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 PREFACE. 
 
 TWENTY-FIVE years have now elapsed since the pub- 
 lication, in 1872, of the first series of "Songs of Two 
 Worlds," the writer's first essay in verse. It seems, 
 therefore, a fitting occasion for yielding to repeated 
 requests, and for appealing, by a volume of Selections 
 from his works at a reduced price, to an even wider 
 circle of readers than heretofore. No writer can 
 hope to survive in more than a small portion of his 
 work, and it is well that the necessary process of 
 elimination should be made by himself rather than 
 by those who come after him. 
 
 Every care has been taken to make the volume 
 a representative one, but if, as seems not improbable, 
 some established favourites are, on account of their 
 length or for other reasons, missing from it, they 
 
 284274 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 will be found, nevertheless, in the collected edition 
 of his works in one volume, which indeed contains 
 everything which so far he desires to acknowledge. 
 
 The order adopted has been strictly that of 
 publication, and proceeds regularly from his earliest 
 to his latest work. 
 
 PENBRYN, 
 
 February 19, 1897. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SOUL-MUSIC ... ... ... ... ... i 
 
 ON A YOUNG POET ... ... ... ... 3 
 
 To THE SETTING SUN ... ... ... ... 5 
 
 THE TREASURE OF HOPE ... ... ... 6 
 
 BY THE SEA ... ... ... ... ... 7 
 
 WHEN i AM DEAD ... ... ... ... 9 
 
 LOVE'S SUICIDE ... ... ... ... ... 10 
 
 THE RIVER OF LIFE ... ... ... ... n 
 
 IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE ... ... ... ... 13 
 
 WATCH ... ... ... ... ... 16 
 
 THE WANDERER ... ... ... ... ... 17 
 
 Two VOYAGES ... ... ... ... 48 
 
 OTHER DAYS ... ... ... ... ... 49 
 
 THE TRUE MAN ... ... ... ... 50 
 
 ON AN OLD MINSTER ... ... ... ... 51 
 
 FAITH WITHOUT SIGHT ... ... ... 55 
 
 OF LOVE AND SLEEP ... ... ... ... 55 
 
 BLIND ... ... ... ... ... 58 
 
 BERLIN, 1871 ... ... ... ... ... 58 
 
 THE BEACON .. ... ... ... 60 
 
viii CONTEN1S. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To AN UNKNOWN POET ... ... ... ... 61 
 
 COMFORT ... ... ... ... ... 64 
 
 OH, SNOWS so PURE! ... ... ... ... 65 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF FAITH ... ... ... 66 
 
 A MEMORY ... ... ... ... ... 67 
 
 NEMESIS ... ... ... ... ... 67 
 
 To A CHILD OF FANCY ... ... ... ... 69 
 
 SONG ... ... ... ... ... 71 
 
 THE ORGAN-BOY"... ... ... ... 7 1 
 
 Loss AND GAIN ... ... ... ... 78 
 
 As IN A PICTURE ... ... ... ... 79 
 
 ODE OF A FAIR SPRING MORNING ... ... 80 
 
 LOVE TRIUMPHANT ... ... ... ... 86 
 
 TOLERANCE ... ... ... ... ... 87 
 
 A HYMN IN TIME OF IDOLS ... ... ... 88 
 
 ON A MODERN PAINTED WINDOW ... 90 
 
 A MIDSUMMER NIGHT ... ... ... 91 
 
 GOOD IN EVERYTHING ... ... ... 92 
 
 IN MEMORY OF A FRIEND ... ... ... 93 
 
 NOTHING LOST ... ... ... 9 6 
 
 COURAGE! ... ... ... ... 97 
 
 A CYNIC'S DAY-DREAM ... ... 97 
 
 IT SHALL BE WELL ... ... ... ... 104 
 
 THIRD SERIES. 
 
 THE HOME ALTAR ... ... ... ... 104 
 
 THE FOOD OF SONG ... ... ... ... 106 
 
 EVENSONG ... ... ... ... 108 
 
 SONG ... ... ... ... ... ... 138 
 
 AT LAST ... ... ... 139 
 
 THE VOYAGE .., ... ... ... ... 142 
 
 THE DIALOGUE ... 143 
 
 THE BIRTH OF VERSE ... ... ... .. 144 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 BOOK I. TARTARUS. 
 
 PHAEDRA ... 
 
 SISYPHUS 
 
 PAGE 
 147 
 
 MARSYAS ... 
 ANDROMEDA 
 NARCISSUS 
 PSYCHE 
 
 BOOK II. HADES. 
 
 158 
 165 
 171 
 
 ATHENE ... 
 HERE 
 
 APOLLO . . . 
 ZEUS 
 
 BOOK III. OLYMPUS. 
 
 177 
 180 
 182 
 185 
 
 GWEN , 
 
 1 88 
 
 THE ODE OF LIFE. 
 
 THE ODE OF PERFECT YEARS 
 THE ODE OF GOOD ... 
 THE ODE OF EVIL 
 THE ODE OF AGE 
 THE ODE OF DECLINE 
 THE ODE OF CHANGE 
 
 202 
 205 
 208 
 209 
 2I 3 
 215 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LINES ON THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF THE 
 
 RIGHT HON. JOHN BRIGHT, FEBRUARY 11, 1896 363 
 
 LLANSTEPHAN ... ... ... ... ... 365 
 
 AN ODE ON THE INSTALLATION OF THE PRINCE OF 
 WALES AS CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 WALES, JUNE 26, 1896 ... ... ... 366 
 
 CIVITAS DEI ... ... ... ... ... 369 
 
SONGS OF TWO WORLDS, 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 SOUL-MUSIC. 
 
 ERRATA AND CORRECTIONS. 
 
 Page viii., line 12, for "Ode of a Fair Spring Morning" read " Ode on a 
 
 Fair Spring Morning." 
 
 47 22, for "dreadful Power" read " awful Power." 
 57 20, for "sudden" read "sunny." 
 i, 64 ,, id, for "And white" read "The white." 
 7 2 13, space before "They were stern cold rulers." 
 84 ,, 27, for "parts" read "part." 
 ,, 108 ,, i, read " The hymns and the prayers." 
 
 "9 ,, i, for "the child of the savage" read "the child or the 
 savage." 
 
 2 35 I. "2, for "round girt" read "girt round." 
 
 fi 2 47 ,, 3L space before " Even then the King Omartes." 
 
 286 ,, 13, space before " David Gwyn was now the Captain." 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LINES ON THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF THE 
 
 RIGHT HON. JOHN BRIGHT, FEBRUARY n, 1896 363 
 
 LLANSTEPHAN ... ... ... ... ... 365 
 
 AN ODE ON THE INSTALLATION OF THE PRINCE OF 
 WALES AS CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 WALES, JUNE 26, 1896 ... 366 
 
 CIVITAS DEI ... ... ... ... ... 369 
 
SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 SOUL-MUSIC. 
 
 MY soul is as a bird 
 
 Singing in fair weather, 
 
 Deep in shady woodlands through the evening's dewy 
 calm ; 
 
 Every glossy feather 
 
 On her full throat stirred, 
 
 As she pours out, rapt, unconscious, all the sweetness of 
 her psalm ; 
 
 Mounting high, and higher, higher, 
 
 Soaring now, now falling, dying ; 
 
 Now through silvery pauses sighing ; 
 
 Throbbing now with joyous strife, 
 
 And rushing tides of love and life, 
 
 Till some ray of heavenly fire 
 
 Shot obliquely through the shade, 
 
 Pierces her ; and lo ! the strain 
 
 Of the music she has made 
 
 Fills her with a sudden pain. 
 
 Then she forgets to sing 
 Her former songs of gladness ; 
 
 Sitting mute in silence sweeter than the old forgotten 
 lays ; 
 
2 SONGS 'OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Till anon some note of sadness, 
 Long-drawn, languishing, 
 Faint at first, swells onward slowly to a subtler depth 
 
 of praise, 
 
 As the low, wild, minor, broken 
 By the ghosts of gayer fancies, 
 Like a rippling stream advances, 
 Till the full tide grown too deep, 
 Whispers first, then falls asleep. 
 Then, as souls with no word spoken 
 Grow together, she, mute and still, 
 Thrills through with a secret voice, 
 Which the farthest heaven can fill, 
 And constrains her to rejoice. 
 
 And the passer-by who hears, 
 
 Not the burst of pleasure, 
 
 Swelling upward, sweet, spontaneous, to the portals of 
 the sky, 
 
 But a chastened measure, 
 
 Low and full of tears ; 
 
 And anon the voiceless silence, when the last notes sink 
 and die, 
 
 Deems some influence malign, 
 
 Checks the current of her song ; 
 
 For that none are happy long. 
 
 Nay ; but to the rapt soul come 
 
 Sounds that strike the singer dumb, 
 
 And the silence is Divine ; 
 
 For when heaven gives back the strain, 
 
 All its joyous tones are o'er ; 
 
 First the low sweet notes of pain, 
 
 Then, the singer sings no more. 
 
ON A YOUNG POET. 
 
 ON A YOUNG POET. 
 
 HERE lay him down in peace to take his rest, 
 
 Who tired of singing ere the day was done. 
 
 A little time, a little, beneath the sun, 
 
 He tarried and gave forth his artless song ; 
 
 The bird that sings with the dawn, sings not for long, 
 
 Only when dew is on the grass his breast 
 
 Thrills, but his voice is silent long ere noon. 
 
 So sang he once, but might not long sustain 
 
 The high pure note of youth, for soon, too soon ! 
 
 He ceased to know the sweet creative pain 
 
 Made still one voice, amid the clamorous strife, 
 
 And proved no more the joys or pains of life. 
 
 And better so than that his voice should fail, 
 And sink to earth, and lose its heavenlier tone ; 
 Perchance, if he had stayed, the said world's moan, 
 The long low discord of incessant wrong, 
 Had marred the perfect cadence of his song, 
 And made a grosser music to prevail. 
 But now it falls as pure upon the ear, 
 As sings the brown bird to the star of eve, 
 Or child's voice in grey minster quiring clear. 
 Rather, then, give we thanks for him than grieve. 
 Thoughts of pure joys which but in memory live, 
 More joy than lower present joys can give. 
 
 For him, deep rest or high spontaneous strains ; 
 
 For us, fierce strife and low laborious song ; 
 
 For him, truth's face shining out clear and strong ; 
 
 For us, half lights, thick clouds, and darkling days. 
 
 No longer walks his soul in mortal ways, 
 
 Nor thinks our thoughts, nor feels our joys or pains, 
 
SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Nor doubts our doubts, nor any more pursues, 
 Knowing all things, the far-off searchless cause ; 
 Nor thrills with art, or nature's fairest hues, 
 Gazing on absolute beauty's inmost laws ; 
 Or lies for ever sunk in dreamless sleep, 
 Nor recks of us ; and therefore 'tis we weep. 
 
 But surely if he sleep, some fair faint dream, 
 Some still small whisper from his ancient home, 
 Not joy, nor pain, but mixt of each shall come ; 
 Or if he wake, the thought of earthly days 
 Shall add a tender sweetness to his praise ; 
 Tempering the unbroken joyance of his theme. 
 And by-and-by the time shall come when we, 
 Laden with all our lives, once more shall meet, 
 Like friends, who after infinite wastes of sea, 
 Look in each other's eyes ; and lo ! the sweet 
 Sad fount of memory to its depths is stirred, 
 And the past lives again, without a word. 
 
 Mourn not for him ! perchance he lends his voice 
 To swell the fulness of the eternal psalm ; 
 Or haply, wrapt in nature's holy calm, 
 As lurks the seed within the vital earth, 
 He quickens surely to a higher birth. 
 Mourn not for him ! but let your souls rejoice. 
 We know not what we shall be, but are sure 
 The spark once kindled by the Eternal breath, 
 Goes not out quite, but somewhere doth endure 
 In that strange life we blindly christen death. 
 Somewhere he is, though where we cannot tell ; 
 But wheresoe'er God hides him, it is well. 
 
TO THE SETTING SUN. 
 
 TO THE SETTING SUN. 
 
 STAY, O sweet day, nor fleet so fast away 
 
 For now it is that life revives again, 
 As the red tyrant sinks beneath the hill ; 
 
 And now soft dews refresh the arid plain ; 
 And now the fair bird's voice begins to thrill ; 
 
 With hidden dolours making sweet her strain 
 And wakes the woods that all day were so still. 
 
 Stay, O sweet day, nor fleet so fast away ; 
 
 For now the rose and all fair flowers that blow 
 Give out sweet odours to the perfumed air, 
 
 And the white palace marbles blush and glow, 
 And the low, ivy-hidden cot shows fair. 
 
 Why are_time's feet so swift, and ours so slow ? 
 Haste, laggard ! night will fall ere you are there. 
 
 Stay, O sweet day, nor fleet so fast away ; 
 
 Soon the pale full-faced moon will slowly climb 
 Up the steep sky and quench the star of love. 
 
 Moonlight is fair, but fairer far the time 
 When through the leaves the dying shafts above 
 
 Slope, and the minster sounds its curfew chime, 
 And the long shadows lengthen through the grove. 
 
 Stay, O sweet day, nor fleet so fast away ; 
 
 For, hark ! the chime throbs from the darkling tower ; 
 Soon for the last time shall my love be here : 
 
 Fair day, renew thy rays for one brief hour. 
 O sweet day, tarry for us, tarry near ; 
 
 To-morrow, love and time will lose their power, 
 And sighs be mine, and the unbidden tear. 
 
SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Stay, O sweet day, nor fleet so fast away. 
 
 But, ah ! thou may'st not ; in the far-off west 
 Impatient lovers weary till you rise ; 
 
 Or may be caring naught thou traversest 
 The plains betwixt thee and thy final skies : 
 
 Go, then ; though darkness come, we shall be blest, 
 Keeping sweet daylight, in each other's eyes. 
 
 THE TREASURE OF HOPE. 
 
 O FAIR bird, singing in the woods, 
 
 To the rising and the setting sun, 
 Does ever any throb of pain 
 
 Thrill through thee ere thy song be done 
 Because the summer fleets so fast ; 
 
 Because the autumn fades so soon ; 
 Because the deadly winter treads 
 
 So closely on the steps of June ? 
 
 O sweet maid, opening like a rose 
 
 In love's mysterious, honeyed air, 
 Dost think sometimes the day will come 
 
 When thou shalt be no longer fair : 
 When love will leave thee and pass on 
 
 To younger and to brighter eyes ; 
 And thou shalt live unloved, alone, 
 
 A dull life, only dowered with sighs ? 
 
 O brave youth, panting for the fight, 
 
 To conquer wrong and win thee fame, 
 Dost see thyself grown old and spent, 
 
 And thine a still unhonoured name : 
 When all thy hopes have come to naught, 
 
 And all thy fair schemes droop and pine 
 And wrong still lifts her hydra head s 
 
 To fall to younger arms than thine ? 
 
BY THE SEA. 
 
 Nay ; song and love and lofty aims 
 
 May never be where faith is not ; 
 Strong souls within the present live ; 
 
 The future veiled, the past forgot : 
 Grasping what is, with thews of steel, 
 
 They bend what shall be, to their will 
 And blind alike to doubt and dread, 
 
 The End, for which they are, fulfil. 
 
 BY THE SEA. 
 
 A LITTLE country churchyard, 
 
 On the verge of a cliff by the sea ; 
 Ah ! the thoughts of the long years past and gone 
 
 That the vision brings back to me. 
 
 For two ways led from the village, 
 
 One, by the rippled sands, 
 With their pink shells fresh from the ebbing wave 
 
 For childish little hands. 
 
 And one 'mid the heath, and the threat'ning 
 
 Loud bees with the yellow thighs, 
 And, twinkling out of the golden furze, 
 
 The marvellous butterflies. 
 
 And the boom of the waves on the shingle, 
 And the hymn of the lark to the sun ; 
 
 Made Sabbath sounds of their own, ere the chime 
 Of the church-going bell had begun. 
 
 I remember the churchyard studded 
 With peasants who loitered and read 
 
 The sad little legends, half effaced, 
 On the moss-grown tombs of the dead. 
 
SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 And the gay graves of little children, 
 
 Fashioned like tiny cots ; 
 With their rosemary and southernwood, 
 
 And blue-eyed forget-me-nots. 
 
 Till the bell by degrees grew impatient, 
 
 Then ceased as the parsonage door 
 Opened wide for the surpliced vicar, 
 
 And we loitered and talked no more. 
 
 I remember the cool, dim chancel, 
 
 The drowsy hum of the prayers : 
 And the rude psalms vollied from seafaring throats 
 
 As if to take heaven unawares. 
 
 Till, when sermon-time came, by permission 
 
 We stole out among the graves, 
 And saw the great ocean a-blaze in the sun, 
 
 And heard the deep roar of the waves. 
 
 And clung very close together, 
 As we spelt out with wonder and tears, 
 
 How a boy lay beneath who was drowned long ago, 
 And was " Aged eleven years." 
 
 And heard, with a new-born terror, 
 
 The first surge of the infinite Sea, 
 Whose hither-shore is the shore of Death, 
 
 And whose further, the Life to be. 
 
 " Did the sea swallow up little children ? 
 
 Could God see the wickedness done ? 
 Nor spare one swift-winged seraph to save 
 
 From the thousands around His throne?" 
 
WHEN I AM DEAD. 
 
 " Was he still scarce older than we were, 
 
 Still only a boy of eleven ? 
 Were child-angels children always 
 
 In the beautiful courts of heaven ? " 
 
 Ah me ! of those childish dreamers, 
 
 One has solved the dark riddle since then : 
 
 And knows the dread secret which none may know 
 Who walk in the ways of men. 
 
 The other has seen the splendour 
 
 And mystery fading away ; 
 Too wise or too dull to take thought or care 
 
 For aught but the needs of the day. 
 
 WHEN I AM DEAD. 
 
 WHEN I am dead and turned to dust, 
 Let them say what they will, I care not aught ; 
 Let them say I was careless, indolent, 
 Wasted the precious hours in dreaming thought, 
 Did not the good I might have done, but spent 
 My soul upon myself, sometimes let rise 
 Thick mists of earth betwixt me and the skies : 
 What must be must. 
 
 But not that I betrayed a trust ; 
 Broke some girl's heart, and left her to her shame ; 
 Sneered young souls out of faith ; rose by deceit ; 
 Lifted by credulous mobs to wealth and fame ; 
 Waxed fat while good men waned, by lie and cheat ; 
 Cringed to the strong ; oppressed the poor and weak 
 When men say this, may some find voice to speak, 
 Though I am dust. 
 
10 SOWGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 LOVES SUICIDE. 
 
 ALAS for me for that my love is dead ! 
 
 Buried deep down, and may not rise again ; 
 Self-murdered, vanished, gone beyond recall, 
 And this is all my pain. 
 
 'Tis not that she I loved is gone from me, 
 
 She lives and grows more lovely day by day ; 
 Not Death could kill my love, but though she lives, 
 My love has died away. 
 
 Nor was it that a form or face more fair 
 
 Forswore my troth, for so my love had proved 
 Eye-deep alone, not rooted in the soul ; 
 And 'twas not thus I loved. 
 
 Nor that by too long dalliance with delight 
 
 And recompense of love, my love had grown 
 Surfeit with sweets, like some tired bee that flags 
 'Mid roses over-blown. 
 
 None of these slew my love, but some cold wind, 
 Some chill of doubt, some shadowy dissidence, 
 Born out of too great concord, did o'ercloud 
 Love's subtle inner sense. 
 
 So one sweet changeless chord, too long sustained, 
 
 Falls at its close into a lower tone : 
 So the swift train, sped on the long, straight way, 
 Sways, and is overthrown. 
 
 For difference is the soul of life and love , 
 
 And not the barren oneness weak souls prize : 
 Rest springs from strife, and dissonant chords beget 
 Divinest harmonies. 
 
THE RIVER OF LIFE. 11 
 
 THE RIVER OF LIFE. 
 
 BRIGHT with unnumbered laughters, and swollen by a 
 
 thousand tears, 
 Rushes along, through upland and lowland, the river of 
 
 life; 
 Sometimes foaming and broken, and sometimes silent 
 
 and slumbrous, 
 Sometimes down rocky glens, and sometimes through 
 
 flowery plains. 
 Sometimes the mountains draw near, and the black 
 
 depths swirl at their bases, 
 Sometimes the limitless meads fade on the verge of the 
 
 sky, 
 Sometimes the forests stand round, and the great trees 
 
 cast mystical shadows, 
 Sometimes the golden wheat waves, and girls fill their 
 
 pitchers and sing. 
 
 Always the same strange flow, through changes and 
 
 chances unchanging, 
 Always in youth and in age, in calm and in tempest the 
 
 same 
 Whether it sparkle transparent and give back the blue 
 
 like a mirror, 
 Or sweep on turbid with flood, or black with the garbage 
 
 of towns 
 Whether the silvery scale of the minnow flash on the 
 
 pebbles, 
 Or whether the poisonous ooze cling like a shroud round 
 
 the dead 
 Whether it struggle through shoals of white blooms and 
 
 feathery grasses, 
 Or bear on its bosom the hulls of ocean-tost navies the 
 
 same. 
 
12 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Flow on, O mystical river, flow on through desert and 
 
 city ; 
 
 Broken or smooth, flow onward into the Infinite sea. 
 Who knows what urges thee on, what dark laws and 
 
 cosmical forces 
 Stain thee or keep thee pure, and bring thee at last to 
 
 thy goal ? 
 What is the cause of thy rest or unrest, of thy foulness or 
 
 pureness ? 
 
 What is the secret of life, or the painful riddle of death ? 
 Why is it better to be than to cease, to flow on than to 
 
 stagnate ? 
 Why is the river-stream sweet, while the sea is as bitter 
 
 as gall ? 
 
 Surely we know not at all, but the cycle of Being is 
 
 eternal. 
 
 Life is eternal as death, tears are eternal as joy. 
 As the stream flowed, it will flow ; though 'tis sweet, yet 
 
 the sea will be bitter : 
 Foul it with filth, yet the deltas grow green and the ocean 
 
 is clear. 
 Always the sun and the winds will strike its broad surface 
 
 and gather 
 Some purer drops from its depths, to float in the clouds 
 
 of the sky ; 
 
 Soon these shall fall once again, and replenish the full- 
 flowing river. 
 Roll round then, O mystical cycle 1 flow onward, ineffable 
 
 stream ! 
 
IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE. 13 
 
 IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE. 
 
 UNDER the picture gallery wall, 
 
 As a sea-leaf clings to a wave-worn rock, 
 
 Nor shrinks from the surging impetuous shock 
 
 Of the breakers which gather and whiten and fall 
 
 A child's form crouches, nor seems to heed 
 
 The ceaseless eddy and whirl of men : 
 
 Men and women with hearts that bleed, 
 
 Men and women of wealth and fame, 
 
 High in honour, or sunk in shame, 
 
 Pass on like phantoms, and pass again. 
 
 And he lies there like a weed. 
 
 A child's form, said I ; but looking again 
 It is only the form that is childish now, 
 For age has furrowed the low dull brow, 
 And marked the pale face with its lines of pain. 
 Yet but few years have fled, since I first passed by, 
 For a dwarfs life is short if you go by the sun, 
 And marked in worn features and lustreless eye 
 Some trace of youth's radiance, though faint and thin, 
 But now, oh, strange jest ! there's a beard to his chin. 
 And he lies there, grown old ere his youth is done, 
 With his poor limbs bent awry. 
 
 What a passer-by sees, is a monstrous head, 
 With a look in the eyes as of those who gaze 
 On some far-off sight with a dumb amaze ; 
 A face as pale as the sheeted dead, 
 A frail body propt on a padded crutch, 
 And lean long fingers, which flutter the keys 
 Of an old accordion, returning their touch 
 With some poor faint echoes of popular song, 
 
14 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Trivial at all times and obsolete long, 
 Psalm-tunes, and African melodies, 
 Not differing very much. 
 
 And there he sits nightly in heat and cold, 
 
 When the fountains fall soft on the stillness of June, 
 
 Or when the sharp East sings its own shrill tune, 
 
 Patiently playing and growing old. 
 
 The swift year waxes and wanes, the great 
 
 Flash by in splendour from rout or ball, 
 
 Statesmen grown weary of long debate, 
 
 Hurry by homewards, and fling him alms ; 
 
 Pitiful women, touched by the psalms, 
 
 Bringing back innocence, stoop by the wall 
 
 Where he lies at Dives' gate. 
 
 What are his thoughts of, stranded there? 
 While life ebbs and flows by, again and again, 
 Does the old sad Problem vex his poor brain ? 
 " Why is the world so pleasant and fair, 
 Why, am I only who did no wrong 
 Crippled and bent out of human form ? 
 Why are other men tall and strong ? 
 Surely if all men were made to rejoice, 
 Seeing that we come without will or choice, 
 It were better to crawl for a day like a worm, 
 Than to lie like this so long ! 
 
 " The blind shuffles by with a tap of his staff, 
 The tired tramp plods to the workhouse ward, 
 But he carries his broad back as straight as a lord 
 And the blind man can hear his little ones laugh, 
 While I lie here like a weed on the sand, 
 With these crooked limbs, paining me night and day. 
 Is it true, what they tell of a far-off land, 
 
IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE. 15 
 
 In the sweet old faith which was preached for the poor, 
 Where none shall be weary or pained any more, 
 Nor change shall enter nor any decay, 
 And the stricken down shall stand ? " 
 
 And perhaps sometimes when the sky is clear, 
 
 And the stars show like lamps on the sweet summer 
 
 night, 
 
 Some chance chord struck with a sudden delight, 
 Soars aloft with his soul, and brings Paradise near. 
 And then for even nature is sometimes kind 
 He lies stretched under palms with a harp of gold ; 
 Or is whirled on by coursers as fleet as the wind ; 
 And is no more crippled, nor weak nor bent ; 
 No more painful nor impotent ; 
 No more hungry, nor weary nor cold, 
 But of perfect form and mind. 
 
 Or maybe his thoughts are of humbler cast, 
 
 For hunger and cold are real indeed ; 
 
 And he longs for the hour when his toil shall be past, 
 
 And he with sufficient for next day's need : 
 
 Some humble indulgence of food or fire, 
 
 Some music-hall ditty, or marvellous book, 
 
 Or whatever it be such poor souls desire ; 
 
 And with this little solace, for God would fain 
 
 Make even his measures of joy and pain, 
 
 He drones happily on in his quiet nook, 
 
 With hands that never tire. 
 
 Well, these random guesses must go for naught 
 
 Seeing it were surer and easier far 
 
 To weigh to an atom the faintest star, 
 
 Than to sound the dim depths of a brother's thought. 
 
 But whenever I hear those poor snatches of song, 
 
 And see him lie maimed in body and soul, 
 
16 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 While I am straight and healthy and strong, 
 I seem to redden with a secret shame, 
 That we can thus differ who should be the same, 
 Till I hear their insolent chariot wheels roll 
 The millionaires along. 
 
 WATCH. 
 
 OH, hark ! the languid air is still, 
 
 The fields and woods seem hushed and dumb. 
 But listen, and you shall hear a thrill, 
 
 An inner voice of silence come, 
 Stray notes of birds, the hum of bees, 
 
 The brook's light gossip on its way, 
 
 Voices of children heard at play, 
 Leaves whispering of a coming breeze. 
 
 Oh, look ! the sea is fallen asleep, 
 
 The sail hangs idle evermore ; 
 Yet refluent from the outer deep, 
 
 The low wave sobs upon the shore. 
 Silent the dark cave ebbs and fills, 
 
 Silent the broad weeds wave and sway ; 
 
 Yet yonder fairy fringe of spray 
 Is born of surges vast as hills. 
 
 Oh, see ! the sky is deadly dark, 
 There shines not moon nor any star ; 
 
 But gaze awhile, and you shall mark 
 Some gleam of glory from afar : 
 
 Some half-hid planet's vagrant ray ; 
 
 Some lightning flash which wakes the world 
 Night's pirate banner slowly furled ; 
 
 And, eastward, some faint flush of day. 
 
THE WANDERER. 17 
 
 THE WANDERER. 
 
 I REARED my growing Soul on dainty food, 
 I fed her with rich fruit and garnered gold 
 Sown freely by the pious provident hands 
 Of the wise dead of old. 
 
 The long procession of the fabulous Past, 
 Rolled by for her the earliest dawn of time ; 
 The seven great Days ; the garden and the sword ; 
 The first red stain of crime ; 
 
 The fierce rude chiefs who smote, and burned, and slew, 
 And all for God ; the pitiless tyrants grand, 
 Who piled to heaven the eternal monuments, 
 Unchanged amid the sand ; 
 
 The fairy commonwealths, where Freedom first 
 Inspired the ready hand and glowing tongue 
 To a diviner art and sweeter song 
 Than men have feigned or sung ; 
 
 The strong bold sway that held mankind in thrall, 
 Soldier and jurist marching side by side, 
 Till came the sure slow blight, when all the world 
 Grew sick, and swooned, and died ; 
 
 Again the long dark night, when Learning dozed 
 Safe in her cloister, and the world without 
 Rang with fierce shouts of war and cries of pain, 
 Base triumph, baser rout ; 
 
 Till rose a second dawn of light again, 
 Again the freemen stood in firm array 
 Behind the foss, and Pope and Kaiser came, 
 Wondered and turned away ; 
 
1 8 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 And then the broadening stream, till the sleek priest 
 Aspired to tread the path the Pagan trod, 
 And Rome fell once again, and the brave North 
 Rose from the Church to God. 
 
 All these passed by for me, till the vast tide 
 Grew to a sea too wide for any shore ; 
 Then doubt o'erspread me, and a cold disgust, 
 And I would look no more. 
 
 For something said, " The Past is dead and gone, 
 Let the dead bury their dead, why strive with Fate ? 
 Why seek to feed the children on the husks 
 Their rude forefathers ate ? " 
 
 " For even were the Past reflected back 
 As in a mirror, in the historic page, 
 For us its face is strange, seeing that the Race 
 Betters from age to age." 
 
 "And if, hearing the tale we told ourselves, 
 We marvel how the monstrous fable grew ; 
 How in these far-off years shall men discern 
 The fictive from the true ? " 
 
 Then turned I to the broad domain of Art, 
 To seek if haply Truth lay hidden there ; 
 Well knowing that of old close links connect 
 The true things and the fair. 
 
 Fair forms I found, and rounded limbs divine, 
 The maiden's grace, the tender curves of Youth 
 The majesty of happy perfect years, 
 But only half the truth. 
 
THE WANDERER. 19 
 
 For there is more, I thought, in man, and higher, 
 Than animal graces cunningly combined ; 
 Since oft within the unlovely frame is set 
 The shining, flawless mind. 
 
 So I grew weary of the pallid throng, 
 Deep-bosomed maids and stalwart heroes tall. 
 One type I saw, one earthy animal seal 
 Of comeliness in all ! 
 
 But not the awful, mystical human soul 
 The soul that grovels and aspires in turn 
 The soul that struggles outward to the light 
 Through lips and eyes that burn. 
 
 So, from the soulless marbles, white and bare 
 And cold, too-perfect art, I turned and sought 
 The canvases, where Christian hands have fixed 
 The dreams of saintly thought. 
 
 Passion I found, and love, and godlike pain> 
 The swift soul rapt by mingled hopes and fears^ 
 Eyes lit with glorious light from the Unseen, 
 Or dim with sacred tears. 
 
 But everywhere around the living tree 
 I marked the tangled growths of fable twine, 
 And gross material images confuse 
 The earthly and divine. 
 
 I saw the Almighty Ruler of the worlds, 
 The one unfailing Source of Light and Love, 
 A frowning gray-beard throned on rolling clouds, 
 Armed with the bolts of Jove. 
 
20 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 The Eternal Son, a shapeless new-born child, 
 Supine upon His peasant-mother's knees, 
 Or else a ghastly victim, crushed and worn 
 By corporal agonies. 
 
 The virgin mother now a simple girl ; 
 Or old and blurred with tears, and wan with sighs ; 
 And now a Pagan goddess, giving back 
 Unspiritual eyes. 
 
 Till faring on what spark of heaven was there, 
 Grew pale, then went out quite ; and in its stead 
 Dull copies of dull common life usurped 
 The empire of the dead. 
 
 Or if sometimes, rapt in a sweet suspense, 
 I knew a passionate yearning thrill my soul, 
 As down long aisles from lofty quires I heard 
 The solemn music roll ; 
 
 Or if at last the long-drawn symphony, 
 After much weary wandering seemed to soar 
 To a finer air, and subtle measures born 
 On some diviner shore, 
 
 I thought how much of poor mechanical skill, 
 How little fire of heart, or force of brain, 
 Was theirs who first devised or now declared 
 That magical sweet strain ; 
 
 And how the art was partial, not immense, 
 As Truth is, or as Beauty, but confined 
 To this our later Europe, not spread out, 
 Wide as the width of mind, 
 
THE WANDERER. 21 
 
 So then from Art, and all its empty shows 
 And outward-seeming truth, I turned and sought 
 The secret springs of knowledge which lie hid 
 Deep in the wells of thought. 
 
 The hoary thinkers of the Past I knew ; 
 Whose dim vast thoughts, to too great stature grown, 
 Flashed round as fitful lightning flashes round 
 The black vault of the Unknown. 
 
 Who, seeing that things are Many, and yet are One ; 
 That all things suffer change, and yet remain 
 That opposite flows from opposite, Life and Death, 
 Love, Hatred, Pleasure, Pain 
 
 Raised high upon the mystical throne of life 
 Some dim abstraction, hopeful to unwind 
 The tangled maze of things, by one rude guess 
 Of an untutored mind. 
 
 The sweet Ideal Essences revealed, 
 To that high poet-thinker's eyes I saw ; 
 The archetypes which underset the world 
 With one broad perfect Law. 
 
 The fair fantastic Commonwealth, too fair 
 For earth, wherein the wise alone bore rule 
 So wise that oftentimes the sage himself 
 Shows duller than the fool : 
 
 And that white soul, clothed with a satyr's form, 
 Which shone beneath the laurels day by day, 
 And, fired with burning faith in God and Right, 
 Doubted men's doubts away ; 
 
22 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 And him who took all knowledge for his own, 
 And with the same swift logical sword laid bare 
 The depths of heart and mind, the mysteries 
 Of earth and sea and air : 
 
 And those on whom the visionary East 
 Worked in such sort, that knowledge grew to seem 
 An ecstasy, a sudden blaze, revealed 
 To crown the mystic's dream ; 
 
 Till, once again, the old light faded out, 
 And left no trace of that fair day remain 
 Only a barren method, binding down 
 Men's thoughts with such a chain 
 
 That knowledge sank self-slain, like some stout knight 
 Clogged by his harness ; nor could wit devise 
 Aught but ignoble quibbles, subtly mixed 
 With dull theologies. 
 
 Not long I paused with these ; but passed to him 
 Who, stripping, like a skilful wrestler, cast 
 From his strong arms the precious deadly web, 
 The vesture of the past ; 
 
 And looked in Nature's eyes, and, foot to foot, 
 Strove with her daily, till the witch at length 
 Gave up, reluctant, to the questing mind 
 The secret of her strength. 
 
 And then the old fight, fought on modern fields, 
 Whether we know by sense or inward sight 
 Whether a law within, or use alone, 
 Mark out the bounds of right 
 
THE WANDERER. 23 
 
 All these were mine ; and then the ancient doubt, 
 Which scarce kept silence as this master taught 
 The undying soul, or that one subtly probed 
 The process of our thought, 
 
 And shuddered at the dreadful innocent talk 
 To the cicala's chirp beneath the trees 
 Love poised on silver wings, love fallen and fouled 
 By black iniquities ; 
 
 And laughed to scorn their quest of cosmic law, 
 Saw folly in the Mystic and the Schools, 
 And in the Newer Method gleams of truth 
 Obscured by childish rules ; 
 
 Rose to a giant's strength, and always cried 
 You shall not find the truth here, she is gone ; 
 What glimpse men had, was ages since, and these 
 Go idly babbling on 
 
 Jangles of opposite creeds, alike untrue, 
 Quaint puzzles, meaningless logomachies, 
 Efforts to scan the infinite core of things 
 With purblind finite eyes. 
 
 Go, get you gone to Nature, she is kind 
 To reasonable worship ; she alone 
 Thinks scorn, when humble seekers ask for bread, 
 To offer them a stone. 
 
 And Nature drew me to her, and awhile 
 Enchained me. Day by day, things strange and new 
 Rose on me ; day by day, I seemed to tread 
 Fresh footsteps of the true. 
 
24 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS, 
 
 I laid life's house bare to its inmost room 
 With lens and scalpel, marked the simple cell 
 Which might one day be man or creeping worm, 
 For aught that sense could tell, 
 
 Thrust life to its utmost home, a speck of gray 
 No more nor higher, traced the wondrous plan, 
 The wise appliances which seem to shape 
 The dwelling-place of man, 
 
 Nor halted here, but thirsted still to know, 
 And, with half-blinded eyesight, loved to pore 
 On that scarce visible world, born of decay 
 Or stranded on the shore. 
 
 Marked how the Mother works with earth and gas, 
 And with what subtle alchemy knows to blend 
 The vast conflicting forces of the world 
 To one harmonious end ; 
 
 And, nightly gazing on the splendid stars, 
 Essayed in vain with reverent eye to trace 
 The chain of miracles by which men learnt 
 The mysteries of space ; 
 
 And toiled awhile with spade and hammer, to learn 
 The dim long sequences of life, and those 
 Unnumbered cycles of forgotten years 
 Ere life's faint light arose ; 
 
 And loved to trace the strange sweet life of flowers, 
 And all the scarce suspected links which span 
 The gulf betwixt the fungus and the tree, 
 And 'twixt the tree and man. 
 
THE WANDERER. 25 
 
 Then suddenly, " What is it that I know ? 
 I know the shows and changes, not the cause ; 
 I know but long successions, which usurp 
 The name and rank of Laws. 
 
 " And what if the design I think I see 
 Be but a pitiless order, through the long 
 Slow wear of chance and suffering working out 
 Salvation for the strong ? 
 
 " How else, if scheme there be, can I explain 
 The cripple or the blind, the ravening jaw, 
 The infinite waste of life, the plague, the sword, 
 The evil, thriftless law, 
 
 " Or seeming errors of design, or strange 
 Complexities of structure, which suggest 
 A will which sported with its power, or worked 
 Not careful for the best ? " 
 
 I could not know the scheme, nor therefore spend 
 My soul in painful efforts to conform 
 With those who lavished life and brain to trace 
 The story of a worm ; 
 
 Nor yet with those who, prizing over-much 
 The unmeaning jargon of their science, sought 
 To hide, by arrogance, from God and man 
 Their poverty of thought, 
 
 And, blind with fact and stupefied by law, 
 Lost sight of the Creator, and became 
 Dull bigots, narrowed to a hopeless creed, 
 And priests in all but name. 
 
26 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Thus, tired with seeking truth, and not content 
 To dwell with those weak souls who love to feign 
 Unending problems of the life and love 
 Which they can ne'er explain ; 
 
 Nor those who, parrot-like, are proud to clothe 
 In twenty tongues the nothing that they know ; 
 Nor those whom barren lines and numbers blind 
 To all things else below ; 
 
 And half-suspecting, when the poet sang 
 And drew my soul to his, and round me cast 
 Fine cords of fancy, but a sleight of words, 
 Part stolen from the past 
 
 I thought, My life lies not with books, but men ! 
 Surely the nobler part is his who guides 
 The State's great ship through hidden rocks and sands, 
 Rude winds and popular tides, 
 
 A freeman amongst freemen, and contrives, 
 By years of thought and labour, to withdraw 
 Some portion of their load from lives bent down 
 By old abusive law ! 
 
 A noble task ; but how to walk with those 
 Who by fate's subtle irony ever hold 
 The freeman's ear the cunning fluent knave, 
 The dullard big with gold ? 
 
 And how, when worthier souls bore rule, to hold 
 Faction more dear than Truth, or stoop to cheat, 
 With cozening words and shallow flatteries 
 The Solons of the street ? 
 
THE WANDERER. 27 
 
 Or, failing this, to wear a hireling sword 
 Ready, whate'er the cause, to kill and slay, 
 And float meanwhile, a gilded butterfly, 
 My brief inglorious day 
 
 Or, in the name of Justice, to confuse, 
 For hire, with shameless tongue and subtle brain, 
 Dark riddles, which, to honest minds unwarped, 
 Were easy to explain 
 
 Or, with keen salutary knife, to carve 
 For hire the shrinking limb ; or else to feign 
 Wise words and healing powers, though knowing naught 
 In face of death and pain 
 
 Or grub all day for pelf 'mid hides and oils, 
 Like a mole in some dark alley, to rise at last, 
 After dull years, to wealth and ease, when all 
 The use for them is past 
 
 Or else to range myself with those who seek 
 By reckless throws with chance, by trick and cheat, 
 Swift riches lacking all the zest of toil, 
 And only bitter-sweet. 
 
 Or worst, and still for hire, to feign to hear 
 A voice which called not, calling me to tell 
 Now of an indolent heaven, and now, obscene 
 Threats of a bodily hell. 
 
 Then left I all, and ate the husks of sense ; 
 Oh, passionate coral lips ! oh, shameful fair ! 
 Bright eyes, and careless smiles, and reckless mirth ! 
 Oh, golden rippling hair ! 
 
28 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Oh, rose-strewn feasts, made glad with wine and song 
 And laughter-lit ! oh, whirling dances sweet, 
 When the mad music faints awhile and leaves 
 Low beats of rhythmic feet ! 
 
 Oh, glorious terrible moments, when the sheen 
 Of silk, and straining limbs flash thundering by, 
 And name and fame and honour itself, await 
 Worse hazard than the die ! 
 
 All these were mine. Then, thought I, I have found 
 The truth at last ; here comes not doubt to pain ; 
 Here things are what they seem, not figments, born 
 Of a too busy brain. 
 
 But soon, the broken law avenged itself; 
 For, oh, the pity of it ! to feel the fire 
 Grow colder daily, and the soaring soul 
 Sunk deep in grosser mire. 
 
 And oh, the pity of it ! to drag down lives 
 Which had been happy else, to ruin, and waste 
 The precious affluence of love, which else 
 Some humble home had graced. 
 
 And oh ! the weariness of feasts and wine ; 
 The jests where mirth was not, the nerves unstrung, 
 The throbbing brain, the tasteless joys, which keep 
 Their savour for the young. 
 
 These came upon me, and a vague unrest, 
 And then a gnawing pain ; and then I fled, 
 As one some great destruction passes, flees 
 A city of the dead. 
 
THE WANDERER. 29 
 
 Then, pierced by some vague sense of guilt and pain, 
 " God help me ! " I said. " There is no help in life, 
 Only continual passions waging war, 
 Cold doubt and endless strife ! " 
 
 But He is full of peace, and truth, and rest, 
 I give myself to Him ; I yearn to find 
 What words divine have fallen from age to age 
 Fresh from the Eternal mind. 
 
 And so, upon the reverend page I dwelt, 
 Which shows Him formless, self-contained, all-wise, 
 Passionless, pure, the soul of visible things, 
 Unseen by mortal eyes ; 
 
 Who oft across dim gulfs of time revealed, 
 Grew manifest, then passed and left a foul 
 Thick mist of secular error to obscure 
 The upward gazing soul ; 
 
 And that which told of Opposite Principles, 
 Of Light with Darkness warring evermore ; 
 Ah me ! 'twas nothing new, I had felt the fight 
 Within my soul before. 
 
 And those wise Answers of the far-off sage, 
 So wise, they shut out God, and can enchain 
 To-day in narrow bonds of foolishness 
 The subtle Eastern brain. 
 
 And last, the hallowed pages dear to all, 
 Which bring God down to earth, a King to fight 
 With His people's hosts ; or speaking awful words 
 From out the blaze of light, 
 
30 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Which tell how earthly chiefs who loved the right. 
 Were dear to Him ; and how the poet-king 
 Sang, from his full repentant heart, the strains 
 Sad hearts still love to sing. 
 
 And how the seer was filled with words of fire, 
 And passionate scorn and lofty hate of 111, 
 So pure, that we who hear them seem to hear 
 God speaking to us still, 
 
 But mixed with these, dark tales of fraud and blood, 
 Like weeds in some fair garden ; till I said, 
 " These are not His ; how shall a man discern 
 The living from the dead ? 
 
 " I will go to that fair Life, the flower, of lives ; 
 I will prove the infinite pity and love which shine 
 From each recorded word of Him who once 
 Was human, yet Divine. 
 
 " Oh, pure sweet life, crowned by a godlike death ; 
 Oh, tender healing hand ; oh, words that give 
 Rest to the weary, solace to the sad, 
 And bid the hopeless live ! 
 
 " Oh, pity, spurning not the penitent thief ; 
 Oh, wisdom, stooping to the little child ; 
 Oh, infinite purity, taking thought for lives 
 By sinful stains defiled ! 
 
 " With thee will I dwell, with thee." But as I mused, 
 Those pale ascetic words renewed my doubt : 
 The cheek, which to the smiter should be turned, 
 The offending eye plucked out, 
 
THE WANDERER. 31 
 
 The sweet impossible counsels which may seem 
 Too perfect for our need ; nor recognise 
 A duty to the world, not all reserved 
 For that beyond the skies. 
 
 " And was it truth, or some too reverent dream 
 Which scorned God's precious processes of birth, 
 And spurned aside for Him, the changeless laws 
 Which rule all things of earth ? 
 
 " Or how shall some strange breach of natural law 
 Be proof of moral truth ; yet how deny 
 That He who holds the cords of life and death 
 Can raise up those who die ? 
 
 " Yet how to doubt that God may be revealed ; 
 Is He more strange, incarnate, shedding tears 
 Than when the unaided scheme fulfils itself 
 Through countless painful years ? 
 
 " But if revealed He be, how to escape 
 iThe critic who dissects the sacred page, 
 Till God's gift hangs on grammar, and the saint 
 Is weaker than the sage ! " 
 
 These warring thoughts held me, and more ; but when 
 The simple life divine shone forth no more, 
 And the fair truth came veiled in stately robes 
 Of philosophic lore ; 
 
 And 'twas the apostle spoke, and not the Christ ; 
 The scholar, not the Master ; and the Church 
 Defined itself, and sank to earthly thrones : 
 " Surely," I said, " my search 
 
32 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 "Is vain ; " and when with magical rite and spell 
 They killed the Lord, and sought with narrow creed, 
 Half-fancy, half of barbarous logic born, 
 To heal the hearts that bleed ; 
 
 And heretic strove with heretic, and the Church 
 Slew for the truth itself had made : again, 
 " Can these things be of Him ? " I thought, and felt 
 The old undying pain. 
 
 And yet the fierce false prophet turned to God 
 The gross idolatrous East ; and far away, 
 Beyond the horrible wastes, the lewd knave makes 
 A Paradise to-day. 
 
 Yet deep within my being still I kept 
 Two sacred fires alight through all the strife, 
 Faith in a living God ; faith in a soul 
 Dowered with an endless life. 
 
 And therefore though the world's foundations shook, 
 I was not all unhappy ; knowing well 
 That He whose hand sustained me would not bear 
 To leave my soul in hell. 
 
 But now I looked on nature with strange eyes, 
 For something whispered, " Surely all things pass ; 
 All life decays on earth or air or sea, 
 All wither like the grass." 
 
 " These are, then have been, we ourselves decline, 
 And cease and turn to earth, and are as they : 
 Shall our dear animals rise ; shall the dead flowers 
 Bloom in another May? 
 
THE WANDERER. 33 
 
 " The seed springs like the herb, but not the same ; 
 And like us, not the same, our children rise ; 
 The type survives, though suffering gradual change, 
 The individual dies. 
 
 " How shall one seek to sever, e'en in thought, 
 Body and soul ; how show to doubting eyes 
 That this returns to dust, while the other soars 
 Deathless beyond the skies ? 
 
 "And if it be a lovely dream no more, 
 And life is ended with our latest breath, 
 May not the same sweet fancy have devised 
 The Lord of life and death ? 
 
 " We know Him not at all, nor may conceive 
 Beginning or yet ending. Is it more 
 To image an Eternal World, than one 
 Where nothing was before ? 
 
 " Whence came the Maker ? Was He uncreate ? 
 Then why must all things else created be ? 
 Was He created ? Then, the Lord I serve, 
 Lies farther off than He. 
 
 " Or if He be indeed, yet the soul dies. 
 Why, what is He to us ? not here, not here ! 
 His judgments fall, wrong triumphs here right sinks 
 What hope have we, or fear ? " 
 
 I could not answer, yet when others came, 
 Affirming He was not, and bade me live 
 In the present only, seizing unconcerned 
 What pleasures life could give, 
 
SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 My doubt grown fiercer, scoffed at them, " Oh fools, 
 And blind, your joys I know ; the universe 
 Confutes you ; can you see right yield to might, 
 The better to the worse, 
 
 " Nor burn to adjust them ? If it were a dream, 
 Would all men dream it? Can your thought conceive 
 The end you tell of better than the life, 
 Which all men else believe ? 
 
 " Or if we shrink as from a hateful voice, 
 From mute analogies of frame and shape, 
 Surely no other than a breath Divine 
 Gave reason to the ape." 
 
 " What made all men to call on God ? what taught 
 The soaring soul its lofty heavenward flight ? 
 What led us to discern the strait bounds set, 
 To sever wrong from right ? 
 
 " Be sure, no easier is it to declare 
 He is not than He is : " and I who sought 
 Firm ground, saw here the same too credulous faith 
 And impotence of thought. 
 
 And when they brought me their fantastic creed, 
 With a figment for a god mock ceremonies 
 Man worshipping himself mock priests to kill 
 The soul's high liberties, 
 
 I spurned the folly with a curse, and turned 
 To dwell with my own soul apart, and there 
 Found no companion but the old doubt grown 
 To an immense despair. 
 
THE WANDERER. 35 
 
 Then, as a man who, on a sunny day, 
 Feeling some trivial ache, unknown before, 
 Goes careless from his happy home, and seeks 
 A wise physician's door. 
 
 And when he comes forth, neither heeds nor sees 
 The joyous tide of life or smiling sky, 
 But always, always hears a ceaseless voice 
 Repeating " Thou shalt die." 
 
 So all the world flowed by, and all my days 
 Passed like an empty vision, and I said, 
 " There is no help in life ; seeming to live, 
 We are but as the dead." 
 
 And thus, I tossed about long time \ at last 
 Nature rebelled beneath the constant pain, 
 And the dull sleepless care forgot itself, 
 In frenzy of the brain. 
 
 And sometimes all was darkness, unrelieved, 
 And sometimes I would wander day and night, 
 Through fiery long arcades, which seared my brain 
 With flakes of blinding light. 
 
 And then I lay unmoved in a gray calm ; 
 Not life nor death, and the past came to seem 
 Thought, act, faith, doubt, things of but little worth 
 A dream within a dream. 
 
 But, when I saw my country like a cloud, 
 Sink in the East, and the free ocean-wind 
 Fanned life's returning flame and roused again 
 Slow pulse and languid mind ; 
 
36 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Soon the great rush and mystery of the sea, 
 The grisly depths, the great waves surging on, 
 Dark with white spuming crests which threaten death, 
 Swoop by, and so are gone. 
 
 And the strong sense of weakness, as we sped 
 Tossed high, plunged low, through many a furious 
 
 night, 
 
 And slept in faith, that some poor seaman woke 
 To guide our course aright. 
 
 All lightened something of my load s and seemed 
 To solace me a little, for they taught, 
 That the impalpable unknown might stretch, 
 Even to the realms of thought. 
 
 And so I wandered into many lands, 
 And over many seas ; I felt the chill 
 Which in mid-ocean strikes on those who near 
 The spire-crowned icy hill, 
 
 And threaded fairy straits beneath the palms, 
 Where, year by year, the tepid waters sleep ; 
 And where, round coral isles, the sudden sea 
 Sinks its unfathomed deep. 
 
 Upon the savage feverish swamp, I trod 
 The desert sands, the fat low plains of the East ; 
 On glorious storied shores and those where man 
 Was ever as the beast. 
 
 And, day by day, I felt my frozen soul, 
 Soothed by the healing influence of change, 
 Grow softer, registering day by day, 
 Things new, unknown, and strange. 
 
THE WANDERER. 37 
 
 Not therefore, holding what it spurned before, 
 Nor solving riddles, which before perplexed ; 
 But with new springs of sympathy, no more 
 By impotent musings vexed. 
 
 And last of all I knew the lovely land 
 Which was most mighty, and is still most fair ; 
 Where world-wide rule and heavenward faith have left 
 Their traces everywhere. 
 
 And as from province to province I wandered on, 
 City or country, all was fair and sweet ; 
 The air, the fields, the vines, the dark-eyed girls, 
 The dim arcaded street ; 
 
 The minsters lit for vespers, in the cool ; 
 Gay bridals, solemn burials, soaring chant, 
 Spent in high naves, gray cross, and wayside shrine, 
 And kneeling suppliant ; 
 
 And painting, strong to aid the eye of faith, 
 And sculpture, figuring awful destinies : 
 Thin campanili, crowning lake-lit hills, 
 And sea-worn palaces. 
 
 Then, as the sweet days passed me one by one, 
 New tides of life through body and soul were sent ; 
 And daily sights of beauty worked a calm 
 Ineffable content. 
 
 And soon, as in the spring, ere frosts are done, 
 Deep down in earth the black roots quicken and start, 
 I seemed to feel a spring of faith and love 
 Stir through my frozen heart. 
 
38 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Till one still summer eve, when as I mused 
 By a fair lake, from many a silvery bell, 
 Thrilled from tall towers, I heard the Angelus, 
 Deep peace upon me fell. 
 
 And following distant organ-swells, I passed 
 Within the circuit of a lofty wall, 
 And thence within dim aisles, wherein I heard 
 The low chant rise and fall. 
 
 And dark forms knelt upon the ground, and all 
 Was gloom, save where some dying day-beam shone, 
 High in the roof, or where the votive lamp 
 Burned ever dimly on. 
 
 Then whether some chance sound or solemn word 
 Across my soul a precious influence cast, 
 Or whether the fair presence of a faith 
 Born of so great a Past, 
 
 Smote me ; the wintry glooms were past and done, 
 And once again the Spring-time, and once more 
 Faith from its root bloomed heavenward and I sank 
 Weeping upon the floor ! 
 
 Long time within that peaceful home I dwelt 
 With those grave brethren, spending silent days 
 And watchful nights, in solemn reverent thought, 
 Made glad by frequent praise. 
 
 And the awakened longing for the Truth, 
 With the great dread of what had been before, 
 The ordered life, the nearer view of heaven, 
 Worked on me more and more. 
 
THE WANDERER. 39 
 
 So that, I lived their life of prayer and praise, 
 Alike in summer heats and wintry snows, 
 Pacing chill cloisters 'neath the waning stars, 
 Long ere the slow sun rose. 
 
 And speaking little, and bringing down my soul 
 With frequent fast and vigil, saw at length 
 Truth's face show daily clearer and more clear 
 To failing bodily strength. 
 
 For living in a mystical air, and parched 
 With thirst for faith and truth j at last I brought 
 The old too-active logic to enforce 
 The current of my thought. 
 
 And wishing to believe, I took for true 
 The shameless subtleties which dare to tell 
 How the Eternal charged one hand to hold 
 The keys of heaven and hell. 
 
 " For if a faith be given, then must there be 
 A Church to guard it, and a tongue to speak, 
 And an unerring mind to rule alike 
 The strong souls and the weak." 
 
 " And, because God's high purpose stands not still, 
 But He is ever with His own, the tide 
 Of miracle and dogma ceases not, 
 But flows down strong and wide. 
 
 " To the world's ending." So my mind fell prone, 
 Before the Church ; and teachings new and strange 
 The wafer, which to spirit and sense sustains 
 Some dim incredible change 
 
40 SOwGS Of TWO WORLDS. 
 
 The substance which tho' altered yet retains 
 The self-same accidents ; the Virgin Queen, 
 Immaculate in birth, and without death, 
 Soaring to worlds unseen 
 
 The legends, ofttimes foolish, ofttimes fair, 
 Of saints who set all natural laws at naught ; 
 The miracles, the portents, not the charm, 
 Of the old Pagan thought 
 
 These shook me not at all, who only longed 
 To drain the healing draught of faith again, 
 And dreaded, with a coward dread, the thought 
 Of the old former pain. 
 
 The more incredible the tale, the more 
 The merit of belief ; the more I sought 
 To reason out the truth, I knew the more 
 The impotence of thought. 
 
 And thus the swift months passed in prayer and praise 
 Bringing the day when those tall gates should close, 
 And shut me out from thought and life and all 
 Our heritage of woes. 
 
 Then, one day, when the end drew very near, 
 Which should erase the past for ever, and I 
 Waited impatient, longing for the hour 
 When my old self should die ; 
 
 I knelt at noon, within the darkened aisle, 
 Before a doll tawdry with rich brocade, 
 And all ablaze with gems, the precious gifts 
 Which pious hands had made : 
 
THE WANDERER. 41 
 
 Nor aught of strange I saw, so changed was I, 
 In that dull fetish ; nay, heaven's gate unsealed, 
 And the veiled angels bent before the throne, 
 Where sat their Lord revealed. 
 
 While like a flood the ecstasy of faith 
 Surged high and higher, swift to fall at last 
 Lower and lower, when the rapture failed 
 And faded, and was past. 
 
 Lo, a sweet sunbeam, straying through the gloom 
 Smote me, as when the first low shaft of day 
 Aslant the night-clouds shoots, and momently 
 Chases the mists away. 
 
 And that ideal heaven was closed, and all 
 That reverend house turned to a darkened room, 
 A den of magic, masking with close fumes 
 The odours of the tomb. 
 
 Then passed I forth. Again my soul was free ; 
 Again the summer sun and exquisite air 
 Made all things smile ; and life and joy and love 
 Beamed on me everywhere. 
 
 And o'er the awakened earth there went a stir, 
 A movement, a renewal. Round the spring 
 In the broad village place, the dark-eyed girls 
 Were fain to dance and sing 
 
 For the glad time. The children played their play, 
 Like us who play at life ; light bursts of song 
 Came from the fields, and to the village church 
 A bridal gleamed along. 
 
42 SOJVGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Far on the endless plain, the swift steam drew 
 A soft white riband. Down the lazy flow 
 Of the broad stream, I marked, round sylvan bends, 
 The seaward barges go. 
 
 The brown vine-dresser, bent among his vines, 
 Ceased sometimes from his toil to hold on high 
 His laughing child, while his deep-bosomed wife 
 Cheerful sat watching by. 
 
 And all the world was glad, and full of life,. 
 And I grew glad with it, and quickly came 
 To see my past life as it was, and feel 
 A salutary shame. 
 
 For what was my desire ? To set aside 
 The perfect scheme of things, to live apart 
 A sterile life, divorced from light and love, 
 Sole, with an empty heart. 
 
 And wherefore to fatigue the Eternal ear 
 With those incessant hymns of barren praise ? 
 Does not a sweeter sound go up to Him 
 From well-spent toilsome days, 
 
 And natural life, refined by honest love, 
 And sweet unselfish liturgies of home, 
 Heaven's will, borne onward by obedient souls, 
 Careless of what may come ? 
 
 What need has He for praise ? Forest and field, 
 The winds, the seas, the plains, the mountains, praise 
 Their Maker, with a grander litany 
 Than our poor voices raise. 
 
THE WANDERER. 43 
 
 What need has He of them ? And looking back 
 To those gray walls which late had shown so fair, 
 I felt as one who from a dungeon 'scapes 
 To free unfettered air. 
 
 And half distrustful of myself, and full 
 Of terror of what might be, once more fled, 
 With scarce a glance behind, as one who flees 
 A city of the dead. 
 
 All through that day and night I journeyed on 
 To the northward. With the dawn a tender rose 
 Blushed in mid-heaven, and looking up, I saw 
 Far off, the eternal snows. 
 
 Then all day higher, higher, from the plain, 
 Beyond the tinkling folds, beyond the fair 
 Dense, self-sown chestnuts, then the scented pines, 
 And then an eager air, 
 
 And then the ice-fields and the cloudless heavens ; 
 And ever as I climbed, I seemed to cast 
 My former self behind, and all the rags 
 Of that unlovely past : 
 
 The doubts, the superstitions, the regrets, 
 The awakening ; as the soul which hears the loud 
 Archangel summon, rising, casts behind 
 Corruption and the shroud. 
 
 For I was come into a higher land, 
 And breathed a purer air than in the past ; 
 And He who brought me to the dust of death 
 Had holpen me at last. 
 
44 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 What then ? A dream of sojourn 'mid the hills, 
 A stir of homeward travel, swift and brief, 
 Because the very hurry of the change 
 Brought somewhat of relief. 
 
 A dream of a fair city, the chosen seat 
 Of all the pleasures, impotent to stay 
 The thirsty soul, whose water-springs were laid 
 In dear lands far away. 
 
 A dream of the old crowds, the smoke, the din 
 Of our dear mother, dearer far than fair ; 
 The home of lofty souls and busy brains, 
 Keener for that thick air. 
 
 Then a long interval of patient toil, 
 Building the gradual framework of my art, 
 With eyes which cared no more to seek the whole, 
 Fast fixed upon the part. 
 
