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SELECTIONS FROM THE 
 POEMS OF WALTER C. SMITH. 
 
PUBLISHED BY 
 
 JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW, 
 ^publishers to ike 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON AND NEW YORK. 
 London, - - Simpkin, Hamilton and Co. 
 Cambridge, - Macmillan and Bowes. 
 Edinburgh, Douglas and Foulis. 
 
 MDCCCXCIII. 
 
Selections from 
 
 the Poems of 
 Walter C. Smith 
 
 Glasgow 
 James MacLehose and Sons 
 
 Publishers to the University 
 1893 
 
CONTENTS. 
 (Songs anb 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SHE is A WOMAN TO LOVE, - i 
 
 So SHE WENT DRIFTING, 2 
 
 WHAT HAS COME OVER THE SUNSHINE?- - 3 
 
 Row, BURNIE, Row, 4 
 
 LOVE, 5 
 
 MYSIE GORDON, 6 
 
 THE GIPSY GIRL, 8 
 
 UP IN THE NORTH, ... 9 
 
 THE FALSE SEA, 10 
 
 THE HOURS, - 12 
 
 LATE, LATE IN MAY, - - 13 
 
 GLENARADALE, - 14 
 
 THE BROOK AND THE RIVER, - - - - 15 
 
 BUDDING, - - 17 
 
 BURSTING, - 18 
 
 WORK AND SPIRIT, - - 19 
 
 A WISH, - - 21 
 SCATTERED, ....... 22 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 WAITING, - -22 
 HOPE, .... 23 
 MORALIZING, .... 25 
 ORWELL, 26 
 
 Character <Sketdus. 
 
 THOROLD, - - - - - - 28 
 
 LADY ANNE DEWHURST, .... 30 
 
 SQUIRE DEWHURST, ... 32 
 
 DICK DALGLEISH, - - 33 
 
 AMORY HILL, 46 
 
 Miss BELLA JAPP, .... - 55 
 
 THE BISHOP, ....... 60 
 
 CONTRASTS, 61 
 
 A SCHOOL-MISTRESS, 65 
 WINNIE, ... 69 
 
 Miss PENELOPE LEITH, - 72 
 
 MIRREN, - - 76 
 
 ABERDEEN, 85 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL TOWN, - "... g 7 
 
 IONA, . . 91 
 
 HILDA'S HOME, - 94 
 
CONTENTS. vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EVENING WALKS, - 96 
 
 THE STORM, - 99 
 
 A HIGHLAND FUNERAL, - 101 
 
 FAILURE, - .... 105 
 
 A WALK, 106 
 
 Dramatic 
 
 LOQUITUR THOROLD, no 
 
 LOQUITUR MATER DOMINA, 117 
 
 LOQUITUR ROSE, 119 
 
 EDITORIAL, 124 
 
 LOQUITUR CLAUD MAXWELL, - 126 
 
 HILDA'S DEATH, - - 127 
 
 THE LETTER, - 130 
 
 cSormons anb Jttoralitics. 
 
 ELIJAH, 134 
 
 THE STANDING STONES, - - 142 
 
 THE ABBEY, 145 
 
 THE SELF-EXILED, - 148 
 
 A CHURCH OF THE AGES, 152 
 
 THE VISION OF GOD, 156 
 
 THE BURDEN OF GOD, 157 
 
 CONTENT, 163 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EARTH WAS WAITING, - ... ^5 
 
 THINK ON ME, LORD, 167 
 
 ONE THING I OF THE LORD DESIRE, - - 168 
 
 BE STILL, - - 169 
 
 LORD, I WOULD CHOOSE, 170 
 
 HE LED ME OUT AND IN, 171 
 
 LORD, WE ARE PILGRIMS, 172 
 
 O'ER LAND AND SEA, 174 
 
SONGS AND LYRICS. 
 
 SHE IS A WOMAN TO LOVE. 
 
 SHE is a woman to love, to love 
 
 As flowers love light ; 
 All that is best in you is at its best, 
 All the heart opens to her as a guest 
 
 Who makes it bright. 
 
 She is a woman to love, to love 
 
 With soul and heart ; 
 And all in her that is sweet and true 
 She makes as if it were drawn from you 
 
 By gracious art. 
 
 You cannot help but love, but love ; 
 
 Nobody can ; 
 
 She carries a charm with her everywhere 
 Just a circle she makes in the air, 
 
 Bewitching man. 
 
 A 
 
SONGS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Is it her beauty I love, I love? 
 
 Is it her mind? 
 
 Is it her fancy, nimble and gay? 
 Or her voice that spirits the soul away? 
 
 I cannot find. 
 
 But she's just a woman to love, to love, 
 
 As men love wine 
 
 Madly and blindly : yet why should they 
 Bring their hearts to be stolen away, 
 
 When she has mine? 
 
 Borland Hall, p. 10. 
 
 SO SHE WENT DRIFTING. 
 
 So she went drifting, drifting 
 
 Over the sea, 
 Thinking that others were shifting ; 
 
 Surely not she. 
 She no anchor had lifted, 
 
 Meant not to move ; 
 Only she slowly drifted 
 
 Deep into love. 
 
 O she had held that a maiden 
 
 Should not be first 
 To sigh with a heart love-laden, 
 
 And long and thirst ; 
 And mad at herself for her longing, 
 
 Hard things she said, 
 Then was mad at herself for wronging 
 
 The love she had. 
 
SO SHE WENT DRIFTING. 
 
 He knew not how she was yearning 
 
 Just for a word, 
 And went on his way discerning 
 
 Nothing he heard : 
 Only he sometimes wondered 
 
 What she could mean 
 O had he only pondered 
 
 He might have seen. 
 
 So she went drifting, drifting 
 
 Day after day; 
 So he went shifting, shifting, 
 
 Farther away ; 
 O but a word would have done it 
 
 Word never spoken ; 
 So she went drifting, drifting 
 
 With her heart broken. 
 
 Borland Hall, p. 178. 
 
 WHAT HAS COME OVER THE 
 
 SUNSHINE? 
 
 WHAT has come over the sunshine? 
 
 It is like a dream of bliss. 
 What has come over the pine-woods ? 
 
 Was ever a day like this? 
 O white-throat swallow flicking 
 
 The loch with long wing-tips, 
 Hear you the low sweet laughter 
 
 Comes rippling from its lips? 
 
SONGS AND LYRICS. 
 
 What has come over the waters ? 
 
 What has come over the trees ? 
 Never were rills and fountains 
 
 So merrily voiced as these. 
 
 throstle softly piping 
 
 High on the topmost bough, 
 
 1 hear a new song singing, 
 Is it my heart, or thou? 
 
 Kildrostan, p. 61. 
 
 ROW, BURNIE, ROW. 
 
 Row, burnie, row 
 
 Through the bracken-glen ; 
 Row, burnie, row 
 
 By the haunts of men ; 
 Where the golden cowslips glint, 
 Through the wild thyme and the mint, 
 By the barley and the lint; 
 
 Row, burnie, row. 
 
 Row, burnie, row 
 
 Tinkling under heather bells ; 
 Row, burnie, row 
 
 Down to where my true love dwells; 
 Singing songs down to the sea, 
 Singing of the hill countrie, 
 Singing to my love from me : 
 
 Row, burnie, row. 
 
 Row, burnie, row 
 
 To him that's far awa, 
 Row, burnie, row, 
 
 And mind him o' us a'. 
 
ROW, BURNIE, ROW. 
 
 Say there's naething I regret, 
 Say I never can forget, 
 Say I love him dearly yet : 
 Row, burnie, row. 
 
 Row, burnie, row 
 
 Through the gowans white, 
 Row, burnie, row, 
 
 Gleaming in the light : 
 Let ilka ripple bear 
 Fond kisses to him there ; 
 O my heart it's longing sair. 
 
 Row, burnie, row. 
 
 Borland Hall, p. 148. 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 O WHAT is this that in my heart is singing, 
 
 Like sweet bird, caged there, carolling all day? 
 O what is this such gladness to me bringing 
 That life is bliss, and work is merry play, 
 And round my steps lo ! sunny flowers are 
 
 springing 
 
 As I go singing, singing on my way? 
 O Love, glad Love ! 
 
 Ah ! what is this that in my heart is sighing, 
 Like captive vainly moaning to be free? 
 
 Ah ! what is this so heavy in me lying, 
 No rest there is, nor any work for me, 
 
 And leaf and flower are drooping now ahd dying 
 As I go sighing, sighing wearily? 
 O Love, sad Love ! 
 
6 SOA'GS AND L YRICS. 
 
 What thing is this my foolish heart is dreaming, 
 That I should love, and long for yon bright 
 
 star? 
 I sigh or sing, but she, unmoved, is gleaming 
 
 As in high glory where the angels are 
 I but a glow-worm on the earth dull-beaming, 
 While she is gleaming, gleaming there afar. 
 O Love, vain Love ! 
 
 Raban. p. 38. 
 
 MYSIE GORDON. 
 
 Now where is Mysie Gordon gone ? 
 What should take her up the glen, 
 Turning, dowie and alone, 
 
 From smithy lads and farming men ? 
 Never seen where lasses, daffing 
 At the well, are blithely laughing, 
 Dinging a' the chields at chaffing : 
 Bonnie Mysie Gordon. 
 
 Mysie lo'ed a student gay, 
 
 And he vowed he lo'ed her well : 
 She gave all her heart away, 
 He lo'ed naething but himsel' : 
 Then he went to woo his fortune, 
 Fleechin', preachin', and exhortin', 
 Got a Kirk, and now is courtin' 
 But no his Mysie Gordon. 
 
 Every night across the moor, 
 Where the whaup and peewit cry, 
 
 Mysie seeks his mither's door 
 Wi' the saut tear in her eye. 
 
MYSIE GORDON. 
 
 Little wots his boastfu' Minnie, 
 Proud to tell about her Johnnie, 
 Every word's a stab to bonnie 
 Love-sick Mysie Gordon. 
 
 A' his letters she maun read, 
 
 A' about the lady braw ; 
 Though the lassie's heart may bleed, 
 Though it even break in twa ; 
 Wae her life may be and weary, 
 Mirk the nicht may be and eerie, 
 Yet she'll gang, and fain luik cheerie, 
 Bonnie Mysie Gordon. 
 
 Whiles she thinks it maun be richt ; 
 
 She is but a landward girl ; 
 He a scholar, and a licht 
 Meikle thocht o' by the EarL 
 Whiles she daurna think about it, 
 Thole her love, nor live without it, 
 Sair alike to trust, or doubt it, 
 Waesome Mysie Gordon. 
 
 Mysie doesna curse the cuif, 
 
 Doesna hate the lady braw, 
 Doesna even haud aloof, 
 Nor wish them ony ill ava : 
 
 But she leaves his proudfu' mither, 
 Dragging through the dowie heather 
 Weary feet by ane anither ; 
 Bonnie Mysie Gordon. 
 
 Borland Hall, p. 17. 
 
SONGS AND L YRICS. 
 
 THE GIPSY GIRL. 
 
 MOTHER, O mother, I've put away 
 Velvet and silk for the raploch grey : 
 
 Love is best ! 
 
 Mother, O mother, my wedding ring 
 Hangs on the glass by a silken string : 
 
 Golden chains are heavy. 
 
 Mother, O mother, if I could find 
 
 The rags that once fluttered in rain and wind 
 
 Love is best ! 
 
 Mother, O mother, the rags were true 
 And O that I had not listened to you : 
 
 Golden chains are heavy. 
 
 Mother, O mother, who led the way 
 
 To the men who came from the ship in the bay? 
 
 Love is best ! 
 
 Mother, O mother, shell and shot 
 Pitied him whom you pitied not. 
 
 Golden chains are heavy. 
 
 Mother, O mother, he did not die ; 
 He is coming again to me by and bye. 
 
 Love is best ! 
 
 Mother, O mother, I love him still, 
 And if he says, Come to me, come I will. 
 
 Golden chains are heavy. 
 
 Mother, O mother, I heard the cry 
 Of a baby, all night, that was hard to die. . 
 Love is best ! 
 
THE GIPSY GIRL. 9 
 
 Mother, O mother, my heart is wild, 
 And what shall I say when he asks for his child? 
 Golden chains are heavy. 
 
 Mother, O mother, your lordling gay 
 
 Was wronged by my coming, not going away ; 
 
 Love is best ! 
 
 Mother, O mother, the woods are green, 
 Yet it never can be as it once has been. 
 
 Golden chains are heavy. 
 
 Borland Hall, p. 122. 
 
 UP IN THE NORTH. 
 
 UP in the North, up in the North, 
 There lies the true home of valour and worth ; 
 Wild the wind sweeps over moorland and glen, 
 But truth is trusty, and men are men, 
 And hearts grow warmer the farther you go, 
 Up to the North with its hills and snow. 
 Ho ! for the North, yo ho ! 
 
 Out of the North, out of the North, 
 All the free men of the nations came forth ; 
 Kings of the sea, they rode, like its waves, 
 Crash on the old Roman empire of slaves, 
 And the poor cowed slaves and their Cassars saw 
 Rise from its ruins our Freedom and Law. 
 Ho ! for the North, yo ho ! 
 
 Up in the North, up in the North, 
 
 O but our maids are the fairest on earth, 
 
10 SONGS AND L YRICS. 
 
 Simple and pure as the white briar-rose, 
 
 And their thoughts like the dew which it clasps 
 
 as it blows ; 
 
 There are no homes but where they be, 
 Woman made home in the north countrie. 
 Ho ! for the North, yo ho ! 
 
 O for the North, O for the North ! 
 O to be there when the stars come forth ! 
 The less that the myrtle or rose is given, 
 The more do we see there the glory of heaven ; 
 And care and burden I leave behind 
 When I turn my face to the old North wind. 
 Ho ! for the North, yo ho ! 
 
 Borland Hall, p. 12. 
 
 THE FALSE SEA. 
 
 SINGING to you, 
 And moaning to me ; 
 Nothing is true 
 In the false, cruel sea. 
 Where its lip kisses 
 The sands, they are bare, 
 Where its foam hisses, 
 Nothing lives there ; 
 When it is smiling, 
 Hushed as in sleep, 
 It is beguiling 
 Some one to weep. 
 
THE FALSE SEA. 
 
 II. 
 
 They were seafaring, 
 
 With light hearts and free, 
 
 And full of the daring 
 
 That's bred of the sea : 
 
 It crept up the inlet, 
 
 And bore them away 
 
 Where it laughed in the sunlight, 
 
 And dimpled the bay, 
 
 Singing to them, 
 
 But moaning to me, 
 
 Tripping it came, 
 
 The cold, cruel sea. 
 
 ill. 
 
 I heard the oars dipping, 
 I heard her bows part 
 The waves with a rippling 
 That went through my heart. 
 And I saw women weeping 
 And wringing their hands 
 For the dead that were sleeping 
 That night on the sands : 
 For nothing is true 
 In the false, cruel sea, 
 Which is singing to you, 
 And moaning to me. 
 
 Borland Hall, p. 21. 
 
12 SONGS AND LYXSCS. 
 
 THE HOURS. 
 BROWN, gipsy hours, with white teeth laughing 
 
 gay, 
 
 Came trooping by me, when a child at play, 
 And with their coaxing stole my life away 
 Where bird in bush was idling all the day. 
 
 Soft, roguish hours, that in the gloaming peep 
 At woodland nooks a dewy tryste to keep, 
 Stole my young life away, and in a heap 
 Of rose leaves, sweetly smelling, hid it deep. 
 
 Dark, robber hours, like burglars in the night, 
 They broke into my house, by cunning sleight, 
 And bound me fast, as with a spell of might, 
 And reft my life away ere morning light. 
 
 The idle bird is silent on the tree, 
 The rose leaves withered now and scentless be, 
 The spell is broken ; lo ! mine eyes can see 
 O thievish hours that stole my life from me ! 
 
 Lost, lost ! and now the mists, low trailing, screen 
 The visioned glories that I once have seen, 
 And all the hours are grey and cold and mean 
 Lost, lost my life and O the might have been ! 
 
 Borland Hall, p. 39. 
 
LA TE, LA TE IN MAY. 13 
 
 LATE, LATE IN MAY. 
 
 LATE, late in May the hawthorn burst in bloom, 
 Long searched by chill blasts from the nipping 
 
 East; 
 
 Late, late the fire-balls flamed upon the broom, 
 And golden-barred bees began to feast. 
 
 Late, late the blue-bells in the forest glade 
 Made skyey patches, starred with primrose sheen, 
 And lady-ferns, uncoiling in the shade, 
 Turned serpent-folds to plumes of waving green. 
 
 Late, late the bright fringe tipped the branching 
 
 spruce, 
 
 And golden fingers sprouted on the pine; 
 And June came in before its curls were loose, 
 Or laughed laburnum in the clear sunshine. 
 
 Late, late they came, but yet they came at last, 
 Lilac, laburnum, sweet Forget-me-not ; 
 But waiting for my summer, summer passed 
 In flowerless hoping, and in fruitless thought. 
 
 Came sunshine to the blossoms and the flowers, 
 Came gladness to the earth and wandering bee, 
 Came balmy airs and dews and tender showers, 
 But my spring never came, for ne'er came he. 
 
 Borland Hall, p. 146. 
 
14 SONGS AND LYRICS. 
 
 GLENARADALE. 
 
 THERE is no fire of the crackling boughs 
 On the hearth of our fathers, 
 
 There is no lowing of brown-eyed cows 
 On the green meadows, 
 
 Nor do the maidens whisper vows 
 In the still gloaming, 
 Glenaradale. 
 
 There is no bleating of sheep on the hill 
 
 Where the mists linger, 
 There is no sound of the low hand-mill 
 
 Ground by the women, 
 And the smith's hammer is lying still, 
 
 By the brown anvil, 
 Glenaradale. 
 
 Ah ! we must leave thee, and go away 
 
 Far from Ben Luibh, 
 Far from the graves where we hoped to lay 
 
 Our bones with our fathers, 
 Far from the kirk where we used to pray 
 
 Lowly together, 
 
 Glenaradale. 
 
 We are not going for hunger of wealth, 
 
 For the gold and silver, 
 We are not going to seek for health 
 
 On the flat prairies, 
 Nor yet for the lack of fruitful tilth 
 
 On thy green pastures, 
 Glenaradale. 
 
GLENARADALE. 15 
 
 Content with the croft and the hill were we, 
 
 As all our fathers, 
 Content with the fish in the lake to be 
 
 Carefully netted, 
 And garments spun of the wool from thee, 
 
 O black-faced wether 
 Of Glenaradale. 
 
 No father here but would give a son 
 
 For the old country, 
 And his mother the sword would have girded on 
 
 To fight her battles ; 
 Many's the battle that has been won 
 
 By the brave tartans, 
 Glenaradale. 
 
 But the big-horned stag and his hinds, we know, 
 
 In the high corries, 
 And the salmon that swirls the pool below 
 
 Where the stream rushes, 
 Are more than the hearts of men, and so 
 We leave thy green valley, 
 Glenaradale. 
 
 Kildrostan, p. 153. 
 
 THE BROOK AND THE RIVER. 
 
 A STREAM from the heath-purpled mountain 
 
 Comes, with a gush, 
 From the star-moss round its fountain, 
 
 Breaking the hush 
 Of the silent, songless mountain. 
 
16 SONGS AND L YRICS. 
 
 Peewit-and-curlew -haunted, 
 
 Foaming, it flows 
 There where the wild deer undaunted 
 
 Bells, as it goes 
 Peewit-and-curlew-haunted. 
 
 It plays with the rowan and bracken, 
 
 And grey lichened stone, 
 But never its pace will it slacken, 
 
 Still hurrying on, 
 Though it plays with the rowan and bracken. 
 
 A river winds 'neath the shadows 
 
 Of pine-wood and oak, 
 And hums to the bee-humming meadows, 
 
 And the white flock 
 That bleats from the mists and the shadows. 
 
 Down to the still river hastens 
 
 The swift-flowing stream, 
 And aye as the distance it lessens 
 
 Its bright waters gleam, 
 And it leaps and sparkles and hastens, 
 
 Till in the calm-flowing river 
 
 Softly it sinks, 
 And hears not and heeds not for ever 
 
 What fern or tree thinks, 
 But only the low-whispering river. 
 
 O Love ! my river full-flowing, 
 
 Wait, wait for me ; 
 O Love ! my love, ever-growing, 
 
 Hastens to thee 
 For rest in thy river calm-flowing. 
 
 Rattan, p. 59. 
 
BUDDING. 17 
 
 BUDDING. 
 
 IT was the gloaming of the day, 
 
 And first pale glimmer of the moon, 
 The fishing-boats were in the bay, 
 And to and fro they seemed to sway, 
 Rhythmic, to a mystic tune, 
 In the pale glimmer of the moon. 
 
 We sat us on a thymy bank, 
 
 Where sea-pink and the wild-rose grew, 
 And blue campanulas were rank, 
 And wild geranium blossoms drank 
 Red sunsets that enriched their hue, 
 And pansies twinkled, gold and blue. 
 
 And fronting us the broad sea-sand 
 
 Spread, ribbed and freckled, to the spray, 
 Crisp-curving to the curving land, 
 And plashing on the pebbly strand ; 
 Beyond, the vague, vast waters lay 
 Lazily heaving in the bay. 
 
 Three children played along the beach 
 With laughter, as the small waves broke ; 
 
 I heard their laughter and their speech 
 
 Rippling along the sandy beach, 
 Though fear and trouble in me woke 
 Like the waves surging as they broke. 
 B 
 
1 8 SONGS AND LYRICS. 
 
 1 told my love, and for a space 
 She gazed out far away from me. 
 
 throbbing heart, how still the place ! 
 Was that a smile that lit her face? 
 
 Or but the moon drawn from the sea 
 To kiss the lips that can bless me? 
 
 1 told the love you knew before ; 
 You said, I did not need to tell, 
 
 And that you would not answer more, 
 
 For that I also knew before 
 The secret of your heart so well 
 It did not need that you should tell. 
 
 Hilda, p. 
 
 BURSTING. 
 
 O PATHWAY through the meadow green, 
 And thou, grey stile, beneath the thorn, 
 And murmurous river softly borne 
 
 In dimpling ripplets hardly seen, 
 
 Sweet path by happy footsteps worn, 
 If all our visions linger there, 
 The poet now shall find thine air, 
 
 More fancy-full than early morn. 
 
 We wandered in a dreamland fair, 
 Beside the huge, coiled willow trees, 
 Discoursing of a life to please 
 
 The Man who took our grief and care. ' 
 
BURSTING. 19 
 
 Not ours the dull, ignoble ease 
 
 Of cushioned seats, or routs and balls, 
 Brain-dulling dinners, civil calls, 
 
 And poor respectabilities; 
 
 Not ours to care for marble halls ; 
 A modest home, and frugal fare, 
 With love for cobwebbed wines and rare, 
 
 And peace for pictures on the walls 
 
 For more than these we would not care ; 
 
 But generous culture should be ours, 
 
 And pious use of all our powers, 
 And knowledge, as the primal pair 
 
 Knew all the beasts and birds and flowers ; 
 And with our best we'd serve the Best, 
 And in His goodness find our rest, 
 
 Untroubled through the years and hours. 
 
 Hilda, p. 91. 
 
 WORK AND SPIRIT. 
 
 Is it the work that makes life great and true? 
 
 Or the true soul that, working as it can, 
 Does faithfully the task it has to do, 
 
 And keepeth faith alike with God and man? 
 
 Ah ! well ; the work is something ; the same 
 
 gold 
 
 Or brass is fashioned now into a coin, 
 Now into fairest chalice that shall hold 
 To panting lips the sacramental wine : 
 
20 SOJVGS AND LYRICS, 
 
 Here the same marble forms a cattle-trough 
 For brutes by the wayside to quench their 
 thirst, 
 
 And there a god emerges from the rough 
 
 Unshapely block yet they were twins at first. 
 
 One pool of metal in the melting pot 
 A sordid, or a sacred thought inspires ; 
 
 And of twin marbles from the quarry brought 
 One serves the earth, one glows with altar-fires. 
 
 There's something in high purpose of the soul 
 To do the highest service to its kind ; 
 
 There's something in the art that can unroll 
 Secrets of beauty shaping in the mind. 
 
 Yet he who takes the lower room, and tries 
 To make his cattle-trough with honest heart, 
 
 And could not frame the god with gleaming 
 
 eyes, 
 As nobly plays the more ignoble part. 
 
 And maybe, as the higher light breaks in 
 And shows the meaner task he has to do, 
 
 He is the greater that he strives to win 
 Only the praise of being just and true. 
 
 For who can do no thing of sovran worth 
 
 Which men shall praise, a higher task may 
 find, 
 
 Plodding his dull round on the common earth, 
 But conquering envies rising in the mind. 
 
WORK AND SPIRIT, 21 
 
 And God works in the little as the great 
 A perfect work, and glorious over all 
 
 Or in the stars that choir with joy elate, 
 Or in the lichen spreading on the wall. 
 
 Raban, p. 21. 
 
 A WISH. 
 
 JUST a path that is sure, 
 
 Thorny or not, 
 
 And a heart honest and pure. 
 Keeping the path that is sure, 
 
 That be my lot : 
 Life is no merry-making, 
 Hark ! how the waves are breaking ! 
 
