4 IDE flD7 
 
THE 
 
 LEGEND OF JUBAL 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
c f 
 
 THE 
 
 LEGEND OF JUBAL 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS, 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 AUTHOR S EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
 
 (LATE TlOKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.) 
 
 1874. 
 
[FROM ADVANCE SHEETS.} 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 RANT>, AVERY, & Co., ELECTROTYPERS AND PRINTERS, 
 117 FRANKLIN STREET. 
 
LH- 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 t THE LEGEND OF JUBAL 1 
 
 AGATHA 43 
 
 >ARMGART 67 
 
 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING 137 
 
 A MINOR PROPHET 171 
 
 BROTHER AND SISTER 191 
 
 STRADIVARIUS 205 
 
 TWO LOVERS 217 
 
 ARION .... 223 
 
 "O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE" . . 231 
 

 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 WHEN Cain was driven from Jehovah s land 
 He wandered eastward, seeking some far strand 
 Ruled by kind gods who asked no offerings 
 Save pure field-fruits, as aromatic things, 
 To feed the subtler sense of frames divine 
 That lived on fragrance for their food and wine : 
 Wild jo3 r ous gods, who winked at faults and folly, 
 And could be pitiful and melancholy. 
 He never had a doubt that such gods were ; 
 He looked within, and saw them mirrored there. 
 Some think he came at last to Tartary, 
 And some to Ind ; but, howsoe er it be, 
 His staff he planted where sweet waters ran, 
 And in that home of Cain the Arts began. 
 
4 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 Man s life was spacious in the early world : 
 It paused, like some slow ship with sail unfurled 
 Waiting in seas by scarce a wavelet curled ; 
 Beheld the slow star-paces of the skies, 
 And grew from strength to strength through centu 
 ries ; 
 
 Saw infant trees fill out their giant limbs, 
 And heard a thousand times the sweet birds mar 
 riage hymns. 
 
 In Cain s young city none had heard of Death 
 Save him, the founder ; and it was his faith 
 That here, away from harsh Jehovah s law, 
 Man was immortal, since no halt or flaw 
 In Cain s own frame betrayed six hundred years, 
 But dark as pines that autumn never sears 
 His locks thronged backward as he ran, his frame 
 Rose like the orbed sun each morn the same, 
 Lake-mirrored to his gaze ; and that red brand, 
 The scorching impress of Jehovah s hand, 
 Was still clear-edged to his unwearied eye, 
 Its secret firm in time-fraught memory. 
 
THE LEGEND OF JURAL. 
 
 He said, " My happy offspring shall n 
 That the red life from out a man may flow 
 When smitten bj r his brother." True, his race 
 Bore each one stamped upon his new-born face 
 A copy of the brand no whit less clear ; 
 But every mother held that little copy dear. 
 
 Thus generations in glad idlesse throve, 
 Nor hunted prey, nor with each other strove ; 
 For clearest springs were plenteous in the land, 
 And gourds for cups ; the ripe fruits sought the 
 
 hand, 
 
 Bending the laden boughs with fragrant gold ; 
 And for their roofs and garments wealth untold 
 Lay everywhere in grasses and broad leaves : 
 The} labored gently, as a maid who weaves 
 Her hair in mimic mats, and pauses oft 
 And strokes across her hand the tresses soft, 
 Then peeps to watch the poised butterfly, 
 Or little burthened ants that homeward hie. 
 Time was but leisure to their lingering thought, 
 There was no need for haste to finish aught ; 
 
6 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 But sweet beginnings were repeated still 
 Like infant babblings that no task fulfil ; 
 For love, that loved not change, constrained the 
 simple will. 
 
 Till, hurling stones in mere athletic joy, 
 Strong Lamech struck and killed his fairest boy, 
 And tried to wake him with the tenderest cries, 
 And fetched and held before the glazed eyes 
 The things they best had loved to look upon ; 
 But never glance or smile or sigh he won. 
 The generations stood around those twain 
 Helplessly gazing, till their father Cain 
 Parted the press, and said, " He will not wake ; 
 This is the endless sleep, and we must make 
 A bed deep down for him beneath the sod ; 
 For know, my sons, there is a mighty God 
 Angry with all man s race, but most with me. 
 I fled from out His land in vain ! tis He 
 Who came and slew the lad, for He has found 
 This home of ours, and we shall all be bound 
 By the harsh bands of His most cruel will, 
 Which any moment may some dear one kill. 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 7 
 
 Nay, though we live for countless moons, at last 
 We and all ours shall die like summers past. 
 This is Jehovah s will, and He is strong ; 
 I thought the way I travelled was too long 
 For Him to follow me : my thought was vain ! 
 He walks unseen, but leaves a track of pain, 
 Pale Death His footprint is, and He will come 
 again ! " 
 
 / 
 
 And a new spirit from that hour came o er 
 
 The race of Cain : soft idlesse was no more, 
 
 But even the sunshine had a heart of care, 
 
 Smiling with hidden dread a mother fair 
 
 Who folding to her breast a dying child 
 
 Beams with feigned joy that but makes sadness mild. 
 
 Death was now lord of Life, and at his word 
 
 Time, vague as air before, new terrors stirred, 
 
 With measured wing now audibly arose 
 
 Throbbing through all things to some unknown 
 
 close. 
 
 Now glad Content by clutching Haste was torn, 
 And Work grew eager, and Device was born. 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 It seemed the light was never loved before, 
 
 Now each man said, " Twill go and come no 
 
 more." 
 
 No budding branch, no pebble from the brook, 
 No form, no shadow, but new dearness took 
 From the one thought that life must have an end ; 
 And the last parting now began to send 
 Diffusive dread through love and wedded bliss, 
 Thrilling them into finer tenderness. 
 Then Memory disclosed her face divine, 
 That like the calm nocturnal lights doth shine 
 Within the soul, and shows the sacred graves, 
 And shows the presence that no sunlight craves, 
 No space, no warmth, but moves among them all ; 
 Gone and yet here, and coining at each call, 
 With ready voice and eyes that understand, 
 And lips that ask a kiss, and dear responsive hand. 
 
 Thus to Cain s race death was tear-watered seed 
 Of various life and action-shaping need. 
 But chief the sons of Lamech felt the stings 
 Of new ambition, and the force that springs 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 9 
 
 In passion beating on the shores of fate. 
 
 They said, " There comes a night when all too late 
 
 The mind shall long to prompt the achieving hand, 
 
 The eager thought behind closed portals stand, 
 
 And the last wishes to the mute lips press 
 
 Buried ere death in silent helplessness. 
 
 Then while the soul its way with sound can cleave, 
 
 And while the arm is strong to strike and heave, 
 
 Let soul and arm give shape that will abide 
 
 And rule above our graves, and power divide 
 
 With that great god of day, whose rays must bend 
 
 As we shall make the moving shadows tend. 
 
 Come, let us fashion acts that are to be, 
 
 When we shall lie in darkness silently, 
 
 As our young brother doth, whom yet we see 
 
 Fallen and slain, but reigning in our will 
 
 By that one image of him pale and still." 
 
 For Lamech s sons were heroes of their race : 
 Jabal, the eldest, bore upon his face 
 The look of that calm river-god, the Nile, 
 Mildly secure in power that needs not guile. 
 
10 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 But Tubal-Cain was restless as the fire 
 
 That glows and spreads and leaps from high to 
 
 higher 
 
 Where er is aught to seize or to subdue ; 
 Strong as a storm he lifted or o erthrew, 
 His urgent limbs like granite bowlders grew, 
 Such bowlders as the plunging torrent wears 
 And roaring rolls around through countless years. 
 But strength that still on movement must be fed, 
 Inspiring thought of change, devices bred, 
 And urged his mind through earth and air to rove 
 For force that he could conquer if he strove, 
 For lurking forms that might new tasks fulfil 
 And yield unwilling to his stronger will. 
 Such Tubal-Cain. But Jubal had a frame 
 Fashioned to finer senses, which became 
 A yearning for some hidden soul of things, 
 Some outward touch complete on inner springs 
 That vaguely moving bred a lonely pain, 
 A want that did but stronger grow with gain 
 Of all good else, as spirits might be sad 
 For lack of speech to tell us they are glad. 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 11 
 
 Now Jabal learned to tame the lowing kine, 
 And from their udders drew the snow-white wine 
 That stirs the innocent joy, and makes the stream 
 Of elemental life with fulness teem ; 
 The star-browed calves he nursed with feeding hand, 
 And sheltered them, till all the little band 
 Stood mustered gazing at the sunset way 
 Whence he would come with store at close of day. 
 He soothed the silly sheep with friendly tone, 
 And reared their staggering lambs, that, older grown, 
 Followed his steps with sense-taught memory ; 
 Till he, their shepherd, could their leader be, 
 And guide them through the pastures as he would, 
 With sway that grew from ministry of good. 
 He spread his tents upon the grassy plain 
 Which, eastward widening like the open main, 
 Showed the first whiteness neath the morning star ; 
 Near him his sister, deft, as women are, 
 Plied her quick skill in sequence to his thought 
 Till the hid treasures of the milk she caught 
 Revealed like pollen mid the petals white, 
 The golden pollen, virgin to the light. 
 
12 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 Even the she-wolf with 3~oung, on rapine bent, 
 He caught and tethered in his mat-walled tent, 
 And cherished all her little sharp-nosed young 
 Till the small race with hope and terror clung 
 About his footsteps, till each new-reared brood, 
 Remoter from the memories of the wood, 
 More glad discerned their common home with 
 
 man. 
 
 This was the work of Jabal : he began 
 The pastoral life, and, sire of jo}*s to be, 
 Spread the sweet ties that bind the family 
 O er dear dumb souls that thrilled at man s caress, 
 And shared his pain with patient helpfulness. 
 
 * 
 
 But Tubal-Cain had caught and j oked the fire, 
 Yoked it with stones that bent the flaming spire 
 And made it roar in prisoned servitude 
 Within the furnace, till with force subdued 
 It changed all forms he willed to work upon, 
 Till hard from soft, and soft from hard, he won. 
 The pliant clay he moulded as he would, 
 And laughed with joy when mid the heat it stood 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 13 
 
 Shaped as his hand had chosen, while the mass 
 That from his hold, dark, obstinate, would pass, 
 He drew all glowing from the busy heat, 
 All breathing as with life that he could beat 
 With thundering hammer, making it obey 
 His will creative, like the pale soft clay. 
 Each day he wrought and better than he planned, 
 Shape breeding shape beneath his restless hand. 
 (The soul without still helps the soul within, 
 And its deft magic ends what we begin.) 
 Nay, in his dreams his hammer he would wield 
 And seem to see a myriad types revealed, 
 Then spring with wondering triumphant cry, 
 And, lest the inspiring vision should go by, 
 Would rush to labor with that plastic zeal 
 Which all the passion of our life can steal 
 For force to work with. Each day saw the birth 
 Of various forms, which, flung upon the earth, 
 Seemed harmless toys to cheat the exacting hour, 
 But were as seeds instinct with hidden power. 
 The axe, the club, the spiked wheel, the chain, 
 Held silently the shrieks and moans of pain ; 
 
14 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 And near them latent lay in share and spade, 
 
 In the strong bar, the saw, and deep-curved blade, 
 
 Glad voices of the hearth and harvest-home, 
 
 The social good, and all earth s joy to come. 
 
 Thus to mixed ends wrought Tubal ; and they say, 
 
 Some things he made have lasted to this day ; 
 
 As, thirty silver pieces that were found 
 
 By Noah s children buried in the ground. 
 
 He made them from mere hunger of device, 
 
 Those small white discs ; but they became the price 
 
 The traitor Judas sold his Master for ; 
 
 And men still handling them in peace and war 
 
 Catch foul disease, that comes as appetite, 
 
 And lurks and clings as withering, damning blight. 
 
 But Tubal-Cain wot not of treacheiy, 
 
 Nor greedy lust, nor any ill to be, 
 
 Save the one ill of sinking into nought, 
 
 Banished from action and act-shaping thought. 
 
 He was the sire of swift-transforming skill, 
 
 Which arms for conquest man s ambitious will ; 
 
 And round him gladly, as his hammer rung, 
 
 Gathered the elders and the growing 3 oung : 
 
THE LEGEND OF JTJBAL. 15 
 
 These handled vaguely, and those plied the tools, 
 Till, happy chance begetting conscious rules, 
 The home of Cain with industry was rife, 
 And glimpses of a strong persistent life, 
 Panting through generations as one breath, 
 And filling with its soul the blank of death. 
 
 Jubal, too, watched the hammer, till his eyes, 
 
 No longer following its fall or rise, 
 
 Seemed glad with something that they could not see, 
 
 But only listened to some melody, 
 
 Wherein dumb longings inward speech had found, 
 
 Won from the common store of struggling sound. 
 
 Then, as the metal shapes more various grew, 
 
 And, hurled upon each other, resonance drew, 
 
 Each gave new tones, the revelations dim 
 
 Of some external soul that spoke for him : 
 
 The hollow vessel s clang, the clash, the boom, 
 
 Like light that makes wide spiritual room 
 
 And skj-ey spaces in the spaceless thought, 
 
 To Jubal such enlarged passion brought, 
 
 That love, hope, rage, and all experience, 
 
 Were fused in vaster being, fetching thence 
 
16 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 Concords and discords, cadences and cries 
 That seemed from some world-shrouded soul to rise, 
 Some rapture more intense, some mightier rage, 
 Some living sea that burst the bounds of man s brief 
 age. 
 
 Then with such blissful trouble and glad care 
 
 For growth within unborn as mothers bear, 
 
 To the far woods he wandered, listening, 
 
 And heard the birds their little stories sing 
 
 In notes whose rise and fall seem melted speech 
 
 Melted with tears, smiles, glances that can reach 
 
 More quickly through our frame s deep-winding 
 
 night, 
 And without thought raise thought s best fruit, 
 
 delight. 
 
 Pondering, he sought his home again and heard 
 The fluctuant changes of the spoken word : 
 The deep remonstrance and the argued want, 
 Insistent first in close monotonous chant, 
 Next leaping upward to defiant stand 
 Or downward beating like the resolute hand ; 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 17 
 
 The mother s call, the children s answering cry, 
 
 The laugh s light cataract tumbling from .on high ; 
 
 The suasive repetitions Jabal taught, 
 
 That timid browsing cattle homeward brought : 
 
 The clear- winged fugue of echoes vanishing ; 
 
 And through them all the hammer s rhythmic ring. 
 
 Jubal sat lonely, all around was dim, 
 
 Yet his face glowed with light revealed to him : 
 
 For as the delicate stream of odor wakes 
 
 The thought-wed sentience, and some image 
 
 makes 
 
 From out the mingled fragments of the past, 
 Finely compact in wholeness that will last, 
 So streamed as from the body of each sound 
 Subtler pulsations, swift as warmth, which found 
 All prisoned germs and all their powers unbound, 
 Till thought self-luminous flamed from memory, 
 And in creative vision wandered free. 
 Then Jubal, standing, rapturous arms upraised, 
 And on the dark with eager eyes he gazed, 
 As had some manifested god been there. 
 It was his thought he saw : the presence fair 
 
18 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 Of unachieved achievement, the high task, 
 The mighty unborn spirit that doth ask 
 With irresistible cry for blood and breath, 
 Till feeding its great life we sink in death. 
 
 He said, " Were now those mighty tones and cries 
 
 That from the giant soul of earth arise, 
 
 Those groans of some great travail heard from 
 
 far, 
 
 Some power at wrestle with the things that are, 
 Those sounds which vary with the varying form 
 Of clay and metal, and in sightless swarm 
 Fill the wide space with tremors : were these wed 
 To human voices with such passion fed 
 As does but glimmer in our common speech, 
 But might flame out in tones whose changing reach 
 Surpassing meagre need, informs the sense 
 With fuller union, finer difference 
 Were this great vision, now obscurely bright 
 As morning hills that melt in new-poured light, 
 Wrought into solid form and living sound, 
 Moving with ordered throb and sure rebound. 
 
I 
 
 THE LEGEND 
 
 Then Nay, I Jubal will that 
 
 The generations of our race shall win 
 
 New life, that grows from out the heart of this, 
 
 As spring from winter, or a"s lovers bliss 
 
 From out the dull" unknown of unwaked energies." 
 
 Thus he resolved, and in the soul-fed light 
 Of coming ages waited through the night, 
 Watching for that near dawn whose chiller ray 
 Showed but the unchanged world of yesterday ; 
 Where all the order of his dream divine 
 La}^ like Olympian forms within the mine ; 
 Where fervor that could fill the earthly round 
 With thronged joys of form-begotten sound 
 Must shrink intense within the patient power 
 That lonely labors through the niggard hour. 
 Such patience have the heroes who begin, 
 Sailing the first toward lands which others win. 
 Jubal must dare as great beginners dare, 
 Strike form s first way in matter rude and bare, 
 And, yearning vaguely toward the plenteous choir 
 Of the world s harvest, make one poor small lyre. 
 
20 THE LEGEND OF JTJBAL. 
 
 He made it, and from out its measured frame 
 Drew the harmonic soul, whose answers came 
 With guidance sweet and lessons of delight 
 Teaching to ear and hand* the blissful Right, 
 Where strictest law is gladness to the sense, 
 And all desire bends toward obedience. 
 Then Jubal poured his triumph in a song 
 The rapturous word that rapturous notes prolong 
 As radiance streams from smallest things that 
 
 burn, 
 
 Or thought of loving into love doth turn. 
 And still his lyre gave companionship 
 In sense-taught concert as of lip w r ith lip. 
 Alone amid the hills at first he tried 
 His winged song ; then with adoring pride 
 And bridegroom s joy at leading forth his bride, 
 He said, " This wonder which my soul hath found, 
 This heart of music in the might of sound, 
 Shall forthwith be the share of all our race, 
 And like the morning gladden common space : 
 The song shall spread and swell as rivers do, 
 And I will teach our youth with skill to woo 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 21 
 
 This living lyre, to know its secret will, 
 Its fine division of the good and ill. 
 So shall men call me sire of harmony, 
 And where great Song is, there my life shall be." 
 Thus glorying as a god beneficent, 
 Forth from his solitary joy he went 
 To bless mankind. It was at evening, 
 When shadows lengthen from each westward thing, 
 When imminence of change makes sense more fine, 
 And light seems holier in its grand decline. 
 The fruit-trees wore their studded coronal, 
 Earth and her children were at festival, 
 Glowing as with one heart and one consent 
 Thought, love, trees, rocks, in sweet warm radiance 
 blent. 
 
 The tribe of Cain was resting on the ground, 
 The various ages wreathed in one broad round. 
 Here lay, while children peeped o er his huge thighs, 
 The sinewy man imbrowned by centuries ; 
 Here the broad-bosomed mother of the strong 
 Looked, like Demeter, placid o er the throng 
 
22 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 Of young Uthe forms whose rest was movement too 
 
 Tricks, prattle, nods, and laughs that lightly flew, 
 
 And swayings as of flower-beds where Love blew. 
 
 For all had feasted well upon the flesh 
 
 Of juicy fruits, on nuts, and honey fresh, 
 
 And now their wine was health-bred merriment, 
 
 Which through the generations circling went, 
 
 Leaving none sad, for even father Cain 
 
 Smiled as a Titan might, despising pain. 
 
 Jabal sat circled with a playful ring 
 
 Of children, lambs and whelps, whose gambolling, 
 
 With tiny hoofs, paws, hands, and dimpled feet, 
 
 Made barks, bleats, laughs, in pretty hubbub meet. 
 
 But Tubal s hammer rang from far away, 
 
 Tubal alone would keep no holiday, 
 
 His furnace must not slack for any feast, 
 
 For of all hardship, work he counted least ; 
 
 He scorned all rest but sleep, where every dream 
 
 Made his repose more potent action seem. 
 
 Yet with health s nectar some strange thirst was blent, 
 The fateful growth, the unnamed discontent, 
 
THE LEGEND OF JTJBAL. 23 
 
 The inward shaping toward some unborn power, 
 Some deeper-breathing act, the being s flower. 
 After all gestures, words, and speech of eyes, 
 The soul had more to tell, and broke in sighs. 
 Then from the east, with glory on his head 
 Such as low-slanting beams on corn- waves spread, 
 Came Jubal with his lyre : there mid the throng, 
 Where the blank space was, poured a solemn song, 
 Touching his lyre to full harmonic throb 
 And measured pulse, with cadences that sob, 
 Exult and cr} T , and search the inmost deep 
 Where the dark sources of new passion sleep. 
 Joy took the air, and took each breathing soul, 
 Embracing them in one entranced whole, 
 Yet thrilled each varying frame to various ends, 
 As Spring new-waking through the creature sends 
 Or rage .or tenderness ; more plenteous life 
 Here breeding dread, and there a fiercer strife. 
 He who had lived through twice three centuries, 
 Whose months monotonous, like trees on trees 
 In hoary forests, stretched a backward maze, 
 Dreamed himself dimly through the travelled days 
 
24 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 Till in clear light he paused, and felt the sun 
 That warmed him when he was a little one ; 
 Knew that true heaven, the recovered past, 
 The dear small Known amid the Unknown vast, 
 And in that heaven wept. But younger limbs 
 Thrilled toward the future, that bright land which 
 
 swims 
 
 In western glory, isles and streams and bays, 
 Where hidden pleasures float in golden haze. 
 And in all these the rhythmic influence, 
 Sweetly o ercharging the delighted sense,- 
 Flowed out in movements, little waves that spread 
 Enlarging, till in tidal union led 
 The j-ouths and maidens both alike long-tressed, 
 By grace-inspiring melody possessed, 
 Rose in slow dance, with beauteous floating swerve 
 Of limbs and hair, and mairy a melting curve 
 Of ringed feet swayed by each close-linked palm : 
 Then Jubal poured more rapture in his psalm, 
 The dance fired music, music fired the dance, 
 The glow diffusive lit each countenance, 
 Till all the circling tribe arose and stood 
 With glad yet awful shock of that mysterious good. 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 25 
 
 Even Tubal caught the sound, and wondering came, 
 Urging his sooty bulk like smoke-wrapt flame 
 Till he could see his brother with the ryre, 
 The work for which he lent his furnace-fire 
 And diligent hammer, witting nought of this 
 This power in metal shape which made strange bliss, 
 Entering within him like a dream full-fraught 
 With new creations finished in a thought. 
 
