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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 POEMS BY THE LATE 
 JOHN LUCAS TUPPER.
 
 POEMS 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 JOHN LUCAS TUPPER 
 
 SELECTED AND EDITED BY 
 
 WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY 
 MDCCCXCVII
 
 CHISWICK press: — CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
 
 VK 
 
 
 
 S-fc<?9 
 
 
 
 ' H'l(.^>- 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Iffry 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prefatory Notice by W. M. Rossetti 
 
 
 
 
 vii 
 
 In Childhood .... 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 Wind-Notes .... 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 Sunrise ..... 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 Dying 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 A Warm February 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 A Death in the Family 
 
 
 
 
 II 
 
 A Silent Lyre . . . . . 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 Eden after Sixty Centuries . 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 What the Sun sees 
 
 
 
 
 . i8 
 
 A Vision of Linnjeus . 
 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 To . "The Fairies feed on 
 
 scent 
 
 > 
 
 
 23 
 
 Renovation .... 
 
 
 
 
 26 
 
 In the Garden .... 
 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 To • . " No word of question 
 
 woulc 
 
 1 I as! 
 
 , )) 
 
 31 
 
 A Witch of Rhine 
 
 
 
 
 33 
 
 Tardy Spring .... 
 
 
 
 
 • 35 
 
 A Woman's Beauty 
 
 
 
 
 • 38 
 
 A Good-bye .... 
 
 
 
 
 40 
 
 Idols 
 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 An Epidemic .... 
 
 
 
 
 43 
 
 Lights and Shadows 
 
 
 
 
 • 45 
 
 Aliens ..... 
 
 
 
 
 47 
 
 Night 
 
 
 
 
 • 49 
 
 A Thrush's Song 
 
 
 
 
 53 
 
 Skylarks ..... 
 
 
 
 
 • 55 
 
 In a Wood ..... 
 
 
 
 
 • 56 
 
 s0?06
 
 VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 A Night-Lay 
 
 Forget me not 
 
 Crime's Blight 
 
 Separation . 
 
 Seaside 
 
 A Quiet Evening 
 
 Progress of the Species 
 
 A Grotesque 
 
 Circumstances alter Cases 
 
 Browning's " Bordello " 
 
 The One Thing Known 
 
 The Debit Side . 
 
 Things Unperceived and Uses Undiscerned 
 
 To my Friend Holman Hunt 
 
 To Frederic Stephens . 
 
 My Dream — i., ii. 
 
 Unachieved 
 
 An Evening Fantasy . 
 
 Kit's Cotty-house, Kent 
 
 Twilight .... 
 
 A Thrush's Message . 
 
 Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven 
 
 Rain .... 
 
 Rue Tronchet, Paris . 
 
 To the Cuckoo . 
 
 To a Skylark. 
 
 Sub Jove 
 
 To a Nightingale 
 
 If I knew ! 
 
 Women's Rights . 
 
 To Annie . 
 
 Notes by W. M. Rossetti 
 
 PAGE 
 
 59 
 
 60 
 
 61 
 
 63 
 64 
 66 
 
 70 
 
 74 
 1^ 
 11 
 78 
 
 79 
 80 
 
 81 
 
 82 
 
 83 
 
 85 
 86 
 
 87 
 88 
 
 89 
 
 90 
 
 91 
 92 
 
 93 
 
 94 
 
 95 
 96 
 
 97 
 98 
 99 
 
 lOI
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 Books and writings about the " Prasraphaelite Brother- 
 hood," which was estabHshed in the autumn of 1848, are 
 by this time tolerably numerous. Among them, here and 
 there, occurs the name of John Lucas Tupper, and some 
 faint suggestion of who he was and what he did. The 
 time seems to have come at last for impressing his name 
 more definitely upon the public memory, and for indi- 
 cating — and indeed, I think, proving — that he was a 
 man with a very considerable poetic gift of his own, and 
 highly deserving of explicit and honourable record. 
 
 I will only cite one testimony to John Tupper's claims 
 as a poet. In the book which I published in 1895 — " Dante 
 Gabriel Rossetti, his Family Letters, with a Memoir " — 
 occurs a note to the following effe6l : " There was a little 
 lyric of Tupper's on the Garden of Eden in ruinous 
 decay, of which Dante Rossetti thought very highly. He 
 compared it to Ebenezer Jones's lyric, ' When the world 
 is burning ' j and said that, had it been the writing of 
 Edgar Poe, it would have enjoyed world-wide celebrity." ^ 
 I include this poem in the present sele6lion, though it 
 was, I believe, published in a review soon after the date 
 of Mr. Tupper's death. 
 
 ' Vol. i., p. 151.
 
 viii PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 John Lucas Tupper was born in London in or about 
 1826. It may perhaps be as well to say at the outset 
 that he had no sort of de fa£io connection with Martin 
 Farquhar Tupper, the author of " Proverbial Philosophy," 
 although it is said that the two men were "eleventh 
 cousins." His father was a lithographic and general 
 printer in the city of London, and the business is still 
 kept up by two of John's brothers. John Tupper, ex- 
 hibiting an early bias towards the arts of design, became a 
 student at the Royal Academy. He was, I think, rather 
 undecided for a while whether he should take to painting 
 or to sculpture ; ultimately he settled upon the latter. In 
 the Academy classes he became known to the young 
 artists who formed the Praeraphaelite Brotherhood — 
 Millais, Holman Hunt, Woolner, Stephens, Collinson, 
 and Dante Rossetti : Hunt and Stephens, and after a 
 time Rossetti, more particularly knew him well. My 
 own introduction to him may have taken place early in 
 1849; by that date, without abandoning the sculptural 
 profession, he had shunted himself off into a special line 
 of work, being installed as anatomical draughtsman at 
 Guy's Hospital — an employment for which he was ex- 
 ceptionally well qualified. As a young man he exhibited 
 a few sculptural works at the Royal Academy, and per- 
 haps elsewhere — works showing advanced studentship and 
 the severest tenets of truthful rendering — but nothing of 
 his ever fixed the public attention. The tendency of his 
 mind was certainly quite as much scientific as artistic ; 
 and, though I conceive him to have been fully capable of 
 producing sound works of art, had circumstances been 
 favourable, he did in fa6t pass through life without realiz- 
 ing anything considerable in sculpture, if we except the
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. ix 
 
 life-sized statue of Linnaeus in the Oxford University- 
 Museum — a work of the most conscientious order in 
 realism of intention and unsparing precision of detail. 
 
 Quitting Guy's Hospital in 1863, Mr. Tupper received, 
 in March 1865, the appointment of Master of the classes 
 for geometrical or scientific drawing at Rugby School ; 
 where he was distinguished for solid and ingenious learn- 
 ing, zealous devotion to his work, and successful train- 
 ing of his pupils. He married in 1871 (the last day of 
 the year), and has left a widow and two children. At 
 Rugby he died on September 29th 1879. His health 
 had for some years been precarious, more especially after 
 a very dangerous illness of a spasmodic or convulsive 
 kind which attacked him in Florence in 1869, when I 
 was his travelling-companion. 
 
 A man of stridler principle than John Tupper, more 
 bent upon doing right, more honourable in ail, more 
 tenacious of the truth as he discerned it, has not been 
 known to me. He was not without ambition, founded 
 upon a well-justified, but always very modest, conscious- 
 ness of abilities — scientific, artistic, speculative, poetical ; 
 and yet was content with his rather secluded and incon- 
 spicuous lot in life. He was a steadfast and affectionate 
 friend, as no one knows better than myself 
 
 Even before I knew him in 1849, Tupper had written 
 a good deal of verse. The Praeraphaelite magazine, 
 "The Germ," issued in 1850, and printed by the Tupper 
 firm, contains the following contributions of his : in verse, 
 " A Sketch from Nature," " Viola and Olivia," and two 
 humorous sketches, " An Incident in the Siege of Troy," 
 and " Smoke " ; in prose, " The Subje6l in Art." 
 
 Perhaps one of the most marked symptoms of the 
 
 b
 
 X PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 poetical temperament is an acute susceptibility to impres- 
 sions. A scene or an objedt in nature, a human person- 
 ality or passion, is discerned, and discerned with peculiar 
 vividness ; but the matter does not remain there — the 
 perception of the eye and mind becomes an impression on 
 the w^hole individuality of the poet, the nutriment of his 
 emotion, and of his fancy or imagination, which swathe 
 it like a lambent flame. That which entered into him as 
 a perception issues forth as a transmuted entity — real, and 
 also visionary. I apprehend that this poetical quality is 
 strongly, and even rather abnormally, marked in the verse 
 of John Tupper. There is also, in various instances, a 
 true lyrical impetus, and a certain cosmic feeling, to 
 which his peculiar turn for science (contemplated rather 
 in the abstra6t than merely physically) contributed. A 
 repugnance to some aspe6ts of modernism, whether in 
 the domain of physics or of mind, will be observed here 
 and there. A few of the poems now collected are 
 humorous (these are grouped together in the latter half 
 of the volume) : they have, I think, a genuine mingling 
 of oddity and sprightliness, or what we call quaintness. 
 The general tone and tenor of Tupper's poetry is summed 
 up not inaptly in his sonnet " To Annie " (his wife), 
 where he speaks of himself as singing of 
 
 " Rarest things 
 That make the earth a perfume and a song, 
 And of vague solace of imaginings." 
 
 John Tupper did not during his lifetime publish any 
 volume of verse j and it appears to me that, after the 
 date of " The Germ," scarcely anything of his, in the 
 poetic form, got into print, even in magazines etc. He
 
 PREFATORY NOTICE. xi 
 
 left, however, a substantial bulk of verse, which his widow 
 copied out — no light task. Her copies form the manu- 
 scripts which have come into my hands. Some of the 
 pieces, besides being confusedly jotted down by himself, 
 had obviously not received his final revision ; and I have 
 thought it not only a right but a duty to redtify here and 
 there some stumble of metre or of didlion, or some lapse 
 of rhyme. The reader may rely upon it that what I have 
 thus done is really a trifle, and not such as to impair in 
 any appreciable degree the authenticity of the work. In 
 fa£l, while I should have regarded it as unkind to the 
 memory of my old friend to omit doing what I have 
 done, I should have deemed it impertinence to go beyond 
 this narrow limit. 
 
 Mr. Tupper was the author of two published books : 
 in each instance he wrote under the fancy name of 
 " Outis." These are " The True Story of Mrs. 
 Stowe " (concerning Lord Byron), and (1869) "Hiatus, 
 or the Void in Modern Education " : the latter received 
 at the time some fair amount of press notice. There are 
 several MS. poems besides those which I have as yet 
 examined ; also a prose story and various papers on scien- 
 tific and other subjedls. Possibly some of these may yet 
 see the light of publication. 
 
 In the present volume I have added a few notes, but 
 only where there were some allusions etc. which seemed 
 not likely to explain themselves. The dates appended to 
 the poems are mostly corre6l, but sometimes only approxi- 
 mate. 
 
 W, M. ROSSETTI. 
 
 London, 
 
 No'vember 1896.
 
 POEMS. 
 
 IN CHILDHOOD. 
 
 'Tv/AS a god-haunted meadow, grassed and wide ; 
 
 Poplars grew on the eastern side, 
 
 The brown wood rose behind. 
 
 It was not low, it was not high. 
 
 For the woods all round went higher : the sky 
 
 Was next to these ; and the sunset blind 
 
 Tore through the deepest forestry. 
 
 There was no empty plain for the eye 
 
 To wander over, remote or nigh. 
 
