 
 
 flowers 
 
 Of red, blue, gold ; and all the mountain droned 
 With falling waters and with pebbly streams. 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 119 
 
 And now, among the huge red-shafted pines, 
 The last green wall of Chiron's realm, the Thrall 
 Heard suddenly a strain of mighty song, 
 The resonant vibrations of a lyre 
 Divine, colossal heard an awful voice 
 Which swayed the pine-wood like an April wind, 
 An infinite tender gale of joyous power; 
 And all the pine-wood sang ; and all the air 
 Was filled with piny fragrance ; and there came 
 A muffled sound of sighing and of song 
 Ascending, as the slopes and leafy glens 
 One after other felt their sleepy boughs 
 Swung in the ever- widen ing rings of sound. 
 
 The aged Thrall felt all the aches of toil, 
 Rain, frost the feebleness and cramps of age 
 Beguiled from his limbs. A fiery blood, 
 The primrose sap of youth, through all his veins 
 Ran tingling to the nails, the grizzled scalp ; 
 Kindled wild light within the bleared eyes ; 
 Burst into flower the primrose sap of youth ! 
 Burst into merry blossom in his brain. 
 He stood erect ; he flung away his staff, 
 Clapped horny hands, and, dancing to the song, 
 Leaped from concealment of the swaying pines ! 
 
1 20 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Magnificent in his immortal age, 
 Th' enormous might of Chiron sang i' the sun. 
 The frost of centuries had blanched his head 
 And hair, which hung in hoary foliage 
 Below his shoulder-blades. A shaggy growth, 
 A frosty herbage, covered back and flank, 
 Each huge and strenuously corded arm, 
 The massy shelving muscles of the chest ; 
 While thickly grown on lip and cheek and chin, 
 His beard seemed pendulous mosses white with 
 
 rime. 
 
 From the strong withers and the mighty croup 
 Down to the bushy fringes of the hoofs, 
 Age had but dashed with grey the rugged brown 
 For on the mountain and the mountaineer 
 Alike the wintry white begins atop. 
 
 Sovereignty, wisdom, joyousness of life 
 Shone in the depths of those immortal eyes, 
 Whose clear blue light, like morning on the hills, 
 Softened to human kindliness a face 
 Rocky, and worn with centuries like a rock, 
 And lit with colour as a rock with flowers, 
 And fixed as rock to endure unflinchingly 
 Pain and the stormy buffets of the world. 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 121 
 
 Abashed at sight of such wild grandeur, dazed, 
 The Thrall, with loosened knees and suppliant 
 
 hands, 
 
 Drew near the mighty-throated Singer. He 
 Ceased, and with outspread hand against the 
 
 strings 
 
 Silenced the ringing instrument. The Thrall 
 Thus spoke with stammering tongue and fright- 
 ened eyes : 
 
 "O Healer and Helper Chiron! if indeed 
 Some god unknown thou be not, having here 
 Thine ever-happy seat i' the shining blue 
 On topmost Pelion." 
 
 Answering with a laugh, 
 "Well hast thou named my name." the Centaur 
 
 said; 
 
 " Even Chiron, and no whit a god am I. 
 But thou, old father, rise, and tremble not 
 Unless, indeed, this high pellucid air 
 Strike chilly through thy goatskin ; so shalt thou 
 Have pine-knots quickly blazing by the cave 
 To warm thy wintry years withal. But say 
 For thou art weak and old from what fair thorpe, 
 In what keen quest, have these thy faltering feet 
 
122 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Borne thee so far afield ? The aged man 
 
 Loves less this blue roof than his smoke-browned 
 
 beams, 
 And mostly haunts 'the home-fields, whence he 
 
 hears 
 The distant kine and far-faint neat-herd's pipe." 
 
 The Thrall replied : "I speak to gracious ears. 
 
 A thrall, an aged man and miserable, 
 
 I seek thy succour. In the peaceful vale, 
 
 My home, by rich lolcos and the sea, 
 
 The common rumour names thee friend of men ; 
 
 Compassionate reputes thee ; wise to heal, 
 
 By virtue of herbs and flowers, all human ills 
 
 Wherefore I come to supplicate thine aid." 
 
 " Tell me thine ailment, so perchance my skill 
 May give relief." 
 
 " Alas ! what can there be 
 
 Of ailments worse than these, and these are mine 
 Sickness of life with yet desire to live, 
 Old age with memory of the bloom of youth, 
 Thraldom with thirst for freedom, and dreams, 
 
 dreams, dreams 
 Of high achievement, dreams no will of mine 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 123 
 
 Avails, or hath availed, or can avail 
 To change to action ? " 
 
 " Not on Pelion grows 
 
 The herb or flower to heal such ills as these. 
 Life to the oldest is the oldest friend, 
 The one most hard to part with. Nought can 
 
 cure 
 
 This ancient malady of growing old ! 
 Still age, though evil, is not all unblessed 
 And thou, old man, whose life has been so 
 
 long " 
 
 " So long ! nay, brief as is the space one takes 
 
 To stoop and drink in. Lo ! a laughing lad, 
 
 I knelt beside a pool, and as my face 
 
 Leaned down and touched the image of my face, 
 
 My bright hair withering fell, my rosy cheeks 
 
 Grew gaunt and haggard ; in my sparkling eyes 
 
 The light was quenched, and on my palsied limbs 
 
 My goatskin rotted into rags. I rose 
 
 And wiped my lips, a frail and aged man. 
 
 I speak not wildly, for in truth to-day, 
 
 When I had crossed Anauros' stream, I reached 
 
 A grove of shadowy planes, and in the midst 
 
 A solitary rock, and near the rock 
 
1 24 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Clear water checked by pebbles to a pool 
 A fountain sweet to thirst. I knelt to drink, 
 And as I leaned I knew the shadowy place, 
 The rock, the water. Sixty years ago, 
 A lad, I drank there ; sixty years had sped 
 Like lightning, and I knelt there gaunt and old." 
 
 " Age, and the disillusionment of age, 
 Are ills past cure or comfort. What remains ? 
 A thrall, thou wouldst be free. Why, here is gold 
 Shall buy thee freedom from the frost, the heat, 
 The daily travail. Thou mayst lie i' the sun, 
 And chide the power that hath mismade the world ; 
 Or drowse beside the fagots when the wind, 
 An icy mouth, fills all the ways with snow ; 
 Nay, mayst thyself have service at thy beck 
 Brown, blithe-eyed dimpled girls to lay thy board 
 With meat and wine, and spread thy pleasant 
 couch." 
 
 The Centaur laughed ; but answering with a sigh, 
 The Thrall; "O god-like Chiron, keep thy gold; 
 I seek nor brimming trough nor slothful stall. 
 Freedom were valueless without the boons 
 Of youthful vigour, joy of being, power 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 125 
 
 To act the dreams have made my life a dream 
 From which I wake with empty palsied hands. 
 Oh, wherefore was I born a rustic child, 
 Mere clod o' the common furrow ? O ye paths 
 And emerald shadows of the summer woods, 
 Was there no dryad with a maiden's heart 
 To love my father ? Wherefore, O ye streams, 
 That steal through tall green reeds and lonely 
 
 fields, 
 
 Did no bright river-god in ambush lie 
 What time my mother, singing as she went, 
 Tripped to you with her pitcher? All unsunned 
 The leprous lichen quickens in the cave ; 
 Between the brown earth and the shining blue 
 The golden flower is fondled into life. 
 Even so the embrace of mortal and divine 
 Begets the flower of Heroes. Common men, 
 A squalid growth i ? the sunless caves of life, 
 The high gods love not. And of these, indeed, 
 No god hath ever need ; but oftentimes 
 The Heroes are th' outstretched hands o' the gods 
 When, leaning forth of heaven, they set their 
 
 strength 
 Towards some great purpose. 
 
 All my boyish heart 
 
1 26 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Burned for heroic quest, heroic strife, 
 
 The gladness and the bloody sweat, the death 
 
 And deathless name of Heroes. In the grass 
 
 I lay with upward gaze, and pained my heart 
 
 With vague desire. Th' inexorable heaven 
 
 Turned over like a monstrous azure wheel, 
 
 And crushed the worm who dared to vex the gods. 
 
 I haunted dewy copse and vine-wreathed cave, 
 
 Lay hid by glassy fountain, watched the creeks 
 
 Where the blue ocean, changed to emerald sea, 
 
 Arrives with rippling laugh arrives arrives 
 
 But never lands, and tires the hope it raised 
 
 Of some one coming who will never come. 
 
 And no one came. I heard no satyr laugh ; 
 
 Pan never slept within my vine- wreathed cave ; 
 
 No wood-nymphs, bathing in the slumbrous noon, 
 
 Pelted and played with silvery flowers of spray ! 
 
 But thirst and hunger, ache of weary limbs, 
 
 Ague and fever, winter's icy tooth, 
 
 The dog-star's rage these came without a prayer I 
 
 A common clod, with less of joy in life 
 
 Than any grasshopper upon the clod, 
 
 I have piped with querulous cries my summer 
 
 through, 
 Till, shrivelled to a grasshopper with age, 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 1 27 
 
 I feel the first hoar-frosts of wintry death. 
 
 I thought of thee abiding on the heights, 
 
 Immortal through the azure centuries ; 
 
 I knew thee wise, compassionate to men ; 
 
 I said perchance the Cloud-born, who can clasp 
 
 A man's hand with a hand the like of man's, 
 
 May own a heart akin to human hearts, 
 
 And share my sorrows if he cannot heal." 
 
 Immersed in thought the Centaur stood, and 
 
 smoothed 
 
 The cloudy tangles of his beard with slow 
 Unconscious stroke. Then turning to the Thrall, 
 " Old father, sit," he said, " and rest thine age ; " 
 Next, bearing from the spar-lit cavern old 
 A platter and a massive golden horn 
 Carved round with golden ivy and ivy-flower, 
 He bade him eat and drink " And while I speak, 
 Cheer thou thy troubles with the kindly wine, 
 Hearing of Heroes and of common men 
 For many a Hero as a little child 
 Hath braced his tender sinews in the hug 
 Of these grim arms ; and many a silent night, 
 When all the woods were black, and black the plain 
 With sleep, and light gleamed forth from fold nor 
 
 farm, 
 
128 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Alone beneath this snowy peak I've lain, 
 Ringed with the starry hollow of the night, 
 And thought abysmal thoughts of life and time, 
 Of sleeping little men and throned gods ; 
 And not alone of these, though most of these, 
 But of the many-visaged conscious life 
 In fur and feather, jelly, horn, and stone; 
 And yet of that ubiquitous dumb strain 
 In lichen, tree, and flower towards consciousness ; 
 And yet again of that which hath no life 
 The golden light, the beautiful clear air, 
 The rocky ribs and soft brown flesh o' the earth, 
 The four great winds and laughing babes of breeze ; 
 The ice, the frost, and silvery flowers of frost, 
 The rain-drop, feather of snow, and rosy cloud 
 And one with these, yet so unlike to these, 
 The thunderstorm, the wintry wastes and peaks, 
 Th' innumerable waters of the world ; 
 And even yet again till brain grew faint 
 Of that mysterious lapse of all that is 
 To that which is not called of mortals Death. 
 Two and inscrutable, throughout all time, 
 Have been and are Time's riddles Life and Death. 
 Nothing more strange than Life but Death ; than 
 Death but Life." 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 1 29 
 
 With dreamy eyes the Centaur, as he spoke, 
 Laid hand upon his mighty lyre, then sang : 
 
 Grasp my hand ! 
 Hold me fast! 
 
