And knock out or knock in the nail
(We will rank them as flatly sincere,
Devoutly detesting a wrong,
Engines o'ercharged with our human steam),
Question thee, seething amid the throng.
And ask, whether Wisdom is born of blood-
heat;

Or of other than Wisdom comes victory here;—
Aught more than the banquet and roundelay,
That is closed with a terrible terminal wail,
A retributive black ding-dong?

And ask of thyself: This furious Yea
Of a speech I thump to repeat,
In the cause I would have prevail,
For seed of a nourishing wheat,

*Is it accepted of Song?*

Does it sound to the mind through the ear,
Right sober, pure sane? has it disciplined feet?

Thou wilt find it a test severe;
Unerring whatever the theme.

Rings it for Reason a melody clear,
We have bidden old Chaos retreat;
We have called on Creation to hear;

All forces that make us are one full stream.

28

Simple islander! thus may the spirit in verse,
Showing its practical value and weight,
Pipe to thee clear from the Empty Purse,
Lead thee aloft to that high estate.—

The test is conclusive, I deem:

It embraces or mortally bites.

We have then the key-note for debate:

A Senate that sits on the heights
Over discords, to shape and amend.

And no singer is needed to serve

The musical God, my friend.

Needs only his law on a sensible nerve:

A law that to Measure invites,
Forbidding the passions contend.

*Is it accepted of Song?*

And if then the blunt answer be Nay,
Dislink thee sharp from the ramping horde,
Slaves of the Goddess of hoar-old sway,

The Queen of delirious rites,
Queen of those issueless mobs, that rend
For frenzy the strings of a fruitful accord,
Pursuing insensate, seething in throng,

29

Their wild idea to its ashen end.
Off to their Phrygia, shriek and gong,
Shorn from their fellows, behold them wend!

But thou, should the answer ring Ay,
Hast warrant of seed for thy word:
The musical God is nigh
To inspirit and temper, tune it, and steer
Through the shoals: is it worthy of Song,
There are souls all woman to hear,
Woman to bear and renew.

For he is the Master of Measure, and weighs,
Broad as the arms of his blue,
Fine as the web of his rays,
Justice, whose voice is a melody clear,
The one sure life for the numbered long.
From him are the brutal and vain,
The vile, the excessive, out-thrust:

He points to the God on the upmost throne!
He is the saver of grain,
The sifter of spirit from dust.

He, Harmony, tells how to Measure pertain
The virilities: Measure alone
Has votaries rich in the male:

30

Fathers embracing no cloud,
Sowing no harvestless main:
Alike by the flesh and the spirit endowed
To create, to perpetuate; woo, win, wed;
Send progeny streaming, have earth for their own,
Over-run the insensates, disperse with a puff
Simulacra, though solid they sail,
And seem such imperial stuff:
Yes, the living divide off the dead.

Then thou with thy furies outgrown,
Not as Cybele's beast will thy head lash tail
So præter-determinedly thermonous,
Nor thy cause be an Attis far fled.
Thou under stress of the strife,
Shalt hear for sustainment supreme,
The cry of the conscience of Life:
Keep the young generations in hail,
And bequeath them no tumbled house!

There hast thou the sacred theme,
Therein the inveterate spur,
Of the Innermost. See her one blink
In vision past eyeballs. Not thee

31

She cares for, but us, Follow her.

Follow her, and thou wilt not sink.

With thy soul the Life espouse:

This Life of the visible, audible, ring

With thy love tight about; and no death will be;

The name be an empty thing,

And woe a forgotten old trick:

And battle will come as a challenge to drink;

As a warrior's wound each transient sting.

She leads to the Uppermost link by link;

Exacts but vision, desires not vows.

Above us the singular number to see;

The plural warm round us; ourself in the thick,

A dot or a stop: that is our task;

Her lesson in figured arithmetic,

For the letters of Life behind its mask;

Her flower-like look under fearful brows.

As for thy special case, O my friend, one must think
Massilia's victim, who held the carouse

For the length of a carnival year,

Knew worse: but the wretch had his opening choice.

For thee, by our law, no alternatives were:

Thy fall was assured ere thou camest to a voice.

32

He cancelled the ravaging Plague,

With the roll of his fat off the cliff.

Do thou with thy lean as the weapon of ink,

Though they call thee an angler who fishes the
vague

And catches the not too pink,

Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause

Is the cause of community. Iterate,

Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite:

Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff:

Yet always in measure, with bearing polite:

The manner of one that would expiate

His share in grandmotherly Laws,

Which do the dark thing to destroy,

Under aspect of water so guilelessly white

For the general use, by the devils befouled.

Enough, poor prodigal boy!

Thou hast listened with patience; another had
howled.

Repentance is proved, forgiveness is earned.

And 'tis bony: denied thee thy succulent half

Of the parable's blessing to swineherd returned:

A Sermon thy slice of the Scriptural calf!

31—C

33

By my faith, there is feasting to come,
Not the less, when our Earth we have seen
Beneath and on surface, her deeds and designs:
Who gives us the man-loving Nazarene,
The martyrs, the poets, the corn and the vines.
By my faith in the head, she has wonders in loom;
Revelations, delights. I can hear a faint crow
Of the cock of fresh mornings, far, far, yet distinct;
As down the new shafting of mines,
A cry of the metally gnome.
When our Earth we have seen, and have linked
With the home of the Spirit to whom we unfold,
Imprisoned humanity open will throw
Its fortress gates, and the rivers of gold
For the congregate friendliness flow.
Then the meaning of Earth in her children behold:
Glad eyes, frank hands, and a fellowship real:
And laughter on lips, as the birds' outburst
At the flooding of light. No robbery then
The feast, nor a robber's abode the home,
For a furnished model of our first den!
Nor Life as a stationed wheel;
Nor History written in blood or in foam,
For vendetta of Parties in cursing accursed.

34

The God in the conscience of multitudes feel,
And we feel deep to Earth at her heart,
We have her communion with men,
New ground, new skies for appeal.
Yield into harness thy best and thy worst;
Away on the trot of thy servitude start,
Through the rigours and joys and sustainments of air.
If courage should falter, 'tis wholesome to kneel.
Remember that well, for the secret with some,
Who pray for no gift, but have cleansing in prayer,
And free from impurities tower-like stand.
I promise not more, save that feasting will come
To a mind and a body no longer inversed:
The sense of large charity over the land,
Earth's wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough,
And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal
Through the active machine: lean fare,
But it carries a sparkle! And now enough,
And part we as comrades part,
To meet again never or some day or soon.

Our season of drought is reminder rude:—
No later than yesternoon,
I looked on the horse of a cart,

35

By the wayside water-trough.
How at every draught of his bride of thirst
His nostrils widened! The sight was good:
Food for us, food, such as first
Drew our thoughts to earth's lowly for food.

JUMP-TO-GLORY JANE

I

A revelation came on Jané,
The widow of a labouring swain:
And first her body trembled sharp,
Then all the woman was a harp
With winds along the strings; she heard
Though there was neither tone nor word.

II

For past our hearing was the air,
Beyond our speaking what it bare,
And she within herself had sight
Of heaven at work to cleanse outright,
To make of her a mansion fit
For angel hosts inside to sit.

36

37

### III

They entered, and forthwith entranced,
Her body braced, her members danced;
Surprisingly the woman leapt;
And countenance composed she kept;
As gossip neighbours in the lane
Declared, who saw and pitied Jane.

### IV

These knew she had been reading books
The which was witnessed by her looks
Of late: she had a mania
For mad folk in America,
And said for sure they led the way,
But meat and beer were meant to stay.

### V

That she had visited a fair,
Had seen a gauzy lady there,
Alive with tricks on legs alone,
As good as wings, was also known:
And longwhiles in a sullen mood,
Before her jumping, Jane would brood.

38

### VI

A good knee's height, they say, she sprang;
Her arms and feet like those who hang:
As if afire the body sped,
And neither pair contributed.
She jumped in silence: she was thought
A corpse to resurrection caught.

### VII

The villagers were mostly dazed;
They jeered, they wondered, and they praised.
'Twas guessed by some she was inspired,
And some would have it she had hired
An engine in her petticoats,
To turn their wits and win their votes.

### VIII

Her first was Winny Earnes, a kind
Of woman not to dance inclined;
But she went up, entirely won,
Ere Jump-to-glory Jane had done;
And once a vixen wild for speech,
She found the better way to preach.

39

IX

No long time after, Jane was seen
Directing jumps at Daddy Green;
And that old man, to watch her fly,
Had eyebrows made of arches high;
Till homeward he likewise did hop,
Oft calling on himself to stop!

X

It was a scene when man and maid,
Abandoning all other trade,
And careless of the call to meals,
Went jumping at the woman's heels.
By dozens they were counted soon,
Without a sound to tell their tune.

XI

Along the roads they came, and crossed
The fields, and o'er the hills were lost,
And in the evening reappeared;
Then short like hobbled horses reared,
And down upon the grass they plumped:
Alone their Jane to glory jumped.

40

XII

At morn they rose, to see her spring
All going as an engine thing;
And lighter than the gossamer
She led the bobbers following her,
Past old acquaintances, and where
They made the stranger stupid stare.

XIII

When turnips were a filling crop,
In scorn they jumped a butcher's shop:
Or, spite of threats to flog and souse,
They jumped for shame a public-house:
And much their legs were seized with rage
If passing by the vicarage.

XIV

The tightness of a hempen rope
Their bodies got; but laundry soap
Not handsomer can rub the skin
For token of the washed within.
Occasionally coughers cast
A leg aloft and coughed their last.

41

## XV

The weaker maids and some old men,
Requiring rafters for the pen
On rainy nights, were those who fell.
The rest were quite a miracle,
Refreshed as you may search all round
On Club-feast days and cry, Not found!

## XVI

For these poor innocents, that slept
Against the sky, soft women wept:
For never did they any theft;
'Twas known when they their camping left,
And jumped the cold out of their rags;
In spirit rich as money-bags.

## XVII

They jumped the question, jumped reply;
And whether to insist, deny,
Reprove, persuade, they jumped in ranks
Or singly, straight the arms to flanks,
And straight the legs, with just a knee
For bending in a mild degree.

42

## XVIII

The villagers might call them mad;
An endless holiday they had,
Of pleasure in a serious work:
They taught by leaps where perils lurk,
And with the lambkins practised sports
For 'scaping Satan's pounds and quarts.

## XIX

It really seemed on certain days,
When they bobbed up their Lord to praise,
And bobbing up they caught the glance
Of light, our secret is to dance,
And hold the tongue from hindering peace;
To dance out preacher and police.

## XX

Those flies of boys disturbed them sore
On Sundays and when daylight wore:
With withies cut from hedge or copse,
They treated them as whipping-tops,
And flung big stones with cruel aim;
Yet all the flock jumped on the same.

43

## XXI

For what could persecution do
To worry such a blessed crew,
On whom it was as wind to fire,
Which set them always jumping higher?
The parson and the lawyer tried,
By meek persistency defied.

## XXII

But if they bore, they could pursue
As well, and this the Bishop too;
When inner warnings proved him plain
The chase for Jump-to-glory Jane.
She knew it by his being sent
To bless the feasting in the tent.

## XXIII

Not less than fifty years on end,
The Squire had been the Bishop's friend:
And his poor tenants, harmless ones,
With souls to save! fed not on buns,
But angry meats: she took her place
Outside to show the way to grace.

44

## XXIV

In apron suit the Bishop stood;
The crowding people kindly viewed.
A gaunt grey woman he saw rise
On air, with most beseeching eyes:
And evident as light in dark
It was, she set to him for mark.

## XXV

Her highest leap had come: with ease
She jumped to reach the Bishop's knees:
Compressing tight her arms and lips,
She sought to jump the Bishop's hips:
Her aim flew at his apron-band,
That he might see and understand.

## XXVI

The mild inquiry of his gaze
Was altered to a peaked amaze,
At sight of thirty in ascent;
To gain his notice clearly bent:
And greatly Jane at heart was vexed
By his ploughed look of mind perplexed.

45

## XXVII

In jumps that said, Beware the pit!
More eloquent than speaking it—
That said, Avoid the boiled, the roast;
The heated nose on face of ghost,
Which comes of drinking: up and o’er,
The flesh with me! did Jane implore.

## XXVIII

She jumped him high as huntsmen go
Across the gate; she jumped him low,
To coax him to begin and feel
His infant steps returning, peel
His mortal pride, exposing fruit,
And off with hat and apron suit.

## XXIX

We need much patience, well she knew,
And out and out, and through and through,
When we would gentlefolk address,
However we may seek to bless:
At times they hide them like the beasts
From sacred beams; and mostly priests.

46

## XXX

He gave no sign of making bare,
Nor she of faintness or despair.
Inflamed with hope that she might win,
If she but coaxed him to begin,
She used all arts for making fain;
The mother with her babe was Jane.

## XXXI

Now stamped the Squire, and knowing not
Her business, waved her from the spot.
Encircled by the men of might,
The head of Jane, like flickering light,
As in a charger, they beheld
Ere she was from the park expelled.

## XXXII

Her grief, in jumps of earthly weight,
Did Jane around communicate:
For that the moment when began
The holy but mistaken man,
In view of light, to take his lift,
They cut him from her charm adrift!

47

XXXIII

And he was lost: a banished face
For ever from the ways of grace,
Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright.
They saw the Bishop's wavering sprite
Within her look, at come and go,
Long after he had caused her woe.

XXXIV

Her greying eyes (until she sank
At Fredsham on the wayside bank,
Like cinder heaps that whitened lie
From coals that shot the flame to sky)
Had glassy vacancies, which yearned
For one in memory discerned.

XXXV

May those who ply the tongue that cheats,
And those who rush to beer and meats,
And those whose mean ambition aims
At palaces and titled names,
Depart in such a cheerful strain
As did our Jump-to-glory Jane!

48

XXXVI

Her end was beautiful: one sigh.
She jumped a foot when it was nigh.
A lily in a linen clout
She looked when they had laid her out.
It is a lily-light she bears
For England up the ladder-stairs.

31—D

49

ODES

TO THE COMIC SPIRIT

Sword of Common Sense!—

Our surest gift: the sacred chain

Of man to man: firm earth for trust

In structures vowed to permanence:—

Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain!

Implacable perforce of just;

With that good treasure in defence,

Which is our gold crushed out of joy and pain

Since first men planted foot and hand was king:

Bright, nimble of the marrow-nerve

To wield thy double edge, retort

Or hold the deadlier reserve,

And through thy victim's weapon sting:

Thine is the service, thine the sport

This shifty heart of ours to hunt

Across its webs and round the many a ring

53

Where fox it is, or snake, or mingled seeds
Occasion heats to shape, or the poor smoke
Struck from a puff-ball, or the troughster's grunt;—
Once lion of our desert's trodden weeds;
And but for thy straight finger at the yoke,
Again to be the lordly paw,
Naming his appetites his needs,
Behind a decorative cloak:
Thou, of the highest, the unwritten Law
We read upon that building's architrave
In the mind's firmament, by men upraised
With sweat of blood when they had quitted cave
For fellowship, and rearward looked amazed,
Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw,
Thou, soul of wakened heads, art armed to warn,
Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we sprang,
Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot,
Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn;
Through thee, in novel wiles to win disguise,
Seen are the pits of the disruptor, seen
His rebel agitation at our root:
Thou hast him out of hawking eyes;
Nor ever morning of the slang
Young Echo sped on hill from horn

54

In forest blown when scent was keen
Off earthy dews besprinkling blades
Of covert grass more merrily rang
The yelp of chase down alleys green,
Forth of the headlong-pouring glades,
Over the dappled fallows wild away,
Than thy fine unaccented scorn
At sight of man's old secret brute,
Devout for pasture on his prey,
Advancing, yawning to devour;
With step of deer, with voice of flute,
Haply with visage of the lily flower.

Let the cock crow and ruddy morn
His handmaidens appear! Youth claims his hour.
The generously ludicrous
Espouses it. But see we sons of day,
On whom Life leans for guidance in our fight,
Accept the throb for lord of us;
For lord, for the main central light
That gives direction, not the eclipse;
Or dost thou look where niggard Age,
Demanding reverence for wrinkles, whips
A tumbled top to grind a wolf's worn tooth;—

55

Hoar despot on our final stage,
In dotage of a stunted Youth;—
Or it may be some venerable sage,
Not having thee awake in him, compact
Of wisdom else, the breast's old tempter trips;
Or see we ceremonial state,
Robing the gilded beast, exact
Abjection, while the crackskull name of Fate
Is used to stamp and hallow printed fact;
A cruel corner lengthens up thy lips;
These are thy game wherever men engage:
These and, majestic in a borrowed shape,
The major and the minor potentate,
Creative of their various ape;—
The tiptoe mortals triumphing to write
Upon a perishable page
An inch above their fellows' height;—
The criers of foregone wisdom, who impose
Its slough on live conditions, much for the greed
Of our first hungry figure wide agape;—
Call up thy hounds of laughter to their run.
These, that would have men still of men be foes,
Eternal fox to prowl and pike to feed;
Would keep our life the whirly pool

56

Of turbid stuff dishonouring History;
The herd the drover's herd, the fool the fool,
Ourself our slavish self's infernal sun;
These are the children of the heart untaught
By thy quick founts to beat abroad, by thee
Untamed to tone its passions under thought,
The rich humaneness reading in thy fun.
Of them a world of coltish heels for school,
We have; a world with driving wrecks bestrewn.

'Tis written of the Gods of human mould,
Those Nectar Gods, of glorious stature hewn
To quicken hymns, that they did hear incensed,
Satiric comments overbold,
From one whose part was by decree
The jester's; but they boiled to feel him bite.
Better for them had they with Reason fenced
Or smiled corrected! They in the great Gods' might,
Their prober crushed, as fingers flea.
Crumbléd Olympus when the sovereign sire
His fatal kick to Momus gave, albeit
Men could behold the sacred Mount aspire,
The Satirist pass by on limping feet.
Those Gods who saw the ejected laugh alight

57

Below, had then their last of airy glee;
They in the cup sought Laughter's drowned sprit,
Fed to dire fatness off uncurbed conceit.
Eyes under saw them waddle on their Mount,
And drew them down; to flattest earth they rolled.
This know we veritable. O Sage of Mirth!
Can it be true, the story men recount
Of the fall'n plight of the great Gods on earth?
How they being deathless, though of human mould,
With human cravings, undecaying frames,
Must labour for subsistence; are a band
Whom a loose-cheeked, wide-lipped gay cripple leads
At haunts of holiday on summer sand;
And lightly he will hint to one that heeds,
Names in pained designation of them, names
Ensphered on blue skies and on black, which twirl
Our hearing madly from our seeing dazed,
Add Bacchus unto both; and he entreats
(His baby dimples in maternal chaps
Running wild labyrinths of line and curl)
Compassion for his masterful Trombone,
Whose thunder is the brass of how he blazed
Of old: for him of the mountain-muscle feats,
Who guts a drum to fetch a snappish groan:

58

For his fierce bugler horning onset, whom
A truncheon-battered helmet caps...
The creature is of earnest mien
To plead a sorrow darker than the tomb.
His Harp and Triangle, in tone subdued,
He names; they are a rayless red and white;
The dawn-hued libertine, the gibbous prude.
And, if we recognize his Tambourine,
He asks; exhausted names her: she has become
A globe in cupolas; the blowziest queen
Of overflowing dome on dome;
Redundancy contending with the tight,
Leaping the dam! He fondly calls, his girl,
The buxom tripper with the goblet-smile,
Refreshful. O but now his brows are dun,
Bunched are his lips, as when distilling guile,
To drop his venomous: the Dame of dames,
Flower of the world, that honey one,
She of the earthly rose in the sea-pearl,
To whom the world ran ocean for her kiss;
He names her, as a worshipper he names,
And indicates with a contemptuous thumb.
The lady meanwhile lures the mob, alike
Ogles the bursters of the horn and drum.

59

Curtain her close! her open arms
Have suckers for beholders: she to this?
For that she could not, save in fury, hear
A sharp corrective utterance flick
Her idle manners, for the laugh to strike
Beauty so breeding beauty, without peer
Above the snows, among the flowers? She reaps
This mouldy garner of the fatal kick?
Gross with the sacrifice of Circe-swarms,
Astarte of vile sweets that slay, malign,
From Greek resplendent to Phoenician foul,
The trader in attractions sinks, all brine
To thoughts of taste; is't love?—bark, dog! hoot, owl!
And she is blushless: ancient worship weeps.
Suicide Graces dangle down the charms
Sprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps.
She stands in her unholy oily leer
A statue losing feature, weather-sick
Mid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere.
The curtain cried for magnifies to see!—
We cannot quench our one corrupting glance:
The vision of the rumour will not flee.
Doth the Boy own such Mother?—shoot his dart
To bring her, countless as the crested deeps,

60

Her subjects of the uncorrected heart?
False is that vision, shrieks the devotee;
Incredible, we echo; and anew
Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps.
Low humourist this leader seems; perchance
Pitched from his University career,
Adept at classic fooling. Yet of mould
Human those Gods were: deathless too:
On high they not as meditatives paced:
Prodigiously they did the deeds of flesh:
Descending, they would touch the lowest here:
And she, that lighted form of blue and gold,
Whom the seas gave, all earth, all earth embraced;
Exulting in the great hauls of her mesh;
Desired and hated, desperately dear;
Most human of them was. No more pursue!
Enough that the black story can be told.
It preaches to the eminently placed:
For whom disastrous wreckage is nigh due,
Paints omen. Truly they our throbber had;
The passions plumping, passions playing leech,
Cunning to trick us for the day's good cheer.
Our uncorrected human heart will swell
To notions monstrous, doings mad

64

As billows on a foam-lashed beach;
Borne on the tides of alternating heats,
Will drug the brain, will doom the soul as well;
Call the closed mouth of that harsh final Power
To speak in judgement: Nemesis, the fell:
Of those bright Gods assembled, offspring sour;
The last surviving on the upper seats;
As with men Reason when their hearts rebel.