 There was no ground but the meadow grass ; 
 
 Dusk woods walled out the world somewhere — 
 
 Away where no one strove to pass ; 
 
 And whether there was another sky 
 
 Or other earth we did not care. 
 
 The sky and the meadow belonged to each other, 
 The life that I led to me was new 
 In a world that was new, and the wonder grew, 
 As the flowers each day 
 Changed their array. 
 
 Or changed into berry and fruit the flower. 
 
 B
 
 IN CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Through the long day and hour by hour 
 
 I could talk and play and talk with my mother. 
 
 And oh it was glad when the evening came 
 To sit by the small lamp's flickering flame, 
 And read of a world that was more than a name, 
 And less than a substance. The histories passed 
 Of Noah and Enoch and Solomon, 
 Of Theseus, Alcides and Telamon, 
 And haunters of forest and fountain and sod. 
 I grew up in love without method amassed. 
 Loving, hating, desiring, and wondering, 
 A haunter of autumn and haunter of spring. 
 And sometimes conceiving I might be a god. 
 
 184.6.
 
 WIND-NOTES. 
 
 I WILL not come to thee, 
 Although my eyes are tranced 
 And full of thy dear face. 
 
 And on this side the day of doom 
 We shall not meet, because the world 
 Works change on what it wears away. 
 
 For I design to think of thee 
 Only as now I think, and so 
 To think of thee until I die. 
 
 For thou to me a sunrise art. 
 
 To which a thousand drops of dew 
 
 Belong and thousand flowers, — 
 
 'to 
 
 Which when the thousand drops of dew 
 And when the thousand flowers are not, 
 Is not the same sunrise. 
 
 Thou art to me a sound of bells 
 At night — a moment of the night 
 When winds Hft sound away.
 
 WIND-NOTES. 
 
 Thou art to me the crystal song 
 Of thrushes to the stars ere morn, 
 While yet the lawns are white ; 
 
 Or nightingale's song poured away 
 Profuse with thunder standing near, 
 To keep the long night wild ; 
 
 Or else a sempiternal sky 
 
 With nine blue stars in rocking leaves. 
 
 And a little golden moon. 
 
 1846.
 
 SUNRISE. 
 
 Listen ! a sweet bird singing now, 
 
 Although it is not Hght ; 
 
 He sits on yon acacia bough 
 
 To watch the wane of night. 
 
 O mystery of mysteries ! 
 
 What are these festivals and cries 
 
 Of birds, of flowers in summer weather ? 
 
 Badly the dull ear keeps together 
 
 Notes flung down from the pledral rod. 
 
 That thrills all nature with the beat 
 
 Of mystic life announcing God, 
 
 And wakes the ever a<Stive heat 
 
 Through earth, and tunes the ether-string 
 
 That throbs in colour, to make sing 
 
 The undulous sea of charmed air. 
 
 What shall be deemed of life ? O where 
 
 Begin its vague interpreting ? 
 
 Ere night steps down the western stair. 
 
 The stir comes over all — along 
 
 Our forest tops no lack of song : 
 
 All flowers resume their colours fair 
 
 When the Light-god comes, and on the string 
 
 Whereon he does his messaging
 
 SUNRISE. 
 
 Vibrate their answer keen and clear. 
 And I, a mere speftator here 
 Without a function, fear to call 
 In worship to the Spirit of all. 
 My tongue would scream a note of woe 
 At dissonance from nature so ; 
 My voice would be a leaden pall 
 Upon the glad flowers' golden glow. 
 
 A million king-cups mean to flare 
 
 Bright eyes to heaven, which turns to flash 
 
 A sun back. There will be a clash 
 
 Of jubilant branches in the air, 
 
 And out of earth will rise a breath 
 
 Of gladness, and the only death 
 
 Lurks in my heart — no other-where ? 
 
 Resolve the mystery ; bring me aid, 
 
 Strange Spirit ! Dwelleth harmony 
 
 With one ? And now thy thought hath made 
 
 The shadow of death be dead in me. 
 
 Strangely I rise to a ministry — 
 
 The mountain pine hath nothing said. 
 
 1846.
 
 DYING. 
 
 Beneath the eye of evening, plain 
 The sleepy hills are lying : 
 Fields are green from recent rain, 
 Green the rugged grassy lane. 
 And how have I wrought on, who die. 
 Now die, wrung brain in vain 
 Striving to find them living ! Dying, 
 Look, they come again — 
 The common, and the children playing 
 With hoop and bat and bow, the straying 
 Lambs beyond. So pass them by : 
 We left them j and we leave them ; try 
 For flowers this rugged grassy lane. 
 Look, your flowers again ! 
 Why, the flowers you wore for hours — 
 Not one withered — as I gave them 
 You, who lost them. I, who have them, 
 I, who brook no coy gainsaying. 
 Now have all : the children playing — 
 All, the sun, the grass, the flowers ; 
 Time — its minutes, hours remain : 
 I feel the minutes throb again ; 
 Moans the bee, and thrills the bird ; 
 Glimmer sunlit grass and flower ;
 
 DYING. 
 
 Flies the white cloud fringed with rain. 
 
 So you droop your eyelids lower, 
 
 And we have no whisper heard : 
 
 So we feel no pain. 
 
 And we shut the prison house ; 
 
 Outside — world, and inside — brain, 
 
 Weary world, dark, onerous ! 
 
 All is here — 
 
 A sunset clear : 
 
 Eyes clear of scorn, grass fresh with rain. 
 
 We'll not wake again ! 
 
 1846.
 
 A WARM FEBRUARY. 
 
 Over the evening-misty hills 
 White villas in the stare of the sun : 
 The heads of elms and chestnuts dun 
 Take tawny fire, each one by one ; 
 February is not done, 
 Although the grass is soft and green, 
 And warm air blows and flows between 
 These blind bare arms that trees uprear 
 To feel for summer somewhere near. 
 
 Sitting upon the stile, I fain 
 Would fancy summer up the lane. 
 Where both the hedges rusty grey 
 With blackthorn bushes say me nay. 
 The winter time has left its stain 
 Of snow upon the thorn and rain 
 Upon the pales. Like black hairs turning 
 Grey, it has a look of yearning 
 Back to youth again. 
 
 Oak trees nigh, not 'gainst the sky. 
 But how black and bare and knotted, 
 And the sunset clings on high 
 To the summer mockery
 
 10 A WARM FEBRUARY. 
 
 Mournfully bedropped and dotted 
 Where the ivy dangles by. 
 And I cannot draw my eyes 
 From the bare sun-gilded trees, 
 Because it seems as by degrees 
 An old grey man is standing there 
 Letting some damsel trick his hair 
 As gaily as the sun decks these, 
 While he bears all without surprise. 
 
 And when into the west at last 
 I turn, the day is sinking fast ; 
 The sun has gapped the hedge with light. 
 Laid fervid fire on thousand sprays. 
 Shooting shadows thousand ways 
 Until they vanish. But the white 
 Slow mists have muffled up the night. 
 And all is changed ; for now the air 
 Is chilly, and the moon has shone 
 Down dimly on a sea unknown, 
 With sunk rocks visible here and there. 
 Whereon one cloud-ship sails alone. 
 
 1850.
 
 II 
 
 A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. 
 
 Fold up her fan : it will not stir 
 
 The air for her. 
 Outside acacias wave and whirr, 
 Fanning breaths that pass 
 From earth to heaven — and what, alas ! 
 
 Do we with fans ? 
 Also these rings, now ? Talismans 
 Perchance — keep them. We must dispense 
 With much now useless : whence 
 A use for what she will not use ? 
 Little things that did amuse. 
 
 Employ her daily, no — 
 Perhaps they should not go ; 
 But all her wardrobe, straight 
 
 Hide it. Or, wait — 
 The sofa with her work thereon 
 
 Must not begone : 
 These tables — she was wont to arrange 
 Their ornaments. The Grange 
 Will vanish altogether so. 
 Trees hold her accents ; grass blades know 
 Her footstep ; garden knots, and flowers 
 Within doors, watered with her hands. 
 Alas, she leaves us nothing ours
 
 12 A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. 
 
 Unsignatured ! Dim seas and lands 
 Remote we needs must seek to be 
 Remindless of her. For I see 
 As yet no fleeting cloud along 
 The rounding verge, hear no faint song 
 Of wind or bird that doth not say, 
 " In such attire, on such a day 
 She pointed, listened." 
 
 The dumb ground. 
 Blind sky, are witnesses around. 
 The chiming hours will speak in round 
 That still she hither goes and there ; 
 Her chamber window would not dare 
 Be bright with daylight if she were 
 Not in her chamber ; every stair 
 In the still house experts her foot : 
 And I am conscious, when the mute 
 Midnight affirms she sleeps, the morn 
 Will ask for her. To live, and scorn 
 These witnesses in dumb array ? 
 No — all must go or all must stay. 
 
 Sept. 1850.
 
 13 
 
 A SILENT LYRE. 
 
 No more — no more ! It will not sound ' 
 The strings relapse with shattering jar, 
 And leave their mournful whisper. Far 
 That harp hath travelled over ground 
 Rugged and smooth — a long way round. 
 
 The plectrum now, till music rings ! 
 
 I feel its weight how dead and cold ! 
 
 And wonder who could be so bold 
 As touch with it these delicate strings. 
 To force out such faint sorrowings. 
 
 Sorrowings, submissive, like a wife 
 
 To rugged brute intoxicate — 
 
 Or flowers, to winds infuriate, 
 
 That shed their perfume with their life 
 
 Upon the senseless northern knife. 
 
 O harp ! if I were born anew. 
 And thou unruined mine again. 
 The mosses of the calmest rain. 
 The offspring of the sweetest dew. 
 Should be too hard, too hard for you.
 
 14 A SILENT LYRE. 
 
 But something culled from thistle down, 
 From cygnet plume, or sleepy owl. 
 With moultage of the eider-fowl. 
 Wherewith a queen fay lines her crown, 
 Would shield thee from the loud renown ; 
 
 Cradle thee soft in solitude. 
 
 With nothing save thy will to creep 
 Self-stirred, in cadence faint or deep. 
 
 Through thine own strings in thine own mood, 
 
 Unquestioned of the multitude. 
 
 Low down within some mountain dell 
 
 Where comes not sun, nor wind, and where 
 Grows dream-like up that maiden-hair 
 That knows the ghostly twilights well. 
 There shouldst thou throb inaudible. 
 
 1850.
 
 15 
 
 EDEN AFTER SIXTY CENTURIES. 
 
 There are rows of poplars 
 Down the garden walks ; 
 There are cedars standing 
 On the dewy lawns ; 
 They have waited many 
 Mornings of the Spring ; 
 Many swallows fly there, 
 Many birds sing ; 
 And now is the Summer. 
 
 Here be great white lilies 
 Leaning down their stalks. 
 
 The roses like lamps 
 Standing on their stems, 
 Burning out their spirit 
 From morning unto even. 
 
 Are dying and born, 
 And all the perfume given 
 
 Is given to waste. 
 
 The flowers upon the trees 
 Are mixed with withered flowers, 
 And black shrivelled seeds
 
 i6 EDEN AFTER SIXTY CENTURIES. 
 
 Of last year's growing. 
 
 There is no knowing 
 How long time ago — 
 
 If there were hours 
 And flowers did grow — 
 
 A hand took the flowers. 
 
 Cystus, anemone, 
 
 Olive and myrtle, 
 
 Cypress and cinnamon. 
 
 Orange and lime. 
 
