m
 
 IFOF 

 
 POE MS 
 
 DRAMATIC AND DEMOCRATIC
 
 POEMS 
 
 DRAMATIC AND DEMOCRATIC 
 
 BY 
 
 GASCOIGNE MACKIE 
 
 V \ \ 
 
 f Author of " The Ballad of Pity" and other Poems./ 
 
 iionDon : 
 I- I.I.I" I STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. I < 
 
 CIarton = on = sea: 
 LINK BROTHERS, PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS. 
 
 1893. 
 
 All rights reserrrd.
 
 sr 
 
 pfU'02 
 
 A i
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The New Spirit 
 
 Endymion's Appeal 
 
 Keats 
 
 Chatterton's Despair 
 
 In the Shadow of the Church 
 
 Lines on an Old Man Reading 
 
 On the Multiplicity of Poets 
 
 Rural Life in England 
 
 Seeds of Progress 
 
 Ferdinand 
 
 A Uemocratii Chant 
 
 The Wanderer's Return 
 
 Love's Conqnesl 
 
 A Falling Stai 
 
 A Harmless Ditty 
 
 Alone! 
 
 Lullaby 
 
 e'l Patience 
 Lovei and Bdoralisl 
 
 I he Cost "I Vn lory 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 12 
 
 20 
 
 3° 
 34 
 
 38 
 
 4' 
 49 
 58 
 
 79 
 101 
 104 
 1 00 
 1 10 
 1 r 1 
 1 12 
 
 "3 
 114 
 116
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 Lonely Love - - - 118 
 
 Autumn Song - - - I21 
 
 The Sand Flower - - ,22 
 
 The Metaphysician - - - I2 5 
 
 The Heights of Winder - - 128 
 
 The Twilight Star - - *3' 
 
 Oft in Elysian Rapture - - - '33 
 
 Good-night— not Good-bye - - - "34 
 
 A Magic Field - - - '35 
 
 Sehnsucht - - " " '3" 
 
 A Pagan Chorale - - - "39 
 
 A Boy's Day Dream - - '4° 
 
 To a Young Poet - - - '43 
 
 Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Last Voyage »44 
 
 Nature's Ethics - - - - 146 
 
 The Poplars (with song) - - '4 8 
 
 Down Stream - - - '5 2 
 
 October, Good-bye - '59 
 
 Autumn Touches - - - lbl 
 Mediocrity Answered 
 
 [6;
 
 THE NEW SPIRIT 
 
 The catalogue of common things 
 Is no more common, no more dull ; 
 Not solely in the bird that sings, 
 Not wholly in the Beautiful 
 So-called, lives wonder and the hope 
 Of the great future; nay, the dawn 
 Of Science brings a wider scope : 
 Poetic imag'ry is worn 
 To Bhreds and patches, fain would seek 
 A deeper impulse, and renew 
 Lost wavs of Nature ; so with meek 
 And steadfast eye let me review,
 
 THK NF.W SPIRIT 
 
 And trace here with a truthful hand 
 The landscape at my feet. 
 
 Behold- 
 A morning toward the close of March. 
 Grey clouds in sullen masses roll'd, 
 With patches of azure, overarch 
 The earth ; and gusts of warm wind stir 
 The pregnant trees, and swell the seeds 
 Unseen, of Spring; while lovelier 
 Glimpses of sun athwart the meads 
 Wake song, and lend the grass a hue 
 Of livelier green — a hundred roods 
 Of vale and meadow I can view 
 Here from this knoll, till distant woods 
 Sink in the circling gray, and mist 
 Obscure the hills behind ; — what wealth 
 Of lights and shadows melt- and twist, 
 Quiver with mirih and sport in stealth,
 
 THE NEW SPIRIT 
 
 Linger and lengthen, quicken amain, 
 Play hide-and-seek with breeze and trees, 
 Race over the meadows and rest a°;ain 
 Beneath bare elms ! 
 
 Our hopes increase 
 With every hour : fresh marvels wake 
 The heart to happiness, and send 
 A challenge to the soul to take 
 Plain facts, and use them for her end. 
 
 A mile away, a railway bank 
 Confronts the eye : when ;ill is still 
 At twilight, and I sit and thank 
 The sinking sun, and drink my (ill 
 Of quirt thought with all that is, 
 Lost in deep-breathing n .• rie, 
 Half waiting till an angel kiss 
 My Iq.s to s-.ng : 1<> ! suddenly
 
 THE NEW SPIRIT 
 
 Between the vision of my gaze, 
 The silence of the evening star, 
 'Mid drift of smoke and sunset- haze 
 Sweeps the leviathan afar 
 With thund'rous echoes, ringing rods 
 Of steel, and force devouring space. 
 O, surely men shall be as gods 
 Knowing the Good and Evil, place 
 Their feet in pride upon the globe, 
 Ransack the mysteries of the earth, 
 While Nature's splendour like a robe 
 Clothes this more glorious second birth : 
 Old things must pass, the mind expands, 
 Parochial beauty, selfish joys 
 Dilate, the general heart demands 
 Expression. Shall no fusing voice 
 Chant in plain strains the strife and stress 
 Man's work for man, life leased anew, 
 The progress through the patientness
 
 THE NEW SPIRIT 
 
 Of the great dead, our fathers, who 
 Laboured in secret for us ? Yea — 
 A mighty nation at my back 
 Pushes me forward, bids me say 
 (Albeit these youthful tones must lack 
 The classic poise) that "man ascends 
 From step to step by slow degrees 
 That cannot lapse : ample amends 
 Wait upon effort ; this that frees 
 Binds by new laws, sure laws for ever, 
 The relentless laws of liberty. 
 Man's link with Nature none can sever, 
 Man's mastery a fool may sec" 
 'Tis sung aloud by storm and cloud 
 And cleansing cataract; 
 The Race is born to Empire 
 That can grapple with the fact.
 
 ENDYMION'S APPEAL 
 
 Clasp me for ever in thy silent arms, 
 
 And press thy sculptured lips close to mine own, 
 
 So shall I need no other love but thine : 
 
 For all the woods are wild with choirs of birds, 
 
 And every lake has leagues of whispering reeds, 
 
 And o'er the foam the mermaids faintly call ; 
 
 E'en the vine-tendril tightens: O my love, 
 
 Mine unseen love, I am thy chosen one, 
 
 Faithful but mortal still, smit deep and sore, 
 
 For ever waiting and for ever sad : 
 
 Thou would'st not have me quit thee for a maid 
 
 Nurtured in men's abodes, e'en though her form 
 
 Proudly should move, with all love's argosy 
 
 Impearled, or lightly spread her laughing sails
 
 endvmion's appeal 7 
 
 To the passionate gusts of Spring — Lend me thy 
 strength 
 
 To walk immortal on these heights alone ; 
 
 With thee my .soul can scorn the ills of life, 
 
 Without thee, I am as the sliding stream 
 
 That purls a wayward course mid flower and fern 
 
 Down through green dingles to the deep beyond: — 
 
 The lowliest find love's equal and a home, 
 
 The dead are with the dead, companions all 
 
 In bliss or sorrow : only I perforce 
 
 Am ravished with impossible love of thee, 
 
 Striving to reach up with my wingless arms: 
 
 O awful goddess, whose cloud-sandal'd feet 
 
 Have paced a thousand centuries away, 
 
 Watching this earth wheel fiercely on and on 
 
 Through death and change revolving; dost thou stoop 
 
 To stab with beauty an ephemeral youth, 
 
 Whose voice but deepened, when thy mysteries 
 
 Bade hush his saucy notes? — no skylark now,
 
 8 ENHYM ION'S API'KAI. 
 
 Warbling shrill dawn-songs 'neath an April sun, 
 But stern and resolute: nerve and sinew set 
 To wrestle and to race. 
 
 O why, white witch. 
 Wilt thou not let me live as other men ? 
 Why should I loiter on this lonesome steep, 
 Why bivouac under stars innumerable, 
 Innumerable stars and liquid chasms 
 Of silent peace ? whence issuing from a cloud, 
 Thy naked grandeur breaks upon my watch 
 And whirls me heaven-ward, and I know not where, 
 Only this ecstasy will slay me soon ; 
 And other shepherds, as they wind at dawn 
 Up the thin mountain-path, carelessly singing 
 Of kine and harvest-home, the pastoral life, 
 Will start to stumble on the form of one 
 Too heavily sleeping, to be called and hear. 
 
 Ah, but thou lov'st me, else I could not dare
 
 ENDYMION S APPEAL 9 
 
 To raise mere mortal eyes and gaze on thee ; 
 Thou lov'dst me first; while still a careless lad, 
 One night in sleep the strange ambrosial musk 
 That marks thine advent, and all other gods, 
 Stole through my senses, and the world was changed. 
 I woke at dawn and longed to sleep again ; 
 And when I slept, I cursed the chain of sleep 
 That showed but held me from thee. 
 
 But at last 
 Thou didst descend and fold me in thine arms ; 
 I felt the life-beat of the universe, 
 Pressing mine ear against thy breast ; I clung, 
 And let thy deity raise me from the earth, 
 Only by thee supported : ah ! what bliss ! 
 In thine austerity plowed deeper fires 
 Than loosed lipped dalliance can excite by wine 
 Or languid cadence; thy firm mouth could tell 
 Of ecstasies beyond the Bcale of song,
 
 10 ENDYMION S APPEAL 
 
 Where silence sweeps the cosmic chords of love, 
 
 Spirit with spirit subtly interfused, 
 
 Speech without language, wisdom without years, 
 
 Untrammelled, fearless, though the shoreless heights 
 
 Together ranging, in majestic joy, 
 
 These were our nuptials. 
 
 Thou didst promise once, 
 When first thy sovran voice rang through the mists 
 That cap these hilltops, and I felt the thrill 
 That bade me upward glance : — Wilt thou forget 
 That promise, for to give becomes a god, 
 And mortals need the gifts immortals give ? 
 Grant then, dear goddess, this request of mine, 
 Redeem thy words, leave men their treachery; 
 Make me thy seer, and hide within my soul 
 The comfort of thy secret : though no more 
 Mine eyes may watch the pearl of thine approach, 
 Do not deceive me, else may I become
 
 ENDYMION S APPEAL II 
 
 Irresolute and irrational and morose, 
 Or seek to lose myself in lower love, 
 Who now am filled with infinite content: 
 Thine image must not wither like a dream 
 When one awakes, nor vanish with the shapes 
 That filled my cloudland-boyhood long ago, 
 But throb for ever in this heart— thy home. 
 Fair are the forms of women ; none like thine 
 Have stirred my soul with glorious energies 
 By subtle contact, when deep waves of joy 
 Roll their triumphant crests along the sand, 
 And flood this sense-bound shore, my body ; ah ! 
 If not with thee, yet in untrammelled vision 
 Alone, still let me feel the gods gaze down, 
 And breathe with us from their serene abodes; 
 So am I constant still if thou art kind, 
 For ever humble and for ever jrlad.
 
 KEATS 
 
 Severn ! where is the bottom of such grief ? 
 
 Say ! what can calm my heart's tempestuous heat ? 
 
 These throbbing temples knock for Death's release, 
 
 Aye, that word Death's my only comfort now. 
 
 Say me not nay, nor strive to win me back, 
 
 Dark Charon's mantle flutters at my side, 
 
 And soon must Iris slit the slender thread 
 
 That binds me to this body. — Tell me, friend — 
 
 But no ! Give me the laudanum, give it me 
 
 I say ; this farce is deadening work for you ! 
 
 Day after day to play the woman thus, 
 
 To feed, to nurse, to watch, night after night : 
 
 The case is hopeless, Severn, let me die, 
 
 What is the world to me or I to the world ! 
 
 A dream, a dream — the fifth Act's far too long.
 
 KEATS 1 3 
 
 Severn, you are the only friend I have, 
 
 And you I hate to keep. What am I worth 
 
 That I should waste the hours your Art should 
 claim ; 
 
 And yet you will not leave me, Severn ? no, — 
 
 Am I in Rome ? — the wonder of the world, 
 Necropolis of purpled conquerors, 
 Cradle of buried Csesars. — Here are groves 
 Which Virgil and Maecenas doubtless paced, 
 And shady porticoes which catch the North 
 Where Horace may have quaffed Falernian wine, 
 And praised his Sabine farm. — Am I in Rome ? 
 And I must lie here dying and see nothing ! 
 O dust, rebellious dust, so silent now. 
 Where be those patrons and their lleeting clients, 
 Patrician, pleb, tribune and senator ? — 
 Vague names to fill a schoolboy's idle head. 
 Where be those gluttonous emperors, whose feasts
 
 14 KEATS 
 
 Amused my youth — and where those classic faces, 
 
 Warriors and statesmen, orators and poets, 
 
 Whose works and words the world has learnt 
 by heart ? 
 
 Sooner or later we all come to this ; 
 
 What's fame and name and grandeur ? — Give us 
 peace. 
 
 Play to me, Severn, that soft minuet 
 
 Of Haydn's soothed me much. — I seemed to see 
 
 A careful garden haunted by the dead, 
 
 Clipt yews and box-hedge, a long gravel-sweep 
 
 Of kissing chestnuts, and/trim beds of flowers, 
 
 And a rosy arbour l?ced with eglantine, 
 
 And lilac fleeced with dew ; and lawns of grass — 
 
 Green English lawns, so common everywhere ; 
 
 But 0,;,to one, whom sickness has stretched low, 
 
 How exquisite is e'en a blade of grass ! 
 
 Alas, imagination will not stop : 
 
 I see a woman waiting for me there,
 
 KEATS 15 
 
 Her face out-pearls the moon, her locks of gold 
 
 Have leashed my straining soul, and these lorn orbs 
 
 Change colour gazing in those azure wells 
 
 Too deep for poet's praise ; silence alone 
 
 And 'bated breath can give him strength to dive, 
 
 And sound the secret of his lady's eyes : 
 
 But I am weak — it was a cloud, 3 dream, 
 
 O God, let me not dream. 
 
 But look there, see, 
 A fairy lights the other taper, see ! 
 That's merry, Severn, merry, 'tis indeed : 
 Alas ! how small a thing can please the sick. 
 
 Once — once I vowed the moon should be my bride, 
 The morning star my bright-hair* d seneschal, 
 Like passionless Hesperus, my soul should brood 
 On beauty, free from love's consuming fang ; 
 Pan my apostle, and stream-haunted woods
 
 1 6 KEATS 
 
 Our happy home, — but oh, that dream has fled. 
 For long or e'er the face of man was seen, 
 Beauty knew sorrow for her paramour, 
 And Nature's nuptials are not lightly made, 
 Nor brook man's arbitration ; with them, Death, 
 Concealed behind the flaming torch he held, 
 As patient as a shadow, stood unseen ; 
 And as the pine torch wept, the shadow grew. 
 Has not some sculptor told the tale in stone ? 
 
 Ah ! Myths of Hellas ere mankind grew gray ! 
 Ah ! Hierarchy of Gods Saturnian 
 That only haunt a poet's fancy now 
 Where are those manly forms of spring-tide strength 
 That tracked the fleet hart over dell and down, 
 Cheering their wild-eyed comrades to the chase 
 With bellowing horn; the wind-swept hills replying? 
 Lost are the gracile shapes of boy and girl, 
 Wood-nymph and shepherd fingering happy flowers,
 
 KEATS 1 7 
 
 Sweet pagan figures of the Pastoral ! 
 
 Save haply, etched upon some potter's urn 
 
 They pipe to us of white simplicity, 
 
 The violet cloudlessness of Attic skies, 
 
 A world of hyacinth and glossy bee ; 
 
 In the morning of immortal loveliness 
 
 When summer filled the soul of Nature. — Gone, 
 
 Gone is that world's once naked innocence. 
 