 And mind, which shunned the general, absorbed 
 In the particular only, till it saw 
 What boundless possibilities lie for men 
 'Twixt matter and high law ! 
 
 How that which may be rules, not that which must; 
 And absolute truth revealed, would serve to blind 
 The soul's bright eye, and sear with tongues of flame 
 The sinews of the mind. 
 
 How in the web of life, the thread of truth 
 Is woven with error ; yet a vesture fair 
 Comes from the loom a precious royal robe 
 Fit for a god to wear. 
 
THE WANDERER. 45 
 
 Till at the last, upon the crest of toil 
 Sat Knowledge, and I gained a newer truth : 
 Not the pale queen of old, but a soft maid, 
 Filled with a tender ruth. 
 
 And, ray by ray, the clear-faced unity 
 Orbed itself forth, and lo ! the noble throng 
 Of patient souls, who sought the truth in act, 
 And grew, through silence, strong. 
 
 Till prizing union more than dissidence, 
 And holding dear the race, I came to prove 
 A spring of sympathy within, which swelled 
 To a deep stream of love. 
 
 And Knowledge gave me gold, and power, and fame, 
 And honour ; and Love, a clearer, surer view : 
 Thus in calm depths I moored my weary soul 
 Fast anchored to the True. 
 
 And now the past lies far away, and I 
 Can scarce recall those vanished days again ; 
 No more the old faith stirs me, and no more 
 Comes the old barren pain. 
 
 For now each day brings its appointed toil, 
 And every hour its grateful sum of care ; 
 And life grows sweeter, and the gracious world 
 Show day by day more fair. 
 
 For now I live a two-fold life ; my own 
 And yet another's ; and another heart 
 Which beats to mine, makes glad the lonely world 
 Where once I lived apart. 
 
46 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 And little lives are mine to keep unstained, 
 Strange mystic growths, which day by day expand, 
 Like the flowers they are, and set me in a fair 
 Perpetual wonderland. 
 
 New senses, gradual language, dawning mind, 
 And with each day that passes, traced more strong- 
 On those white tablets, awful characters 
 That tell of right and wrong. 
 
 And what hand wrote them ? One brief life declined, 
 Went from us, and is not. Ah ! what and where 
 Is that fair soul ? Surely it somewhere blooms 
 In purer, brighter air. 
 
 What took it hence, and whither ? Can I bear 
 To think, that I shall turn to a herb, a tree, 
 A little earth or lime, nor care for these, 
 Whatever things may be ? 
 
 Or shall the love and pity I feel for these 
 End here, nor find a higher type or task ? 
 I am as God to them, bestowing more 
 Than they deserve or ask. 
 
 And shall I find no Father ? Shall my being 
 Aspire in vain for ever, and always tend 
 To an impossible goal, which none shall reach, 
 An aim without an end ? 
 
 Or, shall I heed them when they bid me take 
 No care for aught but what my brain may prove ? 
 I, through whose inmost depths from birth to death, 
 Strange heavenward currents move ; 
 
THE WANDERER. 47 
 
 Vague whispers, inspirations, memories, 
 Sanctities, yearnings, secret questionings, 
 And oft amid the fullest blaze of noon, 
 The rush of hidden wings ? 
 
 Nay ; my soul spurns it ! Less it is to know 
 Than to have faith : not theirs who cast away 
 The mind God gave them, eager to adore 
 Idols of baser clay. 
 
 But theirs, who marking out the bounds of mind, 
 And where thought rules, content to understand, 
 Know that beyond its kingdom lies a dread 
 Immeasurable land. 
 
 A land which is, though fainter than a cloud, 
 Full of sweet hopes and awful destinies : 
 A dim land, rising when the eye is clear 
 Across the trackless seas. 
 
 O life ! O death ! O faithful wandering soul ! 
 O riddle of Being, hard to understand ! 
 These are Thy dreadful secrets, Lord ; and we 
 The creatures of Thy hand. 
 
 O'er wells of consciousness, too deep for thought, 
 Thou broodest always, dreadful Power Divine ; 
 Thine are we still, the creatures of Thy hand, 
 Living and dying, Thine. 
 
48 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 TWO VOYAGES. 
 
 Two ships which meet upon the ocean waste, 
 And stay a little while, and interchange 
 Tidings from two strange lands, which lie beneath 
 Each its own heaven and particular stars, 
 
 And fain would tarry ; but the impatient surge 
 Calls, and a cold wind from the setting sun 
 Divides them, and they sadly drift apart, 
 And fade, and sink, and vanish, 'neath the verge 
 
 One to the parching plains and seething seas 
 Smitten by the tyrannous Sun, where Mind alone 
 Withers amid the bounteous outer-world, 
 And prodigal Nature dwarfs and chains the man 
 
 One to cold rains, rude winds, and hungry waves 
 Spilt on the frowning granite, niggard suns, 
 And snows and mists which starve the vine and palm, 
 But nourish to more glorious growth the man. 
 
 One to the scentless flowers and songless birds, 
 Swift storms and poison stings and ravening jaws : 
 One to spring violets and nightingales, 
 Sleek-coated kine and honest gray-eyed skies. 
 
 One to lie helpless on the stagnant sea, 
 
 Or sink in sleep beneath the hurricane : 
 
 One to speed on, white-winged, through summer airs, 
 
 Or sow the rocks with ruin who shall tell ? 
 
OTHER DAYS. 49 
 
 So with two souls which meet on life's broad deep, 
 And cling together but may not stay ; for Time 
 And Age and chills of Absence wear the links 
 Which bind them, and they part for evermore 
 
 One to the tropic lands of fame and gold, 
 
 And feverish thirst and weariness of soul ; 
 
 One to long struggles and a wintry life, 
 
 Decked with one sweet white bloom of happy love. 
 
 For each, one fate, to live and die apart, 
 Save for some passing smile of kindred souls ; 
 Then drift away alone, on opposite tides, 
 To one dark harbour and invisible goal. 
 
 OTHER DAYS. 
 
 O THRUSH, your song is passing sweet, 
 But never a song that you have sung 
 
 Is half so sweet as thrushes sang 
 When my dear love and I were young. 
 
 O Roses, you are sweet and red, 
 Yet not so red nor sweet as were 
 
 The roses that my mistress loved 
 To bind within her flowing hair. 
 
 Time filches fragrance from the flower ; 
 
 Time steals the sweetness from the song ; 
 Love only scorns the tyrant's power, 
 
 And with the growing years grows strong. 
 
 E 
 
So SOWGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 THE TRUE MAN. 
 
 TAKE thou no thought for aught save right and truth, 
 Life holds for finer souls no equal prize ; 
 Honours and wealth are baubles to the wise, 
 And pleasure flies on swifter wing than youth. 
 If in thy heart thou bearest seeds of hell, 
 Though all men smile, yet what shall be thy gain ? 
 Though all men frown, if truth and right remain, 
 Take thou no thought for aught ; for it is well. 
 
 Take thou no thought for aught ; nor deem it shame 
 To lag behind while knaves and dullards rise ; 
 Thy soul asks higher guerdon, purer fame, 
 Than to loom large and grand in vulgar eyes. 
 Though thou shouldst live thy life in vile estate, 
 Silent, yet knowing that deep within thy breast 
 Unkindled sparks of genius lie repressed, 
 Greater is he who is, than seemeth, great. 
 
 If thou shouldst spend long years of hope deferred, 
 Chilled through with doubt, and sickening to despair ; 
 If as cares thicken friends grow cold and rare, 
 Nor favouring voice in all the throng be heard ; 
 If all men praise him whom thou know'st to be 
 Of lower aims and duller brain than thine, 
 Take thou no thought, though all men else combine 
 In thy despite : their praise is naught to thee. 
 
 Bethink thee of the irony of fate, 
 
 How great men die inglorious and alone ; 
 
 How Dives sits within upon his throne. 
 
 While good men crouch with Lazarus at the gate. 
 
ON AN OLD MINSTER. 5* 
 
 Our tree of life set on Time's hither shore 
 Blooms like the secular aloe once an age : 
 The great names scattered on the historic page 
 Are few indeed, but the unknown are more. 
 
 Waste is the rule of life : the gay flowers spring, 
 The fat fruits drop, upon the untrodden plain ; 
 Sea-sands at ebb are silvered o'er with pain ; 
 The fierce rain beats and mars the feeble wing ; 
 Fair forms grow fairer stilt for deep disease ; 
 Hearts made to bless are spent apart, alone. 
 What claim hast thou to joy, while others moan ? 
 God made us all, and art thou more than these ? 
 
 Take thou no care for aught save truth and right ; 
 Content, if such thy fate, to die obscure ; 
 Wealth palls and honours, Fame may not endure, 
 And loftier souls soon weary of delight. 
 Keep innocence ; be all a true man ought j 
 Let neither pleasure tempt, nor pain appal : 
 Who hath this, he hath all things, having naught ; 
 Who hath it not, hath nothing, having all. 
 
 ON AN OLD MINSTER. 
 
 OLD minster, when my years were few, 
 And life seemed endless to the boy ; 
 Clear yet and vivid is the joy 
 
 With which I gazed and thought on you. 
 
 Thin shaft and flower-wrought capital, 
 High-springing arch, and blazoned pane, 
 Quaint gurgoyles stretching heads profane, 
 
 And stately throne and carven stall. 
 
52 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 The long nave lost in vaporous gray, 
 
 The mailed recumbent forms which wait, 
 In mockery of earthly state, 
 
 The coming of the dreadful day. 
 
 The haunted aisles, the gathering gloom, 
 By some stray shaft of eve made fair : 
 The stillness of the mouldering air, 
 
 The faded legends of the tomb. 
 
 I loved them all. What care had I, 
 I, the young heir of all the Past, 
 That neither youth nor life might last, 
 
 That all things living came to die ! 
 
 The Past was spent, the Past was done, 
 The Present was my own to hold ; 
 Far off within a haze of gold 
 
 Stretched the fair Future, scarce begun. 
 
 For me did pious builders rear 
 Those reverend walls ; for me the song 
 Of supplication, ages long, 
 
 Had gone up daily, year by year. 
 
 And thus I loved you ; but to-day 
 
 The long Past near and nearer shows ; 
 Less bright, more clear, the Future grows, 
 
 And all the world is growing gray. 
 
 But you scarce bear a deeper trace 
 Of time upon your solemn brow ; 
 No sadder, stiller, grayer now, 
 
 Than when I loved your reverend face, 
 
ON AN OLD MINSTER. 53 
 
 And you shall be when I am not ; 
 
 And you shall be a thing of joy 
 
 To many a frank and careless boy 
 When I and mine are long forgot. 
 
 Grave priests shall here with holy rage, 
 Whose grandsires are as yet unborn, 
 Lash, with fierce stripes of saintly scorn, 
 
 The heats of youth, the greed of age. 
 
 Proud prelates sit on that high throne, 
 Whose young forefathers drive the plough 
 While Norman lineage nods below, 
 
 In way-worn tramp or withered crone. 
 
 And white-haired traders feign to pray, 
 Sunk deep in thoughts of gain and gold ; 
 And sweet flower-faces growing old, 
 
 Give place to fresher blooms than they. 
 
 With such new shape of creed and rite 
 
 As none now living may foretell ; 
 
 A faith of love which needs not hell, 
 A stainless worship, pure and white. 
 
 Or, may be, some reverting change 
 To the old faith of vanished days : 
 The incensed air, the mystic praise, 
 
 The barbarous ritual, quaint and strange. 
 
 Who knows ? But they are wrong who say 
 Man's work is brief and quickly past ; 
 If you through all these centuries last, 
 
 While they who built you pass away. 
 
54 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS, 
 
 The wind, the rain, the sand, are slow ; 
 Man fades before his work ; scant trace 
 Time's ringer findeth to efface 
 
 Of him whom seventy years lay low. 
 
 The grass grows green awhile, and then 
 Is as before ; the work he made 
 Casts on his grave a reverend shade 
 
 Through long successive lives of men. 
 
 But he ! where is he ? Lo, his name 
 Has vanished from his wonted place, 
 Unknown his tongue, his creed, his race ; 
 
 Unknown his soaring hopes of fame. 
 
 Only the creatures of the brain, 
 Just laws, wise precepts, deathless verse ; 
 These weave a chaplet for the hearse, 
 
 And through all change unchanged remain, 
 
 These will I love as age creeps on ; 
 
 Gray minster, these are ever young ; 
 
 These shall be read and loved and sung 
 When every stone of you is gone. 
 
 No hands have built the monument 
 
 Which to all ages shall endure ; 
 
 High thoughts and fancies, sweet and pure., 
 Lives in the quest of goodness spent. 
 
 These, though no visible forms confine 
 
 Their spiritual essence fair ; 
 
 Are deathless as the soul they bear, 
 And, as its Maker is, divine. 
 
OF LOVE AND SLEEP. 55 
 
 FAITH WITHOUT SIGHT. 
 
 No angel comes to us to tell 
 Glad news of our beloved dead ; 
 
 Nor at the old familiar board, 
 They sit among us, breaking bread. 
 
 Three days we wait before the tomb, 
 Nay, life-long years ; and yet no more, 
 
 For all our passionate tears, we find 
 The stone rolled backward from the door. 
 
 Yet are they risen as He is risen ; 
 
 For no eternal loss we grieve. 
 Blessed are they who ask no sign, 
 
 And, never having seen, believe. 
 
 OF LOVE AND SLEEP. 
 
 I SAW Sleep stand by an enchanted wood, 
 Thick lashes drooping o'er her heavy eyes : 
 
 Leaning against a flower-cupped tree she stood, 
 
 The night air gently breathed with slumbrous sighs. 
 
 Such cloak of silence o'er the world was spread, 
 
 As on Nile sands enshrouds the mighty dead. 
 
 About her birds were dumb, and blooms were bowed, 
 And a thick heavy sweetness filled the air ; 
 
 White robed she seemed ; and hidden as in a cloud, 
 A star-like jewel in her raven hair. 
 
 Downward to earth her cold torch would she turn 
 
 With feeble fires that might no longer burn. 
 
56 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS 
 
 And in her languid limbs and loosened zone 
 Such beauty dwelt ; and in her rippling hair, 
 
 As of old time was hers, and hers alone, 
 The mother of gods and men, divinely fair ; 
 
 When whiter than white foam or sand she lay, 
 
 The fairest thing beneath the eye of day. 
 
 To her came Love, a comely youth and strong, 
 
 Fair as the morning of a day in June ; 
 Around him breathed a jocund air of song, 
 
 And his limbs moved as to a joyous tune : 
 With golden locks blown back, and eyes aflame, 
 To where the sleeping maiden leant, he came. 
 
 Then they twain passed within that mystic grove 
 Together, and with them I, myself unseen. 
 
 Oh, strange, sweet land ! wherein all men may prove 
 The things they would, the things which might have 
 been; 
 
 Hopeless hopes blossom, withered youth revives, 
 
 And sunshine comes again to darkened lives. 
 
 What sights were theirs in that blest wonder-land ? 
 
 See, the white mountain-summits, framed in cloud, 
 Redden with sunset ; when below them stand 
 
 The solemn pine-woods like a funeral crowd ; 
 And lower still the vineyards twine, and make 
 A double vintage in the tranquil lake. 
 
 Or, after storm-tost nights, on some sea isle 
 The sudden tropical morning bursts ; and lo ! 
 
 Bright birds and feathery palms, the green hills smile, 
 Strange barks, with swarthy crews, dart to and fro ; 
 
 And on the blue bay, glittering like a crown, 
 
 The white domes of some fair historic town. 
 
OF LOVE AND SLEEP. 57 
 
 Or, they fare northward ever, northward still, 
 
 At midnight, under the unsetting sun ; 
 O'er endless snows, from hill to icy hill, 
 
 Where silence reigns with death, and life is done : 
 Till from the North a sweet wind suddenly ; 
 And hark ! the warm waves of the fabulous sea. 
 
 Or, some still eve, when summer days are long, 
 And the mown hay is sweet, and wheat is green, 
 
 They hear some wood-bird sing the old fair song 
 Of joys to be, greater than yet have been; 
 
 Stretched 'neath the snowy hawthorn, till the star, 
 
 Hung high in heaven, warns them that home is far. 
 
 Or, on the herbless, sun-struck hills, by night, 
 Under the silent peaks, they hear the loud 
 
 Wild flutes ; and onward, by the ghostly light, 
 
 Whirled in nude dances, sweeps the maddened crowd ; 
 
 Till the fierce eddy seize them, and they prove 
 
 The shame, the rapture, of unfettered love. 
 
 Or, by the sacred hearth they seem to sit, 
 While firelight gleams on many a sudden head ; 
 
 At that fair hour, before the lamp is lit, 
 
 When hearts are fullest, though no word be said, 
 
 When the world fades, and rank and wealth and fame, 
 
 Seem, matched with this, no better than a name. 
 
 All these they knew ! and then a breeze of day 
 
 Stirred the dark wood ; and then they seemed to come 
 
 Forth with reluctant feet among the gray, 
 Bare fields, unfanciful ; and all the flame 
 
 Was burnt from out Love's eyes, and from his hair, 
 
 And his smooth cheek was marked with lines of care. 
 
58 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 And paler showed the maid, more pure and white 
 And holier than before. But when I said, 
 
 " Sweet eyes, be opened ; " lo, the unveiled sight 
 Was as the awful vision of the dead ! 
 
 Then knew Inbreathing slow, with difficult breath, 
 
 That Love was one with Life, and Sleep with Death. 
 
 BLIND. 
 
 THE girl who from her father's door 
 
 Sees the cold storm-cloud sweep the sea, 
 Cries, wrestling with her anguish sore, 
 
 My love ! my love ! ah, where is he ? 
 And locks her fears within her breast, 
 
 Sickening ; while 'neath the breathless blaze 
 He lies, and dreams, in broken rest, 
 
 Of homely faces, happier days. 
 
 But when a calm is on the deep, 
 
 And scarcely from the quivering blue, 
 The waves' soft murmur, half asleep, 
 
 Speaks hope that he is well, and true : 
 The brave ship sinks to rise no more 
 
 Beneath the thunderous surge ; and he, 
 A pale corpse floating on the sea, 
 
 Or dashed like seaweed on the shore. 
 
 BERLIN, 1871. 
 
 THE spring day was all of a flutter with flags ; 
 
 The mad chimes were beating like surf in the air ; 
 The beggars had slunk out of sight with their rags ; 
 
 And the balconies teemed with the rich and the fair. 
 
BERLIN, 1871. 59 
 
 And below, on each side, the long vistas were set 
 In a frame-work of faces, patient and white, 
 
 Wives, mothers, sweethearts, with full eyes wet, 
 And sick hearts longing to see the sight. 
 
 Till at length, when the evening was waning, there ran 
 A stir through the crowd, and far-off, like a flame, 
 
 The setting sun burned on the helms of the van, 
 And with trampling of hoofs the proud conquerors came. 
 
 And with every step they advanced, you might hear 
 Women's voices, half-maddened with long-deferred joy : 
 
 " Thank God ! he is safe. See, my love, we are here ! 
 See ! here am I, darling ; and this is our boy ! " 
 
 Or, " Here am I, dearest, still faithful and true ; 
 
 Your own love as of old ! " Or an agonised cry, 
 As the loved face came not with the comrades she knew 
 
 And the rough soldiers found not a word to reply. 
 
 And pitiful hands led her softly away, 
 With a loving heart rent and broken in twain ; 
 
 And the triumph sweeps onward, in gallant array, 
 The life and the hope, the despair and the pain. 
 
 Where was it? In Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome ? 
 
 Ages since, or to-day ; in the old world, or new? 
 Who shall tell? From all time these strange histories 
 come ; 
 
 And to-day, as of old, the same story is true. 
 
 And the long line sweeps past, and the dull world rolls on 
 Though the rapture is dead and the sad tears are dry, 
 
 And careless of all, till the progress be done, 
 Life rides like a conqueror triumphing by. 
 
60 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS 
 
 THE BEACON. 
 
 FAIR shines the beacon from its lonely rock, 
 Stable alone amid the unstable waves : 
 
 In vain the surge leaps with continual shock, 
 In vain around the wintry tempest raves, 
 And ocean thunders in her sounding caves. 
 
 For here is life within the gate of death, 
 
 Calm light and warmth amid the storm without ; 
 
 Here sleeping love breathes with untroubled breath, 
 And faith, clear-eyed, pierces the clouds of doubt 
 And monstrous depths which compass her about. 
 
 So calm, so pure, yet prisoned and confined ; 
 Fenced by white walls from pleasure as from pain. 
 
 Not always glooms the sea or shrieks the wind : 
 Sometimes light zephyrs curl the azure main, 
 And the sweet sea-nymphs glide with all their train. 
 
 Or Aphrodite rises from the foam, 
 And lies all rosy on the golden sand, 
 
 And o'er the purple plains the Nereids roam ; 
 
 Sweet laughter comes, borne from the joyous band, 
 And faint sweet odours from the far-off land. 
 
 And straightway the impatient soul within 
 
 Loathes its white house which to a jail doth turn ; 
 
 Careless of true or false, of right or sin, 
 
 Careless of praying hands or eyes that burn, 
 Or aught that sense can feel or mind discern. 
 
 Knowing but this, that the unknown is blest, 
 Holding delight of free untrammelled air : 
 
TO AN UNKNOWN POET. 61 
 
 Delight of toil sweeter than any rest, 
 Fierce storms with cores of calm for those who dare 
 Black rayless nights than fairest noons more fair. 
 
 And drifting forth at eve in some frail boat, 
 Beholds the old light, like a setting star, 
 
 Sink in the sea, and still doth fare and float 
 Adown the night till day-break shows afar, 
 And hark the faint low thunders of the bar. 
 
 Nor if indeed he reach the Blessed Isle, 
 
 Nor if those pitiless crests shall plunge him down, 
 
 Knows he ; but whether breathless azure smile, 
 Or furious night and horrible tempests frown, 
 Living or dying, Freedom wears a crown. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 TO AN UNKNOWN POET* 
 
 DEAR friend, who, two long centuries ago, 
 Didst tread where since my grandsires trod, 
 
 Along thy devious Usk's untroubled flow, 
 Breathing thy soul to God. 
 
 I seek, I, born in these our later days, 
 Using the measure thou didst love, 
 
 With halting tribute of too tardy praise, 
 A poet throned above. 
 
 I in the self-same venerable halls 
 And gray quadrangles made my home, 
 
 * Henry Vaughan, the Silurist, died near Brecon, 1695. 
 
62 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Which heard, new-built, within their recent walls, 
 Thy youthful footsteps come. 
 
 A little grayer now and stiller grown, 
 
 The tranquil refuge now, as then, 
 Where our dear country glories in her own, 
 
 Apart from alien men. 
 
 There, on thy musings broke the painful sound 
 Of arms ; the long-plumed cavaliers 
 
 Clanged thro' the courts the low fat fields around 
 Were filled with strife and tears. 
 
 Constrained by promptings of thy ancient race, 
 Thy gown and books thou flungst away, 
 
 To meet the sturdy Roundhead face to face 
 On many a hard-fought day, 
 
 Till thy soft soul grew sick, and thou didst turn 
 To our old hills ; and there, ere long, 
 
 Love for thy Amoret, at times, would burn 
 In some too fervid song. 
 
 But soon thy wilder pulses stayed, and, life 
 Grown equable, thy sweet muse mild, 
 
 Sobered by tranquil love of child and wife, 
 Flowed pure and undefiled. 
 
 A humble healer thro' a life obscure, 
 Thou didst expend thy homely days ; 
 
 Sweet Swan of Usk ! few know how clear and pure 
 Are thy unheeded lays. 
 
 One poet shall become a household name 
 
 Into the nation's heart ingrown ; 
 One more than equal miss the meed of fame, 
 
 And live and die unknown, 
 
TO AN UNKNOWN POET. 63 
 
 So thou, surviving in thy lonely age, 
 
 All but thy own undying love 
 Didst pour upon the sympathetic page, 
 
 Words which all hearts can move ; 
 
 So quaintly fashioned as to add a grace 
 
 To the sweet fancies which they bear, 
 Even as a bronze delved from some ancient place 
 
 For very rust shows fair. 
 
 " They all are gone into the world of light ! " 
 
 It is thy widowed muse that sings, 
 And then mounts upwards from our dazzled sight 
 
 On heavenward soaring wings. 
 
 "He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know " 
 
 " At first sight if the bird be flown ; " 
 " But what fair dell or grove he sings in now," 
 
 "That is to him unknown." 
 
 " And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams " 
 
 " Call to the soul when man doth sleep," 
 " So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes," 
 
 " And into glory peep." 
 
 " O father of eternal life and all " 
 
 " Created glories under Thee ! " 
 " Resume Thy Spirit from this world of thrall " 
 
 " Into true liberty." 
 
 Thou hast rejoined thy dear ones now, and art, 
 Dear soul, as then thou wouldst be, free. 
 
 I, still a prisoner, strive to do my part 
 In memory of thee. 
 
64 SOWGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Thou art so high, and yet unknown : shall I 
 
 Repine that I too am obscure ? 
 Nay, what care I, though all my verse shall die, 
 
 If only it is pure? 
 
 So some new singer of the days to be, 
 Reading this page with soft young eyes, 
 
 Shall note the tribute which I pay to thee 
 With youth's sweet frank surprise. 
 
 And musing in himself, perchance shall say, 
 " Two bards whom centuries part are here 
 
 One whose high fame and name defy decay, 
 And one who held him dear." 
 
 COMFORT. 
 
 THO' love be bought and honour sold, 
 The sunset keeps its glow of gold, 
 And round the rosy summits cold 
 And white clouds hover, fold on fold. 
 
 Tho' over-ripe the nations rot, 
 Tho' right be dead and faith forgot, 
 Tho' one dull cloud the heavens may blot, 
 The tender leaf delayeth not. 
 
 Tho' all the world lie sunk in ill, 
 The bounteous autumns mellow still, 
 By virgin sand and sea-worn hill 
 The constant waters ebb and fill. 
 
 From out the throng and stress of lies, 
 From out the painful noise of sighs, 
 One voice of comfort seems to rise : 
 " It is the meaner part that dies." 
 
OH, SNOWS SO PURE! 65 
 
 OH, SNOWS so PURE: 
 
 
 
 OH, snows so pure ! oh, peaks so high ! 
 I lift to you a hopeless eye. 
 
 I see your icy ramparts drawn 
 Between the sleepers and the dawn. 
 
 I see you, when the sun has set, 
 Flush with the dying daylight yet, 
 
 I see you, passionless and pure, 
 Above the lightnings stand secure \ 
 
 But may not climb, for now the hours 
 Are spring's, and earth a maze of flowers^ 
 
 And now, 'mid summer's dust and heat> 
 I stay my steps for childish feet. 
 
 And now, when autumn glows, 1 fear 
 To lose the harvest of the year. 
 
 Now winter frowns, and life runs slow, 
 Even on the plains I tread thro' snow. 
 
 While you are veiled, or, dimly seen, 
 Only reveal what might have been ; 
 
 And where high hope would once aspire 
 Broods a vast storm-cloud dealing fire. 
 
 Oh, snows so pure ! oh, peaks so high ! 
 I shall not reach you till I die ! 
 
 F 
 
66 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF FAITH. 
 
 m 
 
 ALL travail of high thought, 
 All secrets vainly sought, 
 All struggles for right, heroic, perpetually fought. 
 
 Faint gleams of purer fire, 
 Conquests of gross desire, 
 Whereby the fettered soul ascends continually higher. 
 
 Pure cares for love or friend 
 Which ever upward tend, 
 
 Too deep and heavenward and true to have on earth 
 their end. 
 
 Vile hearts malign and fell, 
 Lives which no tongue may tell, 
 
 So dark and dread and shameful that they breathe a 
 present hell. 
 
 White mountain, deep-set lake, 
 Sea wastes which surge and break, 
 Fierce storms which, roaring from the north, the mid- 
 night forests shake. 
 
 Fair morns of summer days, 
 Rich harvest eves that raise 
 The soul and heart o'erburdened to an ecstasy of praise. 
 
 Low whispers, vague and strange, 
 Which through our being range, 
 
 Breathing perpetual presage of some mighty coming 
 change. 
 
 These in the soul do breed 
 Thoughts which, at last, shall lead 
 To some clear, firm assurance of a satisfying creed. 
 
NEMESIS. 67 
 
 A MEMORY. 
 
 DOWN dropped the sun upon the sea, 
 The gradual darkness filled the land ; 
 Amid the twilight, silently, 
 I felt the pressure of a hand . 
 
 And a low voice : " Have courage, friend. 
 Be of good cheer, 'tis not for long ; 
 He conquers who awaits the end, 
 And dares to suffer and be strong." 
 
 I have seen many a land since then, 
 Known many a joy and many a pain. 
 Victor in many a strife of men, 
 Vanquished again and yet again . 
 
 The ancient sorrow now is not, 
 Since time can heal the keenest smart ; 
 Yet the vague memory, scarce forgot, 
 Lingers deep down within the heart. 
 
 Still, when the ruddy flame of gold 
 Fades into gray on sea and land, 
 I hear the low sweet voice of old, 
 I feel the pressure of a hand. 
 
 NEMESIS. 
 
 WHO, without fear, 
 
 Piercing the inmost deeps of silent thought, 
 Has won the prize with lonely labour sought, 
 
 And many a bitter tear, 
 
68 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS* 
 
 He in his breast doth hold 
 A rarer thing than gold, 
 And a fair treasure greater than in words is told. 
 
 For he shall learn, 
 
 Not from another's lore, but his own soul, 
 Whither life's hidden ocean currents roll, 
 
 And with sure helm shall turn 
 Into a haven fair, 
 Where, on the breathless air, 
 Nor wave nor storm shall break, but peace is everywhere. 
 
 There, in light boat 
 
 Laid on the soft breast of the summer sea, 
 Lapt day by day in great tranquillity, 
 He carelessly shall float. 
 He scarce shall see or hear 
 A sight or sound of fear, 
 Only a low-voiced siren always gliding near. 
 
 Without the bar 
 
 The enormous surges leap from sea to sky. 
 Upon the ghostly inland summits high 
 
 The avalanche thunders far. 
 On the dull plains below, 
 In long successions slow 
 The toiling generations sow, and reap, and sow. 
 
 Dream-like, he sees 
 
 The lurid smoke blot the beleagured town, 
 Or the great earthquake shake the city down : 
 
 Labours and miseries ; 
 Fire takes them famine, flood, 
 And fever's hideous brood. 
 By night the black skies redden with a glare like blood, 
 
TO A CHILD OF FANCY. 69 
 
 For him, meanwhile, 
 Laid in the shelter of his silken sail, 
 Tho' wind and storm on sea and land prevail, 
 
 The enchanted waters smile. 
 Always in that calm deep, 
 Wherein life's currents sleep, 
 He sees high heaven reflected, tho' all men may weep. 
 
 Yet now and then 
 
 Between the stars and him, sunk deep below, 
 He starts to see a strange dead semblance grow, 
 
 Gone from the eyes of men. 
 Some thin and pale-eyed ghost, 
 By marred reflections crost, 
 Of thoughts, and faiths, and yearnings long since lost. 
 
 And if these fade 
 
 Betimes, he slowly gains to peace again ; 
 But if too long they tarry, such a pain 
 
 Those clear depths doth invade, 
 That for sheer terror he, 
 And utter misery, 
 Flies to the storm-wrapt hills and hungry calling sea. 
 
 TO A CHILD OF FANCY. 
 
 MY little dove, my little lamb, 
 In whom again a child I am; 
 My innocent, on whose fair head 
 The glories of the unknown are shed ; 
 
 Who thro' the laughing summer day 
 Spendest the rosy hours in play, 
 
70 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Too much by joyous life possest 
 To give a willing thought to rest ; 
 
 Who, with the earliest shades of night, 
 White-robed, in happy slumbers light, 
 Recallest in thy stainless calm 
 An angel resting from its psalm ; 
 
 Whence art thou come ? What power could teach 
 The secret of thy broken speech ? 
 What agile limb, what stalwart arm, 
 Like thy sweet feebleness can charm ? 
 
 With what a rapture of surprise 
 This fair world meets thy steadfast eyes, 
 As if they saw reflected there 
 Faint images of scenes more fair. 
 
 Leaving another heaven behind, 
 A heaven on earth thou cam'st to find ; 
 This world, so full of misery, 
 Opens celestial gates for thee. 
 
 Oh ! if thou mightst not e'er grow wise 
 With the sad learning born of sighs ; 
 If those soft eyes might never here 
 Grow dim for any bitter tear. 
 
 Vain thought, no creature born of earth 
 Blooms best 'neath cloudless skies of mirth ; 
 Only soft rains and clouds can dress 
 Life's tree with flowers of blessedness. 
 
 Whate'er the lot thy fate shall give, 
 At least, while life is mine to live, 
 Thou shalt not lack a share of love, 
 My little lamb, my little dove ! 
 
THE ORGAN- BOY, 71 
 
 SONG. 
 
 IT was not that thy eyes 
 
 Were blue as autumn skies, 
 
 It was not that thy hair 
 
 Was as an angel's fair.* 
 
 No excellence of form could move 
 
 A finer soul to so much love. 
 
 Nor that in thee I sought 
 
 For precious gems of thought, 
 
 Nor ever hoped to find 
 
 Hid treasure in thy mind. 
 
 Gray wisdom comes with time and age, 
 
 And thine was an unwritten page. 
 
 But that I seemed in thee 
 
 My other self to see, 
 
 Yet purer and more high 
 
 Than meets my inner eye, 
 
 Like that enamoured boy who, gazing down, 
 
 His lower self would in his higher drown. 
 
 THE ORGAN- BOY. 
 
 GREAT brown eyes, 
 
 Thick plumes of hair, 
 
 Old corduroys 
 
 The worse for wear ; 
 
 A buttoned jacket, 
 
 And peeping out 
 
 An ape's grave poll, 
 
 Or a guinea pig's snout ; 
 
72 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS.. 
 
 A sun-kissed face,. 
 
 And a dimpled mouth, 
 
 With the white flashing teeth 
 
 And soft smile of the south ; 
 
 A young back bent, 
 
 Not with age or care, 
 
 But the load of poor music 
 
 'Tis fated to bear : 
 
 But a commonplace picture 
 
 To commonplace eyes, 
 
 Yet full of a charm 
 
 Which the thinker will prize. 
 
 They were stern cold rulers, 
 
 Those Romans of old, 
 
 Scorning letters and art 
 
 For conquest and gold ; 
 
 Yet leavening mankind, 
 
 In mind and in tongue, 
 
 With the laws that they made 
 
 And the songs that they sung : 
 
 Sitting rose-crowned, 
 
 With pleasure-choked breath, 
 
 As the nude young limbs crimsoned, 
 
 Then stiffened in death ; 
 
 Piling up monuments 
 
 Greater than praise, 
 
 Thoughts and deeds that shall live 
 
 To the latest of days : 
 
 Adding province to province, 
 
 And sea to sea, 
 
 Till the idol fell down 
 
 And the world rose up free. 
 
 And this is the outcome, 
 This vagabond child 
 With that statue-like face 
 And eyes soft and mild, 
 
THE ORGAN-BOY. 73 
 
 This creature so humble, 
 
 So gay, yet so meek, 
 
 Whose sole strength is only 
 
 The strength of the weak ;" 
 
 Of those long cruel ages 
 
 Of lust and of guile, 
 
 Naught left us to-day 
 
 But an innocent smile. 
 
 For the laboured appeal 
 
 Of the orator's art, 
 
 A few childish accents 
 
 That reach to the heart. 
 
 For those stern legions speeding 
 
 O'er sea and o'er land, 
 
 But a pitiful glance 
 
 And a suppliant hand. 
 
 I could moralize still ; 
 
 But the organ begins, 
 
 And the tired ape swings downward 
 
 And capers and grins : 
 
 And away flies romance. 
 And yet, time after time, 
 As I dream of days spent 
 In a sunnier clime, 
 Of blue lakes deep set 
 In the olive-clad mountains, 
 Of gleaming white palaces 
 Girt with cool fountains, 
 Of minsters where every 
 Carved stone is a treasure, 
 Of sweet music hovering 
 'Twixt pain and 'twixt pleasure ; 
 Of chambers enriched, 
 On all sides, overhead, 
 With the deathless creations 
 
74 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Of hands that are dead ; 
 Of still cloisters holy, 
 And twilight arcade, 
 Where the lovers still saunter 
 Thro' chequers of shade ; 
 Of tomb and of temple, 
 Arena and column, 
 'Mid to-day's garish splendours, 
 Sombre and solemn ; 
 Of the marvellous town 
 With the salt-flowing street, 
 Where colour burns deepest, 
 And music most sweet ; 
 Of her the great mother, 
 Who centuries sate 
 'Neath a black shadow blotting 
 The days she was great ; 
 Who was plunged in such shame- 
 She, our source and our home 
 That a foul spectre only 
 Was left us of Rome ; 
 She who, seeming to sleep 
 Thro' all ages to be, 
 Was the priests', is mankind's, 
 Was a slave, and is free ! 
 
 I turn with grave thought 
 
 To this child of the ages, 
 
 And to all that is writ 
 
 In Time's hidden pages. 
 
 Shall young Howards or Guelphs, 
 
 In the days that shall come, 
 
 Wander forth seeking bread 
 
 Far from England and home ? 
 
 Shall they sail to new continents, 
 
 English no more, 
 
THE ORGAN- BOY. 75 
 
 Or turn strange reverse 
 To the old classic shore ? 
 Shall fair locks and blue eyes, 
 And the rose on the cheek, 
 Find a language of pity 
 The tongue cannot speak 
 " Not English, but angels ? " 
 Shall this tale be told 
 Of Romans to be 
 As of Romans of old ? 
 Shall they too have monkeys 
 And music ? Will any 
 Try their luck with an engine 
 Or toy spinning-jenny ? 
 
 Shall we too be led 
 
 By that mirage of Art 
 
 Which saps the true strength 
 
 Of the national heart ? 
 
 The sensuous glamour, 
 
 The dreamland of grace, 
 
 Which rot the strong manhood 
 
 They fail to replace ; 
 
 Which at once are the glory, 
 
 The ruin, the shame, 
 
 Of the beautiful lands 
 
 And ripe souls whence they came ? 
 
 Oh, my England ! oh, Mother 
 Of Freemen ! oh, sweet, 
 Sad toiler majestic, 
 With labour-worn feet ! 
 Brave worker, girt round, 
 Inexpugnable, free, 
 With tumultuous sound 
 And salt spume of the sea, 
 Fenced off from the clamour 
 
76 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Of alien mankind 
 By the surf on the rock, 
 And the shriek of the wind, 
 Tho' the hot Gaul shall envy. 
 The cold German flout thee, 
 Thy far children scorn thee, 
 Still thou shalt be great, 
 Still march on uncaring, 
 Thy perils unsharing, 
 Alone, and yet daring 
 Thy infinite fate. 
 Yet ever remembering 
 The precepts of gold, 
 That were written in part 
 For the great ones of old 
 " Let other hands fashion 
 The marvels of art ; 
 To thee fate has given 
 A loftier part. 
 To rule the wide peoples ; 
 To bind them to thee " 
 By the sole bond of loving, 
 That bindeth the free. 
 To hold thy own place, 
 Neither lawless nor slave ; 
 Not driven by the despot, 
 Nor tricked by the knave. 
 
 But these thoughts are too solemn, 
 
 So play, my child, play, 
 
 Never heeding the connoisseur 
 
 Over the way, 
 
 The last dances of course ; 
 
 Then, with scant pause between, 
 
 " Home, Sweet Home," the " Old Hundredth," 
 
 And " God Save the Queen." 
 
ORGAN-BOY. 77 
 
 See the poot children swarm 
 From dark court and dull street, 
 As the gay music quickens 
 The lightsome young feet. 
 See them now whirl away, 
 Now insidiously come, 
 With a coy grace which conquers 
 The squalor of home. 
 See the pallid cheeks flushing 
 "With innocent pleasure 
 At the hurry and haste 
 Of the quick-footed measure. 
 See the dull eyes now bright, 
 And now happily dim, 
 For some soft-dying cadence 
 Of love-song or hymn. 
 Dear souls, little joy 
 Of their young lives have they, 
 So thro 3 hymn-tune and song-tune 
 Play on, my child, play. 
 
 For tho' dull pedants chatter 
 
 Of musical taste, 
 
 Talk of hindered researches, 
 
 And hours run to waste ; 
 
 Tho' they tell us of thoughts 
 
 To ennoble mankind 
 
 Which your poor measures chase 
 
 From the labouring mind ; 
 
 While your music rejoices 
 
 One joyless young heart, 
 
 Perish bookworms and books, 
 
 Perish learning and art 
 
 Of my vagabond fancies 
 
 I'll e'en take my fill. 
 
 " Qualche cosa, signer ? " 
 
 Yes, my child, that I will. 
 
78 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 LOSS AND GAIN. 
 
 FROM day to day, from year to year, 
 New waves of change assail us here ; 
 Each day, each year, prolongs the chain 
 Where pleasure alternates with pain. 
 
 New earth-born exhalations rise, 
 To hide the heavens from our eyes ; 
 New clouds obscure the vision fair, 
 Which once was round us everywhere. 
 
 New precious obligations come, 
 New sanctities of love and home, 
 New tender hopes, new anxious fears, 
 And sweet experiences of tears. 
 
 Old tastes are lost, old thoughts grow strange, 
 Old longings gradually change, 
 Old faiths seem no more dear or true, 
 Lost in the full light of the new. 
 
 Youth's boundless aspirations fled, 
 And every wild ambition dead ; 
 Love not a meteor blinding sight, 
 But a pure ray of sober light. 
 
 And for the passionate self of old, 
 A deep affection, calm, not cold ; 
 A pitying love serenely kind, 
 A broader trust, a juster mind, 
 
 A faith which occupies the heart, 
 Tho' the brain halts to bear its part, 
 
AS IN A PICTURE. 79 
 
 Which threat and promise fail to move, 
 Like the dim consciousness of love. , 
 
 Tho' much be taken, much is left, 
 Not all forsaken nor bereft ; 
 From change on change we come to rest, 
 And the last moment is the best. 
 
 AS IN A PICTURE. % 
 
 WHITE, on a cliff they stood ; 
 Beyond, a cypress wood. 
 
 Three there were one who wept, 
 And one as though he slept ; 
 
 One with wide steadfast eyes 
 Fixed in a sad surprise. 
 
 Day, like a dying .hymn, 
 Grew gradually dim. 
 
 A solitary star 
 
 Gleamed on them from afar. 
 
 Beneath, by sand and cave 
 Sobbed the continual wave. 
 
 Long time in reverent thought 
 Who these might be I sought, 
 
 Then suddenly I said, 
 
 " Oh, Lord of quick and dead ! " 
 
8o SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 ODE ON A FAIR SPRING MORNING. 
 
 COME, friend, let us forget 
 
 The turmoil of the world a little while, 
 
 For now the soft skies smile, 
 
 With dew the flowers are wet. 
 
 Let us away awhile 
 
 With fierce unrest and carking thoughts of care, 
 
 And breathe a little while the jocund air, 
 
 And sing the joyous measures sung 
 
 By blither singers, when the world was young. 
 
 For still the world is young, for still the spring 
 
 Renews itself, and still the lengthening hours 
 
 Bring back the month of flowers ; 
 
 The leaves are green to-day as those of old, 
 
 For Chaucer and for Shakspeare ; still the gold 
 
 Of August gilds the rippling waves of wheat ; 
 
 Young maids are fair and sweet 
 
 As when they frolicked gay, with flashing feet, 
 
 Round the old May-pole. All young things rejoice. 
 
 No sorrow dulls the blackbird's mellow voice, 
 
 Thro' the clear summer dawns or twilights long. 
 
 With aspect not more dim 
 
 Thro' space the planets swim 
 
 Than of old time o'er the Chaldean plain. 
 
 We only, we alone, 
 
 Let jarring discords mar our song. 
 
 And find our music take a lower tone. 
 
 We only with dim eyes 
 
 And laboured vision feebly strain, 
 
 And flout the undying splendours of the skies. 
 
 Oh, see how glorious show, 
 
 On this fair morn in May, the clear-cut hills, 
 
ODE ON A FAIR SPRING MORNING. 81 
 
 The dewy lawns, the hawthorn's white, 
 Argent on fields of gold ; the growing light 
 Pure as when first on the young earth 
 The faint warm sunlight came to birth ; 
 There is a nameless air 
 Of sweet renewal over all which fills 
 The earth and sky with life, and everywhere, 
 Before the new-born sun begins to glow, 
 The birds awake which slumbered all night long, 
 And with a gush of song, 
 
 First doubting of their strain, then full and wide 
 Raise their fresh hymns thro' all the country side ; 
 Already, above the dewy clover, 
 The soaring lark begins to hover 
 Over his mate's low nest ; 
 And soon, from childhood's early rest 
 In hall and cottage, to the casement rise 
 The little ones with their fresh opened eyes, 
 And gaze on the old Earth, which still grows new, 
 And see the tranquil heaven's unclouded blue, 
 And, since as yet no sight nor sound of toil 
 The fair spread, peaceful picture comes to soil, 
 ' Look with their young and steadfast gaze 
 Fixed in such artless sweet amaze 
 As Adam knew, when first on either hand 
 He saw the virgin landscapes of the morning land. 
 
 Oh, youth, dawn, springtide, triune miracle, 
 
 Renewing life in earth, and sky, and man, 
 
 By what eternal plan 
 
 Dost thou revive again and yet again? 
 
 There is no morn that breaks, 
 
 No bud that bursts, no life that comes to birth, 
 
 But the rapt fancy takes, 
 
 Far from the duller plains of mind' and earth, 
 
 Up to the source and origin of things, 
 
 G 
 
82 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Where, poised on brooding wings, 
 
 It seems to hover o'er the immense inane, 
 
 And see the suns, like feeble rings of light, 
 
 Orb from the gray, and all the youngling globe 
 
 A coil of vapour circling like a dream, 
 
 Then fixed compact for ever ; the first beam 
 
 Strike on the dark and undivided sea, 
 
 And wake the deeps with life. Oh, mystery 
 
 That still dost baffle thought, 
 
 Though by all sages sought, 
 
 And yet art daily done 
 
 With each returning sun, 
 
 With every dawn which reddens in the skies, 
 
 With every opening of awakened eyes ! 
 
 How shall any dare to hold 
 
 That the fair world growing old, 
 
 Hath spent in vanished time 
 
 The glories of its prime ? 
 
 Beautiful were the days indeed 
 
 Of the Pagan's simple creed, 
 
 When all of life was made for girl and boy, 
 
 And all religion was but to enjoy. 
 
 The fair chivalric dream 
 
 To some may glorious seem, 
 
 When from the sleeping centuries, 
 
 Awakened Europe seemed to rise ; 
 
 It may be that we cannot know, 
 
 In these ripe years, the glory and the glow 
 
 Of those young hours of time, and careless days, 
 
 Borne down too much by knowledge, and opprest, 
 
 To halt a little for the needed rest, 
 
 And yield ourselves awhile to joy and praise ; 
 
 Yet every year doth bring 
 
 With each recurrence of the genial hour 
 
 The infancy of spring, 
 
ODE ON A FAIR SPRING MORNING. 83 
 
 Crowned with unfolding leaf and bursting flower 
 
 And still to every home 
 
 Fresh childish voices come, 
 
 And eyes that opened last in Paradise, 
 
 And with each rosy dawn 
 
 Are night and death withdrawn ; 
 
 Another world rises for other eyes ; 
 
 Again begins the joy, the stress, the strife, 
 
 Ancient as time itself, and wide as life. 
 
 We are the ancients of the world indeed ; 
 
 No more the simple creed, 
 
 When every hill and stream and grove 
 
 Was filled with shy divinities of love, 
 
 Allures us, serving as our King 
 
 A Lord of grief and suffering. 
 
 Too much our wisdom burdens to permit 
 
 The fair, thin visions of the past, to flit 
 
 From shade to shade, or float from hill to hill. 
 
 We are so compassed round by ill, 
 
 That all the music of our lives is dumb, 
 
 Amid the turbulent waves of sound that rise, 
 
 The discord born of doubts, and tears, and sighs, 
 
 Which daily to the listening ear do come ; 
 
 Nay, oft, confounded by the incessant noise 
 
 Of vast world-engines, grinding law on law, 
 
 We lose the godhead that our fathers saw, 
 
 And all our higher joys, 
 
 And bear to plod on daily, deaf and blind, 
 
 To a dark goal we dare not hope to find. 
 
 But grows the world then old ? 
 
 Nay, all things that are born of time 
 
 Spring upwards, and expand from youth to prime, 
 
 Ripen from flower to fruit, 
 
 From song-tide till the days are mute, 
 
 Green blade to ear of gold. 
 
84 SO^GS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 But not the less through the eternal round 
 
 The sleep of winter wakes in days of spring, 
 
 And not the less the bare and frozen ground 
 
 Grows blithe with blooms that burst and birds that sing. 
 
 Nature is deathless ; herb and tree, 
 
 Through time that has been and shall be, 
 
 Change not, although the outward form 
 
 Seem now the columned palm 
 
 Nourished in zones of calm, 
 
 And now the gnarled oak that defies the storm. 
 
 The cedar's thousand summers are no more 
 
 To her than are the fleeting petals gay 
 
 Which the young spring, ere March is o'er, 
 
 Scarce offered, takes away. 
 
 Eternal are her works. Unchanging she, 
 
 Alike in short-lived flower and ever-changing sea. 
 
 We, too, are deathless ; we, 
 
 Eternal as the Earth, 
 
 We cannot cease to be 
 
 While springtide comes or birth. 
 
 If our being cease to hold 
 
 Reflected lights divine 
 
 On budding lives, with every morn they shine 
 
 With unabated gold. 
 
 Though lost it may be to our mortal sight, 
 
 It cannot be that any perish quite 
 
 Only the baser parts forgets to be. 
 
 And if within the hidden Treasury 
 
 Of the great Ruler we awhile should rest, 
 
 To issue with a higher stamp imprest, 
 
 With all our baser alloy purged and spent, 
 
 Were we not thus content ? 
 
 Our thoughts too mighty are 
 
 To be within our span of years confined, 
 
ODE ON A FAIR SPRING MORNING. 85 
 
 Too deep and wide and far, 
 
 The hopes, the fears, that crowd the labouring mind, 
 
 The sorrows that oppress, 
 
 The sanctities that bless, 
 
 Are vaster than this petty stage of things. 
 
 The soaring fancy mounts on careless wings 
 
 Beyond the glimmer of the furthest star. 
 
 The nightly watcher who with patient eye 
 
 Scans the illumined sky, 
 
 Knows when the outward rushing fire shall turn, 
 
 And in far ages hence shall brightly burn 
 
 For eyes to-day undreamt of. The clear voice 
 
 From Greece or Israel thro' the centuries heard 
 
 Still bids us tremble or rejoice, 
 
 Stronger than living look or word ; 
 
 The love of home or race, 
 
 Which doth transfigure us, and seems to bring 
 
 On every heaven-lit face 
 
 Some shadow of the glory of our King, 
 
 Fades not on earth, nor with our years doth end ; 
 
 Nay, even earth's poor physical powers transcend 
 
 The narrow bounds of space and time, 
 
 The swift thought by some mystic sympathy 
 
 Speeding through desert sand, and storm-tost sea. 
 
 And shall we hold the range of mind 
 
 Is to our little lives confined ; 
 
 That the pure heart in some blest sphere above, 
 
 Loves not which here was set on fire of love ; 
 
 The clear eye scans not still, which here could scan 
 
 The confines of the Universal plan ; 
 
 The seer nor speaks nor thinks his thoughts sublime, 
 
 And all of Homer is a speck of lime ? 
 
 Nay, friend, let us forget 
 
 Our haunting doubt and fears a little while, 
 
 Again our springs shall smile ; 
 
86 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 We shall not perish yet. 
 
 If God so guide our fate, 
 
 The nobler portions of ourselves shall last 
 
 Till all the lower rounds of life be past, 
 
 And we, regenerate. 
 
 We too again shall rise, 
 
 The same and not the same, 
 
 As daily rise upon the orient skies 
 
 New dawns with wheels of flame. 
 
 So, if it worthy prove, 
 
 Our being, self-perfected, shall upward move 
 
 To higher essence, and still higher grown, 
 
 Not sweeping idle harps before a throne, 
 
 Nor spending praise where is no need of praise, 
 
 But through unnumbered lives and ages come 
 
 From pure laborious days, 
 
 To an eternal home, 
 
 Where spring is not, nor birth, nor any dawn, 
 
 But life's full noontide never is withdrawn. 
 
 LOVE TRIUMPHANT. 
 
 LOVE took me up, a naked, helpless child, 
 Love laid me sleeping on the tender breast, 
 Love gazed on me with saintly eyes and mild, 
 Love watched me as I lay in happy rest, 
 Love was my childhood's stay, my chiefest good, 
 My daily friend, my solace, and my food. 
 
 But when to Love's own stature I was come, 
 Treading the paths where fabled Loves abound, 
 Hard by the Cytherean's magic home, 
 Loveless I paced alone the enchanted ground. 
 
TOLERANCE. 87 
 
 Some phantoms pale I marked, which fled away, 
 And lo, my youth was gone ; my hair turned gray. 
 
 Loveless I lived long time, until I knew 
 A thrill since childish hours unknown before, 
 My cloistered heart forth to the wicket flew, 
 And Love himself was waiting at the door. 
 And now, howe'er the treacherous seasons move, 
 Love dwells with me again, and I with Love. 
 
 Love folds me round, Love walks with me, Love takes 
 
 My heart and burns it with a holy fire : 
 
 Love lays me on his silver wings, and makes 
 
 My fainting soul to thinner air aspire. 
 
 Love of the Source, the Race, the True, the Right, 
 
 This is my sole companion day and night. 
 
 TOLERANCE. 
 
 CALL no faith false which e'er has brought 
 Relief to any laden life, 
 Cessation from the pain of thought, 
 Refreshment 'mid the dust of strife. 
 
 What though the thing to which they kneel 
 Be dumb and dead as wood or stone, 
 Though all the rapture which they feel 
 Be for the worshipper alone ? 
 
 They worship, they adore, they bow 
 Before the Ineffable Source, before 
 The hidden soul of Good ; and thou, 
 With all thy wit, what dost thou more ? 
 
88 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Kneel with them, only if there come 
 Some zealot or sleek knave who strives 
 To mar the sanctities of home, 
 To tear asunder wedded lives ; 
 
 Or who by subtle wile has sought, 
 By shameful promise, shameful threat, 
 To turn the thinker from his thought, 
 To efface the eternal landmarks set, 
 
 'Twixt faith and knowledge ; hold not peace 
 For such, but like a sudden flame 
 Let loose thy scorn on him, nor cease 
 Till thou hast covered him with shame. 
 
 A HYMN IN TIME OF IDOLS. 
 
 THOUGH they may crowd 
 
 Rite upon rite, and mystic song on song ; 
 
 Though the deep organ loud 
 
 Through the long nave reverberate full and strong ; 
 
 Though the weird priest, 
 
 Whom rolling clouds of incense half conceal, 
 
 By gilded robes increased, 
 
 Mutter and sign, and proudly prostrate kneel ; 
 
 Not pomp, nor song, nor bended knee 
 
 Shall bring them any nearer Thee. 
 
 I would not hold 
 
 Therefore that those who worship still where they, 
 
 In dear dead days of old, 
 
 Their distant sires, knelt once and passed away, 
 
 May not from carven stone, 
 
 High arching nave and reeded column fine, 
 
A ffYMN IN TIME OF IDOLS. 89 
 
 And the thin soaring tone 
 
 Of the keen music catch a breath divine, 
 
 Or that the immemorial sense 
 
 Of worship adds not reverence. 
 
 But by some bare 
 
 Hill-side or plain, or crowded city street, 
 
 Wherever purer spirits are, 
 
 Or hearts with love inflamed together meet, 
 
 Rude bench and naked wall, 
 
 Humble and sordid to the world-dimmed sight, 
 
 On these shall come to fall 
 
 A golden ray of consecrating light, 
 
 And Thou within the midst shalt there 
 
 Invisible receive the prayer. 
 
 In every home, 
 
 Wherever there are loving hearts and mild, 
 
 Thou still dost deign to come, 
 
 Clothed with the likeness of a little child ; 
 
 Upon the hearth Thou still 
 
 Dwellest with them at meat, or work, or play ; 
 
 Thou who all space dost fill 
 
 Art with the pure and humble day by day ; 
 
 Thou treasurest the tears they weep, 
 
 And watchest o'er them while they sleep. 
 
 Spirit and Word ! 
 
 That still art hid in every faithful heart, 
 
 Indwelling Thought and Lord 
 
 How should they doubt who know Thee as Thou art ? 
 
 How think to bring Thee near 
 
 By magic words, or signs, or any spell, 
 
 Who art among us here, 
 
 Who always in the loving soul dost dwell. 
 
 Who art the staff and stay indeed 
 
 Of the weak knees and hands that bleed ? 
 
90 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Then let them take 
 
 Their pagan trappings, and their lifeless lore ; 
 
 Let us arise and make 
 
 A worthy temple where was none before. 
 
 Each soul its own best shrine, 
 
 Its priesthood, its sufficient sacrifice, 
 
 Its cleansing fount divine, 
 
 Its hidden store of precious sanctities. 
 
 Those only fit for priestcraft are 
 
 From whom their Lord and King is far. 
 
 ON A MODERN PAINTED WINDOW. 
 
 TIME was they lifted thee so high 
 Between the gazer and the sky, 
 That all the worshipper might see 
 Was God no more, but only thee. 
 
 So high was set thy cross, that they 
 Who would thy every thought obey, 
 Saw not thy gracious face, nor heard 
 More than an echo of thy word. 
 
 But now 'tis nearer to the ground, 
 The weeping women kneel around, 
 The scoffers sneering by, deride 
 Thy kingly claims, thy wounded side. 
 
 Only two beams of common wood, 
 And a meek victim bathed in blood, 
 Rude nails that pierce the tortured limb, 
 Mild eyes with agony grown dim. 
 
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT. 91 
 
 Aye, but to those who know thee right 
 Faith strengthens with the nearer sight ; 
 Love builds a deeper, stronger, creed 
 On those soft eyes and hands that bleed. 
 
 Raised but a little from the rest, 
 But higher therefore and more blest ; 
 No more an empty priestly sign, 
 But the more human, more divine. 
 
 A MIDSUMMER NIGHT. 
 
 THE long day wanes, the broad fields fade ; the night, 
 The sweet June night, is like a curtain drawn. 
 The dark lanes know no faintest sound, and white 
 The pallid hawthorn lights the smooth-pleached lawn. 
 The scented earth drinks from the silent skies 
 Soft dews, more sweet than softest harmonies. 
 
 There is no stir nor breath of air, the plains 
 
 Lie slumbering in the close embrace of night, 
 
 Only the rustling landrail's note complains ; 
 
 The children's casement shows the half-veiled light, 
 
 Only beneath the solemn elm trees tall 
 
 The fountain seems to fall and cease to fall. 
 
 No change will come, nor any sound be made 
 Thro' the still hours which shall precede the day j 
 Only the bright-eyed stars will slowly fade, 
 And a thin vapour rise up cold and gray, 
 Then a soft breeze will whisper fresh and cold, 
 And up the swift sun hurries red as gold. 
 
92 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 And then another dawn, another link, 
 
 To bind the coining to the vanished day, 
 
 Another foot-pace nearer to the brink 
 
 Whereon our perilous footsteps hardly stay, 
 
 Another line upon the secular page 
 
 Of birth-throes, bridals, sick-beds, youth and age. 
 
 Sweet summer night, than summer days more fair, 
 Safe haven of the weary and forlorn, 
 Splendid the gifts the luminous noontides bear, 
 Lovely the opening eyelids of the morn ; 
 But thou with softest touch transfigurest 
 This toilworn earth into a heaven of rest. 
 
 GOOD IN EVERYTHING. 
 
 THE white shafts of the dawn dispel 
 The night clouds banked across the sky ; 
 The sluggish vapours curl and die, 
 
 And the day rises. It is well. 
 
 Unfold, ye tender blooms of life ; 
 Sing, birds ; let all the world be gay : 
 'Tis well, the morning of our day 
 
 Must rise 'mid joyous songs and strife. 
 
 Beat, noonday sun, till all the plain 
 Swoons, and life seems asleep or dead : 
 'Tis well, the harvest of our bread 
 
 Is sown in sorrow and reaped in pain. 
 
 Close, evening shadows, soft and deep, 
 When life reviving breathes once more ; 
 Fall, silent night, when toil is o'er, 
 
 And the soul folds her wings in sleep. 
 
IN MEMORY OF A FRIEND. 93 
 
 Come joy or grief, come right or wrong, 
 
 In good or evil, life or death ; 
 
 We are the creatures of His breath : 
 Nor shall His hand forsake us long. 
 
 IN MEMOR Y OF A FRIEND* 
 
 BENEATH the feathery fronds of palm 
 The white stone of a double grave, 
 And on the horizon, blue and calm, 
 The tropic ocean wave. 
 
 'Twas three years since, no more, that thou, 
 Dear friend, with us, in daily round, 
 Didst labour where we labour now, 
 'Mid London's surge of sound. 
 