 The sun had sunk, but music still was there, 
 And when this ceased, still triumph filled the air : 
 It seemed the stars were shining with delight 
 And that no night was ever like this night. 
 All clung with praise to Jubal : some besought 
 That he would teach them his new skill ; some caught,. 
 Swiftly as smiles are caught in looks that meet, 
 The tone s melodic change and rhythmic beat : 
 Twas easy following where invention trod 
 All eyes can see when light flows out from God. 
 
 And thus did Jubal to his race reveal 
 Music their larger soul, where woe and weal 
 
26 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 Filling the resonant chords, the song, the dance, 
 
 Moved with a wider-winged utterance. 
 
 Now many a tyre was fashioned, man} 7 a song 
 
 liaised echoes new, old echoes to prolong, 
 
 Till things of Jubal s making were so rife, 
 
 " Hearing myself," he said, " hems in my life, 
 
 And I will get me to some far-off land, 
 
 Where higher mountains under -heaven stand 
 
 And touch the blue at rising of the stars, 
 
 Whose song they hear where no rough mingling 
 
 mars 
 The great clear voices. Such lands there must 
 
 be, 
 
 Where varying forms make varying symphony 
 Where other thunders roll amid the hills, 
 Some mightier wind a mightier forest fills 
 With other strains through other-shapen boughs ; 
 Where bees and birds and beasts that hunt or browse 
 Will teach me songs I know not. Listening there, 
 My life shall grow like trees both tall and fair 
 That rise and spread and bloom toward fuller fruit 
 
 each j^ear." 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 27 
 
 lie took a raft, and travelled with the stream 
 Southward for many a league, till he might deem 
 He saw at last the pillars of the sky, 
 Beholding mountains whose white majesty 
 Rushed through him as new awe, and made new song 
 That swept with fuller wave the chords along, 
 Weighting his voice with deep religious chime, 
 The iteration of slow chant sublime. 
 
 It was the region long inhabited 
 By all the race of Seth ; and Jubal said, 
 u Here have I found my thirsty soul s desire, 
 Eastward the hills touch heaven, and evening s fire- 
 Flames through deep waters ; I will take my rest, 
 And feed anew from my great mother s breast, 
 The sky-clasped Earth, whose voices nurture me 
 As the flowers sweetness doth the honey-bee." 
 He lingered wandering for many an age, 
 And, sowing music, made high heritage 
 For generations far bej ond the Flood 
 For the poor late-begotten human brood 
 Born to life s weary brevity and perilous good. 
 
28 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 And ever as he travelled he would climb- 
 
 The farthest mountain, yet the heavenly chime, 
 
 The mighty tolling of the far-off spheres 
 
 Beating their pathway, never touched his ears. 
 
 But wheresoe er he rose, the heavens rose, 
 
 And the far-gazing mountain could disclose 
 
 Nought but a wider earth ; until one height 
 
 Showed him the ocean stretched in liquid light, 
 
 And he could hear its multitudinous roar, 
 
 Its plunge and hiss upon the pebbled shore : 
 
 Then Jubal silent sat, and touched his lyre no more. 
 
 He thought, u The world is great, but I am weak, 
 And where the sky bends is no solid peak 
 To give me footing, but instead, this main 
 Like nryriad maddened horses thundering o er the 
 plain. 1 
 
 u New voices come to me where er I roam, 
 M}- heart too widens with its widening home : 
 But song grows weaker, and the heart must break 
 For lack of voice, OT fingers that can wake 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 29 
 
 The lyre s full answer ; nay, its chords were all 
 Too few to meet the growing spirit s call. 
 The former songs seem little, yet no more 
 Can soul, hand, voice, with interchanging lore 
 Tell what the earth is saying unto me : 
 The secret is too great, I hear confusedly. 
 
 No farther will I travel : once again 
 
 My brethren I will see, and "that fair plain 
 
 Where I and song were born. There fresh- voiced 
 
 youth 
 
 Will pour my strains with all the early truth 
 Which now abides not in my voice and hands, 
 But only in the soul, the will that stands 
 Helpless to move. My tribe remembering 
 Will cry, Tis he ! and run to greet me, welcom 
 ing." 
 
 The way was weary. Many a date-palm grew, 
 Ancl shook out clustered gold against the blue, 
 While Jubal, guided by the steadfast spheres, 
 Sought the dear home of those first eager years, 
 
30 THE LEGEND OF JTJBAL. 
 
 When, with fresh vision fed, the fuller will 
 
 Took living outward shape in pliant skill ; 
 
 For still he hoped to find the former things, 
 
 And the warm gladness recognition brings. 
 
 His footsteps erred among the mazy woods 
 
 And long illusive sameness of the floods, 
 
 Winding and wandering. Through far regions, 
 
 strange 
 
 With Gentile homes and faces, did he range, 
 And left his music in their memory, 
 And left at last, when nought besides would free 
 His homeward steps from clinging hands and 
 
 cries, 
 
 The ancient Lyre. And now in ignorant eyes 
 No sign remained of Jubal, Lamech s son, 
 That mortal frame wherein was first begun 
 The immortal life of song. His withered brow 
 Pressed over eyes that held no lightning now, 
 His locks streamed whiteness on the hurrying air, 
 The unresting soul had worn itself quite bare 
 Of beauteous token, as the outworn might 
 Of oaks slow dying, gaunt in summer s light. 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 31 
 
 His full deep voice toward thinnest treble ran : 
 He was the rune-writ story of a man. 
 And so at last he neared the well-known land, 
 Could see the hills in ancient order stand 
 With friendly faces whose familiar gaze 
 Looked through the sunshine of his childish days ; 
 Knew the deep-shadowed folds of hanging woods, 
 And seemed to see the selfsame insect broods 
 Whirling and quivering o er the flowers to hear 
 The selfsame cuckoo making distance near. 
 Yea, the dear Earth, with mother s constancy, 
 Met and embraced him, and said, " Thou art he ! 
 This w T as thy cradle, here my breast was thine, 
 Where feeding, thou didst all thy life intwine 
 With my sky- wedded life in heritage divine." 
 
 But wending ever through the watered plain, 
 
 Firm not to rest save in the home of Cain, 
 
 He saw dread Change, with dubious face and cold 
 
 That never kept a welcome for the old, 
 
 Like some strange heir upon the hearth, arise 
 
 Sa} r ing, " This home is mine." He thought his eyes 
 
32 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 Mocked all deep memories, as things new made, 
 
 Usurping sense, make old things shrink and fade 
 
 And seem ashamed to meet the staring day. 
 
 His memory saw a small foot-trodden way, 
 
 His eyes a broad far-stretching paven road 
 
 Bordered with many a tomb and fair abode ; 
 
 The little city that once nestled low 
 
 As buzzing groups about some central glow, 
 
 Spread like a murmuring crowd o er plain and 
 
 steep, 
 
 Or monster huge in heavy-breathing sleep. 
 His heart grew faint, and tremblingly he sank 
 Close by the wayside on a weed-grown bank, 
 Not far from where a new-raised temple stood, 
 Sky-roofed, and fragrant with wrought cedar-wood. 
 The morning sun was high ; his rays fell hot 
 On this hap-chosen, dusty, common spot, 
 On the dry withered grass and withered man : 
 That wondrous frame where melody began 
 Lay as a tomb defaced that no eye cared to scan. 
 But while he sank far music reached his ear. 
 He listened until wonder silenced fear, 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 33 
 
 And gladness wonder ; for the broadening stream 
 Of sound advancing was his early dream, 
 Brought like fulfilment of forgotten prayer ; 
 As if his soul, breathed out upon the air, 
 Had held the invisible seeds of harmony 
 Quick with the various strains of life to be. 
 He listened : the sweet mingled difference 
 "With charm alternate took the meeting sense ; 
 Then bursting like some shield-broad lily red, 
 Sudden and near the trumpet s notes out-spread, 
 And soon his eyes could see the metal flower, 
 Shining upturned, out on the morning pour 
 Its incense audible ; could see a train 
 From out the street slow-winding on the plain 
 With lyres and cymbals, flutes and psalteries, 
 While men, youths, maids, in concert sang to these 
 With various throat, or in succession poured, 
 Or in full volume mingled. But one word 
 Ruled each recurrent rise and answering fall, 
 As when the multitudes adoring call 
 On some great name divine, their common soul, 
 The common need, love, joy, that knits them in one 
 whole. 3 
 
34 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 The word was " Jubal ! " . . . " Jubal" filled the 
 
 air, 
 
 And seemed to ride aloft, a spirit there, 
 Creator of the choir, the full-fraught strain 
 That grateful rolled itself to him again. 
 The aged man adust upon the bank 
 Whom no eye saw at first with rapture drank 
 The bliss of music, then, with swelling heart, 
 Felt, this was his own being s greater part, 
 The universal joy once born in him. 
 .But when the train, with living face and limb 
 And vocal breath, came nearer and more near, 
 The longing grew that they should hold him dear ; 
 Him, Lamech s son, whom all their fathers knew, 
 The breathing Jubal him, to whom their love was 
 
 due. 
 
 All was forgotten but the burning need 
 To claim his fuller self, to claim the deed 
 That lived away from him, and grew apart, 
 While he as from -a tomb, with lonely heart, 
 Warmed by no meeting glance, no hand that pressed, 
 Lay chill amid the life his life had blessed. 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 85 
 
 What though his song should spread from man s 
 
 small race 
 
 Out through the myriad worlds that people space, 
 And make the heavens one joy-diffusing choir ? 
 Still mid that vast would throb the keen desire 
 Of this poor aged flesh, this eventide, 
 This twilight soon in darkness to subside, 
 This little pulse of self, that, having glowed 
 Through thrice three centuries, and divinely strewed 
 The light of music through the vague of sound, 
 Ached smallness still in good that had no bound. 
 
 - 
 
 For no eye saw him, while with loving pride 
 Each voice with each in praise of Jubal vied. 
 Must he in conscious trance, dumb, helpless lie 
 While all that ardent kindred passed him by ? 
 His flesh cried out to live with living men, 
 And join that soul which to the inward ken 
 Of all the hymning train was present there. 
 Strong passion s daring sees not aught to dare : 
 The frost-locked starkness of his frame low-bent, 
 His voice s penury of tones long spent, 
 
36 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 He felt not ; all his being leaped in flame 
 To meet his kindred as they onward came 
 Slackening and wheeling toward the temple s face : 
 He rushed before them to the glittering space, 
 And, with a strength that was but strong desire, 
 Cried, u I am Jubal, I ! ... I made the lyre ! " 
 
 The tones amid a lake of silence fell 
 
 Broken and strained, as if a feeble bell 
 
 Had tuneless pealed the triumph of a land 
 
 To listening crowds in expectation spanned. 
 
 Sudden came showers of laughter on that lake ; 
 
 They spread along the train from front to wake 
 
 In one great storm of merriment, while he 
 
 Shrank doubting whether he could Jubal be, 
 
 And not a dream of Jubal, whose rich vein 
 
 Of passionate music came with that dream-pain, 
 
 Wherein the sense slips off from each loved 
 
 thing, 
 
 And all appearance is mere vanishing. 
 But ere the laughter died from out the rear, 
 Anger in front saw profanation near ; 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 37 
 
 Jubal was but a name in each man s faith 
 
 For glorious power untouched by that slow death 
 
 Which creeps with creeping time ; this too, the spot, 
 
 And this the day, it must be crime to blot, 
 
 Even with scoffing at a madman s lie : 
 
 Jubal was not a name to wed with mockery. 
 
 Two rushed upon him : two, the most devout 
 
 In honor of great Jubal, thrust him out, 
 
 And beat him with their flutes. Twas little need ; 
 
 He strove not, cried not, but with tottering speed, 
 
 As if the scorn and howls were driving wind 
 
 That urged his body, serving so the mind 
 
 Which could but shrink and yearn, he sought the 
 
 screen 
 
 Of thorny thickets, and there fell unseen. 
 The immortal name of Jubal filled the sky, 
 While Jubal lonely laid him down to die. 
 He said within his soul, Ci This is the end : 
 O er all the earth to where the heavens bend 
 And hem men s travel, I have breathed my soul : 
 I lie here now the remnant of that whole, 
 
38 THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 
 
 of a life, a lonely pain ; 
 As far-off rivers to my thirst were vain, 
 So of my mighty years nought comes to me 
 again. 
 
 " Is the day sinking? Softest coolness springs 
 From something round me : dewy shadowy wings 
 Enclose me all around no, not above 
 Is moonlight there? I see a face of love, 
 Fair as sweet music when nry heart was strong : 
 Yea art thou come again to me, great Song? " 
 
 The face bent over him like silver night 
 
 In long-remembered summers ; that calm light 
 
 Of days which shine in firmaments of thought, 
 
 That past unchangeable, from change still wrought. 
 
 And there were tones that with the vision blent : 
 
 He knew not if that gaze the music sent, 
 
 Or music that calm gaze : to hear, to see, 
 
 Was but one undivided ecstasy : 
 
 The raptured senses melted into one, 
 
 And parting life a moment s freedom won 
 
I 
 
 THE LEGEND OF- JI 
 
 From in and outer, as a little child 
 
 Sits on a bank and sees blue heavens mild 
 
 Down in the water, and forgets its limbs, 
 
 And knoweth nought save the blue heaven that 
 
 swims. 
 
 " Jubal," the face said, " I am thy loved Past, 
 The soul that makes thee one from first to last. 
 I am the angel of thy life and death, 
 Thy outbreathed being drawing its last breath. 
 Am I not thine alone, a dear dead bride 
 Who blest thy lot above all men s beside ? 
 Thy bride whom thou wouldst never change, nor 
 
 take 
 
 Any bride living, for that dead one s sake ? 
 Was I not all thy yearning and delight, 
 Thy chosen search, thy senses beauteous Right, 
 Which still had been the hunger of thy frame 
 In central heaven, hadst thou been still the same? 
 Wouldst thou have asked aught else from any god 
 Whether with gleaming feet on earth he trod 
 Or thundered through the skies aught else for share 
 Of mortal good, than in thy soul to bear 
 
40 THE LEGEND OF JTJBAL. 
 
 The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest 
 Of the world s spring-tide in thy conscious breast? 
 No, thou hadst grasped thy lot with all its pain, 
 Nor loosed it any painless lot to gain 
 Where music s voice was silent ; for thy fate 
 Was human music s self incorporate : 
 Thy senses keenness and thy passionate strife 
 Were flesh of her flesh and her womb of life. 
 And greatly hast thou lived, for not alone 
 With hidden raptures were her secrets shown, 
 Buried within thee, as the purple light 
 Of gems may sleep in solitary night ; 
 But thy expanding joy was still to give, 
 And with the generous air in song to live 
 Feeding the wave of ever- widening bliss 
 Where fellowship means equal perfectness. 
 And on the mountains in thy wandering 
 Thy feet were beautiful as blossomed spring, 
 That turns the leafless wood to love s glad home, 
 For with thy coming Melody was come. 
 This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow, 
 And that immeasurable life to know 
 
THE LEGEND OF JUBAL. 41 
 
 From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead, 
 A seed primeval that has forests bred. 
 It is the glory of the heritage 
 Thy life has left, that makes thy outcast age : 
 Thy limbs shall lie dark, tombless on this sod, 
 Because thou shinest in man s soul, a god, 
 Who found and gave new passion and new joy 
 That nought but Earth s destruction can destroy. 
 Thy gifts to give was thine of men alone : 
 Twas but in giving that thou couldst atone 
 For too much wealth amid their poverty." 
 
 The words seemed melting into symphony, 
 The wings upbore him, and the gazing song 
 Was floating him the heavenly space along, 
 Where mighty harmonies all gently fell 
 Through veiling vastness, like the far-off bell, 
 Till, ever onward through the choral blue, 
 He heard more faintly and more faintly knew, 
 Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave, 
 The All-creating Presence for his grave. 
 1869. 
 
AGATHA. 
 
AGATHA. 
 
 COME with me to the mountain, not where rocks 
 Soar harsh above the troops of hurrying pines. 
 But where the earth spreads soft and rounded breasts 
 To feed her children ; where the generous hills 
 Lift a green isle betwixt the sky and plain 
 To keep some Old World things aloof from change. 
 Here too tis hill and hollow : new-born streams 
 With sweet enforcement, joyously compelled 
 Like laughing children, hurry down the steeps, 
 And make a dimpled chase athwart the stones ; 
 Pine-woods are black upon the heights, the slopes 
 Are green with pasture, and the bearded corn 
 Fringes the blue above the sudden ridge : 
 A little world whose round horizon cuts 
 
 45 
 
46 AGATHA. 
 
 This isle of hills with heaven for a sea. 
 Save in clear moments when southwestward gleams 
 France by the Rhine, melting anon to haze. 
 The monks of old chose here their still retreat, 
 And called it by the Blessed Virgin s name, 
 S a net a Maria, which the peasant s tongue, 
 Speaking from out the parent s heart that turns 
 All loved things into little things, has made 
 
 Sanct Miirgen, Hoi}* little Mary, dear 
 
 
 
 As all the sweet home "things she smiles upon, 
 The children and the cows, the apple-trees, 
 The cart, the plough, all named with that caress 
 Which feigns them little, easy to be held, 
 Familiar to the C3 r es and hand and heart. 
 What though a Queen ? She puts her crown away 
 And with her little Boy wears common clothes, 
 Caring for common wants, remembering 
 That day when good Saint Joseph left his work 
 To many her with humble trust sublime. 
 
 The monks are gone, their shadows fall no more 
 Tall-frocked and cowled athwart the evening fields 
 
AGATHA. 47 
 
 At milking time ; their silent corridors 
 
 Are turned to homes of bare-armed, aproned men, 
 
 Who toil for wife and children. But the bells, 
 
 Pealing on high from two quaint convent towers, 
 
 Still ring the Catholic signals, summoning 
 
 To grave remembrance of the larger life 
 
 That bears our own, like perishable fruit 
 
 Upon its heaven-wide branches. At their sound 
 
 The shepherd-boy far off upon the hill. 
 
 The workers with the saw and at the forge, 
 
 The triple generation round the hearth, 
 
 Grandames and mothers and the flute-voiced girls, 
 
 Fall on their knees, and send forth prayerful cries 
 
 To the kind Mother with the little Boy, 
 
 Who pleads for helpless men against the storm, 
 
 Lightning and plagues and all terrific shapes 
 
 Of power supreme. 
 
 Within the prettiest hollow of these hills, 
 
 Just as you enter it, upon the slope 
 
 Stands a low cottage neighbored cheerily 
 
 By running water, which, at farthest end 
 
 Of the same hollow, turns a heavy mill, 
 
48 AGATHA. 
 
 And feeds the pasture for the miller s cows, 
 Blanchi and Nageli, Veilchen and the rest, 
 Matrons with faces as Griselda mild, 
 Coming at call. And on the farthest height 
 A little tower looks out above the pines, 
 Where mounting you will find a sanctuary 
 *Open and still ; without, the silent crowd 
 Of heaven-planted, incense-mingling flowers ; 
 Within, the altar where the Mother sits 
 Mid votive tablets hung from far-off 3 r ears 
 By peasants succored in the peril of fire, 
 Fever, or flood, who thought that Ma^ s love, 
 Willing but not omnipotent, had stood 
 Between their lives and that dread power which slew 
 Their neighbor at their side. The chapel bell 
 Will melt to gentlest music ere it reach 
 That cottage on the slope, whose garden-gate 
 Has caught the rose-tree boughs, and stands ajar ; 
 So does the door, to let the sunbeams in ; 
 For in the slanting sunbeams angels come 
 And visit Agatha who dwells within, 
 Old Agatha, whose cousins Kate and Nell 
 
AGATHA. 49 
 
 Are housed by her in Love and Duty s name, 
 They being feeble, with small withered wits, 
 And she believing that the higher gift 
 Was given to be shared. So Agatha 
 Shares her one room, all neat on afternoons, 
 As if some memory were sacred there 
 And every thing within the four low walls 
 An honored relic. 
 