Ah, what a fruitless breeder is this heart,
Full of the mingled seeds, each eating each.
Not wiser of our mark than at the start,
It surges like the wrath-faced father Sea
To countering winds; a force blind-eyed,
On endless rounds of aimless reach;
Emotion for the source of pride,
The grounds of faith in fixity
Above our flesh; its cravings urging speech,
Inspiring prayer; by turns a lump
Swung on a time-piece, and by turns
A quivering energy to jump
For seats angelical: it shrinks, it yearns,
Loves, loathes; is flame or cinders; lastly cloud

62

Capping a sullen crater: and mankind
We see cloud-capped, an army of the dark,
Because of thy straight leadership declined;
At heels of this or that delusive spark:
Now when the multitudinous races press
Elbow to elbow hourly more,
A thickened host; when now we hear aloud
Life for the very life implore
A signal of a visioned mark;
Light of the mind, the mind's discourse,
The rational in graciousness,
Thee by acknowledgement enthroned,
To tame and lead that blind-eyed force
In harmony of harness with the crowd,
For payment of their dues; as yet disowned,
Save where some dutiful lone creature, vowed
To holy work, deems it the heart's intent;
Or where a silken circle views it cowled,
The seeming figure of concordance, bent
On satiating tyrant lust
Or barren fits of sentiment.

Thou wilt not have our paths befouled
By simulation; are we vile to view,

63

The heavens shall see us clean of our own dust,
Beneath thy breezy flitting wing :
They make their mirror upon faces true;
And where they win reflection, lucid heave
The under tides of this hot heart seen through.
Beneficently wilt thou clip
All oversteppings of the plumed,
The puffed, and bid the masker strip,
And into the crowned windbag thrust,
Tearing the mortal from the vital thing,
A lightning o'er the half-illumined,
Who to base brute-dominion cleave,
Yet mark effects, and shun the flash,
Till their drowsed wits a beam conceive,
To spy a wound without a gash,
The magic in a turn of wrist,
And how are wedded heart and head regaled
When Wit o'er Folly blows the mort,
And their high note of union spreads
Wide from the timely word with conquest
charged;
Victorious laughter, of no loud report,
If heard; derision as divinely veiled
As terrible Immortals in rose-mist,

64

Given to the vision of arrested men:
Whereat they feel within them weave
Community its closer threads,
And are to our fraternal state enlarged;
Like warm fresh blood is their enlivened ken:
They learn that thou art not of alien sort,
Speaking the tongue by vipers hissed,
Or of the frosty heights unscaled,
Or of the vain who simple speech distort,
Or of the vapours pointing on to nought.
Along cold skies; though sharp and high thy pitch:
As when sole homeward the belated treads,
And hears aloft a clamour wailed,
That once had seemed the broomstick witch
Horridly violating cloud for drought:
He from the rub of minds dispersing fears,
Hears migrants marshalling their midnight train;
Homeliest order in black sky appears,
Not less than in the lighted village steads.
So do those half-illumued wax clear to share
A cry that is our common voice; the note
Of fellowship upon a loftier plane,
Above embattled castle-wall and moat;
And toning drops as from pure heaven it sheds.

31—E

65

So thou for washing a phantasmal air,
For thy sweet singing keynote of the wise,
Laughter—the joy of Reason seeing fade
Obstruction into Earth’s renewing beds,
Beneath the stroke of her good servant’s blade—
Thenceforth art as their earth-star hailed;
Gain of the years, conjunction’s prize.
The greater heart in thy appeal to heads,
They see, thou Captain of our civil Fort!
By more elusive savages assailed
On each ascending stage; untired.
Both inner foe and outer to cut short;
And blow to chaff pretenders void of grist:
Showing old tiger’s claws, old crocodile’s
Yard-grin of eager grinders, slim to sight,
Like forms in running water, oft when smiles,
When pearly tears, when fluent lips delight:
But never with the slayer’s malice fired:
As little as informs an infant’s fist
Clenched at the sneeze! Thou wouldst but have us be
Good sons of mother soil, whereby to grow
Branching on fairer skies, one stately tree;
Broad of the tilth for flowering at the Court:
Which is the tree bound fast to wave its tress;

66

Of strength controlled sheer beauty to bestow.
Ambrosial heights of possible acquist,
Where souls of men with soul of man consort,
And all look higher to new loveliness
Begotten of the look: thy mark is there;
While on our temporal ground alive,
Rightly though fearfully thou wieldest sword,
Of finer temper now a numbered learn
That they resisting thee themselves resist;
And not thy bigger joy to smite and drive,
Prompt the dense herd to butt, and set the snare
Witching them into pitfalls for hoarse shouts.
More now, and hourly more, and of the Lord
Thou lead’st to, doth this rebel heart discern,
When pinched ascetic and red sensualist
Alternately recurrent freeze or burn,
And of its old religions it has doubts.
It fears thee less when thou hast shown it bare;
Less hates, part understands, nor much resents,
When the prized objects it has raised for prayer,
For fitful prayer;—repentance dreading fire,
Impelled by aches; the blindness which repents
Like the poor trampled worm that writhes in mire;—
Are sounded by thee, and thou darest probe

67

Old Institutions and Establishments,
Once fortresses against the floods of sin,
For what their worth; and questioningly prod
For why they stand upon a racing globe,
Impeding blocks, less useful than the clod;
Their angel out of them, a demon in.

This half-enlightened heart, still doomed to fret,
To hurl at vanities, to drift in shame
Of gain or loss, bewailing the sure rod,
Shall of predestination wed thee yet.
Something it gathers of what things should drop
At entrance on new times; of how thrice broad
The world of minds communicative; how
A straggling Nature classed in school, and scored
With stripes admonishing, may yield to plough
Fruitfullest furrows, nor for waxing tame
Be feeble on an Earth whose gentler crop
Is its most living, in the mind that steers,
By Reason led, her way of tree and flame,
Beyond the genuflexions and the tears;
Upon an Earth that cannot stop,
Where upward is the visible aim,
And ever we espy the greater God,

68

For simple pointing at a good adored
Proof of the closer neighbourhood. Head on,
Sword of the many, light of the few! untwist
Or cut our tangles till fair space is won
Beyond a briared wood of austere brow,
Relieved of discord by thy timely word
At intervals refreshing life: for thou
Art verily Keeper of the Muse's Key;
Thyself no vacant melodist;
On lower land elective even as she;
Holding, as she, all dissonance abhorred;
Advising to her measured steps in flow;
And teaching how for being subjected free
Past thought of freedom we may come to know
The music of the meaning of Accord.

69

YOUTH IN MEMORY

Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
When the grasp on the bow was decision,
And arrow and hand and eye were one;
When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,
Came heaving for rapture ahead!—
Invoke them, they dwindle, they glimmer
As lights over mounds of the dead.

Behold the winged Olympus, off the mead,
With thunder of wide pinions, lightning speed,
Wafting the shepherd-boy through ether clear,
To bear the golden nectar-cup.
So flies desire at view of its delight,
When the young heart is tiptoe perched on sight.
We meanwhile who in hues of the sick year,
The Spring-time paint to prick us for our lost,
Mount but the fatal half way up,
Whereon shut eyes! This is decreed,

70

For Age that would to youthful heavens ascend,
By passion for the arms' possession tossed,
It falls the way of sighs and hath their end;
A spark gone out to more sepulchral night.
Good if the arrowy eagle of the height,
Be then the little bird that hops to feed.

Lame falls the cry to kindle days
Of radiant orb and daring gaze.
It does but clank our mortal chain.
For Earth reads through her felon old,
The many-numbered of her fold,
Who forward tottering backward strain,
And would be thieves of treasure spent,
With their grey season soured.
She could write out their history in their thirst
To have again the much devoured,
And be the bud at burst;
In honey fancy join the flow,
Where Youth swims on as once they went,
All choiric for spontaneous glee
Of active eager lungs and thews;
They now bared roots beside the river bent;

71

Whose privilege themselves to see;
Their place in yonder tideway know;
The current glass peruse;
The depths intently sound;
And sapped by each returning flood,
Accept for monitory nourishment,
Those worn roped features under crust of mud,
Reflected in the silvery smooth around:
Not less the branching and high singing tree,
A home of nests, a landmark and a tent,
Until their hour for losing hold on ground.
Even such good harvest of the things that flee,
Earth offers her subjected, and they choose
Rather of Bacchic Youth one beam to drink,
And warm slow marrow with the sensual wink.
So block they at her source the Mother of the Muse.

Who cheerfully the little bird becomes,
Without a fall, and pipes for peck at crumbs,
May have her dolings to the lightest touch;
As where some cripple muses by his crutch,
Unwitting that the spirit in him sings:
'When I had legs, then had I wings,

72

As good as any born of eggs,
To feed on all aërial things,
When I had legs!'
And if not to embrace he sighs,
She gives him breath of Youth awhile,
Perspective of a breezy mile,
Companionable hedgeways, lifting skies;
Scenes where his nested dreams upon their hoard
Brooded, or up to empyrean soared:
Enough to link him with a dotted line.
But cravings for an eagle's flight,
To top white peaks and serve wild wine
Among the rosy undecayed,
Bring only flash of shade.
From her full throbbing breast of day in night.
By what they crave are they betrayed:
And cavernous is that young dragon's jaw,
Crimson for all the fiery reptile saw
In time now coveted, for teeth to flay,
Once more consume, were Life recurrent May.
They to their moment of drawn breath,
Which is the life that makes the death,
The death that makes ethereal life would bind:
The death that breeds the spectre do they find.

73

Darkness is wedded and the waste regrets
Beating as dead leaves on a fitful gust,
By souls no longer dowered to climb
Beneath their pack of dust,
Whom envy of a lustrous prime,
Eclipsed while yet invoked, besets,
And dooms to sink and water sable flowers,
That never gladdened eye or loaded bee.
Strain we the arms for Memory's hours,
We are the seized Persephone.

Responsive never to the soft desire
For one prized tune is this our chord of life.
'Tis clipped to deadness with a wanton knife,
In wishes that for ecstasies aspire.
Yet have we glad companionship of Youth,
Elysian meadows for the mind,
Dare we to face deeds done, and in our tomb
Filled with the parti-coloured bloom
Of loved and hated, grasp all human truth
Sowed by us down the mazy paths behind.
To feel that heaven must we that hell sound through:
Whence comes a line of continuity,

74

That brings our middle station into view,
Between those poles; a novel Earth we see,
In likeness of us, made of banned and blest;
The sower's bed, but not the reaper's rest:
An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet
Buried, and breathing, and to be.
Then of the junction of the three,
Even as a heart in brain, full sweet
May sense of soul, the sum of music, beat.

Only the soul can walk the dusty track
Where hangs our flowering under vapours black,
And bear to see how these pervade, obscure,
Quench recollection of a spacious pure.
They take phantasmal forms, divide, convolve,
Hard at each other point and gape,
Horrible ghosts! in agony dissolve,
To reappear with one they drape
For criminal, and, Father! shrieking name,
Who such distorted issue did beget.
Accept them, them and him, though hiss thy sweat
Off brow on breast, whose furnace flame
Has eaten, and old Self consumes.

75

Out of the purification will they leap,
Thee renovating while new light illumes
The dusky web of evil, known as pain,
That heavily up healthward mounts the steep;
Our fleshly road to beacon-fire of brain:
Midway the tameless oceanic brute
Below, whose heave is topped with foam for fruit,
And the fair heaven reflecting inner peace
On righteous warfare, that asks not to cease.

Forth of such passage through black fire we win
Clear hearing of the simple lute,
Whereon, and not on other, Memory plays
For them who can in quietness receive
Her restorative airs: a ditty thin
As note of hedgerow bird in ear of eve,
Or wave at ebb, the shallow catching rays
On a transparent sheet, where curves a glass
To truer heavens than when the breaker neighs
Loud at the plunge for bubbly wreck in roar.
Solidity and bulk and martial brass,
Once tyrants of the senses, faintly score
A mark on pebbled sand or fluid slime,

76

While present in the spirit, vital there,
Are things that seemed the phantoms of their time;
Eternal as the recurrent cloud, as air.
Imperative, refreshful as dawn-dew.
Some evanescent hand on vapour scrawled
Historic of the soul, and heats anew
Its coloured lines where deeds of flesh stand bald.
True of the man, and of mankind 'tis true.
Did we stout battle with the Shade, Despair,
Our cowardice, it blooms; or haply warred.
Against the primal beast in us, and flung;
Or cleaving mists of Sorrow, left it starred.
Above self-pity slain: or it was Prayer
First taken for Life's cleanser; or the tongue
Spake for the world against this heart; or rings
Old laughter, from the founts of wisdom sprung;
Or clap of wing of joy, that was a throb
From breast of Earth, and did no creature rob:
These quickening live. But deepest at her springs,
Most filial, is an eye to love her young.
And had we it, still see with it, alive
Is our lost garden, flower, bird and hive.
Blood of her blood, aim of her aim, are then
The green-robed and grey-crested sons of men:

77

She tributary to her aged restores
The living in the dead; she will inspire
Faith homelier than on the Yonder shores,
Abhorring these as mire,
Uncertain steps, in dimness gropes,
With mortal tremours pricking hopes,
And, by the final Bacchic of the Iusts
Propelled, the Bacchic of the spirit trusts:
A fervour drunk from mystic hierophants;
Not utterly misled, though blindly led,
Led round fermenting eddies. Faith she plants
In her own firmness as our midway road:
Which rightly Youth has read, though blindly read;
Her essence reading in her toothsome load;
Spur of bright dreams experience disenchants.
But love we well the young, her road midway
The darknesses runs consecrated clay.
Despite our feeble hold on this green home,
And the vast outer strangeness void of dome,
Shall we be with them, of them, taught to feel,
Up to the moment of our prostrate fall,
The life they deem voluptuously real,
Is more than empty echo of a call,
Or shadow of a shade, or swing of tides;

78

As brooding upon age, when veins congeal,
Grey palsy nods to think. With us for guides,
Another step above the animal,
To views in Alpine thought are they helped on.
Good if so far we live in them when gone!

And there the arrowy eagle of the height,
Becomes the little bird that hops to feed,
Glad of a crumb, for tempered appetite
To make it wholesome blood and fruitful seed.
Then Memory strikes on no slack string,
Nor sectional will varied Life appear:
Perforce of soul discerned in mind, we hear
Earth with her Onward chime, with Winter Spring.
And ours the mellow note, while sharing joys
No more subjecting mortals who have learnt
To build for happiness on equipoise,
The Pleasures read in sparks of substance burnt;
Know in our seasons an integral wheel,
That rolls us to a mark may yet be willed.
This, the truistic rubbish under heel
Of all the world, we peck at and are filled.

79

VERSES

Oh all the world we seek, but not are filled.

This, the truculent ruppin' node, he'd

Think to us, to a mark and mark not be will'd.

Know in our season an integral wheel.

The presence read in a charade of substance put on;

To find for happiness our exiles,

No more adorning mortals who have learned

And now the molten rose, while sharing toge

Earth with her ownward chime, with Winter Spring,

Pentate of soul discerned in mind, we hear

Not sections with varied life appear:

Then memory arrives on no slack string,

To make it wholesome blood and useful seed.

Clad of a crump, let chambered arabic

Becomes the little bird that hopes to feed,

And there the arrowy cags of the height,

Good it so far we live in them when gone!

To view in Alpine thought we each helped on.

Another step above the animny,

Gray safety now to think. With us for guidance,

We floating upon ice, when some sang real,

31—F

81

VERSES

PENETRATION AND TRUST

I

Sleek as a lizard at round of a stone,
The look of her heart slipped out and in.
Sweet on her lord her soft eyes shone,
As innocents clear of a shade of sin.

II

He laid a finger under her chin,
His arm for her girdle at waist was thrown:
Now, what will happen and who will win,
With me in the fight and my lady lone?

III

He clasped her, clasping a shape of stone;
Was fire on her eyes till they let him in.
Her breast to a God of the daybeams shone,
And never a corner for serpent sin.

83

IV

Tranced she stood, with a chattering chin;
Her shrunken form at his feet was thrown:
At home to the death my lord shall win,
When it is no tyrant who leaves me lone!

84

NIGHT OF FROST IN MAY

With splendour of a silver day,
A frosted night had opened May:
And on that plumed and armoured night,
As one close temple hove our wood,
Its border leafage virgin white.
Remote down air an owl hallooed.
The black twig dropped without a twirl;
The bud in jewelled grasp was nipped;
The brown leaf cracked a scorching curl;
A crystal off the green leaf slipped.
Across the tracks of rimy tan,
Some busy thread at whiles would shoot;
A limping minnow-rillet ran,
To hang upon an icy foot.

In this shrill hush of quietude,
The ear conceived a severing cry.
Almost it let the sound elude,
When chuckles three, a warble shy,

85

From hazels of the garden came,
Near by the crimson-windowed farm.
They laid the trance on breath and frame,
A prelude of the passion-charm.

Then soon was heard, not sooner heard
Than answered, doubled, trebled, more,
Voice of an Eden in the bird
Renewing with his pipe of four
The sob: a troubled Eden, rich
In throb of heart: unnumbered throats
Flung upward at a fountain's pitch,
The fervour of the four long notes,
That on the fountain's pool subside,
Exult and ruffle and upspring:
Endless the crossing multiplied
Of silver and of golden string.
There chimed a bubbled underbrew
With witch-wild spray of vocal dew.

It seemed a single harper swept
Our wild wood's inner chords and waked
A spirit that for yearning ached
Ere men desired and joyed or wept.

86

Or now a legion ravishing
Musician rivals did unite
In love of sweetness high to sing
The subtle song that rivals light;
From breast of earth to breast of sky:
And they were secret, they were nigh:
A hand the magic might disperse;
The magic swung my universe.

Yet sharpened breath forbade to dream,
Where all was visionary gleam;
Where Seasons, as with cymbals, clashed;
And feelings, passing joy and woe,
Churned, gurgled, spouted, interflashed,
Nor either was the one we know:
Nor pregnant of the heart contained
In us were they, that griefless plained,
That plaining soared; and through the heart
Struck to one note the wide apart:—
A passion surgent from despair;
A paining bliss in fervid cold;
Off the last vital edge of air,
Leap heavenward of the lofty-souled,

87

For rapture of a wine of tears;
As had a star among the spheres
Caught up our earth to some mid-height
Of double life to ear and sight,
She giving voice to thought that shines
Keen-brilliant of her deepest mines;
While steely drips the rillet clinked,
And hoar with crust the cowslip swelled.

Then was the lyre of earth beheld,
Then heard by me: it holds me linked;
Across the years to dead-ebb shores
I stand on, my blood-thrill restores.
But would I conjure into me
Those issue notes, I must review
What serious breath the woodland drew;
The low throb of expectancy;
How the white mother-muteness pressed
On leaf and meadow-herb; how shock,
Nigh speech of mouth, the sparkle-crest
Seen spinning on the bracken-crook.

88

THE TEACHING OF THE NUDE

I

A Satyr spied a Goddess in her bath,
Unseen of her attendant nymphs; none knew.
Forthwith the creature to his fellows drew,
And looking backward on the curtained path,
He strove to tell; he could but heave a breast
Too full, and point to mouth, with failing leers:
Vainly he danced for speech, he giggled tears,
Made as if torn in two, as if tight pressed,
As if cast prone; then fetching whimpered tunes
For words, flung heel and set his hairy flight
Through forest-hollows, over rocky height.
The green leaves buried him three rounds of moons.
A senatorial Satyr named what herb
Had hurried him outrunning reason's curb.

89

## II

'Tis told how when that hieaway unchecked,
To dell returned, he seemed of tempered mood:
Even as the valley of the torrent rude,
The torrent now a brook, the valley wrecked.
In him, to hale him high or hurl ahead,
Goddess and Goatfoot hourly wrestled sore;
Hourly the immortal prevailing more:
Till one hot noon saw Meliboeus peep
From thicket-sprays to where his full-blown dame,
In circle by the lusty friskers gripped,
Laughed the showered rose-leaves while her limbs
were stripped.

She beckoned to our Satyr, and he came.

Then twirled she mounds of ripeness, wreath of arms.

His hoof kicked up the clothing for such charms.

90

## BREATH OF THE BRIAR

### I

O briar-scents, on yon wet wing
Of warm South-west wind brushing by,
You mind me of the sweetest thing
That ever mingled frank and shy:
When she and I, by love enticed,
Beneath the orchard-apples met,
In equal halves a ripe one sliced,
And smelt the juices ere we ate.

### II

That apple of the briar-scent,
Among our lost in Britain now,
Was green of rind, and redolent
Of sweetness as a milking cow.
The briar gives it back, well nigh
The damsel with her teeth on it;
Her twinkle between frank and shy,
My thirst to bite where she had bit.