 Why do we yearn for Hellas ? — Yet 'tis good 
 
 To have felt the potent force of Nature bend 
 
 Our weakness to her glory, and our poor hearts 
 
 Fire with her solemn torch— none bade me write : 
 
 There are no masters of that Art divine ; 
 
 Only the Spirit scoffs and buffets us, 
 
 And some supreme ideal in the brain 
 
 Tells to the trembling hand what words to trace, 
 
 But oh, when traced, how vague, how nugatory : 
 
 Yet still we persevere, still hope to catch 
 
 Some fragment from the feast of harmony, 
 c
 
 1 8 KEATS 
 
 Though long or o'er the song our souls desire 
 
 Float down, death comes, life like a bubble breaks, 
 
 And men soon cease to know that we have lived. 
 
 And yet we need no pity. Nature breathes 
 
 Her consolation on her children, and 
 
 Comforts the o'er-fraught heart ; on her relying, 
 
 The pageant of the world swims like a dream ; 
 
 There never was true poet who fear'd death : 
 
 Rather we burst life's sensuous chrysalis 
 
 And greet the Angel's consummating touch 
 
 With mingled curiosity and awe. 
 
 Whether we sleep or live beyond, 'tis well, 
 
 What Nature hath ordained must needs be best. 
 
 The grandeur of a man is in his soul, 
 And how he faced the forces of the world, 
 And battled with himself— his tendency, 
 And not his finished work proclaim him great : 
 Did he maintain the majesty innate,
 
 KEATS 19 
 
 The inmost soundness, the inherent force 
 
 Of possible perfection in the race ? 
 
 Did he speak out the truth, and hint the path 
 
 Down which the coming generations, winged 
 
 With plumes of fiery hope, shall crowd and press ? 
 
 The glory of a poet is to stamp 
 
 An indelible mark of natural faith and love 
 
 Upon his epoch — this I have not done : 
 
 But I have lifted up the sacred hem 
 
 Of Nature's loveliness, and sung the truth 
 
 That dwells with beauty — more I might have done, 
 
 But full completion was denied me. So, 
 
 Whether men call me great, or scorn my work, 
 
 Rocked in the cradle of adversity, 
 
 I eased my soul of golden melodies, 
 
 And pointing to the gate called I eautiful, 
 
 Sleep,— Stretched at Nature's feel for evermorr. 

 
 CHATTERTON'S DESPAIR 
 (Dedicated to J. A. S.) 
 
 This day of the week, tradition bids us know, 
 Died He who had no care to save Himself, 
 This day of the week will Thomas Chatterton die, 
 Having no care to live. 
 
 Had Barrett written 
 And sent me what I wished, had Beckford lived, 
 Or had the printers paid me what they owed, 
 Or had I owned one friend worthy the name, 
 I would not do this ; hear me ! in the future, 
 Printers and pimps should set up stock together, 
 For both are traffickers in human flesh 
 And prone to strangle immortality 
 By secret tricks of trade ; listen and laugh ! 
 Sixteen good songs for half-a-guinea cash ; 
 Fell, Edmunds, Dodsley— all the crew of them,
 
 CHATTERTON S DESPAIR 2 1 
 
 Willing to tap my brains — Did Junius write ? 
 
 I, Decimus, could match his stinging style, 
 
 And for that matter he's a purblind fool 
 
 Who cannot find a feasible argument 
 
 On either side, I found them sharp enough : 
 
 Since Churchill was in vogue, I had a fling 
 
 At satire too ; the " County Magazine," 
 
 "Middlesex Journal," "North Briton," "Freeholder," 
 
 All knew me well enough : — Beside that work 
 
 Which claimed my deeper powers and grew in sleep. 
 
 O yes, I've struggled, but the dogs of Fate 
 
 Draw round their quarry, I am brought to bay: 
 
 Here in this dingy attic I must die : 
 
 Four months in London have I starved and sweated ; 
 
 Hear me posterity ! could a man do more 
 
 Than this boy did, or nurse a braver soul ? 
 
 Only last month I spent my hard-earned pence 
 
 To send my mother and my Bister something 
 
 Just as an earnest thai I had that power,
 
 22 CHATTERTON S DESPAIR 
 
 Which given the chance, should lift us out of want 
 
 And they should live to praise the Bristol boy, 
 
 And share his fame. O but my life has been 
 
 One brief ambitious stare : too proud to bend : 
 
 To crave a favour, stoop to menial toil, 
 
 Too proud : For to the mystic lady-Muse 
 
 I vowed myself a dauntless chevalier 
 
 From earliest childhood. Has it led to this? 
 
 Dost thou betray me, while thou let'st those live 
 
 In affluence, who fleer and desecrate 
 
 Thy godlike image ? Rise, thou haughty Sphinx, 
 
 Smite them, but let me soar. 
 
 And I might soar, 
 Could I but stomach Mother Angel's tripe 
 Given me for charity, because she knows, 
 " I'm looking pinched : She will not press for pay, 
 Because she sees I'm poor," she says "and starved." 
 She bade me once " Go to and be a clerk,
 
 CHAITERTON S DESPAIR 2$ 
 
 And earn my bread like any honest lad," 
 Sit like a monkey on a three legged stool, 
 And live by tottles ! Pah ! she turns me sick ; 
 Her sweaty brow and fat square podgy fingers 
 Greasy with cooking, make me shudder: Ah! 
 'Tis strange this psychic hand should have to waste, 
 While hers grows red with plenty : she has that , 
 While I must sup on this which now I take. 
 — Not yet, let's reason. 
 
 Thoughtful Seneca, 
 Brutus and Cassius, Romans, perished thus ; 
 Thus Cato, stern and calm : So Chatterton 
 Crushes his agony with stoicism — 
 For there's a limit which man's fortitude 
 Of suffering can endure ; but past that point, 
 The affronted will disdaining to be shackled, 
 Dungeon'd too deep in dreadful misery, 
 Finds a sure freedom by another way,
 
 24 chatterton's despair 
 
 And none but brave men dare to tread that way. 
 I will not weep, nor cry : " For pity's sake, 
 Give the young Poet bread," — I want no pity, 
 For to need pity is a pitiful thing, 
 And mark of mean birth. No ! I will lie down 
 Unconquered. Even the weakest woman knows 
 There are some snares more terrible than death, 
 A captain scorns to quit his sinking ship, 
 Dishonour slays a soldier more than death ; 
 And I, shall I submit? Never! Needs then 
 I fare to-night where hunger cannot hunt me, 
 And where the sting of pride is never felt, 
 And vain the lust of self-idolatry ; 
 Fame's herald cannot parley at those walls, 
 Nor shake the gates of everlasting sleep ; 
 Come death ! Thou seneschal of rebel dust, 
 That wait'st on all, in turn. Not yet, not yet, 
 Let me pull back the blind and seek a sign : 
 Alas ! the skies are very pitiless,
 
 chatterton's despair 25 
 
 God seems quiescent, and those stelled fires 
 Are void of comfort for me ; all is blank, 
 Nescient of sympathy and desolate. 
 Mercy! how have I made what fatal error, 
 How lost the thread in life's dark labyrinth 
 To stumble on this den ? 
 
 Come, I will dream, 
 And memory shall mock at misery, 
 And beauty share with hunger all I have. 
 This mouldy attic vanishes : I feel 
 The sharp salt wind go whistling past my ears ; 
 I'm on the gorge at Clifton ; far below 
 The sluggish Avon crawls, on th' other side 
 A forest frowns the sun goes down behind : 
 Behold me in my yellow stockings stand, 
 And garb of Charity. O cursed Fate ! 
 An antique soul lodged in a stripling's frame, 
 What can- I now.-' is not thought free as death?
 
 26 chatterton's despair 
 
 The wizard twilight holds me with a spell ; 
 I seem to see great warriors in the air, 
 Mail-clad, on winged coursers snorting fire, 
 I their magician ; when I give command, 
 They wheel and charge, or fall into the deep; 
 And far away to the West looms a vast band, 
 Deep-dyed in sunset robes, half-gods, half-men, 
 Harping of chivalry and battles old, 
 The castled pageantry of feudalism, 
 Cathedral pomp and monkish vespers swelling, 
 Rent standards flushed with many a bloody fight, 
 In glorious hurly-burly ; while my soul 
 Glows o'er the grand confusion, and is calm. 
 What are the prizes of small life to me, 
 The pitiful tricks, the narrow shallow limits 
 Of the mean pence-clutching mediocrity 
 In the town below ; when at the freak of will, 
 I'm lord of legions and the realms of thought ? 
 Master of these, I scorn that lower world.
 
 CHATTERTON S DESPAIR 27 
 
 Must I bow down before the Juggernaut 
 
 Of Mammon ? No, who will may temporise, 
 
 And wear a Janus-face, — but I cannot. 
 
 Let me go further back : a different scene : 
 
 The nearer to the dawn the greater hope : 
 
 But twelve years old, yet hard at work at home 
 
 In my own attic, where with parchments old 
 
 From Canynge's Cofre, books and chemicals, 
 
 I the young Faustus toil'd ; O happy days, 
 
 With none to break upon my reverie, 
 
 While hour by hour on Redcliffe opposite 
 
 Towering I gazed ; till antique images 
 
 Of monk and warrior marshalled in my brain, 
 
 A secret birth I would not deign divulge. 
 
 Shall I forget that evening ? while I worked, 
 
 My sister knocked, I would not let her in ; 
 
 She said, "A letter for you;" up I jumped, 
 
 Unlocked the door sufficient for my arm 
 
 Thrust through, to seize it; and as I broke the seal,
 
 28 chatterton's despair 
 
 I swore from sheer excitement. 'Twas from Walpole. 
 
 Here was the friend, the heaven-sent friend I craved, 
 
 The courtier-wit, the learned man of letters, 
 
 Whose kindly hand might help an aspiring youth ; 
 
 Bristol should never hold me after this. 
 
 To London, to London, throbbed my heart.— I've 
 come, 
 
 I've seen, I starve — but Walpole lives ! 
 
 O bed whereon I fall no more to rise, 
 
 Posterity shall judge who is the forger, 
 
 My lips are silent, justice is not here. 
 
 I'll not repent, defiant to the death, 
 
 For what I could I did and I have lived. 
 
 O double world, so hard to harmonise! 
 
 Eighteen brief summers is enough) I'm tired, 
 
 And very very hungry, but not mad. 
 
 Come to my bedside, mother, your boy is dying 
 
 Alone ; O take my hand and close mine eyes, 
 
 O cruel world ! you cannot hurt me now.
 
 CHATTERTON S DESPAIR 29 
 
 Bristol is far away, and home, dear mother ! 
 
 Alas ! I was not all a son might be, 
 
 But you could never understand my ways, 
 
 And no one understood — they called it pride. 
 
 It may be I shall wake and live again, 
 
 And love, and Heaven forgive. But who can tell ? 
 
 Delusion, and delusion, and delusion, 
 
 It may be death is a delusion too ! 
 
 Farewell ! You'll live, for you were never proud. 
 
 Will he not come home again ? 
 No, he is dead, 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 
 All under the willow-tree.
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHURCH 
 
 Turn, my beloved, let me speak a word. 
 
 Katherine, the die is cast, and day is done ; 
 
 No tears ! in silence let our last farewell 
 
 Be taken, for it is most weak to mourn 
 
 For that which hath no remedy but death. 
 
 I'll not repent, what have we to repent ? 
 
 While life is life, and love life's lonely prize, 
 
 Why should we weep that we have won that prize, 
 
 Though but to lose it ? as a flower that withers 
 
 At sunrise. Go! — but do not go : still, still, 
 
 Would I enfold thee in mine arms, and rain 
 
 Salt tears till all creation swim in mist. 
 
 Would I might die with gazing on thee, Katherine. 
 
 God made me man but man hath made me monk,
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHURCH 31 
 
 God made thee mine, but man hath come between, 
 
 So runs this transient episode away, 
 
 Love's labour lost ; home, home, a ruined hope. 
 
 My dreams lie buried in the wilderness, 
 
 Joys scattered on the barren dunes of time, 
 
 Proud thought o'erthrown — and beauty doom'd to 
 dust. 
 
 Thine hazel eyes will haunt me in my sleep, 
 
 Thy form swim twixt the chalice and the cross, 
 
 Thy brown hair touch my cheek, when bowing low 
 
 In fast and supplication, I implore 
 
 Mercy for sins that I have never known. 
 
 Go to thy homestead duties, I to prayer 
 
 And lonely cell and austere vows must turn, 
 
 To pore on ancient missal, and the Word, 
 
 And mutter misereres for the dead. 
 
 Did not the holy Master claim too much, 
 
 The impossible? O what most haggard deeds 
 
 Hath not religion been persuasive of ?
 
 $1 IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHURCH 
 
 I would I were a painter for thy sake 
 
 To limn thy face above the chancel, there 
 
 To smile for ever with the holy Babe 
 
 Upon thine arm, of motherhood divine, 
 
 Worshipped by thousands with adoring palms ; 
 
 Alas, no art is mine, only the pang, 
 
 And endless pity for thy withered youth, 
 
 For thou wilt never wed, though I am gone : 
 
 Sundered and silent, time will soon flow by. 
 
 Thine eyes are shells still trembling with the spray 
 
 Of seas celestial, flung by envious waves 
 
 Upon these temporal coasts ; soon, when the tide 
 
 Rolls up, they will be gathered back again, 
 
 And sink once more into the deep unknown ; 
 
 Whence issuing once, they told a wanderer 
 
 Of other lands and seas beyond the sun. 
 
 Life hath two scales, one Mammon's and one God's; 
 
 And when this is depressed, then that is raised ; 
 
 The heavy cross flung in the fleshly scale
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHURCH 33 
 
 Will lift thy soul to strike the stars on high, 
 So art thou nearest heaven in deepest woe, 
 Gethsemane's the porch of paradise ; 
 Katherine, farewell, the trial of faith is ours. 
 Katherine, farewell, still silent. — God is Love.
 
 LINKS ON AN OLD MAN READING 
 
 He sits in his arm-chair ; 
 
 Sunk are his eyes, and somewhat dulled perchance ; 
 
 The features scored and trenched with many a furrow, 
 
 Scars in life's battle, now to end so soon : 
 
 Scanty his locks and white : his clothes hang loose : 
 
 Creased his hand-veins and swollen ; all the marks 
 
 Of powers fast-failing recognisable : 
 
 And yet he reads, with one foot in the grave: 
 
 And round that snow-capped hive the busy bees 
 
 Of thought still hum ; and with the month's fresh 
 flowers 
 
 Crowd the o'er brimming brain-cells, e'er the frost 
 
 Of winter warn that working-time is done. 
 
 Why such activity then ? for we may guess 
 
 That none on earth shall share this aftermath,
 
 LINES ON AN OLD MAN READING 35 
 
 In the woild's busy mart his place is filled: 
 "Peace for the old," they say, "with meditation ; 
 For us new generations, yours is past." 
 And yet he reads ; and will none benefit ? 
 Mere waste, mere plethora of Nature's store? 
 
 But in the old man's face there shines a light: 
 ''I still am younger than you think, my friends : 
 And trust the instinct, for God does not jest. 
 It may be, when my twilight closes in, 
 And bees no longer hum around this hive, 
 But dormant lie in seeming death, and feed 
 On the sweet labour of the summer months ; 
 That I, like them, shall find good use for all, 
 Nothing superfluous, mere pass-time nothing. 
 It may be I shall need my knowledge then, 
 And in new worlds act out experience h( 
 For all God's works rise on a gradual si a 
 From pood !■> better, and from better hist:
 
 3^3 LINKS ON AN OLD MAN KKADING 
 
 Doubtless our use of life here must determine 
 
 Our station in the next — if next there be. 
 