 Go high or low ; 
 
 And the wandering vine 
 
 And ivies entwine, 
 
 And stretch at the bough, 
 
 The bough of the pine. 
 
 The palm tree is weeping. 
 The gums ever dropping. 
 The long lawns sleeping. 
 Nothing is dying. 
 Growth is not stopping. 
 Cumbered with nothing, 
 The low lawns are lying 
 In their green clothing. 
 
 He must be coming. 
 These must be waiting. 
 Are the bees not humming ? 
 Are they not translating 
 The golden pollen
 
 EDEN AFTER SIXTY CENTURIES, i-] 
 
 From flower to flower ? 
 Are they not debating 
 In converse sullen 
 About the hour ? 
 
 1851. 
 
 c
 
 i8 
 
 WHAT THE SUN SEES. 
 
 Still the great sun gets up and holds a light 
 That men may see what ugly things they do ; 
 And still the pendent plummet hangeth true ; 
 And still the sky is sempiternal blue : 
 And man gets older, and there cometh night. 
 
 The wind was talking in the poplar trees 
 Over my head, and in this fashion still. 
 Nor heard I, for the running of the rill, 
 The chirp of grasshoppers that count and shrill 
 Some anguished minutes ; but I knew of these 
 
 And all the other pain-enforced voice 
 Of swallow, or expostulating bee; 
 Because there was no creature I could see. 
 Or animal, or wind, or shaken tree. 
 That deemed the sun had reason to rejoice. 
 
 Trust me, the river gurgled chokingly. 
 The mill went jarring round, and blear and dun 
 Clouds in the eye of the insulting sun 
 Escaped towards the west : and one by one 
 Hot sheep rose up, then sank along the lea ;
 
 WHAT THE SUN SEES. 19 
 
 As if they had not rightly settled which, 
 Motion or rest, were painfuller ; and still 
 The light was everywhere, with prying skill 
 Demonstrating a present, visible ill. 
 Though it might lurk in furrow or in ditch : — 
 
 Showing the lizard murdered by the rat, 
 The spider, with his prey, tongued by a toad. 
 The caterpillar writhing at the goad 
 Of tugging emmets, black into the road. 
 The chafer by the cow's hoof trodden flat. 
 
 Death everywhere, or pain ! — until one deemed 
 The blessedest of all things must be sleep : 
 A rest that would continue calm and deep 
 (Although this shepherd will betray his sheep 
 Unto the slaughterer). And then it seemed, 
 
 As I was walking round that labouring mill, 
 There came a young girl with a lamb to play, 
 And she had many flowers which bloom a day 
 But dare not, though we love them, longer stay. 
 Because the hours are ravenous to kill, 
 
 And eat up all : — which, entering not the head 
 
 Of this poor child, had almost changed my mind. 
 
 To find a happiness I could not find 
 
 Attend such blindness. — But the mill was blind. 
 
 Whirled round its sail, and struck her lamb stone dead.
 
 20 WHAT THE SUN SEES. 
 
 So then I said, " Go home, die in your bed ; 
 Sleep first, the only peace before you die ! " 
 The sail went round, and all the wind did sigh : 
 The poplars whispering contumeliously 
 " Of winds below, and calm heaven overhead ! " 
 
 1856.
 
 21 
 
 A VISION OF LINNiEUS, 
 
 I SAW a youth walking upon the hills 
 
 In the breme Lapland morning, while the sun 
 
 Now swerving upward (as a swallow turns 
 
 That has not rested on the earth) emblazed 
 
 The close fur wrapping him with gold that rippled 
 
 I' the flying wind : what time I certified 
 
 His cap of fox-skin, and his coat of deer : 
 
 And, as he walked, how he would stay his step, 
 
 Against the unconquered wind to scrutinize 
 
 The ground with flowers and rare growths mottled o'er 
 
 In that high region ; and the rocks and pools 
 
 Sucked there by spongy herbage — not as a girl 
 
 Culling wild flowers, who looks for these alone. 
 
 But taking with a wide glance all that was 
 
 As each a limb of one great animal. 
 
 For whether it were moss or flower or fern, 
 
 Or fungus growth of rottenness, the bare 
 
 Bleached jaw-bone of some stag, or wind-bleached rock. 
 
 Or raven's wing in rocky cleft, or foot 
 
 Of hare the eagle-owl left, nesting close : 
 
 Each sang keen notes of one great anthem still. 
 
 Of which the dominant (man, in health, disease. 
 
 Or death) rang joyous, with a cry that rent 
 
 The harmony up through sunny air to heaven.
 
 22 A VISION OF LINNtEUS. 
 
 Grandly he walked, or grander stood, the wind 
 
 Passing, and great thoughts passing on more swift 
 
 Within him, what the world had been and was ; 
 
 While in his hand the flower, held listlessly, 
 
 I saw he saw not, for his soul was rapt — 
 
 As one who has fasted feels a lightness go 
 
 Throughout his frame, conversing more with air 
 
 Than solid ear'h, and running seems to fly. 
 
 I saw him hovering about that hill 
 
 Like an alighted eagle, staring round 
 
 A strange world with a glory in his gaze : 
 
 A visitant who momently we fear 
 
 Even while we gaze may find his task complete, 
 
 And merge into the skies in mystery. 
 
 1858.
 
 23 
 
 TO . 
 
 "The fairies feed on scent." 
 
 (Supper Conversation.) 
 
 You say that fairies feed on scent : 
 
 And then you stay, and check your speech 
 For fear lest you should seem to reach 
 
 Too near the faery land ; — 
 Too near the spirit-realm for each 
 To fathom what the fancy meant : 
 You knew we should not understand. 
 
 And so it was, with eyes down bent, 
 
 You said "'Twas thus with fairies, when 
 They lived at least," nor answer then 
 
 Followed the argument. 
 
 But I have had a fancy since, 
 
 Dreaming or musing a vague hour, 
 That raised up many a faery flower 
 
 Cradhng its faery queen and prince 
 At banquet there : and 1 can say 
 The fairies feed thus to this day. 
 
 Nor need you much misgive the event 
 When next you teach us faery lore.
 
 24 
 
 TO . 
 
 For fairies are not less, but more 
 (So thrive they on this subtile scent) ; 
 
 If you expound their nourishment 
 
 To our dull ears, that doubt at first, 
 
 All too terrestrially nursed 
 
 To know of spirits till we hear 
 That voice, and see those eyes, fine Faye, 
 That lift our earthly lids halfway 
 
 Till into faery lands we peer. 
 
 Those eyes that beam the very light — 
 The hue that only flowers can bring : 
 That mouth, the honied murmuring 
 
 Of bees enamoured in their flight ! 
 
 We listen, and we gaze, and fight 
 In vain against this lore you teach, 
 Because those faery lips that preach 
 
 Must feed on perfume day and night. 
 
 Alas for me who have been nursed 
 Ever with spirits (bad or good) ! 
 'Twere hard if I not understood 
 
 The faintest whisper of their wings — 
 
 The scent which hints their presence first. 
 
 But ah ! when some world-fatted calf 
 Wakens to first vague glimmerings 
 Of soul beneath your reasonings — 
 
 Then, Mab, I see your eyelids laugh ! 
 
 As when the half-god Orpheus stood 
 Steeped to the soul in ecstasy
 
 TO . 25 
 
 Of expe6lation strained to see, 
 
 What melody would do with wood. 
 I fancy how the harp-string stopt 
 
 Just as the trees began to prance ; 
 Fancy the muttered words he dropt, 
 " I might have known that they would dance." 
 
 July 1859.
 
 26 
 
 RENOVATION. 
 
 It was a fervid Summer's eve j 
 
 And deep in Penge's woodbine bowers, 
 I walked to wear away the hours, 
 And snatch a short reprieve 
 
 From that unending coil the world 
 Kept dinning in mine ears and head : 
 And now the latest sun-glance red 
 The twilight sky impearled. 
 
 The blaze upon the forest spread 
 Was golden-misty, splendent-dead ; 
 The sounds that in the wood were heard 
 Were those the ringdove and the bird 
 
 Of night and sorrow alternate 
 To any ear that listens late, — 
 Listens what nature doth alone 
 When men are sleep-o'erthrown. 
 
 I saw a Lady in the wood 
 
 Come watering every tree and herb, 
 And fixing such as winds disturb 
 With storm-blast over-rude.
 
 RENOVATION. 27 
 
 She closed the cups of hundred flowers, 
 She held a starHght lantern dim 
 To those whose stalk is slight and slim 
 Throughout the silent hours. 
 
 She wakened mouse and hedgehog's sight, 
 Enkindled many a glow-worm spark, 
 And showed the mole in chamber dark 
 A transitory light ; 
 
 Until a rustling stirring soon 
 
 Went through the leaves across the ground 
 And listening silence pressed around 
 To pry into night's noon. 
 
 Myriads were moving and awake. 
 Myriads were moving to and fro ; 
 Whisperings along the ground did go. 
 And grass and leaflets shake. 
 
 The stars were twinkling in and out : 
 The Lady ever with her hand 
 Tree, bush, herb, floweret, leaflet, fanned, 
 And showered their scents about. 
 
 Then from the holt my footsteps went 
 In wonder-silent shrinking awe ; 
 For still where last I trod I saw 
 She raised the grass down bent.
 
 28 RENOVATION. 
 
 And she caresses every blade, 
 
 And lifts up every floweret's head, 
 Whatever with unheedful tread 
 I trod on and God made. 
 
 1859.
 
 29 
 
 IN THE GARDEN. 
 
 If, when I lay me down to sleep, 
 This night I lose my wonted breath, 
 
 And pale and silent pass away 
 
 To some undreamed-of realm of death ; 
 
 I wonder, love, if I would keep 
 
 Remembrance of this mortal sphere — 
 
 If that which is so dear to life 
 
 Would be to shadowy death as dear. 
 
 Could I not wed my faith with that, 
 To love you so were naught of bliss. 
 
 We soon shall know ! Sit near me — here 
 We have not long to love and kiss ! 
 
 You wear a rose-bud in your hair j 
 Is it the one you wore last June ? 
 
 The moon comes with the sunset. Look ! 
 It has the shape of last year's moon. 
 
 There 's no one coming, 'twas a bird 
 The same that swung on cherry boughs 
 
 Last year, and chirped and twittered so 
 About the garden and the house.
 
 30 IN THE GARDEN. 
 
 Hark how the marvellous music floats, 
 Beyond the elms by Arthur's Grange ; 
 
 The bird is young, the song is old ; 
 Shapes, but not spirits, suffer change. 
 
 What was I saying ? Love shall last. 
 And never old and tarnished grow ? 
 
 Dear heart, I think to those who love 
 All things in Nature promise so. 
 
 1859.
 
 31 
 
 TO . 
 
 No word of question would I ask: 
 I would not learn in this dim world 
 
 Thy doom, or move aside the mask, 
 And find, as I have found before, 
 
 Beneath this flower the worm up-curled 
 That eats my flowers for evermore. 
 
 But now, before the ensanguined worm 
 That kills thy beauty leaves his nest ; 
 
 And ere I probe the inward germ 
 
 And look down on a blinding blight — 
 
 Shall I be grudged an hour of rest, 
 An hour of rest in fate's despite ? 
 
 To lie entranced and sing the songs 
 Appointed for the bower of God — 
 
 To drink the grandeur that belongs 
 To summer suns and golden moons — 
 
 The opiate languor roses nod 
 
 On the faint wind till he too swoons ? 
 