 Treading the dull slow paths of law, 
 With little of reward or gain, 
 To feel a high ambition gnaw 
 Thy heart with tooth of pain, 
 
 And mark with scant content the crowd 
 Fulfil the immemorial rule 
 Which drives the fool with plaudits loud 
 To glorify the fool. 
 
 And so with patient scorn didst gain 
 To winnow from the growing heap 
 Of barren precedent the grain 
 Which hides there buried deep. 
 
 * Ernest Schalch, Attorney-General for Jamaica, who, with his 
 only sister, died of yellow fever in February, 1874. 
 
94 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Till last, congenial labour came, 
 To call thee o'er the tropic sea, 
 
 And exile, gilt by toil and fame, 
 Severed thy friends from thee. 
 
 Brief as we hoped, but ah, how long ! 
 Though lit by news of days well spent, 
 Of rights defined, of law made strong, 
 Of rebels grown content, 
 
 Of ordered codes so reasoned out, 
 Speaking with voice so true and clear, 
 That none who hear them still may doubt 
 " 'Tis Justice speaketh here." 
 
 Yet not the less thou barest part 
 In the old talk we loved before ; 
 The newest growths of thought or art 
 Delighted more and more, 
 
 And all the marvels of thy isle, 
 The lavish wealth of sea and land, 
 The skies with their too constant smile, 
 Loud surf on breathless strand, 
 
 The shallow nature fierce, yet gay, 
 Of our dark brethren ; thou didst learn, 
 Noting but gazing, far away, 
 With eyes that still would yearn, 
 
 For that fair time when, toil being done, 
 The happy day at length should come, 
 When with our kindly autumn sun 
 Thou should'st revisit home. 
 
IN MEMORY OF A FRIEND. 95 
 
 It was this very year ; and then 
 The plague, which long time, dealing death, 
 Had vexed the shores of kindred men, 
 On those breathed deadly breath. 
 
 And one, I know not who, their guest, 
 Sickening, Love drew them forth to tend, 
 Careless of needful food and rest, 
 Their fever-stricken friend, 
 
 Who owed to them life's refluent power ; 
 While for those duteous martyrs twain, 
 Brother and sister, one blest hour 
 Brought one release from pain. 
 
 Too generous natures ! kindred souls ! 
 And now, round those twin tombs the wave, 
 Forgetful of their story, rolls, 
 And the palms shade their grave. 
 
 And we what shall we say of thee ? 
 Thou hast thy due reward, oh, friend 
 We serve a High Necessity, 
 To an Invisible End. 
 
 That waste nor halting comes at all 
 In all the scheme is all we know ; 
 The force was formed that bade thee fall, 
 Millions of years ago. 
 
 The clouds of circumstance unite, 
 The winds of fate together roll ; 
 They meet ; there bursts a sudden light, 
 And consecrates a soul ! 
 
96 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 NOTHING LOST. 
 
 WHERE are last year's snows, 
 Where the summer's rose, 
 Who is there that knows ? 
 
 Or the glorious note 
 Of some singer's throat, 
 Heard in years remote ? 
 
 Or the love they bore 
 Who, in days of yore, 
 Loved, but are no more ? 
 
 Or the faiths men knew 
 
 When, before mind grew, 
 
 All strange things seemed true ? 
 
 The snows are sweet spring rain, 
 The dead rose blooms again, 
 Young voices keep the strain. 
 
 The old affection mild 
 
 Still springs up undefiled 
 
 For love, and friend, and child. 
 
 The old faiths grown more wide, 
 
 Purer and glorified, 
 
 Are still our lifelong guide. 
 
 Nothing that once has been, 
 Tho' ages roll between 
 And it be no more seen, 
 
A CYNICS DAY-DREAM. 97 
 
 Can perish, for the Will 
 Which doth our being fulfil, 
 Sustains and keeps it still. 
 
 COURAGE! 
 
 THERE are who, bending supple knees, 
 Live for no end except to please, 
 
 Rising to fame by mean degrees ; 
 But creep not thou with these. 
 
 They have their due reward ; they bend 
 Their lives to an unworthy end 
 
 On empty aims the pains expend 
 Which had knit close a friend. 
 
 But be not thou as these, whose mind 
 Is to the passing hour confined ; 
 
 Let no ignoble fetters bind 
 Thy soul, as free as wind. 
 
 Stand upright, speak thy thought, declare 
 The truth thou hast that all may share ; 
 
 Be bold, proclaim it everywhere : 
 They only live who dare. 
 
 A CYNIC'S DAY-DREAM. 
 
 SOME men there be who can descry 
 No charm in earth or sea or sky, 
 Poor painful bigot souls, to whom 
 All sights and sounds recall the tomb, 
 
 H 
 
98 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 And some who do not fear to use 
 God's world for tavern or for stews. 
 Some think it wisdom to despoil 
 Their years for gold and troublous toil ; 
 While others with cold dreams of art 
 Would feed the hunger of the heart, 
 And dilettanti dare to stand, 
 Eternities on either hand ! 
 
 But with no one of these shall I 
 
 Make choice to live my life or die, 
 
 Rather let me elect to give 
 
 What span of life is mine to live, 
 
 To honest labour, daily sought, 
 
 Crowned with the meed of patient thought ; 
 
 To precious friends for ages dead, 
 
 But loved where'er their words are read ; 
 
 To others living with us still, 
 
 Who sway the nation's mind and will 
 
 By eloquent pen or burning word, 
 
 Where hearts are fired and souls are stirred, 
 
 So thro' the tranquil evenings long, 
 
 Let us awake our souls with song, 
 
 Such song as comes where no words come, 
 
 And is most mighty when most dumb. 
 
 Then soar awhile on wings of art ; 
 
 Not that which chokes the vulgar mart, 
 
 But subtle hints and fancies fine, 
 
 When least completed most divine, 
 
 Sun-copies of some perfect thought, 
 
 Thro' bronze or canvas fitly wrought, 
 
 Known when in youth 'twas ours to see 
 
 Thy treasure-houses, Italy ! 
 
 Then turn from these to grave debate 
 
 What change of laws befits the State, 
 
A CYNICS DAY-DREAM. 99 
 
 By what wise schemes and precepts best 
 To raise the humble and oppressed, 
 And slay the twin reproach of Time, 
 The fiends of Ignorance and Crime. 
 
 Or what if I might come to fill 
 A calmer part, and dearer still, 
 With one attempered soul to share 
 The joys and ills 'tis ours to bear ; 
 To grow together, heart with heart, 
 Into a whole where each is part; 
 To blend together, soul with soul, 
 Neither a part, but each the whole ; 
 With strange creative thrills to teach 
 The dawning mind, the growing speech, 
 To bind around me precious bands 
 Of loving hearts and childish hands, 
 And lose the stains of time and sense 
 In those clear deeps of innocence ? 
 
 So if kind fate should grant at length, 
 
 Ere frame and brain have lost their strength, 
 
 In my own country homestead dear, 
 
 To spend a portion of the year ; 
 
 What joys I'll prove if modest wealth 
 
 Should come with still unbroken health ! 
 
 There, sheltered from the ruder wind, 
 
 Thro' the thick woods we'll range, to find 
 
 The spring's first flower, the autumn's fruit, 
 
 Strange fungus or misshapen root. 
 
 Mark where the wood-quist or the thrush 
 
 Builds on tall pine or hazel bush ; 
 
 See the brave bird with speckled breast 
 
 Brood fearless on the teeming nest, 
 
 And bid the little hands refrain 
 
 From every act of wrong and pain. 
 
ioo SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Observe the gossip conies sit 
 By their own doors, the white owl flit 
 Thro' the dim fields, while I enjoy 
 The wandering talk of girl or boy. 
 Sweet souls, which at life's portal stand, 
 And all within, a wonderland 
 Oh, treasure of a guileless love, 
 Fit prelude of the joys above ! 
 
 There, when the swift week nears its end, 
 
 To greet the welcome Sunday friend, 
 
 Through the still fields we'll wend our way, 
 
 To meet the guest at close of day. 
 
 And then, when little eyes in vain 
 
 Long time have sought the coming train, 
 
 A gradual distant sound, which fills 
 
 The bosom of the folded hills, 
 
 Till with white steam or ruddy light 
 
 The wayworn convoy leaps to sight, 
 
 Then stops and sets the traveller down, 
 
 Bringing the smoke and news of town. 
 
 And then the happy hours to come, 
 
 The walk or ride which leads us home, 
 
 Past the tall woods through which 'twould seem 
 
 Home's white walls hospitably gleam, 
 
 The well-served meal, the neighbour guest, 
 
 The rosy darlings curled and dressed ; 
 
 And, when the house grows silent, then 
 
 The lengthened talk on books and men ; 
 
 And on the Sunday morning still, 
 
 The pleasant stroll by wood-crowned hill 
 
 To church, wherein my eyes grow dim 
 
 Hearing my children chant the hymn ; 
 
 And seeing in their earnest look 
 
 Something of innocent rebuke, 
 
 I lose the old doubt's endless pain, 
 
 And am a little child again. 
 
A CYNIC'S DAY-DkAW.\\\. 
 
 If fate should grant me such a home, 
 
 So sweet the tranquil days would come, 
 
 I should not need, I trust, to sink 
 
 My weariness in lust or drink. 
 
 Scant pleasure should I think to gain 
 
 From endless scenes of death and pain ; 
 
 'T would little profit me to slay 
 
 A thousand innocents a day ; 
 
 I should not much delight to tear 
 
 With wolfish dogs the shrieking hare ; 
 
 With horse and hound to track to death 
 
 Some helpless wretch that gasps for breath ; 
 
 To make the fair bird check its wing, 
 
 And drop, a dying, shapeless thing ; 
 
 To leave the joy of all the wood 
 
 A mangled heap of fur and blood, 
 
 Or else escaping, but in vain, 
 
 To pine, a shattered wretch, in pain ; 
 
 Teeming, perhaps, or doomed to see 
 
 Its young brood starve in misery ; 
 
 With neither risk nor labour, still 
 
 To live for nothing but to kill 
 
 I dare not ! If perplexed I am 
 
 Between the tiger and the lamb ; 
 
 If fate ordain that these shall give 
 
 Their poor brief lives that I may live : 
 
 Whate'er the law that bids them die, 
 
 Others shall butcher them, not I, 
 
 Not such my work. Surely the Lord, 
 
 Who made the devils by a word, 
 
 Not men, but those who'd wield them well 
 
 Gave these sad tortures of his Hell. 
 
 Ah ! fool and blind, to wander so ; 
 Who hast lived long enough to know 
 
 101 
 
SONGS OF TWO WOKLDS. 
 
 With what insane confusions teem 
 The mazes of our waking dream, 
 The dullard surfeited with gold 
 His bloated coffers fail to hold, 
 While the keen mind and generous brain 
 From penury aspire in vain ; 
 Love's choicest treasures flung away 
 On some vile lump of coarsest clay ; 
 Pure girlhood chained to wretches foul, 
 Tainted in body as in soul ; 
 The precious love of wife or child 
 Not for the loving heart and mild, 
 But for the sullen churl, who ne'er 
 Knew any rule but that of fear ; 
 Fame, like Titania, stooping down 
 To set on asses' ears a crown ; 
 The shallow dunce, the fluent fool, 
 The butt and laughter of the school, 
 By fortune's strange caprice grown great, 
 A light of forum or debate ; 
 The carnal lump devoid of grace, 
 With each bad passion in his face, 
 A saintly idol, round whose knees 
 Crowd throngs of burning devotees. 
 
 Great heaven ! how strange the tangle is, 
 What old perplexity is this ? 
 The very words of my complaint, 
 What else are they than echoes faint 
 Of the full fire, the passionate scorn, 
 Of high-souled singers and forlorn, 
 Who, in our younger England, knew 
 No care for aught but what was true, 
 But loved to lash with bitter hate 
 The shameless vices of the great ; 
 
A CYNIC'S DAY-DREAM. 103 
 
 Who bade, in far-off days of Rome, 
 In verse their indignation come ; 
 Who, when we learn the secrets hid 
 Beneath the eldest Pyramid 
 Or in those dim days further still, 
 Whose nameless ruin builds the hill, 
 Push back our search where'er we can, 
 Till first the ape became the man, 
 Will in rude satire bid us find 
 The earliest victories of mind ? 
 Strong souls, rebellious with their lot, 
 Who longed for right and found it not ; 
 Too strong to take things as they seem, 
 Too weak to comprehend the scheme, 
 Too deeply fired with honest trust 
 To dream that God might be unjust ; 
 Yet, seeing how unequal show 
 His providences here below, 
 By paradoxes girt about, 
 Grew thro' excess of faith to doubt. 
 Oh, faithful souls, who love the true, 
 Tho' all be false, yet will not you ; 
 Tho' wrong shall overcome the right, 
 Still it is hateful in your sight ; 
 Tho' sorely tempted, you, and tried, 
 The truth stands always at your side ; 
 Tho' falsehood wear her blandest smile, 
 You only she shall ne'er beguile ; 
 For you, 'mid spectral sights and shows 
 Life blushes with a hidden rose ; 
 Thro' the loud din of lower things 
 You hear the sweep of angel wings, 
 And with a holy scorn possest, 
 Wait till these clamours sink to rest ! 
 
104 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 IT SHALL BE WELL. 
 
 IF thou shalt be in heart a child, 
 Forgiving, tender, meek, and mild, 
 Though with light stains of earth defiled, 
 Oh, soul, it shall be well. 
 
 It shall be well with thee indeed, 
 Whate'er thy race, thy tongue, thy creed ; 
 Thou shalt not lose thy fitting meed. 
 It shall be surely well. 
 
 Not where, nor how, nor when we know, 
 Nor by what stages thou shalt grow ; 
 We may but whisper faint and low, 
 " It shall be surely well." 
 
 It shall be well with thee, oh, soul, 
 Tho' the heavens wither like a scroll ; 
 Tho' sun and moon forget to roll, 
 Oh, soul, it shall be well. 
 
 THIRD SERIES. 
 
 THE HOME ALTAIC 
 
 WHY should we seek at all to gain 
 By vigils, and in pain, 
 By lonely life and empty heart, 
 To set a soul apart 
 Within a cloistered cell, 
 
 For whom the precious, homely hearth would serve as 
 well ? 
 
THE HOME ALTAR. 105 
 
 There, with the early breaking morn, 
 Ere quite the day is born, 
 The lustral waters flow serene. 
 And each again grows clean ; 
 From sleep, as from a tomb, 
 Born to another dawn of joy, and hope, and doom. 
 
 There through the sweet and toilsome day, 
 To labour is to pray ; 
 There love with kindly beaming eyes 
 Prepares the sacrifice ; 
 And voice and innocent smile 
 Of childhood do our cheerful liturgies beguile. 
 
 There, at his chaste and frugal feast, 
 Love sitteth as a Priest ; 
 And with mild eyes and mien sedate, 
 His deacons stand and wait ; 
 And round the holy table 
 Paten and chalice range in order serviceable. 
 
 And when ere night, the vespers said, 
 Low lies each weary head, 
 What giveth He who gives them sleep, 
 But a brief death less deep ? 
 Or what the fair dreams given 
 But ours who, daily dying, dream a happier heaven ? 
 
 Then not within a cloistered wall 
 Will we expend our days ; 
 But dawns that break and eves that fall 
 Shall bring their dues of praise. 
 This best befits a Ruler always near, 
 This duteous worship mild, and reasonable fear. 
 
io6 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 THE FOOD OF SONG. 
 
 How best doth vision come 
 
 To the poet's mind, 
 
 Lonely beneath the blue, unclouded dome, 
 
 Or battling with the mighty ocean-wind ; 
 
 In fair spring mornings, with the soaring lark, 
 
 Or amid roaring midnight forests dark ? 
 
 Shall he attune his voice 
 
 To sweetest song, 
 
 When earth and sea and sky alike rejoice, 
 
 And men are blest, and think no thought of wrong, 
 
 In some ideal heaven, some happy isle, 
 
 Where life is stiffened to a changeless smile ? 
 
 Or best amid the noise 
 
 Of high designs, 
 
 Loud onsets, shatterings, awful battle-joys, 
 
 Wherefor the loftier spirit longs and pines ; 
 
 Or by the depths of Thought's unfathomed sea ; 
 
 Or to loud thunders of the Dawn to be ? 
 
 Nature is less than naught 
 
 In smile or frown, 
 
 But for the formless, underlying thought 
 
 Of mind and purpose greater than our own ; 
 
 This only can these empty shows inform, 
 
 Smiles through the calm, and animates the storm. 
 
 Nor 'mid the clang and rush 
 
 Of mightier thought, 
 
 The steeps, the snows, the gulfs, that whelm and crush 
 
 The seeker with the treasure he has sought ; 
 
THE FOOD OF SONG. 107 
 
 Too vast, too swift, too formless to inspire 
 The fictive hand, or touch the lips with fire. 
 
 Rather amid the throng 
 
 Of toiling men 
 
 He finds the food and sustenance of song, 
 
 Spread by hidden hands, again, and yet again, 
 
 Where'er he goes, by crowded city street, 
 
 He fares thro' springing fancies sad and sweet. 
 
 Some innocent baby smile ; 
 
 A close-wound waist ; 
 
 Fathers and children ; things of shame and guile ; 
 
 Dim eyes, and lips at parting kissed in haste ; 
 
 The halt, the blind, the prosperous thing of ill ; 
 
 The thief, the wanton, touch and vex him still. 
 
 Or if sometimes he turn 
 
 With a new thrill, 
 
 And strives to paint anew with words that burn 
 
 The inner thought of sea, or sky, or hill : 
 
 It is because a breath of human life 
 
 Has touched them : joy and suffering, rest and strife. 
 
 And he sees mysteries 
 
 Above, around, 
 
 Fair spiritual fleeting agencies 
 
 Haunting each foot of consecrated ground : 
 
 And so, these fading, raises bolder eyes 
 
 Beyond the further limits of the skies, 
 
 And every thought and word, 
 
 And all things seen, 
 
 And every passion which his heart has stirred, 
 
 And every joy and sorrow which has been, 
 
 And every step of life his feet have trod, 
 
 Lead by broad stairs of glory up to God. 
 
1 08 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 EVENSONG. 
 
 THE hymns and prayers were done, and the village 
 
 church was still, 
 As I lay in a waking dream in the churchyard upon 
 
 the hill. 
 
 The graves were all around, and the dark yews over 
 
 my head, 
 And below me the winding stream and the exquisite 
 
 valley were spread. 
 
 The sun was sloping down with a glory of dying rays, 
 And the hills were bathed in gold, and the woods were 
 vocal with praise. 
 
 But from the deep set valley there rose a vapour of gray, 
 And the sweet day sank, and the glory waxed fainter 
 and faded away. 
 
 Then there came, like a chilling wind, a cold, low 
 
 whisper of doubt, 
 Which silenced the echo of hymns, and blotted the 
 
 glories out. 
 
 And I wrestled with powers unseen, and strove with a 
 
 Teacher divine, 
 Like Jacob who strove with the angel, and found with 
 
 the dawn a sign. 
 
 ***** 
 For I thought of the words they sang : "It is He that 
 
 hath made us indeed" ; 
 And my thought flew back to the Fathers of thought and 
 
 their atheist creed 
 
EVENSONG. 109 
 
 How atom with atom at first fortuitously combined, 
 Formed all, from the worlds without to the innermost 
 worlds of mind ; 
 
 And I thought : What, if this be true, and no Maker 
 
 there is indeed, 
 And God is the symbol alone of a feeble and worn-out 
 
 creed ; 
 
 And from uncreate atoms impelled by a blind chance 
 
 driving on free, 
 Grew together the primal forms of all essences that be ! 
 
 Then a voice : If they were, indeed, they were separate 
 
 one from one 
 By a gulph as broad as yawns in space betwixt sun 
 
 and sun 
 
 Self-centred and self-contained, disenvironed and isolate ; 
 Drawn together by a hidden love, torn apart by a hidden 
 hate. 
 
 What power was this chance, will you say ? But chance, 
 
 what else can it mean 
 Than the hidden Cause of things by human reason 
 
 unseen ? 
 
 Chance ! Then Chance were a name for God, or each 
 
 atom bearing a soul 
 Indivisible, like with like, part and whole of the Infinite 
 
 Whole. 
 
 Were God, as the Pantheist taught, God in earth, and in 
 
 sky, and in air, 
 God through every thought and thing, and made manifest 
 
 everywhere ; 
 
i io SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 The spring and movement of things the stir, the breath- 
 ing of breath, 
 
 Without which all things were quenched in the calm of 
 an infinite death ; 
 
 Or, if within each there lay some germ of an unborn 
 
 power, 
 God planted it first, God quickened, God raised it from 
 
 seed to flower. 
 
 Though beneath the weird cosmical force, which we 
 
 wield and yet cannot name, 
 From the germ or the rock we draw out low gleams of 
 
 life's faintest flame ; 
 
 Though we lose the will that commands, and the muscles 
 
 that wait and serve, 
 In some haze of a self-set spring of the molecules of 
 
 nerve ; 
 
 Though we sink all spirit in matter, and let the Theogonies 
 die, 
 
 Life and death are ; thinker and thought ; outward, in- 
 ward ; I, and not I, 
 
 And the I is the Giver of life, and without it the matter 
 
 must die. 
 ***** 
 
 Then I ceased for a while from thought, as I lay on the 
 
 long green grass, 
 Hearing echoes of hymns anew, and letting the moments 
 
 pass. 
 
 The evening was mounting upward ; the sunbeams had 
 
 left the hill ; 
 But the dying daylight lingered, and all the valley was 
 
 still. 
 
EVENSONG. in 
 
 Then I said : But if God there be, how shall man by his 
 
 thinking find, 
 Who is only a finite creature, the depths of the Infinite 
 
 Mind 
 
 Who sounds with a tiny plummet, who scans with a 
 
 purblind eye, 
 The depths of that fathomless ocean, the wastes of that 
 
 limitless sky ? 
 
 Shall we bow to a fetish, a symbol, which maybe nor sees 
 
 nor hears ; 
 Or, seeing and hearing indeed, takes no thought for our 
 
 hopes or fears ; 
 
 Who is dumb, though we long for a word ; who is deaf, 
 
 though his children cry ; 
 Who is Master, yet bears with evil Lord, and lets all 
 
 precious things die ? 
 
 Or if in despair we turn from the godless and meaning- 
 less plan, 
 
 What do we, but make for ourselves a God in the image 
 of man 
 
 A creature of love and hate, a creature who makes for 
 
 good, 
 But barred by an evil master from working the things 
 
 that he would ? 
 
 If he be not a reflex image, we may not know him at all ; 
 If he be, we are God ourselves to ourselves we shall 
 stand or fall. 
 
 Then the voice : But what folly is this ! Cannot God 
 indeed be known 
 
H2 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 If we know not the hidden essence that forms Him and 
 builds His throne ? 
 
 Is all our knowledge naught, of sea, and of sky, and of 
 
 star, 
 Till we know them, not as they seem to our thinking, but 
 
 as they are ? 
 
 We who build the whole fabric of knowledge on vague 
 
 abstractions sublime ; 
 We who whirl through an infinite Space, and live in an 
 
 infinite Time ; 
 
 We who prate of Motion and Force, not knowing that on 
 
 either side 
 Black gulphs unavoidable yawn, dark riddles our thought 
 
 deride ; 
 
 Shall we hold our science as naught in all things of earth, 
 
 because 
 We know but the seemings and shows, the relations, and 
 
 not the cause 
 
 Not only as he who admires the rainbow and cloud of 
 
 gold, 
 Knows that 'tis but a form of vapour his wondering eyes 
 
 behold ; 
 
 But as he who sees and knows, and knowing would fain 
 
 ignore 
 What he knows since the essence of things is hid, and he 
 
 knows not more 
 
 Or who would not love his love, or walk hand in hand 
 
 with his friend, 
 Though he sees not the roots of the tree from whose 
 
 branches life's blossoms depend ? 
 
EVENSONG. 113 
 
 Or how should the sight we see, any more than the 
 
 sound we hear, 
 Be a thing which exists for our thought, apart from the 
 
 eye or the ear ; 
 
 Is not every atom of dust, which compacted we call the 
 
 earth, 
 A miracle baffling our thought with insoluble wonders of 
 
 birth ? 
 
 And know we not, indeed, that the matter which men 
 
 have taught, 
 Is itself an essence unseen and untouched but by spirit 
 
 and thought ? 
 
 Tush ! It is but a brain-sick dream. What was it that 
 
 taught us the laws 
 Which stand as a bar between us and the thought of the 
 
 Infinite Cause ? 
 
 Is He infinite, out of relation, and absolute, past finding 
 
 out? 
 Reach we not an antinomy here ? feel we here no striving 
 
 of doubt ? 
 
 How, then, shall the finite define the bounds of the 
 
 infinite plan, 
 This is finite, and infinite this : here is Deity, here is 
 
 man? 
 
 If our judgment be relative only, how then shall our 
 
 brain transcend 
 The limits of relative thought ; grown too eager to 
 
 comprehend ? 
 
 I 
 
114 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 For he passes the bounds of relation, if any there be 
 
 who can 
 Distinguish the absolute God from the relative in man : 
 
 He has bridged the gulph ; he has leaped o'er the bound ; 
 
 he has seen with his eyes 
 For a moment the land unseen, that beyond the mountain 
 
 peaks lies. 
 
 Nay ! we see but a part of God, since we gaze with a 
 
 finite sight ; 
 And yet not Darkness is He, but a blinding splendour 
 
 of light. 
 
 Do we shrink from this light, and let our dazzled eyeballs 
 
 fall? 
 Nay, a God fully known or utterly dark, were not God 
 
 at all. 
 
 Though we hold not that in some sphere which our 
 
 thoughts may never conceive, 
 There comes not a time when, to know may be all, and 
 
 not, to believe ; 
 
 Nor yet that the right which we love, and the wrong 
 
 which we hate to-day, 
 May not show as reversed, or as one, when the finite has 
 
 passed away ; 
 
 God we 'know in our image indeed, since we are in the 
 
 image of Him, 
 Of His splendour a faint low gleam, of His glory a reflex 
 
 dim. 
 
EVENSONG. 115 
 
 Bowing not to the all unknown, nor to that which is 
 
 searched out quite ; 
 But to That which is known, yet unknown to the 
 
 darkness that comes of light, 
 To the contact of God with man, to the struggle and 
 
 triumph of right. 
 
 ***** 
 Then I ceased for a while from thought, as I lay on the 
 
 long green grass, 
 Hearing echoes of hymns grown nearer, and letting the 
 
 moments pass. 
 
 Exult, oh dust and ashes ! the low voices seemed to say ; 
 And then came a sudden hush, and the jubilance faded 
 away. 
 
 The evening was dying now, and the moon-rise WAS on 
 
 the hill, 
 And the soft light touched the river, and all the valley 
 
 was still. 
 
 Then I thought : But if God there be, and our thought 
 
 may reach Him indeed, 
 How should this bare knowledge alone stand in lieu of 
 
 a fuller creed ? 
 
 If He be and is good, as they say, how yet can our 
 
 judgment approve, 
 'Mid the rule of His iron laws, the place of His infinite 
 
 love? 
 
 The rocks are built up of death, earth and sea teem with 
 
 ravin and wrong ; 
 The sole law in Nature we learn, is the law that strengthens 
 
 the strong. 
 
u6 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Through countless ages of time, the Lord has withdrawn 
 
 Him apart 
 From all the world He has made, save the world of the 
 
 human heart. 
 
 Without and within all is pain, from the cry of the child 
 
 at birth, 
 To its parting sigh in age, when it looks for a happier 
 
 earth. 
 
 Should you plead that God's order goes forth with a 
 
 measured footstep sublime, 
 Know you not that you thrust Him back thus to the first 
 
 beginnings of time, 
 
 That a spark, a moment, a flash, and His work was over 
 
 and done ; 
 And the worlds were sent forth for ever, each circling 
 
 around its sun. 
 
 Bearing with it all secrets of being, all potencies undefined, 
 All forms and changes of matter, all growths and achieve- 
 ments of mind. 
 
 What is there for our worship in this, and should not our 
 
 reason say, 
 He is, and made us indeed, but hides Him too far away? 
 
 Though He lives, yet is He as one dead ; and we, who 
 
 would prostrate fall 
 Before the light of His Presence, we see not nor know 
 
 Him at all. 
 
 Then the voice : Oh folly of doubt ! what is time that we 
 
 deem so far, 
 What else but a multiple vast of the little lives that are ? 
 
EVENSONG. 117 
 
 He who lives for the fifty years, which scarce rear thought 
 
 to its prime, 
 Already a measure has lived of a thousand years of time. 
 
 Twice this, and Christ spoke not yet, and from this what 
 
 a span appears, 
 The space till our thought is lost in the mists of a million 
 
 years ! 
 
 A thousand millions of years we have leapt with a 
 
 thought, with a word ; 
 To the time when no flutter of life 'neath the shield of 
 
 the trilobite stirred. 
 
 All time is too brief for our thought, and yet we would 
 
 bring God nigh, 
 Till He worked in His creature's sight, man standing 
 
 undazzled by. 
 
 Such a God were not God indeed ; nor, if He should 
 
 change at all, 
 Should we hold, as we hold Him now, the God of both 
 
 great and small. 
 
 How know we the great things from small? how mark we 
 
 the adequate cause, 
 Which might make the Creator impede the march of His 
 
 perfect laws, 
 
 We, who know but a part, not the whole ? Or were it a 
 
 fitting thought 
 He should stoop in our sight to amend the errors His 
 
 hand had wrought, 
 
 So His laws were not perfect at all ? or should He amend 
 
 them indeed, 
 How supply by a fitful caprice the want of a normal creed ? 
 
ii8 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 All life is a mode of force, and all force that is force must 
 
 move ; 
 'Tis a friction of Outward and Inward, a contrast of 
 
 Hatred and Love. 
 
 Joy and Grief, Right and Wrong, Life and Death, Finite, 
 
 Infinite, Matter and Will, 
 These are the twin wheels of the Chariot of Life, which 
 
 without them stood still. 
 
 Would you seek in an order reversed and amended a Hand 
 
 divine ? 
 Nay the Wonder of wonders lies in unchangeable design. 
 
 Should God break His law as He might ; should He stoop 
 
 from His infinite skies 
 To redress that which seems to us wrong, to raise up the 
 
 life that dies ; 
 
 Should He save from His wolf His lamb, from His tiger 
 
 His innocent child ; 
 Should He quench the fierce flames, or still the great 
 
 waves clamouring wild, 
 
 I think a great cry would go up from an ordeiiess Uni- 
 verse, 
 
 And all the fair fabric of things would wither, as under a 
 curse. 
 
 'Tis the God of the savage, is this. What do we who rise 
 
 by degrees 
 To the gift of the mind that perceives, and the gift of the 
 
 eye that sees ? 
 
 Does not all our nature tend to a law of unbending rule, 
 Till equity comes but to mend the law that was made by 
 the fool ? 
 
EVENSONG. 119 
 
 Who shows highest? the child of the savage, whose 
 
 smiles change to rage or to tears ? 
 Or the statesman moving, unmoved, through a nation's 
 
 desires and fears ? 
 
 Or the pilgrim whose eyes look onward, as if to a distant 
 
 home, 
 Never turning aside from his path, whatever allurements 
 
 may come ? 
 
 All Higher is more Unmoved ; and the more unbroken 
 
 the law, 
 The more sure does the Giver show to the eyes of a 
 
 wondering awe. 
 
 Nor is it with all of truth that they make their voices 
 
 complain, 
 Who weary our thought with tales of a constant ruin and 
 
 pain. 
 
 It is but a brain-sick dream that would gloat o'er the hope- 
 less bed, 
 
 Or the wreck, or the crash, or the fight, with their tales of 
 the dying or dead. 
 
 Pain comes ; hopeless pain, God knows and we know, 
 
 again and again ; 
 But even pain has its intervals blest, when 'tis heaven to 
 
 be free from pain. 
 
 And I think that the wretch who lies pressed by a load 
 
 of incurable ill, 
 With a grave pity pities himself, but would choose to have 
 
 lived to it still ; 
 
120 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 And, as he whom the tiger bears in his jaws to his blood- 
 stained den 
 
 Feels no pain nor fear, but a wonder, what comes in the 
 wonderful " Then," 
 
 He pities himself and yet knows, as he casts up life's 
 
 chequered sum, 
 It were best on the whole to have lived, whatever calamity 
 
 come. 
 
 And the earth is full of joy. Every blade of grass that 
 
 springs ; 
 Every cool worm that crawls content as the eagle on 
 
 soaring wings ; 
 
 Every summer day instinct with life ; every dawn when 
 
 from waking bird 
 And morning hum of the bee, a chorus of praise is heard ; 
 
 Every gnat that sports in the sun for his little life of a 
 
 day; 
 Every flower that opens its cup to the dews of a perfumed 
 
 May; 
 
 Every child that wakes with a smile, and sings to the 
 
 ceiling at dawn ; 
 Every bosom which knows a new hope stir beneath its 
 
 virginal lawn ; 
 
 Every young soul, ardent and high, rushing forth into 
 
 life's hot fight ; 
 Every home of happy content, lit by love's own mystical 
 
 light ; 
 
EVENSONG. 121 
 
 Every worker who works till the evening, and earns 
 
 before night his wage, 
 Be his work a furrow straight-drawn, or the joy of a 
 
 bettered age ; 
 
 Every thinker who, standing aloof from the throng, finds 
 
 a high delight 
 In striking with tongue or with pen a stroke for the 
 
 triumph of right ; 
 
 All these know that life is sweet ; all these, with a con- 
 sonant voice, 
 
 Read the legend of Time with a smile, and that which 
 they read is, " Rejoice ! " 
 ***** 
 
 Then again I ceased from thought, as I lay on the long- 
 green grass, 
 
 Hearing hymns which grew fuller and fuller, and letting 
 the moments pass. 
 
 Exult, oh dust and ashes ! exult and rejoice ! they said, 
 For blesse'd are they who live, and blessed are they who 
 are dead. 
 
 Then again they ceased and were still, and my thought 
 
 began once more, 
 But touched with a silvery gleam of hopes that were 
 
 hidden before ; 
 
 The moon had climbed up the clear sky, far above the 
 
 black pines on the hill, 
 And the river ran molten silver, and all the valley was 
 
 still. 
 
122 SOJVGS OP TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Then I said : But if God there be, who made us indeed 
 
 and is good, 
 What guide has He left for our feet to walk in the ways 
 
 that He would ? 
 
 For though He should speak indeed, yet, as soon as His 
 
 voice grew dumb, 
 It were only through human speech that the message it 
 
 bore might come, 
 
 Sunk to levels of human thought, and always marred 
 
 and confined 
 By the chain of a halting tongue, and the curse of a finite 
 
 mind ; 
 
 So that he who would learn, indeed, what precepts His 
 
 will has taught, 
 Must dim with a secular learning the brightness his soul 
 
 has sought. 
 
 Who can tell how those scattered leaves through gradual 
 
 ages grew, 
 Adding chaff and dust from the world to the accents 
 
 simple and true ? 
 
 If one might from the seer's wild visions, or stories of 
 
 fraud and blood, 
 Or lore of the world-worn Sultan, discern the sure voice 
 
 of good, 
 
 Such a mind were a God to itself; or if you should 
 
 answer, For each 
 God has set a sure mentor within, with power to convince 
 
 and teach ; 
 
EVENSONG. 123 
 
 Yet it speaks with a changeful voice, which alters with 
 
 race and clime, 
 Nay, even in the self-same lands is changed with the 
 
 changes of time ; 
 
 So that 'twixt the old Europe of story and that which we 
 
 know to-day, 
 Yawns a gulph, as wide almost as parts us from far 
 
 Cathay ; 
 
 What power has such voice to help us ? Or if we should 
 
 turn instead 
 To the precious dissonant pages, which keep what the 
 
 Teacher said ; 
 
 How reduce them to one indeed, or how seek in vain to 
 
 ignore 
 The forgotten teachers who taught His counsels of mercy 
 
 before ? 
 
 Not " an eye for an eye " alone, was the rule which they 
 
 loved to teach, 
 But Mercy, and Pity, and Love, though they spoke with 
 
 a halting speech, 
 
 And He spake with the tongue of those who had spoken 
 
 and then were dumb, 
 And clothed in the words of the Law, which He loved, 
 
 would His precepts come; 
 
 Other teachers have drawn more millions, who follow 
 
 more faithful than we ; 
 Other teachers have taught a rule as stern and unselfish 
 
 as He. 
 
134 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 If we shrink from the Caliph fierce, who carved out a 
 
 faith with his sword, 
 What say we of the pilgrim who sways the old East with 
 
 his gentle word ? 
 
 Or what of the sage whose vague thoughts, over populous 
 
 wastes of earth, 
 Have led millions of fettered feet to the grave from the 
 
 day of birth ? 
 
 Or how can we part indeed, the show, the portent, the 
 
 sign, 
 From the simple words which glow with the light of a 
 
 teaching Divine? 
 
 And if careless of these, as of growths which spring up 
 
 and bear fruit and fall, 
 Yet how shall our thought accept the crowning wonder 
 
 of all? 
 
 Yet if this we reject, wherein, doth our faith and 
 
 assurance lie ? 
 What is it to us that God lives, we who live for a little 
 
 and die ; 
 
 Or why were it not more wise to live as the beasts of 
 
 to-day, 
 Taking life, while it lasts, as a gift, and secure of the 
 
 future as they ? 
 
 Then the voice : Oh, disease of doubt ! now I seem to 
 
 hold you indeed, 
 Keeping fast in my grasp at length the sum of your 
 
 dreary creed. 
 
EVENSONG. 125 
 
 How else should man prove God's will, than through 
 
 methods of human thought ? 
 How else than through human words should he gather 
 
 the things that he ought ? 
 
 If the Lord should speak day by day from Sinai, in 
 : . clouds and in fire, 
 
 Should we hear J mid those thunders loud the still voices 
 which now inspire ? 
 
 Would not either that awful sound, like that vivid and 
 
 scorching blaze, 
 Confuse our struggling thought, and our tottering footsteps 
 
 amaze ? 
 
 Or, if it should peal so clear that to hear were to obey 
 
 indeed, 
 'Twere a thing of dry knowledge alone, not one of a 
 
 faithful creed ; 
 
 No lantern for erring feet, but a glare on a white, straight 
 
 road, 
 Where life struggled its weary day, to sink before night 
 
 with its load ; 
 
 Where the blinded soul might long for the shade of a 
 
 cloud of doubt, 
 And yearn for dead silence, to blot that terrible utterance 
 
 out. 
 
 Yet God is not silent indeed ; not seldom from every 
 
 page 
 From the lisping story of eld to the seer with his noble 
 
 rage ; 
 
126 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 From the simple life divine, with its accents gentle and 
 
 true, 
 To the thinker who formed by his learning and watered 
 
 the faith as it grew ; 
 
 All are fired by the Spirit of God. Nor true is the doubt 
 
 you teach, 
 That God speaks not to all men the same, but differs 
 
 'twixt each and each. 
 
 Each differs from each a little, with difference of race 
 
 and of clime ; 
 Each is changed, but not transformed, with the onward 
 
 process of time ; 
 
 Each nation, each age, has its laws, whereto it shall 
 
 stand or fall, 
 But built on a wider Law, which is under and over 
 
 them all. 
 
 Nor doubt we that from Western wilds to the long-sealed 
 
 isles of Japan, 
 There runs the unbroken realm of a Law that is common 
 
 to man. 
 
 Not as ours shows the law they obey, and yet it is one 
 
 and the same, 
 Though it comes in a varying shape, and is named by 
 
 another name. 
 
 Not so shall your doubt prevail : nor if any should dream 
 
 to-day, 
 By praise of Jew or of Greek, to dissolve His glory away, 
 
EVENSONG. 127 
 
 Can they hold that God left His world with no gleam of 
 
 glory from Him, 
 No light clouds edged with splendour, no radiance of 
 
 Godhead dim. 
 
 Others were before Christ had eome. Oh ! dear dead 
 
 Teacher, whose word, 
 Long before the sweet voice on the Hill, young hearts 
 
 had quickened and stirred ; 
 
 Who spak'st of the soul and the life ; with limbs chilled 
 
 by the rising death, 
 Yielding up to thy faith, with a smile, the last gasp of 
 
 thy earthly breath ; 
 
 And thou, oh golden-mouthed sage, who with brilliance 
 
 of thought as of tongue, 
 Didst sing of thy Commonwealth fair, the noblest of epics 
 
 unsung ; 
 
 In whose pages thy Master's words shine forth, sublimed 
 
 and refined 
 In the music of perfect language, inspired by a faithful 
 
 mind ; 
 
 And ye seers of Israel and doctors, whose breath was 
 
 breathed forth to move 
 The dry dead bones of the Law with the life of a larger 
 
 love ; 
 
 And thou, great Saint of the East, in whose footsteps the 
 
 millions have trod 
 Till from life, like an innocent dream, they pass'd and 
 
 were lost in God ; - 
 
128 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 And thouj quaint teacher of old, whose dead words, 
 
 though all life be gone, 
 Through the peaceful Atheist realms keep the millions 
 
 labouring on ; 
 
 Shall I hold that ye, as the rest, spake no echo of accents 
 
 divine, 
 That no gleam of a clouded sun through the mists of your 
 
 teaching may shine ? 
 
 Nay; such thoughts were to doubt of God. Yet, strange 
 
 it is and yet sure, 
 No teacher of old was full of mercy as ours, or pure. 
 
 'Twixt the love that He taught, and the Greek's with its 
 
 foul abysses of shame, 
 Lies the gulph between Heaven's calm light and the 
 
 fumes of sulphurous flame ; 
 
 'Twixt His rule of a Higher Mercy and that which the 
 
 Rabbi taught, 
 Lies the gulph between glowing Act and barren ashes of 
 
 Thought. 
 
 For the pure thought smirched and fouled, or buried in 
 
 pedant lore, 
 He brought a sweet Reason of Force, such as man knew 
 
 never before. 
 
 What to us are the men of the East, though they preach 
 
 their own Gospel indeed ? 
 We are men of the West, and shall stand or fall by a 
 
 Western creed. 
 
EVENSONG. 129 
 
 Though we see in those Scriptures antique, faint flames of 
 
 Diviner fire, 
 Who would change to Buddha from Christ, as a change 
 
 from lower to higher ? 
 
 Nay! He is our Teacher indeed. Little boots it to-day 
 
 to seek 
 To arraign, with a laboured learning, the words that men 
 
 heard Him speak ; 
 
 To cavil, to carp, to strive, through the mists of an age- 
 long haze, 
 
 To dim to a common light the star which could once 
 amaze ; 
 
 To fix by some pigmy canon, too short for the tale of 
 
 to-day, 
 The facts of a brief life, fled eighteen centuries away ; 
 
 To mark by a guess, and to spurn, as born of a later age, 
 The proofs which, whenever writ, bear God's finger on 
 every page ; 
 
 Or to sneer at the wonders they saw Him work, or 
 
 believed they saw ; 
 We who know that unbending sequence is only a phase 
 
 of law, 
 
 No wonder which God might do if it rested on witness of 
 
 men, 
 Would turn to it our thought of to-day as it turned the 
 
 multitude then. 
 
 Nor proved would avail a whit if the teaching itself were 
 
 not pure ; 
 Nor if it were pure as His would make it one whit more 
 
 sure. 
 
 K 
 
130 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 And for the great Wonder of all. If any there be who 
 
 fears 
 That the spark of God in his breast may be quenched in 
 
 a few short years ; 
 
 Who feels his faith's fire blaze aloft more clear than it 
 
 burnt before, 
 By the thought of the empty tomb and the stone rolled 
 
 back from the door : 
 
 For him was the miracle done. If no proof makes clearer 
 
 to me 
 Than His word to my inner sense, the Higher life that 
 
 shall be ; 
 
 If no Force that has once leapt forth can ever decline 
 
 and fall, 
 From the dead forces stirring the worlds, to the Life-force 
 
 which dominates all ; 
 
 But the sum of life is the same, and shall be when the 
 
 world is done, 
 As it was when its first faint spark was stirred by the kiss 
 
 of the sun ; 
 
 If I feel a sure knowledge within, which shall never be 
 
 blotted out, 
 A Longing, a Faith, a Conviction, too strong for a 
 
 Whisper of Doubt 
 
 That my life shall be hid with a Lord, who shall do the 
 
 thing that is best 
 To be purged, it may be, long time, or taken at once to 
 
 rest, 
 
EVENSONG. 131 
 
 To live, it may be, myself; from all else, individual, sole, 
 Or blended with other lives, or sunk in the Infinite whole 
 
 Though I doubt not that that which is I may endure in 
 
 the ages to be, 
 Since I know not what bars hold apart the Not-Me and 
 
 the mystical Me ; 
 
 How else than thro' Him do I grasp the faith that for 
 
 Greek and Jew 
 Was hidden, or but dimly seen, which nor Moses nor 
 
 Sokrates knew ? 
 
 Ay ! He is our Teacher indeed. He is risen, and we 
 
 shall rise ; 
 But if only as we He rose, not the less he lives in the skies. 
 
 And if those who proclaim Him to-day in the dim gray 
 
 lands of the East, 
 Prove him not by portent or sign, not by trick or secret of 
 
 priest ; 
 
 But for old cosmogonies dead, and faint precepts too 
 
 weak for our need, 
 Offer God brought nearer to man in a living and glowing 
 
 creed. 
 
 The pure teaching, the passionate love, taking thought for 
 the humble and weak, 
 
 The pitiful scorn of wrong, which His Scriptures every- 
 where speak, 
 
 Not writ for the sage in his cell, but preached 'mid the 
 
 turmoil and strife, 
 And touched with a living brand from the fire of the Altar 
 
 of Life. 
 
132 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 So, of all the wonders they tell, no wonder our hearts has 
 
 stirred 
 Like the Wonder which lives with us still in a living and 
 
 breathing Word. 
 
 More than portents, more than all splendours of rank 
 
 loyal hearts devise, 
 More than visions of heavenly forms caught up and lost 
 
 in the skies, 
 
 This the crowning miracle shows, before which we must 
 
 prostrate fall ; 
 For this is the living voice of the Lord and Giver of all. 
 
 Then I ceased again from thought, as I lay on the long 
 
 grave-grass, 
 Thrilled through by a music of hymns, and letting the 
 
 moments pass. 
 
 " Exult and rejoice ! " they sang in high unison, now 
 
 combined 
 Which were warring voices before, the voices of heart and 
 
 mind. 
 
 The earth was flooded with light, over valley and river 
 
 and hill, 
 And this is the hymn which I heard them sing, while the 
 
 world lay still : 
 
 " Exult, oh dust and ashes ! Rejoice, all ye that are dead ! 
 For ye live too who lie beneath, as we live who walk over- 
 head. 
 
EVENSONG. 133 
 
 As God lives, so ye are living ; ye are living and moving 
 
 to-day, 
 Not as they live who breathe and move, yet living and 
 
 conscious as they. 
 
 And ye too, oh living, exult. Young and old, exult and 
 
 rejoice ; 
 For the Lord of the quick and the dead lives for ever : 
 
 we hear His voice. 
 
 We have heard His voice, and we hear it sound wider 
 
 and more increased, 
 To the sunset plains of the West from the peaks of the 
 
 furthest East. 
 
 For the quick and the dead, it was given ; for them it is 
 
 sounding still, 
 And no pause of silence arrests the clear voice of the 
 
 Infinite Will. 
 
 Not only through Christ long since, and the teachers of 
 
 ages gone, 
 But to-day He speaks, day by day, to those who are 
 
 toiling on ; 
 
 More clear perhaps then, to the ear, and with nigher 
 
 voice and more plain, 
 But still the same Teacher Divine, speaking to us again 
 
 and again. 
 
 For I like not his creed, if any there be, who shall dare 
 
 to hold 
 That God comes to us only at times far away in the 
 
 centuries old. 
 
134 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Not so ; but He dwells with us still ; and maybe, though 
 
 I know not indeed, 
 He will send us a Christ again, with a fuller and perfecter 
 
 creed 
 
 A Christ who shall speak to all men, East and West, and 
 
 North and South, 
 Till the whole world shall hear and believe the gracious 
 
 words of His mouth. 
 
 When knowledge has pierced through the wastes, chain- 
 ing earth together and sea, 
 
 And the bars of to-day are lost in the union of all that 
 shall be ; 
 
 And the brotherhood that He loved is more than a saintly 
 
 thought, 
 And the wars and the strifes which we mourn are lost in 
 
 the peace He taught ; 
 
 Then Christ coming shall make all things new. Or it 
 
 may be that ages of pain 
 Shall quench the dim light of to-day, bringing back the 
 
 thick darkness again. 
 
 And then, slow as the tide which flows on though each 
 
 wave may seem to recede, 
 Man advances again and again to the Rock of a higher 
 
 creed. 
 
 Or it may be no teacher shall come down again with 
 
 God in his face, 
 But the light which before was reflected from One shall 
 
 shine on the Race. 
 
EVENSONG. 135 
 
 And as this wide earth grows smaller, and men to men 
 
 nearer draw, 
 There may spring from the root of the race the flower of 
 
 a nobler law, 
 
 Growing fairer, and still more fair; or maybe, through 
 
 long ages of time, 
 Man shall rise up from type to type, to the strength of 
 
 an essence sublime, 
 
 Removed as far in knowledge, in length of life, and in 
 
 good 
 From us, as we from the mollusc which gasped in the 
 
 first warm flood, 
 
 A creature so wise and so high that he scorns all allure^ 
 
 ment of ill, 
 Marching on through an ordered life in the strength of 
 
 a steadfast will. 
 
 Who knows? But, however it be, we live, and shall live 
 
 indeed, 
 In ourselves or in others to come. What more doth our 
 
 longing need ? 
 
 Hid with God, or on earth, we shall see, burning brighter 
 
 and yet more bright, 
 The sphere of humanity move throughout time on its 
 
 pathway of light ; 
 
 Circling round with a narrower orbit, as age upon age 
 
 fleets away, 
 The Centre of Force and of Being, the Fountain of Light; 
 
 an 4 of Day t 
 
136 SOA'GS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Till, nearer drawn, and more near, at last it shall merge 
 
 and fall 
 In its source ; man is swallowed in God, the Part is lost 
 
 in the All ; 
 
 One more world is recalled to rest, one more star adds 
 
 its fire to the sun, 
 One light less wanders thro' space, and the story of 
 
 man is done ! " 
 
 Then slowly I rose to go from my place on the long 
 
 grave-grass, 
 Where so long I had lain in deep musings, letting the 
 
 moments pass : 
 
 A great light was flooding the plains of the earth and 
 
 the uttermost sky, 
 The low church and the deep sunk vale, and the place 
 
 where one day I shall lie, 
 
 The fresh graves of those we have lost, the dark yews 
 
 with their reverend gloom, 
 And the green wave which only marks the place of the 
 
 nameless tomb ; 
 
 And thro' all the spaces above oh wonder ! oh glory of 
 
 Light ! 
 Came forth myriads on myriads of worlds, the shining 
 
 host of the night, 
 
 The vast forces and fires that know the same sun and 
 
 centre as we ; 
 The faint planets which roll in vast orbits round suns we 
 
 shall never see ; 
 
EVENSONG. 137 
 
 The rays which had sped from the first, with the awful 
 
 swiftness of light, 
 To reach only then, it might be, the confines of mortal 
 
 sight : 
 
 Oh, wonder of Cosmical Order ! oh, Maker and Ruler of 
 
 all, 
 Before whose Infinite greatness in silence we worship 
 
 and fall ! 
 
 Could I doubt that the Will which keeps this great 
 Universe steadfast and sure 
 
 Might be less than His creatures thought, full of good- 
 ness, pitiful, pure ? 
 
 Could I dream that the Power which keeps those great 
 
 suns circling around, 
 Took no thought for the humblest life which flutters and 
 
 falls to the ground ? 
 
 " Oh, Faith ! thou art higher than all." Then I turned 
 
 from the glories above, 
 And from every casement new-lit there shone a soft 
 
 radiance of love : 
 
 Young mothers were teaching their children to fold little 
 
 hands in prayer ; 
 Strong fathers were resting from toil, 'mid the hush of the 
 
 Sabbath air ; 
 
 Peasant lovers strolled thro' the lanes, shy and diffident, 
 
 each with each, 
 Yet knit by some subtle union too fine for their halting 
 
 speech :. 
 
138 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Humble lives, to low thought, and low ; but linked, to the 
 
 thinker's eye, 
 By a bond that is stronger than death, with the lights of 
 
 the ultimate sky : 
 
 Here as there, the great drama of life rolled on, and a 
 
 jubilant voice 
 Thrilled through me ineffable, vast, and bade me exult 
 
 and rejoice ; 
 
 Exult and rejoice, oh soul ! sang my being to a mystical 
 
 hymn 
 As I passed by the cool bright wolds, as I threaded my 
 
 pinewoods dim ; 
 
 Rejoice and be sure ! as I passed to my fair home under 
 
 the hill, 
 Wrapt round with a happy content, and the world and 
 
 my soul were still ! 
 
 SONG. 
 
 BEAM on me, fair Ideal, beam on ire ! 
 
 Too long thou hast concealed thee in a cloud ; 
 Mine is no vision strong to pierce to thee, 
 
 Nor voice complaining loud, 
 Whereby thou mightest find thy dear, and come 
 To thine own heart, and long-expecting home. 
 
 Too long thou dost withdraw thee from mine eyes ; 
 
 Too long thou lingerest. Ah, truant sweet ! 
 Dost thou no reckoning take of all my sighs, 
 
 While Time with flying feet 
 
 Speeds onward, till the westering sun sinks low 
 With cruel feet so swift and yet so slow ? 
 
AT LAST. 139 
 
 Time was I thought that thou wouldst come a maid 
 White- armed, with deep blue eyes and sunny head ; 
 
 But, ah ! too long the lovely vision stayed. 
 And then, when this was fled, 
 
 Fame, with blown clarion clear, and wide-spread wings, 
 
 Fame, crown and summit of created things. 
 
 And then in guise of Truth, when this grew faint, 
 Truth in Belief, and Act, and Life and Thought. 
 
 White-robed and virginal, a pure cold saint, 
 Thou cam'st awhile, long sought ; 
 
 But only in glimpses earnest thou, so I 
 
 Watch wearily until thou passest by. 
 
 I wait, I watch, I hunger, though I know 
 
 Thou wilt not come at all who stay'st so long. 
 
 My hope has lost its strength, my heart its glow ; 
 I grow too cold for song : 
 
 Long since I might have sung, hadst thou come then, 
 
 A song to echo through the souls of men. 
 
 Yet, since 'tis better far to dream in sleep, 
 Than wholly lose the treacheries of time, 
 
 I hold it gain to have seen thy garments sweep 
 On the far hills sublime : 
 
 Still will I hope thy glorious face to see, 
 
 Beam on me, fair Ideal, beam on me ! 
 
 AT LAST. 
 
 LET me at last be laid 
 
 On that hillside I know which scans the vale, 
 
 Beneath the thick yews' shade, 
 
 For shelter when the rains and winds prevail. 
 
140 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 It cannot be the eye 
 
 Is blinded when we die, 
 
 So that we know no more at all 
 
 The dawns increase, the evenings fall ; 
 
 Shut close within a mouldering chest of wood 
 
 Asleep, and careless of our children's good. 
 
 Shall I not feel the spring, 
 
 The yearly resurrection of the earth, 
 
 Stir thro' each sleeping thing 
 
 With the fair throbbings and alarms of birth, 
 
 Calling at its own hour 
 
 On folded leaf and flower, 
 
 Calling the lamb, the lark, the bee, 
 
 Calling the crocus and anemone, 
 
 Calling new lustre to the maiden's eye, 
 
 And to the youth love and ambition high ? 
 
 Shall I no more admire 
 
 The winding river kiss the daisied plain ? 
 
 Nor see the dawn's cold fire 
 
 Steal downward from the rosy hills again ? 
 
 Nor watch the frowning cloud, 
 
 Sublime with mutterings loud, 
 
 Burst on the vale, nor eves of gold, 
 
 Nor crescent moons, nor starlights cold, 
 
 Nor the red casements glimmer on the hill 
 
 At Yule-tides, when the frozen leas are still ? 
 
 Or should my children's tread 
 
 Through Sabbath twilights, when the hymns are done, 
 
 Come softly overhead, 
 
 Shall no sweet quickening through my bosom run, 
 
 Till all my soul exhale 
 
 Into the primrose pale, 
 
AT LAST. 141 
 
 And every flower which springs above 
 Breathes a new perfume from my love ; 
 And I shall throb, and stir, and thrill beneath 
 With a pure passion stronger far than death ? 
 
 Sweet thought ! fair, gracious dream, 
 
 Too fair and fleeting for our clearer view ! 
 
 How should our reason deem 
 
 That those dear souls, who sleep beneath the blue 
 
 In rayless caverns dim, 
 
 'Mid ocean monsters grim, 
 
 Or whitening on the trackless sand, 
 
 Or with strange corpses on each hand 
 
 In battle-trench or city graveyard lie, 
 
 Break not their prison-bonds till time shall die? 
 
 Nay, 'tis not so indeed. 
 
 With the last fluttering of the failing breath 
 
 The clay-cold form doth breed 
 
 A viewless essence, far too fine for death ; 
 
 And ere one voice can mourn, 
 
 On upward pinions borne, 
 
 They are hidden, they are hidden, in some thin air, 
 
 Far from corruption, far from care, 
 
 Where through a veil they view their former scene, 
 
 Only a little touched by what has been. 
 
 Touched but a little ; and yet, 
 
 Conscious of every change that doth befal, 
 
 By constant change beset, 
 
 The creatures of this tiny whirling ball, 
 
 Filled with a higher being, 
 
 Dowered with a clearer seeing, 
 
 Risen to a vaster scheme of life, 
 
 To wider joys and nobler strife, 
 
 Viewing our little human hopes and fears 
 
 As we our children's fleeting smiles and tears. 
 
142 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Then, whether with fire they burn 
 
 This dwelling-house of mine when I am fled, 
 
 And in a marble urn 
 
 My ashes rest by my beloved dead, 
 
 Or in the sweet cold earth 
 
 I pass from death to birth, 
 
 And pay kind Nature's life-long debt 
 
 In heart's- ease and in violet 
 
 In charnel-yard or hidden ocean wave, 
 
 Where'er I lie, I shall not scorn my grave. 
 
 THE VOYAGE. 
 
 WHO climbs the Equatorial main 
 Drives on long time through mist and cloud, 
 Through zones of storm, through thunders loud, 
 For many a night of fear and pain. 
 
 Till one night all is clear, and lo ! 
 He sees with wondering, awe-struck eyes, 
 In depths above, in depths below, 
 Strange constellations light the skies 
 
 New stars, more splendid and more fair, 
 Yet not without a secret loss : 
 He seeks in vain the Northern Bear, 
 And finds instead the Southern Cross. 
 
 Yet dawns the self-same sun the same 
 The deep below the keel which lies ; 
 Though this may burn with brighter flame, 
 And that respond to bluer skies, 
 
THE DIALOGUE. 143 
 
 The self-same earth, the self-same sky : 
 
 And though through clouds and tempests driven, 
 
 The self-same seeker lifts an eye 
 
 That sees another side of heaven. 
 
 No change in man, or earth, or aught, 
 Save those strange secrets of the night ; 
 Nor there, save that another thought 
 Has reached them through another sight, 
 
 Which may but know one hemisphere, 
 The earth's mass blotting out the blue, 
 Till one day, leaving shadows here, 
 It sees all heaven before its view. 
 
 THE DIALOGUE. 
 
 UNTO my soul I said, 
 
 " Oh, vagrant soul ! 
 When o'er my living head 
 
 A few years roll, 
 Is't true that thou shalt fly 
 Far away into the sky, 
 Leaving me in my place 
 Alone with my disgrace ? 
 
 " For thou wilt stand in the East, 
 
 The night withdrawn, 
 White-robed as is a priest, 
 
 At the door of dawn ; 
 While I within the ground, 
 In misery fast bound, 
 Shalt lie, blind, deaf, and foul, 
 Since thou art fled, O soul." 
 
I 4 4 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Then said my soul to me : 
 
 " Thy lot is best ; 
 For thou shalt tranquil be, 
 
 Sunk deep in rest, 
 While naked I shall know 
 The intolerable glow 
 When as, the sun, shall rise 
 A fire in fiery skies. 
 
 " Thou shalt lie cool and dark, 
 
 Forgetting all ; 
 I shall float shamed and stark, 
 
 Till the sun fall : 
 Thou shalt be earth in earth, 
 Preparing for new birth ; 
 While me in the heaven fierce, 
 Pure glories fright and pierce." 
 
 Then said I to my soul, 
 
 And she to me : 
 " Where'er life's current roll 
 
 We twain shall be, 
 Part here and part not here, 
 Partners in hope and fear, 
 Until, our exile done, 
 We meet at last in one." 
 
 THE BIRTH OF VERSE. 
 
 BLIND thoughts which occupy the brain 
 Dumb melodies which fill the ear, 
 
 Dim perturbations, precious pain, 
 A gleam of hope, a chill of fear, 
 
THE BIRTH OF VERSE. 145 
 
 These seize the poet's soul, and mould 
 The ore of fancy into gold. 
 
 And first no definite thought there is 
 
 In all that affluence of sound, 
 Like those sweet formless melodies 
 
 Piped to the listening woods around, 
 By birds which never teacher had 
 But love and knowledge : they are glad. 
 