 The economy of Nature will not waste, 
 
 Cannot afford to waste, one man's good hive ; 
 
 Here being needed, for a while I stayed, 
 
 That there, being needed, I may win a place, 
 
 And work my way through progress infinite. 
 
 I'm not so old as you suppose, dear friends ; 
 
 Though I must leave you, and with some regret, 
 
 And one world at a time; is the wise plan ; 
 
 Still I conceive no reasonable doubt 
 
 Hut that these cells shall pour earth's honey forth, 
 
 And in the fadeless fields of asphodel 
 
 Barter therewith for other honey, good 
 
 Alike for them, as their's will be for me; 
 
 From nothing, nothing comes. Wherefore, my friends, 
 
 Ply with your busiest wing from flower to flower: 
 
 Store up, store up, fill your capacious hives, 
 
 And garner knowledge while the sun is yours ;
 
 LINES ON AN OLD MAN READING 37 
 
 Aye till the curfew toll 'tis not too late : 
 Perchance, the last blithe truant laden down 
 With nectar, while the rest are snugly housed, 
 May bring the costliest essence of them all. 
 Whom to have lost had been great detriment."
 
 ON THE MULTIPLICITY OF POETS 
 
 " A locust-plague of poets now," one cries : — 
 
 " As grains of Lybian sand innumerable." 
 
 " Countless as the billows of Atlantic seas 
 
 That arch their scornful crests where no shore breaks 
 
 The grandeur of their limitless succession." 
 
 The critic groans "He cannot drain the sea:" 
 But better thus : " Profound Immensity ! 
 Loved boom of sullen thunder in mine ear ! 
 That trumpet of defiance to the winds 
 Which only deep and massive waters blow, 
 Is born of drops of salt confederate : 
 O who could wish a breaker less ? e'en bells 
 Of foam that scud before the rousing breeze, 
 Vacantly irridescent, hint the stress
 
 ON THE MULTIPLICITY OF POETS 39 
 
 And strife of pushing waters underneath, 
 
 While e'en the third-wave breaks incontinent : 
 
 But where's the loss ? Old Neptune still roars on. 
 
 Just so the complex choir of Britain now, 
 
 Say rather of the world's democracy, 
 
 Is grander in its multiplicity 
 
 Than any single voice of simpler days : 
 
 Sweet was the oaten pipe Sicilian, 
 
 Matchless the plastic plainness of the Greek, 
 
 Meek Maro's tender majesty ; the swoop 
 
 Of him whose phcenix-dust Ravenna guards, 
 
 How swift, how final ! Never has the voice. 
 
 Of singing ceased since that eventful dawn 
 
 Which smiled upon the jocund company 
 
 Of pilgrims bound for Canterbury : — But 
 
 Cephissus, Tiber, Arno, Thamesis, 
 
 Now blend their rich-ored individual streams 
 
 With the sad thunders of a coastless sea : 
 
 One everlasting oratorio
 
 40 ON THE MULTIPLICITY OF POETS 
 
 Born of slow-heaving waters submarine, 
 Of multitudinous waves, and buoyant billows, 
 Of scum, of broken surf, and tossing crest, 
 Mounts up, breathed from the common heart of all ; 
 And Neptune laughs to hear his children sing. 
 So let the sea-cow bark.
 
 RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND 
 By John Self, Rhapsodist. 
 
 i 
 I'll tell you how our village looks 
 In England at the summer prime, 
 My knowledge is not gleaned from books, 
 Or abstract thoughts of the sublime : 
 No ! but by communing and prayer, 
 From hour to hour, from day to day, 
 During the magic month of May, 
 With Nature in the open air. 
 
 2 
 E'en now the bursting blaze of gold 
 Blinds my weak eyes with dizziness; 
 I see the champaign fold on fold 
 Panting with bliss and lovelim
 
 RURAL LIFR IN ENGLAND 
 
 England ! dear garden of the North, 
 Whose sons are feudal, silent, proud, 
 Lords of the earth by all allowed, 
 She rears them here and flings them forth. 
 
 3 
 At dawn, — the window open wide — 
 The thrush, the cuckoo, and the lark, 
 By many a singer deified, 
 Are heard in every field and park, 
 No touch of grief is in their tone ; 
 But should you hear the nightingale 
 Plead low to the stars, and pause, and wail, 
 You'd feel how men still suffer wrong. 
 
 4 
 In May the chestnut's stalwart bough 
 
 Builds up its pyramid of light, 
 
 The first to leaf, the first to strow 
 
 Its sailing petals left and right,
 
 RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND 43 
 
 The bower of many a missel-thrush : 
 
 Then, too, the lilac white and grey, 
 
 Bursts, blossoms, weeps, and fades away, 
 
 Scenting the air at sunset-flush. 
 ***** 
 
 5 
 I see the red-roof'd cottages, 
 The smoke curls up — how blue and straight — 
 To-morrow will be fine, it says, 
 Or should be fine ; at any rate 
 'Tis better not to dogmatise : 
 The swallows skim the cattle-pool 
 Where cows are standing sleek and cool, 
 Flicking their tails to scare the flies. 
 
 6 
 There is a fragrant smell of milk, 
 Mingled with wafts of wild dog-rose, 
 Sweeter to me than all the silk 
 In which my b< i nted lady goes :
 
 4+ RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND 
 
 Where is the city's boasted charm ? 
 Take all the treasures of the realm. 
 Give me a hawthorn and an elm 
 And health upon an English farm. 
 
 7 
 The villagers, when work is done, 
 
 And when the thickening twilight lends 
 
 A beauty to the setting sun, 
 
 Loiter around the corner ends, 
 
 Smoking and gossiping at ease, 
 
 Their brains are never overwrought 
 
 Or harassed with religious thought, 
 
 They live and die in frugal peace. 
 
 8 
 The sombre yew-trees close at hand, 
 That guard the barrows of the dead, 
 Preach lessons all can understand, 
 Though beauty robs them of their dread
 
 RURAL LIFE IN* ENGLAND 45 
 
 The common course — the common fate — 
 The churchyard grass is wet with showers, 
 And bees are busy in the flowers 
 That mark the term of man's estate. 
 
 9 
 Death stamps a prescient majesty 
 
 Even upon the brow of want, 
 
 Death binds by ties of sympathy 
 
 The learned and the ignorant : 
 
 The proud Patrician lined with gold, 
 
 The Peasant- labourer in his blouse, 
 
 Meet, massed in death's impartial house. 
 
 And recognise a common mould. 
 
 10 
 The pride of race is being spent, 
 
 ocracy is taking sha] 
 An'i h< who boasts- of long descent 
 l only nearer to the ape
 
 46 RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND 
 
 Let brother take his brother's hand, 
 And own we are of equal stock, 
 Nature can build a rampart-rock, 
 By welding grains of simple sand. 
 
 1 1 
 
 What makes the splendour of the field ? 
 
 Tis not a solitary flower, 
 
 The waste of time to which men yield 
 
 Lies not in any single hour : 
 
 A drop of rain is not a shower : 
 
 A man, — be he however proud— 
 
 Is still but one among a crowd, 
 
 It is the mass that makes the power. 
 
 ***** 
 
 I 2 
 
 Many a half-hour one may pass, 
 Stretched in the meadow at full ease, 
 Amid a countless sea of grass, 
 Slow, undulating in the breeze :
 
 RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND 47 
 
 Imagination unconfined 
 
 Here proudly mounts where will may lead, 
 
 Can make a cloud an Arab steed, 
 
 And gallop with the rushing wind. 
 
 A touch of Nature's magic wand 
 
 Moves thoughts of manlier majesty 
 
 Than all the learning of the land : 
 
 Simplicity's enough for me : 
 
 To catch the wild lark's morning call, 
 
 Or take a solitary jaunt 
 
 To hear, beneath some leafy haunt, 
 
 The streamlet's flowing madrigal. 
 
 Long, long, too long I've felt the weight 
 Upon me of the cultured age, 
 Now with a shout, I spring elate. 
 Ami 1 [aim my lawful heritaj
 
 48 RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND 
 
 Let poets file their dainty words, 
 And filigree their Watteau-phrases ; 
 I sit and wanton with the birds, 
 And sing among the summer daisies. 
 
 '5 
 Nature, divinest Mother, so 
 May strength with undisturbed repose 
 Attend me whereso'er I go, 
 And calmness bring at evening-close : — 
 And grant, ere thy enshadowing wing 
 Close o'er the twilight of my days, 
 That I once more may sing thy praise 
 With worthier imagining.
 
 SEEDS OF PROGRESS 
 By John Self, Rhapsodist. 
 
 The wind was warm to-day, and smelt of spring, 
 
 The sea as faint with some long reverie, 
 
 (Her white limbs still half flushed with ecstasy 
 
 From the sun's lordly revels) slept secure, 
 
 Only one handmaid-seagull hovered near 
 
 To tend the sleeping queen — yet not alone 
 
 The ocean, but the land itself looked fair: 
 
 I know that buds will break on every bough, 
 
 And hope lend lustre to the tender blade, 
 
 E'en now along the thicket I desi ry 
 
 The noiseless midges weaving their airy loom ; 
 
 Joy throbs their tiny hearts ; the rooks arc loud, 
 
 And lesser starlings fly innumerable 
 
 Across the labour of the plough, to peck 
 
 Food from the new-turned glebe ; all birds are glad, 
 
 E
 
 50 SEEDS OF PROGRESS 
 
 A tantivy of gray pigeon from yon holt 
 
 Clap the warm light, pursuing and pursued. 
 
 O mother, mother, why this mystery ? 
 
 Have I not served thee well ?— and yet so mute ! 
 
 Love's tears will dim thine April violet, 
 
 The flossy bud of primrose hear the brook 
 
 And wake with spring, aye, every stick and straw 
 
 Will feel th' exultant thrill, and welcome give. 
 
 Shall I alone forget thee, and be mute, 
 
 Pass by in silence ? Ah ! I know not why, 
 
 The dawn of beauty is akin to pain, 
 
 And love doth wake in fear, no sensuous shaft 
 
 So poignant as the arrowy glance of spring. 
 
 Why do such mornings stir sad memory, 
 
 O why the bird's sweet note, unbidden tears ? 
 
 What would'st thou have me cry, dear mother, speak ! 
 My heart is pure to listen, quick to catch 
 Thy subtle whispers — may I say a word ?
 
 SEEDS OF PROGRESS 5 1 
 
 I did not come from nothing as ye know, 
 
 I am a part of what I see around, 
 
 For all I see seems to my inner sight 
 
 Arrested man — and thus my love expands 
 
 Till aspiration kindles into act, 
 
 And act reacts in wider sympathy 
 
 With all that is. The timeless distances 
 
 That loom behind tho least make him appear 
 
 Both small and great: small in the sum of things, 
 
 And great as having that to use at will, 
 
 Which millions of long years have gone to make. 
 
 I am not as an evening nightingale 
 
 That sings of sorrow all alone, and flings 
 
 Ilcr solitary song away in ha^te, 
 
 And drops in silence with the shrivell'd leaf; 
 
 If I am strong, my Btrength is also yours, 
 
 If I am joyful, you will share that joy, 
 
 The past has sown tl><- flower that springs to-day, 
 
 A plain meek man who i annot be dismissed.
 
 5Z SEEDS OF PROGRESS 
 
 The great world-spirit seems to chant again, 
 
 The pulse of poetry to stir anew 
 
 To grander issues ; if it once seemed good 
 
 To lock a fairy in a lonely line, 
 
 To carve a crystal cameo ; now no more : 
 
 Dazed arc mine eyes, my throat too thick for speech, 
 
 Good bye to fancy, give me fact instead, 
 
 The bald and terrible scientific fact, 
 
 This fills me with a hope that transcends all, 
 
 A hope, an insight, aye, a certainty ! 
 
 Ha ! for the rose's blood beats in my blood, 
 
 The beasts my cousins, and the birds my kin, 
 
 With every tiny elemental wing 
 
 I claim connection ; for the world streams on, 
 
 Creation does not falter, all that is 
 
 Strains forward and improves from day to day, 
 
 A grand and infinite complexity 
 
 Based on broad unity of cosmic law, 
 
 No split, no sundering, but resistless force
 
 SEEDS OF PROGRESS 53 
 
 Working in solemn order, upward ever ; 
 Why pant ? why hurry ? what is there to fear ? 
 Man's imperfections lessen day by day. 
 The chariot of the world's democracy 
 Wheels slowly on ; the pigmy Phaethon 
 Who held the reins of Empire for a day, 
 Drops headlong ; but Apollo never falls. 
 
 Think you that God in Piccadilly dwells, 
 Or yawns from clubland on wet afternoons, 
 A varnished cynic shod in patent shoes, 
 Grown weary somewhat of the ways of men ? 
 No, no, the kingdom of the poor draws nigh, 
 The Philistine is on thee dandy Dick, 
 Look to thy brains and not thy pedigree ; 
 For the workman stares his master in the face, 
 And those who sat in darkness see a light, 
 And there is something in the souls of men 
 That cannot be down-trampled, nor bought up,
 
 54 SEEDS OF PROGRESS 
 
 Nor patronised, nor pauperised, nor scorned, 
 And woe to those who will not recognise 
 That something ; for it does not dwell in one, 
 But in the race : Nature is prodigal, 
 And will attain her end at any cost. 
 
 The sky's no longer like a crystal case, 
 
 With a circling sun to warm the good flat earth, 
 
 And man as master ; nor the stars no more 
 
 Mere points of flame to light the bell-man home ; 
 
 Things were not made merely for man's desire, 
 
 To serve his ends : his minion or his thrall. 
 
 "Break me my heavens," quoth God, "and let 
 me see 
 
 Their boasted glory shrivel in the gaze 
 
 Of world on world, innumerable, proud, 
 
 Swifter than sight, whereof their pigmy earth 
 
 Swims like a bubble (albeit of my breath) 
 
 Upon the waters of the universe.
 
 SEEDS OF PROGRESS 55 
 
 Ha, these upstanding men that seem so great, 
 
 Of magnet atoms marvellously moulded, 
 
 They shall grow greater by another fall. 
 
 Witless you laughed, you killed my herds and flocks, 
 
 You raised yourselves an inch above the rest, 
 
 And made your God, a man ; my world, a board 
 
 To serve your appetites ; enough of this. 
 
 Know now you cannot kill a jot of mine, 
 
 My power fails not, no atom ever dies, 
 
 It cannot die, for I am in that atom ; 
 
 My progress marches on with steady foot 
 
 To certain triumph ; the music of my laws 
 
 Your ephemeral thunder mocks, you wake to sleep : 
 
 And pass like shadows wailing bitterly, 
 
 Cramped in your cast-iron creeds, until some flame 
 
 Heat the same atoms to another shape: 
 
 Then shouting yuu proclaim, " Behold the truth," 
 
 But truth is meek and comes not with a shout." 
 
 The spirit of demo< ra< y is mild,
 
 56 SEEDS OF PROGRESS 
 
 Wise without learning, full of sympathy, 
 
 Has no desire to quarrel about creeds, 
 
 Wishes none ill as long as they will work ; 
 
 All work's the same with her, no small nor great 
 
 Her heart expands and is not envious, 
 
 Her soul as ancient as the nakt-d stars, 
 
 As unashamed as Nature. 'Tis her joy 
 
 Not to decry the storied majesty 
 
 Of saint and hero, king and conqueror, 
 
 The pomp and pageantry of feudalism, 
 
 The cloistered lady, the romantic love ; 
 
 But she refuses to regard the world 
 
 As satan-bound, and sinful at the core: 
 
 Rather she feels God breathe through everything, 
 
 Making and moulding all to His good end ; 
 
 And all men help him who do honest work. 
 