 And that bemisted odour breathed 
 
 From golden-centred lilies ? Deep 
 Now grows the charm ; and interwreathed
 
 32 
 
 TO 
 
 With rings of radiance, lo, these brows 
 Are aching through a weight of sleep 
 
 Thy presence breathes among the boughs, — 
 
 Hanging on pendent bud and bell. 
 
 Charmed leaf, and fruit, and list'ning bird, 
 
 That dare not let its warble swell 
 
 Because the blank chasm widens round. 
 
 Engirding, till thy lips have stirred. 
 Silence, at watch for that sole sound. 
 
 Because the summer-bee will pause 
 
 Within the cadus' fulgid glare ; 
 The wasp stand still in the hot air ; 
 
 And down the deep white calla cup 
 There will not rise the soft applause 
 
 Until thou lift thine eyelids up. 
 
 So demons whisper woe in vain ! 
 
 For I have neither ear nor sight. 
 I dream here on the edge of night ; 
 
 Here where the calm cold ghosts have passed 
 A girdle round the placid plain 
 
 To hold the charmed sunset fast. 
 
 1859.
 
 33 
 
 A WITCH OF RHINE. 
 
 O GET ye into the boat with me 
 
 For I am the witch of the winding Rhine — 
 And ye shall see 
 How sleepily 
 
 The lights that fly 
 
 Across the sky 
 Under the run of the river shine. 
 
 And ye shall see how winsomely 
 
 The flowers do grow beneath the river : 
 
 Marvel to see 
 
 What things they be / 
 
 That grow so low 
 Where no winds blow, 
 
 And waters stream on on for ever. 
 
 The stars are out, the stars are in, 
 
 The moon is here and there on the stream ; 
 And let it glimmer 
 In sheen or dimmer. 
 
 There 's nothing ye 
 
 In the waters see 
 That's half so empty as life's thin dream. 
 
 D
 
 34 A WITCH OF RHINE. 
 
 Lispeth and lappeth the wave on the boat, 
 For I am the witch of the winding Rhine, 
 
 I lived with you 
 
 In sun and dew, 
 
 Wind, ice, and snow. 
 And only know 
 
 There was nothing real in that Hfe of mine. 
 
 Wherefore in — into the boat with me ; 
 
 On the surface go and the current under, 
 And under and deeper 
 Where never a sleeper 
 
 (Who dreams more true 
 
 Than all of you) 
 Was wakened even by loudest thunder. 
 
 i860.
 
 35 
 
 TARDY SPRING. 
 
 SUN, has earth no influence 
 
 To win thee baclc in time of spring ? 
 And heed'st thou not the year's intense 
 Desire, the eager blossoming, 
 The yearning of the birds to sing 
 Bewrayed by this vain fluttering ? 
 
 1 hear the blackbird, and anon 
 
 The thrush — but oh their hearts are faint. 
 
 And there 's a chilly twitter on 
 
 The pear tree. 'Tis thy turn to paint 
 Some cloud with crimson now : the quaint 
 
 Spring pageant waits for thee alone. 
 
 I've walked the garden three times round, 
 Have questioned with the bustling ants, 
 And solitary bee that chants 
 A dismal drone — we cannot find 
 What keeps thee all so long behind ; — 
 
 The seeds are swollen in the ground. 
 
 And cumbrous forms of life have changed 
 To comelier, demanding wings.
 
 36 TARDY SPRING. 
 
 The secret motion of the Spring's 
 Desire anew hath atoms ranged, 
 And even now the whisperings 
 Of life pervade the germ of things. 
 
 That gold-striped snail I could but spare 
 A fortnight since for promising 
 The early coming of the spring, 
 
 Although he makes the gardens bare. 
 Hath closed his gummy shutters fast 
 Against this snowing eastern blast. 
 
 And were it not the faithful birds 
 Persist to say, O cruel sun, 
 That springtime must be — is begun, 
 
 I would believe, with snail, and herds 
 There sheltering beside the wall. 
 That we shall see no spring at all. 
 
 And, by some error unobserved 
 Before, December followeth 
 On April's heel, with winter-breath 
 To blow out all the golden lamps. 
 And starry flowers whose stems unnerved 
 Hang sidewise in the freezing damps- 
 
 I would believe ; but that the thrush 
 Says resolutely still " the Spring ! " 
 
 With faith so firm against this rush 
 
 Of winter wind that rocks him now. 
 That hoping spring, he dares to sing. 
 
 Without a leaf upon the bough.
 
 TARDY SPRING. 37 
 
 And, if you listen, you shall hear 
 
 How he has clothed, in ecstasy. 
 
 With summer leaves each garden tree. 
 And brought a heated atmosphere 
 
 To that pale calm which keeps afloat 
 
 The thrillings of his evening throat. 
 
 Dear bird, (if thou art nothing more 
 
 Than what we see— a three years thing,) 
 
 With faith so firm thou canst defy 
 Thy present, and thy future sing 
 
 So gladly, I would fain that I 
 
 Had something of thy prophet lore : 
 
 For I am pined with sorrowing : 
 
 The present presses me so sore, 
 
 And of my future, less or more, 
 I cannot augur anything 
 
 With thy large faith, but beat the floor 
 Of hopeless human reasoning. 
 
 i860.
 
 38 
 
 A WOMAN'S BEAUTY. 
 
 Not any fragrance blown from flowers, 
 Not any growth of summer hours, 
 Nor all the whispers of the sea. 
 
 Kissed by relenting winds ; 
 Nor that thrilled bliss the mountain finds 
 
 By Dian nightly visited ; — 
 
 Only the rapture of the dead, 
 
 Voyaging the unvoyaged sea 
 
 To its mysterious shore, may be 
 The rapture that thy beauty breeds in me. 
 
 Death-craving stars that passionately 
 Burn and die, 
 
 And they that listen 
 
 The music of the amethystine 
 
 Turning heavens eternally. 
 Are all too ardent or too cold — 
 For lo, thy beauty, like the radiance rolled 
 Out of yon closing sunset gates of gold, 
 Rains soft upon the spirit and wraps it fold in fold. 
 
 O lady, what is this thou art on earth ? 
 A vision of the unvexed world, a dream 
 Of the eternal peace, where sorrow and sin
 
 A WOMAN'S BEAUTY. 39 
 
 And failure, and the aching spirit's dearth 
 
 No more will enter in ? 
 Yea, thou art mocking us — before the time 
 Tormenting us — a cruel clearest gleam 
 Of heaven too high to climb ! 
 
 Or rather is it, this world sleepy grown, 
 And cumbered in sciential self-conceit. 
 Needs a reminder of forgotten love ? 
 
 Wherefore thou with gentle feet 
 Hast journeyed here in person of love's own 
 
 Sweet spirit to reprove. 
 The nightingale hath fled into the grove, 
 The skylark telleth to the fainting stars 
 
 What no brain dreameth of. 
 The lily breathes her joy. And yet ye groan 
 
 Within your prison-bars 
 Of knowledge, whereas love may here be seen and known. 
 
 i860.
 
 40 
 
 A GOOD-BYE. 
 
 Come a little way on the lea, Mary. 
 
 Let us, at least, say our good-bye ; 
 That fervid gaze of fire that burns the west 
 
 Turns to the cold star in the sky. 
 
 The merle and the mavis lingering 
 
 With music till the daylight die. 
 And small birds weary with sleepy eye that sing, 
 
 Grudge not the time for their good-bye. 
 
 i860.
 
 41 
 
 IDOLS. 
 
 The clouds are heaped : the winds have blown 
 
 The wandering flock in a fleecy sea, 
 And left clear space for the moon, alone 
 
 Descending to the level lea 
 Where stands a black rude Rocking Stone. 
 In her clear path circling down, 
 
 Growing broader gradually. 
 Staring on the level lea. 
 
 Standing on the Rocking Stone ; 
 She shall sink down suddenly. 
 Yet she pauses drowsily — 
 
 A final linger ere she fall : 
 Hearken now the clear wind call ! 
 
 To the bare wolds calleth he : 
 The moon hears not his song. 
 For a giant lies along. 
 
 Sleeping in the shadow, rocking 
 Like one sleeping, but the mocking 
 
 Moon says he will not awake 
 As of old his thirst to slake. 
 Musing yet upon this stone ? 
 
 Can she even see the stain 
 Of what he will not drink again — 
 
 Is it not his elbow-bone
 
 42 IDOLS. 
 
 She slideth down ? 
 
 Was the giant arm upthrown 
 
 In his first sleep ; does he never 
 More unbend it, rocking ever ? 
 
 Circling him v^^ith golden ring 
 She answers, " Once a king." 
 The moon knows what a god he was, 
 
 And she knows how deadly deep 
 He lieth in petrific sleep : 
 
 And she knows each god that has 
 Slept since his time, and count will take 
 Of other gods of rarer make : 
 
 These gods of vapour, and of gas. 
 And lightning, these that lure the mass 
 
 To worship them, that spout and shake 
 Their periods, and pass. 
 
 i860.
 
 43 
 
 AN EPIDEMIC. 
 
 I HEARD the wheel that clattered still, 
 And on the common where I stood 
 
 Was little sign of human ill, 
 
 Nor hint that pestilence could brood 
 Where shadows wrapped the distant wood. 
 
 And many a white-faced village post 
 
 That here and there, with chain between, 
 Gave stir of Hfe to all the green, 
 
 Said nothing of the hearse that crossed 
 A while ago. And you had been 
 
 Persuaded all the villase throve 
 
 In life and health, and that the trees 
 
 Which stand so stately in the grove 
 
 Were fanned by no dead airs that seize 
 
 At midnight on pale mouths we love. 
 
 I had been reading, half the day. 
 
 Of wondrous change by science wrought : 
 But here the children seemed to play 
 
 As hitherto, and art had brought 
 No sweetness to the blackbird's lay ;
 
 44 AN EPIDEMIC. 
 
 Nor any solemn-suited thought 
 
 To infants who would play no more 
 A bow-shot from the accustomed door 
 
 Because a mother's life was not. 
 And nature moved as heretofore. 
 
 1861.
 
 45 
 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 
 
 Ho ! singing high on the hill, 
 Ah ! singing under the vale. 
 
 Fleet sun and shadow 
 
 Move over the meadow, 
 Nothing abiding still ; 
 The cattle, cloud, wind-moving : 
 
 A laughing on hill and in gale, 
 
 A voice in the valley reproving 
 And laughing and loving at shepherds' will. 
 
 Sing me, you thrush in the elm, 
 A single song and stay ; 
 The song-waves overwhelm. 
 Over the meadows all day 
 Move sun and shadow — nay, 
 
 Rest, rest ! 
 There is aching in the breast 
 Whatever idle shepherds say. 
 
 And the perdurable green 
 
 Of holly, and the running river. 
 
 And the ash that holds its mast, 
 
 Will they last ? 
 When we have passed, and shiver
 
 46 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. 
 
 In the wood's serene, 
 
 Whose branches dream and grieve ? 
 
 Whereof it were not good 
 Ye shepherds understood, 
 Dreaming on November eve. 
 
 1867.
 
 47 
 
 ALIENS. 
 
 Love, when I meet thee face to face, 
 I feel thou art not of my race ; 
 I know thy language is not mine. 
 Or only so in the hollow sign 
 The lips make. Of my world of things 
 Thou hast no care or questionings. 
 Nor I of thine. 
 
 What words are said between us twain 
 
 I strive to recolledl, in vain. 
 
 Such merest sounds the words we say, 
 
 Our souls might be in separate spheres 
 
 That own another night and day ; 
 
 Thy smile, God knows, may count for tears ! 
 
