THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ^^i^jL^j
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS
 
 P>TJt.R.U5Kia
 
 WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 ROWLAND THIRLMERE 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD 
 
 1901 
 
 A II rights reserved
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON or* Co 
 At the Ballantyne Press
 
 AMICO 
 
 GEORGIO MILNER 
 
 ARTIUM LIBERALIUM STUDIOSISS IMO 
 
 QUI SUMMO IN PER1CULO 
 
 SUMMAM PRjESTITIT VIRTUTEM 
 
 MONUMENTUM PIETATIS 
 
 HUNC LIBRUM 
 
 D. D. 
 
 868855
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 SEVERAL of the pieces in this collection have ap- 
 peared in the Magazines. The stanzas entitled 
 Sepidcrum Dulcissimi Cantoris were first printed in 
 "THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW," and I am indebted 
 to one of its late editors for permission to include 
 them in this volume. A Flower of Smokeland came 
 out in "THE CORNHILL," and it is with the greatest 
 pleasure that I acknowledge the kindness of Messrs. 
 Smith, Elder, & Co. in allowing me to reprint this 
 poem. 
 
 An Elegy has been printed separately, under 
 another title. 
 
 A Pyrenean Nocturne, By the River, To a Greek 
 Craftsman, &c. &c., were originally published in 
 Manchester papers. 
 
 Beatcs Memories is a little tribute to the memory 
 of the brave men who have fallen in South Africa. 
 
 R. T.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS : A MONODRAMA ... 3 
 
 BEAT^E MEMORISE 79 
 
 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 83 
 
 BY THE RIVER 98 
 
 To A GREEK CRAFTSMAN 120 
 
 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS . . . .121 
 
 THE GRAPES OF YOUTH 135 
 
 A P;EAN OF MARCH 137 
 
 FROM Riou TO THE SEA 143 
 
 POSTPONEMENT 149 
 
 AN ELEGY 151 
 
 SACRAMENT BEFORE BATTLE 161 
 
 To OUR DEAD HEROES . 164 
 
 ACCEPTED . 167 
 
 THE RE- A WAKENING 171 
 
 MIRAGE 174 
 
 "ANIMULA, VAGULA, BLANDULA" 177 
 
 A FLOWER OF SMOKELAND 183 
 
 AN OLD MAID 189
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 A MONODRAMA 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 I KNOW not who he is, or whence he came, 
 But in that splendid instant, when his eyes 
 Pierced me with fire, the world seemed Paradise, 
 And sleeping Love awoke in mist and flame. 
 
 2 
 
 In one brief glance his great soul uttered praise, 
 And mine surveyed its conqueror at the last ; 
 Our spirits kissed that moment when he passed, 
 And crowned each other with unfading bays. 
 
 3 
 
 Light came from God, illumining him so well 
 That he, unknown before, seemed part of me ; 
 The soul's innate, august veracity 
 Told in that second all there was to tell.
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 II 
 
 i 
 
 THE street seems but a wilderness of tombs, 
 A place where man's unutterable despair 
 Rises in vapour, dense, and chill, and black : 
 Unto the childless hearth, the lonely rooms, 
 Unto her husband with his frosty hair 
 O God, dear God, Thy stricken child comes back ! 
 
 2 
 
 Yea, even my house is but a sepulchre 
 Set in the heart of Babylon the New, 
 Where fair dead hopes are lying side by side : 
 O, for a friend that I might fly to her, 
 Lay bare my soul, each doubt bring into view, 
 And feel myself unburdened, purified ! 
 
 3 
 
 The starving bird that haunts the naked wood 
 May live on memories of the nesting-time 
 When all Earth's glory centres in her young ; 
 But I have felt no tremors in my blood 
 Like those which make a simple bird sublime; 
 The half of Love's great song is left unsung !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 III 
 
 APRIL, fair month that cheers 
 The human heart, the meadow, and the plain 
 With chilly smiles and sunny sorrow, 
 
 April, whose froward tears 
 
 Are half of rime and half of rain, 
 
 Thy hope I fain would borrow ! 
 
 Hark to the thrushes on the swaying elms 
 " O love, love, love ; how sweet, how sweet 
 When lovers meet, when lovers meet ! " 
 
 Ah ! cruel is their song ! Its music stings 
 With the wild ecstasy, 
 
 And every thought o'erwhelms 
 
 Save that of love : my spirit sings 
 In swift reply, 
 
 Crying aloud in solitude 
 
 " Come love to me, before I come to die, 
 
 Come love and still my sad inquietude ! "
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 3 
 
 The blackbird whistles to his brooding mate, 
 The willow blossoms at the meadow gate ; 
 Shy gleams of silver shine athwart the leas 
 Where blow the fairy white anemones ; 
 The daffodil has come in state, 
 And primroses for early bees : 
 Some prescience of my fate comes, too, with these. 
 
 4 
 
 Fair as an oak is fair, 
 Reared high in summer air, 
 He standeth in the crowd ; 
 Deep as his perfect eyes 
 The sapphire of the skies 
 That streaks the swansdown cloud. 
 O, merchant, for what mart 
 Hast thou secured my heart ? 
 For it is wholly thine : 
 O, let me see thy face 
 Once more, and feel the grace 
 That makes me half-divine. 
 Love's ichor made thee blush, 
 And I, with answering flush,
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 7 
 
 Proclaimed thy victory won ; 
 Then, from my cloudy fears 
 There fell delightful tears, 
 And lo ! a rainbow shone ! 
 
 5 
 
 My heart is full to overflowing 
 To see those happy children, knowing 
 
 What childless women know : 
 Their laughter stabs my soul and makes 
 A madness in this breast that aches 
 
 With sudden weight of woe. 
 
 6 
 
 Ah, when April-tide returns, 
 
 And the sunny weather, 
 Rapture comes with agony : 
 Poignantly the spirit burns 
 With sense of youth escaping me 
 
 Ere we come together. 
 O, spring, the joyful, bring my soul its May 
 
 Of warmth and flowers ; 
 My sorrow waxeth greater every day 
 
 And longer grow the hours ! 
 
 O, do we pass away ? 
 Is it for naught we gain our powers,
 
 8 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 Is it a dream the heaven we almost see ? 
 O, Father, can it be ? 
 "Too brief, too brief- 
 Chants the sad thrush 
 In the morning hush ; 
 
 And the wise come with their philosophy 
 
 " Elusive are the things we crave, 
 
 Count nothing tangible but grief, 
 
 We grip no joy but in the grave ! " 
 Away with such belief! 
 
 God wills that love should crown these lives of ours ! 
 
 i 
 
 IV 
 
 Is there a nearer, 
 Or am I the dearest ? 
 Thou couldst not be dearer 
 Because thou art nearest. 
 Is there a doubt in 
 My spirit's emotion ? 
 No ! Love cometh out in 
 A tide of devotion. 
 Is the sky clearer 
 Love, whither thou steerest ? 
 Yes! God guides the steerer, 
 Hope's heaven is the clearest.
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 V 
 
 i 
 MARRIED, married, married ! 
 
 So the gossips say : 
 Would that Love had tarried 
 
 Ere he came this way ! 
 
 2 
 Heartless and complaining, 
 
 Dull, unloving, she 
 Who is queen now reigning 
 
 O'er his destiny. 
 
 3 
 Heart, hast thou not spoken 
 
 To his soul, that said 
 " Till our hearts are broken 
 
 We are truly wed ? " 
 
 4 
 Soon shall she, awaking, 
 
 Find herself alone, 
 For a heart now aching 
 
 Has usurped her throne.
 
 io A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 VI 
 
 i 
 
 WHAT wonder my face is white, 
 I met him, I met him to-night, 
 And by our Maker's commands 
 We were blessed by invisible hands ! 
 
 2 
 
 The moon was veiled, and the gloom 
 Breathed coolness into the room 
 Wherein I had played my part : 
 The darkness spake to my heart, 
 For my spirit was stricken dumb 
 And hot, by the ceaseless hum 
 Of gossip, and noisy tunes, 
 And jokes of pompous buffoons : 
 So I fled to the garden stair 
 To think in the exquisite air. 
 
 3 
 
 He passed : he saw me : it seemed 
 This was ordained I had dreamed 
 Of just that window, that sheen, 
 All was as it should have been.
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS n 
 
 4 
 
 We met for a moment he came 
 Towards me head bent and his name 
 Slipped from the heart to the tongue 
 As a hound from the leash, being wrung 
 By Fate from my trembling lips : 
 Then, then, as a fair moth sips 
 Nectar from blossoms new-blown, 
 He touched my mouth with his own ; 
 And, behold ! a great blaze in the mind 
 Sight had returned to the blind ! 
 
 5 
 
 Only one word did he speak, 
 Nay, whispered caressing my cheek : 
 " Love," as a bell far away 
 Rings faintly at close of the day. 
 Then, ere aught sweeter he said 
 With a sob in my throat I fled 
 Into the medley of sound, 
 And the lights of the room span round. 
 
 6 
 
 Two eyes that were bright with dew 
 Had said "O love, is it you ? "
 
 12 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 In breathings of musk and myrrh 
 And balsam of cedar and fir ! 
 " I love you, love you, and this 
 Is all one passionate kiss ! " 
 
 7 
 
 No need for the tongue to speak, 
 When the tears on either cheek 
 Spake what our fate had decreed 
 In our souls' dim hour of need ! 
 
 8 
 
 He came from the silent gloom 
 Into the glittering room : 
 The mask, men take for his face, 
 Of love showed never a trace. 
 I heard him, as, lying asleep, 
 We hear some voice of the deep, 
 Saying "Aim at stars, aim high, 
 Shoot straight and oft at the sky ; 
 Tho' heaven be reached not, nor neared, 
 The roofs, at least, will be cleared." 
 And I thought " At what do I aim, 
 This love may be honour or shame : 
 Is it shame or honour I crave ? 
 Let it be honour be brave ! "
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 13 
 
 9 
 
 His wife that wonder of paint 
 May be sinner or may be saint, 
 But she is the woman he chose, 
 Tho' little, indeed, she knows 
 The worth of her glorious prize : 
 And I, with a home in his eyes, 
 Feel now as wayfarers feel 
 When Nubian deserts reveal 
 At noon, when camels but creep, 
 Rocks in whose shade dwelleth sleep ! 
 
 VII 
 
 i 
 
 THE lovely light that leads me 
 
 Must issue from a star ; 
 The joyful hope that feeds me 
 
 Comes also from afar. 
 New thoughts have made new soundings 
 
 In unfamiliar deeps, 
 And from my dark surroundings 
 
 The strengthened spirit leaps
 
 14 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 2 
 Leaps forth to greet its master, 
 
 To own its lord and love, 
 The earth seems brighter, vaster, 
 
 And Eden not above. 
 Meseems my life was fated 
 
 To blossom in that hour 
 When we two met and mated, 
 
 The moth and passion-flower ! 
 
 VIII 
 
 i 
 HE does not boast Apollo's face, 
 
 Nor proud Herculean form displays ; 
 Mind only has immortal grace, 
 
 Strength lasts not all our days ! 
 
 Enshrined within imperfect shapes 
 The perfect shapes of beauty lie, 
 
 Like stars in clouds when midnight drapes 
 The myriad-peopled sky.
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 15 
 
 3 
 " Love, love ! " Can earthly voice translate 
 
 The heavenly rapture of that word ? 
 Nor poet proud, nor thrush elate, 
 
 Nor heaven's melodious bird ! 
 
 4 
 Love spake : God shook me, then a mist 
 
 Rose up between us, and it seemed 
 Most sweet and right that we had kissed, 
 
 Seen Eden when it gleamed. 
 
 5 
 The earth's deep breath itself became 
 
 One moment audible ; I knew 
 Life's fairness, fulness, and the flame 
 
 That thrills it through and through : 
 
 6 
 For then a sacred, sweet desire 
 
 Made riot in my chilly blood ; 
 Yea, like the spring, whose feet of fire 
 
 Awake the haggard wood.
 
 1 6 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 7 
 But soon a recollection swept 
 
 Like storm through every pulsing vein ; 
 Her cold, calm eyes that never wept 
 
 Beat back my love again. 
 
 8 
 He still is under her control 
 
 His lawful wife in all men's eyes ; 
 But I have caught his fluttering soul, 
 
 And hold it now my prize. 
 
 9 
 O, born beneath what baleful star, 
 
 My lord's dear love, my love's dear lord, 
 That fate should thus existence mar 
 
 With marriages abhorred ! 
 
 10 
 I fain would, yet I cannot weep 
 
 For all the tender words unsaid ; 
 Sincerest tears are shed in sleep, 
 
 The saddest are unshed.
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 17 
 
 IX 
 
 i 
 
 COLD as a winter morning grey with mist 
 Is he whom oft my loveless lips have kissed ; 
 A chilly statue warmed sometimes, maybe, 
 With inextinguishable jealousy. 
 
 2 
 
 The fierce futility of low desire, 
 That leaves but ashes in the place of fire, 
 Made him a ruin, yet the Church hath said 
 " Ye shall be one until the one be dead ! " 
 
 3 
 
 But I have seen a face where sunshine dwells 
 In eyes whose glance a magic story tells, 
 Whose light has power my inmost self to move 
 With the sweet pain of newly wakened love ! 
 
 4 
 
 O, withered, sapless fool, whom no heat warms, 
 Whose wasted and inhospitable arms 
 Offer to Beauty but a dubious bliss, 
 Take back thy honeyed phrase, thy chilly kiss !
 
 1 8 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 5 
 
 Before the Lord my naked soul must cry, 
 " 'Tis Thou Who lendest us Love's mystery ; 
 And Thou hast given my lover shape and mind, 
 What wonder is it that Thy maid is blind ? " 
 
 X 
 
 i 
 
 BEAUTIFUL creature, O daughter of Evil, 
 You are gone, and God saw you depart ; 
 
 Just for a moment my tongue could have told you 
 All that lies nearest my heart. 
 
 2 
 
 What wonderful eyes, and what courteous bearing, 
 But the sun never shone on your mind ! 
 
 1 thought you were noble, O beautiful woman, 
 
 And tender and holy and kind. 
 
 3 
 Just for a moment I felt I could trust you, 
 
 And give you my secret, and hear 
 Calm words of counsel, and (oh for the rapture) 
 
 Be blessed with a kiss and a tear.
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 19 
 
 4 
 Oh, mirage in flesh, oh, perfect illusion, 
 
 You fouled a girl's fame with your lies ; 
 And she without father, or mother, or brother, 
 
 But only God's truth in her eyes ! 
 
 5 
 You said of that child what should never be spoken 
 
 One only is Judge of her love ; 
 Your heart is the heart of a kite, or a vulture, 
 
 Although you can coo like a dove. 
 
 6 
 I thought " If I give her my bitter-sweet secret 
 
 To taste, she will fly at my name, 
 And strike at my heart with her murderous talons 
 
 Of pity, and pitying blame ! " 
 
 7 
 O beautiful creature, O daughter of Evil, 
 
 You are gone, and God saw you depart 
 With love in your phrases, and hate in your laughter, 
 
 And murder of souls in your heart !
 
 20 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 XI 
 
 HAREBELLS, blue as April skies, 
 Fluttering in a sea of heather, 
 
 Speak of spring and azure eyes 
 That lit the April weather. 
 
 Favourites of the fading year, 
 Young am I to-day my sorrows 
 
 In your presence disappear, 
 And joy paints fair to-morrows. 
 
 3 
 At thought of him my heart gives praise, 
 
 And, as a lark at Heaven's high altar 
 Sings, I sing the coming days 
 
 And hopes that shall not falter. 
 
 4 
 Ah ! when my lover comes to me, 
 
 Life shall wear a blossomy whiteness, 
 All Love's autumn days shall be 
 
 Blue with April brightness.
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 21 
 
 XII 
 
 i 
 
 WALLFLOWERS ! And winter peeping o'er the hill ! 
 How sweet these velvet blooms with tints of wine, 
 Cousins to those that wave their liberal gold 
 O'er broken walls, where Beauty and Decay 
 Strive for the mastery, what time the rain 
 And jocund April's wild, invigorate breath 
 Fashion brave flowers to glad pale Memory, 
 Pacing the roofless chambers of the dead ! 
 
 2 
 
 Wallflowers ! The autumn shows a blossomed hope 
 In many a sunny corner ; I have seen 
 The daring primrose, and the violet, 
 Bright in the midst of ruin, where the year 
 Heaps up her toll of golden leaves. These flowers 
 Which Love hath sent me, touch my heart again 
 To happy musings. Ah ! They speak of Love, 
 And he has thought of me at last, and sent 
 A message that may not be writ, for me 
 To breathe in breath of these sweet couriers. 
 Dear Love, thy word is Hope ! The Spring uplifts 
 One hand in autumn ; shall I not uplift 
 My heart ? Yea, even in most disastrous days !
 
 22 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 3 
 
 The flowers have hope and faith in bitter hours ; 
 I will have faith and hope : my soul made strong, 
 By the elixir of this fragrance, thrills : 
 Glad is the frosty garden of my heart, 
 Where, sweet as violets, new hopes arise 
 Among dead leaves of perished days, to be 
 Remembrancers of all the happier hours 
 That I possessed, rejoicingly, in spring. 
 
 XIII 
 
 I 
 THE crimson-thridded woodlands, 
 
 The purple of the wold, 
 The wandering leaves that light the paths 
 
 With flames of ruddy gold, 
 Lie bright beneath the sunset 
 
 Transfiguring land and sea, 
 As lies my soul transfigured, 
 
 In light that comes from thee ! 
 
 2 
 
 Dear soul ! When thou dost pass me, 
 What tides of passion rise
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 23 
 
 To ebb and flow twixt heart and face, 
 And flash from eyes to eyes. 
 
 And Love's eternal sunshine 
 
 . 
 
 Awakes a sleeping rose, 
 That only at thy bidding 
 Its petals will disclose ! 
 
 3 
 Though Autumn, with her torches, 
 
 Runs thro' the dusky glade, 
 My soul is hot with midsummer, 
 
 And seeks not any shade. 
 Late came these days that blossom 
 
 With such delicious hours, 
 But Autumn blooms in blushes 
 
 That shame the summer flowers ! 
 
 XIV 
 
 i 
 LOVE, who didst tune my soul's ^Eolian harp, 
 
 Whose breathing makes it voiceful night and day ; 
 
 Tell me, canst hear the music thou dost play, 
 Now soft and sweet, now rising clear and sharp, 
 
 Now in a rapture fading quite away ?
 
 24 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 Responsive is my spirit, though thou art 
 Leagues distant : nay, if there should be 
 Ten thousand leagues betwixt my body and thee, 
 
 Thy yearning soul would breathe upon my heart, 
 And make wild music of the thoughts in me ! 
 
 XV 
 
 THE love that comes in golden feather 
 
 To man and maid, in their hearts' glad spring, 
 
 Is like a dandelion flower, 
 Most brilliant in the sunny weather, 
 
 That buds, and blows, and fills its hour 
 Long ere the thrush hath ceased to sing. 
 
 Such love doth all too quickly perish ; 
 Its gold soon fades into gossamer ; 
 
 E'en as the dandelion goes 
 Where all things go the eye doth cherish, 
 
 Love takes the pathway of the rose 
 With all its downy plumes astir !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 25 
 
 XVI 
 
 CEASE, wild heart, thy troubled beating, 
 Cease, proud spirit, to chafe and moan ; 
 
 The day comes when he shall give thee greeting 
 In a secret arbour, but not alone : 
 
 Where the churchyard grasses ripple green 
 
 Love is as if it had never been, 
 
 And passion resolves at that place of meeting 
 To a simple name on a simple stone ! 
 
 Cease, wild love, thy mad insistence, 
 Cease, poor passion, thine ebb and flow, 
 
 The moment comes when thine hour's existence 
 Ends, like the shadows that come and go : 
 
 Where the churchyard grasses ripple green 
 
 Love is as if it had never been ; 
 
 All vain our dreams, and our hearts' resistance, 
 Against the fate that we all must know.
 
 26 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 XVII 
 
 i 
 
 OH, that our souls might wholly exile doubt, 
 And see it fade for ever, see the sun 
 Of Truth shine clear on our bewilderment, 
 And know that all distrust we had in God 
 Was buried where the dross of life is laid ! 
 
