POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

II

When that evil lady he lay beside
Bade him turn to greet his bride,
What, think you, he did ?
O, to spare her pain,
And let not his loathing her loathliness vain
Mirror too plain,
Sadly, sighingly,
Almost dyingly,
Turned he and kissed her once and again.
Like Sir Gawain, gentles, should we ?
*Silent, all!* But for pattern agree
There's none like the Knight of Courtesy.

III

Sir Gawain sprang up amid laces and curls;
Kisses are not wasted pearls:—
What clung in his arms?
O, a maiden flower,
Burning with blushes the sweet bride-bower,
Beauty her dower!
Breathing perfumingly,
Shall I live bloomingly,
Said she, by day, or the bridal hour?
Thereat he clasped her, and whispered he,
Thine, rare bride, the choice shall be.
Said she, Twice blest is Courtesy !

IV

Of gentle Sir Gawain they had no sport,
When it was morning in Arthur's court;
What, think you, they cried ?
Now, life and eyes !
This bride is the very Saint's dream of a prize,
Fresh from the skies !
See ye not, Courtesy
Is the true Alchemy,

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POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH

Turning to gold all it touches and tries?
Like the true knight, so may we
Make the basest that there be
Beautiful by Courtesy !

THE THREE MAIDENS

There were three maidens met on the highway;
The sun was down, the night was late:
And two sang loud with the birds of May,
O the nightingale is merry with its mate.

Said they to the youngest, Why walk you there so still?
The land is dark, the night is late:
O, but the heart in my side is ill,
And the nightingale will languish for its mate.

Said they to the youngest, Of lovers there is store;
The moon mounts up, the night is late:
O, I shall look on man no more,
And the nightingale is dumb without its mate.

Said they to the youngest, Uncross your arms and sing:
The moon mounts high, the night is late:
O my dear lover can hear no thing,
And the nightingale sings only to its mate.

They slew him in revenge, and his true-love was his lure:
The moon is pale, the night is late:
His grave is shallow on the moor;
O the nightingale is dying for its mate.

His blood is on his breast, and the moss-roots at his hair:
The moon is chill, the night is late:
But I will lie beside him there:
O the nightingale is dying for its mate.

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—Ah, hero-love! unloose thy hold :
O drop me like a curséd thing.

—See'st thou the crowded swords of gold ?
They wave to us Rose and Ring.

—O death-white mouth! O cast me down !
Thou diest ? Then with thee I die.

—See'st thou the angels with their Crown ?
We twain have reached the sky.

## THE STORY OF SIR ARNULPH

'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself.' —(Matt. xxii. 37-39.)

### I

An earhest man, in long-forgotten years,
Relieved the maladies and stanched the tears
Of pining multitudes, who sought his aid
When death their homesteads threatened to invade.

### II

Blest with one only son (a gentle youth,
Trained in the fear of God, and love of Truth),
He fondly hoped that Arnulph might aspire
Disease and death to baffle, like his sire.

### III

But the boy, musing gloomily apart,
Avowed at length the impulse of his heart:
To some calm cloister, father, I would go,
And there serve God. His father answered, No.

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### IV

Thou doest well to wish to serve the Lord,
By thine whole life imperfectly adored;
But choose thy work amid the world, and then
Thou canst serve God, and bless thy fellow-men.

### V

The boy, still yearning to achieve his plan,
Spake,—It were better to serve God than man.
Pray God for help, the father said, and He
Will solve the riddle of thy doubt to thee.

### VI

'So Arnulph to his chamber went, and prayed,
That in his doubts the Lord would send him aid;
And, in a vision of the silent night,
A phantom stood before him clothed in white
A form for earth too beautiful and grand,
With crimson roses blooming in each hand.

### VII

And Arnulph asked the Angel, Are these flowers
Fresh culled from Eden's amaranthine bowers?
He answered, Nay: these offerings are from all
Whom God the doers of His will doth call.
And can I offer nothing? sighed the boy;
May I not also serve the Lord with joy?
Surely thou mayst, replied that Scrapir fair,
In my left hand, behold, thy gift I bear.

### VIII

Then Arnulph said, I pray thee, tell me why,
In thy left hand the flowers all scentless lie,
But in the right they breathe a gracious smell,
Which long within the haunted sense doth dwell?

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## XXII

Says never: 'I am well at ease,
My sneers upon the weak I shed;
The strong have my cajoleries:
And those beneath my feet I tread.'