 Just plain duty to know, 
 
 Irksome or not, 
 And truer and better to grow 
 In doing the duty I know 
 
 That I have sought : 
 Life is no merry-making, 
 How the stiff pine trees are quaking ! 
 
 Just to keep battling on, 
 
 Weary or not, 
 Sure of the Right alone, 
 As I keep battling on, 
 
 For the true thought : 
 Life is no merry-making, 
 Ah ! how men's hearts are breaking ! 
 
 Raban, p. 52. 
 
22 SONGS AND LYX7CS. 
 
 SCATTERED. 
 
 SCATTERED to East and West and North, 
 Some with the faint heart, some the stout, 
 
 Each to the battle of life went forth, 
 And all alone we must fight it out. 
 
 We had been gathered from cot and grange, 
 From the moorland farm, and the terraced street. 
 
 Brought together by chances strange, 
 And knit together by friendship sweet. 
 
 Not in the sunshine, not in the rain, 
 Not in the night of the stars untold, 
 
 Shall we ever all meet again, 
 
 Or be as we were in the days of old. 
 
 But as ships cross, and more cheerily go 
 Having changed tidings upon the sea, 
 
 So I am richer by them, I know, 
 
 And they are not poorer, I trust, by me. 
 
 Raban, p. 49. 
 
 WAITING. 
 
 WEARILY drag the lagging hours 
 To him who, waiting to be hired, 
 Is by enforced idlesse tired 
 
 More than by strain of all his powers-: 
 Wearily, having in his heart 
 The hope to play a worthy part, 
 And scorning each ignoble art. 
 
WAITING. 23 
 
 Girt for the fight, he waits forlorn, 
 And O ! it irks him sore to rest, 
 And watch, too oft with mocking jest, 
 
 Things done that fill his soul with scorn, 
 As he with folded hands must sit, 
 While lesser men of scanty wit 
 Get all the work, and tangle it. 
 
 So life grows bitter; or perhaps 
 Hope flirts a moment in his face, 
 Then trips off to another place, 
 
 And pours its treasures in the laps 
 Of some dull souls whose easy feet 
 Will tread the old familiar beat 
 Contented getting much to eat. 
 
 And lo ! the work remains undone, 
 And work is what he hungers for, 
 But cannot find an open door, 
 
 And loiters idly in the sun, 
 
 Still waiting with his heart on fire, 
 And wasting with its great desire, 
 Waiting and finding none to hire. 
 
 Raban, p. 50. 
 
 HOPE. 
 
 A LITTLE Kirk, beneath a steep green hill, 
 
 With a grey spire that peeps o'er tall elm-trees, 
 In a still, pastoral land of brook and rill, 
 And broomy knoll, and sleepy, dripping mill, 
 Far from the stir of cities and of seas : 
 
24 SONGS AND LYRICS. 
 
 And near the Kirk, low nestling in the copse, 
 With honeysuckle clad, and roses red, 
 
 A little Manse, whose sweet-flowered garden 
 slopes 
 
 Down to the river where the river drops 
 With murmuring ripple o'er a pebbly bed. 
 
 How happily the days and years might flow 
 Among the silent shepherds brooding long, 
 In pious labour, studious to know, 
 And patient service, till their life should grow 
 From thoughtful silence into thoughtful song ; 
 
 To pass from house to house in visit free, 
 
 Welcome as sunshine at the smoking hearth, 
 To take the little children on the knee, 
 And bless them, as He did in Galilee, 
 
 Who came with blessing unto all the earth ; 
 
 To speak to them of Duty and of God, 
 
 And of the Love that clasped the bitter Cross, 
 And of the health and comfort of His rod, 
 And go before them on the way He trod, 
 Who found Life's glory and fulness in its loss ; 
 
 To share in all the joys and griefs they have, 
 To bless the bridal, not else thought com- 
 plete, 
 
 To stand beside the cradle and the grave, 
 And tell them how the meek and true and brave, 
 Turn graves to cradles where the sleep is sweet. 
 
HOPE. 25 
 
 O happy lot ! with one, to brighten life, 
 
 Smiling soft-eyed beside the evening fire, 
 Sharing the sorrow, sweetening all the strife, 
 And leaning on her lord, a loving wife, 
 And cherished by her lord with fond desire. 
 
 Dream of the golden gloaming of the day ! 
 
 Dream of the night beneath the folding star ! 
 Dream of the hungry heart that in me lay ! 
 Dream by the river rippling soft away 
 
 Into the tremulous moonshine which dreams 
 are. 
 
 Raba.n, p. 57. 
 
 MORALIZING. 
 
 ROSES fair on thorns do grow ; 
 And they tell me even so 
 Sorrows into virtues grow : 
 
 Heigh-ho ! 
 It was a stroke 
 Brought the stream from the flinty rock. 
 
 Frosty winter kills out weeds ; 
 
 And they tell me evil seeds 
 
 Die out in the heart that bleeds : 
 
 Heigh-ho ! 
 
 And some have faith 
 That dying is the death of Death. 
 
26 SO^VGS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Ah ! the loss may yet be gain, 
 Bitter bliss may spring from pain, 
 As the bird-songs after rain : 
 
 Heigh-ho ! 
 
 But nought shall be 
 Ever again the same to me. 
 
 Raban, p. 64. 
 
 ORWELL. 
 
 I STAND on the shore of the lake, 
 Where the small wave ripples and frets ; 
 
 O the land has its weeds, and the lake has its 
 
 reeds, 
 And the heart has its vain regrets. 
 
 Hark ! how the skylarks sing, 
 
 Far up about God's own feet, 
 And the click of the loom is in each little room, 
 
 Of the long, bare village street. 
 
 Yonder the old home stands, 
 
 With the little grey kirk behind ; 
 There are children at play on the sunny brae, 
 
 And their shouts come down the wind, 
 
 With the smell of the old sweet flowers 
 
 We planted there long ago ; 
 And the red-moss rose still buds and blows 
 
 By the door, where it used to grow. 
 
ORWELL. 27 
 
 All of it still unchanged, 
 
 Yet all so changed to me ; 
 For love then was sweet, and its bliss complete. 
 
 And there was no cloud to see. 
 
 But the light is quenched and gone 
 
 That brightened the place of yore. 
 And all the suns and the shining ones 
 
 Shall bring back that light nevermore. 
 
 Ah me ! for the shore and the lake 
 
 Where the small wave ripples and frets ! 
 
 The land has its weeds, and the lake has its 
 
 reeds, 
 And the heart has its vain regrets. 
 
 Heretic, p. 231. 
 
CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 THOROLD. 
 
 BY the door, 
 
 Where it was hid by honey-suckle sprays 
 And briar-rose that trailed around the porch, 
 There stood a youth, at early twilight, making 
 Impatient gestures, switching thistle-down 
 And nettle and dandelion, and whate'er 
 His hasty strokes might reach ; yet humorous 
 Rather than fretful, for the art was his 
 To break vexations with a ready jest, 
 As one that, on the stirrup duly rising, 
 Rides lightly through the world. A graceful 
 
 youth, 
 And tall, though slightly stooping, with features 
 
 high 
 
 And thin and colourless ; yet earnest life 
 Beamed full of hope and energy and help 
 From his great lustrous eyes, though now -and 
 
 then 
 
 They swam into a dreamy, far-off gaze, 
 As seeing the invisible. He was 
 
THOROLD. 29 
 
 A student who had travelled many a field 
 
 Of arduous learning, planted venturous 'foot 
 
 On giddy ledge of speculative thought, 
 
 And searched for truth o'er mountain, shore, and 
 
 sea, 
 
 In stone and flower, and every living thing 
 Where he might read the open secret of God 
 With his own eyes, and ponder out its meaning. 
 Intent he was to know, and knowing do 
 The work laid to his hand ; yet evermore, 
 As he toiled up the solemn stair with joy, 
 Caught by some outlook on a larger world, 
 He seemed to pause, and gaze, and dream a 
 
 dream. 
 
 These moods I noted when he was my pupil, 
 And some strange vocable from India, 
 Or fragment of the old Etrurian speech 
 Would suddenly arrest his eager quest, 
 And sunder us, like the ocean or the grave. 
 
 Trained for a priest, for that is still the pride 
 
 And high ambition of the Scottish mother, 
 
 There was a kind of priestly purity 
 
 In him, and a deep, undertone of awe 
 
 Ran through his gayest fancies, and his heart 
 
 Reached out its sympathies, and laid fast hold 
 
 On the outcast, the unlovely and alone 
 
 P the world. But being challenged at the door 
 
 Of God's high Temple to indue himself 
 
 With armour that he had not proved, to clothe 
 
 With articles of ready-made Belief 
 
 His Faith inquisitive, he rent the Creed 
 
 Trying to fit it on, and cast it from him ; 
 
30 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Then took it up again, and found it worn 
 With age, and riddled by the moth, and rotten. 
 Therefore he trod it under foot, and went 
 Awhile with only scant fig-leaves to clothe 
 His naked spirit, longing after God, 
 But more for knowledge panting than for faith. 
 The Priest was left behind ; the hope of Glory 
 Became pursuit of Fame ; and yet a light 
 From heaven kept hovering always over him, 
 Like twilight from a sun that had gone down. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 7. 
 
 LADY ANNE DEWHURST. 
 
 LADY Anne Dewhurst on a crimson couch 
 
 Lay, with a rug of sable o'er her knees, 
 
 In a bright boudoir in Belgravia ; 
 
 Most perfectly arrayed in shapely robe 
 
 Of sumptuous satin, lit up here and there 
 
 With scarlet touches, and with costly lace, 
 
 Nice-fingered maidens knotted in Brabant : 
 
 And all around her spread magnificence 
 
 Of bronzes, Sevres vases, marquetrie, 
 
 Rare buhl, and bric-a-brac of every kind 
 
 From Rome and Paris and the centuries 
 
 Of far-off beauty. All of goodly colour, 
 
 Or graceful form that could delight the eye, 
 
 In orderly disorder lay around, 
 
 And flowers with perfume scented the warm -air. 
 
 Stately and large and beautiful was she 
 Spite of her sixty summers, with an eye 
 
LADY ANNE DEWHURST. 31 
 
 Trained to soft languors, that could also flash, 
 
 Keen as a sword and sharp a black bright eye, 
 
 Deep sunk beneath an arch of jet. She had 
 
 A weary look, and yet the weariness 
 
 Seemed not so native as the worldliness 
 
 Which blended with it. Weary and worldly, she 
 
 Had quite resigned herself to misery 
 
 In this sad vale of tears, but fully meant 
 
 To nurse her sorrow in a sumptuous fashion, 
 
 And make it an expensive luxury ; 
 
 For nothing she 'esteemed that nothing cost. 
 
 Beside her, on a table round, inlaid 
 
 With precious stones by Roman art designed, 
 
 Lay phials, scents, a novel and a Bible, 
 
 A pill box, and a wine glass, and a book 
 
 On the Apocalypse ; for she was much 
 
 Addicted unto physic and religion, 
 
 And her physician had prescribed for her 
 
 Jellies and wines and cheerful Literature. 
 
 The book on the Apocalypse was writ 
 
 By her chosen pastor, and she took the novel 
 
 With the dry sherry, and the pills prescribed. 
 
 A gorgeous, pious, comfortable life 
 
 Of misery she lived ; and all the sins 
 
 Of all her house, and all the nation's sins, 
 
 And all shortcomings of the Church and State, 
 
 And all the sins of all the world beside, 
 
 Bore as her special cross, confessing them 
 
 Vicariously day by day, and then 
 
 She comforted her heart, which needed it, 
 
 With bric-a-brac and jelly and old wine. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 69. 
 
32 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 SQUIRE DEWHURST. 
 
 A GREY old man sat in that dim grey room, 
 Wrapt in a dressing-gown of soft grey stuff, 
 And puzzling o'er a paper wearily 
 Of circles, squares and pentagons, and lines 
 Of logarithms, he strove to disentangle. 
 He was a little, brisk, bald-headed man, 
 With fiery eyes, and forehead narrow and high 
 And far-retiring : one who could have led 
 A regiment to the belching cannon's mouth 
 If wisely ordered when ; or might have headed 
 The cheery hunt across the stubble field, 
 Taking the fences gallantly, nor turning 
 From the wide brook to seek the safer ford. 
 But being held in London half the year, 
 And with no taste for politics or fashion, 
 Or such religion as he came across, 
 He took to Science, made experiments, 
 Bought many nice and costly instruments, 
 Heard lectures, and believed he understood 
 Beetle-browed Science wrestling with the fact 
 To find its meaning clear ; but all in vain. 
 He thought he thought, and yet he did not think, 
 But only echoed still the common thought, 
 As might an empty room. The forehead high 
 And fiery eye had no reflection in them 
 To brood and hatch the secret of the world. 
 He could but skim and dip, like restless swallow 
 Fly-catching on the surface of all knowledge 
 Anthropologic and Botanical 
 And Chemical, and what was last set forth 
 
SQUIRE DEWHURST. 33 
 
 By charlatan to stun the vulgar sense. 
 But yet a strain of noble chivalry 
 Ran through his nature, and a faint crisp humour 
 Rippled his thought, and would have been a joy 
 Had life been kindlier ; but like forming dew 
 Seized in the night, and chilled into the spikes 
 And crystals of the hoar-frost, so the play 
 And mirth of genial nature had been changed 
 Into sharp prickles ; and his cheeriest smile 
 Verged on a sneer, and ran to mocking laughter. 
 Yet under all his pottering at Science, 
 And deeper than his feeble cynic sneer, 
 Lay a great love, to which he fondly clung, 
 For Rose, the stately daughter of his house. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 104. 
 
 DICK DALGLEISH. 
 
 JUST a mechanic with big, broad head, 
 
 Carpenter, maybe, or engineer, 
 Deft with a skilled hand at winning his bread, 
 
 Scornful of varnish and show and veneer ; 
 Rough-handed, plain-spoken, strong in his youth, 
 
 Loyal to all of his order and craft : 
 Loudly maintaining the fact and the truth, 
 
 At all pretences as loudly he laughed ; 
 Laughed at quill-drivers, and white-fingered dandies 
 
 Measuring ribbons with yard-stick and tape : 
 Laughed more at frowsy men doctoring brandies, 
 
 And calling their drugs the pure fruit of the 
 
 grape : 
 
 C 
 
34 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 He slept through the night, and he toiled all the 
 
 day, 
 And nothing he drunk but the brook by the way. 
 
 Out on a holiday, wholesomely dressed, 
 
 Clean-washed, clean-shirted, his wife by his side, 
 With a small baby she clasped to her breast, 
 
 And chirped to, and watched with a motherly 
 
 pride. 
 Proud of her baby, and proud of her Man, 
 
 All her young face was like sunshine to see ; 
 No sickly vapours had she, nor a wan 
 
 Fine-lady look, but was healthful as he. 
 How she looked up to him ! Who was so clever? 
 
 Who was so good as her Dick? It is true, 
 He was blunt-spoken, but then he would never 
 
 Harm a poor worm or a fly, if he knew ; 
 And he read everything science, and plays, 
 And poems, and all that the newspaper says. 
 
 Out on a holiday, sailing down 
 
 The broad clear river that bore away 
 Thronging crowds from the broiling town 
 
 To the birch-clad hill or the sandy bay ; 
 Shrewdly he glanced at either shore 
 
 Lined with the half-finished skeleton ships, 
 Spoke of their rigging abaft and afore, 
 
 And what they might do at their trial trips ; 
 Plainly knew all about this one's gearing, 
 
 The other one's engines, paddles, or screw, 
 And the new methods of working and steering, 
 
 What coal they needed, and what coal could do ; 
 And shrewdly projected a wonderful dream, 
 
 Into the future, of iron and steam. 
 
DICK DALGLEISH. 35 
 
 I scarce know why, but I rather took 
 
 To the manly bearing of him, and the fond 
 Young pride which his wife showed in every look 
 
 Than to all the rest, as their ways I conned : 
 They were mostly broad-cloth citizen folks, 
 
 Each with his newspaper where he read 
 The markets first, and the price of stocks, 
 
 And what at the bankrupt sittings was said : 
 They carried their business with them always, 
 
 While their wives were towny and overdressed, 
 Talked of their city life, and its small ways, 
 
 And dinners and weddings and fashion and taste. 
 So I took my seat, with a frank good-day, 
 By the big mechanic in homespun grey. 
 
 I was fain to speak of his craft and trade, 
 
 But he went rather at first for books : 
 Did I not think that Darwin made 
 
 A case for the worms as against the rooks ? 
 What had the birds done for earth like these 
 
 Dumb, silent ploughers who made the soil 
 For rooks to nestle on its high trees, 
 
 And man to live by his sweat and toil? 
 That was a man, sir, with hardly a rival 
 
 For his power to see, and his grasp of thought ; 
 And as for his doctrine of fit survival, 
 
 That's the new gospel this age has got ; 
 And we must be rid of the drones in the hive, 
 That the real workers may live and thrive. 
 
 They're nearly all drones now on board here 
 
 to-day ; 
 
 Our lads went off with an earlier boat ; 
 But wife, sir, and baby must have their own way, 
 
36 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 And she likes the gentle folks when she's afloat. 
 
 It is so, you know, Kate ; you're fain now to hear 
 
 The sweet-spoken damsels come praising your 
 
 child ; 
 And if we went down, you would rather appear 
 
 With respectable folk, pretty-mannered and mild, 
 Than stand at the judgment with Dick, Tom, and 
 
 Harry 
 Not more than half-sobered with gulps of the 
 
 sea 
 
 Oh, how can I say so when you chose to marry 
 Such a blunt working chap, such a rough tyke 
 
 as me? 
 
 That's true ; yet you cannot deny it was you 
 Brought me here with this soft-handed, soft-headed 
 crew. 
 
 Would you wish me, old girl, now, to be just like 
 
 these, 
 With broad cloth and white linen worn every 
 
 day, 
 And to saunter through 'Change for an hour at 
 
 my ease, 
 And call that my work, though it looks so like 
 
 play? 
 Their brow never sweats with the work they have 
 
 done, 
 
 Unless at some queer job that looks rather ill, 
 And then it is but for the risk that they run, 
 
 When they shuffle the cards for a trial of skill. 
 Now, I come home at evening, Kate, dirty and 
 
 weary, 
 
 But my conscience is clean, and my head too, 
 is clear ; 
 
DICK DA L GLEISH. 37 
 
 I don't sit and drink wine, and make the house 
 
 dreary, 
 
 As some of them do half the days of the year; 
 I take on no stains from my work or my play, 
 Which a pail of fresh water will not wash away. 
 
 They buy and they sell for the rise or fall, 
 
 When neither a rise nor a fall should be, 
 Filching a profit still, great or small, 
 
 For the doing of nothing that I can see. 
 There's a little chap sitting yonder look ! 
 
 He's bulling and bearing all the day long ; 
 And they're fain to glance at his jotting book, 
 
 For they say that his guesses are seldom 
 
 wrong ; 
 I call him the big flea blood-sucking commerce, 
 
 And these are the little fleas blood-sucking him ; 
 And they live upon us, all our winters and 
 summers 
 
 Swarms of them, sir in the handsomest trim, 
 They make their game and the stakes are laid, 
 And they rake in the gold which the workers 
 made. 
 
 Yet what have they done for the world by their 
 strokes 
 
 Of betting and hedging ? I want to know that. 
 And who is the happier hearing their jokes ? 
 
 And whose life is helped by the jobs they are at? 
 With their sharp arithmetic they fashion a blade 
 
 That cuts a big slice of our profit away ; 
 And yet they've done nothing for it except trade 
 
 On the folly of some, for which all have to pay ! 
 
38 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 I used to read Carlyle, and laughed at his "gig- 
 men," 
 And I still like the old fellow's rough tongue a 
 
 bit; 
 But he never yet said how the " clothes-men " 
 
 and " wig-men " 
 
 Must make way at last for the men who are fit. 
 That's Darwin's discovery ; and how can you doubt 
 These chaps, like the Dodo, are bound to die out ? 
 
 When you spoke to me first, you were wishing 
 
 to know 
 About us, the working men ; what our thoughts 
 
 are; 
 And whereto our strikes and our unions grow ; 
 
 And how near the end is, or, maybe, how far. 
 Ah, folks are grown curious about us, who once 
 Sniffed the grease of our moleskins, and hurried 
 
 them past. 
 
 You're not of that sort, I allow ; and perchance 
 We are crustier, now that our day's come at 
 
 last, 
 Than we should be. That comes of the way we've 
 
 been living ; 
 
 Men trample on man, and they make him a brute ; 
 Though of course we ought all to be taking and 
 
 giving, 
 And keep our good humour and manhood to 
 
 boot. 
 
 But those who have tasted of slight and neglect, 
 When folk grow too civil, are apt to suspec"t. 
 
 I don't say it's right. But at one time I made 
 What was plainly to me a new thing in our line ; 
 
DICK DALGLEISH. 39 
 
 A saving of labour to quicken the trade, 
 
 And bring in more wealth than the gold in a 
 
 mine. 
 Well, I spoke to the head of our firm ; but he 
 
 turned, 
 With a big oath, and bade ne go work at my 
 
 tools ; 
 He had heard such tales once till his fingers were 
 
 burned, 
 And he found that your workmen-inventors 
 
 were fools. 
 
 But afterwards, learning more truly about it, 
 Oh, he spoke me so bland, and would fain see 
 
 the thing ; 
 So I brought forth my model as proud, do not 
 
 doubt it, 
 
 As Kate of her baby there, and with a swing 
 Of the big hammer, I dashed it in bits, 
 Saying, What could come out of a working-man's 
 wits ? 
 
 I had toiled at it, sir, every night for a year, 
 
 So hopeful and happy in seeing my thought 
 Turned now into iron, and coming out clear, 
 
 At last, through a plain inspiration I got. 
 For why should not God inspire minds to invent 
 As well as to preach, and be praised for His 
 
 gift? 
 Sir, it came like a flash and a thrill that were 
 
 sent 
 
 In a moment of failure, when I was adrift ; 
 As "the still small voice," which the prophet 
 
 must hearken, 
 Because it was God's, so the thing came to me, 
 
40 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Like the gladness of light when that failure did 
 
 darken 
 
 Around me, and I was as broken as he : 
 And what is the joy of their gold and their gain, 
 To the gladness I had when I saw it all plain? 
 
 You think it was childish to waste the ripe fruit 
 Of my labour and thought. Not a whit ; it's 
 
 all here 
 
 As clear in my head as that day, and to boot 
 Some riper thought still that may some time 
 
 appear. 
 
 But I told you this only to show how, in vain, 
 Folk think all at once they can heal the huge 
 
 rent 
 
 In our social order where one's heart and brain 
 Find seldom the right place for which they were 
 
 meant. 
 
 But why don't I patent the thing I invented? 
 Oh, and rise in the world, as they say, and 
 
 grow rich, 
 And have a grand house finely papered and 
 
 painted, 
 
 And mount me a-horseback to land in a ditch, 
 And dress my good Kate in her sealskin and silk, 
 And quaff my champagne as it were bottled 
 milk? 
 
 Well, I once knew a man with a head-piece to 
 
 think, 
 And hands that could work out the thought of 
 
 his head 
 It is true that he had a bad weakness for drink, 
 
DICK DALGLEISH. 41 
 
 And would whimper about it, and wish he 
 
 were dead ; 
 
 But he took to that line, and had everything fine, 
 A house in a big square, with lamps at the 
 
 door, 
 And carriages, horses, and flunkies, and wine, 
 
 And heaven knows what that he had not before. 
 But the ladies were shy of his wife ; and the 
 
 flunkies 
 The lazy fat rogues, I'd have sweated them 
 
 well 
 At the back of his chair stood, and grinned there 
 
 like monkeys, 
 And down in the kitchen they laughed at his 
 
 bell; 
 
 And he had not a moment of comfort or peace, 
 Till a crash stript him bare as a sheep of its 
 fleece. 
 
 No, I'll not take that way, sir ; I don't care to 
 
 rise 
 
 Above my own class we are happier so. 
 The Son of the Carpenter now, He was wise 
 In the old town of Nazareth long, long ago. 
 We are not very pious, we workmen, I fear, 
 Don't go much to church, but we read about 
 
 Him ; 
 And the things that we read are not quite what 
 
 we hear 
 
 The minister blow off like froth from the brim 
 Of a pot of small beer. Nay, I don't blame the 
 
 preacher ; 
 
 It's just what we want that we find in our 
 books ; 
 
42 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 As the sun is a painter to some, and a bleacher 
 
 To others ; it is as the eye is that looks ; 
 You open the door to which you have the key, 
 And I find the message that God meant for me. 
 
 But the Carpenter, now, did not care to be great, 
 And to ape what the fine Lords of Herod 
 
 might do, 
 Nor yet be called Rabbi, and sit in the gate 
 
 As a Judge, or a Parliament man to the Jew. 
 The fox had his hole, and the bird of the air 
 Had its nest ; but He had not a roof o'er His 
 
 head, 
 
 And heeded not purple and sumptuous fare, 
 And borrowed a grave when He lay with the 
 
 dead. 
 
 And this is the gospel I read in the story 
 Though I don't say it mayn't have another to 
 
 you 
 
 The Lord did not seek His own honour and glory, 
 But stood by His craftsmen and fishers all 
 
 through. 
 
 He held to His class that their ills He might cure 
 And lift up the head of the needy and poor. 
 