91

EMPEDOCLES

I

He leaped. With none to hinder,
Of Aetna's fiery scoriae
In the next vomit-shower, made he
A more peculiar cinder.
And this great Doctor, can it be,
He left no saner recipe
For men at issue with despair?
Admiring, even his poet owns,
While noting his fine lyric tones,
The last of him was heels in air!

II

Comes Reverence, her features
Amazed to see high Wisdom hear,
With glimmer of a faunish leer,
One mock her pride of creatures.
Shall such sad incident degrade

92

A stature casting sunniest shade?
O Reverence! let Reason swim;
Each life its critic deed reveals;
And him reads Reason at his heels,
If heels in air the last of him!

93

TO COLONEL CHARLES

(Dying General C.B.B.)

I

An English heart, my commandant,
A soldier's eye you have, awake
To right and left; with looks askant
On bulwarks not of adamant,
Where white our Channel waters break.

II

Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness
Across the ruffled strip of salt,
You look, and like the prospect less.
On men and guns would you lay stress,
To bid the Island's foemen halt.

94

III

While loud the Year is raising cry
At birth to know if it must bear
In history the bloody dye,
An English heart, a soldier's eye,
For the old country first will care.

IV

And how stands she, artillerist,
Among the vapours waxing dense,
With cannon charged ? 'Tis hist! and hist!
And now she screws a gouty fist,
And now she counts to clutch her pence.

IV

With shudders chill as aconite,
The couchant chewer of the cud
Will start at times in pussy fright
Before the dogs, when reads her sprite
The streaks predicting streams of blood.

95

VI

She thinks they may mean something; thinks
They may mean nothing: haply both.
Where darkness all her daylight drinks,
She fain would find a leader lynx,
Not too much taxing mental sloth.

VII

Cleft like the fated house in twain,
One half is, Arm! and one, Retrench!
Gambetta's word on dull MacMahon:
'The cow that sees a passing train':
So spies she Russian, German, French.

VIII

She? no, her weakness: she unbraced
Among those athletes fronting storms!
The muscles less of steel than paste,
Why, they of nature feel distaste
For flash, much more for push, of arms.

96

IX

The poet sings, and well know we,
That 'iron draws men after it.'
But towering wealth may seem the tree
Which bears the fruit *Indemnity*,
And draw as fast as battle's fit,

X

If feeble be the hand on guard,
Alas, alas! And nations are
Still the mad forces, though the scarred.
Should they once deem our emblem Pard
Wagger of tail for all save war;—

XI

Mechanically screwed to flail
His flanks by Presses conjuring fear;—
A money-bag with head and tail;—
Too late may valour then avail!
As you beheld, my cannonier,

31—G

97

## XII

When with the staff of Benedek,
On the plateau of Königgrätz,
You saw below that wedgeing speck;
Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck,
Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets.

February 1887.

98

## ENGLAND BEFORE THE STORM

i

The day that is the night of days,
With cannon-fire for sun ablaze,
We spy from any billow's lift;
And England still this tidal drift!
Would she to sainted forethought vow
A space before the thunders flood,
That martyr of its hour might now
Spare her the tears of blood.

ii

Asleep upon her ancient deeds,
She hugs the vision plethora breeds,
And counts her manifold increase
Of treasure in the fruits of peace.
What curse on earth's improvident,
When the dread trumpet shatters rest,
Is wreaked, she knows, yet smiles content
As cradle rocked from breast.

99

### III

She, impious to the Lord of Hosts,
The valour of her offspring boasts,
Mindless that now on land and main
His heeded prayer is active brain.
No more great heart may guard the home,
Save eyed and armed and skilled to cleave
Yon swallower wave with shroud of foam,
We see not distant heave.

### IV

They stand to be her sacrifice,
The sons this mother flings like dice,
To face the odds and brave the Fates;
As in those days of starry dates,
When cannon cannon's counterblast
Awakened, muzzle muzzle bowled,
And high in swathe of smoke the mast
Its fighting rag outrolled.

1891.

100

### TARDY SPRING

Now the North wind ceases,
The warm South-west awakes;
Swift fly the fleeces,
Thick the blossom-flakes.

Now hill to hill has made the stride,
And distance waves the without end:
Now in the breast a door flings wide;
Our farthest smiles, our next is friend.
And song of England's rush of flowers
Is this full breeze with mellow stops,
That spins the lark for shine, for showers;
He drinks his hurried flight, and drops.
The stir in memory seem these things,
Which out of moistened turf and clay,
Astrain for light push patient rings,
Or leap to find the waterway.
'Tis equal to a wonder done,
Whatever simple lives renew

101

Their tricks beneath the father sun,
As though they caught a broken clue:
So hard was earth an eyewink back;
But now the common life has come,
The blotting cloud a dappled pack,
The grasses one vast underhum...
A City clothed in snow and soot,
With lamps for day in ghostly rows,
Breaks to the scene of hosts afoot,
The river that reflective flows:
And there did fog down crypts of street
Play spectre upon eye and mouth:—
Their faces are a glass to greet
This magic of the whirl for South.
A burly joy each creature swells
With sound of its own hungry quest;
Earth has to fill her empty wells,
And speed the service of the nest;
The phantom of the snow-wreath melt,
That haunts the farmer's look abroad,
Who sees what tomb a white night built,
Where flocks now bleat and sprouts the clod.
For iron Winter held her firm;
Across her sky he laid his hand;

102

And bird he starved, he stiffened worm;
A sightless heaven, a shaven land.
Her shivering Spring feigned fast asleep,
The bitten buds dared not unfold:
We raced on roads and ice to keep
Thought of the girl we love from cold.

But now the North wind ceases,
The warm South-west awakes,
The heavens are out in fleeces,
And earth's green banner shakes.

103

JUGGLING JERRY

Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes:
By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.

It's nigh my last above the daisies:
My next leaf'll be man's blank page.
Yes, my old girl! and it's no use crying:
Juggler, constable, king, must bow.

One that outjuggles all's been spying
Long to have me, and he has me now.

II

We've travelled times to this old common:
Often we've hung our pots in the gorse.

We've had a stirring life, old woman!
You, and I, and the old grey horse.

Races, and fairs, and royal occasions,
Found us coming to their call:

Now they'll miss us at our stations:
There's a Juggler outjuggles all!

104

III

Up goes the lark, as if all were jolly!
Over the duck-pond the willow shakes.

Easy to think that grieving's folly,
When the hand's firm as driven stakes!

Ay, when we're strong, and braced, and manful,
Life's a sweet fiddle: but we're a batch

Born to become the Great Juggler's han'ful:
Balls he shies up, and is safe to catch.

IV

Here's where the lads of the village cricket:
I was a lad not wide from here:

Couldn't I whip off the bail from the wicket?
Like an old world those days appear!

Donkey, sheep, geese, and thatched ale-house—I
know them!

They are old friends of my halts, and seem,

Somehow, as if kind thanks I owe them:
Juggling don't hinder the heart's esteem.

V

Juggling's no sin, for we must have victual:
Nature allows us to bait for the fool.

105

Holding one's own makes us juggle no little;
But, to increase it, hard juggling 's the rule.
You that are sneering at my profession,
Haven't you juggled a vast amount?
There's the Prime Minister, in one Session,
Juggles more games than my sins'll count.

VI

I've murdered insects with mock thunder:
Conscience, for that, in men don't quail.
I've made bread from the bump of wonder:
That's my business, and there's my tale.
Fashion and rank all praised the professor:
Ay! and I've had my smile from the Queen:
Bravo, Jerry! she meant: God bless her!
Ain't this a sermon on that scene?

VII

I've studied men from my topsy-turvy
Close, and, I reckon, rather true.
Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy:
Most, a dash between the two.

106

But it's a woman, old girl, that makes me
Think more kindly of the race:
And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me
When the Great Juggler I must face.

VIII

We two were married, due and legal:
Honest we've lived since we've been one.
Lord! I could then jump like an eagle:
You danced bright as a bit o' the sun.
Birds in a May-bush we were! right merry!
All night we kiss'd, we juggled all day.
Joy was the heart of Juggling Jerry!
Now from his old girl he's juggled away.

IX

It's past parsons to console us:
No, nor no doctor fetch for me:
I can die without my bolus;
Two of a trade, lass, never agree!
Parson and Doctor!—don't they love rarely,
Fighting the devil in other men's fields!
Stand up yourself and match him fairly:
Then see how the rascal yields!

107

X

I, lass, have lived no gipsy, flaunting
Finery while his poor helpmate grubs:
Coin I've stored, and you won't be wanting:
You sha'n't beg from the troughs and tubs.
Nobly you 've stuck to me, though in his kitchen
Many a Marquis would hail you Cook!
Palaces you could have ruled and grown rich in,
But your old Jerry you never forsook.

XI

Hand up the chirper! ripe ale winks in it;
Let's have comfort and be at peace.
Once a stout draught made me light as a linnet.
Cheer up! the Lord must have his lease.
May be—for none see in that black hollow—
It's just a place where we're held in pawn,
And, when the Great Juggler makes as to swallow,
It's just the sword-trick—I ain't quite gone!

XII

Yonder came smells of the gorse, so nutty,
Gold-like and warm: it's the prime of May.

108

Better than mortar, brick and putty,
Is God's house on a blowing day.
Lean me more up the mound; now I feel it:
All the old heath-smells! Ain't it strange?
There's the world laughing, as if to conceal it,
But He's by us, juggling the change.

XIII

I mind it well, by the sea-beach lying,
Once—it's long gone—when two guils we beheld,
Which, as the moon got up, were flying
Down a big wave that sparked and swelled.
Crack, went a gun: one fell: the second
Wheeled round him twice, and was off for new
luck:
There in the dark her white wing beckon'd:—
Drop me a kiss—I'm the bird dead-struck!

109

THE OLD CHARTIST

I

Whate'er I be, old England is my dam!

So there's my answer to the judges, clear.

I'm nothing of a fox, nor of a lamb;

I don't know how to bleat nor how to leer:

I'm for the nation!

That's why you see me by the wayside here,
Returning home from transportation.

II

It's Summer in her bath this morn, I think.

I'm fresh as dew, and chirpy as the birds:

And just for joy to see old England wink

Thro' leaves again, I could harangue the herds:

Isn't it something

To speak out like a man when you've got words,

And prove you're not a stupid dumb thing?

110

III

They shipp'd me off for it; I'm here again.

Old England is my dam, whate'er I be!

Says I, I'll tramp it home, and see the grain:

If you see well, you're king of what you see:

Eyesight is having,

If you're not given, I said, to gluttony.

Such talk to ignorance sounds as raving.

IV

You dear old brook, that from his Grace's park

Come bounding! on you run near my old town:

My lord can't lock the water; nor the lark,

Unless he kills him, can my lord keep down.

Up, is the song-note!

I've tried it, too:—for comfort and renown,
I rather pitch'd upon the wrong note.

V

I'm not ashamed: Not beaten's still my boast:

Again I'll rouse the people up to strike.

But home's where different politics jar most.

Respectability the women like.

111

This form, or that form,—
The Government may be hungry pike,
But don't you mount a Chartist platform!

VI

Well, well! Not beaten—spite of them, I shout;
And my estate is suffering for the Cause.—
No,— what is yon brown water-rat about,
Who washes his old poll with busy paws?
What does he mean by 't?
It's like defying all our natural laws,
For him to hope that he'll get clean by 't.

VII

His seat is on a mud-bank, and his trade
Is dirt:—he's quite contemptible; and yet
The fellow's all as anxious as a maid
To show a decent dress, and dry the wet.
Now it's his whisker,
And now his nose, and ear: he seems to get
Each moment at the motion brisker!

112

VIII

To see him squat like little chaps at school,
I could let fly a laugh with all my might.
He peers, hangs both his fore-paws:—bless that fool,
He's bobbing at his frill now!—what a sight!
Licking the dish up,
As if he thought to pass from black to white,
Like parson into lawny bishop.

IX

The elms and yellow reed-flags in the sun,
Look on quite grave:—the sunlight flecks his side;
And links of bindweed-flowers round him run,
And shine up doubled with him in the tide.
I'm nearly splitting,
But nature seems like seconding his pride,
And thinks that his behaviour's fitting.

X

That isle o' mud looks baking dry with gold,
His needle-muzzle still works out and in.
It really is a wonder to behold,
And makes me feel the bristles of my chin,

31—H

113

Judged by appearance,
I fancy of the two I'm nearer Sin,
And might as well commence a clearance.

XI

And that's what my fine daughter said:—she meant:
Pray, hold your tongue, and wear a Sunday face.

Her husband, the young linendraper, spent
Much argument thereon:—I'm their disgrace.

Bother the couple!
I feel superior to a chap whose place
Commands him to be neat and supple.

XII

But if I go and say to my old hen:
I'll mend the gentry's boots, and keep discreet,
Until they grow too violent,—why, then,

A warmer welcome I might chance to meet:
Warmer and better.

And if she fancies her old cock is beat,
And drops upon her knees—so let her!

114

XIII

She suffered for me:—women, you'll observe,
Don't suffer for a Cause, but for a man.

When I was in the dock she show'd her nerve:
I saw beneath her shawl my old tea-can

Trembling . . . she brought it
To screw me for my work: she loath'd my plan,
And therefore doubly kind I thought it.

XIV

I've never lost the taste of that same tea:

That liquor on my logic floats like oil,
When I state facts, and fellows disagree.

For human creatures all are in a coil;
All may want pardon.

I see a day when every pot will boil
Harmonious in one great Tea-garden!

XV

We wait the setting of the Dandy's day,
Before that time!—He's furbishing his dress,—

He *will* be ready for it!—and I say,
That yon old dandy rat amid the cress,—

115

Thanks to hard labour!—
If cleanliness is next to godliness,
The old fat fellow's heaven's neighbour!

XVI

You teach me a fine lesson, my old boy!
I've looked on my superiors far too long,
And small has been my profit as my joy.
You've done the right while I've denounced the
wrong.
Prosper me later!
Like you I will despise the sniggering throng,
And please myself and my Creator.

XVII

I'll bring the linendraper and his wife
Some day to see you; taking off my hat.
Should they ask why, I'll answer: in my life
I never found so true a democrat.
Base occupation
Can't rob you of your own esteem, old rat!
I'll preach you to the British nation.

MARTIN'S PUZZLE

I

There she goes up the street with her book in her hand,
And her Good morning, Martin! Ay, lass, how d'ye do?
Very well, thank you, Martin!—I can't understand!
I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe!
I can't understand it. She talks like a song;
Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass;
She seems to give gladness while limping along,
Yet sinner ne'er suffer'd like that little lass.

II

First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart.
Then, her fool of a father—a blacksmith by trade—
Why the deuce does he tell us it half broke his heart?
His heart!—where's the leg of the poor little maid!
Well, that's not enough; they must push her down-stairs,
To make her go crooked: but why count the list?
If it's right to suppose that our human affairs
Are all order'd by heaven—there, bang goes my fist!

117

### III

For if angels can look on such sights—never mind!
When you're next to blaspheming, it's best to be
mum.

The parson declares that her woes weren't designed;
But, then, with the parson it's all kingdom-come.

Lose a leg, save a soul—a convenient text;
I call it Tea doctrine, not savouring of God.

When poor little Molly wants 'chastening, why,
next

The Archangel Michael might taste of the rod.

### IV

But, to see the poor darling go limping for miles
To read books to sick people!—and just of an age
When girls learn the meaning of ribands and smiles!

Makes me feel like a squirrel that turns in a cage.

The more I push thinking the more I revolve:

I never get farther:—and as to her face,

It starts up when near on my puzzle I solve,
And says, 'This crush'd body seems such a sad
case.'

118

### V

Not that she's for complaining: she reads to earn
pence;

And from those who can't pay, simple thanks are
enough.

Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense?

Howsoever, she's made up of wonderful stuff.

Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord;
She sings little hymns at the close of the day,
Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord,

And only one leg to kneel down with to pray.

### VI

What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear,
If there's Law above all? Answer that if you can!
Irreligious I'm not; but I look on this sphere
As a place where a man should just think like a man.

It isn't fair dealing! But, contrariwise,
Do bullets in battle the wicked select?

Why, then it's all chance-work! And yet, in her
eyes,

She holds a fixed something by which I am checked.

119

VII

Yonder riband of sunshine aslope on the wall,
If you eye it a minute 'll have the same look:
So kind! and so merciful! God of us all!
It's the very same lesson we get from the Book.
Then, is Life but a trial? Is that what is meant?
Some must toil, and some perish, for others below:
The injustice to each spreads a common content;
Ay! I've lost it again, for it can't be quite so.

VIII

She's the victim of fools: that seems nearer the mark.
On earth there are engines and numerous fools.
Why the Lord can permit them, we're still in the dark;
He does, and in some sort of way they're His tools.
It's a roundabout way, with respect let me add,
If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught:
But, perhaps, it's the only way, though it's so bad;
In that case we'll bow down our heads,—as we ought.

120

IX

But the worst of me is, that when I bow my head,
I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust,
And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead
Of humble acceptance: for, question, I must!
Here's a creature made carefully—carefully made!
Put together with craft, and then stamped on, and
why?
The answer seems nowhere: it's discord that's played.
The sky's a blue dish!—an implacable sky!

X

Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit.
They tell us that discord, though discord, alone,
Can be harmony when the notes properly fit:
Am I judging all things from a single false tone?
Is the Universe one immense Organ, that rolls
From devils to angels? I'm blind with the sight.
It pours such a splendour on heaps of poor souls!
I might try at kneeling with Molly to-night.

121

MARIAN

I

She can be as wise as we,
And wiser when she wishes;
She can knit with cunning wit,
And dress the homely dishes.
She can flourish staff or pen,
And deal a wound that lingers;
She can talk the talk of men,
And touch with thrilling fingers.

II

Match her ye across the sea,
Natures fond and fiery;
Ye who zest the turtle's nest
With the eagle's eyrie.
Soft and loving is her soul,
Swift and lofty soaring;
Mixing with its dove-like dole
Passionate adoring,

122

III

Such a she who'll match with me?
In flying or pursuing,
Subtle wiles are in her smiles
To set the world a-wooing;
She is steadfast as a star,
And yet the maddest maiden:
She can wage a gallant war,
And give the peace of Eden.

123

POEMS 1851

THE OLIVE BRANCH

A dove flew with an Olive Branch;
It crossed the sea and reach'd the shore;
And on a ship about to launch,
Drop'd down the happy sign it bore.

'An omen' rang the glad acclaim!
The Captain stoop'd and pick'd it up,
'Be then the Olive Branch her name,'
Cried she who flung the christening cup.

The vessel took the laughing tides;
It was a joyous revelry
To see her dashing from her sides
The rough, salt kisses of the sea.

And forth into the bursting foam
She spread her sail and sped away,
The rolling surge her restless home,
Her incense wreaths the showering spray.

Far out, and where the riot waves
Run mingling in tumultuous throngs;
She danced above a thousand graves,
And heard a thousand briny songs.

Her mission with her manly crew,
Her flag unfurl'd, her title told,
She took the Old World to the New,
And brought the New World to the Old.

127

Secure of friendliest welcomings,
She swam the havens sheening fair;
Secure upon her glad white wings,
She flutter'd on the ocean air.

To her no more the bastion'd fort
Shot out its swarthy tongue of fire;
From bay to bay, from port to port,
Her coming was the world's desire.

And tho' the tempest lash'd her oft,
And tho' the rocks had hungry teeth,
And lightnings split the masts aloft,
And thunders shook the planks beneath.

And tho' the storm, self-will'd and blind,
Made tatters of her dauntless sail,
And all the wildness of the wind
Was loosed on her, she did not fail;

But gallantly she plough'd the main,
And gloriously her welcome peal'd,
And grandly shone to sky and plain
The goodly bales her decks reveal'd;

Brought from the fruitful eastern glebes
Where blow the gusts of balm and spice,
Or where the black blockaded ribs
Are jamm'd 'mongst ghostly fleets of ice,

Or where upon the curling hills
Glow clusters of the bright-eyed grape,
Or where the hand of labour drills
The stubbornness of earth to shape.

Rich harvestings and wealthy germs,
And handicrafts and shapely wares,
And spinnings of the hermit worms,
And fruits that bloom by lions' lairs,

128

Come, read the meaning of the deep!
The use of winds and waters learn!
'Tis not to make the mother weep
'For sons that never will return;

'Tis not to make the nations show
Contempt for all whom seas divide;
'Tis not to pamper war and woe,
Nor feed traditionary pride;

'Tis not to make the floating bulk
Mask death upon its slippery deck,
Itself in turn a shatter'd hulk,
A ghastly raft, a bleeding wreck.

It is to knit with loving lip
The interests of land to land;
To join in far-seen fellowship
The tropic and the polar strand.

It is to make that foaming Strength
Whose rebel forces wrestle still
Thro' all his boundaried breadth and length,
Become a vassal to our will.

It is to make the various skies,
And all the various fruits they vaunt,
And all the dowers of earth we prize,
Subservient to our household want.

And more, for knowledge crowns the gain
Of intercourse with other souls,
And Wisdom travels not in vain
The plunging spaces of the poles.

The wild Atlantic's weltering gloom,
Earth-clasping seas of North and South,
The Baltic with its amber spume,
The Caspian with its frozen mouth;

31—I

129

The broad Pacific, basking bright,
And girdling lands of lustrous growth,
Vast continents and isles of light,
Dumb tracts of undiscovered sloth.

She visits these, traversing each;
They ripen to the common sun,
Thro' diverse forms and different speech,
The world's humanity is one.