 For I stagger and reel 
 At the tumult and splendour of life rushing 
 
 past 
 
 In a whirlwind of fire, dust, vapour, and thunder; 
 For above me and under, 
 
 Upon this side and that, all the sea and the land, 
 All the skies, and the gods' starry seats in the skies, 
 Spin and spin on the axle of time like a wheel 7 
 
 Through the years, through the ceons, 
 
 With laughter and cries, 
 With clangour of conflict and singing of pceans, 
 
 The great wheel goes spinning. 
 
 I see half the round, and I search the dim distance 
 
 To find the beginning 
 
 The point where the vague subtle thought, non- 
 existence, 
 Is changed to the forms and the colours of 
 
 being. 
 The great wheel goes spinning, 
 
130 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 And baffles the brain 
 
 As it sweeps without pause, through the awful, 
 
 inane, 
 
 Inscrutable tracts of the vast imcreated, 
 Then bursts into sight 
 
 Inconceivably freighted 
 
 With pageants of substance, and colour, and mo- 
 tion. 
 
 Oh, the wonders of sight and of sound 
 As the great wheel spins dizzily round ! 
 Oh, the terror, amazement, delight ! 
 Oh, the music and wailing, the laughter and 
 
 cries ! 
 
 Oh, the numberless faces and eyes 
 Full of beauty or dread! Oh, the shapes that 
 
 arise 
 And abide but a moment, then vanish and 
 
 change 
 Into features and forms more unspeakably 
 
 strange ! 
 
 For, behold ! as I gaze, all the substance of life 
 With itself is at strife, 
 
 And for ever is fleeing, 
 And for ever pursued from disguise to disguise, 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 131 
 
 Still eludes and recoils, still survives and 
 
 escapes 
 
 In the masks of divine, inexhaustible shapes 
 Now a goddess's tear, now a pearl in the ocean, 
 
 Now a bird, now a worm, now a flower, now 
 
 aflame 
 
 An unknowable essence, incessantly ranging 
 Through dadal surprises, unchangeably changing 
 Yet single and permanent, effluent, 
 
 Refluent, 
 Ever and never the same ! 
 
 Grasp my hand ; hold me fast ! 
 For the wheel takes my breath 
 As it whirls its ineffable pageantry past ; 
 And I strain in fierce gaze into distance to see 
 The dark goal where existence begins not 
 
 to be 
 
 Where life lapses to death. 
 But the great wheel goes spinning 
 To an end as unknown as the mystic beginning 
 Goes dizzily spinning, alive and full-freighted 
 
 To the void 
 
 Of the cancelled, abolished, destroyed, 
 From the void of the vast uncreated ! 
 
132 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 O my soul, in what region unknown, 
 
 Far removed beyond thought, did I see 
 The vast shape of a beautiful Woman, who sat all 
 alone 
 
 With the wheel at her knee ! 
 And I saw that the wheel was rotation of 'time \ 
 And the wool of her spinning 
 Was life but the fleece 
 Was a secret withdrawn beyond winning. 
 
 Alone in her beauty, she sat there and spun ; 
 
 And she sang a sweet rhyme 
 Out of pleasure or solace, perchance for a task 
 
 never done ; 
 
 Btit the sound of the wheel in her ears was a low 
 woolly drone 
 
 That disturbed not her peace ; 
 And I cried, btit she laboured unconscious, serene ; 
 For desire nor appeal can attain to her 
 
 there, 
 
 And I never shall know 
 If the task of her wheel be a joy or a woe, 
 And whether she sits as a slave or a queen, 
 
 In a region that lies beyond worship and 
 prayer I 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 1 3 3 
 
 " O life, O death ! O mysteries of Fate 
 Which stun the brain and palsy action ! 
 
 Eat, 
 
 Old father, cheerfully, and thank the gods 
 That hunger saves us from the vast inane ! " 
 
 The Centaur smiled and laid aside his lyre. 
 A little while he stood with dreamy eyes 
 And folded arms ; then tossed his cloudy hair 
 Backward and faced the heavens with tranquil 
 front : 
 
 " Insatiable, we know not what we would, 
 We would not what we know ! The best of life 
 Is action not the dream of action, thought. 
 Old father, thou art right. A golden time 
 Was that blithe morning of a merry world, 
 When newly felled the pines of Pelion swam 
 Into the radiant East ; and glad in strength 
 The flower of Minyan Heroes swept the blue 
 With those stout firs I sent them from the heights. 
 For rowing joyously with laugh and song 
 By flowery isles and green-embowered shores, 
 They saw the eternal snows of Caucasus 
 Flushed with the rose of morning saw the blue 
 
1 34 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Clear beauty of the glacier ice, the pines 
 Shining with tinted snow ; and lo ! the while 
 An eagle, black against the glow of dawn 
 Sailed in great circles round the glittering peak, 
 They heard Prometheus groan. But Herakles 
 Smote off those cankering bonds of bronze and ice, 
 And loosed the patient human-hearted god. 
 And when the Heroes landed in the East 
 And won the Fleece, my Jason brought aboard 
 The beautiful dark woman of his love, 
 His bane and after-sorrow. All the sea 
 Danced, garlanded with white and azure flowers, 
 For pleasure of their coming, as they swept, 
 With great oars flashing, homeward ; all the sea 
 Lightened and laughed around my swimming trees, 
 And floating upward through the blossomy foam, 
 Smiled sweet wild faces ; and the rovers saw 
 On that, but never any other day, 
 The strange white beauty of the ocean-girls 
 Caverned in glassy hollows of the waves. 
 
 But leaning over Argo's gladdened pines, 
 Peleus, my daughter's child, with throbbing brows 
 Watched the bright girls whose wheels in spinning 
 make 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 135 
 
 The everlasting murmur of the sea ; 
 
 And as he watched, beheld one sweetest face 
 
 Set in bright hair and crowned with ocean flowers 
 
 One sweetest face with dewy lustrous eyes 
 
 And features rosy with desire of love ; 
 
 And as the clear wave shoaled above her, saw 
 
 Bosom and limbs more fair than mortal maid's 
 
 But shaped and coloured like a mortal maid's, 
 
 And more than any maid's desirable. 
 
 In after-time when all that golden quest 
 Was ended, and the pines of Argo bleached 
 On Corinth strand, that loveliest of the sea, 
 Grown weary of the unweariable deep, 
 Lay curled in slumber in the Sepian cave. 
 Athwart the violet twilight Hesperus 
 Shone large and golden ; full and golden rose 
 The moon above the fleecy folds of sleep ; 
 But Peleus, stealing through the myrtle grove, 
 A goddess won that night to be his bride. 
 
 All Thessaly was one flowered holiday 
 When they were wedded. Toil flung cap in air, 
 Set idle hands akimbo, and moved his feet 
 To sprightly measures of the bridal pipes. 
 
136 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Thy glittering house, Pharsalus, was rejoiced 
 To hold so many cities for thy guests, 
 For Phthia trooped from Tempe to thy feast, 
 Larissa left her far-off shining walls, 
 Rich presents Cranon brought thee in her lap, 
 Yea, Scyros, leaping from her bowery rocks, 
 Came to thee rowing gladly from the sea. 
 
 I, too, descending from mine ancient cave, 
 Bore sylvan gifts great garlands full of scent 
 And gracious colour, wrought of all the flowers 
 That grow in warm low fields or make a fire 
 In rocky nooks, or haunting murmurous streams 
 Draw honey from the waters. These I bore, 
 And pleasant boughs from many a goodly tree ; 
 And all the palace laughed when they were hung. 
 
 But one there came to that far-rumoured feast, 
 
 Unasked, a wrathful guest, and marred the feast ; 
 
 For casting on the board a golden fruit 
 
 To who was fairest, with a bitter laugh 
 
 She stalked away : but, flushed with jealous strife, 
 
 The heavenly queens who graced my grandson's 
 
 board 
 Contended for the golden husk in vain, 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 137 
 
 And so departed with resentful brows 
 And sullen eyes, and left an empty house, 
 And all that gorgeous bridal closed in gloom ! " 
 
 A sound of voices as the Centaur spoke 
 Clear youthful voices singing all together 
 Came floating upward to the snowy peak ; 
 And ever as the voices paused, the rocks 
 Sent back the closing cadence of the song. 
 
 " These be my lads ! " said Chiron with a smile, 
 " The beautiful children trusted to my love 
 By kings of many cities. Home they come 
 With quarry from the chase. My merry boys ! 
 The mountain loves to hear them ! " 
 
 And the song 
 Came floating through the pinewood to the peak : 
 
 " Along the mountain as we go 
 
 Halloo halloo ! 
 Our voices echo to and fro 
 
 Halloo halloo ! 
 Around us tracts of heather glow 
 And blue lakes slumber far below ; 
 
 Halloo halloo ! 
 
138 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Gaily the mountain mocks us so 
 
 Halloo, halloo halloo, halloo! 
 
 Voices a hundred years ago 
 
 Halloo halloo ! 
 Awoke perchance these echoes so ; 
 
 Halloo halloo ! 
 
 Hearts gladdened at the heather's glow ', 
 And bright eyes scanned the lakes below, 
 
 Halloo halloo I 
 Gaily they went ! And we shall go. 
 
 Halloo, halloo halloo, halloo / 
 
 Gaily they went: and men will go 
 
 Halloo halloo ! 
 A hundred years hence even so 
 
 Halloo halloo ! 
 
 When we are dust, and none can know 
 How glad we were long, long ago ! 
 
 Halloo halloo ! 
 Men are as mist the strong winds blow! 
 
 Halloo, halloo halloo, halloo! 
 
 Men are as mist they rise and go 
 Halloo halloo ! 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 1 39 
 
 The mountain stays for ever mo e ! 
 