 And with thy smile, and with thy sighs, 
 
 A subtle effluence of thine eyes, 
 
 And a dim woven atmosphere 
 
 Around me when thy voice is near. 
 
 My spirit is taken swooning-wise 
 
 As death would take it, swathed in sleep. 
 
 Fatal enchantress, take thy spell. 
 
 Spell passion-deep 
 From off me, for I love not thee —
 
 48 ALIENS. 
 
 I know thee not — thy heart can tell 
 Thou know'st not me. 
 
 What converse can be ours this way ? 
 More natural to sit dumb and stare, 
 As two strange creatures, wondering, glare 
 Each upon each in silent fear, 
 Conje6luring what keen weapons they 
 Conceal to poison, crush or tear — 
 Conceal to unsheathe but once, and slay. 
 
 1869.
 
 49 
 
 NIGHT. 
 
 " Wherefore," I said, "no hope within my heart 
 Where hate was dead and sorrow laid asleep ? 
 Wherefore," I said, " play out thy sorry part, 
 Neither to laugh nor weep ? 
 
 " Arming for ever with no foe to fight. 
 
 And girding up thy loins where goal is none, 
 Or making for the goal of final night 
 Wherein no work is done." 
 
 Yea then (as if a word could cheer the sight) 
 I knew thee and I said at last ; " The song 
 Wherewith I hailed my morning doth belong 
 To none but thee, O Night ! 
 
 " Is due at last to thee, strange speechless Night ! 
 Thee who hast followed me with faithful feet. 
 To be mine own, my mistress sole and sweet, 
 Knowing me thine of right. 
 
 " Well laugh'st thou, who didst know me from the first 
 A thriftless wanderer on the sunny ways — 
 Through all the heat and strife of long-drawn days, 
 And strain and toil and thirst. 
 
 £
 
 50 NIGHT. 
 
 (C 
 
 When I stood still, as one who having spied 
 A light of water springs, on nearing it 
 Finds shining rushes in the moon-flame lit, 
 But dusty all and dried. 
 
 " And didst thou see my heart in its delight 
 Counting on ease at last and holidays, 
 And building labyrinths with pleasant ways ? 
 And didst thou smile, O Night, 
 
 *' Knowing how soon thy truant would return 
 With festal torches dipt in funeral gloom. 
 And birthdays bearing dates of death and doom ? 
 All this didst thou discern, 
 
 " But bodest waiting for me all the same, 
 Letting me taste and weary of the light, 
 And taking me at last with tears of shame 
 Which thou wilt dry, O Night ! 
 
 cc 
 
 Content thee if I weave my crown aright, 
 A dainty faultless-fitting cypress wreath. 
 That grew in the charmed darkness underneath 
 Thy tresses, noiseless Night. 
 
 "And tell me, queen, how we may Hve together 
 Now all the vain pursuit of light has ended : 
 What deep-wrought haven for thy last-befriended 
 Waits in the stormless weather.
 
 NIGHT. 51 
 
 " What glimmering mountains, what dim ghosts of trees ? 
 Whisper in thy most calm and quiet breath, 
 As calm but scarcely quite so cold as death. 
 Unfold thy realms of peace. 
 
 " Dark, yea, for thou art Darkness' queen, I know, 
 And imageless, — save what dim imagery 
 Around the spirit dreaming nakedly 
 In phosphor gleam doth glow. 
 
 "So in thy secret arms, encircling Night, 
 Communing close, without restraint or bar, 
 Absolved from fret of sun or moon or star. 
 Beyond all gaze of light, 
 
 " I have essayed to rest me while the spheres 
 Roll round in anguish, and we dream of peace. 
 But, O divinest mistress, what be these 
 Phantoms of hopes or fears ? 
 
 " What portraiture up-growing in the gloom ? 
 
 What eyes like stars that burn through moonless skies ? 
 What mouth the black-red peony petal dyes ? 
 What hair of raven's plume ? " 
 
 And lo, obscurest dream or lucid dream 
 (Out of the darkness woven and the clime 
 Of death, but all untouched by death or time 
 The soul's self-kindled beam.
 
 52 NIGHT. 
 
 Growing to more than mundane permanence 
 Of vital verity as pored upon 
 By form-engendering spirit) to thought puts on 
 Its outmost evidence. 
 
 Even as the slow^-resolving plants supply 
 
 A foodful soil whereon new growths are fed, 
 So the spent thought its pristine form will shed 
 Fresh thought to vivify ; 
 
 Or as a man left on a lonely isle 
 
 Hath sometimes spoken aloud to hear the sound 
 Of his own voice, and listening hath found 
 Words lost to him erewhile ; 
 
 Even so the spirit spins from subtlest thread 
 
 New robes in which she wraps her with delight. 
 No form of earth or heaven will fester dead 
 In these thy courts, O Night. 
 
 And here will blossom every flowret sweet, 
 And every carol of the blithest bird 
 I hear in springtime will again be heard 
 No more to fade or fleet. 
 
 Only thou sayest, thou art darkness all. 
 And I — am I not weary of the light ? 
 What hand is painting on thy lifeless pall 
 These forms of life, O Night ? 
 
 1869.
 
 53 
 
 A THRUSH'S SONG. 
 
 What, sitting in the underwood, I heard — 
 If I should tell it now, who would believe? 
 Not thou, my Annie ! But the wind will weave 
 
 Words in his own song-tissue till the bird 
 
 Sings more than notes to me, when not a third 
 Hearer participates the summer's eve — 
 Oh the wood hearkens when her children grieve ! 
 
 Wilt listen ? I will tell thee word for word. 
 
 Only this human harp must change its strings 
 To take the tone of sylvan minstrelsy, 
 
 And we must couple to our fancy wings 
 Who mean to hear the depth and mystery 
 
 Of what within my ear still plains and rings — 
 The burden of the thrush's threnody. 
 
 « Sweet ! Sweet ! Sweet ! " 
 
 So I sang, and so 
 
 She seemed to listen. 
 Then I said, " Sing low, 
 Sun, these stars will glisten, 
 
 Let summer come or summer go."
 
 54 A THRUSH'S SONG. 
 
 I sang, " Be quick ! Be quick ! " 
 But then she said, "No, no." 
 She would not listen. 
 Then I sang, " What though 
 The night make speed to go, 
 The morrow's sun to glow, 
 Will mine be risen ? 
 
 Let winter come, let summer go." 
 
 I sang, " Alight, alight ! " 
 
 The morning drove the night 
 Westward, and hung the high boughs all with dew 
 To these or those she flew, — 
 The starry eyes of dew ! 
 
 If she listened 
 I know not, and the starry droplets glistened. 
 I sang, " Alight, alight ! " from my dark yew ; 
 
 If she did listen 
 
 I never knew. 
 I sang, " Alight, alight ! " from this dark yew ; 
 
 If she could listen 
 
 I shall not know. 
 I sang, " Alight, alight ! " until the night. 
 I sang, " Let night come now and never go." 
 
 1869.
 
 55 
 
 SKYLARKS. 
 
 The larks sang gay in Long Law-ford : 
 
 The sky was ruddy at even ; 
 Each day had heard as cruel a wind 
 
 As ever sang through heaven. 
 " How many a day 
 
 Will the mad wind stay ? " 
 I heard her say, on the dusty way, — 
 
 Overhead the larks sang gay. 
 
 The larks sang gay in Long Law-ford 
 
 Even to the set of sun : 
 And I saw dip a cloud-built ship 
 
 Whose masts snapt one by one. 
 It bred in me 
 
 Thought silently : 
 " This girl she knows of a ship at sea," — 
 
 Down the last lark dropt on the lea. 
 
 The larks sing gay in Long Law-ford 
 
 All day to the fall of dew : 
 For what they sing, a God-given thing. 
 
 Is joy the summer through. 
 So gaily they sing : but to me never ring 
 
 The notes of their joy-rhyme true. 
 Since I heard that maiden rue. 
 
 1869.
 
 56 
 
 IN A WOOD. 
 
 O Lady, deign with me to walk, 
 Awhile to walk within the wood ; 
 What thrushes sing and turtles brood 
 To hearken while the dim walks strew'd 
 With whispering leaves we trace and talk. 
 
 Ah, Lady, had you seen the wood, 
 And seen the secret conscious sky 
 Beyond the beechen branchery 
 So calm yestreen at sunset brood 
 Before the crows began to cry ! 
 
 -"5 
 
 And in the wood are mysteries, 
 Unchanted songs, that float away 
 Off solid solemn cypresses, 
 A something from where nothing is : 
 No birds are sitting on the spray. 
 
 The blossoms flash in yellow flames, 
 They glimmer in a purple glow ; 
 They wake in all the woods below 
 Occulted flowers that find no names 
 With men — so quick they bloom and go.
 
 IN A WOOD. 57 
 
 Few footsteps on these paths intrude ! 
 A spirit of fear through all its boughs 
 Defends our charmed forest house. 
 That musing owls may dream and drowse, 
 And hares sleep safely unpursued. 
 
 The stars have spaces in the wood 
 Wherein they circle dreamily 
 All the night long till bat and bee 
 Cross in flight, when, day renewed, 
 The star-dance ceases suddenly. 
 
 But when the gold-disked daylight stood. 
 Stood gazing ere he went away, 
 I heard a strange sweet singing say. 
 Say and repeat it (were it good 
 That I repeat such song to-day ? 
 
 He sang it soothly yesterday.) 
 " The wood is growing dark," he said, 
 He said, " the gloom begins to grow : 
 Come quickly, night, and quickly go, 
 To-morrow all the past is dead. 
 
 " To-morrow comes a queenly maid. 
 The maid our minstrel pines to know ; 
 Come quickly, night, and quickly go, 
 For neither have the stars delayed, 
 And silence wills to have it so." 
 
 Hearken the wonders of the wood : 
 The thrushes have a quainter throat.
 
 58. IN A WOOD. 
 
 The blackbird has a bolder note. 
 The squirrel has a softer coat, 
 The oak tree has a grander mood, 
 
 Lady, will you scorn the wood ? 
 Ah, Lady, will you say me nay ? 
 And that true bird did promise yea. 
 And I have trusted long and woo'd 
 Your shadow through the morning grey. 
 
 And at the hour of waning day 
 Two turtles colloquied the same. 
 Ah, Lady, is my heart to blame ? 
 
 1 dreamed the sun was dropt away. 
 And all the world a burning flame. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Nay, Lady, what is this you say. 
 You are no substance but of air ? 
 But, Lady, this is all my care. 
 That in the wood these limbs I lay. 
 So we may walk together there. 
 
 1870.
 
 59 
 
 A NIGHT LAY. 
 
 Hate and love and hope and fear, 
 
 Never more to enter here, 
 
 O night ! 
 
 Thou saw'st the sorry race was run : 
 
 In the dim 
 
 Thou saw'st me swim — 
 
 How I strove and how I won 
 
 In the sun. 
 
 Then how I learned to loathe the light, 
 
 O night ! 
 
 Thou my Queen, my loveliest. 
 
 Thy domain is rest. 
 
 Is there anything to see 
 
 In thy house of ebony ? 
 
 Surely overhang thy house 
 
 Cypress boughs : 
 
 As calm but scarce so cold as death 
 
 Is thy breath. 
 
 1870.
 
 6o 
 
 FORGET ME NOT. 
 
 I will not say, " Forget me not " 
 
 To you, 
 For if it means true friends are true 
 For ever, as the freshet's brink 
 Is to the sky. 
 Shall I 
 
 Tell you of whom to think ? 
 Or say " Forget me not " — 
 For what ? 
 