 For 'tis the man that consecrates the deed, 
 
 And not the deed that magnifies the man. 
 
 Democracy has no desire to slay,
 
 SEEDS OF PROGRESS 57 
 
 Does not pull down, but rather levels up, 
 And wants no prizes in another world : 
 " O in this life " she cries " life to the full, 
 And quench the thirst of curiosity ; 
 The costliest foe of man is ignorance." 
 
 Wh'-refore, chant forth, my soul, in faith and love ; 
 And mix thy rivulet with the rushing river, 
 In the great whirl of things take thou thy place: 
 For now the night of sorrow dies away, 
 And creed and caste are melted in one flood 
 That rolls its mighty billows, crest and foam, 
 And tonnage of tremendous waters, on, 
 Till God's democracy emerge at last 
 Self-governed, self-controlled, speaking one speech, 
 Slaves of the lamp of love, and therefore free.
 
 FERDINAND 
 
 A'lquiet wash of water; moon, and miles of sand; 
 Horror of solitude ; God, Death, and Ferdinand. 
 
 "Hear me, Thou Lord of life! For am I not thy 
 child ? 
 
 Hear me, by whatsoever name best reconciled : 
 
 Prime Force, Creative Cause, Jehovah, Great 
 Unknown, 
 
 I cry, waste-bound I cry, alone with Thee alone. 
 
 The waves' hoarse diapasons mock me. Who am I ? 
 
 Sperm-germ of cuckoo-spittle — Man — O let me die. 
 
 For oh, to what vain end would art strain out 
 
 life's tether ? 
 
 Tis but a little folding of the hands together. 
 
 What of the night ? Speak, watchman-star ! " — 
 "The night will pass,
 
 FERDINAND 59 
 
 And morning break:" — "and wax and wane: all 
 flesh is grass ! 
 
 In vain I tread the crowded square, I pace the 
 wild, 
 
 To find one human face, calm, perfect, undefiled. 
 
 I see but incarnated shards and shreds of lust, 
 
 Legions of lost souls, hungry miracles of dust. 
 
 Oh for ablution." As he spake, he moved to meet 
 
 Ocean : white tongues of surf broke hissing round 
 his feet. 
 
 " 'Tis O for a new creation, a dream that we have 
 not dreamt, 
 
 A life of manifold action, if any were worth the 
 attempt. 
 
 Novelty, novelty, aye, till everything novel must 
 seem 
 
 But infinite variations thrummed on a threadbare 
 theme. 
 
 For the talc of the earth is told, and girdled the 
 earth's strait scope :
 
 60 FERDINAND 
 
 The fabled chest is exhausted, and science has 
 strangled hope. 
 
 Automatons all as it seems, in body, in will, and 
 in mind : 
 
 Destiny handles the tiller : necessity sits in the wind. 
 
 We compete and defeat one another: we labour 
 and know too much : 
 
 Our passions are frittered in folly till deadened is 
 Nature's touch. 
 
 The Apple of Love is eaten green ; we are flaccid 
 ere ripe, 
 
 We huddle and bubble together, till we trend to a 
 pigmy type. 
 
 We force and we forge our children to gather 
 untimely fruit : 
 
 To know if the brain be growing, we pluck it up 
 by the root. 
 
 And most are as grasping as feeble ; methinks that 
 there is not one 
 
 Who dare read by the inward lamp, or will suffer 
 and stand alone. 
 
 I hate this base generation of baby-egos and boys,
 
 FERDINAND 6l 
 
 This mart of mouthing and mammon, of belial- 
 babble and noise : 
 
 This age of smatter and smartness, of cunning 
 shallow and 'cute, 
 
 Where the silt of civilization scarce covers the 
 naked brute. 
 
 But thou, dread death, art firm : turning to thee, 
 we cease." 
 
 Slow swell'd th' voluptuous wave, and coil'd and 
 pluck'd his knees. 
 
 " O to see a new sun rising out beyond some un- 
 known bay, 
 
 O to hear the wild birds singing far away, and far 
 away : 
 
 Watch the planets flush at twilight over some 
 marmoreal sea, 
 
 Muse upon the cosmic vision where no fool can 
 follow me. 
 
 O my soul is lost in sorrow, sick with sighing 
 for mine own, 
 
 And my cry to God and man is simply to be left 
 alone.
 
 6z FERDINAND 
 
 Will they never cease to bicker, bite and blacken, 
 fret and fume ? 
 
 to hear the trump of God blare out their 
 
 everlasting doom ! 
 
 1 should laugh to see their fulsome vices 
 
 hypocritical, 
 
 Like the masks from actors' faces when the play is 
 over, fall : 
 
 Scan them naked and astounded, know them as 
 they really are, 
 
 See their pseudo-philanthropies weighed before the 
 judgment bar : 
 
 I should smile to see the man who sneers and 
 cavils at the throne, 
 
 Battens on the sins of others, strive to justify 
 his own : 
 
 See the journalistic braggart curl up like a 
 frightened louse, 
 
 See the editorial ' we ' shrink back as modest as 
 a mouse : 
 
 See the pariah and the pauper, see the outcast 
 in her shame,
 
 FERDINAND 63 
 
 Stand above the worldly-wise man, step before the 
 stately dame : 
 
 Would the heavens might sink in thunder, stars 
 splash, earth and ocean gape, 
 
 That the gods might close for ever th' annals of 
 the human ape. 
 
 Alas, vain is this loud lament — vain these sighs." 
 
 And now the rising sea plunged heavily round his 
 thighs. 
 
 "O that I had not been born into this aeon of 
 arid woe, 
 
 O that I had lived and flourished half a thousand 
 years ago. 
 
 In an age when life was joyous, somewhere in 
 the sunny south, 
 
 When a passionate love of beauty passed in song 
 from mouth to month. 
 
 Would that I could quit the stricken city, and 
 in lieu of woes, 
 
 Lie enchanted in the golden garden of Boccaccio's;
 
 t>+ FERDINAND 
 
 Laughing at his tales of frolic with their sly 
 insouciance, 
 
 Loll at listless ease, and eat the lotus-leaf of 
 indolence : 
 
 Verml maidens such as Botticelli painted would 
 be there, 
 
 Sprightly as a host of lilies, breeze-blown lilies 
 debonair. 
 
 Lo ! I seem to see before me in a vision at my feet, 
 
 All the youth and yeast of Florence masquerading 
 in the street. 
 
 See them pass! their reeling flambeaux stream 
 against a sallow sky : 
 
 Dainty comfits, darts of cupid fall in showers 
 incessantly : 
 
 Posies toss'd from tinsell'd casements pelt the 
 surging crowd below : 
 
 Damsels borne on milk-white palfreys, nodding 
 gaily as they go : 
 
 Frescobaldi, Soderini, Salviati — all are there — 
 
 Private feuds are drowned in revel, naught is 
 banished now but care.
 
 FERDINAND &5 
 
 ' Hail Lorenzo ! Lord of freedom : Hail Lorenzo ! 
 he is ours, 
 
 Welcome May, the month of madness ! Florence 
 hails the month of flowers.' 
 
 • Hail Lorenzo ! ' Lute and cymbal clash and echo 
 from afar : 
 
 Gallants dight in silken doublets follow his 
 triumphal car. 
 
 O'er the bridge while Arno trembles to the cresset's 
 fitful flare ; 
 
 See ! the- dome of Brunelleschi shadows half the 
 central square. 
 
 We defy thee, death, thou dotard ! while our merry 
 pageant goes : 
 
 Haste, haste, i arnival is passing. Pluck the lily, 
 strip the rose. 
 
 Haste! the spool of time is turning: Maidens, 
 make no long delay, 
 
 Prom tin- tangled floss of Fortune spin the 
 brightest thread yc may.' 
 
 Voice by voice, the minstrels catch and lift the 
 measure .is they 
 
 i
 
 66 FERDINAND 
 
 While the lyric-shuttle weaves the web of music 
 to and fro. 
 
 O'er S. Marco, shriller fragments, as the choric 
 voices swell, 
 
 Smite Savonarola brooding lonely in his cloistered 
 cell." 
 
 " But such pageants ceased. And Florence was 
 not merry any more : 
 
 All her wild hozannas silenced by the cannon's 
 shattering roar. 
 
 So, youth's democratic fancies, passionate visions 
 
 of redress, 
 
 Pass like pictures. Hemm'd and harass'd stands 
 he silent in the press. 
 
 Poor and disenchanted : now he seeks for 
 sympathy in one, 
 
 Marries in a blind delusion : wakes to find himself 
 alone. 
 
 Vainly he maligns his fortune; pressing wants 
 and cares obtrude, 
 
 And the fight for sheer existence scarcely leaves 
 him space to brocd.
 
 FERDINAND 67 
 
 All his soul's lustrous enamel, all th' ideal's pink 
 veneer, 
 
 Rubbed and worn away by living in the city, year 
 by year. 
 
 Thwarted by a thousand worries, petty pothers, 
 paltry strife. 
 
 Selfishness at last becomes the ruling - motive of 
 his life. 
 
 Cased and crusted in convention ; pillar of a 
 palsied church : 
 
 All his nobler speculations left for ever in the 
 lurch : — 
 
 Aye, we know the type of pillar, plethoric with 
 dews of grace, 
 
 Unctuous pillars, whitewashed pillars, bald and 
 broadest at the base ! — 
 
 be ridi< ulea his earlier vision of a perfect state, 
 
 Pridefl bimself on being purely practical — and never 
 la: 
 
 ah me, the ways of mortals Been so sad, 
 • omi< al 
 
 1 in carcely weep for laughing, laugh for 
 weeping at it all.
 
 68 KKRDINAND 
 
 Pitiful pathos, fierce philippic ; which is timelier, 
 who can say ? 
 
 While we watch the rising waters wash the sands 
 of time away. 
 
 Oh, my soul, thou ancient river, thou hast 
 trodden down man's strength : 
 
 Aye, that ancient river Kishon rolls us all away at 
 
 length. 
 
 Harrying, hurrying, marrying, burying, where' s the 
 wonder, where' s the worth ? 
 
 Comes at last the staid procession, sable steeds, 
 and dropping earth. 
 
 Ah ! these spaces stretched above me seem 
 surcharged with speechless fate, 
 
 Ah ! this scintillating, silver, shimmering sea 
 disconsolate ! 
 
 Man might be a king of beauty, man might fill 
 a god-like throne, 
 
 Could he learn himself to choose the law of nature 
 for his own. 
 
 But we imitate a copy, dare not be ourselves at all ; 
 Or we deviate from nature, just to seem original.
 
 FERDINAND 69 
 
 O ye sapphire chasms of splendour, tell me 
 whither, tell me whence ; 
 
 Shout the answer, echo, echo — I defy the 
 consequence." 
 
 But from the void vast night rang out no answering 
 note, 
 
 Albeit the bubbling tide had risen, and lapp'd his 
 throat. 
 
 "Out of the east and the west swell the sounds 
 of disconsolate wailing, 
 
 Wailing of infinite woe: sounds of interminate 
 ;hs. 
 
 For the heart of half of the human race is a prey 
 to delusion : 
 
 Ignorance, mother of sin, rules in the street and 
 the Bquare. 
 
 Roimrl and around like a mill-wheel the nations 
 from sunrise to Sunset 
 
 Toil; and a turmoil of tears is life; and death is 
 a Bleep.
 
 70 FERDINAND 
 
 I know, if stayed, I too like a straw should go 
 down in the maelstrom : 
 
 Therefore with soul undefiled turn I, dear mother, 
 to thee. 
 
 Out of the ivory gate have the sanguine illusions 
 of boyhood 
 
 Fled : but a dawn of despair breaks in this desolate 
 town. 
 
 Thousands of cynical swords, and legions of 
 devils beleaguer, 
 
 Banners and brass of the strong storm round this 
 sorrowful fort. 
 
 Alas ! there are traitorous curs too that lurk in 
 the citadel smiling, 
 
 Whispering, " Better to yield, better surrender 
 than starve ! " 
 
 Nay, by the deeds of the dead. I swear that I will 
 not surrender, 
 
 Therefore, inviolate death, turn I for refuge to thee. 
 
 " I will open the wicket of sleep, I will pass to the 
 garden of Lethe,
 
 FERDINAND 7« 
 
 Under the trees I will stretch, hearing the 
 nightingale sing. 
 
 Where the winds and the waves sweep never, nor 
 sign nor season revolving 
 
 Comes : but immutable calm rules, a perpetual 
 queen. 
 
 Under the boughs of the broad crepuscular cedar 
 of silence, 
 
 Couched upon sorrel and rue, lost in monotonous 
 gloom : 
 
 Alone, I will ponder at dreamful ease where the 
 shadows lie longest : 
 
 Marked from the boisterous crowd — waiting and 
 watching alone. 
 
 Nor folly, nor fever, nor fret, nor favour of 
 fortune shall find me 
 
 There, where the hemlock flowers whiten and wither 
 intact. 
 
 Flush in the fruit, and bloom from the bud, and 
 the falling of blossom 
 
 l'ass, but no change is felt. Summer and winter 
 arc one.
 
 72 FERDINAND 
 
 Quiet security rests like a spell o'er the spot, 
 and consummate 
 
 Silence sombre, and deep shade, and incurious sleep. 
 
 " Courage ! ere I pass for ever let me chant a 
 palinode. 
 
 Some by right are heirs of Belial, some are saints 
 and sons of God. 
 
 Some are born to sink in sin, and some are 
 framed to shield and save ; 
 
 ./Eons of ancestral influence make and mould us 
 from the grave. 
 
 Aye, and living, mere suggestion can induce a 
 waking trance, 
 
 And another guide our motive, lord of life and 
 circumstance. 
 
 But the puppet, self deluded, poses as a freeman 
 still, 
 
 Speaks of sudden intuitions, while he serves a 
 stronger will. 
 
 What is overmastering genius but an automatic 
 strain
 
 FERDINAND 73 
 
 Of the racial instinct somehow summed up in a 
 single brain ? 
 
 Many a link of dead endeavour joins the genius 
 to the dunce, 
 
 And he reaps in rich abundance seed another 
 scattered once. 
 
 Every kindred aspiration, every effort cf the mind, 
 
 Goes to swell the consummation of the mission of 
 mankind. 
 
 Not a sin. a vice is useless; no experience but 
 must tend 
 
 By accumulated wisdom somehow to the wished- for 
 end. 
 
 As the Israelites of old went journeying onward 
 with the ark ; 
 
 Genius plants the human standard furlongs further 
 through the dark. 
 
 He alone, or some few with him. sees by night 
 the pillar of fire ; 
 
 And his eyes reflect that glory : dead : his ashe8 
 still inspire. 
 
 " In the hour of deep disaster, when the cry is 
 ' [chabod ' ;
 
 74 FERDINAND 
 
 Flash of faith. A single strong man. Nations 
 thunder where he trod. 
 
 From the Jews' fell persecutions sprang the 
 world's white aloe-flower: 
 
 Prophets, monarchs, priests, and martyrs prayed and 
 passioned for that hour. 
 
 When He came : He was rejected, scorned His 
 summons from above, 
 
 Hunted like a lonely partridge was the Lord of 
 light and love. 
 
 True to-day the mediocre do not murder any 
 more, 
 
 True, the Sadducean critics serve statistics, not the 
 law ! 
 
 So they cry : ' He's mad or mattoid, genius is 
 akin to crime : ' 
 
 Baby-savans, blas6 cynics stab and sneer him out 
 of time. 
 
 By the great ones gone before us, better freedom 
 though in death ; 
 
 Than to fester in the city breathing in another's 
 breath.
 