 Till, when the chambers of the soul 
 
 Are filled with inarticulate airs, 
 A spirit comes which doth control 
 
 The music, and its end prepares ; 
 And, with a power serene and strong, 
 Shapes these wild melodies to song. 
 
 Or haply, thoughts which glow and burn 
 
 Await long time the fitting strain, 
 Which, swiftly swelling seems to turn 
 
 The silence to a load of pain ; 
 And somewhat in him seems to cry, 
 " I will have utterance, or I die ! " 
 
 Then of a sudden, full, complete, 
 
 The strong strain bursting into sound, 
 
 Words come with rhythmic rush of feet, 
 Fit music girds the language round, 
 
 And with a comeliness unsought, 
 
 Appears the winged, embodied thought. 
 
 But howsoever they may rise, 
 Fit words and music come to birth ; 
 
 There soars an angel to the skies, 
 There walks a Presence on the earth 
 
 L 
 
146 SONGS OF TWO WORLDS. 
 
 A something which shall yet inspire 
 Myriads of souls unborn with fire. 
 
 And when his voice is hushed and dumb, 
 The flame burnt out, the glory dead, 
 
 He feels a thrill of wonder come 
 At that which his poor tongue has said ; 
 
 And thinks of each diviner line 
 
 " Only the hand that wrote was mine." 
 
THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 BOOK I. TARTARUS. 
 
 " IN the old man's eyes 
 A watery gleam of malice played awhile 
 I hate him for it and he bade his son, 
 Yoking his three young fiery colts, drive forth 
 His chariot on the sand. 
 
 And still the storm 
 
 Blew fiercer and more fierce, and the white crests 
 Plunged on the strand, and the loud promontories 
 Thundered back repercussive, and a mist 
 Of foam, torn landward, hid the sounding shore. 
 
 Then saw I him come forth and bid them yoke 
 His untamed colts. I had not seen his face 
 Since that last day, but seeing him, I felt 
 The old love spring anew, yet mixed with hate 
 A storm of warring passions. Tho' I knew 
 What end should come, yet would I speak no word 
 That might avert it. The old man looked forth ; 
 I think he had well-nigh forgotten all 
 The wrong he fancied and the doom he prayed, 
 All but the father's pride in the strong son, 
 Who was so young and bold. I saw a smile 
 Upon the dotard's face, when now the steeds 
 Were harnessed and the chariot, on the sand 
 Along the circling margin of the bay, 
 Flew, swift as light. A sudden gleam of sun 
 Flashed on the silver harness as it went, 
 Burned on the brazen axles of the wheels, 
 And on the golden fillets of the Prince 
 
I 4 8 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Doubled the gold. Sometimes a larger wave 
 
 Would dash in mist around him, and in fear 
 
 The rearing coursers plunged, and then again 
 
 The strong young arm constrained them, and they flashed 
 
 To where the wave-worn foreland ends the bay. 
 
 And then he turned his chariot, a bright speck 
 Now seen, now hidden, but always, tho' the surge 
 Broke round it, safe ; emerging like a star 
 From the white clouds of foam. And as I watched, 
 Speaking no word, and breathing scarce a breath, 
 I saw the firm limbs strongly set apart 
 Upon the chariot, and the reins held high, 
 And the proud head bent forward, with long locks 
 Streaming behind, as nearer and more near 
 The swift team rushed until, with a half joy, 
 It seemed as if my love might yet elude 
 The slow sure anger of the god, dull wrath 
 Swayed by a woman's lie. 
 
 But on the verge, 
 
 As I cast my eyes, a vast and purple wall 
 Swelled swiftly towards the land ; the lesser waves 
 Sank as it came, and to its toppling crest 
 The spume-flecked waters, from the strand drawn back, 
 Left dry the yellow shore. Onward it came, 
 Hoarse, capped with breaking foam, lurid, immense, 
 Rearing its dreadful height. The chariot sped 
 Nearer and nearer. I could see my love 
 With the light of victory in his eyes, the smile 
 Of daring on his lips : so near he came 
 To where the marble palace-wall confined 
 The narrow strip of beach his brave young eyes 
 Fixed steadfast on the goal, in the pride of life, 
 Without a thought of death. I strove to cry, 
 But terror choked my breath. Then, like a bull 
 Upon the windy level of the plain 
 
PHAEDRA. 149 
 
 Lashing himself to rage, the furious wave, 
 Poising itself a moment, tossing high 
 Its bristling crest dashed downward on the strand. 
 With a stamp, with a rush, with a roar. 
 
 And when I looked, 
 
 The shore, the fields, the plain, were one white sea 
 Of churning, seething foam- chariot and steeds 
 Gone, and my darling on the wild mad surge 
 Tossed high, whirled down, beaten, and bruised, and 
 
 flung, 
 Dying upon the marble. 
 
 My great love 
 
 Sprang up redoubled, and cast out my hate 
 And spurned all thought of fear ; and down the stair 
 I hurried, and upon the bleeding form 
 I threw myself, and raised his head, and clasped 
 His body to mine, and kissed him on the lips, 
 And in his dying ear confessed my wrong. 
 And saw the horror in his dying eyes 
 And knew that I was damned. And when he breathed 
 His last pure breath, I rose and slowly spake 
 Turned to a Fury now by love and pain 
 To the old man who knelt, while all the throng 
 Could hear my secret : ' See, thou fool, I am 
 The murderess of thy son, and thou my dupe, 
 Thou and thy gods. See, he was innocent ; 
 I murdered him for love. I scorn ye all, 
 Thee and thy gods together, who are deceived 
 By a woman's lying tongue ! Oh, doting fool, 
 To hate thy own ! And ye, false powers, which punish 
 The innocent, and let the guilty soul 
 Escape unscathed, I hate ye all I curse, 
 I loathe you ! ' 
 
 Then I stooped and kissed my love, 
 And left them in amaze ; and up the stair 
 Swept slowly to my chamber, and therein, 
 
150 THE EPIC OF HADES, 
 
 Hating my life and cursing men and gods, 
 I did myself to death. 
 
 But even here, 
 
 I find my punishment. Oh, terrible doom 
 Of souls like mine ! To see their evil done 
 Always before their eyes, the one dread scene 
 Of horror. See, the wild wave on the verge 
 
 Towers horrible, and he Oh, Love, my Love ! 
 
 Safety is near ! quick ! quicker ! urge them on ! 
 Thou wilt 'scape it yet ! Nay, nay, it bursts on him ! 
 I have shed the innocent blood ! Oh, dreadful gaze 
 Within his glazing eyes ! Hide them, ye gods ! 
 Hide them ! I cannot bear them. Quick ! a dagger ! 
 I will lose their glare in death. Nay, die I cannot ; 
 I must endure and live Death brings not peace 
 To the lost souls in Hell." 
 
 And her eyes stared, 
 
 Rounded with horror, and she stooped and peered 
 So eagerly, and pressed her fevered hands 
 Upon her trembling forehead with such pain 
 As drives the gazer mad. 
 
 Then as I passed, 
 
 I marked against the hardly dawning sky 
 A toilsome figure standing, bent and strained, 
 Before a rocky mass, which with great pain 
 And agony of labour it would thrust 
 Up a steep hill. But when upon the crest 
 It poised a moment, then I held my breath 
 With dread, for, lo ! the poor feet seemed to clutch 
 The hillside as in fear, and the poor hands 
 With hopeless fingers pressed into the stone 
 In agony, and the limbs stiffened, and a cry 
 Like some strong swimmer's, whom the mightier stream 
 Sweeps downward, as he sees his children's eyes 
 Upon the bank, broke from him ; and at last, 
 
SISYPHUS MARSYAS. 151 
 
 After long wrestlings with despair, the limbs 
 
 Relaxed, and as I closed my fearful eyes, 
 
 Seeing the inevitable doom a crash, 
 
 A horrible thunderous noise, as down the steep 
 
 The shameless fragment leapt. From crag to crag 
 
 It bounded ever swifter, flashing fire 
 
 And wreathed with smoke, as to the lowest depths 
 
 Of the vale it tore, and seemed to take with it 
 
 The miserable form whose hopeless eyes 
 
 I caught, as with the great rock whirled and dashed 
 
 Downward, and marking every crag with gore 
 
 And long gray hairs, it plunged, yet living still, 
 
 To the black hollow ; and then a silence came 
 
 More dreadful than the noise, and a low groan 
 
 Was all that I could hear. 
 
 When to the foot 
 
 Of the dark steep I hurried, half in hope 
 To find the victim dead not recognizing 
 The undying life of Hell I seemed to see 
 An aged man, bruised, bleeding, with gray hairs, 
 And eyes from which the cunning leer of greed 
 Was scarcely yet gone out. 
 
 A crafty voice 
 
 It was that answered me, the voice of guile 
 Part purified by pain : 
 
 " There comes not death 
 To those who live in Hell, nor hardly pause 
 Of suffering longer than may serve to make 
 The pain renewed, more piercing." 
 
 BOOK IL HADES. 
 
 Next I saw 
 
 A youth who pensive leaned against the trunk 
 Of a dark cypress, and an idle flute 
 
I $2 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Hung at his side. A sorrowful sad soul, 
 
 Such as sometimes he knows, who meets the gaze, 
 
 Mute, uncomplaining yet most pitiful, 
 
 Of one whom Nature, by some secret spite. 
 
 Has maimed and left imperfect ; or the pain 
 
 Which fills a poet's eyes. Beneath his robe 
 
 I seemed to see the scar of cruel stripes, 
 
 Too hastily concealed. Yet was he not 
 
 Wholly unhappy, but from out the core 
 
 Of suffering flowed a secret spring of joy, 
 
 Which mocked the droughts of Fate, and left him glad 
 
 And glorying in his sorrow. As I gazed 
 
 He raised his silent flute, and, half ashamed, 
 
 Blew a soft note ; and as I stayed awhile 
 
 I heard him thus discourse 
 
 " The flute is sweet 
 
 To gods and men, but sweeter far the lyre 
 And voice of a true singer. Shall I fear 
 To tell of that great trial, when I strove 
 And Phoebus conquered ? Nay, no shame it is 
 To bow to an immortal melody ; 
 But glory. 
 
 Once among the Phrygian hills 
 I lay a-musing, while the silly sheep 
 Wandered among the thyme upon the bank 
 Of a clear mountain stream, beneath the pines, 
 Safe hidden from the noon. A dreamy haze 
 Played on the uplands, but the hills were clear 
 In sunlight, and no cloud was on the sky. 
 It was the time when a deep silence comes 
 Upon the summer earth, and all the birds 
 Have ceased from singing, and the world is still 
 As midnight, and if any live thing move 
 Some fur-clad creature, or cool gliding snake 
 Within the pipy overgrowth of weeds, 
 The ear can catch the rustle, and the trees 
 
MARSYAS. 153 
 
 And earth and air are listening. As I lay, 
 Faintly, as in a dream, I seemed to hear 
 A tender music, like the ^Eolian chords, 
 Sound low within the woodland, whence the stream, 
 Flowed full, yet silent. Long, with ear to ground, 
 I hearkened ; and the sweet strain, fuller grown, 
 Rounder and clearer came, and danced along 
 In mirthful measure now, and now grown grave 
 In dying falls, and sweeter and more clear, 
 Tripping at nuptials and high revelry, 
 Wailing at burials, rapt in soaring thoughts, 
 Chanting strange sea-tales full of mystery, 
 Touching all chords of being, life and death, 
 Now rose, now sank, and always was divine, 
 So strange the music came. 
 
 Till, as I lay 
 
 Enraptured, shrill a sudden discord rang, 
 Then all the sounds were still. A lightning-flash, 
 As from a sun-kissed gem, revealed the wood ; 
 A noise of water smitten, and on the heights 
 A fair white fleece of cloud, which swiftly climbed 
 Into the furthest heaven. Then, as I mused, 
 Knowing a parting goddess, straight I saw 
 A wayward splendour float upon the stream, 
 And knew it for this jewelled flute, which paused 
 Before me on an eddy. It I snatched 
 Eager, and to my ardent lips I bore 
 The wonder, and behold, with the first breath 
 The first warm human breath, the silent strains, 
 The half-drowned notes which late the goddess blew, 
 Revived, and sounded clearer, sweeter far 
 Than mortal skill could make. So caring naught 
 I left my flocks to wander o'er the wastes 
 Untended, and the wolves and eagles seized 
 The tender lambs, but I was for my art 
 Naught else ; and though the high-pitched notes divine 
 
154 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Grew faint, yet something lingered, and at last 
 So sweet a note I sounded of my skill, 
 That all the Phrygian highlands, all the far 
 Hill villages, were fain to hear the strain, 
 Which the mad shepherd made. 
 
 Then, overbold, 
 
 And rapt in my new art, at last I dared 
 To challenge Phoebus' self. 
 
 'Twas a fair day 
 
 When sudden, on the mountain side, I saw 
 A train of fleecy clouds in a white band 
 Descending. Down the gleaming pinnacles 
 And difficult crags they floated, and the arch, 
 Drawn with its thousand rays against the sun, 
 Hung like a glory o'er them. Midst the pines 
 They clothed themselves with form, and straight I knew 
 The immortals. Young Apollo, with his lyre, 
 Kissed by the sun, and all the Muses clad 
 In robes of gleaming white ; then a great fear, 
 Yet mixed with joy, assailed me, for I knew 
 Myself a mortal equalled with the gods. 
 
 Ah me ! how fair they were ! how fair and dread 
 In face and form, they showed, when now they stayed 
 Upon the thymy slope, and the young god 
 Lay with his choir around him, beautiful 
 And bold as Youth and Dawn ! There was no cloud 
 Upon the sky, nor any sound at all 
 When I began my strain. No coward fear 
 Of what might come restrained me ; but an awe 
 Of those immortal eyes and ears divine 
 Looking and listening. All the earth seemed full 
 Of ears for me alone the woods, the fields, 
 The hills, the skies were listening. Scarce a sound 
 My flute might make ; such subtle harmonies 
 The silence seemed to weave round me and flout 
 
MARSYAS. 155 
 
 The half unuttered thought. Till last I blew, 
 As now, a hesitating note, and lo ! 
 The breath divine, lingering on mortal lips, 
 Hurried my soul along to such fair rhymes, 
 Sweeter than wont, that swift I knew my life 
 Rise up within me, and expand, and all 
 The human, which so nearly is divine, 
 Was glorified, and on the Muses' lips, 
 And in their lovely eyes, I saw a fair 
 Approval, and my soul in me was glad. 
 
 For all the strains I blew were strains of love 
 Love striving, love triumphant, love that lies 
 Within beloved arms, and wreathes his locks 
 With flowers, and lets the world go by and sings 
 Unheeding ; and I saw a kindly gleam 
 Within the Muses' eyes, who were, indeed, 
 Women, though god-like. 
 
 But upon the face 
 
 Of the young Sun-god only haughty scorn 
 Sate, and he swiftly struck his golden lyre, 
 And played the Song of Life ; and lo, I knew 
 My strain, how earthy ! Oh, to hear the young 
 Apollo playing ! and the hidden cells 
 And chambers of the universe displayed 
 Before the charmed sound ! I seemed to float 
 In some enchanted cave, where the wave dips 
 In from the sunlit sea, and floods its depths 
 With reflex hues of heaven. My soul was rapt 
 By that I heard, and dared to wish no more 
 For victory ; and yet because the sound 
 Of music that is born of human breath 
 Comes straighter from the soul than any strain 
 The hand alone can make ; therefore I knew, 
 With a mixed thrill of pity and delight, 
 T he nine immortal Sisters hardly touched 
 
1 56 THE EPIC OP HADES. 
 
 By that fine strain of music, as by mine, 
 And when the high lay trembled to its close, 
 Still doubting. 
 
 Then upon the Sun-god's face 
 
 There passed a cold proud smile. He swept his lyre 
 Once more, then laid it down, and with clear voice, 
 The voice of godhead, sang. Oh, ecstasy, 
 Oh happiness of him who once has heard 
 Apollo singing ! For his ears the sound 
 Of grosser music dies, and all the earth 
 Is full of subtle undertones, which change 
 The listener and transform him. As he sang 
 Of what I know not, but the music touched 
 Each chord of being I felt my secret life 
 Stand open to it, as the parched earth yawns 
 To drink the summer rain ; and at the call 
 Of those refreshing waters, all my thought 
 Stir from its dark and sunless depths, and burst 
 Into sweet, odorous flowers, and from their wells 
 Deep call to deep, and all the mystery 
 Of all that is, laid open. As he sang, 
 I saw the Nine, with lovely pitying eyes, 
 Sign ' He has conquered.' Yet I felt no pang 
 Of fear, only deep joy that I had heard 
 Such music while I lived, even though it brought 
 Torture and death. For what were it to lie 
 Sleek, crowned with roses, drinking vulgar praise, 
 And surfeited with offerings, the dull gift 
 Of ignorant hands all which I might have known 
 To this diviner failure ? Godlike 'tis 
 To climb upon the icy ledge, and fall 
 Where other footsteps dare not. So I knew 
 My fate, and it was near. 
 
 For to a pine 
 
 They bound me willing, and with cruel stripes 
 Tore me, and took my life. 
 
MARS Y AS. 157 
 
 But from my blood 
 
 Was born the stream of song, and on its flow 
 My poor flute, to the clear swift river borne, 
 Floated, and thence adown a lordlier tide 
 Into the deep, wide sea. I do not blame 
 Phoebus, or Nature which has set this bar 
 Betwixt success and failure, for I know 
 How far high failure overleaps the bound 
 Of low successes. Only suffering draws 
 The inner heart of song and can elicit 
 The perfumes of the soul. 'Twere not enough 
 To fail, for that were happiness to him 
 Who ever upward looks with reverent eye 
 And seeks but to admire. So, since the race 
 Of bards soars highest ; as who seek to show 
 Our lives as in a glass ; therefore it comes 
 That suffering weds with song, from him of old, 
 Who solaced his blank darkness with his lyre ; 
 Through all the story of neglect and scorn, 
 Necessity, sheer hunger, early death, 
 Which smite the singer still. Not only those 
 Who keep clear accents of the voice divine 
 Are honourable they are happy, indeed, 
 Whate'er the world has held but those who hear 
 Some fair faint echoes, though the crowd be deaf, 
 And see the white gods' garments on the hills, 
 Which the crowd sees not, though they may not find 
 Fit music for their thought ; they too are blest, 
 Not pitiable. Not from arrogant pride 
 Nor over-boldness fail they who have striven 
 To tell what they have heard, with voice too weak 
 For such high message. More it is than ease, 
 Palace and pomp, honours and luxuries, 
 To have seen white Presences upon the hills, 
 To have heard the voices of the Eternal Gods." 
 
158 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 So spake he, and I seemed to look on him, 
 Whose sad young eyes grow on us from the page 
 Of his own verse : who did himself to death ; 
 Or whom the dullard slew : or whom the sea 
 Rapt from us : and I passed without a word, 
 Slow, grave, with many musings. 
 
 Then I came 
 
 On one a maiden, meek with folded hands, 
 Seated against a rugged face of cliff, 
 In silent thought. Anon she raised her arms, 
 Her gleaming arms, above her on the rock, 
 With hands which clasped each other, till she showed 
 As in a statue, and her white robe fell 
 Down from her maiden shoulders, and I knew 
 The fair form as it seemed chained to the stone 
 By some invisible gyves, and named her name : 
 And then she raised her frightened eyes to mine 
 As one who, long expecting some great fear, 
 Scarce sees deliverance come. But when she saw 
 Only a kindly glance, a softer look 
 Came in them, and she answered to my thought 
 With a sweet voice and low. 
 
 " I did but muse 
 
 Upon the painful past, long dead and done, 
 Forgetting I was saved. 
 
 The angry clouds 
 
 Burst always on the low flat plains, and swept 
 The harvest to the ocean ; all the land 
 Was wasted. A great serpent from the deep, 
 Lifting his horrible head above their homes, 
 Devoured the children. And the people prayed 
 In vain to careless gods. 
 
ANDROMEDA. 159 
 
 On that dear land, 
 
 Which now was turned into a sullen sea, 
 Gazing in safety from the stately towers 
 Of my sire's palace, I, a princess, saw, 
 Lapt in soft luxury, within my bower 
 The wreck of humble homes come whirling by, 
 The drowning, bleating flocks, the bellowing herds, 
 The grain scarce husbanded by toiling hands 
 Upon the sunlit plain, rush to the sea, 
 With floating corpses. On the rain-swept hills 
 The remnant of the people huddled close, 
 Homeless and starving. All my being was filled 
 With pity for them, and I joyed to give 
 What food and shelter and compassionate hands 
 Of woman might. I took the little ones 
 And clasped them shivering to the virgin breast 
 Which knew no other touch but theirs, and gave 
 Raiment and food. My sire, not stern to me, 
 Smiled on me as he saw. My gentle mother, 
 Who loved me with a closer love than binds 
 A mother to her son ; and sunned herself 
 In my fresh beauty, seeing in my young gaze 
 Her own fair vanished youth ; doted on me, 
 And fain had kept my eyes from the sad sights 
 That pained them. But my heart was faint in me, 
 Seeing the ineffable miseries of life, 
 And that mysterious anger of the gods, 
 And helpless to allay them. All in vain 
 Were prayer and supplication, all in vain 
 The costly victims steamed. The vengeful clouds 
 Hid the fierce sky, and still the ruin came. 
 And wallowing his grim length within the flood, 
 Over the ravaged fields and homeless homes, 
 The fell sea-monster raged, sating his jaws 
 With blood and rapine. 
 
160 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Then to the dread shrine 
 
 Of Ammon went the priests, and reverend chiefs 
 Of all the nation. White-robed, at their head, 
 Went slow my royal sire. The oracle 
 Spoke clear, not as ofttimes in words obscure, 
 Ambiguous. And as we stood to meet 
 The suppliants she who bare me, with her head 
 Upon my neck we cheerful and with song 
 Welcomed their swift return ; auguring well 
 From such a quick-sped mission. 
 
 But my sire 
 
 Hid his face from me, and the crowd of priests 
 And nobles looked not at us. And no word 
 Was spoken till at last one drew a scroll 
 And gave it to the queen, who straightway swooned, 
 Having read it, on my breast, and then I saw, 
 I the young girl whose soft life scarcely knew 
 Shadow of sorrow, I whose heart was full 
 Of pity for the rest, what doom was mine. 
 
 Jt; 
 
 I think I hardly knew in that dread hour 
 The fear that came anon ; I was transformed 
 Into a champion of my race, made strong 
 With a new courage, glorying to meet, 
 In all the ecstasy of sacrifice, 
 Death face to face. Some god, I know not who, 
 O'erspread me, and despite my mother's tears 
 And my stern father's grief, I met my fate 
 Unshrinking. 
 
 When the moon rose clear from cloud 
 Once more again upon the midnight sea, 
 And that vast watery plain, where were before 
 Hundreds of happy homes, and well-tilled fields, 
 And purple vineyards ; from my father's towers 
 The white procession went along the paths, 
 The high cliff paths, which well I loved of old, 
 
ANDROMEDA. 161 
 
 Among the myrtles. Priests with censers went 
 And offerings, robed in white, and round their brows 
 The sacred fillet. With his nobles walked 
 My sire with breaking heart. My mother clung 
 To me the victim, and the young girls went 
 With wailing and with tears. A solemn strain 
 The soft flutes sounded, as we went by night 
 To a wild headland, rock-based in the sea. 
 
 There on a sea-worn rock, upon the verge, 
 To some rude stanchions, high above my head, 
 They bound me. Out at sea, a black reef rose, 
 Washed by the constant surge, wherein a cave 
 Harboured deep down the monster. The sad queen 
 Would scarcely leave me, though the priests shrank back 
 In terror. Last, torn from my endless kiss, 
 Swooning they bore her upwards. All my robe 
 Fell from my lifted arms, and left displayed 
 The virgin treasure of my breasts ; and then 
 The white procession through the moonlight streamed 
 Upwards, and soon their soft flutes sounded low 
 Upon the high lawns, leaving me alone. 
 
 There stood I in the moonlight, left alone 
 Against the sea-worn rock. Hardly I knew, 
 Seeing only the bright moon and summer sea, 
 Which gently heaved and surged, and kissed the ledge 
 With smooth warm tides, what fate was mine. I seemed, 
 Soothed by the quiet, to be musing still 
 Within my maiden chamber, and to watch 
 The moonlight thro' my lattice. Then again 
 Fear came, and then the pride of sacrifice 
 Filled me, as on the high cliff lawns I heard 
 The wailing cries, the chanted liturgies, 
 And knew me bound forsaken to the rock, 
 And saw the monster-haunted depths of sea. 
 
 M 
 
1 62 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 So all night long upon the sandy shores 
 I heard the hollow murmur of the wave, 
 And all night long the hidden sea caves made 
 A ghostly echo ; and the sea birds mewed 
 Around me ; once I heard a mocking laugh, 
 As of some scornful Nereid ; once the waters 
 Broke louder on the scarped reefs, and ebbed 
 As if the monster coming ; but again 
 He came not, and the dead moon sank, and still 
 Only upon the cliffs the wails, the chants, 
 And I forsaken on my sea-worn rock, 
 And lo, the monster-haunted depths of sea. 
 
 Till at the dead dark hour before the dawn, 
 When sick men die, and scarcely fear itself 
 Bore up my weary eyelids, a great surge 
 Burst on the rock, and slowly, as it seemed, 
 The sea sucked downward to its depths, laid bare 
 The hidden reefs, and then before my gaze 
 Oh, terrible ! a huge and loathsome snake 
 Lifted his dreadful crest and scaly side 
 Above the wave, in bulk and length so large, 
 Coil after hideous coil, that scarce the eye 
 Could measure its full horror ; the great jaws 
 Dropped as with gore ; the large and furious eyes 
 Were fired with blood and lust. Nearer he came, 
 And slowly, with a devilish glare, more near, 
 Till his hot foetor choked me, and his tongue, 
 Forked horribly from out his poisonous jaws, 
 Played lightning-like around me. For awhile 
 I swooned, and when I knew my life again, 
 Death's bitterness was past. 
 
 Then with a bound 
 
 Leaped up the broad red sun above the sea, 
 And lit the horrid fulgour of his scales, 
 And struck upon the rock ; till as I turned 
 
ANDROMEDA. 163 
 
 My head in the last agony of death, 
 
 I knew a brilliant sunbeam swiftly leaping 
 
 Downward from crag to crag, and felt new hope 
 
 Where all was hopeless. On the hills a shout 
 
 Of joy, and on the rocks the ring of mail ; 
 
 And while the hungry serpent's gloating eyes 
 
 Were fixed on me, a knight in casque of gold 
 
 And blazing shield, who with his flashing blade 
 
 Fell on the monster. Long the conflict raged, 
 
 Till all the rocks were red with blood and slime, 
 
 And yet my champion from those horrible jaws 
 
 And dreadful coils was scatheless. Zeus his sire 
 
 Protected, and the awful shield he bore 
 
 Withered the monster's life and left him cold ; 
 
 Dragging his helpless length and grovelling crest : 
 
 And o'er his glaring eyes the films of death 
 
 Crept, and his writhing flank and hiss of hate 
 
 The great deep swallowed down, and blood and spume 
 
 Rose on the waves ; and a strange wailing cry 
 
 Resounded o'er the waters, and the sea 
 
 Bellowed within its hollow-sounding caves. 
 
 Then knew I, I was saved, and with me all 
 The people. From my wrists he loosed the gyves, 
 My hero ; and within his godlike arms 
 Bore me by slippery rock and difficult path, 
 To where my mother prayed. There was no need 
 To ask my love. Without a spoken word 
 Love lit his fires within me. My young heart 
 Went forth, Love calling, and I gave him all . 
 
 Dost thou then wonder that the memory 
 Of this supreme brief moment lingers still, 
 While all the happy uneventful years 
 Of wedded life, and all the fair young growth 
 Of offspring, and the tranquil later joys, 
 
164 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Nay, even the fierce eventful fight which raged 
 
 When we were wedded, fade and are deceased, 
 
 Lost in the irrecoverable past ? 
 
 Nay, 'tis not strange. Always the memory 
 
 Of overwhelming perils or great joys, 
 
 Avoided or enjoyed, writes its own trace 
 
 With such deep characters upon our lives, 
 
 That all the rest are blotted. In this place, 
 
 Where is not action, thought, or count of time, 
 
 It is not weary as it were on earth, 
 
 To dwell on these old memories. Time is born 
 
 Of dawns and sunsets, days that wax and wane 
 
 And stamp themselves upon the yielding face 
 
 Of fleeting human life ; but here there is 
 
 Morning nor evening, act nor suffering, 
 
 But only one unchanging Present holds 
 
 Our being suspended. One blest day indeed, 
 
 Or centuries ago or yesterday, 
 
 There came among us one who was Divine, 
 
 Not as our gods, joyous and breathing strength 
 
 And careless life, but crowned with a new crown 
 
 Of suffering, and a great light came with him, 
 
 And with him he brought Time and a new sense 
 
 Of dim, long-vanished years ; and since he passed 
 
 I seem to see new meaning in my fate, 
 
 And all the deeds I tell of. Evermore 
 
 The young life conies, bound to the cruel rocks 
 
 Alone. Before it the unfathomed sea 
 
 Smiles, filled with monstrous growths that wait to take 
 
 Its innocence. Far off the voice and hand 
 
 Of love kneel by in agony, and entreat 
 
 The seeming careless gods. Still when the deep 
 
 Shows smoothest, lo, the deadly fangs and coils 
 
 Lurk near, to smite with death. And down the crags 
 
 Of Duty, like a sudden sunbeam, springs 
 
 Some golden soul half mortal, half divine, 
 
NARCISSUS. 165 
 
 Heaven-sent, and breaks the chain ; and evermore 
 For sacrifice they die, through sacrifice 
 They live, and are for others, and no grief, 
 Which smites the humblest but reverberates 
 Thro' all the close-set files of life, and takes 
 The princely soul that from its royal towers 
 Looks down and sees the sorrow. 
 
 Sir, farewell ! 
 
 If thou shouldst meet my children on the earth 
 Or here, for maybe it is long ago 
 Since I and they were living, say to them 
 I only muse a little here, and wait 
 The waking." 
 
 And her lifted arms sank down 
 Upon her knees, and as I passed I saw her 
 Gazing with soft rapt eyes, and on her lips 
 A smile as of a saint. 
 
 By a still sullen pool, 
 Into its dark depths gazing, lay the ghost 
 Whom next I passed. In form, a comely youth, 
 Scarce passed from boyhood. Golden curls were his, 
 And wide blue eyes. The semblance of a smile 
 Lighted his lip a girl's but for the down 
 Which hardly shaded it ; but the pale cheek 
 Was soft as any maiden's, and his robe 
 Was virginal, and at his breast he bore 
 The perfumed amber cup which, when March comes, 
 Gems the dry woods and windy wolds, and speaks 
 The resurrection. 
 
 Looking up, he said : 
 
 " Methought I saw her then, my love, my fair, 
 My beauty, my ideal ; the dim clouds 
 Lifted, methought, a little or was it 
 Fond Fancy only ? For I know that here 
 
165 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 No sunbeam cleaves the twilight, but a mist 
 Creeps over all the sky and fields and pools, 
 And blots them ; and I know I seek in vain 
 My earth-sought beauty, nor can Fancy bring 
 An answer to my thought from these blind depths 
 And unawakened skies. Yet has use made 
 The quest so precious, that I keep it here, 
 Well knowing it is vain. 
 
 On the old earth 
 
 'Twas otherwise, when in fair Thessaly 
 I walked regardless of all nymphs who sought 
 My love, but sought in vain, whether it were 
 Dryad or Naiad from the woods or streams, 
 Or white -robed Oread fleeting on the side 
 Of fair Olympus, echoing back my sighs, 
 In vain, for through the mountains day by day 
 I wandered, and along the foaming brooks, 
 And by the pine-woods dry, and never took 
 A thought for love, nor ever 'mid the throng 
 Of loving nymphs who knew me beautiful 
 I dallied, unregarding ; till they said 
 Some died for love of me, who loved not one. 
 And yet I cared not, wandering still alone 
 Amid the mountains by the scented pines. 
 
 Till one fair day, when all the hills were still, 
 Nor any breeze made murmur through the boughs, 
 Nor cloud was on the heavens, I wandered slow, 
 Leaving the nymphs who fain with dance and song 
 Had kept me 'midst the glades, and strayed away 
 Among the pines, enwrapt in fantasy, 
 And by the beechen dells which clothe the feet 
 Of fair Olympus, wrapt in fantasy, 
 Weaving the thin and unembodied shapes 
 Which Fancy loves to body forth, and leave 
 In marble or in song ; and so strayed down 
 
NARCISSUS. 167 
 
 To a low sheltered vale above the plains, 
 
 Where the lush grass grew thick, and the stream stayed 
 
 Its garrulous tongue ; and last upon the bank 
 
 Of a still pool I came, where seemed no flow 
 
 Of water, but the depths were clear as air, 
 
 And nothing but the silvery gleaming side 
 
 Of tiny fishes stirred. There lay I down 
 
 Upon the flowery bank, and scanned the deep, 
 
 Half in a waking dream. 
 
 Then swift there rose, 
 
 From those enchanted depths, a face more fair 
 Than ever I had dreamt of, and I knew 
 My sweet long-sought ideal : the thick curls, 
 Like these, were golden, and the white robe showed 
 Like this ; but for the wondrous eyes and lips, 
 The tender loving glance, the sunny smile 
 Upon the rosy mouth, these knew I not, 
 Not even in dreams ; and yet I seemed to trace 
 Myself within them too, as who should find 
 His former self expunged, and him transformed 
 To some high thin ideal, separate 
 From what he was, by some invisible bar, 
 And yet the same in difference. As I moved 
 My arms to clasp her to me, lo ! she moved 
 Her eager arms to mine, smiled to my smile, 
 Looked love to love, and answered longing eyes 
 With longing. When my full heart burst in words, 
 ' Dearest, I love thee,' lo ! the lovely lips, 
 ' Dearest, I love thee,' sighed, and through the air 
 The love-lorn echo rang. But when I longed 
 To answer kiss with kiss, and stooped my lips 
 To her sweet lips in that long thrill which strains 
 Soul unto soul, the cold lymph came between 
 And chilled our love, and kept us separate souls 
 Which fain would mingle, and the self-same heaven 
 Rose, a blue vault above us, and no shade 
 
1 68 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Of earthly thing obscured us, as we lay 
 Two reflex souls, one and yet different, 
 Two sundered souls longing to be at one. 
 
 There, all day long, until the light was gone 
 And took my love away, I lay and loved 
 The image, and when night was come, ' Farewell,' 
 I whispered, and she whispered back, ' Farewell, 3 
 With oh, such yearning ! Many a day we spent 
 By that clear pool together all day long. 
 And many a clouded hour on the wet grass 
 I lay beneath the rain, and saw her not, 
 And sickened for her ; and sometimes the pool 
 Was thick with flood, and hid her ; and sometimes 
 Some rude wind ruffled those clear wells, and left 
 But glimpses of her, and I rose at eve 
 Unsatisfied, a chill in my dead limbs 
 And fever at my heart : until, too soon ! 
 The summer faded, and the skies were hid, 
 And my love came not, but a quenchless thirst 
 Wasted my life. And all the winter long 
 The bright sun shone not, or the thick ribbed ice 
 Obscured her, and I pined for her, and knew 
 My life ebb from me, till I grew too weak 
 To seek her, fearing I should see no more 
 My dear. And so the long dead winter waned 
 And the slow spring came back. 
 
 And one blithe day, 
 
 When life was in the woods, and the birds sang, 
 And soft airs fanned the hills, I knew again 
 Some gleam of hope within me, and again 
 With feeble force crawled forth, and felt the spring 
 Blossom within me : and the flower-starred glades, 
 The bursting trees, the building nests, the songs, 
 The hurry of life revived me ; and I crept, 
 Ghost like, amid the joy, until I flung 
 
NARCISSUS. 169 
 
 My panting frame, and weary nerveless limbs, 
 Down by the cold still pool. 
 
 And lo ! I saw 
 
 My love once more, not beauteous as of old, 
 But oh, how changed ! the fair young cheek grown pale, 
 The great eyes, larger than of yore, gaze forth 
 With a sad yearning look ; and a great pain 
 And pity took me which were more than love, 
 And with a loud and wailing voice I cried, 
 ' Dearest, I come again. I pine for thee, 3 
 And swift she answered back, 1 1 pine for thee ; ' 
 ' Come to me, oh, my own,' I cried, and she 
 ' Come to me, oh, my own.' Then with a cry 
 Of love I joined myself to her, and plunged 
 Beneath the icy surface with a kiss, 
 And fainted, and am here. 
 
 And now, indeed, 
 
 I know not if it was myself I sought, 
 As some tell, or another. For I hold 
 That what we seek is but our other self, 
 Other and higher, neither wholly like 
 Nor wholly different, the half-life the gods 
 Retained when half was given one the man 
 And one the woman ; and I longed to round 
 The imperfect essence by its complement, 
 For only thus the perfect life stands forth 
 Whole, self-sufficing. Worse it is to live 
 Ill-mated than imperfect, and to move 
 From a false centre, not a perfect sphere, 
 But with a crooked bias sent oblique 
 Athwart life's furrows. 'Twas myself, indeed, 
 Thus only that I sought, that lovers use 
 To see in that they love, not that which is, 
 But that their fancy feigns, and view themselves 
 Reflected in their love, yet glorified, 
 And finer and more pure. 
 
170 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Wherefore it is : 
 
 All love which finds its own ideal mate 
 Is happy happy that which gives itself 
 Unto itself, and keeps, through long calm years, 
 The tranquil image in its eyes, and knows 
 Fulfilment and is blest, and day by day 
 Wears love like a white flower, nor holds it less 
 Though sharp winds bite, or hot suns wither, or age 
 Sully its perfect whiteness, but inhales 
 Its fragrance, and is glad. But happier still 
 He who long seeks a high goal unattained, 
 And wearies for it all his days, nor knows 
 Possession sate his thirst, but still pursues 
 The fleeting loveliness now seen, now lost, 
 But evermore grown fairer, till at last 
 He stretches forth his arms and takes the fair 
 In one long rapture, and its name is Death." 
 
 Thus he ; and seeing me stand grave : " Farewell. 
 If ever thou shouldst happen on a wood 
 In Thessaly, upon the plain-ward spurs 
 Of fair Olympus, take the path which winds 
 Through the close vale, and thou shalt see the pool 
 Where once I found my life. And if in Spring 
 Thou go there, round the margin thou shalt know 
 These amber blooms bend meekly, smiling down 
 Upon the crystal surface. Pluck them not. 
 But kneel a little while, and breathe a prayer 
 To the young god of Love, and let them be. 
 For in those tender flowers is hid the life 
 That once was mine. All things are bound in one 
 In earth and heaven, nor is there any gulf 
 'Twixt things that live, the flower that was a life, 
 The life that is a flower, but one sure chain 
 Binds all, as now I know. 
 
PSYCHE. 171 
 
 If there are still 
 
 Fair Oreads on the hills, say to them, sir, 
 They must no longer pine for me, but find 
 Some worthier lover, who can love again ; 
 For I have found my love." 
 
 And to the pool 
 
 He turned, and gazed with dreaming eyes, and showed 
 Fair as an angel. 
 
 Then the pomp of life 
 Began once more, and left me there alone 
 Amid the awaking world. 
 
 Nay, not alone. 
 
 One fair shade lingered in the fuller day, 
 The last to come, when now my dream had grown 
 Half mixed with waking thoughts, as grows a dream 
 In summer mornings when the broader light 
 Dazzles the sleeper's eyes ; and is most fair 
 Of all and best remembered, and becomes 
 Part of our waking life, when older dreams 
 Grow fainter, and are fled. So this remained 
 The fairest of the visions that I knew, 
 Most precious and most dear. 
 
 The increasing light 
 
 Shone through her, finer than the thinnest shade, 
 And yet most full of beauty ; golden wings, 
 From her fair shoulders springing, seemed to raise 
 Her stainless feet from the gross earth and lift 
 Their wearer into air ; and in her eyes 
 Was such fair glance as conies from virgin love, 
 Long chastened and triumphant. Every soil 
 Of life had vanished from her, and she showed 
 As one who walks a saint already on earth, 
 Virgin or mother. Immortality 
 
172 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Breathed from those radiant eyes which yet had passed 
 Between the gates of death. I seemed to hear 
 The Soul of mortals speaking : 
 
 " I was born 
 
 Of a great race and mighty, and was grown 
 Fair, as they said, and good, and kept a life 
 Pure from all stain of passion. Love I knew not, 
 Who was absorbed in duty ; and the Queen, 
 Of gods and men, seeing my life more calm 
 Than human, hating my impassive heart, 
 Sent down her perfect son in wrath to earth, 
 And bade him break me. 
 
 But when Eros came, 
 It did repent him of the task, for Love 
 Is kin to Duty. 
 
 And within my life 
 
 I knew miraculous change, and a soft flame 
 Wherefrom the snows of Duty flushed to rose, 
 And the chill icy depths of mind were stirred 
 By a warm tide of passion. Long I lived 
 Not knowing what had been, nor recognized 
 A Presence walking with me through my life, 
 As if by night, his face and form concealed : 
 A gracious voice alone, which none but I 
 Might hear, sustained me, and its name was Love. 
 
 Not as the earthly loves which throb and flush 
 Round earthly shrines was mine, but a pure spirit, 
 Lovelier than all embodied love, more pure 
 And wonderful ; but never on his eyes 
 I looked, which still were hidden, and I knew not 
 The fashion of his nature ; for by night, 
 When visual eyes are blind, but the soul sees, 
 Came he, and bade me think not to make search 
 Or whence he came or wherefore. Nor knew I 
 His name. And always ere the coming day, 
 
PSYCHE. 173 
 
 As if he were the Sun-god, lingering 
 
 With some too well-loved maiden, he would rise 
 
 And vanish until eve. But all my being 
 
 Thrilled with my fair unearthly visitant 
 
 To higher duty and more glorious meed 
 
 Of action than of old, for it was Love 
 
 That came to me, who might not know his name. 
 
 Thus, ever rapt by dreams divine, I knew 
 The scorn that comes from weaker souls, which miss, 
 Being too low of nature, the great joy 
 Revealed to others higher ; nay, my sisters, 
 Who being of one blood with me, made choice 
 To tread the flowery ways of daily life, 
 Grew jealous of me, bidding me take heed 
 Lest haply 'twas some monstrous fiend I loved, 
 Such as in fable ofttimes sought and won 
 The innocent hearts of maids. Long time I held 
 My love too dear for doubt, who was so sweet 
 And lovable. But at the last the sneers, 
 The mystery which hid him, the swift flight 
 Before the coming dawn, the shape concealed, 
 The curious girlish heart, tormented me 
 With an unsatisfied thirst. Not his own words : 
 ' Dear, I am with thee only while I keep 
 My visage hidden ; and if thou once shouldst see 
 My face, I must forsake thee : the high gods 
 Link Love with Faith, and he withdraws himself 
 From the full gaze of Knowledge ' not even these 
 Could cure me of my longing, or the fear 
 Those mocking voices worked : who fain would learn 
 The worst that might befall. 
 
 And one sad night, 
 
 Just ere the day leapt from the hills and brought 
 The hour when he should go : with tremulous hands, 
 Lighting my midnight lamp in fear, I stood 
 
174 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Long time uncertain, and at length turned round 
 
 And gazed upon my love. He lay asleep, 
 
 And oh, how fair he was ! The flickering light 
 
 Fell on the fairest of the gods, stretched out 
 
 In happy slumber. Looking on his locks 
 
 Of gold, and faultless face and smile, and limbs 
 
 Made perfect, a great joy and trembling took me 
 
 Who was most blest of women, and in awe 
 
 And fear I stooped to kiss him. One warm drop 
 
 From the full lamp within my trembling hand, 
 
 Or a glad tear from my too happy eyes, 
 
 Fell on his shoulder. 
 
 Then the god unclosed 
 His lovely eyes, and with great pity spake : 
 1 Farewell ! There is no Love except with Faith, 
 And thine is dead ! Farewell ! I come no more.' 
 And straightway from the hills the pitiless sun 
 Leapt up, and as I clasped my love again, 
 The lovely vision faded from his place, 
 And came no more. 
 
 Then I, with breaking heart, 
 Knowing my life laid waste by my own hand, 
 Went forth and would have sought to hide my life 
 Within the stream of Death ; but Death came not 
 To aid me who not yet was meet for Death. 
 
 Then finding that Love came not back to me, 
 I thought that in the temples of the gods 
 Haply he dwelt, and so from fane to fane 
 I wandered over earth, and knelt in each, 
 Enquiring for my Love ; and I would ask 
 The priests and worshippers, ' Is this Love's shrine? 
 Sirs, have you seen the god ? ' But never at all 
 I found him. For some answered, ' This is called 
 The Shrine of Knowledge ; ' and another, * This, 
 The Shrine of Beauty ; ' and another, ' Strength ; ' 
 
PSYCHE. 175 
 
 And yet another, * Youth.' And I would kneel 
 And say a prayer to my Love, and rise 
 And seek another. Long, o'er land and sea, 
 I wandered, till I was not young or fair, 
 Grown wretched, seeking my lost Love ; and last, 
 Came to the smiling, hateful shrine where ruled 
 The queen of earthly love and all delight, 
 Cypris, but knelt not there, but asked of one 
 Who seemed her priest, if Eros dwelt with her. 
 
 Then to the subtle-smiling goddess' self 
 They led me. She with hatred in her eyes : 
 ' What ! thou to seek for Love, who art grown thin 
 And pale with watching ! He is not for thee. 
 What Love is left for such ? Thou didst despise 
 Love, and didst dwell apart. Love sits within 
 The young maid's eyes, making them beautiful. 
 Love is for youth, and joy, and happiness ; 
 And not for withered lives. Ho ! bind her fast. 
 Take her and set her to the vilest tasks, 
 And bend her pride by solitude and tears, 
 Who will not kneel to me, but dares to seek 
 A disembodied love. My son has gone, 
 Leaving thee for thy fault, and thou shalt know 
 The misery of my thralls. 
 
 Then in her house 
 
 They bound me to hard tasks and vile, and shut 
 My life from honour, chained among her slaves 
 And lowest ministers, taking despite 
 And injury for food, and set to bind 
 Their wounds whom she had tortured, and to feed 
 The pitiful lives which in her prisons pent 
 Languished in hopeless pain. There is no sight 
 Of suffering but I saw it, and was set 
 To succour it ; and all my woman's heart 
 Was torn with the uncounted miseries 
 
176 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Which ruthless love has wreaked; and dwelt long time 
 In groanings and in tears. 
 
 And then, oh joy ! 
 
 Oh miracle ! once more again, once more ! 
 I felt Love's arms around me, and the kiss 
 Of Love upon my lips, and in the chill 
 Of deepest prison cells, 'mid vilest tasks, 
 The glow of his sweet breath, and the warm touch 
 Of his invisible hand, and his sweet voice, 
 Ay, sweeter than of old, and tenderer, 
 Speak to me, pierce me, hold me, fold me round 
 With arms Divine, till all the sordid earth 
 Was hued like heaven, and Life's dull prison-house 
 Turned to a golden palace, and those low tasks 
 Grew to be higher works and nobler gains 
 Than any gains of knowledge, and at last 
 He whispered softly, ' Dear, unclose thine eyes, 
 Thou mayest look on me now. I go no more, 
 But am thine own for ever.* 
 
 Then with wings 
 
 Of gold we soared, I looking in his eyes, 
 Over yon dark broad river, and this dim land, 
 Scarce for an instant staying till we reached 
 The inmost courts of heaven. 
 
 But sometimes still 
 
 I come here for a little, and speak a word 
 Of peace to those who wait. The slow wheel turns, 
 The cycles round themselves and grow complete, 
 The world's year whitens to the harvest-tide, 
 And one word only am I sent to say 
 To those dear souls, who wait here, or who yet 
 Breathe earthly air one universal word 
 To all things living, and the word is * Love." 1 
 
 Then soared she visibly before my gaze, 
 And the heavens took her, and I knew my eyes 
 
ATHEN&. 177 
 
 Had seen the Soul of man, the deathless Soul, 
 Defeated, struggling, purified, and blest. 
 
 BOOK III. OLYMPUS. 
 
 But while I stood 
 
 Expectant, lo ! a fair pale form drew near 
 With front severe, and wide blue eyes which bore 
 Mild wisdom in their gaze. Clear purity 
 Shone from her not the young-eyed innocence 
 Of her whom first I saw, but that which comes 
 From wider knowledge, which restrains the tide 
 Of passionate youth, and leads the musing soul 
 By the calm deeps of Wisdom. And I knew 
 My eyes had seen the fair, the virgin Queen, 
 Who once within her shining Parthenon 
 Beheld the sages kneel. 
 
 She with clear voice 
 
 And coldly sweet, yet with a softness too, 
 Such as befits a virgin : 
 
 " She doth right 
 
 To boast her sway, my sister, seeing indeed 
 That all things are as by a double law, 
 And from a double root the tree of Life 
 Springs up to the face of heaven. Body and Soul, 
 Matter and Spirit, lower joys of Sense 
 And higher joys of Thought, I know that both 
 Build up the shrine of Being. The brute sense 
 Leaves man a brute ; but, winged with soaring thought, 
 Mounts to high heaven. The unembodied spirit, 
 Dwelling alone, unmated, void of sense, 
 Shows impotent. And yet I know there is, 
 Far off, but not too far for mortal reach, 
 A calmer height, where, nearer to the stars, 
 
 N 
 
178 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Thought sits alone and gazes with rapt gaze, 
 
 A large-eyed maiden in a robe of white, 
 
 Who brings the light of Knowledge down, and draws 
 
 To her pontifical eyes a bridge of gold, 
 
 Which spans from earth to heaven. 
 
 For what were life, 
 
 If things of sense were all, for those large souls 
 And high, whom grudging Nature has shut fast 
 Within unlovely forms, or from whose life 
 The circuit of the rapid gliding years 
 Steals the brief gift of beauty ? Shall men hold 
 With idle singers, all the treasure of hope 
 Is lost with youth swift-fleeting, treacherous youth, 
 Which fades and flies before the ripening brain 
 Crowns life with Wisdom's crown ? Nay, even in youth, 
 Is it not more to tread the difficult heights 
 Alone the cold free heights and mark the vale 
 Lie breathless in the glare, or hidden and blurred 
 By cloud and storm ; or pestilence and war 
 Creep on with blood and death ; while the soul dwells 
 Apart upon the peaks, outfronts the sun 
 As the eagle does, or takes the coming dawn 
 While all the vale is dark, and knows the springs 
 Of tiny rivulets hurrying from the snows, 
 Which soon shall swell to vast resistless floods, 
 And feed the Oceans which divide the World ? 
 
 Oh, ecstasy ! oh, wonder ! oh, delight ! 
 Which neither the slow-withering wear of Time, 
 That takes all else the smooth and rounded cheek 
 Of youth ; the lightsome step ; the warm young heart 
 Which beats for love or friend ; the treasure of hope 
 Immeasurable ; the quick-coursing blood 
 Which makes it joy to be, ay, takes them all 
 Or makes them naught nor yet satiety 
 Born of too full possession, takes or mars ! 
 
ATHENE. 179 
 
 Oh, fair delight of learning ! which grows great 
 
 And stronger and more keen, for slower limbs, 
 
 And dimmer eyes and loneliness, and loss 
 
 Of lower good wealth, friendship, ay, and Love 
 
 When the swift soul, turning its weary gaze 
 
 From the old vanished joys, projects itself 
 
 Into the void and floats in empty space, 
 
 Striving to reach the mystic source of Things, 
 
 The secrets of the earth and sea and air, 
 
 The Law that binds the process of the suns, 
 
 The awful depths of Mind and Thought ; the prime 
 
 Unfathomable mystery of God ! 
 
 Is there, then, any who holds my worship cold 
 And lifeless ? Nay, but 'tis the light which cheers 
 The waning life ! Love thou thy love, brave youth ! 
 Cleave to thy love, fair maid ! it is the Law 
 Which dominates the world, that bids ye use 
 Your nature ; but, when now the fuller tide 
 Slackens a little, turn your calmer eyes 
 To the fair page of Knowledge. It is power 
 I give, and power is precious. It is strength 
 To live four-square, careless of outward shows, 
 And self-sufficing. It is clearer sight 
 To know the rule of life, the Eternal scheme ; 
 And, knowing it, to do and not to err, 
 And, doing, to be blest." 
 
 The calm voice soared 
 Higher and higher to the close ; the cold 
 Clear accents, fired as by a hidden fire, 
 Glowed into life and tenderness, and throbbed 
 As with some spiritual ecstasy 
 Sweeter than that of Love. 
 
i8o THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 But as they died, 
 
 I heard an ampler voice ; and looking, marked 
 A fair and gracious form. She seemed a Queen 
 Who ruled o'er gods and men ; the majesty 
 Of perfect womanhood. No opening bud 
 Of beauty, but the full consummate flower 
 Was hers ; and from her mild large eyes looked forth 
 Gentle command, and motherhood, and home, 
 And pure affection. Awe and reverence 
 O'erspread me, as I knew my eyes had looked 
 On sovereign Herd, mother of the gods. 
 
 She, with clear, rounded utterance, sweet and calm: 
 " I know the charm of stainless Innocence: 
 I know Love's fruit is good and fair to see 
 And taste, if any gain it, and I know 
 How brief Youth's Passion-tide, which when it ebbs 
 Leaves Life athirst for Knowledge, and I know 
 How fair the realm of Mind, where the keen soul 
 Yearning to rise, wings its impetuous way 
 Beyond the bounds of Thought ; and yet there is 
 A higher bliss than theirs, which best befits 
 A mortal life, compact of Body and Soul, 
 And therefore double-natured a calm path 
 Which lies before the feet, thro' common ways 
 And undistinguished crowds of toiling men, 
 And yet is hard to tread, tho' seeming smooth, 
 And yet, tho' level, finds a worthier crown. 
 
 For Knowledge is a steep which few may climb, 
 While Duty is a path which all may tread. 
 And if the goal of Life and Thought be this, 
 How best to speed the mighty scheme, which still 
 Fares onward day by day the Life of the World, 
 Which is the sum of petty lives, that wane 
 And die so this may live how then shall each 
 
HERE. 181 
 
 Of that great multitude of faithful souls 
 Who walk not on the heights, fulfil himself, 
 But by the duteous Life which looks not forth 
 Beyond its narrow sphere, and finds its work, 
 And works it out ; content, this done, to fall 
 And perish, if Fate will, so the great Scheme 
 Goes onward ? 
 
 Wherefore am I Queen in Heaven 
 And Earth, whose realm is Duty, bearing rule 
 More constant and more wide than those whose words 
 Thou heardest last. Mine are the striving souls 
 Of fathers plodding day by day obscure 
 And unrewarded, save of their own hearts, 
 Mid wranglings of the Forum or the mart ; 
 Who long for joys of Thought, and yet must toil 
 Unmurmuring thro' dull lives from youth to age ; 
 Who haply might have worn instead the crown 
 Of Honour and of Fame : mine the fair mothers 
 Who, for the love of children and of home, 
 Tho' passion dies, expend their careful years 
 In loving labour sweetened by the sense 
 Of Duty : mine the statesman who toils on 
 Thro' vigilant nights and days, guiding his State, 
 Yet finds no gratitude ; and those white souls 
 Who give themselves for others all their years 
 In trivial tasks of Pity. The fine growths 
 Of Man and Time are mine, and spend themselves 
 For me and for the mystical End which lies 
 Beyond their gaze and mine, and yet is good, 
 Tho' hidden from men and gods. 
 
 For as the flower 
 
 Of the tiger-lily gay with varied hues 
 Is for a day, then fades and leaves behind 
 Fairness nor fruit, while the green tiny tuft 
 Swells to the purple of the clustering grape 
 Or golden waves of wheat ; so lives of men 
 
182 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Which show most splendid, fade and are deceased 
 
 And leave no trace ; while those, unmarked, unseen, 
 
 Which no man recks of, rear the stately tree 
 
 Of Knowledge, not for itself sought out, but found 
 
 In the dusty ways of life a fairer growth 
 
 Than springs in cloistered shades ; and from the sum 
 
 Of Duty, blooms sweeter and more divine 
 
 The fair ideal of the Race, than crowns 
 
 The glittering gains of Learning. 
 
 Life, full life, 
 
 Full-flowered, full- fruited, reared from homely earth, 
 Rooted in duty, and thro' long calm years 
 Bearing its load of healthful energies ; 
 Stretching its arms on all sides ; fed with dews 
 Of cheerful sacrifice, and clouds of care, 
 And rain of useful tears ; warmed by the sun 
 Of calm affection, till it breathes itself 
 In perfume to the heavens this is the prize 
 I hold most dear, more precious than the fruit 
 Of Knowledge or of Love." 
 
 The goddess ceased 
 
 As dies some gracious harmony, the child 
 Of wedded themes which single and alone 
 Were discords, but united breathe a sound 
 Sweet as the sounds of heaven. 
 
 And then stood forth 
 
 The last of the gods I saw, the first in place 
 And dignity and beauty, the young god 
 Who grows not old, the Light of Heaven and Earth, 
 The Worker from afar, who darts the fire 
 Of inspiration on the bard and bathes 
 The world in hues of heaven the golden link 
 Between High God and Man. 
 
APOLLO. 183 
 
 With a sweet voice 
 
 Whose every note was perfect melody 
 The melody has fled, the words remain 
 Apollo sang : 
 
 " I know how fair the face 
 Of Purity ; I know the treasure of Strength ; 
 I know the charm of Love, the calmer grace 
 Of Wisdom and of Duteous well-spent lives : 
 And yet there is a loftier height than these. 
 
 There is a Height higher than mortal thought ; 
 There is a Love warmer than mortal love ; 
 There is a Life which, taking not its hues 
 From Earth or earthly things, grows white and pure 
 And higher than the petty cares of men, 
 And is a blessed life and glorified. 
 
 Oh, fair young souls, strain upward, upward still, 
 Even to the heavenly source of Purity ! 
 Brave hearts, bear on and suffer ! Strike for right, 
 Strong arms, and hew down wrong ! The world hath 
 
 need 
 Of all of you the sensual, wrongful world ! 
 
 Hath need of you, and of thee too, fair Love. 
 Oh, lovers, cling together ! the old world 
 Is full of Hate. Sweeten it ; draw in one 
 Two separate chords of Life ; and from the bond 
 Of twin souls lost in Harmony create 
 A Fair God dwelling with you Love, the Lord ! 
 
 Waft yourselves, yearning souls, upon the stars ; 
 Sow yourselves on the wandering winds of space ; 
 Watch patient all your days, if your eyes take 
 Some dim, cold ray of Knowledge. The dull world 
 Hath need of you the purblind, slothful world ! 
 
[84 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Live on, brave lives, chained to the narrow round 
 Of Duty ; live, expend yourselves, and make 
 The orb of Being wheel on steadfastly 
 Upon its path the Lord of Life alone 
 Knows to what goal of Good ; work on, live on : 
 And yet there is a higher work than yours. 
 
 To have looked upon the face of the Unknown 
 And Perfect Beauty. To have heard the voice 
 Of Godhead in the winds and in the seas. 
 To have known Him in the circling of the suns, 
 And in the changeful fates and lives of men. 
 
 To be fulfilled with Godhead as a cup 
 Filled with a precious essence, till the hand 
 On marble or on canvas falling, leaves 
 Celestial traces, or from reed or string 
 Draws out faint echoes of the voice Divine 
 That bring God nearer to a faithless world. 
 
 Or, higher still and fairer and more blest, 
 To be His seer, His prophet ; to be the voice 
 Of the Ineffable Word ; to be the glass 
 Of the Creative Light, and bring them down 
 To bless the earth, set in a shrine of Song. 
 
 For Knowledge is a barren tree and bare, 
 Bereft of God, and Duty but a word, 
 And Strength but Tyranny, and Love, Desire, 
 And Purity a folly ; and the Soul, 
 Which brings down God to Man, the Light to the world 
 He is the Maker, and is blest, is blest ! " 
 
 He ended, and I felt my soul grow faint 
 With too much sweetness. 
 
ZEUS. 185 
 
 In a mist of grace 
 
 They faded, that bright company, and seemed 
 To melt into each other and shape themselves 
 Into new forms, and those fair goddesses 
 Blent in a perfect woman all the calm 
 High motherhood of Here", the sweet smile 
 Of Cypris, fair Athene's earnest eyes, 
 And the young purity of Artemis, 
 Blent in a perfect woman ; and in her arms, 
 Fused by some cosmic interlacing curves 
 Of Beauty into a new Innocence, 
 A child with eyes divine, a little child, 
 A little child no more. 
 
 And those great gods, 
 Of Power and Beauty left a heavenly form 
 Strong not to act but suffer ; fair and meek, 
 Not proud and eager ; with soft eyes of grace, 
 Not bold with joyous youth ; and for the fire 
 Of song, and for the happy careless life, 
 A sorrowful pilgrimage changed, yet the same, 
 Only Diviner far ; and bearing higher 
 The Life God-lighted and the Sacrifice. 
 