O may her voice have power to say
How soon the wrecking discords cease,
When every wandering wave is gay
With golden argosies of peace!

Now when the ark of human fate,
Long baffled by the wayward wind,
Is drifting with its peopled freight,
Safe haven on the heights to find;

Safe haven from the drowning slime
Of evil deeds and Deluge wrath;—
To plant again the foot of Time
Upon a purer, firmer path;

'Tis now the hour to probe the ground,
To watch the Heavens, to speak the word,
The fathoms of the deep to sound,
And send abroad the mission'd bird.

On strengthen'd wing for evermore,
Let Science, swiftly as she can,
Fly seaward on from shore to shore,
And bind the links of man to man;

And like that fair propitious Dove,
Bless future fleets about to launch;
Make every freight a freight of love,
And every ship an Olive Branch.

130

## SONG

Love within the lover's breast
Burns like Hesper in the west,
O'er the ashes of the sun,
Till the day and night are done;
Then when dawn drives up her car—
Lo! it is the morning star.

Love ! thy love pours down mine
As the sunlight on the vine,
As the snow-rill on the vale,
As the salt breeze in the sail;
As the song unto the bird;
On my lips thy name is heard.

As a dewdrop on the rose
In thy heart my passion glows,
As a skylark to the sky,
Up into thy breast I fly;
As a sea-shell of the sea
Ever shall I sing of thee.

## THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP

The Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers;
It lives and dies upon its bed of snows;
And like a thought of spring it comes and goes,
Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers.
The sun's betrothing kiss it never knows,
Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers;
But ever in a placid, pure repose,
More like a spirit with its look serene,
Droops its pale cheek vein'd thro' with infant green.

131

Queen of her sisters is the sweet Wild Rose,
Sprung from the earnest sun and ripe young June;
The year's own darling and the Summer's Queen !
Lustrous as the new-throned crescent moon.
Much of that early prophet look she shows,
Mixed with her fair espoused blush which glows,
As if the ethereal fairy blood were seen ;
Like a soft evening over sunset snows,
Half twilight violet shade, half crimson sheen

Twin-born are both in beauteousness, most fair
In all that glads the eye and charms the air ;
In all that wakes emotions in the mind
And sows sweet sympathies for human kind.
Twin-born, albeit their seasons are apart,
They bloom together in the thoughtful heart;
Fair symbols of the marvels of our state,
Mute speakers of the oracles of fate !

For each fulfilling nature's law, fulfils
Itself and its own aspirations pure;
Living and dying; letting faith ensure
New life when deathless Spring shall touch the hills.
Each perfect in its place; and each content
With that perfection which its being meant :
Divided not by months that intervene,
But linked by all the flowers that bud between:
Forever smiling thro' its season brief,
The one in glory and the one in grief :
Forever painting to our museful sight,
How lowlyhead and loveliness unite.

Born from the first blind yearning of the earth
To be a mother and give happy birth,
Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings,
Lo! from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs;
And ere the snows have melted from the grass,
And not a strip of greensward doth appear,
Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare,

132

Alone, unkissed, unloved, behold it pass !
While in the ripe enthronement of the year,
Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich air
With her so sweet, delicious bridal breath,—
Odorous and exquisite beyond compare,
And starr'd with dews upon her forehead clear,—
Fresh-hearted as a Maiden Queen should be
Who takes the land's devotion as her fee,—
The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower,
Nature's most beautiful and perfect flower.

## THE DEATH OF WINTER

When April with her wild blue eye
Comes dancing over the grass,
And all the crimson birds so shy
Peep out to see her pass ;
As lightly she loosens her showery locks
And flutters her rainy wings;
Laughingly stoops
To the glass of the stream,
And loosens and loops
Her hair by the gleam,
While all the young villagers blithe as the flocks
Go frolicking round in rings;—
Then Winter, he who tamed the fly !
Turns on his back and prepares to die,
For he cannot live longer under the sky.

Down the valleys glittering green,
Down from the hills in snowy rills,
He melts between the border sheen
And leaps the flowery verges !
He cannot choose, but brighten their hues,
And tho' he would creep, he fain must leap,
For the quick spring spirit urges.

133

Down the vale and down the dale,
He leaps and lights, till his moments faif,
Buried in blossoms, red and pale,
While the sweet birds sing his dirges!

O Winter! I'd live that life of thine,
With a frosty brow and an icicle tongue,
And never a song my whole life long,—
Were such delicious burial mine!
To die and be buried, and so remain
A wandering brook in April's train,
Fixing my dying eyes for aye
On the dawning brows of maiden May.

## SONG

The moon is alone in the sky
As thou in my soul;
The sea takes her image to lie
Where the white ripples roll
All night in a dream,
With the light of her beam,
Hushedly, mournfully, mistily up to the shore.
The pebbles speak low
In the ebb and the flow,
As I when thy voice came at intervals, tuned to adore:
Nought other is heard
Save my heart like a bird
Beating to bliss that is past evermore, evermore.

## JOHN LACKLAND

A wicked man is bad enough on earth;
But O the baleful lustre of a chief
Once pledged in tyranny! O star of dearth
Darkly illumining a nation's grief!

134

How many men have worn thee on their brows!
Alas for them and us! God's precious gift
Of gracious dispensation got by theft—
The damning form of false unholy vows!
The thief of God and man must have his feet
And thou John Lackland, despicable prince—
Basest of England's banes before or since!
Thrice traitor, coward, thief! O thou shall be
The historic warning, trampled and abhorr'd
Who dared to steal and stain the symbols of the Lord!

## THE SLEEPING CITY

A princess in the eastern tale
Paced thro' a marble city pale,
And saw on ghastly shapes of stone,
The sculptured life she breathed alone;

Saw, where'er her eye might range,
Herself the only child of change;
And heard her echoed footfall chime
Between Oblivion and Time;

And in the squares where fountains play'd,
And up the spiral balustrade,
Along the drowsy corridors,
Even to the inmost sleeping floors,

Survey'd in wonder chill'd with dread,
The seemingness of Death, not dead;
Life's semblance but without its storm,
And silence frosting every form;

Crown'd figures, cold and grouping slaves,
Like suddenly arrested waves
About to sink, about to rise,—
Strange meaning in their stricken eyes.

135

And cloths and couches live with flame

Of leopards fierce and lions tame,

And hunters in the jungle reed,

Thrown out by sombre glowing brede;

Dumb chambers hush'd with fold on fold,

And cumbrous gorgeousness of gold ;

White casements o'er embroidered seats,

Looking on solitudes of streets, —

On palaces and column'd towers,

Unconscious of the stony hours ;

Harsh gateways startled at a sound,

With burning lamps all burnish'd round ;—

Survey'd in awe this wealth and state,

Touched by the finger of a Fate,

And drew with slow-awakening fear,

The sternness of the atmosphere ;—

And gradually with stealthier foot,

Became herself a thing as mute,

And listened,—while with swift alarm

Her alien heart shrank from the charm ;

Yet as her thoughts dilating rose,

Took glory in the great repose,

And over every postured form

Spread lava-like and brooded warm, —

And fixed on every frozen face,

Beheld the record of its race,

And in each chisell'd feature knew

The stormy life that once blush'd thro' ;—

The ever-present of the past

There written; all that lightened last,

Love, anguish, hope, disease, despair,

Beauty and rage, all written there ;—

136

Enchanted Passions ! whose pale doors

Is never flushed by blight or bloom,

But sentinell'd by silent orbs,

Whose light the pallid scene absorbs.—

Like such an one I pace along

This City with its sleeping throng ;

Like her with dread and awe, that turns

To rapture, and sublimely yearns ;—

For now the quiet stars look down

On lights as quiet as their own ;

The streets that groan'd with traffic, show

As if with silence paved below ;

The latest revellers are at peace,

The signs of in-door tumult cease,

From gay saloon and low resort,

Comes not one murmur or report :

The clattering chariot rolls not by,

The windows show no waking eye,

The houses smoke not, and the air

Is clear, and all the midnight fair.

The centre of the striving world,

Round which the human fate is curl'd,

To which the future crieth wild,—

Is pillow'd like a cradled child.

The palace roof that guards a crown,

The mansion swathed in dreamy down,

Hovel, court, and alley shed,

Sleep in the calmness of the dead.

Now while the many-motived heart,

Lies hush'd—fireside and busy mart,

And mortal pulses beat the tune,

That charms the calm cold ear o' the moon

137

Whose yellowing crescent down the west
Leans listening, now when every breast
Its basest or its purest heaves,
The soul that joys, the soul that grieves;—

While Fame is crowning happy brows
That day will blindly scorn, while vows
Of anguish'd love long hidden, speak
From faltering tongue and flushing cheek;

The language only known to dreams,
Rich eloquence of rosy themes!
While on the Beauty's folded mouth,
Disdain just wrinkles baby youth;

While Poverty dispenses alms
To outcasts, bread, and healing balms;
While old Mammon knows himself
The greatest beggar for his pelf;

While noble things in darkness grope,
The Statesman's aim, the Poet's hope;
The Patriot's impulse gathers fire,
And germs of future fruits aspire;—

Now while dumb nature owns its links,
And from one common fountain drinks,
Methinks in all around I see
This Picture in Eternity;—

A marbled City planted there
With all its pageants and despair;
A peopled hush, a Death not dead,
But stricken with Medusa's head;—

And in the Gorgon's glance for aye
The lifeless immortality
Reveals in sculptured calmness all
Its latest life beyond recall.

138

## THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddy
As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere.
Tender to tearfulness—childlike, and manly, and motherly;
Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English ground.

## THE POETRY OF SPENSER

Lakes where the sunsheen is mystic with splendour and softness;
Vales where sweet life is all summer with golden romance;
Forests that glimmer with twilight round revel-bright palaces;
Here in our May-blood we wander, careering 'mongst ladies and knights.

## THE POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE

Picture some Isle smiling green 'mid the white-foaming ocean;—
Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays;
Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it;
Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm'd by one great human heart.

## THE POETRY OF MILTON

Like to some deep-chested organ whose grand inspiration,
Sérenely majestic in utterance, lofty and calm,
Interprets to mortals with melody great as its burthen,
The mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout the bright spheres.

## THE POETRY OF SOUTHEY

Keen as an eagle whose flight towards the dim empyréan
Fearless of toil or fatigue ever royalty wends!
Vast in the cloud-colour'd robes of the balm-breathing Orient
Lo! the grand Epic advances, unfolding the humanest truth.

139

## THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE

A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting,
And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed—
Renewed thro' all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight—
Unceasing in moonlight, but hush'd in the beams of the holler orb.

## THE POETRY OF SHELLEY

See'st thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets ascending
Quiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn?
Deep in the heart-yearning distance of Heaven it flutters—
Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings down at eve.

## THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH

A breath of the mountains, fresh born in the regions majestic,
That look with their eye-daring summits deep into the sky;
The voice of great Nature! sublime with her lofty conceptions,
Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the green lowly vale.

## THE POETRY OF KEATS

The song of a nightingale sent thro' a slumbrous valley,
Low-lidded with twilight, and tranced with the dolorous sound,
Tranced with a tender enchantment; the yearning of passion
That wins immortality even while panting delirious with death.

## VIOLETS

Violets, shy violets!
How many hearts with ye compare!
Who hide themselves in thickest green,
And thence unseen,
Ravish the enraptured air
With sweetness, dewy fresh and rare!

140

Violets, shy violets!
Human hearts to me shall be
Viewless violets in the grass,
And as I pass,
Odours and sweet imagery
Will wait on mine and gladden me!

## ANGELIC LOVE

Angelic love that stops with heavenly lips
To meet its earthly mate;
Heroic love that to its sphere's eclipse,
Can dare to join its fate
With one beloved devoted human heart,
And share with it the passion and the smart,
The undying bliss
Of its most fleeting kiss;
The fading grace
Of its most sweet embrace:—
Angelic love, heroic love!
Whose birth can only be above,
Whose wandering must be on earth,
Whose haven where it first had birth!
Love that can part with all but its own worth,
And joy in every sacrifice
That beautifies its Paradise!

And gently like a golden-fruited vine,
With earnest tenderness itself consign,
And creeping up deliriously entwine
Its dear delicious arms
Round the beloved being!
With fair unfolded charms,
All-trusting, and all-seeing,—

Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine!
While to the panting heart's dry yearning drouth
Buds the rich dewy mouth—
Tenderly uplifted,
Like two rose-leaves drifted

141

Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet south!
Such love, such love is thine,
Such heart is mine
O thou of mortal visions most divine!

## TWILIGHT MUSIC

Know you the low pervading breeze
That softly sings
In the trembling leaves of twilight trees,
As if the wind were dreaming on its wings?
And have you marked their still degrees
Of ebbing melody, like the strings
Of a silver harp swept by a spirit's hand
In some strange glimmering land,
'Mid gushing springs,
And glistenings
Of waters and of planets, wild and grand!
And have you marked in that still time,
The chariots of those shining cars
Brighten upon the hushing dark,
And bent to hark
That Voice, amid the poplar and the lime,
Pause in the dilating lustre
Of the spherical cluster;
Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep
As dreams of Heaven to souls that sleep!
And felt, despite earth's jarring wars,
When day is done
And dead the sun,
Still a voice divine can sing,
Still is there sympathy can bring
A whisper from the stars!
Ah, with this sentience quickly will you know,
How like a tree I tremble to the tones
Of your sweet voice!
How keenly I rejoice
When in me with sweet motions slow

142

The spiritual music ebbs and moans—
Lives in the lustre of those heavenly eyes,
Dies in the light of its own paradise,—
Dies, and relives eternal from its death,
Immortal melodies in each deep breath;
Sweeps thro' my being, bearing up to thee
Myself, the weight of its eternity;
Till nerved to life from its ordeal fire,
It marries music with the human lyre,
Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.

## REQUIEM

Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,
In patience and peace thou art gone—to thy grave!
Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,
Dead tho' a thousand hands stretch'd out to save.
Thou cam'st to us sighing, and singing and dying,
How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?
Placidly fading, and sinking and shading,
At last to that shadow, the latest desert;
Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining,
Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!

The summer that brightens, the winter that whitens,
The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,
The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,
All—all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;
The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,
Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.

The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;
And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;
No last loving token of wedded love, broken,
No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;
Lost as the flower that is drown'd in the shower,
Fall'n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.

143

With savage inspiration,—pine,
And larch, and beech, and fir, and thorn,
And ash, and oak, and oakling, rave
And shriek, and shout, and whirl, and toss,
And stretch their arms, and split, and crack,
And bend their stems, and bow their heads,
And grind, and groan, and lion-like
Roar to the echo-peopled hills
And ravenous wilds, and crake-like cry
With harsh delight, and cave-like call
With hollow mouth, and harp-like thrill
With mighty melodies, sublime,
From clumps of column'd pines that wave
A lofty anthem to the sky,
Fit music for a prophet's soul—
And like an ocean gathering power,
And murmuring deep, while down below,
Reigns calm profound;—not trembling now
The aspens, but like freshening waves
That fall upon a shingly beach;—
And round the oak a solemn roll
Of organ harmony ascends,
And in the upper foliage sounds
A symphony of distant seas.

The voice of nature is abroad
This night; she fills the air with balm;
Her mystery is o'er the land;
And who that hears her now and yields
His being to her yearning tōnes,
And seats his soul upon her wings,
And broadens o'er the wind-swept world
With her, will gather in the flight
More knowledge of her secret, more
Delight in her beneficence,
Than hours of musing, or the lore
That lives with men could ever give!
Nor will it pass away when morn
Shall look upon the lulling leaves,

150

And woodland sunshine, Eden-sweet,
Dreams o'er the paths of peaceful shade;—
For every elemental power
Is kindred to our hearts, and once
Acknowledged, wedded, once embraced,
Once taken to the unfettered sense,
Once clasped into the naked life,
The union is eternal.

## WILL O' THE WISP

Follow me, follow me,
Over brake and under tree,
Thro' the bosky tanglery,
Brushwood and bramble!
Follow me, follow me,
Laugh and leap and scramble!
Follow, follow,
Hill and hollow,
Fosse and burrow,
Feen and furrow,
Down into the bulrush beds,
Midst the reeds and osier heads,
In the rushy soaking damps,
Where the vapours pitch their camps,
Follow me, follow me,
For a midnight ramble!
O! what a mighty fog,
What a merry night O ho!
Follow, follow, nigher, nigher—
Over bank, and pond, and briar,
Down into the croaking ditches,
Rotten log,
Spotted frog,
Beetle bright
With crawling light,
What a joy O ho!
Deep into the purple bog—
What a joy O ho!

151

Where like hosts of puckered witches
All the shivering agues sit
Warming hands and chafing feet,
By the blue marsh-hovering oils :
O the fools for all their moans !
Not a forest mad with fire
Could still their teeth, or warm their bones,
Or loose them from their chilly coils.

What a clatter,
How they chatter!
Shrink and huddle,
All a muddle,
What a joy O ho!
Down we go, down we go,
What a joy O ho!
Soon shall I be down below,
Plunging with a grey fat friar,
Hither, thither, to and fro,
What a joy O ho!

Breathing mists and whisking lamps,
Plashing in the shiny swamps;

What a joy O ho !
While my cousin Lantern Jack,
With cock ears and cunning eyes,
Turns him round upon his back,
Daubs him oozy green and black,
Sits upon his rolling size,
Where he lies, where he lies,
Groaning full of sack—
Staring with his great round eyes !
What a joy O ho !

Sits upon him in the swamps
Breathing mists and whisking lamps !
What a joy O ho !

Such a lad is Lantern Jack,
When he rides the black nightmare
Through the fens, and puts a glare
In the friar's track.
Such a frolic lad, good lack !

152

To turn a friar on his back,
Trip him, clip him, whip him, nip him.
Lay him sprawling, smack !
Such a lad is Lantern Jack !
Such a tricksy lad, good lack !
What a joy O ho !
Follow me, follow me,
Where he sits, and you shall see !

SONG

Fair and false ! No dawn will greet
Thy waking beauty as of old;
The little flower beneath thy feet
Is alien to thy smile so cold;
The merry bird flown up to meet
Young morning from his nest i' the wheat,
Scatters his joy to wood and wold,
But scorns the arrogance of gold.

False and fair ! I scarce know why,
But standing in the lonely air,
And underneath the blessed sky,
I plead for thee in my despair ;—
For thee cut off, both heart and eye
From living truth ; thy spring quite dry;
For thee, that Heaven my thought may share,
Forget—how false ! and think—how fair !

SONG

Two wedded lovers watch'd the rising moon,
That with her strange, mysterious beauty glowing,
Over misty hills and waters flowing,
Crown'd the long twilight loveliness of June :
And thus in me, and thus in me, they spake,
The solemn secret of first love did wake.

153

Peneus from the heights of Pindus-

Takes its muse-melodious source;
Sacred is its fountain'd birthplace,
And the Orient floods its course!

Many a morn the sunny darling
Saw the rising chariot-rays,
From the winding river-reaches,
Melowning in amber haze.

Thro' the flaming mountain gorges
Lo! the River leaps the plain.
Like a wild god-stridden courser,
Tossing high its foamy mane.

Scon the sweetness of the scenery,
And the balm of flower and herb,
Sothe his senses, check his swiftness,
Smoothe him with a gentle curb!

And he swims thro' laurell'd sunlight,
Full of all sensations sweet,
Misty with his morning incense
To the mirror'd maiden's feet!

Wet and bright the tinting pebbles
Shine where oft she paused and stood;
All her dreamy warmth revolving,
While the chilly waters woo'd.

Like to rosy-born Aurora,
Glowing freshly into view,
When her doubtful foot she ventures
On the first cold morning blue.

White as that Thessalian lily,
Fairest Tempe's fairest flower,
Lo! the tall Peneian virgin,
Stands beneath her bathing bower.

156

There the laurell'd wreaths o'erarching
Crown'd the dainty shuddering maid;
There the dark prophetic laurel
Kiss'd her with its sister shade.

There the young green glistening leaflets
Hush'd with love their breezy peal;
There the little opening flowerets
Blush'd beneath her vermeil heel!

There among the conscious arbours,
Sounds of soft tumultuous wail,
Mysteries of love, melodious,
Came upon the lyric gale!

Breathings of a deep enchantment,
Effluence of immortal grace,
Flitted round her faltering footstep,
Spread a balm about her face!

Witless of the enamour'd presence,
Like a dreamy lotus bud
From its drowsy stem down-drooping,
Gazed she in the glowing flood.

Softly sweet with fluttering presage,
Felt she that ethereal sense,
Drinking charms of love delirious,
Reaping bliss of love intense!

All the air was thrill'd with sunrise,
Birds made music of her name,
And the god-impregnate water
Claspt her image ere she came.

Richer for that glance unconscious!
Dearer for that soft dismay!
And the sudden self-possession!
And the smile as bright as day!

157

Plunging 'mid her scattered tresses,
With her blue invoking eyes;
See her like a star descending!
Like a rosebud see her rise!

Like a rosebud in the morning
Dashing off its jewell'd dews,
Ere unfolding all its fragrance
It is gathered by the muse!

Beauteous in the foamy laughter,
Bubbling round her shrinking waist,
Lo! from locks and lips and eyelids
Rain the glittering pearl-drops chaste !

And about the maiden rapture
Still the ruddy ripples play'd,
Ebbing round in startled circlets
When her arms began to wade.

Flowing in like tides attracted,
To the glowing crescent shine !
Clasping her ambrosial whiteness
Like an Autumn-tinted vine !