 Halloo halloo ! 
 
 They drift where heather and bracken grow 
 Their voices echo to and fro 
 
 Halloo halloo I 
 Grimly the mountain mocks them so ! 
 
 Halloo, halloo halloo, halloo!" 
 
 " Ay, even so, boys ! mortals are as mist 
 They fleet and vanish, but the mountain stays. 
 The mountain does not miss them has not missed 
 Those fair bright lads who loved his heights so 
 
 well 
 
 A hundred years ago. On Corinth strand 
 Was Jason slain in slumber, while he lay 
 In Argo's shadow. From her sides a pine 
 A cankered pine of Pelion broke and fell 
 And slew the prince, but Pelion made no moan. 
 And Peleus sits unsceptred on the shore, 
 An ancient body, frail and white with age. 
 Patient he sits beside the Sepian cave, 
 Where in that violet twilight of old time, 
 He won that deathless bride, and first received 
 Her beauteous body with his hands. He waits 
 Her coming from the sea for she will come 
 
140 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 With sweet wild faces smiling through the foam, 
 And bright heads crowned with white and azure 
 
 flowers, 
 
 To take him to her own immortal home. 
 Patient he sits and childless in his age, 
 For this wild gathering of the ships for Troy 
 Hath plucked the filial staves from old men's 
 
 hands, 
 
 Achilles with the rest. Such bitter fruit 
 Hath been that golden curse the Accursed cast 
 Upon the marriage table ! " 
 
 Chiron paused ; 
 
 And gazing far beyond the clustered Isles 
 Towards Ida and the fateful Asian plains, 
 He murmured : " It may be some seed of good 
 Shall sprout and blossom from that golden ill 
 Some germ of concord, amity and peace 
 Spring from that core of discord. 
 
 From the first 
 
 One equal blue hath covered all men's heads, 
 But underfoot the restless sons of men, 
 Through ages when no single will was law, 
 Have parcelled out the earth with envious greed, 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 141 
 
 Till now a brook that needs no stepping-stone, 
 
 A mountain-track, puts men from men apart 
 
 In tribal isolation. Now at last 
 
 This grievous Dardan wrong, this common shame, 
 
 Hath prompted a confederate revenge, 
 
 And taught the wisdom of united spears. 
 
 This common shame foreshadows common weal, 
 
 And time will come when, schooled by violence, 
 
 Mycenae, Athens, Phthia, looking up, 
 
 Shall see o'erhead no little local heaven, 
 
 But gladly share beneath a wider blue 
 
 The roof-tree of one nation one in blood, 
 
 In language one, and one in deathless fame. 
 
 That time shall come, though haply long delayed 
 
 By public folly, private interest, 
 
 And ere its advent many woes and wars 
 
 Shall make the life of men a bitter thing, 
 
 And wheresoever corn in all the land 
 
 Is sown, women shall mourn the strong men 
 
 slain 
 
 The husbands and the young men beautiful 
 And blinding tears shall spoil the sickle-strokes 
 Of maidens reaping in the harvest-fields. 
 Such years of trouble will it take to school 
 Cities and kings to wisdom. 
 
142 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 What complaint 
 
 Was that of thine, old man the sad estate 
 Of common men whom no god ever needs ? 
 But now I tell thee and do thou give heed, 
 If not the gods, why man needs men's best service. 
 For truly, as I deem, gods, heroes, men 
 Are all one wool upon the flying wheel. 
 Kings are but men and gods but greater kings, 
 In birth unequal, of unequal lot, 
 But all of one same primal seed divine, 
 For still between the highest and the least 
 The bridal fruits attest the kindred strain. 
 Immortal none, I take it, though their bloom 
 Outlasts man's hoariest longevity ; 
 For many a lineage of those deathless gods 
 Hath vanished like a sunset from the heavens, 
 And those now throned above the summer clouds 
 In turn shall pass away. Or if indeed 
 They be undying in some subtle sense 
 The mind conceives of but by glimpse and hint, 
 Their masked divinity shall walk the earth 
 In human flesh and blood. In banished fields 
 Still shall Apollo drive his plough a slave ; 
 And Zeus still chain Prometheus to the peak ; 
 And Aphrodite, holding in her hand 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 143 
 
 The golden apple of Eris, shall embroil 
 Predestined cities till the world shall end. 
 But Zeus and all the regnant gods shall pass, 
 And other gods shall thunder from their seats 
 And follow them to darkness, till at last 
 An age will come oh, there will come an age 
 When perfect manhood shall be man's sole god 
 A god indeed immortal, joyous, strong, 
 A god most beautiful and most benign. 
 But man hath utter need of common men 
 To speed the coming of that better time, 
 To speed the building of that godlike state 
 Of world-wide brotherhood, abundant cheer, 
 Peace amaranthine, freedom unrestrained 
 Save by the checks of chastened temperament. 
 That future is far away. These petty states 
 Have hardly yet awakened to the dawn 
 Of nationality. What gleam, one asks, 
 What hope is there of that more radiant dawn 
 When nations, housed beneath a common roof, 
 Shall form one family of equal men ? 
 And yet, unless my dreams of man and time 
 Be mere marsh-glimmerings of a muddy brain, 
 That time must come. And all may speed the 
 time 
 
144 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Not Heroes only, but all living flesh, 
 
 And thou, old father, mayst achieve thy share." 
 
 As Chiron spoke, from ^Eta's distant height 
 Rose smoke, gleamed fire; and, wreathed above 
 
 the fire 
 
 Which waxed and brightened momently, the smoke 
 Caught splendour as of gold and blood, and 
 
 thronged 
 
 The western heavens with drifts of glowing light. 
 The Centaur watched the blaze with curious eyes, 
 And thought, the witless churl hath fired the woods; 
 But with a bitter laugh the Thrall replied : 
 " That distant time may come ; but while the grass 
 Is growing ? " 
 
 Chiron answered with a frown : 
 " Be glad to starve, then ! Come what time there 
 
 may, 
 
 Thou still must die ; and is it no relief 
 To die with such a future in thy gaze 
 And know the children of thy children's children 
 Some filial echo of thee in some far age 
 Shall through thy being pluck the perfect flower 
 Of that blest state for which thou couldst but 
 
 strive?" 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 145 
 
 " I have no children," said the aged Thrall. 
 
 " Therein, indeed, old man, I pity thee. 
 The excellence of men is perfected 
 In children better than themselves." 
 
 His words 
 
 Were broken short, for, pantkig from the woods, 
 Came one with clenched hands and dripping chin, 
 A runner spent, who fell at Chiron's feet 
 And gasped : " He writhes in mortal agonies ; 
 The fiery poison chars him to the bone ; " 
 And told in voluble bewildered speech 
 How Dejanira, sick at heart with doubt 
 And vexed with thought of lole's girlish face, 
 Had sent to Herakles oh fatal gift ! 
 A wondrous tunic charmed to win his love 
 And woo him homeward to her widowed arms ; 
 But steeped in mortal venom fierce as flame, 
 The accursed vesture charred him to the bone, 
 And searched his blackened flesh with fiery pangs 
 Intolerable. Without or tear or groan 
 Did Herakles endure that deadly love 
 Of Dejanira ; but as anguish grew 
 He bade his people bear him in their hands 
 K 
 
146 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 To Zeus his father's ancient mountain-peak, 
 And build on ^Eta's top a funeral pile 
 Of pines and oaks and lentisks trees and shrubs 
 Grown on those hallowed heights from age to age 
 And lay him on the pile and place his club 
 Beneath his head and quickly fire the pile. 
 
 " But I bethought me, Chiron, of thy skill 
 And fled with frantic feet ! " 
 
 A mighty hand 
 
 The Centaur stretched towards JEta in reply : 
 " That flame already hath loosened from all pain 
 All that could yield to pain in Herakles." 
 
 Even as the sunset heaps the west with fire, 
 
 But all the east is cold and naked blue 
 
 Save for a solitary silver cloud, 
 
 And that lone cloud reflects the gleam and glow 
 
 So blazed the pyre on ^Eta, so the flush 
 
 Of those heroic brands incarnadined 
 
 The sorrowing Chiron's silvery head and beard. 
 
 " Farewell, a long farewell," the Centaur sighed, 
 " To thee, great-hearted toiler of the world ! 
 Farewell, thou strongest, who hast taught mankind 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 147 
 
 That cheerful courage in its resolute hug 
 May crack the ribs of very death. Farewell ! 
 It was thy lot thy mighty heart forbade 
 That it should be thy doom to labour still 
 For others, and with blithe goodwill obey 
 The bidding of the cowardly and base ! 
 
 And I could weep that never any more 
 Shall these sad eyes behold thy godlike form, 
 These hands in welcome clasp thy conquering 
 
 hands 
 
 Save that my tears would shame a joyous life 
 Of splendid strife and superhuman toil. 
 
 Farewell, if vanished men may yet fare well 
 If that prevision of the Happy Isles 
 Be no mere hollow image of desire ; 
 If still the good enjoy the blessed sun 
 Through one long summer day, and never more 
 Vex there their lives with strivings of their hands, 
 But ocean breezes blow about the Isles, 
 And flowers of gold blaze, some along the ground, 
 By running water some, and some on trees, 
 And these the happy garland for their heads 
 And fill their hands withal ! 
 
148 Comfort on Pelion. 
 
 Thou, too, old man, 
 
 Fare wisely and well. My kindly lads will lead 
 Thine aged footsteps homeward, lest the beast 
 Which prowls the forest take thee for a prey. 
 Farewell ; and when the frail repining years 
 Distress thy painful body, take a thought 
 How mere an atom, insignificant, 
 In all the world art thou ; how better men 
 Have found life still more hard; and when thy 
 
 mind 
 
 Is querulous with peevish impotence, 
 Take courage somewhat in the thought that thou 
 Hast, like the limpet on the rock, thy use. 
 
 Lads, guide him down; and, father, bear with 
 
 thee 
 
 The cup thou'st drunk from. It may be the gold 
 Will save thee from a master's angry strokes, 
 And change to smiles his dame's resentful frown ! " 
 
 Down through the pine-wood to the fruitful lawns 
 The princes led the Thrall ; and as he went 
 The aged man, with brain bewildered, watched 
 The smouldering brands of Herakles, and thought 
 Of Peleus sitting on the lonely shore. 
 