 2 
 
 Why was I born to suffer thus ? My life 
 Is full of sorrow ; pain unmerited 
 Makes me a fretful doubter. Many a time 
 I doubt God's purposes, and distrust the love 
 That sets the world in ferment, when a word 
 Might, if indeed He were All-powerful, 
 Calm the wild tumult, and make all men wise ! 
 But, happily, this midnight of the mind, 
 To all the glowworm creeds insensible, 
 Changes to hopeful morn when love appears : 
 For love, the master passion, meaneth life 
 Life ever surging onward, wave on wave 
 Breaking upon the misty shore of death : 
 And, as the emerald-fretted billow breaks 
 On impact with the rocks, so life withdraws 
 Only to flow and ebb and flow eternally !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 27 
 
 Our God is love, and therefore life is God ; 
 Love is supreme in life, thus God is Love ; 
 And love is life ; so, were the world a tomb, 
 God could not be ; and, therefore, God exists, 
 Whatever be His purposes or powers ; 
 And we, being lit with love, as lamps are lit, 
 Are all possessed of Him, and He of us. 
 
 3 
 
 The wise are doubters. Had great Luther been 
 Less firm and wise, less friend of truth, more slave 
 Unto his mother Church, the newer faith 
 Might not have raised its never-wearying voice 
 To preach a nobler gospel to the world. 
 Galileo was a doubter had he been 
 Fuller of trust in old astronomies, 
 Fuller of faith in puerile human words, 
 Those men who drive Thought's lightning chariots 
 In the uncharted depths of glittering space 
 Who hear world call to world, and deep to deep ; 
 Who view the vast processions of the stars 
 Linked by coherences immutable, 
 And see our sun, like some great lioness, 
 Leading her brood of whelps thro' desert space 
 Towards the quarry unattainable,
 
 28 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 Might not have been ! I cannot exile doubt : 
 Galileo's heart misgave him ; doubt bred truth ; 
 He found the infant science of his day 
 Built on a marsh ; and, seeing it unsafe, 
 Pulled the pile down and based it on a rock : 
 Thus would I build firm faith from wild surmise ! 
 
 4 
 
 God is not what of old they said He was, 
 The dreadful being who ordained sin, 
 Condemning man to torture of his lusts, 
 Icily omnipotent. No, no ! to-day 
 The human eye sees clearlier, and sees 
 God in the perfect flower, the beryl wave, 
 The happy face, the voice, the blossoming sky, 
 The grip of honest hands, the tear of love, 
 God everywhere ! In every thankful heart 
 We know He has a chamber, and we know 
 That holy Love is Him made manifest: 
 And He, the Indestructible, abides 
 In each and all of us, so how can we 
 Die as the leaves die ? (Nay, perhaps the leaf 
 Likewise lives ever, though it fall and die ?) 
 We fall and die, but, dying, we retain 
 That force which gives us kinship with the sun !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 29 
 
 5 
 
 What do I doubt but His Omnipotence ? 
 His care for us ? He makes us arbiters 
 Of our own destinies, and bids the world 
 Work out its own salvation. Yet we cry 
 To Him to whom the world has ever cried 
 For succour and for guidance. Does He hear ? 
 And, hearing, does He heed ? O, is it true 
 That honour, and fidelity, and love, 
 Charity and friendship, pride and humbleness, 
 With all their wonders of the human heart : 
 The mysteries of beauty : land and sea : 
 All the enigmas of pure loveliness 
 In flower, in child, in bird and beast, and fish, 
 Have these evolved from Chaos and the stress 
 Of molten granite and of vaporous fire ? 
 But God was in the granite and the fire, 
 He, Love's great Essence, and the Power supreme ; 
 We came with him from Chaos, and we go 
 Whither man knoweth not, but towards the light, 
 Yes, towards the light, and towards the perfect love ! 
 And, though it passes thro' a myriad lives 
 And dies a myriad deaths yea, though it be 
 Purged a thousand times in monstrous heat 
 Of flaming systems, the immortal soul
 
 30 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 That giveth man the right to raise his head 
 With deathless hope, shall never cease to live ; 
 For God it is who gives the deathless hope, 
 And God and Love are indestructible ! 
 
 This is my faith : dear heart can it be thine ? 
 
 Thou art not blind ; thine is no meagre hope ! 
 
 For thou hast chained the lightning as a horse 
 
 To do thy bidding, and enslaved the winds : 
 
 Thy thoughts are flashed across the mountainous seas, 
 
 And thou canst make Alcyone disclose 
 
 The parts that build the structure of her sphere ! 
 
 And I do love thee, O thou glorious man ! 
 
 I love thee, God has guided me in love ! 
 
 Must thou, inheritor of greatness, lose 
 
 Thine hard-won laurels, and the treasure-trove 
 
 That thou hast found upon the beach of Time, 
 
 And suffer the sun to foster thee that Fate 
 
 May make a playfellow of that spirit of thine 
 
 By Art uplifted higher than the stars ? 
 
 No, no, dear love, thou earnest from God : O sing 
 
 Paeans of joy, for thou art part of Him : 
 
 Thou art a thing eternal, as am I :
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 31 
 
 He grows with us as we do nobler grow, 
 His greatness waxeth greater every day: 
 He, the sole Architect of eternal love, 
 Lives ever in us, thus we cannot die, 
 For he has made our souls imperishable ! 
 
 XVIII 
 
 I 
 THE door was ajar; I heard them laugh 
 
 Over the nuts and wine ; 
 I stopped a moment, my heart stood still, 
 
 A name was coupled with mine. 
 " At the age of a man like me, who cares 
 
 If a fickle wife's heart be cold, 
 I had her beauty, she has my brains 
 
 And a purse well filled with gold. 
 
 2 
 " So if another should ease his heart 
 
 By look, or word, or sigh, 
 And if she swims to the bait of love 
 
 And seizes it what care I ? 
 At the age of a man like me, who cares 
 
 What dangerous game they play ? 
 It matters nothing to me, I vow, 
 
 'Tis a case for the Judgment Day ! "
 
 32 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 XIX 
 
 O, THOU Great Mystery 
 
 Who dost possess the earth, the air, and the sky : 
 Whose strength is more than the strength of the sun 
 and the sea, 
 
 Be gracious unto me, 
 Be gracious, and hearken to my cry, 
 If comfort for the heart may come from Thee ! 
 
 I know my faults, my thousand imperfections ; 
 I see each blemish, even each speck of sin ; 
 
 Evil oft triumphs, but bright resurrections 
 Befall the spirit when Thou comest in : 
 So come into my heart, and Thou shalt win 
 Great victory over evil with Thy sword ; 
 
 Come, and be gracious unto me, 
 For I am but a wandering leaf that spring 
 
 Stripped from its bough, 
 Tossed by the tempest, slowly withering 
 In the cold light of Love's calamity, 
 
 Thou knowest how ! 
 
 Thy Word it was that made the Tempest rise, 
 Therefore be merciful, O Lord, 
 And blot the bright temptations from his eyes !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 33 
 
 XX 
 
 I 
 
 IF, by a miracle, my soul could go 
 At night, to meet my lover lip to lip, 
 And if the sense of flesh to flesh were there, 
 Ah ! would he know my spirit, would he know 
 It was not she, his wife, whose fellowship 
 Has brought upon his face that mask of care ? 
 
 2 
 
 Men fail, in darkness, to distinguish wine ; 
 The vintages of sweetness and of fire 
 Fail to impress the brain when lacking light ; 
 Thus might he deem each passionate kiss of mine 
 But the crude symbol of her cold desire, 
 And lie unmoved in the silent night ! 
 
 XXI 
 
 i 
 THERE came a vision to my brain 
 
 Within the miracle of sleep, 
 Meseemed earth was as fair again 
 
 And there was none to weep :
 
 34 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 2 
 
 Those who were living as men live 
 
 Moved as the shadows move, and those 
 
 Whose lives from us were fugitive 
 Knew life that no man knows. 
 
 3 
 Wherever sunshine lit the earth 
 
 Fair souls possessed the golden air, 
 Their pinions made a humming mirth 
 
 As bees' in seasons fair. 
 
 4 
 One cried, " We did not hope for this ; 
 
 The world was naught to us, yet we 
 Have shed the human chrysalis, 
 
 And now the world we see. 
 
 5 
 " We longed for homes in happier spheres, 
 
 We hoped and could not name our hopes, 
 We lived in pains, and doubts, and fears, 
 
 Beneath sad horoscopes ! "
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 35 
 
 6 
 One cried, " We saw nor spark, nor gleam, 
 
 Of this in beauty, once our all ; 
 And yet, beyond our wildest dream, 
 
 Lay heaven within our call. 
 
 7 
 " And now the world indeed we view 
 
 As does the grub whose wings have grown ; 
 Straight from the shell the imago flew 
 
 To find the world its own ! " 
 
 8 
 
 One said, " I did naught else but grieve 
 
 To see the days fly quickly past, 
 Fearing the earth I had to leave 
 
 Meant heaven my first and last. 
 
 9 
 " But once I slept too long, and woke 
 
 To find the earth all new-arrayed ; 
 The morning of a new life broke 
 
 And left the old a shade.
 
 36 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 10 
 
 " At last I saw the spirit of man 
 More beautiful than any light ; 
 
 The flashing soul of matter ran 
 Tremendous in my sight." 
 
 II 
 
 Said one, "The flowers in every clime 
 Speak in the language that is theirs ; 
 
 I see the earth and heaven combine 
 To answer mortal prayers. 
 
 12 
 " I see fair harmonies of sound 
 
 Rise radiant at a master's word, 
 I hear the throb of thoughts profound 
 
 That men have never heard : 
 
 13 
 " The love of mortals I have seen 
 
 Flash over seas in arrowy flames 
 Between beloved ones, who have been 
 
 Breathing each other's names."
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 37 
 
 My mother then came forth and stood 
 
 Before me, saying, " I am here, 
 Striving in hope to keep thee good 
 
 Be brave, and cast out fear. 
 
 15 
 " Those who are purified by death 
 
 May know whate'er their loved ones know ; 
 Swifter than lightning travelleth 
 
 They go, and come and go. 
 
 16 
 "To-day I feel my heart possessed 
 
 And thrilled by anxious thoughts of thine ; 
 But soon thy heart shall know sweet rest 
 
 In love and hope divine ! " 
 
 17 
 Then fell a glory on the host, 
 
 And Some One, shining like the sun, 
 Cried, " Where is she who needs Me most, 
 
 Come hither, weary one !
 
 38 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 18 
 
 " I am the God Who guides thy love, 
 And I have hearkened to thy prayer ; 
 
 This is My answer let it move 
 Thy heart, and enter there : 
 
 * 
 
 19 
 " Those most I love who keep their faith, 
 
 Who go not back upon their word ; 
 Pay heed to what thy conscience saith, 
 
 Its warnings thou hast heard ; 
 
 20 
 
 " Pay heed lose not thine own regard, 
 For, losing that, thou losest all, 
 
 Then love, that is its own reward, 
 From honey turns to gall. 
 
 21 
 
 " Keep faith, keep faith ; be true and leal, 
 Hold pure and sacred every trust, 
 
 From Me thou may'st not aught conceal, 
 I live within thy dust.
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 39 
 
 22 
 
 " The faithful shall be sure of Me 
 Beyond the death that is but birth, 
 
 And those who walk in constancy 
 Shall repossess the earth. 
 
 23 
 " High-placed near me the faithful stand 
 
 Beside the holy treasury, 
 The insignia of the noble band 
 
 Is Honour's fleur-de-lys. 
 
 24 
 " Near them the grateful take their place 
 
 With those whom secrets could not slay, 
 Love's radiance shining on each face 
 
 In the eternal day ! " 
 
 25 
 I woke : the long, chill morning hours 
 
 Seemed not so long, and not so chill, 
 Love's fever passed and left my powers 
 
 Responsive to my will !
 
 40 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 26 
 I woke : and lo, as dewdrops melt 
 
 Upon a gossamer, I saw 
 Each doubt depart ; my conscience felt 
 
 The ease of Love's true law. 
 
 XXII 
 
 i 
 
 YE passionate eyes of night, mysterious, 
 
 Bewildering ! O ye multitude of stars 
 
 Touching my thoughts to such activity 
 
 That I from flesh and blood seem near divorced, 
 
 Becoming part of space ! If light were speech 
 
 What would ye say, ye orbs so far withdrawn 
 
 Into the deep tremendous silences, 
 
 Each with its scattered brood of unseen worlds 
 
 Formed like our own ? 
 
 That mighty ebon deep 
 
 Seems but a scroll whereon some nameless being 
 In high caprice, and splendid carelessness 
 Has traced the outlines of terrestrial things 
 To please the eyes of man ; and for his joy 
 Has made a toy of the vast firmament
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 41 
 
 A sparkling picture of the face of heaven. 
 Who and what is this being ? Can it be 
 There is but one High God He who is Love, 
 He who has lit my soul with light divine, 
 Or is the universe a battle-ground 
 Where gods with gods encounter ; even as we 
 Fight in our ant-hill cities, and become 
 Stronger with every victory ? Do ye spheres 
 See gods evolving even as we evolve, 
 And is there in those million million worlds, 
 That swarm about their lustrous giant sires, 
 Love such as human love; a love like mine 
 
 Unfortunate and bleeding ? 
 
 Where Alcor 
 
 Gleams faintly near the slow-declining Bear, 
 Yea, even so far withdrawn, perchance there spins 
 Some lovely planet round that gorgeous sun, 
 And, in that world, some creature like myself 
 May now, this very moment, feel her heart 
 Breaking, and find her fancy charged with love 
 Like mine, that paints the heaven a summer hue, 
 And shakes me with unutterable desire ! 
 
 Thought takes me far from Britain, far away 
 Unto the peerless Mediterranean sea, 
 And in the splendid night I now behold
 
 42 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 More than its veil of stars : I see my love ; 
 And silence becomes vocal, and I hear 
 The liquid music of the Italian tongue, 
 Allied to hum of wings and song of birds, 
 Rising and falling : and the winged boats 
 Move on the horizon like a flock of birds : 
 And, palpitantly calm, they ride the waves, 
 Where the wide sea, whose happy, slumbrous 
 
 motion 
 
 Rocks every vessel even as mothers rock 
 Their children's cradles, breaks into a gleam 
 Of grey, and sapphire, and of amethyst : 
 We float in jewels : there Vesuvius leaps 
 From gulfs of mist, and waves his pennon of fire 
 That was the city's torch awhile ago : 
 Glad Morn discards her grey habiliments, 
 Throws off her coronet of fading stars, 
 Takes to herself new raiment bright with gems 
 Stolen from the azure fountains of the sea ; 
 Shines like a queen magnificently attired 
 Greeting a city which is loved of her ; 
 Smiles radiantly upon us, trails her train 
 Of changing saffron towards the expectant 
 
 west, 
 And pauses : then, like an enchantress laughs,
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 43 
 
 Lifting the silver curtain of the mist 
 And there, across the chameleon-coloured wave 
 Behold, fair, sunny Naples glittering, 
 Bidding us welcome unto Italy ! 
 
 2 
 
 All this, and more, is mine if I forget 
 Duty and Honour ! Love is measureless ! 
 How can I estimate his hopeful love ? 
 Its courage, mystery, its pride and power 
 Are mine henceforth thro' all eternity, 
 If I but throw my very heart and soul 
 Into a drop of ink, and write one word ! 
 
 XXIII 
 
 I 
 
 THIS letter is a treasury whence I draw 
 The wealth of his affection day by day. 
 And inexhaustible, indeed, it seems ! 
 Fain would I go with thee, my love, and lose 
 My native speech in sweet Italian, 
 And be no more of Britain but a name : 
 Nay, were it wise, or did but Honour lead, 
 Siberia could offer naught to daunt
 
 44 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 My heart, nor keep thee from me wert thou there. 
 
 Thou art my all ! If thou wert gone from hence 
 
 The sun would cease to warm me, light would fail 
 
 To take its momentary messages 
 
 Unto my brain. Grim labour underground, 
 
 Amongst the enslaved gnomes of Nicholas, 
 
 Would be as sweet as love wert thou at hand : 
 
 If Passion made our land inhospitable, 
 
 And banished us from all our callous friends, 
 
 If we were dead, though living ; if the world 
 
 Erased our names from all its lengthy lists 
 
 Of those who hold their Honour like a shield 
 
 Before their faces, I would minister 
 
 To thee, my king, and be thine all in all ! 
 
 But I must keep thee to thy duty, love, 
 
 And well within thine Honour's fair esteem : 
 
 How can I prove to thee my passionate care ? 
 
 Not by the acceptance of a sacrifice, 
 
 Nor by the seizure of this cable, thrown 
 
 From a sweet, flowery shore into my barque 
 
 Struggling with monstrous waves ; for I must stay 
 
 And front the yeasty turmoil. O, my sweet, 
 
 Have I not given my word ? Hast thou not, too, 
 
 Promised to love, and honour, and obey 
 
 One whose affection is not measureless,
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 45 
 
 But who depends on thee ? Thine oath abides 
 
 In the great registers of God ; my oath 
 
 Is likewise written there, though what once seemed 
 
 Affection, grows attenuate and pale. 
 
 I fain would leave this gilded tabernacle 
 
 Wherein I find no comfort for my soul : 
 
 The dust of loathing I would fain shake off 
 
 And go with thee, my love, and feel thine arms 
 
 Fast, fast around me, the imprisonment 
 
 Tenfold more sweet because of long delay. 
 
 It must not be, alas ! It must not be ! 
 
 'Tis dead of night : I am a wanderer 
 The fragrance of a honey-breathing bloom 
 Floats in the dark : I stoop and pluck the flower, 
 But know it not I have no light to see 
 The hue that tincts its summer-sweetened heart. 
 And thy true splendour love's bright miracle 
 Remains unknown ; but I am all aware 
 Of a soul's breath that is imperishable, 
 That fades not as the breath of roses fades ; 
 And, in the darkness finding happiness, 
 Possessing thee and not possessing thee, 
 I struggle with temptation.
 
 46 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 O my love 
 
 I will not step into thy holy shrine 
 With muddy feet, nor let the world of fools 
 Bombard thee with their scorn : not yet, not yet 
 Will I ally this common clay of mine 
 With flesh that guards a being more than man ! 
 I love thee, yet I am not weak, my love, 
 Though I have tempted thee with piteous looks 
 And voiceless supplications. 
 
 (Give me strength, 
 
 O give me strength, dear God, to obey Thy law !) 
 Should I not wrong thee did I mount the stair 
 That leads unto thine height of excellence, 
 And be the architect of ruinous days, 
 Controller of untoward happiness, 
 Misery's mistress and unwilling tool, 
 The sport of drear disaster ? There sits Fate, 
 Like some gigantic spider, in the gloom, 
 Waiting to wrap its toils around two fools 
 Caught in the web of tragedy ! Arise 
 O soul, shake off the sloth of melancholy, 
 Be true and firm, put on the mail of right, 
 And, fearless, wait until the barriers fall !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 47 
 
 XXIV 
 
 i 
 
 COMPASSED about by unseen witnesses ! 
 So does The Word assure us. 
 
 Oft at eve, 
 
 When sitting, lonely, in this chamber of tears, 
 Trying to snatch a brief forgetfulness 
 From some revered and soul-compelling book, 
 They have been near me, they have breathed 
 
 on me ! 
 
 Yes, oft at night, and in the earliest morn, 
 Mine eyes upon a book, my heart away, 
 All on a sudden I have felt a sense 
 Of unfamiliar life about me life 
 Higher than our poor vision may descry, 
 The eternal life divorced from earthly time : 
 Then the pure presence of the seraphim 
 Has comforted me : And when the moment came 
 For my humiliation and my shame, 
 When, towards his couch, reluctantly I moved, 
 The unwilling soul was kissed in sympathy 
 Until the body's blood ran hot and cold 
 With wonder and with awe.
 
 48 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 Then, being aware 
 
 Of steps more light than mine upon the stairs, 
 I knew my mother did companion me 
 And was exceeding glad ! 
 