 1870.
 
 6i 
 
 CRIME'S BLIGHT. 
 
 The dell was deep and darkly screened, 
 
 Over its brink the maple leaned, 
 
 And in its sides grew larch and thorn, 
 
 And ash upreared to greet the morn — 
 
 Morn which ne'er glimmered on the grass — 
 
 And nettles down the dell. You pass 
 
 There as a place meant to be passed, 
 
 Not visited. But when, at last. 
 
 Chance, fate, or what you will, had taught 
 
 My feet to stay here, I was caught 
 
 Strangely as in a magic net 
 
 (Like one foredoomed whose task is set) 
 
 To where the bare roots writhe and twine 
 
 In dragonish fashion ; it was mine 
 
 To He, and dream and strive to unbind 
 
 The shrouded mystery enshrined 
 
 In these dark boughs. For you could know. 
 
 Having once sat there, it was so : 
 
 Some deed done here by man or heaven 
 
 Or hell, in years long gone, had given 
 
 A touch of shivering to the place, 
 
 And if you looked your eye could trace 
 
 A track beneath the trees where grew 
 
 No grass nor any herb, where dew
 
 62 CRIME'S BLIGHT. 
 
 Fell not, nor summer shower, a track 
 
 Half round the dell, barren and black. 
 
 From east to west in crescent-wise 
 
 It goes, as you look up the rise : 
 
 You see where the dark line begins j 
 
 But be it sorrow's mark or sin's, 
 
 All else is fair. Not lovelier 
 
 Grows maple, hawthorn, ash, or fir. 
 
 Than there, when springtime breathings stir. 
 
 Or summer hears the grasshopper. 
 
 The guilt is in the blighted ground 
 
 Alone, and if these trees have found 
 
 A somewhat melancholy mood. 
 
 Believe 'tis where the branches brood 
 
 Over that black and baleful earth ; 
 
 And if the birds withhold their mirth. 
 
 Believe 'tis from these lowest boughs 
 
 Alone, left to the dull carouse 
 
 Of bat and beetle and wood-louse. 
 
 1873.
 
 63 
 
 SEPARATION. 
 
 " When will she come ? " 
 
 Night by night and day by day, 
 Sore at heart, I sigh and say. 
 
 " Where lies my home ? " 
 
 Seven weeks ago this way it lay. 
 And yet I cannot find my way. 
 
 " Is this the sun ? " 
 
 Sore at heart I sigh and say. 
 Cold is the sun, my love away. 
 
 " The day is done," 
 
 Sore of heart I sigh and say, 
 
 The night is drear and drear the day. 
 
 March 1876.
 
 64 
 
 SEASIDE. 
 
 O Annie, if your hand could be 
 Within my hand beside the sea, 
 With sky, and sea, and sunny mist. 
 In sapphire and in amethyst, 
 Dreaming their early morning dream. 
 As from the ClifFs head it did seem 
 The morn I left. If we could stand 
 Beside that sea-wall, hand in hand ! 
 
 The sea-wall there is tawny sand. 
 
 Brown, yellow, rough with broom and gorse, 
 
 And little water-runnels course 
 
 Their way down to the tide-washed strand. 
 
 Where we have seen them fade, as if 
 
 The spirit of their native cliff. 
 
 Jealous of ocean's briny reign. 
 
 Had sucked them back through earth again. 
 
 And, Annie, when the noon is clear, 
 Have we not watched upon the wave 
 The sea-birds sitting, — lost in grave 
 Conje6lure how their seat could be 
 So firm upon the moving sea ?
 
 SEASIDE. 65 
 
 Love, you remember this, and more ; 
 And how we wandered up the shore 
 With our bold boy, in search of shells. 
 To where the bright spa-water wells. 
 
 Ah, love, I dare not muse on those 
 Dull, drooping hours which followed close 
 That noonday walk, but rather dwell 
 On minutes stol'n, while he slept well. 
 When we would nimbly thrid the town. 
 With all its evening shadows brown, 
 Till, in the starry blackness, we 
 Came out upon the rushing sea. 
 
 Then the walk home, in converse low. 
 Of what is given to few to know. 
 Nature's own words of light and shade 
 That yellow sands and pine trees made 
 At sunset, for no eye but ours, 
 The mystery of the cloud-built towers. 
 Mute music of green moss and flowers. 
 And magic morn and evening hours. 
 
 These things we talked of, O my sweet ! — 
 Do you, who see them now, repeat 
 The old words, as I do, leagues away ? 
 Or will you chide me if I say 
 (For your own silent secret ear) 
 Some presence must have touched more near 
 Than Nature's even — or else why prove 
 Thy words more blissful, O my love ? 
 
 Bournemouth, 1876.
 
 66 
 
 A QUIET EVENING. 
 
 From mere ennui the very cat 
 
 Walked out — it was so precious flat. 
 
 Due on the sofa Gabriel sat, 
 
 And next to him was Stephens found j 
 
 I think, but am not certain, that 
 
 The fender William's legs were round. 
 
 However, all was drowsy, mild. 
 And nothing like to break the charm, 
 Though John essayed in some alarm 
 To read his latest muse-born child ; 
 Then Gabriel moved his active arm, 
 And some believe that Stephens smiled. 
 
 But certain 'tis that Aleck, who 
 Had watched that arm, as anglers do 
 Their quiet float, an hour or two. 
 Was pleased to find it move at last. 
 He therefore filled his pipe anew. 
 And doubled the mundungus blast. 
 
 The poem yet went on and on : 
 
 The poet kept his eyes upon 
 
 The paper till the piece was done ;
 
 A QUIET EVENING. 67 
 
 And then the coke-fire's roof fell in. 
 
 Another accident, which one 
 
 Should mention, William scorched his^shin. 
 
 And nothing more till supper time : 
 Except that Gabriel read a rhyme 
 Of Hell and Heaven and ghosts and crime 
 That gave the room a kind of chill, 
 And rapture followed — so sublime 
 That forty minutes all was still. 
 
 Till all the solemn company 
 Went down to supper — verily 
 The supper went ofF quietly. 
 Trying to talk was all in vain : 
 And then we went up silently 
 Into the lonesome room again. 
 
 Oh was it quiet ? I can swear 
 I heard the separate gas lights flare, 
 The creak of the vibrating chair 
 The balanced Aleck swung upon : 
 The balanced Aleck swinging there 
 Knew it, and so went swinging on. 
 
 Six men, each seated in his seat. 
 With body, arms, and legs complete — 
 A passive mass of flesh, alack ! 
 That none but human cattle make ! 
 The wonder was that they could meet 
 So silent and so long awake.
 
 68 A QUIET EVENING. 
 
 But Gabriel coiled himself, at last, 
 Upon the sofa — Stephens cast 
 His weary arms out, William past 
 A thoughtful hand across his eyes, 
 And George has blown a fainter blast 
 To listen till the snores arise. 
 
 And somewhat quickly they arose — 
 He could distinguish Gabriel's nose 
 From William's mouth in sweet repose, 
 Whose measured murmurs now began ; 
 While John L. Tupper, half in dose. 
 Was crooning as he only can. 
 
 And Stephens — no, he took to flight 
 Before he slept. Then Aleck's sight 
 Denied his pipe was yet alight ; 
 He put it down and grimly stared. 
 Then crammed it to the muzzle tight. 
 And listened — that was all he dared. 
 
 For not a waking P. R. B. 
 Was left ; a blinding mystery 
 Of smoke was over all the three 
 Enduring souls that kept awake. 
 They listened — 'twas the harmony 
 Of cats ! — or there was some mistake. 
 
 Then looking on the garden plot 
 Without, they verified the not 
 Unwelcome fact : the cats had got
 
 A QUIET EVENING. 69 
 
 Convivial, sure enough ; and we 
 
 Could recognize friend Thomas hot 
 
 In mirth like Burns " among the three." 
 
 But if the cats held conference, 
 
 What then .'' We might not make pretence 
 
 To such — w^itness the prudent sense 
 
 Of Stephens getting up to go. 
 
 I'd give my cat the preference, 
 
 Who left us somew^hat sooner, though. 
 
 1850.
 
 70 
 
 PROGRESS OF THE SPECIES. 
 
 You're sanguine, very sanguine, a good sign 
 
 You have discovered an invisible power 
 
 That runs along your wires around the world 
 
 Called electricity — the word is much. 
 
 Then comes another invisible in your pipes 
 
 To nullify the night, — gas. Call it so. 
 
 The visible candle is a vulgar thing ! 
 
 That handy artist light who flits about 
 
 Ready, at beck, to paint your visages, 
 
 What name will ye be pleased to accost him by ? 
 
 John, James, were scarce distingue^ let him be 
 
 Photography. 
 
 Dear man, you must have hated tangibles. 
 
 Push further yet — the chairs and table dance 
 
 By simple touching. You must look, nay, think 
 
 These into physical obedience. Call 
 
 The chair you wish to sit on to your side. 
 
 And these are dead trees, do you understand. 
 
 The dead ones of your kin. Be sure, they'll come 
 
 (Hailed by a potent over-mastering will) 
 
 In terrible haste — all the old mouldy sticks, 
 
 Kepler and Newton, Tycho, Verulam, 
 
 To knock out lame excuses in your ears 
 
 For their lugubrious existences.
 
 PROGRESS OF THE SPECIES. 71 
 
 Oh we'll have such a rout of them ! But you 
 Go on — stagnation's death, only hold fast 
 On galvanism, and mesmerism, and steam, 
 And gas, and anaesthetics ! . . . How d'ye do. 
 My dearest Smith ? you see I know a bare 
 Truth — your euphonious patronymic. 
 
 [Smith.] "Ha!" 
 "Why, what in Mammon's name can bring you here ? 
 Are you lichen hunting, out for orchids — cut 
 Grey ledgers for a green day in the woods ? " 
 [5,] " No, I'm going to the Palace. Pretty well ?" 
 " Excellent, excellent ! such an appetite ! 
 I dine directly — won't you stay ? " 
 
 [S.] "How? where?" 
 " Here, just by." 
 
 [^.1 " In the wood ? " " There, Smith, behold 
 My restaurant. This host of mine so shifts 
 His tables, I have no monotony 
 Of scene while feasting, look you, to keep pace 
 With keen requirements of this ultimate age. 
 This last perfedlion of the toiling world. 
 I choose to balance well the dignities 
 That decorate this human microcosm ; 
 To give the bodily ministers — the gross 
 Slaves of the mind — their grosser nutriment ; 
 But not, while these are glutted (far, so far 
 Below in their material house), to have 
 Their supreme lord, the spirit, intoxicate. 
 Or sleeping on his throne. The Romans built 
 Baths high into the air, that while they swam, 
 Ridding their bodies of gross scale and slough, 
 And drinking in the purer lymph, their eyes
 
 72 PROGRESS OF THE SPECIES. 
 
 Might wander far along the coasts below, 
 
 And feed their minds with thought, or greet the dawn 
 
 Through slumbrous floods of summer-purple night ; 
 
 For we must dip back into Rome and Greece, 
 
 For fear we miss some handy requisite. 
 
 Just as our traveller in Naples says. 
 
 Who, having thridded Herculaneum, 
 
 Pompeii, and the obvious treasure-heaps, 
 
 Must look well to the guide book lest he miss 
 
 What 's underneath the house he lodges in, — 
 
 A catacomb with cinerary urns. 
 
 And tell me, is it fair, my sapient Smith, 
 
 To cheat the nineteenth century microcosm 
 
 One atom of accumulated wealth ? 
 