Comfort on Pelion. 149 
 
 The years have gone in thousands since the Thrall 
 Descended from the mountain ; but the might 
 Of Pelion still abides ; his snow-cap gleams 
 High up against the sun ; his shelving sides 
 Are hung with four-and-twenty villages 
 Whose white walls glimmer through the terraced 
 
 bowers ; 
 
 His vines, his bees, his waters still remain. 
 The brooks of Pelion through the houses laugh 
 In marble channels, and the turbaned Turk, 
 Soothed by the waters in the summer heats, 
 Smokes in grave luxury. Full of pleasant shade 
 And pleasant babblement chestnuts and planes 
 Stand green i' the ancient sun, but woe the while, 
 The forest and the foresters are gone 
 Save one ; for lo ! on yon the topmost peak 
 Stands Chiron dreaming still, for wise men say 
 The Centaur was nought other than a cloud, 
 And Herakles in every sunset dies; 
 So, that famed school of Chiron was perchance 
 A splendid image how in intercourse 
 With cloud and sun and wood and mountain, mea 
 Grew virile to enjoy and to endure 
 With temperance and cheerful fortitude. 
 
ISO 
 
 POEMS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 , LAUS INFANTIUM. 
 
 IN praise of little children I will say 
 God first made man, then found a better way 
 For woman, but his third way was the best. 
 Of all created things the loveliest 
 And most divine are children. Nothing here 
 Can be to us more gracious or more dear. 
 And though when God saw all his works were good 
 There was no rosy flower of babyhood, 
 'Twas said of children in a later day 
 That none could enter Heaven save such as they. 
 
 The earth, which feels the flowering of a thorn, 
 Was glad, O little child, when you were born ; 
 
Lau s Infantimn. 151 
 
 The earth, which thrills when skylarks scale the 
 
 blue, 
 Soared up itself to God's own Heaven in you ; 
 
 And Heaven, which loves to lean down and to 
 
 glass 
 
 Its beauty in each dewdrop on the grass 
 Heaven laughed to find your face so pure and fair, 
 And left, O little child, its reflex there ! 
 
152 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 (ANY FATHER.) 
 
 WE talked of you ; in happy dreams 
 Our hearts foretold you, 
 O little Blossom ! 
 And yet how marvellous it seems 
 
 To see and hold you ! 
 We guessed you boy, we guessed you maid, 
 
 Right glad of either ; 
 How like, how unlike all we said, 
 Upon her knee there, 
 You lie and twit us, 
 
 O little Blossom ! 
 
Laus Infantium. 153 
 
 ^v^^^?X. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 INIVERSr 
 
 (ANY MOTHER.) 
 
 SO sweet, so strange so strange, so sweet 
 Beyond expression, 
 
 O little Blossom ! 
 To sit and feel my bosom beat 
 
 With glad possession ; 
 For you are ours, our very own, 
 
 None other's, ours ; 
 
 God made you of our two hearts alone, 
 As God makes flowers 
 Of earth and sunshine, 
 
 O little Blossom ! 
 
1 54 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 (A PHILOSOPHER.) 
 
 YES, you may let them creep about the rug. 
 And stir the fire ! Aha ! that's bright and 
 
 snug. 
 To think these mites ay, nurse, unfold the 
 
 screen ! 
 
 Should be as ancient as the Miocene ; 
 That ages back beneath a palm-tree's shade 
 These rosy little quadrupeds have played, 
 Have cried for moons or mammoths, and have 
 
 blacked 
 
 Their faces round the Drift Man's fire in fact, 
 That ever since the articulate race began 
 These babes have been the joy and plague of 
 man ! 
 
 Unnoticed by historian and sage, 
 
 These bright-eyed chits have been from age to age 
 
 The one supreme majority. I find 
 
Laus Infantium. 155 
 
 Mankind hath been their slaves, and womankind 
 Their worshippers \ and both have lived in dread 
 Of time and tyrants ; toiled and wept and bled, 
 Because of some quaint elves they called their 
 
 own. 
 
 Had little ones in Egypt been unknown, 
 No Pharaoh would have had the power, methinks, 
 To pile the Pyramids or carve the Sphinx. 
 
 Take them to bed, nurse ; but before she goes 
 Papa must toast his little woman's toes. 
 Strange that such feeble hands and feet as these 
 Have sped the lamp-race of the centuries ! 
 
1 56 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 T 
 
 (A POET.) 
 
 HE sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
 " Hence ! to the woods and earn your bread ! " 
 The woods were deep with drifted snow. 
 " Seek till you find where violets blow, 
 
 And bring them home," the step-dame said 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
 Weeping she wandered through the snow ; 
 
 The way was lone ; the wind was bleak ; 
 
 Weeping she went ; she could not speak 
 Her little heart was choked with woe. 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
Laus Infantium. 1 5 7 
 
 Her own dear mother, if she'd known, 
 Had turned to violets in the mould ; 
 But oh ! the snow lay deep, and cold 
 
 Had frozen all the earth to stone. 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
 Within the woods the homeless maid 
 
 Found wreaths of snow and leafless trees. 
 She wanders on until she sees 
 
 A great fire in a wintry glade. 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild- 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
 Approach, dear child, and have no fear I 
 Twelve stones were lying on the ground, 
 And twelve strange men were sitting round 
 
 The gladsome fire as she drew near. 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
1 5 8 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 And one, upon the largest stone, 
 Who held a staff the chief appeared. 
 Oh, white and old was he. His beard 
 
 Into his very lap had grown. 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
 The old chief smiled, and cried : " Soho ! 
 What is't the little woman seeks ? " 
 With great tears running down her cheeks, 
 
 She spoke and told him all her woe. 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
 " I have no violets, my dear ; 
 
 My name is January," he said ; 
 
 "But March has flowers" March bowed his 
 
 head 
 66 Change places, Brother March ; come here ! " 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
Laus Infantium. 159 
 
 March sat on January's seat ; 
 
 The snow-drifts melted j grass was seen ; 
 
 The trees exhaled a mist of green ; 
 Soft breezes made the woodland sweet. 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
 And violets sprang in magic store, 
 And strewed with purple all the glade. 
 Oh, happy, happy little maid, 
 
 Fill full your tattered pinafore ! 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
 A lark piped silvery on a cloud. 
 
 " There ! " March cried gaily ; " run away ! 
 
 What ever will your step-dame say ? " 
 And all the Twelve laughed glad and loud. 
 
 The sun, the sea, the forest wild 
 All nature loves a little child. 
 
160 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 APPLE-BLOOM AND APPLE. 
 
 WHEN little Osy, two years old, 
 Once saw the Spring sun dapple 
 The apple-bloom with blurs of gold, 
 She asked me for an apple. 
 
 "There are no apples, darling, yet; 
 
 The bloom's still white and rosy ; 
 Wait till the harvest, then you'll get- 
 
 " I tannot wait," said Osy. 
 
 I told her of the changing year, 
 The nipping frost, the raw gust, 
 
 The clement rain, the sunny cheer, 
 From April on to August. 
 
Apple-bloom and Apple. 1 6 1 
 
 " So wait till Autumn paints them red, 
 And makes them sweet for eating ! " 
 
 " No, shake them down, pa ! " Osy said, 
 With great blue eyes entreating. 
 
 I can't resist a mouth that pouts 
 
 And trembles, ripe for crying ; 
 I cannot bear the first sad doubts 
 
 In large eyes so relying. 
 
 I shook the trunk ; the branches snowed 
 
 Till all the grass was whitened ; 
 The blue jay darted down the road, 5 
 
 And screamed that he was frightened. 
 
 Of course I shook and shook in vain, 
 
 And Osy, standing under, 
 Laughed and shrugged off the blossomy rain, 
 
 Till glee was changed to wonder ; 
 
 And wonder turned to pain and doubt ; 
 
 Her eyes grew full and pleading ; 
 Her quivering lips began to pout ; 
 
 Her fists were closed for kneading; 
 L 
 
1 62 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 And then there rose a long sharp cry, 
 As if her heart were breaking : 
 
 "You see, my darling child," said I, 
 "Apples don't grow with shaking." 
 
 One day when all the apple-tree 
 With fruit was bowed and ruddy, 
 
 Osy, with dolly on her knee, 
 Sat in a child's brown study. 
 
 The west wind came with pleasant sound, 
 And as the leaves were turning, 
 
 An apple tumbled to the ground, 
 And lay there plump and burning. 
 
 And Osy's face grew bright and glad, 
 From her dim day-dream waking 
 
 A touch had given what could be had 
 Not for a world of shaking. 
 
The Winter Sleep. 163 
 
 THE WINTER SLEEP. 
 
 WHEN snow began she tried to make 
 No noise was frugal in her mirth ; 
 She feared her childish romps might break 
 The winter slumber of the Earth. 
 
 When roofs shook down the thawing snow, 
 And snowdrops peeped what joyous cries ! 
 
 Had not dear Earth begun to throw 
 The clothes off, and to open eyes ? 
 
 But when once more the snow came down, 
 And hoar-frost whitened every pane, 
 
 Her brows were puckered in a frown, 
 The change perplexed her little brain. 
 
 She thought and thought how this might be ; 
 
 At last, " Oh my, papa ! " she cried ; 
 "We thought she was awake but she 
 
 Has only turned upon her side ! " 
 
164 Poems of ChildJwod. 
 
 AN APRIL GRIEF. 
 
 WITH little breast that wildly heaved, 
 With streaming eyes and hair uncurled, 
 She sat and sobbed as if she grieved 
 For all the woes of all the world. 
 
 A sudden pause ! She raised her head 
 In puzzled thought, and still a tear 
 
 Hung, like a dewdrop. as she said : 
 "Why was I crying, mamma dear?" 
 
 41 Because I took poor Pussy's part." 
 Then all the woes beneath the skies 
 
 Once more convulsed that little heart 
 And rained from those despairing eyes ! 
 
 Oh, never in the coming years, 
 
 My darling, may it be your lot 
 To know a grief too deep for tears, 
 
 Or one that cannot be forgot ! 
 
The Great World. 165 
 
 THE GREAT WORLD. 
 
 A WILD adventurer, he loved to fare 
 On wondrous voyages from chair to chair. 
 He coasted wall and furniture until 
 He reached the Indies of his wayward will. 
 His quests recalled th' intrepid days of yore , 
 When tars who woo'd the ocean hugged the shore ; 
 When sirens sang to port and birds to lee, 
 And rigging brushed the blossom from the tree. 
 But one spring afternoon a breeze from Spain 
 Awoke a small Columbus in his brain ; 
 His legs felt sturdy under him ; the door, 
 Through which he'd never passed alone before, 
 Opened on marvels. Brightness, sound and scent 
 Called him to go and play with them. He went. 
 
 He reached the middle of the village green, 
 Then stopped and gazed. Great nature, what a 
 scene ! 
 
1 66 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 On every side to distances untold 
 
 The grass in vast savannas round him rolled. 
 