 One long summer s day 
 An angel entered at the rose-hung gate, 
 With skirts pale blue, a brow to quench the pearl, 
 Hair soft and blonde as infants , plenteous 
 As hers who made the wavy lengths once speak 
 The grateful worship of a rescued soul. 
 The angel paused before the open door 
 To give good-da} . Come in," said Agatha. 
 I followed close, and watched and listened there. 
 The angel was a lady, noble, young, 
 Taught in all seemliness that fits a court, 
 All lore that shapes the mind to delicate use, 
 Yet quiet, lowly, as a meek white dove 
 That with its presence teaches gentleness. 
 
 4 
 
50 AGATHA. 
 
 Men called her Countess Linda ; little girls 
 In Freiburg town, orphans whom she caressed, 
 Said Mamma Linda : yet her years were few, 
 Her outward beauties all in budding- time, 
 Her virtues the aroma of the plant 
 That dwells in all its being, root, stem, leaf, 
 And waits not ripeness. 
 
 "Sit," said Agatha. 
 
 Her cousins were at work in neighboring homes, 
 But yet she was not lonely ; all things round 
 Seemed filled with noiseless yet responsive life, 
 As of a child at breast that gently clings : 
 Not sunlight only or the breathing flowers 
 Or the swift shadows of the birds and bees, 
 But all the household goods, which, polished fair 
 By hands that cherished them for service done, 
 Shone as with glad content. The wooden beams 
 Dark and yet friendly, easy to be reached, 
 Bore three white crosses for a speaking sign ; 
 The walls had little pictures hung a-row, 
 Telling the stories of Saint Ursula, 
 And Saint Elizabeth, the lowly queen ; 
 
AGATHA. 51 
 
 And on the bench that served for table too, 
 Skirting the wall to save the narrow space, 
 There la} T the Catholic books, inherited 
 From those old times when printing still was young 
 With stout-limbed promise, like a sturdy boy. 
 And in the farthest corner stood the bed 
 Where o er the pillow hung two pictures wreathed 
 With fresh-plucked ivy : one the Virgin s death, 
 And one her flowering tomb, while high above 
 She smiling bends, and lets her girdle down 
 For ladder to the soul that cannot trust 
 In life which outlasts burial. Agatha 
 Sat at her knitting, aged, upright, slim, 
 And spoke her welcome with mild dignity. 
 She kept the company of kings and queens 
 And mitred saints who sat below the feet 
 Of Francis with the ragged frock and wounds ; 
 And Rank for her meant Duty, various, 
 Yet equal in its worth, done worthily. 
 Command was service ; humblest service done 
 B} r willing and discerning souls was glory. 
 Fair Countess Linda sat upon the bench, 
 
52 AGATHA. 
 
 Close fronting the old knitter, and they talked 
 With sweet antiphony of young and old. 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 You like our valley, lady ? I am glad 
 
 You thought it well to come again. But rest 
 
 The walk is long from Master Michael s inn. 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 Yes, but no walk is prettier. 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 It is true : 
 
 There lacks no blessing here, the waters all 
 Have virtues like the garments of the Lord, 
 And heal much sickness ; then, the crops and cows 
 Flourish past speaking, and the garden flowers, 
 Pink, blue, and purple, tis a joy to see 
 How they yield honey for the singing bees. 
 I would fche whole world were as good a home. 
 
AGATHA. 53 
 
 CCXPNTESS LINDA. 
 
 And you are well off, Agatha ? your friends 
 Left you a certain bread : is it not so? 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 Not so at all, clear lady. I had nought, 
 
 Was a poor orphan ; but I came to tend 
 
 Here in this house, an old afflicted pair, 
 
 Who wore out slowly ; and the last who died, 
 
 Full thirty }*ears ago, left me this roof 
 
 And all the household stuff. It was great wealth ; 
 
 And so I had a home for Kate and Nell. 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 But how, then, have you earned your daily bread 
 These thirty years ? 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 Oh, that is easy earning. 
 We help the neighbors, and our bit and sup 
 
54 AGATHA. 
 
 Is never failing : they have work for us 
 In house and field, all sorts of odds and ends, 
 Patching and mending, turning o er the hay, 
 Holding sick children, there is always work ; 
 And they are very good, the neighbors are : 
 Weigh not our bits of w r ork with weight and scale, 
 But glad themselves with giving us good shares 
 Of meat and drink ; and in the big farm-house 
 When cloth comes home from weaving, the good wife 
 Cuts me a piece, this very gown, and says, 
 " Here, Agatha, you old maid, you have time 
 TQ pray for Hans who is gone soldiering : 
 The saints might help him, and they have much to do, 
 Twere well they were besought to think of him." 
 She spoke half jesting, but I pra} r , I pray 
 For poor young Hans. I take it much to heart 
 That other people are worse off than I, 
 I ease my soul with praying for them all. 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 That is your way of singing, Agatha ; 
 
AGATHA. 55 
 
 Just as the nightingales pour forth sad songs, 
 
 And when they reach men s ears they make men s 
 
 hearts 
 Feel the more kindly. 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 Nay, I cannot sing : 
 
 My voice is hoarse, and oft I think my prayers 
 Are foolish, feeble things ; for Christ is good 
 Whether I pray or not, the Virgin s heart 
 Is kinder far than mine ; and then I stop 
 And feel I can do nought towards helping men, 
 Till out it comes, like tears that will not hold, 
 And I must pray again for all the world. 
 Tis good to me, I mean the neighbors are : 
 To Kate and Nell too. I have money saved 
 To go on pilgrimage the second time. 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 And do you mean to go on pilgrimage 
 With all your years to carry, Agatha ? 
 
56 AGATHA. 
 
 ,* 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 The years are light, dear lady : tis rny sins 
 Are heavier than I would. And I shall go 
 All the way to Einsiedeln with that load : 
 I need to w r ork it off. 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 What sort of sins, 
 Dear Agatha ? I think they must be small. 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 Nay, but they may be greater than I know ; 
 
 Tis but dim light I see by. So I try 
 
 All waj s I know of to be cleansed and pure : 
 
 I would not sink where evil spirits are. 
 
 There s perfect goodness somewhere : so I strive. 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 You were the better for that pilgrimage 
 You made before ? The shrine is beautiful ; 
 And then you saw fresh country all the way. 
 
AGATHA. 
 
 Yes, that is true. And ever since that time 
 The world seems greater, and the Holy Church 
 More wonderful. The blessed pictures all. 
 The heavenly images with books and wings, 
 Are company to me through the day and night. 
 The time ! the time ! It never seemed far back, 
 Only to father s father and his kin 
 That lived before him. But the time stretched ont 
 After that pilgrimage : I seemed to see 
 Far back, and yet I knew time lay behind, 
 As there are countries lying still behind 
 The highest mountains, there in Switzerland 
 Oh, it is great to go on pilgrimage ! 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 Perhaps some neighbors will be pilgrims too, 
 And } ou can start together in a band. 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 Not from these hills : people are bus}^ here. 
 
58 AGATHA. 
 
 The beasts want tendance. One who is not missed 
 
 Can go and pray for others who must work. 
 
 I owe it to all neighbors, young and old ; 
 
 For they are good past thinking, lads and girls 
 
 Given to mischief, merry naughtiness, 
 
 Quiet it, as the hedgehogs smooth their spines, 
 
 For fear of hurting poor old Agatha. 
 
 Tis pretty : why, the cherubs in the sky 
 
 Look young and merry, and the angels play 
 
 On citherns, lutes, and all sweet instruments. 
 
 I would have young things merry. See the Lord ! 
 
 A little baby playing with the birds ; 
 
 And how the Blessed Mother smiles at Mm. 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 I think you are too happy, Agatha, 
 
 To care for heaven. Earth contents you well. 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 Nay, nay, I shall be called, and I shall go 
 Right willingly. I shall get helpless, blind, 
 
AGATHA. 59 
 
 Be like an old stalk to be plucked away : 
 
 The garden must be cleared for young spring plants. 
 
 "Pis home be} T ond the grave, the most are there, 
 
 All those we pra}* to, all the Church s lights, 
 
 And poor old souls are welcome in their rags : 
 
 One sees it by the pictures. Good Saint Ann, 
 
 The Virgin s mother, she is ve^ old. 
 
 And had her troubles with her husband too. 
 
 Poor Kate and Nell are younger far than I, 
 
 But they will have this roof to cover them. 
 
 I shall go willingly ; and willingness 
 
 Makes the yoke easy and the burden light. 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 When you go southward in your prilgrhnage, 
 
 Come to see me in Freiburg, Agatha. 
 
 Where you have friends 3^011 should not go to inns. 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 Yes, I will gladly come to see }^ou, lady. 
 And you will give me sweet hay for a bed, 
 
60 AGATHA. 
 
 And in the morning I shall wake betimes 
 And start when all the birds begin to sing. 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 You wear your smart clothes on the pilgrimage, 
 Such pretty clothes as all the women here 
 Keep by them for their best : a velvet cap 
 And collar golden-broidered ? They look well 
 On old and young alike. 
 
 AGATHA. 
 
 Nay, I have none, 
 
 Never had better clothes than these you see. 
 Good clothes are pretty, but one sees them best 
 When others wear them, and I somehow thought 
 Twas not worth while. I had so many things 
 More than some neighbors, I was parti} shy 
 Of wearing better clothes than the} , and now 
 I am so old and custom is so strong 
 Twould hurt me sore to put on finer} . 
 
AGATHA. 61 
 
 COUNTESS LINDA. 
 
 Your gray hair is a crowns, dear Agatha. 
 
 Shake hands ; good-by. The sun is going down, 
 
 And I must see the glory from the hill. 
 
 I staid among those hills ; and oft heard more 
 Of Agatha. I liked to hear her name. 
 As that of one half grandame and half saint, 
 Uttered with reverent pla} T fulness. The lads 
 And younger men all called her mother, aunt, 
 Or granny, with their pet diminutives, 
 And bade their lasses and their brides behave 
 Right well to one who surely made a link 
 Twixt faulty folk and God by loving both : 
 Not one but counted service done by her. 
 Asking no pay save just her daily bread. 
 At feasts and weddings, when they passed in groups 
 Along the vale, and the good country wine, 
 Being vocal in them, made them choir along 
 In quaintly mingled mirth and piety, 
 They fain must jest and play some friendly trick 
 
62 AGATHA. 
 
 On three old maids ; but when the moment came 
 Always they bated breath, and made their sport, 
 Gentle as feather-stroke, that Agatha 
 Might like the waking for the love it showed. 
 Their song made happy music mid the hills, 
 For nature tuned their race to harmony, 
 And poet Hans, the tailor, wrote them songs 
 That grew from out their life, as crocuses 
 From out the meadow s moistness. Twas his 
 
 song 
 
 They oft sang, wending homeward from a feast, - 
 The song I give you. It brings in, } T OU see, 
 Their gentle jesting with the three old maids. 
 
 Midnight by the chapel bell ! 
 
 Homeward, homeward all, farewell ! 
 
 I with you, and you with me, 
 
 Miles are short with company. 
 
 Heart of Mary, bless the way, 
 Keep us all by night and day ! 
 
 Moon and stars at feast with night 
 Now have drunk their fill of light. 
 
AGATHA. 63 
 
 Home they hurry, making time 
 Trot apace, like merry rhyme. 
 
 Heart of Mary, mystic rose, 
 
 Send us all a sweet repose ! 
 
 Swiftly through the wood down hill, 
 
 Run till you can hear the mill. 
 
 Toni s ghost is wandering now, 
 
 Shaped just like a snow-white cow. 
 Heart of Mary, morning star, 
 Ward off danger, near or far I 
 
 Toni s wagon w r ith its load 
 
 Fell and crushed him in the road 
 
 Twixt these pine-trees. Never fear ! 
 
 Give a neighbor s ghost good cheer. 
 
 Holy Babe, our God and Brother, 
 
 Bind us fast to one another I 
 
 Hark ! the mill is at its work, 
 Now we pass beyond the murk 
 
64 AGATHA. 
 
 To the hollow, where the moon 
 
 Makes her silven T afternoon. 
 
 Good Saint Joseph, faithful spouse, 
 Help us all to keep our voivs ! 
 
 Here the three old maidens dwell, 
 
 Agatha and Kate and Nell ; 
 
 See, the moon shines on the thatch, 
 
 We will go and shake the latch. 
 Heart of Mary, cup of joy, 
 Give us mirth without alloy ! 
 
 Hush, tis here, no noise, sing low, 
 Rap with gentle knuckles so ! 
 Like the little tapping birds,- 
 On the door ; then sing good words. 
 Meek /Saint Anna, old and fair, 
 Hallow all the snoiv-white hair ! 
 
 Little maidens old, sweet dreams ! 
 Sleep one sleep till morning beams. 
 
AGATHA. 65 
 
 Mothers ye, who help us all, 
 
 Quick at hand, if ill befall. 
 Holy Gabriel, lily -laden. 
 Bless the aged mother-maiden ! 
 
 Forward, mount the broad hillside 
 
 Swift as soldiers when the}^ ride. 
 
 See the two towers how they peep, 
 
 Round-capped giants, o er the steep. 
 Heart of Mary, by thy sorrow, 
 Keep us upright through the morroiv I 
 
 Now they rise quite suddenly 
 Like a man from bended knee, 
 Now Saint Margen is in sight, 
 Here the roads branch off good-night ! 
 Heart of Mary, by thy grace, 
 Give us with the saints a place I 
 1868. 
 
 6 
 
ARMGART. 
 
 67 
 
ARMGART. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 A Salon lit with lamps, and ornamented with green 
 plants. An open piano, with many scattered sheets 
 of music. Bronze busts of Beethoven and Gluck 
 on pillars opposite each other. A small table 
 spread ivith supper. To FRAULEIN WALPURGA, 
 who advances with a slight lameness of gait fro/n 
 an adjoining room, enters GRAF DORNBERG at the 
 opposite door in a travelling dress. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Good-morning, Friiulein ! 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 What, so soon returned? 
 I feared your mission kept you still at Prague. 
 
TO ARMGART. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 But now arrived ! You see my travelling dress. 
 I hurried from the panting, roaring steam 
 Like any courier of embassy 
 Who hides the fiends of war within his bag. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 You know that Armgart sings to-night ? 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Has sung ! 
 
 Tis close on half-past nine. The Orpheus 
 Lasts not so long. Her spirits were they high ? 
 Was Leo confident? 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 He only feared 
 
 Some tameness at beginning. Let the house 
 Once ring, he said, with plaudits, she is safe. 
 
 GRAF. 
 And Armgart? 
 
ARMGAET. 71 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 She was stiller than her wont. 
 But once, at some such trivial word of mine, 
 As that the highest prize might }-et be won 
 By her who took the second she was roused. 
 k For me," she said, " I triumph or I fail. 
 I never strove for any second prize." 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Poor human-hearted singing-bird ! She bears 
 
 Caesar s ambition in her delicate breast, 
 
 And nought to still it with but quivering song ! 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 I had not for the world been there to-night : 
 Unreasonable dread oft chills me more 
 Than any reasonable hope can warm. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 You have a rare affection for your cousin ; 
 As tender as a sister s. 
 
72 AIIMGAET. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Nay, I fear 
 
 My love is little more than what I felt 
 For happy stories when I was a child. 
 She fills my life that would be empt} else, 
 And lifts my nought to value by her side. 
 
 GRAF, 
 
 She is reason good enough, or seems to be, 
 Why all were born whose being ministers 
 To her completeness. Is it most her voice 
 Subdues us ? or her instinct exquisite, 
 Informing each old strain with some new grace, 
 Which takes our sense like any natural good ? 
 Or most her spiritual energy, 
 That sweeps us in the current of her song ? 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 I know not. Losing either, we should lose 
 That whole we call our Armgart. For herself, 
 
ARMGABT. 78 
 
 She often wonders what her life had been 
 Without that voice for channel to her soul. 
 She says, it must have leaped through all her 
 
 limbs 
 
 Made her a Maenad made her snatch a brand, 
 And fire some forest, that her rage might mount 
 In crashing roaring flames through half a land, 
 Leaving her still and patient for a while. 
 " Poor wretch ! " she says, of any murderess 
 " The world was cruel, and she could not sing : 
 I carry my revenges in my throat ; 
 I love in singing, and am loved again." 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Mere mood ! I cannot yet believe it more. 
 Too much ambition has unwomaned her ; 
 But only for a while. Her nature hides 
 One half its treasures by its very wealth, 
 Taxing the hours to show it. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Hark ! she comes. 
 
74 AEMGAHT. 
 
 Enter LEO with a wreath in his hand, holding the 
 door open for ARMGART, who wears a furred man 
 tle and hood. She is followed by her maid, carry 
 ing an armful of bouquets. 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Place for the queen of song ! 
 
 GRAF (advancing towards ARMGART, ivho throws off 
 her hood and mantle, and shows a star of bril 
 liants in her hair) . 
 
 A triumph, then. 
 
 You will not be a niggard of your joy, 
 And chide the eagerness that came to share it. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 kind ! you hastened your return for me. 
 
 1 would you had been there to hear me sing ! 
 Walpurga, kiss me : never tremble more 
 Lest Armgart s wing should fail her. She has 
 
 found 
 
AEMGATIT. 75 
 
 This niglit the region where her rapture breathes 
 
 Pouring her passion on the air made live 
 
 With human heart-throbs. Tell them, Leo, tell 
 
 them 
 
 How I outsang your hope, and made } ou cry 
 Because Gluck could not hear me. That was folly ! 
 He sang, not listened : eveiy linked note 
 Was his immortal pulse that stirred in mine, 
 And all my gladness is but part of him. 
 Give me the wreath. 
 
 [She crowns the bust of GLUCK.. 
 
 LEO (sardonically) . 
 
 Ay, ay, but mark you this : 
 It was not part of him that trill }*ou made 
 In spite of me and reason ! 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 You were wrong 
 
 Dear Leo, you were wrong : the house was held 
 As if a storm were listening with delight, 
 And hushed its thunder. 
 
76 ABMGAET. 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Will you ask the house 
 
 To teach you singing? Quit your Orpheus then, 
 And sing in farces grown to operas, 
 Where all the prurience of the full-fed mob 
 Is tickled with melodic impudence : 
 Jerk forth burlesque bravuras, square your arms 
 Akimbo with a tavern wench s grace, 
 And set the splendid compass of your voice 
 To l_yric jigs. Go to ! I thought you meant 
 To be an artist lift your audience 
 To see } T our vision, not trick forth a show 
 To please the grossest taste of grossest numbers. 
 
 ARMGART (taking up LEO S hand, and kissing it) . 
 
 Pardon, good Leo, I am penitent. 
 
 I will do penance : sing a hundred trills 
 
 Into a deep-dug grave, then burying them 
 
 As one did Midas secret, rid nryself 
 
 Of naughty exultation. Oh I trilled 
 
 At nature s prompting, like the nightingales. 
 
 Go scold them, dearest Leo. 
 
ARMGAKT. 77 
 
 LEO. 
 
 I stop my ears. 
 
 Nature in Gluck inspiring Orpheus, 
 Has done with nightingales. Are bird-beaks lips? 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Truce to rebukes ! Tell us who were not there 
 The double drama : how the expectant house 
 Took the first notes. 
 
 WALPURGA (turning from her occupation of decking 
 the room with the flowers) . 
 
 Yes, tell us all, dear Armgart. 
 Did you feel tremors? Leo, how did she look? 
 Was there a cheer to greet her ? 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Not a sound. 
 
 She walked like Orpheus in his solitude, 
 And seemed to see nought but what no man saw. 
 
78 ARMGART. 
 
 Twas famous. Not the Schroeder-Devrient 
 Had done it better. But your blessed public 
 Had never any judgment in cold blood 
 Thinks all perhaps were better otherwise, 
 Till rapture brings a reason. 
 
 ARMGART (scorn fully) . 
 
 I knew that ! 
 
 The women whispered, u Not a pretty face ! " 
 The men, u Well, well, a goodly length of limb : 
 She bears the chiton." It were all the same 
 Were I the Virgin Mother, and my stage 
 The opening heavens at the Judgment-day : 
 Gossips would peep, jog elbows, rate the price 
 Of such a woman in the social mart. 
 What were the drama of the world to them, 
 Unless they felt the hell-prong ? 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Peace, now, peace ! 
 I hate my phrases to bo smothered o er 
 With sauce of paraphrase, my sober tune 
 
AKMGABT. 79 
 
 Made bass to rambling trebles, showering down 
 In endless demi-semi-quavers. 
 
 ARMGART (taking a bon-bon from the table, uplifting 
 it before putting it into her mouth, and turning 
 away) . 
 
 Mum ! 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Yes, tell as all the glory, leave the blame. 
 
 WALPtJRGA. 
 
 You first, dear Leo what you saw and heard ; 
 Then Armgart she must tell us what she felt. 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Well ! The first notes came clearly, firmly forth. 
 
 And I was easy, for behind those rills 
 
 I knew there was a fountain. I could see . 
 
 The house was breathing gently, heads were still ; 
 
 Parrot opinion was struck meekly mute, 
 
 And human hearts were swelling. Armgart stood 
 
80 ABMGAET. 
 
 As if she had been new-created there, 
 And found her voice which found a melody. 
 The minx ! Gluck had not written, nor I taught : 
 Orpheus was Armgart, Armgart Orpheus. 
 Well, well, all through the scena I could feel 
 The silence tremble now, now poise itself 
 With added weight of feeling, till at last 
 Delight o er-toppled it. The final note 
 Had happy drowning in the unloosed roar 
 That surged and ebbed and ever surged again, 
 Till expectation kept it pent awhile 
 Ere Orpheus returned. Pfui ! He was changed : 
 My demi-god was pale, had downcast eyes 
 That quivered like a bride s who fain would send 
 Backward the rising tear. 
 