 O blessed shades, 
 
 Who view our struggles and divine our thoughts, 
 Who know how full of thorns is Duty's path, 
 Weep you sometimes to see life's agonies, 
 Or is your knowledge happier than ours ? 
 
 2 
 
 Is Love a pauper now ? Does this last word 
 
 Conserve my happiness, or kill my joy ? 
 
 This word ! I will not say the word, not yet 
 
 Not yet ; at least I must have breathing-time : 
 
 One other word, and then the sun would shine, 
 
 Brilliance and warmth were mine ! What shall it be? 
 
 What is the right word in the ears of God, 
 
 The word irrevocable, the perfect word ? 
 
 Dear mother, I have need of thee to-day ; 
 
 Breathe softly on my spirit, cause thy will 
 
 To encircle me, and guide thy daughter's thoughts 
 
 Until her mind be purified. This hand 
 
 Place thou in God's, if He be manifest 
 
 And visible : say this unto our God :
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 49 
 
 " How may she act in order to be true 
 To Thee, and to herself, and to the world, 
 And to the great infinity of worlds ? " 
 
 3 
 
 The flesh rebels : O Lord, subdue the flesh ; 
 Merciful Father, still my doubts and fears, 
 And exorcise temptation ! Dearest shade, 
 Thou seest me sore beset with doubts and fears ; 
 Come, lend thy loving help. 
 
 My soul, indeed, 
 
 Sees thee as once these very eyes beheld 
 Thy dying smile, that shone as shines a rose 
 The last and loveliest on a wind-stript spray ; 
 The inner vision now has cognisance 
 Of purer currents in the flow of air, 
 And, in the echoing hall of Memory, 
 I hear the music of thy voice the very words 
 That thou didst use to a poor Magdalene : 
 " There is no sin that may not turn to good, 
 No smoke that may not change to radiant flame ! " 
 There shone thy mind divine ! In every one 
 Thou sawest good ; in thy munificence 
 Of charitable love the sinner seemed 
 
 But a lost angel trying to be pure : 
 
 D
 
 50 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 Are not earth's greatest those who see most good 
 
 In all poor creatures struggling with their fate ? 
 
 Were we made sinless, could we then be good ? 
 
 Is not all virtue evil's complement ? 
 
 Is not this life of ours but bodily will ? 
 
 And will to live is but one ceaseless effort, 
 
 And that unceasing effort is but pain. 
 
 Why should we suffer ? Can we hope that sin 
 
 Shall from man's life for ever disappear, 
 
 Whilst all this pain exists ? No, no, but then 
 
 Surely behind God's painful purposes, 
 
 The processes of progress, and their pain 
 
 Surely behind this fog and smoke of sin 
 
 Shines for the faithful a triumphant good ? 
 
 Thou wert the image of good, most perfect thing 
 
 Reflected in the mirror of my mind, 
 
 Dear, sainted mother ! Through its too brief span 
 
 Thy life was bright and sweet as hawthorntide : 
 
 Ever the flower of Honour on thy brow 
 
 Shone as a star shines : thou canst best direct 
 
 And lead me safely, past the precipice 
 
 Whereon the tempting blossom of love doth shine 
 
 To where the outstretched hand of God is held 
 
 For me to grasp. Oh, I am still the child 
 
 That lisped upon thy knee, and kissed thy lips,
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 51 
 
 Faithful to love and duty and to prayer; 
 Yea, doubting not the efficacy of prayer ! 
 Dear soul, thy teaching is remembered, 
 It is the illumination of my heart, 
 It shall be pilot, pharos, star and sun 
 Whilst this frail barque can float ! 
 
 4 
 
 Christ, come to me, 
 
 Change thou my grossest thoughts to purest fire, 
 Speak as Thou spakest to the Magdalene, 
 Ennoble me through suffering, and grant 
 That, at the last, the rightful word may go 
 Straight to my love, to be within his heart 
 The seed of virtuous and noble days ! 
 
 XXV 
 
 How can I prove to thee my passionate love, 
 Yet, by a virtue, make thy soul more rich 
 Than erst it was in old, untroubled days ? 
 Not by the acceptance of a sacrifice 
 Offered upon the altar-steps of love, 
 Waiting one touch of flame one little word
 
 52 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 To make the faggots blaze ! No, no, dear heart, 
 My torch of passion must not light the fire, 
 Though this my flesh cries out to thee, and makes 
 Mad mutiny to be with thine allied. 
 O, bone and flesh of me thou art, and yet 
 No other sweet, rash word of flight must fall 
 Into my heart with such too-poignant joy 
 As kills my peace ! There is no compromise ; 
 'Tis Yea or Nay, and only Yea or Nay ; 
 Therefore let Nay be said in faith and hope, 
 And let the word be sacred. Not for us 
 The devious paths of mad, illicit love ; 
 We two must stand before the Lord of Hosts 
 Pure as a lofty cloud. Let us not steal 
 Love's cloying honey by adventuring 
 O'er quicksands and through marshes to our sin ; 
 " For such delirious quest of love but leads 
 To serpent pits and snares of scorpions, 
 To desperate ruin and satiety, 
 Yea, even to death. Such sin shall not be ours ! 
 The secret crime meets secret punishment, 
 The whip of conscience with its thousand cords 
 Doth lash the spirit ; shall we then be lashed 
 Throughout our lives, self-branded living lies ? 
 Thou dark deceit, I will have none of thee :
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 53 
 
 If virtue has to be, it must be virtue 
 Solidly shaped, and armed from base to roof, 
 Therein shall be our refuge evermore ! 
 
 2 
 
 Why is Hell's highway so exceeding fair ? 
 Bright flowers and fruit ! Clear waters glittering, 
 Most pleasant shades, whence azure distances 
 Gleam temptingly ; sweet viols and soft lutes 
 To soothe the spirit in the languorous groves, 
 Such rare auroral forms by every stream, 
 And such a morning sweetness in the air ! 
 O God, does it lead hell-ward all this joy ? 
 And is the desolate way the tenebrous 
 The only path to Heaven ? Dear God, one sign 
 One little sign ! 
 
 Ah, could the Eternal Voice 
 Be for one single moment audible, 
 Then would men cease to sin ? If God gave sign, 
 And cleared away the mists of many creeds 
 By just one word, one superhuman deed, 
 What charity were His ! 
 
 Now here, to-day, 
 
 Two paths diverge, I may but follow one. 
 Which leads to Him ? If He be love, indeed,
 
 54 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 He prompts me towards the music and the light ; 
 Surely He prompts me ; yet some monitor 
 Fate, Conscience, Angel, whatsoe'er it be 
 Points to the highway of unhappiness ! 
 
 3 
 
 O, wine of Love, come down at last to me 
 Through all the ages from the misty prime, 
 Through countless lives and summer-times of joy, 
 Through pain, and darkness, and long-suffering, 
 Here I behold thee ! If I dared to drink 
 My blood would change to ichor I should feel 
 The tide of passion sweep triumphantly 
 Through every vein, and I should know how life 
 May seem unreal, being realised ! 
 Alas, bright Love, I needs must say " begone " : 
 Take with thy charmed cup the cooling fruit 
 That thou hast proffered me : take all away 
 Thy lamp, the wine, the fruit and leave me here 
 In darkness, face to face with Destiny ! 
 
 4 
 O, for an age of less hypocrisy, 
 
 Free from the wicked traffic of the tongue, 
 When Truth, made welcome at the gates of men, 
 Might help the brave !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 55 
 
 Am I courageous 
 
 In thus rejecting love and all its joy, 
 Or cowardly, a truckler to the world ? 
 O, Laodicean fools, O, Pharisees, 
 Shall his illustrious name be given to you 
 To soil and rend, and shall I be the cause 
 Of his dishonour ? No, my heart forbids, 
 And Love from this denial gains new strength 
 To disappoint the evil slanderers ! 
 The world has oft maligned me : when I forged 
 These fetters of gold and made myself a slave, 
 Because a brother did forget himself 
 And all the honour of our name, the world, 
 Seeing a motive that existed not, 
 Cried lustily, " Behold she wants nor youth, 
 Nor health, nor strength, nor beauty in her spouse ; 
 For these are hers who gains command of gold ! 
 Gold ages not, it has eternal youth ; 
 Hence is she well equipped ! " Ay, this and more 
 Was said of me ; and later, when my love 
 Began to speak in language of the eyes, 
 We fell a prey to gossips infamous, 
 Who, with the curious prescience of hate, 
 Divined with misdirected accuracy 
 The half-truth of our secret, and divined
 
 $6 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 How far our hearts had compromised themselves, 
 
 And whispered shame ! O, miserable world ! 
 
 Dishonour there was none ! My lord, my king, 
 
 Knows not dishonour, he shall ever be 
 
 Pure in his own sight, I shall keep him pure ; 
 
 E'en though I shrink with fretting doubts and cares, 
 
 And sicken to a shadow ; even though life 
 
 Be sunless, and devoid of any light, 
 
 E'en though I thirst with silver brooks in view, 
 
 I will be pure, and I shall keep him pure ! 
 
 XXVI 
 
 I 
 
 THIS day has writ itself upon my heart 
 In lines of fire : momentous news has come 
 That chills, yet warms my soul ! His wife 
 My Edward's wife is dead : She fled to France 
 With one unknown, and, ere the ink was dry 
 Upon her poignard of a note, whose stab 
 Strikes deep into her husband's pride, the two 
 Quarrelled in Paris, and her violent slave 
 Secured his future peace by slaying her ! 
 Now, am I glad or sorry ? Hypocrite, 
 Thou art exceeding glad, although thy tongue
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 57 
 
 May shape the ready lie conventional. 
 
 Away with this pretence ! Be truly glad, 
 
 Be righteously exultant at the news, 
 
 Knowing restraint. Be truly sorry, too, 
 
 For a poor sufferer, who, beneath the ice 
 
 And snow of her demeanour, must have felt 
 
 Throbs of volcanic passion strong as thine ! 
 
 Edward to her was but a chattel one 
 
 That appertained unto his wealth a key, 
 
 The simple handle of a treasury door. 
 
 Not hers was he, and she was never his : 
 
 Who was her complement? One of blood and 
 
 fire 
 
 Her icy nature's fierce antithesis. 
 But did these natures coalesce, and form 
 A pleasant-seeming union of souls ? No, no 
 As if to show how truly dangerous 
 Are these extremes, his fire has turned her snow 
 To vapour in this great catastrophe ! 
 
 2 
 
 Now, 
 
 Louder than ever is the cry of Fate ; 
 Insistently the voice of Virtue thrills 
 The inner ear.
 
 58 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 3 
 
 I needs must write to him, 
 And show my boundless love in twenty words 
 A thousand passionate kisses in one line ! 
 The scratch upon his honour what of that ? 
 'Tis but a skate-mark on the ice 'twill melt ! 
 To me, the spiritual wife, his heart desires, 
 He urged the pleas that maybe tempted her, 
 His lawful spouse, his queen of misery 
 Forth to humiliation ? No, no, no 
 The truth alone must tremble from my pen, 
 The truth God's truth and my eternal love ! 
 
 4 
 
 I cannot go to him : he may not come 
 Hither : I would indeed that he could come 
 Now, at this moment, when my soul, ablaze 
 With righteous wrath, endures a taunt 
 I cannot crush. What eyes my husband has, 
 Hawks' eyes that seem to see all thoughts 
 That make the fermentation of my brain. 
 O horrible the taunt ! He knows the truth : 
 He glares : the room swims round. Shall I be brave 
 And tell him that I love this suffering man 
 Daring him to his worst ? Now soul be strong !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 59 
 
 5 
 
 At last ! The truth is out, and I have said 
 What may not be recalled in any time, 
 Nor be repented whilst the myriad cells 
 That make me, hold together. Yes, the truth 
 Sometimes is damnable shall I be damned 
 For casting off the mask, for throwing aside 
 The appurtenances and symbols of deceit ? 
 I gain heaven's high approval : fortified 
 By this, and by the wholesome sense of truth, 
 That thrills my body with new happiness, 
 I rest content. His stupid sneers are naught ; 
 Insinuations mean and base are naught, 
 But O, the horror of his satyr laugh ! 
 
 XXVII 
 
 I 
 
 SUCH thought and feeling fill this passionate note 
 This message that has changed the rhythm of life, 
 And given new hues to earth and sky that now 
 I needs must hold it where my heart may speak 
 The tender answer that his love demands : 
 Tis magnetised with love : mine eyes return 
 Again, and yet again, to scan the lines
 
 60 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 That mean so much to three immortal souls. 
 But I must turn upon this dear affection 
 And play a part. To him I must appear 
 False to the confessions of mine eyes, 
 A traitress to the avowal of my kiss, 
 A trifling fool ! How hard it is to be 
 Pitiless in denying pity to ourselves ! 
 Now, with a heart both glad and sorrowful, 
 I must be brave, and with unquivering lips 
 Face the dread blankness of my wretched home 
 When life's triumphant ecstasy of love 
 Lies in my grasp ! 
 
 O, trees that bloom and sigh 
 In your brief time of happy marriages, 
 When the wild bee forsakes the banquet spread 
 In all the garden-plots and meadow lands 
 To visit your high temples of the spring, 
 Ye feel, O trees, more seasonably than I 
 Doomed to this cold resolve ! Thou art the priest, 
 The hierarch of the spirit, little note, 
 A love-bee of a letter bearing news 
 Sweeter than pollen to the hungering flower ; 
 And yet, alas, a cold tempestuous wind 
 Of duty blows, and lo, the hopeful dust 
 Thou bearest disappears !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 61 
 
 2 
 
 I cannot quench 
 
 This fire within ; it is immortal fire ! 
 'Tis life itself the cry of souls unborn, 
 The struggle of the nascent, the appeal 
 Of Nature for man's immortality ! 
 God of my faith, didst Thou not give me love 
 To be my comfort, and my pleasure ? Thou 
 Who lit'st the flame of passion, canst behold 
 The soul that now extends one hand to love ! 
 But the unhappy spirit is denied 
 Sight of Thy face, and may not know, alas ! 
 Whether Thy features darken into frowns 
 Or brighten into smiles of sympathy. 
 God of my faith, O hearken ! Here am I 
 Here is my body fed by earth and sun, 
 Made glad with light, and vivified with air, 
 Having affinity with loveliness 
 In matter and in mind. Shall I obey 
 The mandate of a world, which glibly cries 
 " Govern thyself, and thou must needs obey ! " 
 How may I govern the ungovernable 
 This flesh rebellious yearning towards the sun ? 
 Oh ! is it pure to be unnatural
 
 62 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 When one is less than woman in the act ? 
 
 No ! I am I ! A wondrous microcosm ; 
 
 A world within a world : I stand alone ; 
 
 Proud in my health and strength; proud of my 
 
 soul; 
 
 Proud in my love ; responsible to none ! 
 Within my body there is mystery, 
 The mystery of countless lives unborn ; 
 Rulers, and maybe conquerors of men ; 
 Fair fruit of love that may yield fairer fruit 
 In centuries to come ! What is this love 
 But just pure duty to the race of men ; 
 Shall I fulfil the duty ? Answer, God ! 
 Is it my mission thus to love, or no ? 
 Am I foredoomed to linger, miserably, 
 At the barred casement of an ancient room 
 Seeing earth's happy lovers, two by two, 
 Pass through the gardens laughing in the sun ? 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 THE immaterial fragrance of the vines 
 Blossoming beneath an ardent sky that scent 
 So subtle, fine and faint, that lays the soul 
 Prostrate with joy's excess, is like his love
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 63 
 
 His passionate love that makes me faint with joy. 
 This innocent love has flowered as flowers the 
 
 vine 
 
 Fragrantly, shyly, unassumingly, 
 But full of promise, even as vineyards are 
 With all their sweetness still in tiny flowers 
 The eye scarce notices, and crimson joys 
 Of love and hope still in sweet perfume hid ! 
 And I must love renounce, and shut mine eyes, 
 Forget the perfume and its promises, 
 See not the vintage that Love's autumn brings, 
 See not the purple grapes. Ah well ! ah well ! 
 O God, I would indeed that it were well ! 
 
 XXIX 
 
 WHEN this dear letter lifted up my hopes, 
 Giving new life to them and strength of wing, 
 And set them fluttering, like butterflies, 
 Through the hot sunshine of my happiness, 
 I felt exultant, as an exile feels 
 Who sights the home-cliffs after weary years 
 In bleak, fatiguing lands ! But now, but now, 
 Despair has caught my too-aspiring hopes 
 In a dark cobweb, grimed and poisonous,
 
 64 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 And they are wrapped about with threads of Death 
 
 Stiflingly close. O God, inviolate still 
 
 Are my rash marriage-promises ; not yet 
 
 Not yet have I transgressed : my spirit sins 
 
 In the sweet thought, but still the flesh is pure, 
 
 And so remains ! I know full well indeed 
 
 That Honour never yet has ruined Love, 
 
 Though Love has beggared Honour many a time. 
 
 Come then, dear Honour, friend of Love, and work 
 
 Thy miracle within me ; peace and hope 
 
 Are thy serene, soft-footed ministers : 
 
 Bid them approach. I would be conqueror 
 
 In this keen conflict of the soul and flesh, 
 
 And of my Destiny be arbitress ; 
 
 'Tis Honour's way that is my chosen way, 
 
 And I will follow it. My heart is strong 
 
 And body and soul are open unto hope, 
 
 Even as fields new-ploughed to rain and sun ! 
 
 XXX 
 
 MOMENTOUS hours are more to us than years 
 Happily passed in uneventful ease; 
 The hues of certain moments tinct our lives 
 Indelibly : a simple summer's morn
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 65 
 
 That comes upon us, fairer than all Time, 
 
 With half a heart-break in its loveliness, 
 
 May leave a golden message in the brain 
 
 To light the eternal dayspring of the mind ! 
 
 And so with me : for Love has left its mark 
 
 Upon my heart and all its attributes, 
 
 And I am greater for it ! O, young love 
 
 That first and sweetest glance, inevitable 
 
 As light itself at coming of the morn ! 
 
 Thy dawn was rosy as the ample breast 
 
 Of some fair Alp, where rhododendrons blush 
 
 Below the snow that blushes eve and morn : 
 
 Did not my soul's apparel catch thy hues ? 
 
 Yea, and no crystal lymph may expurgate 
 
 The crimson, nor yet any furnacing 
 
 Of my young spirit indestructible, 
 
 By Virtue or by Duty or by Pride, 
 
 Shall ever burn away the vestiges 
 
 Of love's first hour, that happy, happy hour ! 
 
 XXXI 
 
 I 
 
 O BROW relax, and be less sorrowful ; 
 
 Eyes cease your bitter weeping wherefore weep
 
 66 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 When the mad hour has passed, and I am sane ? 
 All doubts have fled with feverish sophistry ; 
 My brain is cool, Honour has won the day ! 
 The truth stands clear before me I shall write 
 The bitter word, the honourable word ; 
 And it shall be a little piece of gold 
 Ductile and bright, and I shall beat it thin, 
 Spreading it out in glittering filmy sheets 
 Over the coffin of my happiness : 
 For see, as Love draws near, the joyous face, 
 That shone so radiant in the swift approach, 
 Changes, and all the glorious retinue 
 Moves in a dust of trouble, hushed and sad 
 The fair procession passes me, and lo ! 
 His eyes are covered o'er the eyes of Love : 
 Lamenting him they bear his corse away, 
 And I am beggared he was all in all ! 
 
 2 
 
 My wealth was love, and now it disappears ! 
 
 O God, one ray of hope, one rainbow gleam 
 
 Auguring the resurrection of my joy ! 
 
 Was it not seemly in Thy sight ? Did we not love 
 
 As man and woman who would make the earth 
 
 More virile with their own virility !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 67 
 
 Yea, Lord, 'twas blameless it was Earth herself 
 Who loved in his dear person and in mine, 
 Crying, through us, for sons to make her great, 
 For life to carry out Thy great desires, 
 For nobler souls to mould Thy purposes 
 And thus our love was pure ! 
 
 Let not this day 
 
 Go down in blankness and in tragedy, 
 But paint the west, dear God, with flaming torch, 
 And light the spark to light a fair to-morrow ! 
 