Sinking low with love's emotion !
Levying with look and tone
All love's rosy arts to mimic
Cytherea's magic zone !

Trembling up with adoration
To the crimson daisy tip,
Budding from the snowy bosom—
Fainters than the rose-red lip !

Rising in a storm of wavelets,
That for shelter, feigning fright,
Prest to those twin-heaving havens,
Harbour'd there beneath her light.

158

Gleaming in a whirl of eddies
Round her lucid throat and neck;
Eddying in a gleam of dimples
Up against her bloomy cheek.

Bribing all the breezy water
With rich warmth, the nymph to keep
In a self-imprison'd plaisance;
Tempting her from deep to deep.

Till at last delirious passion
Thrill'd the god to wild excess,
And the fervour of a moment
Made divinity confess;

And he stood in all his glory !
But so radiant, being near,
That her eyes were frozen on him
In a fascinated fear !

All with orient splendour shining,—
All with roseate birth aglow,
Gleam'd the golden god before her,
With his golden crescent bow.

Soon the dazzled light subsided,
And he seem'd a beauteous youth,
Form'd to gain the maiden's murmurs,
And to pledge the vows of truth.

Ah! that thus he had continued !
O, that such for her had been !
Graceful with all godlike beauty,
But so humanly serene !

Cheeks, and mouth, and mellow ringlets,
Bounteous as the mid-day beam;
Pleading looks and wistful tremour,
Tender as a maiden's dream !

159

Palms that like a bird's throbb'd bosom
Palpitate with eagerness,
Lips, the bridals of the roses,
Dewy sweet from the caress!

Lips and limbs, and eyes and ringlets,
Swaying, praying to one prayer,
Like a lyre, swept by a spirit,
In the still, enraptur'd air.

Like a lyre in some far valley,
Uttering ravishments divine !
All its strings to viewless fingers
Yearning, modulations fine !

Yearning with melodious fervour !
Like a beauteous maiden flower,
When the young beloved, three paces
Hovers from the bridal bower.

Throbbing thro' the dawning stillness !
As a heart within a breast,
When the young beloved is stepping
Radiant to the nuptial nest.

O for Daphne ! gentle Daphne !
Ever warmer by degrees
Whispers full of hopes and visions,
Throng her ears like honey bees !

Never yet was lonely blossom
Woo'd with such delicious voice !
Never since hath mortal maiden
Dwelt on such celestial choice !

Love-suffused she quivers, falters—
Falters, sighs, but never speaks,
All her rosy blood up-gushing,
Overflows her ripe young cheeks.

160

Blushing, sweet with virgin blushes,
All her loveliness a-flame,
Stands she in the orient waters,
Stricken o'er with speechless shame !

Ah! but lovelier, ever lovelier,
As more deep the colour glows,
And the honey-laden lily
Changes to the fragrant rose.

While the god with meek embraces,
Whispering all his sacred charms,
Softly folds her, gently holds her,
In his white encircling arms !

But, O Dian ! veil not wholly
Thy pale crescent from the morn !
Vanish not O virgin goddess
With that look of pallid scorn !

Still thy pure protecting influence
Shed from those fair watchful eyes !—
Lo ! her angry orb has vanish'd,
And the bright sun thrones the skies !

Voicelessly the forest virgin
Vanish'd ! but one look she gave—
Keen as Niobean arrow
Thro' the maiden's heart it drave.

Thus towards that throning bosom
Where all earth is warm'd,—each spot
Nourish'd with autumnal blessings—
Icy chill was Daphne caught.

Icy chill! but swift revulsion
All her gentler self renew'd,
Even as icy winter quickens
With bud-opening warmth imbued.

31-L

161

Even as a torpid brooklet
That to the night-gleaming moon
Flash'd in turn the frozen glances,-
Melts upon the breast of noon.

But no more—O never, never,
Turns she to that bosom bright,
Swiftly all her senses counsel—
All her nerves are strung to flight.

O'er the brows of radiant Pindus
Rolls a shadow dark and cold,
And a sound of lamentation
Issues from its mournful fold.

Voice of the far-sighted muses !
Cry of keen foreboding song !
Every cleft of startled Tempe
Tingles with it sharp and long.

Over bourn and bosk and dingle,
Over rivers, over rills,
Runs the sad subservient Echo
Towards the dim blue distant hills !

And another and another !
And a cry more keen and strong,
Sends the babbling nymph to follow
That first message of wild song.

And another and another !
'Tis a cry more wild than all;
And the hills with muffled voices
Answer 'Daphne!' to the call.

And another and another !
'Tis a cry so wildly sweet,
That her charmed heart turns rebel
To the instinct of her feet ;

162

And she pauses for an instant;
But his arms have scarcely slid
Round her waist in cestian girdles,
And his low voluptuous lid

Lifted pleading, and the honey
Of his mouth for her's athirst;
Ruby glistening, raised for moisture—
Like a bud that waits to burst

In the sweet espousing showers—
And his tongue has scarce begun
With its inarticulate burthen—
And the clouds scarce show the sun

As it pierces thro' a crevice
Of the mass that closed it o'er,
When again the horror flashes—
And she turns to flight once more!

And again o'er radiant Pindus
Rolls the shadow dark and cold,
And the sound of lamentation
Issues from its sable fold!

And again the light winds chide her
As she darts from his embrace—
And again the far-voiced echoes
Speak their tidings of the chase.

Loudly now as swiftly, swiftly,
O'er the glimmering sands she speeds;
Wildly now as in the furzes
From the piercing spikes she bleeds.

Deeply and with direful anguish
As above each crimson drop,
Passion checks the god Apollo,
And love bids him weep and stop.—

163

He above each drop of crimson
Shadowing—like the laurel leaf
That above himself will shadow,—
Sheds a fadeless look of grief.

Then with love's remorseful discord,
With its own desire at war,
Sighing turns, while dimly fleeting
Daphne flies the chase afar!

But all nature is against her!
Pan with all his sylvan troop,
Thro' the vista'd woodland valleys
Blocks her course with cry and whoop!

In the twilights of the thickets
Trees bend down their gnarled boughs,
Wild green leaves and low curved branches,
Hold her hair and beat her brows.

Many a brake of brushwood covert
Where cold darkness slumbers mute,
Slips a shrub to thwart her passage,
Slides a hand to clutch her foot.

Glens and glades of lushest verdure
Toil her in their tawny mesh,
Wilder-woofed ways and alleys
Lock her struggling limbs in leash:

Feathery grasses, flowery mosses,
Knot themselves to make her trip;
Sprays and stubborn sprigs outstretching,
Put a bridle on her lip;—

Many a winding lane betrays her,
Many a sudden bosky shoot,
And her knee makes many a stumble
O'er some hidden damp old root,

164

Whose quaint face peers green and dusky
'Mongst the matted growth of plants,
While she rises wild and weltering,
Speeding on with many pants.

Tangles of the wild red strawberry
Spread their freckled trammels frail,
In the pathway creeping brambles
Catch her in their thorny trail.

All the widely sweeping greensward
Shifts and swims from knoll to knoll,
Grey rough-fingered oak and elm wood
Push her by from bole to bole.

Groves of lemon, groves of citron,
Tall high-foliaged plane and palm,
Bloomy myrtle, light-blue olive,
Wave her back with gusts of balm.

Languid jasmine, scrambling briony,
Walls of close-festooning braid,
Fling themselves about her, mingling
With her wafted locks, waylaid.

Twisting bindweed, honey'd woodbine,
Cling to her, while, red and blue,
On her rounded form, ripe berries
Dash and die in gory dew.

Running ivies dark and lingering,
Round her light limbs drag and twine;
Round her waist with languorous tendrils.
Reels and wreathes the juicy vine;—

Reining in the flying creature
With its arms about her mouth;
Bursting all its mellowing bunches
To seduce her husky drouth.

165

Crowning her with amorous clusters;
Pouring down her sloping back
Fresh-born wines in glittering rillets,
Following her in crimson track.

Buried, drench'd in dewy foliage,
Thus she glimmers from the dawn;
Watch'd by every forest creature,
Fleet-foot Oread, frolic Faun,

Silver-sandalled Arethusa
Not more swiftly fled the sands,
Fled the plains and fled the sunlights,
Fled the murmuring ocean strands.

O, that now the earth would open!
O, that now the shades would hide!
O, that now the gods would shelter!
Caverns lead and seas divide!

Not more faint soft-lowing Io
Panted in those starry eyes,
When the sleepless midnight meadows
Piteously implored the skies!

Still her breathless flight she urges
By the sanctuary stream,
And the god with golden swiftness
Follows like an eastern beam.

Her the close bewildering greenery
Darkens with its duskiest green,—
Him each little leaflet welcomes,
Flushing with an orient sheen.

Thus he nears, and now all Tempe
Rings with his melodious cry,
Avenues and blue expanses
Beam in his large, lustrous eye!

166

All the branches start to music !
As if from a secret spring;
Thousands of sweet bills are bubbling
In the nest and on the wing.

Gleams and shines the glassy river
And rich valleys every one;
But of all the throbbing beauty
Brightest! singled by the Sun!

Ivy round her glimmering ankle,
Vine about her glowing brow,
Never sure was bride so beauteous
Daphne, chosen nymph as thou!

Thus he nears! and now she feels him
Breathing hot on every limb;
And he hears her own quick pantings—
Ah! that they might be for him.

O, that like the flower he tramples,
Bending from his golden tread,
Full of fair celestial ardours,
She would bow her bridal head.

O, that like the flower she presses,
Nodding from her lily touch,
Light as in the harmless breezes,
She would know the god as such!

See! the golden arms are round her—
To the air she grasps and clings!
See! his glowing arms have wound her—
To the sky she shrieks and springs!

See! the flushing chase of Tempe
Trembles with Olympian air—
See! green sprigs and buds are shooting
From those white raised arms of prayer!

167

In the earth her feet are rooting!—
Breasts and limbs and lifted eyes,
Hair and lips and stretching fingers,
 Fade away—and fadeless rise.

And the god whose fervent rapture
Clasps her, finds his close embrace
Full of palpitating branches,
And new leaves that bud apace,

Round his wonder-stricken forehead;—
While in ebbing measures slow,
Sounds of softly dying pulses,
Pause and quiver, pause and go.

Go, and come again, and flutter
On the verge of life,—then flee!
All the white ambrosial beauty
Is a lustrous Laurel Tree!

Still with the great panting love-chase
All its running sap is warm'd;—
But from head to foot the virgin
Is transfigured and transform'd.

Changed!—yet the green Dryad nature
Is instinct with human ties,
And above its anguish'd lover
Breathes pathetic sympathies.

Sympathies of love and sorrow;—
Joy in her divine escape!
Breathing through her bursting foliage
Comfort to his bending shape.

Vainly now the floating Naiads
Seek to pierce the laurel maze,
Nought but laurel meets their glances,
Laurel glistens as they gaze.

168

Nought but bright prophetic laurel!
Laurel over eyes and brows,
Over limbs and over bosom,
Laurel leaves and laurel boughs!

And in vain the listening Dryad
Shells her hand against her ear!—
All is silence—save the echo
Travelling in the distance drear.

## SONG

Should thy love die;
O bury it not under ice-blue eyes!
And lips that deny,
With a scorrid surprise,
The life it once lived in thy breast where it wore no disguise.

Should thy love die;
O bury it where the sweet wild-flowers blow!
And breezes go by,
With no whisper of woe;
And strange feet cannot guess of the anguish that slumbers below.

Should thy love die;
O wander once more to the haunt of the bee!
Where the foliaged sky
Is most sacred to see,
And thy being first felt its wild birth like a wind-wakened tree.

Should thy love die;
O dissemble it! smile! let the rose hide the thorn!
While the lark sings on high,
And no thing looks forlorn,
Bury it, bury it, where it was born.

169

LONDON BY LAMPLIGHT

There stands a singer in the street,
He has an audience motley and meet;
Above him lowers the London night,
And around the lamps are flaring bright.

His minstrelsy may be unchaste—
'Tis much unto that motley taste,
And loud the laughter he provokes
From those sad slaves of obscene jokes.

But woe is many a passer by
Who as he goes turns half an eye,
To see the human form divine
Thus Circe-wise changed into swine!

Make up the sum of either sex
That all our human hopes perplex,
With those unhappy shapes that know
The silent streets and pale cock-crow.

And can I trace in such dull eyes
Of fireside peace or country skies?
And could those haggard cheeks presume
To memories of a May-tide bloom?

Those violated forms have been
The pride of many a flowering green;
And still the virgin bosom heaves
With daisy meads and dewy leaves.

But stygian darkness reigns within,
The river of death from the founts of sin;
And one prophetic water rolls
Its gas-lit surface for their souls.

170

I will not hide the tragic sight—
Those drown'd black locks, those dead lips white,
Will rise from out the slimy flood,
And cry before God's throne for blood!

Those stiffened limbs, that swollen face,—
Pollution's last and best embrace,
Will call as such a picture can,
For retribution upon man.

Hark! how their feeble laughter rings,
While still the ballad-monger sings,
And flatters their unhappy breasts
With poisonous words and pungent jests.

O now would every daisy blush
To see them 'mid that earthy crush!
O dumb would be the evening thrush,
And hoary look the hawthorn bush!

The meadows of their infancy
Would shrink from them, and every tree,
And every little laughing spot,
Would hush itself and know them not.

Precursor to what black despairs
Was that child's face which once was theirs!
And O to what a world of guile
Was herald that young angel smile!

That face which to a father's eye
Was balm for all anxiety;
That smile which to a mother's heart
Went swifter than the swallow's dart!

O happy homes! that still they know
At intervals, with what a woe
Would ye look on them, dim and strange,
Suffering worse than winter change!

171

And yet could I transplant them there,
To breathe again the innocent air
Of youth, and once more reconcile
Their outcast looks with nature's smile;

Could I but give them one clear day
Of this delicious loving May,
Release their souls from anguish dark,
And stand them underneath the lark ;—

I think that Nature would have power
To graft again her blighted flower
Upon the broken stem, renew
Some portion of its early hue :—

The heavy flood of tears unlock,
More precious than the Scriptured rock ;
At least instil a happier mood,
And bring them back to womanhood.

Alas! how many lost ones claim
This refuge from despair and shame!
How many, longing for the light,
Sink deeper in the abyss this night!

O, crying sin! O, blushing thought!
Not only unto those that wrought
The misery and deadly blight;
But those that outcast them this night!

O, agony of grief! for who
Less dainty than his race, will do
Such battle for their human right,
As shall awake this startled night?

Proclaim this evil human page,
Will ever blot the Golden Age,
That poets dream and saints invite,
If it be unredeemed this night!

172

This night of deep solemnity,
And verdurous serenity,
While over every fleecy field,
The dews descend and odours yield.

This night of gleaming floods and falls,
Of forest glooms and sylvan calls;
Of starlight on the pebbly rills,
And twilight on the circling hills.

This night! when from the paths of men
Grey error steams as from a fen;
As o'er this flaring City wreathes
The black cloud-vapour that it breathes!

This night from which a morn will spring
Blooming on its orient wing;
A morn to roll with many more
Its ghostly foam on the twilight shore.

Morn! when the fate of all mankind
Hangs poised in doubt, and man is blind;
His duties of the day will seem
The fact of life, and mine the dream.

The destinies that bards have sung,
Regeneration to the young;
Reverberation of the truth,
And virtuous culture unto youth!

Youth! in whose season let abound
All flowers and fruits that strew the ground,
Voluptuous joy where love consents,
And health and pleasure pitch their tents:

All rapture and all pure delight;
A garden all unknown to blight,
But never the unnatural night
That throngs the shameless song this night!

173

## SONG

Under boughs of breathing May,
In the mild spring-time I lay,
Lonely, for I had no love;

And the sweet birds all sang for pity,
Cuckoo, lark, and dove.

Tell me, cuckoo, then I cried,
Dare I woo and wed a bride?
I, like thee, have no home-nest;

And the twin notes thus tuned their ditty,—
'Love can answer best.'

Nor, warm dove with tender coo,
Have I thy soft voice to woo,
Even were a damsel by;

And the deep woodland croon'd its ditty,—
'Love her first and try.'

Nor have I, wild lark, thy wing;
That from bluest heaven can bring
Bliss, whatever fate befall;

And the sky-lyrist trilled this ditty,—
'Love will give thee all.'

So it chanced while June was young,
Wooing well with fervent song,
I had won a damsel coy;

And the sweet birds that sang for pity,
Jubileed for joy.

174

## PASTORALS

How sweet on sunny afternoons,
For those who journey light and well,
To loiter up a hilly rise
Which hides the prospect far beyond,
And fancy all the landscape lying
Beautiful and still.

Beneath a sky of summer blue,
Whose rounded cloudlets, folded soft,
Gaze on the scene which we await
And picture from their peacefulness;
So calmly to the earth inclining
Float those loving shapes!

Like airy brides, each singling out
A spot to love and bless with love,
Their creamy bosoms glowing warm,
Till distance weds them to the hills,
And with its latest gleam the river
Sinks in their embrace.

And silverly the river runs,
And many a graceful wind he makes,
By fields where feed the happy flocks,
And hedge-rows hushing pleasant lanes.
The charms of English home reflected
In his shining eye!

Ancestral oak, broad-foliaged elm,
Rich meadows sunned and starred with flowers,
The cottage breathing tender smoke
Against the brooding golden air,
With glimpses of a stately mansion
On a woodland sward!

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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

IV

Lo! as a tree, whose wintry twigs
Drink in the sun with fibrous joy,
And down into its dampest roots
Thrills quickened with the draught of life,
I wake unto the dawn, and leave my griefs to drowse.

I rise and drink the fresh sweet air:
Each draught a future bud of Spring;
Each glance of blue a birth of green;
I will not mimic yonder oak
That dallies with dead leaves ev'n while the primrose peep!

But full of these warm-whispering beams,
Like Memnon in his mother's eye,—
Aurora! when the statue stone
Moaned soft to her pathetic touch,—
My soul shall own its parent in the founts of day!

And ever in the recurring light,
True to the primal joy of dawn,
Forget its barren griefs; and aye
Like aspens in the faintest breeze,
Turn all its silver sides and tremble into song.

V

Now from the meadow floods the wild duck clamours,
Now the wood pigeon wings a rapid flight,
Now the homeward rookery follows up its vanguard,
And the valley mists are curling up the hills.

Three short songs gives the clear-voiced throstle,
Sweetening the twilight ere he fills the nest;
While the little bird upon the leafless branches
Tweets to its mate a tiny loving note.

Deeper the stillness hangs on every motion;
Calmer the silence follows every call;
Now all is quiet save the roosting pheasant,
The bell-wether tinkle and the watch-dog's bark.

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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Softly shine the lights from the silent kindling homestead,
Stars of the hearth to the shepherd in the fold;
Springs of desire to the traveller on the roadway;
Ever breathing incense to the ever-blessing sky!

VI

How barren would this valley be,
Without the golden orb that gazes
On it, broadening to hues
Of rose, and spreading wings of amber;
Blessing it before it falls asleep.

How barren would this valley be,
Without the human lives now beating
In it, or the throbbing hearts
Far distant, who their flower of childhood
Cherish here, and water it with tears!

How barren should I be, were I
Without above that loving splendour,
Shedding light and warmth! without
Some kindred natures of my kind
To joy in me, or yearn towards me now!

VII

Summer glows warm on the meadows, and speedwell, and gold-cups, and
daisies,

Darken 'mid deepening masses of sorrel, and shadowy grasses

Show the ripe hue to the farmer, and summon the scythe and the hay-
makers

Down from the village; and now, even now, the air smells of the mowing,
And the sharp song of the scythe whistles daily; from dawn, till the gloam-
ing

Wears its cool star; sweet and welcome to all flaming faces afield now;
Besprinkled with labour, and with the pure brew of the malt right cheery!

Heavily weighs the hot season, and drowses the darkening foliage,
Drooping with languor; the white cloud floats, but sails not, for windless

The blue heaven tents it; no lark singing up in its fleecy white valleys;

179

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Up in its fairy white valleys, once feathered with minstrels; melodious
With the invisible joy that wakes dawn o'er the green fields of England.
Summer glows warm on the meadows; then come, let us roam thro' them
gaily,

Heedless of heat, and the hot-kissing Sun, and the fear of dark freckles
For never one kiss will he give on a neck, or a lily-white forehead,
Chin, hand, or fair bosom uncovered, all panting, to take the chance coolness,—

But surely the hot fiery pressure shall leave its brown seal of espousal.

Heed him hot; come, tho' he kiss till the soft little upper-lip loses

Half its pure whiteness; just speck'd where the curve of the rosy mouth
reddens.

Come, let him kiss, let him kiss, and his kisses shall make thee the sweeter.

Thou art no nun, veiled and vowed; doomed to nourish a withering pallor !

City exotics beside thee would show like bleached linen at mid-day,

Hung upon hedges of eglantine! Thou in the freedom of nature,
Full of her beauty and wisdom, gentleness, joyance, and kindness!

Come, and like bees will we gather the rich golden honey of noontide;

Deep in the sweet summer meadows, border'd by hillside and river;

Lined with long trenches half-hidden, where, sweetest, the smell of white
meadow-sweet—

Blissfully hovers—O sweetest! but pluck it not! even in the tenderest

Grasp it will lose breath and wither; like many, not made for a posy.

See the sun slopes down to the meadows, where all the flowers are falling !