 And when these faded wholly, at my side, 
 Tho' hidden before by those too-radiant forms, 
 I was aware once more of her, my guide 
 Psyche, who had not left me, floating near 
 On golden wings ; and all the plains of heaven 
 Were left to us, me and my soul alone. 
 
 Then, when my thought revived again, I said 
 Whispering, " But Zeus I saw not, the prime Source 
 And Sire of all the gods." 
 
 And she, bent low 
 
 With downcast eyes : " Nay. Thou hast seen of Him 
 All that thine eyes can bear, in those fair forms 
 
1 86 THE EPIC OF HADES. 
 
 Which are but parts of Him and are indeed 
 
 Attributes of the Substance which supports 
 
 The Universe of Things the Soul of the World, 
 
 The Stream which flows Eternal, from no Source 
 
 Into no Sea. His Purity, His Strength, 
 
 His Love, His Knowledge, His unchanging rule 
 
 Of Duty, thou hast seen, only a part 
 
 And not the whole, being a finite mind 
 
 Too weak for infinite thought ; nor, couldst thou see 
 
 All of Him visible to mortal sight, 
 
 Wouldst thou see all His essence, since the gods 
 
 Glorified essences of Human mould, 
 
 Who are but Zeus made visible to men 
 
 See Him not wholly, only some thin edge 
 
 And halo of His glory ; nor know they 
 
 What vast and unsuspected Universes 
 
 Lie beyond thought, where yet He rules, like those 
 
 Vast Suns we cannot see, round which our Sun 
 
 Moves with his system, or those darker still 
 
 Which not even thus we know, but yet exist 
 
 Tho' no eye marks, nor thought itself, and lurk 
 
 In the awful Depths of Space ; or that which is 
 
 Not orbed as yet, but indiscrete, confused, 
 
 Sown thro' the void the faintest gleam of light 
 
 Which sets itself to Be. And yet He lives 
 
 There too, and rules, none seeing. But sometimes 
 
 To this our heaven, which is so like to earth 
 
 But nearer to Him, for awhile He shows 
 
 Some gleam of His own brightness, and methinks 
 
 It cometh soon ; but thou, if thou shouldst gaze, 
 
 Thy Life will rush to His the tiny spark 
 
 Absorbed in that full blaze and what there is 
 
 Of mortal fall from thee." 
 
 But I : " Oh, soul, 
 
 What holdeth Life more precious than to know 
 The Giver and to die ? " 
 
ZEUS. 187 
 
 Then she : " Behold ! 
 Look upward and adore." 
 
 And with the word, 
 Unhasting, imdelaying, gradual, sure, 
 The floating cloud which clothed the hidden peak 
 Rose slow in awful silence, laying bare 
 Spire after rocky spire, snow after snow, 
 Whiter and yet more dreadful, till at last 
 It left the summit clear. 
 
 Then with a bound, 
 
 In the twinkling of an eye, in the flash of a thought, 
 I knew an Awful Effluence of Light, 
 Formless, Ineffable, Perfect, burst on me 
 And flood my being round, and draw my life 
 Into itself. I saw my guide bent down 
 Prostrate, her wings before her face ; and then 
 No more. 
 
GWEN. 
 
 THE bud on the bough, 
 
 The song of the bird, 
 
 The blue river-reaches 
 
 By soft breezes stirred ; 
 
 Oh, soul, and hast thou found again thy treasure ? 
 
 Oh, world, and art thou once more filled with pleasure? 
 
 Oh, world, hast thou passed 
 
 Thy sad winter again ? 
 
 Oh, soul, hast thou cast 
 
 Thy dull vesture of pain ? 
 
 Oh ! winter, sad wert thou and full of sorrow ; 
 
 Oh soul, oh world, the summer comes to-morrow ! 
 
 Oh, soul ! 'tis love quickens 
 
 Time's languorous feet ; 
 
 Oh, world ! 'tis Spring wakens 
 
 Thy fair blossoms sweet ; 
 
 Fair world, fair soul, that lie so close together, 
 
 Each with sad wintry days and fair Spring weather ! 
 
 I have found her ! 
 At last, after long wanderings, dull delays, 
 
 I have found her ; 
 And all my life is tuned to joy and praise. 
 
 I have found her ! 
 
GWEN. 189 
 
 A myriad-myriad times 
 In man's long history this thing has been ; 
 
 All ages, climes, 
 This daily, hourly miracle have seen 
 
 A myriad-myriad times ; 
 
 Yet it is new to-day. 
 I have found her, and a new Spring glads my eyes. 
 
 World, fair and gay 
 As when Eve woke in dewy Paradise, 
 
 Fade not away ! 
 
 Fade not, oh light, 
 Lighting the eyes of yet another pair, 
 
 But let my sight 
 Find her as I have found her, pure and fair ! 
 
 Shine, mystic light ! 
 
 Oh, vermeil rose and sweet, 
 Rose with the golden heart of hidden fire, 
 Bear thou my yearning soul to him I love 
 Bear thou my longing and desire. 
 
 Glide safe, oh sweet, sweet rose, 
 By fairy-fall and cliff and mimic strand, 
 To where he muses by the sleeping stream, 
 Then eddy to his hand. 
 
 Drown not, oh vermeil rose, 
 
 But from thy dewy petals let a tear 
 
 Fall soft for joy when thou shalt know the touch 
 
 And presence of my dear. 
 
 Tell him, oh sweet, sweet rose, 
 That I grow fixed no more, nor nourish now 
 In the sweet maiden garden-ground of old, 
 But severed even as thou, 
 
190 GWEN. 
 
 Say from thy golden heart, 
 From virgin folded leaf and odorous breath, 
 That I am his to wear or cast away, 
 His own in life or death. 
 
 Fair star that on the shoulder of yon hill 
 
 Peepest, a little eye of tranquil night, 
 
 Come forth. Nor sun nor moon there is to kill 
 
 Thy ray with broader light. 
 
 Shine, star of eve that art so bright and clear ; 
 
 Shine, little star, and bring my lover here ! 
 
 My lover ! oh, fair word for maid to hear ! 
 
 My lover who was yesterday my friend ! 
 
 Oh, strange we did not know before how near 
 
 Our stream of life smoothed to its fated end ! 
 
 Shine, star of eve, as Love's self, bright and clear ; 
 
 Shine, little star, and bring my lover here ! 
 
 He comes ! I hear the echo of his feet. 
 
 He comes ! I fear to stay, I cannot go. 
 
 Oh, Love, that thou art shame-fast, bitter-sweet, 
 
 Mixed with all pain, and conversant with woe ! 
 
 Shine, star of eve, more bright as night draws near 
 
 Shine, little star, and bring my lover here ! 
 
 What shall I do for my love, 
 
 Who is so tender 
 
 And dear and true, 
 
 Loving and true and tender, 
 
 My strength and my defender- 
 
 What shall I do ? 
 
G WE 1ST. 191 
 
 I will cleave unto my love, 
 
 Who am too lowly 
 
 For him to take. 
 
 With a self-surrender holy 
 
 I will cleave unto him solely ; 
 
 I will give my being wholly 
 
 For his dear sake. 
 
 Forget me not, dear soul ! Yet wherefore speak 
 The words of freedom, where the thing is not ? 
 Forget me not ! And yet how poor and weak 
 My prayer, who know that nothing is forgot ! 
 Low voice, or kindling eye, or glowing cheek, 
 Forget them not ! 
 
 Forget me only if forgetting prove 
 Oblivion of low aims and earthy thought ; 
 Forget the blinder appetites which move 
 Through secret ways, by lower nature taught ; 
 Forget them, love ! 
 
 Remember only, with fond memory, 
 The exaltation, the awakened soul, 
 Swift moments strong to bind my heart to thee, 
 Strong tides of passionate faith which scorn control- 
 In these remember me ! 
 
 Oh, happy days so lately done, 
 
 And yet removed so far away 
 
 Before our passion-tide begun 
 
 And life's young May ! 
 
 Shy early days of sun and showers, 
 
 When all the paths were hidden in flowers 
 
192 GWEN. 
 
 Tender and sweet, 
 
 And on the mountain-side the year, 
 
 With girlish change of smile and tear, 
 
 Tripped with light feet ; 
 
 And by the melting snows the violet came, 
 
 And on the wolds the crocus like a saffron flame 
 
 Daily some song of lonely bird, 
 
 By tufted field or tasselled grove, 
 
 From the clear dawn to solemn eve was heard, 
 
 But few of love. 
 
 Nay, rather virginal flutings pure and clear, 
 
 Passionless preludes, ah, how dear ! 
 
 Nor yet upon the nest, 
 
 The bright-eyed fearless mother sate, 
 
 Nor yet high in mid-heaven her soaring mate 
 
 Thrilled his full breast, 
 
 Nor yet within the white domain of song 
 
 Love burst with eyes aglow the maiden choir among. 
 
 But when the fuller summer shone, 
 Soon as the perfumed rose had come, 
 Lo, all the reign of song was done, 
 The birds all dumb ; 
 
 And for the choir which did before rejoice, 
 Low, tuneless accents of an anxious voice 
 Weighed down with care, 
 And dim forebodings marring the high note 
 Which once resounded from the joyous throat 
 So full and fair. 
 
 I would not lose the love which is so dear, 
 But 'tis oh for the vanished Spring and the lost imperfect 
 year ! 
 
GWEN. 193 
 
 Oh, soft dove gently cooing 
 To thy mate upon her nest, 
 And hast thou known undoing 
 And deep unrest ? 
 Hath any pain of wooing 
 Pierced thy soft breast ? 
 
 Oh, pale flower ever turning 
 To thy great lord the Sun, 
 And dost thou know a yearning 
 Which is never done, 
 For cloudless days returning 
 And June begun ? 
 
 Ah, heart ! there is no pleasure 
 
 As thine, nor grief. 
 
 Time Future holds the treasure ; 
 
 Time Past, the thief. 
 
 What power brings this one, measure, 
 
 Or that, relief? 
 
 Ah ! 'tis not very long 
 
 Since I was light and free, 
 
 And of all the burden of pain and wrong 
 
 No whisper troubled me ; 
 
 But day by day, upon this breeze-swept hill, 
 
 Far from the too great load of human ill, 
 
 I dwelt within the sober walls of home, 
 
 Safe-set, nor heard a sound of outward evil come. 
 
 It is not that I know, 
 
 By word or any deed, 
 
 What depths of misery lie below, 
 
 What hearts that bleed : 
 
194 GWEN. 
 
 But, since I have felt the music of my soul 
 
 Touched by another's mastering hand, 
 
 I seem to hear unfathomed oceans roll, 
 
 As when a child I saw the Atlantic lash the strand, 
 
 Oh, mother, who art dead 
 
 So long beneath the grass, 
 
 Lift up once more, lift thy beloved head 
 
 When we two pass, 
 
 And tell me tell me if this passionate pain, 
 
 This longing, this invincible desire 
 
 For one I know so lately, be the gain 
 
 To which young maids aspire. 
 
 Is this to love, to kiss my chain and feel 
 
 A dominant will to which 'tis joy to kneel ? 
 
 Oh, mother, I am a maid ; 
 I am young, I know not men. 
 My great joy makes me shrink and be afraid. 
 It is not now as then 
 
 When first we walked together on the hill. 
 I take no longer, thought for any soul 
 Of those I loved before and cherish still ; 
 I care not for the poor, the blind, the lame ; 
 I care not for the organ's solemn roll, 
 Or sabbath prayers and hymns, who am seared as by 
 a flame. 
 
 Nay, love ! how can I doubt thee 
 
 Who art so dear, 
 
 Though I pine away without thee 
 
 In the fading year ? 
 
 The ash flings down its leaf, the heather 
 
 Is bloomless in the autumn weather ; 
 
GWEN. 195 
 
 The mountain paths are wet with rime 
 
 Where we together eve by eve 
 
 Would wander in the joyous time, 
 
 Fair hours when thy returning strength 
 
 Came with the days' increasing length. 
 
 I pace alone the dear familiar road 
 
 Where first we met. I walk alone ; 
 
 I have no aim nor purpose, none 
 
 Only to think of those soft days and still believe. 
 
 Yester eve, on a distant hill, 
 
 A wreath of cloud-mist dealing sleet 
 
 Compassed my homeward steps, as still 
 
 I toiled with weary feet. 
 
 Oh, what if the snow, like a winding-sheet, 
 
 Had stayed the steps of my life and my troubled will, 
 
 And closed on me for ever, concluding there 
 
 My little hopes and joys, and maybe my despair ! 
 
 Nay, I will not doubt him nor be afraid ; 
 
 He is all that is good, I know it, tender and true. 
 
 But I fear he is higher in rank than he said ; 
 
 For one day, I remember it well, as he lay 
 
 Very weak on his bed, a letter came 
 
 Coronet-blazoned, and half in shame 
 
 I lifted my eyes, and he saw I knew, 
 
 And his face grew troubled and never more 
 
 Was his gaze as frank as it was before. 
 
 Tender it was, indeed, and ardent and true, 
 
 But not as frank as before. 
 
 But I count the days till he comes again ; 
 
 I long for him with a dull deep pain. 
 
 I will do whatever thing my love commands ; 
 
 I will go or stay ; I am caught as a bird in his hands. 
 
 Oh, love, my love ! tarry not long ; 
 
 I am not happy nor strong. 
 
f> GWEN. 
 
 Delay not, love ; the sun has lost his fire. 
 Stay not ; the cold earth loses warmth and light. 
 Summer is dead, and Winter comes to blight 
 The waiting world's desire. 
 
 Come back, and coming bring back Spring with thee, 
 Spring for my heart though all the world lie dead ; 
 My life will burst in blossom at thy tread 
 Oh, love, come back to me ! 
 
 I did not know, 
 
 When I walked careless on the hills, 
 
 The hopeless load of human ills ; 
 
 But neither could I know 
 
 To what full height our happiness can grow. 
 
 Sing, caged bird, sing ! 
 
 Is this your constant strain? 
 
 " I would, I would that I were free ; 
 
 I would, I would, I would that I were once again 
 
 Sitting alone within a leafy tree ; 
 
 I would that I might be 
 
 Breathing free air far from this gilded pain." 
 
 Ah, bird ! I would be free 
 
 As you, for I weary here. 
 
 And yet, my bird, I have one so dear, so dear, 
 
 That, if he might only bide with me, 
 
 I should no longer care 
 
 To change this stifling, fettered air 
 
 For the free mountain-breathings fresh and fair. 
 
GWEN. 197 
 
 Cold east and drear, 
 
 Thy chill breath veils the world in cheerless gray. 
 
 Sad east, while thou art here, 
 
 Life creeps with halting feet its weary way. 
 
 I feel you pierce my heart, oh, cold east wind ! 
 
 Sad east ! that leavest lifeless plains behind. 
 
 The dull earth, watching, sleeps 
 
 Within her leafless bowers, 
 
 Until the west wind coming weeps 
 
 Soft tears that turn to flowers. 
 
 Oh, cruel east ! that dost delay the world, 
 
 Withering the leaf of hope while yet unfurled. 
 
 O'er this gray cheerless town 
 
 The stifling smoke-mist hangs, a squalid pall, 
 
 And night, too swift for springtide, settles down 
 
 Before the shades of mountain-evenings fall, 
 
 I sicken here alone, dull day by day, 
 
 To watch the turmoil wake and fade away. 
 
 Why does my dear not come, 
 
 Or write or send some little loving word ? 
 
 It is not here as 'twas at home. 
 
 I have no companion but this prisoned bird ; 
 
 No friend in all the throng to hear my sighs ; 
 
 No glance, but the cold stare of alien eyes. 
 
 No friend, nor love nor care 
 
 To hold me ; but when summer suns return 
 
 And wake this stagnant and exhausted air, 
 
 The little dearer life for which I yearn 
 
 May wake, and make me happier than of old, 
 
 Watching the innocent life my arms enfold. 
 
198 GIVEN. 
 
 Cold east and drear, 
 
 Spreading a noontide darkness on the town. 
 
 You shall not blight my faith, nor make me fear, 
 
 Nor leave me in despond, nor drag me down. 
 
 I am alone ; but, if he loves me still, 
 
 I am not all alone, sad days and chill. 
 
 My heart is heavy, 
 My life runs low, 
 My young blood's pulses 
 Beat faint and slow. 
 
 I cannot believe, 
 Yet I dare not doubt, 
 For when faith is shadowed 
 Love's fire goes out. 
 
 Oh, Love, what is this 
 That thy strong power brings 
 To those thou hast touched 
 With thy vanishing wings ? 
 
 Oh, Love, it was cruel 
 To bring us to pain. 
 I will hide me away 
 From the cold world again. 
 
 I can stay here no longer ; 
 Whatever may come, 
 I will go to my father 
 And die at home. 
 
 My heart is heavy, 
 My life runs slow ; 
 To my Father in Heaven 
 I open my woe. 
 
GWEN: 199 
 
 Farewell, oh dear, dear hills ! 
 I do not know if I shall see you more. 
 Farewell ! 'tis set of sun, the night is near. 
 Farewell ! Below, the mist of autumn fills 
 The sleeping vale with winding vapours frore, 
 And hides from sight the yellow woods and sere. 
 
 But on the heights the day's declining fire 
 Bathes all the summits in a haze of gold. 
 Not yet the cold mist, stealing high and higher, 
 Touches the purple glow with fingers cold ; 
 Not yet the ruddy light from out the sky 
 Goes, nor the orange shadows fade and die. 
 
 Here, far above the grave of dying day, 
 
 The clear night comes, and hills and vales grow dark. 
 
 But soon the first faint star, a lucid spark, 
 
 Glimmers ; and, lo ! the mystical array ! 
 
 A myriad suns for one ! strange suns and far, 
 
 The eternal homes where blessed spirits are ! 
 
 Oh ! night of Being, like the night of day, 
 How should I fear because your shadows fall ? 
 Who knows from what fresh glories thy dark pall 
 For failing vision lifts the veil away? 
 What boundless spiritual orbits rise 
 Before the inward gaze of dying eyes ? 
 
 Farewell, oh little grave, 
 
 Wherein I leave my buried heart awhile ! 
 
 Thick yew, protect it well until I come ; 
 
 Shelter it ; let not winds of winter rave, 
 
 Nor sharp frosts fret nor snows, nor floods defile. 
 
 Here is my heart, and here my waiting home. 
 
 Farewell ! farewell ! 
 
200 GIVEN. 
 
 The silent Forces of the World, 
 Time, Change, and Fate, deride us still ; 
 Nor ever from the hidden summit, furled, 
 Where sits the Eternal Will, 
 The clouds of Pain and Error rise 
 Before our straining eyes. 
 
 It is to-day as 'twas before, 
 
 From the far days when Man began to speak, 
 
 Ere Moses preached or Homer sung, 
 
 Ere Buddha's musing thought or Plato's silvery tongue. 
 
 We pace our destined path with failing footsteps weak ; 
 
 A little more we see, a little more 
 
 Of that great orb which shineth day and night 
 
 Through the high heaven, now hidden, now too bright, 
 
 The Sun to which the earth on which we are, 
 
 Life's labouring world, is as the feeblest star. 
 
 Nor this firm globe we know 
 
 Which lies beneath our feet ; 
 
 Nor by what grades we have grown and yet shall grow, 
 
 Through chains of miracle, more and more complete ; 
 
 By what decrees the watery earth 
 
 Compacted grew the womb of countless birth ; 
 
 Nor, when the failing breath 
 
 Is taken by the frozen lips of Death, 
 
 Whither the Spoiler, fleeing with his prey, 
 
 The fluttering, wandering Wonder bears away. 
 
 The powers of Pain and Wrong, 
 Immeasurably strong, 
 
 Assail our souls, and chill with common doubt 
 Clear brain and heart devout : 
 
GIVEN. 201 
 
 War, Pestilence, and Famine, as of old, 
 
 The lust of the flesh, the baser lust of gold, 
 
 Vex us and harm us still ; 
 
 Fire comes, and crash and wreck, and lives are shed 
 
 As if the Eternal Will itself were dead ; 
 
 And sometimes Wrong and Right, the thing we fear, 
 
 The thing we cherish, draw confusedly near ; 
 
 We know not which to choose, we cannot separate 
 
 Our longing and our hate. 
 
 But Love the Conqueror, Love, Immortal Love, 
 
 Through the high heaven doth move, 
 
 Spurning the brute earth with his purple wings, 
 
 And from the great Sun brings 
 
 Some radiant beam to light the House of Life, 
 
 Uplifts our grosser thought, and makes us pure ; .. 
 
 And to a Higher Purpose doth mature 
 
 Our trivial days, and calms the ignoble strife, 
 
 Raises the waning life with his sweet breath, 
 
 And from the arms of Death 
 
 Soars with it to the eternal shore, 
 
 Where sight or thought of evil comes no more. 
 
 Love sitteth now above, 
 
 Enthroned in glory, 
 
 And yet hath deigned to move 
 
 Through life's sad story. 
 
 Fair Name, we are only thine ! 
 
 Thou only art divine ! 
 
 Be with us to the end, for there is none 
 
 But thou to bind together God and Man in one ! 
 
THE ODE OF LIFE. 
 
 THE ODE OF PERFECT YEARS. 
 MOTHERHOOD. 
 
 BUT here is one who over all the earth 
 
 Is worshipped and is blest, 
 
 Who doth rejoice from holier springs of mirth, 
 
 And sorrow from a deeper fount of tears, 
 
 On whose sweet bosom is our earliest rest, 
 
 Whose tender voice that cheers 
 
 Is our first memory, which still doth last 
 
 Thro' all our later past 
 
 The love of love or child, the world-worn strife, 
 
 The turmoil and the triumphs of a life 
 
 The sweet maid-mother, pure and mild, 
 
 The deep love undefiled. 
 
 Thou art the universal praise 
 
 Of every human heart, the secret shrine 
 
 Where seer and savage keep a dream divine 
 
 Through growing and declining days ; 
 
 And but for thee 
 
 And thy unselfish love, thy sacrifice, 
 
 Which brings heaven daily nearer to our eyes, 
 
 Men whom the rude world stains, men chilled by doubt, 
 
 Would find no ray of Deity 
 
 To fire a Faith gone out. 
 
THE ODE OF PERFECT YEARS. 203 
 
 Our life from a twofold root 
 
 Springs upwards to the sky, 
 
 One, surface only, shared with tree and brute, 
 
 And one, as deep and strong as heaven is high. 
 
 Spirit and sense, 
 
 Each bears its part and dwells in innocence 
 
 Yet only grown together can they bear 
 
 The one consummate fruit. 
 
 The flower is good, the flower is fair, 
 
 But holds no lasting sweetness in its petals thin, 
 
 No seed of life within. 
 
 But the ripe fruit within its orbed gold 
 
 Doth hidden secrets hold ; 
 
 Within its honied wells set safe and deep, 
 
 The Future lies asleep. 
 
 Of shamefastness our being is born, 
 
 Of shamefastness and scorn. 
 
 Oh, wonder, that so high dost soar ! 
 
 Oh, vision, blest for evermore ! 
 
 With every throe of birth 
 
 Two glorious Presences make glad the earth : 
 
 The stainless mother and the Eternal Child. 
 
 Of the heart comes love, of the heart and not the brain ; 
 
 To heights where Thought comes not can Love attain: 
 
 We cannot tell at all, we may not know, 
 
 How to such stature high our lower natures grow; 
 
 What strong instinctive thrill 
 
 The mother's being doth fill, 
 
 And raises it from miry common ways, 
 
 Up to such heights of love. 
 
 We cannot tell what blessed forces move, 
 
 And so transform the careless girlish heart 
 
 To bear so high a part. 
 
 We cannot tell ; we can but praise. 
 
204 THE ODE OF LIFE. 
 
 Fair motherhood, by every childish tongue 
 Thy eulogy is sung. 
 In every passing age 
 The theme of seer and sage : 
 The painters saw thee in a life-long dream ; 
 The painters who have left a world more fair 
 Than ever days of nymph and goddess were 
 Blest company, who now for centuries 
 Have fixed the virgin mother for our eyes 
 The painters saw thee sitting brown or fair, 
 Under the Tuscan vines or colder Northern air ; 
 They saw pure love transform thy peasant gaze ; 
 They saw thy reverent eyes, thy young amaze 
 And left thee Queen of Heaven, wearing a crown 
 Of glory ; and abased at thy sweet breast, 
 Spurning his robes of kingship down, 
 The God-child laid at rest. 
 
 They found thee, and they fixed thee for our eyes ; 
 
 But every day that goes 
 
 Before the gazer new Madonnas rise. 
 
 What matter if the cheek show not the rose. 
 
 Nor look divine is there nor queenly grace? 
 
 The mother's glory lights the homely face. 
 
 In every land beneath the circling sun 
 
 Thy praise is never done. 
 
 Whatever men may doubt, they put their trust in thee ; 
 
 Rude souls and coarse, to whom virginity 
 
 Seems a dead thing and cold. 
 
 So always was it from the days of old; 
 
 So shall it be while yet our race doth last ; 
 
 Though truth be sought no more and faith be past, 
 
 Still, till all hope of heaven be dead, 
 
 Thy praises shall be said. 
 
THE ODE OF GOOD. 205 
 
 Aye, thou art ours, or wert, ere yet 
 
 The loss we ne'er forget, 
 
 The loss which comes to all who reach life's middle way. 
 
 We see thee by the childish bed 
 
 Sit patient all night long, 
 
 To cool the parching lips or throbbing head ; 
 
 We hear thee still with simple song 
 
 Or sweet hymn lull the wakeful eyes to sleep ; 
 
 Through every turning of life's chequered page, 
 
 Joying with those who joy, weeping with those who weep. 
 
 Oh, sainted loye ! oh, precious sacrifice ! 
 
 Oh, heaven-lighted eyes ! 
 
 Best dream of early youth, best memory of age ! 
 
 THE ODE OF GOOD. 
 
 Of happiness and weal ! 
 
 Indwelling and unfailing Force ! 
 
 Who dost Thyself reveal 
 
 In every jocund day, and restful night ; 
 
 In every dawn serenely bright ; 
 
 In every tide of yearning which doth roll, 
 
 Heavenward, some growing soul ! 
 
 What were life save for Thee 
 
 But pain and misery 
 
 To have no more longing, but to be 
 
 Below the brute, below the tree, 
 
 Below the little stone, or speck of dust, 
 
 Which are themselves, and are made just, 
 
 Conforming to the law which bade them grow, 
 
 Not dreaming dreams of heaven in their estate so low ! 
 
206 THE ODE OF LIFE. 
 
 The calm brutes live and are, 
 
 Tranquil and unafraid, 
 
 Keeping their nature only ; the faint star 
 
 Pursues its orbit always though of Thee 
 
 It knows not, yet its vast periphery 
 
 Is ordered by Thy hand ; by Thee were laid 
 
 The fixed foundations of the unfathomed sea ; 
 
 All these obey Thee, though they may not know 
 
 What law it is that holds them. Man alone 
 
 Sees Thee, and knowing Thee, averts his face, 
 
 And yet is higher than all for his disgrace, 
 
 Which were impossible to brute, or tree, or stone. 
 
 How shall a finite voice 
 
 Praise Thee who art too high for any praise, 
 
 Great Scheme, that by eternal, perfect ways 
 
 Farest and dost rejoice : 
 
 Thou wert before Life was, or 111. 
 
 Thou rulest all things still ; 
 
 The Governance and regimen are Thine, 
 
 Oh Plenitude divine ! 
 
 Of all the countless orbs that roll 
 
 Through all Thy infinite space. 
 
 We are through Thee alone, each in its place, 
 
 Organic, Inorganic, great and small ; 
 
 Thou dost inspire and keep us all ; 
 
 Earth, sky, and sea ; herb, tree, insect, and brute ; 
 
 All Thy created excellences mute, 
 
 To Man of large discourse, and the undying soul. 
 
 We know not by what Name our tongues shall calJ 
 Thee or Thy Essence, nor can Thought as yet 
 Gain those ineffable heights where Thou art set, 
 As from a watch-tower guarding all. 
 Thou girdest Thyself round with mystery, 
 As Thy great sun behind an embattled cloud, 
 
THE ODE OF GOOD. 207 
 
 Or some wrapt summit, never seen ; 
 
 Yet Thy veiled presence cheers us on our road. 
 
 With eyes bent down too much on earth and bowed, 
 
 We toil and do forget 
 
 All but our daily labour and its load ; 
 
 Yet art Thou there the while, felt yet unseen, 
 
 Oh universal Good, and Thy great Will 
 
 Directs our footsteps still 
 
 Directs them, though they come to stray 
 
 From Thy appointed perfect way ; 
 
 Lights them, though for a while they wander far, 
 
 Led by some feeble baleful star, 
 
 Which can allure them when the blinding fold 
 
 Of mist is on the hill side, and the cold 
 
 Clouds which make green our lives, descending, hide 
 
 Death's steeps on every side. 
 
 We know not what Thou art 
 
 Whether the Word of some all-perfect Will 
 
 Inborn and nourished in each human heart, 
 
 Some hidden and mysterious good, 
 
 Obeyed, not understood ; 
 
 Or whether the harmonious note 
 
 Of some world-symphony divme, 
 
 To which the perfect Scheme of things, 
 
 Ever advancing perfectly 
 
 To high fulfilment, sings. 
 
 We know not what Thou art, and yet we love ; 
 
 We know not where Thou dwell'st, yet still above 
 
 We turn our eyes to Thee, knowing Thou wilt take 
 
 Our yearnings and wilt treasure them, and make 
 
 Our little lives fulfil themselves and Thee : 
 
 And in this trust we bear to be. 
 
 Oh Light so white and pure, 
 Oft clouded and yet sure ! 
 
203 THE ODE OF L1PE. 
 
 Oh inner Radiance of the heart, 
 
 That drawest all men, whatsoe'er Thou art ! 
 
 Spring of the soul, that dost remove 
 
 Winter with rays of love, 
 
 And dost dispel of Thy far-working might 
 
 The clouds of 111 and Night, 
 
 For every soul which cometh to the earth ; 
 
 That beamest on us at our birth, 
 
 And paling somewhat in life's grosser day, 
 
 Lightest, a pillar of fire, our evening way ; 
 
 What matter by what Name 
 
 We call Thee ? still art Thou the same, 
 
 God call we Thee, or Good, still through the strift 
 
 Unchangeable alone, of all our changeful life, 
 
 With awe-struck souls we seek Thee, we adore 
 
 Thy greatness ever more and more, 
 
 We turn to Thee with worship, till at last, 
 
 Our journey well-nigh past, 
 
 When now our day of Life draws to its end, 
 
 Looking, with less of awe and more of love, 
 
 To Thy high throne above, 
 
 We see no dazzling brightness as of old, 
 
 No kingly splendours cold, 
 
 But the sweet Presence of a heavenly Friend. 
 
 THE ODE OF EVIL. 
 
 THE victories of Right 
 
 Are born of strife. 
 
 There were no Day were there no Night, 
 
 Nor, without dying, Life. 
 
 There only doth Right triumph, where the Wrong 
 
 Is mightiest and most strong ; 
 
 There were no Good, indeed, were there no 111. 
 
THE ODE OF AGE. 209 
 
 And when the final victory shall come, 
 
 Burst forth, oh Awful Sun, and draw Creation home, 
 
 Not within Time or Space 
 
 Lines drawn in opposite ways grow one, 
 
 But in some Infinite place 
 
 Before the Eternal throne ; 
 
 There, ways to-day divergent, Right and Wrong, 
 
 Approach the nearer that they grow more long. 
 
 There at the Eternal feet, 
 
 Fused, joined, and grown complete, 
 
 The circle rounds itself, the enclosing wall 
 
 Of the Universe sinks down, and God is all in all ! 
 
 THE ODE OF AGE. 
 
 THERE is a sweetness in autumnal days, 
 
 Which many a lip doth praise ; 
 
 When the earth, tired a little and grown mute 
 
 Of song, and having borne its fruit, 
 
 Rests for a little space ere winter come. 
 
 It is not sad to turn the face towards home, 
 
 Even though it shows the journey nearly done ; 
 
 It is not sad to mark the westering sun, 
 
 Even though we know the imminent night doth come. 
 
 Silence there is, indeed, for song, 
 
 Twilight for noon ; 
 
 But for the steadfast soul and strong 
 
 Life's autumn is as June. 
 
 As June itself, but clearer, calmer far ; 
 Here come no passion-gusts to mar. 
 No thunder-clouds or rains to beat 
 To earth the blossoms and the wheat, 
 
2io THE ODE OF LIFE 
 
 No high tumultuous noise 
 
 Of youth's self-seeking joys, 
 
 But a cold radiance white 
 
 As the moon shining on a frosty night. 
 
 To-morrow is as yesterday, scant change, 
 
 Little of new or strange, 
 
 No glamour of false hope to daze, 
 
 Nor glory to amaze, 
 
 Even the old passionate love of love or child 
 
 A temperate affection mild, 
 
 And ever the recurring thought 
 
 Returning, though unsought : 
 
 How strange the Scheme of Things ! how brief a span 
 
 The little life of man ! 
 
 And ever as we mark them, fleeter and more fleet, 
 
 The days and months and years, gliding with winged feet. 
 
 And ever as the hair grows grey, 
 
 And the eyes dim, 
 
 And the lithe form which toiled the live-long day, 
 
 The stalwart limb, 
 
 Begin to stiffen and grow slow, 
 
 A higher joy we know : 
 
 To spend the remnant of the waning year, 
 
 Ere comes the deadly chill, 
 
 In works of mercy, and to cheer 
 
 The feet which toil against life's rugged hill ! 
 
 To have known the trouble and the fret, 
 
 To have known it, and to cease 
 
 In a pervading peace, 
 
 Too calm to suffer pain, too living to forget, 
 
 And reaching down a succouring hand 
 
 To where the sufferers are, 
 
 To lift them to the tranquil heights afar, 
 
 Whereon Time's conquerors stand. 
 
THE ODE OF AGE. ill 
 
 And when the fruitful hours are done, 
 
 How sweet at set of sun 
 
 To gather up the fair laborious day ! 
 
 To have struck some blow for right 
 
 With tongue or pen ; 
 
 To have smoothed the path to light 
 
 For wandering men ; 
 
 To have chased some fiend of 111 away ; 
 
 A little backward to have thrust 
 
 The instant powers of Drink and Lust, 
 
 To have borne down gaunt Despair, 
 
 To have dealt a blow at Care ! 
 
 How sweet to light again the glow 
 
 Of hotter fires than youth's, tho' the calm blood runs slow ! 
 
 Oh ! is there any joy, 
 
 Of all that come to girl or boy 
 
 Of manhood's calmer weal and ease, 
 
 To vie with these ? 
 
 Here is some fitting profit day by day, 
 
 Which naught can render less ; 
 
 Some glorious gain Fate cannot take away, 
 
 Nor Time depress. 
 
 Sad brother, fainting on your road ! 
 
 Poor sister, whom the righteous shun ! 
 
 There comes for you, ere life and strength be done, 
 
 An arm to bear your load. 
 
 A feeble body, maybe bent, and old, 
 
 But bearing 'midst the chills of age 
 
 A deeper glow than youth's ; a nobler rage ; 
 
 A calm heart yet not cold. 
 
 A man or woman, weak perhaps, and spent, 
 
 To whom pursuit of gold or fame 
 
 Is as a fire grown cold, an empty name, 
 
 Whom thoughts of Love no more allure, 
 
 Who in a self-made nunnery dwell, 
 
212 THE ODE OF LIFE. 
 
 A cloistered calm and pure, 
 
 A beatific peace deeper than tongue can tell. 
 
 And sweet it is to take, 
 
 With something of the eager haste of youth, 
 
 Some fainter glimpse of Truth 
 
 For its own sake ; 
 
 To observe the ways of bee, or plant, or bird ; 
 
 To trace in Nature the ineffable Word, 
 
 Which by the gradual wear of secular time, 
 
 Has worked its work sublime ; 
 
 To have touched, with strenuous gropings dim 
 
 Nature's extreinest outward rim ; 
 
 To have found some weed or shell unknown before ; 
 
 To advance Thought's infinite march a footpace more ; 
 
 To make or to declare laws just and sage ; 
 
 These are the joys of Age. 
 
 Or by the evening hearth, in the old chair, 
 
 With children's children at our knees, 
 
 So like, yet so unlike the little ones of old 
 
 Some little lad with curls of gold, 
 
 Some little maid demurely fair, 
 
 To sit, girt round with ease, 
 
 And feel how sweet it is to live, 
 
 Careless what fate may give ; 
 
 To think, with gentle yearning mind 
 
 Of dear souls who have crossed the Infinite Sea ; 
 
 To muse with cheerful hope of what shall be 
 
 For those we leave behind 
 
 When the night comes which knows no earthly morn ; 
 
 Yet mingled with the young in hopes and fears, 
 
 And bringing from the treasure-house of years 
 
 Some fair-set counsel long-time worn ; 
 
 To let the riper days of life, 
 
 The tumult and the strife, 
 
THE ODE OF DECLINE. 213 
 
 Go by, and in their stead 
 
 Dwell with the living past, so living, yet so dead ; 
 
 The mother's kiss upon the sleeper's brow, 
 
 The little fish caught from the brook, 
 
 The dead child-sister's gentle voice and look, 
 
 The school-days and the father's parting hand ; 
 
 The days so far removed, yet oh ! so near, 
 
 So full of precious memories dear ; 
 
 The riddle of flying Time, so hard to understand ! 
 
 Not in clear eye or ear 
 
 Dwells our chief profit here. 
 
 We are not as the brutes, who fade and make no sign ; 
 
 We are sustained where'er we go, 
 
 In happiness and woe, 
 
 By some indwelling faculty divine, 
 
 Which lifts us from the deep 
 
 Of failing senses dim, and duller brain, 
 
 And wafts us back to youth again ; 
 
 And as a vision fair dividing sleep, 
 
 Pierces the vasts behind, the voids before, 
 
 And opens to us an invisible gate, 
 
 And sets our winged footsteps, scorning Time and Fate, 
 
 At the celestial door. 
 
 THE ODE OF DECLINE. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 THE soaring thoughts of youth 
 Are dead and cold, the victories of Thought 
 Are no more prized or sought 
 By eyes which draw too near the face of Truth. 
 Whatever fruit or gain 
 Fate held in store, 
 
214 THE ODE OF LIFE. 
 
 To tempt the growing soul or brain, 
 
 Allures no more. 
 
 It is as the late Autumn, when the fields 
 
 Are bare of flower or fruit ; 
 
 Nor charm nor profit the swept surface yields, 
 
 Sullen and mute ; 
 
 So that a doubting mind might come to hold 
 
 The very soul and life were dead and cold. 
 
 But who can peer 
 
 Into another soul, or tell at all 
 
 What hidden energies befall 
 
 The aged lingering here ? 
 
 When all the weary brain 
 
 Seems dull, the immeasurable fields of life 
 
 Lie open to the memory, and again 
 
 They know the youthful joys, the hurry and the strife 
 
 And feel, but gentlier now, the ancient pain. 
 
 In the uneasy vigils of the night, 
 
 Before the tardy light ; 
 
 Or, lonely days, when no young lives are by, 
 
 There come such long processions of the dead, 
 
 The buried lives and hopes of far-off years, 
 
 Spent joys and dried-up tears, 
 
 That round them stands a blessed company, 
 
 Holding high converse, though no word be said, 
 
 Till only what is past and gone doth seem 
 
 To live, and all the Present is a dream. 
 
 So may the wintry earth, 
 
 Holding her precious seeds within the ground, 
 
 Pause for the coming birth, 
 
 When like a clarion-note the Spring shall sound ; 
 
 So may the roots which, buried deep 
 
 And safe within her sleep, 
 
 Whisper as 'twere, low down, tales of the sun, 
 
THE ODE OF CHANGE. 215 
 
 Whisper of leaf and flower, of bee and bird, 
 
 Till by a sudden glory stirred, 
 
 A mystic influence bids them rise, 
 
 Bursting the narrow sheath 
 
 And cerement of death, 
 
 And bloom as lilies again beneath the recovered skies. 
 
 THE ODE OF CHANGE. 
 
 ***** 
 WE are part of an Infinite Scheme, 
 All we that are ; 
 
 Man the high crest and crown of things that be, 
 The fiery-hearted earth, the cold unfathomed sea, 
 The central sun, the intermittent star. 
 Things great and small, 
 We are but parts of the Eternal All ; 
 We live not in a barren, baseless dream ; 
 No endless, ineffectual chain 
 Of chance successions launched in vain ; 
 But every beat of Time, 
 Each sun that shines or fails to shine, 
 Each animate life that comes to throb or cease, 
 Each life of herb or tree 
 
 Which blooms and fruits and then forgets to be, 
 Each change of strife and peace, 
 Each soaring thought sublime, 
 Each deed of wrong and blood, 
 Each impulse towards an unattained good, 
 All with a sure, unfaltering working tend 
 To one Ineffable, Beatific End. 
 Oh hidden Scheme, perfect Thyself, and take 
 Our petty lives, and mould them as Thou wilt ! 
 All things that are, are only for Thy sake, 
 And not to obey Thee is our only guilt ! 
 
216 THE ODE OF LIFE. 
 
 Perfect Thyself, and be fulfilled, oh great 
 Unfathomable Will, who art our Life and Fate ! 
 
 There is hope, but nothing of fear, 
 Nought but a patient mind, 
 For him who waits with conscience clear 
 And soul resigned 
 Whate'er the mystic coming change 
 Shall bring of new and strange. 
 He looks back once upon the fields of life, 
 The good and evil locked in strife, 
 The happy and the unhappy days, 
 The Right we always love, the oft- triumphant Wrong ; 
 And all his Being to a secret song 
 Sings with a mighty and unfaltering voice 
 " I have been ; Thou hast done all things well ; I am 
 glad ; I give thanks ; I rejoice ! " 
 
SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 PICTURES, 
 
 ABOVE the absymal undivided deep 
 
 A train of glory streaming from afar ; 
 
 And in the van, to wake the worlds from sleep, 
 
 One on whose forehead shines the Morning- Star 
 
 Long-rolling surges of a falling sea, 
 Smiting the sheer cliffs of an unknown shore ; 
 And by a fanged rock, swaying helplessly 
 A mast with broken cordage nothing more. 
 
 Three peaks, one loftier, all in virgin white, 
 Poised high in cloudland when the day is done, 
 And on the mid-most, far above the night, 
 The rose-red of the long-departed sun. 
 
 A wild girl reeling, helpless, like to fall, 
 Down a hushed street at dawn in midsummer ; 
 And one who had clean forgot their past and all, 
 From a lit palace casement pities her. 
 
218 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 A young man, only clothed with youth's first bloom, 
 In mien and form an angel, not in eye ; 
 Hard by, a fell worm crawling from a tomb, 
 And one, wide-eyed, who cries, " The Enemy ! " 
 
 A lake of molten fires which swell and surge 
 And fall in thunders on the burning verge ; 
 And one a queen rapt, with illumined face, 
 Who doth defy the Goddess of the place. 
 
 Eros beneath a red-cupped tree, asleep, 
 And 'mid the flowers, and thro' the air above, 
 Fair boys with silver wings who smiling peep 
 Upon the languid loosened limbs of love. 
 
 A darkling gateway, thronged with entering ghosts, 
 And a grave janitor, who seems to say : 
 " Woe, woe to youth, to life, which idly boasts ; 
 I am the End, and mine the appointed Way." 
 
 A young Faun making music on a reed, 
 
 Deep in a leafy dell in Arcady : 
 
 Three girl-nymphs fair, in musing thought take heed 
 
 Of the strange youth's mysterious melody. 
 
 A flare of lamplight in a shameful place 
 Full of wild revel and unchecked offence, 
 And in the midst, one fresh scarce-sullied face, 
 Within her eyes, a dreadful innocence. 
 
PICTURES. 219 
 
 A quire of seraphs, chanting row on row, 
 With lute and viol and high trumpet notes ; 
 And, above all, their soft young eyes aglow 
 Child angels, making laud from full clear throats. 
 
 Some, on a cliff at dawn, in agony ; 
 
 Below, a scaly horror on the sea, 
 
 Lashing the leaden surge. Fast-bound, a maid 
 
 Waits on the verge, alone, but unafraid. 
 
 A poisonous, dead, sad sea-marsh, fringed with pine, 
 Scarce lit by mouldering churches, old as Time ; 
 Beyond, on high, just touched with wintry rime, 
 The long chain of the autumnal Apennine. 
 
 A god-like Presence, beautiful as Dawn, 
 Watching, on some untrodden summit white, 
 The Earth's last day grow full, and fade in night ; 
 Then, with a sigh, the Presence is withdrawn. 
 
 A sheer rock-islet, frowning on the sea 
 Where no ship sails, nor ever life may be : 
 Thousands of leagues around, from pole to pole, 
 The unbounded lonely ocean-currents roll. 
 
 Young maids who wander on a flower-lit lawn, 
 In springtide of their lives as of the year ; 
 Meanwhile, unnoticed, swift, a thing of fear, 
 Across the sun, a deadly shadow drawn. 
 
220 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Slow, hopeless, overborne, without a word, 
 Two issuing, as if from Paradise ; 
 Behind them, stern, and with unpitying eyes, 
 Their former selves, wielding a two-edged sword 
 
 A weary woman tricked with gold and gem, 
 Bearing some strange barbaric diadem, 
 Scorn on her lips, and, like a hidden fire, 
 Within her eyes cruel unslaked desire. 
 
 Two aged figures, poor, and blurred with tears ; 
 Their child, a bold proud woman, sweeping by ; 
 A hard cold face, which pities not nor fears, 
 And all contempt and evil in her eye. 
 
 Around a harpsichord, a blue-eyed throng 
 Of long-dead children, rapt in sounds devout, 
 In some old grange, while on that silent song 
 The sabbath twilight fades, and stars come out. 
 
 Hidden in a trackless and primaeval wood, 
 Long-buried temples of an unknown race, 
 And one colossal idol ; on its face 
 A changeless sneer, blighting the solitude. 
 
 The end of things created ; Dreadful night, 
 Advancing swift on sky, and earth, and sea ; 
 But at the zenith a departing light, 
 A soaring countless blessed company ! 
 
THE LESSON OF TIME. 221 
 
 THE LESSON OF TIME. 
 
 LEAD thou me, Spirit of the World, and I 
 Will follow where thou leadest, willingly ; 
 Not with the careless sceptic's idle mood, 
 Nor blindly seeking some unreal good ; 
 
 For I have come, long since to that full day 
 Whose morning mists have fled and curled away 
 That breathless afternoon-tide when the Sun 
 Halts, as it were, before his journey done, 
 
 Calm as a river broadening toward the main, 
 Which never plunges down the rocks again, 
 But, clearly mirrored in its tranquil deep, 
 Holds tower and spire and forest as in sleep. 
 
 How old and worn the metaphor appears, 
 Old as the tale of passing hopes and fears ! 
 New as the springtide air, which day by day 
 Breathes on young lives, and speeds them on their way. 
 
 The Roman knew it, and the Hellene too ; 
 Assyrian and Egyptian proved it true ; 
 Who found for youth's young glory and its glow 
 Serener life, and calmer tides run slow. 
 
 And them oblivion takes, and those before, 
 Whose very name and race we know no more, 
 To whom, oh Spirit of the World and Man, 
 Thou didst reveal Thyself when Time began, 
 
 They felt, as I, what none may understand ; 
 They touched through darkness on a hidden hand ; 
 
222 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 They marked their hopes, their faiths, their longings fade. 
 And found a solitude themselves had made ; 
 
 They came, as I, to hope which conquers doubt, 
 Though sun and moon and every star go out ; 
 They ceased, while at their side a still voice said, 
 " Fear not, have courage ; blessed are the dead." 
 
 They were my brothers of one blood with me, 
 As with the unborn myriads who shall be : 
 I am content to rise and fall as they ; 
 I watch the dawning of the Perfect Day. 
 
 Lead thou me, Spirit, willing and content 
 To be, if thou wouldst have me, wholly spent. 
 I am thine own, I neither strive nor cry : 
 Stretch forth thy hand, I grasp it, silently. 
 
 VENDREDI SAINT. 
 
 THIS is Paris, the beautiful city, 
 Heaven's gate to the rich, to the poor without pity. 
 The clear sun shines on the fair town's graces, 
 And on the cold green of the shrunken river, 
 And the chill East blows, as 'twould blow for ever, 
 On the holiday groups with their shining faces. 
 
 For this is the one solemn day of the season, 
 
 When all the swift march of her gay unreason 
 
 Pauses a while, and a thin veil of sadness 
 
 Half hides, from strange eyes, the old riot and madness, 
 
 And the churches are crowded with devotees holy, 
 
 Rich and poor, saint and sinner, the great and the lowly. 
 
VENDREDI SAINT. 223 
 
 Here is a roofless palace, where gape 
 
 Black casements in rows without form or shape : 
 
 A sordid ruin, whose swift decay 
 
 Speaks of that terrible morning in May 
 
 When the whole fair city was blood and fire, 
 
 And the black smoke of ruin rose higher and higher, 
 
 And through the still streets, 'neath the broad Spring sun 
 Everywhere murder and rapine were done ; 
 Women lurking, with torch in hand, 
 Evil eyed, sullen, who soon should stand 
 Before the sharp bayonets, dripping with blood, 
 And be stabbed through and through, or shot dead where 
 they stood. 
 
 This is the brand-new Hotel de Ville, 
 
 Where six hundred wretches met death in the fire ; 
 
 Ringed round with a pitiless cordon of steel, 
 
 Not one might escape that swift vengeance. To-day 
 
 The ruin, the carnage, are clean swept away ; 
 
 And the sumptuous facades, and the high roofs aspire, 
 
 And, upon the broad square, the white palace face 
 Looks down with a placid and meaningless grace, 
 Ignoring the bloodshed, the struggle, the sorrow, 
 The doom that has been, and that may be to-morrow, 
 The hidden hatred, the mad endeavour, 
 The strife that still is and shall be for ever. 
 
 Here rise the twin-towers of Notre Dame, 
 Through siege, and revolt, and ruin the same. 
 See the people in crowds pressing onward, slowly, 
 Along the dark aisles to the altar holy 
 The altar, to-day, wrapt in mourning and gloom, 
 Since He whom they worship lies dead in the tomb. 
 
224 SOWGS UNSUNG. 
 
 There, by a tiny acolyte tended, 
 A round-cheeked child in his cassock white, 
 Lies the tortured figure to which are bended 
 The knees of the passers who gaze on the sight, 
 And the people fall prostrate, and kiss and mourn 
 The fair dead limbs which the nails have torn. 
 
 And the passionate music comes from the quire, 
 
 Full of soft chords of a yearning pity 
 
 The mournful voices accordant aspire 
 
 To the far-off gates of the Heavenly City ; 
 
 And the clear, keen alto, soaring high and higher, 
 
 Mounts now a surging fountain, now a heavenward lire. 
 
 Ay, eighteen centuries after the day, 
 
 A world-worn populace kneel and pray, 
 
 As they pass by and gaze on the limbs unbroken. 
 
 What symbol is this ? of what yearnings the token ? 
 
 What spell this that leads men a part to be 
 
 Of this old Judasan death-agony ? 
 
 And I asked, Was it naught but a Nature Divine, 
 
 That for lower natures consented to die ? 
 
 Could a greater than human sacrifice, 
 
 Still make the tears spring to the world-worn eye ? 
 
 One thought only it was that replied, and no other : 
 
 This man was our brother. 
 
 As I pass from the church, in the cold East wind, 
 
 Leaving its solemn teachings behind : 
 
 Once again, on the verge of the chill blue river, 
 
 The blighted buds on the branches shiver ; 
 
 Here, again, stream the holiday groups, with delight 
 
 Gaping in wonder at some new sight. 
 
VENDREDI SAINT. 22$ 
 
 'Tis an open doorway, squalid and low, 
 And crowds that ceaselessly come and go, 
 Careless enough ere they see the sight 
 Which leaves the gay faces pallid and white : 
 Something is there which can change their mood, 
 And check the holiday flow of the blood. 
 
 For the face which they see is the face of Death. 
 Strange, such a thing as the ceasing of breath 
 Should work such miraculous change as here : 
 Turn the thing that we love, to a thing of fear ; 
 Transform the sordid, the low, the mean, 
 To a phantasm, pointing to Depths unseen. 
 
 There they lie, the dead, unclaimed and unknown, 
 
 Each on his narrow and sloping stone. 
 
 The chill water drips from each to the ground ; 
 
 No other movement is there, nor sound. 
 
 With the look which they wore when they came to die, 
 
 They gaze from blind eyes on the pitiless sky. 
 
 No woman to-day, thank Heaven, is here ; 
 But men, old for the most part, and broken quite, 
 Who, finding this sad world a place of fear, 
 Have leapt forth hopelessly into the night, 
 Bankrupt of faith, without love, unfriended, 
 Dead-tired of life's comedy ere 'twas ended. 
 
 But here is one younger, whose ashy face 
 
 Bears some faint shadow of former grace* 
 
 What brought him here ? was it love's sharp fever ? 
 
 Was she worse than dead that he bore to leave her ? 
 
 Or was his young life, ere its summer came, 
 
 Burnt by Passion's whirlwinds as by a flame* 
 
 Q 
 
226 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Was it Drink or Desire, or the die's sure shame, 
 Which led this poor truant to deep disgrace ? 
 Was it hopeless misfortune, unmixed with blame, 
 That laid him here dead, in this dreadful place ? 
 Ah Heaven, of these nineteen long centuries, 
 Is the sole fruit this thing with the sightless eyes ! 
 
 Yesterday, passion and struggle and strife, 
 Hatreds, it may be, and anger-choked breath ; 
 Yesterday, fear and the burden of life ; 
 To-day, the cold ease and the calmness of death : 
 And that which strove and sinned and yielded there, 
 To-day in what hidden place of God's mysterious air ? 
 
 Whatever he has been, here now he lies, 
 
 Facing the stare of unpitying eyes. 
 
 I turn from the dank and dishonoured face, 
 
 To the fair dead Christ by his altar place, 
 
 And the same thought replies to my soul, and no other- 
 
 This, too, was our brother. 
 
 THE NEW CREED. 
 
 YESTERDAY, to a girl I said 
 
 " I take no pity on the unworthy dead, 
 
 The wicked, the unjust, the vile who die ; 
 
 'Twere better thus that they should rot and lie. 
 
 The sweet, the lovable, the just 
 
 Make holy dust ; ' 
 
 Elsewhere than on the earth 
 
 Shall come their second birth. 
 
 Until they go each to his destined place, 
 
 Whether it be to bliss or to disgrace, 
 
THE NEW CREED. 227 
 
 'Tis well that both should rest, and for a while be dead." 
 " There is nowhere else," she said. 
 
 " There is nowhere else." And this was a girl's voice 
 
 Who, some short tale of summers gone to-day, 
 
 Would carelessly rejoice, 
 
 As life's blithe springtide passed upon its way 
 
 And all youth's infinite hope and bloom 
 
 Shone round her ; nor might any shadow of gloom 
 
 Fall on her as she passed from flower to flower ; 
 
 Love sought her, with full dower 
 
 Of happy wedlock and young lives to rear ; 
 
 Nor shed her eyes a tear, 
 
 Save for some passing pity, fancy-bred. 
 
 All good things were around her riches, love, 
 
 All that the heart and mind can move, 
 
 The precious things of Art, the undefiled 
 
 And innocent affection of a child. 
 
 Oh girl, who sunny ways alone dost tread, 
 
 What curse is this that blights thy comely head ? 
 
 For right or wrong there is no further place than here, 
 
 No sanctities of hope, no chastening fear ? 
 
 " There is nowhere else," she said. 
 
 " There is nowhere else," and in the wintry ground 
 When we have laid the darlings of our love 
 The little lad with eyes of blue, 
 The little maid with curls of gold, 
 Or the beloved aged face 
 
 On which each passing year stamps a diviner grace- 
 That is the end of all, the narrow bound. 
 Why look our eyes above 
 
 To an unreal home which mortal never knew 
 Fold the hands on the breast, the clay-cold ringers fold ? 
 No waking comes there to the uncaring dead ! 
 " There is nowhere else," she said. 
 
228 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Strange ; is it old or new, this deep distress ? 
 
 Or do the generations, as they press 
 
 Onward for ever, onward still, 
 
 Finding no truth to fill 
 
 Their starving yearning souls, from year to year 
 
 Feign some new form of fear 
 
 To fright them, some new terror 
 
 Couched on the path of error, 
 
 Some cold and desolate word which, like a blow, 
 
 Forbids the current of their faith to flow, 
 
 Makes slow their pulse's eager beat, 
 
 And, chilling all their wonted heat, 
 
 Leaves them to darkling thoughts and dreads a prey, 
 
 Uncheered by dawning shafts or setting ray ? 
 
 Ah, old it is, indeed, and nowise new, 
 
 This is the poison-growth that grew 
 
 In the old thinkers' fancy-haunted ground. 
 
 They, blinded by some keen too-vivid gleam 
 
 Of the Unseen, to which all things did seem 
 
 To shape themselves and tend, 
 
 Solved, by some Giant Force, the Mystery of Things, 
 
 And, soaring all too high on Fancy's wings, 
 
 Saw in dead matter both their Source and End. 
 
 They felt the self-same shock and pain 
 
 As I who hear these prattlings cold to-day. 
 
 Not otherwise of old the fool to his heart did say. 
 
 " There is no other place of joy or grief, 
 
 Nor wrong in doubt, nor merit in belief : 
 
 There is no God, nor Lord of quick and dead ; 
 
 There is nowhere else," they said. 
 
 And, indeed, if any to whom life's path were rough 
 Should say as you, he had cause maybe at sight. 
 Truly, the way is steep and hard enough,' 
 And wrong is tangled and confused with right ; 
 
THE NEW CREED. 229 
 
 And from all the world there goes a solemn sound 
 Of lamentations, rising from the ground, 
 Confused as that which shocks the wondering ear 
 Of one who, gliding on the still lagune, 
 Finds the oar's liquid plash and tune 
 Lost in wild cries of frenzy and of fear, 
 And knows the Isle of Madness drawing near ; 
 And the great scheme, if scheme there be indeed, 
 Is a book deeper than our eyes may read, 
 Full of wild paradox, and vain endeavour, 
 And hopes and faiths which find completion never. 
 For such a one, in seasons of dismay 
 And dark depression deepening to despair, 
 Clouds come ofttimes to veil the face of day, 
 And there is no ray left of all the beams of gold, 
 The glow, the radiance bright, the unclouded faith of 
 old. 
 
 But you, poor child forlorn, 
 
 Ah ! better were it you were never born ; 
 
 Better that you had flung your heart away 
 
 On some coarse lump of clay ; 
 
 Better defeat, disgrace, childlessness, all 
 
 That can a solitary life befall, 
 
 Than to have all things and yet be 
 
 Self-bound to dark despondency, 
 
 And self-tormented, beyond reach of doubt, 
 
 By some cold word that puts all yearnings out. 
 
 " There is nowhere else," she said : 
 
 This is the outcome of their crude Belief 
 
 Who are, beyond all rescue and relief, 
 
 Being self-slain and numbered with the dead. 
 
 " There is no God but Force, 
 
 Which, working always on its destined course, 
 
 Speeds on its way and knows no thought of change. 
 
230 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Within the germ the molecule fares free, 
 Holding the potency of what shall be ; 
 Within the little germ lurks the heaven-reaching tree: 
 No break is there in all the cosmic show. 
 What place is there, in all the Scheme Immense, 
 For a remote unworking Excellence 
 Which may not be perceived by any sense, 
 Which makes no humble blade of grass to grow, 
 Which adds no single link to things and thoughts we 
 know ? " 
 
 " For everything that is, indeed, 
 
 Bears with it its own seed ; 
 
 It cannot change or cease and be no more : 
 
 All things for ever are even as they were before, 
 
 Or if, by long degrees and slow, 
 
 More complex doth the organism grow, 
 
 It makes no break in the eternal plan ; 
 
 There is no gulf that yawns between the herb and man." 
 
 Poor child, what is it they have taught, 
 
 Who through deep glooms and desert wastes of thought 
 
 Have brought to such as you their dreary creed ? 
 
 Have they no care, indeed, 
 
 For all the glorious gains of man's long past, 
 
 For all our higher hope of what shall be at last ? 
 
 " All things are moulded in one mould ; 
 
 They spring, they are, they fade by one compulsion cold 
 
 Some dark necessity we cannot know, 
 
 Which bids them wax and grow, 
 
 That is sufficient cause for all things, quick and dead ! " 
 
 " There is no Cause else," she said. 
 
 Oh, poor indeed, and in evil case, 
 
 Who shouldst be far from sound of doubt 
 
THE NEW CREED. 231 
 
 As a maiden in some restful place 
 
 Whose tranquil life, year in year out, 
 
 Is built on gentle worship, homely days 
 
 Lit each by its own light of prayer and praise, 
 
 For whom the spire points always to the sky, 
 
 And heaven lies open to the cloistered eye. 
 
 For us, for us, who mid the weary strife 
 
 And jangling discords of our life 
 
 Are day by day opprest, 
 
 'Twere little wonder were our souls distrest, 
 
 God, and the life to be, and all our early trust 
 
 Being far from us expelled and thrust; 
 
 But for you, child, who cannot know at all 
 
 To what mysterious laws we stand or fall, 
 
 To what bad heights the wrong within may grow, 
 
 To what dark depths the stream of hopeless lives may flow ! 
 