 What though the face of Love be hidden away 
 Within the coffin, gilded with my word, 
 Let not the earth be thrown upon the gold 
 In mute despair. I would know happiness 
 Through hope the sole creator of our joy. 
 Dear God, it is not much I ask of Thee, 
 This ray of hope to light a sinless love ! 
 And Love is sinless when it is but hope, 
 No matter whom the object : pure desire, 
 Outlasting all the torment of the flesh,
 
 68 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 May well exist on Hope's thin nutriment 
 And see the vision ever. Let me see 
 The fair dream-palace always shining bright 
 Before me ! Ah ! no mirage, but a guide ; 
 No mockery of madness, but a help ; 
 A" 1 beacon- light, and an immortal joy ! 
 
 XXXII 
 
 i 
 
 COME tears of joy, the tears of doubt are shed, 
 The well of feeling is not empty yet ! 
 Etna is quenched within, and cooler springs 
 Send to mine eyes their tribute : the clear sky 
 Shall not be further vexed by smoky doubt 
 And passion's cinders, vomited in flame ! 
 
 2 
 
 Unreal shine the hills ; more visionary 
 Appears their setting : breath on breath I take 
 And seem less human after every breath : 
 Into my heart they flow, these large impressions 
 Woods, fields and brooks, and many a purple peak 
 That stands on guard above its waterfalls
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 69 
 
 Singing in lofty chorus Nature's hymn : 
 
 The mountain breeze has caught the breath of pines, 
 
 An essence pure that makes my spirit thrill 
 
 In sweet intoxication of the soul. 
 
 Here Love is dwarfed, and in its proper place : 
 
 Superimposed above Man's littleness 
 
 God's greatness towers, and I must think of Him. 
 
 Woman I am no more, but only soul 
 
 Burning beneath the Lapidary's touch ; 
 
 And, haply, glowing brighter than a gem. 
 
 O God, my spirit has gone forth to Thee ! 
 
 Behold Thy servant, humble, reverent, 
 
 A shadow kneeling at Thine altar-steps 
 
 Praying for knowledge of the highest good 
 
 That we may reach on earth, and praying to see 
 
 The inner greatness of all sacrifice 
 
 Offered upon the Rock Impregnable ! 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 I 
 
 O STAR, that shinest in that gulf of cloud 
 Be thou my lamp of hope : nay, thou art gone 
 Even with my words, but hope is not eclipsed 
 As thou art by those vapours cold and grey,
 
 70 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 Albeit the time has come when I must shape 
 Honour's inevitable word yes, now 
 When the new morning, faintly heralded 
 By stranger light amid the host of stars 
 Pulsates, and makes the saddened face of earth 
 Relax, as some dark, careworn visage melts 
 Little by little into jbyfulness. 
 
 2 
 
 Here is the pen. At last the word is writ 
 That makes me more than woman. I reject 
 Nature's high privilege in saying " I^ay " ; 
 Yet shall he love me more in sheer despite, 
 And bless me for the word. Dear, patient heart, 
 This surety of my virtue, signed and sealed, 
 Shall keep thee pure and ever honourable ! 
 
 3 
 
 Behold the approach of morn ! The wan east burns 
 With crocus fire, and flames of faintest rose; 
 Now the moon's pale and shrunken hemisphere 
 Withdraws a ghostly face before the light : 
 The dreary foreshore wakes ; a wondrous hand 
 Rains radiant gold upon its leagues of mud, 
 Splashes with wine the sullen slimy pools.
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 71 
 
 Now doffs the restless sea her nightly garb, 
 Changes her steel cuirass for silver mail 
 Shines out in morning joy apparelled ! God ! 
 O, that my life were at a touch transformed 
 Like that bleak tideway ! See the million gems 
 That once were mud ! Now give my soul its 
 
 dawn, 
 
 Change my unworthy thoughts innumerable 
 With the glad rays of Honour and of Truth ! 
 
 4 
 
 Come, lovely daybreak, steal into my blood ! 
 Give me thy purity, thy generous light, 
 Thy virtue's clear and sweet expansiveness : 
 Give me thy beauty I am pure at last, 
 And beauty springs from truth and righteousness, 
 And Honour merits beauty. O great sun 
 That weariest not in thine eternal task, 
 Thee I salute as God's high messenger 
 Sent to His servant. As I humbly kneel 
 I bid thee welcome, great ambassador ! 
 No smiling sea, no fiery southern hill 
 Kissing the flower of dawn with lips of flame, 
 Pouring upon the altar of its peaks 
 The tumult of a golden thanksgiving
 
 72 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 Could give thee better welcome than do I 
 
 One of the least of all God's servants yes, 
 
 A little moth tormented by a flame, 
 
 A simple moth that struggled wearily 
 
 Towards the gleam of love, but now beholds 
 
 A higher light to rise to. O, great sun, 
 
 Majestic orb of promise and of hope, 
 
 Bathe me in splendour, fill mine eyes with faith, 
 
 Make me more fit to be the handmaiden 
 
 Of Him who holds the systems in His grasp, 
 
 Yea, even in the hollow of His hand !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 73 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 I 
 
 THIS is Thine Hand, O God ! This is Thy work ! 
 The man who soiled the blossom of my youth 
 Dragging it through the ashes of old sins 
 Lies cold and dumb. He perished happily, 
 Unconscious of his doom ; and, as he died, 
 All life's emotions came into my heart ; 
 And now, with joy and pain near surfeited, 
 I stand dismayed. This is too much to bear ! 
 Whilst quivering still from one supreme surprise 
 Another comes upon me, and I see 
 Thy great Hand working out the fate of Man, 
 My fate and his. For see, my lover finds 
 An empty chamber. She his wife has fled ; 
 She, the embodiment of chill reserve, 
 Has warmed to passion, and has fled hot-foot 
 With some despotic, bold adventurer : 
 And these two die : she slain by him, and he 
 Slain by his own rash hand their secret hid 
 From all. Then Hope looms largely in my thoughts. 
 Then for my lover shines a brighter sun, 
 A clearer moon, and yet a starrier heaven.
 
 74 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 To him Love's way seems clear but I have given 
 My word to Thee ! And now, O Merciful, 
 Thou hast removed the one last barrier. 
 
 II 
 
 HERE, with those rugged features softening 
 
 Into Death's pathos, whilst the last chill comes 
 
 To that enfevered clay and makes it pure, 
 
 I stand dismayed ; my soul both grieved and glad. 
 
 Heartsore, yet jocund with a sweeter pain 
 
 Than ever moved the lips of Nero's queen, 
 
 I fear my happiness. 'Tis well that I 
 
 Should yearn towards the corpse, and see, at last, 
 
 All the faint loopholes whence his goodness shone 
 
 In the forbidding personality. 
 
 Forgotten kindnesses rise up and wound 
 
 With unsuspected daggers : O, my God, 
 
 He was a human creature like myself, 
 
 I must be fair to him and charitable ; 
 
 For he, first moulded by Thine Hand, was made 
 
 Himself by his own soul. This tenement 
 
 Was but its dwelling : now the soul has gone, 
 
 Pure is the habitation, clean and pure ! 
 
 Forgive his sins, O God, forgive his sins !
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 75 
 
 III 
 
 O, HUSBAND, husband, you are stricken low ! 
 Death knocked upon your door, and waiting not, 
 Shivered the portals, and the house collapsed. 
 Some gleam of youth steals back into your cheeks 
 I almost love you now : 'tis true, 'tis true ! 
 I love your boyhood and your strenuous youth 
 Which Death has mapped upon your features yes, 
 I love the greater man you might have been ! 
 
 You had a mother once, dear, pallid corpse 
 Perchance your latest thought was given to her, 
 Hence this faint smile of icy happiness. 
 Forgive my sin : forgive my weak acceptance 
 Of all the glittering toys you showered on me ; 
 Mine was the fault, mine was the sin indeed: 
 I dazzled you my freshness tempted you ; 
 Desiring me as I desire a flower 
 You spake a word, and lo, the rose of youth 
 Was in your hands ! It was but natural 
 That youth should tempt you, O, unhappy man ! 
 You wished no harm to me ; you sought to make 
 Life full and lovely, even magnificent !
 
 76 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 
 
 Cynical, cold, and masterfully weak 
 
 You moved through life in purblind ignorance 
 
 Of all the woman in me : yet, at times, 
 
 Careless of reputation, you have said 
 
 That I might sin : O, misdirected soul, 
 
 My heart seems strangely full of gratitude 
 
 That you descended not to cruelty ! 
 
 Now take these tears, the first mine eyes have shed 
 
 Upon your hands, they mean sincerity. 
 
 I see you nobler than I thought you were 
 
 Ennobling Death has thrown a pure soft light 
 
 Upon your features, made you as you were 
 
 Once, when maternal songs were sweet to you. 
 
 IV 
 
 HERE, in this presence, I do dedicate 
 
 Myself to him who is my other self. 
 
 God's will it was that made our hearts conjoin, 
 
 God's purposes have moved our souls to love, 
 
 We shall obey Him ; and fulfil our love 
 
 As a most holy charge. O, come to me 
 
 Dear heart ; then we shall kneel and pray 
 
 For holiness, for calmness, and for reverence, 
 
 For charity to cover all our sins :
 
 A WOMAN OF EMOTIONS 77 
 
 We must take warning from this sinless clay, 
 Wasting no hour, no word, no deed, no thought. 
 The rime upon the meadows of our lives 
 Has disappeared : the verdure soon shall spring 
 Into new life in holy happiness ! 
 I, too, was near to sinning, and his feet 
 Were near to stumbling. She has gone 
 She chose the wild, the miserable way, 
 Thinking that love and joy are everything. 
 Shall I admonish in word, or even in thought, 
 The heart that sought its happiness in flight 
 And found but Death ? Desiring Love she died : 
 May she be happy whither God has led 
 Her feet ! Not all the rectitude of Pharisees 
 Shall e'er demean my lips to one reproach : 
 Rather do I accept in humbleness, 
 Contrition, and true sorrow, this great boon 
 The gift of Love which God has given to me.
 
 BEAT^E MEMORISE ! 
 
 WE are thinking of you, laddies, who are lying fast 
 
 asleep, 
 
 And waiting the reveille where you fell ; 
 Though the crowds be all a-singing, there are many 
 
 who must weep 
 
 For the victims of the bullet and the shell : 
 O, brave and bonny warriors who died, 
 In 3'our passion, in your strength, and in your 
 
 pride ; 
 Through woodlands, gleaming blue, last year we 
 
 walked with you, 
 And happy was the mother and the bride ! 
 
 " Who is it that stands at the spirifs open door? 
 Is it you, O my dearest, are you near me? " 
 
 " My feet with yours keep time, dear Love, for evermore, 
 When I speak, despite of death, you surely hear me!" 
 
 79
 
 8o BEAT.E MEMORLE! 
 
 2 
 
 We are thinking of you, laddies, of your bright, 
 courageous eyes, 
 
 Wherein your hopes were flashing when you sailed ; 
 Now the bells are all a-ringing, you can hear, in 
 Paradise, 
 
 And happy are the hearts that never quailed : 
 O, brave and bonny striplings who have done 
 Your duty in the battles lost and won ; 
 The sea and summer air were twenty times as fair 
 When you were here and laughing in the sun ! 
 
 " Who was it that spoke to my soul that winter eve f 
 Was it you, O my dearest, did you need me ? " 
 
 "I cried aloud, dear wife, but in dying did not grieve, 
 For your spirit came and lovingly did lead me ! " 
 
 3 
 We are thinking of you, laddies, and the kisses of 
 
 your lips, 
 
 The clasp of hands that now are only clay ; 
 But the music of your voices as they sounded from the 
 
 ships 
 Is a melody for ever and for aye :
 
 EEATAL MEMORISE! 8 : i 
 
 O brave and bonny soldiers, we shall find 
 
 In thoughts of you a light to lead the blind ; 
 
 You have sprent the earth with blood for the sake of 
 
 brotherhood ; 
 You sowed the seed we shall not reap the wind ! 
 
 " Who was it that came and trembled by my chair? 
 Was it you, O my dearest, were you crying?' 1 
 
 " / was near and spoke, my love, and my hand was on 
 
 your hair, 
 And I wept because your heart was not replying! " 
 
 4 
 
 We are thinking of you, laddies, as you slumber in 
 
 the dust ; 
 
 You did not fight and fall for but a word ; 
 Ah ! who in Wrong's brief triumph can let his weapon 
 
 rust ? 
 
 When Freedom called, her lover-heroes heard ! 
 O, brave and bonny callants, had ye stayed 
 To be the joy of mother, wife, and maid, 
 You might have missed renown, and the immortal 
 
 crown 
 
 Whose leaves are of the love that cannot fade ! 
 
 F
 
 82 BEAT.E MEMORISE! 
 
 tl Who is this I see in visions round my bed? 
 Is it you, O my dearest, crowned with glory ?" 
 
 41 They met me, and they placed the laurels on my head, 
 And I proudly hurried home to tell the story ! " 
 
 5 
 We are thinking of you, laddies; yes, thinking every 
 
 hour, 
 
 Of the great and solemn duty that was yours ; 
 You laid upon God's altar fair lives that were in 
 
 flower, 
 
 That men might know the Concord that endures. 
 O, brave and bonny heroes, you shall be 
 New lamps to light the halls of memory, 
 Bright beacons that shall burn, to lead the brave to 
 
 spurn 
 The tyrant's clutches falling on the free ! 
 
 " Who is it that comes when the heavy shadows fall? 
 Is it you, O my darling, whom I cherished?" 
 
 " Have hope, O mother mine, I have got the countersign, 
 And the soul I drew from yours has never perished!"
 
 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 
 I 
 
 HERE, proud as the summits that bloomed in splen- 
 dours of yellow and red, 
 
 When Spain had a frontier of fire, I stand where bright 
 pollen of gold 
 
 The blood of creation emerged ere it crept through 
 the valley and rolled 
 
 To the barrier hills, and I hear dim echoes of years 
 that are dead 
 
 The moan of the crater's red mouth, the roar of its 
 
 vomit of steam, 
 The crack of the stones that were hurled by Titans, 
 
 the hiss of the ice 
 Bewildering horrors of sound, and my soul is gripped 
 
 in a vice ; 
 The strong, savage prime of the world comes back in a 
 
 wonderful dream. 
 
 83
 
 84 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 
 
 II 
 
 O, earth, thou hast battled like me, with struggles 
 
 thou gainedst thine ends ; 
 Here, aloft, and at last thou art calm, white-headed, 
 
 dispassionate, sage ; 
 I fain would have speech with the wise, ere manhood 
 
 has leapt into age : 
 Old earth, be my counsellor thou the strongest and 
 
 staunchest of friends ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 There, eastward, the tide of the night draws near like 
 the tide of the sea ; 
 
 The plains that were languid with heat are cooled and 
 entranced by its charms ; 
 
 The distant, blue, tapering peaks are lost in its vapor- 
 ous arms ; 
 
 The jewelled horizon is hid, and onward they travel to 
 me, 
 
 Those soft, rolling billows of mist, through velvety 
 gorges they creep,
 
 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 85 
 
 And over the glacier's breast, from height to o'er- 
 
 towering height : 
 Triumphant invasion is thine, magnificent tide of the 
 
 night ! 
 The pageant of provinces gone ! Naught left but the 
 
 hunger of sleep ! 
 
 IV 
 
 A wind shows the shuddering moon adrift in an ocean 
 
 of cloud : 
 Behold ! a new realm of the soul above the great desert 
 
 of smoke ! 
 A king in a kingdom of air, with glory of gladness I 
 
 woke, 
 Forgetting, as children forget, what lies in that tenuous 
 
 shroud. 
 
 Diana is out with her nymphs, they hunt in the sheen 
 
 and the shade : 
 I see the bright gleams of their hair athwart the dread 
 
 walls of the peak ;
 
 86 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 
 
 But only the isard l descries the flush on the goddess's 
 
 cheek ; 
 He feels not her arrows of light, nor fears the blithe 
 
 face of the maid. 
 
 Below, in a Stygian gloom, the glacier is troubled, and 
 
 groans ; 
 Winds of the north and the west have clashed, and 
 
 united, assail 
 The rocks with invisible hands, and hark ! the deep 
 
 gulf of the vale 
 Protests with the voice of a ghost against the wild 
 
 volley of stones. 
 
 Yea, out of that funnel whence flowed a torrent of 
 
 terrible fire 
 Bright wine of disorder expressed from the wine-press 
 
 of chaos below 
 Sounds rise and disturb the sad dreams of vultures 
 
 that sleep by the snow ; 
 In indolent anger they leave their cornice and make for 
 
 the spire : 
 
 There, sitting like spectres above the peaks that are 
 mastered by men, 
 
 1 Pyrencan chamois.
 
 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 87 
 
 They, craning their featherless necks, look down on 
 
 the stranger with scorn. 
 Who climbs in the hush of the dark may slumber for 
 
 ever at morn ; 
 The haughty, inviolate hills may crush the invader 
 
 again ! 
 
 VI 
 
 Where kingdoms embrace on the heights the moon has 
 
 nor rival nor peer ; 
 She visits the easterly peaks, she touches the spires 
 
 of the south ; 
 She hangs on the shoulders of one, she offers another 
 
 her mouth ; 
 And, stately and proud as their queen, the mountains 
 
 her jewels uprear. 
 
 The gleam of the planets subdued, she smiles at the 
 
 flash of the stars ; 
 Arrived at her limits of blue, she bends like a lover 
 
 o'er Spain ; 
 Rich with the frost-fashioned gems on the snow-field's 
 
 glittering plain, 
 At the laughter of Sirius she laughs, and mocks at the 
 
 anger of Mars.
 
 &8 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 
 
 Far off, the great capitals now receive her white blessing 
 
 of love, 
 And holy and beautiful even the saddest and lowliest 
 
 shine ; 
 They, memory -mirrored, appear, arrayed in their 
 
 vesture divine, 
 As if, with this wonderful light, they took the pure 
 
 sheen of the Dove. 
 
 VII 
 
 O, what has descended to me from highways that lead 
 
 to the Throne ? 
 Can the Dove have come down ? Is this hour to be 
 
 large with the change of a soul ? 
 Yea, changed is my spirit to-night, life's gloom, with 
 
 its evil control, 
 Has gone like the vapours that wrapped the mountain 
 
 when I was alone. 
 
 Companioned by star-crowned peaks, no longer can 
 
 solitude lead 
 My soul to the Lethe of sleep ; an influence enters my 
 
 breast
 
 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 89 
 
 That rouses the soul to a work far sweeter than rap- 
 turous rest ; 
 
 And, entering, comforts a heart, sore troubled and sick 
 of its need. 
 
 This exquisite silence of stars, so pregnant with 
 
 beautiful words, 
 Enfolds a man newly baptized, whose chrisom lies 
 
 pale in the moon : 
 Ah ! this is the night of all nights my zenith the 
 
 cardinal boon : 
 The blossoming groves of the soul resound with the 
 
 singing of birds ! 
 
 Each clad in a pallium of snow, the hierophant 
 
 pinnacles laud 
 The God of the infinite depths, Who, bidding my 
 
 spirit be strong, 
 Hath sown in the innermost shrine quick seeds of a 
 
 happier song : 
 There the moon's altar-lamp hangs from the roof of 
 
 His temple, and, awed, 
 
 I kneel in the limitless fane, whose mysteries glimmer 
 above ;
 
 90 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 
 
 A magical symphony throbs from a thousand invisible 
 
 lyres ; 
 I burn with a glorious hope, I dream in a swoon of 
 
 desires ; 
 My soul is enwrapped in the flame of immortal and 
 
 infinite love. 
 
 VIII 
 
 O, God of my fathers, enthroned beyond the wild 
 
 doubts of the wise ! 
 Infallible Centre of Life ! I know that the soul in 
 
 these veins 
 This fire in the handful of clay this feeling of triumph 
 
 that reigns 
 Where once was a cloudy despair, dies not as its 
 
 tenement dies ! 
 
 Man's wisdom climbs higher and higher; the dim, 
 
 unattainable goal, 
 Beyond the faint silvery dust that shines in the 
 
 heavenly stream, 
 Recedes, yet, advancing, we know that our Maker is 
 
 more than a dream, 
 On summits of science is given new vision of faith to 
 
 the soul.
 