 ARMGART (advancing, but then turning aivay, as if 
 to check her speech) . 
 
 I was a bride, 
 As nuns are at their spousals. 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Ay, my lady, 
 
ARMGART. 81 
 
 That moment will not come again : applause 
 May come and plenty ; but the first, first draught ! 
 
 [/Snaps Ms fingers. 
 
 Music has sounds for it I know no words. 
 I felt it once myself when they performed 
 My overture to Sintram. Well ! tis strange, 
 We know not pain from pleasure in such joy. 
 
 ARMGART (turning quickly) . 
 Oh, pleasure has cramped dwelling in our souls, 
 And when full Being comes must call on pain 
 To lend it liberal space. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 I hope the house 
 
 Kept a reserve of plaudits : I am jealous 
 Lest they had dulled themselves for coming good 
 That should have seemed the better and the best. 
 
 LEO. 
 
 No, twas a revel where they had but quaffed 
 Their opening cup. I thank the artist s star, 
 
82 AEMGART. 
 
 His audience keeps not sober : once afire, 
 
 They flame towards climax, though his merit hold 
 
 But fairly even. 
 
 ARMGART (her hand on LEO S arm) . 
 
 Now, now, confess the truth : 
 I sang still better to the very end 
 All save the trill ; I give that up to } T ou, 
 To bite and growl at. Why, you said 3~ourself, 
 Each time I sang, it seemed new doors were open 
 That you might hear heaven clearer. 
 
 LEO (shaking his finger). 
 
 I was raving. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 I am not glad with that mean vanity 
 Which knows no good beyond its appetite 
 Full feasting upon praise ! I am only glad, 
 Being praised for what I know is worth the praise ; 
 Glad of the proof that I myself have part 
 
AEMGAHT. 83 
 
 In what I worship ! At the last applause 
 Seeming a roar of tropic winds that tossed 
 The handkerchiefs and num}*-colored flowers, 
 Falling like shattered rainbows all around 
 Think you I felt myself uprima donna? 
 No, but a happy spiritual star 
 Such as old Dante saw, wrought in a rose 
 Of light in Paradise, whose only self 
 Was consciousness of glory wide-diffused, 
 Music, life, power I moving in the midst 
 With a sublime necessity of good. 
 
 LEO (with a shrug). 
 
 I thought it was a prima donna came 
 Within the side-scenes ; ay, and she was proud 
 To find the bouquet from the royal box 
 Enclosed a jewel-case, and proud to wear 
 A star of brilliants, quite an earthly star, 
 Valued by thalers. Come, my lady, own 
 Ambition has five senses, and a self 
 That gives it good warm lodging when it sinks 
 Plump down from ecstasy. 
 
84 ARMGART. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Own it? why not? 
 
 Am I a sage whose words must fall like seed 
 Silently buried toward a far-off spring ? 
 I sing to living men, and my effect 
 Is like the summer s sun, that ripens corn 
 Or now or never. If the world brings me gifts, 
 Gold, incense, myrrh twill be the needful sign 
 That I have stirred it as the high year stirs 
 Before I sink to winter. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Ecstasies 
 
 Are short most happily ! We should but lose 
 Were Armgart borne too commonly and long 
 Out of the self that charms us. Could I choose, 
 She were less apt to soar bej^ond the reach 
 Of woman s foibles, innocent vanities, 
 Fondness for trifles like that pretty star 
 Twinkling beside her cloud of ebon hair. 
 
ARMGART. 85 
 
 ARMGART (taking out the gem, and looking at it). 
 
 This little star ! I would it were the seed 
 
 Of a whole Milky Way, if such bright shimmer 
 
 Were the sole speech men told their rapture with 
 
 At Armgart s music. Shall I turn aside 
 
 From splendors which flash out the glow I make, 
 
 And live to make, in all the chosen breasts 
 
 Of half a Continent? No, may it come, 
 
 That splendor ! May the day be near when men 
 
 Think much to let my horses draw me home, 
 
 And new lands welcome me upon their beach, 
 
 Loving me for my fame. That is the truth 
 
 Of what I wish, nay, yearn for. -Shall I lie? 
 
 Pretend to seek obscurity to sing 
 
 In hope of disregard ? A vile pretence ! 
 
 And blasphemy besides. For what is fame 
 
 But the benignant strength of One, transformed 
 
 To joy of Many? Tributes, plaudits come 
 
 As necessary breathing of such joy ; 
 
 And * may they come to me ! 
 
86 AKMGART. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 The auguries 
 
 Point clearly that way. Is it no offence 
 To wish the eagle s wing may find repose, 
 As feebler wings do, in a quiet nest? 
 Or has the taste of fame already turned 
 The Woman to a Muse . . . 
 
 LEO (going to the table) . 
 
 Who needs no supper. 
 I am her priest, ready to eat her share 
 Of good Walpurga s offerings. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Anngart, come. 
 Graf, will you come ? 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Thanks, I play truant here, 
 And must retrieve my self-indulged delay. 
 
ARMGART. 87 
 
 But will the Muse receive a votary 
 At any hour to-morrow ? 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Any hour 
 After rehearsal, ftfter twelve at noon. 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 The same Salon, morning. ARMGART seated, in her 
 bonnet and walking-dress. The GRAF standing 
 near her against the piano. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Armgart, to many minds the first success 
 Is reason for desisting. I have known 
 A man so versatile, he tried all arts, 
 But when in each by turns he had achieved 
 Just so much mastery as made men say, 
 
, ARMGART. 
 
 " He could be king here if he would," he threw 
 The lauded skill aside. He hates, said one. 
 The level of achieved pre-eminence, 
 He must be conquering still ; but others said 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 The truth, I hope : he had a meagre soul, 
 Holding no depth where love could root itself. 
 Could if he would ? " True greatness ever wills 
 It lives in wholeness if it lire at all, 
 And all its strength is knit with constancy. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 He used to say himself he was too sane 
 
 To give his life away for excellence 
 
 Which yet must stand, an ivory statuette 
 
 Wrought to perfection through long lonely years, 
 
 Huddled in the mart of mediocrities. 
 
 He said, the very finest doing wins 
 
 The admiring only ; but to leave undone, 
 
 Promise and not fulfil, like buried youth, 
 
AEMGARTAr 89 
 
 Wins all the envious, makes them 
 
 As that fair Absent, blameless Possible, 
 
 Which could alone impassion them ; and thus, 
 
 Serene negation has free gift of all, 
 
 Panting achievement struggles, is denied, 
 
 Or wins to lose again. What say you, Armgart? 
 
 Truth has rough flavors if we bite it through ; 
 
 I think this sarcasm came from out its core 
 
 Of bitter irony. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 It is the truth 
 
 Mean souls select to feed upon. What then ? 
 Their meanness is a truth, which I will spurn. 
 The praise I seek lives not in envious breath, 
 Using my name to blight another s deed. 
 I sing for love of song and that renown 
 Which is the spreading act, the world wide share, 
 Of good that I was born with. Had I failed 
 Well, that had been a truth most pitiable. 
 I cannot bear to think what life would be 
 With high hope shrunk to endurance, stunted aims 
 
90 AKMGAftT. 
 
 Like broken lances ground to eating-knives, 
 A self sunk clown to look with level eyes 
 At low achicvemennt, doomed from day to day 
 To distaste of its consciousness. But I 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Have won, not lost, in your decisive throw. 
 
 And I too glory in this issue ; 3 et 
 
 The public verdict has no potency 
 
 To sway my judgment of what Armgart is : 
 
 My pure delight in her would bo but sullied, 
 
 If it o erflowed with mixture of men s praise. 
 
 And had she failed, I should have said, " The pearl 
 
 Remains a pearl for me, reflects the light 
 
 With the same fitness that first charmed my gaze 
 
 Is worth as fine a setting now as then." 
 
 ARMGART (rising). 
 
 Oh you are good ! But why will you rehearse 
 The talk of cynics, who with insect eyes 
 Explore the secrets of the rubbish-heap ? 
 I hate your epigrams and pointed saws 
 
AKMGAKT. 91 
 
 Whose narrow truth is but broad falsity. 
 Confess your friend was shallow. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 I confess 
 
 Life is not rounded in an epigram, 
 And saying aught, we leave a world unsaid. 
 I quoted, merely to shape forth my thought 
 That high success has terrors when achieved 
 Like preternatural spouses whose dire love 
 Hangs perilous on slight observances : 
 Whence it were possible that Armgart crowned 
 Might turn and listen to a pleading voice, 
 Though Armgart striving in the race was deaf. 
 You said }-ou dared not think what life had been 
 Without the stamp of eminence ; have you thought 
 How } ou will bear the poise of eminence 
 With dread of sliding ? Paint the future out 
 As an unchecked and glorious career, 
 Twill grow more strenuous b} T the very love 
 You bear to excellence, the veiy fate 
 Of human powers, which tread at every step 
 On possible verges. 
 
92 AEMGAET. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 I accept the peril. 
 
 I choose to walk high with sublimer dread 
 Rather than crawl in safety. And, besides, 
 I am an artist as you are a noble : 
 I ought to bear the burthen of my rank. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Such parallels, dear Armgart, are but snares 
 To catch the mind with seeming argument 
 Small baits of likeness mid disparity. 
 Men rise the higher as their task is high, 
 The task being well achieved. A woman s rank 
 Lies in the fulness of her womanhood : 
 Therein alone she is royal. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Yes, I know 
 
 The oft-taught Gospel : " Woman, thy desire 
 Shall be that all superlatives on earth 
 Belong to men, save the one highest kind 
 
ARMGART. 93 
 
 To be a mother. Thou shalt not desire 
 To do aught best save pure subservience : 
 Nature has willed it so ! " O blessed Nature ! 
 Let her be arbitress ; she gave me voice 
 Such as she only gives a woman child, 
 Best of its kind, gave me ambition too, 
 That sense transcendent which can taste the joy 
 Of swaying multitudes, of being adored 
 For such achievement, needed excellence, 
 As man s best art must w^ait for, or be dumb. 
 Men did not say, when I had sung last night, 
 " Twas good, nay, wonderful, considering 
 She is a woman " and then turn to add, 
 " Tenor or baritone had sung her songs 
 Better, of course : she s but a woman spoiled." 
 I beg your pardon, Graf, you said it. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 No! 
 
 How should I say it, Armgart? I who own 
 The magic of your nature-given art 
 As sweetest effluence of your womanhood, 
 
94 AKMGAET. 
 
 Which, being to my choice the best, must find 
 The best of utterance. But this I say : 
 Your fervid youth baguiles you ; you mistake 
 A strain of lyric passion for a life 
 Which in the spending is a chronicle 
 With ugly pages. Trust me, Armgart, trust me ; 
 Ambition exquisite as yours which soars 
 Toward something quintessential you call fame, 
 Is not robust enough for this gross world 
 Whose fame is dense with false and foolish breath. 
 Ardor, a-twin with nice refining thought, 
 Prepares a double pain. Pain had been saved, 
 Nay, purer gloiy reached, had you been throned 
 As woman only, holding all }T>ur art 
 As attribute to that dear sovereignty 
 Concentring }*our power in home delights 
 Which penetrate and purify the world. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 What, leave the opera with my part ill -sung 
 While I was warbling in a drawing-room? 
 Sing in the chimney-corner to inspire 
 
ARMGAKT. 95 
 
 My husband reading news ? Let the world hear 
 
 My music only in his morning speech 
 
 Less stammering than most honorable men s ? 
 
 No ! tell me that my song is poor, my art 
 
 The piteous feat of weakness aping strength 
 
 That were fit proem to jour argument. 
 
 Till then, I am an artist by my birth 
 
 By the same warrant that I am a woman : 
 
 Nay, in the added rarer gift I see 
 
 Supreme vocation : if a conflict comes, 
 
 Perish no, not the woman, but the joys 
 
 Which men make narrow by their narrowness. 
 
 Oh I am happy ! The great masters write 
 
 For women s voices, and great Music wants me ! 
 
 I need not crush myself within a mould 
 
 Of theory called Nature : I have room 
 
 To breathe and grow imstunted. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Armgart, hear me. 
 
 I meant not that our talk should hurry on 
 To such collision. Foresight of the ills 
 
96 ARMGART. 
 
 Thick shadowing your path, drew on my speech 
 
 Beyond intention. True, I canae to ask 
 
 A great renunciation, but not this 
 
 Towards which my words at first perversel} T strayed, 
 
 As if in memory of their earlier suit, 
 
 Forgetful 
 
 Armgart, do you remember too? the suit 
 Had but postponement, was not quite disdained 
 Was told to wait and learn what it has learned 
 A more submissive speech. 
 
 
 
 ARMGART (with some agitation) . 
 
 Then it forgot 
 
 Its lesson cruelly. As I remember, 
 Twas not to speak save to the artist crowned, 
 Nor speak to her of casting off her crown. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Nor will it, Armgart. I come not to seek 
 
 Any renunciation save the wife s, 
 
 Which turns away from other possible love 
 
ABMGAKT. 97 
 
 Future and worthier to take his love 
 Who asks the name of husband. He who sought 
 Armgart obscure, and heard her answer, " Wait" 
 May come without suspicion now to seek 
 Armgart applauded. 
 
 ARMGART (turning towards him) . 
 
 Yes, without suspicion 
 
 Of augUt save what consists with faithfulness 
 In all expressed intent. Forgive me, Graf 
 I am ungrateful to no soul that loves me 
 To you most grateful. Yet the best intent 
 Grasps but a living present which may grow 
 Like any unfledged bird. You are a noble, 
 And have a high career ; just now you said 
 Twas higher far than aught a woman seeks 
 Beyond mere womanhood. You claim to be 
 More than a husband, but could not rejoice 
 That I were more than wife. What follows, then? 
 You choosing me with such persistency 
 As is but stretched-out rashness, soon must find 
 Our marriage asks concessions, asks resolve 
 7 
 
98 ARMGART. 
 
 To share renunciation or demand it. 
 
 Either we both renounce a mutual ease, 
 
 As in a nation s need both man and wife 
 
 Do public services, or one of us 
 
 Must yield that something else for which each lives 
 
 Besides the other. Men are reasoners : 
 
 That premise of superior claims perforce 
 
 Urges conclusion " Armgart, it is you." 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 But if I say I have considered this 
 
 With strict prevision, counted all the cost 
 
 Which that great good of loving you demands 
 
 Questioned my stores of patience, half-resolved 
 
 To live resigned without a bliss whose threat 
 
 Touched 3^011 as well as me and finally, 
 
 With impetus of undivided will 
 
 Returned to say, You shall be free as now ; 
 
 Only accept the refuge, shelter, guard, 
 
 My love will give } our freedom " then your words 
 
 Are hard accusal. 
 
ARMGART. 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Well, I accuse myself. 
 My love would be accomplice of your will. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Again my will ? 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Oh your unspoken will. 
 Your silent tolerance would torture me, 
 And on that rack I should deny the good 
 I yet believed in. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Then I am the man 
 Whom you would love ? 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Whom I refuse to love ! 
 No, I will live alone, and pour my pain 
 With passion into music, where it turns 
 
100 AKMGART. 
 
 To what is best within my better self. 
 
 1 will not take for husband one who deems 
 
 The thing my soul acknowledges as good 
 
 The thing I hold worth striving, suffering for. 
 
 To be a thing dispensed with easily, 
 
 Or else the idol of a mind infirm. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Armgart, 3-011 are ungenerous ; you strain 
 My thought be}~ond its mark. Our difference 
 Lies not so deep as love as union 
 Through a mysterious fitness that transcends 
 Formal agreement. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 It lies deep enough 
 To chafe the union. If many a man 
 Refrains, degraded, from the utmost right, 
 Because the pleadings of his wife s small fears 
 Are little serpents biting at his heel, 
 How shall a woman keep her steadfastness 
 
ARMGAKT. 101 
 
 Beneath a frost within her husband s eyes 
 Where coldness scorches ? Graf, it is your sorrow 
 That you love Armgart. Nay, it is her sorrow 
 That she may not love you. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 * 
 
 Woman, it seems, 
 Has enviable power to love or not 
 According to her will. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 She has the will 
 
 I have who am one woman not to take 
 Disloyal pledges that divide her will. 
 The man who marries me must wed my Art 
 Honor and cherish it, not tolerate. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 The man is yet to come whose theory 
 
 Will weigh as nought with you against his love. 
 
102 AKMGART. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Whose theory will plead beside his love. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Himself a singer, then ? who knows no life 
 Out of the opera books, where tenor parts 
 Are found to suit him ? 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 You are bitter, Graf. 
 
 Forgive me ; seek the woman you deserve, 
 All grace, all goodness, who has not yet found 
 A meaning in her life, nor any end 
 Beyond fulfilling yours. The type abounds. 
 
 GRAF. 
 And happily, for the world. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Yes, happily. 
 
ARMGART. 103 
 
 Let it excuse me that my kind is rare : 
 Commonness is its own security. 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Armgart, I would with all my soul I knew 
 The man so rare that he could make j our life 
 As woman sweet to you, as artist safe. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Oh I can live unmated, but not live 
 Without the bliss of singing to the world, 
 And feeling all my world respond to me. 
 
 GRAF. 
 May it be lasting. Then, we two must part? 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 I thank you from my heart for all. Farewell ! 
 
104 AEMGABT. 
 
 SCENE III. A YEAR LATER. 
 
 The same Salon. WALPURGA is standing looking 
 totvards the window with an air of uneasiness. 
 DOCTOR GRAHN. 
 
 DOCTOR. 
 Where is my patient, Fraulein? 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Fled! escaped! 
 Gone to rehearsal. Is it dangerous? 
 
 DOCTOR. 
 
 No, no ; her throat is cured. I only came 
 To hear her try her voice. Had she yet sung? 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 No : she had meant to wait for you. She said, 
 " The Doctor has a right to rny first song." 
 Her gratitude was full of little plans, 
 
AKMGABT. 105 
 
 But all were swept away like gathered flowers 
 By sudden storm. She saw this opera bill 
 It was a wasp to sting her : she turned pale, 
 Snatched up her hat and mufflers, said in haste, 
 " I go to Leo to rehearsal none 
 Shall sing Fidelio to-night but me ! " 
 Then rushed down stairs. 
 
 DOCTOR (looking at his watch) . 
 
 And this, not long ago? 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Barely an hour. 
 
 DOCTOR. 
 
 I will come again 
 Returning from Charlottenburg at one. 
 
 WALPURGA . 
 
 Doctor, I feel a strange presentiment. 
 Are 3 ou quite easy ? 
 
106 ARMGAKT. 
 
 DOCTOR. 
 
 She can take no harm. 
 
 Twas time for her to sing : her throat is well. 
 It was a fierce attack, and dangerous ; 
 I had to nse strong remedies, but well ! 
 At one, dear Fraulein, we shall meet again. 
 
 SCENE I Y. Two HOURS LATER. 
 
 WALPURGA starts up, looking toivards the door. 
 ARMGART enters, followed by LEO. She throws 
 herself on a chair which stands with its back towards 
 the door, speechless, not seeming to see any thing. 
 WALPURGA casts a questioning , terrified look at LEO. 
 He shrugs his shoulders, and lifts up his hands be- 
 .hind ARMGART, who sits like a helpless image, while 
 WALPURGA takes off her hat and mantle. 
 
AEMGAET. 107 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Armgart, dear Armgart (kneeling, and taking her 
 
 hands), only speak to me, 
 
 Your poor Walpurga. Oh your hands are cold ! 
 Clasp mine, and warm them ! I will kiss them warm. 
 
 (ARMGART looks at her an instant, then draws 
 away her hands, and, turning aside, buries her 
 face against the back of the chair, WALPURGA 
 rising, and standing near.) 
 
 (DOCTOR GRAHN enters.) 
 
 DOCTOR. 
 
 News ! stirring news to-day ! wonders come thick. 
 ARMGART (starting up at the first sound of his voice, 
 
 and speaking vehemently) . 
 
 Yes, thick, thick, thick ! and you have murdered it I 
 Murdered my voice poisoned the soul in me, 
 And kept me living. 
 You never told me that your cruel cures 
 "Were clogging films a mouldy, dead ning blight 
 
108 ARMGART. 
 
 A lava-mud to crust and bury me, 
 Yet hold me living in a deep, deep tomb, 
 Crying unheard forever ! Oh your cures 
 Are devils triumphs : you can rob, maim, slay, 
 And keep a hell on the other side your cure 
 Where you can see your victim quivering 
 Between the teeth of torture see a soul 
 Made keen by loss all anguish with a good 
 Once known and gone ! ( Turns and sinks back on 
 her chair.) 
 
 O misery, misery ! 
 
 You might have killed me, might have let me sleep 
 After my happy daj 1 ", and wake not here ! 
 In some new unremembered world, not here, 
 Where all is faded, flat a feast broke off 
 Banners all meaningless exulting words 
 Dull, dull a drum that lingers in the air 
 Beating to melody which no man hears. 
 