 For let the doubter cavil as he can, 
 
 There is no wit in man 
 
 Which can make Force rise higher still 
 
 Up to the heights of Will, 
 
 No phase of Force which finite minds can know 
 
 Can self-determined grow, 
 
 And of itself elect what shall its essence be : 
 
 The same to all eternity, 
 
 Unchanged, unshaped, it goes upon its blinded way ; 
 
 Nor can all forces nor all laws 
 
 Bring ceasing to the scheme, nor any pause, 
 
 Nor shape it to the mould in which to be 
 
 Form from the winged seed the myriad-branching tree, 
 
 Nor guide the force once sped, so that it turn 
 
 To Water-floods that quench or Fires that burn, 
 
 Or now to the electric current change, 
 
 Or draw all things by some attraction strange. 
 
 Or in the brain of man, working unseen, sublime, 
 
 Transcend the narrow bounds of Space and Time.. 
 
232 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Whence comes the innate Power which knows to guide 
 
 The force deflected so from side to side, 
 
 That not a barren line from whence to where 
 
 It goes upon its way through the unfettered air ? 
 
 What launched the prisoned atom on its fruitful course ? 
 
 Ah, it was more than Force 
 
 Which gave the Universe of things its form and face ! 
 
 Force moving on its path through Time and Space 
 
 Would round no orb, but leave all barren still. 
 
 A higher Power, it was, the worlds could form and fill ; 
 
 And by some pre-existent harmony 
 
 Were all things made as Fate would have them be 
 
 Fate, the ineffable Word of an Eternal Will. 
 
 All things that are or seem, 
 
 Whether we wake who see or do but dream, 
 
 Are of that Primal Will phantasms, if no more ; 
 
 Who sees these right sees God, and seeing doth adore. 
 
 Joy, suffering, evil, good, 
 
 Whate'er our daily food, 
 
 Whate'er the mystery and paradox of things, 
 
 Low creeping thoughts and high imaginings. 
 
 The laughters of the world, the age-long groan, 
 
 Bring to his mind one name, one thought alone ; 
 
 All beauty, right, deformity, or wrong, 
 
 Sing to his ear one high unchanging song ; 
 
 And everything that is, to his rapt fancy brings 
 
 The hidden beat through space of the Eternal Wings. 
 
 Where did the Idea dwell, 
 
 At first, which was of all the germ and seed ? 
 
 Which worked from Discord order, from blind Force 
 
 Sped all the Cosmos on its upward course ? 
 
 Which held within the atom and the cell 
 
 The whole vast hidden Universe, sheltered well, 
 
 Till the hour came to unfold it, and the need ? 
 
THE NEW CREED. 233 
 
 What did the ever-upward growth conceive, 
 
 Which from the obedient monad formed the herb, the 
 
 tree, 
 
 The animal, the man, the high growths that shall be ? 
 Ever from simpler to more complex grown, 
 The long processions from a source unknown 
 Unfold themselves across the scene of life. 
 Oh blessed struggle and strife, 
 Fare onward to the end, since from a Source 
 Thou art, which doth transcend and doth determine Force! 
 Fare onward to the end ; not from Force, dead and blind, 
 Thou comest, but from the depths of the Creative Mind. 
 
 Fare on to the end, but how should ending be, 
 
 If Will be in the Universe, and plan ? 
 
 Some higher thing shall be, that which to-day is Man. 
 
 Undying is each cosmic force : 
 
 Undying, but transformed, it runs its endless course. 
 
 It cannot wane, or sink, or be no more. 
 
 Not even the dust and lime which clothe us round 
 
 Lose their own substance in the charnel-ground, 
 
 Or carried far upon the weltering wind ; 
 
 Only with other growths combined, 
 
 In some new whole they are for ever 
 
 They are, and perish never. 
 
 The great suns shed themselves in heat and light 
 
 On the vast vacant interstellar air, 
 
 Till when their scattered elements unite 
 
 They are replenished as before they were. 
 
 Nothing is lost, nor can be : change alone, 
 
 Unceasing, never done, 
 
 Shapes all the forms of things, and keeps them still 
 
 Obedient to the Unknown Perfect Will. 
 
 And shall the life that is the highest that we know, 
 
 Shall this, alone, no more increase, expand and grow ? 
 
234 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Nay, somewhere else there is, although we know not 
 
 where, 
 
 Nor what new shape God gives our lives to wear. 
 We are content, whatever it shall be : 
 Content, through all eternity, 
 
 To be whatever the Spirit of the World deems best ; 
 Content to be at rest ; 
 
 Content to work and fare through endless days ; 
 Content to spend ourselves in endless praise : 
 Nay, if it be the Will Divine, 
 Content to be, and through long lives to pine, 
 Far from the light which vivifies, the fire 
 Which breathes upon our being and doth inspire 
 All soaring thoughts and hopes which light our pathway 
 
 here ; 
 
 Content, though with some natural thrill of fear, 
 To be purged through by age-long pain, 
 Till we resume our upward march again ; 
 Content, at need, to take some lower form, 
 Some humbler herb or worm 
 To be awhile, if e'er the eternal plan 
 Go back from higher to lower, from man to less than man. 
 Not so, indeed, we hold, but rather this 
 That all Time gone, that all that was or is, 
 The scarped cliff, the illimitable Past, 
 This truth alone of all truths else hold fast : 
 From lower to higher, from simple to complete, 
 This is the pathway of the Eternal Feet ; 
 From earth to lichen, herb to flowering tree, 
 From cell to creeping worm, from man to what shall be. 
 This is the solemn lesson of all time, 
 This is the teaching of the voice sublime : 
 Eternal are the worlds, and all that them doth fill ; 
 Eternal is the march of the Creative Will ; 
 Eternal is the life of man, and sun, and star ; 
 Ay, even though they fade a while, they are ; 
 And though they pause from, shining, speed for ever stilL 
 
A GREAT GULPH. 235 
 
 A GREAT GULPH. 
 
 IF any tender sire 
 Who sits round girt by loving faces 
 And happy childhood's thousand graces, 
 Through sudden crash or fire 
 
 Should 'scape from this poor life to some mysterious air, 
 And, dwelling solitary there, 
 Feel his unfilled and yearning father's heart 
 Pierced through by some intolerable smart ; 
 And, sickening for the dear lost lives again, 
 Through his o'ermastering pain 
 
 Break through the awful bonds the Eternal sets between 
 That which lives Here, and There, the Seen and the 
 Unseen ; 
 
 And having gained once more 
 
 This little Earth, should reach the scarce-left place 
 
 Which greets him with unchanged familiar face 
 
 The well-remembered door, 
 
 The rose he watered blooming yet, 
 
 Naught to remember or forget, 
 
 No change in all the world except in him, 
 
 Nor there save in some sense already dim 
 
 Before the unaltered past, so that he seem 
 
 A mortal spirit still, and what was since, a dream ; 
 
 And in the well-known room 
 
 Finds all the blithe remembered faces 
 
 Grown sad and blurred by recent traces 
 
 Of a new sorrow and gloom, 
 
 And when his soul to comfort them is fain 
 
 Mourns his voice mute, his form unknown, unseen, 
 
236 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 And thinks with irrepressible pain 
 Of all the happy days which late have been, 
 And feels his new life's inmost chambers stirred 
 If only of his own, he might be seen or heard ; 
 
 Then if, at length, 
 
 The father's yearning and o'erburdened soul 
 
 Burst into shape and voice which scorn control 
 
 Of its despairing strength, 
 
 Ah Heaven ! ah pity for the present dread 
 
 Which rising, strikes the old affection dead ! 
 
 Ah, better were it far than this thing to remain, 
 
 Voiceless, unseen, unloved, for ever and in pain ! 
 
 So when a finer mind, 
 
 Knowing its old self swept by some weird change 
 
 And the old thought deceased, or else grown strange, 
 
 Turns to those left behind, 
 
 With passionate stress and mighty yearning stirred, 
 
 It strives to stand revealed in shape and word 
 
 In vain ; or by strong travail visible grown, 
 
 Finds but a world estranged, and lives and dies -alone! 
 
 ONE DAY. 
 
 ONE day, one day, our lives shall seem 
 Thin as a brief forgotten dream : 
 One day, our souls by life opprest, 
 Shall ask no other boon than rest. 
 
 And shall no hope nor longing come, 
 No memory of our former home, 
 No yearning for the loved, the dear 
 Dead lives that are no longer here ? 
 
THE PATHOS OF ART. 237 
 
 If this be age, and age no more 
 Recall the hopes, the fears of yore, 
 The dear dead mother's accents mild, 
 The lisping of the little child, 
 
 Come, Death, and slay us ere the blood 
 Run slow, and turn our lives from good ; 
 For only in such memories we 
 Consent to linger and to be. 
 
 THE PATHOS OF ART. 
 
 OFT, seeing the old painters' art, 
 We find the tear unbidden start, 
 And feel our full hearts closer grow 
 To the far days of long ago. 
 
 Not burning faith, or godlike pain, 
 Can thus our careless thought enchain ; 
 The heavenward gaze of souls sublime, 
 At once transcends, and conquers time. 
 
 Nor pictured form of seer or saint, 
 Which hands inspired delight to paint ; 
 Art's highest aims of hand or tongue, 
 Age not, but are for ever young. 
 
 But some imperfect trivial scene, 
 Of homely life which once has been, 
 Of youth, so soon to pass away, 
 Of happy childhood's briefer day 
 
238 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Or humble daily tasks portrayed 
 The thrifty mistress with her maid ; 
 The flowers, upon the casement set, 
 Which in our Aprils blossom yet ; 
 
 The long processions, never done ; 
 The time-worn palace, scarce begun ; 
 The gondolier, who plies his oar 
 For stately sirs or dames of yore ; 
 
 The girl with fair hair morning-stirred, 
 Who swings the casement for her bird ; 
 The hunt ; the feast ; the simple mirth 
 Which marks the marriage or the birth ; 
 
 The burly forms, from side to side 
 Careering on the frozen tide ; 
 The long-haired knights ; the ladies prim ; 
 The chanted madrigal or hymn ; 
 
 The opera, with its stately throng ; 
 The twilight church aisles stretching long ; 
 The spires upon the wooded wold ; 
 The dead pathetic life of old ; 
 
 These all the musing mind can fill 
 So dead, so past, yet living still : 
 Oh dear dead lives, oh hands long gone, 
 Whose Life, whose Art still lingers on ! 
 
 A NIGHT IN NAPLES. 
 
 THIS is the one night in all the year 
 When the faithful of Naples who love their priest 
 May find their faith and their wealth increased ; 
 For just as the stroke of midnight is here, 
 
A NIGHT IN NAPLES. 239 
 
 Those who with faithful undoubting mind 
 Their " Aves " mutter, their rosaries tell, 
 They without doubt shall a recompence find ; 
 Yea, their faith indeed shall profit them well. 
 
 Therefore, to-night, in the hot thronged street 
 By San Gennaro's, the people devout, 
 With banner, and relic, and thurible meet, 
 With some sacred image to marshal them out. 
 
 For a few days hence, the great lottery 
 
 Of the sinful city declared will be, 
 
 And it may be that Aves and Paters said 
 
 Will bring some aid from the realms of the dead. 
 
 And so to the terrible place of the tomb 
 They issue, a pitiful crowd, through the gloom, 
 To where all the dead of the city decay, 
 Waiting the trump of the judgment day. 
 
 For every day of the circling year 
 
 Brings its own sum of corruption here ; 
 
 Every day has its great pit, fed 
 
 With its dreadful, heap of the shroudless dead. 
 
 And behind a grated rust-eaten door, 
 Marked each with their fated month and day, 
 The young and the old, who in life were poor, 
 Fester together and rot away. 
 
 Silence is there, the silence of death, 
 And in silence those poor pilgrims wearily pace, 
 And the wretched throng, pitiful, holding its breath, 
 Comes with shambling steps to the dreadful place. 
 
240 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Till before those dark portals, the muttering crowd 
 Breaks at length into passionate suffrages loud, 
 Waiting the flickering vapour thin, 
 Bred of the dreadful corruption within. 
 
 And here is a mother who kneels, not in woe, 
 By the vault where her child was flung months ago ; 
 And there is a strong man who peers with dry eyes 
 At the mouth of the gulph where his dead wife lies. 
 
 Till at last, to reward them, a faint blue fire, 
 Like the ghost of a soul, flickers here or there 
 At the gate of a vault, on the noisome air, 
 And the wretched throng has its low desire ; 
 
 And with many a praise of favouring saint, 
 
 And curses if any refuses to heed, 
 
 Full of low hopes and of sordid greed, 
 
 To the town they file backward, weary and faint. 
 
 And a few days hence, the great lottery 
 
 Of the sinful city declared will be, 
 
 And a number thus shown to those sordid eyes, 
 
 May, the saints being willing, attain the prize. 
 
 Wherefore to Saint and Madonna be said, 
 All praise and laud, and the faithful dead ! 
 
 ***** 
 It was long, long ago, in far-off Judasa, 
 That they slew Him of old, whom these slay to-day ; 
 They slew Him of old, in far-off Judsea, 
 It is long, long ago ; it was far, far away ! 
 
ODATIS. 241 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 LIKE to a star, or to a fire, 
 
 Which ever brighter grown, or higher, 
 
 Doth shine forth fixed, or doth aspire ; 
 
 Or to a glance, or to a sigh ; 
 Or to a low wind whispering by, 
 Which scarce has risen ere it die ; 
 
 Or to a bird, whose rapid flight 
 Eludes the dazed observer's sight, 
 Or a stray shaft of glancing light, 
 
 That for an instant breaks the gloom 
 
 Which wraps some dark, forgotten tomb, 
 
 Or some sweet Spring-flower's fleeting bloom ;- 
 
 Mixed part of reason, part belief, 
 
 Of pain and pleasure, joy and grief, 
 
 As changeful as the Spring, and brief ; 
 
 A wave, a shadow, a breath, a strife, 
 With change on change for ever rife ! 
 This is the thing we know as life. 
 
 ODATIS. 
 
 AN OLD LOVE-TALE. 
 
 CHARES of Mytilend, ages gone, 
 When the young Alexander's conquering star 
 Flamed on the wondering world, being indeed 
 The comrade of his arms, from the far East 
 Brought back this story of requited love. 
 
242 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 A Prince there was of Media, next of blood 
 To the great King Hystaspes, fair of form 
 As brave of soul, who to his flower of age 
 Was come, but never yet had known the dart 
 Of Cypris, being but a soldier bold, 
 Too much by trenched camps and wars' alarms 
 Engrossed, to leave a thought for things of love. 
 
 Now, at this selfsame time, by Tanais 
 Omartes ruled, a just and puissant king. 
 No son was his, only one daughter fair, 
 Odatis, of whose beauty and whose worth 
 Fame filled the furthest East. Only as yet, 
 Of all the suitors for her hand, came none 
 Who touched her maiden heart ; but, fancy-free, 
 She dwelt unwedded, lonely as a star. 
 
 Till one fair night in springtide, when the heart 
 Blossoms as does the earth, Cypris, the Queen, 
 Seeing that love is sweet for all to taste, 
 And pitying these loveless parted lives, 
 Deep in the sacred silence of the night, 
 From out the ivory gate sent down on them 
 A happy dream, so that the Prince had sight 
 Of fair Odatis in her diadem 
 And habit as she lived, and saw the charm 
 And treasure of her eyes, and knew her name 
 And country as it was ; while to the maid 
 There came a like fair vision of the Prince 
 Leading to fight the embattled Median hosts, 
 Young, comely, brave, clad in his panoply 
 And pride of war, so strong, so fair, so true, 
 That straight, the virgin coldness of her soul 
 Melted beneath the vision, as the snow 
 In springtime at the kisses of the sun. 
 
ODAT1S. 243 
 
 And when they twain awoke to common day 
 From that blest dream, still on their tranced eyes 
 The selfsame vision lingered. He an essence 
 Lovelier than all his life had known, more pure 
 And precious than all words ; she a strong soul 
 Yet tender, comely with the fire, the force 
 Of youthful manhood ; saw both night and day. 
 
 Nor ever from their mutual hearts the shape 
 Of that celestial vision waned nor grew 
 Faint with the daily stress of common life, 
 As do our mortal phantasies, but still 
 He, while the fiery legions clashed and broke, 
 Saw one sweet face above the flash of spears ; 
 She in high palace pomps, or household tasks, 
 Or 'mid the glittering courtier-crowded halls 
 Saw one brave ardent gaze, one manly form. 
 
 Now while in dreams of love these lovers lived 
 
 Who never met in waking hours, who knew not 
 
 Whether with unrequited love they burned, or whether 
 
 In mutual yearnings blest ; the King Omartes, 
 
 Grown anxious for his only girl, and knowing 
 
 How blest it is to love, would bid her choose 
 
 Whom she would wed, and summoning the maid, 
 
 With fatherly counsels pressed on her ; but she : 
 
 " Father, I am but young ; I prithee, ask not 
 
 That I should wed ; nay, rather let me live 
 
 My life within thy house. I cannot wed. 
 
 I can love only one, who is the Prince 
 
 Of Media, but I know not if indeed 
 
 His love is his to give, or if he know 
 
 My love for him ; only a heavenly vision, 
 
 Sent in the sacred silence of the night, 
 
 Revealed him to me as I know he is. 
 
 Wherefore, my father, though thy will be law, 
 
244 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Have pity on me ; let me love my love, 
 If not with recompense of love, alone ; 
 For I can love none else." 
 
 Then the King said : 
 " Daughter, to me thy happiness is life, 
 And more ; but now, I pray thee, let my words 
 Sink deep within thy mind. Thou canst not know 
 If this strange vision through the gate of truth 
 Came or the gate of error. Oftentimes 
 The gods send strong delusions to ensnare 
 Too credulous hearts. Thou canst not know, in sooth, 
 If 'twas the Prince thou saw'st, or, were it he, 
 If love be his to give ; and if it were, 
 I could not bear to lose thee, for indeed 
 I have no son to take my place, or pour 
 Libations on my tomb, and shouldst thou wed 
 A stranger, and be exiled from thy home, 
 What were my life to me ? Nay, daughter, dream 
 No more, but with some chieftain of my realm 
 Prepare thyself to wed. With the new moon 
 A solemn banquet will I make, and bid 
 Whate'er of high descent and generous youth 
 Our country holds. There shalt thou make thy choice 
 Of whom thou wilt, nor will I seek to bind 
 Thy unfettered will ; only I fain would see thee 
 In happy wedlock bound, and feel the touch 
 Of childish hands again, and soothe my age 
 With sight of thy fair offspring round my knees." 
 
 Then she, because she loved her sire and fain 
 Would do his will, left him without a word, 
 Obedient to his hest ; but day and night 
 The one unfading image of her dream 
 Filled all her longing sight, and day and night 
 The semblance of her Prince in all the pride 
 And bravery of battle shone on her. 
 
ODAT2S. 245 
 
 Nor was there any strength in her to heal 
 
 The wound which love had made, by reasonings cold, 
 
 Or musing on the phantasies of sleep ; 
 
 But still the fierce dart of the goddess burned 
 
 Within her soul, as when a stricken deer 
 
 O'er hill and dale escaping bears with her 
 
 The barb within her side ; and oft alone 
 
 Within her secret chamber she would name 
 
 The name of him she loved, and oft by night, 
 
 When sleep had bound her fast, her pale lips formed 
 
 The syllables of his name. Through the long hours, 
 
 Waking or sleeping, were her thoughts on him ; 
 
 So that the quenchless yearning long deferred 
 
 Made her heart sick, and like her heart, her form 
 
 Wasted, her fair cheek paled, and from her eyes 
 
 Looked out the silent suffering of her soul. 
 
 Now, when the day drew near which brought the feast, 
 
 One of her slaves, who loved her, chanced to hear 
 
 Her sweet voice wandering in dreams, and caught 
 
 The Prince's name ; and, being full of grief 
 
 And pity for her pain, and fain to aid 
 
 The gentle girl she loved, made haste to send 
 
 A messenger to seek the Prince and tell him 
 
 How he was loved, and when the feast should be, 
 
 And how the King would have his daughter wed. 
 
 But to the Princess would she breathe no word 
 
 Of what was done, till, almost on the eve 
 
 Of the great feast, seeing her wan and pale 
 
 And all unhappy, falling at her knees, 
 
 She, with a prayer for pardon, told her all. 
 
 But when the Princess heard her, virgin shame 
 Love drawing her and Pride of Maidenhood 
 In opposite ways till all distraught was she 
 Flushed her pale cheek, and lit her languid gaze. 
 
346 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Yet since she knew that loving thought alone 
 
 Prompted the deed, being soft and pitiful, 
 
 She bade her have no fear, and though at first 
 
 Unwilling, by degrees a newborn hope 
 
 Chased all her shame away, and once again 
 
 A long unwonted rose upon her cheek 
 
 Bloomed, and a light long vanished fired her eyes. 
 
 Meanwhile upon the plains in glorious war 
 
 The brave Prince led his conquering hosts ; but still, 
 
 Amid the shock of battle and the crash 
 
 Of hostile spears, one vision filled his soul. 
 
 Amid the changes of the hard-fought day, 
 
 Throughout the weary watches of the night, 
 
 The dream, the happy dream, returned again ; 
 
 Always the selfsame vision of a maid 
 
 Fairer than earthly, filled his eyes and took 
 
 The savour from the triumph, ay, and touched 
 
 The warrior's heart with an unwonted ruth, 
 
 So that he shrank as never yet before 
 
 From every day's monotony of blood, 
 
 And saw with unaccustomed pain the sum 
 
 Of death and woe, and hopeless shattered lives, 
 
 Because a softer influence touched his soul. 
 
 Till one night, on the day before the feast 
 Which King Omartes destined for his peers, 
 While now his legions swept their conquering way 
 A hundred leagues or more from Tanais, 
 There came the message from the slave, and he 
 Within his tent, after the well-fought day, 
 Resting with that fair image in his eyes, 
 Woke suddenly to know that he was loved. 
 
 Then, in a moment, putting from him sleep 
 And well-earned rest, he bade his charioteer 
 
ODATIS. 247 
 
 Yoke to his chariot three unbroken colts 
 
 Which lately o'er the endless Scythian plain 
 
 Careered, untamed ; and, through the sleeping camp, 
 
 Beneath the lucid aspect of the night, 
 
 He sped as speeds the wind. The great stars hung 
 
 Like lamps above the plain ; the great stars sank 
 
 And faded in the dawn ; the hot red sun 
 
 Leapt from the plain ; noon faded into eve ; 
 
 Again the same stars lit the lucid night ; 
 
 And still, with scarce a pause, those fierce hoofs dashed 
 
 Across the curved plain onward, till he saw 
 
 Far off the well-lit palace casements gleam 
 
 Wherein his love was set. 
 
 Then suddenly 
 
 He checked his panting team, the rapid wheels 
 Ceased, and his mail and royal garb he hid 
 Beneath a rich robe such as nobles use 
 By Tanais ; and to the lighted hall 
 He passed alone, bidding his charioteer 
 Await him in the darkness by the gate. 
 
 Now, when the Prince drew near the vestibule, 
 The feast long time had sped, and all the guests 
 Had eaten and drunk their fill ; and he unseen, 
 Through the close throng of serving men and maids 
 Around the door, like some belated guest 
 To some obscurer station slipped, and took 
 The wine-cup with the rest, who marvelled not 
 To see him come, nor knew him ; only she 
 Who sent the message whispered him a word : 
 " Have courage ; she is there, and cometh soon. 
 Be brave : she loves thee only ; watch and wait." 
 Even then the King Omartes, where he sate 
 On high among his nobles, gave command 
 To summon from her maiden chamber forth 
 The Princess. And obedient to the call, 
 
248 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 Robed in pure white, clothed round with maiden shame, 
 Full of vague hope and tender yearning love, 
 To the high royal throne Odatis came. 
 
 And when the Prince beheld the maid, and saw 
 
 The wonder which so long had filled his soul 
 
 His vision of the still night clothed with life 
 
 And breathing earthly air and marked the heave 
 
 Of her white breast, and saw the tell-tale flush 
 
 Crimson her cheek with maiden modesty, 
 
 Scarce could his longing eager arms forbear 
 
 To clasp the virgin round, so fair she seemed. 
 
 But, being set far down from where the King 
 
 Sat high upon the da'is 'midst the crowd 
 
 Of eager emulous faces looking love, 
 
 None marked his passionate gaze, or stretched-forth 
 
 hands ; 
 
 Till came a pause, which hushed the deep-drawn sigh 
 Of admiration, as the jovial King, 
 Full tender of his girl, but flushed with wine, 
 Spake thus to her : 
 
 " Daughter, to this high feast 
 Are bidden all the nobles of our land. 
 Now, therefore, since to wed is good, and life 
 To the unwedded woman seems a load 
 Which few may bear, and none desire, I prithee, 
 This jewelled chalice taking, mingle wine 
 As well thou knowest, and the honeyed draught 
 Give to some noble youth of those thou seest 
 Along the well-ranged tables, knowing well 
 That him to whom thou givest, thou shalt wed. 
 I fetter not thy choice, girl. I grow old ; 
 I have no son to share the weight of rule, 
 And fain would see thy children ere I die." 
 
 Then, with a kiss upon her glowing cheek, 
 
ODA TIS. 249 
 
 He gave the maid the cup. The cressets' light 
 
 Fell on the jewelled chalice, which gave back 
 
 A thousand answering rays. Silent she stood 
 
 A moment, half in doubt, then down the file 
 
 Of close-ranked eager faces flushed with hope, 
 
 And eyes her beauty kindled more than wine, 
 
 Passed slow, a breathing statue. Her white robe 
 
 Among the purple and barbaric gold 
 
 Showed like the snowy plumage of a dove, 
 
 As down the hall, the cup within her hands, 
 
 She, now this way regarding and now that, 
 
 Glided, a burning blush upon her cheek ; 
 
 And on each youthful noble her large eyes 
 
 Rested a moment only, icy cold, 
 
 Though many indeed were there, brave, fair to see, 
 
 Fit for a maiden's love ; but never at all 
 
 The one o'ermastering vision of her dream 
 
 Rose on her longing eyes, till hope itself 
 
 Grew faint, and, ere she gained the end, she turned 
 
 Sickening to where, along the opposite wall, 
 
 Sat other nobles young and brave as those, 
 
 But not the fated vision of her dream. 
 
 Meanwhile the Prince, who 'mid the close-set throng 
 
 Of humbler guests was hidden, saw her come 
 
 And turn ere she had marked him, and again 
 
 Down the long line of princely revellers 
 
 Pass slow as in a dream ; and all his soul 
 
 Grew sick with dread lest haply, seeing not 
 
 The one expected face, and being meek 
 
 And dutiful, and reverent to her sire, 
 
 She in despair might make some sudden choice 
 
 And leave him lovelorn. And where'er she went 
 
 He could not choose but gaze, as oft in sleep 
 
 Some dreadful vision chains us that we fail 
 
 To speak or move, though to be still seem death. 
 
250 SONGS UNSUNG. 
 
 And once he feared that she had looked on him 
 And passed, and once he thought he saw her pause 
 By some tall comely youth ; and then she reached 
 The furthest wall, and as she turned her face 
 And came toward him again to where the jars 
 Of sweet wine stood for mingling, with a bound 
 His heart went out to her ; for now her cheek 
 As pale and lifeless as the icy moon, 
 And the dead hope within her eyes, and pain 
 Of hardly conquered tears, made sure his soul, 
 Knowing that she was his. 
 
 But she, dear heart, 
 
 Being sick indeed with love, and in despair, 
 Yet reverencing her duty to her sire, 
 Turned half-distraught to fill the fated cup 
 And with it mar her life. 
 
 But as she stood 
 
 Alone within the vestibule and poured 
 The sweet wine forth, slow, trembling, blind with tears, 
 A voice beside her whispered, " I am here ! " 
 And looking round her, at her side she saw, 
 A youthful mailed form the festal robe 
 Flung backward, and the face, the mouth, the eyes 
 Whereof the vision filled her night and day. 
 
 Then straight, without a word, with one deep sigh, 
 She held the wine-cup forth. He poured out first 
 Libation to the goddess, and the rest 
 Drained at a draught, and cast his arms round her, 
 And down the long-drawn sounding colonnade 
 Snatched her to where without, beneath the dawn, 
 The brave steeds waited and the charioteer. 
 His robe he round her threw ; they saw the flare 
 Of torches at the gate ; they heard the shouts 
 Of hot pursuit grow fainter ; till at last, 
 In solitude, across the rounding plain 
 
ODAT1S. 251 
 
 They flew through waking day, until they came 
 To Media, and were wed. And soon her sire, 
 Knowing their love, consented, and they lived 
 Long happy lives ; such is the might of Love. 
 
 That is the tale the soldier from the East, 
 Chares of Mytilene', ages gone, 
 Told oftentimes at many a joyous feast 
 In Hellas ; and he said that all the folk 
 In Media loved it, and their painters limned 
 The story in the temples of their gods, 
 And in the stately palaces of kings, 
 Because they reverenced the might of Love. 
 
GYCI A. 
 
 Lamachns. My dearest daughter, why this solemn 
 
 aspect ? 
 
 I have glad news for thee. Thou knowest of old 
 The weary jealousies, the bloody feuds, 
 Which 'twixt our Cherson and her neighbour City 
 Have raged ere I was born nay, ere my grandsire 
 First saw the light of heaven. Both our States 
 Are crippled by this brainless enmity. 
 And now the Empire, now the Scythian, threatens 
 Destruction to our Cities, whom, united, 
 We might defy with scorn. Seeing this weakness, 
 Thy father, wishful, ere his race be run, 
 To save our much-loved Cherson, sent of late 
 Politic envoys to our former foe, 
 And now i* faith, I am not so old, 'twould seem, 
 That I have lost my state-craft comes a message. 
 The Prince Asander, heir of Bosphorus, 
 Touches our shores to-day, and presently 
 Will be with us. 
 
 Gycia. Oh, father, is it wise ? 
 
 Do fire and water mingle ? Does the hawk 
 Mate with the dove ; the tiger with the lamb ; 
 The tyrant with the peaceful commonwealth ; 
 Fair commerce with the unfruitful works of war ? 
 What union can there be 'twixt our fair city 
 And this half-barbarous race ? 'Twere against nature 
 To bid these opposite elements combine 
 
GYCIA. 253 
 
 The Greek with the Cimmerian. Father, pray you, 
 Send them away, with honour if you please, 
 And soothing words and gifts only, I pray you, 
 Send them away, this Prince who doth despise us, 
 And his false retinue of slaves. 
 
 Lama. My daughter, 
 
 Thy words are wanting in thy wonted love 
 And dutiful observance. 'Twere an insult 
 Unwashed by streams of bloodshed, should our City 
 Scorn thus the guests it summoned. Come they must, 
 And with all hospitable care and honour, 
 Else were thy sire dishonoured. Thou wilt give them 
 A fitting welcome. 
 
 Gycia. Pardon me, my father. 
 
 That I spoke rashly. I obey thy will. {Going. 
 
 Lama. Stay, Gycia. Dost thou know what 'tis to love ? 
 
 Gycia. Ay, thee, dear father. 
 
 Lama. Nay, I know it well. 
 
 But has no noble youth e'er touched thy heart ? 
 
 Gycia. None, father, Heaven be praised ! The young 
 
 Irene 
 
 Was with me when thou cam'st, and all her life 
 Seem blighted by this curse of love for one 
 Whose name she hides, with whom in Bosphorus 
 She met, when there she sojourned. Her young brother, 
 The noble Theodorus, whom thou knowest, 
 Lets all the world go by him and grows pale 
 For love, and pines, and wherefore? For thy daughter, 
 Who knows not what love means, and cannot brook 
 Such brain-sick folly. Nay, be sure, good father, 
 I love not thus, and shall not. 
 
 Lama. Well, well, girl, 
 
 Thou wilt know it yet. I fetter not thy choice, 
 But if thou couldst by loving bind together 
 Not two hearts only, but opposing peoples ; 
 Supplant by halcyon days long years of strife, 
 
254 GYCIA. 
 
 And link them in unbroken harmony ; 
 Were this no glory for a woman, this 
 No worthy price of her heart ? 
 
 Gycia. Tell me, I pray, 
 
 What mean you by this riddle ? 
 
 Lama. Prince Asander 
 
 Comes here to ask your hand, and with it take 
 A gracious dower of peace and amity. 
 He does not ask thee to forsake thy home, 
 But leaves for thee his own. All tongues together 
 Are full of praise of him : virgin in love, 
 A brave youth in the field, as we have proved 
 In many a mortal fight ; a face and form 
 Like a young god's. I would, my love, thy heart 
 Might turn to him, and find thy happiness 
 In that which makes me happy. I am old 
 And failing, and I fain would see thee blest 
 Before I die, and at thy knees an heir 
 To all my riches, and the State of Chersoti 
 From anxious cares delivered, and through thee. 
 
 Gycia. Father, we are of the Athenian race, 
 Which was the flower of Hellas. Ours the fame 
 Of Poets, Statesmen, Orators, whose works 
 And thoughts upon the forehead of mankind 
 Shine like a precious jewel ; ours the glory 
 Of those great Soldiers who by sea and land 
 Scattered the foemen to the winds of heaven, 
 First in the files of time. And though our mother, 
 Our Athens, sank, crushed by the might of Rome, 
 What is Rome now ? An Empire rent in twain ; 
 An Empire sinking 'neath the unwieldy weight 
 Of its own power ; an Empire where the Senate 
 Ranks lower than the Circus, and a wanton 
 Degrades the Imperial throne. But though to its fall 
 The monster totters, this our Cherson keeps 
 The bravery of old, and still maintains 
 
GYCIA. . 255 
 
 The old Hellenic spirit and some likeness 
 
 Of the fair Commonwealth which ruled the world. 
 
 Surely, my father, 'tis a glorious spring 
 
 Drawn from the heaven-kissed summits whence we come ; 
 
 And shall we, then, defile our noble blood 
 
 By mixture with this upstart tyranny 
 
 Which fouls the Hellenic pureness of its source 
 
 In countless bastard channels ? If our State 
 
 Ask of its children sacrifice, 'tis well. 
 
 It shall be given ; only I prithee, father, 
 
 Seek not that I should with barbaric blood 
 
 Taint the pure stream, which flows from Pericles. 
 
 Let me abide unwedded, if I may, 
 
 A Greek girl as before. 
 
 Lama. Daughter, thy choice 
 
 Is free as air to accept or to reject 
 This suitor ; only, in the name of Cherson, 
 Do nothing rashly, and meanwhile take care 
 That naught that fits a Grecian State be wanting 
 To do him honour. 
 
 Gycia. Sir, it shall be done. 
 
SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 ON A THRUSH SINGING IN AUTUMN. 
 
 SWEET singer of the Spring, when the new world 
 
 Was filled with song and bloom, and the fresh year 
 
 Tripped, like a lamb playful and void of fear, 
 
 Through daisied grass and young leaves scarce unfurled, 
 
 Where is thy liquid voice 
 
 That all day would rejoice ? 
 
 Where now thy clear and homely call, 
 
 Which from gray dawn to evening's chilling fall 
 
 Would echo from thin copse and tasselled brake, 
 
 For homely duty tuned and love's dear sake ? 
 
 The spring-tide passed, high summer soon should come. 
 
 The woods grew thick, the meads a deeper hue ; 
 
 The pipy summer growths swelled, lush and tall ; 
 
 The keen scythes swept at daybreak through the dew. 
 
 Thou didst not heed at all, 
 
 Thy prodigal voice grew dumb"; 
 
 No more with song mightst thou beguile, 
 
 She sitting on her speckled eggs the while, 
 
 Thy mate's long vigil as the slow days went, 
 
 Solacing her with lays of measureless content. 
 
 Nay, nay, thy voice was Duty's, nor would dare 
 Sing were Love fled, though still the world were fair ; 
 
ON A THRUSH SINGING IN AUTUMN. 257 
 
 The summer waxed and waned, the nights grew cold, 
 
 The sheep lay thick within the wattled fold, 
 
 The woods began to moan, 
 
 Dumb wert thou and alone; 
 
 Yet now, when leaves are sere, thy ancient note 
 
 Comes low and halting from thy doubtful throat. 
 
 Oh, lonely loveless voice, what dost thou here 
 
 In the deep silence of the fading year ? 
 
 Thus do I read the answer of thy song : 
 
 " I sang when winds blew chilly all day long ; 
 
 I sang because hope came and joy was near, 
 
 I sang a little while, I made good cheer ; 
 
 In summer's cloudless day 
 
 My music died away ; 
 
 But now the hope and glory of the year 
 
 Are dead and gone, a little while I sing 
 
 Songs of regret for days no longer here, 
 
 And touched with presage of the far-off Spring." 
 
 Is this the meaning of thy note, fair bird ? 
 
 Or do we read into thy simple brain 
 
 Echoes of thoughts which human hearts have stirred, 
 
 High-soaring joy and melancholy pain ? 
 
 Nay, nay, that lingering note 
 
 Belated from thy throat 
 
 " Regret," is what it sings, " regret, regret ! 
 
 The dear days pass, but are not wholly gone. 
 
 In praise of those I let my song go on ; 
 
 Tis sweeter to remember than forget." 
 
258 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 IN AUTUMN. 
 
 " DECAY, decay," the wildering west winds cry, 
 
 " Decay, decay," the moaning woods reply ; 
 
 The whole dead autumn landscape, drear and chill, 
 
 Strikes the same chord of desolate sadness still. 
 
 The drifting clouds, the floods a sullen sea, 
 
 The dead leaves whirling from the ruined tree, 
 
 The rain which falling soaks the sodden way, 
 
 Proclaim the parting summer's swift decay. 
 
 No song of bird, nor joyous sight or thing, 
 
 Which smooths the wintry forefront of the spring ; 
 
 No violet lurking in its mossy bed, 
 
 Nor drifted snow-bloom bending overhead, 
 
 Nor kingcups carpeting the meads with gold, 
 
 Nor tall spiked orchids purpling all the wold ; 
 
 But thin dull herbage which no more may grow, 
 
 And dry reeds rustling as the chill winds blow, 
 
 Bleak hillsides whence the huddled flocks are fled, 
 
 And every spear of crested grass lies dead. 
 
 " Decay, decay," the leafless woodlands sigh, 
 
 The torpid earth, and all the blinded sky, 
 
 And down the blurred moor, 'mid the dying day, 
 
 An age-worn figure limps its weary way. 
 
 IN A COUNTRY CHURCH. 
 
 THE organ peals, the people stand, 
 The white procession through the aisles, 
 As is our modern use, defiles 
 In ranks, which part on either hand. 
 
IN A COUNTRY CHURCH. 259 
 
 They chant the psalms with resonant voice 
 These peasants of our Saxon Kent ; 
 With the old Hebrew king rejoice, 
 With him grow contrite and repent. 
 
 But when the pale priest, blandly cold, 
 White-winged above the eagle bends, 
 I lose the ancient words of old, 
 The monotone which still ascends. 
 
 For there the village school is set, 
 A row of shining faces bright, 
 Round cheeks by time unwrinkled yet, 
 Smooth heads, and boyish collars white. 
 
 And through the row there runs a smile, 
 Like sunlight on a rippling sea 
 A childish mirth, devoid of guile ; 
 What may the merry movement be ? 
 
 The teachers frown ; not far to seek 
 The wonder seems, for it is this : 
 A little scholar whose round cheek 
 A stain of gules appears to kiss. 
 
 For some low shaft of wintry sun 
 
 Strikes where Dame Dorothy of the Grange, 
 
 In long devotions never done, 
 
 Kneels on through centuries of change ; 
 
 And from her robe's unfading rose, 
 Athwart the fair heads ranged below, 
 A ruddy shaft at random goes, 
 And lights them with unwonted glow. 
 
260 SOJVGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 And straightway all the scene but these 
 Grows dim for me ; I heed no more 
 The preacher's smooth monotonies. 
 The chants repeated o'er and o'er. 
 
 For I am borne on fancy's wings 
 Far from the Present to the Past ; 
 From those which pass to those which last, 
 The root and mystery of Things. 
 
 How many an old and vanished day, 
 Has gone, she kneeling there the while, 
 And watching, with her saintly smile, 
 The generations fade away. 
 
 The children came each Sunday there 
 To hear the self-same chant and hymn ; 
 The boys grew strong, the girls grew fair, 
 Their lives with fleeting years grew dim. 
 
 Their children's children came and went, 
 She kneeling in the self-same prayer ; 
 They passed to withered age, and bent, 
 And left the Lady kneeling there. 
 
 They grew, they waned through toil and strife, 
 From innocence to guilt and sin ; 
 They gained what prize was theirs to win, 
 They sank in shame the load of life. 
 
 They passed, and on the churchyard ground 
 No more their humble names are seen ; 
 Only upon the billowy mound 
 Yearly the untrodden grass grows green. 
 
IN A COUNTRY CHURCH. 261 
 
 And still the kneeling Lady calm 
 Throws gules on many a childish head. 
 And still the self-same prayers are said, 
 The self-same chant, the self-same psalm. 
 
 So had it been, before as yet, 
 Her far-off grandsires lived and died, 
 Ere long descent had nourished pride, 
 Before the first Plantagenet. 
 
 No change, unless some change there were 
 In simpler rite or grayer stone, 
 The self-same worship never done, 
 And for its very age grown fair. 
 
 Great God, the creatures of Thy hand, 
 Must they thus fail for ever still 
 Thy high behests to understand, 
 To seek and find Thy hidden will ? 
 
 Are Thy hands slow to succour then ? 
 And are Thy eyes, then, blind to see 
 The toiling, tempted race of men 
 Born into sin and misery ? 
 
 For nineteen centuries of Time, 
 Nay more, for dim unnumbered years, 
 Men's eyes have sought Thy face sublime, 
 And turned uncomforted, in tears. 
 
 For countless years unsullied youth 
 Has sunk through grosser mire of sense ; 
 And yet men cherish innocence ! 
 And yet we are no nearer truth ! 
 
262 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 And not the less from age to age 
 Heavenward the unchanging suffrage rolls 
 From hearts inspired by holy rage, 
 And meek and uncomplaining souls, 
 
 Who see no cloud of doubt o'erspread 
 The far horizons of the sky, 
 But view with clear, unfailing eye 
 The mansions of the happy dead. 
 
 Oh, wonder ! oh, perplexed thought ! 
 Oh, interchange of good and ill ! 
 In vain, by life's long pain untaught, 
 We strive to solve the riddle still. 
 
 In vain, so mixed the twofold skein, 
 That none the tangle may unwind ; 
 Where one the gate of Heaven may find, 
 Another shrinks in hopeless pain. 
 
 So here the immemorial sum 
 Of simple reverence may breed 
 A finer worship than might come 
 For fruit of some severer creed. 
 
 Kneel, Lady, blazoned in thy place ! 
 Through generations children kneel. 
 To know is weaker than to feel : 
 Though Truth seem far, we know her face ! 
 
AN ENGLISH IDYLL. 263 
 
 AN ENGLISH ID YLL. 
 
 ONCE I remember, in a far-off June, 
 
 Leaving the studious cloister of my youth, 
 
 Beside the young Thames 3 stream I laid me down, 
 
 Wearied, upon a bank. 'Twas mid-summer ; 
 
 The warm earth teemed with flowers ; the kingcup's gold, 
 
 The perfumed clover, 'mid the crested grass, 
 
 The plantains rearing high their flowery crowns 
 
 Above the daisied coverts ; overhead, 
 
 The hawthorns, white and rosy, bent with bloom, 
 
 The broad-spread chestnuts spiked with frequent flowers, 
 
 And white gold-hearted lilies on the stream ; 
 
 All these made joy within my heart, and woke 
 
 The fair idyllic phantasies of Greece ; 
 
 And dreaming, well content with the rich charm 
 
 Of summer England, long I idly mused : 
 
 " And were the deep-set vales of Thessaly 
 
 Or fair Olympian beech-groves more than this ? 
 
 Or the Sicilian meads more rich in flowers, 
 
 Where the lost goddess plucked the asphodel ? 
 
 Or flowed the clear stream through a lovelier shade 
 
 Where Dian bathed and rapt Actason saw ? 
 
 Or were they purer depths where Hylas played 
 
 Till the nymphs drew him down ? Ah, fairer dreams 
 
 Than our poor England holds ! Grave, toil-worn land 1 
 
 Poor aged mother of a graceless brood, 
 
 With shambling gait and limbs by labour bent ! 
 
 What should she know of such ? " 
 
 When straight I heard 
 A ripple of boyish mirth, and looking saw 
 Far off along the meads a gliding boat 
 Float noiselessly ; lithe forms at either end 
 The self- same forms which Phidias fixed of old 
 
264 SOWGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 With tall poles, pressed it forward, others lay 
 Reclined, and all had crowned their short smooth hair 
 With lilies from the stream, while one had shaped 
 Some hollow reed in semblance of a pipe, 
 Making a shrill faint sound a joyous crew, 
 Clothed with the grace of innocent nakedness. 
 Then, while they yet were far, ere yet a sound 
 Of their poor rustic tones assailed the sense, 
 Or too great nearness marred the grace of form 
 
 Poised sudden in a white row, side by side, 
 
 They plunged down headlong in the sweet warm tide. 
 
 Then, as I went, within myself I said, 
 
 " The young Apollo is not wholly fled, 
 
 Nor can long centuries of toil and care 
 
 Make youth less comely or the earth less fair. 
 
 To the world's ending Joy and Grace shall be. 
 
 I, too, have been to-day in Arcady." 
 
 ANIMA MUNDI. 
 
 OH great World-Spirit, wherefore art thou come ? 
 We crave an answer, but thy voice is dumb. 
 
 Oh great World-Spirit, whither dost thou tend ? 
 By what dark paths to what mysterious end ? 
 
 We do not know, we cannot tell at all, 
 Only before thy onward march we fall. 
 * * * * * 
 
 Nay, but before thy throne we fall, we kneel ; 
 We crave not that thy face thou shouldst reveal ; 
 We do not seek to know, only to feel. 
 
IN PEMBROKESHIRE, 1886. 265 
 
 We praise thee not in words our tongues can tell ; 
 Though thy hand slay us, we will not rebel. 
 Whate'er thy will design for us, 'tis well. 
 
 Compute our lives with all thy boundless past, 
 Project them on thy abysmal Future vast ; 
 Only let all be merged in Thee at last. 
 
 IN PEMBROKESHIRE, 1886. 
 
 THROUGH crested grass I took my way 
 From my loved home. The sun was high ; 
 The warm air slept the live-long day j 
 No shadowy cloudlet veiled the sky. 
 
 The swift train swept with rhythmic tune, 
 By endless pastures hurrying down, 
 White farm, lone chapel, castled town, 
 Then, fringed with weed, the salt lagune, 
 
 At last the land-locked haven blue, 
 Thin-sown with monstrous works of war, 
 And on the sweet salt air I knew 
 Faint sounds of cheering from afar. 
 
 ***** 
 Strong arms and backs are bent, and then 
 They draw us up the fluttering street ; 
 Behind, there comes the ordered beat 
 Of long-drawn files of marching men. 
 
 At last a halt ; a steep hillside 
 Set thick with toil-worn workers strong, 
 Grave faces stretching far and wide, 
 Fired with the hope to banish wrong. 
 
266 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 Ah me ! how thin one voice appears, 
 To reach so many eager minds ! 
 Nay, for it speaks to willing ears, 
 And what the hearer seeks he finds. 
 
 Unhappy Island of the West ! 
 Thy brethren these in race and blood, 
 Not like thee tempted or opprest, 
 But filled with. longing for thy good. 
 
 For just is manhood rude and strong 
 And generous the toiler's soul ; 
 When these the ship of State control, 
 Oppression shall not flourish long. 
 
 The crowds are gone, the hillside bare, 
 The last good-nights at length are said, 
 The harbour crossed again, the fair 
 Large star of eve hangs overhead. 
 
 The shades of tardy evening fall ; 
 Lights come in casements here and there ; 
 Through dewy meads on the cool air 
 The wandering landrails hoarsely call. 
 
 The silent roads loom ghostly white ; 
 No veil of darkness hides the skies ; 
 A sunless dawn appears to rise 
 Upon the stilly charmed night. 
 
 The day's hot concourse comes to seem 
 Far, far away ; the eager crowd, 
 The upturned gaze, the plaudits loud, 
 In the cool silence like a dream. 
 
IN PEMBROKESHIRE, 1886. 267 
 
 And oh, sweet odours, which the air 
 Of the calm summer midnight deep 
 Draws from the rose which lies asleep, 
 And bowery honeysuckles fair. 
 
 Oh, perfumed night ! Some tremulous bird 
 From the thick hedgerows seems to thrill. 
 No other sound but this is heard, 
 Save ringing horsehoofs, beating still. 
 
 Midnight is past ; there comes a gleam, 
 Precursor of the scarce-set sun. 
 Through gray streets hushed as in a dream 
 We sweep, and the long day is done. 
 
 Men pass, but still shall Nature keep 
 Her night's cool calm, her dawn's bright glow ; 
 Unseen her fragrant wild flowers creep, 
 Unmarked her midnight odours blow. 
 
 The long injustices of years i 
 
 Shall pass ; the hapless Western Isle 
 Shall dry the age-long trace of tears, 
 And show instead a happy smile. 
 
 The wheels of Fate are swiftly borne 
 From point to point, from change to change ; 
 What yesterday was new and strange, 
 To-morrow scouts as old and worn. 
 
 I may forget the shouting crowd, 
 The sea of eyes which upward turn, 
 The kindling cheeks, the plaudits loud, 
 The sympathies which glow and burn. 
 
268 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 Ay, all things change, but hardly those 
 Shall fade the midnight calm of June, 
 The cool sweet airs, the night-bird's tune, 
 The perfume of the sleeping rose. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 LOVE took my life and thrilled it 
 
 Through all its strings, 
 Played round my mind and filled it 
 
 With sound of wings, 
 But to my heart he never came 
 To touch it with his golden flame. 
 
 Therefore it is that singing 
 
 I do rejoice, 
 Nor heed the slow years bringing 
 
 A harsher voice, 
 
 Because the songs which he has sung 
 Still leave the untouched singer young. 
 
 But whom in fuller fashion 
 
 The Master sways, 
 For him, swift winged with passion, 
 
 Fleet the brief days. 
 Betimes the enforced accents come. 
 And leave him ever after dumb. 
 
LLYN Y MORWYN10N. 269 
 
 LLYN Y MORWYNION. 
 
 ON Arvon once the men of Meirion, 
 
 Being alone, nor having hearth or home, 
 
 Swooped down when all her warriors were afield 
 
 Against the foemen. And they snatched from them 
 
 The flower of all the maidens of the race, 
 
 And to their mountain fastness far away 
 
 Bare them unchecked. There with great care and love 
 
 They tended them, and in the captives' hearts 
 
 The new observance slowly ousted all 
 
 The love of home and country, till they stayed 
 
 Content, forgetting all their lives before, 
 
 Parents and kinsfolk, everything but love. 
 
 But when the war was ended, and their arms 
 Set free, the men of Arvon sent demand 
 That they should straight restore to home and kin 
 The maidens they had rapt. Then came great doubt 
 Upon the men of Meirion, knowing well 
 Their strength too weak to match the Arvonian hosts 
 In unassisted war ; heralds they sent 
 To Arvon asking peace, making amends 
 For what had been their fault. But the others nursed 
 Deep anger in their hearts, and to their words 
 Made only answer, " Give ye back untouched 
 Our daughters and our sisters, whom your fraud 
 Has stolen from us, or prepare to die." 
 Then they, taking deep counsel with themselves, 
 Swore, not for life itself would they return 
 The women, only if themselves should will 
 To leave them ; and they made request of them 
 That they might know their wish. But when they 
 
 sought 
 To question them, they answered with one voice 
 
27 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 " We will not go ; for barren is the lot 
 Of maidenhood, and cold the weary fate 
 Of loveless lives, the household tasks whose weight 
 Bears down the childless woman. Since we came 
 We have known life in the full light of home. 
 Say to our sires and brothers, that we stay 
 Willing, and bid our young men that they wive 
 From out some noble tribe ; for thus it is 
 Our Cymric race grows strong. But do ye bid 
 Our mothers comfort them, for they shall take 
 Their grandsons on their knees ; for we are wed 
 And cannot more return. Not Fate itself 
 Can e'er recall the irrevocable Past." 
 
 But when the men of Arvon heard the hest 
 The herald brought, their souls were wroth in them 
 Against the ravishers, whose cunning wiles 
 Had worked such wrong. They called their warriors 
 
 forth 
 
 From every hill and dale, and marched in haste 
 To Meirion. And they summoned them to yield, 
 But they refused ; and so the fight was set 
 For the morrow, on the margin of a mere 
 Deep down within the circuit of the hills. 
 
 There, with the sun, within a close-set pass 
 The men of Meirion stood, a scanty band, 
 Waiting the approaching host. With grief and pain 
 They left their loves, and swift, with breaking day, 
 Marched with unfaltering steps, without a word, 
 To the field of honour, as men go who know 
 That all beside is lost. But as they stood, 
 Ranged in stern silence, waiting for the fray, 
 They saw a white procession thread the pass 
 Behind, now seen, now lost, by flowery bends, 
 Gorse-gold and heather-purple. At their head 
 
LLYN Y MORWYNION. 271 
 
 Blodeuwedd, she the flower in face and form 
 By magic formed, by magic art foredoomed 
 To sin and suffer. Then again they knew 
 The bitterness of death, and clasped once more 
 The forms they loved, when by the lake the sun 
 Lit the fierce light of countless marching spears. 
 
 Then with a last embrace the tearful throng 
 Withdrew to where above the fastness rose 
 A purple slope. No way the assailing host 
 Might find to it while yet one stalwart arm 
 Of Meirion lived. Toward the lake it fell, 
 Till in a sheer, precipitous cliff it sank, 
 Its base in the unfathomable deep. 
 
 Now, while the maidens like a fleece of cloud 
 Whitened the hill, or like a timid flock 
 From nearer danger shrinking, swift there came 
 Along the grassy margin of the lake 
 The glimmering spears of Arvon. And their sires 
 And brethren saw them, and great wrath and joy 
 Fired them and urged them onward, till they surged 
 And broke on Meirion. But her strong sons stood 
 And flung them backward ; and the frightened throng 
 Of white-robed suppliants saw the deed, and feared, 
 Hiding their eyes, hovering 'twixt hope and fear, 
 Divided 'twixt their lovers and their kin. 
 
 All day the battle raged, from morn to eve ; 
 All day the men of Arvon charged and broke, 
 And charged again the little band which stood 
 Unshaken in the pass, but hourly grew 
 Weaker and weaker still. But at the last 
 The noise of battle ceased awhile ; the shouts, 
 The cries, grew silent. On the purple hill 
 The kneeling women saw the Arvonian host 
 
272 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 Retreating with their dead, and rose to go 
 
 With succour to their lovers. As they gazed, 
 
 Sudden, as with a last despairing strength 
 
 And a hoarse shout, again, a torrent of steel, 
 
 The men of Arvon, by their own weight pressed, 
 
 Burst on the scant defenders of the pass ; 
 
 Like some fierce surge which from the storm-vext sea, 
 
 Through narrow inlets fenced by rocky walls, 
 
 Lifts high its furious crest, and sweeps in ruin 
 
 Within the rayless, haunted ocean caves, 
 
 Rocks, wreckage, and the corpses of the dead. 
 
 And as the women, impotent to save, 
 With agonizing hands and streaming eyes 
 Looked down upon the pass, they saw their loves 
 Driven back, o'er whelmed, surrounded, flashing swords 
 And thrusting spears and broken Shields, and heard 
 The noise of desperate battle, then a pause 
 And silence, as the last of Meirion's sons 
 Sank in his blood and the long fight was done. 
 
 Then suddenly, ere yet the conquering host 
 Might climb to them, Blodeuwedd, standing clothed 
 In her unearthly beauty, faced the throng 
 Of shrinking women. Not a word she spake. 
 The sinking sun upon her snowy robe 
 Shone with unearthly gold ; like some fair bird 
 Leading the flock she showed. With one white arm 
 She pointed to the dreadful pass where lay 
 The thick-piled corpses, with the other signed 
 Toward the sheer cliff, and to the lake beneath 
 Motioned. One word she uttered" Follow me," 
 And all who heard it knew and shared her mind. 
 
 Then looking to the heavens, she hurried down 
 Through thyme and heather, chanting some wild hymn 
 
TO A GAY COMPANY. 273 
 
 To the Immortal Gods ; and with her went 
 
 The white-robed throng, and when they gained the 
 
 verge, 
 
 Without a pause, plunged through the empty air 
 Into the unfathomed depths, like some great flight 
 Of white birds swooping from a sea-cliff down 
 To ocean. The still waters leapt in foam ; 
 One loud shriek only woke the air, and then 
 Silence was over all, and night and death. 
 
 Still sometimes, when the dreaming peasants go 
 By the lone mountain tarn at shut of day, 
 The white clouds with the eve descending swift 
 Down the steep hillside to the lake may seem 
 The white-robed maidens falling, and the shriek 
 Of night birds, fair Blodeuwedd and her train ; 
 And fancy, by the ancient fable fed, 
 Turns from the duller Present's dust and glare 
 To the enchanted twilights of the Past. 
 
 TO A GAY COMPANY. 
 
 A GRASSY little knoll I know, 
 Before the windows of my home, 
 Where, when the chill days longer grow, 
 And the slow Spring has come, 
 
 Forth gleams a golden company 
 Of lowly blossoms through the grass, 
 Smiling a welcome back to me 
 As the soft Spring days pass. 
 
274 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 Daily they take the cloudless sun ; 
 With innocent faces free from guile, 
 And a sweet yearning never done, 
 They look on him and smile. 
 
 And while he shines, the livelong day, 
 From early morn to failing light, 
 Stands patiently the dense array, 
 Content and smiling bright. 
 
 But if cold rain or wintry hail 
 Touch them, the careful petals fold, 
 Safe where no violence may assail 
 Their shining cups of gold. 
 
 Oh, silent, innocent choir ! I seem 
 To hear your fairy voices rise, 
 Extolling faint, as in a dream, 
 Your great Lord in the skies ; 
 
 And read in your wide-opened eyes 
 Strange thoughts and human histories, 
 Till from your humble lives seems grown, 
 Life fairer than your own. 
 
 Fair celandines, I love to see 
 Each year your radiant company 
 Bloom golden on the springing grass, 
 As the quick seasons pass. 
 
 No careless foot shall come to mar 
 Your peaceful lives, while life is mine ; 
 Still as the Spring-tide comes shall shine 
 Each multitudinous star, 
 
TO A GAY COMPANY. 275 
 
 So like the others, and the dead 
 Dear blossoms of forgotten Mays, 
 The joyous Springs which now are fled, 
 The wondering childish days 
 
 When you, a joyous company, 
 Or yours, were of an age with me ; 
 When marvels filled the earth and sky, 
 Nor you could fade, nor I. 
 
 Still shall I seem to hear your voice ' 4 
 Of joyous praise, though all be still ; 
 The Spring-time, bidding all rejoice, 
 Through you and me shall thrill. 
 
 Whether we be alive on earth, 
 
 Or lying hidden in the mould, 
 
 The Spring shall come with throes of birth, 
 
 And clothe the fields with gold. 
 
 And me, whom the same Maker made, 
 Shall no renewal touch ? Shall I 
 Beyond all hope decay and fade ? 
 Deeper than Spring-tide lie ? 
 
 Nay, nay ! the sun shines overhead, 
 The Spring-tide calls, the winter's done ; 
 At last, from close depths dark and dread, 
 I, too, shall greet the Sun. 
 
276 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 THE SECRET OF THINGS. 
 
 DID the Race of men descend from a Nature sublime, 
 From a type which is higher than man and almost 
 divine, 
 
 Sinking from higher to lower through iuons of time, 
 Through a hopeless decay and slow unmeasured decline ? 
 
 Whence came, then, this downward force to degrade what 
 
 God gave ? 
 Can we rest in the thought that we fell from a higher 
 
 estate ? 
 
 Shall the work of His hand grow weaker in time and fade, 
 And that which was once above death, sink down to 
 the grave ? 
 
 And if we are born with the seeds of a deep decay, 
 
 Can it ever be stayed, though it were by an Infinite 
 Will; 
 
 Or are all things fated to fade and diminish away 
 Through all stages of lower life till Creation lies still ? 
 
 Or if power there be to stay, and willing for good, 
 
 Where then shall be set the limit of gradual shame ? 
 Not there, maybe, where we think, nor then when we 
 
 would, 
 
 And how shall our being reascend to the height whence 
 we came ? 
 
 Or shall this faith rather be ours, that the Infinite Plan 
 
 Is worked by a gradual miracle bett'ring the Race, 
 Since the quickening Spirit breathed on the sea's dead 
 
 face, 
 
 And the faint life stirred, which one day should blossom 
 in Man ? 
 
THE SECRET OF THINGS. 277 
 
 It were liker, indeed, to the work of an Infinite Might 
 To raise all the gradual Past from lower to higher ; 
 Nay, but where, were it thus, were there room for the 
 
 heaven-sent light 
 
 That, 'midst growing darkness shining, could bid us 
 aspire ? 
 
 And what were our profit to rise from the general shame, 
 If we knew that the Race were doomed to a deeper 
 
 decay, 
 Or if millions of lives that are past should wither in 
 
 flame, 
 Nor rise from the darkness of Hell to a Heavenly day ? 
 
 And does not all Nature teem, not only with types that 
 
 ascend, 
 But with those their mysterious fates from a higher 
 
 ideal degrade, 
 High archetypes dwindling down, which from higher to 
 
 lower tend, 
 
 Keen organs, and powers of might, which to feeble 
 energies fade ? 
 
 Great Universe, what is thy Secret, what are thy Laws ? 
 Do they dwindle through secular time by the power of 
 
 an Infinite Will ? 
 Or do all things to Perfectness tend by a changeless 
 
 ordinance still, 
 
 Impelled by the upward force of an inborn Beneficent 
 Cause ? 
 
 But if such were the law of things, how then should any 
 
 ignore 
 
 The self-same embryo growth of man and the lowest 
 ape, 
 
278 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 Which an inborn necessity moulds to such difference of 
 
 being and shape, 
 
 That one rises to godlike discourse, one lies soulless for 
 evermore ? 
 
 Or shall we believe, indeed, that deep down in the cover- 
 ing earth 
 May be found, some day, a trace of a Being that once 
 
 has been, 
 Which in long-dead aeons of time was parent of either 
 
 birth, 
 
 And, in Nature's gradual scheme, stood centred and 
 fixed between ? 
 
 Can the Individual rise, though the Race sinks down in 
 
 disgrace, 
 And, while all is ruined beside, increase to a heavenly 
 
 height? 
 
 Can the Individual sink to some dark and forsaken place, 
 While the Race rises higher and higher in face of the 
 Infinite Light? 
 
 Is the soul of Humanity one with the Individual soul 
 Shall each rise with the other or sink, as the suns are 
 
 illumined or fade ? 
 Shall the hand of the Maker show weak as the aeons 
 
 unchangeably roll, 
 
 Grown helpless to stay the wreck of the Cosmos itself 
 hath made ? 
 
 Nay, from out of the House of despair shall be heard a 
 
 jubilant voice, 
 
 Beneath the deepest depths and hopeless abysses 
 of 111, 
 
OH, EARTH! 279 
 
 Which in cosmical accents immense, bids all things 
 
 living rejoice, 
 
 And out of the pit of Hell strive onward and upward 
 still. 
 
 OH, EARTH! 
 
 OH, earth ! that liest still to-night 
 
 Beneath the starlit skies, 
 How splendid dost thou loom and bright 
 
 To planetary eyes ! 
 
 But if some storm-cloud, vast and dark, 
 Should hide thee from the day ; 
 
 If through blind night no faintest spark 
 Should force its feeble way, 
 
 No other would thy face appear, 
 
 Than on this cloudless sky, 
 Though all the world should quake with fear, 
 
 Though all our race should die. 
 
 Great Universe ! too vast thou art, 
 
 Too changeless and too far, 
 Dull grows the brain and chill the heart 
 
 Before the nearest star. 
 
 Oh, kindly earth ! upon thy breast 
 
 For ever let me lie, 
 Wrapt round with thy eternal rest, 
 
 But gazing on the sky. 
 
28o SOA 7 GS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE. 
 
 AN ODE. (JULY 4, 1887.) 
 
 WITH soaring voice and solemn music sing ! 
 
 High to Heaven's gate let pealing trumpets ring ! 
 
 To-day our hands consolidate 
 
 The Empire of a thousand years : 
 
 Delusive hopes, distracting fears, 
 
 Have passed and left her great. 
 
 For Britain, Britain, we our jubilant anthems raise. 
 
 Uplift your voices all : worthy is she of praise ! 
 
 Our Britain, issuing at the call of Fate 
 
 From her lone islets in the Northern Sea, 
 
 Donned her Imperial robe, assumed her crowned state, 
 
 Took the sole sgeptre of the Free ; 
 
 'Mid clang of arms her crescent glory rose, 
 
 By shattered fleet and flaming town : 
 
 Victorious at the last o'er all her foes, 
 
 Embattled rolls her splendid story down. 
 
 Soldier and seaman, side by side, 
 
 Her strong sons, greatly dared and bravely died. 
 
 Close on their steps her dauntless toilers went 
 
 O'er unknown sea and pathless continent, 
 
 Till when the centuries of strife were done 
 
 They left the greatest Realm beneath the sun. 
 
 Praise them and her ; your grateful voices raise. 
 
 Mother of Freedom ! thou art worthy of our praise ! 
 
 No more we seek our Realm's increase 
 
 By War's red rapine, but by white-winged Peace ; 
 
 To-day we seek to bind in one, 
 
 T'ill all our Britain's work be done 
 
THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE. 281 
 
 Through wider knowledge closer grown, 
 
 As each fair sister by the rest is known ; 
 
 Through mutual Commerce, mighty to efface 
 
 The envious bars of Time and Place ; 
 
 Deep pulsing from a common heart 
 
 And through a common speech expressed, 
 
 From North to South, from East to West, 
 
 Our great World Empire's every part ; 
 
 A universal Britain, strong 
 
 To raise up Right and beat down Wrong. 
 
 Let this thing be ! who shall our Realm divide ? 
 
 Ever we stand together, Kinsmen, side by side ! 
 
 To-day we would make free 
 
 Our millions of their glorious heritage. 
 
 Here, Labour crowds in hopeless misery, 
 
 There, is unbounded work and ready wage. 
 
 The salt breeze, calling, stirs our Northern blood, 
 
 Lead we the toilers to their certain good ; 
 
 Guide we their feet to where 
 
 Is spread for those who dare 
 
 A happier Britain 'neath an ampler air. 
 
 Uprise, O Palace fair ! 
 
 With ordered knowledge of each far-off land 
 
 For all to understand ! 
 
 Uprise, O Palace fair, where for the Poor shall be 
 
 Wise thought and love to guide o'er the dividing sea. 
 
 First Lady of our British race ! 
 
 'Tis well that with thy peaceful Jubilee 
 
 This glorious dream begins to be. 
 
 This thy lost consort would ; this would thy son, 
 
 Who has seen all thy Empire face to face 
 
 And fain would leave it One. 
 
 Oh, may the Hand which rules our Fate 
 
 Keep this our Britain great ! 
 
282 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 We cannot tell, we can but pray 
 
 Heaven's blessing on our work to-day. 
 
 Uprise, O Palace fair, where every eye may see 
 
 This proud embodied Unity ! 
 
 For Britain and our Queen one voice we raise, 
 
 Laud them, rejoice, peal forth : worthy are they of praise ! 
 
 DAVID GWYN. 
 
 DAVID GWYN was a Welshman bold who pined a slave 
 
 in the hulks of Spain, 
 Taken years since in some mad emprise with Francis 
 
 Drake on the Spanish main. 
 Long in that cruel prison he knew the captive's bitter 
 
 and hapless lot ; 
 Slowly the dead years passed and left him dreaming still 
 
 of the days that were not, 
 
 Of tiny Radnor, or stately Brecknock, or Cardigan's rain- 
 swept heights may be, 
 Or green Caermarthen, or rich Glamorgan, or Pembroke 
 
 sitting on either sea. 
 Sickening within his squalid jail, while still as the 
 
 circling seasons came 
 The fierce sun beat on the brown Sierras, springtide and 
 
 summer and autumn the same, 
 Almost hope failed the dauntless sailor, chained in an 
 
 alien and hateful land, 
 Lonely and friendless, starved and buffeted, none to pity 
 
 or understand, 
 Pining always and ageing yearly as slow Time whitened 
 
 and bowed his head, 
 While longing and hate burned high and higher as life 
 
 sank lower and hope fell dead, 
 
DAVID GWYN. 283 
 
 With brutes for his gaolers, and fiends for his fellows, 
 chained to him ceaselessly night and day, 
 
 Eleven autumns, eleven winters wasted their wearisome 
 length away. 
 
 Then there awoke round his floating prison clang of 
 
 hammers and bustle of men ; 
 Shipwrights labouring late and early woke old thoughts 
 
 in his heart again. 
 " Spain will lay waste your heretic island with fire and 
 
 sword ere the winter come, 
 And you and the rest of your felon crew shall row the 
 
 galleys which sack your home." 
 The hot blood flushed to the prisoner's forehead, but never 
 
 a word in reply said he, 
 Toiling obediently days and weeks till the great fleet sailed 
 
 on the summer sea, 
 Splendid galleons towering skyward with gilded masts 
 
 and with streamers brave, 
 Floating proudly to martial music over the blue Lusitanian 
 
 wave, 
 Four great galleys leading the van, and in one midst the 
 
 close-thronged benches sate 
 David Gwyn, a forgotten oarsman, nursing a burning heart 
 
 of hate. 
 
 So along the windless ocean slow the great Armada sped, 
 
 Two unclouded weeks of summer blazed the hot sun over- 
 head. 
 
 Hourly from the high deck-pulpits preaching rose and 
 chant and prayer, 
 
 And the cloying fumes of incense on the brisk Atlantic air ; 
 
 Courtiers fine and sea-worn sailors jesting the slow hours 
 away, 
 
 Silken sails and blazoned standards flapping idly day by 
 day, 
 
284 SOWGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 And within his high poop-turret, more than mortal to 
 
 behold, 
 The High Admiral Medina lounging idly, clothed with 
 
 gold : 
 Not a thought of peril touched them, not a dream of what 
 
 might come, 
 Proudly sailing, sure of conquest, with the benison of 
 
 Rome, 
 And far down among the oarsmen's benches, fainting, 
 
 desperate, 
 David Gwyn, a patriot helpless with a burning heart of 
 
 hate. 
 
 With the roaring Bay of Biscay louder winds and grayer 
 
 skies, 
 And the galleons plunge and labour, and the rolling 
 
 mountains rise ; 
 Blacker loom the drifting storm-clouds, fiercer grow the 
 
 wind and sea, 
 Far and wide the galleons scatter, driving, drifting 
 
 helplessly. 
 Higher mount the thundering surges ; tossed to heaven, 
 
 or fathoms down, 
 Rear or plunge the cumbrous galleys while the helpless 
 
 oarsmen drown. 
 
 Like a diver the Diana slides head first beneath the wave, 
 Not a soul of all her hundreds may her labouring consorts 
 
 save. 
 Now to larboard, now to starboard, shattered, tost from 
 
 side to side, 
 Helpless rolls the great Armada, shorn of all its pomp 
 
 and pride. 
 Down between those toppling ridges, groaning, straining 
 
 in his place, 
 David Gwyn among the oarsmen sits with triumph in his 
 
 face. 
 
DAVID GWYN. 285 
 
 Then amid the roaring seas, when hope was gone and 
 
 death was near, 
 And the hearts of all the Spaniards sinking, failing them 
 
 for fear, 
 Boldly to the haughty Captain, David Gwyn the oarsman 
 
 went, 
 Veiling with a fearless frankness all the depth of his 
 
 intent. 
 " Quick, Senor ! the ship is sinking ; like her consort will 
 
 she be, 
 Buried soon with slaves and freemen, fathoms deep 
 
 beneath the sea. 
 Give me leave and I will save her; I have fought the 
 
 winds before, 
 Fought and conquered storms and foemen many a time 
 
 on sea and shore." 
 And the haughty Captain, knowing David Gwyn a seaman 
 
 bold, 
 Since upon the Spanish main the foemen sailed and fought 
 
 of old, 
 Answered, turning to his prisoner : " Save the ship, and 
 
 thou shalt gain 
 Freedom from thy life-long fetters, guerdon from the Lord 
 
 of Spain." 
 Then from out the prisoner's eye there flashed a sudden 
 
 gleam of flame, 
 And a light of secret triumph o'er his clouded visage 
 
 came, 
 Thinking of his Cymric homestead and the fair years that 
 
 were gone, 
 And his glory who should save her from the thraldom of 
 
 the Don. 
 " I will save your ship," he answered ; " trust me wholly, 
 
 have no fear : 
 Pack the soldiers under hatches ; leave the main deck 
 
 free and clear." 
 
286 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 Doubting much the Don consented ; only, lest the slaves 
 should rise, 
 
 By each oarsman sat a soldier, watching him with jealous 
 eyes. 
 
 Little knew he of the cunning, secret signs, and watch- 
 words born 
 
 Of long years of cruel fetters, stripes and hunger, spite 
 and scorn. 
 
 Little thought he every prisoner as in misery he sate 
 
 Hid a dagger in his waistband, waiting for the call of 
 Fate. 
 
 David Gwyn, the valiant seaman, long time battled with 
 
 the main, 
 Till the furious storm-wind slackened and the ship was 
 
 safe again. 
 Sudden then he gave the signal, raised his arm and bared 
 
 his head. 
 Every oarsman rising swiftly stabbed his hapless warder 
 
 dead, 
 Seized his arms, and, fired with conquest, mad with 
 
 vengeance, like a flood 
 On the crowded 'tween-decks bursting, left the Spaniards 
 
 in their blood. 
 David Gwyn was now the Captain, and the great ship all 
 
 his own ; 
 Well the slaves obeyed their comrade, thus to sudden 
 
 greatness grown. 
 Straight for France the stout Vasana shaping, sudden on 
 
 her lee 
 Don Diego in the Royal, foaming through the stricken 
 
 sea, 
 Driven by full four hundred oarsmen, nigh the monstrous 
 
 galley drew. 
 Then from out her thundering broadside swift the sudden 
 
 lightning flew ; 
 
DAVID GWYN. 287 
 
 In among Gwyn's crowded seamen straight the hurtling 
 
 missiles sped ; 
 Nine strong sailors in a moment lay around their Captain 
 
 dead. 
 
 David Gwyn, the dauntless Captain, turning to his 
 
 comrades then 
 " God has given you freedom ; earn it : fear not ; quit 
 
 yourselves like men. 
 Lay the ship aboard the Royal: free your comrades and 
 
 be free." 
 
 The strong oarsmen bent, obedient, rowing swiftly, silently, 
 Till, as if in middle ocean striking on a hidden rock, 
 All the stout Vasanrfs timbers, quivering, reeling with the 
 
 shock, 
 Straight on board the crowded Royal leapt that band of 
 
 desperate men, 
 Freed the slaves, and left no Spaniard who might tell the 
 
 tale again ; 
 And the sister galleys stately with fair winds sped 
 
 safely on, 
 Under David Gwyn, their Captain, and cast anchor at 
 
 Bayonne. 
 And King Henry gave them largesse, and they parted, 
 
 every one 
 Free once more to his own country, and their evil days 
 
 were done. 
 
 David Gwyn to England coming won the favour of the 
 
 Queen ; 
 Well her Grace esteemed his valour in the perils that had 
 
 been. 
 What! had those swift, full-oared galleys, which could 
 
 wind and tide defy, 
 Winged with speed the slow Armada when our weak fleet 
 
 hovered by ? 
 
288 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 Had not then that sullen quarry, ploughing helpless on 
 
 the plain, 
 Turned and crushed the nimble hunters, and rewrit the 
 
 fate of Spain ? 
 Who shall tell ? But his were doughty deeds and worthy 
 
 lasting fame, 
 Though the country he delivered never yet has known 
 
 his name. 
 
 Did he seek again the home of his youth, did he let the 
 
 years go peacefully by, 
 Breathing the sweet clear air of the hills, till his day was 
 
 done and he came to die ? 
 By tiny Radnor, or stately Brecknock, or Cardigan's 
 
 rain-swept heights may be, 
 Or green Caermarthen, or rich Glamorgan, or Pembroke 
 
 sitting on either sea ? 
 Did he dream sometimes 'mid the nights of storm of 
 
 those long-dead years in the hulks of Spain, 
 That stealthy onset, that dread revenge, with the wild 
 
 winds drowning the cries of pain ? 
 Did the old man shudder to think of the blood, when the 
 
 knife pierced deep to the Spaniard's heart ? 
 Nay, to each of us all is his Life assigned, his Work, his 
 
 Fate, his allotted Part. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 FAREWELL ! farewell ! Adown the ways of night 
 The red sun sinks, and with him takes the light ; 
 O'er the dull East the gathering shadows grow, 
 And turn to gray the Western after-glow. 
 
THE ALBATROSS. 289 
 
 Farewell ! farewell ! But Day shall come again ; 
 Shall hope then die, and prayers be breathed in vain ? 
 Our faithful hopes outlive the fleeting day ; 
 Stronger than Life and Death and Time are they. 
 
 Ah ! see the last faint ray has ceased to flame. 
 Courage ! our parted souls are still the same. 
 Round is the earth, and round the estranging sea, 
 And Time's swift wheel which brings thee back to me. 
 
 Come back ! Come back climbing the Eastern sky ! 
 Our souls are deathless though our flesh shall die. 
 Winged are our thoughts, and flash forth swift and far 
 Beyond the faint light of the furthest star. 
 
 Come back ! or if we meet in some strange place, 
 On some dim planet, I shall know thy face ; 
 By some weird land, or unimagined sea, 
 I shall not be afraid, dear, having thee. 
 
 THE ALBATROSS. 
 
 UPON the lone Australian shore, 
 A chance-sent traveller's careless eye, 
 Saw a white bird swoop down and lie 
 With wide wings that should soar no more. 
 
 A feeble quiver shook the bird, 
 A film the glazing eye o'erspread ; 
 Once more the pearly plumage stirred, 
 And then the Albatross was dead. 
 
 U 
 
290 SONGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 He spread the giant pinions wide, 
 When 'neath the snowy down he found 
 By hands unknown securely bound, 
 A sea-worn missive safe and sound. 
 
 And when the blotted page he read, 
 
 This message bore it from the sea 
 
 " Five shipwrecked sailors, mourned as dead, 
 
 A thousand miles from land are we ; 
 
 " Whoe'er thou art whose hand shall take 
 Our poor winged messenger, we pray 
 That thou wilt spare him for our sake, 
 And send him scatheless on his way. 
 
 " Hardly we hope our words shall find 
 Response, save by some blessed chance ; 
 Good friend who readest this be kind, 
 And speed us to our well-loved France." 
 
 The traveller stood and musing read, 
 Some new-born pity filled his breast, 
 Seeing that poor envoy lie at rest, 
 The living speaking thro' the dead. 
 
 And soon to save those helpless men, 
 A stout ship, many a weary mile 
 Sailed forth, and found their lonely isle, 
 And sped them to their homes again. 
 
 But I, as o'er this tale I stay 
 
 My wandering fancy, seem to hear, 
 
 A voice which comes my heart to cheer, 
 
 A silent voice which seems to say, 
 
VEN1TE PROCWAMUS. 291 
 
 " Thus is it with the world around, 
 
 For tho' the messenger be gone, 
 
 Some winged thought with his being bound, 
 
 O'er all the world goes echoing on. 
 
 " And though its tones sound faint and weak, 
 Lost in the rude world's clamorous strife, 
 The message of dead lips can speak 
 To souls in prison, words of life ! " 
 
 VENITE PROCIDAMUS. 
 
 OUR hopes, our fears, 
 Our love and hate, 
 Our joys and tears, 
 
 Our throws with fate, 
 
 What are they all but phantoms fleeting past, 
 Weak creatures of a day, which but a day may last ? 
 
 But the great Scheme 
 Fares on its course 
 Thro' Time's long dream 
 
 Of changing force. 
 It saw the plesiosaur and mastodon 
 Wax strong, and dwindle down, and still goes silent on. 
 
 It saw the ape 
 
 Rule every land, 
 The cave-man shape 
 Flints for his hand. 
 It saw a thousand generations pass 
 Across life's mournful stage, like visions in a glass. 
 
292 SOJVGS OF BRITAIN. 
 
 It saw the strange 
 
 Forgotten Kings, 
 Ages of change, 
 
 Terrible things, 
 
 It saw the Egyptian and the Assyrian come, 
 The gay Hellenic bloom, the rugged sway of Rome. 
 
 These too it saw 
 Totter and fall, 
 A purer law 
 
 O'er-ruling all, 
 
 And then the arrested march, the long delay, 
 The baffled hope, the Dawn fading to common day. 
 
 It makes no cry, 
 
 It lifts no voice, 
 Tho' all things die, 
 
 Tho' all rejoice, 
 
 It goes unceasing onward, blind and dumb, 
 Nor halts, nor hastes, nor heeds whatever things may 
 come. 
 
 Eternal Scheme, 
 
 Great Lord of all, 
 August, Supreme, 
 
 Prostrate we fall, 
 
 We cannot know Thy working, nor its end, 
 Nor by what hidden paths Thy Perfect Will may tend. 
 
 But if one word 
 
 Might come, or sign, 
 Our souls were stirred 
 
 To growths divine, 
 
 No longer should we walk in fear and doubt, 
 Like children in dark ways, before the stars come out. 
 
VEN1TE PROCIDAMUS. 293 
 
 Ah no ! the word 
 
 The soul can hear 
 Is only heard 
 
 By the inner ear, 
 
 No outward light it is which can illume 
 The spiritual eye, and pierce the enshrouding gloom. 
 
 An inborn light, 
 
 An inner voice, 
 Which burneth bright, 
 Which doth rejoice, 
 
 A Faith in things unseen, an inward sight 
 Which thro' a wrecked world sees the victory of Right. 
 
 With this our guide, 
 
 Our strength, our stay, 
 No more aside 
 
 Our footsteps stray. 
 
 Fulfil Thyself, Great Scheme, Eternal Plan, 
 Work out we ask no word the Destiny of Man. 
 
A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 " WHEN Rome was Pagan still, a little band 
 
 Of ardent, generous youths who called on Christ, 
 
 Fled their idolatrous city, thinking scorn 
 
 To kneel to those false gods their souls abhorred 
 
 And loathing that accursed heathen rout 
 
 Turned to the silence of the lonely hills 
 
 That brood round Ephesus, and found at length 
 
 Shelter and peace, within a winding cave 
 
 High on the rock-faced side of Ccelian, 
 
 And there dwelt safe, lifting their gracious hymns 
 
 In worship to the Lord. 
 
 At last there came 
 
 Some heathen passer-by, who heard the sound, 
 And straight betrayed them. And the tyrant sent 
 His soldiers, and that none came forth again 
 Rolled in the narrow entrance monstrous rocks, 
 Which shut out air and light. Then when they knew 
 No change of night and day, and all their food 
 Had failed, came Heaven-sent sleep to close their eyes. 
 Deep sleep which knew no waking fell on them 
 For the long space of nigh two hundred years. 
 
 There they slept on, till now the conquering Cross 
 Prevailed, and 'twas a Christian Caesar ruled 
 Where raged the Pagan erst. For thirty years 
 The pious Theodosius swayed the might 
 
THE SEVEN SLEEPERS OF EPHESUS. 295 
 
 Of Rome, and then the powers of evil bred 
 
 Dark heresies to rend the seamless robe 
 
 The Pagan might not. Doubting voices cried, 
 
 ' No resurrection is there, but the body 
 
 Lies rotting in the earth, and the freed soul 
 
 Weltering upon the unbounded seas of space 
 
 Is lost within the Universe, nor more 
 
 Takes its old shape. What ? did the prophets know, 
 
 Moses, Esaias, and the rest, this thing? 
 
 There is no place of souls nor judgment day 
 
 Of deeds done in the flesh, nor heaven nor hell, 
 
 Only upon the earth our kingdom is. 
 
 Be wise and occupy, for never indeed 
 
 Conies any resurrection of the dead ; 
 
 The dead are gone, cleave to the living alone ; 
 
 Use all your nature. Lives the flower again, 
 
 The brute that comes so near us, and is full 
 
 Of faithful love and reverence for man 
 
 As man for God ? If all these die and pass, 
 
 Then shall not we ? What else than arrogant pride 
 
 Blinds men to fact, and fools them with a world 
 
 No eye has seen, which all the seers of old 
 
 Knew not nor proved ? Nay, surely it were well 
 
 To take our lives in our own hands, and tread 
 
 Our fearless paths not looking for reward 
 
 To any dim unreal sphere, but deem 
 
 Our individual life ends with the grave, 
 
 As ends the flower in frost ; or if there come 
 
 Something of higher life, yet 'tis the Race 
 
 Which profits, naught beside. Wherefore in vain 
 
 Are all your hopes of Heaven, your fears of Hell, 
 
 Since 'tis not men who live again, but Man.' 
 
 Thus having heard, the pious Caesar turned, 
 Struck cold with doubt, as one a palsy takes, 
 Making his limbs hang impotent, his will 
 
296 j A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 Powerless to live or die. Alone he sate, 
 Hating the voice, hating his doubt, himself 
 Who doubted, and long time from sight of men 
 Withdrew himself and, clad in sackcloth, pined 
 With ashes on his head, yet found not peace 
 For all his penance, but the spectral doubt 
 Weighed on him like a nightmare night and day. 
 
 Now at the selfsame hour, when Caesar strove 
 With his immense despair, a humble hind, 
 Seeking to find a shelter for his flock, 
 Chanced on the secret cave of Ccelian, 
 And toiling with his fellows rolled aside 
 The rocks which sealed its mouth, and went his way, 
 Nor entered ; but when now, returning dawn 
 Flooded the long-sealed vault with cheerful day, 
 It pierced to where the sleepers lay, and breathed 
 Some stir of coming life, and they once more 
 Drinking the brisk sweet breath of early morn 
 Opened their long-closed eyes, and woke again 
 To the old earth, and kept the far off past 
 Unchanged in memory, and spake with mirth 
 Of their long sleep, and the fair dreams it brought, 
 And said a prayer, and sang a hymn, and then, 
 Urged by the healthy zest of vigorous youth, 
 Sent one among them, Malchus hight, to buy 
 Food for their hunger. 
 
 Fearfully he stole 
 
 Down the long steep to where great Ephesus 
 Shining beneath him lay. Scant change was there, 
 Only the stately house of Artemis 
 He found not where it stood. Half dazed he seemed 
 By too long sleep. But when he gained the gate 
 Qf the city, on the walls behold the Cross ! 
 The witness to the faith by which he lived, 
 The blessed symbol, which to own was death ! 
 
THE SEVEN SLEEPERS OF EPHESUS. 297 
 
 But still he seemed to dream, and wondering sought 
 
 Another gate, and there again the Cross ! 
 
 And as he mused what portent 'twas he saw 
 
 The passers freely named the holy name 
 
 Which yesternight brought doom. Then with great joy, 
 
 Yet deep perplexity, he turned to greet 
 
 Some face he seemed to know, but it was strange, 
 
 And strange the fashion of the dress, and strange 
 
 The accent of the tongue, till, half afraid, 
 
 He sought where bread was bought, and offering gold, 
 
 The seller looking saw an ancient coin 
 
 Of DeciuS, and would ask him whence it came, 
 
 Deeming he found by some unhallowed spell 
 
 Forbidden treasure ; and the youth's strange garb 
 
 And speech, and great perplexity, enforced 
 
 The doubt, so that they bound him fast and haled him 
 
 Through the long streets, where all in vain he sought 
 
 One friendly glance, to where upon his throne 
 
 The Bishop judged ; and when the aged man 
 
 Questioned him of the thing, and what had been, 
 
 And sware him on the Cross, straightway the youth 
 
 ' We fled the tyrant Decius, who would bid us 
 
 Serve the false gods, and was it yesternight ? 
 
 Rolled ponderous rocks to seal the cave where I 
 
 And my companions slept ; but now, I pray you 
 
 What is it that has been ? Bear you the Cross 
 
 And fear not ? Call men now upon the name 
 
 Of Christ and dread not all the bitter pains 
 
 The dungeon, and the torture, and the stake, 
 
 The tyrannies our fathers knew and we ? 
 
 What change is this assails my ears and eyes 
 
 Strange speech, strange vestments, forms and faces strange? 
 
 Where is the shining house of Artemis ? 
 
 I pray you tell me what it is has been, 
 
 And whether I be alive or long time dead, 
 
 Deceived in dreams by long unnoted years.' 
 
298 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 Then fell the Bishop, full of pious awe, 
 Prostrate at Malchus' feet the aged man 
 Before the spirit clothed with changeless youth, 
 Since well he knew what thing his eyes had seen 
 A miracle of life, raised from the grave, 
 A miracle of Heaven. And all the throng, 
 Bishop and governor, with all the great 
 And noble of the city, white-haired lords, 
 And stately matrons, coming, knelt with him 
 Before the youth, o'er whose unwrinkled brow 
 Two hundred years had passed and left no sign 
 Swift-coming age before eternal youth, 
 Brief life before the endless life of death. 
 
 Then went they forth, that noble throng, and all 
 The city, to where upon the Ccelian hill 
 The seven youthful martyrs lay so long. 
 There in the cave, the blessed company 
 Sate cheerful, wondering much to see the throng, 
 With Malchus leading them ; and as the array 
 Drew nearer, heard the sound of hymns, and saw 
 The sacred symbol borne on high, and knew 
 All that had been, and that the might of Wrong 
 Was broken, and the world was of the Faith, 
 And the false gods no more ; and then they raised 
 Their clear accordant strains in praise to heaven, 
 And from their happy heads crowned round with light, 
 And from their cheeks red with the heavenly rose, 
 And from their lips touched with divinest song, 
 An effluent glory shone, and all who saw 
 Knew that their eyes beheld the blesse'd dead. 
 
 Last, Theodosius wrestling with his doubt, 
 And almost conquering, sped o'er land and sea 
 To see the portent, and when he was come 
 And stood before the place the Pagan erst 
 
THE SEVEN SLEEPERS OF EPHESUS. 299 
 
 Sealed fast with monstrous rocks, on the young lives 
 Fresh vowed to Christ, and left them there to die, 
 He knelt in silence, and the fire of faith 
 Burned high in him, and dried the deeps of doubt. 
 And when he looked on those immortal eyes, 
 And that first bloom of an immortal youth, 
 His faith grew perfect, and he blest the Lord 
 Who sent the sign. Then, with one voice sublime, 
 The seven awakened spirits sang, ' Believe, 
 Believe through us, O Caesar ! We are dead, 
 And yet we live. Praise Heaven that we have seen 
 The faith triumphant. Ere the last great day 
 The Lord has raised us that men should be strong, 
 And doubt no longer, but believe indeed 
 The life and resurrection of the world.' 
 
 And when their voices died away they bowed 
 Their heads upon their breasts, and kneeling, gave 
 Their spirits back to God ; and all who saw, 
 And all who heard, Caesar, and all the throng, 
 Doubted no more, but rose and did believe." 
 
 Which things, when I had heard, again I seemed 
 To hear my guide, " Know, thou that hearest me, 
 Through the round world this fair old legend runs 
 Where man is higher than the beasts that die. 
 The Hindu, dreaming on his seething plains, 
 Cherishes it ; the fierce false prophet stole 
 The story ; and throughout the fabulous East 
 It lives and thrives to-day ; the frozen North 
 Holds it for true ; o'er all the ancient world 
 Some fair faint blossom of the gracious tale 
 Lingers, and in the modern springs anew 
 In witness to the light-winged hours which snatch 
 The swift unconscious life from youth to age. 
 
300 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 Too fair, too fleeting, change confusing change 
 Change of a day which works the work of years ; 
 Unchanging years, which seem but as a day ! " 
 
 " But with still clearer voice, and sweeter tongue, 
 Thus speaks the legend : * Sleep and Death are one, 
 Not diverse, and to Death's long slumber comes 
 Awakening sure and certain, when the Dawn 
 Of the Last Day shall break, and shall unseal 
 The long-closed eyes, as that strong sun of Spring 
 Illumed the caves of sleep, and stirred the blood 
 Which else had slumbered still.' Yet since no sign 
 Comes from our sleepers here, the yearning hearts 
 Which mark the struggling breath come short and faint, 
 The tired eyes close, and the calm peace which smooths 
 The weary brow and feel 'tis sleep no more- 
 Yet find no proof, cherish the legend fair, 
 Because life longs to be, because to cease 
 Is terrible, because the listening soul 
 Waits for some whisper from beyond the grave, 
 Waits still, as it has waited through all time, 
 Waits undismayed, whate'er its form of creed, 
 Nor fails, though all is silence, to hold fast, 
 Deep in its sacred depths, too deep for thought, 
 The Resurrection and the Life to be." 
 
 'Twas an old man came next, who bore the palm, 
 Mild and of venerable mien, with hair 
 And beard of silver, yet his sunburnt cheek 
 Showed ruddy with the hue of health which still 
 Smiles like an Indian summer on the lives 
 Of those who, far from dust and toil of men, 
 Like the first Husbandman, breathe purer air, 
 
S. PHOCAS. 301 
 
 And watch the opening flowers, the ripening fruits ; 
 Changing their healthy toil for tranquil sleep, 
 And mingling works of mercy with pure thoughts 
 And meditations. Him indeed I knew not, 
 And yet half guessed his tale. 
 
 And this it was : 
 
 " In Pontus, by Sinope, dwelt of old, 
 
 Three centuries after Christ, an aged man, 
 
 Phocas by name. He to his lowly home 
 
 Retiring from the busy city, spent 
 
 His life in meditation on the Faith 
 
 Sweetening his honest toil. Day after day 
 
 Within his narrow garden-ground he found 
 
 Fit labour for his hands ; eve after eve, 
 
 When the sweet toilsome day at last was done, 
 
 He strayed among the flowers and fruits his skill 
 
 Had reared the roses red and white which filled 
 
 The air with perfume, like the fragrant flower 
 
 Of sanctitude ; white cups adust with gold 
 
 Of lilies, pure as blameless lives, which breathe 
 
 Their sweetness to the heavens; the flower which bears 
 
 The symbols of the Passion ; the mild roots 
 
 And milky herbs which nourish those white lives 
 
 That scorn to batten on the blood and pain 
 
 Of innocent dumb brutes ; such honeyed fruits 
 
 As our first parents ate in Paradise 
 
 Bright apples, golden pears, pink pomegranates, 
 
 The pendent purple of the trellised grape, 
 
 And blushing peaches, and the perfumed globes 
 
 Of melons ; all the flowers and fruits the isles 
 
 Of the enchanted dim Hesperides 
 
 Bore in the fabled eld. Of these he took 
 
 Sufficient for his hunger, praising God, 
 
 And of the rest he gave of charity 
 
 To all the poor and weak, free without price, 
 
302 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 Following his Master's word. And all the poor 
 And needy blessed him and revered the skill 
 Which reared them, and the venerable years 
 Of that good gardener. None who came to him 
 His generous hand denied, but he would give them 
 Shelter and food, and, when the day was done, 
 Converse on things Divine, and many a word 
 Of Truth which swayed the listener, if he were 
 A Pagan still, or heartened him indeed 
 If he already held and loved the Faith. 
 
 For while to some pure souls the thought, the dream. 
 
 The blessed vision are enough, the sounds 
 
 Heard by rapt ears, the opened heavens, the joy 
 
 Of contemplation only, when the sands 
 
 Of the desert or the cloistered vistas dim 
 
 Show ghostly 'neath the midnight stars ; for some 
 
 Labour is best not sordid labour vile 
 
 And turned to earth, but that which working still 
 
 For Heaven doth therefore gain a purer height 
 
 Than any ; and for him the varied page 
 
 Of Nature painted by a hand divine 
 
 Brought meditation, and he found a voice 
 
 In every bursting flower and mellowing fruit ; 
 
 In every life which, governing its way 
 
 By heavenly rule, lived on without offence 
 
 And did fulfil its part ; in every weed 
 
 Which cumbered earth, yet doubtless were of aid 
 
 If we might read its secret ; every growth 
 
 Of poison, which from the same elements, 
 
 The bounteous earth, the wooing of the sun, 
 
 The same fair fanning breezes, as the grain 
 
 On which our lives are nourished, waxed and grew 
 
 To deal out death and torment. Long he mused 
 
 On all these things how one great Husbandman 
 
 Planted them all, and framed them as He framed 
 
S. PHOCAS. 303 
 
 The tiger and the lamb ; and so he gained 
 Mild wisdom from his daily task, and awe, 
 And wonder, which is kin to faith, and thence 
 True faith in God and man, and was content 
 To sow the seed of good within his soul, 
 As in the earth, and root the evil out, 
 And living only for the Faith, to work 
 And be at peace, leaving the rest to Him 
 Who sends in season, sun and rain and cloud 
 And frost, and in whose hand are flower and fruit 
 To give or to withhold, in earth and heaven. 
 
 Now, one fair summer eve, as Phocas sate 
 At supper, came a knock, and he in haste 
 Opening, three strangers waited at the door, 
 Whom he bade enter and take food and rest ; 
 And when they were refreshed, he questioned them 
 What errand brought them. And they said in turn, 
 ' We seek a certain Phocas know'st thou him ? 
 Who dares to call on Christ, and have command 
 To slay him found.' Then tranquilly the saint 
 1 Sleep now and rest. I know him. With the dawn 
 I will conduct you to him.' And they slept, 
 Not dreaming whom they saw, and were content. 
 
 But he, when all the house was dark and still, 
 Stole out into his garden. The faint stars, 
 Pale in the radiance of the summer night, 
 Trembled above him ; at his feet the flowers 
 He loved so well declined their heavy heads 
 And slumbering petals. One loud nightingale, 
 Thrilling the tender passionate note of old, 
 Throbbed from a flower-cupped tree, and round him all 
 The thousand perfumes of the summer night 
 Steeped his pleased sense in fragrance sweeter far 
 Than frankincense the skill of men compounds 
 
304 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 In Araby the Blest. Then on the grass 
 
 He sate him down, rapt deep in musing thought ; 
 
 And o'er him, ghostly white or gleaming red, 
 
 The roses glimmered, and the lilies closed 
 
 Their pure white cups, and bowed their heads, and seeme 
 
 To overhear his thought. ' Should he then fly, 
 
 To live a little while, leaving his home 
 
 And all that made it dear, the flowers, the fruits 
 
 He loved, and preach the Faith a little yet 
 
 Before Fate called him ? Surely life is sweet 
 
 To tranquil souls, which scorn delights and take 
 
 Something of Heaven on earth ; ay, sweeter far 
 
 Than the old haste of flushed and breathless chase 
 
 Strong pulses, vaulting projects, hot designs 
 
 To capture worthless ends. Haply 'twere well 
 
 For this, to leave the solitude he loved 
 
 As others wife or child.' 
 
 But as he mused, 
 
 The thought of full obedience filled his soul ; 
 Submissive to the Heavenly Will which sent 
 Those fatal messengers, and destined for him 
 The martyr's crown, and swayed and took so fast 
 His doubtful mind, that presently he rose, 
 As one whose purpose halts not rose and went 
 As in a dream, and coming brought a spade 
 And softly, half in dreams, began to delve 
 The flower-lit turf, within a sheltered nook 
 O'ergrown with roses and the perfumed gloom 
 Of blossomed trees. And as he wrought, he laid 
 Turf upon turf, and hollowed out a space 
 In the fresh virgin mould which lay beneath, 
 Shaped deftly in the semblance of a cross, 
 Large as might take the stature of a man. 
 And still half dreaming, nor confessing yet 
 What thing he did, deeper and yet more deep 
 He dug and laboured, till with earliest dawn, 
 
S. PHOCAS. 305 
 
 Just as the waking birds began their song, 
 He flung the last mould upwards, smoothing fair 
 The edges of the trench, and knew at length 
 That all night long he laboured at his grave. 
 
 And at its foot were lilies white and gold, 
 And at its head were roses white and red, 
 And all around a pitying quire of flowers 
 Bent down regarding it ; and when he saw, 
 Still half as in a dream, he whispered, ' Lo ! 
 The narrow bed is ready ; ere 'tis day 
 The sleeper shall be laid in it, and prove 
 Unbroken slumbers blest, until the peal 
 Of the loud Angel wakes him from the skies.' 
 
 Then to his home returning grave and slow, 
 
 He sought his guests, on whom the new-born day 
 
 Was rising. They with half-awakened eyes 
 
 Greeted their coming host, and, bidding him 
 
 Good morrow, rose and took the frugal meal 
 
 His care provided. Then the question came, 
 
 ' Hast brought him whom we seek ? ' And he : ' I have. 
 
 And they : ' Where find we him ? ' And he : ' Behold, 
 
 I am the man none else.' Then deep distress 
 
 Took them, and great perplexity, who knew 
 
 The man whose life they sought the same who gave 
 
 Shelter and food. But he, revolving all, 
 
 The martyr's palm and that unchanged resolve 
 
 Of the still night, bade them take heart for all 
 
 Their duty bade them. And he led them forth, 
 
 Through maiden flowers fresh opened to the day, 
 
 Brushing the dewdrops from them as they went 
 
 To where, set round with blooms, they found his grave 
 
 Fresh delved in daisied turf, and there they bound 
 
 Their willing prisoner, and the headsman's axe, 
 
 x 
 
306 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 Even as he knelt, a smile upon his lips, 
 
 By one swift, skilful blow and merciful, 
 
 Upon the grassy margin, painlessly 
 
 Severed his life. And there they laid him down, 
 
 Amid the joyous matins of the birds, 
 
 In the cool earth ; and by his head there sprang 
 
 Sweet roses red and white, and by his feet 
 
 Deep-chaliced lilies mingled white with gold ; 
 
 And there he waits the day the just shall rise 
 
 And bloom, as these on earth, beyond the skies." 
 
 But when I heard the gracious tale, which showed 
 Like some fair blossom with a fragrant heart, 
 Thus would I answer : " Blameless anchorite, 
 Meek martyr, self-betrayed, some saints there be 
 Whose youthful suffering draws a readier tear 
 Than thine ; and yet, for me, that duteous life 
 Of honest toil for others, that great faith 
 Thou show'dst, that simple eagerness to bear 
 The martyr's palm, that night beneath the stars 
 Of summer, fashioning thy flower^decked grave, 
 That lonely suffering, mark thy life and death 
 With a more calm and gracious note than theirs 
 Who, 'mid the applauding saints around, the throng 
 Of heavenly faces stooping from the skies, 
 In the arena dauntless met their end ; 
 A simpler nor less touching piety 
 Than theirs who, 'mid the dust of mortal strife, 
 Shed their pure lives upon the sullen sand." 
 
 And then it was a girl who seemed a youth, 
 With pure sweet eyes, wearing a monkish garb, 
 Within whose arms a young child nestled close, 
 
S. MARINA. 307 
 
 While she along the fields of Paradise 
 Plucked lilies for it. Spotless innocence 
 Shone from her, and around her comely head 
 A finer motherhood. And thus the voice : 
 
 " In Egypt long ago a humble hind 
 Lived happy. One fair daughter of his love 
 Was his, a modest flower, that came to bless 
 The evening of his days. But time and change 
 Assailed his well-loved home, and took from him 
 The partner of his life ; and when the blow 
 Had fallen, loathing of the weary world 
 Seized him, and, leaving his young girl behind 
 With some who tended her, he went his way 
 Across the desert sands, and in a cave 
 Long time he lived, a pious eremite 
 Withdrawn from men. But when the rapid years 
 Hurried his child to budding maidenhood, 
 Knowing the perils of the world, his soul 
 Grew troubled, and he could not bear the dread 
 That day and night beset him for her sake ; 
 So that his vigils and his prayers seemed vain, 
 Nor bore their grateful suffrage to the skies, 
 Since over all his mind would brood a doubt 
 For her and her soul's health, revolving long 
 How she should 'scape the world and be with him, 
 Because no woman might draw near the cell 
 Of any pious hermit. At the last 
 He counselled her, taking the garb of man, 
 To come to him, leaving the world behind ; 
 And the fair girl, loving her sire, obeyed, 
 And lived with him in duty to the end. 
 
 And when he died, leaving the girl alone, 
 The brethren of a cloistered convent near, 
 Seeing the friendless youth, and pitying 
 
308 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 His loneliness, and holding high his love 
 For his dead sire, offered him food and home 
 Within the holy house ; and there he served, 
 A young man in the blossom of his age, 
 Sweet natured, pious, humble, drawing to him 
 The friendship of the youths, the love of maids. 
 
 But all his soul was rapt with thoughts of Heaven, 
 Taking no thought for earth, and so it came 
 The youthful Brother grew in every grace 
 And great humility, and was to all 
 Example of good life and saintly thought, 
 And was Marinus to the monks, who loved 
 Their blameless serving-lad, nor knew at all 
 That 'twas a maid indeed who lived with them. 
 
 Now, as in all humility he served, 
 
 The Abbot, trusting him beyond the rest, 
 
 Would send him far across the desert sands, 
 
 With wagons and with oxen, to the sea, 
 
 As steward for the House ; and oftentimes 
 
 The young man stayed far from his convent home, 
 
 With some rude merchant who purveyed their food ; 
 
 And oft amid the wild seafaring folk 
 
 His days were passed, and coarse disordered lives ; 
 
 And oftentimes the beauty of the youth 
 
 Drew many a woman's heart who deemed him man. 
 
 But still the saintly tenour of her way 
 
 The maiden kept, serene, with innocent eyes, 
 
 So that before her face the ribald rout 
 
 Grew sober, and among the styes of sense 
 
 Unstained she walked in spotless purity, 
 
 A youth in grace, keeping a virgin heart. 
 
 But one, the daughter of his host, would cast 
 A loving eye upon him all in vain ; 
 
S. MARINA. 309 
 
 For careless still he went his way, nor took 
 
 Heed of her love nor her, and oftentimes 
 
 He would reprove her of his maiden soul, 
 
 Knowing a woman's weakness, and would say, 
 
 ' Sister, I prithee think of whom thou art, 
 
 And set a watch upon thy feet.' But she, 
 
 Hating the faithful candour of the youth, 
 
 Fell into utter wretchlessness of sin ; 
 
 And when her sire, discovering her disgrace, 
 
 Threatened her for her fault, a shameless thought 
 
 Seized her, and she, with feigned reluctancy, 
 
 Sware he deserted her, and with her child 
 
 Came to the saintly Abbot, where he sate 
 
 Judging the brethren. Then great anger seized 
 
 The reverend man that at his heart he nursed 
 
 A viper which thus stung him, and he cried, 
 
 ' Vile wretch, who dost disgrace our holy house ! 
 
 Thou hypocrite, soiling the spotless robe 
 
 Of saintly purity ! I do denounce 
 
 Thy wickedness. No longer canst thou be 
 
 A brother to thy brethren here, who live 
 
 Pure lives unstained. My sentence on thee is 
 
 That thou be scourged, and from this reverend house 
 
 Go forth in shame, and work what viler work 
 
 The brethren find for thee ; and this poor child 
 
 Take thou with thee, and look that thou maintain 
 
 Its growing life, since thus thy duty bids thee. 
 
 Or if my mercy spare thee from the stripes 
 
 Thou hast deserved, 'tis for its sake, not thine. 
 
 Go, get thee gone, and never dare again 
 
 Pollute my presence.' 
 
 Long she strove to speak, 
 
 But her lips formed no word. And then she rose 
 Meekly, and, answering no word, went forth, 
 Bowed down with shame, and yet not ill content, 
 Deeming it but the penance which her sins ; 
 
310 A VISION OF SAIATS. 
 
 Had merited. And when the little one 
 
 Stretched forth its hands, she clasped it to her breast, 
 
 Her virgin breast, and all the sacred glow 
 
 Of motherhood, which lurks within the hearts 
 
 Of innocent maidens, rising soothed her pain ; 
 
 And, wandering forth, she found some humble hut 
 
 For shelter. There by alms and servile tasks, 
 
 'Mid great despite of all who knew her once 
 
 In days of honour ; hungry, lonely, poor, 
 
 And ofttimes begging bread, she pined long time, 
 
 Till the young life Heaven gave her, throve and grew 
 
 In happy innocence, and all who passed 
 
 Might hear twin voices mingling in the hymns 
 
 The father's, who was mother, and the child's 
 
 And wondering went their way. 
 
 So that pure soul 
 
 Grew tranquil, even on earth. Yet in her heart 
 Deep down the rankling sorrow dwelt, and burned 
 The sources of her being, and sometimes 
 Her penance grew too hard, and almost broke 
 The bonds of silence ; then again her soul 
 Took courage, persevering to the end, 
 Knowing her sins, and how the pain she bore, 
 Though undeserved, was nothing to the sum 
 Of her offence, dear heart ! and hoping from it 
 The fair reward of utter faithfulness. 
 
 But not the less the insults and the shame 
 Consumed her life and strength, and day by day, 
 When now the innocent she loved had grown 
 To happy childhood, weaker and more weak, 
 Her failing forces waned, till on her bed 
 Stretched helpless lay the maid. And when she knew 
 Her hour was come, she summoned to her side 
 An aged woman whom she knew of yore, 
 What time she seemed a frank and eager youth, 
 
GEORGE HERBERT. 311 
 
 Ere her shame took her ; and when she was come, 
 Quickly with trembling hand she beckoned her, 
 Giving her charge, when she was dead, to take 
 Her child to the good brethren, with her prayer 
 That they should keep it safe. 
 
 Then with weak hand 
 
 She bared her innocent virgin breast and smiled, 
 A sad wan smile, and, looking up to Heaven, 
 Breathed her last breath. 
 
 And she who saw, amazed, 
 
 With mingled joy and tears, composed with care 
 The virgin limbs, and wrapped her in her shroud, 
 And hasting to the convent with the child 
 Left orphan, told the tale. And when he heard, 
 The holy Abbot knelt with bitter grief 
 All night before the altar, asking grace 
 Of Heaven, that he had wronged that saintly soul 
 By base suspicion ; and the brotherhood 
 Bewailed the pure girl-saint, who bore so long 
 In blessed silence taunts and spite and shame, 
 Obedient and in great humility." 
 
 And then I saw a reverend figure come, 
 
 Walking with meditative steps and slow, 
 
 Who listened as the blest Cecilia erst 
 
 To high celestial music, else unheard ; 
 
 And straight I knew the Priest, from whose full heart 
 
 Welled a clear spring of quaint and sacred song, 
 
 And seemed again to tread the dewy meads 
 
 Of Sarum, and to see the thin spire pierce 
 
 The sunset skies, as I by Bemerten 
 
 Strayed rapt in thought. And as we passed, my guide : 
 
312 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 " Not of one Church, or age, or race alone 
 
 The saints are born, nor of one clime they come, 
 
 But 'mid the grass-green English landscapes dwell 
 
 Pure saintly souls, as by the slender towers 
 
 Of olive-grey Assisi, or white shrines 
 
 Washed by the purple sea. There, walked on earth 
 
 The saint thou seest, high of birth and name, 
 
 Yet lowly as his Lord, when once he gave 
 
 His life to Him, and with each day that dawned 
 
 Renewed his saintly vows, and lived content 
 
 For the brief years Heaven would. 
 
 Not always turned 
 
 His soul to Heaven ; the splendours of the Court 
 Dazzled his youth, and the fair boundless dreams 
 Of youthful hope. For he, by name and blood 
 A noble, 'neath our Abbey's reverend shade, 
 Amid the cloistered courts of Westminster, 
 Drank with deep draughts the lore of Greece and Rome, 
 And then within the time-worn Halls which watch 
 The slow-paced Cam ; and there his studious eyes 
 Kept nightly vigil, and his sweet shy Muse 
 Tuned her clear voice for Heaven, a stainless youth 
 Who to his loved and gracious mother vowed 
 The firstlings of his song. For him the flow 
 Of sweet concordant descants soothed his soul 
 Till Heaven stood open. But not yet his thought 
 Turned to the Altar, since in high respect 
 And favour of his king, he stayed to take 
 What high advancement his unwearied thirst 
 For knowledge, and his gay and polished wit, 
 Wielding the tongues of France and Spain, and thine, 
 Great Dante, and his courtly presence clad 
 In robes of price, might offer. Then at length, 
 When now his growing soul grew sick of Courts, 
 Yearning for Heaven, the hand of Death removed 
 His potent friends, and last, the king himself; 
 
GEORGE HERBERT. 313 
 
 And one by one the fetters broke which bound 
 His soul to earth, and soon he turned to hear 
 His mother's pleading words ; and, stronger still, 
 The voice within which called him set him free 
 Free from himself and wholly vowed to God. 
 
 Then, when the courtiers scoffed at him and bade him 
 
 Pursue some nobler life and worthier, 
 
 Thus made he answer : ' Though the sacred name 
 
 Of priest be now despised, yet will I strive 
 
 To do it honour. All my little store 
 
 Of learning cheerful will I yield to Him 
 
 Who gave it, grieving sore I yield Him naught 
 
 Who made me His. Oh, let me strive to be 
 
 Likened to Him, and make Humility 
 
 Lovely in all men's eyes, following still 
 
 My merciful meek King.' 
 
 So he became 
 
 A servant of the Altar, for awhile 
 A deacon only, fearing yet to take 
 The priestly office. At the last, when now 
 His struggling years had reached life's midmost way, 
 Whence turn our faces homewards, weak in frame 
 Though strong in spirit, 'mid the golden meads 
 He ministered a priest, where the gray spire 
 Of Sarum points to Heaven, and consecrates 
 The rich low vale with grace. There he should see 
 Three brief and saintly years before the end. 
 
 There from him all his courtly robes, his silks, 
 
 His sword, he put away, and in the garb 
 
 Of priesthood did indue himself, and vow 
 
 His contrite soul to Heaven. Within his church, 
 
 With all doors closed, he passed, as the law bade, 
 
 To take full seisin, and, their pastor now, 
 
314 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 To toll, with his own hand, the bell which called 
 The faithful. Then because he came not back 
 After long hours, they sought him, and, behold, 
 Through the low casement looking, saw the saint 
 Prostrate before the altar, rapt in prayer 
 For strength to do God's work ; and there he framed 
 His rule of life, and vowed to keep it still. 
 
 Even so the good Priest lived his tranquil days, 
 
 His saintly helpmeet working with him still 
 
 In alms and prayer. Daily the orisons 
 
 Of those pure souls, and theirs who dwelt with them, 
 
 Three orphaned girls, rose morn and eve to Heaven, 
 
 Following the sober uses of their Church, 
 
 Matins and vespers. All the country side 
 
 Loved that white life, and knelt with reverent hearts 
 
 Whene'er within the little oratory 
 
 The daily Liturgies were sung. The hind 
 
 Paused at his task when o'er the neighbouring leas, 
 
 Summer and winter, thrilled the solemn bell 
 
 That called the saint to prayer, and oftentimes 
 
 Touched by some new devouter impulse, left 
 
 The patient oxen at the plough, and knelt 
 
 Awhile within the reverend walls, and took 
 
 The good man's blessing, and returned with strength 
 
 Fresh braced for toil. Thus he, within a realm 
 
 Whereon the coming shadow of strife and blood, 
 
 The fanatic's guile and hate, the atheist's sneer, 
 
 Brooded already, and the darkling stain 
 
 Of worldly ease, and sloth, and sensual sin, 
 
 Renewed the pure devotion of a Church 
 
 Stripped of its Pagan gauds and robed for Heaven. 
 
 Ah ! yet I see thee clearly, when the strain 
 Of unheard rhythms filled thy happy ears, 
 Wander from field to field : and on the road 
 
PATHER DAM JEN. 315 
 
 To the great Minster, when thy soul had need 
 
 Of new refreshment, ever on thy way, 
 
 Hoarding faint echoes of a voice Divine, 
 
 Glow into fervent verse, and stone by stone 
 
 Build up thy * Temple ; ' and anon sit rapt, 
 
 Leaving thy humbler liturgies awhile, 
 
 Within the heaven-kissed fane the centuries 
 
 Mellow, and listen to the soaring chant 
 
 Sung daily still, the jubilant anthem's voice 
 
 Of praise, the firstborn precious harmonies 
 
 Of England's sacred song ; the o'er-mastering joy 
 
 Of the full organ-music glooming deep 
 
 From aisle to aisle, or caught from height to height, 
 
 Till lost at last as at Heaven's gate, and thou 
 
 And thy rapt soul floated with it to joy. 
 
 " From the long wave of the Pacific Sea 
 
 Rise the enchanted islands of the West. 
 
 There the green surge, translucent, flowered with foam, 
 
 Flings its warm snows to kiss the stooping palm ; 
 
 But from the deep's soft bosom rose no sound 
 
 Of rippling mirth, nor more the fair brown forms, 
 
 Half heathen, naked, joyous, crowned with flowers, 
 
 Rode high as erst on the caressing wave, 
 
 Because some strange immedicable hurt 
 
 Consumed them, and they pined in hopeless pain, 
 
 Despairing, till a servant of the Lord 
 
 Was sent to them with succour for their need, 
 
 And cleansed the desperate souls, which, struck by 
 
 doom, 
 
 Cursing their fate, turned them to reckless ill ; 
 And gave his life to serve them, till he died, 
 A leper in their midst. 
 
3*6 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 But while his long laborious days he spent 
 
 In service of his Lord, his pitying eyes 
 
 Took many a sight of grievous misery 
 
 Which naught might heal. For on those happy isles, 
 
 Where sea and sky wear a perpetual smile, 
 
 And all the lavish earth with flower and fruit 
 
 Laughs always, and from out the odorous gloom 
 
 Of blossomed trees a myriad creepers hang 
 
 Laden with perfume, and the feathery fronds 
 
 Of giant ferns spring upward twice the height 
 
 Of a man's stature, and bright birds flash by 
 
 On jewelled wings, a thousand brilliant hues, 
 
 Flower-like, among the flowers, and the clear sea 
 
 Holds in its azure deeps a thousand lights 
 
 Of sapphire scales, or gold, or glowing red, 
 
 Or tints which match the rainbow's all in one, 
 
 Brighter than any which the cunning skill 
 
 Of painter limns ; and, 'midst the tropic wealth 
 
 Of lustrous blossoms strange to Northern eyes, 
 
 Sweet roses blush, and lilies sprent with gold 
 
 Droop their fair heads, and starry myrtles wake 
 
 Memories of classic grace ; amidst all these 
 
 And the poor joyous lives which, crowned with flowers, 
 
 Like the old careless gods of Pagan eld, 
 
 Let the hours pass, and were content, nor knew 
 
 Our Northern cares, nor thought of Hell or Heaven, 
 
 Naught but delight ; there came long years ago, 
 
 Brought from the teeming East, a dreadful ill, 
 
 Which naught might cure, and seized those hapless 
 
 limbs, 
 
 And rotted them away, mere death in life, 
 Maimed horribly, and losing human form 
 And semblance, till at last the wretched spirit 
 Released itself and fled. And since the touch 
 Of hand or robe was thought to take with it 
 The dread contagion, from the land they chased 
 
A VISION OF SAINTS. 317 
 
 Those hopeless sufferers, to where there rose 
 
 Sheer from the Southern Sea the frowning cliffs 
 
 Of Molokai. On its northern edge 
 
 The island blossoms into purple peaks, 
 
 With soaring heads veiled in a fleece of white. 
 
 There down each steep precipitous gorge the gleam 
 
 Of leaping waters issuing from the clouds 
 
 Lights the dark cliffs, and, where a sunbeam strikes, 
 
 Sparkles in rainbow mists ; while at the foot 
 
 Of those great walls, just raised above the surge, 
 
 Stretches an emerald plain, white with the homes 
 
 Of lepers, none beside. 
 
 But many a saintly form I knew, and passed 
 
 Without a word, because no vision long 
 
 Endures, and that for all no mortal life 
 
 Might well suffice. Did I not mark thy fair 
 
 Nude youthful grace, Sebastian beautiful 
 
 As young Apollo on the Olympian hill, 
 
 Or Marsyas, his victim fettered fast 
 
 And pierced by rankling shafts while thou didst raise 
 
 Thy patient eyes to Heaven ? Saw I not thee, 
 
 Oh sainted childlike Agnes, with thick locks 
 
 Of gold, which, grown miraculously long, 
 
 Guarded thy maiden modesty ; or thee, 
 
 S. Agatha, with thy white wounded breast 
 
 Martyrs and saints ? Or thee of recent days, 
 
 S. Vincent, who thy late-enfranchised years, 
 
 Freed from the prison bonds thou long hadst borne, 
 
 Didst spend in works of mercy, and didst care, 
 
318 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 As might a father, for the childish lives 
 
 Forlorn which no man heeded ? Saw I not 
 
 Thee, saintly Jeremy, whose daily feet 
 
 Paced 'neath the long-armed oaks of Golden Grove, 
 
 Above our winding Towy ; or thy mild, 
 
 Benevolent gaze, good Howard, who didst die, 
 
 Christ-like, for souls in prison ? Saw I not, 
 
 Blessing our land, thy apostolic form, 
 
 Dear Wesley, through whose white soul Love Divine 
 
 Shone unrefracted, whose pure life was full 
 
 Of love for God and man, whose faithful hand 
 
 Relit the expiring fire, which sloth and sense 
 
 And the sad world's unfaith had well-nigh quenched 
 
 And left in ashes ; or thy saintly friend, 
 
 Fletcher of Madeley, clean consumed of faith 
 
 And ruth for perishing souls ; or thee, whose zeal 
 
 Laid all thy learning at His feet who gave it, 
 
 Eliot, apostle to the dying race 
 
 Of the Red Indian, on their trackless plains 
 
 Preaching in their own tongue the gracious news 
 
 Thy learning opened ; or thy comely form, 
 
 Brave Dorothy, who thy abounding life, 
 
 'Neath smoke-stained skies, 'mid coarse and brutal souls, 
 
 Gavest to the maimed and sick, content to be 
 
 A happy life-long martyr, and didst die 
 
 Alone at last of hopeless torture-pains 
 
 Incurable, yet cheerful barest thy cross 
 
 Even to the end ; or ye, oh priceless lives ! 
 