Falling unhymned; for the nightingale scarce ever charms the long twi-
light:

Mute with the cares of the nest; only known by a 'chuck, chuck,' and
dovelike

Call of content, but the finch and the linnet and blackcap pipe loudly.

Round on the western hill-side warbles the rich-billed onzel;

And the shrill throstle is filling the tangled thickening copses;

Singing o'er hyacinths hid, and most honey'd of flowers, white field-rose.

Joy thus to revel all day in the grass of our own beloved country;

Revel all day, till the lark mounts at eve with his sweet 'tirra-lirra':

Trilling delightfully. See, on the river the slow-rippled surface

Shining; the slow ripple broadens in circles; the bright surface smoothens;

180

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Now it is flat as the leaves of the yet unseen water-lily.

There dart the lives of a day, ever-varying tactics fantastic.

There, by the wet-mirrored osiers, the emerald wing of the kingfisher
Flashes, the fish in his beak ! there the dab-chick dived, and the motion
Lazily undulates all thro' the tall standing army of rushes.

Joy thus to revel all day, till the twilight turns us homeward!

Till all the lingering deep-blooming splendour of sunset is over,

And the one star shines mildly in mellowing hues, like a spirit

Sent to assure us that light never dieth, tho' day is now buried.

Saying: to-morrow, to-morrow, few hours intervening, that interval

Tuned by the woodlark in heaven, to-morrow my semblance, far eastward,

Heralds the day 'tis my mission eternal to seal and to prophecy.

Come then, and homeward; passing down the close path of the meadows.

Home-like the bees stored with sweetness; each with a lark in the bosom,

Trilling for ever, and oh! will yon lark ever cease to sing up there?

### SONG

#### Spring

When buds of palm do burst and spread

Their downy feathers in the lane,

And orchard blossoms, white and red,

Breathe Spring delight for Autumn gain;

And the skylark shakes his wings in the rain;

O then is the season to look for a bride!

Choose her warily, woo her unseen;

For the choicest maids are those that hide

Like dewy violets under the green.

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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

SONG

Autumn

When nuts behind the hazel-leaf
Are brown as the squirrel that hunts them free,
And the fields are rich with the sun-burnt sheaf,
'Mid the blue cornflower and the yellowing tree;
And the farmer glows and beams in his glee;

O then is the season to wed thee a bride!
Ere the garners are filled and the ale-cups foam;
For a smiling hostess is the pride
And flower of every Harvest Home.

LOVE IN THE VALLEY

Under yonder beech-tree standing on the green sward,
Couched with her arms behind her little head,
Her knees folded up, and her tresses on her bosom,
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
Had I the heart to slide one arm beneath her
Press her dreaming lips as her waist I folded slow,
Waking on the instant she could not but embrace me—
Ah! would she hold me, and never let me go?

Shy as the squirrel, and wayward as the swallow;
Swift as the swallow when athwart the western flood
Circled the surface he meets his mirrored winglets—
Is that dear one in her maiden bud.

Shy as the squirrel whose nest is in the pine-tops;
Gentle—ah! that she were jealous as the dove!
Full of all the wildness of the woodland creatures,
Happy in herself is the maiden that I love!

182

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

What can have taught her distrust of all I tell her?
Can she truly doubt me when looking on my brows?
Nature never teaches distrust of tender love-tales,
What can have taught her distrust of all my vows?
No, she does not doubt me! on a dewy eve-tide
Whispering together beneath the listening moon,
I pray'd till her cheek flush'd, implored till she faltered—
Fluttered to my bosom—ah! to fly away so soon!

When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,
Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,
Often she thinks—were this wild thing wedded,
I should have more love, and much less care.
When her mother tends her before the bashful mirror,
Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,
Often she thinks—were this wild thing wedded,
I should lose but one for so many boys and girls.

Clambering roses peep into her chamber,
Jasmine and woodbine breathe sweet, sweet,
White-necked swallows twittering of summer,
Fill her with balm and nested peace from head to feet.
Ah! will the rose-bough see her lying lonely,
When the petals fall and fierce bloom is on the leaves?
Will the Autumn garners see her still ungathered,
When the fickle swallows forsake the weeping eaves?

Comes a sudden question—should a strange hand pluck her!
Oh! what an anguish smites me at the thought.
Should some idle lordling bribe her mind with jewels!—
Can such beauty ever thus be bought?
Sometimes the huntsmen prancing down the valley
Eye the village lasses, full of sprightly mirth;
They see as I see, mine is the fairest!
Would she were older and could read my worth!

183

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Are there not sweet maidens if she still deny me?

Show the bridal Heavens but one bright star?

Wherefore thus then do I chase a shadow,

Clattering one note like a brown eve-jar?

So I rhyme and reason till she darts before me—

Thro' the milky meadows from flower to flower she flies,

Sunning her sweet palms to shade her dazzled eyelids

From the golden love that looks too eager in her eyes.

When at dawn she wakens, and her fair face gazes

Out on the weather thro' the window-panes,

Beauteous she looks! like a white water-lily

Bursting out of bud on the rippled river plains.

When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle—

In her long nightgown, sweet as boughs of May,

Beauteous she looks! like a tall garden lily

Pure from the night and perfect for the day!

Happy, happy time, when the grey star twinkles

Over the fields all fresh with bloomy dew;

When the cold-cheeked dawn grows ruddy up the twilight,

And the gold sun wakes, and weds her in the blue.

Then when my darling tempts the early breezes,

She the only star that dies not with the dark!

Powerless to speak all the ardour of my passion

I catch her little hand as we listen to the lark.

Shall the birds in vain then valentine their sweethearts?

Season after season tell a fruitless tale;

Will not the virgin listen to their voices?

Take the honeyed meaning, wear the bridal veil.

Fears she frosts of winter, fears she the bare branches?

Waits she the garlands of spring for her dower?

Is she a nightingale that will not be nested

Till the April woodland has built her bridal bower?

184

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Then come merry April with all thy birds and beauties!

With thy crescent brows and thy flowery, showery glee;

With thy budding leafage and fresh green pastures;

And may thy lustrous crescent grow a honeymoon for me!

Come merry month of the cuckoo and the violet!

Come weeping Loveliness in all thy blue delight!

Lo! the nest is ready, let me not languish longer!

Bring her to my arms on the first May night.

## BEAUTY ROHTRAUT

(From Möricke)

What is the name of King Ringang's daughter?

Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!

And what does she do the livelong day,

Since she dare not knit and spin alway?

O hunting and fishing is ever her play!

And, heigh! that her huntsman I might be!

I'd hunt and fish right merrily!

Be silent, heart!

And it chanced that, after this some time,

Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut,

The boy in the Castle has gained access,

And a horse he has got and a huntsman's dress,

To hunt and to fish with the merry Princess;

And, O! that a king's son I might be!

Beauty Rohtraut I love so tenderly.

Hush! hush! my heart.

Under a grey old oak they sat,

Beauty, Beauty Rohtraut!

She laughs: 'Why look you so slyly at me?'

If you have heart enough, come, kiss me.'

Cried the breathless boy, 'kiss thee?'

But he thinks, kind fortune has favoured my youth;

And thrice he has kissed Beauty Rohtraut's mouth.

Down! down! mad heart.

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## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Then slowly and silently they rode home,—
Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!
The boy was lost in his delight:
And, wert thou Empress this very night,
I would not heed or feel the blight;
Ye thousand leaves of the wild wood wist
How Beauty Rohtraut's mouth I kiss'd.
Hush! hush! wild heart.'

### TO A SKYLARK

O skylark! I see thee and call thee joy!
Thy wings bear thee up to the breast of the dawn;
I see thee no more, but thy song is still
The tongue of the heavens to me!

Thus are the days when I was a boy;
Sweet while I lived in them, dear now they're gone:
I feel them no longer, but still, O still
They tell of the heavens to me.

### SORROWS AND JOYS

Bury thy sorrows, and they shall rise
As souls to the immortal skies,
And there look down like mothers' eyes.

But let thy joys be fresh as flowers,
That suck the honey of the showers,
And bloom alike on huts and towers.

So shall thy days be sweet and bright;
Solemn and sweet thy starry night,
Conscious of love each change of light.

186

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

The stars will watch the flowers asleep,
The flowers will feel the soft stars weep,
And both will mix sensations deep.

With these below, with those above,
Sits evermore the brooding dove,
Uniting both in bonds of love.

For both by nature are akin;
Sorrow, the ashen fruit of sin,
And joy, the juice of life within.

Children of earth are these; and those
The spirits of divine repose—
Death radiant o'er all human woes.

O, think what then had been thy doom,
If homeless and without a tomb,
They had been left to haunt the gloom!

O, think again what now they are—
Motherly love, tho' dim and far,
Imaged in every lustrous star.

For they, in their salvation, know
No vestige of their former woe,
While thro' them all the heavens do flow.

Thus art thou wedded to the skies,
And watched by ever-loving eyes,
And warned by yearning sympathies.

### SONG

The Flower unfolds its dawning cup,
And the young sun drinks the star-dews up,
At eve it droops with the bliss of day,
And dreams in the midnight far away.

187

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

So am I in thy sole, sweet glance,
Pres't with a weight of utterance;
Lovingly all my leaves unfold,
And gleam to the beams of thirsty gold.

At eve I droop, for then the swell
Of feeling falters forth farewell;—
At midnight I am dreaming deep,
Of what has been, in blissful sleep.

When—ah! when will love's own light
Wed me alike thro' day and night,
When will the stars with their linking charms
Wake us in each other's arms?

### SONG

Thou to me art such a spring,
As the Arab seeks at eve,
Thirsty from the shining sands;
There to bathe his face and hands,
While the sun is taking leave,
And dewy sleep is a delicious thing.

Thou to me art such a dream,
As he dreams upon the grass,
While the bubbling coolness near,
Makes sweet music in his ear;
And the stars that slowly pass,
In solitary grandeur o'er him gleam.

Thou to me art such a dawn,
As the dawn, whose ruddy kiss
Wakes him to his darling steed;
And again the desert speed,
And again the desert bliss,
Lightens thro' his veins, and he is gone!

188

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

### ANTIGONE

The buried voice bespake Antigone.

'O Sister! could'st thou know as thou wilt know,
The bliss above, the reverence below,
Enkindled by thy sacrifice for me;
Thou wouldst at once with holy ecstasy,
Give thy warm limbs into the yearning earth.
Sleep, Sister! for Elysium's dawning birth,—
And faith will fill thee with what is to be!
Sleep, for the Gods are watching over thee!
Thy dream will steer thee to perform their will,
As silently their influence they instil.
O Sister! in the sweetness of thy prime,
Thy hand has plucked the bitter flower of death;
But this will dower thee with Elysian breath,
That fade into a never-fading clime.

Dear to the Gods are those that do like thee
A solemn duty! for the tyranny
Of kings is feeble to the soul that dares
Defy them to fulfil its sacred cares:
And weak against a mighty will are men.
O, Torch between two brothers! in whose glem
Our slaughtered House doth shine as one again,
Tho' severed by the sword; now may thy dream
Kindle desire in thee for us, and thou,
Forgetting not thy lover and his vow,
Leaving no human memory forgot,
Shalt cross, not unattended, the dark stream
Which runs by thee in sleep and ripples not.
The large stars glitter thro' the anxious night,
And the deep sky broods low to look at thee:
The air is hush'd and dark o'er land and sea,
And all is waiting for the morrow light:
So do thy kindred spirits wait for thee.
O Sister! soft as on the downward rill,

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## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Will those first daybeams from the distant hill
Fall on the smoothness of thy placid brow,
Like this calm sweetness breathing thro' me now:
And when the fated sounds shall wake thine eyes,
Wilt thou, confiding in the supreme will,
In all thy maiden steadfastness arise,
Firm to obey and earnest to fulfil;
Remembering the night thou didst not sleep,
And this same brooding sky beheld thee creep,
Defiant of unnatural decree,
To where I lay upon the outcast land;
Before the iron gates upon the plain;
A wretched, graveless ghost, whose wailing chill,
Came to thy darkened door imploring thee;
Yearning for burial like my brother slain;—
And all was dared for love and piety!
This thought will nerve again thy virgin hand
To serve its purpose and its destiny.'

She woke, they led her forth, and all was still.

Swathed round in mist and crown'd with cloud,
Θ-Mountain! hid from peak to base—
Caught up into the heavens and clasped
In white ethereal arms that make
Thy mystery of size sublime!
What eye or thought can measure now
Thy grand dilating loftiness!
What giant crest dispute with thee
Supremacy of air and sky!
What fabled height with thee compare!
Not those vine-terraced hills that seethe
The lava in their fiery cusps;
Nor that high-climbing robe of snow,
Whose summits touch the morning star,
And breathe the thinnest air of life;
Nor crocus-couching Ida, warm

190

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

With Juno's latest nuptial lure;
Nor Tenedos whose dreamy eye
Still looks upon beleaguered Troy;
Nor yet Olympus crown'd with gods,
Can boast a majesty like thine,
O Mountain! hid from peak to base,
And image of the awful power
With which the secret of all things
That stoops from heaven to garment earth,
Can speak to any human soul,
When once the earthly limits lose
Their pointed heights and sharpened lines,
And measureless immensity
Is palpable to sense and sight.

### SONG

No, no, the falling blossom is no sign
Of loveliness destroy'd and sorrow mute;
The blossom sheds its loveliness divine;—
Its mission is to prophecy the fruit.

Nor is the day of love for ever dead,
When young enchantment and romance are gone;
The veil is drawn, but all the future dread
Is lightened by the finger of the dawn.

Love moves with life along a darker way,
They cast a shadow and they call it death:
But rich is the fulfilment of their day;
The purer passion and the firmer faith.

### THE TWO BLACKBIRDS

A Blackbird in a wicker cage,
That hung and swung mid fruits and flowers,
Had learnt the song-charm, to assuage
The dreaminess of its wingless hours.

191

180

Heedless of heat, and the hot-kissing Sun, and the fear of dark freckles;

Chin, hand, or fair bosom uncover'd, all panting, to take the chance coolness,—

Still feed him not; come, tho' he kiss till the soft little upper-lip loses

Thou art no nun, veild and vow'd; doom'd to nourish a withering pallor!

City exotics beside thee would show like bleach'd linen at mid-day,

See the sun slopes down to the meadows, where all the flowers are falling!

Falling unhymnd; for the nightingale scarce ever charms the long twi-
light:

Low call of content, but the finch and the linnet and blackcap pipe loudly.

From elms round the western hill-side warbles the rich-bill'd ouzel;

And the shrill throstle is filling the dusky thickening copses;

O joy thus to revel all day in the grass of our own beloved country;

181

Now it is flat as the leaves of the yet unseen water-lily.
There dart the lives of a day, ever-varying tactics fantastic.
There, by the wet-mirror'd osiers, the emerald wing of the kingfisher
Flashes, the fish in his beak! there the dab-chick dived, and the motion
Lazily undulates all thro' the tall standing army of rushes.

O joy thus to revel all day, till the twilight turns us homeward!
Till all the lingering deep-blooming splendour of sunset is over,
And the one star shines mildly in mellowing hues, like a spirit
Sent to assure us that light never dieth, tho' day is now buried.
Saying: to-morrow, to-morrow, few hours intervening, that interval
Tuned by the woodlark in heaven, to-morrow my semblance, far eastward,
Heralds the day 'tis my mission eternal, to seal and to prophecy.

## SONG

### Spring

When buds of palm do burst and spread
Their downy feathers in the lane,
And orchard blossoms, white and red,
Breathe Spring delight and Autumn gain;
And the skylark shakes his wings in the rain;

182

## SONG

### Autumn

When nuts behind the hazel-leaf
Are brown as the squirrel that hunts them free,
And the fields are rich with the sun-burnt sheaf,
'Mid the blue cornflower and the yellowing tree;
And the farmer glows and beams with glee;

O then is the season to wed thee a bride!
Ere the garners are filled and the ale-cups foam,
For a smiling hostess is the pride
And flower of every Harvest Home.

## LOVE IN THE VALLEY

Under yonder beech-tree standing on the green sward,
Couch'd with her arms behind her little head,
Her knees folded up, and her tresses on her bosom,
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
Had I the heart to slide one arm beneath her!
Press her dreaming lips as her waist I folded slow,
Waking on the instant she could not but embrace me—
Ah! would she hold me, and never let me go?

Shy as the squirrel, and wayward as the swallow;
Swift as the swallow when athwart the western flood
Circleding the surface he meets his mirror'd winglets,—
Is that dear one in her maiden bud.

183

Comes a sudden question—should a strange hand pluck her!
Oh! what an anguish smites me at the thought,
Should some idle lordling bribe her mind with jewels!—
Can such beauty ever thus be bought?
Sometimes the huntsmen prancing down the valley
Eye the village lasses, full of sprightly mirth;
They see as I see, mine is the fairest!
Would she were older and could read my worth!

184

When at dawn she wakens, and her fair face gazes
Out on the weather thro' the window-panes,
Beauteous she looks! like a white water-lily
Bursting out of bud on the rippled river plains.
When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle
In her long nightgown, sweet as boughs of May,
Beauteous she looks! like a tall garden lily
Pure from the night and perfect for the day!

Happy, happy time, when the grey star twinkles
Over the fields all fresh with bloomy dew;
When the cold-cheek'd dawn grows ruddy up the twilight,
And the gold sun wakes, and weds her in the blue.
Then when my darling tempts the early breezes,
She the only star that dies not with the dark!
Powerless to speak all the ardour of my passion
I catch her little hand as we listen to the lark.

Shall the birds in vain then valentine their sweethearts?
Season after season tell a fruitless tale;
Will not the virgin listen to their voices?
Take the honey'd meaning, wear the bridal veil.
Fears she frosts of winter, fears she the bare branches?
Waits she the garlands of spring for her dower?
Is she a nightingale that will not be nested
Till the April woodland has built her bridal bower?

185

## BEAUTY ROHTRAUT

(From Möricke)

Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!

Be silent, heart!

Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut,

Hush! hush! my heart.

Beauty, Beauty Rohtraut!

Down! down! mad heart.

186

Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!

'And, wert thou Empress this very night,

Hush! hush! wild heart.'

## TO A SKYLARK

The tongue of the Heavens to me!

They tell of the Heavens to me.

## SORROWS AND JOYS

187

For they, in their salvation, know
No vestige of their former woe,
While thro' them all the Heavens do flow.

## SONG

188

So am I in thy sole, sweet glance,
Prest with a weight of utterance;
Lovingly all my leaves unfold,
And gleam to the beams of thirsty gold.

## SONG

189

ANTIGONE

O Sister! couldst thou know as thou wilt know,
The bliss above, the reverence below,
Enkindled by thy sacrifice for me;
Thou wouldst at once with holy ecstasy,
Give thy warm limbs into the yearning earth.
Sleep, Sister! for Elysium's dawning birth,—
And faith will fill thee with what is to be!
Sleep, for the Gods are watching over thee!
Thy dream will steer thee to perform their will,
As silently their influence they instil.
O Sister! in the sweetness of thy prime,
Thy hand has pluck'd the bitter flower of death;
But this will dower thee with Elysian breath,
That fade into a never-fading clime.
Dear to the gods are those that do like thee
A solemn duty! for the tyranny
Of kings is feeble to the soul that dares
Defy them to fulfil its sacred cares:
And weak against a mighty will are men.
O, Torch between two brothers! in whose gleam
Our slaughtered House doth shine as one again,
Tho' severed by the sword; now may thy dream
Kindle desire in thee for us, and thou,
Forgetting not thy lover and his vow,
Leaving no human memory forgot,
Shalt cross, not unattended, the dark stream
Which runs by thee in sleep and ripples not.
The large stars glitter thro' the anxious night,
And the deep sky broods low to look at thee:
The air is hush'd and dark o'er land and sea,
And all is waiting for the morrow light:
So do thy kindred spirits wait for thee.
O Sister! soft as on the downward rill,

190

Swathed round in mist and crown'd with cloud,
O Mountain! hid from peak to base—
Caught up into the heavens and clasped
In white ethereal arms that make
Thy mystery of size sublime!
What eye or thought can measure now
Thy grand dilating loftiness!
What giant crest dispute with thee
Supremacy of air and sky!
What fabled height with thee compare!
Not those vine-terraced hills that seethe
The lava in their fiery cusps;
Nor that high-climbing robe of snow,
Whose summits touch the morning star,
And breathe the thinnest air of life;
Nor crocus-couching Ida, warm

191

With Juno's latest nuptial lure;
Nor Tenidos whose dreamy eye
Still looks upon beleaguered Troy;
Nor yet Olympus crown'd with gods,
Can boast a majesty like thine,
O Mountain ! hid from peak to base,
And image of the awful power
With which the secret of all things
That stoops from Heaven to garment earth,
Can speak to any human soul,
When once the earthly limits lose
Their pointed heights and sharpened lines,
And measureless immensity
Is palpable to sense and sight.

## SONG

Love moves with life along a darker way,
They cast a shadow and they call it death;
But rich is the fulfilment of their day;
The purer passion and the firmer faith.

## THE TWO BLACKBIRDS

A Blackbird in a wicker cage,
That hung and swung mid fruits and flowers,
Had learnt the song-charm, to assuage
The dreariness of its wingless hours.

192

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Yet daily with its flattering voice,
Talking amid its fluttering wings,
Store of ouzel dainties choice,
With busy bill the poor bird brings.

And shall I say, till weak with age,
Down from its drowsy branch it drops,
It will not leave that captive cage,
Nor cease those busy searching hops?