 DOCTOR (after a moment s silence.) 
 A sudden check has shaken you, poor child ! 
 All things seem livid, tottering to your sense, 
 
ARMGART. 109 
 
 From inward tumult. Stricken by a threat 
 You see your terrors only. Tell me, Leo : 
 Tis not such utter loss. (LEO, with a shrug, goes 
 quietly out.) 
 
 The freshest bloom 
 Merely, has left the fruit ; the fruit itself . . . 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Is ruined, withered, is a thing to hide 
 
 Away from scorn or pity. Oh you stand 
 
 And look compassionate now, but when Death came 
 
 With mercy in his hands, you hindered him. 
 
 I did not choose to live and have your pity. 
 
 You never told me, never gave me choice 
 
 To die a singer, lightning-struck, unmaimed, 
 
 Or live what you would make me with your cures 
 
 A self accursed with consciousness of change, 
 
 A mind that lives in nought but members lopped, 
 
 A power turned to pain as meaningless 
 
 As letters fallen asunder that once made 
 
 A hymn of rapture. Oh, I had meaning once, 
 
110 ABMGABT. 
 
 Like day and sweetest air. What am I now ? 
 The millionth woman in superfluous herds. 
 Why should I be, do, think? Tis thistle-seed, 
 That grows and grows to feed the rubbish-heap. 
 Leave me alone ! 
 
 DOCTOR. 
 
 Well, I will come again ; 
 
 Send for me when you will, though but to rate me. 
 That is medicinal a letting blood. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Oh there is one physician, only one, 
 
 Who cures and never spoils. Him I shall send for ; 
 
 He comes readily. 
 
 DOCTOR (to WALPURGA). 
 One word, dear Fraulein. 
 
ARMGART. Ill 
 
 SCENE V. 
 
 ARMGAKT, WALPURGA. 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Walpurga, have you walked this morning ? 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 No. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Go, then, and walk ; I wish to be alone. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 I will not leave you. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Will not, at my wish ? 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Will not, because } 7 ou wish it. Say no more, 
 But take this draught. 
 
112 ARMGART. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 The Doctor gave it you ? 
 It is an anodyne. Put it awa} T . 
 He cured me of my voice, and now he wants 
 To cure me of my vision and resolve 
 Drug me to sleep that I may wake again 
 Without a purpose, abject as the rest 
 To bear the yoke of life. He shall not cheat me 
 Of that fpesh strength which anguish gives the soul, 
 The inspiration of revolt, ere rage 
 Slackens to faltering. Now I see the truth. 
 
 WALPURGA (setting down the glass) . 
 
 Then you must see a future in your reach, 
 With happiness enough to make a dower 
 For two of modest claims. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Oh j ou intone 
 
 That chant of consolation wherewith ease 
 Makes itself easier in the sight of pain. 
 
ARMGART. 113 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 No ; I would not console } T OU, but rebuke. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 That is more bearable. Forgive me, dear. 
 Say what you will. But now I want to write. 
 
 (She rises, and moves towards a table) . 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 I say then, you are simply fevered, mad ; 
 You cry aloud at horrors that would vanish 
 If you would change the light, throw into shade 
 The loss you aggrandize, and let day fall 
 On good remaining, nay on good refused 
 Which may be gain now. Did you not reject 
 A woman s lot more brilliant, as some held, 
 Than any singer s ? It may still be yours. 
 Graf Dornberg loved you well. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Not me, not me. 
 
114 AEMGAET. 
 
 He loved one well who was like me in all 
 Save in a voice which made that All unlike 
 As diamond is to charcoal. Oh, a man s love ! 
 Think you he loves a woman s inner self 
 Aching with loss of loveliness ? as mothers 
 Cleave to the palpitating pain that dwells 
 Within their rnisformed offspring ? 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 But the Graf 
 
 Chose you as simple Armgart had preferred 
 That you should never seek for any fame 
 But such as matrons have who rear great sons. 
 And therefore you rejected him ; but now 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Ay, now now he would see me as I am, 
 
 (she takes up a hand-mirror) , 
 Russet and songless as a missel-thrush. 
 An ordinary girl a plain brown girl, 
 Who, if some meaning flash from out her words, 
 
AEMGAKT. 115 
 
 Shocks as a disproportioned thing a Will 
 That, like an arm astretch and broken off, 
 Has nought to hurl the torso of a soul. 
 I sang him into love of me : my song 
 Was consecration, lifted me apart 
 From the crowd chiselled like me, sister forms, 
 But empty of divineness. Nay, my charm 
 Was half that I could win fame, } et renounce ! 
 A wife with glory possible absorbed 
 Into her husband s actual. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 For shame ! 
 
 Armgart, you slander him. What would you say 
 If now he came to you and asked again 
 That you would be his wife ? 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 No, and thrice no ! 
 
 It w r ould be pitying constancy, ,not love, 
 That brought him to me now. I will not be 
 A pensioner in marriage. Sacraments 
 
116 AEMGART. 
 
 Are not to feed the paupers of the world. 
 If he were generous I am generous too. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 Proud. Armgart, but not generous. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Say no more. 
 He will not know until 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 He knows already. 
 
 ARMGART (quickly) . 
 
 Is he come back ? 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Yes, and will soon be here. 
 The Doctor had twice seen him, and would go 
 From hence again to see him. 
 
It is all one. 
 
 ARMGAHT. 117 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Well, he knows. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 What if he were outside? 
 I hear a footstep in the ante-room. 
 ARMGART (raising herself-, and assuming calmness) . 
 Why let him come, of course. I shall behave 
 Like what I am, a common personage 
 Who looks for nothing but civility. 
 I shall not play the fallen heroine, 
 Assume a tragic part, and throw out cues 
 For a beseeching lover. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Some one raps. 
 
 (Goes to the door.) 
 A letter from the Graf. 
 
118 AEMGABT. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Then open it. 
 (WALPURGA still offers it.) 
 Nay, my head swims. Read it. I cannot see. 
 
 (WALPURGA opens it, reads and parses.) 
 Read it. Have done ! No matter what it is. 
 
 WALPURGA {reads in a lov:, hesitating voice] . 
 " I am deeply moved my heart is rent, to hear 
 of your illness and its cruel result, just now commu 
 nicated to me b} Dr. G-rahn. But surely it is pos 
 sible that this result may not be permanent. For 
 youth such as yours, Time may hold in store some 
 thing more than resignation : who shall say that it 
 does not hold renewal? I have not dared to ask 
 admission to you in the hours of a recent shock, but 
 I cannot depart on a long mission without tendering 
 my sympathy and my farewell. T start this evening 
 for the Caucasus, and thence I proceed to India, 
 where I am intrusted by the Government with busi 
 ness which may be of long duration." 
 
 (WALPURGA sits down dejectedly.) 
 
AEMGART. 119 
 
 ARMGART (after a slight shudder, bitterly) . 
 
 The Graf has much discretion. I am glad. 
 
 He spares us both a pain, not seeing me. 
 
 What I like least is that consoling hope 
 
 That empty cup, so neatly ciphered " Time," 
 
 Handed me as a cordial for despair. 
 
 (Slowly and dreamily) Time what a word to fling 
 
 as charity ! 
 
 Bland neutral word for slow, dull-beating pain 
 Days, months, and years ! If I would wait for 
 
 them ! 
 
 (She takes up her hat and puts it on, then wraps 
 her mantle round her. WALPURGA leaves the 
 room.) 
 Why, this is but beginning. (WALP. re-enters.) 
 
 Kiss me, dear. 
 
 I am going now alone out for a walk. 
 Say you will never wound me any more 
 With such cajolen 7 as nurses use 
 To patients amorous of a crippled life. 
 Flatter the blind : I see. 
 
120 AEMGART. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Well, I was wrong. 
 
 In haste to soothe, I snatched at flickers merely. 
 Believe me, I will flatter you no more. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Bear witness, I am calm. I read my lot 
 
 As soberly as if it were a tale 
 
 Writ by a creeping feuilletonist, and called 
 
 " The Woman s Lot : a Tale of Everyday : " 
 
 A middling woman s, to impress the world 
 
 With high superfluousness ; her thoughts a crop 
 
 Of chick-weed errors or of pot-herb facts, 
 
 Smiled at like some child s drawing on a slate. 
 
 " Genteel? " " Oh yes, gives lessons ; not so good 
 
 As any man s would be, but cheaper far." 
 
 " Pretty? " " No : yet she makes a figure fit 
 
 For good society. Poor thing, she sews 
 
 Both late and early, turns and alters all . 
 
 To suit the changing mode. Some widower 
 
AEMGAET. 121 
 
 Might do well, marrying her; but in these 
 
 days ! . . . 
 
 Well, she can somewhat eke her narrow gains 
 By writing, just to furnish her with gloves 
 And droskies in the rain. They print her things 
 Often for charity." Oh a dog s life ! 
 A harnessed dog s, that draws a little cart 
 Voted a nuisance ! I am going now. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 Not now, the door is locked. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Give me the key ! 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Locked on the outside. Gretchen has the key : 
 She is gone on errands. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 What, you dare to keep me* 
 Your prisoner ? 
 
122 ARMGART. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 And have I not been yours ? 
 Your wish has been a bolt to keep me in. 
 Perhaps that middling woman whom you paint 
 With far-off scorn . . . 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 I paint what I must be ! 
 What is my soul to me without the voice 
 That gave its freedom ? gave it one grand touch 
 And made it nobly human? Prisoned now, 
 Prisoned in all the petty mimicries 
 Called woman s knowledge, that will fit the world 
 As doll-clothes fit a man. I can do nought 
 Better than what a million women do 
 Must drudge among the crowd, and feel my life 
 Beating upon the world without response, 
 Beating with passion through an insect s horn 
 That moves a millet-seed laboriously. 
 If I would do it ! 
 
ABMGART. 123 
 
 WALPURGA (coldly). 
 
 And why should you not? 
 
 ARMGART (turning quickly) . 
 
 Because Heaven made me royal wrought me out 
 
 With subtle finish towards pre-eminence, 
 
 Made every channel of my soul converge 
 
 To one high function, and then flung me down,. 
 
 That breaking I might turn to subtlest pain. 
 
 An inborn passion gives a rebel s right ; 
 
 I would rebel and die in twenty worlds 
 
 Sooner than bear the yoke of thwarted life, 
 
 Each keenest sense turned into keen distaste, 
 
 Hunger not satisfied but kept alive 
 
 Breathing in languor half a century. 
 
 All the world now is but a rack of threads 
 
 To twist and dwarf me into pettiness 
 
 And basely feigned content, the placid mask 
 
 Of woman s misery. 
 
124 ARMGART. 
 
 WALPURGA (indignantly) . 
 
 Ay, such a mask 
 
 As the few born like you to easy joy, 
 Cradled in privilege, take for natural 
 On all the lowly faces that must look 
 Upward to }*ou ! What revelation now 
 Shows you the mask or gives presentiment 
 Of sadness hidden? You who every day 
 These five years saw me limp to wait on you, 
 And thought the order perfect which gave me, 
 The girl without pretension to be aught, 
 A splendid cousin for my happiness : 
 To watch the night through when her brain was fired 
 With too much gladness listen, always listen 
 To what she felt, who having power had right 
 To feel exorbitantly, and submerge 
 The souls around her with the poured-out flood 
 Of what must be ere she were satisfied ! 
 That was feigned patience, was it ? Why not love, 
 Love nurtured even with that strength of self 
 Which found no room save in another s life ? 
 
ABMGART. 125 
 
 Oh such as I know joy by negatives, 
 
 And all their deepest passion is a pang 
 
 Till they accept their pauper s heritage, 
 
 And meekly live from out the general store 
 
 Of joy they were born stripped of. I accept 
 
 Naj T , now would sooner choose it than the wealth 
 
 Of natures you call royal, who can live 
 
 In mere mock knowledge of their fellows woe, 
 
 Thinking their smiles may heal it. 
 
 ARMGART (tremulously) . 
 
 Nay, Walpurga, 
 
 I did not make a palace of my joy 
 To shut the world s truth from me. All my good 
 Was that I touched the world, and made a part 
 In the world s dower of beauty, strength, and bliss ; 
 It was the glimpse of consciousness divine 
 Which pours out day, and sees the day is good. 
 Now I am fallen dark ; I sit in gloom, 
 Remembering bitterly. Yet you speak truth ; 
 I wearied you, it seems ; took all your help 
 As cushioned nobles use a weary serf, 
 Not looking at his face. 
 
126 AEMGART. 
 
 x-" 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Oh, I but stand 
 
 As a small sj mboi for a mighty sum 
 The sum of claims unpaid for myriad lives ; 
 I think } ou never set }~our loss beside 
 That mighty deficit. Is your work gone 
 The prouder queenly work that paid itself, 
 And yet was overpaid with men s applause ? 
 Are } T OU no longer chartered, privileged, 
 But sunk to simple woman s penury, 
 To ruthless Nature s chary average 
 Where is the rebel s right for you alone ? 
 Noble rebellion lifts a common load ; 
 But what is he who flings his own load off, 
 And leaves his fellows toiling? Rebel s right? 
 Say rather, the deserter s. Oh, you smiled 
 From your clear height on all the million lots 
 Which yet you brand as abject. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 I was blind 
 
ARMGART. ^%<J ^ 
 
 With too much happiness : true vision comes 
 Only, it seems, with sorrow. Were there one 
 This moment near me, suffering what I feel, 
 And needing me for comfort in her pang 
 Then it were worth the while to live ; not else. 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 One near you why, they throng ! you hardly stir 
 But your act touches them. We touch afar. 
 For did not swarthy slaves of yesterday 
 Leap in their bondage at the Hebrews flight, 
 Which touched them through the thrice millennial 
 
 dark? 
 
 But you can find the sufferer you need 
 With touch less subtle. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Who has need of me ? 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 Love finds the need it fills. But you are hard. 
 
128 AEMGAET. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Is it not you, Walpurga, who are hard? 
 
 You humored all my wishes till to-day, 
 
 When fate has blighted me 
 
 WALPURGA. 
 
 You would not hear 
 
 The chant of consolation : " words of hope 
 Only imbittered you. Then hear the truth 
 A lame girl s truth, whom no one ever praised 
 For being cheerful. " It is well," they said : 
 " Were she cross-grained, she could not be endured." 
 A word of truth from her had startled you ; 
 But you you claimed the universe ; nought less 
 Than all existence working in sure tracks 
 Towards your supremacy. The wheels might scathe 
 A nryriad destinies na} r , must perforce ; 
 But 3 T ours they must keep clear of ; just for } ou 
 The seething atoms through the firmament 
 Must bear a human heart which } T OU had not ! 
 For what is it to you that women, men, 
 
ARMGART. 129 
 
 Plod, faint, are weary, and espouse despair 
 Of aught but fellowship ? Save that you spurn 
 To be among them? Now, then, you are lame 
 Maimed, as you said, and levelled with the crowd : 
 Call it new birth birth from that monstrous Self 
 Which, smiling down upon a race oppressed, 
 Says, " All is good, for I am throned at ease." 
 Dear Armgart nay, you tremble I am cruel. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Oh no! hark! Some one knocks. Come in! 
 come in I 
 
 (Enter LEO.) 
 
 LEO. 
 
 See, Gretchen let me in. I could not rest 
 Longer away from you. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Sit down, dear Leo. 
 Walpurga, I would speak with him alone. 
 
 (WALPURGA goes out.) 
 
130 ARMGART.. 
 
 LEO (hesitatingly) . 
 You mean to walk? 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 No, I shall stay within. 
 
 (She takes off her hat and mantle, and sits, down 
 immediately. After a pause, speaking in a 
 subdued tone to LEO.) 
 
 How old are you ? 
 
 LEO. 
 Threescore and five. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 That s old. 
 
 I nevet* thought till now how you have lived. 
 They hardly ever play j^our music? 
 
 LEO (raising his eyebrows, and throwing out 
 his lip.) 
 
 No! 
 
AEMGAET. 131 
 
 Schubert too wrote for silence : half his work 
 Lay like a frozen Rhine till summers came 
 That warmed the grass above him. Even so ! 
 His music lives now with a mighty youth. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Do you think yours will live when you are dead ? 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Pfui ! The time was, I drank that home-brewed wine 
 And found it heady, while my blood was young : 
 Now it scarce warms me. Tipple it as I may, 
 I am sober still, and say : " My old friend Leo, 
 Much grain is wasted in the world and rots ; 
 Why not thy handful ? " 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Strange ! since 1 have known you 
 Till now I never wondered how you lived. 
 When I sang well that was your jubilee. 
 But you were old already. 
 
132 AKMGAKT. 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Yes, child, yes : 
 
 Youth thinks itself the goal of each old life ; 
 Age has but travelled from a far-off time 
 Just to be ready for youth s service. Well ! 
 It was my chief delight to perfect you. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Good Leo ! You have lived on little joys. 
 
 But your delight in me is crushed forever. 
 
 Your pains, where are they now ? They shaped intent 
 
 Which action frustrates ; shaped an inward sense 
 
 Which is but keen despair, the agony 
 
 Of highest vision in the lowest pit. 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Nay, nay, I have a thought : keep to the stage, 
 To drama without song ; for you can act 
 Who knows how well, when all the soul is poured 
 Into that sluice alone ? 
 
AKMGAKT. 133 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 I know, and you : 
 
 The second or third best in tragedies 
 That cease to touch the fibre of the time. 
 No ; song is gone, btit nature s other gift, 
 Self-judgment, is not gone. Song was my speech, 
 And with its impulse only, action came : 
 Song was the battle s onset, when cool purpose 
 Glows into rage, becomes a warring god 
 And moves the limbs with miracle. But now 
 Oh, I should stand hemmed in with thoughts and 
 
 rules 
 
 Say u This way passion acts," yet never feel 
 The might of passion. How should I declaim ? 
 As monsters write with feet instead of hands. 
 I will not feed on doing great tasks ill, 
 Dull the world s sense with mediocrity, 
 And live by trash that smothers excellence. 
 One gift I had that ranked me with the best 
 The secret of my frame and that is gone. 
 For all life now I am a broken thing. 
 
134 AEMGAKT. 
 
 But silence there ! Good Leo, advise me now. 
 I would take humble work and do it well 
 Teach music, singing what I can not here, 
 But in some smaller town where I may bring 
 The method you have taught me, pass your gift 
 To others who can use it for delight. 
 You think I can do that ? 
 
 (/She pauses with a sob in her voice.) 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Yes, yes, dear child ! 
 
 And it were well, perhaps, to change the place 
 Begin afresh as I did when I left 
 Vienna with a heart half broken. 
 
 ARMGART (roused by surprise) . 
 
 You? 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Well, it is long ago. But I had lost 
 No matter ! We must bury our dead joys 
 
ARMGART. 185 
 
 And live above them with a living world. 
 But whither, think you, you would like to go? 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 To Freiburg. 
 
 LEO. 
 
 In the Breisgau ? And why there ? 
 It is too small. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Walpurga was bora there, 
 And loves the place. She quitted it for me 
 These five years past. Now I will take her there. 
 Dear Leo, I will bury my dead joy. 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Mothers do so, bereaved ; then learn to love 
 Another s living child. 
 
 ARMGART. 
 
 Oh, it is hard 
 
136 AEMGART. 
 
 
 
 To take the little corpse, and lay it low, 
 
 And say, " None misses it but me." 
 
 She sings . . . 
 
 I mean Paulina sings Fidelio, 
 
 And they will welcome her to-night. 
 
 LEO. 
 
 Well, well, 
 
 Tis better that our griefs should not spread far. 
 1870. 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 137 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 Six hundred years ago, in Dante s time, 
 
 Before his cheek was furrowed by deep rhyme 
 
 When Europe, fed afresh from Eastern story, 
 
 Was like a garden tangled with the glory 
 
 Of flowers hand-planted and of flowers air-sown, 
 
 Climbing and trailing, budding and full-blown, 
 
 Where purple bells are tossed amid pink stars, 
 
 And springing blades, green troops in innocent wars, 
 
 Crowd every shady spot of teeming earth, 
 
 Making invisible motion visible birth 
 
 Six hundred years ago, Palermo town 
 
 Kept holiday. A deed of great renown, 
 
 A high revenge, had freed it from the yoke 
 
 Of hated Frenchmen, and from Calpe s rock 
 
 139 
 
140 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 To where the Bosphorus caught the earlier sun, 
 
 Twas told that Pedro, King of Aragon, 
 
 "Was welcomed master of all Sicily, 
 
 A royal knight, supreme as kings should be, 
 
 In strength and gentleness that make high chivalry. 
 
 Spain was the favorite home of knightly grace, 
 
 Where generous men rode steeds of generous race ; 
 
 Both Spanish, yet half Arab, both inspired 
 
 By mutual spirit, that each motion fired 
 
 With beauteous response, like minstrelsy 
 
 Afresh fulfilling fresh expectancy. 
 
 So when Palermo made high festival, 
 
 The joy of matrons and of maidens all 
 
 Was the mock terror of the tournament, 
 
 Where safety, with the glimpse of danger blent, 
 
 Took exaltation as from epic song, 
 
 Which greatly tells the pains that to great life belong. 
 
 And in all eyes King Pedro was the king 
 
 Of cavaliers : as in a full-gemmed ring 
 
 The largest rub}^ or as that bright star 
 
 Whose shining shows us where the Hyads are. 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 141 
 
 His the best genet, and he sat it best ; 
 His weapon, whether tilting or in rest, 
 Was worthiest watching, and his face once seen 
 Gave to the promise of his royal mien 
 Such rich fulfilment as the opened eyes 
 Of a loved sleeper, or the long-watched rise 
 Of vernal day, whose joy o er stream and meadow 
 flies. 
 