 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 91 
 
 Horizons grow wider as men ascend towards the 
 
 Source of the Mind, 
 The more of God's wonders we see the more should 
 
 we love and revere ; 
 He, Centre of Systems, proclaims His puissance, that, 
 
 manifest here, 
 Illumines a soul vvith belief, once vagrant and mentally 
 
 blind : 
 
 Transfigured by grace from on high, God's marvellous 
 
 bounty that fell 
 Through ether, like meteor dust that powders yon 
 
 shimmering field, 
 I yearn for some light from His eyes to show me the 
 
 wonders revealed 
 In cycles that fashioned our earth from flames of 
 
 ebullient hell. 
 
 IX 
 
 Did life from the firmament fall in grit of the galaxy 
 
 there, 
 The seed of the earliest moss, the spore that evolved 
 
 to a worm ;
 
 92 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 
 
 The atom allied with the Lord, the potent, primordial 
 
 germ, 
 Was it rained from some Eden to be the father of all 
 
 that is fair ? 
 
 Or did the white heart of the world, when the world 
 
 was a turmoil of flame, 
 Possess the beginnings of life, the primal impalpable 
 
 spark ? 
 From riot of vaporous fire came man, and the rose, 
 
 and the lark ? 
 Thou white-mantled pinnacle speak ! Thou knowest 
 
 how chaos became 
 
 Resolved into order and law ; how, shaken with 
 
 tumult, the earth 
 Sank down to her splendid repose, with terrible, 
 
 passionate sighs, 
 Sprang we from the furnace below, or fell the first life 
 
 from the skies ? 
 Thou silent and beautiful peak, oh, read me the riddle 
 
 of birth ! 
 
 Each man in his aspirant brain possesses life's apex 
 of power ;
 
 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 93 
 
 Each mortal is ruler of self, God giveth him charge of 
 
 his fate ; 
 Aloft in the passionless heavens they smile at the 
 
 love, and the hate, 
 And the greed of the hurrying swarm that struggles 
 
 and hopes for an hour. 
 
 We, seeking salvation above, are blind to the Eden 
 
 below, 
 This planet, so splendidly dowered, where man must 
 
 for ever abide : 
 We live in earth's glory of green, in the lovely unrest 
 
 of the tide ; 
 Our death is a birth, and the soul, like the ocean, ebbs 
 
 ever to flow. 
 
 X 
 
 I climb by a perilous path ; the stones of the pin- 
 nacles sing 
 
 When, plunging to chasms of dusk, they pass in the 
 silence profound ; 
 
 The moon, barren virgin of night, descends to her 
 uttermost bound ; 
 
 The vultures have word of the light : O, what will the 
 sunrising bring ?
 
 94 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 
 
 Advancing with timorous gleam new morning appears 
 in the east ; 
 
 I feel that to me is outstretched God's bounteous 
 Omnipotent Hand ! 
 
 Thou dawn full of warmth and of love bring blessings 
 to sea and to land, 
 
 Bring fire for the altars, prepare once more the per- 
 petual feast ! 
 
 Below in Arcadian vales the Dryads their thurible 
 
 sway, 
 And hither the frosty wind brings their incense of 
 
 spruce and of pine ; 
 Sharp cold that has riven the rocks makes morn on 
 
 the mountains divine, 
 And the tide of my song is at full, and the fountains of 
 
 fancy at play ! 
 
 Last night I was even a shard of glass that encum- 
 bered the dust ; 
 
 My heart is a wine-press to-day, receiving new visions 
 and shapes 
 
 To be crushed by the soul, as the South withdraws 
 the green blood from her grapes : 
 
 May the vintage be pure and divine that comes from 
 the tenebrous must !
 
 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 95 
 
 Innumerable blossoms may lie in the honeyed heart of 
 
 a flower 
 Like love in the bosom of love : thus praise in a 
 
 passionate mind 
 But sleeps till the accolade falls, with sight for the eyes 
 
 that were blind ; 
 Then song, welling up in the heart, breaks out in a 
 
 torrent of power ! 
 
 XI 
 
 Oh, when he is weighed in the scales, how mean is 
 
 vainglorious man ! 
 A seed with a gossamer wing, a mite in the wonderful 
 
 whole ! 
 Behold, in the Protean east, comes now what has 
 
 counted the roll 
 Of a million cycles of life: red javelins rise like a 
 
 fan, 
 
 And a chillier wind from the north plays over the 
 
 shivering height. 
 The ermined, immutable peaks, each wrapped in a 
 
 silvery robe,
 
 96 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 
 
 Receive their new vesture, and lo ! the moon, but the 
 
 ghost of a globe, 
 Grows grey as she hides in the hills ; and brighter, 
 
 and ever more bright 
 
 Becomes the vast hollow of air ; the timid red trembles 
 to rose, 
 
 Pale amber now kindles to gold ; the gold into saffron 
 must run ; 
 
 Wan planets recede with the dusk before the vic- 
 torious sun, 
 
 That hangs like a bubble of fire, o'erbrimming the 
 chalice of snows. 
 
 Like bergs of immovable seas, all white as the veil of 
 a bride, 
 
 The sentinel summits of Spain stand guarding the 
 South, and the cold 
 
 Grey brows of the mountains are crowned with splen- 
 dour of opal and gold, 
 
 As Lucifer sinks in the blue of the morn's magnificent 
 tide. 
 
 Night vanishes down in the west, a phantom of purple 
 and grey,
 
 A PYRENEAN NOCTURNE 97 
 
 The solitude greets the return of its emperor orb, and 
 
 his beams 
 Bleed full on the silvery ice ; thin rillets awake from 
 
 their dreams, 
 And a vision of France and of Spain lies there in the 
 
 eye of the day. 
 
 XII 
 
 How good to have breath to have strength ! O sun, 
 
 that of earth art the sire, 
 What child of thy luminous loins can equal this planet 
 
 of ours ? 
 Whose wonders of colour and shade, and life that is 
 
 perfect in flowers, 
 Evoking all beautiful thoughts, fill man with supernal 
 
 desire ! 
 
 My vigil was kept by the snow; with the vigilant 
 
 isard I drew 
 Deep into my lungs the clear wind ; and, nourished by 
 
 more than the air, 
 My soul, waxing strong, tried its wings, took flight 
 
 and behold ! it is there 
 With the eagles that wheel in the sun, aloft in the 
 
 ocean of blue ! 
 
 G
 
 BY THE RIVER 
 
 The Wife. 
 
 O, FOR a word to express but the half that I feel 
 
 And cannot conceal 
 Now, at this moment of moments, when life is complete 
 
 With you at my feet ! 
 
 Soft sky, azure river, laburnums bright wealth of 
 the May 
 
 Rained o'er us and gay 
 
 Lilac, brave tulips, sweet hawthorn bespattered with 
 wine, 
 
 And lilies divine : 
 
 No hour could be fairer, couldj shed on this king 
 of all streams 
 
 Such glamour of dreams. 
 
 And I, sitting here in the sunlight, bewildered with 
 peace, 
 
 Half-mad at release
 
 BY THE RIVER 99 
 
 From torturing doubts and despair, see highest 
 surmise 
 
 And God in your eyes : 
 
 Spring, too, dwells in them : their warmth and their 
 wonder have stirred 
 
 My soul : like a bird 
 
 Fast caught in the snare of the fowler it shakes in 
 your grasp : 
 
 O, do not unclasp 
 
 Your hand, dear, but hold me for ever and firm be 
 your grip, 
 
 Lest the flutterer slip ! 
 
 My treasure of treasures is yielded, and yours is my 
 soul 
 
 To guide and control ; 
 
 All, all have I given you, dearest and would it were 
 more ! 
 
 But life has a store 
 
 In springs that shall follow, and summers to come ; 
 'tis for us 
 
 Whom love honours thus. 
 
 I have lived for this noonday of rapture, what 
 matters the pain ? 
 
 I could bear it again ;
 
 ioo BY THE RIVER 
 
 What matter the toil and the trouble, now you are 
 my own ? 
 
 My argosy, blown 
 
 To this happy haven by favouring wind from the 
 west, 
 
 Safe anchored, at rest ! 
 
 It is happily true, my Hippomenes. Look in my 
 face 
 
 You have triumphed, the race 
 Is yours, and I glory in losing ! O, open your heart 
 
 The innermost part 
 Reveal the pure fount of your music that rises in jets 
 
 Of joys and regrets; 
 
 Show me the source of your songs, dearest, teach me 
 to sing 
 
 In this beautiful spring. 
 
 The truth is I loved you last year when my love I 
 denied, 
 
 In passion and pride, 
 
 But noble persistence has won me, and now in your 
 breast 
 
 I would make me a nest ; 
 
 I would slumber and dream ; the tired bird yearns for 
 its bower 
 
 Aflame with love's flower.
 
 BY THE RIVER 101 
 
 The Musician. 
 
 What do you crave, my beloved ? to you I have given 
 
 Soul, body, and striven 
 
 To show you the strength of a love that has fasted too 
 long 
 
 And spoken in song. 
 
 You are blood of my blood ; you are wife ; and a 
 mother to be. 
 
 O, hearken to me : 
 
 I love you : these lilacs, these hawthorns, were naught 
 without you ; 
 
 Yon arch of pure blue, 
 
 Had it not your deep eyes to drink light from, were 
 dark ; 
 
 The voice of the lark 
 
 Would be shrill did not yours murmur low like a 
 brook ; 
 
 My little one, look 
 
 I have opened my heart to you, offered the keys of 
 each room 
 
 Where, dead in the gloom, 
 
 Lie shattered and ruined the dreams and the joys of 
 my life : 
 
 Be happy, dear wife ;
 
 102 BY THE RIVER 
 
 I give you my love and my secrets, but you I 
 adore 
 
 I cannot give more ! 
 
 The Wife. 
 
 But why are you sad as you gaze on that glorious 
 grove? 
 
 Your eyes ever rove 
 
 You sigh, looking long at the blossoms again and 
 again ; 
 
 Some exquisite pain 
 
 Seems to lead you away from the fulness of love on 
 my face ; 
 
 O, may I not trace 
 
 Your thoughts to their objects ? Those chestnut trees 
 take you ? What spires 
 Of crimsoning fires ! 
 That delicate pattern of white on the velvety green 
 
 Enriches the scene : 
 
 Candelabra aflame on God's altar; ah yes, they are 
 fair, 
 
 But what see you there ? 
 
 Leaves that are wrapped in the spell of the westering 
 light, 
 
 And clouds that are bright ;
 
 BY THE RIVER 103 
 
 Why are you sad, dearest ? tell me, O, do you 
 repent 
 
 That message you sent, 
 
 Saying : " Love, for an age, as it seems, I have hoped 
 for and prayed 
 
 For just such a maid: 
 
 You flouted and scorned me, and fled from the fire in 
 mine eyes 
 
 I followed my prize 
 
 1 want you to^ live for, to love, and to cherish and 
 hold?" 
 
 And, this loop of gold 
 
 Accepted bedewed with a tempest of tears is the 
 sign 
 
 Of our compact divine : 
 
 Do I lack some rare gift that is needful to raise in 
 your heart 
 
 Desire to impart 
 
 Soul yearnings, your passion, your sense of invisible 
 things ? 
 
 A Seraph's wide wings 
 
 Then give me, O dearest; one whisper might make 
 of me now 
 
 An Angel ; but how ?
 
 104 BY THE RIVER 
 
 Speak of the thoughts that distress you, the troubles 
 that throng 
 
 The chambers of song. 
 
 The Musician. 
 
 I snatched at the hand that you proffered, and kissed 
 it with tears ; 
 
 For you, without peers, 
 
 Seemed shining far off, like a splendour that beams on 
 the sea, 
 
 And, behold, you chose me ! 
 Pursuing, sometimes I was hopeless, awhile I was mad, 
 
 But, dearest, how glad 
 
 How great was my heart when you, captured, sank 
 low in mine arms 
 
 And yielded your charms ! 
 
 We see in the sky, and the earth with this exquisite 
 bloom 
 
 The bride and her groom : 
 
 The blue that o'erarches the glory and gladness of 
 May 
 
 Is cloudless to-day ; 
 
 To-morrow some sadness may fleck the clear joy of 
 the sky ; 
 
 And, thus, you and I
 
 BY THE RIVER 105 
 
 Find nature between us, grey clouds shutting out 
 from our sight 
 
 The sources of light. 
 
 Can earth make the firmament empty of mist at a 
 word, 
 
 My fluttering bird ? 
 Can I shamelessly show you the struggles of man 
 
 with his mind ? 
 If 
 
 Is the love in you blind ? 
 
 Tis in silence that soul speaks to soul; when love 
 is intense 
 
 Speech is but a sense ; 
 
 The truths most momentous come not from the pas- 
 sionate lips 
 
 Or warm finger-tips, 
 But beautiful language is spoken by beautiful eyes, 
 
 Swift questions replies 
 Wild babble of rapture and exquisite moans of desire, 
 
 Like lightning's quick fire, 
 
 Light us and warm the sweet stillness that falls on 
 the hour 
 
 Two souls break in flower. 
 
 But never a word need be uttered : in silence and 
 gloom 
 
 Is the soul's fairest bloom !
 
 io6 BY THE RIVER 
 
 The Wife. 
 
 Forgive me : how jealous I am of a thought that may 
 bring 
 
 Perchance a dead Spring 
 
 Back with its perfume to speak of some passion long 
 dead; 
 
 (O, what have I said ?) $ 
 
 Such thought still withhold I forgive you, but if in 
 those trees 
 
 Your soul's vision sees 
 Beauty I view not, I ask you to make my dim eyes 
 
 Strong open the skies 
 
 With the key of your secret : beloved, my spirit would 
 leap 
 
 With yours through the deep ! 
 
 Again your far gaze seeks the trees is a shimmering 
 flight 
 
 Of angels in sight ? 
 
 I love you ; I want him, yes, yes, to be utterly 
 mine, 
 
 Who, human-divine, 
 
 Seems lord of all springs and all summers the 
 greatest of men ; 
 
 Be all to me then !
 
 BY THE RIVER 107 
 
 The Musician. 
 
 To the dead, spring has spoken in beauty ; and, leaving 
 us here, 
 
 May, halcyon-clear, 
 
 Her pageant, this glory, proceeds through the 
 cycles, and we, 
 
 Like leaves of a tree 
 Fade into dust, but the wonders of May and of June 
 
 Dissolve not so soon. 
 
 I gaze at that grove, which my fathers before me have 
 seen 
 
 Thus proud in new green, 
 
 Pranked round with flower-pyramids, scented thus 
 hopefully sweet ; 
 
 And, prone at the feet 
 
 Of damsels as fair as the maid who is fair to their 
 son 
 
 O, beautiful one, 
 
 They, touched with some feeling of infinite grief, may 
 have sighed 
 
 For visions that died 
 
 For loves that were ended, for dreams that were over 
 and dead : 
 
 They, too, may have fed
 
 108 BY THE RIVER 
 
 On the honey that sweetens the heart when pure love 
 is returned ; 
 
 They, too, may have burned 
 
 With hope and with passion: but I have their load 
 and mine own 
 
 Their thoughts fuller grown ; 
 
 Old love, and old torment, inherited, strengthened by 
 * time : 
 
 Thus, in the year's prime, 
 
 I look at that grove with a sadness that baffles my 
 love, 
 
 And thoughts from above 
 
 And around me, come down on my heart like shadows 
 on earth, 
 
 And you, and your worth, 
 
 Fade, sweetheart, fade from my sight, and trembling 
 I see 
 
 God's hand on each tree, 
 
 God's hand, and the beauty eternal, that, steadfast and 
 sure, 
 
 All time must endure. 
 This beauty that dies not appeals with supernal appeal ; 
 
 I, wonderingly, feel 
 
 A sense of the sorrow that falls like a blight upon man 
 Fate's terrible ban
 
 BY THE RIVER 109 
 
 To die when the brain is a treasury stored with the 
 gold 
 
 Of new days and old, 
 
 The heart a rich temple adorned with the graces of 
 time ; 
 
 And in the soul's prime 
 To cease to exist when the spirit demands to exist ; 
 
 The mark that was missed 
 Bright in perspective of lovely and luminous days ; 
 
 When eager to praise 
 
 Him who has fashioned His wonders in flower and in 
 shell, 
 
 Yea, eager to swell 
 
 The paean of worship to climb to the height of His 
 lore 
 
 To cease evermore ! 
 
 Know this, that the lover of beauty craves ever to 
 know 
 
 More beauty, and lo ! 
 
 Just as his casement of knowledge is opened, he 
 dies; 
 
 Ay, just as the skies 
 
 Begin to reveal their great secrets unto him, he 
 goes 
 
 The way of the rose ;
 
 no BY THE RIVER 
 
 And, going, he hungers for knowledge for power to 
 revere : 
 
 His vision is clear, 
 
 The small in the great he descries, and the great in 
 the small, 
 
 Sees beauty in all, 
 
 Yet dies ; and his life seems a moment surpassingly 
 bright 
 
 As the spirit takes flight, 
 Surpassingly bright, but too brief for the soul to attain 
 
 Its ultimate gain : 
 
 We hunger for knowledge ; at death, though not 
 paupers in mind, 
 
 The wisest are blind ; 
 
 Thej r touch with the tips of their fingers some magi- 
 cal gem 
 
 In God's diadem, 
 
 Then die, crying : " O for new life, for more beautiful 
 days 
 
 To see Him and praise ! " 
 
 We dream through our youth, then awaken and yearn 
 for the sun, 
 
 The hour-glass is run, 
 
 And we pass in the night, sobbing : " Father, re-open 
 Thy book, 
 
 Thy servants would look
 
 BY THE RIVER 1 1 1 
 
 Again at its pages, and learn ; yea, Lord, they would 
 learn 
 
 If life could return : 
 Too brief were the hours : O give us renewal of birth 
 
 On this beautiful earth : 
 
 Let us live, but to learn, love, and worship this boon 
 wilt thou give ? 
 
 Lord let us live ! " 
 
 This is the trouble of mortals : O, could we but bide 
 
 The turn of Life's tide, 
 
 Secure that the ebb would but prove in the end just 
 the flow ! 
 
 Ah, could we but know ! 
 
 The Wife. 
 
 So this is the sadness that weighs on your soul ? O, 
 my sweet, 
 
 1 will sit at your feet ! 
 
 Forgive, O, forgive me I craved the impossible; now 
 
 Let me kiss that white brow, 
 
 Let me kiss those dear lips ; O, blest be your wisest of 
 words : 
 
 Ah ! hearken the birds ! 
 
 A new burst of rapture ! That bee is quite drunk with 
 its dive ; 
 
 How it reels to the hive !
 
 H2 BY THE RIVER 
 
 You must, and shall live on and on to more glorious 
 times, 
 
 Not only in rhymes, 
 
 And in music that binds even nations together with 
 cords 
 
 That are proof against swords, 
 But with me, in our issue : united in children, this fire 
 
 This perfect desire 
 
 That shakes both our frames with a passion no sorrow 
 may kill, 
 
 Shall bloom in new will, 
 
 New hope, and new strength ; our sons and our 
 daughters shall bear 
 
 Our stamp, and shall wear 
 
 Our essence, our love and its power like an amulet ; 
 thus 
 
 The seed shall be us, 
 
 As we are but those who have yearned, loved, and 
 suffered before 
 
 Flesh-vesture we wore, 
 
 Who paid the dust tribute of flesh in its power and its 
 pride 
 
 The bridegroom and bride. 
 
 But, surely, my love, it is meet if we twain shall be one 
 In daughter and son,
 
 BY THE RIVER 113 
 
 That I should possess you entirely, and you me 
 possess ; 
 
 No more and no less ? 
 
 That I should have share in each thought, in each 
 hope, and should feel 
 
 There is naught to conceal ? 
 
 That your mind lie before me pellucid and bright as a 
 pond 
 
 With the sunset beyond, 
 
 And the colour of Heaven mirrored in it ; deep within 
 deep? 
 
 But why do you weep ? 
 
 The Musician. 
 