 Or, whilst you harbour galvanism and steam 
 
 As household slaves discreetly ministrant. 
 
 To so, so far forget your grosser needs. 
 
 As, if you wanted hazel-kernels, now 
 
 To rush into the wood and gobble down 
 
 The hazel leaves and all ? What folly then 
 
 Is here ! we know — blest science teaches us — 
 
 The stomach craves matter to triturate ; 
 
 The Ia6leal glands, albumen ; and so forth. 
 
 Inside the wood 's a certain bark, my friend : 
 
 Moistened or dry, 'twill serve the stomach well 
 
 For grinding purposes. Albumen next. 
 
 And olein for the ladleals — look there ! 
 
 Creeping so slowly, turning every view 
 
 To tempt a man, the partridge has his leave 
 
 To whirr away — we'll not go after him. 
 
 The long slow slug cased o'er with silver light, 
 
 (What's meant for man is well within his reach,)
 
 PROGRESS OF THE SPECIES. 73 
 
 Two coloured spiral snails that seem to screw 
 
 Into the craving appetite — these have 
 
 Excess of the nutritious element, 
 
 Minus the fibre of the barbarous ox. 
 
 See — covers laid for two — observe both shells, 
 
 What elegant ornamental cookery ! 
 
 The Romans didn't shut their eyes to this — 
 
 Even the shell has nutrient properties — 
 
 The crust of a raised pie. You'll stop and dine ? " 
 
 " I thank you, thanks, but appetite won't serve 
 
 So early in the day as this with me. 
 
 You see my office keeps me on till four, 
 
 And then, when I get home, I have to dress," 
 
 1855.
 
 74 
 
 A GROTESQUE. 
 RURAL SOUNDS. 
 
 (Morning.) 
 
 The pigs are whistling on the hill, 
 
 The cart-horse singeth blithe, 
 The crows are tinkling faint and shrill, 
 
 The fox-glove wets his scythe ; 
 And shall we linger slumbering still 
 
 While such sweet sounds are rife ? 
 Oh quit thy slothful window-sill. 
 
 And plunge into the strife. 
 
 SOCIAL SOUNDS. 
 
 (Noon.) 
 
 Hark to the bobby's bounce and buzz, 
 
 And this hot pavement's hum : 
 As jocund as the Man of Uz 
 
 Singeth the East end slum. 
 Oh were it not a bitter thought, 
 
 To live and never die. 
 How cheerfully (but dearly bought) 
 
 Such sounds might meet the eye !
 
 A GROTESQUE. 75 
 
 SOLEMN SOUNDS. 
 
 (Night.) 
 
 Where ocean stays his warbling flight, 
 
 And rocks no further roam, 
 But listen midst the glare of night. 
 
 The yellow, sounding foam ; 
 No minstrelsy is half so sweet. 
 
 No perfume half so gay : 
 The lips are dazzled, and the feet 
 
 Of watch-dogs melt away. 
 
 1869.
 
 76 
 
 CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 
 
 That last gust must have blown away the gable, 
 The chimney-pots, or something. To depart 
 Were safest now — and here goes for a start : 
 
 Not that I wish it, but because I'm able 
 
 Just now. This bedroom may be in the stable 
 A minute hence, and I have not the heart 
 To stand my ground, and own (however tart 
 
 Your sarcasm) I hold it just a fable 
 
 That men are best-wise by experience taught, 
 Unless that soundest maxim you sele6l 
 
 From interesting fails that are not fraught 
 With fatal consequences — You detedl 
 
 My meaning doubtless. Make a grand onslaught 
 On turkeys, and be certain you'll be pecked. 
 
 184.6.
 
 n 
 
 BROWNING'S " SORDELLO." 
 
 *' SoRDELLO " I confess has puzzled me, 
 And I have read it — some will never read j 
 But go on to their end, like dogs indeed 
 
 Feeding and snarling almost equally : 
 
 But, that such tykes have just capacity 
 To value nobly that on w^hich they feed. 
 Loathing Sordello, is not quite agreed — 
 
 We doubt they judge ev'n horse flesh righteously. 
 
 If ever any man should cut my throat, 
 I should be anxious, ere they hanged the knave. 
 That the phrenologists should ascertain 
 Whether his brain had ventricle or moat 
 Wherein perchance Sordello might have lain ; 
 Demonstrate that, and I the man w^ould save. 
 
 1859.
 
 78 
 
 THE ONE THING KNOWN. 
 
 Easy to say " there 's nothing that we know," 
 But do we really know thisf If we do, 
 'Tis surely something, and the first 's not true. 
 
 We know, it seems, our knowledge does not go 
 
 Beyond the knowing this same knowledge so 
 Contracted that we have not mastered two 
 Truths yet ; and then — after so long ado — 
 
 One empty truth is all we have to show. 
 
 A positive negative, but something yet : 
 Short men a long way off of being tall ! 
 Income of poverty vast and secure ! 
 
 Courage, O mortals ! see the over-set 
 
 Of abstract doubt achieved, and, spite of all 
 The destinies, be sure you are not sure. 
 
 i860.
 
 79 
 
 THE DEBIT SIDE. 
 
 When whoso merely hath a little grain 
 
 Of faith, will keep that faith that is in him. 
 
 Not running after others for a whim, 
 Not keeping true men waiting in the rain : 
 When whoso keeps a covenant (on pain 
 
 Of pocket) from respedt to custom trim, 
 
 Or some idea of honour very dim, 
 Or even from the dirty one of gain : 
 
 Be not too keen to cry, " So this is all — 
 A thing I might myself have done as well. 
 
 But would not do it for it was not worth." 
 Ask, is this fair ? For is it still to tell 
 
 That of all blessed nuisances on earth, 
 The worst is waiting, quizzed by great and small ? 
 
 1868.
 
 8o 
 
 THINGS UNPERCEIVED AND USES 
 UNDISCERNED. 
 
 A SLOW moon lifteth out her luculent horn 
 
 Above the umbrage : steering through the pines 
 She looks slant downward through the shafted lines 
 
 Of shadow, brightening bramble, sharpening thorn, 
 
 And forked toadstool, to where mists are born 
 At bottom of the dell : there sleeps she ; shines 
 There broodingly among the eglantines. 
 
 Leaving the hillside utterly forlorn. 
 
 So seems it. But to one who climbs the hill 
 
 Slant-darkling through the thorny hanging ground. 
 
 Weak creeping lanterns glimmer green and chill. 
 There for a purpose will the dew drip round. 
 Holding no6lurnal converse without sound. 
 
 And something through the grass at periods thrill. 
 
 1846.
 
 8i 
 
 TO MY FRIEND HOLMAN HUNT. 
 
 I SEE SO much of sorrow on the earth, 
 
 O Hunt, that — were it not for natural things, 
 The careless loitering of lucent springs, 
 The evening sweetness, and the morning mirth 
 Of songsters, and (far most, amidst this dearth 
 Of earthly love) thy brave endeavourings 
 To catch the far harmonious murmurings 
 That tell how calm a region gave them birth, — 
 I might be led to doubt, in evil hour, 
 (With such a failure as the world doth seem, 
 Where love and ruth front churlishness and hate)- 
 I might be won in darkened hour to dream 
 Of chance misrule, or evil guiding power, 
 But for these counsellings to hope and wait. 
 
 1850.
 
 82 
 
 TO FREDERIC STEPHENS. 
 
 Stephens, although you worked with heart and soul 
 And hand, to compass what has now been wrought 
 And thought for others when was need of thought, 
 
 And comforted when weary weakness stole 
 
 On other workers — sharing half the dole ; 
 Now that the labour to an end is brought, 
 The victors blazoned and the battle fought, 
 
 I do not read you on the popular roll. 
 
 Much comfort ! other work demands your hand. 
 
 God shall appoint a day when you will bear 
 Your own peculiar fruit. For it was planned 
 
 That these should no part of your guerdon share, 
 Toiling for others. God gave that command. 
 
 And wills that He give all the guerdon there. 
 
 1855.
 
 83 
 
 MY DREAM. 
 
 My mother, is it even two months to-day ? 
 Like very truth, it seemed now I stood near 
 This window — with the bird's song at mine ear — 
 
 Moulding some fancied form in plastic clay ; 
 
 Which suddenly began to sink away 
 Under my fingers, holding it in fear, 
 But that a voice came from the lawn as clear 
 
 As thrushes thrill the sinking sun to stay. 
 
 The voice cried, " Wait, I'll come." A voice no less 
 Moved by the mouth than was the heart in pain 
 To help me. So I watched the door for you, — 
 
 Which opened not. And soon the ghastly guess 
 
 That some grim gulph had rolled between us twain. 
 Grew into waking knowledge. And I knew.
 
 84 MY DREAM. 
 
 II. 
 
 No wonder when I call upon thy name 
 
 I hear no low reply to comfort me : 
 
 No wonder doubt endures eternally 
 Around the dwelling of the dead, and flame 
 Of fervid love burns dim beyond the frame 
 
 Of our terrene : no wonder fitfully 
 
 I catch the far-ofF tone of memory, 
 And know not through which gate the tidings came ; 
 For so my world of sleep derives a power 
 
 Wanting whilom, and fashions thee more clear 
 
 Than daylight memory; and I believe 
 Thy visit a6lual at the midnight hour : 
 
 Without which solace, O companion dear, 
 
 A woeful life were mine, who wake and grieve. 
 
 Nov. 1859.
 
 85 
 
 UNACHIEVED. 
 
 Love's triumph this ! I would not have her sigh, 
 Nor hear her fine voice falter which is keen 
 And sweet as falling water heard between 
 
 Steep rocks in summer. My extremity 
 
 Of passion should not weigh upon her eye 
 
 And blanch her hue ; and she should walk serene. 
 And pass me by, an inaccessible queen ; 
 
 And I should offer her idolatry. 
 
 For, so, there comes, at least, no emptiness 
 Of heart and spirit. All the sorrow and teen, 
 
 And far-off hopeless hope, will last — will last : 
 My once clear moon will not wane lustreless ; 
 
 Its glory never shall be overpast ; 
 Unreached, it still must be what it has been. 
 
 Nov. 1859.
 
 86 
 
 AN EVENING FANTASY. 
 
 But if you linger near to even-song, 
 
 When the calm flood of twilight overwhelms, 
 And hear the drone of wind pass down the elms, 
 
 And watch the night draw nearer to the long 
 
 Horizon's bend, until the belfry's tongue 
 Awake you : then unbar ambiguous realms 
 Of rock and lake, where barques with magic helms 
 
 Pursue their windless way bright isles among. 
 
 Pray Heaven you wake not in that forest land 
 
 Whose former cheerful glimpse of town and spire 
 
 Is banished by the baffling gloom, or stand 
 To feel the guilty trunks still winding higher, 
 And (while the spirits in bonds pant and suspire) 
 
 Clicking their dragon rind beneath your hand. 
 
 i860.
 
 87 
 
 KIT'S COTTY-HOUSE, KENT. 
 
 This autumn wanes — the day is ebbing out. 
 
 Upon the round of a bare, stubbly hill, 
 
 Four rugged stones are standing huge and still 
 And black against the west. Round, round about 
 I walk betwixt two spirits, wonder and doubt. 
 
 Pondering this witness to the invincible will ; 
 
 Until I know the tyrant Time can kill 
 No purpose, where the heart is true and stout. 
 While lo and look you ! moving round again. 
 
 What a weird misty moon is rising ! Late 
 The night and year grow. Garnered is the grain ; 
 
 All that can die is arming desperate 
 To brave the binding winter's straitening chain : 
 
 While these throughout all seasons "stand and wait." 
 
 i860.
 