 But of the maiden forms that thick inwreathed 
 The broad piazza and sweet witchery breathed, 
 With innocent faces budding all arow 
 From balconies and windows high and low, 
 Who was it felt the deep mysterious glow, 
 The impregnation with supernal fire 
 Of young ideal love transformed desire, 
 Whose passion is but worship of that Best 
 Taught by the many-mingled creed of each young 
 breast ? 
 
 Twas gentle Lisa, of no noble line, 
 Child of Bernardo, a rich Florentine, 
 
142 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 Who from his merchant-city hither came 
 To trade in drags ; yet kept an honest fame, 
 And had the virtue not to try and sell 
 Drugs that had none. He loved his riches well, 
 But loved them chiefly for his Lisa s sake. 
 Whom with a father s care he sought to make 
 The bride of some true honorable man : 
 Of Perdicone (so the rumor ran) , 
 Whose birth was higher than his fortunes were ; 
 For still your trader likes a mixture fair 
 Of blood that hurries to some higher strain 
 Than reckoning money s loss and money s gain. 
 And of such mixture good may surety come : 
 Lords scions so may learn to cast a sum, 
 A trader s grandson bear a well-set head, 
 And have less conscious manners, better bred ; 
 Nor, when he tries to be polite, be rude instead. 
 
 Twas Perdicone s friends made overtures 
 To good Bernardo ; so one dame assures 
 Her neighbor dame who notices the youth 
 Fixing his eyes on Lisa ; and in truth 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 143 
 
 Eyes that could see her on this summer day 
 Might find it hard to turn another way. 
 She had a pensive beauty, yet not sad ; 
 Rather, like minor cadences that glad 
 The hearts of little birds amid spring boughs ; 
 And oft the trumpet or the joust would rouse 
 Pulses that gave her cheek a finer glow, 
 Parting her lips that seemed a mimic bow 
 By chiselling Love for play in coral wrought, 
 Then quickened by him with the passionate thought, 
 The soul that trembled in the lustrous night 
 Of slow long e} T es. Her body was so slight, 
 It seemed she could have floated in the sky, 
 And with the angelic choir made symphony ; 
 But in her cheek s rich tinge, and in the dark 
 Of darkest hair and eyes, she bore a mark 
 Of kinship to her generous mother earth, 
 The fervid land that gives the plumy palm-trees 
 birth. 
 
 She saw not Perdicone ; her young mind 
 Dreamed not that any man had ever pined 
 
144 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 For such a little simple maid as she : 
 
 She had but dreamed how heavenly it would be 
 
 To love some hero noble, beauteous, great, 
 
 Who would live stories worthy to narrate, 
 
 Like Roland, or the warriors of Troy, 
 
 The Cid, or Amadis, or that fair boy 
 
 Who conquered every thing beneath the sun, 
 
 And somehow, some time, died at Babylon 
 
 Fighting the Moors. For heroes all were good 
 
 And fair as that archangel who withstood 
 
 The Evil One, the author of all wrong 
 
 That Evil One who made the French so strong ; 
 
 And now the flower of heroes must be he 
 
 Who drove those tyrants from dear Sicily, 
 
 So that her maids might walk to vespers tranquilly. 
 
 Young Lisa saw this hero in the king, 
 
 And as wood-lilies that sweet odors bring 
 
 Might dream the light that opes their modest eyne 
 
 Was lily-odored, and as rites divine, 
 
 Round turf-laid altars, or neath roofs of stone, 
 
 Draw sanctity from out the heart alone 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 145 
 
 That loves and worships, so the miniature 
 Perplexed of her soul s world, all virgin pure, 
 Filled with heroic virtues that bright form, 
 Raona s royalt} , the finished norm 
 Of horsemanship the half of chivalry : 
 For how could generous men avengers be, 
 Save as God s messengers on coursers fleet? 
 These, scouring earth, made Spain with Syria 
 
 meet 
 
 In one self world where the same right had sway, 
 And good must grow as grew the blessed day. 
 No more ; great Love his essence had endued 
 With Pedro s form, and entering subdued 
 The soul of Lisa, fervid and intense, 
 Proud in its choice of proud obedience 
 To hardship glorified by perfect reverence. 
 
 Sweet Lisa homeward carried that dire guest, 
 And in her chamber through the hours of rest 
 The darkness was alight for her with sheen 
 Of arms, and plumed helm, and bright between 
 Their commoner gloss, like the pure living spring 
 10 
 
146 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 Twixt porphyry lips, or living bird s bright wing 
 Twixt golden wires, the glances of the king 
 Flashed on her soul, and waked vibrations there 
 Of known delights love-mixed to new and rare : 
 The impalpable dreana was turned to breathing 
 
 flesh, 
 
 Chill thought of summer to the warm close mesh 
 Of sunbeams held between the citron-leaves, 
 Clothing her life of life. Oh, she believes 
 That she could be content if he but knew 
 (Her poor small self could claim no other due) 
 How Lisa s lowly love had highest reach 
 Of winged passion, whereto winged speech 
 Would be scorched remnants left by mounting flame. 
 Though, had she such lame message, were it blame 
 To tell what greatness dwelt in her, what rank 
 She held in loving ? Modest maidens shrank 
 From telling love that fed on selfish hope ; 
 But love, as hopeless as the shattering song 
 Wailed for loved beings who have joined the throng 
 Of mighty dead ones. . . .Nay, but she was weak 
 Knew only prayers and ballads could not speak 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 147 
 
 With eloquence save what dumb creatures have, 
 That with small cries and touches small boons 
 crave. 
 
 She watched all day that she might see him pass 
 With knights and ladies ; but she said, " Alas ! 
 Though he should see me, it were all as one 
 He saw a pigeon sitting on the stone 
 Of wall or balcony : some colored spot 
 His eye just sees, his mind regardeth not. 
 I have no music-touch that could bring nigh 
 My love to his soul s hearing. I shall die, 
 And he will never know who Lisa was 
 The trader s child, w r hose soaring spirit rose 
 As hedge-born aloe-flowers that rarest years dis 
 close. 
 
 " For were I now a fair deep-breasted queen 
 A-horseback, with blonde hair, and tunic green 
 Gold-bordered, like Costanza, I should need 
 No change within to make me queenly there ; 
 For they the royal-hearted women are 
 
148 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 Who nobly love the noblest, yet have grace 
 For needy suffering lives in lowliest place, 
 Carrying a choicer sunlight in their smile, 
 The heavenliest ray that pitieth the vile. 
 My love is such, it cannot choose but soar 
 Up to the highest ; yet forevermore, 
 Though I were happ} T , throned beside the king, 
 I should be tender to each little thin"* 
 
 O 
 
 With hurt warm breast, that had no speech to 
 
 tell 
 
 Its inward pang, and I would soothe it well 
 With tender touch and with a low soft moan 
 For company : my dumb love-pang is lone, 
 Prisoned as topaz-beam within a rough-garbed 
 
 stone." 
 
 So, in ward- wailing, Lisa passed her days. 
 
 Each night the August moon with changing phase 
 
 Looked broader, harder on her unchanged pain ; 
 
 Each noon the heat lay heavier again 
 
 On her despair ; until her body frail 
 
 Shrank like the snow that watchers in the vale 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KQsG. 149 
 
 See narrowed on the height each summer morn ; 
 While her dark glance burnt larger, more forlorn, 
 As if the soul within her all on fire 
 Made of her being one swift funeral pyre. 
 Father and mother saw with sad dismay 
 The meaning of their riches melt away : 
 For without Lisa what would sequins buy ? 
 What wish were left if Lisa were to die? 
 Through her they cared for summers still to come, 
 Else they would be as ghosts without a home 
 In any flesh that could feel glad desire. 
 They pay the best physicians, never tire 
 Of seeking what will soothe her, promising 
 That aught she longed for, though it were a thing 
 Hard to be come at as the Indian snow, 
 Or roses that on alpine summits blow 
 It should be hers. She answers with low voice, 
 She longs for death alone death is her choice ; 
 Death is the King who never did think scorn, 
 But rescues every meanest soul to sorrow born. 
 
 ret one day, as they bent above her bed 
 
 And watched her in brief sleep, her drooping head 
 
150 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 Turned gently, as the thirsty flowers that feel 
 
 Some moist revival through their petals steal, 
 
 And little flutterings of her lids and lips 
 
 Told of such dreamy joy as sometimes dips 
 
 A slsyey shadow in the mind s poor pool. 
 
 She oped her eyes, and turned their dark gems full 
 
 Upon her father, as in utterance dumb 
 
 Of some new prayer that in her sleep had come. 
 
 11 What is it, Lisa? " " Father, I would see 
 
 Minuccio, the great singer ; bring him me." 
 
 For always, night and day, her unstilled thought, 
 
 Wandering all o er its little world, had sought 
 
 How she could reach, by some soft pleading touch, 
 
 King Pedro s soul, that she who loved so much 
 
 Dying, might have a place within his mind 
 
 A little grave which he would sometimes find 
 
 And plant some flower on it some thought, some 
 
 memory kind. 
 
 Till in her dream she saw Minuccio 
 Touching his viola, and chanting low 
 A strain that, falling on her brokenly, 
 Seemed blossoms lightly blown from off a tree, 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 151 
 
 Each burthened with a word that was a scent 
 llaona, Lisa, love, death, tournament ; 
 Then in her dream she said, " He sings of -me 
 Might be rny messenger ; ah, now I see 
 The king is listening " Then she awoke, 
 And, missing her dear dream, that new-born longing 
 spoke. 
 
 She longed for music : that was natural ; 
 
 Physicians said it was medicinal ; 
 
 The humors might be schooled by true consent 
 
 Of a line tenor and fine instrument ; 
 
 In brief, good music, mixed with doctor s stuff, 
 
 Apollo with Asklepios enough ! 
 
 Minuccio, entreated, gladly came. 
 
 (lie was a singer of most gentle fame 
 
 A noble, kindly spirit, not elate 
 
 That he was famous, but that song was great 
 
 Would sing as finely to this suffering child 
 
 As at the court where princes on him smiled.) 
 
 Gently he entered and sat down by her, 
 
 Asking what sort of strain she would prefer 
 
152 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 The voice alone, or voice with viol wed ; 
 
 Then, when she chose the last, he preluded 
 
 With magic hand, that summoned from the strings 
 
 Aerial spirits, rare jet vibrant wings 
 
 That fanned the pulses of his listener, 
 
 And waked each sleeping sense with blissful stir. 
 
 Her cheek already showed a slow faint blush, 
 
 But soon the voice, in pure full liquid rush, 
 
 Made all the passion, that till now she felt, 
 
 Seem but cool waters that in warmer melt. 
 
 Finished the song, she pra} r ed to be alone 
 
 With kind Minuccio ; for her faith had grown 
 
 To trust him as if missioned like a priest 
 
 With some high grace, that when his singing ceased 
 
 Still made him wiser, more magnanimous 
 
 Than common men who had no genius. 
 
 So laying her small hand within his palm, 
 
 She told him how that secret glorious harm 
 
 Of loftiest loving had befallen her ; 
 
 That death, her only hope, most bitter were, 
 
 If when she died her love must perish too 
 
 As songs unsung and thoughts unspoken do, 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 153 
 
 Which else might live within another breast. 
 She said, " Minuccio, the grave were rest, 
 If I were sure, that tying cold and lone, 
 My love, my best of life, had safely flown, 
 And nestled in the bosom of the king ; 
 See, tis a small weak bird, with unfledged wing. 
 But } ou will carry it for me secretly, 
 And bear it to the king, then come to me 
 And tell me it is safe, and I shall go 
 Content, knowing that he I love my love cloth 
 know." 
 
 Then she wept silently, but each large tear 
 Made pleading music to the inward ear 
 Of good Minuccio. " Lisa, trust in me," 
 He said, and kissed her fingers loyally ; 
 " It is sweet law to me to do your will, 
 And ere the sun his round shall thrice fulfil, 
 I hope to bring you news of such rare skill 
 As amulets have, that aches in trusting bosoms 
 still." 
 
154 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 He needed not to pause and first devise 
 How he should tell the king ; for in no wise 
 Were such love-message worthily bested 
 Save in fine verse by music rendered. 
 He sought a poet-friend, a Siennese, 
 And " Mico, mine," he said, " full oft to please 
 Thy whim of sadness I have sung thee strains 
 To make thee weep in verse : now pay my pains, 
 And write me a canzone divinely sad, 
 Sinlessl} passionate and meekly mad 
 With 3 oung despair, speaking a maiden s heart 
 Of fifteen summers, who would fain depart 
 From ripening life s new-urgent nrystery 
 Love-choice of one too high her love to be 
 But cannot yield her breath till she has poured 
 Her strength away in this hot-bleeding word, 
 Telling the secret of her soul to her soul s lord. * 
 
 Said Mico, " Nay, that thought is poesy, 
 I need but listen as it sings to me. 
 Come thou again to-morrow." The third day, 
 When linked notes had perfected the lay, 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 155 
 
 Minuccio had his summons to the court 
 To make, as he was wont, the moments short 
 Of ceremonious dinner to the king. 
 This was the time when he had meant to bring 
 Melodious message of 3 oung Lisa s love : 
 He waited till the air had ceased to move 
 To ringing silver, till Falernian wine 
 Made quickened sense with quietude combine, 
 And then with passionate descant made each ear 
 incline. 
 
 Love, thou didst see me, light as morning s breath, 
 Roaming a garden in a joyous error. 
 Laughing at chases vain, a happy child, 
 Till of thy countenance the alluring terror 
 In majesty from out the blossoms smiled, 
 From out their life seeming a beauteous Death. 
 
 Love, who so didst choose me for thine own, 
 Taking this little isle to thy great sway, 
 See now, it is the honor of thy throne 
 That what thou gavest perish not away, 
 
156 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 JVbr leave some sweet remembrance to atone 
 
 By life that will be for the brief life gone : 
 
 Here, ere the shroud o er these frail limbs be thrown 
 
 Since every king is vassal unto thee, 
 
 My heart s lord needs must listen loyally 
 
 tell him I am waiting for my Death ! 
 
 Tell him, for that he hath such royal power 
 Twere hard for him to think, how small a thing, 
 Hotv slight a sign, would make a wealthy dower 
 For one like me, the bride of that pale king 
 Whose bed is mine at some swift-nearing hour. 
 Go to my lord, and to his memory bring 
 That happy birthday of my sorrowing 
 WJien his large glance made meaner gazers glad, 
 Entering the bannered lists : twas then I had 
 Tlie wound that laid me in the arms of Death. 
 
 Tell him, Love, I am a lowly maid, 
 No more than any little knot of thyme 
 That he with careless foot may often tread; 
 Yet lowest fragrance oft will mount sublime 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE BRNfl> 157 
 
 And cleave to things most high and hallowm^J VtW** 
 
 As doth the fragrance of my life s springtime, 
 
 My lowly love, that soaring seeks to climb 
 
 Within his thought, and make a gentle bliss, 
 
 More blissful than if mine, in being his : 
 
 So shall I live in him and rest in Death. 
 
 The strain was new. It seemed a pleading cry, 
 And 3 r et a rounded perfect melody, 
 Making grief beauteous as the tear-filled eyes 
 Of little child at little miseries. 
 Trembling at first, then swelling as it rose, 
 Like rising light that broad and broader grows, 
 It filled the hall, and so possessed the air 
 That not one breathing soul was present there, 
 Though dullest, slowest, but was quivering 
 In music s grasp, and forced to hear her sing. 
 But most such sweet compulsion took the mood 
 Of Pedro (tired of doing what he would) . 
 Whether the words which that strange meaning 
 
 bore 
 Were but the poet s feigning, or aught more, 
 
158 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 Was bounden question, since their aim must be 
 
 At some imagined or true royalty. 
 
 He called Minuccio and bade him tell 
 
 What poet of the day had writ so well ; 
 
 For though they came behind all former rhymes, 
 
 The verses were not bad for these poor times. 
 
 " Monsignor, they are only three days old," 
 
 Minuccio said ; but it must not be told 
 
 How this song grew, save to your royal ear." 
 
 Eager, the king withdrew where none was near, 
 
 And gave close audience to Minuccio, 
 
 Who meetly told that love-tale meet to know. 
 
 The king had features pliant to confess 
 
 The presence of a manly tenderness 
 
 Son, father, brother, lover, blent in one, 
 
 In fine harmonic exaltation 
 
 The spirit of religious chivalry. 
 
 He listened, and Minuccio could see 
 
 The tender, generous admiration spread 
 
 O er all his face, and glorify his head 
 
 With ro} alty that would have kept its rank 
 
 Though his brocaded robes to tatters shrank. 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 159 
 
 He answered without pause, " So sweet a maid, 
 
 In nature s own insignia arrayed, 
 
 Though she were come of unmixed trading blood 
 
 That sold and bartered ever since the Flood, 
 
 Would have the self-contained and single worth 
 
 Of radiant jewels born in darksome earth. 
 
 Raona were a shame to Sicily, 
 
 Letting such love and tears unhonored be : 
 
 Hasten, Minuccio, tell her that the king 
 
 To-day will surely visit her when vespers ring." 
 
 Joyful, Minuccio bore the joyous word, 
 And told at full, while none but Lisa heard, 
 How each thing had befallen, sang the song, 
 And like a patient nurse who would prolong 
 All means of soothing, dwelt upon each tone, 
 Each look, with which the mighty Aragon 
 Marked the high worth his royal heart assigned 
 To that dear place he held in Lisa s mind. 
 She listened .till the draughts of pure content 
 Through all her limbs like some new being went 
 Life, not recovered, but untried before, 
 From out the growing world s unmeasured store 
 
160 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 Of fuller, better, more divinely mixed. 
 
 Twas glad reverse : she had so firmly fixed 
 
 To die, already seemed to fall a veil 
 
 Shrouding the inner glow from light of senses pale. 
 
 Her parents wondering see her half arise 
 
 Wondering, rejoicing, see her long dark eyes 
 
 Brimful with clearness, not of scaping tears, 
 
 But of some light ethereal that enspheres 
 
 Their orbs with calm, some vision newly learnt 
 
 Where strangest fires erewhile had blindly burnt. 
 
 She asked to have her soft white robe and band 
 
 And coral ornaments, and with her hand 
 
 She gave her locks dark length a backward fall, 
 
 Then looked intently in a mirror small, 
 
 And feared her face might perhaps displease the 
 
 king ; 
 
 " In truth," she said, " I am a tiny thing ; 
 I was too bold to tell what could such visit bring." 
 
 Meanwhile the king, revolving in his thought 
 That virgin passion, was more deeply wrought 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 161 
 
 To chivalrous pity ; and at vesper bell, 
 
 With careless mien which hid his purpose well, 
 
 Went forth on horseback, and as if by chance 
 
 Passing Bernardo s house, he paused to glance 
 
 At the fine garden of this wealth} 7 man, 
 
 This Tuscan trader turned Palermitan : 
 
 But, presently dismounting, chose to walk 
 
 Amid the trellises, in gracious talk 
 
 With this same trader, deigning even to ask 
 
 If he had yet fulfilled the father s task 
 
 Of marrying that daughter whose young charms 
 
 Himself, betwixt the passages of arms, 
 
 Noted admiringly. " Monsignor, no, 
 
 She is not married ; that were little woe, 
 
 Since she has counted barely fifteen } T ears ; 
 
 But all such hopes of late have turned to fears ; 
 
 She droops and fades ; though for a space quite 
 
 brief 
 Scarce three hours past she finds some strange 
 
 relief." 
 
 The king advised : " Twere dole to all of us, 
 The world should lose a maid so beauteous ; 
 11 
 
162 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 Let me now see her ; since I am her liege lord, 
 Her spirits must wage war with death at my strong 
 
 word." 
 
 In such half-serious playfulness, he wends, 
 With Lisa s father and two chosen friends, 
 Up to the chamber where she pillowed sits 
 Watching the opened door, that now admits 
 A presence as much better than her dreams, 
 As happiness than any longing seems. 
 The king advanced, and, with a reverent kiss 
 Upon her hand, said, " Lady, what is this? 
 You, whose sweet youth should others solace be, 
 Pierce all our hearts, languishing piteously. 
 We pray you, for the love of us, be cheered, 
 Nor be too reckless of that life, endeared 
 To us who know your passing worthiness, 
 And count your blooming life as part of our life s 
 
 bliss." 
 
 Those words, that touch upon her hand from him 
 Whom her soul worshipped, as far seraphim 
 "Worship the distant gloiy, brought some shame 
 Quivering upon her cheek, yet thrilled her frame 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 163 
 
 With such deep joy she seemed in paradise, 
 In wondering gladness, and in dumb surprise 
 That bliss could be so blissful : then she spoke 
 " Signor, I was too weak to bear the yoke, 
 The golden yoke of thoughts too great for me ; 
 That was the ground of my infirmity. 
 But now, I pray your grace to have belief 
 That I shall soon be well, nor any more cause 
 grief." 
 