 The cottages were leagues and leagues away. 
 
 The enormous spaces that about him lay 
 
 Seemed glad to find him little and alone. 
 
 A thousand miles up, great white clouds were 
 
 blown 
 
 Across a sky as bright and clear as glass, 
 And here their shadows raced across the grass. 
 Cloud-gazing made one's little senses reel, 
 For all the sky seemed, like a glittering wheel, 
 To turn clean over. 
 
 With uneasy mind, 
 
 He marked the tall trees waving in the wind. 
 Each tossed its great green arms and wagged its 
 
 head 
 
 So grimly that he held his breath for dread. 
 How had he vexed the beech, the elm, the fir? 
 Their dreadful voices told how vexed they were. 
 
 He thought of home, for what can harm or hurt 
 The child whose fingers clutch his mother's skirt ? 
 He turned to seek the refuge of the wise 
 But oh, the horror of those startled eyes ! 
 
The Great World. 167 
 
 Between him and that far-off cottage door 
 Swayed the green terror of a sycamore. 
 The great tree rocks above him, cries, expands, 
 And strives to snatch him with a hundred hands. 
 
 Oh, never till this moment had he known 
 How terrible it was to be alone ; 
 Never till now been clear that he was he, 
 Not one with earth and air and stone and tree, 
 But something different and quite apart. 
 And now dismay has filled his little heart. 
 He drops upon the grass ; the earth and skies 
 Collapse about him as he sobs and cries. 
 
 Oh joy of joys ! a friend, a helper hears 
 His piteous wail, compassionates his tears. 
 A furry head is rubbed against his cheek ; 
 Against his hair, a body soft and sleek. 
 It is it is his Puss ! O Pussy dear, 
 Listen to all his woes, and you shall hear 
 The strangest story child told cat since mark ! 
 The tiger sneezed the first puss in the ark. 
 
 Child's dreams, child's memories are so blent that we 
 Can scarce trace shining cloud from shining sea. 
 
1 68 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 Did Pussy laugh and tell him who can say ? 
 He need not mind the skies ; it was their way. 
 That as for size and distance, after all 
 The whole world was comparatively small ; 
 That big things would grow little, far things near 
 As he grew old ; that trees had made men fear 
 Ever since mother Eve plucked fruit from bough ; 
 'Twas but a freak of theirs to mop and mow, 
 And catch at stars and clouds with aguish arm 
 Green foolish giants they, they did no harm. 
 
 Did Pussy in her wisdom answer thus ? 
 
 Strange sympathies united him and Puss 
 
 In those dim days of wonder and romance, 
 
 And sympathy projected speech perchance. 
 
 In any case, his arms he flung around 
 
 Dear Puss, and almost hugged her off the ground ; 
 
 Got firm on foot ; began to recognise 
 
 No tree could see him if he shut his eyes ; 
 
 Set off, determined never more to roam 
 
 When once safe housed. 
 
 So Pussy led him home. 
 
A New Poet. 169 
 
 A NEW POET. 
 
 I WRITE. He sits beside my chair 
 And scribbles too in hushed delight ; 
 He dips his pen in charmed air ; 
 What is it he pretends to write ? 
 
 He toils and toils ; the paper gives 
 
 No clue to ought he thinks. What then ? 
 
 His little heart is glad ; he lives 
 The poems that he cannot pen. 
 
 Strange fancies throng that baby brain. 
 
 What grave sweet looks ! What earnest eyes ! 
 He stops reflects and now again 
 
 His unrecording pen he plies. 
 
 It seems a satire on myself 
 
 These dreamy nothings scrawled in air, 
 This thought, this work ! Oh, tricksy elf, 
 
 Wouldst drive thy father to despair ? 
 
170 Poems of CkUdhood. 
 
 Despair ! Ah, no ; the heart, the mind 
 Persists in hoping, schemes and strives 
 
 That there may linger with our kind 
 Some memory of our little lives. 
 
 Beneath his rock i' the early world 
 Smiling the naked hunter lay, 
 
 And sketched on horn the spear he hurled, 
 The urus which he made his prey. 
 
 Like him I strive in hope my rhymes 
 May keep my name a little while. 
 
 O child, who knows how many times 
 We two have made the angels smile ! 
 
The Ladder. 171 
 
 THE LADDER. 
 
 IN our woodyard one apple-tree 
 Quite touched the sky, I knew ; 
 For when the boughs swung I could see 
 Blue bits of heaven break through. 
 
 The big red apples glittered bright 
 
 So high up in the sun, 
 An angel, without stooping, might 
 
 Have plucked the topmost one. 
 
 A long, green-painted ladder leant 
 Among the boughs ; 'twas odd, 
 
 But I was sure that ladder went 
 Right up the tree to God. 
 
 I longed to climb and see His place, 
 But then I was so young 
 
 Just two and what a fearful space 
 Divided rung from rung ! 
 
Poems of Childhood. 
 
 THE UPWARD LOOK. 
 
 I CRIED because I was afraid. 
 Strange people came about the place ; 
 They'd laid my mother in a chest, 
 
 And spread a cloth upon her face. 
 And then they whispered up and down ; 
 
 And all of them were dressed in black ; 
 And women that I did not know 
 
 Kissed me and said, " Poor little Jack ! " 
 And then the great black horses came 
 
 Their tails trailed almost on the ground 
 And there were feathers on the coach, 
 
 And all the neighbours stood around. 
 
 And when the horses went away, 
 
 The house no longer seemed the same, 
 
 And I grew frightened, and I called 
 For Mother ; but she never came, 
 
 4 
 
The Upward Look. 173 
 
 And so I cried ! But then my Aunt 
 
 Came weeping when she heard my cries ; 
 
 And I was such a little thing 
 
 I looked up to her streaming eyes. 
 
 I looked up to her streaming eyes ! 
 
 And it has often seemed since then, 
 At times of threatening, doubt, distress, 
 
 That, full-grown to the life of men, 
 Just so have I looked up just so 
 
 Some being of a higher sphere, 
 Aware of laws from me concealed, 
 
 Has downward looked and dropped a tear 
 A tear of pity for the pain 
 
 That I must feel when I've outgrown 
 This larger childhood, and have learned 
 
 To know myself as I am known. 
 
1 74 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 THE ROBIN. 
 
 WHEN ice is black upon the pond, 
 And woods and ways are choked with 
 
 snow, 
 
 The Robin flutters in ! 
 The little maids with wide glad eyes 
 Stand spell-bound lest a breath or sign 
 Should scare him from his crumbs. 
 
 Oft when the fire is keen with frost, 
 And blinds are drawn and candles lit 
 
 O Robin, flutter in ! 
 They sit around the cosy hearth, 
 And hear with wondering love and awe 
 
 How Robin's breast grew red. 
 
 Fond little maids ! each fancies now 
 That somewhere in the great white snow 
 O Robin, flutter in ! 
 
The Robin. 175 
 
 That somewhere in the tracts of snow, 
 An icy cross forsaken stands, 
 
 And Christ hangs pale and dead ! 
 
 A childish fancy ? Be it so ! 
 And let me ever be a child, 
 
 With Robins fluttering in, 
 Than grow into the man who sees 
 In wintry wastes of unbelief 
 
 A phantom Christ and Cross ! 
 
1 76 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH. 
 
 SHE came to us in storm and snow 
 The little one we held so dear 
 And all the world was full of woe, 
 
 And war and famine plagued the year; 
 And ships were wrecked and fields were drowned, 
 
 And thousands died for lack of bread ; 
 In such a troubled time we found 
 
 That sweet mouth to be kissed and fed. 
 
 But oh, we were a happy pair, 
 
 Through all the war and want and woe ; 
 Though not a heart appeared to care, 
 
 And no one even seemed to know. 
 
 She left us in the blithe increase 
 Of glowing fruit and ripening corn, 
 
 When all the nations were at peace, 
 And plenty held a brimming horn 
 
Birth and Death. 177 
 
 When we at last were well to do, 
 
 And life was sweet, and earth was gay ; 
 
 In that glad time of cloudless blue 
 Our little darling passed away. 
 
 And oh, we were a wretched pair 
 In all the gladness and the glow : 
 
 And not a heart appeared to care, 
 And no one even seemed to know. 
 
 M 
 
178 Poems of Childhood. 
 
 SUSPIRIUM. 
 
 little shoes ! How proud she was of 
 JL these ! 
 
 Can you forget how, sitting on your knees, 
 She used to prattle volubly, and raise 
 Her tiny feet to win your wondering praise ? 
 Was life too rough for feet so softly shod, 
 That now she walks in Paradise with God, 
 Leaving but these whereon to dote and muse 
 These little shoes ? 
 
 1870. 
 
1/9 
 
 THE STONE FACE. 
 
 LO ! here the first sun strikes the cold grey 
 peak 
 
 Broad August ! and in shining wreaths the mist 
 Creeps up from crag to crag against the dawn, 
 While far below, still sleeping in the dusk, 
 Ringed from the great world's trouble and unrest, 
 The little mountain village lies a-row, 
 Fringed with the fragrant selvage of the pines. 
 
 Descend the glimmering pass, and as you go, 
 The sun outrunning you with golden feet 
 Till all the red-tiled, white-walled rustic world 
 Laughs out, from grass to gilded weather-cock, 
 With gladsome colour and with breezy life 
 Look backward to the peak ! Look back and 
 
 pause ! 
 
 For lo ! the huge grey crags will all have blent 
 And grown into a countenance of stone : 
 
1 80 The Stone Face. 
 
 An aged, sweet, majestic face, whose eyes, 
 With wondrous human tenderness, look down 
 Upon the valley and the little lives 
 That come and go in their eternal gaze. 
 
 In the dim days of old, when snowy beards 
 Belied the childlike hearts that ne'er grew grey, 
 A strange tradition in the valley told 
 How in the golden future should be born, 
 Within the range of those calm kindly eyes, 
 A child, the need and succour of his times, 
 A boy whose face should be in flesh and blood 
 A reflex of that grave, sweet face of stone. 
 
 The little lives went ever to and fro, 
 
 Toiled, suffered, loved, enjoyed, and passed away; 
 
 The generations died the legend lived ! 
 
 A legend only a legend often told, 
 
 Cherished and half believed, for, evermore, 
 
 The aged and majestic face looked down 
 
 With wondrous human tenderness and truth. 
 
 'Twas Christmas night, two hundred years ago. 
 Deep on the hills the snow lay ; deep and white, 
 Lay hushing all the valley, road and roof, 
 
The Stone Face. 181 
 
 Until the clock struck midnight. Then the bells 
 Rang in the holly and the mistletoe ; 
 Rang in the merry maskers and the waits ; 
 Rang in all gentle thoughts and generous cheer ; 
 And lanterns glimmered on the fleecy roads, 
 And sounds of singing moved from house to 
 
 house. 
 