 The love that is felt with the soul is predestined 
 to be; 
 
 Sweet, such you give me : 
 Your love is a lily that flowers in a desolate field, 
 
 Its bloom was revealed 
 
 In a burst of most magical light from the flames of the 
 mind; 
 
 And, in it, I find 
 
 The passion of those who have vanished the loves of 
 the dead : 
 
 I have wooed and have wed 
 
 H
 
 114 BY THE RIVER 
 
 All the fair women who lived that my darling might 
 stand 
 
 A tower in the land. 
 We are but tenements built of the earth and the rain, 
 
 That struggle in vain 
 
 To stand the assaults of the years ; to them for a 
 space 
 
 Love shows a bright face 
 Inhabits his dwelling an hour, then passes away. 
 
 Love, with us to-day, 
 
 Sits at those heaven-lit windows, your passionate 
 eyes 
 
 Secure of his prize 
 
 He sits in the sunshine and smiles, but soon will 
 depart ; 
 
 The joy of your heart 
 Will pass to a tenement newer and brighter to him, 
 
 Your sight growing dim, 
 May see his glad face in the eyes of a daughter or son. 
 
 Thus love passes on : 
 Thus do we live again : love must eternally live ; 
 
 So passion can give 
 
 Hope to its captive : the love that is strong with the 
 past 
 
 Must bloom and outlast
 
 BY THE RIVER 115 
 
 All time : and I feel it : I thrill when I look at your 
 eyes,- 
 
 Such love never dies ! 
 
 But, child (1 must tell you the truth), though installed 
 in my heart 
 
 You know not one part ; 
 
 One chamber of thoughts that is filled with a splendour 
 divine 
 
 Is utterly mine ; 
 It opens not even to you though you carry love's key 
 
 And seldom to me : 
 
 Sometimes when I look at a flower, or an exquisite 
 plume, 
 
 Or a face, when gloom 
 
 Is heavy around me, or when the rare breath of a 
 rose 
 
 In the June breeze flows, 
 
 I am moved : a wonder of light floods the soul's inmost 
 hall, 
 
 And I hear God call 
 
 "Through Beauty I work and speak, and in Beauty 
 abide ; 
 
 Be thou at my side ! " 
 
 Often when sunsets flatter the west with prodigal gold 
 My spirit turns cold
 
 n6 BY THE RIVER 
 
 The ether that opens discloses a Ray from the 
 Throne 
 
 That lights me alone. 
 
 The yearnings that trouble my heart, those, those I 
 may share, 
 
 And pilot you where 
 
 Thought reels in the rays which Science has thrown 
 upon life; 
 
 But, sweetheart and wife, 
 
 The shrine of my soul must be sacred, even from 
 you, 
 
 Though your eyes be blue 
 As the beautiful sky that domes the Eden of dreams ; 
 
 For my spirit deems 
 
 Sacred to silence that place, where is fashioned the 
 word 
 
 God said should be heard ; 
 Nor can I tell you what is it that speaks to me when 
 
 Thought burns on the pen, 
 
 When I see in the innermost shrine the Light of the 
 Source, 
 
 And, feeling strange force, 
 
 From founts wherein bubble the magical secrets of 
 song, 
 
 New fantasies throng
 
 BY THE RIVER 117 
 
 The rapt mind, and with fervour and passion I write 
 
 In the world's despite. 
 
 And here, in this bower by the Thames, the heart in 
 my breast 
 
 By you, love, possessed, 
 
 My soul that leans ever towards the dim, unattainable 
 things, 
 
 Forgets you, and sings 
 
 To the Seraphim seated above that high altar of 
 flowers ; 
 
 Immaculate powers 
 
 Stand by its wonder of blossoms that spires to the 
 blue; 
 
 And, heedless of you, 
 
 I snatch at bright pinions that winnow the luminous 
 air, 
 
 And fain would be there 
 
 With those who transfigure the earth, where the 
 magical Gleam 
 
 Descends like a dream. 
 I love you, extol you my love is as deep as the sea ; 
 
 Yet fairer to me 
 
 Is that grove in full blossom : " But why " ? O, how 
 can I say ? 
 
 It is the soul's way !
 
 n8 BY THE RIVER 
 
 There is love within love, like the white flame centred 
 in red 
 
 The purest love, fed 
 
 By all the divinest, the deepest, best feelings of 
 men 
 
 Its glory shines when 
 
 One breaks through the trammels of flesh, and strains 
 to the light 
 
 With pleasure in sight. 
 At an altar built by the sun the soul was at prayer 
 
 The reredos of air 
 
 Stretches to God ; its base is all that our vision may 
 scan : 
 
 This suppliant man 
 Offered his Maker a soul that is all but your own ; 
 
 The loveliness grown 
 
 To a splendour that touched the deep springs of holiest 
 thought, 
 
 Deep reverence wrought 
 
 Drew me, compelled me to worship ; and thus to the 
 end, 
 
 Incomparable friend, 
 
 Sometimes I must turn from the light of your passionate 
 eyes 
 
 To look at the skies
 
 BY THE RIVER 119 
 
 To hear the great words that are uttered by blossoming 
 trees 
 
 In hours such as these, 
 
 When beings we know not possess the fair temples of 
 spring, 
 
 And nature must sing. 
 
 The Wife. 
 
 O, let me not crave for the sun ! I will cease to 
 repine, 
 
 Your love is divine : 
 
 My husband, the jealousy leaves me, and I under- 
 stand ; 
 
 O, give me your hand ; 
 Let my lips be still so that the soul in me may awake 
 
 And work for your sake : 
 In silence, then, shall be freedom and eloquent speech ; 
 
 My spirit shall reach 
 
 The heights by your help, beyond the unfathomable 
 sea, 
 
 You ever with me.
 
 TO A GREEK CRAFTSMAN 
 
 O CARVER of the sardonyx, by thy will 
 A stone became this perfect cameo : 
 We gaze upon thy craftsmanship, and lo ! 
 Greece rises on our vision : vale and hill 
 Set in a jewelled air ; blithe folk who thrill 
 With rapture such as we may never know, 
 Whose noble forms and perfect features show 
 What life was that of which they had their fill. 
 
 Vanished are these thy models ; regal head 
 And massive torso now have passed away : 
 But thou, O carver, though returned to clay, 
 Art not among the unremembered dead, 
 For here thy i,uul to this young face is wed, 
 And lives and smiles triumphantly to-day.
 
 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI 
 CANTORIS 
 
 i 
 
 WITHIN the hollow horologe of Time 
 
 Is there a silent summons for the dead ? 
 
 Is there a call for us from space sublime, 
 
 Or is Man's oldest hope discomfited ? 
 
 The sun the mother of the world who flies 
 
 Through the vast void towards the distant Lyre 
 
 With her bright children as her retinue, 
 
 Is voiceless in the skies, 
 Ploughing the unplumbed ether with her fire, 
 And none may know the prize she doth pursue ! 
 
 2 
 
 We have no portion save beneath the sun ; 
 We have no Eden save this heaven of earth ; 
 Man hears no summons, when his life is done, 
 Calling him upwards to a second birth.
 
 122 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 
 
 The sun is mistress of his fate ; she holds 
 Within her power all human will and power, 
 And Earth, her favourite child, is made so fair 
 
 That its bright robe enfolds 
 All that can charm us when our spirits flower 
 
 Anew in death's diviner, ampler air. 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 When this vast globe was but a fiery ball, 
 Thou, brother of the rose, wert in its heart ; 
 Thou with thy puissance, and thy pride, and all 
 The glories of thine high immortal art : 
 Man's flesh is but the substance of all spheres ; 
 In the great gulf of space there is but one 
 Sole substance in the worlds that ever move 
 
 Beyond our hopes and fears 
 In endless rhythm of life and death : the sun, 
 The earth, and man all come from light through 
 Love. 
 
 4 
 
 Man's frame, though clay, is yet transfigured clay ; 
 Possessed and guarded by the spirit of light ; 
 As force and matter but one law obey 
 Nothing may pass into an endless night :
 
 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 123 
 
 Thus what did once possess the husk of thee 
 Still lives, and maybe helps our souls to climb 
 To things we covet : yea, thy soul abides 
 
 Part of infinity 
 
 Moving Man's soul to make immortal rhyme, 
 Dearest of helpers, faithfullest of guides ! 
 
 5 
 
 O, splendid child of thine immortal song, 
 Here, where the cold earth hides what once was 
 
 thee, 
 
 Perchance sometimes thou standest, proud and strong, 
 With the young vigour of eternity, 
 Watching thy brothers as they come and gaze 
 Upon this grave far-famed for evermore. 
 What need for them to sing thy glories now ? 
 
 Afire with voiceless praise, 
 Here, by thy dust, they stand and see the door 
 Ajar, that hides from men thy laurelled brow. 
 
 6 
 
 Each year brings back thy memory with delight 
 When earth puts forth her hands in all the glades, 
 When lyric voices thrill from morn till night, 
 And the Spring's pageant glows, and fails, and fades ;
 
 124 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 
 
 Then thou art surely with us, day by day 
 Walking with him whose wild impassioned note 
 Of mourning pierced the stony ears of Fate : 
 
 Ah ! now can either say 
 Why the enchanted singer swells his throat, 
 And why he breaks his wings on Heaven's gate ? 
 
 7 
 
 I hold you loved the earth too well to leave 
 Its beauty unexhausted : you are still 
 Present with us, and this I do believe, 
 Our hearts are oft recorders of your will. 
 Dead poets surely help the spirit to rise 
 Sunward, on wings of most mysterious bliss, 
 When flower, or song, or face, or sunlight makes 
 
 A moment's paradise, 
 When the pure soul in man receives the kiss 
 Of God, and with strange stress of rapture aches. 
 
 8 
 
 Thou dost not leave us, O beloved and best, 
 Save as a swallow leaves his mother-land 
 When vizored Autumn shakes her crimson crest 
 And flaunts the torch she bears in either hand :
 
 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 125 
 
 Thou comest back attired in silver mist 
 Some gentle dawn of spring, when April nets 
 Morn's light, and makes it flowers : Earth's magic 
 
 change 
 
 To thee, her alchemist, 
 Is known, when, from soft vapour, violets 
 Draw their deep hue and perfume sweet and strange. 
 
 9 
 
 Flowers, whose ephemeral breath is food and wine 
 To thee, and all the souls who walk with thee, 
 Moved, in this life, that mighty heart of thine 
 As moonbeams move the impressionable sea ; 
 God's word to man is writ each year in flowers 
 When the cold earth awakens to the sun 
 To show that even in mire His splendours lie; 
 
 And so this clay of ours 
 Needs but the warmth of love to make it one 
 With earth, as earth appears with summer nigh. 
 
 10 
 
 There seems to blow about me all the while 
 Some breath of that far year in which there died 
 One whose most dauntless mien and radiant smile 
 Mirrored the morning and the morning's pride !
 
 126 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 
 
 Thy brief day broke in beauty, but there came 
 Ere noon the fell, the devastating breath, 
 The hot sirocco, of a dire disease, 
 
 Thy forfeit life to claim ; 
 
 For bards who sweetliest sing are loved of Death, 
 Who covets those who live in ecstasies ! 
 
 ii 
 What transports, Keats, were thine, whilst fruitless 
 
 love 
 
 Like some Enchanter's city, rose and shone 
 Silvery across the waste when thou didst move 
 Towards the sunlit slopes of Helicon ! 
 Then, when the lovely mirage disappeared, 
 And, breathless, thou hadst gained the honeyed hill, 
 Not even the draught of Friendship's Hippocrene 
 
 Thy drooping spirit cheered, 
 But thou didst weep, thy wan lips trembled still 
 Because of all the joys that might have been. 
 
 12 
 
 Thy bedfellow is one of strenuous heart 
 Who wished to lie near thee that he might hear 
 Thy songs in death : true friends, ye did not part 
 When thou wert lifted from the Roman bier:
 
 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 127 
 
 He saw the aureole above thy brow, 
 
 When sacred tears bedewed thy wasted face ; 
 
 And here, behold ! these violets have shed 
 
 Their seed for him, and now 
 His grave is one with thine, and all the place 
 Is bright with flowers that charm the happy dead. 
 
 13 
 
 Thou art not there, though the deluded earth 
 Smiles at the thought that thou art hers alone 
 The rose has knowledge of thy second birth, 
 The ringdove blends thy singing with her 
 
 moan; 
 
 And the laburnums, in love's lyric time, 
 O'erjoyed to see thy face, weep golden tears ; 
 The skylark praises thee in every lay ; 
 
 Thine is the eternal prime, 
 Thou wert the amaranth of dreary years, 
 And, being immortal, may'st not fade away. 
 
 14 
 
 When woods are hung with tapestry of flame 
 The fleeting beauty of thy face one sees 
 In all the hectic splendour, and thy name 
 One hears in the susurrus of the trees ;
 
 128 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 
 
 And in the summer thee our souls discern 
 Far in the copses, where thou seekest flowers, 
 Passing from dewy rose to dewy rose, 
 
 When the bright blossoms burn 
 With sense of something kindlier than showers, 
 The kiss thine immaterial mouth bestows. 
 
 15 
 
 And when the fragrant summer air falls o'er 
 The long, lush grass, and makes a dusty wave, 
 Yea, and when orchards redden with their store, 
 Surely thou art not sleeping in thy grave ? 
 No ! for thou standest then where winds blow 
 
 sweet, 
 
 Watching the ripples, or beside the press 
 Wherein some western yeoman makes his wine ; 
 
 Or, with thy silent feet, 
 Thou comest to me, to show me loveliness 
 That did escape these purblind eyes of mine ! 
 
 16 
 
 To those who toil in cities clamorous 
 Thou art a solace ever: like a bird 
 Singing aloft in cloud, thou singest to us 
 Songs that are sweet as any we have heard.
 
 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 129 
 
 Whilst in the roaring mart, absorbed in gain, 
 Often the spirit hears thy magic voice 
 Telling of higher, purer things than gold ; 
 
 Then, poet, not in vain 
 Thou singest, for our hearts at once rejoice, 
 Knowing the bliss of what may not be told. 
 
 17 
 
 Seeing thy face in flowers, with misty eyes, 
 Heartsore and heavy with an unsung song, 
 Comes hither he who seeks the poet's prize, 
 Comes hither weak, and hence departeth strong ; 
 Ever a silent welcome greets him here, 
 Where Joy and Sorrow hold the laurel wreath 
 Above the blossoms of thy resting-place : 
 
 Dear shade, now doubly dear, 
 It is not thee who silent lies beneath 
 This light of flowers for I can see thy face ! 
 
 18 
 
 Thine was the fate of Pyramus to leave 
 The ungarnered harvest and the ripening fruit ; 
 The strength of youth was but a make-believe, 
 Death drained the sap that filled the blossoming 
 
 shoot 
 
 I
 
 130 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 
 
 Death's ruthless fingers froze the lips of June 
 June, wreathed with roses and the passion flower 
 But bruised them first, alas, and made them bleed, 
 
 In envy of the tune 
 
 That fell therefrom in thine exalted hour, 
 Proud soul that perished with thy hopeful seed ! 
 
 19 
 
 Fame brought thee glory that will never fade, 
 But cold such favours fall when life is gone ! 
 She mocked thee with such tardy accolade, 
 For thou wert pauper with thy triumphs won ; 
 Yet, rich indeed wert thou ; O, richer far 
 Than kings, with heavenly fortune of the mind ; 
 Most affluent youth, whose modest name was writ 
 
 Beneath Fame's brilliant star 
 In the eternal ice, that men may find 
 A lesson in the words engraved on it ! 
 
 20 
 
 Thou who didst eat Ambition's bitter bread, 
 Thou whom old Homer kindled into flame, 
 Better it was, perhaps, that thou wert dead 
 Before thy songs were trumpeted by Fame ;
 
 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 131 
 
 For thou wert but a cup of delicate glass 
 
 With the eternal iris in its hue 
 
 Too fragile for the rudeness of thy day 
 
 And thus it was, alas, 
 
 That, like all joys thy god-like fancy knew 
 The cup being broke, the iris passed away ! 
 
 21 
 
 Yes, passed away, but only from our sight, 
 
 The iris shineth still in all thy song, 
 
 And through another sense we see the light 
 
 That gives thee honour in the immortal throng : 
 
 For thine was inextinguishable fire, 
 
 And surely it was meet that thou shouldst go 
 
 Forth from thy fellows, in thy splendid years, 
 
 Thy golden wizard lyre 
 
 Cast at Death's feet as gage, with all the glow 
 Of hope about thee, mocking trivial tears ? 
 
 22 
 
 Thus young thou art for ever, fair and young; 
 Endymion hath vanished, but his voice 
 Doth echo still on Latmos ; still are sung 
 The songs that make Diana's heart rejoice ;
 
 132 SEPULCRUM DULCISS1MI CANTORIS 
 
 A spirit went out from thee which leads the soul 
 O'er Beauty's highway to the city of bliss, 
 Outliving mistimed death ; and we can see 
 
 How thou dost oft console 
 
 Despairing hearts with thy sweet word, and this 
 Gives thee the passport to eternity. 
 
 23 
 
 Where robins raise bright song in brilliant jets, 
 Straight from the fountains of their happy hearts ; 
 Where fairy laughter rises, and regrets 
 Most sweetly choired, before the swallow starts 
 Forth on his autumn pilgrimage, to me 
 There seems a hint of thee, as once, when sighs 
 Of joy first came, and sunlit sycamores 
 
 Hummed with thy melody, 
 Where thou didst make my heart's clear fountain 
 
 rise, 
 And opened Heaven's innumerable doors ! 
 
 24 
 
 Receive my chaplet, thou whose memory lives ! 
 Grateful am I to thee for all the good 
 Thy song with its most magic music gives 
 To those who feel song's magic in their blood !
 
 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 133 
 
 Dear spirit, when I hear the adventurous lark 
 
 Repeat celestial music to the earth 
 
 Clear from the crystal stairway of the morn, 
 
 I seem to see the dark 
 
 Where Poesy wandered blindfold, then thy mirth 
 I hear heaven's music Song's new day being 
 
 born! 
 
 25 
 
 The dark soil drinks the crimson cloud, 
 And knoweth heav'n: then brown buds shape and 
 
 swell, 
 
 And earth, fulfilled of dreams, bedecks the shroud 
 Of the dead year, in copse and dewy dell, 
 With broidery of bloom, in dappled shade. 
 Flowers spring from sunset hues the earth hath 
 
 stored 
 
 In her cold breast, from visionary light 
 Thus we absorb the light thy Fame controls 
 
 So lavishly outpoured 
 
 Upon the soil of our cold hearts, and bright 
 The blossoms show upon our flowering souls ! 
 
 26 
 
 Thou wert not lured to wander far away 
 Into the winter of the skies, besprent
 
 134 SEPULCRUM DULCISSIMI CANTORIS 
 
 With sad hoar-frost of stars, for now, to-day, 
 Here thou art with me, breath with breath is blent ; 
 Thou shunnest all the dim-conjectured spheres, 
 And here pursuest still the toilful march 
 Man makes towards the things he may not know ; 
 
 And, full of hopes and fears, 
 Thou labourest on beneath that azure arch 
 Which spans all human joy and human woe. 
 
 27 
 
 friend, whose music is a joy to me, 
 
 1 need not say adieu we do not part 
 'Tis but farewell unto thy grave, not thee, 
 Whose nightingale is singing in my heart ! 
 O, may the breath of Man's supreme desire 
 Blow on the soul's incalculable flame, 
 
 And make more blooms like those that proudly 
 
 fling 
 
 Aloft their heads of fire 
 Deep in the sacred pleasaunces of Fame, 
 Where thou hast found imperishable spring !
 
 THE GRAPES OF YOUTH 
 
 LIFE gave largesse of fruit to me 
 
 (Ah, love, the blossoms of youth are sweet /) 
 Fresh from the gardens of Faery, 
 Misted with vapours of Fantasy, 
 Most luscious grapes that a man may see. 
 
 (Ah, youth, the passing of love is fleet /) 
 
 God whispered " Charily, one by one " 
 
 (Sing hey the kisses of youth are sweet /) 
 " Eat of that fruit in shade or sun, 
 So shall it last till thy day be done." 
 (Sing ho the pinions of love are fleet /) 
 
 The proud sun opened the morning's gate 
 
 (Sing hey youth 's pulses do wildly beat /) 
 And at noontide hot I seized and ate 
 All all my mouth was insatiate. 
 