## XXIII

Nay, but 'tis said for her, great Lord !
The misery's there! The shameless on
Adjures mankind to sheathe the sword,
Herself not yielding what it won :—

## XXIV

Her sermon at cock-crow doth preach,
On sweet Prosperity—or greed.
'Lo! as the beasts feed, each for each,
God's blessings let us take, and feed !'

## XXV

Ungrateful creatures crave a part—
She tells them firmly she is full;
Lest sheared sheep, hurt her tender heart
With bleating, stops her ears with wool

## XXVI

Seized sometimes by prodigious qualms
(Nightmares of bankruptcy and death),—
Showers down in lumps a load of alms,
Then pants as one who has lost a breath;

## XXVII

Believes high heaven, whence favours flow,
Too kind to ask a sacrifice
For what it specially doth bestow :—
Gives she, 'tis generous, cheese to mice.

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## XXVIII

She saw the young Dominion strip
For battle with a grievous wrong,
And curled a noble Norman lip;
And looked with half an eye sidelong;

## XXIX

And in stout Saxon wrote her sneers,
Denounced the waste of blood and coin,
Implored the combatants, with tears,
Never to think they could rejoin.

## XXX

Oh ! was it England that, alas !
Turned sharp the victor to cajole ?
Behold her features in the glass :
A monstrous semblance mocks her soul !

## XXXI

A false majority, by stealth,
Have got her fast, and sway the rod :
A headless tyrant built of wealth,
The hypocrite, the belly-God.

## XXXII

To him the daily hymns they raise :
His tastes are sought: his will is done :
He sniffs the putrid steam of praise,
Place for true England here is none !

## XXXIII

But can a distant race discern
The difference 'twixt her and him ?
My friend, that will you bid them learn.
He shames and binds her, head and limb.

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### XXXIV

Old wood has blossoms of this sort.
Though sound at core, she is old wood.
If freemen hate her, one retort
She has; but one!—'You are my blood.'

### XXXV

A poet, half a prophet, rose
In recent days, and called for power.
I love him; but his mountain prose—
His Alp and valley and wild flower—

### XXXVI

Proclaimed our weakness, not its source.
What medicine for disease had he?
Whom summoned for a show of force?
Our titular aristocracy!

### XXXVII

Why, these are great at City feasts;
From City riches mainly rise:
'Tis well to hear them, when the beasts
That die for us they eulogize!

### XXXVIII

But these, of all the liveried crew
Obeisant in Mammon's walk,
Most deferent ply the facial screw,
The spinal bend, submissive talk.

### XXXIX

Small fear that they will run to books—
(At least the better form of seed)!
I, too, have hoped from their good looks,
And fables of their Northman breed;—

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### XL

Have hoped that they the land would head
In acts magnanimous; but, lo,
When fainting heroes beg for bread
They frown: where they are driven they go.

### XLI

Good health, my friend! and may your lot
Be cheerful o'er the Western rounds.
This butter-woman's market-trot
Of verse is passing market-bounds.

### XLII

Adieu! the sun sets; he is gone.
On banks of fog faint lines extend:
Adieu! bring back a braver dawn
To England, and to me my friend.

November 16th, 1867.

## ON THE DANGER OF WAR

Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed,
This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick !
When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric
Seems reason they are ripe for cannon's food.
Dark looms the issue though the cause be good,
But with the doubt 'tis our old devil's trick.
O now the down-slope of the lunatic
Illumine lest we redden of that brood.
For not since man in his first view of thee
Ascended to the heavens giving sign
Within him of deep sky and sounded sea,
Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress;
In peril of his blood his ears incline
To drums whose loudness is their emptiness.

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## TO CARDINAL MANNING

I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men,
Or straining for the angel of the light,
Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight,
When I behold one lamp that through our fen
Goes hourly where most noisome; hear again
A tongue that loathsomeness will not affright
From speaking to the soul of us forthright
What things our craven senses keep from ken.
This is the doing of the Christ; the way
He went on earth; the service above guile
To prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it shines;
Cries to the Mammonites: Allay, allay
Such misery as by these present signs
Brings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile.

## TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS

### I
Strike not thy dog with a stick!
I did it yesterday:
Not to undo though I gained
The Paradise: heavy it rained
On Kobold's flanks, and he lay.

### II

Little Bruno, our long-ear pup,
From his hunt had come back to my heel.
I heard a sharp worrying sound,
And Bruno foamed on the ground,
With Koby as making a meal.

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### III
I did what I could not undo
Were the gates of the Paradise shut
Behind me: I deemed it was just.
I left Koby crouched in the dust,
Some yards from the woodman's hut.

### IV
He bewhimpered his welting, and I
Scarce thought it enough for him: so,
By degrees, through the upper box-grove,
Within me an old story hove,
Of a man and a dog: you shall know.

### V
The dog was of novel breed,
The Shannon retriever, untried;
His master, an old Irish lord,
In an oaken armchair snored
At midnight, whisky beside.

### VI
Perched on top of a desolate tower,
Where the black storm-wind was a whip
To set it nigh spinning, these two
Were alone, like the last of a crew,
Outworn in a wave-beaten ship.

### VII
The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed;
He quitted his couch on the rug,
Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked;
And finding the signals unmarked,
Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug.

285

VIII

He pulled till his master jumped
For fury of wrath, and laid on
With the length of a tough knotted staff,
Fit to drive the life flying like chaff,
And leave a sheer carcase anon.

IX

That done, he sat, panted, and cursed
The vile cross of this brute: nevermore
Would he house it to rear such a cur!
The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir,
Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door.

X

Then his master raised head too, and sniffed:
It struck him the dog had a sense
That honoured both dam and sire.
You have guessed how the tower was afire.
The Shannon retriever dates thence.

XI

I mused: saw the pup ease his heart
Of his instinct for chasing, and sink
Overwrought by excitement so new:
A scene that for Koby to view,
Was the seizure of nerves in a link.

XII

And part sympathetic, and part
Imitatively, raged my poor brute;
And I, not thinking of ill,
Doing eviller: nerves are still
Our savage too quick at the root.

286

XIII

They spring us: I proved it, albeit
I played executioner then
For discipline, justice, the like.
Yon stick I had handy to strike,
Should have warned of the tyrant in men.

XIV

You read in your History books,
How the Prince in his youth had a mind
For governing gently his land.
Ah, the use of that weapon at hand,
When the temper is other than kind!

XV

At home all was well; Koby's ribs
Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled,
He forgives me, his criminal air
Throws a shade of Llewellyn's despair
For the hound slain for saving his child.

A STAVE OF ROVING TIM

(Addressed to certain friendly tramps)

I

The wind is East, the wind is West,
Blows in and out of haven;
The wind that blows is the wind that's best,
And croak, my jolly raven!
If here awhile we jiggled and laughed,
The like we will do yonder;
For he's the man who masters a craft,
And light as a lord can wander.

287

So, foot the measure, Roving Tim,
And croak, my jolly raven !
The wind according to its whim
Is in and out of haven.

## II
You live in rows of snug abodes,
With gold, maybe, for counting;
And mine's the beck of the rainy roads
Against the sun amounting.
I take the day as it behaves,
Nor shiver when 'tis airy;
But comes a breeze, all you are on waves,
Sick chickens o' Mother Carey !
So, now for next, cries Roving Tim,
And croak, my jolly raven !
The wind according to its whim
Is in and out of haven.

## III
Sweet lass, you screw a lovely leer,
To make a man consider.
If you were up with the auctioneer,
I'd be a handsome bidder.
But wedlock clips the rover's wing;
She tricks him fly to spider;
And when we get to fights in the Ring,
It's trumps when you play outsider.
So, wrench and split, cries Roving Tim,
And croak, my jolly raven !
The wind according to its whim
Is in and out of haven.

## IV
Along my winding way I know
A shady dell that's winking;
The very corner for Self and Co,
To do a world of thinking.

288

And shall I this? and shall I that?
Till Nature answers, ne'ther !
Strike match and light your pipe in your hat,
Rejoicing in sound shoe-leather !
So lead along, cries Roving Tim,
And croak, my jolly raven !
The wind according to its whim
Is in and out of haven.

## V
A cunning hand'll hand you bread,
With freedom for your capers.
I'm not so sure of a cunning head;
It steers to pits or vapours.
But as for life, we'll bear in sight
The lesson Nature teaches;
Regard it in a sailing light,
And treat it like thirsty leeches.
So, fly your jib, cries Roving Tim,
And top your boom, old raven !
The wind according to its whim
Is in and out of haven.

## VI
She'll take, to please her dame and dad,
The shopman nicely shaven.
She'll learn to think o' the marching lad
When perchers show they're craven.
You say the shopman piles a heap,
While I perhaps am fasting;
And bless your wits, it haunts him in sleep,
His tin-kettle chance of lasting !
So hail the road, cries Roving Tim,
And hail the rain, old raven !
The wind according to its whim
Is in and out of haven.

31-T

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