 The king alone perceived the covert sense 
 Of all her words, which made one evidence 
 With her pure voice and candid loveliness, 
 That he had lost much honor, honoring less 
 That message of her passionate distress. 
 He staid beside her for a little while 
 With gentle looks and speech, until a smile 
 As placid as a ray of early morn 
 On opening flower-cups o er her lips was borne. 
 When he had left her, and the tidings spread 
 Through all the town how he had visited 
 The Tuscan trader s daughter, who was sick, 
 Men said, it was a royal deed and catholic. 
 
164 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 And Lisa ? she no longer wished for death ; 
 But as a poet, who sweet verses saith 
 Within his soul, and joys in music there, 
 Nor seeks another heaven, nor can bear 
 Disturbing pleasures, so was she content, 
 Breathing the life of grateful sentiment. 
 She thought no maid betrothed could be more blest ; 
 For treasure must be valued by the test 
 Of highest excellence and rarity, 
 And her dear joy was best as best could be ; 
 There seemed no other crown to her delight 
 Now the high loved one saw her love aright. 
 Thus her soul thriving on that exquisite mood, 
 Spread like the May-time all its beauteous good 
 O er the soft bloom of neck, and arms, and cheek, 
 And strengthened the sweet body, once so weak, 
 Until she rose and walked, and, like a bird 
 With sweetly rippling throat, she made her spring 
 joys heard. 
 
 The king, when he the happy change had seen, 
 Trusted the ear of Constance, his fair queen, 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 165 
 
 With Lisa s innocent secret, and conferred 
 
 How they should jointly, ~by their deed and word, 
 
 Honor this maiden s love, which, like the prayer 
 
 Of loyal hermits, never thought to share 
 
 In what it gave. The queen had that chief grace 
 
 Of womanhood, a heart that can embrace 
 
 All goodness in another woman s form ; 
 
 And that same day, ere the sun lay too warm 
 
 On southern terraces, a messenger 
 
 Informed Bernardo that the royal pair 
 
 Would straightway visit him, and celebrate 
 
 Their gladness at his daughter s happier state, 
 
 Which they were fain to see. Soon came the king 
 
 On horseback, with his barons, heralding 
 
 The advent of the queen in courtly state ; 
 
 And all, descending at the garden gate, 
 
 Streamed with their feathers, velvet, and brocade, 
 
 Through the pleached alleys, till they, pausing, made 
 
 A lake of splendor mid the aloes gray 
 
 When, meekly facing all their proud array, 
 
 The white-robed Lisa with her parents stood, 
 
 As some white dove before the gorgeous brood 
 
 Of dapple-breasted birds born by the Colchian flood. 
 
166 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 The king and queen, by gracious looks and speech, 
 
 Encourage her, and thus their courtiers teach 
 
 How this fair morning they may courtliest be 
 
 By making Lisa pass it happily. 
 
 And soon the ladies and the barons all 
 
 Draw her by turns, as at a festival 
 
 Made for her sake, to easy, gay discourse, 
 
 And compliment with looks and smiles enforce ; 
 
 A joyous hum is heard the gardens round ; 
 
 Soon there is Spanish dancing and the sound 
 
 Of minstrel s song, and autumn fruits are plucked ; 
 
 Till mindfully the king and queen conduct 
 
 Lisa apart to where a trellised shade 
 
 Made pleasant resting. Then King Pedro said 
 
 "Excellent maiden, that rich gift of love 
 
 Your heart hath made us, hath a worth above 
 
 All royal treasures, nor is fitly met 
 
 Save when the grateful memory of deep debt 
 
 Lies still behind the outward honors done : 
 
 And as a sign that no oblivion 
 
 Shall overflood that faithful memory, 
 
 We while we live your cavalier will be, 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 167 
 
 Nor will we ever arm ourselves for fight, 
 
 Whether for struggle dire or brief delight 
 
 Of warlike feigning, but we first will take 
 
 The colors you ordain, and for } our sake 
 
 Charge the more bravely where your emblem is ; 
 
 Nor will we ever claim an added bliss 
 
 To our sweet thoughts of } ou save one sole kiss. 
 
 But there still rests the outward honor meet 
 
 To mark your worthiness, and we entreat 
 
 That you will turn your ear to proffered vows 
 
 Of one who loves you, and would be } T our spouse. 
 
 We must not wrong yourself and Sicily 
 
 By letting all your blooming years pass by 
 
 Unmated : 3-011 will give the world its due 
 
 From beauteous maiden and become a matron true." 
 
 Then Lisa, wrapt in virgin wonderment 
 At her ambitious love s complete content, 
 Which left no further good for her to seek 
 Than love s obedience, said with accent meek 
 " Monsignor, I know well that were it known 
 To all the world how high my love had flown, 
 
168 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 There would be few who would not deem me mad, 
 
 Or say my mind the falsest image had 
 
 Of my condition and your lofty place. 
 
 But Heaven has seen that for no moment s space 
 
 Have I forgotten you to be the king, 
 
 Or me myself to be a lowly thing 
 
 A little ^ark, enamoured of the sky, 
 
 That soared to sing,, to break its breast, and die. 
 
 But, as you better know than I, the heart 
 
 In choosing chooseth not its own desert, 
 
 But that great merit which attracteth it ; 
 
 Tis law, I struggled, but I must submit, 
 
 And having seen a worth all worth above, 
 
 I loved you, love you, and shall always love. 
 
 But that doth mean, my will is ever yours, 
 
 Not only when your will my good insures, 
 
 But if it wrought me what the world calls narm 
 
 Fire, wounds, would wear from your dear will a 
 
 charm. 
 
 That you will be my knight is full content, 
 And for that kiss I pray, first for the queen s 
 
 consent." 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 169 
 
 Her answer, given with such firm gentleness, 
 Pleased the queen well, and made her hold no less 
 Of Lisa s merit than the king had held. 
 And so, all cloudy threats of grief dispelled, 
 There was betrothal made that very morn 
 Twixt Perdicone, youthful, brave, well-born, 
 And Lisa, whom he loved ; she loving well 
 The lot that from obedience befell. 
 The queen a rare betrothal ring on each 
 Bestowed, and other gems, with gracious speech. 
 And that no joy might lack, the king, who knew 
 The youth was poor, gave him rich Ceffalu 
 And Cataletta, large and fruitful lands 
 Adding much promise when he joined their hands. 
 At last he said to Lisa, with an air 
 Gallant yet noble : " Now we claim our share 
 From your sweet love, a share which is not small : 
 For in the sacrament one crumb is all." 
 Then taking her small face his hands between, 
 He kissed her on the brow with kiss serene, 
 Fit seal to that pure vision her young soul had 
 seen. 
 
170 HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 
 
 Sicilians witnessed that King Pedro kept 
 His royal promise : Perdicone stept 
 To many honors honorably won, 
 Living with Lisa in true union. 
 Throughout his life the king still took delight 
 To call himself fair Lisa s faithful knight ; 
 And never wore in field or tournament 
 A scarf or emblem save by Lisa sent. 
 
 Such deeds made subjects loyal in that land : 
 
 They joyed that one so worthy to command, 
 
 So chivalrous and gentle, had become 
 
 The king of Sicily, and filled the room 
 
 Of Frenchmen, who abused the Church s trust, 
 
 Till, in a righteous vengeance on their lust, 
 
 Messina rose, with God, and with the dagger s thrust. 
 
HOW LISA LOVED THE KING. 171 
 
 i 
 
 L ENVOI. 
 
 Reader, this story pleased me long ago 
 In the bright pages of Boccaccio, 
 And where the author of a good we know, 
 Let us not fail to pay the grateful thanks we owe. 
 1869. 
 
A MINOR PROPHET. 
 
 173 
 
A MINOR PROPHET. 
 
 I HAVE a friend, a vegetarian seer, 
 
 By name Elias Baptist Butterworth, 
 
 A harmless, bland, disinterested man, 
 
 Whose ancestors in Cromwell s day believed 
 
 The Second Advent certain in five years. 
 
 But when King Charles the Second came instead, 
 
 Revised their date and sought another world : 
 
 I mean not heaven but America. 
 
 A fervid stock, whose generous hope embraced 
 
 The fortunes of mankind, not stopping short 
 
 At rise of leather, or the fall of gold, 
 
 Nor listening to the voices of the time 
 
 As housewives listen to a cackling hen, 
 
 With wonder whether she has laid her egg 
 
 175 
 
176 A MINOE PROPHET. 
 
 On their own nest-egg. Still they did insist 
 Somewhat too wearisomety on the joys 
 Of their Millennium, when coats and hats 
 Would all be of one pattern, books and songs 
 All fit for Sundays, and the casual talk 
 As good as sermons preached extempore. 
 
 And in Elias the ancestral zeal 
 
 Breathes strong as ever, only modified 
 
 By Transatlantic air and modern thought. 
 
 You could not pass him in the street and fail 
 
 To note his shoulders long declivity, 
 
 Beard to the waist, swan-neck, and large pale eyes ; 
 
 Or, when he lifts his hat, to mark his hair 
 
 Brushed back to show his great capacity 
 
 A full grain s length at the angle of the brow 
 
 Proving him witty, while the shallower men 
 
 Only seem witty in their repartees. 
 
 Not that he s vain, but that his doctrine needs 
 
 The testimony of his frontal lobe. 
 
 On all points he adopts the latest views ; 
 
 Takes for the key of universal Mind 
 
A MINOR PROPHET. 177 
 
 The " levitation" of stout gentlemen ; 
 
 Believes the Rappings are not spirits work, 
 
 But the Thought-atmosphere s, a steam of brains 
 
 In correlated force of raps, as proved 
 
 By motion, heat, and science generally ; 
 
 The spectrum, for example, which has shown 
 
 The selfsame metals in the sun as here ; 
 
 So the Thought-atmosphere is everywhere : 
 
 High truths that glimmered under other names 
 
 To ancient sages, whence good scholarship 
 
 Applied to Eleusinian mj steries 
 
 The Vedas Tripitaka Vendidad - 
 
 Might furnish weaker proof for weaker minds 
 
 That Thought was rapping in the hoary past, 
 
 And might have edified the Greeks by raps 
 
 At the greater Dionysia, if their ears 
 
 Had not been filled with Sophoclean verse. 
 
 And when all Earth is vegetarian 
 
 When, lacking butchers, quadrupeds die out, 
 
 And less Thought-atmosphere is re-absorbed 
 
 By nerves of insects parasitical, 
 
 Those higher truths, seized now by higher minds 
 
178 A MINOR PROPHET. 
 
 But not expressed (the insects hindering) 
 
 Will either flash out into eloquence, 
 
 Or better still, be comprehensible 
 
 By rappings simply, without need of roots. 
 
 Tis on this theme the vegetarian world 
 
 That good Elias willingly expands : 
 
 He loves to tell in mildly nasal tones 
 
 And vowels stretched to suit the widest views, 
 
 The future fortunes of our infant Earth 
 
 When it will be too full of human kind 
 
 To have the room for wilder animals. 
 
 Saith he, Sahara will be populous 
 
 With families of gentlemen retired 
 
 From commerce in more Central Africa, 
 
 Who order coolness as we order coal, 
 
 And have a lobe anterior strong enougn 
 
 To think away the sand-storms. Science thus 
 
 Will leave no spot on this terraqueous globe 
 
 Unfit to be inhabited by man, 
 
 The chief of animals : all meaner brutes 
 
 Will have been smoked and elbowed out of life. 
 
A MINOR PROPHET. 179 
 
 No lions then shall lap Caffrarian pools, 
 
 Or shake the Atlas with their midnight roar : 
 
 Even the slow, slime-loving crocodile, 
 
 The last of animals to take a hint, 
 
 Will then retire forever from a scene 
 
 Where public feeling strongly sets against him. 
 
 Fishes ma} r lead carnivorous lives obscure, 
 
 But must not dream of culinary rank 
 
 Or being dished in good society. 
 
 Imagination in that distant age, 
 
 Aiming at fiction called historical, 
 
 Will vainly try to reconstruct the times 
 
 When it was men s preposterous delight 
 
 To sit astride live horses, which consumed 
 
 Materials for incalculable cakes ; 
 
 When there were milkmaids who drew milk from 
 
 cows 
 
 With udders kept abnormal for that end 
 Since the rude nrythopceic period 
 Of Aryan dairymen, who did not blush 
 To call their milkmaid and their daughter one 
 Helplessly gazing at the Milky Way, 
 
180 A MINOR PROPHET. 
 
 Nor dreaming of the astral cocoanuts 
 
 Quite at the service of posterity. 
 
 Tis to be feared, though, that the duller boys, 
 
 Much given to anachronisms and nuts, 
 
 (Elias has confessed boys will be boys) 
 
 May write a jockey for a centaur, think 
 
 Europa s suitor was an Irish bull, 
 
 JEsop a journalist who wrote up Fox, 
 
 And Bruin a chief swindler upon Change. 
 
 Boys will be boys, but dogs will all be moral, 
 
 With longer alimentary canals 
 
 Suited to diet vegetarian. 
 
 The uglier breeds will fade from memory, 
 
 Or, being paleontological, 
 
 Live but as portraits in large learned books, 
 
 Distasteful to the feelings of an age 
 
 Nourished on purest beauty. Earth will hold 
 
 No stupid brutes, no cheerful queernesses, 
 
 No naive cunning, grave absurdity. 
 
 Wart-pigs with tender and parental grunts, 
 
 Wombats much flattened as to their contour, 
 
 Perhaps from too much crushing in the ark, 
 
A MINOB PROPHET. 181 
 
 But taking meekly that fatality ; 
 
 The serious cranes, unstung by ridicule ; 
 
 Long-headed, short-legged, solemn-looking curs, 
 
 (Wise, silent critics of a flippant age) ; 
 
 The silly straddling foals, the weak-brained geese 
 
 Hissing fallaciously at sound of wheels 
 
 All these rude products will have disappeared 
 
 Along with every faulty human type. 
 
 By dint of diet vegetarian 
 
 All will be harmony of hue and line, 
 
 Bodies and minds all perfect, limbs well-turned, 
 
 And talk quite free from aught erroneous. 
 
 Thus far Elias in his seer s mantle : 
 
 But at this climax in his prophecy 
 
 My sinking spirits, fearing to be swamped, 
 
 Urge me to speak. "High prospects, these my 
 
 friend, 
 
 Setting the weak carnivorous brain astretch ; 
 We will resume the thread another day." 
 " To-morrow," cries Elias, " at this hour?" 
 " No, not to-morrow I shall have a cold 
 
182 A MINOE, PROPHET. 
 
 At least I feel some soreness this endemic 
 Good-by." 
 
 No tears are sadder than the smile 
 With which I quit Elias. Bitterly 
 I feel that every change upon this earth 
 Is bought with sacrifice. My yearnings fail 
 To reach that high apocalyptic mount 
 Which shows in bird s-eye view a perfect world, 
 Or enter warmly into other joys 
 Than those of faulty, struggling human kind. 
 That strain upon my soul s too feeble wing 
 Ends in ignoble floundering : I fall 
 Into short-sighted pity for the men 
 Who living in those perfect future times 
 Will not know half the dear imperfect things 
 That move my smiles and tears will never know 
 The fine old incongruities that raise 
 My friendly laugh ; the innocent conceits 
 That like a needless eyeglass or black patch 
 Give those who wear them harmless happiness ; 
 The twists and cracks in our poor earthenware, 
 That touch me to more conscious fellowship 
 
A MINOB PROPHET. 183 
 
 (I am not myself the finest Parian) 
 
 With my coevals. So poor Colin Clout, 
 
 To whom raw onion gives prospective zest, 
 
 Consoling hours of dampest wintry work, 
 
 Could hardly fancy any regal jo} r s 
 
 Quite unimpregnate with the onion s scent : 
 
 Perhaps his highest hopes are not all clear 
 
 Of waftings from that energetic bulb : 
 
 Tis well that onion is not heresy. 
 
 Speaking in parable, I am Colin Clout. 
 
 A clinging flavor penetrates my life 
 
 My onion is imperfectness : I cleave 
 
 To nature s blunders, evanescent types 
 
 Which sages banish from Utopia. 
 
 " Not worship beauty? " say you. Patience, friend ! 
 
 I worship in the temple with the rest ; 
 
 But by my hearth I keep a sacred nook 
 
 For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves 
 
 Who stitched and hammered for the weary man 
 
 In days of old. And in that piety 
 
 I clothe ungainly forms inherited 
 
 From toiling generations, daily bent 
 
184 A MINOR PROPHET. 
 
 At desk, or plough, or loom, or in the mine, 
 In pioneering labors for the world. 
 Nay, I am apt when floundering confused 
 From too rash flight, to grasp at paradox, 
 And pity future men who will not know 
 A keen experience with pity blent, 
 The pathos exquisite of lovely minds 
 Hid in harsh forms not penetrating them 
 Like fire divine within a common bush 
 "Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest, 
 So that men put their shoes off ; but incaged 
 Like a sweet child within some thick- walled cell, 
 Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars, 
 But having shown a little dimpled hand 
 Is visited thenceforth by tender hearts 
 Whose eyes keep watch about the prison walls. 
 A foolish, nay, a wicked paradox ! 
 For purest pity is the eye of love 
 Melting at sight of sorrow ; and to grieve 
 Because it sees no sorrow, shows a love 
 Warped from its truer nature, turned to love 
 Of merest habit, like the miser s greed. 
 
A MINOR PROPHET. 185 
 
 But I am Colin still : rny prejudice 
 Is for the flavor of my daily food. 
 Not that I doubt the world is growing still 
 As once it grew from Chaos and from Night ; 
 Or have a soul too shrunken for the hope 
 Which dawned in human breasts, a double morn, 
 With earliest watchings of the rising light 
 Chasing the darkness ; and through many an age 
 Has raised the vision of a future time 
 That stands an Angel with a face all mild 
 Spearing the demon. I too rest in faith 
 That man s perfection is the crowning flower, 
 Toward which the urgent sap in life s great tree 
 Is pressing, seen in puny blossoms now, 
 But in the world s great morrows to expand 
 With broadest petal and with deepest glow. 
 
 Yet, see the patched and plodding citizen 
 Waiting upon the pavement with the throng 
 While some victorious world-hero makes 
 Triumphal entry, and the peal of shouts 
 And flash of faces neath uplifted hats 
 
186 A MINOR PEOPHET. 
 
 Run like a storm of joy along the streets ! 
 
 He says, " God bless him ! " almost with a sob, 
 
 As the great hero passes ; he is glad 
 
 The world holds might} 7 men and mighty deeds ; 
 
 The music stirs his pulses like strong wine, 
 
 The moving splendor touches him with awe 
 
 Tis glory shed around the common weal, 
 
 And he will pay his tribute willingly, 
 
 Though with the pennies earned by sordid toil. 
 
 Perhaps the hero s deeds have helped to bring 
 
 A time when every honest citizen 
 
 Shall wear a coat unpatched. And yet he feels 
 
 More easy fellowship with neighbors there 
 
 Who look on too ; and he will soon relapse 
 
 From noticing the banners and the steeds 
 
 To think with pleasure there is just one bun 
 
 Left in his pocket, that may serve to tempt 
 
 The wide-eyed lad, whose weight is all too much 
 
 For that 3 r oung mother s arms : and then he falls 
 
 To dreamy picturing of sunny days 
 
 When he himself was a small big-cheeked lad 
 
 In some far village where no heroes came, 
 
A MINOR PROPHET. 187 
 
 And stood a listener twixt his father s legs 
 
 In the warm fire-light, while the old folk talked 
 
 And shook their heads and looked upon the floor ; 
 
 And he was puzzled, thinking life was fine 
 
 The bread and cheese so nice all through the year, 
 
 And Christmas sure to come. O that good time ! 
 
 He, could he choose, would have those days again, 
 
 And see the dear old-fashioned things once more. 
 
 But soon the wheels and drums have all passed by, 
 
 And tramping feet are heard like sudden rain : 
 
 The quiet startles our good citizen ; 
 
 He feels the child upon his arms, and knows 
 
 He is with the people making holiday 
 
 Because of hopes for better days to come. 
 
 But Hope to him was like the brilliant west 
 
 Telling of sunrise in a world unknown, 
 
 And from that dazzling curtain of bright hues 
 
 He turned to the familiar face of fields 
 
 Lying all clear in the calm morning land. 
 
 Maybe tis wiser not to fix a lens 
 
 Too scrutinizing on the glorious times 
 
 When Barbarossa shall arise and shake 
 
188 A MINOR PROPHET. 
 
 His mountain, good King Arthur come again, 
 
 And all the heroes of such giant soul 
 
 That, living once to cheer mankind with hope, 
 
 They had to sleep until the time was ripe 
 
 For greater deeds to match their greater thought. 
 
 Yet no ! the earth yields nothing more Divine 
 
 Than high prophetic vision than the Seer 
 
 Who fasting from man s meaner joy beholds 
 
 The paths of beauteous order, and constructs 
 
 A fairer type, to shame our low content. 
 
 But prophecy is like potential sound 
 
 Which turned to music seems a voice sublime 
 
 From out the soul of light ; but turns to noise 
 
 In scrannel pipes, and makes all ears averse. 
 
 *. 
 