 Well, that is our gospel too, that is our Ark, 
 Not to rise from our class, but to raise the 
 
 class higher, 
 
 Not to take to the nice ways of lawyer or clerk, 
 Not to turn from the hammer, the file, and the 
 
 fire ; 
 
 But to stand by our order, and stick to our tools, 
 And still win our bread by the sweat of our brow 
 
DICK DALGLEISH. 43 
 
 And to organise labour by Christian-like rules, 
 Not that some, but that all may be better than 
 
 now, 
 May have homes of more comfort, and lives with 
 
 more leisure 
 
 To read, and to think, and to well understand, 
 And to get, like us here now, some holiday 
 
 pleasure ; 
 
 For they do the work that enriches the land. 
 No ! I don't care to rise for myself, till I see 
 The rest get a chance, too, of rising with me. 
 
 You're a Christian, sir? So am I, in a way, 
 Though some of our fellows, and good fellows 
 
 too, 
 
 Have no other gospel or God, as they say, 
 Than Man, and what man's brain and fingers 
 
 may do. 
 
 I don't go with them, but I reckon my trade 
 May be my church too, if the right heart is 
 
 there, 
 A-healing the wounds which the selfish have 
 
 made, 
 And helping the helpless their burden to 
 
 bear, 
 He is parson and priest, though his apron be 
 
 leather, 
 And he tuck up his shirt sleeves to do his job 
 
 well, 
 Whose heart is most loving to sister and brother. 
 
 Most ready to go where the sorrowful dwell, 
 And to show to the erring the right way of 
 
 truth, 
 And bring them again to the faith of their youth. 
 
44 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Now, the faith of my youth was that Christ 
 
 would redeem 
 
 The life of the poor from its sorrow and sin, 
 Would wake up the world from its wealth-loving 
 
 dream 
 
 To seek the true riches of manhood within, 
 In wisdom and worth, and the peace which they 
 
 bring. 
 That's the word which I heard from my old 
 
 mother's lips ; 
 
 But now its another guess-song that they sing, 
 And the light of her heaven has all suffered 
 
 eclipse. 
 Oh, we boast that the poor man may rise in the 
 
 world, 
 And we point to his sons who are lords in the 
 
 state, 
 A-driving in carriages, scented and curled, 
 
 Or making their bow to the gold-stick-in-wait. 
 And where shall you find, now, a sight so grand, 
 Except in this truth-loving, Christ-serving land? 
 
 Well, well ! what rare tricks we do play, to be 
 
 sure, 
 With our conjuring cards, and our thimbles 
 
 and peas ! 
 
 To think that a God could come here, and endure 
 
 A cross to make lordlings and ladies like these, 
 
 And to leave all the rest of His brothers to 
 
 pine! 
 There's your thimble, and Christ in't ; but 
 
 presto ! begone ! 
 
 Lo ! the devil is there, where the glory divine 
 A short while ago sat in sorrow alone ! 
 
DICK DALGLEISH. 45 
 
 O blessed the poor if they only get money ; 
 And blessed the meek if they stand to their 
 
 rights ; 
 And all who are selfish shall have milk and 
 
 honey, 
 For they are the salt of the world and its 
 
 lights ! 
 
 Ay ! that's the new gospel, I call it, of Gold ; 
 But we working men will hold fast to the old. 
 
 Yes, I know we're divided, as other folk are, 
 And what is yet worse, we are cursed with that 
 
 drink ; 
 
 And many are selfish, and some of us mar 
 A good cause with bad ways, and some do not 
 
 think ; 
 And we've blundered, 'tis true, and been wrong 
 
 now and then, 
 And done what we should not as who has not 
 
 done ? t 
 
 But we'll learn by our failures ; we're only poor 
 
 men, 
 Kept like children till lately, now trying to 
 
 run; 
 And sometimes, of course, we get tript up and 
 
 tumble ; 
 But still on our clouds, lo ! the rainbow is 
 
 set, 
 And a light springeth up in the hearts of the 
 
 humble, 
 Will grow to more fulness, and gladden us 
 
 yet- 
 But there ! I've been preaching until I have got 
 A drop in my heart that is bitter and hot. 
 
46 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 That's the way with all preaching ; it don't make 
 
 one sweet. 
 Where's Kate and the baby? They'll put me 
 
 all right. 
 
 Oh, the ladies are praising its hands and its feet 
 And its mouth and its nose, and its precious 
 
 eyesight ! 
 Well, well ! do you see, sir, that narrow green 
 
 glen, 
 With the strip of dark alders that show where 
 
 the stream 
 Flows on in its loneliness far from men, 
 
 And ripples, and murmurs like one in a dream? 
 I speak like a fool, for of course you can't hear it, 
 
 Though I hear it singing away to itself, 
 Or sobbing at times like- a sore troubled spirit, 
 
 Or laughing perhaps as it slides down a shelf; 
 I was born there, sir ; and we're going to try 
 A week with old mother Kate and baby and I. 
 
 North Country Folk, p. 53. 
 
 I 
 
 AMORY HILL. 
 
 DOES any one know about Amory Hill ? 
 What an unrestful mind she had, 
 Questioning everything, good and bad, 
 
 Subtle in thought, and firm of will ! 
 Beautiful, too, in her way : but what 
 Ever could come of a girl like that? 
 
AMORY HILL. 47 
 
 Oh, you remember the large grey eyes ; 
 
 What a keen look in them did lie, 
 
 Fain to be told the reason why 
 We ever held anything true or wise ! 
 
 And say what you might, she would still find out, 
 
 Somehow or other, a ground for doubt. 
 
 Under the Word she must see the Thing, 
 Never content with the neatest phrase ; 
 The coin might be of the ancient days, 
 
 But still she must try if it truly ring, 
 And bite it too with her dainty teeth, 
 For it might look well, and be false beneath. 
 
 No matter how old a lie might be, 
 Age, she said, could not make it true ; 
 No matter though truth be fresh and new, 
 
 It was the pleasanter sight to see, 
 Like a fresh star your eyes behold, 
 Where never a star had been seen of old. 
 
 Liked ! how could she be liked, a girl 
 Who'd squat her down in a quiet nook, 
 Out of the way, with a folio book, 
 
 With all the rest of us there in a whirl 
 Of work or talk ? And she did not heed, 
 If only we left her at peace to read. 
 
 Of course, her doubts and her questions tried 
 Every one's patience, more or less, 
 And the older folk, when they felt the stress, 
 
 Were fain their ignorance to hide, 
 
 And sent her off, with a sharp rebuke, 
 Back again to her folio book. 
 
48 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Somehow she never took it ill, 
 Whatsoever you chanced to say ; 
 But not in the least did it change her way ; 
 
 She soon had another question still : 
 Never the same one twice, for now 
 She would puzzle it out by herself somehow. 
 
 What could come of a girl like that, 
 Who would not walk on the common road, 
 Who fretted at bearing the common load, 
 
 And did not know what she would be at, 
 And was not sure of the common creed, 
 And gave not her dress a moment's heed? 
 
 Oh, Amory Hill ! Amory Hill ! 
 And yet how good she was and nice, 
 Scorning a meanness, and hating a vice, 
 
 With a brave true heart and a patient will, 
 Loving the truth, and not afraid ! 
 What has come of the grey-eyed maid ? 
 
 AMORY HILL. 
 II. 
 
 I THOUGHT you had heard of Amory Hill 
 It made at the time a mighty stir, 
 But nobody now-a-days thinks of her. 
 
 We wonder at nothing, good or ill, 
 After two or three days are past 
 That is enough for a comet to last 
 
AMORY HILL. 49 
 
 Amory grew, as you might expect, 
 
 From a doubting, questioning, restless elf 
 To a woman who brooded by herself 
 
 About the Church, and the Lord's Elect, 
 About the fate of the quick and dead, 
 Doubting the more, the more she read. 
 
 At a Revival some one got 
 
 A hold of her for a little while ; 
 
 And she sang their hymns with an angel's smile, 
 And tried to live on their shallow thought ; 
 
 But back the questions came, and then 
 
 Oh, she was deep in her doubts again. 
 
 She writ a book that I tried to read, 
 But could not tell what it was about 
 Just like thoughts that she had thrown out 
 
 Into the darkness of thought and deed, 
 And heard them in the silence roll 
 Back again on her yearning soul. 
 
 Poor girl ! she wandered, here and there, 
 From pastures green where the grace was rife, 
 Seeking the Way and the Truth and the Life, 
 
 And finding but shadows and dim despair, 
 Till she came to the perilous brink of Faith, 
 Beyond which lieth the realm of death. 
 
 Star after star had all gone out, 
 Darkest night was on all her sky ; 
 And moaning as one who is ready to die, 
 
 Ah, me ! she said, Must I live without 
 God and his Christ and the hope divine, 
 That erewhile gladdened this life of mine ? 
 D 
 
50 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Then one laid hold of her, drew her back 
 From the dismal gloom of that deadly brink, 
 Told her that now she must cease to think, 
 
 And then no wisdom her soul should lack ; 
 If to the Church she would only bow, 
 It would do all of her thinking now. 
 
 Bland his speech was, and mild his look; 
 Was he an angel come from heaven 
 To save the soul that was tempest-driven 
 
 There where in terror and pain it shook? 
 And what had all of her thinking brought, 
 Except despair of all certain thought? 
 
 So straightway into his arms she fell, 
 Cast away Reason, and swallowed the Creeds, 
 Mumbled her Aves, and counted her beads, 
 
 And said it was good in peace to dwell 
 
 With Nuns who had not a thought in their 
 
 head 
 But is it the peace of the living or dead? 
 
 She does much good to the sick and poor, 
 Going about in that quaint odd dress 
 With the little book which her ringers press : 
 
 But then she did quite as much good before, 
 For Amory Hill was always sweet, 
 And came like a sunbeam along the street. 
 
AMORY HILL. 51 
 
 AMORY HILL, 
 ill. 
 
 WHO would know me for Amory Hill, 
 Once the plague and the tease of School, 
 Querying lesson, and breaking rule ? 
 
 And yet I fear I am Amory still, 
 Under the white cap and the hood 
 Of the patient merciful Sisterhood. 
 
 I've tried, till I think there is no use trying 
 To be anything other than I was made ; 
 I've sought the light, and I've sought the shade, 
 
 I've crushed my thought, when it rose defying, 
 I've nursed submission, and fondled pain, 
 Yet ever the thoughts come back again. 
 
 Weary, I'm weary ; what shall I do ? 
 
 Oh, will that chatter of theirs not cease ? 
 
 Here I had hoped to have quiet peace^ 
 In the daily round of duties true, 
 
 And the tranquil hymn, and the whispered 
 prayer, \ 
 
 Freed from the burden of trouble and care. 
 
 Once I wrestled, in earnest thought, 
 With weighty problems of truth and faith, 
 With the high issues of life and death, 
 
 And what we should not do, what we ought : 
 But here our wrestle is not to think 
 Can it be more sinful to see than wink? 
 
52 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Does God, indeed, mean that we should not bear 
 The burden of thought? or fashion a life 
 Of peace, instead of the noble strife 
 
 Inspiring ever the soul to dare, 
 And make fresh conquests, if it may, 
 On the realm of darkness, day by day? 
 
 Oh ! but this is rebellion, this is sin : 
 So they tell me, and I have tried 
 To crush it out, and have done, beside, 
 
 Many a penance for letting it in. 
 But is it sinful ? and can it be right 
 To close the shutters, when God is Light ? 
 
 This is the hour when they sit and talk, 
 Oh, such nothings ! and not without 
 Touches of malice too, all about 
 
 What they saw in the daily walk 
 
 To visit the sick and the poor, when they 
 Looked on the world and its wicked way. 
 
 But why is the world more wicked than they : 
 They were silly girls ere they took the vow, 
 And they're just as silly sisters now. 
 
 Ribbons and gawds may be put away, 
 And love and marriage be counted shame, 
 Yet heart and mind may be still the same. 
 
 How should they differ from what they were? 
 Hear ! how they chatter as school girls do, 
 And gossip about the folk they knew, 
 
 And who was married, and who was there : 
 I blame them not, if they did not blame 
 The world as wicked for doing the same. 
 
AMORY HILL. 53 
 
 Are all the people who try to do good 
 As little-minded as those I've known ? 
 Ere I came here, how I used to groan 
 
 At Dorcas meetings in angry mood ! 
 
 And the District Visitors need, I'm sure, 
 Quite as much visiting as the poor. 
 
 Oh, how I shrank from the vulgar talk, 
 
 The fuss, and the hard mechanical way 
 
 Of saving so many souls a day 
 By dropping tracts in a morning walk ! 
 
 Not so, I said, would the work be done 
 
 Here by the consecrated Nun. 
 
 But here or there, it is all the same, 
 The talk alike, and the fuss and fret, 
 And the vulgar methods of clearing debt, 
 
 And the mechanical ways and lame 
 For doing of spiritual work, without 
 
 The faintest thought what you are about. 
 
 And then this drilling of hands and lips ! 
 So many hours of work a day, 
 So many hours to praise and pray, 
 
 All of our time cut into snips, 
 
 And just as you get your mind in swing, 
 There goes the bell with its ting, ting, ting ! 
 
 Was I mistaken in coming here? 
 
 Was it a hasty step I made ? 
 
 I am still free to go back, 'tis said ; 
 And I was not meant for a Nun, I fear. 
 
 But they are all pleased with their happy lot, 
 
 And what would they think if they knew my 
 thought ? 
 
54 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 It's nonsense what people were wont to say 
 About the misery vows may bring, 
 About the hearts that are suffering, 
 
 And the glad bright youth as it wastes away : 
 There is nothing to waste, for they have no mind 
 Nor heart nor passion of any kind. 
 
 And yet I feel that I am not free. 
 
 Oh, the subtle threads that are wound 
 
 About us here till our souls are bound, 
 And there's nothing for it but just to be 
 
 As silly as all the rest, and make 
 
 A merit of it for Jesus' sake. 
 
 I gave up my former life in dread 
 
 Of the rush of thoughts into my soul, 
 
 Terrible as the waves that roll 
 Over the weary swimmer's head ; 
 
 But now if I leave this, it will be 
 
 In scorn of its dull vacuity. 
 
 Ay, if I leave it ! but dare I go ? 
 
 Do I not know what would be said? 
 
 Better it were to be lying dead 
 Than pine away with a poison slow 
 
 Of lies that would tingle in every vein, 
 
 And break the heart with a nameless pain .' 
 
 Ah ! rebel nature could not endure 
 The vacant mind and the weary day, 
 The effort to keep all thought away, 
 
 But for the work 'mong the sick and poor : 
 It is among them that I find my good, 
 If they would not pain me by gratitude. 
 
 North Country Folk, p. 198. 
 
MISS BELLA JAPP. 55 
 
 MISS BELLA JAPP. 
 
 TO HER YOUNG MINISTER. 
 
 SPEAK out, speak out ! 
 We are all hungering, sir, for truthful words 
 
 Of faith or doubt ; 
 And we are weary of all mocking-birds 
 
 Who would be dumb 
 If they might eat their meat, and do no more ; 
 
 And only come, 
 
 And sing again what we have heard before, 
 And grind again the same tune at the door 
 
 To get their crumb. 
 
 Oh yes, yes, yes ! 
 We have much talk, we have abundant speech 
 
 In Rhetoric dress 
 Thin thready talk that has no truth to teach ; 
 
 Poor echoes sent 
 From rock-like brains that barren are of thought : 
 
 No nutriment 
 
 On which a soul may live is to be got 
 From echoes which are shadows, and give not 
 
 The least content. 
 
 Just speak out that 
 Which God gives you to live on day by day ; 
 
 And say not what 
 The people round about would have you say 
 
 Oh I could preach, 
 
56 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 If they would let me, if I had a sphere ! 
 
 If you would reach 
 
 The heart of others, listen first and hear 
 What your own heart is saying, and speak it clear 
 
 To all and each. 
 
 Take not your words 
 From pulpit, platform, or from parliament ; 
 
 Just take the Lord's 
 The words which from His lips to you are sent, 
 
 Which few desire, 
 But all believe whether they will or no : 
 
 And for no hire 
 
 Proclaim them from the housetops where you go, 
 And cry aloud because they burn and glow 
 
 In you like fire ! 
 
 What ! man, you talk 
 Of living by the gospel you proclaim ! 
 
 Well, if you walk 
 So as to glorify the Lord's great name, 
 
 You shall have meat 
 Enough the meat He gave to His own Son, 
 
 And that was sweet. 
 
 " Not muzzle the ox !" what harm that text has done, 
 Just making lazy " nowt " of many a one 
 
 For meat to eat ! 
 
 I've gone to Kirk 
 Sixty years now since first with Jenny, nurse-; 
 
 And what a work 
 I've heard them make about the Fall' and Curse, 
 
 Imputed sin, 
 
J//SS BELLA JAPP. 57 
 
 Imputed right, imputed everything, 
 
 Meanwhile within, 
 
 The Devil who had us in his grips would sing, 
 " Impute away ! that's just the way to bring 
 
 My bairns in." 
 
 Now don't you spin 
 Notions and crotchet-things like that about 
 
 Imputed sin, 
 When sin's a fact whereof there is no doubt ; 
 
 As you can see 
 Flaunting at every corner its disgrace 
 
 Or misery, 
 
 And in the " Publics " running a hot race, 
 Ay ! and at Kirk too smirking in the face 
 
 O' the Pharisee. 
 
 Then speak out, man ; 
 Out with it plain, the Devil is in the town, 
 
 And what we can, 
 That, with God's help, we must, to put him down : 
 
 Oh, fools may scoff, 
 But he laughs last who truth has on his side : 
 
 Hell's not far off 
 
 Where dead folk are ; it's at your very side, 
 And souls drop in as balls are made to slide, 
 
 I' th' holes at golf. 
 
 There are the holes, 
 And here's the Devil's game, and well he plays ; 
 
 For thoughtless souls 
 Come dropping in, with some bit pleasant phrase, 
 
 Each hour o' the day. 
 
58 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 An easy job he's had this many a year, 
 
 For it's poor play 
 
 We've had against him ; God's been ill served here, 
 And it's been like to drive me mad to hear 
 
 Their feckless way. 
 
 But you have come 
 Fresh and hot-hearted, as I hear, from College, 
 
 Freighted like some 
 Others, no doubt, with tons of useless knowledge. 
 
 But O my man, 
 It's not your metaphysics that we need, 
 
 Watery and wan ; 
 
 Just take the Book, and with your own eyes read, 
 And drop the spectacles of an old-world creed 
 
 About "The Plan." 
 
 And preach right out 
 And pray ; I do not mean to stamp the floor, 
 
 And sweat and shout ; 
 God is not deaf that you should need to roar : 
 
 But take our sin 
 Right by the throat, and call it by its name, 
 
 Nor mind the din 
 
 The Devil will raise because ye spoil his game, 
 Or Pharisee because he's put to shame, 
 
 Turned outside in. 
 
 Pick ye no words 
 To tickle itching ears with rhetoric ; 
 
 They have the birds 
 To sing to them if that is what they seek : 
 
 Its dainty phrase 
 
MISS BELLA JAPP. 59 
 
 And mincing speech have been our very death 
 
 These many days, 
 
 As in the Kirk we sought not truth and faith, 
 But tricks of art to hear with bated breath, 
 
 Like fine stage plays. 
 
 Be strong and true ; 
 Hold up our sins that we may see them bare, 
 
 And hold up too 
 The Cross both to believe it, and to share 
 
 Its pain and loss, 
 Should sorrow fill our cup unto the brim ; 
 
 For on the Cross 
 
 We see the glory as the eye grows dim, 
 Only we're fain to hand it on to Him, 
 
 Who clasped it close. 
 
 Believing much 
 The Cross, that it is all our help and hope, 
 
 We will not touch 
 It with our finger, fain to let it drop ; 
 
 And therewith cease 
 The grace and bliss and riches that it brings, 
 
 And all increase ; 
 
 Meanwhile we sing about the angels' wings, 
 And soothe the sickly conscience as it stings, 
 
 And call this Peace. 
 
 North Country Folk, p. 210. 
 
6o CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 THE BISHOP. 
 
 GOD made him beautiful, to be 
 Drawn to all beauty tenderly, 
 And conscious of all beauty, whether 
 In things of earth or heaven or neither ; 
 So to rude men he seemed 
 Often as one that dreamed. 
 
 But true it was that, in his soul, 
 The needle pointed to the pole, 
 Yet trembled as it pointed, still 
 Conscious alike of good and ill ; 
 
 In his infirmity 
 
 Looking, O Lord, to thee. 
 
 Beautiful spirit ! fallen, alas, 
 On times when little beauty was ; 
 Still seeking peace amid the strife, 
 Still working, weary of thy life, 
 Toiling in holy love, 
 Panting for heaven above : 
 
 I mark thee, in an evil day, 
 Alone upon a lonely way ; 
 More sad-companionless thy fate, 
 Thy heart more truly desolate, 
 
 Than even the misty glen 
 
 Of persecuted men. 
 
 For none so lone on earth as he 
 Whose way of thought is high and free, 
 
THE BISHOP. 6 1 
 
 Beyond the mist, beyond the cloud, 
 Beyond the clamour of the crowd, 
 Moving, where Jesus trod, 
 In the lone walk with God. 
 
 The Bishop's Walk, p. 16. 
 
 CONTRASTS. 
 
 TWAIN are they, sundered each from each, 
 
 Though oft together they are brought ; 
 Discoursing in a common speech, 
 
 Yet having scarce a common thought ; 
 The same sun wanned them all their days, 
 
 They breathe one air of life serene ; 
 Yet, moving on their several ways, 
 
 They walk with a whole world between. 
 
 I think they never meet without 
 
 Some sharp encounter of their wits ; 
 And neither hints a faith or doubt, 
 
 The other does not take to bits ; 
 For what the one regards with awe, 
 
 The other holds a creed outworn ; 
 And what this boasts as perfect law, 
 
 That turns to laughter with his scorn. 
 
 No envious grudge is in their hearts, 
 Detracting from the honour due 
 
 To nobler worth, or greater parts, 
 Or larger grasp, or clearer view : 
 
62 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Simply there is a gulf between 
 
 Their ways of life, and modes of thought, 
 And nothing is by either seen 
 
 But as the other likes it not 
 
 With vision keen and thought complete 
 
 Cool-headed Warham holds his way, 
 And all that lies about his feet 
 
 He makes it his, and clear as day ; 
 All common things of natural birth 
 
 He sets forth in a novel sense ; 
 But never leaves the common earth 
 
 To seek the dim Omnipotence. 
 
 He gathers knowledge hour by hour, 
 
 Forgetting nought that once he knew, 
 And handling it with conscious power 
 
 As matter certified and true ; 
 And all he knows gives added might 
 
 That still with harder thought combines ; 
 We wonder at the shining light, 
 
 He wonders less the more it shines ! 
 
 He has slight pity for our pain, 
 
 For weakness, he has none at all ! 
 He is not proud, he is not vain ; 
 
 He is not either great or small ; 
 But he is strong and hard and clear 
 
 As is a frosty winter day, 
 And never sheds an idle tear, 
 
 Nor flings an idle word away. 
 
CONTRASTS. 63 
 
 He cannot breathe but in the breath 
 
 Of certainty and knowledge clear ; 
 And where we have to walk by Faith 
 
 He will not go, or will not fear 
 To search into the mysteries, 
 
 And bid the haunting shadows go ; 
 And yet, with all he knows and sees, 
 
 True wisdom somehow does not grow. 
 
 But Cromer is of finer make, 
 
 And doth with subtler thoughts commune 
 Thoughts singing oft in dim daybreak, 
 
 And silent oft in blaze of noon ; 
 He sees the process Warham saw, 
 
 But to the Power he is not blind, 
 Beholds the working of the Law, 
 
 And bows to that which lies behind. 
 
 Seeking what knife can ne'er dissect, 
 
 Nor flame-wrapt blowpipe can set free, 
 Nor chemic test can e'er detect, 
 
 But only kindred mind can see, 
 He finds in everything a light 
 
 Which, shunning finest power of sense, 
 Does more to make a man of might 
 
 Than knowledge of the Why or Whence. 
 
 And much he knows, and much he thinks, 
 But he is more than all he knows ; 
 
 For still aspiring, still he drinks 
 Fresh inspiration as he goes, 
 
64 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 More careful that the man should gro\v 
 Than that the mind should understand : 
 
 He loves all creatures here below, 
 And touches all with tender hand. 
 
 He pities all the pained and weak, 
 
 And feels for their unhappy fate ; 
 Simple and true and brave and meek, 
 
 He does not know that he is great ; 
 He looks to heaven with wondering gaze, 
 
 And earth with awe by him is trod ; 
 We marvel at the words he says, 
 
 He, at the silences of God. 
 
 Thus on their several ways they go, 
 
 And neither other comprehends, 
 Yet it was God that made them so, 
 
 And they do serve His several ends ; 
 That seeks for light to walk in it, 
 
 And this for God to live in Him ; 
 One questions with a searching wit, 
 
 The other trusts where all is dim. 
 
 Why quarrel with their several parts, 
 
 Where each is good if one is best? 
 And who shall say that this departs, 
 
 Restful, unto Eternal rest, 
 While he who loves the light goes down 
 
 Into the darkness of the night ? 
 Life grows unto its perfect crown, 
 
 And light unto a larger light. 
 
 Hilda, p. 20. 
 
A SCHOOL-MISTRESS. 65 
 
 A SCHOOL-MISTRESS. 
 