Ah, no! the moral will not strain;
Another sense will make it range,
Another mate will soothe its pain,
Another season work a change.

But thro' the live-long summer, tried,
A pure devotion we may see;
The ebb and flow of Nature's tide;
A self-forgetful sympathy.

## JULY

Blue July, bright July,
Month of storms and gorgeous blue;
Violet lightnings o'er thy sky,
Heavy falls of drenching dew;
Summer crown ! o'er glen and glade
Shrinking hyacinths in their shade;
I welcome thee with all thy pride,
I love thee like an Eastern bride!
Thou all the singing days are done
As in those climes that clasp the sun;
Thou the cuckoo in his throat,
Leaves to the dove his last twin note;
Come to me with thy lustrous eye,
Golden-dawning oriently,

31-N

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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Come with all thy shining blooms,
Thy rich red rose and rolling glooms.
Tho' the cuckoo doth but sing 'cuk, cuk,
And the dove alone doth coo;
Tho' the cushat spins her coo-r-roo, r-r-roo—
To the cuckoo's halting 'cuk.'

II

Sweet July, warm July!
Month when mosses near the stream,
Soft green mosses thick and shy,
Are a rapture and a dream
Summer Queen! whose foot the fern
Fades beneath while chesnuts burn
I welcome thee with thy fierce love
Gloom below and gleam above.
Tho' all the forest trees hang dumb,
With dense leafiness o'ercome;
Tho' the nightingale and thrush,
Pipe not from the bough or bush;
Come to me with thy lustrous eye,
Azure-melting westerly,
The raptures of thy face unfold,
And welcome in thy robes of gold!
Tho' the nightingale broods—'sweet-chuck-sweet'—
And the ouzel flutes so chill,
Tho' the throstle gives but one shrilly trill
To the nightingale's 'sweet-sweet.'

SONG

I would I were the drop of rain
That falls into the dancing rill,
For I should seek the river then,
And roll below the wooded hill,
Until I reach'd the sea.

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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

And O, to be the river swift
That wrestles with the wilful tide,
And fling the briny weeds aside
That o'er the foamy billows drift,
Until I came to thee!

I would that after weary strife,
And storm beneath the piping wind,
The current of my true fresh life,
Might come unmingled, unimbrined,
To where thou floatest free.

Might find thee in some amber clime,
Where sunlight dazzles on the sail,
And dreaming of our plighted vale,
Might seal the dream, and bless the time,
With maiden kisses three.

SONG

Come to me in any shape!
As a victor crown'd with vine,
In thy curls the clustering grape,—
Or a vanquished slave:
'Tis thy coming that I crave,
And thy folding serpent twine,
Close and dumb;
Ne'er from that would I escape;
Come to me in any shape!
Only come!

Only come, and in my breast
Hide thy shame or show thy pride;
In my bosom be caress,
Never more to part;
Come into my yearning heart;
I, the serpent, golden-eyed,

195

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

V

Hark! how the bitter winter breezes blow
Round the sharp rocks and o'er the half-lifted wave,
While all the rocky woodland branches rave
Shrill with the piercing cold, and every cave,
Along the icy water-margin low,
Rings bubbling with the whirling overflow;
And sharp the echoes answer distant cries
Of dawning daylight and the dim sunrise,
And the gloom-coloured clouds that stain the skies
With pictures of a warmth, and frozen glow
Spread over endless fields of sheeted snow;
And white untrodden mountains shining cold,
And muffled footpaths winding thro' the wold,
O'er which those wintry gusts cease not to howl and blow.

VI

Rare is the loveliness of slow decay !
With youth and beauty all must be desired,
But 'tis the charm of things long past away,
They leave, alone, the light they have inspired :
The calmness of a picture; Memory now
Is the sole life among the ruins grey,
And like a phantom in fantastic play,
She wanders with rank weeds stuck on her brow,
Over grass-hidden caves and turret-tops,
Herself almost as tottering as they;
While, to the steps of Time, her latest props
Fall stone by stone, and in the Sun's hot ray
All that remains stands up in rugged pride,
And bridal vines drink in his juices on each side.

TO A NIGHTINGALE

O nightingale! how hast thou learnt
The note of the nested dove?
While under thy bower the fern hangs burnt
And no cloud hovers above !

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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Rich July has many a sky
With splendour dim, that thou mightst hymn,
And make rejoice with thy wondrous voice,
And the thrill of thy wild pervading tone !
But instead of toluoo, thou hast learnt to coo :
Thy song is mute at the mellowing fruit,
And the dirge of the flowers is sung by the hours
In silence and twilight alone.

O nightingale! 'tis this, 'tis this
That makes thee mock the dove !
That thou hast past thy marriage bliss,
To know a parent's love.
The waves of fern may fade and burn,
The grasses may fall, the flowers and all,
And the pine-smells o'er the oak dells
Float on their drowsy and odorous wings
But thou wilt do nothing but coo,
Brimming the nest with thy brooding breast,
'Midst that young throng of future song,
Round whom the Future sings !

215

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

POEMS FROM 'MODERN LOVE'

(FIRST EDITION)

GRANDFATHER BRIDGEMAN

I

'Heigh, boys!' cried Grandfather Bridgeman, 'it's time before dinner to-day.'

He lifted the crumpled letter, and thumped a surprising 'Hurrah!'

Up jumped all the echoing young ones, but John, with the starch in his throat,

Said, 'Father, before we make noises, let's see the contents of the note.'

The old man glared at him harshly, and, twinkling made answer: 'Too bad!'

John Bridgeman, I'm always the whisky, and you are the water, my lad!'

II

But soon it was known thro' the house, and the house ran over for joy,
That news, good news, great marvels, had come from the soldier boy;

Young Tom, the luckless scapegrace, offshoot of Methodist John;

His grandfather's evening tale, whom the old man hailed as his son.

And the old man's shout of pride was a shout of his victory, too;

For he called his affection a method: the neighbours' opinions he knew.

III.

Meantime, from the morning table, removing the stout breakfast cheer,
The drink of the three generations, the milk, the tea, and the beer
(Alone in its generous reading of pints stood the Grandfather's jug),

The women for sight of the missive came pressing to coax and to hug.

He scattered them quick, with a buss and a smack; thereupon he began

Diversions with John's little Sarah: on Sunday, the naughty old man!

216

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

IV

Then messengers sped to the maltster, the auctioneer, miller, and all

The seven sons of the farmer who housed in the range of his call.

Likewise the married daughters, three plentiful ladies, prime cooks,

Who bowed to him while they condemned, in meek hope to stand high in
his books.

'John's wife is a fool at a pudding,' they said, and the light carts up hill
Went merrily, flouting the Sabbath: for puddings well made mend a will.

V

The day was a van-bird of summer: the robin still piped, but the blue,
As a warm and dreary palace with voices of larks ringing thro',

Looked down as if wistfully eyeing the blossoms that fell from its lap:

A day to sweeten the juices: a day to quicken the sap!

All round the shadowy orchard sloped meadows in gold, and the dear

Shy violets breathed their hearts out: the maiden breath of the year!

VI

Full time there was before dinner to bring fifteen of his blood,

To sit at the old man's table: they found that the dinner was good.

But who was she by the lilacs and pouring laburnums concealed,

When under the blossoming apple the chair of the Grandfather wheeled?

She heard one little child crying, 'Dear brave Cousin Tom!' as it leapt;

Then murmured she: 'Let me spare them!' and passed round the walnuts,
and wept.

VII

Yet not from sight had she slipped ere sharp feminine eyes could detect

The figure of Mary Charlworth. 'It's just what we all might expect,'

Was uttered: and: 'Didn't I tell you?' Of Mary the rumour resounds,

That she is now her own mistress, and mistress of five thousand pounds.

'Twas she, they say, who cruelly sent young Tom to the war.

Miss Mary, we thank you now! If you knew what we're thanking you
for!

VIII

But, 'Have her in: let her hear it,' called Grandfather Bridgeman, elate,
While Mary's black-gloved fingers hung trembling with flight on the gate.

Despite the women's remonstrance, two little ones, lighter than deer,

Were loosed, and Mary imprisoned, her whole face white as a tear,

217

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Came forward with culprit footsteps. Her punishment was to commence:
The pity in her pale visage they read in a different sense.

### IX

'You perhaps may remember a fellow, Miss Charlworth, a sort of black sheep,'

The old man turned his tongue to ironical utterance deep :

'He came of a Methodist dad, so it wasn't his fault if he kicked.
He earned a sad reputation, but Methodists are mortal strict.

His name was Tom, and, dash me! but Bridgeman I think you might add :
Whatever he was, bear in mind that he came of a Methodist dad.'

### X

This prelude dismally lengthened, till Mary, starting, exclaimed,

'A letter, Sir, from your grandson?' 'Tom Bridgeman that rascal is named,"
The old man answered, and further, the words that sent Tom to the ranks,
Repeated as words of a person to whom they all owed mighty thanks.

But Mary never blushed: with her eyes on the letter, she sate,
And twice interrupting him faltered, 'The date, may I ask, Sir, the date ?'

### XI

'Why, that's what I never look at in a letter,' the farmer replied:

'Facts first! and now I'll be parson.' The Bridgeman women described
A quiver on Mary's eyebrows. One turned, and while shifting her comb,
Said low to a sister: 'I'm certain she knows more than we about Tom.

She wants him now he's a hero! The same, resuming her place,
Begged Mary to check them the moment she found it a tedious case.

### XII

Then as a mastiff swallows the snarling noises of cats,

The voice of the farmer opened. "Three cheers, and off with your hats !

—That's Tom. "We've beaten them, Daddy, and tough work it was, to be sure !

A regular stand-up combat: eight hours smelling powder and gore.

I entered it Serjeant-Major,"—and now he commands a salute,

And carries the flag of old England! Heigh! see him lift foes on his foot !

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## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

### XIII

'—An officer! ay, Miss Charlworth, he is, or he is so to be;

You'll own war isn't such humbug: and Glory means something, you see.

“But don't say a word,” he continues, “against the brave French any more.”

—That stopt me: we'll now march together. I couldn't read further before.

That “brave French” I couldn't stomach. He can't see their cunning to get
Us Britons to fight their battles, while best half the winnings they net !

### XIV

The old man sneered, and read forward. It was of that desperate fight;—

The Muscovite stole thro' the mist-wreaths that wrapped the chill Inkermann height,

Where stood our silent outposts: old England was in them that day !

O sharp worked his ruddy wrinkles, as if to the breath of the fray

They moved! He sat bareheaded: his long hair over him slow,

Swung white as the silky bog-flowers in purple heath-hollows that grow.

### XV

And louder at Tom's first person: acute and in thunder the 'I'

Invaded the ear with a whinny of triumph, that seem'd to defy

The hosts of the world. All heated, what wonder he little could brook

To catch the sight of Mary's demure puritanical look?

And still as he led the onslaught, his treacherous side-shots he sent

At her who was fighting a battle as fierce, and who sat there unbent.

### XVI

"We stood in line, and like hedgehogs the Russians rolled under us thick.

They frightened me there."—He's no coward; for when, Miss, they came at the quick,

The sight, he swears, was a breakfast.—"My stomach felt tight: in a glimpse

I saw you snoring at home with the dear cuddled-up little imps.

And then like the winter brickfields at midnight, hot fire lengthened out.

Our fellows were just leashed bloodhounds: no heart of the lot faced about.

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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

XVII

"And only that grumbler, Bob Harris, remarked that we stood one to ten: 'Ye fool,' says Mick Grady, 'just tell 'em they know to compliment men!' And I sang out your old words: 'If the opposite side isn't God's, Heigh! after you've counted a dozen, the pluckiest lads have the odds.' Ping-ping flew the enemies' pepper: the Colonel roared, Forward, and we Went at them. 'Twas first like a blanket: and then a long plunge in the sea.

XVIII

"Well, now about me and the Frenchman: it happened I can't tell you how: And, Grandfather, hear, if you love me, and put aside prejudice now": He never says "Grandfather"—Tom don't—save it's a serious thing. "Well, there were some pits for the rifles, just dug on our French-leaning wing: And backwards, and forwards, and backwards we went, and at last I was vexed, And swore I would never surrender a foot when the Russians charged next.

XIX

"I know that life's worth keeping."—Ay, so it is, lad; so it is!— "But my life belongs to a woman."—Does that mean Her Majesty, Miss?— "These Russians came lumping and grinning: they're fierce at it, though they are blocks. Our fellows were pretty well pumped, and looked sharp for the little French cocks. Lord, didn't we pray for their crowing! when over us, on the hill-top, Behold the first line of them skipping, like kangaroos seen on the hop."

XX

"That sent me into a passion, to think of them spying our flight!" Heigh, Tom! you've Bridgeman blood, boy! And, "Face them!" I shouted: 'All right; Sure, Serjeant, we'll take their shot dacent, like gentlemen,' Grady replied. A ball in his mouth, and the noble old Irishman dropped by my side. Then there was just an instant to save myself, when a short wheeze Of bloody lungs under the smoke, and a red-coat crawled up on his knees.

220

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

XXI

"Twas Ensign Baynes of our parish."—Ah, ah, Miss Charlworth, the one Our Tom fought for a young lady? Come, now we've got into the fun!— "I shouldered him: he primed his pistol, and I trailed my musket, prepared." Why, that's a fine pick-a-back for ye, to make twenty Russians look scared! "They came—never mind how many: we couldn't have run very well, We fought back to back: 'face to face, our last time!' he said, smiling, and fell."

XXII

"Then I strove wild for his body: the beggars saw glittering rings, Which I vowed to send to his mother. I got some hard knocks and sharp stings, But felt them no more than angel, or devil, except in the wind. I know that I swore at a Russian for showing his teeth, and he grinned The harder: quick, as from heaven, a man on a horse rode between, And fired, and swung his bright sabre: I can't write you more of the scene."

XXIII

"But half in his arms, and half at his stirrup, he bore me right forth, And pitched me among my old comrades: before I could tell south from north, He caught my hand up, and kissed it! Don't ever let any man speak A word against Frenchmen, I near him! I can't find his name, tho' I seek. But French, and a General, surely he was, and, God bless him! thro' him I've learnt to love a whole nation." The ancient man paused, winking dim."

XXIV

A curious look, half woeful, was seen on his face as he turned His eyes upon each of his children, like one who but faintly discerned His old self in an old mirror. Then gathering sense in his fist, He sounded it hard on his knee-cap. 'Your hand, Tom, the French fellow kissed!' He kissed my boy's old pounder! I say he's a gentleman!' Straight The letter he tossed to one daughter; bade her the remainder relate."

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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

XXV

Tom properly stated his praises in facts, but the lady preferred

To deck the narration with brackets, and drop her additional word.

What nobler Christian natures these women could boast, who 'twas known,
Once spat at the name of their nephew, and now made his praises their
own!

The letter at last was finished, the hearers breathed freely, and sign

Was given, 'Tom's health!'-Quoth the farmer: 'Eh, Miss? are you weak
in the spine?'

XXVI

For Mary had sunk, and her body was shaking, as if in a fit.

Tom's letter she held, and her thumb-nail the month when the letter was
writ

Fast-dinted, while she hung sobbing: 'O, see, Sir, the letter is old!

O, do not be too happy!'—'If I understand you, I'm bowled!'

Said Grandfather Bridgeman, 'and down go my wickets!—not happy! when
here,

Here's Tom like to marry his General's daughter—or widow—I'll swear!

XXVII

'I wager he knows how to strut, too! It's all on the cards that the Queen
Will ask him to Buckingham Palace, to say what he's done and he's seen.
Victoria's fond of her soldiers: and she's got a nose for a fight.

If Tom tells a cleverish story—there is such a thing as a knight!

And don't he look roguish and handsome!—To see a girl snivelling there—
By George, Miss, it's clear that you're jealous!—'I love him!' she
answered his stare.

XXVIII

'Yes! now!' breathed the voice of a woman.—'Ah! now!' quiver'd low
the reply.

'And "now"'s just a bit too late, so it's no use your piping your eye.'
The farmer added bluffy: 'Old Lawyer Charlworth was rich ;

You followed his instructions in kicking Tom into the ditch.

If you're such a dutiful daughter, that doesn't prove Tom is a fool.

Forgive and forget's my motto! and here's my grog growing cool!'

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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

XXIX

'But, Sir,' Mary faintly repeated: 'for four long weeks I have failed

To come and cast on you my burden; such grief for you always prevailed !

My heart has so bled for you!' The old man burst on her speech:

'You've chosen a likely time, Miss! a pretty occasion to preach!'

And was it not outrageous, that now, of all times, one should come

With incomprehensible pity! Far better had Mary been dumb.

XXX

But when again she stammered in this bewildering way,

The farmer no longer could bear it, and begged her to go, or to stay,

But not to be whimpering nonsense at such a time. Pricked by a goad,

'Twas you who sent him to glory :—you've come here to reap what you
sowed.

Is that it?' he asked; and the silence the elders preserved, plainly said,
On Mary's heaving bosom this begging-petition was read.

XXXI

And that it was scarcely a bargain that she who had driven him wild,

Should share now the fruits of his valour, the women expressed, as they
smiled.

The family pride of the Bridgeman was comforted; still, with contempt,

They looked on a monied damsel of modesty quite so exempt.

'O give me force to tell them!' cried Mary, and even as she spoke,

A shout and a hush of the children: a vision on all of them broke.

XXXII

Wheeled, pale, in a chair, and shattered, the wreck of their hero was seen ;

The ghost of Tom drawn slow o'er the orchard's shadowy green.

Could this be the martial darling they joyed in a moment ago?

'He knows it?' to Mary Tom murmured, and closed his weak lids at her

'No.'

'Beloved!' she said, falling by him, 'I have been a coward: I thought

You lay in the foreign country, and some strange good might be wrought.

XXXIII

'Each day I have come to tell him, and failed, with my hand on the gate.

I bore the dreadful knowledge, and crushed my heart with its weight.

223

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

The letter brought by your comrade—he has but just read it aloud!
It only reached him this morning! Her head on his shoulder she bowed.
Then Tom with fity's tenderest lordliness patted her arm,
And eyed the old white-head fondly, with something of doubt and alarm.

XXXIV

O, take to your fancy a sculptor whose fresh marble offspring appears
Before him, shiningly perfect, the laurel-crown'd issue of years:
Is Heaven offended? for lightning behold from its bosom escape,
And those are mocking fragments that made the harmonious shape!
He cannot love the ruins, till feeling that ruins alone
Are left, he loves them threefold. So passed the old grandfather's moan

XXXV

John's text for a sermon on Slaughter, he heard, and he did not protest.
All rigid as April snowdrifts, he stood, hard and feeble; his chest
Just showing the swell of the fire as it melted him. Smiting a rib,
'Heigh! what have we been about, Tom! Was this all a terrible fib?'
He cried, and the letter forth-trembled. Tom told what the cannon had
done.
Few present but ached to see falling those aged tears on his heart's son!

XXXVI

Up lanes of the quiet village, and where the mill-waters rush red
Thro' browning summer meadows to catch the sun's crimsoning head,
You meet an old man and a maiden who has the soft ways of a wife
With one whom they wheel, alternate; whose delicate flush of new life
Is prized like the early primrose. Then shake his right hand, in the chair—
The old man fails never to tell you: 'You've got the French General's
there!'

## THE MEETING

The old coach-road through a common of furze,
With knolls of pine ran white;
Berries of autumn, with thistles, and burrs,
And spider-threads, droop'd in the light.

224

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

The light in a thin blue veil peered sick;
The sheep grazed close and still;
The smoke of a farm by a yellow rick
Curled lazily under a hill.

No fly shook the round of the silver net;
No insect the swift bird chased;
Only two travellers moved and met
Across that hazy waste.

One was a girl with a babe that throve,
Her ruin and her bliss;
One was a youth with a lawless love,
Who clasped it the more for this.

The girl for her babe hummed prayerful speech;
The youth for his love did pray;

Each cast a wistful look on each,
And either went their way.

## THE BEGGAR'S SOLILOQUY

I

Now, this, to my notion, is pleasant cheer,
To lie all alone on a ragged heath,
Where your nose isn't sniffing for bones or beer,
But a peat-fire smells like a garden beneath.

The cottagers bustle about the door,
And the girl at the window ties her strings.
She's a dish for a man who's a mind to be poor;
Lord! women are such expensive things.

II

We don't marry beggars, says she: why, no:
It seems that to make 'em is what you do;
And as I can cook, and scour, and sew,
I needn't pay half my victuals for you.

31—P

225

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

This blazing blue weather all round the brown crop,
He can't enjoy! all but cash he hates.

He's only a snail that crawls under his shop;
Though he has got the ear o' the magistrates.

XI

Now, giving and taking's a proper exchange,
Like question and answer: you're both content.

But buying and selling seems always strange;
You're hostile, and that's the thing that's meant.

It's man against man—you're almost brutes !
There's here no thanks, and there's here no pride.

If Charity's Christian, don't blame my pursuits,
I carry a touchstone by which you're tried.

XII

—'Take it,' says she, 'it's all I've got':
I remember a girl in London streets:

She stood by a coffee-stall, nice and hot,
My belly was like a lamb that bleats.

Says I to myself, as her shilling I seized,
You haven't a character here, my dear !

But for making a rascal like me so pleased,
I'll give you one, in a better sphere !

XIII

And that's where it is—she made me feel
I was a rascal: but people who scorn,

And tell a poor patch-breech he isn't genteel,
Why, they make him kick up—and he treads on a corn.