 Soft rosy lights filled all the frosty heavens 
 With tremulous floating splendour, and the stars 
 Shone keen and golden through it, and the wind 
 Blew little flakes of cloud like leaves of flowers 
 Across the night ; and in the magical 
 Warm flush of colour, every icy peak, 
 And all the long white ridges of the hills, 
 The snowy village roofs, the ghostly pines, 
 Sprang out with startling clearness ; and the face 
 The great stone face, now bearded with the snow, 
 And looking old so old with hoary hair 
 Seemed to lean closer in the rosy light ; 
 And that same night a peasant's child was born ! 
 
 The babe throve lustily and grew apace ; 
 The years went by, and when the great blue eyes 
 Had learned to trace that visage on the heights, 
 The mother told the legend of old days, 
 
1 82 The Stone Face. 
 
 The promise of that happy future time. 
 And marvelling, the lad drank in the tale, 
 Mused on it, watched the aged face of stone, 
 And longed for that bright future longed to see 
 In living flesh and blood that gracious mien, 
 And those dark eyes of majesty. Strange dreams 
 Awakened in his heart, as day by day 
 He raised his ardent eyes up to the peaks 
 Strange dreams of helpfulness to all the world, 
 Of wisdom and of power to right all wrong, 
 To lift the fallen, soothe the sick at heart, 
 Make life more beautiful and brighten death. 
 
 He nurtured his keen boyhood on the thoughts 
 Of great dead men, nor overlooked the lore 
 Of that green throbbing world of flower and plant, 
 Bird, reptile, insect, rock, and passing cloud \ 
 And all he learnt grew into melody 
 Within his heart. 
 
 The Vicar marked the lad, 
 Advised him, lent him books, and gave him aid 
 To master those great tongues, now tongues no 
 
 more 
 Eye-symbols and a music of the brain 
 
The Stone Face. 183 
 
 Until at length, when he had quite outgrown 
 His little wondering self and now could look 
 Upon the mighty face of stone and smile 
 To think with what a simple passionate faith 
 He had believed that myth, the rocky mask 
 Had half-fulfilled the promise of the myth, 
 And stamped some semblance of its tenderness 
 And large sweet power upon the student's mind. 
 
 Friends were not wanting to the youth, and soon 
 He left his humble cottage in the hills 
 And laboured in the city's learned halls, 
 Toiled day and night to win the glorious meed 
 Of being helpful unto all the world, 
 Of being wise with power to right some wrong, 
 To lift the fallen, soothe the sick at heart, 
 Make life more beautiful and brighten death. 
 
 Nor laboured vainly ; for when he returned. 
 Once more and saw the face among the peaks 
 And smiled at childish memories, his friend, 
 The aged Vicar, was content to rest 
 And let the younger man achieve for both. 
 
 Years sped in glad whole-hearted toil. He served, 
 From early manhood to a reverend age 
 
1 84 The Stone Face. 
 
 The peaceful peasant people ; ministered 
 In helpful sympathetic ways ; fulfilled 
 In days of famine, sickness, hopeless need, 
 The golden promise of the legend old ; 
 Became, unconsciously and unobserved, 
 All that the village folk had hoped in him 
 Who should resemble that great face of stone. 
 
 When old age came upon him, oft he stood 
 And gazed with dim fond eyes upon the face 
 Whose gracious semblance of humanity 
 Had thrilled his childish heart and filled his life 
 With noblest duties ; often too he told, 
 With frail hand laid upon the little head 
 Of lass or lad, the legend of the face. 
 
 Like all the little lives that come and go 
 Before the steadfast gaze of those stone eyes, 
 He too departed, full of years and honour. 
 And as he lay dead, cold ; his beard like snow 
 Scattered in silvery masses on his breast ; 
 And looking old so old with hoary hair 
 Loose on the pillow ; and his people gazed 
 The last time on those kindly lineaments, 
 They felt a sudden tremor round their hearts, 
 
The Stone Face. 1 8 5 
 
 For lo ! the face seemed changed familiar still, 
 But changed in some wise strangely. Then at length 
 One gazed and turning to the window drew 
 The curtains open. Snow was on the hills, 
 And snow hushed all the valley, and rosy lights 
 Filled all the frosty heavens, and the face 
 The vast stone visage, in the tremulous flush 
 Seemed to lean closer, and the gazers saw 
 His and those great stone features were the same. 
 
 And this was Christmas night, but all was still ! 
 
 A hundred years ago and folk yet lived 
 
 Who saw those faces, knew they were the same. 
 
 But generations die and legends live ! 
 
 The little lives beneath those eyes eterne 
 
 Toil, suffer, love, enjoy, and pass away ; 
 
 And still the people in the valley tell 
 
 How in the golden future will be born 
 
 A child, the need and succour of his times, 
 
 A boy whose face shall be in flesh and blood 
 
 A reflex of that grave sweet face of stone ! 
 
 A legend only, never gravely told, 
 
 Not even half believed in these shrewd days 
 
 When childhood listens with a grey-beard's heart ! 
 
1 86 
 
 SONG. 
 
 MAKING morning-mirth 
 Larks were singing loud 
 Over flowery earth, 
 
 Under shining cloud ; 
 Golden-haired and gay 
 Started on his way 
 
 The laughing lad ; 
 Time lay bright before, 
 And a branch he bore 
 
 With blossoms clad. 
 
 O'er the wintry wold 
 
 Fell the twilight snow ; 
 Homeward, hoarse and cold, 
 
 Flapped the famished crow. 
 Haggard, frail, forlorn, 
 On his rugged thorn 
 
 The grey-beard bent ; 
 Night before him lay ; 
 No star gleamed ; the way 
 
 No further we-nt. 
 
1 8 7 
 
 MENA THE LIBYAN. 
 
 " / nn v HE boy so long delighteth in his play; 
 JL The youth so long pursues his maid ; so 
 
 long 
 
 The old man broods upon uneasiness, 
 That none can find the time not even one 
 In all the regions of the level world 
 To meditate upon the very God ! " 
 
 And Mena, rising, fled the babbling streets ; 
 And climbing through the shadow of the woods, 
 Gained one great ledge which shelved above the 
 
 mass 
 
 Of billowy foliage, and beheld beneath 
 The Libyan city on this hand, and on that 
 The plain of western waters. From below 
 No murmur save the woodland's reached his ear : 
 And resting on the rocky ledge, he crossed 
 His arms upon his bosom and withdrew 
 
1 88 Mena the Libyan. 
 
 His spirit from all things living, fixed it fast 
 Upon the Life, and grew entranced in God. 
 
 And God upheld him, and he leaned on God 
 And knew no fleshly need, no touch of time. 
 
 In the long summers for the varying year, 
 
 Even as the sylvan waters of a brook 
 
 Divide against a boulder in the brook, 
 
 And now the sunny current carries down 
 
 Blue gleams of sky and leaves and flowers, and now 
 
 Grey shadows, but through all the changeful day 
 
 The boulder feels no change, even so the year 
 
 Brought lapse of seasons, even so the man 
 
 Of seasons and of years was unaware 
 
 In the long summers moss and tendrils grew 
 
 About his limbs ; the spider wove her web 
 
 Around his head. In wintry moons the trees 
 
 Were shattered by the tempest in the woods \ 
 
 But Mena heard not. Neither felt he rain 
 
 Nor hoar-frost blanching tangled hair and beard 
 
 Within his beard the small birds built in spring 
 
 And, later, trills and chirps and gladdened wings 
 
 Made happy music to the early sun 
 
 Upon his bosom ; but he heard no sound. 
 
Mena the Libyan. 189 
 
 And Mena waxed like all things mortal old, 
 
 A haggard frame ! But still despite the years 
 
 His spirit drooped nor withered wrapt in God ! 
 
 The woodlands fell and rotted in their place ; 
 
 The Libyan city crumbled, thundered down 
 
 Like snow in April, drifted wide in dust 
 
 Along the four great winds which purge the world ; 
 
 And lo ! the waters of the western sea 
 
 Drew ever further westward, sank and shrank, 
 
 And left but sand and salt and thirst and fire, 
 
 Mirage and dumb tremendous solitude. 
 
 And Mena, with a hopeless sigh, awoke : 
 "O Thou unknowable and holy God, 
 How shall I hope to know Thee as Thou art ? 
 Long hours I seek Thee, till my weary soul 
 Sinks back to rest her weakness on the earth. 
 O God, will ever thought be more than babe 
 Which stretches to the moon its simple hands ? 
 The Lord be my protector, what is this ? " 
 
 He rubbed his eyes and gazed, amazed, and shook 
 With awe and speechless wonder ; for behold ! 
 The desert flared before him, and he stood 
 Near trunks of forest changed to stumps of stone, 
 
190 Mena the Libyan. 
 
 And saw the solitude of salt and sand 
 Where no man in the living world had trod. 
 
 And Mena, while he gazed, became aware 
 
 Of hoariest age and utter nakedness. 
 
 He turned his face against the rock and wept. 
 
 Then lo ! upon the east the desert changed, 
 
 As in a dream, to fields and homely trees 
 
 And glittering waters ; and the weeping man 
 
 Beheld them and his heart was lifted up ; 
 
 And hastening on with feeble steps, he strove 
 
 To reach that blessed isle of living land. 
 
 He travelled all that day through sand and salt, 
 
 Through valleys where in long- forgotten time 
 
 Water had rolled the boulder, worn the cliff, 
 
 But now from eye to eye 'twas stone and stone ; 
 
 Then fell, outworn, and slumbered where he fell, 
 
 But rose ere dawn and journeyed, wild with hope, 
 
 Saying : " Those waters and delightsome trees 
 
 Were surely a gracious vision sent of God 
 
 To lead me onward." Then at length he marked 
 
 Where limestone in a dark sierra jagged 
 
 The scarlet of the morning. Here he climbed 
 
 And saw beyond the ridge oh, joy of joys ! 
 
Mena the Libyan. 191 
 
 The broad Nile flowing through a fruitful land, 
 And sphinx and temple and pyramid and palm, 
 Green fields, and men and women. And he lay 
 And wept for gladness. 
 