 OLD Prinkle I took for a prude, 
 
 With her hands in her black thread-mits, 
 Chap- fingered, and painfully good, 
 
 Yet half-scared out of her wits ; 
 And at first I could not make out 
 What troubled a soul so devout. 
 
 'Twas not the mere burden of care 
 For a score of commonplace girls, 
 
 Whose manners and dresses and hair, 
 Their finger-nails, teeth, and their curls, 
 
 With their morals and dinners and laughter, 
 
 'Twas her calling in life to look after. 
 
 But parents and guardians then wanted, 
 For girls at a " Finishing School," 
 
 The old wine of Faith well decanted 
 Into flasks which must also be full 
 
 Of the world, and of woman's ambition 
 
 To better her single condition. 
 
 So she had to be worldly-wise, 
 And train us for " marrying well " ; 
 
 And she had to put on a disguise, 
 
 And warn us of Death, too, and Hell ; 
 
 For the earthly young soul must be given 
 
 At least a top-dressing of Heaven. 
 E 
 
66 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Twas against the grain, I admit, 
 
 For she'd fain have been honest and true 
 
 She had neither much culture nor wit, 
 She was simply a woman that knew 
 
 About womanly ways and things, 
 
 Such as colours and dresses and rings. 
 
 A good soul, kindly and just, 
 
 But timid, and living in ways 
 She would never have chosen, but must, 
 
 If she meant to live out all her days 
 In the highly respectable station 
 Of finishing sound education. 
 
 Not a person to train the young mind, 
 For she was not at all intellectual, 
 
 And oft her religion would find 
 All its efforts were quite ineffectual 
 
 To fix her stray thoughts on devotion, 
 
 Or show the least touch of emotion. 
 
 Thus, when sermon was over at noon 
 On Sunday, she'd question us on it ; 
 
 But her speech would wander off soon 
 To a ribbon, a gown, or a bonnet 
 
 Or anything pretty or new 
 
 She had seen in the minister's pew. 
 
 She used to bubble and bell 
 About lady-like manners and ways 
 
 In soft purling accents that well 
 Suggested her own brighter days ; 
 
 Then sighed and looked timid about, 
 
 As if sure that she should be found out. 
 
A SCHOOL-MISTRESS. 67 
 
 And the terror that haunted her so 
 Was fear of the Governess, Lane, 
 
 Who was dismal and dreary as snow 
 When it thaws in a drizzle of rain, 
 
 And sharp-eyed, and wanted the school, 
 
 And held our dear Prinkle a fool. 
 
 Lane had laws for all that we did, 
 And for every hour of the day ; 
 
 This and that we were strictly forbid, 
 So and so we were always to say ; 
 
 And we lived, like nuns in their cells, 
 
 'Mid an hourly ringing of bells. 
 
 We never did any great wrong, 
 
 Such as schoolboys would do on a hint ; 
 And therefore she had to be strong 
 
 On the tithing of anise and mint ; 
 And taught us to wet our hard pillows 
 At the lightest of light peccadilloes. 
 
 O the old-maiden morals we had, 
 So scrupulous, prim, and demure '. 
 
 What the decalogue never forbade 
 Our consciences could not endure : 
 
 But life was so low-pitched and sad, 
 
 It was quite a relief to be bad. 
 
 Then, the wearisome lessons ! the proper, 
 Dull prose that we read every day, 
 
 Which felt as if boiled in a copper 
 To take all the flavour away ! 
 
 The colourless paragraphs writ 
 
 Without reason or fancy or wit ! 
 
68 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Yet the poems were worse ; they were so 
 
 Lack-a-daisical pretty-sublime, 
 Spurting upward in little jets d'eau 
 
 To fall with a musical chime ; 
 And we mouthed the sweet verses, Good heavens ! 
 How we mouthed, all at sixes and sevens ! 
 
 Then the darning and hemming and stitching, 
 
 The broidery and the brocade, 
 The Berlin-wool figures bewitching, 
 
 And the wonderful trees that we made, 
 Like green triangles in bloom 
 Stuck hard on the stick of a broom ! 
 
 And the scales that we practised for hours, 
 Till we hated the sight of the keys ! 
 
 And the evenings when, ranged out like flowers, 
 We had our aesthetical teas, 
 
 With music, charades, and advices, 
 
 While the parents had sherry and ices ! 
 
 French was taught by a starved refugee 
 Who had hurled at all tyrants defiance ; 
 
 And a student, who stormed like the sea, 
 Administered globules of science 
 
 Well wrapt up in texts to make sure 
 
 That the bane should have always its cure. 
 
 And thus we were "finished" at last 
 
 On principles strictly religious, 
 Made ready " to come out " and cast 
 
 Our lines in the ocean prodigious ; 
 And begin the true business of life, 
 To find some one in want of a wife. 
 
A SCHOOL-MISTRESS. 69 
 
 I do not blame Prinkle the least 
 She did what they asked her to do ; 
 
 They did not wish knowledge increased 
 Of the wise and the right and the true ; 
 
 But they would have a gloss of devotion 
 
 On girls who had not a notion, 
 
 Except just to marry and dress, 
 
 And to see to their cooks and their dinners, 
 And live on in soft idleness, 
 
 And on Sunday to call themselves sinners, 
 And be mothers, ere long, of more fools 
 To be sent to more " Finishing schools." 
 
 Hilda, p. 128. 
 
 WINNIE. 
 
 SURELY Winnie is changed ; we ne'er had been 
 
 friends together, 
 Had she always been ready to sting like a wasp 
 
 in October weather. 
 I think there is hardly a name she has not some 
 
 story about 
 
 Of all that we knew long ago a story suggest- 
 ing a doubt. 
 Each face that I used to remember as beaming 
 
 with kindly light, 
 Is smirched with something or other, and no one 
 
 escapes her spite, 
 Sneering with scornful laughter, turn wherever 
 
 she may, 
 
70 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 All the glory is dimmed of all that come in her 
 
 way; 
 She creeps on the noblest natures stealthily as 
 
 a cat, 
 Now with a bite of venom, and now with a 
 
 wanton pat, 
 Leaving them not till crushed. And one thing I 
 
 cannot abide, 
 The way that she natters my husband even when 
 
 I am beside, 
 Now flopping down on her knees, and staring up 
 
 in his face, 
 Clasping her hands, and feigning an ecstasy quite 
 
 out of place ; 
 Pumping up tears at his pathos, or sighing with 
 
 heaving breast, 
 Or giggling and clapping her hands when his 
 
 humour is wickedest. 
 He is weak enough to believe her, which makes 
 
 me colder in praise, 
 And I care for poetry less than I ever did all my 
 
 days. 
 She natters him daily with words that are silky 
 
 and soft and sleek, 
 And no true wife can be pleased when seeing her 
 
 husband weak. 
 
 Tis growing quite dreadful to hear her now and 
 
 then, when she speaks 
 Jauntily of a Faith that needs no God, nor 
 
 seeks 
 To trace His work on the earth, or follow His 
 
 way on high, 
 
WINNIE. 71 
 
 Noting his glorious footprints clear in the starry 
 
 sky ; 
 
 For Nature has in herself the reason for all that is, 
 And God is an unscientific, needless hypothesis, 
 Like witches, ghosts, and miracles dreams of the 
 
 slumbrous night 
 Which the great dawn of reason has driven away 
 
 with its light ! 
 
 Thereto my husband made answer and O I was 
 
 proud and glad ; 
 " Look you, Miss Winnie," he said, " it's your 
 
 method of science that's bad ; 
 Good for its own end, of course ; but here it is 
 
 clearly at fault ; 
 God is not found by the tests that detect you an 
 
 acid or salt. 
 While you search only for secrets that process of 
 
 science sets free, 
 Nothing you'll find in the world, but matter to 
 
 handle or see. 
 Here is a book I am reading now ; what can your 
 
 method find there? 
 Boil it, or burn it, dissect it, let microscope scan 
 
 it with care ; 
 What does it show you but paper and ink and 
 
 leather and thread, 
 All made of chemical simples that, no doubt, you 
 
 have in your head? 
 But where is the thought, which is all the end 
 
 and use of the book, 
 And which flows on through its pages clear to 
 
 my mind as a brook 
 
72 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Rippling and singing sweet music to him that 
 
 hath ears to hear? 
 Have you an acid will test it? a glass that will 
 
 make it all clear? 
 Or scalpel to cut it ? And yet paper and leather 
 
 and ink 
 All are but trash, if I find not the thought which 
 
 the writer can think. 
 What, now, if Spirit and God are the thought 
 
 which is written out plain 
 On the great page of the world, and your method 
 
 of seeking is vain ? " 
 
 Hilda, p. 112. 
 
 MISS PENELOPE LEITH. 
 
 LAST heiress she of many a rood, 
 
 Where Ugie winds through Buchan braes- 
 A treeless land, where beeves are good, 
 
 And men have quaint old-fashioned ways, 
 And every burn has ballad-lore, 
 
 And every hamlet has its song, 
 And on its surf-beat rocky shore 
 
 The eerie legend lingers long. 
 Old customs live there, unaware 
 
 That they are garments cast away, 
 And what of light is shining there 
 
 Is lingering light of yesterday. 
 
 Never to her the new day came, 
 Or if it came she would not see ; 
 
 This world of change was still the same 
 To our old-world Penelope : 
 
MISS PENELOPE LEITH. 73 
 
 New fashions rose, old fashions went, 
 
 But still she wore the same brocade, 
 With lace of Valenciennes or Ghent 
 
 More dainty by her darning made, 
 A little patch upon her face, 
 
 A tinge of colour on her cheek, 
 A frost of powder, just to grace 
 
 The locks that time began to streak. 
 
 A stately lady ; to the poor 
 
 Her manner was without reproach ; 
 But from the Causeway she was sure 
 
 To snub the Provost in his coach : 
 In pride of birth she did not seek 
 
 Her scorn of upstarts to conceal, 
 But of a Bailie's wife would speak 
 
 As if she bore the fisher's creel. 
 She said it kept them in their place, 
 
 Their fathers were of low degree ; 
 She said the only saving grace 
 
 Of upstarts was humility. 
 
 The quaint, old Doric still she used, 
 
 And it came kindly from her tongue ; 
 And oft the "mim-folk" she abused, 
 
 Who mincing English said or sung : 
 She took her claret, nothing loth, 
 
 Her snuff that one small nostril curled ; 
 She might rap out a good round oath, 
 
 But would not mince it for the world : 
 And yet the wild word sounded less 
 
 In that Scotch tongue of other days ; 
 Twas just like her old-fashioned dress, 
 
 And part of her old-fashioned ways. 
 
74 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 At every fair her face was known, 
 
 Well-skilled in kyloes and in queys ; 
 And well she led the fiddler on 
 
 To " wale " the best of his strathspeys ; 
 Lightly she held the man who rose 
 
 While the toast-hammer still could rap. 
 And brought her gossip to a close, 
 
 Or spoilt her after-dinner nap ; 
 Tea was for women, wine for men, 
 
 And if they quarrelled o'er their cups, 
 They might go to the peat-moss then, 
 
 And fight it out like stags or tups. 
 
 She loved a bishop or a dean, 
 
 A surplice or a rocket well, 
 At all the church's feasts was seen, 
 
 And called the Kirk, Conventicle ; 
 Was civil to the minister, 
 
 But stiff and frigid to his wife, 
 And looked askance, and sniffed at her, 
 
 As if she lived a dubious life. 
 But yet his sick her cellars knew, 
 
 Well stored from Portugal or France, 
 And many a savoury soup and stew 
 
 Her game-bags furnished to the Manse. 
 
 But if there was a choicer boon 
 
 Above all else she would have missed, 
 It was on Sunday afternoon 
 
 To have her quiet game at whist 
 Close to the window, when the Whigs 
 
 Were gravely passing from the Kirk, 
 And some on foot, and some in gigs, 
 
 Would stare at her unhallowed work : 
 
MfSS PENELOPE LEITH. 75 
 
 She gloried in her " devil's books " 
 That cut their sour hearts to the quick ; 
 
 Rather than miss their wrathful looks 
 She would have almost lost the trick. 
 
 Her politics were of the age 
 
 Of Claverhouse or Bolingbroke ; 
 Still at the Dutchman she would rage, 
 
 And still of gallant Grahame she spoke, 
 She swore 'twas right that Whigs should die 
 
 Psalm-snivelling in the wind and rain, 
 Though she would ne'er have harmed a fly 
 
 For buzzing on the window pane. 
 And she had many a plaintive rhyme 
 
 Of noble Charlie and his men : 
 For her there was no later time, 
 
 All history had ended then. 
 
 The dear old sinner ! yet she had 
 
 A kindly human heart, I wot, 
 And many a sorrow she made glad, 
 
 And many a tender mercy wrought : 
 And though her way was somewhat odd, 
 
 Yet in her way she feared the Lord, 
 And thought she best could worship God 
 
 By holding Pharisees abhorred, 
 By being honest, fearless, true, 
 
 And thorough both in word and deed, 
 And by despising what is new, 
 
 And clinging to her old-world creed. 
 
 Raban, p. 195. 
 
76 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 MIRREN. 
 
 SHE was but a maid of all work, 
 
 For she could not bear to see 
 Idle sluts about her kitchen 
 
 Slopping tables with their tea; 
 And besides, she had a habit 
 
 Of speaking out her mind 
 Which might not look respectful 
 
 If another stood behind ; 
 For she'd scold a wasteful mistress 
 
 Very roundly to her face, 
 But would not let another 
 
 Think a thought to her disgrace. 
 
 She had seen her fifty winters, 
 
 But was always trim and tight 
 In her printed cotton bodice, 
 
 And her apron clean and white : 
 Never knew her head a bonnet, 
 
 But a cap of muslin thin 
 With a bit of simple ribbon 
 
 Tied in bows beneath her chin : 
 And her features, small and puckered, 
 
 Looking tempery and tart, 
 Did not truly tell the secret 
 
 Of her true and faithful heart. 
 
 All the folk that did not know her 
 And there were not many did, 
 
 For her faults were somewhat patent, 
 And her virtues mainly hid 
 
M1RREN. 77 
 
 Much disliked her prim preciseness, 
 
 And her stiff unchanging ways, 
 And the tartness of her sayings, 
 
 And the scrimpness of her praise. 
 But the children whom she rated 
 
 If their boots had soiled her floor, 
 Knew how fain she was to cheer them, 
 
 When their little hearts were sore. 
 
 She had never left the city, 
 
 Rarely seen the growing corn, 
 Never been a five-miles' journey 
 
 From the spot where she was born, 
 Never voyaged in a steam-boat, 
 
 Never travelled by the mail, 
 And nothing could persuade her 
 
 To go jaunting on the rail. 
 But she knew the streets and closes, 
 
 And the harbour and the boats, 
 And the kindly fishers' houses, 
 
 And their creels and nets and floats. 
 
 And all the grand old mansions 
 
 Where the gentry once would dwell, 
 With their cork-screw stairs and turrets, 
 
 And their chambers panelled well, 
 And the stately Lords and Ladies 
 
 Who had ridden from their doors, 
 And the fateful tragic dramas 
 
 Oft enacted on their floors, 
 She could tell you stories of them, 
 
 Till a feeling in you woke 
 That the nobles must have sorrows 
 
 Not allowed to common folk. 
 
78 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Going weekly to the market, 
 
 You might safely trust her care 
 Not to squander one half penny 
 
 Of your thrifty monies there ; 
 She would have the best and cheapest, 
 
 Yet she would not chaffer long ; 
 They might cheat a young housekeeper, 
 
 But they feared her caustic tongue; 
 Nor would she for a moment 
 
 Linger in the sun or rain ; 
 She had gone to do her business, 
 
 And must home to work again. 
 
 Going weekly to the kirk too, 
 
 Be the Sunday dry or wet, 
 With her Bible in her kerchief, 
 
 And her features primly set, 
 There she sat in tireless patience, 
 
 Thinking less about her sin 
 Than about her common duties, 
 
 And the frets she had therein, 
 Not unpleased that she had done them 
 
 With some credit to herself, 
 And with visions of her saucepans 
 
 All in order on their shelf. 
 
 One day she told her mistress, 
 
 She must find another maid : 
 No, she had no fault to find with 
 
 Any thing they did or said, 
 And she was not like the fickle 
 
 Fools that wanted just a change, 
 Nor did she much rebel at 
 
 That new-fangled kitchen range : 
 
MIRREN. '79 
 
 And she had not made her mind up 
 
 To take a place or no ; 
 There was nothing she was sure of, 
 
 Only just that she must go. 
 
 Plainly there was something hidden ; 
 
 There was mystery in her look ; 
 But she pursed her lips, and held it 
 
 Tight as in a close-sealed book. 
 They wist not, when she left them, 
 
 What had wiled her thus away, 
 Puzzling over it, and guessing 
 
 Twenty different things a day ; 
 They were angry, for they missed her, 
 
 Nothing seeming to go smooth ; 
 But the pathos of it touched them, 
 
 When they came to know the truth. 
 
 She had served a gentlewoman, 
 
 When they both were fresh and young ; 
 They had smiled and sighed together, 
 
 And together wept and sung. 
 Proud was Mirren of her mistress 
 
 While her beauty was in bud, 
 Yet prouder to remember 
 
 She was come of gentle blood, 
 Having Lords to her forefathers, 
 
 With Ladies by their side, 
 And loves and wars to tell of, 
 
 And tragic tales to hide. 
 
 But the lady, when her beauty 
 'Gan to have a faded look, 
 
8o CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 Mated with a man beneath her, 
 
 Which her handmaid could not brook. 
 Why could she not live single ? 
 
 Maidenhood was clean and sweet : 
 If wed she must, why pick him 
 
 From the gutter on the street ? 
 She had never served but gentles, 
 
 And she trowed she never would, 
 So they quarrelled, and they parted, 
 
 Both of them in angry mood. 
 
 So the lady had her wedding, 
 
 Though a stranger dressed her hair, 
 And a hand she had not proven 
 
 Robed her in her garments fair. 
 But the marriage-bed was barren, 
 
 And the wedded life was shame. 
 For he wasted all her substance, 
 
 And he soiled a noble name ; 
 Till friendless and forsaken, 
 
 With a hot and fevered eye, 
 In weariness and sickness 
 
 She prayed that she might die. 
 
 But as she sat despairing 
 
 The door was opened wide, 
 Then closed again in silence, 
 
 And one stood by her side, 
 As of old so trim and tidy, 
 
 As of old with bodice bright, 
 With the dainty cap of muslin, 
 
 And the apron clean and white ; 
 
MIR REN. 8 1 
 
 As of old so peppery tempered, 
 As of old so prim and tart ; 
 
 But also underneath it 
 Lay the old, true, faithful heart. 
 
 And she pushed a bag of something 
 
 Right into the lady's hand, 
 Saying, " Not a word, Miss Elsie, 
 
 It is by the Lord's command ; 
 I've been toiling, scrimping, saving, 
 
 Till my bones and joints would ache, 
 And I've put my soul in peril 
 
 All for filthy lucre's sake. 
 Save me now from that temptation, 
 
 Give my soul a chance of life, 
 For I've just been self-deceiving, 
 
 Though I have been no man's wife. 
 
 " Now get you to the parlour, 
 
 This is not the place for you, 
 I am mistress of my kitchen, 
 
 And I have my work to do ; 
 Take your seat beside the window ; 
 
 There you'll see the breezy bay, 
 And the brown sails of the fishers 
 
 Dipping in the white sea-spray, 
 And the children pulling sea-weed, 
 
 And the old men gathering bait, 
 And lads the old boats mending 
 
 That are in a leaky state, 
 And the lighthouse on the skerry, 
 
 And the red lamp on the pier, 
 And the lass that's always waiting 
 
 For the ship that conies not here. 
 F 
 
82 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 " Oh, you'll never weary watching 
 
 The ships that come and go, 
 Or to hear the sailors singing 
 
 As they turn the capstan slow ; 
 Some are bound for far Archangel, 
 
 Some for Greenland's snow and ice, 
 Some, it's likely, for a harbour 
 
 In the land of Paradise. 
 But the hand of God is o'er them. 
 
 And behind them and before, 
 And the gate of Heaven as near them 
 
 On the sea as on the shore. 
 
 " O my bonnie, sweet Miss Elsie, 
 
 My blessing and my care, 
 You'll break my heart now, sitting 
 
 With that look of hard despair ; 
 Rouse ye up, there's work to do yet. 
 
 And peace for you to win, 
 And the web of life is never 
 
 Only sorrow warped with sin. 
 There's sunshine in the rain-cloud, 
 
 And heat in wreaths of snow. 
 And God's love is in all things 
 
 That happen here below." 
 
 So Mirren pleaded fondly, 
 And her plea prevailed at last, 
 
 And they lived together loving, 
 As they had done in the past. 
 
 The lady broidered garments, 
 Or darned the dainty lace, 
 
M1RREN. 83 
 
 Which her handmaid washed as no one 
 
 Could wash in all the place; 
 And if their fare was scanty, 
 
 No eye was there to see, 
 As they held themselves aloof still 
 
 In pride of poverty. 
 
 Trim was still the lady's raiment, 
 
 Never seeming to grow worse, 
 And she never lacked the glitter 
 
 Of a gold-piece in her purse ; 
 And on the Bishop's visit 
 
 She could give him rare old tea- 
 For of course she went to Chapel 
 
 Duly with the Quality. 
 The Bishop for her lady 
 
 Was the fitting minister; 
 But the Kirk was still to Mirren 
 
 The house of God for her. 
 
 So the weeks went by in patience, 
 
 And the Sabbaths brought their peace, 
 And the years sped lightly o'er them, 
 
 Though their labours did not cease ; 
 And in the summer mornings 
 
 They saw the sun rise red, 
 And the sea a golden pavement, 
 
 Whereon his feet might tread ; 
 And in the winter evenings 
 
 O'er their needles and their frames 
 They told most tragic stories 
 
 Of the old-world knights and dames. 
 
84 CHARACTER SKETCHES. 
 
 And their way of life was tranquil, 
 
 And their thoughts were pure and sweet, 
 And the poor that lived beside them 
 
 Thought the better of the street, 
 When the gentry came to see them, 
 
 And the great world, in the pride 
 Of its carriages and horses, 
 
 Drew the children to its side ; 
 Though a grander world was inside 
 
 If they had but eyes to see 
 The faith and love that dwelt there, 
 
 And true-hearted piety. 
 
 Heretic, p. 173. 
 
DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 ABERDEEN. 
 
 THERE'S an old University town 
 
 Between the Don and the Dee 
 Looking over the grey sand dunes, 
 
 Looking out on the cold North Sea. 
 
 Breezy and blue the waters be, 
 And rarely there you shall not find 
 The white horse-tails lashing out in the wind, 
 Or the mists from the land of ice and snow 
 Creeping over them chill and slow. 
 Sitting o' nights in his silent room, 
 The student hears the lonesome boom 
 Of breaking waves on the long sand reach, 
 And the chirming of pebbles along the beach ; 
 And gazing out on the level ground, 
 Or the hush of keen stars wheeling round, 
 He feels the silence in the sound. 
 
 So, hearkening to the City's stir, 
 Alone in some still house of God 
 Whose solemn aisles are only trod 
 By rarely-coming worshipper, 
 
86 DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 At times, beneath the fret and strife, 
 The far-off hum, the creaking wain, 
 The hurrying tread of eager gain, 
 And all the tide of alien life, 
 We catch the Eternal Silence best, 
 And unrest only speaks of rest. 
 
 O'er the College Chapel a grey stone crown 
 
 Lightsomely soars above tree and town, 
 
 Lightsomely fronts the Minster towers, 
 
 Lightsomely chimes out the passing hours 
 
 To the solemn knell of their deep-toned bell ; 
 
 Kirk and College keeping time, 
 
 Faith and Learning, chime for chime. 
 
 The Minster stands among the graves, 
 
 And its shadow falls on the silent river ; 
 
 The Chapel is girt with Life's bounding waves, 
 
 And the pulses of hope there are passioning 
 
 ever. 
 
 But death is life, and life is death ; 
 Being is more than a gasp of breath : 
 We come and go, we are seen and lost, 
 Now in glimmer, and now in gloom ; 
 But oft this body is the tomb, 
 And the Life is with the silent host. 
 So to living and dead let the solemn bell call ; 
 Sleeping or waking, time passes with all. 
 
 Borland Hall, p. 3. 
 
THE CATHEDRAL TOWN. 87 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL TOWN. 
 
 A GREY old Minster on the height 
 Towers o'er the trees and in the light ; 
 A grey old town along the ridge 
 Slopes, winding downward to the bridge 
 
 A quaint, old, gabled place. 
 
 With Church stamped on its face. 
 
 The quiet Close, secluded, dim, 
 The lettered scroll, the pillar slim, 
 The armorial bearings on the wall, 
 The very air you breathe, are all 
 Full of Church memories, 
 And the old sanctities. 
 
 And beautiful the grey old place 
 With characters of antique grace, 
 That tell the tale of pious work 
 Beneath the spire and round the kirk. 
 And growth of Law and Right 
 Where Christ had come with light. 
 
 Begrimed with smoke, a monotone 
 Of equal streets in brick or stone, 
 With squalid lane, and flaunting Hall, 
 Infrequent spire, and chimneys tall ; 
 You know the place wherein 
 The weary toil and spin. 
 
88 DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 With jalousie and portico, 
 And oriel large, where sea-winds blow, 
 And light parade, and ample streets, 
 Where idler with the idler meets ; 
 
 You know the haunt of pleasure, 
 
 Or sick resort of leisure. 
 
 Far otherwise the old church town, 
 With the grey minster for its crown : 
 Its tide of work has ebbed away ; 
 Its pleasuring was never gay ; 
 Yet there the morning broke, 
 And the new world awoke. 
 
 And it is well, amid the whirr 
 Of restless wheels and busy stir, 
 To find a quiet spot where live 
 Fond pious thoughts conservative, 
 That ring to an old chime, 
 And bear the moss of time. 
 
 Like ivy clasping ruin grey, 
 And greenly clothing its decay ; 
 Like garden haunted to this hour 
 With smell of some old-fashioned flower 
 So sweet the dim old town 
 Still with its minster crown. 
 
 There is a strange philosophy 
 Among the wondrous things that be : 
 Even that the path which man has trod 
 Progresses still away from God, 
 
 And that we flourish most 
 
 As piety is lost. 
 
THE CATHEDRAL TOWN. 
 
 As sacred turns to secular, 
 As worship wanes, and temples are 
 Unvisited and voiceless grown, 
 And only rigid law is known : 
 
 Even so, they say, do we 
 
 Achieve our destiny. 
 
 Alas ! and must the deep divine 
 Impress of God, and the grand line 
 Of our high parentage be lost, 
 To reach the meagre winning-post 
 
 Of modern social saw, 
 
 And economic law? 
 
 Nay, but in this quaint place I see 
 The nobler thought of history ; 
 The birth of civil right and peace, 
 And progress that shall never cease, 
 
 Amid the chaunt and hymn 
 
 In cloistered alley dim. 
 
 And sweeter far and grander too 
 The ancient civilization grew, 
 With holy war and busy work 
 Beneath the spire and round the kirk, 
 
 Than miles of brick and stone 
 
 In godless monotone. 
 
 For here, in wild and lawless days, 
 The Culdee waked a psalm of praise 
 For Gospel light and liberty, 
 And help of man's great misery ; 
 
 And Darkness from its throne 
 
 Fled at the Cross alone. 
 
90 DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 So was it then so is it now. 
 And will for ever be, I trow : 
 The only spell of might is He, 
 The watchword and the victor)' ; 
 
 And thou shalt suffer loss, 
 
 But conquer in the Cross. 
 
 Back rolls the Darkness, as they come. 
 
 The victor griefs of Christendom ; 
 
 Omnipotent sorrows only heal 
 
 The evils of the common weal ; 
 And dim and ever dimmer 
 All other lights shall glimmer. 
 
 The good monk had his working day, 
 The good priest also passed away, 
 The mitre faded, and the crook, 
 And chanted hymn, and lettered book ; 
 
 But in this quiet place 
 
 They left a natural grace. 
 
 A quaint old place a minster grey, 
 And grey old town that winds away, 
 Through gardens, down the sloping ridge 
 To river's brim and ancient bridge, 
 
 Where the still waters flow 
 
 To the deep pool below. 
 
 The Bishop's Walk, p. i 
 
ION A. 91 
 
 IONA. 
 
 LONE, green Isle of the West, 
 
 Where the Monks, their corracle steering, 
 Could see no more, o'er the wave's white crest, 
 
 Their own loved home in Erin ; 
 Shrouded often in mist, 
 
 And buried in cloud and rain ; 
 Yet once by the light of a glory kissed, 
 
 Which nothing can dim again ! 
 
 O'er tangled and shell-paved rocks 
 
 The white sea-gulls are flying ; 
 And in the sunny coves brown flocks 
 
 Of wistful seals are lying ; 
 The waves are breaking low, 
 
 Hardly their foam you trace ; 
 All hushed and still, as if they know 
 
 This is a sacred place. 
 
 The diving guillemot 
 
 Is preening his dappled feather ; 
 The great merganser shows his throat, 
 
 Red in this summer weather ; 
 And bathed in a tremulous light 
 
 Are minster, cross, and grave, 
 That call up the past with a spell of might, 
 
 To tell of the meek and brave. 
 
 No fitter day than this 
 
 To look on thy mystic beauty, 
 And brood on memories of the bliss 
 
 Of faith and love and duty, 
 
92 DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 Of the hours of quiet prayer, 
 
 Of the days of patient toil, 
 Of the love that always, and everywhere, 
 
 Burned like a holy oil. 
 
 lone green Isle of the West, 
 So oft by the mist enshrouded, 
 
 1 have seen thee to-day in thy quiet best, 
 Not noisily mobbed, and crowded, 
 
 Seen thee in flooding light, 
 
 Seen thee in perfect calm ; 
 Yet am I sad as at the sight 
 
 Of mummy that men embalm. 
 
 Isle of the past and gone, 
 
 The life from thee has departed ; 
 Thy best is now but a carven stone, 
 
 And a memory lonely-hearted ! 
 Yet thou wert a power erewhile, 
 
 O'er the great world's mind and heart ; 
 But where now the priests of the Holy Isle 
 
 And the skill of its graceful Art ? 
 
 Skilled was the hand that wrought 
 
 Your traceried tombs and crosses, 
 And silvern brooches that yet are brought 
 
 From depths of the black peat mosses ; 
 And theirs was a holy work 
 
 Who carried the gospel pure 
 Where the white waves break by the old White- 
 kirk, 
 
 And brought salvation sure. 
 
ION A. 93 
 
 Was it the Norseman's sword, 
 
 And the ships of Thor and Odin 
 That drove the saints with the sacred Word 
 
 From the peaceful ways they trod in? 
 Was it the Saxon's sway, 
 
 Brutal and selfish and strong, 
 That swept the beautiful Art away, 
 
 And stifled the Celtic song? 
 
 Only this do we know, 
 
 The Celt brought light to the Teuton, 
 And ever the knowledge of God did grow 
 
 In the land he set his foot on ; 
 But as they throve he pined, 
 
 But as they smiled he sighed, 
 But as they grew he surely dwined, 
 
 And in their life he died. 
 
 O passion of holy love ! 
 
 O sacrificial people, 
 Dying to lift men's thoughts above 
 
 By altar and cross and steeple ! 
 Through stormy seas ye passed, 
 
 And moor and marsh and fen, 
 To be left behind in the march at last 
 
 As weak exhausted men ! 
 
 They say ye shall rise again 
 On the level Western prairie, 
 
 With a larger life and a keener brain, 
 Like eagle out of his eyrie ; 
 
94 DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 But not the mind and the heart 
 That grew by the Lochs and Bens, 
 
 Nor the plaintive song and the mystic Art 
 Nursed in the rushy glens. 
 
 North Country Folk, p. 239. 
 
 HILDA'S HOME. 
 
 OUR home is a bright little cottage, half-smothered 
 
 in yellow rose, 
 Not yet blooming, however ; a still river sullenly 
 
 flows 
 Deep at the foot of a broomy brae, and the 
 
 leaping trout 
 Ripple its gloom in the evening as May-flies 
 
 flicker about. 
 Nor is it all so sullen, for down in a farther 
 
 reach 
 It leaps and sparkles and gleams o'er the stones 
 
 of a pebbly beach, 
 Under the birch and the hazel, just coming to 
 
 leaf, and there are 
 Blue-bell patches of sky made bright with the 
 
 primrose star. 
 Behind is a group of great fir-trees, five of them, 
 
 red-armed firs, 
 Druid sisters he calls them, that moan when 
 
 the night-wind stirs ; 
 Last of a great pine forest that stubs the -heath 
 
 with its roots 
 For miles, till you come to a tarn where gulls 
 
 and little round coots 
 
HILDA'S HOME. 95 
 
 Are dipping and diving all day in a quiet 
 
 solitude ; 
 There the bee haunts, and the air is blithe, and 
 
 the lapwings brood. 
 I hear the curlew scream, and the grouse-cock 
 
 crowing at dawn, 
 And yet when I stand at the door, where the 
 
 cowslips laugh on the lawn 
 It is only a patch of green turf, enough to 
 
 pasture a lark 
 I see the sleepy old town, and the spires of the 
 
 Minster dark, 
 And catch a glimpse of the sea-waves white on 
 
 the yellow sand, 
 
 Where the river leaps at the bar, and the coast- 
 guard houses stand. 
 We have a bright little garden down on a sunny 
 
 slope, 
 Bordered with sea-pinks, and sweet with the 
 
 songs and the blossoms of hope. 
 O it is all too good for me ; often I catch myself 
 
 singing 
 In very lightness of heart, and I seem like the 
 
 birds to be winging 
 Merry from room to room, as they flutter from 
 
 bush to tree, 
 And each has her mate a-coming, and mine, too, 
 
 is coming to me. 
 
 Am I wrong to be always so happy ? This 
 
 world is full of grief; 
 Yet there is laughter of sunshine, to see the 
 
 crisp green on the leaf, 
 
96 DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 Daylight is ringing with song-birds, and brooklets 
 
 are crooning by night ; 
 And why should I make a shadow where God 
 
 makes all so bright? 
 Earth may be wicked and weary, yet I cannot 
 
 help being glad ; 
 There is sunshine without and within me, and 
 
 how should I mope or be sad? 
 God would not flood me with blessings, meaning 
 
 me only to pine 
 Amid all the bounties and beauties He pours 
 
 upon me and mine ; 
 Therefore will I be grateful, and therefore will I 
 
 rejoice ; 
 My heart is singing within me ; sing on, O heart 
 
 and voice. 
 
 Hilda, p. 60. 
 
 EVENING WALKS. 
 
 WE have walks as the evenings lengthen ; some- 
 times over the moor, 
 
 Many-tinted and shadowed ; brisk is the air there 
 and pure 
 
 Among the brown heath and the bracken that 
 now from its snake-like bonds, 
 
 Under the sun's deft fingers, is slowly uncoiling 
 its fronds; 
 
 Close-packed now, by-and-by they, overlapping, 
 will hide 
 
 The flower of the slender orchis purpling close 
 by their side. 
 
EVENING WALKS. 97 
 
 Dry on the knolls is the whin-bush, massing its 
 
 golden bloom ; 
 The cotton-grass low in the marshes tosses its 
 
 small white plume ; 
 
 And from the hollows is wafted the scent of bog- 
 myrtle or birch 
 Fragrant after the rain ; but, best of all, is the 
 
 search 
 Among the roots of the heather for stag-moss 
 
 antlers green 
 Branching over the earth, far-spreading, and rarely 
 
 seen. 
 Here and there is a cottage, too, looking just 
 
 like the heath, 
 Green on the roof with house-leek, brown with 
 
 its turf-wall beneath. 
 Children play at the door, they are dirty and 
 
 happy and fair, 
 Sunbrowned all of their faces, sunbleached their 
 
 lint-white hair ; 
 The mother is milking the cow, the dog lies 
 
 coiled in the sun, 
 The fowls for the roost are making, and the 
 
 labourer's day is done. 
 Sometimes we rest on a bank, and hear in the 
 
 evening calm, 
 Just as the stars come out, the sough of their 
 
 grateful psalm. 
 
 Often we go to the sea-marge, where the long 
 
 sands give place 
 To a belt of dark red crags, storm-beaten, which 
 
 grimly face 
 
 G 
 
98 DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 The baffled billows that lie ever panting below 
 at their feet, 
 
 Or gurgling in black-throated caves where they 
 foam and mine and beat 
 
 Perched on the cliff is a village, and far in the 
 cove below 
 
 The boats are beached on the shingle, waiting 
 the tide to flow ; 
 
 Hard-visaged, bunchy women are baiting the 
 lines in hope, 
 
 Or carrying laden creels, slow, up the long, shelv- 
 ing slope, 
 
 Or spreading their fish on the rocks, or wel- 
 coming men from the sea, 
 
 As the lugger trips daintily in, and the flapping 
 sail is free. 
 
 One thing strikes me about my husband's way 
 
 with the folk, 
 Whether the moorland shepherds, or fishermen 
 
 perched on the rock. 
 Freely we enter their homes, for he seems to be 
 
 known to them all, 
 And knows who is there in the corner, and who 
 
 in the bed in the wall, 
 And the idiot dreamily singing by the grandam 
 
 racked with pain, 
 And the lad that went off to the sea, and has 
 
 never come back again 
 All the home life of the people, their good and 
 
 their evil hap. 
 So every door flies open just after a warning 
 
 tap, 
 
EVENING WALKS, 99 
 
 And everywhere he is met with a welcome glad 
 
 and free ; 
 The dogs come fawning upon him, the children 
 
 get up on his knee, 
 Great, rough hands are held out to give him a 
 
 hearty grip, 
 And the mother's face is shining as he kisses the 
 
 baby's lip. 
 Of course they are happy to see me, too, for my 
 
 husband's sake, 
 Only they daintily touch me, as fearful perchance 
 
 I may break, 
 And, making ungainly curtseys, they have not a 
 
 word to say ; 
 But O I am proud to see him so loved in this 
 
 lovingest way. 
 
 Hilda, p. 65. 
 
 THE STORM. 
 
 FROM every part of heaven the clouds crept, 
 
 slow, across the sky, 
 Black clouds, with lurid edges, and rifts of 
 
 leaden grey, 
 
 And earth lay still and breathless as they mus- 
 tered there on high, 
 
 Nor lark nor throstle noting the dimly dying 
 day. 
 
 Then all was wrapt in darkness, without twinkling 
 of a star, 
 
ioo DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 And the big thunder-rain came down in sullen 
 
 warning drops ; 
 Beneath the silent trees the silent kine were 
 
 grouped, and far 
 The sea moaned, and a shiver passed along 
 
 the tall tree-tops. 
 
 And then it burst in fury rain and hailstones 
 
 mixed with fire, 
 And sudden gusts of wind that howled across 
 
 the stony moor, 
 With awful lulls, and shattering peals that nearer 
 
 grew and higher ; 
 
 And one great ball of hissing fire fell almost 
 at the door. 
 
 A wild, black night of tempest, such as men 
 
 remember long 
 In the dull undated life of a sleepy country 
 
 town, 
 When forests fell before the wind, streams swept 
 
 off bridges strong, 
 
 And church-towers, lightning-shivered, reeled, 
 and then came crashing down. 
 
 Awe-stricken, yet entranced, I watched, with 
 
 tremulous joy, each phase 
 And movement as it registered itself upon the 
 
 mind, 
 While the strained sense, exulting in the wonder 
 
 and amaze, 
 
 Jarred at a common sound amid the thunder 
 and the wind. 
 
 Hilda, p. 183. 
 
A HIGHLAND FUNERAL. 101 
 
 A HIGHLAND FUNERAL. 
 
 POOR fishers on the wild west shore 
 
 Where slow mists trail along the hills, 
 And from the mist comes evermore 
 
 The sound of rushing brooks and rills, 
 Are plodding, grave, with lingering feet, 
 
 About the high hot noon of day, 
 Along the circle of the street 
 
 That straggles round the circling bay. 
 
 Why are the long-oared boats afloat? 
 
 Why tolls the bell from the steepled kirk? 
 It is not the hour to launch the boat, 
 
 And it is not the Sabbath of rest from work ; 
 And why are they all in best array, 
 As it were for some high holiday? 
 'Neath crags and hills the long loch winds, 
 
 Through rocky isles where sea-birds flock ; 
 Along the slopes the grey birch finds 
 
 Frail footing on the slaty rock ; 
 On every ledge there grows a pine, 
 
 With roots that cling as the branches toss, 
 And the oaks along the low sea-line 
 
 Are greenly feathered with fern and moss. 
 Behind the cliffs are mountains steep 
 
 By foaming torrents scored and scarred, 
 And up their gullies the alders creep, 
 
 But the peaks are ragged and jagged and 
 
 barred : 
 Cloud-capped often their stormy tops, 
 
 While ridge and corrie and crag are bare, 
 Or a girdle of mist will ring the slopes, 
 
 While the heights rise clear in the upper air. 
 
DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 A desolate land of fern and moss, 
 
 Of brackened braes and craggy hills, 
 And shores where fickle waters toss, 
 
 And birch-and-hazel-fringed rills 
 And foaming cataracts like snow 
 
 That in the gorges leap and run, 
 And rocks, ice-polished long ago, 
 
 That gleam like waters in the sun, 
 And rainbows arching high in heaven 
 
 And down in still lochs doubly bowed, 
 While broken prismic lights are woven 
 
 On the thin veils of wavering cloud, 
 And gorgeous sunsets that enfold 
 
 The mountains with a purple robe, 
 And dash the crimson and the gold 
 
 In billowy spray about the globe : 
 A land of wayside cairns the place 
 
 Of resting for the biers of death 
 And tokens of a fading race, 
 
 And relics of forgotten faith 
 Legend and rhyme and mystic rite, 
 
 The worship of a God unknown, 
 Stealthily done at dead of night 
 
 By sacred well or standing stone. 
 O marvel not they love the land 
 
 Who watch its changeful hills and skies, 
 For in its desolation grand 
 
 A charm of 'wildering beauty lies. 
 
 A meagre life they have, and still ' 
 Not stiller almost is the grave 
 
 Those villagers beneath the hill 
 
 That looks down on the encircling wave 
 
A HIGHLAND FUNERAL. 103 
 
 Rude are the huts of stone and turf 
 
 That straggle round the circling street. 
 The thatched roofs soaked with rain or surf, 
 
 And blackened with the smoking peat. 
 No ploughshare tears the scanty soil, 
 
 Enough for them are spade and hoe ; 
 'Tis on the waters that they toil, 
 
 And in the seas their harvests grow. 
 The moors are for the hare and grouse, 
 
 The corries for the antlered stag, 
 But shaggy big-horned cattle browse 
 
 On the fringe of bracken and rush and flag. 
 And now and then comes like a dream 
 
 A white-sailed yacht into the bay, 
 And now and then the snort of steam 
 
 Sounds from the headland far away ; 
 But never shows the world's proud strife, 
 
 Its strain of power and rush of thought : 
 Time counts for nothing in their life, 
 
 But comes and goes, and changes nought. 
 Yet men have grown there, true and brave, 
 
 Bronzed with weather, and horny of hand, 
 Who wrestled with the problems grave 
 
 That at the porch of Wisdom stand ; 
 And you shall find in low, thatched cot, 
 
 Round-angled, and with smoke begrimed, 
 Love that can sweeten every lot, 
 
 And Faith that hath all fates sublimed. 
 
 But why are the long-oared boats afloat? 
 
 Why tolls the bell from the steepled kirk? 
 It is not the hour to launch the boat, 
 
 And it is not the Sabbath of rest from work ; 
 
104 DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 And why are the children sad and grave, 
 With no ripple of mirth by the rippling wave ? 
 And whither away do the strong men walk, 
 While the women gather in groups and talk ? 
 
 Slowly the muffled oars dip in the tide, 
 Slowly the silent boats shadow-like glide 
 Past the grey, steepled kirk, past the low rrianse, 
 Now in the ripples that glimmer and glance 
 Where the sun flashes, and now in the shade 
 The birch-feathered rocks and the great hills 
 
 have made; 
 
 Slowly and silently onward they pass 
 Over the calm spaces shining like glass, 
 While wild wailing strains of the coronach swell, 
 And fall with the breeze and the slow-tolling bell. 
 Long, low and dark is the first of the train, 
 With six bending oars keeping time to the strain ; 
 In it a coffin, and by it a maiden 
 Who to the moaning sea moans sorrow-laden, 
 As they drop down to the dim abbey pile 
 Lying half-hid in a cleft of the isle, 
 Ruined and roofless, 'mid tangle of trees 
 That dip their low boughs in the wave, but the 
 
 breeze 
 
 Rustles their higher leaves over a tower 
 Green with massed ivy, and crown'd with wall- 
 flower. 
 
 There, with his forefathers, peaceful to sleep 
 By the white surf of the unresting deep, 
 Where once the Culdee monk toiled, prayed, and 
 
 died, 
 Where once the galleys oared out in their pride, 
 
A HIGHLAND FUNERAL. 105 
 
 Where still the clansmen their high chiefs bewail, 
 
 Silent they laid the good priest of the Gael. 
 
 No cross was reared above his head, 
 
 No requiem was sung or said, 
 
 No hope was spoken of the just 
 
 In glory rising from the dust : 
 
 In silent awe they did their part, 
 
 Yet the good hope was in every heart. 
 
 Kildrostan, pp. i and 10. 
 
 FAILURE. 
 
 I SEE the Kirk beneath the hill, 
 The tall elms rustling in the breeze, 
 
 The modest Manse, so calm and still, 
 
 The dripping of the sleepy mill 
 
 That hides among the nutting trees. 
 
 I look down, with a hungry heart, 
 
 On the broad river rippling cool ; 
 The fisher plies his patient art, 
 The trout leaps, and the May flies dart 
 About the slowly eddying pool. 
 
 Low sunbeams on the meadows play, 
 The moon shows like a film of cloud, 
 
 A star from the red skirts of day 
 
 Peeps to another star far away, 
 And the hill is wrapt in a misty shroud. 
 
 A shepherd's wife comes to the door, 
 
 Shading her eyes with large brown hand, 
 
io6 DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 He is away on the upland moor, 
 And nothing she sees but a kestrel soar, 
 Keen-eyed, spying over the land. 
 
 There is no voice but the rushing rills, 
 And creak of frightened peewit's wing, 
 
 And bleat of young lambs on the hills, 
 
 Heard only when a silence fills 
 The soul, and all the space of things, 
 
 What made my eyes grow dim and blind ? 
 Ah, when the heart is heavy and low, 
 
 The beauty that on earth we find, 
 
 Or strain of music on the wind, 
 Shall touch it like an utter woe ! 
 
 Kaban, p. 61. 
 
 A WALK. 
 
 A CLEAR, crisp, Autumn day. Autumn is Scotch 
 And lingers lovingly among the hills, 
 Knee-deep in golden bracken, and golden grass 
 That tints the moor, what time the purple heather 
 Withers to brown, and golden pendants hang 
 On the slim, drooping birch the golden time 
 Of all the Northern year. 
 
 You shall find Spring, 
 
 Joyous with bursting life, in English lanes , 
 Where the May-blossom wafts from straggling 
 
 hedge 
 Its incense like a white-robed Thurifer, 
 
A WALK. 107 
 
 While the meek violet, like a saintly soul, 
 Hid in a green obscurity, breathes out 
 Its sweets, unseen, and the pale primrose woos 
 The shadow at the foot of lush blue-bells. 
 Green are the meadows there, and green the leaves 
 Opening, with various shade, in chestnut whorles, 
 And feathery birch, aud plane and beech and lime, 
 And late ash-bud and oak the many tints 
 Like many colours, yet one flush of green 
 
 From the young life o' the year, 
 i 
 
 But Autumn loves 
 
 The ferny braes, the brown heath on the hills, 
 The lichened rocks, orange and grey and black, 
 The harebell and the foxglove in the shaws, 
 The brisk and nimble air upon the moor, 
 The flying cloud that scuds across the blue, 
 Its shadow hurrying o'er the sunlight brow 
 Of the still mountain, and the sleepy loch 
 Quivering as in a dream of coot and tern, 
 Or leaping trout ; thither the antlered stag 
 Leads forth his hinds to water at the dawn : 
 And life is at full pitch of beauty then, 
 When verging to its close. 
 
 That Autumn day, 
 
 I wandered forth alone, in sober ways 
 While yet the shadow of the houses fell 
 Around me, and the window-eyes looked on ; 
 Yet I was glad, for I had found my work. 
 And when I reached the country, and beheld 
 The loaded wains with the last harvest-sheaves 
 Led homeward, and the reapers blithe and brown, 
 And felt my feet among the rustling leaves 
 
io8 DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. 
 
 By the wayside, and watched the shining spikes 
 
 Of frost in shady nooks beside the burn, 
 
 I could not walk, but leaped, and laughed at 
 
 nothings 
 
 In very joy of life; for anything 
 Serves for a jest what time the heart is gay. 
 
 So on and up I went, with tireless feet, 
 
 And fertile mind suggesting victories 
 
 My pen should win for me, as the slow years 
 
 Ripened the powers which circumstance disclosed, 
 
 And critics now approved. I had the trick 
 
 Of hoping to the full, and building up 
 
 Dream-palaces, creative, out of nothing, 
 
 Collapsing into nothing at a touch 
 
 Of adverse fact ; and that day I was in 
 
 The mood to make whole worlds, with suns and 
 
 stars, 
 And flowers and birds, and homes by love made 
 
 glad. 
 
 But crossing a waste moor, where hills of slag 
 Rose bare, and sluggish pools were at their feet, 
 Where no fish swam, but red lights ever glowed, 
 1 came upon a village mean and poor, 
 Which no one cared for, save to draw much wealth 
 From seams of coal, and veins of ironstone 
 That undermined it ; one long string of huts, 
 Ugly and dirty and monotonous ; 
 And no bell rang there on the Sabbath morn, 
 And only Death e'er spoke to them of God. 
 Swart, stunted men were plodding from the pits, 
 Weary, with little lamps stuck in their caps 
 Instead of flower or feather ; savage children 
 
A WALK. 109 
 
 Were skulking at the doors, but none of them 
 Did run to meet their fathers, and be kissed 
 And borne home shoulder-high ; the mothers, too, 
 Were fierce, and smiled not when the men came 
 
 home, 
 
 For they were weary, and not with woman's work. 
 Oft had I seen the peasant from his plough 
 Plod slowly home, but gladdened by his girl, 
 Curly and sunny, chattering at his side, 
 And by the baby nestling on his breast, 
 And by the mother smiling at the door 
 With the milk-pail ; and often watched the fisher, 
 Hard-faced and weather-beaten, leave his boat, 
 At early morn with children gambolling, 
 Bare-footed, on the sand, or leading him 
 Home in the pride of love, with the fresh spoils 
 Of the old sea ; but such a sight as this, 
 So without hope or heart or any joy 
 I had not seen before : a place so dreary, 
 So God-forsaken in its ugliness, 
 Each house alike, the people too alike 
 Dismal and brutal ; and the only spot 
 With any brightness was a drinking house 
 Shining with glass and brass and painted barrels. 
 
 Therewith the thought again knocked at my heart, 
 Urgent and loud : Was thy life given to thee 
 For making pretty sentences, and play 
 Of dainty humour for the mirthful heart 
 To be more merry ; or to serve thy kind, 
 Redressing wrong? And all the long way home 
 That thought kept ever knocking at my heart. 
 
 Raban, p. 125. 
 
DRAMATIC FRAGMENTS. 
 
 LOQUITUR THOROLD. 
 
 'TWAS sweet to dream as we have dreamed 
 
 Together in years long ago, 
 When life might be, as Fancy deemed, 
 
 For aught the happy child could know, 
 
 A bright illusion, and a show 
 Create at will, and shaped to meet 
 Each changeful whim, and quaint conceit, 
 
 And varying mood of joy or woe, 
 Nor ever with tragic end complete. 
 
 But ill for him who will not see 
 The dream to be a dream indeed, 
 
 And life a fateful mystery, 
 And iron fact the only creed 
 To lean on in the hour of need. 
 
 The child may dream ; the man must act 
 
 With reverence for the world's great fact ; 
 And look to toil and sweat and bleed,' 
 And gather his energies all compact. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 14. 
 
LOQUITUR THOROLD. \ 
 
 O HAPPY childhood ! wakening first 
 In moony realms of fond romance ; 
 
 And quenching soon a deeper thirst 
 In science that refrained to glance 
 Scorn at old faiths : so we could once 
 
 Believe we heard the mermaid sing, 
 
 And that the deft Fays shaped the ring 
 
 Footing o' moonlights in the dance, 
 And that Spirit lay hidden in every thing. 
 
 Nor need that early faith be all 
 In definite, clear knowledge lost : 
 
 Though never Greek to Ilium's wall 
 In the swift ships the sea had crossed, 
 Each wrathful king with banded host, 
 
 The tale of Troy were true to me, 
 
 More than bare fact of history : 
 
 There is more truth than is engrossed 
 In your musty sheepskin guarantee. 
 
 And there is truth transcending far 
 
 The way of scientific thought, 
 Which travels to the farthest star, 
 
 And verges on the smallest mote, 
 
 But all beyond it knoweth not ; 
 Its ladder, based on earth, must lean 
 Its summit on the felt and seen ; 
 
 But ever our hearts their rest have sought 
 In that dim Beyond, where it hath not been. 
 
 'Tis wisdom, doubtless, for the man 
 To learn the fact and steadfast Law ; 
 
 Yet Wisdom also in its plan 
 
 Embraced the child's great wondering awe 
 Which found the Unseen in all it saw, 
 
1 1 2 DRAMA TIC FRA GMENTS. 
 
 Whom now we seek with cruel strain 
 Of longing heart and wildered brain, 
 Tossing our barren chaff and straw 
 In search of the old diviner grain. 
 
 Can it be wisdom to forget 
 
 What wisdom taught us yesterday? 
 What if the form may change, and yet 
 
 The truth abide that in it lay? 
 
 And what if Gin, and Ghost, and Fay, 
 Were but the form of highest truth 
 The Father's parable for youth, 
 
 To teach that Law is Will, to say, 
 I am the worker of all, in sooth ! 
 
 So might the dream be, after all, 
 
 The key which confident Science lost, 
 
 And hath been groping round the wall 
 Of mystery, perplex'd and toss'd, 
 In search of, making many a boast, 
 
 Yet conscious that her universe 
 
 Of several facts and laws is scarce 
 
 God's living world ; yea, is at most 
 His graveyard, whither she drove His hearse. 
 
 Our Science knows no Father yet ; 
 
 He seems to vanish as we think ; 
 And most of all, when we are set 
 
 To fish for Faith upon the brink 
 
 Of Nature ; we draw, link by link, 
 A line of close-plied reasoning 
 Elaborate, and hope to bring, 
 
 Besides the baited thought we sink, 
 God from the depths at the end of a string ! 
 
LOQUITUR THOROLD. 113 
 
 Ah ! who shall find the perfect Whole 
 
 In the small fragment that we see? 
 Or mirror in the flesh-bound soul 
 
 The image of Immensity? 
 
 Our hearts within us faint, and we, 
 Amid the storm and darkness driven, 
 Cry out for God to earth and heaven ; 
 
 But what if all our answer be 
 Only our cry by the echoes given? 
 
 As light outside the Temple vast 
 
 Coming and going, with sudden gleams 
 On altar, pillar, and pavement cast, 
 
 Down on our lower world He streams 
 
 An externe glory. So it seems ; 
 But who can tell? The things that press 
 On our dream-life's half-consciousness, 
 
 Though real as the hills and streams, 
 Are the stuff dreams are made of nevertheless. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 23. 
 
 BUT my Faith is not gone, although 
 At times it seems to fade away. 
 
 I would I were as long ago ; 
 
 I cling to God, and strive to say 
 The devil and all his reasons Nay : 
 
 But in the crucible of thought 
 
 Old forms dissolve, nor have I got, 
 
 Or seem to wish, new moulds of clay- 
 To limit the boundless truth I sought. 
 
 Can the great God be aught but vague, 
 Bounded by no horizon, save 
 H 
 
1 14 DRAMA TIC FRA GMENTS. 
 
 What feeble minds create to plague 
 High Reason with? We madly crave 
 For definite truth, and make a grave, . 
 
 Through too much certainty precise, 
 
 And logical distinction nice, 
 
 For all the little Faith we have, 
 Buying clear views at a terrible price. 
 
 Too dear, indeed, to part with Faith 
 
 For forms of logic about God, 
 And walk in lucid realms of death, 
 
 Whose paths incredible are trod 
 
 By no soul living. Faith's abode 
 Is mystery for evermore, 
 Its life to worship and adore, 
 
 And meekly bow beneath the rod, 
 When the day is dark, and the burden sore. 
 
 What soft, low notes float everywhere 
 In the soft glories of the moon ! 
 
 Soft winds are whispering in the air, 
 And murmuring waters softly croon 
 To mossy banks a muffled tune ; 
 
 Softly a rustling faint is borne 
 
 Over the fields of waving corn 
 
 God's still small voice, we drown at noon, 
 Which is everywhere heard in the even and morn. 
 
 Hush ! let us go. The stars shine out, 
 Yonder the moonlight on the sea, ' 
 
 The fishers spread their sails about 
 Its tangled rings ; from yon lime tree 
 The hum of some belated bee 
 
LOQUITUR THOROLD. 115 
 
 Sways as if lost ; I seem to hear 
 A boding murmur in my ear 
 
 Of coming storm. What, if it be 
 Omen of tempest in my career? 
 
 Strange ! that whene'er the hour arrives, 
 Which we have longed for day and night, 
 
 To act the purpose of our lives, 
 Fades all the glory and the light, 
 Fails too the sense of power and might ; 
 
 And there are omens in the air, 
 
 And voices whispering Beware ! 
 
 But never victor in the fight 
 Heeded the portents of fear and care. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 31. 
 
 MY sun sinks without clouds or fears ; 
 
 No spectral shadows gather round 
 The gateway of the endless years, 
 
 Where we, long blindfold, are unbound, 
 
 And lay our swathings on the ground, 
 To face the Eternal. So I rest 
 Peacefully on the Strong One's breast, 
 
 Even though the mystery profound 
 Ever a mystery be confessed. 
 
 My old doubts ? Well, they no more fret, 
 Nor chafe and foam o'er sunken rocks. 
 
 I don't know that my Faith is yet 
 Quite regular and orthodox ; 
 I have not keys for all the locks, 
 
 And may not pick them. Truth will bear 
 
 Neither rude handling, nor unfair 
 
1 16 DRAMA TIC FRA GMENTS. 
 
 Evasion of its wards, and mocks 
 Whoever would falsely enter there. 
 
 But all through life I see a Cross, 
 
 Where sons of God yield up their breath : 
 
 Their is no gain except by loss, 
 There is no life except by death, 
 There is no vision but by Faith, 
 
 Nor glory but by bearing shame, 
 
 Nor justice but by taking blame ; 
 And that Eternal Passion saith, 
 " Be emptied of glory and right and name." 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 201. 
 
 I WONDER how the twilight shines 
 On the tinkling brook that cleaves the hill, 
 
 And how it rays with great broad lines 
 Through rifted clouds that slumber still, 
 And how the fall that turned our mill 
 
 Glistens, and how the shadows fold 
 
 Around the dew as night grows cold, 
 And how the lark with tuneful bill 
 Sings o'er the meadows we loved of old. 
 
 I ever loved our earth, and still 
 
 I love its scaurs and brooks and braes, 
 
 The long bleak moor, the misty hill, 
 And all their creatures, and their ways, 
 And many waters sounding praise ; 
 
 It seems as if my lingering feet 
 
 Clung to its moss and grasses sweet, 
 And ferny glades, and golden days 
 When cowslips and ladybirds made our hearts 
 beat. 
 
LOQUITUR THOROLD. 117 
 
 Throw up the window ; let me hear 
 
 The mellow ouzel once more sing, 
 The carol of the sky-lark clear, 
 
 The hum of insects on the wing, 
 
 The lowing of the kine to bring 
 The milk-maid singing with her pail, 
 The tricksy lapwing's far-off wail, 
 
 The woodland cushat's murmuring, 
 And the whisk of the pines' in the evening gale. 
 
 / 
 Fain would I carry with me all 
 
 Blithe Nature's blended harmony ; 
 The half-notes and the tremulous fall 
 
 Of her young voices, and the free 
 
 Gush of full-throated melody ; 
 And like a child, I'm loath to go, 
 And leave the elders to the flow 
 
 Of speech and song and memory, 
 And take me to sleep in the room below. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 203. 
 
 LOQUITUR MATER DOMINA. 
 
 BUT women who have lost their Faith 
 Are angels who have lost their wings, 
 
 And always have a nasty breath 
 Of chemistry, and horrid things 
 That go off when a lecturer rings 
 
 His bell. But they will not go off; 
 
 They take a mission or a cough ; 
 
 For men will marry a fool that sings, 
 Sooner than one that has learnt to scoff. 
 
1 18 DRAMA TIC FRA GMENTS. 
 
 You don't believe me : you go in 
 For science, culture, common-sense, 
 
 And think a woman sure to win 
 
 Because she knows the why and whence, 
 And looks at vermin through a lens : 
 
 And yet you've seen a score of girls 
 
 With empty heads, and silly curls, 
 
 And laughter light, and judgment dense, 
 Wedded to Marquises, Dukes, and Earls. 
 
 And why ? They started fair with you : 
 You dressed as well for that was mine ; 
 
 You were as handsome and well-born, too, 
 And you had wit like sparkling wine : 
 But they all took to things divine 
 
 Like sober, pious girls. I know 
 
 That some were High Church, and would go, 
 
 Like nuns, with beads and crosses fine 
 But they all were wives in a season or so. 
 
 Men may be bad, but still they like 
 
 A pious wife that lives for heaven ; 
 Your wit may shine, your beauty strike, 
 
 But not to these their love is given. 
 
 Ah ! had you with your prayer-book driven 
 To church, and kept a Sunday-school, 
 And visited, and lived by rule 
 
 But that is past and all forgiven, 
 Though you played your cards like a perfect fool. 
 
 You cannot be a hypocrite, 
 To mumble out a false remorse, 
 
 And wear a look of prim conceit 
 Only to be the winning horse? 
 Of course, you cannot, and of course 
 
LOQUITUR MATER DOMINA. 119 
 
 I never meant you should. But yet, 
 You might feel true grief and regret 
 
 For sin ; and could be none the worse 
 For the strawberry leaves in a coronet. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 81. 
 
 NAY, tell me not you do not care 
 Although the end of the world were come. 
 
 It's very wicked to despair ; 
 You should be gentle, patient, dumb, 
 Thinking that any day the hum 
 
 Of angels, and of saintly crowds, 
 
 With rainbow trimmings round their shrouds, 
 
 May greet you at a kettle-drum, 
 Coming in glory among the clouds. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 87. 
 
 LOQUITUR ROSE. 
 
 I HATE a sham ; let bad be bad, 
 
 And good be good for evermore : 
 Who doeth right, let him be glad, 
 
 Knowing the good he liveth for ; 
 
 Who doeth wrong, let him, too, pour 
 Unshrinking light upon his ill, 
 And do it with determined will : 
 
 But our devil clings to his ways of yore, 
 And is fain to appear the good angel still. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 141. 
 
120 DRAMA TIC FRA GMENTS. 
 
 YET mine is not a love like thine, 
 Which brooks no rival, fears no ill, 
 
 Which time would mellow like old wine, 
 Which hath no separate end or will, 
 And is content with loving still. 
 
 Such life would grow insipid soon 
 
 To me, and tiresome as a tune 
 Ground on a barrel-organ, till 
 A change were as welcome as flowers in June. 
 
 It should not, but I know it would ; 
 
 It seems as if some evil spell 
 Were on me, holding me from good, 
 
 And from the peace unspeakable ; 
 
 There is that in me like a bell 
 Cracked in the belfry, where it swings 
 Shaming its office, for it rings, 
 
 For Christmas cheer and passing knell, 
 The same false note for all truest things. 
 
 Women are fickle I am more ; 
 
 Women are contrary I am worse ; 
 Even ficklest women can adore, 
 
 And in adoring gain a force 
 
 Which holds them to a steadfast course ; 
 But I've no reverence ; mine eyes 
 Have only learnt to criticise, 
 
 To find out flaws, and trace their source, 
 And to weary of folk that are good and wise. 
 
 I love enough to part with pain, 
 But not enough to wed thee poor ; 
 
 I dare not face the way of men 
 W T ho nobly labour and endure, 
 Seeking the great life high and pure. 
 
LOQUITUR ROSE. 121 
 
 But I have one true purpose yet ; 
 I will not lead you to forget 
 
 The splendid hope of glory sure, 
 Which was all your thought until we two met. 
 
 Ah ! you will not believe the truth, 
 
 Because it shows me poor and mean ; 
 You've dreamt that I am all in sooth, 
 
 Which I have dreamt I might have been ; 
 
 And should, perhaps, if I had seen 
 In early years the generous life 
 Of aspiration high, and strife 
 
 For truth and love and faith serene, 
 Which oft you have pictured for you and your wife. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 150. 
 
 I COULD not bear the poky rooms 
 
 Where Bloomsbury students talk and smoke, 
 I'd sicken at the steamy fumes, 
 
 The maid-of-all-work would evoke ; 
 
 I'd sooner hear a raven croak 
 Than hearken to the flow of wit, 
 And watch the gleams of genius flit, 
 
 While shabby artist fellows broke 
 The silence with laughter loud and fit. 
 
 'Twas nice, of course, to hear from you 
 About their wild Bohemian ways ; 
 
 One likes to know how people do 
 Who are not in our world. We gaze 
 Upon their splendid works, and praise 
 
 Their genius, and we long to hear 
 
 About their naughty vices dear, 
 
1 22 DRA MA TIC FRA G ME NTS. 
 
 So charming in our books and plays, 
 Like beings quite in another sphere. 
 
 You do not like this tone? I know 
 You hate a false, affected vein ; 
 
 What, then, if we were bound to row, 
 Like galley-slaves, together, twain 
 Linked each to each by loathsome chain ; 
 
 And by that union sundered more, 
 
 Until the fretting bondage wore 
 
 Your heart, and left an aching pain, 
 As the only trace of the love you bore? 
 
 It may not be, it may not be ; 
 
 'Twere grievous sin in me to wed 
 A soul to so great misery, 
 
 Binding the living with the dead. 
 
 And now this parting word is said, 
 We, being twain, may still love on, 
 Who, being one, had turned to stone ; 
 
 We loose our vows, but link, instead, 
 Our hearts more surely to love alone. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 155. 
 
 I WOT not what it means ; but now 
 
 The stories of your grey North Sea 
 Keep running in my head, somehow ; 
 
 And weird and eerie tales they be. 
 
 Was it yourself that told it me? 
 Or some one else? I do not know 
 How 'mong the isles the tide-waves flow, 
 
 Like maddened steeds that franticly 
 Are lashed into fury as on they go ; 
 
LOQUITUR ROSE. 123 
 
 And how a fisher-lad was once 
 
 Caught in the race, and swept away ; 
 
 And how his oars, by evil chance, 
 Were reft from him ; and how he lay 
 Helpless among the tossing spray : 
 
 And how he saw the grim crags loom, 
 
 And heard the big waves crash and boom, 
 Through mists that darkened on his way, 
 Darkened and deepened like walls of his tomb ; 
 
 And how his heart in him grew cold, 
 
 As still the boat went hurrying on, 
 Past foaming skerry and headland bold, 
 
 Into the darkness all alone ; 
 
 And weird, witch forms, with eyes of stone, 
 Looked on, and mocked with laughter dread, 
 As hungry waves, like fierce wolves, sped, 
 
 And leaped on him ; and hope was none ; 
 And fain would he pray, but he cursed instead : 
 
 And how he lifted up his hand 
 To pray or curse, as it might be, 
 
 And in that moment grazed the land, 
 When something smote his palm, and he 
 Grasped a strong rope convulsively 
 
 A fowler's rope that dangled there, 
 
 Down on his darkness and despair, 
 Barely dipping the swollen sea 
 And the half-uttered curse turned into a prayer. 
 
 Even so am I on fateful tide 
 
 Borne on, and by the surges tossed, 
 
 And helplessly I rock and ride, 
 Alone, and in the darkness lost, 
 Haunted by many a mocking ghost ; 
 
1 24 DRA MA TIC PR A G ME NTS. 
 
 No help without, no help within, 
 Forsaken in my way of sin, 
 
 Forsaken by myself the most, 
 But I reach out in vain through the gloom and 
 the din. 
 
 I reach out, but I reach in vain ; 
 
 No help for me ; I touch the shore ; 
 They only push me back again ; 
 
 The tide sweeps on, the waters roar, 
 
 My head is dizzy, my heart is sore ; 
 I reach out, but no help is near, 
 A cloud is on my soul, and fear, 
 
 And hate and madness evermore 
 Are hissing their whispers in my ear. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 159. 
 
 EDITORIAL. 
 
 BUT now it is not given to any one 
 
 To overarch the structure of all knowledge, 
 
 And crown it with its dome and golden cross ; 
 
 Nor is it given to any one to work, 
 
 As God does, leisurely, because He draws 
 
 Upon the unmeasured ages, wherefore He 
 
 Alone may say '"Tis finished, and very good." 
 
 We only do a part, and partly well, 
 
 And others come and mend it. Thorold tried 
 
 Too much for our brief life a cosmic work, 
 
 And toiled to do it in his week of days 
 
 That had nor fresh-breathed morn, nor restful eve 
 
 For him. So he broke down, a wreck, at last, 
 
EDITORIAL. 
 
 125 
 
 Achieving but a fragment of his thought, 
 
 A porch, a pillar, and an outline dim. 
 
 Some deemed he was a failure ; others saw 
 
 The germ of grand discovery in his thought, 
 
 And worked it to their profit. Ah ! well, well : 
 
 There are who give us all they have, complete, 
 
 Nothing omitted, nothing lying behind, 
 
 All formulated, tidy, docketed, 
 
 Tied neatly up in ribbons, laid in drawers, 
 
 And handy for our use an entire soul, 
 
 With all its thoughts booked up to the last hour 
 
 In double entry ; these don't interest me ; 
 
 I know them, and am done with them ; they have 
 
 No infinite possibilities, no shadows 
 
 Of the great God upon them, and their light 
 
 Is but a row of foot-lights and reflectors 
 
 Shining upon the stage, and on themselves. 
 
 But others, more aspiring than achieving, 
 
 Achieve all in suggestion. They lie down 
 
 With Nature, as Ruth lay at the feet of Boaz, 
 
 Who longed for his upwaking, and yet feared 
 
 What the day-break might bring ; so they with 
 
 dread 
 
 And yearning wait, till God shall speak to them 
 The thing they cannot utter, save in fragments, 
 In broken strains of angel melody, 
 Or visions momentary behind the veil ; 
 Yet more suggestive of Divinity, 
 More helpful by their infinite reaching forth, 
 Than all completed thinking. Thorold thus 
 Pushed at the gates of God, and through the 
 
 chink 
 
 Caught, wondering, some gleams of inmost Light 
 Transcendent, and some cords of harmony 
 
126 DRAMATIC FRAGMENTS. 
 
 Entrancing ; unexpected mysteries 
 Of unison and beauty, heretofore 
 Or jarring, or divided, blended now 
 In reconciling vision of higher truth. 
 
 Olrig Grange, p. 171. 
 
 LOQUITUR CLAUD MAXWELL. 
 
 : TlS the sin of art's fine passion that it only seeks 
 
 to know, 
 Not to perfect, any creature that his lot he may 
 
 fulfil ; 
 It has charity to bear with any rankest weeds 
 
 that grow 
 
 Unto any picturesqueness, and to leave them 
 growing still. 
 
 Priest and prophet try to save, and so their work 
 
 is blessed ; but mine 
 Strove only just to see, and reproduce the 
 
 picture true, 
 Making sacrifice of duty for the trimming of a 
 
 line, 
 Heeding not of higher wisdom in the itch for 
 
 something new. 
 
 O my heart and its misgivings ! I am never 
 
 wholly sure. 
 Was the art of Greece so perfect that its life 
 
 was also high? 
 Is the heavenly vision only seen what time the 
 
 heart is pure? 
 
 Is the poem but the poet as he dares to live 
 and die ? 
 
LOQUITUR CLAUD MAXWELL. 127 
 
 Could I be a mere onlooker, and yet see what 
 
 should be seen ? 
 Standing calmly on the outside, could I paint 
 
 this life aright ? 
 Nay, that could never come to any perfect fruit, 
 
 I ween, 
 
 Could yield but sickly blossom nipt by any 
 frosty night. 
 
 Better wield a pick or spade, or drive a furrow 
 
 in the soil, 
 
 Bear a hod, or hurl a barrow among fustian- 
 wearing men, 
 Win humblest daily bread by daily sweat of 
 
 honest toil, 
 Than live to find in life but stuff for scrawling 
 
 with a pen ! 
 
 Hilda, p. 169. 
 
 HILDA'S DEATH. 
 
 A MIGHTY city of tented streets, 
 
 And never a house of brick or stone, 
 And the pulse of the city throbs and beats 
 
 As if in a fever burning on ; 
 Nothing but tents in all the plain, 
 Nothing but bronzed and bearded men, 
 With clashing sabre and jingling spur, 
 Plume of feather, or crest of fur. 
 
 Here are banners, and there are flags ; 
 
 All of their bravery now is stained ; 
 As the wind flutters their tattered rags, 
 
 Lo ! where the powder and blood are grained 
 
1 28 DRAMA TIC FRA GMENTS. 
 
 And the heavy air has a foetid breath : 
 Is it of blood ? or is it of death ? 
 How the wild dogs and the birds are fat, 
 Gorged, where they lazily perch or squat ! 
 
 Now, at a tent-door steeds are champing, 
 
 Now they are galloping forth with speed ; 
 Down the long streets there are companies tramping, 
 
 Grimly silent, on some fell deed ; 
 Some in the wine-shop are drinking hard, 
 Some are gaming with dice and card ; 
 Many a jolly stave trowls from those, 
 But these are coming to oaths and blows. 
 
 Hark ! to the call of the bugle horn, 
 
 Or the quick rattle of mustering drum ! 
 Swift to the summons, at even or morn, 
 
 Bronzed and bearded, the gallants come. 
 Balls from the rifle-pits ping about, 
 Great guns boom from the big Redoubt, 
 And the angry hiss of the burning shell 
 Screams through the fire and smoke of hell. 
 
 Far on the outskirts stands a tent, 
 
 And over the tent a great red Cross ; 
 Balls lie round, but their force was spent 
 
 Long e'er they rolled o'er the silent moss ; 
 A cross is over the silent gate, 
 A cross on the arm of them that wait, 
 Emblem of pity and healing and peace, 
 Bidding the wrath of war here to cease. 
 
HILDA 'S DBA Tff. 1 29 
 
 One comes out of it, grave and sad ; 
 
 Just a whisper, and then returns ; 
 What are the tidings now ? good or bad ? 
 
 Still she lives, but the fever burns. 
 Then again silence reigns all about, 
 And the twilight pales, and a star comes out, 
 But yet the air seems to pulse and to throb, 
 Now and again, with a stifled sob. 
 
 Sudden, the sob is turned to a wail ; 
 
 What is it ? where is it ? Hush ! the door 
 Opens again now, and all hearts fail ; 
 
 He too is weeping, for all is o'er. 
 It is not night, and it is not day ; 
 Calm in the twilight she passed away, 
 Just as the star, where the cloud was riven, 
 Pointed her way through the opening heaven. 
 