 The faith that life on earth is being shaped 
 To glorious ends, that order, justice, love 
 Mean man s completeness, mean effect as sure 
 As roundness in the dew-drop that great faith 
 Is but the rushing and expanding stream 
 Of thought, of feeling, fed by all the past. 
 Our finest hope is finest memory, 
 
A MINOR PROPHET. 189 
 
 As they who love in age think youth is blest 
 
 Because it has a life to fill with love 
 
 Full souls are double mirrors, making still 
 
 An endless vista of fair things before 
 
 Repeating things behind : so faith is strong 
 
 Only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink. 
 
 It comes when music stirs us, and the chords 
 
 Moving on some grand climax shake our souls 
 
 With influx new that makes new energies. 
 
 It comes in swellings of the heart and tears 
 
 That rise at noble and at gentle deeds 
 
 At labors of the master-artist s hand, 
 
 Which, trembling, touches to a finer end, 
 
 Trembling before an image seen within. 
 
 It comes in moments of heroic love, 
 
 Unjealous joy in joy not made for us 
 
 In conscious triumph of the good within 
 
 Making us worship goodness that rebukes. 
 
 Even our failures are a prophecy, 
 
 Even our yearnings and our bitter tears 
 
 After that fair and true we cannot grasp ; 
 
 As patriots who seem to die in vain 
 
 Make liberty more sacred by their pangs. 
 
190 A MINOR PROPHET. 
 
 Presentiment of better things on earth 
 Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls 
 To admiration, self-renouncing love, 
 Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one 
 Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night 
 We hear the roll and dash of waves that break 
 Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide, 
 Which rises to the level of the cliff 
 Because the wide Atlantic rolls behind 
 Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs. 
 1865. 
 

 BROTHER AND SISTER. 
 
 191 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER. 
 
 I CANNOT choose but think upon the time 
 When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss 
 At lightest thrill from the bee s swinging chime, 
 Because the one so near the other is. 
 
 He was the elder and a little man 
 Of forty inches, bound to show no dread, 
 And I the girl that puppy-like now ran, 
 Now lagged behind my brother s larger tread. 
 
 I held him wise, and when he talked to me 
 Of snakes and birds, and which God loved the best, 
 I thought his knowledge marked the boundary 
 Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest. 
 
 If he said, Hush ! " I tried to hold my breath ; 
 Wherever he said, " Come ! " I stepped in faith. 
 
 193 
 
194 BROTHER AND SISTER, 
 
 n. 
 
 Long years have left their writing on my brow, 
 But yet the freshness and the dew-fed beam 
 Of those young mornings are about me now, 
 When we two wandered toward the far-off stream 
 
 With rod and line. Our basket held a store 
 Baked for us only, and I thought with joy 
 That I should have my share, though he had more, 
 Because he was the elder and a boy. 
 
 The firmaments of daisies since to me 
 Have had those mornings in their opening eyes, 
 The bunched cowslip s pale transparency 
 Carries that sunshine of sweet memories, 
 
 And wild-rose branches take their finest scent 
 From those blest hours of infantine content. 
 
BBOTHEK AND SISTER. 195 
 
 III, 
 
 Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways, 
 Stroked down my tippet, set my brother s frill, 
 Then with the benediction of her gaze 
 Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still 
 
 Across the homestead to the rookery elms, 
 Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound, 
 So rich for us, we counted them as realms 
 With varied products : here were earth-nuts found, 
 
 And here the Lad3 r -fingers in deep shade ; 
 Here sloping toward the Moat the rushes grew, 
 The large to split for pith, the small to braid ; 
 While over all the dark rooks cawing new, 
 
 And made a happy strange solemnity, 
 
 A deep-toned chant from life unknown to me. 
 
 13 
 
196 BKOTHEK AND SISTER. 
 
 rv, 
 
 Our meadow-path had memorable spots : 
 One where it bridged a tiny rivulet, 
 Deep hid by tangled blue Forget-me-nots ; 
 And all along the waving grasses met 
 
 My little palm, or nodded to my cheek, 
 When flowers with upturned faces gazing drew 
 My wonder downward, seeming all to speak 
 With eyes of souls that dumbly heard and knew. 
 
 Then came the copse, where wild things rushed 
 
 unseen, 
 
 And black-scathed grass betraj ed the past abode 
 Of mystic g}^psies, who still lurked between 
 Me and each hidden distance of the road. 
 
 A gypsy once had startled me at play, 
 Blotting with her dark smile my sunny day. 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER. 197 
 
 Thus rambling we were schooled in deepest lore, 
 And learned the meanings that give words a soul, 
 The fear, the love, the primal passionate store, 
 Whose shaping impulses make manhood whole. 
 
 Those hours were seed to all my after good ; 
 My infant gladness, through eye, ear, and touch, 
 Took easily as warmth a various food 
 To nourish the sweet skill of loving much. 
 
 For who in age shall roam the earth, and find 
 Reasons for loving that will strike out love 
 With sudden rod from the hard year-pressed mind ? 
 Were reasons sown as thick as stars above, 
 
 Tis love must see them, as the eye sees light : 
 Day is but Number to the darkened sight. 
 
198 BROTHER AND SISTER. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Our brown canal was endless to my thought ; 
 And on its banks I sat in dreamy peace, 
 Unknowing how the good I loved was wrought, 
 Untroubled by the fear that it would cease. 
 
 Slowly the barges floated into view 
 Rounding a grassy hill to me sublime 
 With some Unknown beyond it, whither flew 
 The parting cuckoo toward a fresh spring time. 
 
 The wide-arched bridge, the scented elder-flowers. 
 The wondrous wate^ rings that died too soon, 
 The echoes of the quarry, the still hours 
 With white robe sweeping on the shadeless noon, 
 
 Were but my growing self, are part of me, 
 My present Past, my root of piety. 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER. 199 
 
 vn. 
 
 Those long days measured by my little feet 
 Had chronicles which yield me many a text ; 
 Where irony still finds an image meet 
 Of full-grown judgments in this world perplext. 
 
 One day my brother left me in high charge, 
 To mind the rod, while he went seeking bait, 
 And bade me, when I saw a nearing barge, 
 Snatch out the line, lest he should come too late. 
 
 Proud of the task, I watched with all my might 
 For one whole minute, till my eyes grew wide, 
 Till sky and earth took on a strange new light 
 And seemed a dream-world floating on some tide 
 
 A fair pavilioned boat for me alone 
 
 Bearing me onward through the vast unknown. 
 
200 BROTHER AND SISTER. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 But sudden came the barge s pitch-black prow, 
 Nearer and angrier came my brother s cry, 
 And all my soul was quivering fear, when lo ! 
 Upon the imperilled line, suspended high, 
 
 A silver perch ! My guilt that won the prey, 
 Now turned to merit, had a guerdon rich 
 Of songs and praises, and made merry play, 
 Until my triumph reached its highest pitch 
 
 When all at home were told the wondrous feat, 
 And how the little sister had fished well. 
 In secret, though my fortune tasted sweet,, 
 I wondered why this happiness befell. 
 
 " The little lass had luck," the gardener said 
 And so I learned, luck was with glory wed. 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER. 201 
 
 ES. 
 
 We had the selfsame world enlarged for each 
 By loving difference of girl and boy : 
 The fruit that hung on high beyond my reach 
 He plucked for me, and oft he must employ 
 
 A measuring glance to guide my tiny shoe 
 Where lay firm stepping-stones, or call to mind 
 " This thing I like my sister may not do, 
 For she is little, and I must be kind." 
 
 Thus boyish Will the nobler mastery learned 
 Where inward vision over impulse reigns, 
 Widening its life with separate life discerned, 
 A Like unlike, a Self that self restrains. 
 
 His years with others must the sweeter be 
 For those brief days he spent in loving me. - 
 
202 BROTHER AND SISTER. 
 
 X. 
 
 His sorrow was my sorrow, and his joy 
 Sent little leaps and laughs through all my frame ; 
 My doll seemed lifeless and no girlish toy 
 Had any reason when my brother came. 
 
 I knelt with him at marbles, marked his fling 
 Cut the ringed stem and make the apple drop, 
 Or watched him winding close the spiral string 
 That looped the orbits of the humming top. 
 
 Grasped by such fellowship my vagrant thought 
 Ceased with dream-fruit dream-wishes to fulfil ;. 
 My aery-picturing fantasy was taught 
 Subjection to the harder, truer skill 
 
 That seeks with deeds to grave a thought-tracuea 
 
 line, 
 And by " What is," " What will be " to define. 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER. 203 
 
 XI. 
 
 School parted us ; we never found again 
 That childish world where our two spirits mingled 
 Like scents from varying roses that remain 
 One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled. 
 
 Yet the twin habit of that early time 
 Lingered for long about the heart and tongue : 
 We had been natives of one happy clime 
 And its dear accent to our utterance clung. 
 
 Till the dire years whose awful name is Change 
 Had grasped our souls still yearning in divorce, 
 And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range 
 Two elements which sever their life s course. 
 
 But were another childhood- world my share, 
 I would be born a little sister there. 
 1869. 
 
STRADIVARIUS. 
 
 205 
 
STRADIVARIUS. 
 
 YOUR soul was lifted by the wings to-day 
 
 Hearing the master of the violin : 
 
 You praised him, praised the great Sebastian too 
 
 Who made that fine Chaconne ; but did 3-011 think 
 
 Of old Antonio Stradivari ? him 
 
 Who a good centmy and half ago 
 
 Put his true work in that brown instrument, 
 
 And by the nice adjustment of its frame 
 
 Gave it responsive life, continuous 
 
 With the master s finger-tips and perfected 
 
 Like them by delicate rectitude of use. 
 
 Not Bach alone, helped by fine precedent 
 
 Of genius gone before, nor Joachim 
 
 Who holds the strain afresh incorporate 
 
 207 
 
208 STKADIVARIUS. 
 
 By inward hearing and notation strict 
 
 Of nerve and muscle, made our joy to-day : 
 
 Another soul was living in the air, 
 
 And swaying it to true deliverance 
 
 Of high invention and responsive skill : 
 
 That plain white-aproned man who stood at work 
 
 Patient and accurate full fourscore years, 
 
 Cherished his sight and touch by temperance, 
 
 And since keen sense is love of perfectness 
 
 Made perfect violins, the needed paths 
 
 For inspiration and high mastery. 
 
 No simpler man than he : he never cried, 
 " Why was I born to this monotonous task 
 Of making violins ? " or flung them down 
 To suit with hurling act a well-hurled curse 
 At labor on such perishable stuff. 
 Hence neighbors in Cremona held him dull, 
 Called him a slave, a mill-horse, a machine, 
 Begged him to tell his motives, or to lend 
 A few gold-pieces to a loftier mind. 
 Yet he had pithy words full fed by fact ; 
 
STRADIVARIUS. 209 
 
 For Fact, well-trusted, reasons and persuades, 
 
 Is gnomic, cutting, or ironical, 
 
 Draws tears, or is a tocsin to arouse 
 
 Can hold all figures of the orator 
 
 In one plain sentence ; has her pauses too 
 
 Eloquent silence at the chasm abrupt 
 
 Where knowledge ceases. Thus Antonio 
 
 Made answers as Fact willed, and made them strong. 
 
 Naldo, a painter of eclectic school, 
 Taking his dicers, candlelight and grins 
 From Caravaggio, and in holier groups 
 Combining Flemish flesh with martyrdom 
 Knowing all tricks of style at thirty-one, 
 And weary of them, while Antonio 
 At sixty-nine wrought placidly his best 
 Making the violin you heard to-day 
 Naldo would tease him oft to tell his aims, 
 
 Perhaps thou hast some pleasant vice to feed 
 The love of louis d ors in heaps of four, 
 Each violin a heap I ve nought to blame ; 
 H 
 
210 STBADIYARniS. 
 
 My vices waste such heaps. But then, why work 
 
 With painful nicety ? Since fame once earned 
 
 By luck or merit bftenest by luck 
 
 (Else why do I put Bonifazio s name 
 
 To work that pinxit Naldo would not sell ?) 
 
 Is welcome index to the wealthy mob 
 
 Where they should pay their gold, and where they 
 
 pay 
 
 There they find merit take j r our tow for flax, 
 And hold the flax unlabelled with your name, 
 Too coarse for sufferance." 
 
 Antonio then : 
 
 " I like the gold well, yes but not for meals. 
 And as my stomach, so m} T eye and hand, 
 And inward sense that works along with both, 
 Have hunger that can never feed on coin. 
 Who draws a line and satisfies his soul, 
 Making it crooked where it should be straight? 
 An idiot with an oyster-shell may draw 
 His lines along the sand, all wavering, 
 Fixing no point or pathway to a point ; 
 An idiot one remove may choose his line, 
 
STEADIVAEIUS. 211 
 
 Straggle and be content ; but God be praised, 
 
 Antonio Stradivari has an eye 
 
 That winces at false work, and loves the true, 
 
 With hand and arm that play upon the tool 
 
 As willingly as any singing bird 
 
 Sets him to sing his morning roundelay, 
 
 Because he likes to sing and likes the song." 
 
 Then Naldo : " Tis a petty kind of fame 
 At best, that comes of making violins ; 
 And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go 
 To purgatory none the less." 
 
 But he : 
 
 " Twere purgatory here to make them ill ; 
 And for my fame when any master holds, 
 Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine, 
 He will be glad that Stradivari lived, 
 Made violins, and made them of the best. 
 The masters only know whose work is good : 
 They will choose mine, and while God gives them skill 
 I give them instruments to play upon, 
 God choosing me to help Him." 
 
I % . . n l b 
 
 212 :, / STE ADIV ARIUS . 
 
 "What! were God 
 At fault for violins, thou absent?" 
 
 "Yes; 
 He were at fault for Stradivari s work." 
 
 " Why, many hold Giuseppe s violins 
 As good as thine." 
 
 May be : they are different. 
 His quality declines : he spoils his hand 
 With over-drinking. But were his the best, 
 He could not work for two. My work is mine, 
 And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked, 
 I should rob God since He is fullest good 
 Leaving a blank instead of violins. 
 I say, not God Himself can make man s best 
 Without best men to help Him. I am one best 
 Here in Cremona, using sunlight well 
 To fashion finest maple till it serves 
 More cunningly than throats, for harmony. 
 Tis rare delight : I would not change my skill 
 To be the Emperor with bungling hands, 
 And lose my work, which comes as natural 
 As self at waking." 
 

 STKADIVAEIUS. 
 
 218 
 
 " Thou art little 
 Than a deft potter s wheel, Antonio ; 
 Turning out work by mere necessity 
 And lack of varied function. Higher arts 
 Subsist on freedom eccentricity 
 Uncounted inspirations influence 
 That comes with drinking, gambling, talk turned 
 
 wild, 
 
 Then moody misery and lack of food 
 With every dithyrambic fine excess : 
 These make at last a storm which flashes out 
 In lighting revelations. Steady work 
 -Turns genius to a loom ; the soul must lie 
 Like grapes beneath the sun till ripeness comes 
 And mellow vintage. I could paint } ou now 
 The finest Crucifixion ; yesternight 
 Returning home I saw it on a sky 
 Blue-black, thick-starred. I want two louis d ors 
 To buy the canvas and the costly blues 
 Trust me a fortnight." 
 
 Where are those last two 
 I lent thee for thy Judith ? her thou saw st 
 
214 STRADIVAKIUS. 
 
 In saffron gown, with Holofernes head 
 And beauty all complete ? " 
 
 " She is but sketched 
 I lack the proper model and the mood. 
 A great idea is an eagle s egg, 
 Craves time for hatching ; while the eagle sits 
 Feed her." 
 
 If thou wilt call thy pictures eggs 
 I call the hatching, work. Tis God gives skill, 
 But not without men s hands : He could not make 
 Antonio Stradivari s violins 
 Without Antonio. Get thee to thy easel." 
 1873. 
 
TWO LOVERS. 
 
 215 
 
TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Two lovers by a moss-grown spring : 
 They leaned soft cheeks together there, 
 Mingled the dark and sunny hair, 
 And heard the wooing thrushes sing. 
 O budding time ! 
 O love s blest prime ! 
 
 Two wedded from the portal stept : 
 The bells made happ} T carollings, 
 The air was soft as fanning wings, 
 White petals on the pathway slept. 
 
 O* pure-eyed bride ! 
 O tender pride ! 
 
 217 
 
218 TWO LOVERS. 
 
 Two faces o er a cradle bent : 
 
 Two hands above the head were locked ; 
 These pressed each other while they rocked, 
 Those watched a life that love had sent. 
 O solemn hour ! 
 O hidden power ! 
 
 Two parents by the evening fire : 
 The red light fell about their knees 
 On heads that rose by slow degrees 
 Like buds upon the lily spire. 
 
 O patient life ! 
 O tender strife ! 
 
 The two still sat together there, 
 .The red light shone about their knees ; 
 But all the heads by slow degrees 
 Had gone and left that lonely pair. 
 
 O voyage fast ! 
 O vanished past ! 
 
TWO LOVERS. 219 
 
 The red light shone upon the floor 
 
 And made the space between them wide ; 
 They drew their chairs up side by side, 
 Their pale cheeks joined, and said, " Once more ! " 
 O memories ! 
 O past that is ! 
 18G6. 
 
ARION. 
 
 221 
 
ABION. 
 
 (HEROD. I. 24.) 
 
 ARION, whose melodic soul 
 Taught the dithyramb to roll 
 
 Like forest fires, and sing 
 
 Olympian suffering, 
 
 Had carried his diviner lore 
 From Corinth to the sister shore 
 
 Where Greece could largelier be, 
 
 Branching o er Italy. 
 
 223 
 
224 ARION. 
 
 Then weighted with his glorious name 
 And bags of gold, aboard he came 
 Mid harsh seafaring men 
 To Corinth bound again. 
 
 The sailors eyed the bags, and thought 
 " The gold is good, the man is nought 
 And who shall track the wave 
 That opens for his grave ? " 
 
 With brawny arms and cruel e} r es 
 They press around him where he lies 
 In sleep beside his lyre, 
 Hearing the Muses choir. 
 
 He waked and saw this wolf-faced Death 
 Breaking the dream that filled his breath 
 With inspiration strong 
 Of 3 et unchanted song. 
 
ARION. 225 
 
 " Take, take my gold and let me live ! " 
 He prayed, as kings do when they give 
 Their all with royal will, 
 Holding born kingship still. 
 
 To rob the living they refuse, 
 One death or other he must choose, 
 Either the watery pall 
 Or wounds and burial. 
 
 " My solemn robe then let me don, 
 Give me high space to stand upon, 
 That dying I may pour 
 A song unsung before." 
 
 It pleased them well to grant this 1 prayer, 
 To bear for nought how it might fare 
 
 With men who paid their gold 
 
 For what a poet sold. 
 
226 AEION. 
 
 In flowing stole, his eyes aglow 
 With inward fire, he neared the prow 
 And took his god-like stand, 
 The cithara in hand. 
 
 The wolfish men all shrank aloof, 
 And feared this singer might be proof 
 
 Against their murderous power, 
 
 After his lyric hour. 
 
 But he, in liberty of song. 
 Fearless of death or other wrong, 
 With full spondaic toll 
 Poured forth his mighty soul : 
 
 Poured forth the strain his dream had taught, 
 A nome with lofty passion fraught, 
 
 Such as makes battles won 
 
 On fields of Marathon. 
 
AKION. 227 
 
 The last long vowels trembled then 
 As awe within those wolfish men : 
 
 They said, with mutual stare, 
 Some god was present there. 
 
 But lo ! Arion leaped on high 
 Readj , his descant done, to die ; 
 Not asking, " Is it well? " 
 Like a pierced eagle fell. 
 1873. 
 
O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE." 
 
 229 
 
" O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE." 
 
 " Longum illud tempus, quum non ero, mayis me movet, quam 
 hoc ez^ram." CICERO, adAtt., xii. 18. 
 
 O MAY I join the choir invisible 
 
 Of those immortal dead who live again 
 
 In minds made better by their presence : live 
 
 In pulses stirred to generosit} , 
 
 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
 
 For miserable aims that end with self, 
 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
 
 And with their mild persistence urge man s search 
 
 To vaster issues. 
 
 So to live is heaven : 
 To make undyiiig music in the world, 
 
232 " O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE. 
 
 Breathing as beauteous order that controls 
 
 With growing sway the growing life of man. 
 
 So we inherit that sweet purity 
 
 For which we struggled, failed, and agonized 
 
 With widening retrospect that bred despair. 
 
 Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued, 
 
 A vicious parent shaming still its child 
 
 Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved ; 
 
 Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies, 
 
 Die in the large and charitable air. 
 
 And all our rarer, better, truer self, 
 
 That sobbed religiously in 3 r earning song, 
 
 That watched to ease the burthen of the world, 
 
 Laboriously tracing what must be, 
 
 And what may yet be better saw within 
 
 A worthier image for the sanctuary, 
 
 And shaped it forth before the multitude 
 
 Divinely human, raising worship so 
 
 To higher reverence more mixed with love 
 
 That better self shall live till human Time 
 
 Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky 
 
 Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb 
 
 Unread forever. 
 
" O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE." 233 
 
 This is life to come, 
 
 Which martyred men have made more glorious 
 For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
 That purest heaven, be to other souls 
 The cup of strength in some great agony, 
 Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
 Beget the smiles that have no cruelty 
 Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
 And in diffusion ever more intense. 
 So shall I join the choir invisible 
 Whose music is the gladness of the world. 
 1867. 
 
 THE END. 
 

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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY