POE MS O1F ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. THE POEMS or ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. A NEW EDITION, OAREFULLY CORRECTED BY THE LAST LONDON EDITION. WITH A N INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. VOL. II. NEW YORK: C. S. FRANCIS & CO., 262 BROADWAY. BOSTON: CROSBY & NICHOLS. x.DOOO.LIII. CONTENTS OF VOL. IIH. PAGE DEDICATION vii A Drama of Exile - 15 The Romaunt of the Page - - 101 The Lay of the Brown Rosary..... 114 Lady Geraldine's Courtship.- - 136 A Vision of Poets - - - - - - 167 Rhyme of the Duchess May. 205 The Poet and the Bird - -226 The Lost Bower - -. - 227 A Child Asleep 242 The Cry of the Children -. 245 Crowned and Wedded.- - - - 251 Crowned and Buried -...255 The Four-fold Aspect 262 A Flower in a Letter - -267 The Cry of the Human - 272 A Lay of the Early Rose - 277 The Lady's "' Yes." - - * -285 A Portrait. 287 L. E. L.'s Last Question - e - 290 The Mournful Mother - - - - 293 The Romance of the Swan's Nest - 296 A DRAMA OF EXILE. xv A DRAMA OF EXILE. PERSONS OF TRE DRtAMA. ADAM. LUCIFER. Earth Spirits and Phantasms. EVE. Angels. The Morning Star. GABRIEL. Eden Spirits. CHRIST, in a Vision. SCEN E —The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with clouds, from the depth of which revolves the sword of fire, self-moved. A/ watch of innumerable ANGELS, rank above rank, slopes up from around it to the zenith; and the glare, cast f-ront their brightness and from the sword, extends many miles into the wilderness. ADAM and EVE are seen in the distance, flyingt along the glare. The ANGEL GABRIEL ansd LUCIFER are beside the gate. Lucifer. Hail Gabriel, the keeper of the gate! Now that the fruit is plucked, prince Gabriel, I hold that Eden is impregnable Under thy keeping. Gabriel. Angel of the sin, Such as thou standest,-pale in the drear light Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath,Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls; — A monumental melancholy gloom Seen down all ages; whence to mark despair, And measure out the distances from good! Go firom us straightway. 2* 17 2 18 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Lucifer. Wherefore? Gabriel. Lucifer, Thy last ste'p in this place, trod sorrow up. Recoil before that sorrow, if not this sword. Lucifer. Angels are in the world —wherefore not I? Exiles are in the world —wherefore not I? The cursed are in the world —wherefore not I? Gabriel. Depart. Lucifer. And where's the logic of " depart?" Our lady Eve had half been satisfied To obey her Maker, if I had not learnt To fix my postulate better. Dost thou dream Of guarding some monopoly in heaven Instead of earth? Why I can dream with thee To the length of thy wings. Gabriel. I do not dream. This is not Heaven, even in a dream; nor earth, As earth was once, —first breathed among the stars, — Articulate glory from the mouth divine,To which the myriad spheres thrilled audibly, Touched like a lute-string,-and the sons of God Said AMEN, singing it. I know that this Is earth, not new created, but new cursedThis, Eden's gate, not opened, but built up With a final cloud of sunset. Do I dream? Alas, not so! this is the Eden lost By Lucifer the serpent! this the sword (This sword, alive with justice and with fire!) That smote upon the forehead, Lucifer The angel! Wherefore, angel, go...depart — Enough is sinned and suffered. A DRAMA OF EXILE. 19 Lucifer. By no means. I-THere's a brave earth to sin and suffer on! It holds fast still-it cracks not under curse; It holds, like mine immortal. Presently We 11 sow it thick enough with graves as green Or greener, certes, than its knowledge-tree — We'11 have the cypress for the tree of life, More eminent for shadow-for the rest We'11 build it dark with towns and pyramids, And temples; if it please you:-we'11 have feasts And funerals also, merrymlakes and wars, Till blood and wine shall mix and run along Right o'er the edges. And, good Gabriel, (Ye like that word in Heaven') I too hlave strength — Strength to behold Him, and not worship Him; Strength to fall from Him, and not cry on Him; Strength to be in the universe, and yet Neither God nor his servant. The red sign Burnt on my forehead, which you taunt me with, Is God's sign that it bows not unto God; The potter's mark upon his work, to show It rings well to the striker. 1 and the earth Can bear more curse. Gabriel. 0 miserable earth! O ruined angel! Lucifer. Well! and if it be, I CHOSE this ruin: I elected it Of my will, not of service. What I do, I do volitient, not obedient, And overtop thy crown with my despair. My sorrow crowns me. Get thee back to Heaven; 20 A DRAMA OF EXILE. And leave me to the earth, which is mine own In virtue of her misery, as I hers, In virtue of my ruin! turn from both, That bright, impassive, passive angelhood; And spare to read us backward any more Of your spent hallelujahs. Gabriel. Spirit of scorn! I might say, of unreason! I might say, That who despairs, acts; that who acts, connives With God's relations set in time and space; That who elects, assumes a something good Which God made possible; that who lives, obeys The law of a Life-maker... Luccifer. Let it pass! No more, thou Gabriel!.What if I stand up And strike my brow against the crystaline Roofing the creatures, —shall I say for that, My stature is too high for me to stand, — Henceforward I must sit? Sit thou. Gabriel. I kneel. Lucifer. A heavenly answer. Get thee to thy Heaven, And leave my earth to me. Gabriel. Through Heaven and earth God's will moves freely; and I follow it, As color follows light. He overflows The firmamental walls with Deity, Therefore with love: His lightnings go abroad, His pity may do so; His angels must, Whene'er He gives them charges. Lucifer. Verily, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 21 I and my demons-who are spirits of scornMight hold this charge of standing with a sword'Twixt man and his inheritance, as well As the benignest angel of you all. Gabriel. Thou speakest in the shadow of thy change. If thou hadst gazed upon the face of God This morning for a moment, thou hadst known That only pity fitly can chastise, While hate avenges. Lzucifer As it is, I know Something of pity. When I reeled in Heaven, And mny sword grew too heavy for my wrist, Stabbing through matter, which it could not pierce So much as the first shell of,-toward the throne When I fell back, down, —starinog up as I fell, — The lightnings holding open my scathed lids, And that thought of the infinite of God Drawn from the finite, speeding my descent; When countless angel-faces, still and stern, Pressed out upon me from the level heavens, Adown the abysmal spaces; and I fell, Trampled down by your stillness, and struck blind By the sight in your eyes; —'twas then I knew How ye could pity, my kind angelhood! Gabriel. Yet, thou discrowned one, by the truth in me Which God keeps in me, I would give away All,-save that truth, and His love over it,To lead thee home again into the light, 22 A DRAMA OF EXILE. And hlear thy voice chant with the morning stars; When their rays tremble round them with much song, Sung in more gladness! Lucifer. Sing, my morning star'. Last beautiful-last heavenly-that I loved T If I could drench thy golden locks with tears, What were it to this angel? Gabriel. What love is! And now I have named God. Lucifer. Yet Gabriel, By the lie in me which I keep myself, Thou'rt a false swearer. Were it otherwise, What dost thou here, vouchsafing tender thoughts To that earth-angel or earth-demon-which, Thou and I have not solved his problem yet Enough to argue,-that fallen Adaml there.That red-clay and a breath! who must, forsooth, Live in a new apocalypse of sense, With beauty and music waving in his trees And running in his rivers, to make glad His soul made perfect; if it were not for The hope within thee, deeper than thy truth, Of finally conducting him and his To fill the vacant thrones of me and mine, Which affront Heaven with their vacuity? Gabriel. Angel, there are no vacant thrones in Heaven To suit thy bitter words. Glory and life Fulfil their own depletions: and if God Sighed you far from Him, His next breath drew in A compensative splendor up the skies, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 23 Flushing the starry arteries! Lucifer. With a change! So, let the vacant thrones, and gardens too, Fill as may please you!-and be pitiful, As ye translate that word, to the dethroned And exiled, man or angel. The fact stands, That I, the rebel, the cast out and down, Am bere, and will not go; while there, along The light to which ye flash the desert out, Flies your adcpted Adam! your red clay In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this? WThose work is this? Whose hand was in the work? Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks, I am not a fallen angel! Gabriel. Dost thou know Aught of those exiles? Lucifer. Ay: I know they have fled Worldless all day along the wilderness: I know they wear, for burden on their backs, The thought of a shut gate of Paradise, And faces of the marshalled cherubimn Shining against, not for theml! and I know They dare not look in one another's face. As if each were a cherub! Gabriel. Dost thou know Aught of their future? Lucifer. Only as much as this: That evil will increase and multiply Without a benediction. Gabriel. Nothing more? 24 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Lucifer. Why so the angels taunt! What should be more? Gabriel. God is more. Lucifer. Proving what Gabriel. That he is God, And capable of saving. Lucifer, I charge thee by the solitude He kept Ere he created, —leave the earth to God! Lucifer. My foot is on the earth, firm as my sin! Gabriel. I charge thee by the memory of Heaven Ere any sin was done,-leave earth to God! Lucifer. My sin is on the earth, to reign thereon Gabriel. I charge thee by the choral song we sang When up against the white shore of our feet, The depths of the creation swelled and brake, — And the new worlds, the beaded foam and flower Of all that coil, roared outward into space On thunder-edges,-leave the earth to God. Lucifer. My woe is on the earth, to curse thereby. Gabriel. I charge thee by that mournful morning star Which trembles..... Lucifer. Hush! I will not hear thee speak Of such things. Enough spoken. As the pine In norland forest, drops its weight of snows By a night's growth, so, growing toward my ends, I drop thy counsels. Farewell, Gabriel! Watch out thy selvice; I assert my will. And peradventure in the after years, When thoughtful men bend slow their spacious brows Upon the stormi and strife seen everywhere A DRAMA OF EXILE. 25 To ruffle their smooth manhood, and break up With lurid lights of intermittent hope Their human fear and wrong, —they may discern The heart of a lost an(el in the earth. CHORUS OF EDEN SPIRITS, (C0hanting from Paradise, while Adam and Eve fly across the sword-glare.) Harken, oh harken! let your souls, behind you, Lean, gently moved! Our voices feel along the Dread to find you, O lost, beloved! Through the thick-shielded and strong-marshalled angels, They press and pierce: Our requiems follow fast on our evangels,Voice throbs in verse! We are but orphaned Spirits left in Eden, A time agoGod gave us golden cups; and we were bidden To feed you so! But now our right hand hath no cup remaining, No work to do; The mystic hydromel is spilt, and staining The whole earth through; And all those stains lie clearly round for showing (Not interfused!) That brighter colors were the world's foregoing, Than shall be used. Harken, oh harken! ye shall harken surely, For years and years, VOL. II.-3 26 A DRAMA OF EXILE. The noise beside you, dripping coldly, purely, Of spirits' tears! The yearning to a beautiful, denied you, Shall strain your powers:Ideal sweetnesses shall over-glide you, Resumled fiom ours! In all your music, our pathetic minor Your ears shall cross; And all fair sights shall mind you of diviner, With sense of loss! We shall be near, in all your poet-languors And wild extremes; What time ye vex the desert with vain angers, Or light with dreams! And when upon you, weary after roaming, Death's seal is put, By the forgone ye shall discern the coming, Through eyelids shut. Spirits of the trees. Hark! the Eden trees are stirring, Slow and solemn to your hearing! Plane and cedar, palm and fir, Tamarisk and juniper, Each is throbbing in'vibration Since that crowning of creation, When the God-breath spake abroad, Pealing down the depths of Godhead Let us make man like to God! And the pine stood quivering In the Eden-gorges wooded, As the awful word went by; A DRAMA OF EXILE. 27 Like a vibrant chorded string Stretched from mountain-peak to sky! And the platan did expand, Slow and gradual, branch and head; And the cedar's strong black shade Fluttered brokenly and grand!Grove and forest bowed aslant In emotion jubilant. Voice of the same, but softer. Which divine impulsion cleaves In dim movements to the leaves Dropt and lifted, dropt and lifted In the sunlight greenly sifted,In the sunlight and the moonlight Greenly sifted through the trees. Ever wave the Eden trees In the nightlight, and the noonlight, With a ruffling of green branches Shaded off to resonances; Never stirred by rain or breeze! Fare ye well, farewell! The sylvan sounds, no longer audible, Expire at Eden's door! Each footstep of your treading Treads out some murmur which ye heard before: Farewell the trees of Eden Ye shall hear nevermore. River-Spirits. Hark! the flow of the four rivers — Hark the flow! How the silence round you shivers, 28 A DRAMA OF EXILE. While our voices through it go, Cold and clear. A softer voice. Think a little, while ye hear,Of the banks Where the alders and red deer Crowd in intermingled ranks, As if all would drink at once, Where the living water runs! Of the fishes' golden edges Flashing in and out the sedges: Of the swans on silver thrones, Floating down the winding streams, With impassive eyes turned shoreward, And a chant of undertones,And the lotos leaning forward To help them into dreams. Fare ye well, farewell! The river-sounds, no longer audible, Expire at Eden's door! Each footstep of your treading Treads out some murmur which ye heard before: Farewell! the streams of Eden, Ye shall hear nevermore. Bird- Spirit. I am the nearest nightingale That singeth in Eden after you; And I am singing loud and true, And sweet, —I do not fail! I sit upon a cypress-bough, Close to the gate; and I fling my song A DRAMA OF EXILE. 29 Over the gate and through the mail Of the warden angels marshalled strong, — Over the gate and after you! And the warden angels let it pass, Because the poor brown bird) alas! Sings in the garden sweet and true. And I build my song of high pure notes, Note over note, height over height, Till I strike the arch of the Infinite; And I bridge abysmal agonies With strong, clear calms of harmonies,And something abides, and something floats, In the song which I sing after you: Fare ye well, farewell! The creature-sounds, no longer audible, Expire at Eden's door! Each footstep of your treading Treads out some cadence which ye heard before Farewell! the birds of Eden Ye shall hear nevermore. Blower-Spirits. We linger, we linger, The last of the throng! Like the tones of a singer Who loves his own song We are spirit-aromas Of blossom and bloom; We call your thoughts home, as Ye breathe our perfume; To the amaranth's splendor Afire on the slopes; 3* 30 A DRAMA OF EXILE. To the lily-bells tender, And grey heliotropes! To the poppy-plains, keeping Such dream-breath and ble, That the angels there stepping Grew whiter to see To the nook, set with moly, Ye jested one day in, Till your smile waxed too holy, And left your lips praying! To the rose in the bower-plaee, That dripped o'er you sleeping; To the asphodel flower place, Ye walked ankle deep in! We pluck at your raiment, We stroke down your hair,We faint in our lament, And pine into air. Fare ye well, farewell! The Eden scents, no longer sensible, Expire at Eden's door! Each footstep of your treading Treads out some fragrance which ye knew before: Farewell! the flowers of Eden, Ye shall smell nevermore. There is silence. ADAM and EVE fly on, and never look back. Only a colossal shadow, as of the dark ANGEL passing quickly, is cast upon the sword-glare. A DRAMA OF EXILE. 31 SCENE. —The extremity of the Sword-glare. Adam. Pausing a moment on this outer edge, Where the supernal sword-glare cuts in light The dark exterior desert, —hast thou strength, Beloved, to look behind us to the gate? Eve. Have I not strength to look up to thy face. Adam. We need be strong: yon spectacle of cloud Which seals the gate up to the final doom, Is God's seal manifest. There seem to lie A hundred thunders in it, dark and dead; The unmolten lightnings vein it motionless; And, outward from its depth, the self-moved sword Swings slow its awful gnomon of red fire From side to side,-in pendulous horror slow,Across the stagnant, ghastly glare thrown flat On the intermediate ground from that to this, In still reflection of still splendor. They, The angelic hosts, the archangelic pomps, Thrones, dominations, princedoms, rank on rank, Rising sublimely to the feet of God, On either side, and overhead the gate,Show like a glittering and sustained smoke Drawn to an apex. That their faces shine Betwixt the solemn claspings of their wings, Clasped high to a silver point above their heads,We only guess from hence, and not discern. Eve. Though we were near enough to see them shine, The shadow on thy face were awfuller, 112 A DRAMA OF EXILE. To me, at least,-than could appear their light. Adara. What is this, Eve? thou droppest heavily In a heap earthward; and thy body heaves Under the golden floodings of thy hair! Eve. 0 Adam, Adam! by that name of EveThine Eve, thy life-which suits me little now, Seeing that I confess myself thy death And thine undoer, as the snake was mine, — I do adjure thee, put me straight away, Together with my name. Sweet, punish me 0 Love, be just! and, ere we pass beyond The light cast outward by the fiery sword, Into the dark which earth must be to us, Bruise my head with thy foot,-as the curse said My seed shall the first tempter's: strike with curse, As God struck in the garden! and as HE, Being satisfied with justice and with wrath, Did roll His thunder gentler at the close,Thou, peradventure, may'st at last recoil To some soft need of mercy. Strike, my lord! I, also, after tempting, writhe on ground; And I would feed on ashes from thy hand, As suits me, 0 my tempted. Adam. My beloved, Mine Eve and life-I have no other name For thee or for the sun than what ye are, My blessed life and light! If we have fallen, It is that we have sinned,-we: God is just; And since his curse doth comprehend us both, It must be that His balance holds the weights Of first and last sin on a level. What! A DRAMA OF EXILE. 33 Shall I who had not virtue to stand straight Among the hills of Eden, here assume To mend the justice of the perfect God, By piling up a curse upon His curse, Against thee-theeEve. For so, perchance, thy God Might take thee into grace for scorning me; Thy wrath against the sinner giving proof Of inward abrogation of the sin! And so, the blessed angels might come down And walk with thee as erst, —-I think they would, — Because I was not near to make them sad, Or soil the rustling of their innocence. Adam. They know me. I am deepest in the guilt If last in the transgression. Eve. THOU! Adam. If God! Who gave the right and joyaunce of the world Both unto thee and me,-gave thee to me, The best gift last; the last sin was the worst, Which sinned against more complement of gifts And grace of giving. God! I render back Strong benediction and perpetual praise From mortal feeble lips, (as incense-smoke, Out of a little censer, may fill heaven,) That Thou, in striking my benumbed hands, And forcing them to drop all other boons Of beauty, and dominion, and delight,Hast left this well-beloved Eve-this life Within life-this best gift between their palms, In gracious compensation! 3 34 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Eve Is it thy voice? Or some saluting angel's-calling home My feet into the garden? Adam. O my God! I, standing here between the glory and dark,The glory of thy wrath projected forth From Eden's wall; the dark of our distress, Which settles a step off in that drear worldLift up to Thee the hands from whence hath fallen Only creation's sceptre, —thanking Thee That rather Thou hast cast me out with her, Than left me lorn of her in Paradise;With angel looks and angel songs around, To show the absence of her eyes and voice, And make society full desertness, Without the uses of her comforting. Eve. Or is it but a dream of thee, that speaks Mine own love's tongue? Adam. Because with her, I stand Upright, as far as can be in this fall, And look away from heaven, which doth accuse me, And look away from earth which doth convict me, Into her face; and crown my discrowned brow Out of her love; and put the thought of her Around me, for an Eden full of birds; And lift her body up-thus-to my heart; And with my lips upon her lips,-thus, thus,Do quicken and sublimate my mortal breath, Which cannot climb against the grave's steep sides, But overtops this grief! Eve. I am renewed: A DRAMA OF EXILE. 35 My eyes grow with the light which is in thine; The silence of my heart is full of sound. Hold me up-so! Because I comprehend This human love, I shall not be afraid Of any human death; and yet because I know this strength of love, I seem to know Death's strength, by that same sign. Kiss on my lip: To shut the door close on my rising soul,Lest it pass outwards in astonishment, And leave thee lonely. Adam. Yet thou liest, Eve, Bent heavily on thyself across mine arm, Thy face flat to the sky. Eve. Ay! and the tears Running as it might seem, my life from me; They run so fast and warm. Let me lie so, And weep so,-as if in a dream or prayer,Unfastening, clasp by clasp, the hard, tight thought Which clipped my heart, and showed me evermore Loathed of thy justice as I loathe the snake, And as the pure ones loathe our sin. To-day, All day, beloved, as we fled across This desolating radiance, cast by swords Not suns, my lips prayed soundless to myself, Rocking against each other-O Lord God! ('Twas so I prayed) I ask Thee by my sin, And by thy curse, and by thy blameless heavens, Make dreadful haste to hide me from thy face, And from the face of my beloved here, For whom I am no helpmete, quick away Into the new dark mystery of death! 36 A DRAMA OF EXILE. I will lie still there; I will make no plaint; I will not sigh, nor sob, nor speak a word,Nor struggle to come back beneath the sun, Where peradventure I might sin anew Against thy mercy and his pleasure. Death, Oh, death, whate'er it be, is good enough For such as I. —For Adaml —there's no voice, Shall ever say again, in heaven or earth, It is not yoodfor him to be alone. Adam. And was it good for such a prayer to pass, My unkind Eve, betwixt our mutual lives? If I am exiled, must I be bereaved? Eve.'Twas an ill prayer: it shall be prayed no more;.And God did use it for a foolishness, Giving no answer. Now my heart has grown Too high and strong for such a foolish prayer: Love makes it strong: and since I was the first In the transgression, with a steady foot I will be first to tread from this sword-glare Into the outer darkness of the waste, — And thus I do it. Adam. Thus I follow thee, As erewhile in the sin. -What sounds! what sounds! I feel a music which comes slant from Heaven, As tender as a watering dew. Eve. I think That angels-not those guarding Paradise,But the love-angels who came erst to us, And when we said' GoD, fainted unawares Back from our mortal presence unto God, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 37 (As if He drew them inward in a breath) His name being heard of th.em,-I think that they With sliding voices lean friom heavenly tower, Invisible but gracious. Hark-how soft! CHORUS OF INVISIBLE ANGELS, (Faint and tender.) Mortal man and woman, Go upon your travel! Heaven assist the Human Smoothly to unravel All that web of pain Wherein ye are holden. Do ye know our voices Chanting down the golden? Do ye guess our choice is, Being unbeholden, To be harkened by you, yet again? This pure door of opal, God hath shut between us; Us, his shining people,You who once have seen us, And are blinded new! Yet across the doorway, Past the silence reaching, Farewells evermore may, Blessing in the teaching, Glide from us to you. First semichorus. Think how erst your Eden, Day on day succeeding, VOL. IL-4 38 A DRAMA OF EXILE. With our presence glowed. We camne as if the Heavens were bowed To a milder music rare! Ye saw us in our solemn treading, Treading down the steps of cloud; While our wings outspreading Double calms of whiteness, Dropped superfluous brightness Down from stair to stair Second semichorus. Or, abrupt though tender, While ye gazed on space, We flashed our angel-splendor In either human face With mystic lilies in our hands, From the atmospheric bands, Breaking, with a sudden grace, We took you unaware! While our feet struck glories Outward, smooth and fair, Which we stood on floorwise, Platformed in mid air. First Semichorus. Oft when Heaven-descended, Shut up in a secret light Stood we speechless in your sight, In a mute apocalypse! With dumb vibrations on our lips, From hosannas ended; And grand half-vanishings Of the foregone things, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 39 Within our eyes belated! Till the heavenly Infinite Falling off from our Created, Left our inward contemplation Opening into ministration. Chorus. Then in odes of burning, Brake we suddenly, And sang out the morning Broadly up the sky.Or we drew Our music through The noontide's hush and heat and shine, And taught them our intense DivineWith our vital fiery notes All disparted hither, thither, Trembling out into the mether,Visible like beamy motes!Or, as twilight drifted Through the cedar masses. The globed sun we lifted, Trailing purple, trailing gold Out between the passes Of the mountains manifold, To anthems slowly sung! While he, aweary and in swoon, For joy to hear our climbing tune Pierce the faint stars' concentric rings,The burden of his glory flung In broken lights upon our wings. Chant dies away confusedly, and enter LUCIFER. 40 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Lucifer. Now may all fruits be pleasant to thy lips, Beautiful Eve! The times have somewhat changed Since thou and I had talk beneath a tree; Albeit ye are not gods yet. Eve. Adam! hold My right hand strongly. It is LuciferAnd we have love to lose. Adam. I' the name of God, Go apart from us, 0 thou Lucifer i! And leave us to the desert thou hast made Out of thy treason. Bring no serpent-slime Athwart this path kept holy to our tears, Or we may curse thee with their bitterness. Lucifer. Curse fireely! curses thicken. Why, this EIve Who thought ine once part worthy of her ear, And somewhllat wiser than the other beasts,Drawing together her lar(e globes of eyes, The lilght of whicli is throbbing in and out Their steadfast continuity of gaze,Knots her fair eyebrows in so hard a knot, And, down firom her white heights of womanhood, Looks on me so amazed,-I scarce should fear To wager such an apple as she plucked, Against one riper from the tree of life, That she could curse too-as a woman maySmooth in the vowels. Eve. So-speak wickedly! I like it best so. Let thy words be wounds,For, so, I shall not fear thy power to hurt: Trench on the forms of good by open ill A DRAMA OF EXILE. 41 For, so, I shall wax strong and grand with scorn; Scorning myself for ever trusting thee As far as thinking, ere a snake ate dust, He could speak wisdom. Lucifer. Our new gods, methinks, Deal more in thunders than in courtesies: And, sooth, mine own Olympus, which anon I shall build up to loud-voiced imnagery, From all the wandering visions of the world,May show worse railing than our lady Eve Pours o'er the rounding of her argent arm. But why should this be? Adam pardoned Eve. Adam>. Adam loved Eve. Jehovah pardon both Eve. Adalm forgave Eve —because loving Eve. Lucifer. So, well. Yet Adalm was undone of Eve, As both were by the snake. Therefore forgive, In like wise, fellow-temptress, the poor snake — Who stung there, not so poorly! [Aside. Eve. Hold thy wrath, Beloved Adam! let me answer him; For this time he speaks truth, which we should hear, And asks for mercy, which I most should grant, In like wise, as he tells us-in like wise! And therefore I thee pardon, Lucifer, As freely as the streams of Eden flowed, When we were happy by them. So, depart; Leave us to walk the remnant of our time Out mildly in the desert. Do not seek To harm us any more or scoff at us, Or ere the dust be laid upon our face To find there the communion of the dust 4* ~42 A DRAMA OF EXILE. And issue of the curse.-Go. Adam. At once, go. Lucifer. Forgive! and go! Ye inmages of clay, Shrunk somewhat in the mould, —what jest is this? What words are these to use? By what a thought Conceive ye of me? Yesterday —a snake! To-day, what? Adam. * A strong spirit. Eve. A sad spirit. Adam. Perhaps a fallen angel.-Who shall say? Lucifer. Who told thee, Adam? Adam. Thou! The prodigy Cf thy vast brows and melancholy eyes, Which comprehend the heights of some great fall. I think that thou hast one day worn a crown Under the eyes of God. Lucifer. And why of God? Adam. It were no crown else! Verily, I think Thou'rt fallen far. I had not yesterday Said it so surely; but I know to-day Grief by grief, sin by sin. Lucifer. A crown by a crown. Adam. Ay, mock me! now I know more than I knew. Now I know thou art fallen below hope Of final re-ascent. Lucifer. Because? Adam. Because A spirit who expected to see God, Though at the last point of a million years, Could dare no mockery of a ruined man A DRAMA OF EXILE. 43 Such as this Adam. Lucifer. Who is high and boldBe it said passing!-of a good red clay Discovered on some top of Lebanon, Or haply of Aornus, beyond sweep Of the black eagle's wing! A furlong lower Had made a meeker king for Eden. Soh! Is it not possible, by sin and grief (To give the things your nallles) that spirits should rise instead of falling? Adam. Most impossible. The Highest being the Holy and the Glad, Whoever rises must approach delight And sanctity in the act. Lucifer. Ha, my clay-king! Thou wilt not rule by wisdom very long The after generations. Earth, methinks, Will disinherit thy philosophy For a new doctrine suited to thine heirs; Classing these present dogmas with the rest Of the old-world traditions-Eden fruits And saurian fossils. Eve. Speak no more with him, Beloved! it is not good to speak with him. Go from us, Lucifer, and speak no more: We have no pardon which thou dost not scorn, Nor any bliss, thou seest, for coveting, Nor innocence for staining. Being bereft, We would be alone.-Go. Lucifer. Ah! ye talk the same, All of you-spirits and clay-go, and depart! 44 A DRAMA OF EXILE. In Heaven they said so; and at Eden's gate,And here, reiterant, in the wilderness! None saith, Stay with me, for thy face is fair! None saith, Stay with me, for thy voice is sweet! And yet I was not fashioned out of clay. Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful? Eve. Thou hast a glorious darkness. Lucifer. Nothing more? Eve. I think no more. Lucifer. False Heart —thou thinkest more! Thou canst not choose but think, as I praise God, Unwillingly bhut fully, that I stand Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves Were fashioned very good at best, so we Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word Which thrilled around us-God Himself being moved, When that august work of a perfect shape, His dignities of sovran angel-hood, Swept out into the universe,-divine With thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods, And silver-solemn clash of cymbal wings. Whereof was I. in motion and in form, A part not poorest. And yet —yet, perhaps, This beauty which I speak of, is not here, As God's voice is not here; nor even my crownI do not know. What is this thought or thing Which I call beauty? is it thought or thing? Is it a thought accepted for a thing? Or both? or neither?-a pretext? —a word? Its meaning flatters in me like a flame Under my own breath: my perceptions reel A DRAMA OF EXILE. 45 For evermore around it, and fall off, As if it too were holy. Eve. Which it is. Adam. The essence of all beauty I call love. The attribute, the evidence, and end, The consummation to the inward sense, Of beauty apprehended from without, I still call love. As form, when colorless, Is nothing to the eye; that pine tree there, Without its black and green, being all a blank; So, without love, is beauty undiscerned In man or angel. Angel! rather ask WThat love is in thee, what love moves to thee, And what collateral love moves on with thee; Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful. Lucifer. Love! what is love? I lose it. Beauty and love! I darken to the image. Beauty —Love! [Hefades away, while a low music sounds. Adam. Thou art pale, Eve. Eve. The precipice of ill Down this colossal nature, dizzies meAnd, hark! the starry harmony remote Seems measuring the heights from whence he fell. Adam. Think that we have not fallen so. By the hope And aspiration, by the love and faith, We do exceed the stature of this angel. Eve. Happier we are than he is, by the death! Adarn. Or rather, by the life of the Lord God! How dim the angel grows, as if that blast 46 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Of music swept him back into the dark. [The music is stronger, gathering itself into uncertain articulation. Eve. It throbs in on us like a plaintive heart, Pressing, with slow pulsations, vibrative. Its gradual sweetness through the yielding air, To such expression as the stars may use, Most starry-sweet, and strange! With every note That grows more loud, the angel grows more dim, Receding in proportion to approach, Until he stand afar,-a shade. Adam. Now, words. SONG OF THE MORNING STAR TO LUCIFER. He fades utterly away and vanishes, as it proceeds. Mine orbed image sinks Back from thee, back from thee, As thou art fallen, methinks, Back from me, back from me. O my light-bearer, Could another fairer Lack to thee, lack to thee? Ai, ai, Heosphoros! I loved thee, with the fiery love of stars, Who love by burning, and by loving move, Too near the throned Jehovah, not to love. Ai, ai, Heosphoros! Their brows flash fast on me from gliding cars, Pale-passioned for my loss. Ai, ai, Heosphoros! Mine orbed heats drop cold Down from thee, down from thee, A DRAMA OF EXILE 47 As fell thy grace of old Down from me, down from me. O my light-bearer, Is another fairer Won to thee, won to thee? Ai, ai, Heosphoros, Great love preceded loss, Known to thee, known to thee. Ai, ai! Thou, breathing thy cummunicable grace Of life into my light, Mine astral faces, from thine angel face, Hast inly fed, And flooded me with radiance overmuch From thy pure height. Ai, ai! Thou, with calm, floating pinions both ways spread, Erect, irradiated, Didst sting my wheel of glory On, on before thee, Along the Godlight, by a quickening touch! Ha, ha! Around, around the firmamental ocean, I swam expanding with delirious fire! Around, around, around, in blind desire To be drawn upward to the InfiniteHa, ha! Until, the motion flinging out the motion To a keen whirl of passion and avidity,To a blind whirl of rapture and delight, 48 A DRAM A OF EXILE. I wound in girant orbits, smooth and white With that intense rapidity! Around, around, I wound and interwound, While all the cyclic heavens about me spun! Stars, planets, suns, and moons, dilated broad, Then flashed together into a single sun, And wound, and wound in one; And as they wound I wound,-around, around, In a great fire, I almost took for God! Ha, ha, Heosphoros! Thine angel glory sinks Down from me, down from me — My beauty falls, methinks, Down from thee, down from thee! O my light-bearer, O my path-preparer, Gone from me, gone from meot Ai, ai, Heosphoros! I cannot kindle underneath the brow Of this new angel here, who is not Thou: All things are altered since that time ago, — And if I shine at eve, I shall not knowI am strange —I am slow! Ai, ai, Heosophoros! Henceforward, human eyes of lovers be The only sweetest sight that I shall see, With tears between the looks raised jup to me. Ai, ai! When, having wept all night, at break of day, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 49 Above the folded hills they shall survey My light, a little trembling, in the grey; Ai, ai And gazing on me, such shall comprehend, Through all my piteous pomp at morn or even, And melancholy leaning out of Heaven, That love, their own divine, may change or end, That love may close in loss! Ai, ai, Heosphoros! SCENE.-Farther on. A wild open country seen vaguely in the approaching night. Adam. Howv doth the wide and melancholy earth Gather her hills around us, grey and ghast, And stare with blank significance of loss Right in our faces! Is the wind up? Eve. Nay. Adam. And yet the cedars and the junipers Rock slowly through the mist, without a sound; And shapes, which have no certainty of shape, Drift duskly in and out between the pines, And loom along the edges of the hills, And lie flat, curdling in the open groundShadows without a body, which contract And lengthen as we gaze on them. Eve. O Life Which is not man's nor angel's! What is this? Adam. No cause for fear. The circle of God's life Contains all life beside. Eve I think the earth Is crazed with curse, and wanders from the sense VOL. II.-5 4 50 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Of those first laws affixed to form and space Or ever she knew sin! Adam. We will not fear: We were brave sinning. Eve. Yea, I plucked the fruit With eyes upturned to Heaven, and seeing there Our god-thrones, as the tempter said-not GOD. My heart, which beat then, sinks. The sun hath sunk Out of sight with our Eden. Adam. Night is near. Eve. And God's curse, nearest. Let us travel back, And stand within the sword-glare till we die; Believing it is better to meet death Than suffer desolation. Adam. Nay, beloved We must not pluck death from the Maker's hand, As erst we plucked the apple: we must wait Until He gives death, as He gave us life; Nor murmur faintly o'er the primal gift, Because we spoilt its sweetness with our sin. Eve. Ah, ah! Dost thou discern what I behold? Adam. I see all. How the spirits in thine eyes, From their dilated orbits, bound before To meet the spectral Dread! Eve. I am afraidAh, ah! The twilight bristles wild with shapes Of intermittent motion, aspect vague And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth, Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood. How near they reach... and far! how gray they move A DRAMA OF EXILE. 51 Treading upon the darkness without feet,And fluttering on the darkness without wings! Some run like dogs, with noses to the ground; Some keep one path, like sheep; some rock like trees Some glide like a fallen leaf; and some flow on, Copious as rivers. Adam. Some spring up like fireAnd some coil... Eve. Ah, ah! Dost thou pause to say Like what?-coil like the serpent when he fell From all the emerald splendor of his height, And writhed,-and could not climb against the curse, Not a ring's length. I am afraid-afraidI think it is God's will to make me afiraid, Permitting THESE to haunt us in the place Of His beloved angels-gone from us, Because we are not pure. Dear Pity of God, That didst permit the angels to go home, And live no more with us who are not pure; Save us too fiom a loathly company — Almost as loathly in our eyes, perhaps, As we are in the purest! Pity usUs too! nor shut us in the dark, away From verity and from stability, Or what we name such, through the precedence Of earth's adjusted uses,-evermore To doubt, betwixt our senses and our souls, Which are the most distraught, and full of pain, And weak of apprehension. Adam. Courage, sweet! The mystic shapes ebb back from us, and drop 52 A DRAMA OF EXILE. With slow concentric movement, each on each, — Expressing wider spaces, and. collapsed In lines more definite for imagery And clearer for relation; till the throng Of shapeless spectra merge into a few Distinguishable phantasms, vague and grand; Which sweep out and around us vastily, And hold us in a circle and a calm. Eve. Strange phantasmns of pale shadow! there are twelve. Thou, who didst name all lives, hast names for these? Adam. Methinks this is the zodiac of the earth, Which rounds us with its visionary dread,Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth, In fantasque apposition and approach, To those celestial, constellated twelve Which palpitate adown the silent nights Under the pressure of the hand of God, Stretched wide in benediction. At this hour, Not a star pricketh the flat gloom of heaven! But, girdling close our nether wilderness, The zodiac-figures of the earth loom slow,Drawn out, as suiteth with the place and time, In twelve colossal shades, instead of stars, Through which the ecliptic line of mystery Strikes bleakly with an unrelenting scope, Foreshowing life and death. Eve. By dream or sense, Do we see this? Adam. Our spirits have climbed high By reason of the passion of our grief, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 58 And firom the top of sense, looked over sense, To the significance and heart of things Rather than things themselves. Eve. And the dim twelve... Adamn. Are dimn exponents of the creature-life As earth contains it. Gaze on them, beloved! By stricter apprehension of the sight, Suggestions of the creatures shall assuage Thy terror of the shadows;-what is known Subduing the unknown, and taming it From all prodigious dread. That phantasm, there, Presents a lion,-albeit, twenty times As large as any lion -with a roar Set soundless in his vibratory jaws, And a strange horror stirring in his nane! And, there, a pendulous shadow seems to weighGood against ill, perchance; and there, a crab Puts coldly out its gradual shadow-claws, Like a slow blot that spreads,-till all the ground, Crawled over by it, seems to crawl itself; A bull stands horned here with gibbous glooms; And a ram likewise; and a scorpion writhes Its tail in ghastly slime, and stings the dark! This way a goat leaps, with wild blank of beard; And here fantastic fishes duskly float, Using the calm for waters, while their fins Throb out slow rhythms along the shallow air! While images more human'Eve. How he stands, That phantasm of a man-who is not thou. Two phantasms of two men. J5 b4 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Adam, One that sustains, And one that strives!-resuming, so, the ends Of manhood's curse of labor.* Dost thou see That phantasm of a woman?Eve. I have seenBut look off to: those small humanities,t Which draw me tenderly across my fear,Lesser and fainter than my womanhood, Or yet thy manhood-with strange innocence Set in the misty lines of head and hand They lean together! I would gaze on them Longer and longer, till my watching eyes,As the stars do in watching anything,Should light them forward from their outline vague, To clear configurationTwo Spirits, of organic and inorganic nature, arise from the ground. But what Shapes Rise up between us in the open space,And thrust me into horrorl back from hope? Adam. Colossal Shapes-twin sovran images, — With a disconsolate, blank majesty Set in their wondrous faces!-with no look, And yet an aspect-a significance Of individuala life and passionate ends, Which overcomes us gazing. * Adam recognizes in Aqquarius, the water-bearer, and Sagittarius, the archer, distinct types of the man bearing and the man combatting,the passive and active forms of human labor. I hope that the preceding zodiacal signs-transferred to the earthly shadow and representative purpose-of Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, Capricornus, and Pisces, are sufficientiy obvious to the reader. t Her muaternatl instinct is excited by Gemini. A DRAMA OF EXILE. 55 0 bleak sound! O shadow of sound, O phantasm of thin sound! How it comes, wheeling as the pale moth wheels, Wheeling and wheeling in continuous wail, Around the cyclic zodiac; and gains force, And gathers, settling coldly like a moth, On the wan faces of these images We see before us; whereby modified It draws a straight line of articulate song From out that spiral faintness of lament — And, by one voice, expresses many griefs. First Spirit. I am the spirit of the harmless earth; God spake me softly out among the stars, As softly as a blessing of much worth,And then, His smile did follow unawares, That all things, fashioned, so, for use and duty, Might shine anointed with His chrism of beauty — Yet I wail! I drave on with the worlds exultingly, Obliquely down the Godlight's gradual fall — Individual aspect and complexity Of gyratory orb and interval, Lost in the fluent motion of delight Toward the high ends of Being, beyond sightYet I wail! Second Spirit. I am the Spirit of the harmless beasts, Of flying things, and creeping things, and swimming; Of all tile lives, erst set at silent feasts, That found the love-kiss on the goblet brimming, 58 A DRAMA OF EXILE. And tasted, in each drop within the measure, The sweetest pleasure of their Lord's good pleasureYet I wail! What a full hum of life, around His lips, Bore witness to the fulness of creation! How all the grand words were full-laden ships; Each sailing onward, from enunciation, To separate existence,-and each bearing The creature's power of joying, hoping, fearing! — Yet I wail! Eve. They wail, beloved! they speak of glory and God, And they wail-wail. That burden of the song Drops fiom it like its fruit, and heavily falls Into the lap of silence! Adam. Hark, again! First Spirit I was so beautiful, so beautiful, My joy stood up within me bold and glad, To answer God; and when His work was full, To " very good," responded " very glad!" Filtered through roses, did the light enclose me; And bunches of the grape swam blue across meYet I wail! Second Spirit. I bounded with my panthers! I rejoiced In my young tumbling lions, rolled together! My stag-the river at his fetlocks-poised, Then dipped his antlers, through the golden weather, In the same ripple which the alligator Left in his joyous troubling of the water A DRAMA OF EXILE. 57 Yet I wail! First Spirit. O my deep waters, cataract and flood,What wordless triumph did your voices render! O mountain-summits, where the angels stood, And shook from head and wing thick dews of splendor; How with a holy quiet, did your Earthy Accept that Heavenly-knowing ye were worthy! Yet I wail! Second Sspirit. O my wild wood dogs, with your listening eyes! My horses —my ground eagles, for swift fleeing! My birds, with viewless wings of harmonies,My calm cold fishes of a silver being,How happy were ye, living and possessing, O fair half-souls, capacious of full blessing. Yet I wail! First Spirit. I wail, I wail! Now hear my charge to-day, Thou man, thou woman, marked as the misdoers, By God's sword at your backs! I lent my clay To make your bodies, which had grown more flowers: And now, in change for what I lent, ye give me The thorn to vex, the tempest-fire to cleave meAnd I wail! Second Spirit. I wail, I wail! Behold ye that I fasten My sorrow's fang upon your souls dishonored? Accursed transgressors! down the steep ye hasten, — 58 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Your crown's weight on the world, to drag it downward Unto your ruin. Lo! my lions, scenting The blood of wars, roar hoarse and unrelentingAnd I wail! First Spirit. I wail, I wail! Do ye hear that I wail? I had no part in your transgression-none! My roses on the bough did bud not pale — MIy rivers did not loiter in the sun. I was obedient. Wherefore, in my centre, Do I thrill at this curse of death and winter!And I wail! Second Spirit. I vail, I wail! I shriek in the assault Of undeserved perdition, sorely wounded! My nightingales sang sweet without a fault, My gentle leopards innocently bounded; We were obedient-what is this convulses Our blameless life with pangs and fever pulses? And I wail! Eve. I choose God's thunder and His angels' swords To die by, Adam, rather than such words. Let us pass out, and flee. Adam. We cannot flee. This zodiac of the creatures' cruelty Curls round us, like a river cold and drear, And shuts us in, constraining us to hear. First Spirit. I feel your steps, 0 wandering sinners, strike A sense of death to me, and undug graves! A D R AMA OF E X I E. 5 The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling, like The ragged foam along the ocean-waves: The restless earthquakes rock against each other;The elements moan'round me-" Mother, mother "And I wail! Second SZpirit. Your melancholy looks do pierce me through; Corruption swathes the paleness of your beauty. Why have ye done this thing? What did we do That we should fall from bliss, as ye from duty? Wild shriek the hawks, in waiting for their jesses, Fierce howl the wolves along the wildernesses — And I wail! Adam. To thee, the Spirit of the harmless earthTo thee, the Spirit of earth's harmless livesInferior creatures, but still innocentBe salutation fiom a guilty mouth, Yet worthy of some audience and respect From you who are not guilty. If we have sinned, God hath rebuked us, who is over us, To give rebuke or death; and if ye wail Because of any suffering from our sin, Yc, who are under and not over us, Be satisfied with God, if not with us, And pass out from our presence in such peace As we have left you, to enjoy revenge, Such as the Heavens have made you. Verily, There must be strife between us,Jlarge as sin. Eve. No strife, mine Adam! Let us not stand high Upon the wrong we did, to reach disdain, Who rather should be humbler evermore, 60 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Since self-made sadder. Adam! shall I speakI who spake once to such a bitter endShall I speak humbly now, who once was proud? I, schooled by sin to more humility Than thou hast, 0 mine Adam, 0 my king — Ml1y king, if not the world's? Adam. Speak as thou wilt. Eve. Thus then-my hand in thine-.... Sweet, dreadful Spirits! I pray you humbly in the name of God; Not to say of these tears, which are impureGrant me such pardoning grace as can go forth From clean volitions toward a spotted will, From the wronged to the wronger; this and no more; I do not ask more. I am'ware, indeed, That absolute pardon is impossible From you to me, by reason of my sin,And that I cannot evermore, as once, With worthy acceptation of pure joy, Behold the trances of the holy hills Beneath the leaning stars; or watch the vales, Dew-pallid with their morning ecstasy; Or hear the winds make pastoral peace between Two grassy uplands,-and the river-wells Work out their bubbling lengths beneath the groundAnd all the birds sing, till, for joy of song, They lift their trembling wings, as if to heave The too-much weight of music from their heart And float it up the rether! I am'ware That these things I can no more apprehend, With a pure organ, into a full delight; A DRAMA OF EXILE. E1 The sense of beauty and of melody Being no more aided in me by the sense Of personal adjustment to those heights Of what I see well-formed or hear well-tuned, — But rather coupled darkly, and made ashamed, By my percipiency of sin and fall, And melancholy of humiliant thoughts. But, oh! fair, dreadful Spirits-albeit this Your accusation must confront my soul, And your pathetic utterance and full gaze Must evermore subdue me; be contentConquer me gently-as if pitying me, Not to say loving! let my tears fall thick As watering dews of Eden, unreproached; And when your tongues reprove me, make me smooth, Not ruffled-smooth and still with your reproof, And peradventure better, while more sad. For look to it, sweet Spirits-look well to itIt will not be amiss in you who kept The law of your own righteousness, and keep The right of your own griefs to mourn themselves, — To pity me twice fallen, —from that, and this,From joy of place, and also right of wail," I wail " being not for me-only " I sin." Look to it) O sweet Spirits!For was I not, At that last sunset seen in Paradise, When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs Of sudden angel-faces, face by face, All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God Held them suspended,-was I not, that hour, VOL. II.-6 62 A DRAMA OF EXILE. The lady of the world, princess of life, Mistress of feast and favor? Could I touch A rose with my white hand, but it became Redder at once? Could I walk leisurely Along our swarded garden, but the grass Tracked me with greenness? Could I stand aside A moment underneath a cornel-tree, But all the leaves did tremble as alive, With songs of fifty birds who were made glad Because I stood there? Could I turn to look With these twain eyes of mine, now weeping fast, Now good for only weeping-upon man, Angel, or beast, or bird, but each rejoiced Because I looked on him? Alas, alas! And is not this much wo, to cry " alas!" Speaking of joy? And is not this more shame, To have made the wo myself, from all that joy? To have stretched my hand, and plucked it from the tree, And chosen it for fruit? Nay, is not this Still most despair,-to have halved that bitter fruit, And ruined, so, the sweetest friend I have, Turning the GREATEST to mine enemy? Adam. I will not hear thee speak so. Hearken, Spirits! Our God, who is the enemy of none, But only of their sin,-hath set your hope And my hope, in a promise, on this Head. Show reverence, then, —and never bruise her more With unpermitted and extreme reproach; Lest, passionate in anguish, she fling down A DRAMA OF EXILE. es3 Beneath your trampling feet, God's gift to us, Of sovranty by reason and freewill; Sinning against the province of the Soul To rule the soulless. Reverence her estate: And pass out from her presence with no words. Eve. 0 dearest Heart, have patience with my heart,O Spirits, have patience,'stead of reverence,And let me speak; for, not being innocent, It little doth become me to be proud; And I am prescient by the very hope And promise set upon me, that henceforth, Only my gentleness shall make me great, My humbleness exalt me. Awful Spirits, Be witness that I stand in your reproof But one sun's length off from my happinessHappy, as I have said, to look aroundClear to look up! —And now! I need not speakYe see me what I am; ye scorn me so,Because ye see me what I have made myself From God's best making! Alas,-peace forgone,Love wronged,-and virtue forfeit, and tears wept Upon all, vainly! Alas, me! alas, Who have undone myself from all that best, Fairest and sweetest, to this wretchedest, Saddest and most defiled-cast out, cast downWhat word metes absolute loss? let absolute loss Suffice you for revenge. For I, who lived Beneath the wings of angels yesterday, Wander to-day beneath the roofless world! 1, reigning t" a earth's empress, yesterday, 64 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Put off from me, to-day, your hate with prayers! I, yesterday, who answered the Lord God, Composed and glad, as singing-birds the sun, Might shriek now from our dismal desert, " God," And hear Him make reply, " What is thy need, Thou whom I cursed to-day i? Adam. Eve! -Eve. I, at last, Who yesterday was helpmate and delight Unto mine Adam, am to-day the grief And curse-mete for him! And, so, pity us, Ye gentle Spirits, and pardon him and me, And let some tender peace, made of our pain, Grow up betwixt us, as a tree might grow With boughs on both sides. In the shade of which, When presently ye shall behold us dead,For the poor sake of our humility, Breathe out your pardon on our breathless lips, And drop your twilight dews against our brows; And stroking with mild airs, our harmless hands Left empty of all fruit, perceive your love Distilling through your pity over us, And suffer it, self-reconciled, to pass. LUCIFER rises in the circle. Lucifer. Who talks here of a complement of grief? Of expiation wrought by loss and fall? Of hate subduable to pity? Eve? Take counsel from thy counsellor the snake, And boast no more in grief, nor hope from pain, My docile Eve! I teach you to despond, Who taught you disobedience. Look around; A DRAMA OF EXILE. 65 Earth-spirits and phantasms hear you talk, unmoved, As if ye were red clay again, and talked! What are your words to them? your griefs to them? Your deaths, indeed, to them? Did the hand pause For their sake, in the plucking of the fruit, That they should pause for you, in hating you? Or will your grief or death, as did your sin, Bring change upon their final doom? Behold, Your grief is but your sin in the rebound, And cannot expiate for it. Adam. That is true. Lucifer. Ay, it is true. The clay-king testifies To the snake's counsel,-hear him! —very true. Earth Spirits. I wail, I wail! Lucifer. And certes, that is true. Ye wail, ye all wail. Peradventure I Could wail among you. 0 thou universe, That holdest sin and wo,-more room for wail! Distant starry voice. Ai, ai, Heosphoros! Earth Spirits. I wail, I wail! Adam. Mark Lucifer. He changes awfully. Eve. It seems as if he looked from grief to God. And could not see Him;-wretched Lucifer! Adam. How he stands-yet an angel! Earth Spirits. I wail-wail! Lucifer. (After a pause.) Dost thou remember, Adam, when the curse Took us in Eden? On a mountain-peak Half-sheathed in primal woods, and glittering In spasms of awful sunshine, at that hour A lion couched,-part raised upon his paws, 6* 5 66 A DRAMA OF EXILE. With his calm, massive face turned full on thine, And his mane listening. When the ended curse Left silence in the world, —right suddenly He sprang up rampant, and stood straight and stiff, As if the new reality of death Were dashed against his eyes, —and roared so fierce (Such thick carnivorous passion in his throat Tearing a passage through the wrath and fear)And roared so wild, and smote from all the hills Such fast, keen echoes crumbling down the vales Precipitately, -that the forest beasts, One after one, did mutter a response In savage and in sorrowful complaint Which trailed along the gorges. Then, at once, He fell back, and rolled crashing from the height, Hid by the dark-orbed pines. Adam. It might have been. I heard the curse alone. Earth Spirits. I wail, I wail! Lucifer. That lion is a type of what I am! And as he fixed thee with his full-faced hate, And roared, O Adam-comprehending doom; Se, gazing on the face of the Unseen, I cry out here, between the heavens and earth, My-conscience of this sin, this wo, this wrath, Which damn me to this depth! Earth Spirits. I wail, I wail! Eve. I wail-O God! Lucifer. I scorn you that ye wail, Who use your petty griefs for pedestals To stand on, beckoning pity from without, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 67 And deal in pathos of antithesis Of what ye were forsooth, and what ye are;I scorn you like an angel! Yet, one cry, I, too, would drive up, like a column erect, Marble to marble, from my heart to Heaven, A monument of anguish, to transpierce And overtop your vapory complaints Expressed from feeble woes! Earth Spirits. I wail, I wail! Lucifer. For, 0 ye heavens, ye are my witnesses, That [, struck out from nature in a blot, The outcast, and the mildew of things good, The leper of angels, the excepted dust Under the common rain of daily gifts,I the snake, I the tempter, I the cursed,To whom the highest and the lowest alike Say, Go from us —we have no need of thee,Was made by God like others. Good and fair, He did create me!-ask Him, if not fair; Ask, if I caught not fair and silverly His blessing for chief angels, on my head, Until it grew there, a crown crystallized! Ask, if He never called me by my name, Lucifer —kindly said as " Gabriel "Lucifer-soft as " Michael!" While serene I, standing in the glory of the lamps, Answered " my father," innocent of shame And of the sense of thunder. Ha! ye think, White angels in your niches,-I repent,And would tread down my own offences, back To service at the footstool! That's read wrong: i68 A DRAMA OF EXILE. I cry as the beast did, that I may cryExpansive, not appealing! Fallen so deep Against the sides of this prodigious pit, I cry-cry-dashing out the hands of wail, On each side, to meet anguish everywhere, And to attest it in the ecstasy And exaltation of a wo sustained Because provoked and chosen. Pass along Your wilderness, vain mortals! Puny griefsy In transitory shapes, be henceforth dwarfed To your own conscience, by the dread extremes Of what I am and have been. If ye have fallen, It is a step's fall,-the whole ground beneath Strewn woolly soft with promise; if ye have sinned, Your prayers tread high as angels! if ye have grieved, Ye are too mortal to be pitiable, The power to die disproves the right to grieve. Go to! ye call this ruin. I half-scorn The ill I did you! Were ye wronged by me, Hated and tempted, and undone of me,Still, what's your hurt to mine, of doing hurt, Of hating, tempting, and so ruining' This sword's hilt is the sharpest, and cuts through The hand that wields it. Go-I curse you all. Hate one another-feebly-as ye can; I would not certes cut you short in hateFar be it from me! hate on as ye can! I breathe into your faces, spirits of earth, As wintry blast may breathe on wintry leaves, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 6 And lifting up their brownness, show beneath The branches very bare. -Beseech you, give To Eve, who beggarly entreats your love For her and Adam when they shall be dead, An answer rather fitting to the sin Than to the sorrow-as the Heavens, I trow, For justice' sake gave theirs. I curse you both, Adam and Eve! Say grace as after meat, After my curses. May your tears fall hot On all the hissing scorns o' the creatures here, — And yet rejoice. Increase and multiply, Ye and your generations, in all plagues, Corruptions, melancholies, poverties, And hideous forms of life and fears of death; The thought of death being alway eminent Im!moveable and dreadful in your life, And deafly and dumbly insignificant Of any hope beyond, —as death itself,Whichever of you lieth dead the first,Shall seem to the survivor-yet rejoice! My curse catch at you strongly, body and soul, And HE find no redemption-nor the wing Of seraph move your way-and yet rejoice! Rejoice,-because ye have not set in you This hate which shall pursue you-this fire-hate Which glares without, because it burns withinWhich kills from ashes-this potential hate, Wherein I, angel, in antagonism To God and his reflex beatitudes, Moan ever in the central universe, XS A DRAMA OF EXILE. With the great wo of striving against LoveAnd gasp for space amid the infiniteAnd toss for rest amid the DesertnessSelf-orphaned by my will, and self-elect To kingship of resistant agony Toward the Good round me —hating good and love. And willing to hate good and to hate loves And willing to will on so evermore, Scorning the Past, and damning the To comeGo and rejoice! I curse you! LUCIFER vanishes. Earth Spirits. And we scorn you! there's no pardon Which can lean to you aright! When your bodies take the guerdon Of the death-curse in our sight, Then the bee that hummeth lowest shall transcend you. Then ye shall not move an eyelid Though the stars look down your eyes; And the earth, which ye defiled, She shall show you to the skies," Lo! these kings of ours-who sought to comprehend you." First Spirit. And the elements shall boldly All your dust to dust constrain; Unresistedly and coldly, I will smite you with my rain! From the slowest of my frosts is no receding. Second Spirit. And my little worm, appointed A DRAMA OF EXILE. 71 To assume a royal part, He shall reign, crowned and anointed, O'er the noble human heart! Give him counsel against losing of that Eden! Adam. Do ye scorn us Back your scorn Toward your faces gray and lorn, As the wind drives back the rain, Thus I drive with passion-strife; I who stand beneath God's sun, Made like God, and, though undone, Not unmade for love and life. Lo! ye utter words in vain! By my free will that chose sin, By mine agony within Round the passage of the fire; By the pinings which disclose That my native soul is higher Than what it chose,We are yet too high, 0 spirits, for your disdain. Eve. Nay, beloved! if these be low, We- confront them with no height; We stooped down to their level In working them that evil; And their scorn that meets our blow, Scathes aright. Amen. Let it be so. Earth Spirits. We shall triumph —triumph greatly, When ye lie bcneath the sward! There, our lily shall grow stately, Though ye answer not a word 72 A DRAMA OF EXILE. And her firagrance shall be scornful of your silence: While your throne, ascending calmly, We, in heirdom of your soul, Flash the river, lift the palm tree, The dilated ocean, roll With the thoughts that throbbed within you-round the islands. Alp and torrent shall inherit Your significance of will: With the grandeur of your spirit, Shall our broad savannahs fillIn our winds, your exultations shall be springing. Even your parlance which inveigles, By our rudeness shall be won; Hearts poetic in our eagles, Shall beat up against the sun, And pour downward, in articulate clear singing. Your bold speeches, our Behemoth, With his thunderous jaw, shall wield! Your high fancies shall our Mammoth Breathe sublimely up the shield Of St. Michael, at God's throne, who waits to speed him! Till the heavens' smooth-grooved thunder Spinning back, shall leave them clear; And the angels, smiling wonder, With dropt looks from sphere to sphere, Shall cry, "' Ho, ye heirs of Adam! ye exceed him!" A DRAMA OF EXILE. 73 Adam. Root out thine eyes, sweet, from the dreary ground. Beloved, we may be overcome by God, But not by these. Eve. By God, perhaps, in these. Adam. I think, not so. Had God foredoomed despair, He had not spoken hope. He may destroy, Certes, but not deceive. Eve. Behold this rose! I plucked it in our bower of Paradise This morning as I went forth; and my heart Hath beat against its petals all the day. I thought it would be always red and full, As when I plucked it —Is it? —-ye may see! I cast it down to you that ye may see, All of you!-count the petals lost of itAnd note the colors fainted! ye may see: And I am as it is, who yesterday Grew in the same place. O ye spirits of earth! I almost, from my miserable heart, Could here upbraid you for your cruel heart, Which will not let me, down the slope of death, Draw any of your pity after me, Or lie still in the quiet of your looks, As my flower, there, in mine. [.A bleak wind, quickened with indistinct human voices, spins around the earth-zodiac; and filling the circle with its presence, and theta wailing off into the east, carries the flower away with it. Evr f4lle upon her face. ADAM stands erect. Adam. So, verily, The last departs. VOL. II.- 7 74 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Eve, So Memory follows Hope, And Life both. Love said to me, "Do not die," And I replied, " 0 Love, I will not die. I exiled and I will not orphan Love." But now it is no choice of mine to dieMy heart throbs from me. Adam. Call it straightway back. Death's consummation crowns completed life, Or comes too early. Hope being set on thee For others; if for others, then for thee,For thee and me. [Thas wind revolves from the east, and round afgain to the east,perfumed by the Eden flower, and full of voices which sweep out into articulation as they pass. Let thy soul shake its leaves, To feel the mystic wind-Hark! Eve. I hear life. Infant voices passing in the wind. O we live, 0 we liveAnd this life that we receive, Is a warm thing and a new, Which we softly bud into, From the heart and from the brain,Something strange, that overmuch is Of the sound and of the sight, Flowing round in trickling touches, In a sorrow and delight,Yet is it all in vain? Rock us softly, Lest it be all in vain. Youthful voices passing. O we live, 0 we live A DRAMA OF EXILE. 75 And this life that we achieve, Is a loud thing and a bold, Which, with pulses manifold, Strikes the heart out full and fainActive doer, noble liver, Strong to struggle, sure to conquer, — Though the vessel's prow will quiver At the lifting of the anchor: Yet do we strive in vain? Infant voices passing. Rock us softly, Lest it be all in vain. Poet voices passing. O we live, 0 we liveAnd this life that we conceive, Is a clear thing and a fair, Which we set in crystal air, That its beauty may be plain: With a breathing and a flooding Of the heaven-life on the whole, While we hear the forests budding To the music of the soulYet is it tuned in vain? Infant voices passing. Rock us softly, Lest it be all in vain. Philosophic voices passing. O we live, 0 we liveAnd this life that we perceive, Is a strong thing and a grave, Which for others' use we have, 76 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Duty-laden to remain. We are helpers, fellow-creatures, Of the right against the wrong,We are earnest-hearted teachers Of the truth which maketh strongYet do we teach in vain? Infant voices passing. Rock us softly, Lest it be all in vain. Revel, voices passing. 0 we live, 0 we liveAnd this life that we reprieve, Is a low thing and a light, Which is jested out of sight, And made worthy of disdain! Strike with bold electric laughter The high tops of things divineTurn thy head, my brother, after, Lest thy tears fall in my wine;For is all laughed in vain? Infant voices passing. Rock us softly, Lest it be all in vain. Eve. I hear a sound of life-of life like oursOf laughter and of wailing,-of grave speech, Of little plaintive voices innocent,Of life in separate courses flowing out Like our four rivers to some outward main. I hear life-life! Adam. And, so, thy cheeks have snatched Scarlet to paleness; and thine eyes drink fast A DRAMA OF EXILE. 77 Of glory from full cups; and thy moist lips Seem trembling, both of them, with earnest doubts Whether to utter wordsj or only smile. Eve. Shall I be mother of the coming life? Hear the steep generations, how they fall Adown the visionary stairs of Time, Like supernatural thunders-far, yet near; Sowing their fiery echoes through the hills. Am I a cloud to these-mother to these? Earth Spirits. And bringer of the curse upon all these. EVE sinks down again. Poet voices passing. O we live, 0 we liveAnd this life that we believe, Is a noble thing and high, Which we climb up loftily, To view God without a stain: Till recoiling where the shade is, We retread our steps again, And descend the gloomy Hades, To resume man's mortal pain. Shall it be climbed in vain? Infant voices passing. Rock us softly, Lest it be all in vain. Love voices passing. O we live, 0 we liveAnd this life we would retrieve, Is a faithful thing apart, Which we love in, heart to heart, 7* 78 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Until one heart fitteth twain. "Wilt thou be one with me?" "I will be one with thee!" "Ha, ha!-we love and live!" Alas! ye love and die! Shriek-who shall reply? For is it not loved in vain? Infant voices passing. Rock us softly, Though it be all in vain. Aged voices passing. O we live, O we liveAnd this life that we receive, Is a gloomy thing and brief, Which consummated in grief, Leaving ashes for all gain. Is it not all in vain? Infant voices passing. Rock us softly, Though it be all in vain. Voices die away. Earth Spirits. And bringer of the curse upon all these. Eve. The voices of foreshown Humanity Die off;-so let me die. Adam. So let us die, When God's will soundeth the right hour of death. Earth Spirits. And bringer of the curse upon all these. Eve. 0 spirits! by the gentleness ye use In winds at night, and floating clouds at noon, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 79 In gliding waters under lily leaves, — In chirp of crickets, and the settling hush A bird makes in her nest, with feet and wings,Fulfil your natures now! Earth Spiirits. Agreed; allowed! We gather out our natures like a cloud, And thus fulfil their lightnings! Thus, and thus! Hearken, O hearken to us! First Spirit. As the east wind blows bleakly in the norland,As the snow wind beats blindly from the moorland,As the simoon drives wild across the desert,As the thunder roars deep in the Unmeasured,As the torrent tears an ocean-world to atoms,As the whirlpool grinds fathoms below fathoms,Thus,-and thus! Second Spirit. As the yellow toad, that spits its poison chilly,As the tiger, in the jungle, crouching stilly,As the wild boar, with ragged tusks of anger,As the wolf-dog, with teeth of glittering clangour, — As the vultures that scream against the thunder,As the owlets that sit and moan asunder,Thus, —and thus! Eve. Adam! God! Adam. Ye cruel, cruel, unrelenting Spirits! By the power in me of the sovran soul, Whose thoughts keep pace yet with the angel's march, I charge you into silence-trample you 80 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Down to obedience. -I am king of you! Earth Spirits. Ha, ha! thou art king! With a sin for a crown, And a soul undone: Thou, who antagonized, Tortured and agonized, Art held in the ring Of the zodiac! Now, king, beware! We are many and strong, Whom thou standest among,And we press on the air, And we stifle thee back, And we multiply where Thou wouldst trample us down From rights of our own To an utter wrongAnd, from under the feet of thy scorn, 0 forlorn! We shall spring up like corn, And our stubble be strong. Adam. God, there is power in Thee! I make appeal Unto thy kingship. Eve. There is pity in THEE, O sinned against, great God!-My seed, my seed, There is hope set on THEE —I cry to thee, Thou mystic seed that shalt be!-rleave us not In agony beyond what we can bear, Fallen in debasement below thunder-mark A DRAMA OF EXILE. 81 A mark for scorning-taunted and perplext By all these creatures we ruled yesterday, Whom thou, Lord, rulest alway. O my Seed, Through the tempestuous years that rain so thick Betwixt my ghostly vision and thy face, Let me have token! for my soul is bruised Before the serpent's head. [Aq vision of CHRIST appears in the midst of the zodiac, which pales before the heavenly light. The Earth Spirits grow grayer and fainter. CHRIST. Lo, I AM HERE! Adam. This is God! —Curse us not, God, any more. Eve. But gazing so-so-with omnific eyes, Lift my soul upward till it touch thy feet! Or lift it only, —not to seem too proud, — To the low height of some good angel's feetFor such to tread on, when he walketh straight, And thy lips praise him. CHRIST. Spirits of the earth, I meet you with rebuke for the reproach And cruel and unmitigated blame Ye cast upon your masters. True, they have sinned; And true their sin is reckoned into loss For you the sinless. Yet, your innocence, Which of you praises? since God made your acts Inherent in your lives, and bound your hands With instincts and imperious sanctitias, From self-defacement? Which of you disdains These sinners, who, in falling, proved their height Above you, by their liberty to fall? And which of you complains of loss by them, 6 82 A DRAMA OF EXILE. For whose delight and use ye have your life And honor in creation? Ponder it! This regent and sublime Humanity, Though fallen, exceeds you! this shall film your sun, — Shall hunt your lightning to its lair of cloud,Turn back your rivers, footpath all your seas, Lay flat your forests, master with a look Your lion at his fasting and fetch down Your eagle flying. Nay, without this rule Of mandom, ye would perish, —bast by beast Devouring; tree by tree, with strangling roots And trunks set tuskwise. Ye would gaze on God With imperceptive blankness up the stars, And mutter, " Why, God, hast thou made us thus?" And, pining to a sallow idiocy, Stagger up blindly against the ends of life; Then stagnate into rottenness, and drop Heavily —poor, dead matter-piecemeal down The abysmal spaces-like a little stone Let fall to chaos. Therefore, over you, Accept this sceptre; therefore be content To minister with voluntary grace And melancholy pardon, every rite And service in you, to this sceptred hand. Be ye to man as angels be to God, Servants in pleasure, singers of dalight, Suggesters to his soul of higher things Than any of your highest. So, at last, He shall look round on you, with lids too straight To hold the grateful tears, and thank you well; And bless you when he prays his secret prayers, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 83 And praise you when he sings his open songs, For the clear song-note he has learnt in you, Of purifying sweetness; and extend Across your head his golden fantasies, Which glorify you into soul from sense! Go serve him for such price. That not in vain; Nor yet ignobly ye shall serve, I place My word here for an oath, mine oath for act To be hereafter. In the name of which Perfect redemption and perpetual grace, I bless you through the hope and through the peace, Which are mine —to the Love, which is myself. Eve. Speak on still, Christ. Albeit thou bless me not In set words, I am blessed in hearkening theeSpeak, Christ. CHRIST. Speak, Adam. Bless the woman, manIt is thine office. Adam. Mother of the world, Take heart before this Presence. Lo! my voice, Which, naming erst the creatures, did express,God breathing through my breath,-the attributes And instincts of each creature in its naLne; Floats to the same afflatus, —floats and heaves Like a water-weed that opens to a wave,A full-leaved prophecy affecting thee, Out fairly and wide. Henceforward, rise, aspir Unto the calms and magnanimities, The lofty uses, and the noble ends, The sanctified devotion and full work, To which thou art elect for evermore, -84 A DRAMA OF EXILE.'First woman, wife, and mother. Eve. And first in sin. Adam. And also the sole bearer of the Seed Whereby sin dieth! Raise the majesties Of thy disconsolate brows, 0 well-beloved, And fi'ont with level eyelids the To come, And all the dark o' the world. Rise, womlan, risc To thy peculiar and best altitudes Of doing good and of enduring ill,Of comforting for ill, and teaching good, And reconciling all that ill and good Unto the patience of a constant hope,Rise with thy daughters! If sin came by thee, And by sin, death,-the ransom-righteousness, The heavenly life and compensative rest Shall come by means of thee. If wo by thee Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth An angel of the wo thou didst achieve; Found acceptable to the world instead Of others of that name, of whose bright steps Thy deed stripped bare the hills. Be satisfied; Something thou hast to bear through womanhoodPeculiar suffering answering to the sin; Some pang paid down for each new human life; Some weariness in guarding such a lifeSome coldness from the guarded; some mistrust From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved Too loyally, some treason: feebleness Within thy heart, and cruelty without; And pressures of an alien tyranny, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 85 With its dynastic reasons of larger bones And stronger sinews. But, go to! thy love Shall chant itself its own beatitudes, After its own life-working. A child's kiss, Set on thy sighing lips, shall make thee glad: A poor man, served by thee, shall make thee rich; A sick man, helped by thee, shall make thee strong; Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest. Such a crown I set upon thy head,-Christ witnessing With looks of prompting love-to keep thee clear Of all reproach against the sin foregone, From all the generations which succeed. Thy hand which plucked the apple, I clasp close; Thy lips which spake wrong counsel, I kiss close, — J bless thee in the name of Paradise, And by the memory of Edenic joys Forfeit and lost;-by that last cypress tree Green at the gate, which thrilled as we came out; And by the blessed nightingale, which threw Its melancholy music after us;And by the flowers, whose spirits full of smells Did follow softly, plucking us behind Back to the gradual banks and vernal bowers And fourfold river-courses:-by all these, I bless thee to the contraries of these; I bless thee to the desert and the thorns, To the elemental change and turbulence, And to the roar of the estranged beasts, And to the solemn dignities of grief,To each one of these ends, —and to this END VOL. rI. —8 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Of Death and the hereafter! Eve. I accept For me and for my daughters this high part, Which lowly shall be counted. Noble work Shall hold me in the place of garden-rest; And in the place of Eden's lost delight, Worthy endurance of permitted pain; While on my longest patience there shall wait Death's speechless angel, smiling in the east Whence cometh the cold wind. I bow myself Humbly henceforward on the ill I did, That humbleness may keep it in the shade. Shall it be so? Shall I smile, saying so? O seed'! 0 king! 0 God, who shalt be seed,What shall I say? As Eden's fountains swelled Brightly betwixt their banks, so swells my soul Betwixt Thy love and power! And, sweetest thoughts Of foregone Eden! now, for the first time Since God said "Adam," walking through the trees, I dare to pluck you, as I plucked erewhile The lily or pink, the rose or heliotrope, So pluck I you-so largely-with both hands,And throw you forward on the outer earth Wherein we are cast out, to sweeten it. Adam. As thou, Christ, to illume it, holdest Heaven Broadly above our heads. [The CHRIST is gradually transfigured during the following phrases of dialogue, into humanity and suffering. Eve. 0 Saviour Christ, Thou standest mute in glory, like the sun. A DRAMA OF EXILE. F7 Adam. We worship in Thy silence, Saviour Christ. Eve. Thy brows grow grander with a forecast wo,Diviner, with the possible of Death! We worship in thy sorrow, Saviour Christ. Adam. How do thy clear, still eyes transpierce our souls, As gazing through them toward the Father-throne, In a pathetical, full Deity, Serenely as the stars gaze through the air Straight on each other. Eve. O pathetic Christ, Thou standest mute in glory, like the moon. CHRIST. Eternity stands alway fronting God; A stern colossal image, with blind eyes, And grand dim lips, that murmur evermore God, God, God! While the rush of life and death, The roar of act and thought, of evil and good,The avalanches of the ruining worlds Tolling down space, —the new world's genesis Budding in fire,-the gradual humming growth Of the ancient atoms, and first forms of earth, The slow procession of the swathing seas And firmamental waters,-and the noise Of the broad, fluent strata of pure airs,All these flow onward in the intervals Of that reiterant, solemn sound of-GOD! Which WORD, innumerous angels straightway lift High on celestial altitudes of song And choral adoration, and then drop The burden softly; shutting the last notes Hushed up in silver wings' I' the noon of time, as A DRAMA OF EXILE. Nathless, that mystic-lipped Eternity Shall wax as silent-dumb as Death himself, While a new voice beneath the spheres shall cry, " God! Why hast thou forsaken me, my God?" And not a voice in Heaven shall answer it. The transfiguration is complete in sadness. Adam. Thy speech is of the Heavenlies; yet, O Christ, Awfully human are thy voice and face! Eve. My nature overcomes me from thine eyes. CHRIST. Then in the noon of time, shall one from Heaven, An angel fresh from looking upon God, Descend before a woman, blessing her, With perfect benediction of pure love, For all the world in all its elements; For all the creatures of earth, air, and sea; For all men in the body and in the soul, Unto all ends of glory and sanctity. Eve. 0 pale, pathetic Christ-I worship thee! I thank thee for that woman! CHRIST. For, at last, I, wrapping round me your humanity, Which, beino sustained, shall neither break nor burn Beneath the fire of Godhead, will tread earth, And ransom you and it, and set strong peace Betwixt you and its creatures. With my pangs I will confront your sins: and since your sins Have sunken to all nature'slheart from yours, The tears of my clean soul shall follow them, And set a holy passion to work clear A DRAMA OF EXILE. 89 Absolute consecration. In my brow Of kingly whiteness, shall be crowned anew Your discrowned human nature. Look on me! As I shall be uplifted on a cross In darkness of eclipse and anguish dread, So shall I lift up in my pierced hands, Not into dark, but light-not unto death, But life,-beyond the reach of guilt and grief, The whole creation. Henceforth in my name Take courage, O thou woman, —man, take hope! Your graves shall be as smooth as Eden's sward, Beneath the steps of your prospective thoughts; And one step past them, a new Eden-gate Shall open on a hinge of harmony, And let you through to mercy. Ye shall fall No more, within that Eden, nor pass out Any more fiom it. In which hope, move on, First sinners and first mourners. Live and love,Doing both nobly, because lowlily; Live and work, strongly,-because patiently! And for the deed of death, trust it to God, That it be well done, unrepented of. And not to loss. And thence with constant prayers Fasten your souls so high, that constantly The smile of your heroic cheer may float Above all floods of earthly agonies, Purification being the joy of pain! [The vision of CHRIST vanishes. ADAM and EvE stand in an ecstasy. The earth-zodiac pales away shade by shade, as the stars, star by star, shine out in the sky; and the following chant from the two Earth Spirits (as they sweep back into the zodiac and disappear with it) accompanies the process of change. 8* 90 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Earth Spirits. By the mighty work thus spoken Both for living and for dying, We, our homage-oat1r once broken, Fasten back again in sighing; And the creatures and the elements renew their covenanting. Here, forgive us all our scorning; Here, we promise milder duty; And the evening and the morning Shall re-organize in beauty, A sabbath day in sabbath joy, for universal chanting And if, still, this melancholy May be strong to overcome us; If this mortal and unholy, We still fail to cast out from us,And we turn upon you, unaware, your own dark influences; If ye tremble when surrounded By our forest pine and palm trees; If we cannot cure the wounded With our marjoram and balm trees; And if your souls, all mournfully, sit down among your senses,Yet, 0 mortals, do not fear us,We are gentle in our languor; And more good ye shall have near us, Than any pain or anger; And our God's refracted blessing, in our blessing, shall be given! A DRAMA OF EXILE. 91 By the desert's endless vigil, We will solemnize your passions; By the wheel of the black eagle We will teach you exaltations, When he sails against the wind, to the white spot up in Heaven. Ye shall find us tender nurses To your weariness of nature; And our hands shall stroke the curse's Dreary furrows from the creature, Till your bodies shall lie smooth in death, and straight and slumberful: Then, a couch we will provide you, Where no summer heat shall dazzle; Strewing on you and beside you Thyme and rosemary and basilAnd the cypress shall grow overhead, to keep all safe and cool. Till the Holy blood awaited Shall be chrism around us running, Whereby, newly-consecrated, We shall leap up in God's sunning, To join the spheric company, where the pure worlds assemble; While, renewed by new evangels, Soul-consummated, made glorious, Ye shall brighten past the angelsYe shall kneel to Christ victorious; 9~ A DRAMA OF EXILE. And the rays around His feet, beneath your sobbing lips, shall tremble. [The phantastic vision has all passed; the earth-zodiac has broken like a belt, and dissolved from the desert. The Earth Spirits vanish; and the stars shine out above, bright and mild. CHORUS OF INVISIBLE ANGELS. While ADAM and EVE advance into the desert, hand in hand. Hear our heavenly promise, Through your mortal passion! Love ye shall have from us, In a pure relation! As a fish or bird Swims or flies, if moving, We, unseen, are heard To live on by loving. Far above the glances Of your eager eyes, Listen! we are loving! Listen, through man's ignorances — Listen, through God's mysteriesListen down the heart of things, Ye shall hear our mystic wings Murmurous with loving! Through the opal door, Listen evermore How we live by loving! First semichorus. When your bodies, therefore, Lie in grave or goal, Softly will we care for A DRAMA OF EXILE. 93 Every enfranchised soul! Softly and unlothly, Through the door of opal, We will draw you soothly Toward the Heavenly people. Floated on a minor fine Into the full chant divine, We will draw you. smoothly,While the human in the minor Makes the harmony diviner: Listen to our loving! Second semichorus. Then a sough of glory Shall your entrance greet; Ruffling round the doorway, All the radiance it shall meet. From the Heavenly throned centre Heavenly voices shall repeat — " Souls redeemed and pardoned, enter; For the chrism on you is sweet." And every angel in the place Lowlily shall bow his face, Folded fair on softened sounds, Because upon your hands and feet He images his Master's wounds: Listen to our loving! First semichorus. So, in the universe's Consummated undoing, Our angels of white mercies Shall hover round the ruin! 94 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Their wings shall stream upon the flame, As if incorporate of the same, In elemental fusion; And calm their faces shall burn out With a pale and mastering thought, And a steadfast looking of desire, From out between the clefts of fire,While they cry, in the Holy's name. To the final Restitution! Listen to our loving! Second semichorus. So, when the day of God is To the thick graves accompted; Awaking the dead bodies, The angel of the trumpet Shall split the charnal earth To the roots of the grave, Which never before were slackened; And quicken the charnal birth, With his blast so clear and brave; Till the Dead shall start and stand erect, And every face of the burial-plac3 The awful, single look, reflect, Wherewith he them awakened. Listen to our loving! First semichorus. But wild is the horse of Death! He will leap up wild at the clamor Above and beneath; And where is his Tamer On that last day, A DRAMA OF EXILE. 95 When he crieth, Ha, ha! To the trumpet's blare, And paweth the earth's Aceldama? When he tosseth his head, The drear-white steed, And ghastily champeth the last moon-ray,What angel there Can lead him away, That the living. may rule for the Dead? Second semichorus. Yet a TAMER shall be found! One more bright than seraph crowned, And more strong than cherub bold; Elder, too, than angel old, By his gray eternities,He shall master and surprise The steed of Death, For He is strong, and He is fain; He shall quell him with a breath, And shall lead him where He will, With a whisper in the ear, Which it alone can hearFull of fearAnd a hand upon the mane, Grand and still. First semichorus. Through the flats of Hades, where the souls assemble, HE will guide the Death-steed, calm between their ranks; While, like beaten dogs, they a little moan and tremble 96 A DRAMA OF EXILE. To see the darkness curdle from the horse's glittering flanks. Through the flats of Hades where the dreary shade is,Up the steep of Heaven, will the Tamer guide the steed,Up the spheric circles-circle above circle, We, who count the ages, shall count the tolling treadEvery hoof-fall striking a bliAder, blanker sparkle From the stony orbs, which shall show as they were dead. Second sernichorus. All the way the Dea.th-steed, with tolling hoofs, shall travel, Ashen gray the planets shall be motionless as stones; Loosely shall the systems eject their parts coeval,Stagnant in the spaces shall float the pallid moons; Suns that touch their apogees, reeling from their level, Shall run back on their axles, in wild, low, broken tunes. Chorus. Up against the arches of the crystal ceiling, Shall the horse's nostrils steam the blurting breath; Up between the angels pale with silent feeling, Will the Tamer, calmly, lead the horse of death. Semichorus. Cleaving all that silence, cleaving all that gloay, Will the Tamer lead him straightway to the Throne. " Look out, 0 Jehovah, to this I bring before Thee, With a hand nail-pierced,-I, who am thy Son." A DRAMA OF EXILE. 97 Then the Eye Divinest, from the Deepest, flaming, On the mystic courser, shall look out in fire: Blind the beast shall stagger, where It overcame him,Meek as lamb at pasture-bloodless in desireDown the beast shall shiver,-slain amid the taming,And, byLifeessential, the phantasm Death expire. A Voice. Gabriel, thou Gabriel! Another Voice. What wouldst thou with me? First Voice. I heard thy voice sound in the angels' song; And I would give thee question. Second Voice. Question me. First Voice. Why have I called thrice to my Morning-star And had no answer? All the stars are out, And round the earth, upon their silver lives, Wheel out the music of the inner life, And answer in their places. Only in vain I cast my voice against the outer rays Of my star, shut in light behind the sun! No more reply than from a breaking string, Breaking when touched. Or is she not my star? Where is my star-my star? Have ye cast down Her glory like my glory? Has she waxed Mortal, like Adam? Has she learnt to hate Like any angel? Second Voice. She is sad for thee: All things grow sadder to thee, one by one. Chorus. Live, work on, 0 Earthy! By the Actual's tension, VOL. 1. —9 7 98 A DRAMA OF EXILE. Speed the arrow worthy Of a pure ascension. From the low earth round you, Reach the heights above you; From the stripes that wound you, Seek the loves that love you! God's divinest burneth plain Through the crystal diaphane Of our loves that love you. First Voice. Gabriel, 0 Gabriel! Second Voice. What wouldst thou with me? First Voice. Is it true, 0 thou Gabriel, that the crown Of sorrow which I claimed, another claims? That HE claims THAT tOO? Second Voice. Lost one, it is true. First Voice. That HE will be an exile from His Heaven, To lead those exiles homeward? Second Voice. It is true. First Voice. That HE will be an exile by His will, As I by mine election! Second Voice. It is true. First Voice, That I shall stand sole exile finally,Made desolate for fruition? Second Voice. It is true. First Voice. Gabriel! Second Voice. I hearken. First Voice. Is it true besides — Aright true-that mine orient star will give Her name of' Bright and Morning-Star' to HIM, — A DRAMA OF EXILE. 99 And take the fairness of His virtue back, To cover loss and sadness? Second Voice. It is true. First Voice. UNtrue, UNtrue! O Morning-star! O MINE! Who sittest secret in a veil of light, Far up the starry spaces, say,- Untrue! Speak but so loud as doth a wasted moon To Tyrrhene waters! I am Lucifer[.d pause. Silence in the stars. All things grow sadder to me) one by one. Angel -chorus. Exiled Human creatures, Let your hope grow larger! Larger grows the vision Of the new delight. From this chain of Nature's, God is the Discharger; And the Actual's prison Opens to your sight. Semichorus. Calm the stars and golden, In a light exceeding: What their rays have measured, Let your hearts fulfil! These are stars beholden By your eyes in Eden; Yet, across the desert, See them shining still. Chorus. Future joy and far light lo* A DRAMA OF EXILE. Working such relations,Hear us singing gently — Exiled is not lost! God, above the starlight, God, above the patience, Shall at last present ye Guerdons worth the cost. Patiently enduring, Painfully surrounded, Listen how we love youHope the uttermostWaiting for that curing Which exalts the wounded, Hear us sing above youEXILED, BUT NOT LOST: [Te star* shine on brightly, while ADAM and EVE pursue their way into the far wilderness. There is a sound through the silence, as of the falling tears of an angel, THE ROMAUNT'r OF THE PAGE. A KNIGHT of gallant deeds, And a young page at his side From the holy war in Palestine, Did slow and thoughtful ride, As each were a palmer, and told for beads The dews of the eventide.' O0 young page," said the knight, " A noble page art thou! Thou fearest not to steep in blood The curls upon thy brow; And once in the tent, and twice in the fight, Didst ward me a mortal blow -- "0 brave knight," said the page, " Or ere we hither came, We talked in tent, we talked in field Of the bloody battle-game: But here, below this greenwood bough, I cannot speak the same. 9* 101 102 THE ROUMAU2IT UO T1 11 PAGE. "Our troop is far behind, The woodland calm is new; Our steeds, with slow grass-muffled boofs, Tread deep the shadows through. And in my mind, some blessing kind Is dropping with the dew. "The woodland calm is pureI cannot choose but have A thought, from these, o' the beechen-trees Which, in our England, wave; And of the little finches fine, Which sang there, while in Palestine The warrior-hilt we drave. Methinks, a moment gone, I heard my mother pray! I heard, sir knight, the prayer for me Wherein she passed away; And I know the Heavens are leaning down To hear what I shall say." The page spake calm and high As of no mean degree; Perhaps he felt in nature's broad Full heart, his own was free: And the knight looked up to his lifted eye, Then answered smilingly:"Sir Page, I pray your grace! Certes, I meant not so THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 103 To cioss your pastoral mood, sir page, With the crook of the battle-bow; But a knight may speak of a lady's face, I trow, in any mood or place, If the grasses die or grow. "And this, I meant to say,My lady's face shall shine As ladies' faces use, to greet My Page from Palestine: Or, speak she fair, or prank she gay, She is no lady of mine., And this, I meant to fear,Her bower may suit thee ill! For, sooth, in that same field and tent, Thy talk was somewhat still; And fitter thy hand for my knightly spear, Than thy tongue for my lady's will." Slowly and thankfully The young page bowed his head: His large eyes seemed to muse a smile, Until he blushed instead; And no lady in her bower pardie, Could blush more sudden red"Sir Knight, —thy lady's bower to me, Is suited well," he said. Beati, beati, mortui! From the convent on the sea, 104 THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. One mile off, or scarce as nigh,,Swells the dirge as clear and high As if. that,- over brake and lea, Bodily the wind did carry -The great altar of St. Mary, And the fifty tapers burning o'er it, And the lady Abbess dead before it,And the chanting nuns whom yesterweek Her voice did charge and blessChanting steady, chanting meek, Chanting with a solemn breath Because that they are thinking less Upon the Dead than upon death! Beati, beati, mortui! Now the vision in the sound Wheeleth on the wind aroundNow it sweeps aback, awayThe uplands will not let it stay To dark the western sun. Mortui — away at last,Or ere the page's blush is past! And the knight heard all, and the page heard none. "A boon, thou noble knight, If ever I served thee! Though thou art a knight, and I am a page, Now grant a boon to meAnd tell me sooth, if dark or bright, If little loved, or loved aright, Be the face of thy ladye." THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 105 Gloomily looked the knight; " As a son thou hast served me: And would to none, I had granted boon, Except to only thee! For haply then I should love aiight,For then I should know if dark or bright Were the face of my ladye. "Yet ill it suits my knightly tongue To grudge that granted boon: That heavy price, from heart and life I paid in silence down: The hand that claimed it, cleared in fine My father's fame: I swear by mine, That price was nobly won. Earl Walter was a brave old earl,He was my father's friend; And while I rode the lists at court, And little guessed the end,My noble father in his shroud, Against a slanderer lying loud, He rose up to defend. "Oh, calm, below the marble gray My father's dust was strown! Oh, meek, above the marble gray, His image prayed alone! The slanderer lied-the wretch was brave,For, looking up the minster-nave, 106 THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. He saw my father's knightly glaive Was chanced from steel to stone. "But Earl Walter's glaive was steel, With a brave old hand to wear it! And dashed the lie back in th3 mouth Which lied against the godly truth And against the knightly merit: The slanderer,'neath the avenger's heel, Struck up the dagger in appeal From stealthy lie to brutal forceAnd out upon that traitor's corse, Was yielded the true spirit. " I would my hand had fought that fight, And justified my father! I would my heart had caught that wound, And slept beside him rather! I think it were a better thing Than murthered friend, and marriage-ring, Forced on my life together. "Wail shook Earl Walter's houseHis true wife shed no tearShe lay upon her bed as mute As the earl did on his bier: Till-' Ride, ride fast,' she said at last, And bring the avengned's son anear! Ride fast-ride free, as a dart can flee: For white of ble, with waiting for me, Is the coise in the next chainbere.' TH E ROMA U N T F TL- i P A GE. 107 "I came —I knelt beside her bedHer calm was worse than strifeMy husband, for thy father dear, Gave freely, when thou wert not here, His own and eke my life. A boon! Of that sweet child we make An orphan for thy father's sake, Make thou, for ours, a wife.' "I said,' My steed neighs in the court: My bark rocks on the brine; And the warrior's vow, I am under now, To free the pilgrim's shrine: But fetch the ring, and fetch the priest, And call that daughter of thine; And rule she wide, from my castle on Nyde, While I am in Palestine.' "In the dark chambdre, if the bride was fair, Ye wis, I could not see; But the steed thrice neighed, and the priest fast prayed And wedded fast were we. Her mother smiled upon her bed, As at its side we knelt to wed; And the bride rose fiom her knee, And kissed the smile of her mother dead, Or ever she kissed me. "My page, my page, what grieves thee so, That the tears run down thy face?"' LO8 THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. " Alas, alas! mine own sisther Was in thy lady's case! But she laid down the silks she wore And followed him she wed before, Disguised as his true servitor, To the very battle-place." And wept the page, and laughed the knight, A careless laugh laughed he: es Well done it were for thy sist6r, But not for my ladye! My love, so please you, shall requite No woman, whether dark or bright, Unwomaned if she be." The page stopped weeping, and smiled cold-. " Your wisdom may declare That womanhood is proved the best By golden brooch and glossy vest The mincing ladies wear: Yet is it proved, and was of old, Anear as well-I dare to holdBy truth; or by despair." He smiled no more-he wept no more.But passionate he spake,is Oh, womanly, she played in tent, When none beside did wake! Oh, womanly, she paled in fight, For one belIove's sake!And her little hand defiled with blood, THE ROMAUNT OF' THE PAGE. 109,Her tender tears of womanhood, Most woman-pure, did mlale!" " Well done it were for thy sistr — Thou tellest well her tale! But for my lady, she shall pray I' the kirk of NydesdaleNot dread for me, but love for me, Shall make my lady pale: No casque shall hide her womlan's tearIt shall have room to trickle clear Behind her woman's veil." "But what if she mistook thy mind, And followed thee to strife; Then kneeling, did entreat thy love, As Paynims ask for life?" "I would forgive, and evermore Would love her as my servitor, But little as my wife. t'"Look up-there is a small bright cloud Alone amid the skies! So high, so pure, and so apart, A woman's glory lies." The page looked up-the cloud was sheenA sadder cloud did rush, I ween, Betwixt it and his eyes: Then dimly dropped his eyes away From welken unto hillVOL. II. —-1 110 THE RONMAUNT OF THE PAGE. Ha! who rides there? —the page is'ware, Though the cry at his heart is still! And the page seeth all, and the knight seeth none Though banner and spear do fleck the sun, And the Saracens ride at will. He speaketh calm, he speaketh low — " Ride fast, my master, ride, Or ere within the broadening dark The narrow shadows hide!" " Yea, fast, my page; I will do so; And keep thou at my side." " Now nay, now nay, ride on thy way, Thy faithful page precede! For I must loose on saddle-bow My battle-casque, that galls, I trow, The shoulder of my steed; And I must pray, as I did vow, For one in bitter need. 4' Ere night I shall be near to thee,Now ride, my master, ride! Ere night, as parted spirits cleave To mortals too beloved to leave, I shall be at thy side." The knight smiled free at the fantasy, And adown the dell did ride. Had the knight looked up to the page's face, No smile the word had won! THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 111 Had the knight looked up to the page's face, I ween he had never gone: Had the knight looked back to the page's geste, I ween he had turned anon: For dread was the wo in the face so young; And wild was the silent geste that flung Casque, sword to earth-as the boy down-sprung, And stood-alone, alone. He clenched his hands, as if to hold His soul's great agony"Have I renounced my womanhood, For wifehood unto thee? And is this the last, last look of thine, That ever I shall see? "Yet God thee save, and mayst thou have A lady to thy mind; More woman-proud, and half as true As one thou leav'st behind! And God me take with HIM to dwellFor HIM I cannot love too well, As I have loved my kind." SHE looketh up, in earth's despair, The hopeful Heavens to seek: That little cloud still floateth there, Whereof her Loved did speak. How bright the little cloud appears! Her eyelids fall upon the tears,And the tears, down either cheek. 112 THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. The tramp of hoof, the flash of steelThe Paynims round her coming! The sound and sight have made her calm,False page, but truthful woman! She stands amid them all unmoved: The heart, once broken by the loved, Is strong to meet the foeman. "Ho, Christian page! art keeping sheep, From pouring wine cups, resting?""I keep my master's noble name, For warring, not for feasting: And if that here Sir Hubert were, My master brave, my master dear, Ye would not stay to question." " Where is thy master, scornful page, That we may slay or bind himn?"" Now search the lea, and search the wood, And see if ye can find him! Nathless, as hath been often tried, Your Paynim heroes faster ride Before him than behind him." " Give smoother answers, lying page, Or perish in the lying." — "I trow that if the warrior brand Beside my foot, were in may hand,'Twere better at replying." They cursed her deep, they smote her low, THE ROMAUNT OF THlE PAGE. 113 They cleft her golden ringlets through: The Loving is the Dying. She felt the scimitar gleam down, And met it from beneath, With smile more bright in victcry Than any sword from sheath, — Which flashed across her lip serene, Most like the spirit-light between The darks of life and death. Ingemisco, ingemisco! From the convent on the sea, Now it sweepeth solemnly! As over wood and over lea, Bodily the wind did carry The great altar of St. Mary, And the fifty tapers paling o'er it, And the Lady Abbess stark before it, And the weary nuns, with hearts that faintly Beat along their voices saintlyIngemnisco, ingemisco! Dirge for abbess laid in shroud, Sweepeth o'er the shroudless Dead, Page or lady, as we said, With the dews upon her head, All as sad if not as loud: -Ingemisco, ingemisco! Is ever a lament begun By any mourner under sun, Which, ere it endeth, suits but one? 10; 8 THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. PART FIRS T " ONORA, ONORA "-'her mother is callingShe sits at the lattice and hears the dew falling Drop after drop from the sycamores laden With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden" Night cometh, Onora." She looks down the garden-walk caverned with trees, To the limes at the end, where the green arbor is —i " Some sweet thought or other may keep ere it found her, i\ While, forgot or unseen in the dreamlight around herNight cometh, Onora!" She looks up the forest whose alleys shoot on Like the mute minster-aisles, when the anthem is done, And the choristers, sitting with faces aslant, Feel the silence to consecrate more than the chant" Onora, Onora!" 114 LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 115 And forward she looketh across the brown heath" Onora, art coming?" —What is it she seeth? Nought, nought, but the gray border-stone that is wist To dilate and assume a wild shape in the mist — " My daughter!"-Then over The casement she leaneth, and as she doth so, She is'ware of her little son playing below: " Now where is Onora?"-He hung down his head And spake not, then answering blushed scarlet-red, — "At the tryst with her lover." But his mother was wroth. In a sternness quoth she, "As thou play'st at the ball, art thou playing with me K When we know that her lover to battle is gone, And the saints know above that she loveth but one, And will ne'er wed another?" Then the boy wept aloud.'Twas a fair sight, yet sad, To see the tears run down the sweet blooms he had: He stamped with his foot, said-" The saints know I lied, Because truth that is wicked, is fittest to hide! Must I utter it, mother?" In his vehement childhood he hurried within, And knelt at her feet as in prayer against sin; But a child at a prayer never sobbeth as he-'Oh! she sits with the nun of the brown rosarie, At nights in the ruin! 116 LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. " The old convent ruin the ivy rots off, Where the owl hoots by day, and the toad is sunproof; Where no singing-birds build; and the trees gaunt and gray, As in stormy sea-coasts, appear blasted one wayBut is this the wind's doing? " A nun in the east wall was buried alive, Who mocked at the priest, when he called her to shrive,And shrieked such a curse as the stone took her breath, The old abbess fell backward and swooned unto death With an ave half-spoken. "i tried once to pass it, myself and my hound, Till, as fearing the lash, down he shivered to ground,! A brave hound, my mother! a brave hound, ye wot! And the wolf thought the same, with his fangs at her throat, In the pass of the Brocken. "At dawn and at eve, mother, who sitteth there, With the brown rosarie never used for a prayer? Stoop low, mother, low! If we went there to see, What an ugly great hole in that east wall must be At dawn and at even! " Who meet there, my mother, at dawn and at even? Who meet by that wall, never looking to heaven? 0 sweetest my sister, what doeth with thee, LAYr. OF TH E BR [OW N RE.CS eR R Y. 117 The ghost of a nun with a brown rosaric, And a face turned from heaven? " St. Agnes o'erwatcheth my dreams; and erewhile I have felt through mine eyelids, the warmth of her smileBut last night, as a sadness like pity came o'er her, She whispered-' Say two prayers at dawn for Onora The Tempted is sinning.' Onora, Onora! they heard her not comingNot a step on the grass, not a voice through the gloaming: But her mother looked up, and she stood on the floor, Fair and still as the moonlight that came there before And a smile just beginning: It touches her lips —but it dares not arise To the height of the mystical sphere of her eyes: And the large musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry, S-ing on like the angels in separate glory, Between clouds of amber. For the hair droops in clouds amber-colored, till stirred Into gold by the gesture that comes with a word: While-'O soft!-her speaking is so interwound Of the dim and the sweet,'tis a twilight of sound, And floats through the' chamber. " Since thou shrivest my brother, fair mother," said she, 118 LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY "I count on thy priesthood for marrying of me: And I know by the hills, that the battle is done — That my lover rides on-will be here with the sun,'Neath the eyes that behold thee!"' Her mother sat silent-too tender, I wis, Of the smile her dead father smiled dying to kiss; But the boy started up, pale with tears, passionwrought,0 wicked fair sister, the hills utter nought! If he cometh, who told thee?" "I know by the hills," she resumed calm and clear, l" By the beauty upon them, that HE is anear: Did they ever look so since he bade me adieu? Oh, love in the waking, sweet brother, is true As St. Agnes in sleeping." Half-ashamed and half-softened, the boy did not speak, And the blush met the lashes which fell on his cheek: She bowed down to kiss him-Dear saints, did he see Or feel on her bossom the BROWN ROSARIEThat he shrank away weeping? LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY 11 PART SECOND. oA bed-ONoRA sleeping. Angels, but not near. First Angel. Must we stand so far, and she So very fair? Second Angel. As bodies be. First Angel. And she so mild? Second Angel. As spirits, when They meeken, not to God, but men. First Angel. And she so young,-that I who bring Good dreams for saintly children, might Mistake that small soft face to-night, And fetch her such a blessed thing, That, at her waking, she would weep For childhood lost anew in sleep How hath she sinned? Second Angel. In bartering love — God's love-for mans_: First Angel. We may reprove The world for this! not only her: Let me approach, to breathe away This dust o' the heart with holy air. Second Angel. Stand off! She sleeps, and did not pray. 120 LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. First Angel. Did none pray for her? Second Angel. Ay, a child, — Who never, praying, wept before: While, in a mother undefiled, Prayer goeth on in sleep, as true And pauseless as the pulses do First Angel. Then I approach. Second Angel. It is not WILLED. First Angel. One word: Is she redeemed? Second Angel. No more! THE PLACE IS FILLED. [Angels vanish. Evil Spirit in a Nun's garb by the bed. Forbear that dream-forbear that dream! too near to Heaven it leaned. Onora in sleep. Nay, leave me this-but only this!'tis but a dream, sweet fiend! Evil Spirit. It is a thought. Onora in sleep. A sleeping thought-most innocent of goodit doth the Devil no harm, sweet fiend! it cannot) if it would. I say in it no holy hymn,-I do no holy work; LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 121 I scarcely hear the sabbath-bell that chimeth from the kirk. Evil Spirit. Forbear that dream-forbear that dream! Onora in sleep. Nay, let me dream at least: That far-off bell, it may be took for viol at a feastI only walk among the fields, beneath the summer-sun, With my dead father, hand in hand, as I have often done. Evil Spirit. Forbear that dream-forbear that dream! Onora in sleep. Nay, sweet fiend, let me goI never more call walk.i..t h...,, 0. nvermore-but so: For they have tied my father's feet beneath the kirkyard stone,Oh, deep and straight; oh, very straight! they move at nights alone: And then he ealleth through my dreams, he calleth tenderly,Come forth, my daughter, my beloved, and walk the fields with me!' Evil Spirit. Forbear that dream, or else disprove its pureness by a sign. Onora in sleep. Speak on, thou shalt be satisfied! my word shall answer thine. I hear a bird which used to sing when I a child was praying; VOL, II.-1 1 122 LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. I see the poppies in the corn I used to sport away in. What shall I do-tread down the dew, and pull the blossoms blowing? Or clap my wicked hands to fright the finches from the rowen? Evil Spirit. Thou shalt do something harder still: Stand up where thou dost stand, Among the fields of Dreamland, with thy father, hand in hand, And clear and slow, repeat the vow-declare its cause and kind, Which, not to break in sleep or wake, thou bearest on thy mind. Onora in sl ep. I bear a vow of wicked kind, a vow for mournful cause: I vowed it deep, I vowed it strong-the spirits laughed applause: The spirits trailed, along the pines, low laughter like a breeze, While, high atween their swinging tops, the stars appear d to freeze. Evil Spirit. More call and free,-speak out to me, why such a vow was made. Onora in sleep. Because that God decreed my death, and I shrank back afraid: Have patience, 0 dead father mine! I did not fear to die; LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 123 I wish I were a young dead child, and had thy company! I wish I lay beside thy feet, a buried three-year child, And wearing only a kiss of thine, upon my lips that smiled! The linden-tree that covers thee, might, so, have shadowed twainFor death itself I did not fear-'tis love that makes the pain. Love feareth death: I was no child-I was betrothed that day; I wore a troth-kiss on my lips, I could not give away: How could I bear to lie content and still beneath a stone, And feel mine own Betrothed go by-alas! no more mine own,Go leading by, in wedding pomp, some lovely lady brave, With cheeks that blushed as red as rose, while mine were cold in grave? How could I bear to sit in Heaven, on e'er so high a throne, And hear him say to her-to her! that else he loveth none? Though e'er so high I sate above, though e'er so low he spake, As clear as thunder I should hear the new oath he night takeThat hers, forsooth, are heavenly eyes, —ah, me t while very dim 124 LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. Some heavenly eyes (indeed of Heaven ) would darken down to him. Evil SIirit. Who told thee thou wert called to death? Onora in sleep. I sat all night beside theeThe gray owl on the ruined wall shut both his eyes to hide thee; And ever he flapped his heavy wing, all brokenly and weak, And the long grass waved against the sky, around his gasping beak: I sat beside thee all the night, while the moonlight lay forlorn Strewn round us like a dead world's shroud, in ghastly fragmcents torn: And through the night, and through the hush, and over the flapping wing, We heard, beside the Heavenly Gate, the angels murmuring: We heard them say,'Put day to day, and count the days to seven, And God will draw Onora up the golden stairs of Heaven: And yet the evil ones have leave that purpose to defer, For if she has no need of HIM, He has no need of ler - Evil Splirit.,Speak out to me —speak bold and free. LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 125 Onora in slee)p. And then I heard thee say, — 4 I count upon my rosarie brown, the hours thou hast to stay!' Yet God permits us evil ones to put by that decree, Since if thou hast no need of Hr.I, He has no need of thee-' And if thou wilt forego the sight of angels, verily j Thy true love gazing on thy face, shall guess what angels be-'Nor bride shall pass, save thee'. Alas!-my father's hand's acold — The meadows seemn-i.. Evil Sp3irit. Forbear the dream, or let the vow be told! Onora in sleep. I vowed upon thy rosarie brown, this string of antique beads, By charnel lichens overgrown, and dank among the weeds — This rosarie brown which is thine own, —lost soul of bulioed nun,Who, lost by vow, wouldst render now all souls alike undone; — I vowed upon thy rosirie brown, —and, till such vow should break, A pledge always of living days,'twas hung around my neck I vowed to thee on rosarie, (Dead father, look not so!) I would not thank God in my weal, nor seek God in my wo. 11* 1.26 LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. Evil Spirit. And canst thou prove.... Onora in sleep. O love —my love! I felt him near again! I saw his steed on mountain-head, I heard it on the plain! iWas this no weal for me to feel?-is greater weal than this?> Yet when he came, I wept his naml —and the angels heard but his. Evil Spirit. Well done, well done! Onora in sleep. Ay me! the sun... the dreamlight'gins to pine,Ay me! how dread can look the Dead!-Aroint thee, father mine! She starteth from slumber, she sitteth upright, And her breath comes in sobs while she stares through the night: There is nought: The great willow, her lattice before, Large-drawn in the moon, lieth calm on the floor; But her hands tremble fast as their pulses, and free From the death-clasp, close over-the BROWN ROSARIE. LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 127 TEHIRD PA RT.'TIs a morn for a bridal; the merry bride-bell Rings clear through the green-wood that skirts the chapelle; And the priest at the altar awaiteth the bride, And the sacristans slyly are jesting aside At the work shall be doing. While down through the wood rides that fair company, The youths with the courtship, the maids with the glee,Till the chapel-cross opens to sight, and at once All the maids sigh demurely, and think for the nonce, And so endeth a wooingr! And the bride and the bridegroom are leading the way, With his hand on her rein, and a word yet to say: Her dropt eyelids suggest the soft answers beneathAnd the little quick smiles come and go with her breath, When she sigheth or speaketh. And the tender bride-mother breaks off unaware From an Ave, to think that her daughter is fair,Till in nearing the chapel, and glancing before, She seeth her little son stand at the door,Is it play that he seeketh? 128 LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. Is it play s when his eyes wander innocent-wild, And sublimed with a sadness unfitting, a child! lIe trembles not, weeps not —the passiin) is done, And calmly he kneels in their midst, with the sun On his head like a glory. " fair-featured maids, ye are many!"7 he cried, — " But, in fairness and vileness, who matcheth the bride? O brave-hearted youths, ye are many! but whom, For the courage and wo, can ye match with the groom, As ye see them before ye?" Out spake the bride's mother-" The vileness is thine, If thou shame thine own sister, a brid.: at thei~ shrine!" Out spake the bride's lover —" The vil!eness be mine, If he shame mine own wife at the hearth or the shrine, And the charge be unproved.' Bring the charge, prove the charge, brother! speak it aloudLet thy father and hers, hear it deep in his shroud!" -" 0 father, thou seest-for dead eyes can seeHow she wears on her bosom a brown rosarie, 0 my father beloved!" Then outlaughed the bridegroom, and outlaughed withal Both maidens and youths, by the old chapel-wall —' So she weareth no love-gift, kind brother,"' quoth he, LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 129 I' She may wear, an she listeth, a brown rosarie, Like a pure-hearted lady!" Then swept through the chapel, the long bridal train: Though he spake to the bride, she replied not againOn, as one in a dream, pale and stately she went,::Where the altar-lights burn o'er thee great saerament, Faint with daylight, but staadly. But her brother had passed in b.tw:een them and her, And callnly knelt down on the hi:h-laltar stairOf an infantine aspect so stern to tine view~, That the pxiest could not smile on the child's cyes ofblue, As he would for another. Toe knelt like a child marble-sculpturoed and white, That seems kneeling to pray on the tomb of a knight, With a look taken up to each iris of stone From the greatness and death where he kneeleth, but none From the face of a mother. "In your chapel, O priest, ye have wedded and shriven Fair wives for the hearth, and fair sinners for Heaven! But this fairest my sister, ye think now to wed, Bid her kneel where she standeth, and shrive her instead0 shrive her and wed not P! In tears, the bride's mother, —" Sir priest, unto thee Would he lie, as he lied to this fair comlpany!" 9l 130 LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. In wrath, the bride's lover, —'I' The lit shall be clear! Speak it out, boy! the saints in their niches shall hearBe the charge proved or said not!" Then serene in his childhood he lifted his face, And his voice sounded holy and fit for the place" Look down from your niches, ye still saints, and see How she wears on her bosom a brown rosarie! Is it used for the praying?" The youths looked aside-to laugh there were a sinAnd the maidens' lips trembled with smiles shut within: fuoth the priest-" Thou art wild, pretty boy! Blessed she, Who prefers at her bridal a brown rosarie To a worldly arraying!" The bridegroom spake low and led onward the bride, And before the high altar they stood side by side: The rite-book is opened, the rite is begunThey have knelt down together to rise up as oneWho laughed by the altar The maidens looked forward, the youths looked around,The bridegroom's eye flashed from his prayer at the sound; And each saw the bride, as if no bride she were, LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 131 Gazing cold at the priest, without gesture of prayer, As he read from the psalter. The priest never knew that she did so, but still He felt a power on him, too strong for his will; And whenever the Great Name was there to be read, His voice sank to silence-THAT could not be said, Or the air could not hold it. " I have sinned," quoth he, " I have sinned, I wot"And the tears ran adown his old cheeks at the thought; They dropped fast on the book; but he read on the same,And aye was the silence where should be the NAME, As the choristers told it. rhe rite-book is closed, and the rite being done, They who knelt down together, arise up as one; Fair riseth the bride-Oh, a fair bride is she,But, for all (think the maidens) that brown rosarie, No saint at her praying! What aileth the bridegroom? He glares blank and widerhen suddenly turning, he kisseth the brideHis lip stung her with cold: she glanced upwardly mute:' Mine own wife," he said, and fell stark at her foot In the word he was saying. They have lifted him up,-but his head sinks away, — And his face showeth bleak in the sunshine, and gray. 132 LAY OF TIHE BROWN ROSARY. Leave him now where he lieth-for oh, nevermore Will he kneel at an altar or stand on a floor! Let his bride gaze upon him! Long and still was her gaze, while they chafed him there, And breathed in the mouth whose last life had kissed her: But when they stood up-only they! with a start The shriek from her soul struck her pale lips apartShe has lived, and forgone him! And low on his body she droppeth adown" Didst call me thine own wife, beloved —thine own? Then take thine own with thee! thy coldness is warm To the worldlc's cold without thee! Come, keep me fiom harm In a calm of thy teaching!"' She looked in his face earnest long, as in sooth There were hope of an answer,-and then kissed his mouth; And with head on his bosom, wept, wept bitterly,-' Now, 0 God, take pity-take pity on me!God, hear my beseeching!" She was'ware of a shadow that crossed where she lay; She was'ware of a presence that wither'd the dayWild she sprang to her feet,-" I surrender to thee The broken vow's pledge, —the accursed rosarie,I am ready for dying!" LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 133 She dashed it in scorn to the marble-paved ground, Where it fell mute as snow; and a weird music-sound Crept up, like a chill, up the aisles long and dim,As the fiends tried to mock at the choristers' hymn, And moaned in the trying. FOURTH PART. ONORA looketh listlessly adown the garden walk: " I am weary, O my mother, of thy tender talk! I am weary of the trees a-wavinog to and froOf the steadfast skies above, the running brooks below;All things are the same but I;-only I am dreary; _And, mother, of my dreariness, behold me very weary. a Mother, brother, pull the flowers I planted in the spring, And smiled to think I should smile more upon their gathering. The bees will find out other flowers-oh, pull them, dearest mine, And carry them and carry me before St. Agnes' shrine." — Whereat they pulled the summer flowers she planted in the spring, And her and them, all mournfully, to Agnes' shrine did bring. VOL. I.- 12 134 LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. She looked up to the pictured saint, and gently shook her head"The picture is too calm for me —too calm for me," she said: "The little flowers we brought with us, before it we may lay, For those are used to look at heaven,-but I must turn awayBecause no sinner under sun, can dare or bear to gaze On God's or angel's holiness, except in Jesu's face." She spoke with passion after pause-" And were it wisely done, If we who cannot gaze above, should walk the earth alone? — If we whose virtue is so weak, should have a will so strong,And stand blind on the rocks, to choose the right path from the wrong? To choose perhaps a love-lit hearth, instead of love and Heaven, — A single rose, for a rose-tree, which beareth seven times seven? A rose that droppeth from the hand,'that fadeth in the breast, Until, in grieving for the worst, we learn what is the best!" Then breaking into tears,-" Dear God," she cried, " and must we see All blissful things depart from us, or ere we go to THEE? LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 135 We cannot guess thee in the wood, or hear thee in the wind? Our cedars must fall round us, ere we sec.the light behind? Ay, sooth, we feel too strong in weal, to need thee on that road; But wo being come, the soul is dumb, that crieth not on' God."' Her mother could not speak for tears; she ever mus6d thus" The bees will find out other flowers,-but what is left for us? But her young brother stayed his sobs, and knelt beside her knee, -"~ Thou sweetest sister in the world, hast never a word for me?" She passed her hand across his face, she pressed it on his cheek, So tenderly, so tenderly-she needed not to speak. The wreath which lay on shrine that day, at vespers bloomed no moreThe wollan fair who placed it there, had died an hour before: Both perished mute, for lack of root, earth's nourishment to reach;O reader, trceathe (the ballad saith) some sweetness out of each! LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. A ROMANCE OF THE AGE Ai poet writes to his friend. Place-A- room in Wycombe Hall. Time -Late in the evening. DEAR my friend and fellow-student, I would lean my spirit o'er you; Down the purple of this chamber, tears should scarcely run at will: 1 am humbled whowas humble! Friend,-I bow my head before you! You should lead me to my peasants! —but their faces are too still. There's a lady —an earl's daughter; she is proud and she is noble; And she treads the crimson carpet, and she breathes the perfumed air; And a kingly blood sends glances up her princely eye to trouble, And the shadow of a monarch's crown is softened in her hair. 136 LADY GiRALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 137 She has halls and she has castles, and the resonant steam-eagles Follow far on the direction of her little dove-like handTrailing on a thunderous vapor underneath the starry vigils, So to mark upon the blasted heaven, the measure of her land. There are none of England's daughters, who can show a prouder presence; Upon princely suitors suing, she has looked in her disdain: She was sprung of English nobles, I was born of English peasants; What was I that I should love her-save for feelingi of the pain? I was only a poor poet, made for singing at her casement, As the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of other things. Oh, she walked so high above me, she appeared to my abasement, In her lovely silken murmur, like an angel clad in wings! Many vassals bow before her, as her chariot sweeps their door-ways; She has blest their little children, —as a priest or queen were she! 12* 138 LADY GERALDINE'S Far too tender or too cruel far, her smile upon the poor was, For I thought i.t was the same smile, which she used to smile on me. She has voters in the commons, she has lovers in the palaceAnd of all the fair court-ladies, few have jewels half as fine: Even the prince has named her beauty,'twixt the red wine and the chalice: Oh, and what was I to love her? my Beloved, my Geraldine! Yet I could not choose but love her-I was born to poet uses — To love all thinos set above me, all of good and all of fair: Nymphs of mountain, not of valley, we are wont to call the Muses — And in nympholeptic climbing, poets pass from mount to star. And because I was a poet, and because the people praised me, With their critical deductions for the modern writer's fault; I could sit at rich men's tables, —though the courtesies that raised me,,Still suggested clear between us, the pale spectrum of the salt. COURTSHIP. 139 And they praised me in her presence: —" Will your book appear this summer?" Then returning to each other —" Yes, our plans are for the moors;" Then with whisper dropped behind me —" There he is! the latest corner! Ohs she only likes his verses! what is over, she endures. " Quite low born! self-educated! somewhat gifted though by nature,And we make a point of asking him, —of being very kind; You may speak, he does not hear you; and besides, he writes no satire,These new charmers who keep serpents, have the antique sting resigned." I grew seornfuller, grew colder, as I stood up there among themeTill as fIrost intense will burn you, the cold scorning scorched my brow; When a sudden silver speaking, gravely cadenced, overrung them, And a sudden silken stirring touched my inner nature through. I looked upward and beheld her! With a calm and regnant spirit, Slowly round she swept her eyelids, andsaid clear before them all 140 LADY GERALDINE'S " Have you such superfluous honor, sir, that, able to to confer it, You will come down, RMr. Bertram, as nmy guest to Wycombe Hall?" Here she paused, —she had been paler at the first word of her speaking; But because a silence followed it, blushed scarlet, as for shame; Then, as scorning her own feeling, resumed calmly" I am seeking More distinction than these gentlemen think worthy of my claim. " Ne'ertheless, you see, I seek it-not because I am a woman," — (Here her smile sprang like a fountain, and, so, overflowed her mouth) But because my woods in Sussex have some purple shades at gloaming, Which are worthy of a king in state, or poet in his youth.' I invite you, Mr. Bertram, to no scene for worldly speechesSir, I scarce should dare-but only where God asked the thrushes fir stAnd if you will sing beside them, in the covert of my beeches, I will thank you for the woodlands,... for the human world at worst." COURTSHIP. 141 Then, she smiled around right childly, then, she gazed around right queenly; And I bowed-I could not answer! Alternated light and gloomWhile as one who quells the lions, with a steady eye serenely, She, with level fronting eyelids, passed out stately fronom the room. Oh, the blessed woods of Sussex, I can hear them still around me, I With their leafy tide of greenery still rippling up the wind! Oh, the ue',sed woods of Sussex! where the hunter's arrow found me, When a fair face and a tender voice had made me mad and blind! In that ancient hall of WVycomlbe, thronged the numelrous guests invited, And the lovely London ladies trod the floors with gliding feet; And their voices low with fashion, not with feeling, softly freighted All the air about the windows, with elastic laughters sweet. 142 LADY GERALDINE'S For at eve, the open windows, flung their light out on the terrace, Which the floating orbs of curtains, did with gradual shadow sweep; While the swans upon the river, fed at morning by the heiress, Trembled downward through their snowy wings, at music in their sleep. And there evermore was music, both of instrument and singing; Till the finches of the shrubberies, grew restless in the dark; But the cedars stood up motionless, each in a moonlight ringing, And the deer, half in the glimmer, strewed the hollows of the park. And thouoh sometimes she would bind me with her silver-corded speeches, To commix my words and laughter with the converse and the jest,Oft I sat apart, and gazing on the river, through the beeches, Heard, as pure the swans swam down it, her pure voice o'erfloat the rest In the morning, horn of huntsman, hoof of steed, and laugh of rider, Spread out cheery from the court-yard, till we lost them in the hills; COURTSHIP. 343 While herself and other ladies, and her suitors left beside her, Went a-wandering up the gardens, through the laurels and abeles. Thus, her foot upon the new-mown grass-bareheaded -with the flowinlg Of the virginal white vesture, gathered closely to her throat; With the golden ringlets in her neck, just quickened by her going, And appearing to breathe sun for air, and doubting if to float, — With a branch of dewy maple, which her right hand held above her, And which trembled a green shadow in betwixt her and the skies, — As she turned her face in going, thus, she drew me on to love her, And to worship the divineness of the smile hid in her eyes. F1or her eyes alone smile constantly: her lips have serious sweetness, And her front is calm —the dimple rarely ripples on her cheek: But her deep blue eyes smile constantly,-as if they had by fitness Won the secret of a happy dream, she does not care to speak. 744 LADY GERALDINE'S Thus she drew me the first morning, out across into the garden: And I walked amongo her noble friends, and could not keep behind; Spake she unto all and unto me-" Behold, I am the warden, Of the song birds in these lindens, which are cages to their mind. "But within this swarded circle, into which the lime-walk brings usWhence the beeches rounded greenly, stand away in reverent fear; I will let no music enter, saving what the fountain sings us, Which the lilies round the basin, may seem pure enough to hear. "The live air that waves the lilies, waves this slender jet of water, Like a holy thought sent feebly up from soul of fasting saint! Whereby lies a marble Silence, sleeping! (Lough the sculptor wrought her,) So asleep, she is forgetting to say laush!-a fancy quaint! " Mark how heavy white her eyelids! not a dream between them lingers t And the left hand's indx droppeth from the lips upon the cheek: COURTS ttP. 145 And the riht hand, —with the symbol rose held slack withlin the fingers - Iais fill n blekwatd in the basin-yet this Silence will not speak! " That the essential meaning growing, may exceed the special symbol, Is the thought, as I conceive it: it applies more high and low,Our true noblemen will often, through right nobleness, grow humble, And assert an inward honor, by denying outward show." "Nay, your' Siience," said I, "truly holds her symbol rose but slackly, Yet shke holds t —or would scarcely be a Silence to our ken! And your notolfs wear their ermine on the outside, or walk blackly In the presence of the social law, as most ignoble men. " Let tile poets dream such dreaming! Madam, in these British islands,'Tis thle substance that wanes ever,'ti: thle symbol that exceeds; Soon woe shell have nought but sym)bol! and for statues like this Silence, Shall accept tle rose's marbl!e-in anotir case, the weed's." 10 vo0. II.13 146 LADY GERALDINE'S "N Not so quickly " she retorted,-" I confess where'er you go, you Find for things, names-shows for actions, and pure gold for honor clear; But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you The world's book, which now reads drily, and sit down withSilence here." Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation; Friends who listened laughed her words off while her lovers deemed h-r afair,A fair woman-flushed with feeling, in her noblelighted station, Near the statue's white reposing-and both bathed in sunny air! With the trees round, not so distant, but you heard their vernal murmur, And beheld in light and shadow, the leaves in and outward move; And the little fountain leaping toward the sun-heart to be warmer, And recoiling backward, trembling with the too much light above-'Tis a picture for remembrance! and thus, morning after morning, Did I follow as she drew me, by the spirit, to her feet 0OUR TSHIP. 147 Why, her greyhound followed also! dogs —-we both were dogs for scorning — To be sent back when she pleased it, and her path lay through the wheat. And thus, morning after morning, spite of oath, and spite of sorrow, Did I follow at her drawing, while the week-days passed along; Just to feed the swans this noontide, or to see the fawns to-morrow, Or to teach the hill-side echo, some sweet Tuscan in a song. Ay, and sometimes on the hill-side, while we sat down in the gowans, With the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before; And the river running under; and across it, from the rowans, A brown partridge whirring near us, till we felt the air it boreThere, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems Made by Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various, of our own; Read the pastoral parts of Spenser-or the subtle interflowings Found in Petrarch's sonnets-here's the book-the leaf is folded down! 148 LADY GERALDINE'S Or at times a modern volume,-Wordsworth's solemnthoughted idyl, Howitt's ballad-dew, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie,IOr from Biowninrig some " Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle, Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity! Or, at times I read there, hoarsely, sorme new poem of my making — Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their worth,For the echo, in you, breaks upon the wards which you are speaking, And the chariot-wheils jar in the gate, through which you drive them forth. After, when we were grown tired of bookshtlhe silence round us flin(rincr A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast,-j She would break out, on a sudden, in a gush of woodland singing, Like a child's emotion in a god-a naiad tired of rest. Oh, to see or hear her singing! scarce I know which is divinestFor her looks sing too-she modulates her gestures on the tune; CO U R T S H I P. 149 And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are finest,'Tis the eyes that shoot out vocal light, and seem to swell them on.'IThnu we talked-oh, how we talked! ier voice, so cadenced in the talking, iJade another singing —of the soul! a music without bars-) While the leafy sounds of woodlands, hummingr round where we were walking, Brought interposition worthy-sweet,-as skies about the stars. And she she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought themAnd had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch, Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them, In the birchen wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange. In her utmost lightness there is truth-and often she speaks lightly; And she has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve; For the root of some grave earnest thought is understruck so rightly, As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above. 13* 150 LADY GERALDINE'S And she talked on-we talked, rather! upon all things -substance-shadowOf the sheep that browsed the grasses —of the reapers in the cornOf the little children from the schools, seen winding through the meadowOf the poor rich world beyond them, still kept poorer by its scorn. So of men, and so, of letters-4books are men of higher stature, And the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear So, of mankind in the abstract, which grows slowly into nature, Yet will lift the cry of' progress," as it trod from sphere to sphere. And her custom was to praise me, when I said," The Age culls simples, With a broad clown's back turned broadly, to the glory of the starsWe are gods by our own reck'ning, —and may well shut up the temples,.And wield on, amid the incense-steam, the thunder of our cars. " For we throw out acclamations of self-thanking, self-admiring, With, at every mile run faster,-' O the wondrous, wondrous ager, COURTS HIP. 151 Littie thinking if we work our SOULS as nobly as our iron, — Or if angels will commend us, at the goal of pilgrimage. " Why, what is this patient entrance into nature's deep resources, B3ut the child's most gradual learning to walk upright without bane - kWhen we drive out, fron the cloud of steam, majestical white horses, Are we greater than the first men, who led black ones by the mane? " If we trod the deeps ofocean,if we struck the stars in rising, If we wrapped the globe intensely with one hot electric breath,'Twere but power within our tether-no new spiritpower conferringAnd in life we were not greater men, nor bolder men in death." She was patient with my talking; and I loved herloved her certes, As I loved all Heavenly objects, with uplifted eyes and hands! As I loved pure inspirations-loved the graces, loved the virtues,In a Love content with writing his own name, on desert sands. 152 LADY GERALDINE'S Or at least I thought so purely! —thoughi, no idiot Hope was raising Any crown to crown Love's silence-silent Love that sat aloneOut, alas! the stag is like me-he, that tries to go on grazing With the great deep gun-wound in his neck, then reels with sudden moan. It was thus I reeled! I told you that her hand had many suitorsBut she smiles them down imperially, as Venus did, the wavesAnd with such a gracious coldness, that they cannot press their futures On the present of her courtesy, which yieldingly enslaves. And this morning, as I sat alone within the inner chamber With the great saloon beyond it, lost in pleasant thought sereneFor I had been reading Camo/ns-that poem you remember, Which his lady's eyes are praised in, as the sweetest ever seen. And the book lay open, and my thought flew from it, takinog from it A vibration and impulsion to an end beyond its own, COURTSHIP. 153 As the branch of a green osier, when a child would overcome it, Springs up freely forom his clasping, and goes swinging in the sun. As I mused I heard a murmur,-it grew deep as it grew longerSpeakers using earnest language-" Lady Geraldine, you would!' And I heard a voice that pleaded ever on, in accents stronger, As a sense of reason gave it power to make its Ihetoric good. Well I know that voice-it was an earl's, of soul that matched his stationOf a soul complete in lordship —might and right read on his brow: Very finely courteous-far too proud to doubt his domination Of the common people,-he atones for grandeur by a bow. High straight forehead, nose of eagle, cold blue eyes, of less expression Than resistance, coldly casting off the looks of other men, As steel, arrows,-unelastic lips, which seem to taste possession, And be cautious lest the common air should injure or distrain. 154 LADY GERALDINE'S For the rest, accomplished, upright, —ay, and standing by his order With a bearing not ungraceful; fond of arts, and letters too; Just a good man, made a proud man,-as the sandy rocks that border A wild coast, by circumstances, in a regnant ebb and flow. Thus, I knew that voice-I heard it —and I could not help the hearkening: In the room I stood up blindly, and my burning heart within Seemed to seethe and fuse my senses, till they ran on all sides, darkening, And scorched, weighed, like melted metal, round myv feet that stood therein. And that voice, I heard it pleading, for love's sakefor wealth, position, For the sake of liberal uses, and great actions to be doneAnd she answered, answered gently —( Nay, my lord, the old tradition Of your Normans, by some worthier hand than mine is, should be won."' " Ah, that white hand!" he said quickly, —and in his he either drew it, Or attempted-for with gravity and instance she replied COURTSHIP. 155 " Nay, indeed, my lord, this talk is vain, and we had best eschew it, And pass on, like friends, to other points, less easy to decide. " What he said again, I know not. It is likely that his trouble Worked his pride up to the surface, for she answered in slow scorn"And your lordship judges rightly. Whom I marry, shall be noble, Ay, and wealthy. I shall never blush to think how he was born." There, I maddened! her words stung me! Life swept through me into fever, And my soul sprang up astonished; sprang, fullstatured in an hour: Know you what it is when anguish, with apocalyptic NEVER, To a Pythian height dilates you,-and despair sablimes to power? From my brain, the soul-wings budded! —waved a flame about my body,,Whence conventions coiled to ashes: I felt self-drawn out, as man, From amalgamate false natures; and I saw the skies grow ruddy With the deepening feet of angels, and I knew what spirits can. 8i6 LADY GERALDINE'S I was mad —inspired —say either! anguish worketh inspiration! Was a man, or beast —perhaps so; for the tiger roars, when speared; And I walked on, step by step, along the level of my passionOh my soul! and passed the doorway to her face, and never feared. lHe had left her,-peradventure, when my footstep proved my comnio — But for he —she half arose, then sat-grew scarlet and grew pale: Oh, she trembled! —tis so always with a worldly man or woman, In the presence of true spirits-what else can they do but quail? Oh, she fluttered like a tanme bird, in among its forestbrothers, Far too strong for it! then drooping, bowed her face upon her hands — And I spake out wildly, fiercely, brutal truths of her and others! I, she planted in the desert, swathed her, windlike, with my sands. I plucked up her social fictions, bloody-rooted, though leaf-verdant, Trod them down with words of shamingr, —all the purples and the gold, CO UR TS TI T. 1 57 And the'landed stakes' and Lordships —all that spirits pure and ardent Are cast out of love and reverence, because chancing not to hold.' For myself I do not argue," said I, " though I love you, Madam, But for better souls, that nearer to the height of yours have trodAnd this a(re shows, to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam, Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God. "S Yet, 0 God," (I said,) " O grave," (I said,) " O mother's liheat, and bosonm, With whom first and last are equal, saint and corpse and little child! We are fools to your deductions, in these figments of heart-closino! We are traitors to your causes, in these sympathies defiled! " Learn more reverence, Madam, not for rank or wealth —thct needs no learning; That comes quickly —quick as sin does! ay, and often works to sin; But for Adam's seed,( fAN! Trust me,'tis a clay above your scorning, With God's irmiage stamped upon it, and God's kindling breath withini. VOL. II.-14 158 LADY GERALDINE'S "6 What right have you, Madam, gazing in your shining mirror daily, Getting, so, by heart, your beauty, which all others must adore,While you draw the golden ringlets down your fingers, to vow gayly, You will wed no man that's only good to God, —and nothing more.' Why, what right have you, made fair by that same God —the sweetest woman Of all wonmen He has fashioned-with your lovely spirit face, Which would seanu too near to vanish, if its smiles were not so human,And your voice of holy sweetness, turning common words to grace: " What right can you have, God's other works, to scorn, despise,.... revile them In the gross, as mere men, broadly-not as noble men, forsooth, — But as Parias of the outer world, forbidden to assoil them, In the hope of living-dying,-near that sweetness of your mouth? "Have you any answer, Madam? If my spirit were less earthyIf its instrument were gifted with more vibrant silver strings COURTSHIP. 159 I would kneel down where I stand, and say-' Behold me! I am worthv Of thy loving, for I love thee! I am worthy_ as a kine.' " As it is-your ermined pride, I swear, shall feel this stain upon her — That I, poor, weak, tost with passion, scorned by me and you again, Love you, Madam-dare to love you-to my grief and your dishonorTo my endless desolation, and your impotent disdain!" More mad words like these-more madness! friend, I need not write them fuller; And I hear my hot soul dropping on the lines in showers of tearsOh, a woman! friend, a woman! Why, a beast had scarce been duller, Than roar bestial loud complaints against the shining of the spheres. But at last there came a pause. I stood all vibrating with thunder, Which my soul had used. The silence drew her face up like a call. Could you guess what word she uttered? She looked up, as if in wonder, With tears beaded on her lashes, and said " Bertram!" it was all. .GO'C0 LADtY GERALDINE S If she had cursed me-and she niight have-or if even, with queenly bearing, WThich at need is used by women, she had risen up and said,' Sir, you are my guest, and therefore, I have given you a full hearingNow, beseech you, choose a name exacting somewhat less instead " — I had borne it!-but that " Bertram "-why it lies there on the paper A mere woid, without her accent, —and you cannot judge the weight Of the calmll wich crushed my passion! I seemed swimming in a vapor,And her gentleness did shame me, whom her scorn mllade desolate. So, struck backward, and exhausted with that inward flow of passion Which had passed, in deadly rushing, into forms of abstract truth,With a logic agonizing through unfit denunciation,And with youth's own anguish turning grhily gray the hails of youth,With the sense accursed and instant, that if even I spake wisely, I spakc basely —using truth,-if what I spake, indeed, wVas true CO URT S H IP. 161 To avenge wrong on a woman-her, who sat there weighing nicely A full manhood's worth, found guilty of such deeds as I could do!With such wrong and wo exhausted-what I suffered and occasioned, — As a wild horse, through a city, runs with lightning in his eyes, And then dashing at a church's cold and passive wall, impassioned, Strikes the death into his burning brain, and blindly drops and diesSo I fell, struck down before her! Do you blame me, friend, for weakness?'Twas my strength of passion slew me!-fell before her like a stone; Fast the dreadful world rolled from me, on its roaring wheels of blackness! When the light came I was lying in this chamber — and alone. Oh, of course, she charged her lacqueys to bear out the sickly burden, And to cast it from her scornful sight-but not beyond the gateShe is too kind to be cruel, and too haughty not to pardon Such a man as I —'t were something to be level to her hate. 14* 11 162 LADY GERALDINE'S But for mne-you now are conscious why, my friend, I write this letter,How my life is read all backward, and the charm of life undone! I shall leave this house at dawn-I would to-night, if I were betterAnd I charge my soul to hold my body strengthened for the sun. When the sun has dyed the orient, I depart with no last gazes, No weak moanings —one word only left in writing for, her hands,Out of reach of her derisions, and some unavailing praises, To make front against this anguish in the far and foreign lands. Blame me not, I would not squander life in grief —I am abstemious: i but nurse my spirit's falcon, that its wing may soar again: There's no room for tears of weakness, in the blind eyes of a Phemius: ~ into work the poet kneads them, —and he does not die till then. CO U R TS HJI P. 163 CON C L U S IO N. Bertram finished the last pages, while along the silence ever Still in hot and heavy splashes, fell his tears on every leaf: Having ended, he leans backward in his chair, with lips that quiver From the deep unspoken, ay, and deep unwritten thoughts of grief. Soh! how still the lady standeth!'tis a dream-a dream of Inercie.s!'Twixt the purlple lattice-euertains, how she standeth still and pale!'Tis a vision, sure, of mercies, sent to soften his selfcurses1Sent to sleep a patient quiet, o'er the tossing of his wail. " Eyes," he said, " now throbbing through me! are ye eyes that did undo me? Shining eyes, like antique jewels set in Parian statuestone! Underneath that calm white forehead, are ye ever burning torrid, O'er the desolate sand-desert of my heart and life undone?" 164 LADY GERALDINE'S With a murmurous stir, uncertain, in the ai, tfile purple curtain Swelleth in and swelleth out around her motionless pale brows; While the gliding of the river sends a rippling noise for ever, Through the open casement whitened by the moonlight's slant repose. Said he-" Vision of a lady! stand there silent, stand there steady! Now I see it plainly, plainly; now I cannot hope or doubtThere, the cheeks of calm expression-there, the lips of silent passion, Curved like an archer's bow to send the bitter arrows out." Ever, evermore the while in + slow silence she kept smiling,And approached him slowly, slowly, in a gliding measured pace; With her two white hands extendedl as if praying one offended, And a look of supplication, gazing earnest in his face. Said he-" Wake me by no gesture,-sound of breath, or stir of vesture; Let the blessed apparition melt not yet to its divine! COURTS HI ['. 165 No approaching —hush! no breathing! or my heart must swoon to death in That too utter life thou bringest-O thou dream of Geraldine!" Ever, evermore the while in a slow silence she kept smilingBut the tears ran over lightly from her eyes, and tenderly; " Dost thou, Bertram, truly love me? Is no woman far above me, Found more worthy of thy poet-heart, than such a one as I?" Said he —'" I would dream so ever, like the flowing of that river, Flowing ever in a shadow, greenly onward to the sea; So, thou vision of all sweetness —princely to a full completeness,Would my heart and life flow onward-deathwardthrough this dream of THEE!" Ever, evermore the while in a slow silence she kept smiling,While the silver tears ran faster down the blushing of her cheeks; Then with both her hands enfolding both of his, she softly told him, " Bertram, if I say I love thee,... t is the vision only speaks." 166 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. Softened, quickened to adore her, on his knee he fell before herAnd she whispered low in triumph-" It shall be as I have sworn! Very rich he is in virtues, —very noble-noble,' certes; And I shall not blush in knowing, that men call himin lowly born!" A VISION OF POETS. " 0 Sacred Essence, lighting me this hour, How may I lightly stile thy great power? Echo. Power. Power! but of whence? under the greenwood spraye? Or liv'st in Heaven? saye. Echo. in Heavens aye. In Heavens aye! tell, may I it obtayne By alms, by fasting, prayer,-by paine? Echo. By paine. Show me the paine, it shall be undergone: I to mine end will still go on. Echo. Go on." BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS. A POET could not sleep aright, jFor his soul kept up too much light nder his eyelids for the night: And thus he rose disquieted, With sweet rhymes ringing through his head, And in the forest wandered; Where, sloping up the darkest glades, The moon had drawn long colonnades, Upon whose floor the verdure fades To a faint silver: pavement fair, The antique wood-nymphs scarce would dare To footprint o'er, if such w3re there, 167 168 A VISION OF POETS. But rather sit by breathlessly, With tears in their large eyes to see The consecrated sight. But HEThe poet —who with spirit-kiss Familiar, had long claimed for his Whatever earthly beauty is, Who also in his spirit bore A Beauty passing the earth's store, Walked calmly onward evermore. iHis aimless thoughts in metre went, Like a babe's hand, without intent,'Drawn down a seven-stringed instrument Nor jarred it with his humour as, With a faint stirring down the grass, An apparition fair did pass. He might have feared another time, But all things fair and strange did chime With his thoughts then-as rhyme to rhyme. An angel had not startled him, Dropping from Heaven's encyclic rim To breathe from glory in the DimMuch less a lady, riding slow Upon a palfrey white as snow, As smooth as a snow-cloud could go. Full upon his she turned her face, — " What, ho, sir poet! dost thou pace Our woods at night, in ghostly chase A VISION OF POETS. 169 "Of some fair Dryad of old tales, Who chants between the nightingales, And over sleep by song prevails?" She smiled; but he could see arise Her soul firom far adown her eyes, Prepared as if for sacrifice. She looked a queen who seemeth gay From royal grace alone: " Now, nay," He answered, —" slumber passed away, Compelled by instincts in my head, That I should see to-night instead Of a fair nymph, some fairer Dread." She looked up quickly to the sky And spake:-"- The moon's regality Will hear no praise! she is as I. " She is in heaven, and I on earth This is my kingdom-I come forth To crown all poets to their worth." He brake in with a voice that mourned"To their worth, lady! They are scorned By men they sing for, till inurned. " To their worth! Beauty in the mind Leaves the hearth cold; and love-refined Ambitions make the world unkind. " The boor who ploughs the daisy down, The chief, whose mortgage of renown, Fixed upon graves, has bought a crownVOL. II.-15 170 A VISION OF POETS. Both these are happier, more approved Than poets! —Why should I be moved In saying both are more beloved?' "The south can judge not of the north;" She resumed calmly —" I come forth To crown all poets to their worth. Yea, sooth! and to anoint them all With blessed oils, which surely shall Smell sweeter as the ages fall." "As sweet," the poet said, and rung A low sad laugh, "as flowers do, sprung Out of their graves when they die young: As sweet as window eglantineSome bough of which, as they decline, The hired nurse plucketh at their sign: "As sweet, in short, as perfumed shroud, Which the fair Roman maidens sewed For English Keats, singing aloud." The lady answered, " Yea, as sweet! The things thou namest being complete In fragrance, as I measure it. "Since sweet the death-clothes and the knell Of him who, having lived, dies well,And holy sweet the asphodel, "Stirred softly by that foot of his, When he treads brave on all that is, Into the world of souls, from this! A VISION OF POETS. 171 "Since sweet the tears, dropped at the door Of tearless Death,-and even before: Sweet, consecrated evermore! "What! dost thou judge it a strange thing, That poets, crowned for vanquishing, Should bear some dust from out the ring? C" ome on with me, come on with me; And learn in coming! Let me free Thy spirit into verity." She ceased: her palfrey's paces sent No separate noises as she went,-'Twas a bee's hum —a little spent. And while the poet seemed to tread Along the drowsy noise so made, The forest heaved up overhead Its billowy foliage through the air, And the calm stars did, far and fair, O'er-swim the masses everywhere: Save where the overtopping pines Did bar their tremulous light with lines All fixed and black. Now the moon shines A broader glory. You may see The trees grow rarer presently,The air blows up more fresh and free: Until they come from dark to light, And from the forest to the sight Of the large Heaven-heart, bare with night — 172 A VISION OF POETS. A fiery throb in every star, With burning arteries that are The conduits of God's life afar,A wild brown moorland underneath, Low glimmering here and thither, with White pools in breaks, as blank as death. Beside the first pool, near the wood, A dead tree in set horror stood, Peeled and disjointed, stark as rood; Since thunder stricken, years ago, Fixed in the spectral strain and throe Wherewith it struggled from the blow: A monumental tree... alone, That will not bend, if tempest-blown, But break off sudden like a stone,Its lifeless shadow lies oblique Upon the pool,-where, javelin-like, The star-rays quiver while they strike. Drink, " said the lady, very still-'Be holy and cold." He did her will, And drank the starry water chill. The next pool they came near unto, Was bare of trees: there, only grew Straight flags and lilies fair to view, Which sullen on the water sat, And leant their faces on the flat, As weary of the starlight-state. A VISION OF POETS. 173 " Drink," said the lady, grave and slow, " World's use behoveth thee to know."' He drank the bitter wave below. The third pool, girt with thorny bushes, And flaunting weeds, and reeds and rushes That winds sang through in mournful gushes, Was whitely smeared in many a round By a slow slime: the starlight swound Over the ghastly light it found. "'Drink," said the lady, sad and slow" World's love behoveth thee to know.'" He looked to her, commanding so. Her brow was troubled, but her eye Struck clear to his soul. For all reply He drank the water suddenly,Then, with a deathly sickness, passed Beside the fourth pool and the last, Where weights of shadow were down-cast From yew and cypress, and from trails Of hemlock clasping the trunk-scales, And flung across the intervals From yew to yew. Who dareth stoop Where those moist branches overdroop Into his heart the chill strikes up: He hears a silent, gliding coilThe snakes breathe hard against the soilHis foot slips in their slimy oil: 15* 174 A VISION OF POETS. And toads seem crawling on his hand, And clinging bats, but dimly scanned, Right in his face their wings expand. A paleness took the poet's cheek; "Must I drink here?" he questioned meek The lady's will, with utterance weak.'' Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be"(And this time she spake cheerfully) " Behoves thee know world's cruelty. n He bowed his forehead till his mouth Curved in the wave, and drank unloth, As if from rivers of the south. His lip sobbed through the water rank, His heart paused in him while he drank, His brain beat heart-like-rose and sank, And he swooned backward to a dream, Wherein he lay'twixt gloom and gleam, With Death and Life at each extreme. And spiritual thunders, born of soul Not cloud, did leap from mystic pole, And o'er him roll and counter-roll, Crushing their echoes reboant With their own wheels. Did Heaven so grant His spirit a sign of covenant? At last came silence. A slow kiss Did crown his forehead after this: His eyelids flew back for the bliss. A VISION OF POETS. 175 The lady stood beside his head, Smiling a thought, with hair dispread: The moonshine seemed dishevelled In her sleek tresses manifold; Like Danae's in the rain of old, That dripped with melancholy gold: But SHE was holy, pale, and high — As one who saw an ecstasy Beyond a foretold agony. " Rise up!" said she, with voice where song Eddied through speech — " rise up! be strong; And learn how right avengeth wrong." The poet rose up on his feet: He stood before an altar set For sacrament, with vessels meet, And mystic altarlights which shine As if their flames were crystaline Carved flames that would not shrink or pine. The altar filled the central place Of a great church, and toward its face Long aisles did shoot and interlace. And from it a continuous mist Of incense (round the edges kissed By a pure light of amethyst) Wound upward slowly and throbbingly, Cloud within cloud, right silverly, Cloud above cloud, victoriously, 176 A VISION OF POETS. Broke full of against the arched roof, And, thence refracting, eddied off, And floated through the marble woof Of many a fine-wrought architrave,Then, poising the white masses brave, Swept solemnly down aisle and nave. And now in dark, and now in light, The countless columns, glimmering white, Seemed leading out to Infinite. Plunged half-way up the shaft they showed, In the pale shifting incense-cloud Which flowed them by, and overflowed, Till mist and marble seemed to blend, And the whole temple, at the end, With its own incense to distend; The arches, like a giant's bow, To bend and slacken,-and below The niched saints to come and go. Alone, amid the shifting scene, That central altar stood serene In its clear steadfast taper-sheen. Then first, the poet was aware Of a chief angel standing there Before that altar, in the glare. His eyes were dreadful, for you saw That they saw God-his lips and jaw, Grand-made and strong, as Sinai's Law A VISION OF POETS. 177 They could enunciate, and refrain From vibratory after-pain; And his brow's height was sovereignOn the vast background of his wings Arose his image: and he flings, From each plumed are, pale glitterings And fiery flakes (as beateth more Or less, the angel-heart ) before, And round him, upon roof and floor, Edging with fire the shifting fumes: While at his side,'t wixt lights and glooms, The phantasm of an organ booms. Extending from which instrument And angel, right and left-way bent, The poet's sight grew sentient Of a strange company around And toward the altar,-pale and crowned, With sovran eyes of depth profound. Deathful their faces were; and yet The power of life was in them setNever forgot, nor to forget. Sublime significance of mouth, Dilated nostril full of youth, And forehead royal with the truth. These faces were not multiplied Beyond your count, but side by side Did front the altar, glorified: 12 178 A VISION OF POETS. Still as a vision, yet exprest Full as an action —look and geste Of buried saint, in risen rest: The poet knew them. Faint and dim His spirit seemed to sink in him, Then, like a dolphin, change and swim The current-These were poets true Who died for Beauty, as martyrs do For truth —the ends being scarcely two. God's prophets of the Beautiful These poets were-of iron rule, The ruggid cilix, serge of wool. Here Homer, with the broad suspense Of thunderous brows, and lips intense Of garrulous god-innocence. There, Shakspeare! on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world! Oh, eyes sublimeWith tears and laughters for all time! Here, Aschylus,-the women swooned To see so awful when he frowned As the gods did,-he standeth crowned. Euripides, with close and mild Scholastic lips, —that could be wild, And laugh or sob out like a child Right in the classes. Sophocles, With that king's look which down the trees, Followed the dark effigies A VISION OF POETS. Of the lost Theban: Hesiod old, Who somewhat blind and deaf and cold, Cared most for gods and bulls. And bold Electric Pindar, quick as fear, With race-dust on his cheeks, and clear, Slant startled eyes that seem to hear The chariot rounding the last goal, To hurtle past it in his soul: And Sappho crowned with aureole Of ebon curls on calmed browsO poet-woman! none foregoes The leap, attaining the repose! Theocritus, with glittering locks Dropt sideway, as betwixt the rocks He watched the visionary flocks: And Aristophanes: who took The world with mirth, and laughter-struck The hollow caves of Thought and woke The infinite echoes hid in each. And Virgil: shade of Mantuan beech Did help the shade of bay to reach And knit around his forehead high:For his gods wore less majesty Than his brown bees hummed deathlessly. Lucretius —nobler than his mood: Who dropped his plummet down the broad Deep universe, and said',No God,' 188 A VISION OF POETS. Finding no bottom: he denied Divinely the Divine, and died Chief poet on the Tiber-side, By grace of God! his face is stern, As one compelled, in spite of scorn, To teach a truth he could not learn. An Ossian, dinmly seen or guessed: Once counted greater than the rest, When mountain-winds blew out his vest. And Spenser drooped his dreaming head ('With languid sleep-smile you had said From his own verse engendered) On Ariosto's, till they ran Their locks in one:-The Italian Shot nimbler heat of bolder man Fromn his fine lids. And Dante stern And sweet, whose spirit was an urn For wine and milk poured out in turn. Hard-souled Alfieri; and fancy-willed Boiardo,-who with laughters filled The pauses of the jostled shield. And Berni, with a hand stretched out To sleek that storm: And not without The wreath he died in, and the doubt He died by, Tasso: bard and lover, Whose visions were too thin to cover The face of a false woman over. A VISION OF POETS. 181 And soft Racine,-and grave Corneille — The orator of rhymes, whose wail Scarce shook his purple! And Petrarch pale, Who from his brainlit heart hath thrown A thousand thoughts beneath the sun, Each perfumed with the name of One. And Camoens, with that look he had, Compelling India's Genius sad From the wave through the Lusiad, With murmurs of a purple ocean Indrawn in vibrative emotion Along the verse! And while devotion In his wild eyes fantastic shone Between the bright curls blown upon By airs celestial,... Calderon: And bold De Vega,-who breathed quick Song after song, till death's old trick Put pause to life and rhetoric. And Goethe-with that reaching eye His soul reached out from, far and high, And fell from inner entity. And Schiller, with heroic front Worthy of Plutarch's kiss upon'tToo large for wreath of modern wont. And Chaucer, with his infantine Familiar clasp of things divine-'That mark upon his lip is wine. voL, II.- 16 1'912 A VISION OF POETS. Here Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim. The shapes of suns and stars did swim Like clouds from them, and granted him God for sole vision! Cowley, there, Whose active fancy debonairDrew straws like amber —foul to fair. Drayton and Browne,-with smiles they drew From outward Nature, to renew From their own inward nature true. And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben — Whose fire-heart sowed our furrows, when The world was worthy of such men. And Burns, with pungent passionings Set in his eyes. Deep lyric springs Are of the fire-mount's issuings. And Shelley, in his white ideal, All statue blind; and Keats, the real Adonis, with the hymeneal Fresh vernal buds half sunk between Htis youthful curls, kissed straight and sheen In his Rome-girave, by Venus queen. And poor, proud Byron,-sad as grave And salt as life: forlornly brave, And quivering with the dart he drave. And visional:y Coleridge, who Did sweep his thoughts as angels do Their wings, with cadence up the Blue, A VISION OF POETS. 183 These poets faced (and other more) The lighted altar booming o'er The clouds of incense dim and hoar: And all their faces, in the lull Of natural things, looked wonderful With life and death and deathless rule: All still as stone, and yet intense; As if by spirit's vehemence That stone were carved, and not by sense. All still and calm as statue-stone: The life lay coiled unforgone Up in the awful eyes alone, And flung its length out through the air Into whatever eyes should dare To front them-Awful shapes and fair! But where the heart of each should beat, There seemed a wound instead of it, From whence the blood dropped to their feet, Drop after drop-dropped heavily As century follows century Into the deep eternity. Then said the lady,-and her word Came distant,-as wide waves were stirred Between her and the ear that heard:"WVorld's use is cold-world's love is vain,World's cruelty is bitter bane; But pain is not the fruit of pain. 184 A VISION OF POETS. "Hearken, 0 poet, whom I led From the dark wood! Dismissing dread, Now hear this angel in my stead: His organ's pedals strike along These poets' hearts, which metal-strong, They gave him without count of wrong,From which foundation he can guide Up to God's feet, from these who died, An anthem fully glorified: "Whereat God's blessing.... IBARAK ( Breathes back this music-folds it back About the earth in vapory rack: "And men walk in it, crying' Lo!'The world is wider, and we know The very heavens look brighter so: The stars move statelier round the edge 0' the silver spheres, and give in pledge Their light for nobler privilege. No little flower but joys or grieves — Full life is rustling in the sheaves; Full spirit sweeps the forest-leaves:' "So works this music on the earth: God so admits it, sends it forth, To add another worth to worthA new creation-bloom that rounds The old creation, and expounds His Beautiful in tuneful sounds. A VISION OF POU4TS. 185 "Now hearken!" Then the poet gazed Upon the angel glorious-faced, Whose hand, majestically raised, Floated across the organ-keys, Like a pale moon o'er murmuring seas, With no touch but with influences. Then rose and fell (with swell and swound Of shapeless noises wandering round A concord which at last they found) Those mystic keys-the tones were mixed, Dim, faint; and thrilled and throbbed betwixt The incomplete and the unfixed: And therein mighty minds were heard In mighty musings, inly stirred, And struggling outward for a word. Until these surges, having run This way and that, gave out as one An Aphrodite of sweet tune, — A Harmony that, finding vent, Upward in grand ascension went, Winged to a heavenly argumentUp, upward! like a saint who strips The shroud back from his eyes and lips, And rises in apocalypse: A Harmony sublime and plain, Which cleft (as flying swan, the rain,Throwing the drops off with a strain 16* 186 A VISION OF POETS. Of her white wings) those undertones Of perplext chords, and soared at once, And struck out firom the starry thrones Their several silver octaves, as It passed to God: The music was Of divine stature-strong to pass: And those who heard it, understood Something of life in spirit and bloodSomething of Nature's fair and good. And while it sounded, those great souls Did thrill as racers at the goals, And burn in all their aureoles. But she, the lady, as vapor-bound, Stood calmly in the joy of sound,Like nature with the showers around. And when it ceased, the blood which fell, Again, alone grew audible, Tolling the silence as a bell. The sovran angel lifted high His hand and spake out sovranly" Tried poets, hearken and reply! "Give me true answers. If we grant That not to suffer, is to want The conscience of the Jubilant," If ignorance of anguish is But ignorance; and mortals miss Far prospects, by a level bliss, — A VISION OF POETS. 187 "If as two colors must be viewed In a seen image, mortals should Need good and evil, to see good,"If to speak nobly, comprehends To feel profoundly-if the ends Of power and suffering, Nature blends,If poets on the tripod must Writhe like the Pythian, to make just Their oracles, and merit trust,"If every vatic word that sweeps To change the world, must pale their lips, And leave their own souls in eclipseIf to search deep the universe Must pierce the searcher with the curse, — Because that bolt (in man's reverse,) Was shot to the heart o' the wood, and lies Wedged deepest in the best:-if eyes That look for visions and surprise "From marshall'd angels, must shut down Their lids, first, upon sun and moon, The head asleep upon a stone, — If ONE who did redeem you back, By His own lack, from final lack, Did consecrate by touch and track Those temporal sorrows, till the taste Of brackish waters of the waste Is salt with tears He di'opt too fast, 188 A VISION OF POETS. "If all the crowns of earth must wound With prickings of the thorns Hie found,If saddest sighs swell sweetest sound, — "What say ye unto this? —refuse This baptism in salt water?-choose Calm breasts, mute lips, and labor loose?' Or, oh ye gifted givers! ye Who give your liberal hearts to me, To make the world this harmony,Are ye resigned that they be spent To such world's help?" - The Spirits bent Their awful brows and said-" Content!" Content! it sounded like Amen, Said by a choir of mourning menAn affirmation full of pain And patience:-ay, of glorying, And adoration,-as a king Might seal an oath for governing. Then said the angel-and his face Lightened abroad, until the place Grew larger for a moment's space,The long aisles flashing out in light, And nave and transept, columns white,,And arches crossed, being clear to sight, As if the roof were off, and all Stood in the noon-sun,-" Lo! I call To other hearts as liberal. A VISION OF POETS. 189 This pedal strikes out in the air: My instrument hath room to bear Still fuller strains and perfecter. "Herein is room, and shall be room While Time lasts, for new hearts to come Consummating while they consume. "What living man will bring a gift Of his own heart, and help to lift The tune?-The race is to the swift!" So asked the angel. Straight the while, A company came up the aisle With measured stop and sorted smile; Cleaving the incense-clouds that rise, With winking unaccustomed eyes, And love-locks smelling sweet of spice. One bore his head above the rest, As if the world were dispossessedAnd one did pillow chin on breast, Right languid —an as he should faint: One shook his curls across his paint, And moralized on wordly taint. One, slanting up his face, did wink The salt rheum to the eyelid's brink, To think —O gods! or-not to think! Some trod out stealthily and slow, As if the sun would fall in snow, If they walked to, instead of fro. 190 A VISION OF POETS. And some with conscious ambling free, )Did shake their bells right daintily On hand and foot, for harmony. And some composing sudden sighs, In attitudes of point-device, Rehearsed impromptu agonies. And when this company drew near The spirits crlowned, it might appear Submitted to a ghastly fear. As a sane eye in master-passion Constrains a maniac to the fashion Of hideous maniac imitation In the least geste-the dropping low 0' the lid —the wrinkling of the brow, — Exaggerate with mock and mow,So, mastered was that company By the crowned vision utterly, Swayed to a maniac mockery. One dulled his eyeballs, as they ached With Homer's forehead-though he lacke An inch of any. And one racked His lower lip with restless tooth, — As Pindar's rushing words forsooth Were pent behind it. One, his smooth Pink cheeks, did rumple passionate, Like tEschylus —and tried to prate On trolling tongue, of fate and fate: A VISION OF POETS. 191 One set her eyes like Sappho's-or Any light woman's! one forbore Like Dante, or any man as poor In mirth, to let a smile undo His hard shut lips. And one, that drew Sour humors from his mother. blew His sunken cheeks out to the size Of most unnatural jollities, Because Anacreon looked jest-wise. So with the rest.-It was a sight For great world-laughter, as it might For great world-wrath, with equal right! Out came a speaker from that crowd, To speak for all —in sleek and proud Exordial periods, while he bowed His knee before the angel-" Thus, O angel, who hast called for us, We bring thee service emulous, — " Fit service from sufficient soul — Hand-service, to receive world's doleLip-service, in world's ear to roll'' Adjusted concords —soft enow To hear the wine cups passing, through, And not too grave to spoil the show. " Thou, certes, when thou askest more, O sapient angel, leanest o'er The window-sill of metaphor. 19e A VISION OF POETS. To give our hearts up! fie! —That rage Barbaric, antedates the age: It is not done on any stage. Because your scald or gleeman went With seven or nine-stringed instrument Upon his back-must ours be bent? We are not pilgrims, by your leave, No, nor yet martyrs! if we grieve, It is to rhyme to... summer eve. And if we labor, it shall be As suiteth best with our degree, In after-dinner reverie." More yet that speaker would have said,Poising between his smiles fair fed, Each separate phrase till finished; But all the foreheads of those born And dead true poets flushed with scorn Betwixt the bay leaves round them wornAy, jetted such brave fire, that they, The new-come, shrank and paled away, Like leaden ashes when the day Strikes on the hearth! A spirit-blast, A presence known by power, at last Took them up mutely-they had passed. And he, our pilgrim-poet, saw Only their places, in deep awe,What time the angel's smile did draw A VISION OF POETS. 193 His gazing upward. Smiling on, The angel in the angel shone, Revealing glory in benizon. Till, ripened in the light which shut The poet in, his spirit mute Dropped sudden, as a perfect fruit. He fell before the angel's feet, Saying —" If what is true is sweet; In something I may compass it. For where my worthiness is poor, My will stands richly at the door, To pay short comings evermore. Accept me therefore-Not for price, And not for pride my sacrifice Is tendered! for my soul is nice, And will beat down those dusty seeds Of bearded corn, if she succeeds In soaring while the covey feeds. I soar —I am drawn up like the lark To its white cloud: So high my mark, Albeit my wing is small and dark. "I ask no wages-seek no fame: Sew me, for shroud round face and name, God's banner of the oriflamme. I only would have leave to loose (In tears and blood, if so He choose) Mine inward music out to use. VOL. II.-17 13 194 A VISION OF POETS. "I only would be spent —in pain And loss, perchance-but not in vain7 Upon the sweetness of that strain,"Only project, beyond the bound Of mine own life, so lost and found, My voice, and live on in its sound,"Only embrace and be embraced By fiery ends,-whereby to waste, And light God's future with my past." The angel's smile grew more divineThe mortal speaking-ay, its shine Swelled fuller, like a choir-note fine, Till the broad gloriole, round his brow, Did vibrate with the light below; But what he said I do not know. Nor know I if the man who prayed, Rose up accepted, unforbade, From the church-floor where he was laid,Nor if a listening life did run Through the king-poets, glossing down Their eyes capacious of renown. My soul, which might have seen, grew blind By what it looked on: I can find No certain count of things behind. I saw alone, dim white and grand As in a dream, the angel's hand Stretched forth in gesture of command, A VISION OF POETS. 195 Straight through the haze —And so, as erst A strain, more noble than the first, Mused in the organ, and outburst. With giant march, from floor to roof, Rose the full notes; now parted off In pauses massively aloof, Like measured thunders; now rejoined In concords of mysterious kind, Which won together sense and mind: Now flashing sharp on sharp along, Exultant, in a mounting throng,Now dying off into a song Fed upon minors,-starry sounds Moved on free-paced, in silver rounds, Enlarging liberty with bounds. And every rhythm that seemed to close, Survived in confluent underflows, Symphonious with the next that rose: Thus the whole strain being multiplied And greatened, —with its glorified Wings shot abroad from side to side, — Waved backward. (as a wind might wave A Brochen mist, and with as brave Wild roaring) arch and architrave, Aisle, transept, colunmn, marble wall,Then swelling outward, prodigal Of aspiration beyond thrall. 196 A VISION OF POETS. Soared, —and drew up with it the whole Of this said vision-as a soul Is raised by a thought: and as a roll Of bright devices is unrolled Still upward, with a gradual gold,So rose the vision manifold, Angel and organ, and the round Of spirits, solemnized and crowned,While the fieed clouds of incense wound Ascending, following in their track And glimmering faintly, like the rack 0' the moon, in her own light cast back. And as that solemn Dream withdrew, The lady's kiss did fall anew Cold on the poet's brow as dew. And that same kiss which bound him first Beyond the senses, now reversed Its own law, and most subtly pierced His spirit with the sense of things Sensual and present. Vanishings Of glory, with iolian wings Struck him and passed: the lady's face Did melt back in the chrysopras Of the orient morning sky that was Yet clear of lark, —and there and so She melted, as a star might do, Still smiling as she melted-slow: A VISION OF POETS. t97 Smiling so slow, he seemed to see Her smile the last thing, gloriously, Beyond her-far as memory: Then he looked round: he was aloneHe lay before the breaking sun, As Jacob at the Bethel stone. And thought's entangled skein being wound, He knew the moorland of his swound, And the pale pools that seared the ground,The far wood-pines, like offing shipsThe fourth pool's yew anear him dripsWorld's cruelty attaints his lips; And still he tastes it —bitter stillThrough all that glorious possible He had the sight of present ill! Yet rising calmly up and slowly, With such a cheer as scorneth folly, And mild delightsome melancholy, He journeyed homeward through the wood, And prayed along the solitude, Betwixt the pines,-" O God, my God!" The golden morning's open flowings Did sway the trees to murmurous bowings,In metric chant of blessed poems. And passing homeward through the wood, He prayed along the solitude,THou, Poet-God, art great and good! 17* 198 A VISION OF POETS. And though we must have, and have had Right reason to be earthly sad,THou, Poet-God, art great and glad." CONCLUSION. Life treads on life, and heart on heartWe press too close in church and mart, To keep a dream or grave apart. And I was'ware of walking down That same green forest where had gone The poet-pilgrim. One by one I traced his footsteps: From the east A red and tender radiance pressed Through the near trees, until I guessed The sun behind shone full and round; While up the leafiness profound A wind scarce old enough for sound, Stood ready to blow on me when I turned that way; and now and then The birds sang and brake off again To shake their pretty feathers dry Of the dew sliding droppingly From the leaf-edges, and apply Back to their song.'Twixt dew and bird So sweet a silence ministered, God seemed to use it for a word Yet morning souls did leap and run In all things, as the least had won A joyous insight of the sun. A VISION OF POETS. 199 And no one lookinc round the wood Could help confessing, as he stood, This Poet- God is glad and good. But hark! a distant sound that grows! A heaving, sinking of the bouchsA rustling murmur, not of those! A breezy noise, which is not breeze! And white-clad children by degrees Steal out in troops among the trees; Fair little children, morning-bright With faces grave, yet soft to sight,Expressive of restrained delight. Some plucked the palm-bows within reach, And others leapt up high to catch The upper bows, and shake from each A rain of dew, till, wetted so, The child who held the branch let go, And it swang backward with a flow Of faster drippings. Then I knew The children laughed-but the laugh flew From its own chirrup, as might do A frightened song-bird; and a child Who seemed the chief, said very mild, "Hush! keep this morning undefiled." His eyes rebuked them from calm spheres; His soul upon his brow appears In waiting for more holy years. 200 A VISION OF POETS. I called the child to me, and said, "What are your palms for?"-" To be spread," He answered, "on a poet dead. "The poet died last month; and now The world, which had been somewhat slow, In honoring his living brow, "Commands the palms-They must be strown On his new marble very soon; In a procession of the town." I sighed and said, " Did he foresee Any such honor?" "Verily I cannot tell you," answered he. "But this I know,-I fain would lay Mine own head down, another day, As he did,-with the fame away. "A lily, a friend's hand had plucked, Lay by his death-bed, which he looked As deep down as a bee had sucked; Then, turning to the lattice, gazed O'er hill and river, and upraised His eyes, illumined and amazed "With the world's beauty, up to God, Re-offering on his iris broad, The images of things bestowed "By the chief Poet,-' God!' he cried,'Be praised for anguish, which has tried; For beauty, which has satisfied; A VISION OF POETS. 201 For this world's presence, half within And half without me-sound and sceneThis sense of Being, and Having been. " I thank Thee that my soul hath room For Thy grand world! Both guests may comeBeauty, to soul-Body, to tomb!' I am content to be so weak, — Put strength into the words I speak, And I am strong in what I seek. I am content to be so bare Before the archers! everywhere My wounds being stroked by heavenly air. I laid my soul before Thy feet, That Images of fair and sweet Should walk to other men on it.'I am content to feel the step Of each pure Image! —let those l<:ep To mandragore, who care to sleep. " I am content to touch the biink Of the other goblet, and I think My bitter drink a wholesome drink. Because my portion was assigned Wholesome and bitter —Thou art kind And I am blessed to my mind.' Gifted for giving, I receive The maythorn, and its scent outgive! I grieve not that I once did grieve. 202 A V.ISION OF POETS. "' In my large joy of sight and touch Beyond what others count for such, I am content to suffer much. " I know —is all the mourner saith. — Knowledge by suffering enterethll; And life is perfected by Death!' " The child spake nobly. Strange to hear, His infantine soft accents clear, Charged wrth high meanings, did appear,And fair to see, his form and face, — Winged out with whiteness and pure grace From the green darkness of the place. Behind his head a palm-tree grew; An orient beam, which pierced it through, Transversely on his forehead drew The figure of a palm-branch brown, Traced on its brightness, up and down In fine fair lines,-a shadow-crown. Guido might paint his angels soA little angel, taught to go, With holy words to saints below. Such innocence of action yet Significance of object met In his whole bearing strong and sweet. And all the children, the whole band, Did round in rosy reverence stand, Each with a palm-bough in his hand. A VISION OF POETS. 203 "And so he died," I whispered;-" Nay, Not so," the childish voice did say"That poet turned him, first, to pray "In silence; and God heard the rest,'Twixt the sun's footsteps down the west. Then he called one who loved him best, Yea, he called softly through the room (His voice was weak yet tender)-' Come,' He said,'come nearer! Let the bloom "'Of Life grow over, undenied, This bridge of Death, which is not wideI shall be soon at the other side. "'Come, kiss me!' So the one in truth Who loved him best-in love, not ruth, Bowed down and kissed him mouth to mouth. And, in that kiss of Love, was won Life's manumission: All was doneThe mouth that kissed last, kissed alone But in the former, confluent kiss, The same was sealed, I think, by His, To words of truth and uprightness." The child's voice trembled-his lips shook, Like a rose leaning o'er a brook, Which vibrates, though it is not struck. And who," I asked, a little moved, Yet curious-eyed, " was this that loved And kissed him last, as it behooved?" 204 A VISION OF POETS. I," softly said the child; and then, "I," said he louder, once again. "His son, —my rank is among men. "And now that men exalt his name, I come to gather palms with them, That holy Love may hallow Fame. "He did not die alone; nor should His memory live so,'mid these rude World-praisers-a worse solitude. "Me, a voice calleth to that tomb, Where these are strewing branch and bloom, Saying, come nearer! —and I come. "Glory to God!" resumed he, And his eyes smiled for victory O'er their own tears, which I could see Fallen on the palm, down cheek and chin "That poet now hath entered in The place of rest which is not sin. And while he rests, his songs, in troops, Walk up and down our earthly slopes, Companioned by diviner Hopes." "But thou," I murmured,-to engage The child's speech farther-" hast an age Too tender for this orphanage." "Glory to God-to God!" he saithKNOWLEDGE BY SUFFERING ENTERETH; AND LIFE IS PERFECTED BY DEATH!" RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. In the belfry, one by one, went the ringers from the sun, Toll slowly. And the oldest ringer said, "' Ours is music for the Dead, When the rebecks are all done." Six abeles i' the kirkyard grow, on the northside in a row,- Toll slowly. And the shadows of their tops, rock across the little slopes Of the grassy graves below. On the south side and the west, a small river runs in haste,- Toll slowly. And between the river flowing, and the fair green trees a growing, Do the dead lie at their rest. On the east I sate that day, up against a willow gray:- Toll slowly. Through the rain of willow-branches, I could see the low hill-ranges, And the river on its way. VOL. II.-18 205 206 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. There I sate beneath the tree, and the bell tolled solemnly, Toll slowly. While the trees and rivers' voices flowed between the solemn noises, — Yet death seemed more loud to me. There, I read this ancient rhyme, while the bell did all the time Toll slowly. And the solemn knell fell in with the tale of life and sin, Like a rhythmic fate sublime. THE RHYME. Broad the forest stood (I read) on the hills of Linteged- Toll slowly. And three hundred years had stood, mute adown each hoary wood, Like a full heart, having prayed. And the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,- Toll slowly. And but little thought was theirs, of the silent antique years, In the building of their nest. Down the sun dropt, large and red, on the towers of Linteged,- Toll slowly. Lance and spearhead on the height, bristling strange in fiery light, While the castle stood in shade. RHYME OF THE DUCHESS AMAY. 207 There, the castle stood up black, with the red sun at its back,- Toll slowly. Like a sullen smouldering pyre, with a top that flickers fire, When the wind is on its track. And five hundred archers tall did besiege the castle wall,- Toll slowly. And the castle, seethed in blood, fourteen days and nights had stood, And to night, anears its fall. Yet thereunto, blind to doom, three months since, a bride did come,- Toll slowly. One who proudly trod the floors, and softly whispered in the doors, " May good angels bless our home." Oh, a bride of queenly eyes, with a front of constancies,- Toll slowly. Oh, a bride of cordial mouth,-where the untired smile of youth Did light outward its own sighs.'Twas a Duke's fair orphan-girl, and her uncle's ward, the Earl Toll slowly. Who betrothed her, twelve years old, for the sake of dowry gold, To his son Lord Leigh, the churl. But what time she had made good all her years of womanhood,- Toll slowly. 208 RHY.MII ~F THE DUCHESS MAY. Unto both those Lords of Leigh, spake she out right sovranly, " My will runneth as my blood. " And while this same blood makes red this same right hand's veins," she said,- Toll slowly. " Tis my will, as lady free, not to wed a Lord of Leigh, But Sir Guy of Linteged." The old Earl he smiled smooth, then he sighed for wilful youth,- Toll slowly. " Good my niece, that hand withal, looketh somewhat soft and small, For so large a will, in sooth." She, too, smiled by that same sign,-but her smile was cold and fine, — Toll slowly. "Little hand clasps muckle gold; or it were not worth the hold Of thy son, good uncle mine!" Then the young lord jerked his breath, and sware thickly in his teeth,- Toll slowly. "He would wed his own betrothed, an she loved him an she loathed, Let the life come or the death." Up she rose with scornful eyes, as her father's child might rise,- Toll slowly. "Thy hound's blood, my lord of Leigh, stains thy knightly heel," quoth she, " And he moans not where he lies. RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 209 " But a woman's will dies hard, in the hall or on the sward!- Toll slowly. " By that grave, my lords, which made me orphaned girl and dowered lady, I deny you wife and ward." Unto each she bowed her head, and swept past with lofty tread,- Toll slowly. Ere the midnight-bell had ceased, in the chapel had the priest Blessed her, bride of Linteged. Fast and fain the bridal train, along the night-storm rode amain: — Toll slowly. Wild the steeds of lord and serf, struck their hoofs out on the turf, In the pauses of the rain. Fast and fain, the kinsmen's train, along the storm pursued amain- Toll slowly. Steed on steed-track, dashing off-thickening, doubling hoof on hoof, In the pauses of the rain And the bridegroom led the flight, on his red-roan steed of might, — Toll slowly. And the bride lay on his arm, still, as if she feared no harm, Smiling out into the night. " Dost thou fear?" he said at last;-" Nay!" she answered him in haste,- Toll slowly. 18* 14 210 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. "Not such death as we could find-only life with one behindRide on fast as fear —-ride fast!" Up the mountain wheeled the steed-girth to ground, and fetlocks spread,- Toll slowly. Headlong bounds, and rocking fianks,-down he staggered —down the banks, To the towers of Linteged. High and low the serfs looked out, red the flambeaus tossed about, — Toll slowly. In the courtyard rose the cry-" Live the Duchess and Sir Guy!" But she never heard them shout. On the steed she dropt her cheek, lissed his mane and kissed his neck,- Toll slowly. "I had happier died by thee, than lived on a Lady Leigh," Were the words which she did speak. But a three months' joyaunce lay'twixt that moment and to-day,- Toll slowly. CWhen five hundred archers tall, stand beside the castle wall, To recapture Duchess May. And the castle standeth black, with the red sun at its back,- Toll slowly. And a fortnight's siege is done —and, except the Duchess, none Can misdoubt the coming wrack. RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 211 Then the captain, young Lord Leigh, with his eye so gray of blee, — Toll slowly. And thin lips, that scarcely sheath the cold white gnashing of his teeth, Gnashed in smiling, absently,Cried aloud —" So goes the day, bridegroom fair of Duchess May! — Toll slowly. Look thy last upon that sun. If thou seest tomorrow's one,'Twill be through a foot of clay. "Ha, fair bride! Dost hear no sound, save that moaning of the hound? Toll slowly. Thou and I have parted troth,-yet I keep my vengeance oath, And the other may come round. "Ha! thy will is brave to dare, and thy new love past compare, — Toll slowly. Yet thine old love's falchion brave, is as strong a thing to have, As the will of lady fair. " Peck on blindly, netted dove — If a wife's name thee behove, - Toll slowly. Thou shalt wear the same to-morrow, ere the grave has hid the sorrow Of thy last ill-mated love. O'er his fixed and silent mouth, thou and I will call back troth, - Toll slowly. 212 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. He shall altar be and priest,-and he will not cry at least'I forbid you —I am loath!' "I will wring thy fingers pale, in the gauntlet of my mail,- Toll slowly. Little hand and muckle gold' close shall lie within my hold, As the sword did to prevail." O the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,- Toll slowly. 0, and laughed the Duchess May, and her soul did put away All his boasting, for a jest. In her chamber did she sit, laughing low to think of it, — Toll slowly. "Tower is strong and will is free —thou canst boast, my lord of Leigh,But thou boastest little wit." In her tire-glass gazed she, and she blushed right womanly,- Toll slowly. She blushed half from her disdain —half, her beauty was so plain, — " Oath for oath, my lord of Leigh!" Straight she called her maidens in —" Since ye gave me blame herein,- Toll slowly. That a bridal such as mine, should lack gauds to make it fine, Come and shrive me from that sin. RHIIYMIE OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 213 "It is three months gone to-day, since I gave mine hand away.- Toll slowly. Bring the gold and bring the gem, we will keep bride state in them, While we keep the foe at bay. " On your arms I loose my hair;-comb it smooth and crown it fair,- Toll slowly. I would look in purple-pall, from this lattice down the wall, And throw scorn to one that's there!" 0, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,- Toll slowly. On the tower the castle's lord leant in silence on his sword, With an anguish in his breast. With a spirit-laden weight, did he lean down passionate,- Toll slowly. They have almost sapped the wall, —they will enter there withal, With no knocking at the gate. Then the sword he leant upon, shivered-snapped upon the stone, — Toll slowly. " Sword," he thought, with inward laugh, "ill thou servest for a staff, When thy nobler use is done! " Sword, thy nobler use is done!-tower is lost, and shame begun; — Toll slowly. 214 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. If we met them in the breach, hilt to hilt or speech to speech, We should die there, each for one. " If we met them at the wall, we should singly, vainly fall,- Toll slowly. But if I die here alone,-then I die, who am but one, And die nobly for them all. " Five true friends lie for my sake-in the moat and in the brake, Toll slowly. Thirteen warriors lie at rest, with a black wound in the breast, And not one of these will wake. " And no more of this shall be!-heart-blood weighs too heavily- Toll slowly. And I could not sleep in grave, with the faithful and the brave Heaped around and over me. "Since young Clare a mother hath, and young Ralph a plighted faith,- Toll slowly. Since my pale young sister's cheeks blash like rose when Ronald speaks, Albeit never a word she saith"These shall never die for me —life-blood falls too heavily: — Toll slowly. And if I die here apart, —o'er my dead and silent heart They shall pass out safe and free. RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 215 "When the foe bath heard it said-' Death holds Guy of Linteged,' - Toll slowly.'That new corse new peace shall bring; and a blessed, blessed thing, Shall the stone be at its head.'" Then my fiiends shall pass out free, and shall bear my memory, — Toll slowly. Then my foes shall sleek their pride, soothing fair my widowed bride, Whose sole sin was love of me. " With their words all smooth and sweet, they will front her and entreat:- Toll slowly. And their purple pall will spread underneath her fainting head, While her tears drop over it. "She will weep her woman's tears, she will pray her woman's prayers,- Toll slowly. But her heart is young in pain, and her hopes will spring again By the suntime of her years. " Ah, sweet May-ah, sweetest grief!-once I vowed thee my belief,- Toll slowly. That thy name expressed thy sweetness, —May of poets, in completeness! Now my May-day seemeth brief." All these silent thoughts did swim o'er his eyes grown strange and dim,- Toll slowly. 416 RHYNIE OF THE DUCHESS MAY. Till his true men in the place, wished they stood there face to face With the foe instead of hinm. " One last oath, my friends, that wear faithful hearts to do and dare!- Toll slowly. Tower must fall, and bride be lost!-swear me service worth the cost,' -Bold they stood around to swear. "Each man clasp my hand, and swear, by the deed we failed in there, — Toll slowly. Not for vengeance, not for right, will ye strike one blow to-night!"Pale they stood around-to swear. " One last boon, young Ralph and Clare! faithful hearts to do and dare! Toll slowly. Bring that steed up from his stall, which she kissed before you all — Guide him up the turret-stair. "' Ye shall harness him aright, and lead upward to this height!- Toll slowly. Once in love and twice in war, hath he borne me strong and far,He shall bear me far to-night." Then his men looked to and fro, when they heard him speaking so,- Toll slowly. —'Las! the noble heart," they thought,-" he in sooth is grief-distraught.WVould, we stood here with the foe!" RHY-IMIE OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 217 But a fire flashed from his eye,'twixt their thought and their reply,- Toll slowly. " Have ye so much time to waste! We who ride here, must ride fast, As we wish our foes to fly." They have fetched the steed with care, in the harness he did wear,- Toll slowly. Past the court and through the doors, across the rushes of the floors; But they goad him up the stair. Then from out her bower-chambere, did the Duchess Mlay repair,- Toll slowly. "Tell me now what is your need," said the lady, " of this steed, That ye goad him up the stair?" Calm she stood! unbodkined through, fell her dark hair to her shoe, — Toll slowly. And the smile upon her face, ere she left the tiringglass, Had not time enough to go. " Get thee back, sweet Duchess May! hope is gone like yesterday,- Toll slowly. One half-hour completes the breach; and thy lord grows wild of speech.Get thee in, sweet lady, and pray. "In the east tower, high'st of all,-loud he cries for steed from stall,- Toll slowly. vOL. I. -19 218 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY.'He would ride as far,' quoth he,'as for love and victory, Though he rides the castle-wall.' " And we fetch the steed from stall, up where never a hoof did fall.- Toll slowly. Wifely prayer meets deathly need! may the sweet Heavens hear thee plead, If he rides the castle-wall." Low she dropt her head, and lower, till her hair coiled on the floor,- Toll slowly. And tear after tear yi heard, fall distinct as any word Which you might be listening for. " Get thee in, thou soft ladie!-here is never a place for thee!- Toll slowly. Braid thy hair and clasp thy gown, that thy beauty in its moan May find grace with Leigh of Leigh." She stood up in bitter case, with a pale yet steady face,- Toll slowly. Like a statue thunderstruck, which, though quivering, seems to look Right against the thunder-place. And her foot trod in, with pride, her own tears i' the stone beside,- Toll slowly.' Go to, faithful friends, go to!-Judge no more what ladies do,No, nor how their lords may ride!" RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 219 Then the good steed's rein she took, and his neck did kiss and stroke:- Toll slowly. Soft he neighed to answer her; and then followed up the stair, For the love of her sweet look. Oh, and steeply, steeply wound up the narrow stair around,- Toll slowly. Oh, and closely, closely speeding, step by step beside her treading, Did he follow, meek as hound. On the east tower, high'st of all, —there, where never a hoof did fall,- Toll slowly. Out they swept, a vision steady, —noble steed and lovely lady, Calm as if in bower or stall! Down she knelt at her lord's knee, and she looked up silently, — Toll slowly. And he kissed her twice and thrice, for that look within her eyes, Which he could not bear to see. Quoth he, " Get thee from this strife,-and the sweet saints bless thy life!- Toll slowly. In this hour, I stand in need of my noble red-roan steed — But no more of my noble wife." Quoth she, " Meekly have I done all thy biddings under sun: — Toll slowly. 220 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. But by all my womanhood,-which is proved so, true and good, I will never do this one. "Now by womanhood's degree, and by wifehood's verity, — Toll slowly. In this hour if thou hast need of thy noble red-roan steed, Thou hast also need of me. " By this golden ring ye see on this lifted hand pardie, — Toll slowly. If this hour, on castle-wall, can be room for steed from stall, Shall be also room for me " So the sweet saints with me be" (did she utter solemnly,) — Toll slowly. If a man, this eventide, on this castle-wall will ride, He shall ride the same with me." Oh, he sprang up in the selle, and he laughed out bitter-well, — Toll slowly. " Wouldst thou ride among the leaves, as we used on other eves, To hear chime a vesper bell?" She clang closer to his knee-" Ay, beneath the cypress-tree!- Toll slowly. Mock me not; for otherwhere, than along the green-wood fair, Have I ridden fast with thee! RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 221 " Fast I rode, with new-made vows, from my angry kinsman's house!- Toll slowly. What! and would you men should reck, that I dared more for love's sake, As a bride than as a spouse? "What, and would you it should fall, as a proverb, before all,- Toll Slowly. That a bride may keep your side, while through castlegate you ride, Yet eschew the castle-wall?" Ho! the breach yawns into ruin, and roars up against her suing, — Toll slowly. With the inarticulate din, and the dreadful falling in — Shrieks of doing and undoing! Twice he wrung her hands in twain; but the small hands closed again, — Toll slowly. Back he reined the steed —back, back! but she trailed along his track, With a frantic clasp and strain! Evermore the foeman pour through the crash of window and door,- Toll slowly. And the shouts of Leigh and Leigh, and the shrieks of " kill!" and " flee!" Strike up clear the general roar, Thrice he wrung her hands in twain, —but they closed and clung again, — Toll slowly. 19* 222 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. Wild she clung, as one, withstood, clasps a Christ upon the rood, In a spasm of deathly pain. She clung wild and she clung mute,-with her shuddering lips half-shut,- Toll slowly. Her head fallen as in swound,-hair and knee swept oLthe ground,She clung wild to stirrup and foot. Back he reined his steed, back-thrown on the slippery coping stone,- Toll slowly. Back the iron hoofs did grind, on the battlement behind, Whence a hundred feet went down. And his heel did press and goad on the quivering flank bestrode, Toll slowuly. "Friends, and brothers! save my wife! —Pardon, sweet, in change for life,But I ride alone to God!" Straight as if the Holy name did upbreathe her as a flame, — Tll slowly. She upsprang, she rose upright! —in his selle she sat in sight; By her love she overcame. And her head was on his breast, where she smiled as one at rest,- Toll slowly. "Ring," she cried, "'O vesper-bell, in the beechwood's old chapelle! But the passing bell rings best." RHYME OFf THE DUCHESS MAY. 23 They have caught out at the rein, which Sir Guy threw loose-in vain,- Toll slowly. For the horse in stark despair, with his front hoofs poised in air, On the last verge, rears amain. And he hangs, he rocks between-and his nostrils curdle in,- Toll slowly. And he shivers head and hoof-and the flakes of foam fall off; And his face grows fierce and thin! And a look of human woe, from his staring eyes did go,- Toll slowly. And a sharp cry uttered he, in a foretold agony Of the headlong death below,And, " Ring, ring — thou passing-bell," still she cried, " i' the old chapelle!"- Toll slowly. Then back-toppling, crashing back-a dead weight flunk out to wrack, Horse and riders overfell! Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, — Toll slowly. And I read this ancient Rhyme, in the kirkyard while the chime Slowly tolled for one at rest. 224 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. The abeles moved in the sun, and the river smooth did run, — Toll slowly. And the ancient Rhyme rang strange, with its passion and its change, Here, where all done lay undone. And beneath a willow tree, I a little grave did see,Toll slowly. Where was graved,-" HERE UNDEFILED, LIETH MAUD) A THREE-YEAR CHILD, " EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FORTY-THREE."I Then, 0 Spirits-did I say-ye who rode so fast that day,- Toll slowly. Did star-wheels and angel-wings, with their holy winnowings, Keep beside you all the way? Though in passion ye would dash, with a blind and heavy crash, Toll slowly. Up against the thick-bossed shield of God's judgment in the field,Though your heart and brain were rash,Now, your will is all unwilled-now your pulses are all stilled, — Toll slowly. Now, ye lie as meek and mild (whereso laid) as Maud the child, Whose small grave was lately filled. Beating heart and burning brow, ye are very patient now, — Toll slowly. RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 225 And the children might be bold to pluck the kingscups from your mould, Ere a month had let them grow. And you let the goldfinch sing, in the alder near, in spring,- Toll slowly. Let her build her nest and sit all the three weeks out on it, Murmuring not at anything. In your patience ye are strong; cold and heat ye take not wrong:- Toll slowly. When the trumpet of the angel blows eternity's evangel, Time will seem to you not long. Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, Toll slowly. And I said in underbreath, —all our life is mixed with death,And who knoweth which is best? Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, — Toll slowly. And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness,Round our restlessness, His rest. 15 THE POET AND THE BIRD. A?FABLE. SAID a people to a poet-" Go out from among us straightway! "While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine. There's a little fair brown nightingale, who, sitting in the gateway, Makes fitter music to our ear, than any song of thine!" The poet went out weeping —the nightingale ceased chanting; "Now, wherefore, 0 thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done?" I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly p6et wanting, Whoso highest harmony includes the lowest under sun.' The poet went out weeping,-and died abroad, bereft thereThe bird flew to his grave and died amid a thousand wails!And, when I last came by the place, I swear the music left there Was only of the poet's song, and not the nightingale's! 226 THE LOST BOWER. IN the pleasant orchard closes,'God bless all our gains,' say we; But'May God bless all our losses,' Better suits with our degree.Listen gentle-ay, and simple! Listen children on the knee! Green the land is where my daily Steps in jocund childhood played — Dimpled close with hill and valley, Dappled very close with shade; Summer-snow of apple blossoms, running up from glade to glade. There is one hill I see nearer, In my vision of the rest; And a little wood seems clearer, As it climbeth from the west, Sideway from the tree-locked valley, to the airy upland crest. Small the wood is, green with hazels, And, completing the ascent, Where the wind blows and sun dazzles, Thrills, in leafy tremblement; Like a heart that, after climbing, beateth quickly through content. Not a step the wood advances O'er the open hill-top's bound: 128 THE LOST BOWER. There, in green arrest, the branches See their image on the ground: You may walk beneath them smiling, glad with sight and glad with sound. For you hearken on your right hand, How the birds do leap and call In the greenwood, out of sight and Out of reach and fear of all; And the squirrels crack the filberts, through their cheerful madrigal. On your left, the sheep are cropping The slant grass and daisies pale; And five apple-trees stand dropping Separate shadows toward the vale, Over which, in choral silence, the hills look you their " All hail!" Far out, kindled by each other, Shining hills on hills arise; Close as brother leans to brother, When they press beneath the eyes [dise. Of some father praying blessings from the gifts of paraWhile beyond, above them mounted, And above their woods also, Malvern hills, for mountains counted Not unduly, loom a-rowKeepers of Piers Plowman's visions, through the sun. shine and the snow.* o The Malvern Hills of Worcestershire, are the scene of Langlande's visions, and thus present the earliest classic ground of English poetry, THE LOST BOWER. 229 Yet in childhood little prized I That fair walk and far survey:'Twas a straight walk, unadvised by The least mischief worth a nayUp and down-as dull as grammar on the eve of holiday. But the wood, all close and clenching Bough in bough and root in root,No more sky (for over-branching) At your head than at your foot,Oh, the wood drew me within it, by a glamour past dispute. Few and broken paths showed through it, Where the sheep had tried to run, — Forced, with snowy wool to strew it Round the thickets, when anon They with silly thorn-pricked noses, bleated back into the sun. But my childish heart beat stronger Than those thickets dared to grow: I could pierce them! I could longer Travel on, methought, than so. Sheep for sheep-paths! braver children climb and creep where they would go. And the poets wander, said I, Over places all as rude! Bold Rinaldo's lovely lady Sat to meet him in a wood — [tude. Rosalinda, like a fountain, laughed out pure with solivoL. I. —20 230 THE LOST BOWER. And if Chaucer had not travelled Through a forest by a well, He had never dreamt nor marvelled At those ladies fair and fell Who lived smiling without loving, in their islandcitadel. Thus I thought of the old singers, And took courage from their song, Till my little struggling fingers Tore asunder gyve and thong Of the lichens which entrapped me, and the barrier branches strong. On a day, such pastime keeping, With a fawn's heart debonaire, Under-crawling, overleaping Thorns that prick and boughs that bear, I stood suddenly astonished —I was gladdened unaware From the place I stood in, floated Back the covert dim and close; And the open ground was coated Carpet-smooth with grass and moss, And the blue-bell's purple presence signed it worthily across. Here a linden-tree stood, brightening All adown its silver rind; For as some trees draw the lightning; So this tree, unto my mind, Drew to earth the blessed sunshine, from the sky where it was shrined. THE LOST BOWER. 231 Tall the linden-tree, and near it An old hawthorn also grew; And wood-ivy like a spirit Hovered dimly round the two, Shaping thence that Bower of beauty, which I sing of thus to you.'Twas a bower for garden fitter, Than for any woodland wide: Though a fresh and dewy glitter Struck it through, from side to side, Shaped and shaven was the freshness, as by gardencunning plied. Oh, a lady might have come there, Hooded fairly like her hawk, With a book or lute in summer, And a hope of sweeter talk,Listening less to her own music, than for footsteps on the walk. But that bower appeared a marvel In the wildness of the place! With such seeming art and travail, Finely fixed and fitted was [the base. Leaf to leaf, the dark-green ivy, to the summit from And the ivy, veined and glossy, Was inwrought with eglantine; And the wild hop fibred closely, And the large-leaved columbine, Arch of door and window mullion, did right sylvanly entwine. 232 THE LOST BOWER. Rose-trees, either side the door, were Growing lythe and growing tall; Each one set a summer warder For the keeping of the hall, — With a red rose, and a white rose, leaning, nodding at the wall. As I entered —mosses hushing Stole all noises from my foot; And a green elastic cushion, Clasped within the linden's root, Took me in a chair of silence, very rare and absolute. All the floor was paved with glory,Greenly, silently inlaid, Through quick motions made before me, With fair counterparts in shade, Of the fair serrated ivy-leaves which slanted overhead " Is such pavement in a palace?" So I questioned in my thought: The sun, shining through the chalice Of the red rose hung without, Threw within a red libation, like an answer to my doubt. At the same time, on the linen Of my childish lap there fell Two white may-leaves, downward winning Through the ceiling's miracle, From a blossom, like an angel, out of sight yet blessing well. THE LOST BOWER. 233 Down to floor and up to ceiling, Quick I turned my childish face; With an innocent appealing For the secret of the place, To the trees which surely knew it, in partaking of the grace. Where's no foot of human creature, How could reach a human hand? And if this be work of nature, Why is nature sudden bland, [derstand. Breaking off from other wild work? It was hard to unWas she weary of rough-doing,C Of the bramble and the thorn? Did she pause in tender ruing, Here, of all her sylvan scorn? Or, in mock of art's deceiving, was the sudden mildness worn? Or could this same bower (I fancied) Be the work of Dryad strong; Who, surviving all that chanced In the world's old pagan wrong, Lay hid, feeding in the woodland, on the last true poet's song? Or was this the house of fairies, Left, because of the rough ways, Unassoiled by Ave Marys Which the passing pilgrim prays,And beyond St. Catherine's chiming, on the blessed Sabbath days? en* 234 THE LOST BOWER. So, young muser, I sat listening To my Fancy's wildest word — On a sudden, through the glistening Leaves around a little stirred, Came a sound, a sense of music, which was rather felt than heard. Softly, finely, it inwound meFrom the world it shut me in,Like a fountain falling round me, Which with silver waters thin Clips a little marble Naiad, sitting smilingly within. Whence the music came, who knoweth? I know nothing. But indeed Pan or Faunus never bloweth So much sweetness from a reed, Which has sucked the milk of waters, at the oldest riverhead Never lark the sun can waken With such sweetness! when the lark, The high planets overtaking In the half evanished Dark, Cast his singing to their singing, like an arrow to the mark. Never nightingale so singethOh! she leans on thorny tree, And her poet-soul she flingeth Over pain to victory! Yet she never sings such music — or she sings it not to me. THE LOST BOWER. 235 Never blackbirds, never thrushes, Nor small finches sing as sweet, When the sun strikes through the bushes, To their crimson clinging feet, And their pretty eyes look sideways to the summer heavens complete. If it were a bird, it seemed Most like Chaucer's, which, in sooth, He of green and azure dreamdd, While it sat in spirit-ruth On that bier of a crowned lady, singing nigh her silent mouth. If it were a bird!-ah, sceptic, Give me " Yea" or give me " Nay"Though my soul were nympholeptic, As I heard that virelay, [away. You may stoop your pride to pardon, for my sin is far I rose up in exaltation And an inward trembling heat, And (it seemed) in geste of passion, Dropped the music to my feet, Like a garment rustling downwards! —such a silence followed it. Heart and head beat through the quiet, Full and heavily, though slower; In the song, I think, and by it, Mystic Presences of power Had up-snatched me to the Timeless, then returned me to the flour. 236 THE LOST BOWER. In a child-abstraction lifted, Straightway from the bower I past; Foot and soul being dimly drifted Through the greenwood, till, at last, In the hill-top's open sunshine, I all consciously was cast. Face to face with the true mountains, I stood silently and still; Drawing strength for fancy's dauntings, From the air about the hill, And from Nature's open mercies, and most debonair goodwill. Oh! the golden-hearted daisies Witnessed there, before my youth, To the truth of things, with praises To the beauty of the truth: And I woke to Nature's real, laughing joyfully for both. And I said within me, laughing, I have found a bower to-day, A green lusus-fashioned half in Chance, and half in Nature's playAnd a little bird sings nigh it, I will nevermore missay. Henceforth, I will be the fairy Of this bower, not built by one; I will go there, sad or merry, With each morning's benison: And the bird shall be my harper in the dream-hall I have won. THE LOST BOWER. 237 So I said. But the next morning, (-Child, look up into my face-'Ware, oh sceptic, of your scorning! This is truth in its pure grace;) The next morning, all had vanished, or my wandering missed the place. Bring an oath most sylvan holy, And upon it swear nme trueBy the wind-bells swinging slowly Their mute curfews in the dewBy the advent of the snow-drop —by the rosemary and rue,I affirm by all or any, Let the cause be charm or chance, That my wandering searches many Missed the bower of my romance — [nance. That I nevermore upon it, turned my mortal counteI affirm that, since I lost it, Never bower has seemed so fairNever garden-creeper crossed it, With so deft and brave an airNever bird sung in the summer, as I saw and heard them there. Day by day, with new desire, Toward my wood I ran in faithUnder leaf and over briarThrough the thickets, out of breathLike the prince who rescued Beauty from the sleep as long as death. 238 THE LOST BOWER. But his sword of mettle clashed, And his arm smote strong, I ween; And her dreaming spirit flashed Through her body's fair white screen,And the light thereof might guide him up the cedar alleys green. But for me, I saw no splendor — All my sword was my child-heart; And the wood refused surrender Of that bower it held apart, Safe as (Edipus's grave-place,'nmid Colone's olives swart. As Aladdin sought the basements His fair palace rose upon, And the four and twenty casements Which gave answers to the sun; [down. So, in wilderment of gazing, I looked up, and I looked Years have vanished since, as wholly As the little bower did then; And you call it tender folly That such thoughts should come again? Ah! I cannot change this sighing for your smiling, brother-men! For this loss it did prefigure Other loss of better good, When my soul, in spirit-vigor, And in ripened womanhood, Fell from visions of more beauty than an arbor in a wood. THE LOST BOWER. 239 I have lost —oh many a pleasureMany a hope and many a powerStudious health and merry leisureThe first dew on the first flower!'But the first of all my losses was the losing of the bower. I have lost the dream of Doing, And the other Dream of DoneThe first spring in the pursuing, The first pride in the Begun, — First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is won — Exaltations in the far light, Where some cottage only isMild dejections in the starlight, Which the sadder-hearted miss; And the child-cheek blushing scartet, for the very shame of bliss. I have lost the sound child-sleeping Which the thunder could not break; Something too of the strong leaping Of the staglike heart awake, Which the pale is low for keeping in the road it ought to take. Some respect to social fictions Hath been also lost by me; And some generous genuflexions, Which my spirit offered free To the pleasant old conventions of our false Humanity. 240 THE LOST BOWER. All my losses did I tell you, Ye, perchance, would look away;Ye would answer me, " Farewell! you Make sad company to-day; And your tears are falling faster than the bitter words you say." For God placed me like a dial In the open ground, with power; And my heart had for its trial, All the sun and all the shower! [bower. And I suffered many losses; and my first was of the Lau(gh ye? If that loss of mine be Of no heavy seeming weightWhen the cone falls from the pine-tree, The young children laughed thereat; Yet the wind that struck it, riseth, and the tempest shall be great! One who knew me in my childhood, In the glamour and the game, Looking on me long and mild, would Never know me for the same. Come, unchanging recollections, where those changes overcame. On this couch I weakly lie on, While I count my memories,Through the fingers which, still sighing, I press closely on mine eyes,Clear as once beneath the sunshine, I behold the bower arise. THE LOST BOWER. 241 Springs the linden-tree as greenly, Stroked with light adown its rindAnd the ivy-leaves serenely Each in either intertwined, And the rose-trees at the doorway, they have neither grown nor pined. From those overblown faint roses, Not a leaf appeareth shed, And that little bud discloses.Not a thorn's-breadth more of red, For the winters and the summers which have passed me overhead. And that music overfloweth, Sudden sweet, the sylvan caves; Thrush or nightingale-who knoweth? Fay and Faunus-who believes? [the leaves. But my heart still trembles in me, to the trembling of Is the bower lost, then? Who sayeth That the bower indeed is lost? Hark! my spirit in it prayeth Throufgh the solstice and the frost,And the prayer preserves it greenly, to the last and uttermostTill another open for me In God's Eden-land unknown, With an angel at the doorway, White with zin at His Thr; And a saint's voice in the palm-trees, singing — ALL, JIS LOST.. n. alf won!" VOL. II.-21 16 A CHILD ASLEEP. How he sleepeth! having drunken Weary childhood's mandtragore, From his pretty eyes have sunken Pleasures, to make room for moreSleeping near the withered nosegay, which he pulled the day before. Nosegays! leave them for the waking: Throw them earthward where they grew: Dim are such beside the breaking Amaranths he looks untoFolded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do. Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden From the palms they sprang beneath Now perhaps divinely holden, Swing against him in a wreath — We may think so from the quickening of his bloom and of his breath. Vision unto vision calleth, While the young child dreameth on: Fair, 0 dreamer, thee befalleth With the glory thou hast won! Darker wert thou in the garden, yestermorn, by summer sun. 242 A CHILD ASLEEP. 243 We should see the spirits ringing Round thee, —were the clouds away'Tis the child-heart draws them, singing In the silent-seeming clay — [the way. Singing! —Stars that seem the mutest, go in music all As the moths around a taper, As the bees around a rose, As the gnats around a vapor, — So the spirits group and close Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose. Shapes of brightness overlean thee, With their diadems of youth On the ringlets which half screen thee While thou smilest,.. not in sooth Thy smile,.. but the overfair one, dropt from some ethereal mouth. Haply it is angels' duty, During slumber, shade by shade To fine down this childish beauty To the thing it must be made, Ere the world shall bring it praises, or the tomb shall see it fade. Softly, softly! make no noises! Now he lieth dead and dumbNow he hears the angels' voices Folding silence in the room — Now he muses deep the meaning of the Heaven-words as they come. 244 A H ILD ASLEEP. Speak not! he is cons-eratedBreathe no breath across his eyes: Lifted up and separated On the hand of God he lies, In a sweetness beyond touching,-held in cloistral sanctities. Could ye bless him-father-mother? Bless the dimple in his cheek? Dare ye look at one another, And the benediction speak? Would ye not break out in weeping, and confess yourselves too weak? He is harmless-ye are sinful. — Ye are troubled, —he, at ease: From his slumber, virtue winful Floweth outward with increaseDare not bless him! but be blessed by his peaceand go in peace. THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. " MN, (pEc, rt 7rpodOpKcOUS tL' ojqpacYLv, rCKva." MEDEA. Do ye hear the children weeping, 0 my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows: The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows; The young flowers are blowing toward the west — But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly!They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free. Do you question the young children in the sorrow, Why their tears are falling so;The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in Long AgoThe old tree is leafless in the forestThe old year is ending in the frostThe old wound, if stricken, is the sorestThe old hope is hardest to be lost: 245 246 THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland? They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are sad to see, For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses Down the cheeks of infancy" Your old earth," they say, "-is very drearyOur young feet," they say, " are very weak' Few paces have we taken, yet are wearyOur gTave-rest is very far to seek: Ask the old why they weep, and not the children, For the outside earth is cold, — And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, And the graves are for the old: " True," say the young children, " it may happen That we die before our time: Little Alice died last year —the grave is shapen Like a snowball, in the rime. We looked into the pit prepared to take herWas no room for any work in the close clay: From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, Crying,' Get up, little Alice! it is day.' If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries!Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, For the smile has time for growing in her eyes, THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 247 And melrry go her momlents, lulled and stilled in Tile shr'oud, by the kirk-chilne! It is good when it happens," say the children,:" Tlhat we die before our time!" Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking Death in life, as best to have! They are binding up their hearts away fiom breaking, With a celreient from the grave. Go out, children, from the mine and firom the city — Sing out, children, as the little thrushes doPluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips prettyLaugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through! But they answer, " Are your cowslips of the meadows Like our weeds anear the mine? Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, From your pleasures fair and fine! "' For oh,' say the children, " we are weary, And we cannot run or leapIf we cared for any meadows, it were merely Tlo drtop down in them and sleep. Our knees tremlble sorely in the stoopingWe fall upon our faces, trying to go; And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. For, all day, we dragu our burden tiring, Through the coal-dark undergroundOr, all day, we drive the wheels of iron In the factories, round and round. "' For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning,Their wind collles in our faces, 248 THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. Till our hearts turn,-our heads, with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their placesTurns the sky in the high window blank and reelingTurns the long light that droppeth down the wallTurn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling — All are turning, all the day, and we with all! — And all day the iron wheels are droning; And sometimes we could pray,'0 ye wheels,' (breaking out in a mad moaning,) —'Stop! be silent for to-day!"' Ay! be silent! Let them hear each other breathing For a moment, mouth to mouthLet them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing Of their tender human youth! Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals Let them prove their inward souls against the notion That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark. Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers, To look up to Him and praySo the blessed One, who blesseth all the others, Will bless them another day. They answer, " Who is God that IIe should hear us, While the rushing of the iron whbels is stirred? THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 249 When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word! And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding) Strangers speaking at the door: Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him, Hears our weeping any more? " Two words, indeed, of praying we remember; And at midnight's hour of harm,Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber, We say softly for a charm.* We know no other words, except' Our Father,' And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, And hold both within His right hand which is strong. Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely (For they call him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,'Come and rest with me, my child.' " But, no!" say the children, weeping faster, " He is speechless as a stone; And they tell us, of His image is the master Who commauds us to work on. " Go to!" say the children, —" Up in Heaven, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find: Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving,We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.' * A fact rendered pathetically historical by Mr. Hlorne's Report of his commission. The name of the poet of " Orion" and " Cosmo de' Medici" has, however, a change of associations, and comes in time to remind me (with other noble instances) that we have some nloble poetic heat still in our literature,-thongh open to the reproach, on certain points, of being somewhat gelid in our humanity. 250 THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, O my brothers, what ye preach? For God's possible is taught by His world's lovingAnd the children doubt of each. And well may the children weep before you; They are weary ere they run; They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory Which is brighter than the sun: They know the grief of man, but not the wisdom; They sink in man's despair, without its calmAre slaves, without the liberty in Christdom,Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm,Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly No dear remembrance keep, — Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly: Let them weep! let them weep! They look up, with their pale and sunken faces, And their look is dread to see, For they mind you of their angels in their places, With eyes meant for Deity;" How long," they say, " how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants, And your purple shows your path; But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence Than the strong man in his wrath!" CROWNED AND WEDDED. WHEN last before her people's face her own fair face she bent, Within the meek projection of that shade she was content To erase the child-smile from her lips, which seemed as if it might Be still kept holy from the world, to childhood still in sight — To erase it with a solemn vow,-a princely vow-to ruleA priestly vow-to rule by grace of God the pitiful,A very god-like vow-to rule in right and righteousness, And with the law and for the land!-so God the vower bless! The minster was alight that day, but not with fire, I ween, And long-drawn glitterings swept adown that mighty aisled scene: The priests stood stoled in their pomp, the sworded chiefs in theirs, And so, the collared knights,-and so, the civil ministers,And so, the waiting lords and dames-and little pages best At holding trains —and legates so, from countries east and west251 252 CROWNED AND WEDDED. So, alien princes, native peers, and high-born ladies bright, Along whose brows the queen's new crowned, flashed coronets to light! — And so, the people at the gates, with priestly hands on high, Which bring the first anointing to all legal majesty. And so the DEAD who lie in rowsbeneath the minster floor, There, verily an awful state maintaining evermoreThe statesman, whose clean palm will kiss no bribe whate'er it beThe courtier, who, for no fair queen, will rise up to his kneeThe court-dame, who, for no court-tire, will leave her shroud behindThe laureate, who no courtlier rhyme than " dust to dust " can findThe kings and queens, who having made that vow and worn that crown, Descended unto lower thrones and darker, deep adown! Dieu et mon droit-what is't to them?-what meaning can it have?The King of kings, the rights of death-God's judgment and the grave! And when betwixt the quick and dead the young fair queen had vowed, The living shouted " May she live! Victoria, live!" aloudAnd as the loyal shouts went up, true spirits prayed between, CROW NED AND WEDDED. 253 The blessings happy monarchs have, be thine, 0 crowned queen!" But now before her people's face she bendeth hers anew, And calls them, while she vows, to be her witness thereunto. She vowed to rule, and in that oath, her childhood put awayShe doth maintain her womanhood, in vowing love to-day. 0, lovely lady!-let her vow — such lips become such vows, — And fairer goeth bridal wreath than crown with vernal brows! O, lovely lady!-let her vow!-yea, let her vow to love! And though she be no less a queen —with purples hung above, The pageant of a court behind, the royal kin around, And woven gold to catch her looks turned maidenly to ground,Yet may the bride-veil hide from her a little of that state, While loving hopes, for retinues, about her sweetness wait:SHE VOWS to love, who vowed to rule-the chosen at her side Let none say, God preserve the queen!-but rather, Bless the bride!None blow the trump, none bend the knee, none violate the dream Wherein no monarch, but a wife, she to herself may seem: VOL. Ix — 22 254 CROWNED AND WEDDED. Or, if ye say, Preserve the queen!-moh, breathe it inward low — She is a woman and beloved! —and'tis enough but so! Count it enough, thou noble prince, who tak'st her by the hand, And claimest for thy lady-love, our lady of the land!And since, Prince Albert, men have called thy spirit hi(gh and rare, And true to truth and brave for truth, as some at Augsburg were — We charge thee, by thy lofty thoughts, and by thy poet-mind, Which not by glory and degree takes measure of mankind, Esteem that wedded hand less dear for sceptre than for ring, And hold her uncrowned womanhood to be the royal thing: And now, upon our queen's last vow, what blessings shall we pray? None straitened to a shallow crown, will suit our lips to-day. Behold, they must be free as love —they must be broad as free, Even to the borders of heaven's light and earth's humanity: Long live she! —send up loyal shouts-and true hearts pray between,"The blessings happy PEASANTS have, be thine, 0 crowned queen!" CROWNED AND BURIED. 1NAPOLEON!-years ago, and that great word, Compact of human breath in hate and dread And exultation, skied us overheadAn atmosphere whose lightning was the sword, Scathing the cedars of the world,-drawn down In burnings, by the metal of a crown. Napoleon! Nations, while they cursed that name, Shook at their own curse; and while others bore Its sound, as of a trumpet, on before, Brass-fronted legions justified its fameAnd dying men, on trampled battle-sods, N ear their last silence, uttered it for God's. Napoleon! Sages, with high foreheads drooped, Did use it for a problem; children small Leapt up to greet it, as at manhood's call: Priests blessed it from their altars overstooped By meek-eyed Christs, —and widows with a moan Spake it, when questioned why they sat alone. That name consumed the silence of the snows In Alpine keeping, holy and cloud-hid: The mimic eagles dared what Nature's did, And over-rushed her mountainous repose In search of eyries: and the Egyptian river Mingled the same word with its grand' For ever.' 255 256 CROWNED AND BURIED. That name was shouted near the pyramidal Egyptian tombs, whose mummied habitants, Packed to humanity's significance, Motioned it back with stillness: Shouts as idle As hireling artists' work of myrrh and spice, Which swathed last glories round the Ptolemies. The world's face changed to hear it: Kingly men Came down, in chidden babes' bewilderment, From autocratic places-each content With sprinkled ashes for anointing:-then The people laughed or wondered for the nonce, To see'one throne a composite of thrones. Napoleon! And the torrid vastitude Of India felt, in throbbings of the air, That name which scattered by disastrous blare All Europe's bound-lines, —drawn afresh in blood: Napoleon —from the Russias, west to Spain! And Austria trembled-till we heard her chain. And Germany was'ware —and Italy, Oblivious of old fames-her laurel-locked, High-ghosted Coesars passing uninvoked,Did crumble her own ruins with her knee, To serve a newer:-Ay! and Frenchmen cast A future from them, nobler than her past. For, verily, though France augustly rose With that raised NAME, and did assume by such The purple of the world,-none gave so much CROWNED AND BURTED 257 As she, in purchase-to speak plain, in lossWhose hands, to freedom stretched, dropped paralyzed To wield a sword, or fit an undersized King's crown to a great man's head. And though along Her Paris' streets, did float on frequent streams Of triumph, pictured or emmarbled dreams, Dreampt right by genius in a world gone wrong,No dream, of all so won, was fair to see As the lost vision of her liberty. Napoleon!'twas a high name lifted high! It met at last God's thunder sent to clear Our compassing and covering atmosphere, And open a clear sight, beyond the sky, Of sutpreme empire: this of earth's was doneAnd kings crept out again to feel the sun. The kings crept out —the peoples sat at home, And finding the long-invocated peace A pall embroidered with worn images Of rights divine, too scant to cover doom Such as they suffered,-cursed the corn that grew Rankly, to bitter bread, on Waterloo. A deep gloom centered in the deep reposeThe nations stood up mute to count their deadAnd he who owned the NAME which vibrated Through silence,-trusting to his noblest foes, When earth was all too gray for chivalryDied of their mercies,'mid the desert sea. 22* 17 258 CROWNED AND BURIED. O wild St. Helen! very still she kept him, With a green willow for all pyramid, —Which stirred a little if the low wind did, A little more, if pilgrims overwept him Disparting the lithe boughs to see the clay Which seemed to cover his for judgment-day. Nay! not so long! —France kept her old affection, As deeply as the sepulchre the corse, Until dilated by such love's remorse To a new angel of the resurrection, She cried, " Behold, thou England! I would have The dead whereof thou wottest, from that grave." And England answered in the courtesy Which, ancient foes turned lovers, may befit, — " Take back thy dead! and when thou buriest it, Throw in all former strifes'twixt thee and me." Amen, mine England!'tis a courteous claim — But ask a little room too... for thy shame! Because it was not well, it was not well, Nor tuneful with thy lofty-chanted part Among the Oceanides,-that heart To bind and bare, and vex with vulture fell. I would, my noble England, men might seek All crimson stains upon thy breast —not cheek! I would that hostile fleets had scarred thy bay, Instead of the lone ship which waited moored Until thy princely purpose was assured, CROWNED AND BURIED. 259 Then left a shadow-not to pass away — Not for to-night's moon, nor to-morrow's sun! Green watching hills, ye witnessed what was done! And since it was done, —in sepulchral dust, We fain would pay back something of our debt To France, if not to honor, and forget How through much fear we falsified the trust Of a fallen foe and exile: —We return Orestes to Electra... in his urn. A little urn-a little dust inside, Which once outbalanced the large earth, albeit To-day, a four-years' child might carry it, Sleek-browed and smiling, "Let the burden'bide!" Orestes to Electra!-O fair town Of Paris, how the wild tears will run down, And run back in the chariot-marks of Time, When all the people shall come forth to meet The passive victor, death-still in the street He rode through'mid the shouting and bell-chime And martial music,-under eagles which Dyed their rapacious beaks at Austerlitz. Napoleon! he hath come again-borne home Upon the popular ebbing heart, —a sea Which gathers its own wrecks perpetually, Majestically moaning. Give him room!Room for the dead in Paris! welcome solemn And grave deep,'neath the cannon-moulded column!* * it was the first intention to bury him under the column. ,260 CROWNED AND BURIED. There, weapon spent and warrior spent may rest From roar of fields: provided Jupiter Dare trust Saturnus to lie down so near His bolts! —And this he may: For, dispossessed Of any godship, lies the godlike armThe goat, Jove sucked, as likely to do harm. And yet... Napoleon! —the recovered name Shakes the old casements of the world! and we Look out upon the passing pageantry, Attesting that the Dead makes good his claim To a Gaul grave, —another kingdom wonThe last-of few spans-by Napoleon. Blood fell like dew beneath his sunrise —sooth! But glittered dew-like in the covenanted And high-rayed light. He was a despot-granted! But the avros of his autocratic mouth Said yea i' the people's French: he magnified The image of the freedom he denied. And if they asked for rights, he made reply, " Ye have my glory!" —and so, drawing round them His ample purple, glorified and bound them In an embrace that seemed identity. He ruled them like a tyrant —true! but none Were ruled like slaves! Each felt Napoleon! I do not praise this man: the man was flawed For Adam-much more, Christ!-his knee, unbentHis hand, unclean-his aspiration, pent CROWNED AND BURIED. 261 Within a sword-sweep-pshaw!-but since he had The genius to be loved, why let him have The justice to be honored in his grave I think this nation's tears, poured thus together, Nobler than shouts: I think this funeral Grander than crownings, though a Pope bless all: I think this grave stronger than thrones: But whether The crowned Napoleon or the buried clay Be better, I discern not-Angels may. THE FOURFOl, D ASPECT. When ye stood up in the house With your little childish feet, And, in touching Life's first shows, First, the touch of Love, did meet, — Love and Nearness seeming one, By the heart-light cast before, — And, of all Beloveds, none Standing farther than the doorNot a name being dear to thought, With its owner beyond call, — Nor a face, unless it brought Its own shadow to the wall,When the worst recorded change Was of apple dropt from bough),When love's sorrow seemed more strange Than love's treason can seem now,Then, the Loving took you up Soft, upon their elder knees,Telling why the statues droop Underneath the churchyard trees,And how ye must lie beneath them, Through the winters long and deep, Till the last trump overbreathe them, And ye smile out of your sleep... Oh. ye lifted up your head, and it seemed as if they said 262 THE FOURFOLD ASPECT. 263 A tale of fairy ships With a swan-wing for a sail!Oh, ye kissed their loving lips For the merry, merry tale! — So carelessly ye thought upon the Dead. Soon ye read in solemn stories Of the men of long agoOf the pale bewildering glories Shining farther than we know,Of the heroes with the laurel, Of the poets with the bay, Of the two worlds' earnest quarrel For that beauteous Helena,How Achilles at the portal Of the tent, heard footsteps nigh, And his -strong heart, half-immnortal, Met the kleitai with a cry,How Ulysses left the sunlight For the pale eidola race, Blank and passive through the dun light, Staring blindly on his face: How that true wife said to Pcetus, With calm smile and wounded heart — "Sweet, it hurts not!" —how Admetus Saw his blessed one depart. How King Arthur proved his mission,And Sir Rowland wound his horn,And at Sangreal's moony vision Swords did bristle round like corn. Oh! ye lifted up your head, and it seemed the while ye read, 264 THE FOURFOLD ASPECT. That this death, then, must be found A Valhalla for the crownedThe heroic who prevail: None, be sure, can enter in Far below a paladin Of a noble, noble tale!So, awfully, ye thought upon the Dead. Ay! but soon ye woke up shrieking,As a child that wakes at night From a dream of sisters speaking In a garden's summer-light,That wakes, starting up and bounding, In a lonely, lonely bed, With a wall of darkness round him, Stifling black about his head!And the full sense of your mortal Rushed upon you deep and loud, And ye heard the thunder hurtle From the silence of the cloudFuneral-torches at your gateway Threw a dreadful light within; All things changed! you rose up straightway, And saluted Death and Sin: Since,-your outward man has rallied, And your eye and voice grown boldYet the Sphinx of Life stands pallid, With her saddest secret told: Happy places have grown holy: If ye went where once ye went, Only teats would fall down slowly, As at solemn sacrament: THE FOURFOLD ASPECT. 265 Merry books, once read for pastime, If ye dared to read again, Only memories of the last time Would swim darkly up the brain: Household names, which used to flutter Through your laughter unawares,God's Divine one, ye could utter With less trembling in your prayers! Ye have dropt adown your head, and it seems as if ye tread On your own hearts in the path Ye are called to in His wrath,And your prayers go up in wail! -' Dost Thou see, them, all our loss, O Thou agonized on cross? Art thou reading all its tale? So, mournfully, ye think upon the Dead! Pray, pray, thou who also weepest, And the drops will slacken so;Weep, weep:-and the watch thou keepest, With a quicker count will go. Think -the shadow on the dial For the nature most undone, Marks the passing of the trial, Proves the presence of the sun: Look, look up, in starry passion, To the throne above the spheres,Learn: the spirit's gravitation Still must differ from the tear's. Hope: with all the strength thou usest In embracing thy despair: VOL. II.-23 266 THE FOURFOLD ASPECT. Love: the earthly love thou losest Shall return to thee more fair. Work: make clear the forest-tangles Of the wildest stranger-land: Trust: the blessed deathly angels Whisper,' Sabbath hours at hand!' By the heart's wound when most gory By the longest agony, Smile!-Behold, in sudden glory The TRANSFIGURED smiles on thee And ye lifted up your head, and it seemed as if He said, "' My Beloved, is it so? Have ye tasted of my wo?Of my Heaven ye shall not fail!"He stands brightly where the shade is, With the keys of Death and Hades, And there, ends the mournful tale: — So, hopefully, ye think upon the Dead. A FLOWER iN A LETTERo MIy lonely chamnber next the sea, Is full of many flowers set fiee By summer's earliest duty; Dear friends upon the garden-wall Mlight stop amidcl their fondest talk, To pull the least in beauty. A thousand flowers-each seemnig one That learnt, by gazing on the sun, To counterfeit his shining — Within whose leaves the holy dew That falls from- heaven, hath won anoew A glory o in declining. Red roses used to praises lonng, Contented with the poet's song, The nightinoale's being over: And lilies iwhite, prepared to touch The whitest thought, nor soil it much, Of dreamer turnned to lover. Deep violets you liken to The kindest eyes that look on you Without a thought disloyal: And caetuses, a queen might don, If weary of a golden crown, And still appear as royal. A FLOWER IN A LETTER. Pansies for ladies all! I wis That none who wear such brooches, miss A jewel in the nmilror: And tulips, children love to stretch Their fingers down, to feel in each Its beauty's secret nearer. Love's language may be talked with these: To work out choicest sentences, No blossoms can be meeter,And, such being used in Eastern bowers, Young maids may wonder if the flowers Or meanings be the sweeter. And such being strewn before a bride, Her little foot may turn aside, Their longer bloom decreeing; Unless some voice's whispered sound Should make her gaze upon the ground Too earnestly —for seeing. And such being scattered on a grave, Whoever mourneth there may have A type that seemeth worthy Of a fair body hid below, Which bloomed on earth a time ago, Then perished as the earthy. Aind such being wreathed for worldly feast, Across the brimming cup some guest Their rainbow colors viewing, A FLOWER IN A LETTER. 269 May feel them, —with a silent start, — The covenant, his childish heart With nature made, —renewing. No flowers our gardened England hath, To match with these in bloom and breath, Which from the world are hiding In sunny Devon moist with rills, A nunnery of cloistered hills, The elements presiding. By Loddon's stream the flowers are fair That meet one gifted lady's care With prodigal rewarding; But Beauty is too used to run To Mitford's bower-to want the sun To light her through the garden. But, here, all summers are comprisedThe nightly frosts shrink exorcised Before the priestly moonshine And every Wind with stoled feet, In wandering down the alleys sweet, Steps lightly on the sunshine; And (having promised Harpocrate Among the nodding roses, that No harm shall touch his daughters) Gives quite away the rushing sound, He dares not use upon such ground, To ever-trickling waters. 23* 270 A FLOWER IN A LETTER. Yet, sun and wind! what can ye do, But make the leaves more brightly show In posies newly gathered?I look away fiom all your best; To one poor flower unlike the rest,A little flower half-withered. I do not think it ever was A pretty flower,-to make the grass Look greener where it reddened: And now it seems ashamed to be Alone in all this company, Of aspect shrunk and saddened. A chamber-window was the spot It grew in, fromn a garden-pot, Among the city shadows: If any, tending it, might seem To smile,'t was only in a dream Of nature in the meadows. How coldly, on its head, did fall The sunshine, from the city wall, In pale refraction driven! How sadly plashed upon its leaves The raindrops, losing in the eaves The first sweet news of Heaven! And those who planted, gathered it In gamesome or in loving fit, And sent it as a token A FLOWER IN A LETTER. 271 Of what their city pleasures be,For one, in Devon by the sea, And garden-blooms, to look on. But SHE, for whom the jest was mecnt, With a grave passion innocent Receiving what was given,Oh! if her face she turned then,... Let none say't was to gaze again Upon the flowers of Devon! Because, whatever virtue dwells In genial skies-warm oracles For gardens brightly springing,The flower which grew beneath your eyes, Beloved friends, to mine supplies A beauty worthier singing! THE CRY OF THE HUMAN. "THERE is no God," the foolish saith,But none," There is no sorrow;" And nature oft, the cry of faith, In bitter need will borrow: Eyes which the preacher could not school, By wayside graves are raised; And lips say, " God be pitiful," Who ne'er said, " God be praised." Be pitiful, 0 God The tempest stretches from the steep The shadow of its coming; The beasts grow tame, and near us creep, As help were in the human: Yet, while the cloud-wheels roll and grind We spirits tremble under!The hills have echoes; but we find No answer for the thunder. Be pitiful, 0 God! The battle hurtles on the plainsEarth feels new scythes upon her: We reap our brothers for the wains, And call the harvest.. honor,272 THE CRY OF THE HUMAN. 273 Draw face to face, front line to line, One image all inherit,Then kill, curse on, by that same sign, Clay, clay,-and spirit, spirit. Be pitiful, O God! The plague runs festering through the town,And never a bell is tolling; And corpses, jostled'neath the moon, Nod to the dead-cart's rolling: The young child calleth for the cupThe strong man brings it weeping; The mother from her babe looks up, And shrieks away its sleeping. Be pitiful, O God! The plague of gold strikes far and near, — And deep and strong it enters: This purple chimar which we wear, Makes madder than the centaur's. Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange; We cheer the pale gold-diggersEach soul is worth so much on'Change, And marked, like sheep, with figures. Be pitiful, O God! The curse of gold upon the land, The lack of bread enforcesThe rail-cars snort from strand to strand, Like more of Death's White Horses! 18 274 THE CRY OF THE HUMAN. The rich preach " rights" and future days, And hear no angel scoffing: The poor die mute-with starving gaze On corn-ships in the offing. Be pitiful, O God! We meet together at the feastTo private mirth betake usWe stare down in the winecup, lest Some vacant chair should shake us! We name delight, and pledge it round"It shall be ours to-morrow!" God's seraphs! do your voices sound As sad in naming sorrow? Be pitiful, O God! We sit together, with the skies, The steadfast skies, above us: We look into each other's eyes," And how long will you love us?" The eyes grow dim with prophecy, The voices, low and breathless"Till death us part!"-O words to be Our best for love the deathless! Be pitiful, dear God! We tremble by the harmless bed Of one loved and departedOur tears drop on the lips that said Last night, " Be stronger hearted " THE CRY OF THE HUMAN. 275 O God,-to clasp those fingers close, And yet to feel so lonely! To see a jlioht on dearest brows, Which_is the dayight only..! Be pitiful, 0 God! The happy children come to us, And look up in our faces: They ask us-Was it thus, and thus, When we were in their places? We cannot speak:- we see anew The hills we used to live in; And feel our mother's smile press through The kisses she is giving. Be pitiful, O God! We pray together at the kirk, For mercy, mercy, solelyHands weary with the evil work, We lift them to the Holy! The corpse is calm below our kneeIts spirit, bright before TheeBetween them, worse than either, weWithout the rest or glory! Be pitiful, 0 God! We leave the communing of men, The murmur of the passions; And live alone, to live again With endless generations. THE CRY OF THE HUMAN. 276 Are we so brave?-The sea and sky In silence lift their mirrors; And, glassed therein, our spirits highb Recoil from their own terrors. Be pitiful, 0 God! We sit on hills our childhood wist, Woods, hamlets, streams, beholding: The sun strikes, through the farthest mist, The city's spire to golden. The city's golden spire it was, When hope and health were strongest, But now it is the churchyard grass, We look upon the longest. Be pitiful, 0 God! And soon all vision waxeth dull — Men whisper, "He is dying:" We cry no more, Be pitiful!" — We have no strength for crying: No strength, no need! Then, Soul of mine, Look up and triumph ratherLo! in the depth of God's Divine, The Son adjures the FatherBE PITIFUL, 0 GOD! LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. -— " discordance that can accord." ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE. A ROSE once grew within A garden April-green, In her loneness, in her loneness, And the fairer for that oneness. A white rose delicate, On a tall bough and straight! Early comer, early comer, Never waiting for the summer. Her pretty gestes did win South winds to let her in, In her loneness, in her loneness, All the fairer for that oneness. " For if I wait," said she, " Till times for roses be,For the musk-rose and the moss-rose, Royal-red and maiden-blush rose,VOL. II.-24 277 A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. " What glory then for me In such a company?Roses plenty, roses plenty, And one nightingale for twenty? "Nay, let me in," said she, " Before the rest are free,In my loneness, in my loneness, All the fairer for that oneness. "For I would lonely stand, Uplifting my white hand,On a mission, on a mission, To declare the coming vision. " Upon which lifted sign, What worship will be mine? What addressing, what caressing! And what thank, and praise, and blessing! "A windlike joy will rush Through every tree and bush, Bending softly in affection And spontaneous benediction. " Insects, that only may Live in a sunbright ray, To my whiteness, to my whiteness, Shall be drawn, as to a brightness," And every moth and bee, Approach me reverently; Wheeling o'er me, wheeling o'er me, Coronals of motioned glory. A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. 279 " Three larks shall leave a cloud; To my whiter beauty vowedSinging gladly all the moontide, Never-waiting for the suntide. "Ten nightingales shall flee Their woods for love of me, — Singing sadly all the suntide, Never waiting for the moontide. " I ween the very skies Will look down with surprise, When low on earth they see me, With my starry aspect dreamy! "And earth will call her flowers To hasten out of doors, — By their curtsies and sweet-smelling, To give grace to my foretelling." So praying, did she win South winds to let her in, In her loneness, in her loneness, And the fairer for that oneness. But ah! —alas for her! No thing did minister To her praises, to her praises, More than might unto a daisy's. No tree nor bush was seen To boast a perfect green; Scarcely having, scarcely having, Onc leaf broaLd enough for waving. 280 A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. The little flies did crawl Along the southern wall, — Faintly shifting, faintly shifting Wings scarce strong enough for lifting. The lark, too high or low, I ween, did miss her so; With his nest down in the gorses, And his song in the star-courses. The nightingale did please To loiter beyond seas. Guess him in the happy islands, Learning music from the silence. Only the bee, forsooth, Came in the place of both; Doing honor, doing honor, To the honey-dews upon her. The skies looked coldly down, As on a royal crown; Then with drop for drop, at leisure, They began to rain for pleasure. Whereat the earth did seem To waken from a dream, Winter-frozen, winter-frozen, Her unquiet eyes unclosingSaid to the Rose —" Ha, Snow! And art thou fallen so? Thou, who wert enthroned stately All along my mountains, lately? A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. 281 "Holla, thou world-wide snow! And art thou wasted so? With a little bough to catch thee, And a little bee to watch thee!" -Poor Rose to be misknown! Would, she had ne'er been blown, In her loneness, in her loneness,All the sadder for that oneness! Some word she tried to saySome no... ah, wellaway! But the passion did o'ercome her, And the fair frail leaves dropped from herDropped from her, fair and mute, Close to a poet's foot, Who beheld them, smiling slowly, As at something sad yet holy: Said, " Verily and thus It chanceth eke with us Poets singing sweetest snatches, While that deaf men keep the watches"Vaunting to come before Our own age evermore, In a loneness, in a loneness, And the nobler for that oneness! "Holy in voice and heart, — To high ends, set apart! All unmated, all unmated, Because so consecrated. 24* 282 A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE "But if alone we be, Where is our empiry? And if none can reach our stature, Who can praise our lofty nature? "What bell will yield a tone, Swung in the air alone? If no brazen clapper bringing, Who can hear the chimed ringing? " What angel, but would seem To sensual eyes, ghost-dim. And without assimilation, Vain is inter-penetration. "And thus, what can we do, Poor rose and poet too, Who both antedate our mission In an unprepared season? "Drop leaf-be silent songCold things we come among: We must warm them, we must warm them, Ere we ever hope to charm them. "Howbeit " (here his face Lightened around the place,So to mark the outward turning Of his spirit's inward burning)"Something, it is, to hold In God's worlds manifold, First revealed to creature-duty, Some new form of His mild Beauty! A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. 283 " Whether that form respect The sense or intellect, Holy be, in mood or meadow, The Chief Beauty's sign and shadow! "Holy, in me and thee, Rose fallen firom the tree,Though the world stand dumb around us, All unable to expound us: "Though none us deign to bless, Blessed are we, nathless: Blessed still, and consecrated, In that, rose, we were created. " Oh, shame to poet's lays Sung for the dole of praise,Hoarsely sung upon the highway With that obulum da mihi. "Shame, shame to poet's soul, Pining for such a dole, When Heaven-chosen to inherit The high throne of a chief spirit! " Sit still upon your thrones, 0 ye poetic ones! And if, sooth, the world decry you, Let it pass, unchallenged by you! " Ye to yourselves suffice, Without its flatteries. Self-contentedly approve you Unto HIM who sits above you, 284 A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. "In prayers-that upward mount Like to a fair-sunned fount Which, in gushing back upon you, Hath an upper music won you,"In faith-that still perceives No rose can shed her leaves, Far less, poet fall from missionWith an unfulfilled fruition! "In hope-that apprehends An end beyond these ends; And great uses rendered duly By the meanest song sung truly! " In thanks-for all the good, By poets understoodFor the sound of seraphs moving Down the hidden depths of loving,"For sights of things away, Through fissures of the clay, Promised things which shall be given And sung over, up in Heaven," For life, so lovely-vain,For death which breaks the chain,For this sense of present sweetness,And this yearning to completeness!" THE LADY'S "YES." " YES!" I answered you last night; "No!" this morning, Sir, I say' Colors, seen by candle-light, Will not look the same by day. When the viols played their best, Lamps above, and laughs belowLove me sounded like a jest, Fit for Yes or fit for No. Call me false, or call me freeVow, whatever light may shine, No man on your face shall see Any grief for change on mine. Yet the sin is on us bothTime to dance is not to wooWooer light makes fickle trothScorn of me recoils on you: Learn to win a lady's faith Nobly, as the thing is high; Bravely, as for life and deathWith a loyal gravity. 285 286 THE LADY'S YES. Lead her from the festive boards, Point her to the starry skies, Guard her, by your truthful words, Pure from courtship's flatteries. By your truth she shall be trueEver true, as wives of yoreAnd her Yes, once said to you, SHALL be Yes for evermore. A PORTRAIT. 4' One name is Elizabeth."-BEN JONSON. I WILL paint her as I see her: Ten times have the lilies blown, Since she looked upon the sun. And her face is lily-clearLily-shaped, and drooped in duty To the law of its own beauty. Oval cheeks, encolored faintly, Which a trail of golden hair Keeps from fading off to air: And a forehead fair and saintly, Which two blue eyes undershine, Like meek prayers before a shrine. Face and figure of a child,Though too calm, you think, and tender, For the childhood you would lend her. Yet child-simple, undefiled, Frank, obedient,-waiting still On the turnings of your will. 287 288 A PORTRAIT Moving light, as all young thingsAs young birds, or early wheat When the wind blows over it. Only free from flutterings Of loud mirth that scorneth measureTaking love for her chief pleasure: Choosing pleasures (for the rest) Which come softly-just as she, When she nestles at your knee: Quiet talk she liketh best, In a bower of gentle looks, — Watering flowers, or reading books. And her voice, it murmurs lowly, As a silver stream may run, Which yet feels, you feel, the sun. And her smile, it seems half holy, As if drawn from thoughts more far Than our common jestings are. And if any poet knew her, He would sing of her with falls Used in lovely madrigals. And if any painter drew her, He would paint her unaware With a halo round her hair. A PORTRAIT. 289 And if reader read the poem, He would whisper-" You have done a Consecrated little Una!" And a dreamer (did you show him That same picture) would exclaim,'Tis my angel, with a name!" And a stranger, —when he sees her In the street even-smileth stilly, Just as you would at a lily. And all voices that address her, Soften, sleeken every word,As if speaking to a bird. And all fancies yearn to cover The hard earth whereon she passes, With the thymy scented grasses. And all hearts do pray,' God love her!'Ay, and certes, in good sooth, We may all be sure He DOTH. VOL. II.-25 19 L. E. L.'S LAST QUESTION. "Do you think of me as I think of you?" FROM HER POEM WRITTEN DURING THE VOYAGE TO TIHE CAPE.'Do you think of me as I think of you, My friends, my friends?'-She said it from the sea, The English minstrel in her minstrelsy; While, under brighter skies than erst she knew, Her heart grew dark, —and groped there, as the blind, To reach, across the waves, friiends left behind —' Do you think of me as I think of you?' It seemed not much to ask —As I of you -- We all do ask the same. No eyelids cover Within the meekest eyes, that question over, —And little, in the world, the Loving do, But sit (among the rocks?) and listen for The echo of their own love evermore —' Do you think of me as I think of you?' Love-learned, she had sung of love and love, — And, like a child, that, sleeping with dropt head Upon the fairy-book he lately read, Whatever household noises round him move, Hears in his dream some elfin turbulence,Even so, suggestive to her inward sense, All sounds of life assumed one tune of love. 290 L. E. L.'S LAST QUESTION. 291 And when the glory of her dream withdrew,When knightly gestes and courtly pageantries Were broken in her visionary eyes, By tears the solemn seas attested true,Forgetting that sweet lute beside her hand, She asked not, —Do you praise me, O my land?But,-' Think ye of me, friends, as I of you?' Hers was the hand that played for many a year, Love's silver phrase for England, —smooth and well Would God, her heart's more inward oracle In that lone moment, might confirm her dear! For when her questioned friends in agony Made passionate response —' We think of thee,'Her place was in the dust, too deep to hear. Could she not wait to catch their answering breath? Was she content-content-with ocean's sound, Which dashed its mocking infinite around One thirsty for a little love?-beneath Those stars, content,-where last her song had gone,They, mute and cold in radiant life, —as soon Their singer was to be, in darksome death?* Bring your vain answers-cry,'We think of thee /! How think ye of her? warm in long ago Delights?-or crowned with budding bays? Not so. None smile and none are crowned where lieth she, — With all her visions unfulfilled, save one — Her childhood's —of the palm-trees in the sunAnd lo! their shadow on her sepulchre! * Her lyric on the polar star came home with her latest papers. 292 L. E. L.'S LAST QUESTION.' Do ye think of me as I think of you?'O friends, —O kindred,-O dear brotherhood Of all the world! what are we, that we should For covenants of long affection sue? Why press so near each other, when the touch Is barred by graves? Not much, and yet too much, Is this' Think of me as I think of you.' But while on mortal lips I shape anew A sigh to mortal issues, —verily Above the unshaken stars that see us die, A vocal pathos rolls! and HE who drew All life from dust, and for all, tasted death, By death and life and love, appealing, saith, Do you think of me as I think of you? THE MOURNING MOTHER, (OF THE DEAD BLIND.) DOST thou weep, mourningmother, For thy blind boy in the grave? That no more with each other Sweet counsel ye can have?That he, left dark by nature, Can never more be led By thee, maternal creature, Along smooth paths instead? That thou canst no more show him The sunshine, by the heat; The river's silver flowing, By murmurs at his feet? The foliage, by its coolness; The roses, by their smell; And all creation's fulness, By Love's invisible? Weepest thou to behold not His meek blind eyes again,Closed doorways which were folded, And prayed against in vain — And under which, sat smiling The child-mouth evermore, 25* 293 294 THE MOURNING MOTHER. As one who watcheth, whiling The time by, at a door? And weepest thou to feel not His clinging hand on thineWhich now, at dream time, will not Its cold touch disentwine? And weepest thou still ofter, Oh, nevermore to mark His low soft words, made softer By speaking in the dark? Weep on, thou mourning mother! But since to him when living, Thou wert both sun and moon, Look o'er his grave, surviving, From a high sphere alone! Sustain that exaltationExpand that tender light; And hold in mother-passion, Thy Blessed, in thy sight. See how he went out straightway From the dark world he knew, — No twilight in the gateway To mediate'twixt the two,Into the sudden glory, Out of the dark he trod, Departing from before thee At once to Light and GoD! — For the first face, beholding The Christ's in its divine,For the first place, the golden And tideless hyaline; THE MOURNING MOTHER. 295 With trees, at lasting summer, That rock to songful sound, While angels, the new-comer, Wrap a still smile around: Oh, in the blessed psalm now, His happy voice he tries,Spreading a thicker palm-bough, Than others, o'er his eyes. Yet still, in all the singing, Thinks haply of thy song Which, in his life's first springing, Sang to him all night long,And wishes it beside him, With kissing lips that cool And soft did overglide him,To make the sweetness full. Look up, 0 mourning mother; Thy blind boy walks in light! Ye wait for one another, Before God's infinite! But thou art now the darkest, Thou mother left below,Thou, the sole blind, —thou markest, Content that it be so;Until ye two give meeting Where Heaven's pearl-gate is, And he shall lead thy feet in As once thou leddest his.' Wait on, thou mourning mother. ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST So the dreams depart, So the fading phantoms flee, And the sharp reality Now must act its part. WESTWOOD'S "BEADS FROM A ROSARY.' LITTLE Ellie sits alone Mid the beeches of a meadow, By a stream-side, on the grass; And the trees are showering down Doubles of their leaves in shadow, On her shining hair and face. She has thrown her bonnet by; And her feet she has been dipping In the shallow water's flowNow she holds them nakedly In her hands, all sleek and dripping, While she rocketh to and fro. Little Ellie sits alone,And the smile, she softly useth, Fills the silence like a speech; 296 THE SWAN'S NEST. 297 While she thinks what shall be done,And the sweetest pleasure, chooseth, For her future within reach. Little Ellie in her smile Chooseth.... I will have a lover, Riding on a steed of steeds! He shall love me without guile; And to him I will discover That swan's nest among the reeds.'And the steed shall be red-roan And the lover shall be noble, With an eye that takes the breath,And the lute he plays upon, Shall strike ladies into trouble, As his sword strikes men to death.'And the steed, it shall be shod All in silver, housed in azure, And the mane shall swilll the wind: And the hoofs along the sod, Shall flash onward and keep measure, Till the shepherds look behind.'But my lover will not prize All the glory that he rides in, When he gazes in my face: He will say, " O Love, thine eyes Build the shrine my soul abides in; And I kneel here for thy grace " 298 THE ROMANCE OF Then, ay, then-he shall kneel low,With the red-roan steed anear him Which shall seem to understandTill I answer, " Rise and go! For the world must love and fear him Whom 1 gift with heart and hand."'Then he will arise so pale, I shall feel my own lips tremble With a yes I must not sayNathless, maiden-brave, " Farewell," I will utter and dissembleLight to-morrow, with to-day." Then he will ride through the hills, To the wide world past the river, There to put away all wrong: To make straight distorted wills,And to empty the broad quiver Which the wicked bear along. Three times shall a young foot-page Swim the stream, and climb the mountain, And kneel down beside my feet" Lo! my master sends this gage, Lady, for thy pity's counting! What wilt thou exchange for it?"'And the first time, I will send A white rosebud for a guerdon, THE SWAN'S NEST. 299 And the second time, a glove: But the third time —I may bend From my pride, and answer-" PardonIf he comes to take my love."' Then the young foot-page will runThen my lover will ride faster, Till he kneeleth at my knee: " I am a duke's eldest son! Thousand serfs do call me master,But, 0 Love, I love but thee!"' He will kiss me on the mouth Then; and lead me as a lover, Through the crowds that praise his deeds: And, when soul-tied by one troth, Unto him I will discover That swan's nest among the reeds.' Little Ellie, with her smile Not yet ended, rose up gayly,Tied the bonnet, donned the shoeAnd went homeward, round a mile, Just to see, as she did daily, What more eggs were with the two. Pushing through the elm-tree copse Winding by the stream, light-hearted, Where the osier pathway leadsPast the boughs she stoops-and stops! Lo! the wild swan had desertedAnd a rat had gnawed the reeds. 300 THE SWAN'S NEST. Ellie went home sad and slow: If she found the lover ever, With his red-roan steed of steeds, Sooth I know not! but I know She could never show him-never, That swan's nest among the reeds. NEW AND INTERESTING nnkhs fur 0n111ug tufptI PUBLISHED BY C. S. FRANCIS AND COMPANY 252 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 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