 FERDINAND 75 
 
 I will tell the shades in Sheol : 'Merry England 
 is no more, 
 
 Only smoke and squalid millions, miles of brick 
 and mud galore ! ' 
 
 Faith has vanished from our faces : in this life 
 alone, it seems, 
 
 Must the wise man lay up treasure : and forsake 
 fanatic dreams. 
 
 Give us truth, whate'er the ransom for truth's 
 freedom we must pay : 
 
 Yet I think our mothers were not wrong to teach 
 us how to pray. 
 
 There a mystery unexplained still, and I hear it 
 on the beach, 
 
 Ceaseless in these surf-tongues hissing at the 
 seaweed out of reach. 
 
 From the deeper seas, an echo : ' Seeds are 
 scattered everywhere 
 
 Anl a soul of sterner fibre shall be born of thy 
 despair.' 
 
 Ah ! indeed, the individual withers, as the poet 
 sin:
 
 76 FERDINAND 
 
 We must die content to grasp the righteous 
 tendency of things : 
 
 Though so loath to hear the phantom knocking 
 on the other side ; 
 
 We must pass, and let the others blunder where we 
 used to guide. 
 
 Some-day, doubtless, somehow, though we shall 
 not live to see that day, 
 
 Man's immortal aspirations will be summoned into 
 play. 
 
 When our so-called education will not leave him, 
 like a child, 
 
 Naked of bread-winning knowledge, hungry in a 
 pathless wild. 
 
 When the curse of competition branded on the 
 young man's brow 
 
 Will not find him old at thirty, as it often finds 
 him now. 
 
 When the statesman will not turn the public trust 
 to private ends, 
 
 Nor the homeless needy lady have to live upon her 
 friends.
 
 FERDINAND 77 
 
 When the woman and the man shall stand as 
 comrades side by side : 
 
 When to help, not hoard the million, will be held 
 in highest pride. 
 
 When a conscientious thinker will not have to 
 quit his church, 
 
 Nor the callow curate clamour, like a parrot, from 
 his perch. 
 
 When distracted sects shall widen and unite in 
 love and zeal, 
 
 Christ identified at last with our humanity's ideal ! 
 
 All these things will happen some day, in the 
 future far ahead, 
 
 Some day in the golden future, after you and I are 
 dead. 
 
 O to live and love again when aeons shall have 
 washed us clean, 
 
 When this stormy world has wheeled into a cycle 
 more sere re I 
 
 As for this, my Roman exit, let him judge who 
 underi tan
 
 78 FERDINAND 
 
 God ! if God there be : I give my body and soul 
 into Thy hands." 
 
 A splash. A string of bubbles. A widening ring. 
 No more. 
 
 Only a quiet wash of water on the shore.
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 By John Self, Rhapsodist. 
 
 Behold ! I will sing one great song from the depths 
 of my soul ; 
 
 Of life : what it was, what it is, what it may be, — 
 the whole : 
 
 Not muffled with vague lamentation, not stammered 
 in rage : 
 
 Not beating void wings like a bird at the bars of 
 her cage : 
 
 Nor gazing with eyes from dim watching made sore 
 and distressed, 
 
 Not with burden of years of long labour and learning 
 oppressed ; 
 
 Hut buoyant, as after a lapse of unsorrowfol rest 
 
 On the lap of our wonderful mother, whose beautiful 
 br< 
 
 Lulls all her tired offspring to slumber with gentle 
 ■ iress,
 
 80 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 
 Who loves not her mighty ones more, nor her little 
 ones less, 
 
 So impartial is she from whose temporal prison I 
 break, 
 
 As free as from rock spouts a torrent, white-flashing, 
 awake, 
 
 In joy of wild liberty leaping in headlong career, 
 
 Too strong to be stemmed, too liquid to pause, too 
 swift to be clear, 
 
 But with frolic of foam-bell and froth and impetuous 
 voice, 
 
 He cries to the highlands and lowlands: I flow, 
 I rejoice ; 
 
 For the spell of the morning is on me, the mist of 
 the heights : 
 
 From the womb of the mountain I spring, from 
 impervious nights 
 
 In the dim underworld of deep darkness ; where, 
 pent and at bay, 
 
 Meand'ring in mazy abysses, I forced my slow way 
 
 Through slate, slag, and shale : till behold ! I leap 
 forth into day.
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 8 1 
 
 I ask not for smoothness, for idlesse : broad 
 boulders may block, 
 
 Pen, parcel and split: I accept them; with many 
 a rude shock 
 
 And buffet of cliff, I race forward somehow to mine 
 end, 
 
 Nor loiter to question and quibble whereto 'tis 
 I tend ; 
 
 For the weight of my waters impels me resistlessly 
 on 
 
 'Neath the sunlight of labour, the magic of twilight, 
 of moonlight alone ; 
 
 I swirl the green banks of broad meadows and 
 champaigns of corn, 
 
 Through forests of firs and through dingles and 
 dells where the birds sing at dawn, 
 
 Through great lone recesses, and chasms of un- 
 speakable gloom, 
 
 'Twixt drizzling black rock-reefs I gather with 
 thunder, and boom, 
 
 When ;tll th<- blind hulk of my passion is hurled 
 forth apao , 
 
 G
 
 82 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 
 (A polished white column of waters arched over 
 sheer space), 
 
 Eh- fountains of foam are dashed back again, 
 shattered in spray : 
 
 Bui I shake my stunned senses, recover, and urge 
 on my way : 
 
 Soon streamlet and burn, tarn and beck, bend 
 their footsteps to me, 
 
 My brothers, my comrades, they join me, they 
 long for the sea : 
 
 Though our sources be many, and voices may 
 differ — in purpose and love 
 
 With one soul to one sea democratic united we 
 move : 
 
 And who shall resist us persisting, who bind us, 
 who block ? 
 
 The) who cannot and dare not encounter are 
 welcome to mock : 
 
 They may stand on the bank, wring their hands 
 in despair, watch and weep, 
 
 And wail for the past that has flashed by for ever, 
 may wail for the steep,
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 83 
 
 Whence our waters first rose, the pure well-head, 
 the fountain, the source : 
 
 And others may fear for the future, the close of 
 the course ; 
 
 For already the waters are salt with the tears of 
 the ages, and dull 
 
 With the turbulent billows of passion, blind 
 pushing, and clamour: and full 
 
 Of the poison and reek of the mills, and the filth 
 of the towns : 
 
 Oh ! what can the future avail, though they court 
 us and crown us with crowns, 
 
 If the waters we drink are mephitic, the flood 
 that we float on debased, 
 
 With all the morn's innocent dimple and shimmer 
 and dancing < Ifaced ! 
 
 Well ! so let them wail as they will, if their 
 faith be declined : 
 
 Yet still, (» the grandeur of dust, the incredible 
 marvel of mind : 
 
 Ontl Mi'- gale, and defying the changes and 
 
 incea of time,
 
 84 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 
 Deep-based on the laws now unriddled, the facts 
 that are fixed, the sublime 
 
 Long labour, success of our fathers, who silent, 
 yet speak ! 
 
 O the endless progression of thought, from the 
 schools of the Greek. 
 
 And the city of scholars deep-brained, who could 
 gather the gift 
 
 Of the wonder and wealth of the past, who had 
 patience to sift 
 
 And to hand on the best to the new generation, 
 aflash with the flame 
 
 Of the glorified Nazarene's fire, whose immaculate 
 Name 
 
 Shook down the strong thrones of the Caesars, and 
 set up in place, 
 
 Self-sacrifice sweeter than life, meek might of 
 invisible grace. 
 
 Then came the slow struggles of creed, the age 
 of the Councils, debates, 
 
 Fierce factions, malign persecutions, betrayals, 
 intolerant hates ;
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 85 
 
 Still, under the crystalised dogma, the bull of 
 infallible Pope, 
 
 Dilemma, and logic of schoolmen ; the seed of 
 humanity's hope 
 
 Grew in cloister and castle, cathedral and convent; 
 the effort was one : 
 
 Monk, merchant, crusader and monarch, proud lady 
 and nun, 
 
 They laboured, they foughc, and they loved and 
 they yearned for the best, 
 
 For the something Divine yet unconquered, the 
 dream that would not let them rest, 
 
 Unsatisfied still, they grasped at the future, till 
 out of the East 
 
 Rang an echo; "This earth is not wholly a 
 snare of the Beast ; 
 
 The beauty that lures thee in Nature and woman, 
 the simple delight 
 
 Of innocent children, of homestead, and garden, 
 is good and is right ; 
 
 There is \<>y in the finite-, the lisp of the least 
 leaf may thrill thee, the hell
 
 86 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 
 Of the Eremite's madness, the scourge, the 
 seclusion, the ban and the cell 
 
 Are marks of vain torture, of helpless endeavour 
 to break through the bond 
 
 Of flesh that imprisons, that bars thee from vision 
 of wonders beyond : 
 
 But the wonder is round thee, the dust that thou 
 spurnest is pregnant with truth, 
 
 The books thou contemnest of Hellas are blossoms 
 of Nature and youth ; 
 
 No longer gaze mournfully over humanity blasted 
 by sin, 
 
 No longer strive vainly to solve the sphinx-riddle 
 by searching within, 
 
 There is earth at thy feet, there is life in the 
 street, there are joys that are clean : 
 
 Go, mix with thy fellows, despise not God's 
 creatures ; th' unseen and the seen 
 
 Must mingle, enlighten, correct one another — thy 
 visions of love 
 
 Beyond, are not all — all that is thou must love 
 that the world may improve."
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT .87 
 
 Thus grew the great Age of New Learning. There 
 were feuds, there were fights 
 
 For freedom of conscience, for government civil, 
 political rights : 
 
 And the wave of progression swept forward. 
 
 Then woke with a burst 
 
 From her feudal oppression a Spirit of marvel in 
 men, and a thirst 
 
 For adventure and travel and knowledge of others, 
 impassioned delight 
 
 As of children who gaze the first time on a 
 glorious sight ; 
 
 They swept round the world, they ransacked lin- 
 ages, translated and taught ; 
 
 They lived hard, they worked hard, the di< d 
 hard ; they sought and they fought 
 
 For Bomething they deemed very precious not 
 above nor beneath, 
 
 Bat for liberty dearer than life, and for love that 
 
 is deeper than death, 
 
 Here, here, on this earth. Ami like Titans 
 med with ambitious d<
 
 88 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 
 To wield from the heights of Olympus the bolt of 
 invincible fire. 
 
 Then budded the rod of our Empire; aye, chips 
 of the oak 
 
 Were the sires of the sons of the West, who have 
 flung off the yoke ; 
 
 But one blood and one race with one speech are 
 we still, and a time 
 
 Draweth nigh for a closer alliance to blot out the 
 crime 
 
 Of that futile oppression. 
 
 And then broke in battle a terrible dawn : 
 
 'Twixt the rights of a Monarch, the wrongs of a 
 People, the kingdom was torn ; 
 
 Heaven guided that issue through triumph and 
 failure : the struggle was stern : 
 
 But the strength of the nation was solid and patient, 
 could suffer and learn, 
 
 Though a frost chilled the early success, and 
 fanatical gloom
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 89 
 
 Wrapt all the gray island : but silently under the 
 doom 
 
 Of depression and stillness, as under the cloak of 
 the snow 
 
 Bursts a delicate snowdrop, that tells of the promise 
 of spring, 
 
 Waxed the weak flower of science, a modest and 
 tentative thing, 
 
 (While the rest of the landscape lay formless and 
 featureless, pale as a ghost) : 
 
 That clung to the earth, and was slow in its 
 growth, hardly noticed by most, 
 
 But still there it was. 
 
 And when Winter at last had gone by, 
 
 There ran a faint tremulous shudder through Europe, 
 a sigh 
 
 Of oppression and hatred against the oppressor, 
 but not a soul stirr'd : 
 
 And a voice of revolt against tyranuous priestcraft 
 which nobody heard : 
 
 In revel by moonlight with courtier and mistress 
 the monarch sat throned:
 
 90 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 
 And under the feet of the monarch the angel of 
 Liberty groaned : 
 
 "What are kings? what are rights? what, 
 religion ? " the sceptic enquired : 
 
 " Mere tricks of the stronger to harass the weaker, 
 gross selfishness tired 
 
 And trapp'd in deceitful apparel — society's built 
 
 On a lie — back to nature and freedom," they 
 cried: " let the guilt 
 
 Be avenged of their sons and their fathers : come, 
 let us restore 
 
 The reign of the people primaeval." 
 
 Then rose with a roar, 
 
 As of beasts of the forest when twilight is falling, 
 a nation enraged, 
 
 And wreak'd their red fury in wreckage and blood 
 till their wrath was assuaged ; 
 
 Till out of their ranks climbed a despot, remorse- 
 lessly strong, 
 
 A man of the people, who led them to glory, and 
 Europe ere long
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 91 
 
 Lay flat at his feet. But he fell at the last, and 
 his deeds were as dust 
 
 That reddens a terrible sunset : the fame of his 
 reign and his lust 
 
 As the flare of a portent that flashes and fades 
 from the sky: 
 
 But the dream of democracy widened. 
 
 And science arose, 
 
 And strode through the dark in the shape of a 
 giant, a giant that throws 
 
 The shadow of dread upon all that he passes: the 
 woods quake with fear: 
 
 At the sound of his footstep, the ring of his 
 hammer, the hills disappear; 
 
 He measures and mutters, the seas cannot check 
 his imperious stride : 
 
 He blows his great horn through the storm: as 
 he plunges his steel in the tide, 
 
 Waves leap to obey him, do darkness benights him, 
 he wat( 1ms in sleep :
 
 92 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 
 The roll of the ocean he changes to light as he 
 lolls on the deep, 
 
 While all the huge weight of his mail the mad 
 waters must keep, 
 
 Though they curl their white lips, hiss and heave 
 in his wake, they must toil at command, — 
 
 Soon became the great gests of this giant a power 
 in the land ; 
 
 For his eyes were so clear he could tell what the 
 stars were composed of, and note 
 
 All those little black minims that lurk in man's body 
 to hurt him, and float 
 
 Else unseen, in the air ; and his ear was so keen 
 that no sound could escape, 
 
 But words that were murmured at Cairo he caught 
 at the Cape ; 
 
 But strangest of all were the tales that he told ; 
 for like Zadig the sage, 
 
 The hound and the horse that he never had seen, 
 he described : and the age 
 
 Of the earth, and the various races of men, what 
 they saw, what they prized,
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 93 
 
 Ere Memphis was raised from the dust, or the 
 tombs of the Pharoahs devised : 
 
 And he spake with authority too of men's faith 
 and men's fears ; 
 
 "Aye, what were their creeds and their shibboleths 
 now in the ocean of years ! 
 
 He had made all religion a science, could trace 
 how belief had evolved 
 
 Through totem and fetich and ancestor-worship: — 
 the question was solved : 
 
 And man's mind was a delicate web of gray matter, 
 priest-figment the soul ; 
 
 His will but the ultimate strongest sensation that 
 governs the whole : 
 
 His freedom a farce, his crime a disease, and his 
 faith a fine folly." 
 
 So spake the dread giant, and straightway on all 
 fell profound melancholy. 
 
 Behold, I will sing of myself, for myself am a part 
 of the whole, 
 
 John Self, the waif of the hopes of his age with 
 the chant in his soul :
 
 94 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 
 For a nation brought me to birth, 'tis futile for 
 them to disown ; 
 
 For I have not sprung like a palm in the desert, 
 self-sown and alone, 
 
 But the desolate Past with long sighing and labour, 
 and passionate fire, 
 
 As he yearn'd for his shadowy Psyche, the Future, 
 his unseen desire, 
 
 Begat me : behold me, believe me, I am what 
 I am, 
 
 With the frame of my father who sleeps with his 
 fathers, but eyes lit with flame 
 
 Of the lady my mother, the deathless, the dauntless, 
 half-veiled and half-seen, 
 
 And I feel that she will not deceive or disgrace 
 me, my mother, my queen. 
 
 For oft, when the folds of the twilight have fallen 
 and covered the land, 
 
 In the fields I have wandered and pondered and 
 felt for her hand, 
 
 For the stately white hand of the lady my mother, 
 when roses are blowing ;
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 95 
 
 And raptured with glory of summer and gloaming 
 moved on without knowing, 
 
 Till stealthily out of the scent and the mist and 
 the gloom of the wood, 
 
 In place of her hand, there has fallen a kiss on 
 my lips, and a mood 
 
 Of clairvoyance, ineffable insight, and buoyant 
 delight ; 
 
 And I know that the soul shall strive onward till 
 reason and love shall unite : 
 
 Till passion and purity blend, and the "ought" 
 and the "is" be as one, 
 
 Till love shall no longer be wild, nor knowledge 
 wax sterile alone, 
 
 Till the heart shall not shrink from the head, nor 
 the head be betrayed by the heart ; 
 
 When the lion and lamb shall lie down together, 
 religion with art, 
 
 And the weaned child shall place his hand on the 
 cocatrice-den, 
 
 Aye, faith shall not swerve from science, nor 
 Bcieni e be faithless then.
 
 96 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 
 The ways of the world without shall not war with 
 the world within, 
 
 Nor the fruit of the tree of knowledge be plucked 
 from the boughs of sin, 
 
 The apple of love shall not waste in the mouth to 
 the dust of remorse, 
 
 Nor the face of a thousand ships bear the freight 
 of a nation's curse. 
 
 Our girls and our boys will be brought up together, 
 no longer divorced, 
 
 United in wiser reliance on nature, not fettered, 
 not forced ; 
 
 The mind of the girl must be braced by the boy's ; 
 no more shall inanity 
 
 Strangle the growth of her best, or swallow her 
 talents in vanity ; 
 
 The boy will be touched by the grace of the 
 maiden, and sweetened in soul, 
 
 Till from knowledge of either arise something 
 better than knowledge — control. 
 
 The poet's heart shall not ache for the ways and 
 the days of the dead,
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 97 
 
 For the present shall thrill and exalt him when 
 knowledge and love have wed, 
 
 No more shall his bosom heave like a salt and a 
 homeless sea 
 
 Plunging in desolate search of the shores of 
 eternity, 
 
 Nor shatter in cynical spray 'gainst the floes of the 
 world's cold face, 
 
 Nor batten and waste on the drift of the wash of 
 the commonplace : 
 
 No, no. (J receive me, believe me, take back, 'tis 
 thine own, 
 
 Tins faith in my soul, of the future prophetic: leap, 
 I. ap to thy throne, 
 
 Reign there ! thou art king in the realm of thy 
 splendour, no more thou art dust, 
 
 'Tis faith thai must crown thee triumphant in effort : 
 the ultimate trust 
 
 That dies unrewarded, that marks the divergence of 
 manhood from beast : 
 
 Ami this hi lis essence ma) be the possession oi 
 at< Bl and l< ast. 
 
 ii
 
 9& A DEMOCRATIC CHAN'l 
 
 I sing not of heroes, for all flesh is goodly, alike 
 in the main ; 
 
 I claim no advantage of birth or possession, I 
 share what I gain ; 
 
 I stand with my fellows, 1 nerd them : together 
 we thrive or we fall, 
 
 The sin and the sorrow of one is the sorrow and 
 sin of us all : 
 
 Society holds us and folds us in fetters far firmer 
 than brass, 
 
 'Tis as drops of the ocean, as leaves of the oak 
 tree, as green blades of grass ; 
 
 'Tis the pageant of millions that moves us to 
 marvel, the measureless sweep 
 
 Of the fields of the harvest, the gloom of the 
 forest, the roar of the deep, 
 
 And my spirit in rapture flings forth a proud paean, 
 caresses the whole ; 
 
 We lend to each other our best and our bravest 
 — I give you my soul — 
 
 Nay, 'tis not my soul, 'tis the soul of a nation 
 that beats in this song ;
 
 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 99 
 
 For myself. I am nothing, I rank with the file, I 
 am one with the throng. 
 
 O Father almighty, Thou wilt not deceive us, Thou 
 wilt not protract 
 
 The night of our sorrow, the dream of our doubting, 
 the faith which we lacked, 
 
 For now through the mouth of this people and all 
 men by me thou art praised. 
 
 1 ) mother immortal, dear earth, thy dark atoms of 
 matter arc raised, 
 
 Mysterious, are raised in the scale of our knowledge : 
 we bow, and we trust. 
 
 ler protean, immortal, abiding, that weavest 
 the dust 
 
 To shapes of full Bplendour through seasons of 
 wonder, maturity, re 
 
 Thai buildesl and breakest, that turnest and shakesl 
 mould in thy palm, 
 
 \ "i old thou wilt feed us and Bhepherd thj 
 ill* isen and shield them from harm 
 
 Round these ] al my birth 'twas a bough of 
 
 n oli ■ "i olive, not yew,
 
 100 A DEMOCRATIC CHANT 
 
 Thou didst twine as a sign of peace of the soul 
 thou would'st grant, not to few, 
 
 But to all who would walk in the ways of thy 
 wisdom and help thine increase : 
 
 And this promise to those who will follow and 
 serve thee — thy palm and thy peace.
 
 SONG OF THE WANDERER'S RETURN 
 
 Hell, pack your fading fires, 
 Stars, freeze your worst : 
 
 I'll quench my deep desires, 
 I'll see my lady first. 
 
 I come, I come. 
 
 From rugged Russian floes, 
 
 Icefields and bears, 
 Wh.n scarlet dawn arose 
 
 Love heard my prayers. 
 
 I ( Mine, I (Mill''.
 
 102 SONG OF THE WANDERERS RETURN 
 
 3 
 
 By Ganges' floating lamp. 
 
 Crocodiles cry : 
 jungle and veldt and swamp, 
 
 World-wanderer I : 
 
 I come, I come. 
 
 4- 
 Cast me your horoscope, 
 
 Stars overhead ; 
 Lighter than antelope. 
 Hark, 'tis her tread, 
 
 She comes, she comes. 
 
 S 
 Thou art a woman, 
 
 I am a man : 
 Love, love is human, 
 Life is a span. 
 
 1 come, I come.
 
 SONG OF THE WANDERER'S RETURN 103 
 
 6. 
 
 Tease me no more, ye Fates, 
 
 Under this dome ! 
 Breathless before your gates. 
 
 I come, I come. 
 Love, take me home !
 
 LOVE'S CONQUEST 
 
 i 
 Here let the billowy tempest overtake us 
 
 Of love, of love ; 
 Here let his arrowy lightnings rend and shake us, 
 
 Time will approve ; 
 Heaven comes not closer than a woman's heart, 
 Or none, or all, I crave ! O love me not in part. 
 
 2 
 I am no false half-hearted wayward lover, 
 
 The passion comes : 
 I plunge, my foot not deigning to recover, 
 
 I love but once ; 
 God-like should be the wooing lover's strength ! 
 O let me anchor on this happy isle at length.
 
 love's conquest 105 
 
 3 
 
 Nay ! tell me not to move mine eyes away, 
 
 Dread not their fire : 
 
 Lust, sloth, and envy now have had their day, 
 
 Gazing, expire : 
 
 It is thy cleansing soul I hunger for, 
 
 It is the God in thee I yield to and adore. 
 
 + 
 Lift up these gates immortal, let me wonder, 
 
 Oh ! have I won ? 
 Mine, wholly mine, till life's stout bark go under, 
 
 The voyage done : 
 
 Lightnings may cease, — let joy descend in tears, 
 
 And this sweet rain make rich the hope of future 
 years.
 
 A FALLING STAR 
 
 i 
 Did sleep refuse your gentle eyes 
 Last night, and did you sit awhile 
 While moonlight filled the summer skies ; 
 And watching with a wistful smile 
 Still muse about that shooting star 
 You saw, while we were walking home ; 
 When fearful of hard days to come, 
 You gazed, and wondered what we are ! 
 
 2 
 And fragrant memories at my heart, 
 Like violets drenched in April dew 
 Revived : — while hope, the nobler part 
 Of life, began to thrill anew;
 
 A FALLING STAR 107 
 
 Sweet voices hailed me from the grave, 
 Far o'er the sea, where shadows shroud 
 Death's garden, and sheer cliffs of cloud 
 Blot out the dead whose names we save. 
 
 3 
 We children in life's pilgrimage, 
 
 What can we know ? a pious guess ; 
 
 Hut Eden-tones and sacred page 
 
 Hint something deeper than success : 
 
 Let us be clear : " We do not know," 
 
 So falls that star ; and then perchance 
 
 From honest night of ignorance 
 
 A dawn of deeper truth may flow. 
 
 Life's not for victory or prize. 
 Hut iff'.rt only, as it seems; 
 The will, the work, the enterprise. 
 And sunnv (lavs For sowing <lrcams ;
 
 108 A FALLING STAR 
 
 We sow, we reap ; lovers and friends ; 
 And what remains of cherished hours ? 
 Only a knot of faded flowers, 
 And memory — so, so it ends. 
 
 5- 
 
 One royal moment on his throne 
 
 Love sits triumphant over death, 
 
 Calls the wide universe his own, 
 
 And lives an aeon in a breath : 
 
 He mingles, mid that short delight, 
 
 With music borne from worlds afar : 
 
 Then, like an inharmonious star, 
 
 Swerves : and shoots headlong down the night. 
 
 6 
 We are but wanderers. Let us stand. 
 Though rains wash bare life's ruined pride, 
 And ocean swallow sea and land. 
 Though not a soul stand by our side.
 
 A FALLING STAR 1 09 
 
 Unbribed, unsuccoured, undismayed, 
 Still let us stand and conquer ; — aye, 
 The red rose withers on its stem. 
 What is life's linal diadem ? 
 Death — love's last utterance — a sigh.
 
 A HARMLESS DITTY 
 
 At dusk we took our walk abroad, 
 
 fie ! O fie ! 
 
 I stole a kiss along the road : 
 
 Tra la la, tra la le. 
 
 She blushed and would not look at me, 
 
 O fie ! O fie ! 
 
 And so I made the kisses three : 
 
 Tra la la, tra la le. 
 
 And no one came along the lane, 
 
 O fie ! O fie ! 
 
 She gave me one o' them back again : 
 
 Tra la la, tra la le. 
 
 Like me may every lover thrive, 
 
 O fie ! O fie ! 
 
 I feel quite glad to be alive : 
 
 Tra la la, tra la le.
 
 ALONE ! 
 
 i 
 Firm of purpose, God-reliant. 
 
 Parted and alone I sit : 
 Still the spirit is defiant. 
 
 Bleed on heart — what of it ? 
 
 2 
 
 Doubtless love's a heaven-sent blessing, 
 Life's one peerless aloe-bud. 
 
 Still not given us for possessing. 
 What comes next.-' — Solitude.
 
 LULLABY 
 
 i 
 () to fling down this weary head 
 'Mong valleys where they never reap: 
 A pillow of poppies for my bed, 
 And dream -dews from the Latmian steep ; 
 
 Thy brown wings hover, 
 
 Cover, O cover, 
 And shield me with thy pinion, sleep ! 
 
 2 
 
 Sing smoother measures than the airs 
 That blow round Lesbos, famous isle, 
 Drop down, and take me unawares, 
 To roam and roam thy realm awhile ; 
 
 Till night be over, 
 
 And dawn uncover 
 My dreaming eyelids with a smile.
 
 LOVE'S PATIENCE 
 i 
 Can the life be worth the living 
 
 That locks up the human heart ? 
 Can the love be worth the giving 
 
 That surrenders but in part ? 
 Life should be a generous giver 
 
 Full of bounty and increase : 
 Love, a slow, majestic river 
 
 Deepening through a land of peace 
 2 
 Can a man be worth the waiting, 
 
 If he dare not cope with fate ? 
 Can a maid be worth the mating. 
 
 If too fickle-frail to wait ? 
 So, my heart, I bend and kiss you, 
 
 Like a lover true and brave, 
 Though faith only see the i^sue, 
 
 Love will last beyond the grave.
 
 LOVER AND MORALIST 
 
 Lover : Let sorrow come, I'll not regret. 
 
 Moralist : Though love should wither with the 
 leaf ? 
 
 Lover : It was in summer that we met. 
 
 Moralist : Love's summer days are hot and brief. 
 
 Lover : The heart-shaped cherry on the bough 
 Allured the glossy starling's beak : 
 
 Moralist : Fit emblem how a lover's vow 
 
 Can win and waste a blushing cheek.
 
 LOVER AND MORALIST I 1 5 
 
 2 
 
 Lover : Red breathless clouds streamed up the 
 
 East, 
 
 And hail'd the sun-god from afar : 
 
 The thrill Earth felt within her breast, 
 
 A thrush sang to the dying star ; 
 
 Hark ! hark ! the lark's auroral cry 
 
 That light as wine leapt in our veins : 
 
 " All other raptures cannot buy 
 
 The least of love's immortal pains."
 
 THK COST OF VICTORY 
 
 i 
 Profounder peace my soul invades 
 
 Than, after battle's blood and strain, 
 Lulls the broad field, when evening shades 
 
 The silent faces of the slain. 
 
 2 
 There, hopes like stricken heroes lie 
 
 Foe-facing, with their eyes aghast ; 
 Joys bivouaced 'neath the open sky: 
 
 O joys ! too proud, too young to last ! 
 
 3 
 Alone, I pass across the field 
 
 By moonlight, 'neath the tranquil trees : 
 God never meant the right to yield, 
 
 'Twas worth the loss to gain this peace.
 
 THE COST OF VICTORY 117 
 
 4 
 The splash of blood, charge and recnarge, 
 
 The whirl and scream of shell and shot, 
 A man must meet : would he enlarge 
 
 The kingdom native to his lot. 
 
 A ghostly combat 'twas, meseems 
 By far the fiercest fight of all : 
 
 These sighing hopes and splintered dreams 
 Shall claim most solemn burial. 
 
 6 
 With calm I count the fearful cost, 
 
 And inwardly exult ; although 
 I ne'er shall head a braver host, 
 
 Nor gaze upon a fairer show.
 
 LONELY LOVE 
 
 And if I love thee, what is that to thee ! 
 Will not the sunflower bow toward the sun ? 
 What's one pale star when morning has begun, 
 And who in youth remembers memory ? 
 
 We met as friends, as friends we part again : 
 Go and be happy, break another heart ! 
 Thou soon wilt learn to play that higher part, 
 And pride will teach me how to smother pain. 
 
 3 
 Ah me, I toil, I ache to comprehend : 
 O moon and sea, O stars and miles of sand 
 Where once we used to wander, hand in hand. 
 Nor ever wonder how it all would end ?
 
 I.ONKLY LOVE I IQ 
 
 O wild-wood walks ! O fire of youth's ambition ! 
 
 Alone with thee along the moon-lit corn. 
 
 That moon has fled, how bleak the fields stand 
 shorn ! 
 
 And cold neglect the meed of woman's mission. 
 
 Nay. but the heart is such a tender plant, 
 So sensitive to sunshine and to rain : 
 A gust will make that blossom shut again, 
 Nor future music as of old enchant. 
 
 Whv teach me love if but to leave me thus. 
 That melody's too sad to sing alone : 
 Love aches to sit upon a single throne, 
 Her unshared honours how monotonous I
 
 120 LONELY LOVE 
 
 7 
 To wait while beauty withers silently, 
 
 Me, me, thy spring-tide's sweetheart left alone : 
 
 O home which once 1 thought to call mine own, 
 
 O phantom faces I shall never see !
 