 After he had reached 
 That marvellous city of a later race, 
 He rested many days a shadow of man 
 And watched with awe the new old life, the same 
 Old joys and sorrows of the ancient world \ 
 And while he watched, the ancient thought recurred 
 In language no man spoke, and " Ah ! " he 
 
 sighed, 
 
 " The boy so long delighteth in his play 
 The youth so long pursues his maid ; so long 
 The old man broods upon uneasiness, 
 That none can find the time not even one 
 To meditate upon the very God ! " 
 
 And even as he thought, another thought 
 Broke slowly on him, like a tardy dawn 
 Which colours weed and stone and common earth, 
 And makes the homeliest seem divine and strange : 
 "Perchance it may be, though it seems so 
 strange, 
 
192 Mena the Libyan. 
 
 Perchance the truest and the holiest life 
 
 Is his who acts in God, not his who stands 
 
 Enmarbled in a many-centuried dream 
 
 Of who but God knows what he thinks is God ! " 
 
 And Mena sighed but spoke not, only mused 
 " I am but a babe delighted with Thy light, 
 That hath stretched out to Thee its simple hands 
 A babe, O God, that now must die a babe 
 And trust for growth in Thine eternal years ! " 
 
 'Twas in these later days the man was named 
 By those who knew him " Mena," for that he 
 Through all that wind of change and whirl of waste 
 Had stood the one man constant in the world. 
 
193 
 
 PEARLS AND SIMPLES. 
 AN IDYL. 
 
 HIS long grey shadow lingers in the pass ; 
 He slowly gains the ridge ; he turns to 
 
 wave 
 A last farewell. (God speed you !) He is 
 
 gone ! 
 Sunset will light him to some quiet cave j 
 
 Or haply, stretched a-lee some sheltering stone 
 
 Among the mountain grass, 
 He'll lie to-night and listen to the deep 
 
 Hushed breathing of the hills, and watch the 
 
 skies 
 
 Till one great star shall lead him by the eyes, 
 Through drowsy deserts, to the crib of sleep. 
 
194 Pearls and Simples. 
 
 n. 
 A merry ouzel chattering on his rock, 
 
 A bleating lamb, will wake him ere the day 
 Hath reddened to the flower of four o'clock, 
 
 And he will rise and wander on his way. 
 And this hath been his mode of life for years, 
 To roam in search of simples through the hills, 
 To fish for pearls where upland waters fall 
 
 Murmuring o'er mossy weirs, 
 To sleep where fortune and when darkness 
 
 wills 
 Praise be to Him who doth not sleep at all ! 
 
 in. 
 
 The little red-roofed town where he was born 
 Sits robin-like amid the trees and snow ; 
 
 And here he winters, making song and shoe 
 Like old Hans Sachs. But let the windflower 
 
 blow, 
 And hyacinths light the woods with wells of 
 
 blue, 
 
 And white stars gem the thorn 
 The leafless sloe, why, lo you ! he is dressed 
 For travel, and in honest leather shod 
 From his own lapstone, starts 'mid smile and nod 
 Hillward once more upon his annual quest. 
 
Pearls and Simples. 195 
 
 IV. 
 
 What rustic thorpe, lone farm, or bosky grange, 
 
 But counts upon his coming year by year ? 
 He rarely fails them. In a world of change 
 These old-time nooks to him are strangely 
 
 dear. 
 
 He comes and goes ; he leaves at every door 
 A "cheery memory. When at last his way 
 Shall lead him from the kindly homes of men, 
 
 And he can come no more, 
 " If not this year, why, next," the folk will say ; 
 " He sometimes missed, but always came 
 again." 
 
 v. 
 
 For habit makes us hopeful, and we thrive 
 Best on this homely nurture of routine. 
 
 " If not this year, why, next," will oft be 
 
 said; 
 
 And so with them, long after grass is green 
 Upon the simple mound where he is laid, 
 
 He still will be alive 
 
 A strong blithe man of helpful hand and speech, 
 Still wandering somewhere, sitting by some fire 
 Of farm or cottage in a neighbouring shire, 
 Or telling tales beneath some village beech. 
 
196 Pearls and Simples. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Dear in a world of change, because they change 
 So little, are these old homes. Since first he 
 
 came, 
 
 Roads, houses, trees, brooks, meadows, mountain- 
 range 
 Have, like the heaven above them, seemed the 
 
 same. 
 
 The ivied church hath scarcely hoarier grown, 
 Yet age hath silvered many a lusty head ; 
 The little ones of twenty years ago 
 
 Have children of their own : 
 Beneath the shadow of the elms the dead 
 
 Have heaved the earth in many a grassy row. 
 
 VII. 
 
 But most he haunts the hills. For days and days, 
 Among the mossy solitudes, the coy 
 
 Wild lives in fur and feather are his only 
 Companions ; but a deep impassioned joy 
 Prevents his heart from ever feeling lonely. 
 
 To merely sit and gaze 
 
 On God's green earth and gracious heaven, to live 
 In cloud and rock, in lichen and in leaf, 
 To feel but Nature's gladness, Nature's grief, 
 Are happiness no pride of life could give. 
 
Pearls and Simples. 197 
 
 VIII. 
 
 He knows all tracks, the loops and glassy linns 
 
 Of every burn, each winding river-reach ; 
 The limits where each herb and flower begins 
 
 And ends; the virtues and the name of each. 
 And often of these uplands doth he speak, 
 
 As if in some mysterious way each stone 
 And rush, and every cry and chirp of song 
 
 Were his from plain to peak 
 As if they were in some strange sense his own 
 
 And to none else could ever so belong. 
 
 IX. 
 
 And oft he tells, in phrase of dreamy power, 
 
 Of sights that filled his heart with strength and 
 
 rest, 
 
 As, how he watched the lean blue heron wait 
 With head and bill sunk gravely on its breast, 
 Among the shadowy shoals, as fixed as fate, 
 
 As patient of the hour ; 
 
 And once when rain and wind had raged amain 
 And all again was bright, he chanced to see 
 A milk-white fawn beneath a rowan-tree 
 Which blazed with crimson fruit and drops of rain. 
 
198 Pearls and Simples. 
 
 x. 
 
 As though of weightiest import, he insists 
 
 On merest trifles, no one notes at all. 
 God steeps, he says, the rain-clouds and the mists 
 
 In gold of dawn and sunset ere they fall. 
 Though we by tender gloamings moved may weep, 
 
 He smiles ; his sunset's but the other side 
 Of some one else's morning: When he lies 
 
 Beneath a tree to sleep, 
 He thinks how leaves and little cares can hide 
 
 God in His heaven and systems in their skies. 
 
 XI. 
 
 The Oak-tree croons to him a wondrous song : 
 " My type, which hath sufficed for centuries, 
 Doth still hold good. Old elements new- 
 wrought 
 Have streamed from age to age beneath this 
 
 guise. 
 Through what most ancient language have 
 
 man's thought 
 
 And feeling streamed so long ? " 
 To him the great Dust blown upon the wind 
 Is a weird vision. Lo ! among her own, 
 He sees sweep past, unworshipped and unknown, 
 The venerable mother of mankind ! 
 
Pearls and Simples. 199 
 
 XII. 
 
 A little naked child in tender wise 
 
 She carries nestling to her slumb'rous breast. 
 Her milk hath hushed its passionate human cries, 
 
 And lulled it into ever dreamless rest. 
 Absorbed in fantasy, he thinks he sees 
 
 The infant's playthings as she glideth by, 
 For countless fragments, curious and old, 
 
 Strange animals and trees, 
 Like broken arks of childhood, mingled lie 
 
 Within her garment's deep mysterious fold. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 He marvels at the discontent of men 
 
 Cankering their lives with labour and despite. 
 One April midnight, waking on the hill, 
 Jupiter set, Arcturus burning bright 
 
 V the central blue, he heard a song-thrush 
 
 thrill 
 
 The wooded little glen 
 With ravishing roulades ; and in the hush 
 
 Of those blue heavens and that enchanted 
 
 earth, 
 He asked was all men strove and toiled for 
 
 worth 
 The rapturous music of that happy thrush. 
 
2OO Pearls and Simples. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The ancient mysteries of life and death 
 
 Perplex him not. Why should he hope or fear ? 
 Because men clamour, and no one answereth 
 Out of the clouds? He knows that God is 
 
 here 
 
 Not in some distant heaven, but close at hand 
 Around us, nay, within us well aware 
 Of us and all our motions. Like a nest 
 
 The world lies in His hand. 
 What can the callow nestlings chirping there 
 Conceive of Him who holds them to His 
 breast ? 
 
 xv. 
 
 To him the doubts and anguish of the age 
 Seem raving winds among the peaks of stone. 
 
 O sceptic spirit, climb the hills and learn 
 That God exists, and man is not alone ! 
 Question the Arctic lichen and the fern, 
 
 The moss and saxifrage ! 
 
 High up the sea-pink blooms. 'Twill answer thee : 
 "The North wind blew us hither in days of 
 
 yore. 
 
 These rocks of ours were once an island shore 
 Amid the ice-drift of an ancient sea ! " 
 
Pearls and Simples. 201 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The wandering flora of the Northern Star 
 
 Drifted for centuries on berg and floe. 
 Through the white ages Europe gleamed afar 
 
 One mighty snow-peaked archipelago. 
 And here a fern was stranded, here a grass, 
 And here a saxifrage laughed out in flower 
 And made a gladness in the lone bright air. 
 
 Who saw the ages pass ? 
 Who shaped the land afresh, yet every hour 
 
 Thought these small fragile creatures worth His 
 care ? 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Who raised them with the hills on which they grew, 
 And bade His clouds subserve them? Who 
 
 sustained 
 Their weakness through the wondrous cosmic 
 
 change 
 
 When the great ocean of the north was drained, 
 And new-time plants and beasts began to range 
 
 A continent made new ? 
 They blossomed in the prehistoric snow ; 
 
 They blossom still ; it may be that once more 
 New seas shall find them on their ancient shore 
 Amid a later archipelago. 
 
2O2 Pearls and Simples. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Thus, being very sure of God, he takes 
 No trouble to himself whate'er befall. 
 Enough that God loves everything He makes 
 Through countless ages hath remembered all. 
 Nor is he anywise concerned to know 
 
 Aught more of God than God may will. He 
 
 seeks 
 No pledge, no knowledge wherefore he exists 
 
 Or whither he shall go. 
 He lives on faith, a flower upon the peaks, 
 Cared for and loved though wrapped in blind- 
 ing mists. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Out of delight to find a little space 
 
 For trees and flowers which he may call his own 
 
 In this old garden of God, where'er he goes 
 He carries apple-pip and cherry-stone, 
 
 And seed of divers trees ; and these he sows 
 
 In many a lonely place, 
 And little cairns mark every chosen spot. 
 Exceeding "joy to him it is to know 
 His trees among the hills in hundreds grow, 
 And still will bloom when he is long forgot. 
 