 88 
 
 TWILIGHT. 
 
 I WALKED within the vine-clad garden wall 
 At even hush, as moonlight came to aid 
 The waning day : and while the day decayed, 
 Faint shade, that solely on white flowers would fall, 
 Followed me ; till I thought — Indeed we call 
 This interval of neither shine nor shade 
 Nor sleep nor toil " twilight." Yet who essayed 
 To name a thing so unsubstantial ? 
 For, wisdom, with thy boundaries limiting 
 God's creatures here, art thou not foolishness — 
 Naming far points and knowing merely these ? 
 What is the thing and what the nothingness ? 
 What all this labouring change from clouds to trees, 
 Through light to dark, beginning, vanishing ? 
 
 Summer 1863.
 
 89 
 
 A THRUSH'S MESSAGE. 
 
 What might it mean ? The thrush at eventide 
 When the red sun was Hngering on the line 
 Where frozen earth and glowing sky combine, 
 
 Sang as if less to sing than speak he tried. 
 
 For oh to me, " Be quick ! " it seemed he cried, 
 To me whom, waiting for a fond design 
 To be fulfilled (if Heaven my way incline). 
 
 Some hope now near my sunset has espied. 
 
 " Be quick ! Be quick ! " Alas, amen, said I. 
 Is it thy mate thou callest to thy nest ? 
 
 Or dost thou to the woodland muses cry. 
 
 To bring thee thy full throat ? or wouldst thou wrest 
 Some touch of magic beauty unpossessed 
 
 By other sunsets from this sanguine sky ? 
 
 1866.
 
 90 
 
 OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF 
 HEAVEN. 
 
 The lovingness of souls must needs be great 
 
 When they have moulted off their vain disguise, 
 
 If we dare pi6lure them in any w^ise 
 From children, newly entering on our state 
 Of wonder, having not yet learned to hate. 
 
 Or hide the love they carry in their eyes, 
 
 Or look unfaithful passion, that belies 
 The heart, to leave it scarred and obdurate. 
 
 Alas alas ! would all of us be glad 
 
 To enter in Christ's kingdom where the folk 
 Are such as these ? We surely should repine. 
 
 And sigh for old disguises — grown so mad 
 
 That God's true heaven would seem an arduous yoke 
 If age first grew not meek and infantine. 
 
 1867.
 
 91 
 
 RAIN. 
 
 After a thirsting summer came the rain, 
 
 Laggard, unwelcome at September's end ; 
 
 But, as one dying revives to know his friend, 
 The faint earth brightened and looked green again : 
 And I, who walked and watched the daylight wane, 
 
 And saw the wet clouds silently descend, 
 
 And the half-famished sheep where they were penned. 
 Said "Surely this comes mockingly in vain ! " 
 " Vain ? " laughed an echo : " Shrunken brooks are filling ; 
 
 Some bird's throat opens thankfully between 
 This light and dark ; some weeds say. We are willing 
 
 Again before the winter to be green ; 
 Some newt's ear hearkens to the drops distilling. 
 
 Are thy delights all that the angels mean ? " 
 
 Sept. 1868.
 
 92 
 
 RUE TRONCHET, PARIS. 
 
 When wind was fresh at morn, and early sun 
 
 Smote the top story of the high-built street, 
 
 And these roof-shadows sprang across to greet 
 The windows opposite, half walk, half run 
 (So light this air of Paris maketh one) 
 
 I went ; and not with the old grave, discreet, 
 
 Staid step — it is a charm, it is a cheat 
 That wins — and no one knows till he is won. 
 Even so ! Then to a place where fountains play 
 
 I came, and saw a solemn obelisk. 
 Graven with dynasties long fallen away. 
 
 Climb up the morning. Here the Frenchmen frisk. 
 And fountains spurt, and bubbles burst to spray 
 
 Round Egypt's granite — time's blank asterisk ! 
 
 March 1869.
 
 93 
 
 TO THE CUCKOO. 
 
 If, cuckoo, it bodes any good in love 
 To hear thy note after the nightingale. 
 Little, alas, for him should it avail 
 
 Whose hair is growing scant and grey above 
 
 His temples : little profits he thereof: 
 Therefore thou leavest me, alone to hail 
 The bird of love who now thou know'st would fail 
 
 To bring me any help in wood or grove. 
 
 So hold'st thou up a mirror for my life. 
 
 Despiteful bird that grudgest me my gains, 
 Me who have little sorrow that 'tis so. 
 
 So have I dreamed of calm 'mid storm and strife, 
 And I have mused of mountains in the plains. 
 And I have sung of summer in the snow. 
 
 1869.
 
 94 
 
 TO A SKYLARK. 
 
 O FERVID poet, chanting even and morn, 
 Who so ador'st the sun thou dost not tire 
 Singing for aye his glory to the higher 
 
 Regions I may not reach, a thought forlorn 
 
 Hath seized me, that thou own'st a love inborn 
 I know not, nor can know, though I aspire 
 In spirit to thy constant quenchless fire 
 
 Which, save one idol, all things seems to scorn. 
 
 For neither sun nor star nor witching moon 
 Can hold me long, but still my heart doth rove. 
 
 Seeking for ever some unknown dehght ; 
 
 Beauty in man or woman cannot smite 
 
 My heart so deep but still a new-found love 
 
 Enchants it to be disenchanted soon. 
 
 1870.
 
 95 
 
 SUB JOVE. 
 
 After a day of heat at end of June, 
 
 While the last rain mist swathed the lawns in white, 
 And when no breath of wind breathed on the night, 
 
 There rolled along the heaven a magic moon. 
 
 My spirit spoke, " Lest ye be home too soon 
 For sleep, stay here, and turn your bodily sight 
 On earth and sky, dreaming in silent night 
 
 Of all that will be done by morrow-morn." 
 
 Then did I yearn in that thrice charmed hour. 
 
 Dream with the dreaming trees, glow with the stars 
 That faint in odour and drip cold in dew ; 
 
 Yet never gained I glimpse of all the power 
 Behind the five insuperable bars. 
 Who held me swooning till the first cock crew. 
 
 1870.
 
 96 
 
 TO A NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 O NIGHTINGALE, that singest till the dawn 
 Through all the starry changes of the night, 
 Wasting thy passionate heart with fervid might. 
 
 The sun is sunk away and the day gone : 
 
 Now unto what dark san6luary withdrawn. 
 Beyond the reach of peevish sound and sight, 
 Pourest thou forth such wild and wild delight, 
 
 And sittest thrilling this dim moon-lit lawn ? 
 
 Triumph of song thou pauseless dost outpour 
 By thy great faith in the great stress of love, 
 
 That moves the worlds to music as of yore ; 
 
 Now the night creepeth down with yearning sore 
 At heart of silence — meadow and wood and grove, 
 And bending moon and listening stars approve. 
 
 1870.
 
 97 
 
 IF I KNEW! 
 
 Ah if I knew that thy divinest eyes 
 
 Had read the story of my heart's heart-love, 
 
 Knowing (what httle profits me to know) 
 That neither sleep nor night nor dim remove 
 Avails to quench their fire that, like moonrise. 
 
 Rose on my ravished spirit a year ago ! 
 
 How all my hope is like a lamp gone low. 
 And all my heart burnt out in ecstasies ! 
 Only the knowing this were known to thee 
 
 Would make some tide of life-blood to renew 
 My heart, and some sweet hope come back to me. 
 
 The lonely realms of paradisal dew. 
 The golden isles within the enchanted sea 
 
 Were not so far to voyage. Ah if I knew ! 
 
 1870. 
 
 H
 
 98 
 
 WOMEN'S RIGHTS. 
 
 Now know I well this nation's strength doth wane. 
 
 But not because its eager intelleft 
 
 Hath taken means for end, losing respeil 
 Of self, industrious (in a miser's vein) 
 To heap up ever what is counted gain. 
 
 Much too intent on hoarding to dete6l 
 
 If that be gain or no. Even this defedt. 
 This trick of mind might right itself, with strain. 
 But when I see our heart of woman turned 
 
 To worship in this wise, her brow engrossed 
 And hardened with a weight of wisdom earned 
 
 At such an impious and unnatural cost. 
 Her dower of beauty dim and undiscerned : — 
 
 Then know I that the land I loved is lost. 
 
 1871.
 
 99 
 
 TO ANNIE. 
 
 Annie, if any verse of mine might win 
 The obdurate heart of Time to let it live, 
 When I am mingled with the fugitive 
 
 Fleet elements wherein all lives begin 
 
 And end : if any echo ghostly thin 
 Survive of me for men to hear at eve 
 When the boughs tremble as the sunbeams leave,- 
 
 Tliat echo thy dear name shall tremble in. 
 
 For singing ever of thee and rarest things 
 That make the earth a perfume and a song, 
 
 And of vague solace of imaginings. 
 
 Thou wilt so closely unto these belong, 
 
 That they will tell thy name as with a tongue. 
 
 And bring the sighs thy poet's passion brings. 
 
 May 1871.
 
 NOTES BY W. M. ROSSETTI. 
 
 Page 2 1. A Vision of Linnaus. This relates to Tupper's 
 statue of Linnaeus, executed for the Oxford University Museum 
 (see the Prefatory Note, p. ix), Linnasus is here represented 
 as quite a young man, clad in skins suited for a traveller in 
 semi-arftic regions : he is abstraftedly contemplating a flower 
 which he has plucked as a specimen. 
 
 Page 66. A ^iet Evenmg. This, it will be perceived, is 
 a piece of friendly "chaff," relating to an evening which three 
 members of the Praeraphaelite Brotherhood — Stephens, my 
 brother, and myself — spent at the family residence of the 
 Tappers in South Lambeth. The date must have been in 
 1850. " John" is Tupper himself ; "George " and "Aleck " 
 his brothers. The "rhyme of Hell and Heaven," which 
 Gabriel read, must clearly be his ballad " Sister Helen." 
 
 Page 74. A Grotesque. I need scarcely say that this is 
 absolute intentional nonsense. One may surmise that it was 
 written after Tupper had read some pieces of similar aim by 
 Edward Lear or by Lewis Carroll. 
 
 Page 77. Browning's " Sordello." This again is " chaff." 
 Tupper was always an extreme — indeed a quite passionate — 
 admirer of Browning, and he revelled in " Sordello," though it 
 may readily be believed that he found the poem difficult in 
 parts. 
 
 Page 79. Ike Debit Side. This sonnet is a burlesque of a 
 sonnet which I wrote in 1849, and which was printed on the 
 cover of each number of " The Germ." " The Debit Side "
 
 102 NOTES BY W. M. ROSSETTI. 
 
 appears to me to relate to a certain affair in which I, as John 
 Tupper's nominee, took an a£tive part at the time, but I am 
 not at all sure. 
 
 Page 8i. To my Friend Holman Hunt. Tupper inscribed 
 this sonnet on the copy of " The Germ " belonging to Mr. 
 Hunt. "The Germ " was published in 1850, and I give that 
 date to the sonnet ; but possibly its true date is later on. 
 
 Page 82. To Frederic Stephens. The date of this sonnet 
 may be towards 1855, when the leading members of the P.R.B. 
 — I need only specify Millais and Hunt — had triumphed over 
 all opposition ; whereas Stephens, who had been an art student 
 along with them, and otherwise a zealous co-operator, had 
 praftically relinquished the aftual exercise of the painting 
 profession.
 
 CHISWICK press: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERy LANE, LONDON.
 
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