 Near the tent-door was a sickly group, 
 And O the tears ran down their cheeks like 
 
 rain; 
 One said, "There is not a man in our troop 
 
 But would have died just to save her a pain : 
 I would have died for her ; so would a score of 
 
 us ; 
 Broken and maimed, she was worth many more 
 
 of us ; 
 
 God help the poor fellows, now she is gone ; 
 She was like my mother when last I was down." 
 
 When it was told at the drinking bar, 
 
 The flagon untasted was dashed on the board ; 
 
 Hushed was the chorus of glory and war 
 Others were trusted, but she was adored. 
 
 I 
 
1 30 DRAMA TIC FRA GMENTS. 
 
 No one shuffled the cards again, 
 
 Rattled the dice now, or called a main. 
 
 " Who's for the trenches ? we must have it out ; 
 
 Now is the time, lads, to try the Redoubt." 
 
 Belted with hell-fire, and shrouded with smoke, 
 Girdled with rifle-balls as with a wall, 
 
 Yet with a yell from the trenches they broke, 
 Plunging through rifle-balls, hell-fire, and all. 
 
 'Twas not for glory they stormed the Redoubt ; 
 
 'Twas that the grief of their wild hearts must out. 
 
 That was her monument ; and they cried 
 
 " God and saint Bridget ! " as each man died. 
 
 Hilda, p. 241. 
 
 THE LETTER. 
 
 I BEGGED hard for an hour of grace 
 
 From that grim Ferryman who plies 
 His wherry to the fore-doomed place 
 
 Of all the foolish and all the wise. 
 But not an hour the churl will give, 
 
 Nor deigns to answer me, though I, 
 Who always was in haste to live, 
 
 Would rather take my time to die. 
 
 Another sun, and I shall know 
 The secret Death has kept so well : 
 
 What wonders in a day or so 
 A letter writ by me could tell ! 
 
THE LETTER. 131 
 
 And yet who knows ? I've mostly found 
 
 That secrets are but sorry stuff; 
 And those that lie beneath the ground 
 
 Perchance are commonplace enough. 
 
 I've lived my life ; it has not been 
 
 What once I hoped, nor what I feared 
 And why should that we have not seen 
 
 Be other than has yet appeared ? 
 There are no breaks in God's large plan, 
 
 But simple growth from less to more ; 
 And each to-morrow brings to man 
 
 But what lay in the day before. 
 
 The river has its cataract, 
 
 And yet the waters down below 
 Soon gather from the foam, compact, 
 
 And on like those above it flow : 
 And so the new life may begin 
 
 Where this one stopt, with finer powers, 
 Perhaps, a subtler thread to spin, 
 
 And years to work instead of hours. 
 
 What has my life been that my heart 
 
 Should be so tranquil at this time, 
 So free to ply the careless art 
 
 Of guessing, and of tagging rhyme ? 
 Here on this solemn brink of doom 
 
 I seem not much to fear or care, 
 But peer into the gathering gloom, 
 
 And mostly wonder what is there. 
 
132 DRAMATIC FRAGMENTS. 
 
 And that has been my bane all through, 
 
 That never yet would life appear 
 So real that my hand must do 
 
 Its work with earnestness and fear : 
 Still I could dream and speculate, 
 
 And turn it somehow into play, 
 And nothing woke a perfect hate, 
 
 Or love that had its perfect way. 
 
 I tried the highest life and failed ; 
 
 A lower, with a small success ; 
 I loved ; I sorrowed ; laughed and railed 
 
 At Fortune and her fickleness ; 
 And powers I might have trained to grow 
 
 I frittered, for I was not wise ; 
 And now their fire is burning low, 
 
 Their smoke is bitter in the eyes. 
 
 Ah ! wasted gifts and trifling gains ! 
 
 Ah ! life that by the abysses played, 
 And partly knew the griefs and pains 
 
 That from the depths their moaning made, 
 And partly felt them too, and yet 
 
 Could be content to dream and write, 
 And jest and laugh, and to forget, 
 
 And never wrought with all thy might ! 
 
 You'll find in an odd drawer the sum 
 
 Of that life, rich in nought but friends 
 A grasshopper's dry-throated hum, 
 
 A hank of broken odds and ends ; 
 Do with it as you will ; I give 
 
 My all to you ; perchance it may 
 Beacon another soul to live, 
 
 More wisely through its changeful day. 
 
THE LETTER. 133 
 
 You'll pay my debts they are not large ; 
 
 You'll bury me where the poor folk sleep ; 
 And for the rest, my only charge 
 
 Is that the dear old books you'll keep. 
 If ghosts come back, mine will be met 
 
 Upon the steps among the shelves, 
 Searching for mildew, moth, or wet 
 
 In the small quartos or the twelves. 
 
 And now farewell, my lad ; fear God, 
 
 And keep your faith whole, if you can, 
 And where the devil has smoothed your road, 
 
 Keep to the right like an honest man ; 
 See that your heart is pure and just, 
 
 See that your way is clean and true ; 
 By and by we shall all be dust, 
 
 Yet by and by I shall meet with you. 
 
 The world is losing faith in God, 
 
 And thereby losing faith in man, 
 For now the earthworm and the sod 
 
 Wind up, they say, our little span ; 
 But they that hold by the Divine, 
 
 Clasp too the Human in their faith, 
 And with immortal hopes entwine 
 
 The silence and the gloorn of death. 
 
 Raban, p. 10. 
 
SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 2 Kings ii. 2-11. 
 
 IT was the great Elijah in the chariot of heaven, 
 With the horses of Jehovah, by a mighty angel 
 
 driven, 
 And the chariot wheels were rushing 'mid a mist 
 
 of fiery spray, 
 Through glory of the night to higher glory of the 
 
 day. 
 
 It was the great Elijah but meek and still was he, 
 For he trembled at the glory which his flesh was 
 
 soon to see, 
 Going, girdled in his sackcloth, as the prophets 
 
 were arrayed, 
 To the splendour of the Presence where the angels 
 
 are dismayed. 
 
 Unwonted was the honour which his Master would 
 
 accord 
 To His true and faithful witness, bravest servant 
 
 of the Lord ; 
 But better had he borne, I trow, the sad old 
 
 human way 
 Of entering by the gates of Death into eternal day. 
 
ELIJAH. 135 
 
 Ay, better had he borne to turn his face unto 
 
 the wall, 
 With his kindred in their kindness gathered round 
 
 him, one and all, 
 And to lie down with his fathers in the dust for 
 
 some brief space ; 
 For the death, he once had dreaded, now appeared 
 
 a tender grace. 
 
 It was the great Elijah ; and the form that would 
 
 dilate 
 In the presence of King Ahab, and his Councillors 
 
 of State, 
 Now bowed its head in lowliness, as if it dared 
 
 not cope 
 With the terror and the glory, and the wonder and 
 
 the hope. 
 
 Away from earth they travelled ; yet he somehow 
 
 seemed to know 
 The road, as if his weary steps had trod it long 
 
 ago: 
 And was not that the wilderness to which he once 
 
 had fled? 
 And that the lonely juniper where he had wished 
 
 him dead? 
 
 And was not that the cave where he had sat in 
 
 sullen mood, 
 Until he heard the " still small voice " that touched 
 
 his heart with good? 
 And was not that the road by which from Carmel 
 
 he had run 
 Before the chariot of the king about the set of 
 
 sun? 
 
136 SEAWOWS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 Yea, God was backward leading him to heaven 
 
 along the path 
 Which he had erewhile travelled o'er in fear or 
 
 grief or wrath, 
 That by its mingled memories his heart He might 
 
 prepare 
 For the grandeur and the glory and the crown he 
 
 was to wear. 
 
 Now, as they drove, careering, with the fire-flakes 
 
 round the wheels, 
 And the sparks that rushed like shooting stars 
 
 from the horses' flashing heels, 
 Lo ! he was aware of a throng of men lay strewn 
 
 along the road ; 
 And straight at them the angel drave the chariot 
 
 of God. 
 
 " Stay, stay ! " then cried Elijah, " rein up the fiery 
 
 steeds ; 
 They will mangle those poor people lying there 
 
 like bruised reeds ; 
 See, they stir not ; they are sleeping ; or their 
 
 thoughts are far away, 
 And they do not hear the wheels of God to whom 
 
 perchance they pray. 
 
 " Full oft have 1 been praying so, and chiding 
 
 His delay, 
 And lo ! the work was done, or ere my lips had 
 
 ceased to pray ; 
 For our ears are dull of hearing ; stay, and put 
 
 them not to proof 
 Beneath the grinding of the wheel, and trampling 
 
 of the hoof." 
 
ELIJAH. 137 
 
 " Nay, it boots not," said the angel, " they are but 
 
 the ghosts of those 
 Three hundred priests of Baalim who fell beneath 
 
 thy blows 
 That glorious day on Carmel ; let them perish, as 
 
 they cry 
 To the gods that cannot help them when they 
 
 live, or when they die. 
 
 " Drive on, ye horses of the Lord, across the wel- 
 tering throng, 
 
 It is the great Elijah ye are bearing now along, 
 
 Let them see him once again in the triumph of his 
 faith, 
 
 And hear the bitter mockery, and taste the bitter 
 death." 
 
 It was the great Elijah, the prophet stern and 
 
 grand, 
 Faithful only to Jehovah he in all the faithless 
 
 land, 
 
 Zealous even unto slaughter for the God of Israel 
 'Gainst Ahab and the minions of the Tyrian 
 
 Jezebel. 
 
 But he answered, " Stay thy running now, and let 
 
 me here descend, 
 For the Lord has brought me hither surely for 
 
 this very end : 
 Ah ! this thing I had forgotten day of glory and 
 
 of dole 
 And I wist not what did ail me, but its weight 
 
 was on my soul." 
 
138 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 Then he stept down from the chariot, looking O so 
 
 meek and mild, 
 For the burden of the glory made him humble as 
 
 a child ; 
 And he lifted up the prostrate head of one and 
 
 then another, 
 For the burden of the greatness made him tender 
 
 as a mother. 
 
 " Ye priests of ancient Sidon, and of purple Tyre," 
 
 he cried, 
 " I have heard a still small voice that hushed the 
 
 storms of wrath and pride, 
 And God who was not in the fire, and was not 
 
 in the wind, 
 Was in the still small voice that spake to the 
 
 unquiet mind. 
 
 " O worshippers of Ashtaroth, and priests of 
 
 Baalim, 
 I thought to please Jehovah, and I only grieved 
 
 Him ; 
 I flouted you, and mocked you, and I deemed 
 
 that I did well 
 When I smote you in the name of Him, the God 
 
 of Israel. 
 
 " But He hath no pleasure in the death of any 
 man that dies, 
 
 He delighteth not in blood or smoke of such a 
 sacrifice ; 
 
 Yea, not a worm is crushed here, but the Vvrith- 
 ings of its pain 
 
 Touch a chord of His great pity who made noth- 
 ing live in vain. 
 
ELIJAH. 139 
 
 " He had patience with thee, Sidon, and patience 
 
 I had none ; 
 For the art of Tyre, perchance, He let the sin of 
 
 Tyre alone, 
 Something He saw to stay His wrath ; but I 
 
 would nothing see ; 
 Ye were the priests of Jezebel, and hateful unto 
 
 me. 
 
 " I did not think how hard it is to find the way 
 
 of truth ; 
 I did not think how hard it is to shake the faith 
 
 of youth ; 
 Yet, if I was walking in the light, the credit was 
 
 not mine, 
 But God's who in His grace to me had made the 
 
 light to shine. 
 
 " If ye were walking in the dark, and I was in 
 
 the light, 
 I should have brought its help to you, and plied 
 
 you with its might ; 
 But I made my heart a flaming fire, my tongue 
 
 a bitter rod, 
 And I did not hear the still small voice which is 
 
 the voice of God. 
 
 " I said ye might have right to live in Tyre 
 
 beside the sea, 
 
 But not in high Samaria, or fertile Galilee ; 
 And I smote you there on Carmel, as I thought, 
 
 by His commands, 
 But I smote my own heart also when your blood 
 
 was on mv hands. 
 
140 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 'For the strength departed from me as the pity 
 
 in me died, 
 And in an unloved loneliness I nursed unhallowed 
 
 pride; 
 And I wist there was none faithful on the earth, 
 
 but only I, 
 And sat beneath the juniper, and prayed that I 
 
 might die. 
 
 " For Jezebel and Ahab did as they had done 
 
 before, 
 And the idols were exalted, and idolaters were 
 
 more, 
 And the land was nothing better for the blood 
 
 that had been shed, 
 And I sat beneath the juniper, and wished that 
 
 I were dead. 
 
 "Then it was I heard the still small voice, and 
 
 bowed me to the ground, 
 Humbled by the gracious burden of the mercy I 
 
 had found, 
 But I may not enter in'.o rest, or with the Lord 
 
 abide, 
 Till ye humble with your pardon him that smote 
 
 you in his pride." 
 
 Then, one by one, he bore them gently from the 
 
 angel's way, 
 And, one by one, he laid them down, and kissed 
 
 them where they lay ; 
 And he never was so human as in his meekness 
 
 then, 
 And he never was so godlike for he was like 
 
 other men. 
 
ELIJAH. 141 
 
 And he said in yearning pity, " O that I might 
 
 die for you, 
 Hapless souls that are in darkness, and who know 
 
 not what they do ! " 
 And the tearful eye was swimming, and he heaved 
 
 a weary sigh ; 
 He was very near to glory with that great tear in 
 
 his eye. 
 
 And the angel in his chariot sat, and watched 
 
 him toiling long, 
 And the angel's face shone radiant, and he broke 
 
 into a song ; 
 For the choicest songs of angels are the anthems 
 
 that begin 
 With the sorrow of a contrite heart a-breaking 
 
 for its sin. 
 
 And ever as the prophet wept, the angel sang 
 
 more loud, 
 And his face was shining more, the more the 
 
 prophet's head was bowed ; 
 Until the task was ended, and the flesh was 
 
 crucified, 
 When lo ! they were at the gate of heaven, and 
 
 the door was opened wide. 
 
 Lo ! they were at the gate of heaven, and there 
 a mighty throng, 
 
 Ten thousand times ten thousand, raised their 
 shout and sang their song, 
 
 But the Lord remembered he was flesh, and down- 
 cast for his sin, 
 
 And Enoch who had walked with God came forth 
 
 to lead him in. 
 
 Raban, p. 97. 
 
M2 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 THE STANDING STONES. 
 
 " God at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time 
 past unto the fathers." Heb. i. i. 
 
 A ROLLING upland, open and bare, 
 
 A blasted heath where the night wind moans, 
 Eerie and weird, to the curlews there, 
 And the greedy kite and the kestrel scare 
 Singing birds from the lightsome air. 
 
 High on the heath are the Standing Stones, 
 
 Great, gaunt stones in a mystic ring, 
 Girdling a barrow where heroes' bones 
 Crumble to dust of death that owns 
 Them and their wars and faiths and thrones. 
 
 Not far off is an oozy spring 
 
 Feeding a black and dismal pool ; 
 There slow efts crawl, horse -leeches cling, 
 And the dragon-fly whirrs on restless wing, 
 And near by the adder is coiled in the ling ; 
 
 And once an oak made a shadow cool, 
 Woven of its green boughs overhead, 
 And blithe birds sang in the leafage full ; 
 Now but a raven, bird of dule, 
 Croaks on its stump from May to Yule. 
 
 But silently watching the silent dead 
 Stands the grey circle of sentinels, 
 Scarred and lichened, as ages sped 
 With snows, and dripping rains overhead, 
 And suns, and the wasteful life they bred. 
 
THE STANDING STONES. 143 
 
 Now, evermore where the dead man dwells 
 
 The living have gone to seek for God, 
 And the Altar-fire of the Unseen tells, 
 Or the swing and the clash of Christian bells 
 Summon to Lauds and Canticles. 
 
 And there, of old, in that bleak abode ' 
 
 Of wily lapwing and shrill curlew, 
 To circle and cairn they carried their load 
 Of burdened thought, as they wearily trod 
 On to the brink where they lost the road. 
 
 There dipped the Sun in the dripping dew 
 
 His earliest beams ; and there he met 
 The Bel-fire kindling its answer true 
 Earth-light for the light in heaven that grew, 
 Worship-light to the Light-god due. 
 
 So men acknowledged, and paid their debt, 
 
 In the old days, to the powers above, 
 Giving back that they were fain to get, 
 And piling the faggots, dry or wet, 
 Still as the keen stars rose and set. 
 
 Was not the instinct true that wove 
 
 Fire-worship thus for the god of fire? 
 Give from below what ye get from above, 
 Light for the heaven-light, Love for its Love, 
 A holy soul for the Holy Dove. 
 
 God tunes for Himself the hallowed lyre 
 
 That shall truly His praises show; 
 He gives the song that He will desire, 
 Ever new from the trembling wire, 
 Ever new from the heart on fire. 
 
144 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 Back to its fountain let it flow 
 
 Whatsoever He sends to you ; 
 Mercy, if mercy of His ye know, 
 And if your joy He has made to grow, 
 Up to Him let its gladness go. 
 
 So in all faiths there is something true, 
 
 Even when bowing to stock or stone 
 Something that keeps the Unseen in view 
 Beyond the stars, and beyond the blue, 
 And notes His gifts with the worship due. 
 
 For where the spirit of man has gone 
 
 A-groping after the Spirit divine, 
 Somewhere or other it touches the Throne, 
 And sees a light that is seen by none, 
 But who seek Him that is sitting thereon. 
 
 Seek but provision of bread and wine, 
 
 High-ceiled houses, and heaps of gold, 
 Fools to flatter, and raiment fine, 
 All the wealth of the sea and mine 
 And nothing of God shall e'er be thine. 
 
 But who seeks Him, in the dark and cold, 
 With heart that elsewhere finds no rest, 
 Some fringe of the skirts of God shall hold, 
 Though round his spirit the mists may fold, 
 With eerie shadows, and fears untold. 
 
 Raban, p. 75. 
 
THE ABBEY. 145 
 
 THE ABBEY. 
 
 ' ' God at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time 
 past unto the fathers." Heb. i. i. 
 
 NEAR by the river the Abbey stands, 
 
 Among old fruit trees, and on fat green lands, 
 
 With a weir on the river to drive the mill, 
 And cunning cruives at the salmon-leap ; 
 And the beeves on the clover are fetlock-deep, 
 
 And the sheep are nibbling the grassy hill. 
 
 'Tis now but a ruin spreading wide 
 Broken gable and cloistered side 
 
 'Mong lichened pear-trees and Spanish nuts, 
 Here a pillar, and there a shrine, 
 Or niche where its sculptured lords recline : 
 
 And long a quarry for walls and huts. 
 
 O stately the Lady- Chapel there 
 Once reared its cross in the upper air 
 
 Near by the river among the trees, 
 And sweet bells rung, and censers swung, 
 And matins and vespers and lauds were sung 
 
 With solemn-chaunted litanies. 
 
 O'er the high Altar a meek face shone, 
 A virgin-mother and baby-son, 
 
 Fashioned by art beyond the sea ; 
 And there, in linen or purple dressed, 
 A priest gave thanks, or a priest confessed, 
 
 With a psalm of praise, or a bended knee. 
 
 K 
 
146 SEKAfONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 And some would pore over vellum books, 
 And some would feather the sharp fish-hooks, 
 
 And some would see to the sheep and kine ; 
 Some went hunting the red-deer stag, 
 Some would travel with beggar's bag, 
 
 And some sat long by the old red wine ; 
 
 Some would go pleading a cause in Rome, 
 And still found cause to be far from home, 
 
 And near to St. Peter's costly door : 
 They were not all bad, and they were not all good 
 Who wore the Monk's girdle and sandal and 
 hood, 
 
 But some of them padded the Cross they bore. 
 
 Yet was the Abbey a fruitful stage 
 
 In the slow growth, and the ripening age 
 
 Of the long history of man : 
 For beaming virgin, and holy child 
 Made many a fierce heart meek and mild, 
 
 And the mastery there of mind began. 
 
 The footsore pilgrim there found rest, 
 The heartsore too was a welcome guest, 
 
 And who loved books, got helpful store. 
 It is God who guides the world's affairs, 
 And ever it rises by winding stairs, 
 
 Screwing its way from the less to more. 
 
 He reads the story best, who reads 
 Ever to find some germing seeds 
 
 Sprouting up to a nobler end, 
 And God's long patience working still 
 Through all the good, and through all the ill, 
 
 And always something in us to mend. 
 
THE ABBEY. 147 
 
 From bud to bell the wild bee strays, 
 Seeking the sweets of the sunny days, 
 
 Probing deep for the honey-cell ; 
 Yet well for his theft he pays the flower, 
 For he brings to the blossom a quickening power, 
 
 And a richer life to bud and bell. 
 
 Narrow and poor was the old Church-life 
 
 As it prayed in its cell, amid storm and strife, 
 
 With scourgings many, and fastings new ; 
 It knew no letters, it spurned at Art, 
 It had no pleasures, and lived apart 
 
 Doomed to die as the world's life grew. 
 
 But something of wisdom the Monk would know, 
 Something of gladness here below, 
 
 Something of beauty and what it can ; 
 He was not sinless, and yet he brought 
 A larger heart, and a deeper thought, 
 
 And a fuller life to the sons of man. 
 
 And we are a stage too not the end ; 
 Others will come yet our work to mend, 
 
 And they too will wonder at our poor ways. 
 Ah ! Life is more than our sermons, prayers, 
 Bourses, machineries, multiplied wares 
 
 Still the heart sighs for the better days. 
 
 Still is a feeling of something in me 
 Which yet I am not, and I ought to be, 
 
 Vaguely reaching for more and more ; 
 And the gain is loss, when I do not win 
 Larger life for the soul within, 
 
 And hopes of an ever-opening door. 
 
 If a ban, p. 84. 
 
I 4 8 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 THE SELF-EXILED. 
 
 THERE came a soul to the gate of Heaven 
 
 Gliding slow 
 A soul that was ransomed and forgiven, 
 
 And white as snow : 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 A mystic light beamed from the face 
 
 Of the radiant maid : 
 But there also lay on its tender grace 
 
 A mystic shade : 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 As sunlit clouds by a zephyr borne 
 
 Seem not to stir, 
 So to the golden gates of morn 
 
 They carried her : 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " Now open the gate, and let her in, 
 
 And fling it wide, 
 For she hath been cleansed from stain of sin," 
 
 St. Peter cried : 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " Though 1 am cleansed from stain of sin," 
 
 She answered low, 
 " I came not hither to enter in, 
 
 Nor may I go :" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
THE SELF-EXILED. 149 
 
 ' I come," she said, " to the pearly door, 
 
 To see the Throne 
 Where sits the Lamb on the Sapphire Floor, 
 
 With God alone:" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " I come to hear the new song they sing 
 
 To Him that died, 
 And note where the healing waters spring 
 
 From His pierced side :" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " But I may not enter there," she said, 
 
 " For I must go 
 Across the gulf where the guilty dead 
 
 Lie in their woe :" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " If I enter heaven I may not pass 
 
 To where they be, 
 Though the wail of their bitter pain, alas ! 
 
 Tormenteth me :" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " If I enter heaven I may not speak 
 
 My soul's desire 
 For them that are lying distraught and weak 
 
 In flaming fire :" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " I had a brother, and also another 
 
 Whom I loved well ; 
 What if, in anguish, they curse each other 
 
 In depths of hell ?" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
150 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 " How could I touch the golden harps, 
 
 When all my praise 
 Would be so wrought with grief-full warps 
 
 Of their sad days?" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " How love the loved who are sorrowing, 
 
 And yet be glad ? 
 How sing the songs ye are fain to sing, 
 
 While I am sad?" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " O clear as glass is the golden street 
 
 Of the city fair, 
 And the tree of life it maketh sweet 
 
 The lightsome air :" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 "And the white-robed saints with their crowns 
 and palms 
 
 Are good to see, 
 And O so grand are the sounding psalms ! 
 
 But not for me : " 
 And the angels all were silent 
 
 " I come where there is no night," she said, 
 
 "To go away, 
 And help, if I yet may help, the dead 
 
 That have no day." 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 St. Peter he turned the keys about, 
 
 And answered grim ; 
 " Can you love the Lord, and abide without. 
 
 Afar from Him?" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
THE SELF-EXILED. 151 
 
 " Can you love the Lord who died for you, 
 
 And leave the place 
 Where His glory is all disclosed to view, 
 
 And tender grace?" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " They go not out who come in here ; 
 
 It were not meet : 
 Nothing they lack, for He is here, 
 
 And bliss complete." 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " Should I be nearer Christ," she said, 
 
 "By pitying less 
 The sinful living, or woeful dead 
 
 In their helplessness ?" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 " Should I be liker Christ were I 
 
 To love no more 
 The loved, who in their anguish lie 
 
 Outside the door ?" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 "Did He not hang on the cursed tree, 
 
 And bear its shame, 
 And clasp to His heart, for love of me, 
 
 My guilt and blame?" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 "Should I be liker, nearer Him, 
 
 Forgetting this, 
 Singing all day with the Seraphim, 
 
 In selfish bliss?" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
152 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 The Lord Himself stood by the gate, 
 
 And heard her speak 
 Those tender words compassionate, 
 
 Gentle and meek : 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 Now, pity is the touch of God 
 
 In human hearts, 
 And from that way He ever trod 
 
 He ne'er departs : 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 And He said, " Now will I go with you, 
 
 Dear child of love, 
 I am weary of all this glory, too. 
 