Pearls and Simples. 203 
 
 xx. 
 
 Thus through the years he wanders, gathering pearls 
 
 For beauty, culling herbs for human pain, 
 And planting trees to be his boys and girls 
 His fair and fruitful children. Not in vain 
 Can he have lived whose heart hath found such rest, 
 Who dwells in such high thoughts of men and 
 
 things, 
 Who loves through all his wayfaring to read 
 
 And carry in his breast 
 The book wherein old Epictetus sings 
 The grand Te Deum of a pagan creed. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 For thus saith Epictetus : " Ought we not, 
 Whether we dig or plough or eat, to sing 
 
 To God this homage : ' Great is God who 
 
 gives 
 
 These tools of tillage and of harvesting ; 
 Who fashioned unto every man that lives 
 
 Hands equal to his lot : 
 
 And great is God who gives us each the power 
 Of swallowing, and a stomach for our keep, 
 And faculty of breathing while asleep, 
 And imperceptible growth from hour to hour} 
 
2O4 Pearls and Simples. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " And this at all times and in every place 
 
 We ought to sing; but our most joyous praise 
 Should rise to heaven that God hath given us grace 
 To know these things, and walk in blameless 
 
 ways. 
 
 Well, seeing most of you are dumb and blind, 
 Were it not meet some man should fill for you 
 This charge, and sing to God his whole life 
 
 long 
 
 A hymn for all mankind ? 
 Besides, what else can Epictetus do, 
 
 A lame old man, save honour God with 
 song ? " 
 
205 
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE. 
 
 midnight Mass. 
 
 'Twas a snowy night ; 
 
 But the great Cathedral was warm and bright 
 Ablaze with flame and colour, and filled 
 With a mist of incense, and music that thrilled 
 The motley audience drawn together, 
 Despite late hours and the wild white weather 
 Partly from sentiment, partly from piety, 
 Partly in quest of a pleasing variety 
 To view the strange spectacular ritual 
 (For which, O Catholics, Protestants twit you ill, 
 For why should one rank under worship of images 
 This beautiful scene handed down from the dim 
 ages ?) 
 
206 Christmas Eve. 
 
 Near the rails of the chancel the crib was seen, 
 Roofed and clustered with winter-green ; 
 On a truss of straw from the manger smiled 
 The golden-nimbused celestial Child ; 
 While over the crib gleamed the star which of old 
 Led the Kings with their myrrh and frankincense 
 and gold. 
 
 The service was odd, but of singular interest ; 
 The strains of Mozart lulled all feelings of sin to 
 
 rest; 
 The lights, fragrance, garlands of ivy and holly 
 
 tree 
 Moved the senses to worship (Can that be 
 
 idolatry ?) 
 
 And all had been touched to a certain extent 
 With a cosy religious sentiment, 
 When the organ stopped and the singing ceased, 
 And the people sat down ; and a grey-haired priest 
 Mounted the pulpit in alb and stole, 
 To save, if it might be, some sectary's soul. 
 
 At the side of the altar in pride of place 
 Sat my Lord Archbishop enthroned ; and his 
 Grace 
 
Christmas Eve. 207 
 
 Smiled out of gladness of heart as he viewed 
 The half-heretic curious multitude 
 Waiting, like furrows in spring, to receive 
 The seed of the faith that Christmas Eve. 
 
 In beautiful language the preacher spoke 
 
 Of the Syrian hills and the shepherd folk 
 
 Who heard the Angels and saw the light 
 
 As they watched their flocks in that ancient night. 
 
 And then he marked how the Lord had come 
 
 To a world that knew Him not, men who were 
 
 dumb; 
 
 But to-night, oh ! it was not the Angels alone 
 Who sang ; oh, not only to these was He known ; 
 But the whole world rejoiced in the joy of His 
 
 birth ! 
 
 From the East to the West round the peopled earth 
 As the midnight travelled it carried along 
 The joy of that birth, the thanksgiving of song. 
 
 As the preacher proceeded a strange thing occurred. 
 My Lord Archbishop first fancied he heard 
 The wind rising without ; then a tramping of feet ; 
 Then a hoarse vague clamour of crowds in the 
 street ; 
 
208 CJiristinas Eve. 
 
 Then wailing and sobbing and agonised screams. 
 Then his Grace grew aware as a man when he 
 
 dreams 
 That the walls of the church were absorbed by the 
 
 night, 
 And the snow-flakes were falling. 
 
 Then, lo ! a strange light 
 
 Like a cloud hid the altar ; and in it there stood 
 Christ crowned with His thorns pale and 
 
 ghastly with blood 
 From the wounds of His scourging. 
 
 Behind the bright cloud, 
 
 Dimly seen, swayed a moaning, tumultuous crowd 
 Round a shadowy cross, which they struggled to 
 bear. 
 
 Christ spoke : " What availeth your praise or your 
 
 prayer ? 
 
 What profits to hallow the day of my birth, 
 Yet ignore that I still am among you on earth ? 
 Of Christ ye but dream. I am here ; but ye know 
 
Christmas Eve. 209 
 
 The mere legend of Christ not the Christ in His 
 
 woe, 
 In His Church, in His flesh." 
 
 From behind the bright cloud 
 Rose the sorrowful moan of the shadowy crowd. 
 
 " And these, too, are Christ ! Yet who is it sees 
 How he scourges and pierces and slays me in 
 
 these ? 
 Behold them and know them ! " 
 
 Then out of the night 
 Came the crowd, and were seen in the cloud's 
 
 mystic light. 
 They swept by in thousands. The sound of their 
 
 woe 
 Filled the midnight with terror ! 
 
 Whatever men know 
 
 Of the ills of the world, it was there in some form, 
 Flitting out of the splendour and into the storm. 
 All tribes and all nations, each colour of skin, 
 o 
 
2io Christmas Eve. 
 
 All aspects of sorrow and suffering and sin, 
 All the poor of all cities, all shapes of disease, 
 Passed sobbing and writhing. 
 
 And Christ was of these 
 These were Christ in His flesh ! And my Lord, as 
 
 they passed, 
 
 Perceived that on all, from the first to the last, 
 Lay a cross like a shadow. 
 
 Then lo ! in a wink 
 All was changed. 
 
 His Grace yawned. 
 
 " Have been dozing, I think ! " 
 
211 
 
 ANNO DOMINI XXXVII. 
 
 KEY dawn upon the mountain. Grey and 
 VJT cold, 
 
 O'er shivering pines and dripping boulders rolled 
 The great mist upward to the unseen peak. 
 The wind blew chill. The scant light, grey and 
 
 bleak, 
 Showed haggard outlines. 
 
 In the stony waste 
 
 Knelt by a torrent one who seemed in haste 
 To cleanse his hands of some deep ghastly stain. 
 He washed and moaned. Again and yet again 
 He raised them to the bleak grey light, and scanned 
 Their horror with wild eyes ; then gathered sand 
 And bent and washed with frenzy. 
 
 Upward drew 
 The spectral mist. Far out, the day was blue 
 
212 A nno Domini XXXVII. 
 
 Above the tumbled forest slopes : but here, 
 Above the man, the icy atmosphere 
 Was filled with mist and shadow of mist. 
 
 No tree 
 Throve on these heights. No grass grew. One 
 
 could see 
 
 But vast bald domes, and grim escarpments strewn 
 With block and shingle stone, and stone, and stone, 
 All streaming with the vapours of the peak. 
 
 The man beside the torrent with a shriek 
 Arose : " The waters mock at my despair ; 
 Their jeering voices call me everywhere ; 
 They madden me ! The clouds upon the height 
 Drain all the depths of Heaven day and night, 
 And day and night I wash, but never more 
 
 Will these red hands " He wrung them with 
 
 the roar 
 Of some wild beast that cannot break its cage. 
 
 Far down upon the boundless foliage 
 O' the valleys burst the sun. A brilliant green 
 Laughed out from rocky slope and deep ravine. 
 The low hills glittered. Silvery waters ran 
 Through clearings in the wilderness. 
 
A nno Domini XXXVII. 2 1 3 
 
 The man 
 
 Beneath his cloud as from a cavern gazed 
 And shuddered with the cold. The morning 
 
 blazed 
 
 A vast blithe fire which drew his steps below ! 
 Blue flanks and shining summits capped with snow 
 Rose where the distant Alps walled in the wide, 
 Glad scene. 
 
 The man went down the mountain-side. 
 
 He reached the pines ; then stopped. 
 
 What sudden fear 
 Caused him to crouch and tremble ? 
 
 Hand to ear, 
 
 He listened, breathless ! Rising from afar, 
 A strange wild sound, flung back from crag and scar, 
 Came floating through the hills and sank and died. 
 
 The man glared fiercely down the gorge and cried : 
 " Tiberius sends his bloodhounds forth at last ! " 
 
 He turned to flee, but paused. 
 
 Then slowly passed 
 
 The look of terror from his hunted eyes. 
 " An end of all things comes for him who dies," 
 
214 A nno Domini XXXVII. 
 
 He murmured, rising. " Earth can compass not 
 More hideous exile than this savage spot. 
 What worse can Caesar do than take away 
 My life ? What then ! Who slays me will but slay 
 Hunger and thirst and weariness and cold ; 
 And I shall sleep and never more behold 
 Those awful eyes that thorn-crowned head which 
 
 fills 
 The nights with terror ! " 
 
 Echoing through the hills 
 
 Once more the trumpets blew a long wild strain. 
 The man plunged downward through the woods to 
 
 gain 
 The winding levels of the rugged pass. 
 
 With sunlight flashed from spear-head and cuirass, 
 Through the green glen the Roman soldiers strode. 
 Red-plumed beyond the spears their tribune rode. 
 
 The man stood forth and with uplifted hand 
 Cried : " Halt ! It is your prisoner bids you stand; 
 The fugitive Tiberius seeks is here ; 
 Bring forth your chains ! " 
 
 The Roman chief rode near 
 And eyed the man. 
 
A nno Domini XXX VII. 2 1 5 
 
 The man stood gaunt and grim ; 
 Half clad in wolf-skin ; naked, breast and limb : 
 Through tangled hair his eyeballs blazed like flame. 
 
 "What man are you?" the tribune asked " Your 
 name ? " 
 
 He answered : " Once I ruled Judea. Men 
 Bowed low and named me Pontius Pilate then." 
 
 Wondering the soldiers gazed. The tribune said : 
 " You strangely err. Tiberius is dead. 
 We seek you not." 
 
 The legionaries marched on 
 With iron tramp. Long after they had gone 
 The man still stared. 
 
 At set of sun that day 
 Unhappy Pilate cast his life away. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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