 (Sing ho for passion and fire-winged feet /) 
 135
 
 136 THE GRAPES OF YOUTH 
 
 Then at gloaming-time my drouth waxed sore. 
 
 (Ah, love, how slowly do worn hearts beat /) 
 Time offers bounty from many a store, 
 But God, who has barred the Devil's door, 
 Cries " Prodigal, fool, no more, no more ! " 
 
 {Ah me, how weary are old men s feet /)
 
 A PjEAN OF MARCH 
 
 COME, mad March wind, and toss the sea 
 
 In wild abandoned ecstasy, 
 
 And let the music of the main 
 
 Surge through my languid heart again, 
 
 The music cradled in pinewoods 
 
 Afar in Baltic solitudes, 
 
 The whisper to a chorus grown 
 
 With lofty ode and antiphon. 
 
 2 
 
 Wind of the endless winter-waste 
 Come hither, that our souls may taste 
 The sense of Purity. O, thrill 
 Each sea-bird with new joy ; then fill 
 Each grey-green billow with desire 
 To leap with laughter, foam, and fire.
 
 138 A P^AN OF MARCH 
 
 3 
 
 How good it is to drink the spray 
 From out the briny winds at play 
 To taste the quintessential bloom 
 Of tumbling leagues of ocean spume ; 
 Thence this March wind such vintage strips 
 As lights my brain and dews my lips ; 
 Wine of the sea, for which has bled 
 The foam-cluster unharvested ; 
 Clear, ay, and maddening as the moon, 
 Mysterious, like an echoed Rune 
 Rung down this very wind to-day 
 From Viking-times and Norroway, 
 Gone with the dreams the world has dreamed. 
 And so indeed it may be deemed 
 That the brine borne from distant shores 
 Across these desecrated moors, 
 Athwart these groves of sooted larch, 
 Recalls, on this wild morn of March, 
 Our early dreams and Viking-days, 
 Our sunrising and morning's blaze, 
 Faded beneath the Norns' dread curse, 
 And gone for better or for worse.
 
 A P^EAN OF MARCH 139 
 
 4 
 
 Wind of the gleaming North, thy breath 
 Makes sport of Man, and Life, and Death : 
 Thou singest with tempestuous mirth 
 Of morning freshness o'er the earth, 
 Of merry seamen on the wave 
 Mad with the rapture freedom gave ; 
 The eternal Saga is thy song, 
 For ever new, for ever strong. 
 Now, surely, olden voices fill 
 The airy halls ! Hark ! deep and shrill 
 The echoes of the warrior time 
 Blend with the war- waves' martial chime ; 
 And gleams of bygone splendours flash 
 When the majestic breakers crash : 
 Thoughts come and make us overflow 
 With sharp desire when thou dost blow, 
 All of the restless Gothic life ; 
 The awful happiness of strife ; 
 The gardens of the ocean home 
 Whose only blossoms are of foam ; 
 Tftie maidens, April-eyed, with hair 
 Like birchen leaves when, coldly fair, 
 October brings her ruddy brand 
 To work bright ruin in the land ;
 
 140 A P^EAN OF MARCH 
 
 The maidens who were sent to be 
 Transmitters of our destiny, 
 Whose jewels were of rainbow-spray 
 When sunbeams lit the waterway ; 
 Mothers of lion-hearted men 
 Who served our land with weapons when 
 That Northern bravery and pride, 
 With godlike wisdom close allied, 
 Gave to our race what must outlast 
 All tinsel glories of the past. 
 
 5 
 
 Brave Vikings, all whose blue eyes shone 
 With sea-light in the days bygone, 
 Bright blue and ever-changing grey, 
 Like ocean pools or melting spray 
 Methinks I see the bubbled brine 
 Upon your crisp beards leonine, 
 The tangled tufts of tawny hair 
 Like the sere tussocks waving there ! 
 Ye saw upon the summer sky . 
 
 The pomp of Odin's blazonry, 
 And marked your gods in arrowy flames 
 Write on the heavens their magic names,
 
 A P.EAN OF MARCH 141 
 
 Which the clouds clarioned to the earth 
 With Thor's acclaim of awful mirth. 
 Brave warriors ! Ye, with steadfast eyes 
 Fixed on the lands of fair surmise, 
 Ye found the unperturbed sea 
 At last, and though your memory 
 Is gore-bespattered, still the Power 
 Who gave the storm its dreadful dower 
 Of fierceness, shaped you for His ends 
 O, fierce to foes, and fair to friends ! 
 
 6 
 
 Come, Northern wind, and freshen us 
 In this red land so dolorous, 
 This dull red land of brick and stone 
 Where Lady Beauty makes her moan, 
 Within a palace dungeon-walled 
 By a great ogre-fiend enthralled, 
 A giant grim, hight Wealth, who keeps 
 Her in duresse, and ever steeps 
 His passion in her tears ; and none, 
 Though lovers hath she many a one, 
 May see her face, but only he 
 And his foul scion Luxury.
 
 142 A P^EAN OF MARCH 
 
 7 
 
 Resonant breath of storm and snow, 
 Which thrilled our fathers years ago 
 Again, again blow wild and strong, 
 To thrill our island into song ; 
 Come, fan the daffodils to flame, 
 And shake the woods in grand acclaim; 
 Strengthen our nerves, make clear our sight, 
 For life's most keen and deadly fight ; 
 Come, move our pulses with the power 
 Of Vikings in the battle-hour !
 
 FROM RIOU TO THE SEA 
 
 L A LETTER 
 
 i 
 
 WlLT thou return, poor city slave, and tread these 
 
 paths with me, 
 
 Over the granite Pyrenees from Riou to the sea, 
 By blossoming vale, by barren peak, by glacier, crag, 
 
 and scree ? 
 O, come again to Cauterets, and I will walk with thee ! 
 
 2 
 
 The ice of Vignemale is firm, my piolet is here 
 
 The rope is ready on my arm, the burden standing 
 
 near; 
 There is a peak that tempts my heart, nor safe nor yet 
 
 too sheer, 
 What joy to climb its giddy wall, that crag without a 
 
 peer! 
 
 143
 
 144 FROM RIOU TO THE SEA 
 
 3 
 Dark armies of the spruce and pine are spreading 
 
 everywhere, 
 The silver mists rise up like steam, white torrents 
 
 shake the air 
 Heavy with balsam, warm as milk, and on the steep 
 
 Pe*guere, 
 The cocks that preen their varnished wings have 
 
 found the morning fair. 
 
 4 
 
 What bliss to win the unconquered crest, to see the 
 snow-king's flower, 
 
 The gentian and the Alpine rose, the vulture's barren 
 bower ; 
 
 To mark the springald ibex leap from rocky tower to 
 tower, 
 
 To feel the stinging whips of hail, the sudden thunder- 
 shower ! 
 
 5 
 
 Thou knowest not the precipice, the ice, the treacher- 
 ous snow ; 
 
 The isard's path, the eagle's perch my friend, how 
 canst thou know?
 
 FROM RIOU TO THE SEA 145 
 
 I love to guide a hillsman's feet where cowards may 
 
 not go 
 Above the chasms that stretch to death five thousand 
 
 feet below. 
 
 Rememberest thou that summer night ? How sweet 
 
 the moments flew ! 
 We saw the planets pace their course o'er pathways 
 
 ever new ; 
 Thou couldst not sleep because of all the stars that 
 
 came in view, 
 So near they seemed ! We might have reached and 
 
 plucked them from the blue ! 
 
 7 
 
 Return, O brother of the North, and do not say 
 
 me nay; 
 The mountains scent our mountain blood ; they call us 
 
 day by day 
 " Come hither to our milky breasts, ye children strayed 
 
 away, 
 Come hither to the mother's lap, take nourishment, 
 
 and stay."
 
 146 FROM RIOU TO THE SEA 
 
 II. THE ANSWER 
 
 i 
 FRIEND, I will travel to the South, in answer to 
 
 thy call, 
 
 To taste the joys of throbbing hours upon the icy wall, 
 To see Gavarnie's argent plume, her slender waterfall ; 
 To feel the power of splendid peaks uptowering 
 
 over all ! 
 
 Once, whilst I clomb with faltering feet a fearful 
 
 precipice 
 Hearing in dizzy coign and cleft the wind's portentous 
 
 hiss, 
 Thou, snatching at a thistle seed that sailed the great 
 
 abyss, 
 Didst cry " O man, before our God we are not less 
 
 than this ! 
 
 3 
 " He guides the little flower of silk, thus He directs 
 
 thy feet. 
 Courage ! we mount to glorious heights, to see great 
 
 kingdoms meet,
 
 FROM RIOU TO THE SEA 147 
 
 To see full seventy leagues of hills a-shimmer in the 
 
 heat." 
 Friend, as I climbed, and gazed, I knew that life was 
 
 passing sweet. 
 
 4 
 We drank the sparkling wine of heaven, we slumbered 
 
 in thy cave, 
 
 Grasping the chilly joys of morn, the peace that 
 evening gave ; 
 
 We heard God singing in His House a high im- 
 passioned stave 
 
 And trembled with immortal hope upon earth's archi- 
 trave. 
 
 5 
 
 What time the Dog-star signalled us above the drouth 
 of Spain, 
 
 Night held her breath awhile to hear the glacier 
 mouths complain ; 
 
 And high upon the blue-black sky she showed the 
 diamond stain 
 
 Of sparkling dust that lies beyond the confines of the 
 
 brain. 
 
 6 
 
 I will return, O mountaineer, together we shall stand 
 When riven rocks leap overhead ; our foreheads shall 
 be fanned
 
 148 FROM RIOU TO THE SEA 
 
 By cool winds from the distant sea, when, sitting 
 
 hand in hand, 
 We journey down on silver slides, and leave the silver 
 
 land. 
 
 7 
 
 To breathe the South's voluptuous breath, hold con- 
 verse with the stars, 
 
 And see wild sunsets gild the peaks above night's 
 purple bars ; 
 
 To watch the day run forth like some young warrior 
 to the wars 
 
 Into that pure and holy calm no alien ever mars, 
 
 I will return, my Southern friend, and thou shalt walk 
 
 with me, 
 For thou and I have equal blood, sons of the hills 
 
 are we ; 
 Though sunk in earth, though burnt with fire what 
 
 once companioned thee, 
 Thy soul and mine again shall go from Riou to 
 
 the sea !
 
 POSTPONEMENT 
 
 IN an evil hour he gazed on her, 
 
 I marked the sphere in her swan-throat stir; 
 
 'Twas a devil's glance, and she could but go : 
 He made her his toy for a night and a day, 
 Then offered her gold, and sent her away, 
 
 Her pink cheeks blanched like the driven snow. 
 
 She fled to me full of ice and flame, 
 
 She kissed my feet, and whispered my name. 
 
 I fought with my heart, whence passion had 
 
 flown. 
 
 But the horror within me conquered my love, 
 And I cried, " Nor prayers nor kisses can move 
 
 A soul, now cold as a glacier stone." 
 
 Then I journeyed eve and morn and noon, 
 Praying, " O God, let me find him soon ! " 
 
 When thrushes were singing their morning 
 hymn 
 
 Mt
 
 150 POSTPONEMENT 
 
 We two met at last in an Apennine wood, 
 
 And I struggled hard for his devil's blood, 
 
 But the Prince of Devils fought for him. 
 
 My sight was clouded, my limbs were weak : 
 The blood of boyhood was in his cheek, 
 
 And he laughed, triumphantly strong and well, 
 With his heel on my ashen lips bruised and dumb 
 He left me dead, but his torture will come, 
 
 The mind of man is the heart of hell !
 
 AN ELEGY 
 I 
 
 THINE accents echo in mine ears, 
 Though what thou wert has ceased to be, 
 Thus many a voice the spirit hears 
 That sounds not audibly. 
 
 And thine was like a rivulet's, 
 When April floods the land with praise, 
 Shy Nightingale, whose sweet regrets 
 Made bitter-sweet our days ! 
 
 When songs like thine on earth are heard, 
 A deep and holy joy they move, 
 As if some pure transcendent bird 
 Sang more than mortal love. 
 
 And more than mortal love was thine : 
 Eternal passion 'twas a fire 
 Within a cloud a deep, divine, 
 Unquenchable desire.
 
 152 AN ELEGY 
 
 We hear thy song ; our spirits glow ; 
 And many see who erst were blind ; 
 Such influence from thy mind doth flow 
 To light the baser mind. 
 
 II 
 
 Thy smile was generous as a kiss 
 From sweet maternal lips ; its light 
 Was beauty from the source of bliss, 
 Thou holy eremite. 
 
 For looking long at Heaven, thy face 
 Reflected Heaven ; 'twas glorified : 
 Perchance we also, by this grace, 
 Shone brighter at thy side. 
 
 Ill 
 
 O poignant thought ! Hast thou not missed 
 The flame of life's delicious morn ? 
 Love gave me blooms of amethyst, 
 And thee a flowerless thorn.
 
 AN ELEGY 153 
 
 For me earth's ever-varying scene, 
 And seas that thou hast never viewed ; 
 Clear mountain air ; the fairy sheen 
 Of desert solitude : 
 
 Whilst thou didst linger in thy square 
 Watching the clouds with hungry eyes, 
 Yet, with an angel singing there, 
 That place was Paradise ! 
 
 Once only didst thou seek the South 
 Till then a hope most sweet and strange 
 Returning with a trembling mouth, 
 And troubled eyes of change. 
 
 IV 
 
 Dear soul that fasted when the feast 
 Was laid before thee, Love once came 
 Like morning magic from the east ; 
 Yet Love was but a name : 
 
 Yea, but a name, though wide and far 
 Thy halcyon songs have made it heard ; 
 For Love was but a splendid star 
 To thee, a lonely bird.
 
 154 AN ELEGY 
 
 Inscrutable God's purpose lies 
 Wide-written on the changing earth ; 
 Unsolved still the mysteries 
 Of Love, and Death, and Birth. 
 
 Change overcomes the very deep 
 That holds the monstrous, quivering sun ; 
 Some day his lessening orb will sleep 
 And all days be as one. 
 
 Now thou art changed, and there are men 
 Who tell us that thou dost not live : 
 Doubts issue forth like vapours when 
 Wan faith is fugitive : 
 
 Doubts issue forth from Time's abyss ; 
 The cold grave yawns ; Life's end must come : 
 We cry, " One word ! one look ! one kiss ! " 
 Alas, the dead are dumb ! 
 
 Yet should the brightness, wont to play 
 About thee, be for ever dead, 
 We dreamers are but lamps of clay 
 Lit, and extinguished
 
 AN ELEGY 155 
 
 Chimeras, phantoms burning bright 
 With splendour of elusive dreams 
 That move, like meteors, through a night 
 Made darker by their gleams. 
 
 VI 
 
 Vain, vain the thought ! I hope, I feel 
 Thy soul remains with us and knows 
 At last what Life and Love conceal 
 The meaning of our woes. 
 
 Death is but slumber : some arise 
 Therefrom, and know a lovelier morn 
 Than that which lightens in the skies 
 For man of woman born : 
 
 And thou hast issued from thy sleep, 
 With fuller knowledge born of pain ; 
 To hear the deep call unto deep, 
 To sing sweet songs again. 
 
 Unchanged thy spirit, save, perchance, 
 With greater happiness more fair ;
 
 156 AN ELEGY 
 
 More lovely grows the countenance 
 In Heaven's benignant air. 
 
 Beyond our ken thou art, but still 
 We feel thee near us day by day, 
 Guiding with thy auspicious will 
 Our steps upon the way. 
 
 VII 
 
 For thee deep Arno's flowery meads 
 Are spread, and Dante lingers there 
 To show thee how the lily feeds 
 On sweet Italian air. 
 
 There, too, in some poetic haunt 
 Grave Milton thou may'st haply meet, 
 Whose mortal music angels chaunt, 
 Thronged at the master's feet. 
 
 Thy mortal music, too, they sing, 
 And friends lost only to be found 
 Hearken to songs that charm The King, 
 And thrill the laurel-crowned.
 
 AN ELEGY 157 
 
 VIII 
 
 Now may'st thou seek the mountain chain 
 When morning leaps from crest to crest, 
 And see the misty leagues of plain 
 Shine like a dove's bright breast. 
 
 To thee the seas their powers display ; 
 The clouds are now thy charioteers ; 
 Where, through the undiminished day, 
 Thou smilest on thy peers. 
 
 Now thou dost know the lovely speech 
 Of birds the language of the pure 
 And truths beyond our little reach 
 In fields of thought obscure. 
 
 The voices of the silent trees, 
 The utterances of springing flowers ; 
 Thou must have cognizance of these 
 With thy perfected powers. 
 
 To thee there is nor far nor near; 
 Thee space and time do not impede ; 
 Like thought thou rovest flitting here 
 And there where Love may lead.
 
 158 AN ELEGY 
 
 IX 
 
 Within each petal of the rose 
 A perfect rainbow may be seen ; 
 The lily through her pallor shows 
 A seven-hued mystic sheen. 
 
 Nor flower nor tree that breathes and blooms 
 By virtue of the azure skies 
 But guards more mystery than in tombs 
 Of ancient Egypt lies. 
 
 The riddles that we may not solve 
 Perplex us in the world we know, 
 Their mazes day by day evolve 
 Where knowledge cannot go. 
 
 Stars give no hope, immensely bright ; 
 Fierce with unutterable fires : 
 They lure us trembling to their light 
 To find but blazing pyres. 
 
 But promises are written clear 
 Upon the petals of each flower, 
 And hopes are hid in beauty here 
 To fill the soul with power.
 
 AN ELEGY 159 
 
 For Heaven is near us, and we hail 
 At times a light upon the mind, 
 That issues from beyond the Veil 
 And not from humankind. 
 
 Some voice with God's voice in it thrills 
 The soul a moment some sweet strain 
 Of music moves us and fulfils 
 The heart with rapturous pain. 
 
 At times a glimpse of ocean wakes 
 Within us what is more than man ; 
 Or, breathed upon, the spirit makes 
 Music aeolian. 
 
 So, when in mood exultant sings 
 The soul, we surely apprehend 
 That near us beat the unwearied wings 
 Of some transfigured friend. 
 
 And Heaven is always present here, 
 Not in the stars beyond the sun ; 
 And, Heaven being near us, thou art near; 
 For Heaven and earth are one.
 
 160 AN ELEGY 
 
 X 
 
 The first pale crocus of the year 
 Shall brave the wind to court thy view ; 
 Thou still art living, though thy bier 
 Bore rosemary and rue. 
 
 O, modest, tender, perfect soul, 
 Whose sacrificial life sublime 
 Placed thee beyond Fame's wide control, 
 Triumphant over Time. 
 
 Thou standest in Perfection's place, 
 Communing with the Holy Dove ; 
 Made one with Beauty, Truth, and Grace, 
 And comraded by Love. 
 
 The spirit has eternal youth ; 
 What once thou wert, not thee we mourn ; 
 For thou hast found the glorious truth, 
 And, dead, thou art re-born.
 
 SACRAMENT BEFORE BATTLE 
 
 GIVE ear, O Lord : our feet are on the stairs 
 That lead to Death, we humbly come to Thee 
 As children to their Father ; hear our prayers 
 For victory ! 
 
 The hills are clothed in silence as a robe, 
 And war seems but a whispered word, that strives 
 To show new meanings in our wondrous globe 
 And in our lives. 
 
 Thou, who hast made the fiery-hearted earth 
 Obedient to its mighty brake of tide 
 Hast checked the wheels of life killed ribald mirth, 
 And vanquished pride, 
 
 Give us Thy peace within Thought's inner shrine, 
 We would forget all sin and all disgrace ; 
 Lend us Thy Light, Thy Sympathy divine, 
 Grant us Thy Face ! 
 
 161 L
 
 1 62 SACRAMENT BEFORE BATTLE 
 
 Thine Empire ever glimmers in Man's thought 
 The supreme wonder : in our childhood's days 
 Bright seemed the vision, when our mothers taught 
 Their sons Thy praise. 
 
 A planet, burning in the sunset flames 
 Last night, led fancy back to homeland, where 
 Those loving mothers, murmuring our names 
 Blend them with prayer. 
 