It isn't liking, it's curst ill-luck,
Drives half of us into the begging-trade :

If for taking to water you praise a duck,
For taking to beer why a man upbraid ?

XIV

The sermon's over: they're out of the porch,
And it's time for me to move a leg ;

But in general people who come from church,
And have called themselves sinners, hate chaps to beg.

228

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

I'll wager they'll all of 'em dine to-day !

I was easy half a minute ago.

If that isn't pig that's baking away,
May I perish!—we're never contented—heigho !

CASSANDRA

I

Captive on a foreign shore,
Far from Ilion's hoary wave,
Agamemnon's bridal slave
Speaks Futurity no more :
Death is busy with her grave.

II

Thick as water, bursts remote
Round her ears the alien din,
While her little sullen chin
Fills the hollows of her throat :
Silent lie her slaughter'd kin.

III

Once to many a pealing shriek,
Lo, from Ilion's topmost tower,
Ilion's fierce prophetic flower
Cried the coming of the Greek !
Black in Hades sits the hour.

IV

Eyeing phantoms of the Past,
Folded like a prophet's scroll,
In the deep's long shoreward roll
Here she sees the anchor cast :
Backward moves her sunless soul.

229

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

V

Chieftains, brethren of her joy,
Shades, the white light in their eyes
Slanting to her lips, arise,
Crowding quick the plains of Troy :
Now they tell her not she lies.

VI

O the bliss upon the plains
Where the joining heroes clashed
Shield and spear, and, unabashed,
Challenged with hot chariot-reins
Gods!—they glimmer ocean-washed.

VII

Alien voices round the ships,
Thick as water, shouting Home.
Argives, pale as midnight foam,
Wax before her awful lips :
White as stars that front the gloom.

VIII

Like a torch-flame that by day
Up the daylight twists, and, pale,
Catches air in leaps that fail,
Crushed by the inveterate ray,
Through her shines the Ten-Years' Tale.

IX

Once to many a pealing shriek,
Lo, from Ilion's topmost tower,
Ilion's fierce prophetic flower,
Cried the coming of the Greek !
Black in Hades sits the hour.

230

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

X

Still upon her sunless soul,
Gleams the narrow hidden space
Forward, where her fiery race
Falters on its ashen goal:
Still the Future strikes her face.

XI

See, toward the conqueror's car
Step the purple Queen whose hate
Wraps red-armed her royal mate
With his Asian tempest-star :
Now Cassandra views her Fate.

XII

King of men! the blinded host
Shout:—she lifts her brooding chin :
Glad along the joyous din
Smiles the grand majestic ghost :
Clytemnestra leads him in.

XIII

Lo, their smoky limbs aloof,
Shadowing heaven and the seas,
Fates and Furies, tangling Threes,
Tear and mix above the roof :
Fates and fierce Eumenides.

XIV

Is the prophetess with rods
Beaten, that she writhes in air ?
With the rods who never spare,
Wrestling with the unsparing gods,
Lone, her body struggles there.

231

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

She saw how her body grew freckled and foul;
Red rose and white in the garden;
She heard from the woods the hooting owl;
And the bird sings over the roses.

With never a quiver her mouth did speak;
Red rose and white in the garden;
O when she had done she stood so meek!
And the bird sings over the roses.

The bridegroom stamped and called her vile;
Red rose and white in the garden;
He did but waken a little smile;
And the bird sings over the roses.

The bridegroom raged and called her foul;
Red rose and white in the garden;
She heard from the woods the hooting owl;
And the bird sings over the roses.

He muttered a name full bitter and sore;
Red rose and white in the garden;
She fell in a lump on the still dead floor;
And the bird sings over the roses.

O great was the wonder, and loud the wail,
Red rose and white in the garden;
When through the household flew the tale;
And the bird sings over the roses.

The old grey mother she dressed the bier;
Red rose and white in the garden;
With a shivering chin and never a tear;
And the bird sings over the roses.

O had you but done as I bade you, my child!
Red rose and white in the garden;
You would not have died and been reviled;
And the bird sings over the roses.

238

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

The bridegroom he hung at midnight by the bier;
Red rose and white in the garden;
He eyed the white girl thro' a dazzling tear;
And the bird sings over the roses.

O had you been false as the women who stray;
Red rose and white in the garden;
You would not be now with the Angels of Day!
And the bird sings over the roses.

## THE HEAD OF BRAN THE BLEST

I
When the Head of Bran
Was firm on British shoulders,
God made a man!
Cried all beholders.

Steel could not resist
The weight his arm would rattle;
He, with naked fist,
Has brain'd a knight in battle.

He marched on the foe,
And never counted numbers;
Foreign widows know
The hosts he sent to slumber.

As a street you scan,
That's towered by the steeple,
So the Head of Bran
Rose o'er his people.

II
'Death's my neighbour,'  
Quoth Bran the Blest;

'Christian labour
Brings Christian rest.

239

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

### II

With cynical Adrian then I took flight
To that old dead city whose carol
Bursts out like a reveller's loud in the night,
As he sits astride his barrel.

### III

We two were bound the Alps to scale,
Up the rock-reflecting river;
Old times blew thro' me like a gale,
And kept my thoughts in a quiver.

### IV

Hawking ruin, wood-slope, and vine,
Reeled silver-laced under my vision,
And into me passed, with the green-eyed wine
Knocking hard at my head for admission.

### V

I held the village lily cheap,
And the dream around her idle :
Lo, quietly as I lay to sleep,
The bells led me off to a bridal.

### VI

My bride wore the hood of a Benguine,
And mine was the foot to falter;
Three cowled monks, rat-eyed, were seen;
The Cross was of bones o'er the altar.

### VII

The Cross was of bones; the priest that read,
A spectacled necromancer:
But at the fourth word, the bride I led,
Changed to an Opera dancer.

244

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

### VIII

A young ballet-beauty, who perked in her place,
A darling of pink and spangles;
One fair foot level with her face,
And the hearts of men at her ankles.

### IX

She whirled, she twirled, the mock-priest grinned,
And quickly his mask unriddled;
'Twas Adrian! loud his old laughter dinned;
Then he seized a fiddle, and fiddled.

### X

He fiddled, he glowed with the bottomless fire,
Like Sathanas in feature:
All thro' me he fiddled a wolfish desire
To dance with that bright creature.

### XI

And gathering courage I said to my soul,
Throttle the thing that hinders!
When the three cowled monks, from black as coal,
Waxed hot as furnace-cinders.

### XII

They caught her up, twirling: they leapt between-whiles:
The fiddler flickered with laughter:
Profanely they flew down the awful aisles,
Where I went sliding after.

### XIII

Down the awful aisles, by the fretted walls,
Beneath the Gothic arches:—
King Skull in the black confessionals
Sat rub-a-dub-dubbing his marches.

245

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

XIV

Then the silent cold stone warriors frowned,
The pictured saints strode forward:
A whirlwind swept them from holy ground;
A tempest puffed them nor'ward.

XV

They shot through the great cathedral door ;
Like mallards they traversed ocean :
And gazing below, on its boiling floor,
I marked a horrid commotion.

XVI

Down a forest's long alleys they spun like tops:
It seemed that for ages and ages,
Thro' the Book of Life bereft of stops,
They waltzed continuous pages.

XVII

And ages after, scarce awake,
And my blood with the fever fretting,
I stood alone by a forest-lake,
Whose shadows the moon were netting.

XVIII

Lilies, golden and white, by the curls
Of their broad flat leaves hung swaying.
A wreath of languid twining girls
Streamed upward, long locks disarraying.

XIX

Their cheeks had the satin frost-glow of the moon;
Their eyes the fire of Sirius.
They circled, and droned a monotonous tune,
Abandoned to love delirious.

246

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

XX

Like lengths of convolvulus torn from the hedge,
And trailing the highway over,
The dreamy-eyed mistresses circled the sedge,
And called for a lover, a lover !

XXI

I sank, I rose through seas of eyes,
In odorous swathes delicious:
They fauned me with impetuous sighs,
They bit me with kisses vicious.

XXII

My ears were spelled, my neck was coiled,
And I with their fury was glowing,
When the marbly waters bubbled and boiled
At a watery noise of crowing.

XXIII

They dragged me low and low to the lake:
Their kisses more stormily showered;
On the emerald brink, in the white moon's wake,
An earthly damsel cowered.

XXIV

Fresh heart-sobs shook her knitted hands
Beneath a tiny suckling,
As one by one of the doleful bands
Dived like a fairy duckling.

XXV

And now my turn had come—O me !
What wisdom was mine that second !
I dropped on the adorer's knee;
To that sweet figure I beckoned.

247

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

XXVI

Save me! save me! for now I know
The powers that Nature gave me,
And the value of honest love I know :—
My village lily! save me!

XXVII

Come 'twixt me and the sisterhood,
While the passion-born phantoms are fleeing!
Oh, he that is true to flesh and blood,
Is true to his own being!

XXVIII

And he that is false to flesh and blood,
Is false to the star within him:
And the mad and hungry sisterhood
All under the tides shall win him!

XXIX

My village lily! save me! save!
For strength is with the holy:—
Already I shuddered to feel the wave,
As I kept sinking slowly:—

XXX

I felt the cold wave and the under-tug
Of the Brides, when—starting and shrinking—
Lo, Adrian tilts the water-jug!
And Bruges with morn is blinking.

XXXI

Merrily sparkles sunny prime
On gabled peak and arbour:
Merrily rattles belfry-chime
The song of Sevilla's Barber.

248

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

SHEMSELNIHAR

O my lover! the night like a broad smooth wave
Bears us onward, and morn, a black rock, shines wet.
How I shuddered—I knew not that I was a slave,
Till I looked on thy face:—then I writhed in the net.
Then I felt like a thing caught by fire, that her star
Glowed dark on the bosom of Shemselnihar.

And he came, whose I am: O my lover! he came:
And his slave, still so envied of women, was I:
And I turned as a hissing leaf spits from the flame,
Yes, I shrivelled to dust from him, haggard and dry.
O forgive her:—she was but as dead lilies are:
The life of her heart fled from Shemselnihar.

Yet with thee like a full throbbing rose how I bloom!
Like a rose by the fountain whose showering we hear,
As we lie, O my lover! in this rich gloom,
Smelling faint the cool breath of the lemon-groves near.
As we lie gazing out on that glowing great star—
Ah! dark on the bosom of Shemselnihar.

Yet with thee am I not as an arm of the vine,
Firm to bind thee, to cherish thee, feed thee sweet?
Swear an oath on my lip to let none disentwine
The life that here fawns to give warmth to thy feet.
I on thine, thus! no more shall that jewelled Head jar
The music thouarest on Shemselnihar.

Far away, far away, where the wandering scents
Of all flowers are sweetest, white mountains among,
There my kindred abide in their green and blue tents:
Bear me to them, my lover! they lost me so young.
Let us slip down the stream and leap steed till afar
None question thy claim upon Shemselnihar.

249

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

O that long note the bulbul gave out—meaning love!
O my lover, hark to him and think it my voice!
The blue night like a great bell-flower from above
Drooping low and gold-eyed: O, but hear him rejoice!
Can it be? 'twas a flash! that accurst scimitar
In thought even cuts thee from Shemselnihar.

Yes, I would that, less generous, he would oppress,
He would chain me, upbraid me, burn deep brands for hate,
Than with this mask of freedom and gorgeousness,
Spangle over my slavery, mock my strange fate.
Would, would, would, O my lover, he knew—dared debar
Thy coming, and earn curse of Shemselnihar!

## A ROAR THROUGH THE TALL TWIN ELM-TREES

A roar thro' the tall twin elm-trees
The mustering storm betrayt:
The south-wind seized the willow
That over the water swayt.

Then fell the steady deluge
In which I strove to doze,
Hearing all night at my window
The knock of the winter rose.

The rainy rose of winter !
An outcast of must pine.
And from thy bosom outcast
Am I, dear lady mine.

## WHEN I WOULD IMAGE

When I would image her features,
Comes up a shrouded head:
I touch the outlines, shrinking :
She seems of the wandering dead.

250

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

But when love asks for nothing;
And lies on his bed of snow,
The face slips under my eyelids,
All in its living glow.

Like a dark cathedral city,
Whose spires, and domes, and towers
Quiver in violet lightnings,
My soul basks on for hours.

## I CHAFE AT DARKNESS

I chafe at darkness in the night,
But when 'tis light,
Hope shuts her eyes; the clouds are pale;
The fields stretch cold into a distance hard:
I wish again to draw the veil
Thousand-starred.

Am I of them whose blooms are shed,
Whose fruits are spent,
Who from dead eyes see Life half dead;—
Because desire is feeble discontent?
Ah, no! desire and hope should die,
Thus were I.

But in me something clipped of wing,
Within its ring
Frets; for I have lost what made
The dawn-breeze magic, and the twilight beam
A hand with tidings o'er the glade
Waving seem.

251

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

THE DOE A FRAGMENT

(From 'Wandering Willie')

And—'Yonder look ! yoho ! yoho !
Nancy is off !' the farmer cried,
Advancing by the river side,
Red-kerchief and brown-coated ;—'So,
My girl, who else could leap like that?
So neatly I like a lady ! !
Zounds !
Look at her how she leads the hounds !'
And waving his dusty beaver hat,
He cheered across the chase-filled water,
And clapt his arm about his daughter,
And gave to Joan a courteous hug,
And kiss that, like a stubborn plug
From generous vats in vastness rounded,
The inner wealth and spirit sounded:
Eagerly pointing south, where, lo,
The daintiest fleetest-footed doe
Led o'er the fields and thro' the furze
Beyond : her lively delicate ears
Prickt up erect, and in her track
A dappled lengthy-striding pack.

Scarce had they cast eyes upon her,
When every heart was wagered on her,
And half in dread, and half delight,
They watched her lovely bounding flight;
As now across the flashing green,
And now beneath the stately trees,
And now far distant in the dene,
She headed on with graceful ease :
Hanging aloft with doubled knees,
At times athwart some hedge or gate;
And slackening pace by slow degrees,
As for the foremost foe to wait.

260

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Renewing her outstripping rate
Whene'er the hot pursuers neared,
By garden wall and paled estate,
Where clambering gazers whoopt and cheered.
Here winding under elm and oak,
And slanting up the sunny hill :
Splashing the water here like smoke
Among the mill-holms round the mill.

And—'Let her go; she shows her game,
My Nancy girl, my pet and treasure !'
The farmer sighed: his eyes with pleasure
Brimming: 'Tis my daughter's name,
My second daughter lying yonder.'
And Willie's eye in search did wander,
And caught at once, with moist regard,
The white gleams of a grey churchyard.
'Three weeks before my girl had gone,
And while upon her pillows propt,
She lay at eve; the weakling fawn—
For still it seems a fawn just dropt.
A se'night, to my Nancy's bed
I brought to make my girl a gift :
The mothers of them both were dead :
And both to bless it was my drift,
By giving each a friend; not thinking
How rapidly my girl was sinking.
And I remember how, to pat
Its neck, she stretched her hand so weak,
And its cold nose against her cheek
Presset fondly: and I fetched the mat
To make it up a couch just by her,
Where in the lone dark hours to lie :
For neither dear old nurse nor I
Would any single wish deny her.
And there unto the last it lay;
And in the pastures cared to play
Little or nothing: there its meals
And milk I brought: and even now

261

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Knowing not what to think or do:
But Joan, recovering first, broke thro'
The instantaneous suspension,
And knelt upon the ground, and guessed
The bitterness at a glance, and pressed
Into the comfort of her breast,
The deep-throed quaking shape that drooped
In misery's wilful aggravation,
Before the farmer as he stooped,
Touched with accusing consternation:
Soothing her as she sobbed aloud:—
'Not me! not me! Oh, no, no, no!
Not me! God will not take me in!
Nothing can wipe away my sin!
I shall not see her: you will go;
You and all that she loves so:
Not me! not me! Oh, no, no, no!'
Colourless, her long black hair,
Like seaweed in a tempest tossed
Tangling astray, to Joan's care
She yielded like a creature lost:
Yielded, drooping toward the ground;
As doth a shape one half-hour drowned,
And heaved from the old sea with mast and spar,
All dark of its immortal star.
And on that tender heart, inured
To flatter basest grief, and fight
Despair upon the brink of night,
She suffered herself to sink, assured
Of refuge; and her ear inclined
To comfort; and her thoughts resigned
To counsel; her wild hair let brush
From off her weeping brows; and shook
With many little sobs that took
Deeper-drawn breaths, till into sighs
Long sighs they sank; and to the 'hush!'
Of Joan's gentle chide, she sought
Childlike to check them as she ought,
Looking up at her infantwise.

264

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

And Willie, gazing on them both,
Shivered with bliss through blood and brain,
To see the darling of his troth
Like a maternal angel strain
The sinful and the sinless child
At once on either breast, and there
In peace and promise reconciled
Unite them: nor could Nature's care
With subtles beneficence
Have fed the springs of penitence,
Still keeping true, though harshly tried,
The vital prop of human pride.

265

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

### SCATTERED POEMS

#### INVITATION TO THE COUNTRY

Now 'tis Spring on wood and wold,
Early Spring that shivers with cold,
But gladdens, and gathers, day by day,
A lovelier hue, a warmer ray,
A sweeter song, a dearer ditty;
Ouzel and throstle, new-mated and gay,
Singing their bridals on every spray—
Oh, hear them, deep in the songless City!
Cast off the yoke of toil and smoke,
As Spring is casting winter's grey,
As serpents cast their skins away:
And come, for the Country awaits thee with pity;
And longs to bathe thee in her delight,
And take a new joy in thy kindling sight;
And I no less, by day and night,
Long for thy coming, and watch for, and wait thee,
And wonder what duties can thus belate thee.

Dry-fruited firs are dropping their cones,
And vista'd avenues of pines
Take richer green, give fresher tones,
As morn after morn the glad sun shines.

Primrose tufts peep over the brooks,
Fair faces amid moist decay!
The rivulets run with the dead leaves at play,
The leafless elms are alive with the rooks.

266

## POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Over the meadows the crowslips are springing;
The marshes are thick with king-cup gold,
Clear is the cry of the lambs in the fold,
The skylark is singing, and singing, and singing.

Soon comes the cuckoo when April is fair;
And her blue eye the brighter the more it may weep;
The frog and the butterfly wake from their sleep,
Each to its element, water and air.

Mist hangs still on every hill,
And curls up the valleys at eve; but noon
Is fullest of Spring; and at midnight the moon
Gives her westerning throne to Orion's bright zone,
As he slopes o'er the darkened world's repose;
And a lustre in eastern Sirius glows.
Come, while the larches burst bud, and the palm
Sheds its white down, ere the odorous balm
Of flowers has wasted its first keen sense
Of Elysian air, and pastoral sweetness,
Which fills us with godlike power intense,
To enjoy the wise insight to nature's completeness.

Come, like a flower, and grow in the rains,
While the fields are preparing the sweet May-mirth.
Feel the learning of Summer below the green earth,
That March foretells, and April feigns.

Come, in the season of opening buds !
Come, and regret not the otter that whistles
Unlit by the moon, 'mid the wet winter bristles
Of willow, half-drowned in the fattening floods !
Let him catch his cold fish without fear of a gun,
And the stars shall shield him, and thou wilt shun !
And every little bird under the sun
Shall know that the bounty of Spring doth dwell
In the winds that blow, in the waters that run,
And in the breast of man as well.

267

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

THE SWEET O' THE YEAR

Now the frog, all lean and weak,
Yawning from his famished sleep,
Water in the ditch doth seek,
Fast as he can stretch and leap:
Marshy king-cups burning near,
Tell him 'tis the sweet o' the year.

Now the ant works up his mound
In the mouldered piny soil,
And above the busy ground
Takes the joy of earnest toil:
Dropping pine-cones, dry and sere,
Warn him 'tis the sweet o' the year.

Now the chrysalis on the wall
Cracks, and out the creature springs,
Raptures in his body small,
Wonders on his dusty wings:
Bells and cups, all shining clear,
Show him 'tis the sweet o' the year.

Now the brown bee, wild and wise,
Hums abroad, and roves and roams,
Storing in his wealthy thighs
Treasure for the golden combs:
Dewy buds and blossoms dear
Whisper 'tis the sweet o' the year.

Now the merry maids so fair
Weave the wreaths and choose the queen,
Blooming in the open air,
Like fresh flowers upon the green;
Spring, in every thought sincere,
Thrills them with the sweet o' the year.

268

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Now the lads, all quick and gay,
Whistle to the browsing herds,
Or in the twilight pastures grey
Learn the use of whispered words:
First a blush, and then a tear,
And then a smile, i' the sweet o' the year.

Now the May-fly and the fish
Play again from noon to night;
Every breeze begets a wish,
Every motion means delight:
Heaven high over heath and mere,
Crowns with blue the sweet o' the year.

Now all Nature is alive,
Bird and beetle, man and mole;
Bee-like goes the human hive,
Lark-like sings the soaring soul;
Hearty faith and honest cheer;
Welcome in the sweet o' the year.

THE SONG OF COURTESY

I

When Sir Gawain was led to his bridal-bed,
By Arthur's knights in scorn God-sped:—
How, think you, he felt?
O the bride within
Was yellow and dry as a snake's old skin;
Loathly as sin !
Scarcely faceable,
Quite unembraceable;
With a hog's bristle on a hag's chin !—
Gentle Gawain felt as should we,
Little of Love's soft fire knew he:
But he was the Knight of Courtesy.

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