 In heaven above :" 
 And the angels all were silent. 
 
 "We will go seek and save the lost, 
 
 If they will hear, 
 They who are worst but need me most, 
 
 And all are dear :" 
 And the angels were not silent. 
 
 Hilda, p. 1 02. 
 
 A CHURCH OF THE AGES. 
 
 IT is a Church of the Ages, all 
 
 Arched and pillared and grandly towered, 
 With many a niche on the buttressed wall, 
 
 And delicate tracery, scrolled and flowered : 
 Gargoyles gape, and arches fly 
 From base to base of the pinnacles high, 
 And the great cross points to the solemn sky. 
 
A CHURCH OF THE AGES. 153 
 
 A stately Church, and a Church all through, 
 
 Everywhere shaped by a thought divine, 
 With symbols of Him who is Just and True, 
 
 And emblems of Him who is Bread and Wine, 
 It is dowered with wealth of land and gold, 
 And memories high of the days of old, 
 And of sheep that were lost gathered into its fold. 
 
 Lord bishops sleep their slumber deep 
 
 Under mitre and crosier carved in stone ; 
 There are brasses quaint for the warrior saint 
 
 Who had battled at Acre and Ascalon ; 
 In the low-groined crypts lie kings and earls, 
 Resting now from their plots and quarrels, 
 But they mix not their dust with the rustic carles. 
 
 It is not day, and it is not dark, 
 
 And the altar-lights are burning dim ; 
 One sings, but it is not priest nor clerk, 
 And he chaunts no psalm, and he sings 
 
 hymn. 
 
 Who are these that are trooping in, 
 With grimy visage, and bearded chin, 
 Rude and unmannered, with noisy din? 
 
 Some one is wailing a poor soul ailing 
 
 Down in the dim aisles far away ; 
 Who is that droning? is he intoning 
 
 The great Athanasian curse to-day? 
 Silence that chatter and laughter there, 
 And do not stand bonneted up to stare- 
 Hush ! that is surely the voice of prayer. 
 
154 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 FIRST VOICE. 
 
 They have made Thy Temple a place abhorred, 
 They have mocked Thy Christ, for His own 
 
 betrayed Him ; 
 
 And now they have taken away my Lord, 
 Ah woe ! and I know not where they have laid 
 Him. 
 
 SECOND VOICE. 
 
 Now that the gods are certainly dead 
 
 Brahma and Zeus and the Father, and all 
 With a desk and a lime-light overhead, 
 
 We might use this up for a lecture-hall. 
 We could shew them things on the altar there 
 
 Bringing the light to the proper focus 
 Wonderful transformations rare, 
 
 Would beat the priests with their hocus-pocus : 
 With two or three chemicals we could make 
 
 Nature her miracle-power surrender, 
 And a glass, at the angle fit, would wake 
 
 A ghost as well as the witch of Endor. 
 Everything here would give point to my hits 
 At the monk's huge faith, and his little wits. 
 As I drive at Bigots, and shout for Truth, 
 And laugh at the dreams of the world's raw youth. 
 
 THIRD VOICE. 
 
 A pest on all the reforming crew, 
 
 Savant or Puritan, old or new ! 
 
 See how the rogues come tramping in, 
 
 Now that they have not to praise or pray 
 
A CHURCH OF THE AGES. 155 
 
 Faugh ! what a breath of tobacco and gin ! 
 
 They crowd to church because God is away ! 
 And they've smashed that pitying angel's face, 
 That touched one's heart with its tender grace, 
 None of their brute- wits can ever replace. 
 
 If there be angels good or bad, 
 I very much doubt, and I do not much care ; 
 
 But yet what a pitying look it had, 
 Beaming down from the oriel there ! 
 
 Will no one silence that idiot's chatter 
 About laws, forsooth, of health and riches ? 
 
 I'd rather the old priest's " stabat-mater "- 
 If we had but the ordeal now for witches, 
 
 Wouldn't I souse him into the water ! 
 
 FOURTH VOICE. 
 
 Anathema Maranatha ! Hark ! 
 
 Be he sinner or be he saint, 
 There is no place in the saving Ark 
 
 For one who keeps but a cobweb faint 
 Of doubt in his heart, or doubt in his head, 
 About any one article I have read. 
 " Credo," that is the key of heaven ; 
 
 The more incredible, so much more 
 Virtue lies in the Credo given 
 
 To open the everlasting door. 
 Thurifer, let the censer wave : 
 
 " Hoc est corpus," lift it high ; 
 Christ is risen from the stone-sealed grave ; 
 
 Now let us forth with Him, and die 
 Into the life that comes thereby. 
 In high procession the priests will go 
 Chaunting the Dies Irae low, 
 
156 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 Dies ilia, sad and slow. 
 So the Church in the days of old, 
 Robed in linen and purple and gold, 
 Foiled the Devil, and all his tricks, 
 And drove out the swine with a crucifix. 
 
 FIRST VOICE (far away). 
 
 They have taken away my Lord, 
 
 And I know not where they have laid Him ! 
 
 So it went wailing down the long aisle, 
 
 Mixed with the hum of the priest and the 
 
 people ; 
 
 And a shudder passed through the massive pile, 
 From the low-groined crypt to the cross on the 
 
 steeple : 
 
 And the glimmering lights on the altar died, 
 No more the priest-hymn sobbed and sighed, 
 But a hollow wind wailed through the transept 
 
 wide. 
 
 Hilda, p. i. 
 
 THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 O THE silences of heaven, 
 
 How they speak to me of God, 
 Now the veil in twain is riven 
 
 That concealed where He abode ! 
 Yet its clouds were once around Him f 
 
 And I sought Him in despair, 
 And never there I found Him, 
 
 Till I brought Him with me there. 
 
THE VISION OF GOD. 157 
 
 Not the optic glass revealed Him, 
 
 No mechanical device 
 Pierced the darkness that concealed Him 
 
 With a vision more precise : 
 Only lowliness can merit 
 
 That His secret He should tell ; 
 Only spirit seeth spirit, 
 
 And the heart that loveth well. 
 
 Never till His love hath found thee, 
 
 Shall the cloud and mist depart ; 
 Vain to seek Him all around thee, 
 
 Till He dwell within thy heart. 
 Not without thee, but within thee 
 
 Must the oracle be heard, 
 As He seeketh still to win thee, 
 
 And to guide thee by His word. 
 
 When I found Him in my bosom, 
 
 Then I found Him everywhere. 
 In the bud and in the blossom, 
 
 In the earth and in the air ; 
 And He spake to me with clearness 
 
 From the silent stars that say, 
 As ye find Him in His nearness, 
 
 Ye shall find Him far away. 
 
 Heretic, p. 52. 
 
 THE BURDEN OF GOD. 
 
 I BORE a load of doubt and care. 
 And could not reason it away ; 
 
 It might have no right to be there. 
 Yet clung to me by night and day. 
 
158 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 And I was fain to be alone, 
 
 A stranger in a far off land, 
 Where friend and helper I had none, 
 
 Nor any that could understand. 
 O for a glad entrancing faith ! 
 
 O for an all-controlling thought 
 To fill my soul, as with a breath 
 
 That from the Eternal life is brought ! 
 Let me but be alone with God 
 
 A little while on some high place, 
 Where rarely foot of man hath trod, 
 
 That I may see Him face to face. 
 So did they 'long of old, who built 
 
 High altars on the hill-tops bare, 
 To leave their load of sin and guilt, 
 
 And find the peace they hoped for there. 
 
 Then I went toiling up the glen, 
 
 Like one that wanders in a dream, 
 Past broad-eaved homes of toiling men, 
 
 Along the swiftly rushing stream, 
 Past the white kirk with ruddy spire, 
 
 And solitary wayside shrine, 
 Where peasant mothers did admire 
 
 The mother of the Babe divine, 
 Past orchards where the tawny steer, 
 
 Black-muzzled, stood and whisked his tail, 
 While men sat in the tavern near, 
 
 With flask of wine or mug of ale. 
 I heard the sharp whisk of the scythe. . , 
 
 And dragging of the patient rake, 
 I heard the children singing blithe, 
 
 And felt as if my heart would break. 
 
THE BURDEN OF GOD. 159 
 
 They sang the song of Bethlehem, 
 And glad their voices were and clear ; 
 
 And O that I could sing like them, 
 And only knew that God would hear ! 
 
 Still on, I bore my burden on, 
 
 Finding no help in kirk or shrine, 
 Or crucifix of carven stone, 
 
 Or picture of the Babe divine : 
 Alone, I must be all alone, 
 
 Beyond the mighty wooded slopes ; 
 I would have company with none, 
 
 But those vast, silent mountain tops 
 Which held me with their snowy spell, 
 
 And bade me come to where they stood, 
 And in their white robes worshipped well 
 
 The Everlasting Pure and Good. 
 
 I took the steep rock-path that winds 
 
 Through the pine wood above the stream, 
 High up the grey-green glacier grinds, 
 
 Far down its grey-green waters gleam, 
 A torrent from a neighbouring cliff 
 
 Leaped down, and disappeared half way, 
 To fall in tremulous mist, as if 
 
 Nature to me was fain to say 
 See how the rush of lofty thought, 
 
 The higher that its way appears, 
 The deeper that its rest is sought, 
 
 Still vanishes in mist and tears. 
 
 Still up the rugged path I went, 
 
 With panting breath and trembling knees, 
 And weary limb, and back low bent, 
 
 Till, past the belt of great pine trees 
 
160 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 I came upon a sunny glade 
 
 Open and green, with brooks and wells, 
 And crocus fields where cattle wade, 
 
 With noise of many jangling bells, 
 And flat-roofed chalets, piled with stone, 
 
 For winds are boisterous there and wild, 
 But kirk or steeple there was none, 
 
 Only the Virgin and her Child, 
 Kept in some homely box for shrine, 
 
 And sheltered in a quiet nook, 
 Where humble worship might incline 
 
 With bended knee and lowly look. 
 But all these fond traditions stood 
 
 How sweet soe'er their tender grace 
 Between me and the Pure and Good, 
 
 And I must see Him face to face. 
 
 A little speech, a little rest, 
 
 A cup of goat's milk at the door ; 
 Bid me not stay and be your guest, 
 
 There are a good eight hours and more. 
 Before the sun dips in the west, 
 
 And I must on at any price, 
 To see his evening glories rest 
 
 Upon the pale green glacier ice, 
 And on the web of pallid snow, 
 
 That wraps the hills in raiment white. 
 And on the changing clouds below, 
 
 That catch the fringes of his light. 
 I did not tell my inmost thought : 
 
 Those neat-herds could not well divine 
 How I, in search of God, was brought 
 
 Away from kirk and cross and shrine. 
 
THE BURDEN OF GOD. 161 
 
 Still up and up ; the Alpen-stock 
 
 Oft buried in the turf before, 
 Now smote upon the living rock, 
 
 And from its heart the fire-spark tore ; 
 And as I trod the gradual slope 
 
 'Neath some snow-crested precipice, 
 And glanced round with a passing hope 
 
 Of chamois fleet or Edelweiss, 
 Lo ! then my step grew lightsomer, 
 
 And cheerily I sped along, 
 And in the brisk and tingling air 
 
 I could have broken into song. 
 And this I took for omen true, 
 
 That I was on the way of peace, 
 That doubts were where the pine-woods grew 
 
 And with the haunts of man would cease. 
 
 And so at length I trod the snow 
 
 On the hill-top that afternoon, 
 And saw it in the evening glow, 
 
 And in the sheen o' th' pallid moon, 
 And saw the wondrous morning dawn 
 
 All rosy on the white-robed peaks 
 That, ranged like priest-forms in their lawn, 
 
 Served through eternal holy weeks 
 About the altar of the Lord, 
 
 Awful in their blanch beauty there, 
 Silent as if with one accord 
 
 Wrapt in the hush of speechless^ prayer. 
 There was no sound of man or beast, 
 
 Nor hum of bee, nor song of bird, 
 And more the silence seemed increased 
 
 What time the avalanche was heard. 
 L 
 
162 SERAfONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 Once they had held me with a spell, 
 
 And drawn me with a mystic force, 
 Those hills, as deeming God must dwell 
 
 There where the waters had their source, 
 Which made the vales and meadows glad ; 
 
 There where in majesty sublime 
 The changeless snow-clad summits had 
 
 No reckoning of the passing time. 
 There 'mid the everlasting snow 
 
 Should I not see the eternal right, 
 And look down on the mists below, 
 
 And gaze up to the fount of light, 
 And find my burden fall away, 
 
 And feel at last the perfect calm, 
 That broods in the unchanging day, 
 
 And vision of the great I Am? 
 
 But as I stood upon the height, 
 
 I did not find what I had sought, 
 I did not find the perfect light, 
 
 That answered to my wistful thought ; 
 It did not ease me of my load, 
 
 That I had left the world behind ; 
 I was not any nearer God 
 
 By being far from human kind. 
 And up amid the bands of ice 
 
 And silent fields of clinging snow, 
 I could have purchased with a price 
 
 The Virgin and the Babe below. 
 For not in nature's awfulness, 
 
 And majesty and purity, 
 And not in her dread silences 
 
 Shall God reveal His depths to thee ; 
 
THE BURDEN OF GOD. 163 
 
 But in a heart that throbs to thine, 
 
 And tongue that speaks a human speech : 
 The human is the one divine, 
 
 That yearning human souls can reach. 
 There is no scene of earth fulfils 
 
 The high hope of the soaring mind, 
 And in the quiet of the hills 
 
 The peace of God I did not find ; 
 And sweet it was with weary limbs, 
 
 Ere long to sit i' the kirk, and hear 
 The children singing in their hymns, 
 
 That Christ was come, and God was near. 
 
 Heretic, p. 55. 
 
 CONTENT. 
 
 HOWE'ER it be with some, the broad highway 
 Is better than the priestly path for me ; 
 
 For when it was my task, from day to day, 
 
 To do official pieties, and pray, 
 
 I think I might have grown a Pharisee, 
 
 Pumping my heart, when it was dry as dust, 
 
 For words of faith and hope because I must. 
 
 Then are we at our highest, when we touch 
 
 The Infinite and Good in worship due, 
 Bowing in lowly reverence to such 
 As we deem holiest, and trusting much 
 
 Because the holiest is most pitying too : 
 Nothing so nobly human as the quest 
 That seeks true man in God, and there finds rest. 
 
164 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 But he who all day handles sacred tasks, 
 While his thoughts travail with the world, 
 
 and he 
 
 Nor hopes to get from God the thing he asks, 
 Nor yet to hide from God the heart he masks 
 
 To others how it wounds his soul to be 
 Praying-machine, until the day's chief sin 
 Is the chief duty he, has done therein ! 
 
 I did not turn a Pharisee ; I fought 
 Against the perils that my life beset, 
 
 And when I felt no worship, worshipped not, 
 
 And when my heart was merry, mirth I sought, 
 Entangling jests like gay moths in a net, 
 
 And laughed, and made laugh, though I saw, the 
 while, 
 
 They fancied not a priest so given to smile. 
 
 Be the road stormy, be it calm and mild, 
 
 Yet snares are spread there, pitfalls too are dug : 
 
 The pious mother, longing that her child 
 
 May keep his white robe clean and undefiled, 
 Dreams of a peaceful parsonage and snug, 
 
 Where the world comes not, neither any snare ; 
 
 Yet world and flesh and devil, too, are there. 
 
 Just past their teens, we task young souls to do 
 
 What needs a large experience deeply-tried ; 
 And oft I marvel they remain so true, 
 Freshening the old, and bringing forth the new, 
 And with the growing life still growing wide ; 
 For the cloud-incense of the altar hides 
 The true form of the God who there abides. 
 
CONTENT. 165 
 
 But now I do my work with hand and head, 
 And do my worship with a separate heart ; 
 
 With a good conscience earning daily bread, 
 
 And by the Heavenly Father duly fed, 
 I keep the worship and the work apart ; 
 
 And yet the work has worship in it too, 
 
 But willing service, not a task I do. 
 
 My heart is more at one, my soul more calm, 
 
 My Sunday more a welcome joy to me, 
 Whose rest is sweetened by the folded palm, 
 The bended knee, and the uplifted psalm, 
 While once it was a fretful troubled sea 
 Vexed by the thought of human praise or blame, 
 And only partly lit by the Great Name. 
 
 Raban, p. 118. 
 
 EARTH WAS WAITING. 
 
 1 When the fulness of the time was come, God sent 
 forth His Son, made of a woman." Gal. iv. 4. 
 
 EARTH was waiting, spent and restless, 
 With a mingled hope and fear; 
 
 And the faithful few were sighing, 
 " Surely, Lord, the day is near ; 
 
 The desire of all the nations, 
 It is time He should appear." 
 
 Still the gods were in their temples 
 But the ancient faith had fled ; 
 
166 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 And the priests stood by their altars 
 
 Only for a piece of bread ; 
 And the Oracles were silent, 
 
 And the Prophets all were dead. 
 
 In the sacred courts of Zion, 
 Where the Lord had His abode, 
 
 There the money-changers trafficked, 
 And the sheep and oxen trod ; 
 
 And the world, because of wisdom, 
 Knew not either Lord or God. 
 
 Then the spirit of the Highest 
 On a virgin meek came down, 
 
 And He burdened her with blessing, 
 And He pained her with renown ; 
 
 For she bare the Lord's Anointed 
 For His cross and for His crown. 
 
 Earth for Him had groaned and travailed, 
 
 Since the ages first began ; 
 For in Him was hid the secret 
 
 That through all the ages ran 
 Son of Mary, Son of David, 
 
 Son of God, and Son of Man. 
 
 Hymns, p. in. 
 
THINK ON ME, LORD. 167 
 
 THINK ON ME, LORD. 
 "Think upon me, my God, for good." Nehem. v. 19. 
 
 THINK on me, Lord ; for I am all alone, 
 
 My friends and brethren turn their eyes away; 
 
 Who love me, fear to let their love be known ; 
 Who hate me, boast that none shall say them 
 
 nay; 
 Think on me, Lord, and open up my way. 
 
 They watch my steps my steps do always err ; 
 
 They catch my words no word of mine is true ; 
 Mine every look hath something sinister ; 
 
 And what lacks meaning they give meaning to ; 
 
 Think on me Lord ; I wot not what to do. 
 
 Think on me, Lord; I lift mine eyes above, 
 And reach out in the darkness for Thy light, 
 
 And reach out in my loneliness for love, 
 And in my weakness reach to Thee for might ; 
 Think on me, Lord, alone in the dark night. 
 
 I think on Thee, whom all forsook and fled, 
 And on the loneliness of Love divine, 
 
 And of the thorns they plaited for Thy head ; 
 And then I think how light are griefs of mine, 
 Yea, glorious being a fellowship with Thine. 
 
 Think on me, Lord ; for in the name of Him 
 Whose name is Love, they compass me with 
 hate ; 
 
 Think on me, Lord ; and in my darkness trim 
 The lamp within, that I may calmly wait, 
 Loving the more the more disconsolate. 
 
 Hymns, p. 46. 
 
168 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 ONE THING I OF THE LORD DESIRE. 
 
 1 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. : 
 Matt. v. 8. 
 
 ONE thing I of the Lord desire 
 For all my way hath miry been 
 
 Be it by water or by fire, 
 O make me clean. 
 
 Erewhile I strove for perfect truth, 
 And thought it was a worthy strife ; 
 
 But now I leave that aim of youth 
 For perfect life. 
 
 If clearer vision Thou impart, 
 Grateful and glad my soul shall be ; 
 
 But yet to have a purer heart 
 Is more to me. 
 
 Yea, only as the heart is clean 
 
 May larger vision yet be mine, 
 For mirrored in its depths are seen 
 
 The things divine. 
 
 I watch to shun the miry way, 
 
 And stanch the spring of guilty thought ; 
 But, watch and wrestle as I may, 
 
 Pure I am not. 
 
 So wash Thou me without, within ; 
 
 Or purge with fire, if that must be ; 
 No matter how, if only sin 
 
 Die out in me. 
 
 Thoughts and Fancies, p. 3, 
 
BE STILL. 169 
 
 BE STILL. 
 
 " Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and 
 be still" Ps. iv. 4. 
 
 BE still, and know He doeth all things well, 
 Working the purpose of His holy will, 
 
 And if His high designs He do not tell 
 Till He accomplish them do thou be still 
 
 Why should'st thou strive and fret and fear and 
 doubt, 
 
 As if His way, being dark, must bode thee ill? 
 If thine own way be clearly pointed out, 
 
 Leave Him to clear up His, and be thou still. 
 
 Was ever yet thy trust in Him misplaced? 
 
 And hoping in Him, did He not fulfil 
 The word on which He caused thee to rest, 
 
 Though not as thou had'st thought, perchance? 
 Be still. 
 
 What if the road be rough which might be 
 smooth ? 
 
 Is not the rough road best for thee, until 
 Thou learn by patient walking in the truth 
 
 To trust and hope in God, and to be still ? 
 
 A little faith is more than clearest views ; 
 
 Would'st thou have ocean like a babbling rill ? 
 God without mystery were not good news ; 
 
 Wrestle not with the darkness, but be still. 
 
i;o SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 Be still, and know that he is God indeed 
 Who reigns in glory on His holy hill, 
 
 Yet once upon the Cross did hang and bleed, 
 And heard the people raging and was still. 
 
 Thoughts and Fancies, p. 21. 
 
 LORD, I WOULD CHOOSE. 
 ' Mary hath chosen that good part." Luke x. 42. 
 
 LORD, I would choose the better part 
 Which none may take away from me ; 
 
 Let me not fret with anxious heart, 
 But sit at peace, and hold with Thee 
 
 Communion sweet here at Thy feet. 
 
 There be that love Thee well and true, 
 And yet they vex their souls with care ; 
 
 For still much service they will do, 
 And many needless vessels bear, 
 
 And they with such are cumbered much. 
 
 They love Thee, Lord, and Thy good word, 
 Yet of Thy joy they stint their heart, 
 
 And grudge the peace Thou dost accord 
 To them that choose the better part ; 
 
 And, idly faint, they make complaint. 
 
 The one thing needful let me do, 
 Nor let my service cumber me ; 
 
 Who serve the Lord must hold in view 
 They need Him more than needeth He ; 
 
 Who serve Him best in Him too rest. 
 
LORD, I WOULD CHOOSE. 171 
 
 So would I rest, Lord, at Thy feet, 
 And learn of Thee, and look above ; 
 
 Doing the service that is meet, 
 But free to worship and to love, 
 
 And find increase of grace and peace. 
 
 Hymns, p. 153. 
 
 HE LED ME OUT AND IN. 
 
 He shall go in and out, and find pasture." John x. 9. 
 
 HE led me out and in, 
 And pasture still I found, 
 
 For where He led me 
 
 There He fed me, 
 Although it might seem barren ground. 
 
 He led me out and in, 
 Yet in the frost and cold, 
 
 With Him beside me 
 
 To cheer and guide me, 
 My peace was great as in the Fold. 
 
 He led me out and in, 
 From many a hallowed spot 
 
 To buying, selling, 
 
 Planting, felling, 
 And yet my spirit fainted not. 
 
 He led me out and in, 
 And if to-day was glad, 
 
 While to-morrow 
 
 Brought its sorrow, 
 Yet they both a blessing had. 
 
172 SERMONS AND MORALITIES. 
 
 So lead me out and in : 
 Thy guidance, Lord, is best ; 
 
 If Thou chasten 
 
 'Tis to hasten 
 My footsteps to the promised rest. 
 
 And in the Fold or out, 
 It shall be well with me 
 
 Or in sadness, 
 
 Or in gladness, 
 If only I am still with Thee. 
 
 Thoughts and Fancies, p. 16. 
 
 LORD, WE ARE PILGRIMS. 
 
 'They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims 
 on the earth." Heb. xi. 13. 
 
 LORD, we are pilgrims here, 
 
 Resting a night ; 
 Waiting our call lo hear 
 
 At morning light; 
 Humble our fare may be, 
 Thankful no less are we, 
 Parting more easily 
 
 From small delight. 
 
 Lord, we are pilgrims poor ; 
 
 But Thou art right, 
 He goeth nimblest sure 
 
 Who goeth light; 
 
LORD, WE ARE PILGRIMS. 173 
 
 Riches we would not heap, 
 Burdens they were to keep, 
 Cares only should we reap 
 By day and night. 
 
 Lord, we are pilgrims true, 
 
 Nor would go back ; 
 E'er since Thy love we knew 
 
 Nothing we lack ; 
 Dark is the earth with sin, 
 And we would glory win, 
 Let not our pace begin 
 
 Now to be slack. 
 
 Lord, we are pilgrims all, 
 
 Hastening to Thee ; 
 Forward, whate'er befal, 
 
 Our path must be ; 
 Our home in Heaven is, 
 Glory and blessedness, 
 Rest and eternal peace 
 
 There we shall see. 
 
 Lord, do Thou bring us all 
 
 Back when we stray ; 
 And let us never fall 
 
 Out by the way; 
 Still let us sing Thy praise, 
 Still serve the God of grace, 
 Still do with cheerfulness 
 
 What good we may. 
 
 Hymns, p. 91. 
 
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