 Perchance their intercessions brought us here, 
 We, their most froward sons, who understand 
 Their great love now, and hold it doubly dear 
 With death at hand. 
 
 Our souls are strengthened when Thy lamps o'er- 
 
 hang 
 
 The dusty veldt, where dear, dead comrades sleep ; 
 A magic voice more clear than trumpet clang 
 
 Cries from the deep : 
 
 For Thou, enthroned above the Milky Way, 
 Above all suns and mighty seed of suns, 
 Seest the pathos of each trivial day 
 That swiftly runs,
 
 SACRAMENT BEFORE BATTLE 163 
 
 And, pitying man who blindly strives to kill, 
 Givest the soul new vision to descry 
 One Will triumphant beyond human will 
 And Destiny. 
 
 And thus our penitence we bring to Thee, 
 Having naught else for Thine high altar, Lord, 
 Save love and trust ; the hope that men may see 
 We bear Thy sword.
 
 TO OUR DEAD HEROES 
 
 i 
 
 WE will avenge you, honoured dead, 
 
 We will avenge you yet, 
 So bravely following, bravely led, 
 
 How can your kin forget ? 
 Crippled by carelessness you fought, 
 
 Lacking both steed and gun, 
 Your triumphs all too dearly bought 
 
 Yes, all too bravely won ! 
 
 2 
 With valiant hearts you sternly faced 
 
 The fearful storms of lead, 
 And, falling, you were not disgraced 
 
 Nor yet discomfited: 
 For in your keeping was the fame 
 
 Of lands no foe may raid, 
 Thus was it that the battle flame 
 
 Slew warriors undismayed !
 
 TO OUR DEAD HEROES 165 
 
 You bore the lash of fiery whips 
 
 With firm, unfaltering feet ; 
 Dying with smiles upon your lips 
 
 In hellish dust and heat. 
 Our hearts are larger for your deeds, 
 
 And strong our souls have grown, 
 Never in vain the hero bleeds 
 
 When War's ripe fields are mown. 
 
 Where bullets hummed the dreadful song 
 
 Of death in driving rain, 
 You, in the darkness, proud and strong, 
 
 Drank of the cup of pain : 
 Death's unseen shuttle wove your doom, 
 
 But, like a splendid star, 
 Your fame shines bright above the gloom 
 
 And scorpion stings of war.
 
 1 66 TO OUR DEAD HEROES 
 
 5 
 
 Yes, in a weak and foolish pride 
 
 Our prudence was forgot : 
 You made the sacrifice, and died 
 
 To show what we were not : 
 O glorious are your graves where, crouched, 
 
 The quivering lions fret 
 To prove what you by death have vouched, 
 
 Britain is Britain yet !
 
 ACCEPTED 
 
 I 
 
 To-DAY is full of coming days ; 
 Upon my infant empire's throne 
 I sit, and tremble with amaze, 
 Alone, yet not alone. 
 
 A noble prize, indeed, is mine, 
 The fairest realm beneath the skies, 
 Whose unimagined riches shine 
 In two serene blue eyes. 
 
 So far beneath her did I stand, 
 I seemed a beggar at her gate ! 
 I knocked : she drew the bolt her hand 
 Bestowed her heart, her fate.
 
 1 68 ACCEPTED 
 
 She showed to me, a soul forlorn, 
 Her spirit's perfect splendour, then 
 I was as marble warmed by morn, 
 Nay, changed to flesh of men ! 
 
 Like sunrise on a blushing rose 
 The fire that fell upon her cheeks, 
 Or such auroral light as glows 
 On solemn Alpine peaks. 
 
 How cold I thought her once ! No hint 
 She gave of love that might be told ; 
 But flame lies latent in the flint, 
 Although the flint be cold. 
 
 The light that shone upon her face 
 Fell from an unknown, fairer sky, 
 That domes the beatific place 
 Of love and mystery. 
 
 II 
 
 Morn swung the censers of the wood 
 In honour of this golden hour,
 
 ACCEPTED 169 
 
 And bade the poppy doff her hood, 
 The hawthorn break in flower. 
 
 Surely an unseen eremite 
 Walks in this golden-fretted gloom 
 With frankincense of fir ! Delight 
 Springs from the rich perfume. 
 
 The cuckoo calls ; the bluebells hang 
 Serenely in the Eden-glow ; 
 The adder has forgot her fang, 
 The ringdove all her woe. 
 
 The high hills' velvet slopes enclose 
 An unfamiliar joy ; the wind 
 Like some mysterious essence flows 
 Through body and through mind. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The soul is fashioned by our thought, 
 Our life is fashioned by the soul, 
 And earth's fair scenes are surely naught 
 But our own selves made whole !
 
 1 70 ACCEPTED 
 
 Creation's work is now fulfilled 
 
 In me ; my soul is made entire ; 
 
 An unimagined zest has thrilled 
 
 My veins, and this new fire 
 
 Brings presciences of lovely years 
 Within the Future's mystic womb, 
 Untouched by grief, unchilled by tears, 
 Unshadowed by the tomb.
 
 THE RE-AWAKENING 
 
 I 
 
 THE sleeping soul in this intranquil breast, 
 
 Forgetful of past song and song's delight, 
 
 Lay trance-bound, and the day seemed almost night; 
 
 When, hearing thy most precious melody, 
 
 I saw a rolling moorland and the crest 
 
 Of a blue hill, a raven's lofty flight, 
 
 And the grey splendour of the northern sea. 
 
 The scene took life within my brain. I heard 
 More than thy music, for I heard God speak : 
 "What gift," He cried, "is that which thou dost 
 
 seek? 
 
 The gift I gave outshines a world of gold ! " 
 Then with a morning breath my spirit stirred, 
 Resolve ran flaming into either cheek ; 
 " No more," I said, " shall I be bought and sold ! "
 
 172 THE RE-AWAKENING 
 
 My soul awoke and opened wide her eyes, 
 
 Spread venturous wings, and rose into the blue, 
 
 And like a tempest-riding falcon flew 
 
 To thine abode, where all thy glorious peers 
 
 Live in earth's unsuspected paradise ; 
 
 And, seeing there thy beckoning smile, she knew 
 
 The tears within her eyes were happy tears. 
 
 Thy light aroused the slumbering seeds of song, 
 And lo ! within my heart another spring 
 Blossomed, and all the birds of hope took wing, 
 Flashing amidst the sunshine of my bliss ; 
 I heard strange music, and my soul grew strong, 
 Touched by a spell that is no transient thing, 
 Which glorifies a life more large than this. 
 
 II 
 
 The breath of Poesy is more than sweet ! 
 
 More bright and bounteous are her gifts to me 
 
 Than heather billows to the blithesome bee 
 
 Dizzy with mead of the empurpled moor ; 
 
 In happy mood she sits at Beauty's feet 
 
 And shows me wonders I alone may see, 
 
 All touched with radiance from God's open door.
 
 THE RE-AWAKENING 173 
 
 III 
 
 How few, alas ! are those who ever know 
 
 Their soul's true strength ! we let our daily toil 
 
 Take toll of joy, and we refuse the soil 
 
 Of our cold hearts the warmth and light it needs 
 
 To make it brighten with an April snow 
 
 Of flowers : then, being sunless in the broil, 
 
 Frost falls upon the soul's most fruitful meads. 
 
 There is no human creature on the earth 
 In whom the seed-plot of the Most Divine 
 Is lacking : only let God's glory shine 
 On us through art and natural beauty, then 
 The lowliest soul of all must needs give birth 
 To some fair bloom, and gain the countersign 
 That takes its owner to the seats of men !
 
 MIRAGE 
 
 WITHOUT thy voice, no melody 
 
 Has power to ease my pain ; 
 Without thy smile the earth is dark, 
 
 And Beauty pleads in vain. 
 The battlements of dawn are grey, 
 
 No splendours on them fall, 
 And grey the mist that rolls around 
 
 This grey old English hall. 
 
 O, dost thou recollect our time 
 
 Of dreams in Old Castile, 
 The dreary leagues of naked earth, 
 
 The hard blue sky of steel ; 
 The mountains of such tender shades 
 
 They shone like heaven at noon ; 
 The purple pomp of splendid eves, 
 
 The golden vintage moon ? 
 
 The narrow stair that led us through 
 
 Segovia's highest tower ; 
 
 174
 
 MIRAGE 175 
 
 The earth-brown city, old as Rome, 
 
 The lilac crocus flower ; 
 La Granja's woods of gloomy pine ; 
 
 The Guadarrama snow, 
 Wherefrom we saw the vultures wheel 
 
 A thousand feet below ? 
 
 The balcony we lingered in, 
 
 Perched high above the square ; 
 The shepherds, with their slouching march, 
 
 All piping shrilly there ; 
 The hand that trembled in mine own 
 
 For just a breathing space, 
 When blushes like the morning wrote 
 
 Love's message on thy face ? 
 
 The peasant-lads would pause to drink 
 
 At thy translucent eyes, 
 Saying, " Ah ! surely she has strayed 
 
 Hither from Paradise ! 
 Some Virgin takes a form of flesh 
 
 Whom great Murillo drew," 
 And only he who loved thy soul 
 
 Its simple greatness knew ?
 
 1 76 MIRAGE 
 
 One burning afternoon we saw 
 
 In Avila's drear plain 
 The silver shadow of a lake, 
 
 And towers all white with rain ; 
 It was a parched and thirsty land 
 
 That we twain hurried through, 
 " There is no water there," one cried, 
 
 " A mirage dazzles you ! " 
 
 Thy love is thus : at times I find, 
 
 Far on the horizon's line, 
 A silver lake, whose cool, sweet waves 
 
 Might quench this thirst of mine ; 
 Then, struggling towards the magic gleam, 
 
 I see the vision fade, 
 And I am stricken to the earth 
 
 For love of thee, O maid !
 
 ANIMULA, VAGULA, BLANDULA" 
 
 i 
 
 As I went down the Callan Glen 
 She walked the Glen of Dhoon ; 
 
 There was a whistling in the wood, 
 A veil before the moon. 
 
 Where two fair valleys meet, I met 
 That weird and lovely maid, 
 
 When salt of spindrift filled the air 
 And wild sea-horses neighed. 
 
 3 
 Within the hollow of the wind 
 
 I stood, and felt my breast 
 Vacant and felt some strenuous will 
 
 That all my thoughts possessed. 
 
 177 M
 
 1 78 "ANIMULA, VAGULA, BLANDULA" 
 
 4 
 And then her face shone clear and bright, 
 
 As shines the sphered moon, 
 Ere diving through the billowy clouds 
 
 In sudden, shuddering swoon. 
 
 5 
 Her hair streamed yellow in the wind, 
 
 Her eyes grew large for me ; 
 She heard the throbbing of my heart 
 
 Above the roaring sea. 
 
 She snatched the longing from my lips 
 And warbled mystic words ; 
 
 Like to a bird's the song she sang, 
 Her voice was like a bird's. 
 
 7 
 " O, come you from the wild Barrule, 
 
 Or down the Golden Vale ? " 
 She answered not, but drank my gaze, 
 
 And louder screamed the gale.
 
 "ANIMULA, VAGULA, BLANDULA" 179 
 
 8 
 I had no mind for aught but her, 
 
 She saw and read my mind : 
 Meseemed my soul had left my heart 
 
 And rode upon the wind. 
 
 9 
 She laughed : I could not touch her hand, 
 
 Although I heard her sighs ; 
 She held me there the livelong night 
 
 With those bewitching eyes ! 
 
 10 
 At morn, the gold and purple hills 
 
 Shone bright; she was not there 
 Only the memory of her face, 
 
 The shadow of her hair. 
 
 ii 
 Then up the path, thro' heath and gorse, 
 
 An old man came to me ; 
 His face was like a drowned face 
 
 Delivered of the sea :
 
 i8o "ANIMULA, VAGULA, BLANDULA" 
 
 12 
 
 " O hast thou seen the maid," I cried 
 " Than earth and heaven more sweet, 
 
 Who stood and let the moonlight play 
 Upon her naked feet ? " 
 
 13 
 His pale lips moved, but words came not, 
 
 His watery eyes took fire ; 
 He sobbed, in sooth, a prayer for me 
 
 Beyond my vain desire. 
 
 Then up through sunlit gorse and heath 
 They brought a heavy load ; 
 
 A form that Deirdre might have owned, 
 But O, so white and cold ! 
 
 15 
 The old man saw the corse, and spake 
 
 " Too late, too late, you came ; 
 For five long years she yearned for love 
 
 With stabbing thoughts of flame !
 
 "ANIMULA, VAGULA, BLANDULA" 181 
 
 16 
 
 " For five long years she yearned for love, 
 
 And then forgot that you 
 Were destined by the Fates to be 
 
 The mate she never knew. 
 
 17 
 " She heard you coming in the wind, 
 
 She saw your face in streams ; 
 You were the burden of her songs, 
 
 The sunshine of her dreams. 
 
 18 
 
 " But on her soul fell darker hours ; 
 
 And she forgot your face ; 
 Forgot our name, forgot our pride, 
 
 And brought this last disgrace. 
 
 19 
 " I know the spirit in the flesh, 
 
 And, therefore, I can see 
 Before me what she oft beheld 
 
 In happy fantasy :
 
 1 82 "ANIMULA, VAGULA, BLANDULA" 
 
 20 
 
 " You came to her you heard her call, 
 But you have come too late 
 
 The door is locked, the key is lost, 
 The hasp is on the gate ! " 
 
 21 
 
 I raised the cloth, and saw the eyes, 
 With all their sealight fled, 
 
 And knew that I had seen and loved 
 The spirit of the dead !
 
 A FLOWER OF SMOKELAND 
 
 OUTSIDE the town there's April shine 
 On glancing waters sapphirine, 
 And billowy clouds in boundless blue, 
 With blithe bird-voices pulsing through ; 
 Each waxen bud is quick with sap, 
 The daffodil has doffed its cap, 
 The vernal grass and scented clod 
 Breathe sweet thanksgivings unto God. 
 The children, too, like springing flowers, 
 Make glad the meadows ; happy hours 
 Pass by like music ; everywhere 
 Youth's mystic glory fills the air. 
 
 Here by the stream the sky is brown 
 
 With filth belched by a foetid town ; 
 
 183
 
 1 84 A FLOWER OF SMOKELAND 
 
 The stagnant air is thick with soot 
 
 And trembling with the horrid hoot 
 
 Of engines ; farther off, the roar 
 
 Of traffic ; here, a loathsome store 
 
 Of bones a very charnel-pit 
 
 Round which the human vermin sit 
 
 And hold their converse ; whirling clouds 
 
 Of blinding dust, and climbing shrouds 
 
 Of steam ; the water, inky black, 
 
 Threading its slimy, sullen track 
 
 Between the bare, repulsive banks 
 
 Whereon are piled, in serried ranks, 
 
 The habitations of the lost. 
 
 And here the flood of life has tossed 
 
 A little girl, whose sinful sire 
 
 With scanty hair and eyes of fire 
 
 Lies in a dark and cheerless cell 
 
 In penance hard. Oh, could I tell 
 
 Of all the weariness and woes 
 
 That weigh upon her, now she knows 
 
 Her father's shame ! She's lying ill 
 
 In this vile house beside the mill 
 
 The mill where she has worked "half-time" 
 
 Throughout her saddened infant-prime ; 
 
 A monstrous gaol that stole her breath 
 
 And left her nothing else but Death.
 
 A FLOWER OF SMOKELAND 185 
 
 3 
 Ten springs have waked the sleeping larch, 
 
 Ten times the lilies bloomed in March, 
 Since first she saw the sun's wan smile 
 In these dark haunts of greed and guile. 
 Poor, tender flower ! The light in her 
 Has no more ardent worshipper ; 
 Through cobwebbed panes her shining eyes 
 Gaze longingly upon the skies 
 Like some slight, sickly window-plant 
 She cranes her neck to heaven ; the want 
 Of warmth and love has blanched her face, 
 And in her features you may trace 
 The spirit-struggles of a child 
 Caged like a throstle of the wild. 
 
 When richer girls were not awake 
 She saw the humming card-room take 
 The morning light ; the cheerful heat 
 Made all her pulses wildly beat : 
 She longed to roam the hills ! Around 
 The wheels droned on with endless sound 
 Which left the ear exhausted ; she 
 Then wondered why she has a heart, 
 And why the toil, and why the smart,
 
 1 86 A FLOWER OF SMOKELAND 
 
 The bitter aching is it thus 
 That the Lord God doth cherish us ? 
 And further, whether He designed, 
 In lending Earth to humankind, 
 That little girls should work like slaves 
 For naught but unremembered graves ? 
 Yes, often when there's no one nigh 
 She'll press her tiny hands and cry, 
 And sob with wan lips quivering 
 Like young rose-petals in the spring ; 
 Sobbing because her body's hired, 
 Crying because her soul is tired : 
 She sickens for the light and air 
 By which God speaketh everywhere ; 
 Knowing, deep down within her breast, 
 That parish boards will bring her rest, 
 And that the grave is dark and still 
 Beneath the grass upon the hill ; 
 That no one knows, that no one cares 
 About her little world's affairs : 
 She feels all this, and that her life 
 Has never known aught else but strife ; 
 She never felt a mother's kiss 
 The infant's highest height of bliss
 
 A FLOWER OF SMOKELAND 187 
 
 She never had a kind caress, 
 Nor heard sweet tones of friendliness ; 
 Always yes, always blows and tears, 
 And savage words throughout the years. 
 
 4 
 
 But now the little eyes are turned 
 Unto the light, and where once burned 
 Youth's dying fire an hour ago 
 Nor life there is, nor afterglow. 
 Gone, gone, alas ! poor, sickly flower, 
 That grew in shadow hour by hour ; 
 Gone to the purple land of dreams 
 Where Peace broods by her silent streams. 
 God grant that thou art safe at last, 
 Beyond remembrance of thy past ! 
 
 5 
 
 Thou hast not heard the throstle sing 
 Nor hearkened to the voice of Spring. 
 Unseen of thee the misty hills, 
 And golden fields of daffodils ;
 
 1 88 A FLOWER OF SMOKELAND 
 
 Unknown of thee the halcyon hours 
 Of youth, what time the April showers 
 Shed balm and incense on the earth ; 
 Thine was a most mistaken birth, 
 But O, frail blossom, lying dead, 
 At least thou'lt be remembered 
 By me, though others take no heed 
 Nor shed a tear, nor wear a weed : 
 And when thou standest by His Throne, 
 Where darker flowers so oft have shone, 
 He will not think of thee the less 
 Because of all this griminess ; 
 But, haply, He may take thy hand, 
 And then thou'lt surely understand 
 Why thou didst pass through toil and pain 
 Into the Happy Land again.
 
 AN OLD MAID 
 
 O, LOVELY seemed the clover-field 
 
 Wherein the lovers lay ; 
 Lip-red the fuchsia's fairy bells 
 
 Beside the twinkling bay ; 
 O, lovely flamed the poppy fires 
 
 Among the golden corn, 
 But sadly through the scene I passed, 
 
 Forgotten and forlorn. 
 
 The robin raised his thankful voice 
 
 In bright autumnal bowers, 
 Fair children passed me full of joy, 
 
 I thought of lonely hours : 
 The lovers in their splendid youth 
 
 Looked up, their passion shone, 
 Whilst perfumes filled me with a sense 
 
 Of youth for ever gone !
 
 AN OLD MAID 
 
 The soul shook in my yearning heart, 
 
 Death bitterer could not be, 
 For no man ever kissed my lips 
 
 Or spoke of love to me : 
 My unborn children somewhere wept, 
 
 I heard their sobs and sighs ; 
 O, that I might have kissed their cheeks 
 
 And gazed into their eyes ! 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by BALLANTTNE, HANSON <& Co 
 Edinburgh 2^ London
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 IDYLLS OF SPAIN 
 
 OR 
 
 VARNISHED PICTURES OF TRAVEL IN 
 THE PENINSULA 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 
 "A very lively and entertaining account of his wanderings in 
 the highways and byways." Bookman. 
 
 "A good traveller, a better impressionist. That indescribable 
 charm of Northern Spain, of its inns, its people, and its romance, 
 he can impart to us with signal success." Daily Chronicle. 
 
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