 AN AUTUMN SONG 
 
 i 
 What is this pang that strikes across my heart ? 
 
 A silent flush 
 
 On field and bush 
 No wild wood thrush doth waken. 
 
 2 
 
 What are these tears that tremble down my cheek ? 
 
 Must I alone 
 
 Live on to mourn 
 My loved ones flown, or taken ? 
 
 3 
 What is this splendour streams across my soul ? 
 
 Fight the good fight. 
 
 We shall unite 
 
 When earth lies quite forsaken.
 
 THE SAND -FLOWER 
 
 Where ocean breaks on either hand 
 Along a bleak and sterile shore. 
 Where tongues of surf lick up the sand, 
 Amid the wreckage and the roar. 
 Where heaps of blackened seaweed lie 
 Mid matted drift of various tides, 
 Which, as the refluent wave subsides, 
 Bevel the blue bald pebbles, I 
 Found this sweet blossom blowing. 
 
 2 
 There was no other verdure near, 
 Only the straggling thistle crawled, 
 And some few bents of salt bleached grass
 
 THE SAND FLOWER 1 23 
 
 Told to the wanderer who might pass 
 Df earth's last edge: where one might hear 
 The stormy seagull as he called. 
 And watch the full tide flowing. 
 
 3 
 The centra] strength of all we see 
 Has not this flower's immaculacy, 
 Yon seagull poised on outstretched wings 
 Still wants the scent this blossom flings; 
 The huffling sea-wind sweeps and blows; 
 This never argues, —but it grows. 
 And praises God in growing. 
 
 4 
 Sweet flower I how keen was my surprise, 
 
 And not untouched by earnest shame, 
 
 1 1 note you there with eager ey< 
 
 And yet to never know your nann ■! 
 By what mate gift, what subtle spell,
 
 124 THE SAND-FLOWER 
 
 Could you transform with chymic power 
 Mere sandy waste and salt sea-swell, 
 Into this lovely lilac flower 
 I press within my bosom ? 
 
 5 
 And yet I need not marvel : for 
 
 In crowded cities far from view, 
 
 Pure souls fast locked by love's stern law, 
 
 Whose names not e'en the wisest knew, 
 
 Have lived ; and by some wondrous grace, 
 
 Some art of sweeter alchemy, 
 
 Some charm of rarest charity, 
 
 Have touched to life the commonplace, 
 
 And bade the desert blossom.
 
 THE METAPHYSICIAN 
 
 j 
 
 The lonely scholar shut his book, 
 
 And rose and stirr'd his dying fire. 
 Still standing, he began to look 
 
 And watch the winter-day expire : 
 And as he saw the vapours roll 
 
 Across the meadows far away, 
 \J. •!!' ric twilight brimmed his soul, 
 
 And filmr-d his ryes with ecstasy. 
 
 2 
 
 Through his mist-clouded window pain-. 
 The tracery of twigs and boughs, 
 
 Tip- lcallesa hedges rank with rain. 
 Even the sheep-flocks and the cows
 
 126 THE METAPHYSICIAN 
 
 Seemed strangely still. — "Ah me," he cried, 
 " Is the world really what it seems, 
 
 Or are we cheated and belied 
 By incommunicable dreams ? 
 
 3 
 " For now 1 feel so wierdly dull, 
 
 So plunged in doubts I cannot prove, 
 Lethargic and insensible 
 
 To this tough world in which we move, 
 That almost I am prone to say, 
 
 Gazing o'er yon grey waste of mist, 
 That th' ego is refined away 
 
 Sometimes, and ceases to exist. 
 
 4 
 " Why else this drear-eyed dreamy gaze 
 
 Over the fields at twilight tide, 
 If this life be not but a phase 
 
 Of some far larger life ; allied,
 
 THE METAPHYSICIAN IZ] 
 
 Yet torn from which, th' atomic frame 
 Obeys the spirit's plangent stress, 
 
 And deadens, while the yearning flame 
 Flies forth into the wilderness. 
 
 5 
 " For all the fossil-forms that prim 
 
 Past strata of the growth of man, 
 Whatever mind or memory hint, 
 
 I piece together as I can, 
 If haph — ah! but who can know, 
 
 What single brain can grasp the whole ? 
 Where is the science that can show 
 
 The structure of the human soul ?"
 
 THE HEIGHTS OF WINDER 
 
 Red chanticleer's loud clarion calls, 
 
 And chides the mists, and bids them pass : 
 
 Alike on loose unmorticed walls, 
 
 On slanting roof, and sparkling grass, 
 
 Frost, like a million grains of spelt, 
 
 Glints, as the rolling vapours melt. 
 
 2 
 
 O valley of a thousand rills 
 
 That falling, feed the dark main river ; 
 O ring of proud and royal hills 
 
 That stand consolidate for ever 
 'Twas ye, 'twas ye who rearM my youth, 
 Who gave me strength and taught me truth.
 
 THE HEIGHTS OF WINDER I 29 
 
 3 
 
 These sun-smit summits, unperplexed 
 
 By clouds blown crossways o'er the skies, 
 
 Fill me, by many a fancy vexed, 
 With silent hope and deep surmise ; 
 
 Clouds too may loiter round the base, 
 
 But splendour fills the mountain's face. 
 
 4 
 Yon mountain doth not mock its star, 
 
 Nor envy swell the lesser hills, 
 Content they stand for what they are, 
 
 And laugh through all tlu-ir lyric rills: 
 These Bteep'd my mind, or great or less, 
 
 In something sweeter than success. 
 
 5 
 Something that cannot be o'erthrown, 
 
 Methinks, this mountain doth express ; 
 A conscious might that itands alone,
 
 130 THE HEIGHTS OF WINDER 
 
 A majesty, a gentleness, 
 Which bids me follow what is best, 
 
 Unchecked : — and leave to God the rest. 
 
 6 
 There is a Voice speaks in the air 
 
 Of worlds that lie as yet unproved : 
 A Presence o'er me everywhere, 
 
 Which will not argue but is loved : 
 A Message, howsoever sent, 
 
 Which is its own best argument.
 
 THE TWILIGHT STAR 
 
 i 
 Lone lamp of twilight, vestal star so distant, 
 
 Sole sentinal ere thy myriad sisters glow, 
 Star of the east, eve after eve persistent, 
 
 Marking the spot whence dawn will surely flow: 
 
 2 
 ni^ blow, and blot thee out from man's divining, 
 Ihou'rt lost, thou'rt pone, the sore faint-hearted say; 
 And yet full well I know thou still art shining, 
 It i- the clouds, tin clouds, which pass away. 
 
 3 
 ') twilight star, symbol of light more tender, 
 
 Star of the soul, guide of distempered youth 
 
 in sovereign faith 1 yield complete surrender, 
 
 And henceforth follow m tin- track of truth
 
 132 THE TWILIGHT STAR 
 
 4 
 
 Thou, round thine orbit, journeyest, never swerving 
 From that fixed course in which the planets move 
 
 O soul, swerve not from that great law of Serving 
 By which thy being mounts through endless love.
 
 OFT IN ELYSIAN RAPTURE 
 
 i 
 Oft in Elysian rapture have I wandered 
 
 O'er dell and down, through glen and grove, 
 Where'er my footsteps led me, I have pondered 
 
 The royal song, the perfect love. 
 
 2 
 Alas ! what lips of clay can ever sin.^ us 
 
 The song of songs, the royal chant r 
 And who of mortals hrvatheth that can bring US 
 
 The love of loves, the love we want ?
 
 GOOD-NIGHT— NOT GOOD BYE 
 
 i 
 There is a word that wrings the heari, 
 
 And oh! too soon it must be spoken, 
 It comes when those who meet must part, 
 
 When scenes will change, and ties are broken. 
 Broken ? 
 No, no, 
 Not so, 
 There still will be some tie. 
 
 2 
 Kind hearts are not too far away, 
 
 Some token of good-will to send us. 
 Though some will go, and some must stay. 
 Still as of old may God defend us ; 
 Good-bye ? 
 No, no. 
 Not so, 
 Good-night — ah! not good-bye!
 
 A MAGIC FIELD 
 
 i 
 A field, a field, down in the west, 
 Green, open to the sun and air : 
 A gust of love, a throbbing breast. 
 I could not cross it but in prayer. 
 
 2 
 
 For ever on that plot of ground 
 Some angel touched away my tears, 
 And heavenly echoes rang around 
 The narrow arches of mine ears. 
 
 3 
 They sang me songs of anguish old, 
 
 Mute loves, and measures of delight 
 
 I trod the fabled Seece of gold 
 
 In mnil of more than human miL-iit
 
 136 A MAGIC FIELD 
 
 4 
 For hate grew distant as a dream. 
 
 And sorrow shed a subtle bliss ; 
 
 Deep in my breast there swam a beam 
 
 Of faith and melting tenderness. 
 
 5 
 The dead, the living, e'en as one, 
 Seemed singing through the twilight-air : 
 Time withered with the rolling sun, 
 And solace crowned the brows of care. 
 
 6 
 I paused and stretched mine arms abroad, 
 And then wrote swiftly with my pen : 
 " He who has felt the peace of God 
 Can work without the praise of men."
 
 SEHNSUCHT 
 
 i 
 Fresh, fresh as a rose is the face of the Earth, 
 
 Immortal, abiding, Protean, 
 The death of a shower is the dew of the birth 
 
 Of a song-bird's imperious paean. 
 
 2 
 
 But unknown, unexplored is the core of the Earth, 
 
 Too abysmal for human discerning : 
 
 Though her surface be flattered with seasons of 
 mirth, 
 
 Her breast is remorselessly burning. 
 
 3 
 
 But fairest of all is th«- rose of the Earth, 
 Man— man— Nature's prodigal giant: 
 
 The death ol a dream is to him bul the birth 
 ' )f resolve, philo ophii , deflanl
 
 138 SEHNSUCHT 
 
 + 
 
 But unplumbed is man's mystery still, though the 
 worth 
 
 Of his years be consumed in the learning ; 
 
 Like the central sad fires of his mother, the Earth : 
 
 His bosom is wasted with yearning.
 
 A PAGAN CHORALE 
 
 Vex not thy soul with dread of death's accruing, 
 
 Hush ! hush all sorrows in forgetfulness ; 
 Weep not in dreams, the past is past pursuing, 
 
 The future but a vain elusive guess ; 
 Let poppy twine thy tares, when the last embers 
 
 Of life's gray fires drop on the cold hearth-stone 
 Sleep ! and dismiss the spirit that remembers 
 
 All that thy days have done or left undone. 
 
 Come heavenly sleep, sink gently on his eyelids, 
 1 ) Hermes ! touch his forehead with thy wand, 
 
 And guide him kindly when the last low sigh bids 
 Tin presence waft him to a world beyond.
 
 A BOY'S DAY-DREAM 
 
 i 
 
 All day he sat beside the pond, 
 
 And none rebuked ; for none could guess 
 
 The boy's retreat : no careless feet 
 
 Broke in upon his solitude ; 
 
 The cuckoo and the wilderness 
 
 Were the grand masons of his mood ; 
 
 With bricks of water, and airy mortar, 
 
 He built a turret and gazed beyond. 
 
 2 
 A thousand spirits he had, that gleam 
 Or creep or swim or live by the chase : 
 And magic spells from mystic wells 
 That hold in leash the skipping fays ;
 
 A BOYS DAY-DREAM 141 
 
 Such made obeisance to his grace, 
 And fast as ants in Autumn days, 
 With song and sod, with trowel and hod, 
 Thev reared the battlement of dream. 
 
 3 
 A parapet of delicate make 
 With loop-holes cleft at intervals 
 Crowned the great tower ; and here a bower 
 A mist}' staircase led unto : 
 And from the summit a fountain falls 
 Of rainbow bubbles and drizzling dew: 
 And over the fountain, vista of mountain. 
 Blue sky, and beauty — his thirst to slake. 
 
 4 
 The boy ;/.i/.''il up, his large gray eyes 
 
 Absorbed in speculation: Lo-- 
 Sudden there itood upon the flood 
 A nab '1 li«ur< athletic, slim,
 
 142 a boy's day-dream 
 
 Flushed with the glory of love aglow 
 For a whiter phantom, that shadowed dim, 
 Beyond the fountain, beyond the mountain ; 
 Half seen, half veiled behind the skies. 
 
 5 
 The fountain figure stretched his arms, 
 Crying aloud : " My heart will break ! — 
 If thou art real, O white ideal, 
 Stoop down and kiss me lest I die ; 
 Stoop and caress." — He seemed to wake 
 A million echoes with his cry : 
 And fairy fountain, figure and mountain 
 And tower collapsed in loud alarms.
 
 TO A YOUNG POET 
 
 i 
 A voice ! a voice ! do you not hear it ringing 
 
 O'er fen and fold ? 
 A poet's voice, do you not hear him singing 
 
 The new, and old ? 
 
 2 
 
 I saw him lying, laughing in the clover, 
 
 Though none was near ; 
 
 The meadows cry'd : " Welcome ! the world's true 
 lover 
 
 Is here, is here." 
 
 3 
 All down the green glade late and early roaming. 
 
 In leafy grove, 
 I heard him softly singing : in the gloaming 
 
 Me sang of love
 
 SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT'S LAST VOYAGE 
 
 " Sail on my bark, my bark sail on, 
 The moon is fled, the stars are gone." 
 The lightnings quiver, 
 The tempest shrieks : 
 The yard-arms shiver, 
 The cordage creaks. 
 
 "Furl sail, batter down the hatches:" 
 " Master, the hurricane catches us, 
 Master, the hurricane snatches us ! " 
 
 " Sail on my bark, my bark sail on, 
 
 Until the storm be overblown : 
 
 Little I reck of wrack or rent, 
 
 The five bells chime, the night is spent." 
 " A shout, a shout, 
 Put about, put about, 
 A sailor overboard."
 
 SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT'S LAST VOYAGE 1 45 
 
 " Nay, leave him to the Lord, 
 
 For ship and soul on sea or land 
 
 Are close to God's almighty hand : 
 
 Sail on my bark, my bark sail on, 
 
 The moon is dead, the stars have flown ; 
 
 When the great storm of storms is past, 
 
 Man's destiny will clear at last." 
 
 His strength is weak, 
 His currents crossed ; 
 " A leak, a leak, 
 We're lost, we're lost ! " 
 
 " Master, the stern crushes in on us, 
 Master, the sea rushes in on us, 
 
 Lost, lost, all lost ! " 
 " Lost, — nay not lost, the haven's won, 
 Sink, sink, my bark, thy course is done, 
 For ship and soul on sea or land 
 Are close to I Sod's almighty hand."
 
 NATURE'S ETHICS 
 
 And when my brain is overwrought 
 
 With toil or solitary thought, 
 
 When all my fevered pulses beat, 
 
 And this flesh-prison throbs and thrills, 
 
 I sit beside the window-seat 
 
 Where oft I sat in boyhood's days, 
 
 And through the frost-bound silence, gaze 
 
 Upon the white majestic hills. 
 
 So meek, so stern, so wondrous still 
 They stand : they fortify my will 
 With strength the world knows nothing of; 
 With haughty silence to endure,
 
 NATURES ETHICS I47 
 
 And with sincerity, to prove 
 
 That Nature's work knows no regrets, 
 
 She never falters or forgets, 
 
 Her paths are plain, her purpose sure. 
 
 3 
 Behind man's riot and life's folly, 
 Life's failure and man's melancholy, 
 Broods the great destiny, the plan 
 Slowly unfolded hour by hour 
 In Nature, and the soul of man ; 
 This is not changed, nor disappears, 
 But rules the rolling of the spheres, 
 And whispers through the frailest flower.
 
 THE POPLARS 
 
 i 
 
 Not a voice, not a sound of the step of men, 
 The shadowy kine on the uplands lie: 
 
 Not a bird is heard, not a stir from the glen, 
 But only the slender poplars sigh. 
 
 2 
 On the hard white road glints the cusp of the moon, 
 
 The land is cool'd with the wind's caress : 
 There is joy on all of the choral June, 
 And the poplars utter their happiness. 
 
 3 
 For summer speaks to the world once more, 
 
 Her music moves on the wings of the breeze, 
 O Love ! thou art queen, from the sap and the core 
 
 To the tips of the musical poplar-trees.
 
 THE POPLARS 149 
 
 4 
 O mystical love ! O magic unsung, 
 
 That thy sorceress-spirit in secrecy weaves ! 
 Ah ! where among men is the silver-sweet tongue 
 
 To sing us the song of the poplar-leaves ? 
 
 (THE SONG) 
 
 ( ■ ) 
 Then fly with me; my love, with me; 
 
 June, June is ours, I love, I yearn : 
 A land of flowers, and reverie, 
 
 The poplars lisp love's low nocturn. 
 
 CO 
 
 Ah ! it must ever come to this, 
 
 When love and youth and summer meel 
 
 To rake a n Lie, to win a kiss, 
 I'd ca t .in empire al thy feel
 
 150 THE SONG 
 
 (3) 
 
 Where thou art, the immortals are, 
 To breathe thy sweet Elysian breath 
 
 Would make a glow-worm grow a star, 
 And teach a dastard scorn of death. 
 
 (4) 
 
 Thy tones are like that solemn lyre 
 The stress of Nature speaketh through, 
 
 Thine eyes are moons of mellow fire, 
 Thy mouth a moss-rose moist with dew. 
 
 (5) 
 
 O come with me ; my love, with me : 
 June, June will die, I sigh, I yearn ; 
 
 Ope to the night's fond witchery, 
 My lily of the golden urn.
 
 THE SONG ISI 
 
 (6) 
 
 Steep me with nectar of thy mind, 
 
 Love's aromatic chalice spill : 
 No third is here : only a wind 
 
 Keeps tryst upon the moon-lit hill. 
 
 (7) 
 O earth, O earth, how strange thou art, 
 
 How new-created all that is ; 
 When love, fore-gathering at the heart, 
 
 First trembles in a mutual kiss.
 
 DOWN STREAM 
 
 i 
 Who would not drift on such a stream 
 
 At such an hour, alone with thee, 
 Together, you and I, Marie, 
 
 Who would not drift, who would not dream ? 
 A while ago the full sun sank. 
 
 And twilight gathered in the trees, 
 The slender reeds on either bank, 
 
 With summer piped : " Say, who are these 
 That, dropping down an odorous wind, 
 
 Slide smoothly past my rushy coves?" 
 " We leave a world of tears behind 
 
 In search of secret treasure-troves : " 
 The swimming lilies softly sighed : 
 
 "'Tis but a lover and his bride."
 
 DOWN STREAM I 53 
 
 2 
 
 "We are alone. Still, as of old, 
 
 To hear thy voice above the flood, 
 Ten times ten thousand strings of gold, 
 
 Dear Marie, throb and thrill my blood. 
 But thou art as a faultless flower 
 
 That sheds still perfume on the air. 
 What time the bee from manna-bower 
 
 Wings forth, and searches everywhere : 
 And still the slim white throated flower 
 
 Utters no sound, divinely dumb, 
 She rests on Nature's secret power. 
 
 She knows the bee is sure to conn : 
 So thou, sweet mistress, hast the 
 
 Of silence to enchant the heart 
 
 3 
 
 " I've watched the goldfinch in the mead 
 With fluttered palpitating wings
 
 154 DOWN STREAM 
 
 Poised close above the thistle-seed : 
 
 And still he hovers, still she swings, 
 And still the winds, in captious play, 
 
 Her crest incline, his feathers puff, 
 Where'er he turns, she bends away; 
 
 And every slip and shy rebuff 
 But makes his hunger keener felt; 
 
 So, when I bow, and fain would press 
 My lips to hers, and fondly melt 
 
 In speech no language can express, 
 She moves, and I, poor fool, must miss 
 
 The music of my lady's kiss. 
 
 " How did my love begin? — a gleam 
 From paradise that shot, and spread 
 
 Within my soul : a heavenly beam 
 Pulsing in waves of joy and dread : 
 
 Ah ! bid this deep majestic stream
 
 DOWN STREAM 155 
 
 Flow back, and seek his fountain-head. 
 We met : for better or for worse : 
 
 For worse ? Ah ! no, it cannot be, 
 Love needs must take its own sweet course 
 
 In light and shadow to the sea; 
 But ask not love's immortal source. 
 
 5 
 "Adown the maiden mountain-beck 
 
 I've watched the eddies wreathe and swirl, 
 And scented bells of heather speck 
 
 The dimpled flood : so coil and curl 
 The ringlets round thy slender neck, 
 
 While drifts of fancy flush and fleck 
 The claustral cheek, the gates of pearl. 
 
 6 
 " Look up, Marie, this is our trysl : 
 Awav, away o'er stream and glen, 
 Ringed round and cloaked in clond and mist,
 
 I56 DOWN STREAM 
 
 Moves the great world of other men : 
 O let me be thy world alone, 
 
 As thou art mine, and only mine, 
 My heart shall be thy single throne, 
 
 Sole home, thy soul, so I am thine.*' 
 
 "O hold me and fold me beloved, 
 
 I love thee : 
 If still thou must doubt me, then try me, 
 
 Then prove me : 
 O love, the subduer, will change not 
 
 With fashion, 
 Say, which is the truer, the world or 
 
 My passion : 
 As twilight with moonlight when daylight 
 
 Is over, 
 So eyesight wakes soul-sight in maiden 
 
 And lover ;
 
 DOWN STREAM 157 
 
 Let fortune caress thee ; sin, sorrow 
 
 Oppress me : 
 Still, still must I follow and worship 
 
 And bless thee : 
 O silent, still doubting ! then test me 
 
 And prove me : 
 But, hold me and fold me, beloved, 
 
 I love thee." 
 
 8 
 
 " Aye, and thou love me, as thou art, 
 So fresh and pure, so proud and fair, 
 
 And if thou give me all thine heart 
 This moment as thou liest there, 
 
 Thou of thy single self shalt prove, 
 Men grow immortal when they love 
 
 9 
 
 •' The earth will crumble like the past, 
 Dead are the dreams of long ago,
 
 158 DOWN STREAM 
 
 How little may the present last ! 
 
 'Tis come and gone ere one can know 
 A glance, a gleam, a moment's quiver 
 
 Of moonlight on a flowing river. 
 
 10 
 
 " And shall this gaudy world mislead 
 The man who sighs for sober rest ? 
 
 Ambition, Fortune, fame ? — indeed 
 I find them all upon thy breast, 
 
 And in sincere simplicity 
 Utterly give myself to thee. 
 
 1 1 
 "Death's finger cannot touch the bough 
 
 That hangs in love's celestial bower ; 
 Love's life is an immortal now, 
 
 A present never-dying hour. 
 When love and time meet ; in their kiss, 
 
 Eternity is all that is."
 
 OCTOBER— GOOD-BYE 
 
 i 
 The small brown brook swirls rapidly, 
 And gathered are the barley-sheaves : 
 Amid a fall of fading leaves 
 Our footsteps meet to say good-bye ! 
 
 2 
 Come, let us stand where the road runs nigh 
 This side the heavy whitewashed gate, 
 Where wet square ricks stand desolate, 
 There let us wish and kiss good-bye ! 
 
 3 
 The loose-leaf'd willows lean and sigh 
 Along the field where the brown brook flows, 
 How soon the day draws to its close ! 
 How soon 'tis time to say good-by !
 
 j6o OCTOBER-GOOD-BYE 
 
 4 
 Let us be resolute, and try 
 To find some utterance for relief; 
 Nor wrapt in mist of mournful grief, 
 Wait, dumb like cattle— you and I ! 
 
 5 
 Loitering alone here, you and I 
 Can find no fond exchange of words: 
 We hang as silent as the birds, 
 It is so sad to say good-bye ! 
 
 6 
 Needs must, from this low-weeping sky 
 I chase your twittering swallow south ; 
 One last sweet silence, mouth to mouth : 
 Friends once, friends ever ! Love, good-bye !
 
 AUTUMN TOUCHES 
 
 i 
 Now drops the fir-cone from the (ir. 
 Ripe acorns patter through the oaks, 
 And half dismantled stands the wood, 
 The blue jay screams, the bull-frog croaks : 
 
 garnered is the golden corn, 
 And glossy starlings boldly dash 
 And strij) the scarlet mountain-ash, 
 I . e red may-berry hangs forlorn. 
 
 z 
 Wlnrc late stream'd tongui ented bloom 
 
 Black hang the I iburn urn's shrivel I'd | ods, 
 1 he elm-tree sheds her mall firm leav< . 
 The slim mast-poplar, naked, nod
 
 IbZ AUTUMN TOUCHES 
 
 The orchard stands despoiled of fruit, 
 And barren boughs begin to show- 
 Thick clumps of sage-green mistletoe, 
 While all the meads are moist and mute. 
 
 3 
 The filbert slips its russet sheath. 
 And walnut boughs are beaten bare, 
 A white mist crawls from vale to vale, 
 And shrewdly bites the evening air, 
 Tired flocks at twilight steal to fold ; 
 With burrowing mole the soil is loose, 
 And now the plough-boy sets his noose, 
 And earth-worms cast the mounded mould. 
 
 4- 
 Dimpled with bent and willow-leaf, 
 O'er bedded reeds the shallow stream, 
 'Twixt tiny isle and shelving bank 
 Where dace in summer bask and gleam.
 
 AUTUMN TOUCHES J03 
 
 Runs and will run, till Boreas blow 
 His boisterous clarion through the gloom. 
 And cloak his course and seal his doom 
 With thickening frost and furious snow. 
 
 5 
 Cold hangs the nest beneath the thatch 
 Where late the circling swallow hung, 
 Weak linnets cloud the homestead ricks, 
 The sparrow pecks the farmyard dung; 
 Now hums the farn cr's threshing-wheel. 
 And village children with their books 
 Peep in to watch the tossing stooks, 
 Then scamper away to mid-day meal. 
 
 6 
 The cub-fox knows his secret lair, 
 The hedgehog rolls himself to rest. 
 The cold snake curls bi neath the leaves. 
 The mouse has weaved her winter nest,
 
 ,5 4 AUTUMN TOUCHES 
 
 Amid the thicket chirps the wren 
 And brusquely nits from twig to twig, 
 Dumb is the shrill high-elbowed grig, 
 The hare creeps down the marshy fen. 
 
 7 
 Thus all things, after their own kind. 
 Serve and preserve, bloom and decay : 
 Shall man alone, gifted with mind. 
 Swerve from his own appointed way ? 
 Because of knowledge shall he fail. 
 Or mazed in larger ignorance, 
 Neglect the will, bow down to chance, 
 And let the cruder form prevail ? 
 
 8 
 For each has some peculiar gift, 
 His bounden duty to perform : 
 O Earth ! and can a man not lift 
 That which is loosened by a worm !
 
 AUTUMN TOUCHES 165 
 
 Shall Nature stretch an arm to save 
 Her meaner creatures, teach them how 
 To toil and thrive : yet let man go, 
 Mocked with half-knowledge, to the grave ? 
 
 No ! wider knowledge needs must print 
 A fuller faith upon the heart : 
 As hidden ways of Nature hint 
 Deep touches of diviner art : 
 'Tis good to grasp the facts uf time 
 And search the secrets of the dusi . 
 If but to trace how preed and lust 
 Expand by law, and Irani to climb 
 
 10 
 
 Bui shall mankind drop back and serve 
 The beggarly elements whence hi roi 
 Deny the BOUl, bi I IB •■ h< kn<>\\ a 
 This frame, too well, oi ii'-sh and n
 
 1 66 AUTUMN TOUCHES 
 
 Shall he malign his long ascent, 
 And let despair or passion sway : 
 Nor bid the loftier spirit play 
 On this self-conscious instrument ? 
 
 j i 
 No, no ! For though man's ancient pride 
 Stand stript, and autumn skies be dull ; 
 I will not sigh as once I sighed, 
 As once I wept, I will not weep : 
 Dead forms and faces beautiful 
 Still gather at the wells of sleep : 
 Wistful, but not disconsolate 
 I watch the leaves drop. Rest ! tired earth ! 
 In thy decay a better birth 
 Quickens, and I will love and wait.
 
 MEDIOCRITY ANSWERED 
 
 He drifts and dies who has no aim. 
 Tost to and fro on buffeting seas : 
 Better to chase the pinioned Harm: 
 Of selfish purpose, better shame 
 With strength — than sink in sapless case 
 
 But better far, who with shut I ir 
 Faces his moody thoughts alone ; 
 Few hopes survive, but fewer f( 
 
 < 'infuse him as the end appeal 
 I [( looks ahead without .1 groan.
 
 1 6S MEDIOCRITY ANSWERED 
 
 3 
 
 We have one life, but one to spend. 
 How shall we use the precious loan ? 
 Dawn is our slave, the noon a friend, 
 Sunset may stay : but at the end 
 The soul must judge the soul alone. 
 
 4 
 Wilt keep the same our fathers had, 
 Treasure the buried talent ?— but 
 Read the old page of Nature, shut 
 The book without a note to add, 
 And plod tradition's crudded rut? 
 
 5 
 "Ah! but 1 have no worthy gift, 
 No genius, learning, eloquence, 
 I am not strong, I am not swift, 
 1 have not power enough to lift 
 This weight of conscious impotence.
 
 MEDIOCRITY ANSWERED i6q 
 
 6 
 
 " If I had only half your might, 
 
 Your courage, your unswerving will, 
 
 I'd dare defiance, in the fight 
 
 My sword should aid the cause of right : — 
 
 But now my life is like a mill 
 
 7 
 " That slowly moves its measured round, 
 
 Monotonously confident ; 
 
 The stream, alas, is not profound, 
 
 The average weight of grain is ground ; 
 
 Such was the wheel's predestined bent." 
 
 8 
 "Can then life's mill no freedom have? — 
 What stream so hidd'n but stars will steal 
 And glimmer somewhere on the wave : 
 E'en if the wheel he but a slave, 
 Whence comes the stream that feeds the wheel ?
 
 170 MEDIOCRITY ANSWERED 
 
 9 
 
 "What seems so now confined and slow 
 Far up the mountain-height outbroke 
 With godlike energy, aye, we know 
 Which way the element will flow, 
 When it has passed beyond the yoke. 
 
 10 
 "Why weigh the worth of small and great? 
 Water's the same the whole world through, 
 The deepest seas plunge desolate, 
 And heaven itself, in spite of fate, 
 ('an gather in one drop of dew." 
 
 LINE BROTHERS, PRINTERS, CI.ACTON-ON-SKA.
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR : 
 
 "THE BALLAD OF PITY" 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS. 
 OUT OF PRINT. A few copies remaining. 
 
 Prick 5/— Posi I-km. 
 
 Apply 
 
 LINE BROTHERS, 
 
 GUIDE OFFICE," CLACTON - ON - SEA, 
 
 I' SSI V
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CAYLORO 
 
 
 
 PRINTCO IN U.S.A.
 
 AA 000 641 328 o 
 
 HIVLH'.'l'l "I"*. 1 
 
 3 1210 01285 2453
 
 L