 After long years of terror, day and night, 
 
 Till death itself seemed better than your dread, 
 
 Shed for the Faith by many a savage isle 
 
 Of the Pacific seas ; or ye whose graves 
 
 'Mid fever-swamps or silent forest depths 
 
 The Moslem slaver mocks, sent to sure death 
 
 For Africa. Nay, nay, I marked ye all, 
 
 But might not tarry more, so vast has grown, 
 
A VISION OF SAINTS. 319 
 
 Lost in dim eld, and longer, hour by hour, 
 The ever-lengthening pageant of the Blest. 
 
 And then I marked no other name men know, 
 
 For now we passed along the close-set files 
 
 Of saints and martyrs, bearing each the palm, 
 
 Discerned no more by robes antique, or mien, 
 
 Or speech, but of the modern centuries, 
 
 And as we live to-day. So thick they rose 
 
 Streaming from earth, as when the autumnal year 
 
 Sheds its fair throng of meteors on the sky. 
 
 So those pure souls, white with a glittering train 
 
 Of light, flashed upward, till I might not take 
 
 Count of their number, for of every race 
 
 And hue and creed they came, of every age, 
 
 Both young and old all to the heavens above 
 
 Ascending ; and an infinite thankfulness 
 
 Took me, and joy, because our day, that seems 
 
 To some so void of faith, so full of pain 
 
 And chilled with deadly doubt, not less than those 
 
 The faithful ages might, sent forth its tale 
 
 Of victories of the Faith. Nor bore they all 
 
 The name of Christ, but some there were who held 
 
 The old unchanging Faith from whence He came 
 
 Whom yet their fathers slew, and some who called 
 
 On that ascetic Prince who draws the East 
 
 With some faint law of Mercy and of Love 
 
 For all created essences, one hope 
 
 To be with God, even though Man's nature rush 
 
 To His as doth the river to the sea, 
 
 Absorbed in Him for ever ; and of those 
 
 To whom the fierce false Prophet calling, taught, 
 
 Though stained with fanatic zeal and grovelling sense, 
 
 Amid the noise of base idolatries, 
 
 The unity of God, the pure, the wise, 
 
 Who sits to judge the world ; there came who left 
 
320 A VISION Of SAINTS. 
 
 The sensual stye and rose above the din 
 
 Of the world's wranglings, and who were indeed 
 
 His saints, though Him they knew not 
 
 But of all 
 
 The most part were of Him, each Christian race 
 Sending its cloud of witnesses to swell 
 The innumerable host. There, came the thralls 
 Of Duty, willing servants old and young, 
 Who love the bonds that bind them, knowing well 
 Their fealty freedom ; men who toil enchained 
 Of household care, knowing not rest nor ease, 
 For those they love, and live their briefer lives 
 Unmurmuring ; and grave statesmen who toil on 
 To the laborious end, though life sink low, 
 Whom natural rest allures, but strive on still 
 While the sharp tooth of slander gnaws their souls ; 
 Or women who have given their ease, their life, 
 To weary cares, nor heed them if they know 
 Their children happy ; or who from the hush 
 Of cloistered convents serve with prayer and praise ; 
 Or who amid the poor and lowly folk 
 Of all the Churches, as their Master erst, 
 Toil amid sin and pain, and are content 
 To live compassionate days and ask no more 
 Of wages for their service, but, consumed 
 Of pity, give their lives to save the lost 
 And hopeless ; or who love to minister, 
 Spurning the weakness of their sex, the bloom 
 Of delicate ease, and grace and luxury, 
 And, 'mid the teeming homes of healing, bend 
 To succour bodily ill, while night by night 
 The sick and maimed, in restless slumbers tost, 
 Lie groaning till the dawn, and cries of pain 
 Wring the soft hearts whose duty binds them fast, 
 While the gay festive hearths of friends or home 
 Thrill with sweet music and the rhythmic feet 
 
A VISION OF SAINTS. 321 
 
 Of careless youth and joyance, and the rose 
 And lily of their gentle girlhood wait 
 Their coming, but in vain, till youth is past, 
 And with it earthly love. All these fair souls 
 In one incessant effluence of light 
 Soared from the earth, the army of the saints 
 Who in all time have set themselves to work 
 The Eternal Will. 
 
 And yet not all of pain 
 
 And suffering were they, who thus leaving earth, 
 Rose to high Heaven. To some, high sacrifice 
 Is joy, not pain. For some, from youth to age 
 The even current of their lives flows on, 
 Broken by scarce a ripple, scarce a cloud 
 Veiling the constant blue the daily use 
 Of humble duty, the unchanging round 
 Of homely life ; the father's work, who toils 
 Ungrudging day by day, from year to year, 
 To keep the lives he loves, and dies too soon 
 His children round his bed, nor knows at all 
 The tremours of the saint ; the lowly tasks 
 Which fill the unchanging round of busy lives, 
 And keep them pure ; the willing, cheerful care 
 Of mothers. Wert thou not among the throng, 
 Dear life long fled, who, after tranquil years 
 Unbroken and unclouded by great griefs 
 Or bodily pains, on the sad year's last day 
 Wentest from us ; who threescore years and ten 
 Didst wear thy children's love ; whose pitying hand 
 Was always open ; whose mild voice and eye 
 Drew rich and poor alike, a soul that soared 
 Not on great sacrifice, indeed, or high 
 And saintly pains, but trod life's level plain 
 As 'twere high snows, and daily did inform 
 Earth with some hue of Heaven ; on whose loved tomb 
 No word is graven, save thy name and date 
 
322 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 Of birth and death, because it seemed that none 
 Might fit the gracious life and beautiful, 
 Whose glory was its humbleness, whose work, 
 Built of sweet acts and precious courtesies, 
 The exemplar of a home ? Nay, well I know 
 High Heaven were not Heaven, wanting thee 
 And such as thou. Within the gates of God 
 Are many mansions, and each saintly soul 
 Treads its own path, fills its own place, but all 
 Are perfected and blest. 
 
 And yet how few 
 
 Of that great congress saw I. He who keeps 
 Lone vigils with the stars notes on night's face 
 Some ghostly, scarce-suspected vapour gleam, 
 And turns his optic-glass to it ; and, lo ! 
 A mist of suns ! wherefrom the sensitive disc 
 Fixes the rays, first scattered, then more dense 
 With longer time, star after hidden star 
 Stealing from out the unimagined void 
 And twinkling into light, till on its face 
 Those dark unplumbed abysses show no speck 
 Of vacant gloom, a white and shining wall 
 Of glomerated worlds, broad as the bound 
 Which feeble fancy, yearning for an end, 
 Builds round the verge of Space. So that bright throng 
 Grew denser as I gazed, till Heaven was full 
 Of the white cloud of witnesses, who still, 
 As always since the worlds and Time began, 
 Stand round the throne of God. 
 
 Then while I gazed, 
 
 As in that vision fair which filled the eyes 
 Of the blest seer of Patmos, suddenly 
 The angels with veiled faces cast them down 
 Prostrate, and then a peal of glorious sound, 
 Mightier than any sound of earth, which chased 
 My dream, and well-remembered words I heard 
 
A VISION OF SAINTS. 323 
 
 " Blessing and Glory, Wisdom, Thanksgiving, 
 Honour, and Power, and Might be unto Thee 
 For ever and for ever." 
 
 Then methought 
 My soul made answer : 
 
 " Yea, and victory 
 
 Over Thy Evil. Not Thy saints alone 
 Are Thine, and if one soul were lost to Thee, 
 Thine arm were shortened. All the myriad lives 
 Which are not here, but pine in bitter dole, 
 Do Thou redeem at last, after what toils 
 Thou wilt, in Thine own time, of Thine own will, 
 Purged, if Thou wilt, by age-long lustral pain, 
 Banished for long. Yet through new spheres untried 
 Of Being let them rise, sinner and saint, 
 Higher and higher still, till all shall move 
 In harmony with Thee and Thy great Scheme, 
 Which doth transcend the bounds of Earth and Time : 
 Still let them work Thy work. Yet bring them home ; 
 Let none be lost ! For see how far Thy Heavens 
 Are higher than our earth, how brief the tale 
 Of little years we live, how low and small 
 Our weak offence, transgression of a child 
 Grown petulant, on whom the father looks 
 With pity, not with wrath. On those dead souls 
 Which unillumined in the outer depths 
 Lie yet, too gross for Heaven, send Thou a beam 
 From Thy great Sun, and, piercing through them, wake 
 The good that slept on earth : and, like the throb 
 Of radiant light which pulses through the mist 
 With which Thy Space is sown, and wakes new worlds, 
 Atom by atom drawn or else repelled ; 
 Or as the vibrant subtle note which thrills 
 Upon the sensitive film, and traces on it 
 Figure on figure, curve with curve inlaced 
 Into some perfect flower ; so do Thou, Lord, 
 
324 A VISION OF SAINTS. 
 
 Sound with Thy light and voice the dumb dark depths 
 And, working on the unnumbered souls which lie 
 Far from Thee, shine and call, and, waking in them 
 A latent order, purge them. Make their will 
 Harmonious with the Will which governs all, 
 And orb into some higher form, and start 
 As Thy new worlds to life, till all Thy skies 
 Shine with recovered souls. Then shall it be 
 As those great voices would, and Thou fulfilled 
 Alike in Earth and Heaven." 
 
 But as I woke 
 
 To this poor world again, almost with tears, 
 Not wholly did the vision fade, but still 
 Those high processions lingering with me seemed 
 To purify my soul. What was the world, 
 Its low designs and hopes, its earthborn joys, 
 Base grovelling pleasures, and unfruitful pains, 
 To those and such as they those eyes that saw 
 Not earth, but Heaven ; those stainless feet that trod 
 Through lilied meads of saintly sacrifice 
 And strange unearthly snows ? Surely 'twas well 
 To have seen them clearer than the mists of earth 
 Concede to waking sight. Come thou again, 
 Fair dream, and often, till thou art a dream 
 No more, but waking. March to victory, 
 Great army, from the legendary Past, 
 Through the brief Present, where Life's pilgrims toil 
 To-day, and rise triumphant, or fall prone, 
 Prest by their load ; through that unnoted tract 
 Of the dim Future which our thought pourtrays, 
 Far fairer than the world's sad Past ; which yet 
 Shall have its struggles too, its sins, its wrongs, 
 Its saints, its martyrs ! 
 
A VISION OF SAINTS. 325 
 
 March in spotless line, 
 
 Lengthening the ranks of those who, gone before, 
 Are now triumphant, till the End shall come, 
 Which hushes all our lower strifes, attunes 
 Discords to harmonies, rounds and makes complete 
 The cycle of our Lives ; till Sacrifice 
 And Pain are done, and Death, and the Dread Dawn 
 Breaks which makes all things new, and the great Sun 
 Rising upon the worlds, dispels the Night 
 Of Man's sad Past, and routs the gathered clouds 
 Of Evil, and ascends a Conqueror, 
 Wielding full splendours of unwaning Day 
 For ever ! 
 
SONGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 AT A COUNTRY WEDDING. 
 
 BRING roses, youths, red roses, with full hands ; 
 Bring lilies, maidens, snow-white, delicate ; 
 See at life's threshold full-lipped Eros stands, 
 And white Loves hover round the flower-hung gate 
 Bring smiles and jocund strains, 
 Laughter and jovial mirth ; 
 For still the young God reigns 
 O'er all the earth. 
 
 Sing carols, maidens, carols to his name : 
 Sound, striplings, sound for joy a lusty note ; 
 Acclaim him, pipe and flute, as when he came 
 To Hellas or old Nile in years remote ; 
 Raise gleeful hymns and high 
 To the blue vault above ; 
 He lives, he cannot die, 
 Immortal Love ! 
 
 Forget ye, as the wise earth doth forget, 
 Calm in divine oblivion of the years, 
 The slow-paced ages and their load, the fret 
 Of hopes illusive, and distracting fears ; 
 The cares, the toils, the strife, 
 Wherethrough man's labouring feet 
 Have trod the round of life ; 
 Yet found it sweet. 
 
AT A COUNTRY WEDDING. 327 
 
 For fair as once was Hellas, fair and young 
 Our June-lit England shows, and lovelier still 
 Than clear Cephissus' waters ofttimes sung, 
 Cool I sis doth her lilied fountains fill. 
 Young is the earth, Youth knows not change, 
 And Love renews himself the same 
 As in dim years and regions strange 
 His altar-flame. 
 
 Thro' golden buttercups and crested grass, 
 To the lone, ivied church beneath the yew, 
 Gaily, oh white procession, gaily pass ! 
 'Tis the old worship, tho' the rite be new. 
 Thro' youth's full veins to-day 
 The same quick pulses move ; 
 Still Hymen beareth sway 
 And crowneth Love. 
 
 Forget the tired earth's plenitude of years, 
 
 Forget Time's weird ^Eolian music sad ; 
 
 Touch not a chord, think not a thought, but cheers 
 
 Lift high, lift only merry strains and glad. 
 
 A little, little while we are, 
 
 Sing youths and maids with joyous voice ! 
 
 Forget long hopes and issues far ; 
 
 To-day rejoice ! 
 
 Bring roses, youths, red roses, with full hands ; 
 Bring lilies, maidens, snow-white, delicate. 
 
328 SONGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 FROM AN AMERICAN SERMON* 
 
 STRETCHED open to high heaven 
 Each humble rood of earth unsheltered lies, 
 The worlds regard it from the vault of space, 
 
 Serene, unnumbered eyes ! 
 
 Beneath it everywhere 
 
 Are centred living fires which seethe and glow ; 
 A little from the surface you shall reach 
 
 The dreadful depths below. 
 
 Clear brook or stately stream 
 Struggling through flowers, or rolling silently 
 Majestic waters, lose themselves alike 
 
 In the surrounding sea. 
 
 So every human soul, 
 Set here betwixt its twin eternities, 
 Stands open to Heaven's eye, fares on to doom 
 
 'Mid opposite mysteries. 
 
 
 
 And tho' immured it seem, 
 By narrow walls of circumstance confined, 
 Shut from Heaven's face, "closed to all vital airs 
 Is blown through by God's wind. 
 
 Aye, tho' the deep shaft's side 
 Obscure the eye of noon, yet new stars shine ; 
 Tho' day is blinded, a new lucid night 
 
 Opens its eyes divine. 
 
 * By the late Bishop Phillips Brooks, of Massachusetts. 
 
DAY DAWN. 329 
 
 There is no port of life 
 
 So landlocked from the deep, so dead, so still, 
 But sometimes, spume-flecked from the Infinite Sea 
 
 Fresh tides in-rushing fill. 
 
 There is no lot so low 
 
 No glimpse of cloudless heaven nor faint-eyed star 
 Can reach it, wake it, shine on it, nor bring 
 
 Some radiance from afar ; 
 
 No soul so cold or calm 
 But underneath it burns the infernal fire ; 
 
 None so cast down, so vile, 
 It may not to the heaven of heavens aspire. 
 
 Above, beneath, around, 
 Dread destinies encompass great and small ; 
 One Will, one Hand, one all-regarding Eye, 
 
 Surveys and governs all. 
 
 DA Y DA WN. 
 
 A FRESH breeze wakes over land and sea 
 
 With the dawning of day ; 
 A trouble, a travail, a newness beginning to be 
 
 As the mists roll away ; 
 And the young God, his pennons glancing with roseate 
 
 light, 
 Routs the cohorts of Night. 
 
 And the dark shadows curdle and then grow gray, 
 
 Then a sound as of wings 
 Divides the thin gloom as it melts and is hurried away ; 
 
 Some sentinel sings, 
 
 And, proud with the conqueror's pride for the victory won, 
 Forth issues the sun. 
 
330 SONGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 THE VOICE OF SPRING. 
 
 WHEN birds salute the loitering dawn, 
 
 And faint, warm sunbeams wake the bee, 
 
 From the dim fields of Memory 
 
 The veil is year by year withdrawn. 
 
 The dear, dead Springs revive once more, 
 
 And I grow young again ; 
 
 Sweet is the world again, as 'twas of yore, 
 
 And thought of parted joys is precious pain. 
 
 Woo the pale flowers, blithe bee ; sing, rippling voice ; 
 
 Rejoice, be glad, and I too will rejoice. 
 
 When the white pear-bloom lights the wall, 
 
 And gilly-flowers embalm the air ; 
 
 When shining chestnut-cases fall, 
 
 And lilacs cluster fair ; 
 
 When 'mid the bursting coverts show 
 
 The blue-eyed violets and the wind-flowers' snow, 
 
 Or starry celandines with shining gold, 
 
 The old, dead Springs, forgot by all but me, 
 
 Their vanished blooms unfold. 
 
 Can I forget the buried years ? 
 
 Not then, not then, shall I forget 
 
 Life's fresh dawns dewy-wet. 
 
 Sing, thrush ; flute, starling ; hover, wanton bee, 
 
 And wake a rapture dimmed by happy tears. 
 
 What gives the youngling Spring a tongue to call ? 
 Till with swift step the ghostly Past draws nigh, 
 Our Midsummers are dumb ; 
 No voice is theirs, nor spell which can enthrall ; 
 Their painted garden-glories, high and sweet, 
 Blow silently and fleet unheeded by j 
 
THE VOICE OF SPRING. 331 
 
 No message brings the white rose or the red 
 
 From Junes remote and dead. 
 
 Nay, even the cloistered lilies virginal 
 
 Awake no stirrings of unrest divine. 
 
 The autumnal glories fine, 
 
 From ripeness to decay, 
 
 Are mute, and pass away ; 
 
 The reddening orchards and the yellowing wheat 
 
 Steal by with noiseless feet, 
 
 The glowing pageant marching voicelessly 
 
 On its appointed way till Winter come. 
 
 These flower within the present, or bear fruit ; 
 
 But all their Past is mute, 
 
 And the dead days of Winter speak no word 
 
 Of years long done, nor touch an answering chord. 
 
 But not a snowdrop lights the wintry gloom, 
 
 And not a crocus flames from out the grass, 
 
 And not a primrose smiles on bank or lea, 
 
 And not a cherry hides its sprays in bloom ; 
 
 But suddenly for me 
 
 The gray mists lift, the gathered shadows pass, 
 
 The undying Past once more begins to be ; 
 
 The daisy and the lamb upon the field 
 
 Are wonders new-revealed ; 
 
 Youth's long-strange thoughts return, the world grows 
 
 gay, 
 
 And with the increasing day 
 The tide of Time ebbs refluent, and I seem 
 To hear again the hurrying, high-voiced stream 
 Laugh by Life's founts ; for whom long since the deep, 
 Slow-footed, rolls asleep 
 Thro' hushed autumnal marshes to the sea. 
 
 Then wake, oh world, again ; 
 
 Dear vanished Springs, revive for young and old, 
 
332 SONGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 Shine, morning years with scarce-abated gold ; 
 
 Return, oh sweet half-pain, 
 
 That comest of remembrance of years done. 
 
 A little while we are beneath the sun ; 
 
 Let us not all forget 
 
 The treasure of long hope redoubled by regret : 
 
 The springtides of the soul, which in that^ strange new 
 
 birth 
 Shall blossom once again, if never else on earth. 
 
 IN THE BEGINNING. 
 
 How first did the Cosmical Order cohere from the voids 
 
 of space ? 
 What was the secret law of its being, or fashion of 
 
 birth ? 
 What bound the compacted atoms in numberless Suns, 
 
 as in Earth, 
 Till the young orbs circled for ever, each in its place ? 
 
 What else than a vibrant thrill, which throbbed from the 
 
 central brain, 
 Pulsing through limitless space with a silent harmonious 
 
 beat, 
 Keeping the rhythm unchanged of some weird and 
 
 mystical strain, 
 
 Till the synchronous waves of the ether grew one, and 
 the Worlds complete. 
 
 Even as by a vibrant note, when the film or the sand is 
 
 stirred, 
 
 The separate atoms cohere in the form of a perfect 
 flower, 
 
IN THE BEGINNING. 333 
 
 The Ineffable Spirit at first, the Eternal Infinite Word, 
 Breathed, and the Universe blossomed in perfectness 
 under its power. 
 
 Still the great World's symphony sounds, if only our souls 
 
 might hear ; 
 
 Still, to a mystical music, the suns in their courses ring ; 
 Still, by secret rhythms unheard, are ruled the revoluble 
 
 spheres, 
 
 And together as at the first the stars of the morning 
 sing. 
 
 Oh, mighty inaudible music which boldest and governest 
 
 all, 
 Sound, sound on our mortal ears thy note of heavenly 
 
 rest, 
 
 On our warring, discordant souls let Thy gracious har- 
 monies fall, 
 
 Till our inmost recesses of being are filled with Thy 
 voice and are blest. 
 
 And when Thy compelling Will, unseen Creator, is done 
 Let Thy Seraph peal a new note at dawn from Thy 
 
 heavenly gate, 
 Till Thy Cosmical Order dispels, like a mist in the 
 
 rising sun, 
 
 And Thy great orbs are lost in the void, and Thy 
 Universe uncreate ! 
 
334 SOJVGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 ICARUS. 
 
 'TWAS a beautiful morning in Spring, 
 Bud and blossom were everywhere, 
 
 Glad youth, on its newly-tried wing, 
 Blithe renewal on earth and in air. 
 
 And one immature fledgling had come, 
 Enfranchised that day from the nest, 
 
 Like our children who, parting from home, 
 Fly far to the East or the West. 
 
 What a spreading of fluttering wings ! 
 
 What chirpings, what pride in their child ! 
 As, forgetting terrestrial things, 
 
 The parents for gladness grow wild. 
 
 'Tis a lesson in flight, they essay, 
 
 As, led by the teaching of love, 
 The feeble wings flutter away, 
 
 The weak limbs endeavour to move. 
 
 Now before and above him they dart, 
 With short flights and encouraging calls ; 
 Now the poor pupil harmlessly falls, 
 
 Engrossed in his half-attained art. 
 
 And the neighbours and gossips, who sit 
 
 On the twigs of the bushes around, 
 Join the clamorous chorus and flit 
 
 Up and down 'twixt their seats and the ground. 
 
AT THE GATE. 335 
 
 Long lasted the lesson. At length 
 
 Those feeble wings tempted the air 
 Full a yard, in their newly found strength ! 
 
 You had thought they had Icarus there! 
 
 Such chirpings, such shouts of applause ! 
 
 Such a chorus of innocent glee ! 
 
 Unconscious that under the tree 
 Crept a monster with pitiless jaws. 
 
 Quick ! a flash and a dart and a spring, 
 And the learner, with terror-choked breath, 
 
 Sharp pain, and a profitless wing, 
 Is snatched by the spoiler to death. 
 
 Was it Nature that doomed him ? Why, then, 
 
 Did I start with a curse in pursuit, 
 Forgetting the usage of men, 
 
 More cruel by far than the brute ? 
 
 Vain chase ! O'er a neighbouring wall, 
 
 They vanish ; yet somehow to-day 
 I hear the poor parents' sad call, 
 
 When their darling was ravished away. 
 
 AT THE GATE. 
 
 THRO' the young morning, mile on mile, 
 On my swift wheel alone I glide ; 
 See wood and field and hamlet smile, 
 And all the landscape glorified. 
 
 A young man freed from toil at length, 
 Who labour far from friends and home, 
 
336 SOtfGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 Glad with the joy of youth and strength, 
 To these sweet solitudes I come. 
 
 And on this summer morning calm, 
 The long week's dust and turmoil done, 
 Leave the dull to\vn, to drink the balm 
 Of scented pines and take the sun, 
 
 And let the country's peace and rest 
 Sink on my restless soul, and breed 
 A kindred quiet in my breast, 
 And hints of some sufficing creed. 
 
 The grey church fills ; the cheerful ray, 
 Soft on the latticed casements falls ; 
 Softly the breath of summer day 
 Plays spiced with June around the walls. 
 
 And quickly thro' the golden leas 
 The dutiful processions wend, 
 Then thro' the arching secular trees, 
 Like those who seek a faithful friend. 
 
 The mad chimes haste, then slower come, 
 Toll gravely, and at last grow dumb, 
 And thro' the wide doors, faint and dim, 
 Float the first echoes of the hymn. 
 
 Beneath this thick-leaved elm awhile, 
 Forgetful of the turbid street, 
 I rest, and let the influence sweet 
 The fever of my soul beguile. 
 
AT THE GATE. 337 
 
 For it is Sunday everywhere. 
 The lark a Sabbath carol sings, 
 To blossomed meads and odorous air, 
 And murmurous hum of wooing wings. 
 
 The dozing teams beside the pool 
 Whisk their long tails, and, fetlock-deep 
 In dewy meadow-grasses cool, 
 Munch lazily, then fall asleep. 
 
 The bold pie chatters in the shade, 
 Well knowing she is safe to-day ; 
 Fearless the moorhens dip and wade, 
 The bounding conies fearless play. 
 
 All breathes a seeming calm and rest ; 
 The glad world sleeps a Sabbath sleep ; 
 While on boon Nature's tranquil breast 
 God's peace, His careless creatures keep. 
 
 Shall I not worship, then, with these, 
 Old trees and fleeting flowers that blow ? 
 Share the great Mother's joyous ease, 
 And watch her long-plumed grasses grow, 
 
 And let the spirit of old earth 
 Grow one with mine till both shall fly, 
 Winged by some new, mysterious birth, 
 Beyond the confines of the sky ? 
 
 Here in this long-aisled avenue, 
 Roofed only by the unbounded blue, 
 Are liturgies diviner yet 
 Than those the pitiless years forget. 
 
338 SONGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 Here from these blithe, untutored lays 
 Of chanting birds serene and clear, 
 A sweeter symphony of praise 
 Ascends to take the Eternal ear 
 
 Than in yon humble church hard by ; 
 Nay, in the immemorial quires 
 Of twilight-minsters soaring high, 
 The worshipper's rapt soul inspires. 
 
 But can unaided Nature draw 
 Our worship ? Can her stern decrees, 
 Triumphant Strength, unbending Law, 
 Fit praying hands and bended knees ? 
 
 Shows she, Benign, Almighty, Just, 
 
 Who slays the Unit for the Race, 
 
 Whom neither Pity moves nor Grace ; 
 
 Whose cold voice cries, " What must be, must ; 
 
 To whom the fairest human Soul, 
 Tho' with a thousand jewels drest 
 Purity, reverence, self-control, 
 Love, aspiration for the best 
 
 Is less than his who laughs to scorn 
 All laws but hers, and breaks in twain 
 Poor hearts, and lives his life in vain 
 A vile life, better never born ; 
 
 Who unregarding, stalks through blood 
 And suffering, blindly to her end, 
 Nor shrinks from 111, nor yearns for Good, 
 Careless whate'er the Future send ; 
 
AT THE GATE. 339 
 
 Who framed the tiger, tooth and claw, 
 The eagle's rending beak, the snake 
 With poison-fangs and coils, to take 
 Fresh victims for the ravening maw ? 
 
 The very ground on which I lie 
 Bears rapine on each blade of grass. 
 Stern rapine wings the dragon-fly, 
 The darting swifts that glance and pass. 
 
 And in yon flower-faced, slumbrous pool 
 Pain wakes and rapine day and night. 
 The same unchanging evil rule 
 The terror of Unpitying Might. 
 
 See, a swift trouble cuts the air, 
 A rush of cruel, arrowy wings, 
 And yon blithe throstle as she sings, 
 To death the pouncing talons bear. 
 
 And singled from the helpless throng, 
 Despairing, faint, with failing breath, 
 Half blind, a coney limps along, 
 With, close behind, unerring Death. 
 
 Nay, not to her I kneel. I hold 
 Better than this the Atheist's creed, 
 Which chills the heart with accents cold, 
 If thus I may supply my need. 
 
 Tho' the world teem with wrong and pain, 
 What matter, if no Power Divine 
 Framed this rebellious soul of mine, 
 This soul which drags and loathes its chain ? 
 
340 SONGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 The great World- System on its course 
 Goes unregarding, dumb, and blind ; 
 How reach the dull, deaf ear of Force. 
 Or touch with ruth its careless mind ? 
 
 Not this I worship. Twere to kneel 
 In a void shrine, whose God had fled ; 
 We only worship when we feel ; 
 We owe no reverence to things dead. 
 
 And can this dim Abstraction fill 
 The hungry heart, the soul that yearns 
 For ever closer union still 
 With that far central Life which burns, 
 
 And lights, and first did animate 
 All things that are, and can control 
 The infinite orbits, small and great, 
 And Man's immeasurable soul ? 
 
 For surely, though far off He is, 
 We hear His voice, not only here, 
 But in the clamorous city ; clear 
 It speaks through precious sanctities. 
 
 How shall a young man cleanse his way, 
 His sore-tried way, save by the thought, 
 Too precious for his lips to say, 
 Which points to some diviner " Ought " ? 
 
 The flaring streets allure to sin ; 
 Evil besets his lonely bed ; 
 Heaven seems too straight to enter in, 
 Too faint the precepts of the dead. 
 
AT THE GATE. 341 
 
 Yet oft the Tempter's voice in vain 
 Assails him ; oft the thought of home 
 And simple childhood's whiteness come, 
 And give him strength to strive again ; 
 
 Or if he fall, yet shall he rise, 
 And, breaking the dark jails of sense, 
 See a white radiance light the skies, 
 And hail recovered Innocence. 
 
 Were Conscience dumb, did Nature bind, 
 Even as the brutes are bound, my mind, 
 I were content as those to be, 
 Nor seek invisible Deity. 
 
 But hark ! through all the House of Life, 
 The cloistered cell, the clamorous crowd, 
 Night's cool and calm, Day's dust and strife, 
 A voice of Godhead pleading loud. 
 
 Shall I then kneel with those, and raise 
 My voice with theirs ; who know of old 
 The Century's deep disease, which slays 
 Our Faith, and strikes our yearnings cold 
 
 I who have listened while the coarse, 
 Glib unbeliever marshalled out 
 His legions of unfaithful Doubt, 
 And found no other God but Force, 
 
 And held the Christian tale in scorn, 
 The God-like Victim virgin-born, 
 The atoning pain, the mystic Cross, 
 The sacred salutary loss ? 
 
342 SONGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 What care I ? God there is, I know, 
 Who rules the Worlds and bade us be ; 
 But shall He care for things below, 
 And show His hidden face to me ? 
 
 Too far away He seems to stand, 
 Too bright, if present, for our need ; 
 Nor else than through the Faith, His hand 
 Has given us, know we Him, indeed. 
 
 No other gave He. The strong Hours 
 Have wreaked in vain their age-long Powers, 
 Unchanged as from His lips it came ; 
 To-day it lives and rules the same. 
 
 Enough for me, and for my need ; 
 Enough for dear lives dead and gone ; 
 No other Faith is ours, nor Creed, 
 To speed the labouring ages on. 
 
 Then since He is, and since no more 
 Without Him can I live and move, 
 I join the ranks of Faith and Love, 
 And rise and enter and adore ! 
 
 MARATHON. 
 
 THIS is the very place, 
 
 The hills, the plain, the sea, 
 Calm nature changeth not 
 W r hate'er may be. 
 
 Here, here the Eastern wave, 
 Myriads of warlike men, 
 
MARATHON. 343 
 
 Surged vainly on the shore, 
 Then sank again. 
 
 Two thousand years and more 
 Have vanished since the day 
 When that barbarian host 
 Faded away. 
 
 Worse tyrannies have come, 
 
 Flood after bitter flood ; 
 Long time the loathly Turk 
 Bathed Greece in blood. 
 
 But of that old fierce fight 
 
 Clear memories linger yet ; 
 Dark histories roll between, 
 Yet none forget. 
 
 To-day as twilight falls 
 
 Upon the darkling plain, 
 The ghosts of the great Past 
 Contend again. 
 
 Still on that haunted marsh 
 
 The affrighted peasant hears 
 Barbaric shouts arise, 
 
 Shields clash with spears. 
 
 Groans, cries of mortal strife, 
 
 And trampling chivalry, 
 Where the lone hills survey 
 The sailless sea. 
 
344 SONGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 OCTOBER 6, 1892. 
 
 DEAR Friend and honoured Master, art thou dead ? 
 And shall I see no more thy reverend face, 
 Recall our older England's manlier grace ? 
 Nor any more admire that noble head, 
 That brow as high as Shakespeare's, that grave eye, 
 Now soft with mirth, now fired with fantasy ? 
 Nor hear again thy rugged, kindly speech 
 Illume the sunless deeps of thought, and teach 
 The Right thou lov'dst ? nor breathe the eager air 
 Of thy lone eyrie with thee ? nor behold 
 Thy bent, cloaked figure, dark against the gold 
 And purple of thy dear, secluded hill, 
 Pace with uncertain footsteps day by day 
 The much-loved round ? nor in the failing light 
 Upon thy smooth lawns watch the summer night 
 Steal o'er the ghostly plains ? nor mark the strain 
 Of thy blithe thrushes with thee ? nor again 
 The enamoured, lonely nightingale complain ? 
 
 Thy years were come to harvest home-spent years 
 Of reverence from without, of love within. 
 A perfect life, health, riches, honours, fame 
 All these were thine, no prize was left to win ; 
 Scant sorrow, save that fine despondency 
 Which fans the smouldering genius into flame ; 
 Only two brief experiences of tears 
 The dear friend lost in youth, the son in age, 
 Bracing thy soul to bear whatever should be. 
 Such lives Fate grants not often, nor for long, 
 And rarest to the suffering ranks of song. 
 
OCTOBER 6, 1892. 345 
 
 Why should we mourn, save for our private pain 
 
 And friendship which shall never come again ? 
 
 Our race can never lose thee, whose fair page, 
 
 Rich with the harvest of a soul inspired, 
 
 So many a weakling life and heart has fired. 
 
 Thou art not wholly gone, but livest yet 
 
 Till thy great England's sons their tongue forget ! 
 
 Thy place is with the Immortals. Who shall gauge 
 Thy rank among thy peers of world-wide song ? 
 Others, it may be, touched a note more strong, 
 Scaled loftier heights, or glowed with fiercer rage ; 
 But who like thee could slay our modern Doubt ? 
 Or soothe the sufferers with a tenderer heart ? 
 Or deck gray legends with such knightly grace ? 
 Or nerve Life's world-worn pilgrims for their part ? 
 Who, since our English tongue first grew, has stirred 
 More souls to noble effort by his word ? 
 More reverent who of Man, of God, of Truth ? 
 More piteous of the sore-tried strength of Youth ? 
 Others of grosser clay might stoop to fire 
 Ignoble lusts with prostituted lyre. 
 Thy chaste, white Muse, loathing the Pagan rout, 
 Would drive with stripes the goatish Satyr out. 
 Thy love of Righteousness preserved thee pure ; 
 Thy lucid genius scorned to lurk obscure, 
 And all thy jewelled art and native grace 
 Were consecrate to God and to the Race. 
 
 This day extinguishes a star as bright 
 
 As shone upon our dying century. 
 
 Here, as in that great England over sea, 
 
 " Light after light goes out," yet 'tis not night. 
 
 The peaceful moonbeams kissed him as he lay 
 
 At midnight, dying in the arms of Love. 
 
 Thou couldst not wait the dawn of earthly Day. 
 
346 SONGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 Farewell, blest soul, farewell ! And if, indeed, 
 Some care for things of earth may mount above, 
 As is our hope, enfranchised Spirit, plead 
 For this our England, which thou lov'dst so long, 
 And crownedst with thy diadem of song ! 
 
 TWO LAY HYMNS. 
 
 I. 
 
 COME Thou again. The world grows old, 
 And Faith's fire wanes and hearts grow cold ; 
 The years defraud Thee of Thy due ; 
 Come Thou, and, coming, make things new. 
 
 But shouldst Thou come again indeed 
 With a new Name, and modern creed, 
 Hearts which are loyal to Thee still 
 Might doubt Thy new-revealed will. 
 
 And Thou, with Thy enfranchised Word, 
 Not peace wouldst bring us, but a sword ; 
 And all Thy former gracious Past 
 Might rise to hinder Thee at last. 
 
 Yet come. The mystic beat of Time, 
 The dead years' measured march sublime, 
 The very truths Thy voice first taught, 
 Grown sovereign, bring Thy power to naught. 
 
 Each weary age deceasing brings 
 Dust of dead creeds and soulless things, 
 So that no more our souls discern 
 Through their thick haze Thy precepts burn. 
 
TWO LAY HYMNS. 347 
 
 Dead thoughts which ere Thy earthly years 
 Had marred the Race with lust and tears, 
 Arraign Thy Word, Thy Life, Thy Love, 
 Thy Cross on earth, Thy Throne above. 
 
 And some, with wandering fires grown blind 
 No more the face of Godhead find, 
 And are content, rejecting Thee, 
 Aimless and rudderless to be ; 
 
 And some have sought in hopeless pain 
 The styes of Pagan sense again, 
 And in Thy place would fain install 
 False gods with foulness for their all. 
 
 And since so weak indeed we are, 
 With Death so near and Heaven so far, 
 With creeping mists of sin and sense 
 Quench the white fire of innocence. 
 
 Come Thou. Tho' brief to Thee appears 
 The sum of nigh two thousand years, 
 To lives like ours, which fleet so fast, 
 They stretch a long abysmal Past. 
 
 Come, if Thou wilt, with wider creed, 
 To meet and satisfy our need ; 
 Or, if Thou wilt, come now as then, 
 And fill the hungry hearts of men. 
 
 Nor once, but often, come and fire 
 Cold hearts, and doubting minds inspire ; 
 And from its depths of misery 
 Lift a despairing world to Thee ! 
 
348 SOJVGS WITHOUT NOTES. 
 
 II. 
 
 WHERE wouldst Thou I should go ? The way 
 Is dark, nor yet ascends the day ; 
 Confused, the mazy paths combine 
 I cannot yet distinguish mine. 
 
 Wouldst Thou that up the soaring hill 
 Breathless I climb and labour still ? 
 Or on the dull uncomely plain 
 Shall sow and reap and sow again ? 
 
 Shall I, amid the dust and strife 
 Of the thronged town, expend my life ? 
 Or watch the silent summers come, 
 Gilding the skies and fields of home ? 
 
 Or best devote my nascent years 
 To stay the flow of human tears ? 
 Or cloistered in some tranquil cell, 
 Shall I, in praising Thee, do well? 
 
 Or shall my studious footsteps stray 
 Down Learning's still, untroubled way, 
 And, led by princely souls of yore, 
 Advance Thought's realm a footpace more ? 
 
 Or in the wrangling Senate take 
 
 No care for aught, but for Thy sake, 
 
 Content to raise the multitude 
 
 To some faint glimpse of Thee and Good ? 
 
 Or, better in the busy mart 
 Remind the worldling that Thou art 
 Working Thy humbler work, which lies 
 Not less on earth than in the skies? 
 
TWO LAY HYMNS. 349 
 
 Or strive to fix with half-amaze 
 The beauty of my inward gaze ? 
 Or with lips fired by yearnings strong 
 Clothe Thy ineffable word with song ? 
 
 Guide with Thy light my faltering feet 
 Where Life's perplexing pathways meet ; 
 Call Thou me with Thy silent voice, 
 And I will follow and rejoice ! 
 
 PROCEMIUM* 
 
 Go, daring bark, upon the wider stream ; 
 
 Go to what hidden end thy fate doth call ; 
 Aiding our country's yet imperfect dream ; 
 
 Go, be thy lot to vanquish or to fall ! 
 
 Thou and thy venturous comrades, small and great, 
 Are freighted with our Cambria's hopes and fears ; 
 
 Thou shalt not miss, whate'er the award of Fate, 
 One favouring hand, at least, one voice that cheers. 
 
 Sail, with Imperial England, round the earth, 
 Using the lordly tongue which sways the Race ; 
 
 But oh ! forget not thou the Cymric grace, 
 The snows, the heaven-kissed summits of thy birth 1 
 
 * For the Welsh Review. 
 
IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 MORNING SONG. 
 
 AWAKE, arise ! 
 
 Day's shining eyes 
 Open unclouded to the waking skies ; 
 
 Night and the hosts of Sleep, 
 
 Dispersed, defeated, creep 
 To their Lethaean dens and sunless caverns deep. 
 
 Hark ! with the day 
 
 His roundelay 
 Each brave bird sings, and speeds away ; 
 
 Aloft, on circling wings, 
 
 The mounting skylark sings, 
 A denizen of air, scorning terrestrial things. 
 
 Arise, awake ! 
 
 And, singing, make 
 Thy morning orisons for Love's sweet sake. 
 
 Awake, awake, arise ! 
 
 Keep the cerulean skies 
 Reflected in the faithful azure of thine eyes. 
 
IN THE BAPTISTERY. 351 
 
 IN THE BAPTISTERY. 
 
 IN Pisa once, within the Baptistery 
 
 I well remember, the astonished ear 
 
 Took sounds too sweet for earth. For as we stood 
 
 Beneath the fretted ambit of the dome 
 
 The poor guide lifted a worn voice, not sweet, 
 
 But skilled to evoke the subtle harmonies 
 
 Which lurked in those dim heights ; a common voice 
 
 And earthy as the accents, coarse and dull, 
 
 Of some street singer at a tavern door, 
 
 Frighting the midnight street ; some hackneyed phrase 
 
 Stolen from the Missal-book, so poor and flat 
 
 We fain had silenced it. 
 
 But hark ! but hark ! 
 Ere it is done what heavenly harmonies 
 Flout those poor tones of earth. The ambient air 
 Seems rilled with voices, voices everywhere, 
 Of some angelic choir, which swell, which beat, 
 Reverberating ; circling waves of sound, 
 Now single, doubled now, and resonant 
 And grown together, and interlaced and lost 
 In some unearthly sweetness mystical, 
 Till all the enchanted vault is charged with joy, 
 As when of old, hid on their perilous isle, 
 The lurking Sirens drew the listening crews ; 
 Or as the chanting quires which soar and fall 
 In hoary fanes ; or the aerial flights 
 Of the angelic host whose heavenly tones 
 The rapt Cecilia heard ; or those white ranks 
 Of gold-haired Seraphs, chanting row on row, 
 With viol and voice and trump, the painter saw 
 And filled with high-pitched music for all time 
 Though no sound come. Anon the circling tides, 
 
352 IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Ebbing and flowing through the stately round 
 
 Of that great dome, are driven back, wave on wave, 
 
 High, repercussive, till they sink and die, 
 
 Like fairy ripples of a summer sea, 
 
 In sweetness, and transform themselves and flow 
 
 In some low gracious melody which sighs, 
 
 Fainter and fainter, to its perfect close, 
 
 As 'twere the soaring, rapt, angelic choir 
 
 Which vanished in heaven's vault and left earth dumb 
 
 Of music, first the uplifted, pealing, high 
 
 Archangels' trumpets, then the chanting saints, 
 
 And then the faint child-angels' voices last. 
 
 A PLEA FOR THE CHILDREN. 
 
 SHALL woman's pitying love 
 
 Its object seek in vain ? 
 Comes there to-day our hearts to move 
 
 No hopeless, innocent pain ? 
 The dull world speeds on its unbending course 
 
 No law there seems but Force ! 
 And those whose tender hearts would seek 
 
 To aid the helpless weak, 
 Too oft, with folded hands, sit impotent 
 Waiting the dark event. 
 
 So loud the doubting voices are, 
 
 We scarce may stir at all, 
 Though at the shock of ruthless war 
 
 The young battalions fall ! 
 
 Over all lands in vain 
 
 The toiling worker's pain 
 Speaks, with a terrible voice unheard, 
 
 Its awful Sibylline word ! 
 
A PLEA FOR THE CHILDREN. 353 
 
 Hardly we dare assuage 
 The ever-growing ills of Age, 
 Who, knowing how the lifelong sufferers live, 
 Know, too, how hard the task to wisely give. 
 The homes of healing languish for the gold 
 
 The rich, perplexed, withhold : 
 Since hardly may our minds discern the clue 
 To separate the false need from the true 
 So hard to tell if that we strive to do 
 
 Make not the tangle worse, 
 And bring, indeed, no blessing, but a curse ! 
 
 One cause there is, indeed 
 Alas for all the Christian centuries ! 
 
 Calls clear from childish lives that bleed 
 
 With daily miseries. 
 
 Within a thousand homeless homes to-day 
 The sot, the savage, bear remorseless sway 
 
 Vile souls, and hearts of stone ! 
 With none to heed the helpless children moan 
 Starved, beaten, prisoned, drugged, tormented, slain : 
 In life a burden, but in death a gain ! 
 
 Shall these still suffer ? Shall the State's tired arm, 
 
 Too slow to save from harm, 
 Its dim eye, by a thousand cares, grown blind, 
 
 No willing helpers find ? 
 These little ones ! Shall they unaided pine ? 
 Who, fresh from the creative Hand Divine, 
 
 Bring to our sad, laborious earth 
 
 Bright memories of their birth ! 
 
 Who 'neath a happier, juster fate 
 May give strong, willing workers to the State ! 
 Here no doubt comes ; here is our duty plain : 
 Soothe, tender women, soothe their hopeless pain ! 
 And trample, with a righteous anger strong, 
 
 This thrice accursed wrong ! 
 
 2 A 
 
354 IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 AD AN IMAM, 
 
 THEREFORE I said unto my Soul, " Rejoice, 
 
 Oh Soul, be comforted, for thou long time 
 
 Hast fared upon the snow- clad heights, and breathed 
 
 The icy mountain air, and watched the dawn 
 
 Steal upward from the Eastern rim, and marked 
 
 The silver shafts transmuted into gold 
 
 By the uprushing Sun, and oft alone, 
 
 Sole, unattended, save of thine own strength, 
 
 Above the slumbering cities seen the throngs 
 
 Wake the hushed streets, and heard the warring sounds 
 
 Of joy and sorrow, birth and death, arise, 
 
 Blent in the sweet sad symphony of Life, 
 
 And the tired world revive. And thou hast smiled, 
 
 Flouting the aimless struggle from afar 
 
 On thy untrodden height, the stress, the toil, 
 
 And trouble of the Race ; dwelling apart 
 
 From wars and tribulations, and the clash 
 
 And jangle of opposing schools, convinced 
 
 That all alike were vain, and mocking all. 
 
 " Nor hast thou bowed thee with hysteric zeal 
 At shrines which were not Reason's, casting down 
 The birthright of thy freedom and the gains 
 Of Man's long upward struggle, and the hope 
 Of his high-soaring Future, in the mire 
 At the priest's bidding, while the blinding fumes 
 Of the swung censers and the magic spell 
 Of Art and Music chained thee, eye and ear. 
 But standing cold, aloof, disdain'dst to kneel 
 Where the throng knelt, incredulous, alone. 
 
 " Nor hast thou wallowed in the sensual sty, 
 Nor known the fetters Sloth and Dalliance 
 
REGINA C(EL2. 355 
 
 Bind round the nascent life, the mists of sense 
 
 Quenching Youth's pure white fire ; but by thy cell 
 
 And midnight lamp, Divine Philosophy 
 
 Sate grave, with clear cold eyes ; and wholesome toil 
 
 Engrossed thy days and purged thee of all stain 
 
 Of sin, till thou, to godlike stature grown, 
 
 Didst spurn the grosser Earth. 
 
 Therefore, oh Soul, 
 Rejoice, and be thou glad." 
 
 But not a word 
 
 Of answer came, but through the formless void, 
 Beyond the circuits of the faintest stars, 
 A thin wail, like the melancholy wind 
 Among the high-set pines or caverned rocks, 
 Hopeless, revoluble, reverberant, 
 And deepening to a groan, which seemed to say, 
 " Oh, self-deceived, self-righteous, nothing worth, 
 And self-betrayed ! Oh, fool ! in vain ! in vain ! " 
 
 REGINA CCELI. 
 
 WHAT shall I frame my life to gain ? 
 Not Riches ; lower mundane things 
 Spread wi.de their fickle treacherous wings, 
 
 And who pursues them strives in vain. 
 
 Nor Fame ; for she fleets faster yet, 
 Or comes not ere the closing tomb 
 The sun of Glory sets in gloom, 
 
 And the world hastens to forget. 
 
 Nor Rank nor Honours. Were it best 
 Dowered of some weaker soul to live. 
 
356 IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Or bear the jewel none can give 
 Deep in the heart, not on the breast ? 
 
 Nor Pleasure ; for her gains elude 
 The weary seeker's baffled eyes ; 
 The wanton leaves him when she flies 
 
 Bound fast in hopeless servitude. 
 
 Nor Love, because its flower divine 
 Blooms with the Morn, nor long can stay, 
 But withers in Life's fuller day 
 
 And leaves the lonely heart to pine. 
 
 Nor Beauty ; though the fictive hand 
 Fix some faint glimpses, Time the thief 
 Cries, " Art is long, and Life is brief," 
 
 And slays us ere we understand. 
 
 Nor Learning ; for her laboured page 
 Palls on the soul which nears the Truth ; 
 The thirst for fame, the haste of Youth 
 
 Stir not the slower limbs of Age. 
 
 To Duty only let me kneel, 
 Her painful circlet on her brow ! 
 To her, my Queen, my head shall bow, 
 
 Not knowing, but content to feel ! 
 
 All faint, all fade, all pass, but She 
 Shines clear for young and aged eyes, 
 High as the peaks which kiss the skies, 
 
 Profound as the tmfathomed sea ! 
 
IN BOHEMIA. 357 
 
 IN BOHEMIA. 
 
 THIS tale I seemed to hear a Gipsy tell, 
 A dark-browed woman prisoned in a cell 
 In wild Bohemia : 
 
 " Ay, 'twas in the gloom 
 Of the dark, twilight pine-woods far away 
 They found me sitting, somewhat dazed, I think, 
 By what sad things had been, and slow to move 
 When all was done ; self-chained, as I am now 
 Within this lonely cell, and pondering 
 All the sad Past. I know not what the Law 
 Can do with me, nor care. But there just there 
 Where you stand now do you see two corpses lie, 
 One, shot through the brain, who bears a stony calm 
 Upon his face ; and one with staring eyes 
 And knitted brows, and clenched jaws, breathing rage 
 And balked revenge ? Do you see the crimson stain 
 Steal on or is it fancy, and there comes 
 Nothing to break the bare and ghastly white 
 Of this unlovely cell, and I but dream 
 That dreadful dream again ? 
 
 What ? would you learn 
 How 'tis that I come here a prisoner bound 
 By self-forged chains ? Our swift Gitana blood 
 Breeds savage jealousies and hates and loves 
 Not the slow current of your Northern veins, 
 But a fierce tigerish impulse, half desire, 
 Half selfish pride. We wanderers keep to-day 
 The unbridled passion, which the tropic sun 
 Burned in our blood ; and I am of my race, 
 As you of yours. 
 
358 IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Two there were sought my love. 
 One a man, strong, with all the vigorous strength 
 Of manhood, tall of stature, black of beard, 
 And swarthy cheeked a strenuous mate to bind 
 A woman's wandering wings strong arms and loins ; 
 A husband more than lover, so that long 
 I doubted if 'twere well to smile on him, 
 Half fearful lest his fierce and tyrannous will 
 Should prove too strong for mine. Therefore it was 
 I hesitated, drawn now here, now there. 
 I think I never loved him ; though maybe 
 His splendid manhood drew me as it draws 
 Weak women the world over us who toil 
 And wander day by day, and lie by night 
 Tired 'neath the gazing stars, and those who sink, 
 After soft days of silken dalliance, 
 Canopied close, in down and perfumed ease, 
 Within their gilded palaces. They too 
 Are women weak as I, and loving well 
 The strong, supporting arm ay, though sometimes 
 'Twere raised in anger and the resonant tones 
 And flashing eye, because their strength confirms 
 Our weakness. 
 
 But because our souls are weak, 
 Not strength alone allures us, but the charm 
 Of youth, the scarcely shaded lip and cheek, 
 The dark plume on the brow, the lissom grace 
 Of budding age ; and one there was, a boy 
 Of fitting years to mine, bold as a god, 
 And lithe as a young panther, and he cast 
 Dark passionate eyes on me, as he had cast them 
 Upon a score before, and at the tones 
 Of his gay accents, all the woman's love 
 Of beauty and things fair rose up and strove 
 For mastery with the woman's shrinking nature 
 That loved the guiding hand, and overthrew it 
 
IN BOHEMIA, 359 
 
 While he was near love of the sight alone, 
 Not of the heart or mind. And though I knew not 
 Which love to choose, it was the eyes' desire 
 Prevailed at last. 
 
 And yet I do not think 
 I loved him ; for when all the gossips came 
 To tell me he was faithless, now with this one 
 And now with that, it was not pain I knew, 
 Only contempt for him and wounded pride, 
 And (though that argues unrequited love) 
 A longing for revenge. You cannot know, 
 You Northerns, through whose veins the tepid blood 
 Creeps slowly, with what pulses the hot tide 
 Leaps from our torrid hearts. 
 
 Therefore I planned 
 
 A subtle scheme. I wrote a loving letter, 
 Bidding him meet me in the wood when eve 
 Was falling ; I had much to say to him, 
 And begged that he would come, for it might prove 
 The last time we should meet, and we should be 
 Together and alone. Then, when 'twas sent, 
 I wrote another to the man I feared, 
 Not loved, and bade him to the trysting-place 
 A little later, when the dying sun 
 Was sinking on the hills, and I would give him 
 The answer he had asked. When all was done, 
 And both I knew would come poor fools allured 
 By love, where love was not, only revenge 
 And hatred I went forth without a word 
 After my toil was done, and took with me, 
 Half ignorant of what I did or wherefore, 
 Concealed upon my bosom, like the asp 
 Of our Egyptian Queen, with shining tube, 
 A tiny weapon, for what end I know not 
 Nor knew ; but with our Gipsy blood 'tis well, 
 When passions rise to fever-heat, to hold 
 
360 IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Some strength reserved, and I had done that day 
 That which might lead to bloodshed, and 'twere best 
 The way to escape lay open, if my fate 
 At last should leave me lonely to despair. 
 
 Then when the dying day, declining, cast 
 
 Its longer shadows through the darkling wood, 
 
 Hastening, within a little glade I found 
 
 My youthful lover waiting at the place 
 
 Where he should die ere sunset. As I saw him, 
 
 It did repent me of my deed. I fain 
 
 Had warned him of his doom ; but as we sate 
 
 Upon a fallen tree-trunk, side by side, 
 
 Some careless boast, some burst of mocking mirth, 
 
 Some jibe at woman's love, or covert sneer, 
 
 Fanning my jealous fancies into flame, 
 
 Filled all my soul with madness. And the sun 
 
 Sank on the hills and a cold chill of eve 
 
 Breathed like the breath of Fate, as, looking up, 
 
 I saw the angry face and lurid eyes 
 
 Of the avenger burn ; and knew that doom 
 
 Was nigh, fierce fight and blood, and pain and death. 
 
 Ah, I remember well with what fierce rage, 
 Poor fools ! they rushed together. I mocked them both, 
 Dupes of a loveless woman who cared naught 
 Whatever ill befell them, when they closed 
 In mortal combat, the strong stalwart man 
 And the lithe agile youth. Long time the fight 
 Raged doubtfully, 'twixt those slow-moving limbs 
 And that swift panther-tread ; they struck, they strained, 
 They twined, until at last the younger fell, 
 O'erborne, upon the earth. 
 
 Then with a cry 
 
 Of rage he rose, and soon the keen knives flashed 
 Red in the last rays of the sinking sun j 
 
IN BOHEMIA. 361 
 
 The dark eyes, lighted by an inward fire, 
 Burned with the light of hate. And I sat mute 
 And motionless, watching as those who sit 
 Sporting with blood and pain. I had no wish 
 To stay their hands, nor spoke one soothing word 
 To avert their doom. The keen eyes, the quick limbs, 
 The feints, the thrusts, the parries, moved me not, 
 Who sat with eager eyes, and watched the fight, 
 Like some tempestuous drama, to the close, 
 From act to breathless act. There came no sound 
 But the quick clash of steel, the deep drawn breaths, 
 The crackle of trampled wood, until at last 
 One agonizing cry, and my young lover, 
 With large reproachful eyes, fell at my feet, 
 Stabbed to the heart. 
 
 Then all my former hate 
 Transformed to love and pity, I rose and fell 
 Upon his breast, and kissed him ere he died ; 
 And when I rose I saw the angry eyes 
 Of the other bent on me, as if he knew 
 My secret and despised me. Not a word 
 He spoke, nor I, but straight, the rushing flood 
 Of passionate love transformed itself to hate 
 Of him who did despoil me, and contempt 
 For life and for myself, and a great rage 
 Against the stronger, rising, blotted out 
 All my old thoughts. No more I sought to gain 
 Deliverance dying. As he stood before me 
 With fierce, victorious eyes, I raised my hand, 
 Drew forth the little asp from out my breast, 
 And stung him through the brain. 
 
 He fell beside 
 
 The other, and I stirred not till 'twas night ; 
 And when they came, they found me pondering still 
 On all that sad day's deeds, as if the play 
 Was done, and I tired out and loath to stir, 
 
362 IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Though all the lights were out. I did not know 
 
 I loved him till he died, or I had waived 
 
 My poor revenge, or when he died had turned 
 
 My weapon on myself. 'Twas Love, not I, 
 
 That took another life. A murderess 
 
 Call they me ? Ah ! nay, nay ; 'twas never murder, 
 
 When unforeseen misfortune, suddenly 
 
 Arising like a storm-cloud from the sea, 
 
 O'envhelms us. 'Twas not I that slew my love ; 
 
 I knew not that I loved. Had I not loved him, 
 
 I had not slain his slayer, but had borne 
 
 An innocent conscience, and had died self-slain, 
 
 A blameless suicide. But now they come, 
 
 Those servants of your pallid, prudish law, 
 
 And measure our quick pulses, our hot tides 
 
 Of passion by your bloodless ordinances. 
 
 Not thus they used, in that far ancient East, 
 
 Ere first we wandered here. I pray you, sir, 
 
 Think not such ill of me. And yet, oh Heaven, 
 
 I know not ! Why lie those two corpses there, 
 
 There day and night, one with a stony calm, 
 
 And one with angry, unrelenting eyes ? " 
 
 AN ELEGY, JANUARY 3, 1895.* 
 
 DEAD at the crest, the crown 
 
 And blossom of his fortunes, this strong son 
 Of our great Realm sank down 
 
 Beneath the load of Honours scarcely won, 
 
 Windsor's Imperial Towers 
 Kept watch and ward above him as he lay ; 
 
 * On the dentil at Windsor of Sir John Thompson, the Canadian 
 Premier. 
 
UNVEILING OF JOHN B RIGHT'S STATUE. 363 
 
 His Sovereign lavished flowers 
 In gratitude upon his honoured clay. 
 
 Through stress and storm afar 
 
 He crossed once more the troubled wintry wave 
 In that stout ship of War, 
 
 By the old flag enshrouded for his grave. 
 
 Great Empire, heart and mind 
 Closer let Britain's sons together draw ! 
 
 Such lives, such deaths, can bind 
 A firmer Union than the bond of Law. 
 
 May this career sublime, 
 
 This honoured ending of an honoured life, 
 Bear fruit through secular Time 
 
 In hearts drawn near, deep peace, averted strife ! 
 
 LINES ON THE UNVEILING OF THE 
 STATUE OF THE RIGHT HON. JOHN 
 BRIGHT, FEBRUARY n, 1896. 
 
 SEVEN years have fled since on thy honoured clay 
 I laid a fading wreath of grateful verse ; 
 
 Willing, once more I come again to-day 
 Thy unforgotten virtues to rehearse ; 
 
 Friend of the friendless else, thou art not dead 
 
 Whilst still one voice laments thy honoured head ! 
 
 Nay, nay, rejoice ! the time is past for tears. 
 
 Now when our long-lost leader comes to stand 
 Pleading once more for England 'midst his peers, 
 
 Pure as the marble from the sculptor's hand, 
 
364 IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Not grief be ours, but joy that he has come, 
 Who being dead yet speaketh, to his home. 
 
 Here 'mid the lengthening pageant of the Great 
 Still let him stand, speechless yet eloquent, 
 
 Taking the eager air of high debate, 
 
 And echoes of our freeman's Parliament ; 
 
 Here let him plead as erst impassioned, strong 
 
 In love of Right, and scorn and hate of Wrong. 
 
 Ah ! well that he is come ! the peoples groan ; 
 
 Torture and murder vex them day by day. 
 Would he were living still to hear their moan 
 
 And fright the accursed spoiler from his prey ! 
 Yet though that voice warlike for peace is gone, 
 Pray Heaven its accents still go widening on ! 
 
 Here from his silent lips be wafted far 
 A gracious message over land and sea, 
 
 Deep horror of the fratricide of War, 
 High aspirations for the Peace to be, 
 
 As when long years ago his eloquent word, 
 
 Though spent in vain, the listening Senate stirred. 
 
 Here let him plead again the toiler's cause, 
 The burden of the oppressed, the weak, the slave, 
 
 Crushed to the earth by old abusive laws ; 
 The voice of freedom dies not with the grave ; 
 
 Mute though they seem, those lips so cold and white 
 
 Shall glow with burning utterance for the right. 
 
 Stand here, great Englishman ! Earth knows to-day 
 No prouder title than that world-wide name ; 
 
 Though thrones and rank and honours pass away, 
 There comes no cloud that shall obscure thy fame. 
 
 Here in the precincts where thy years were spent 
 
 Inspire, sustain thy well-loved Parliament ! 
 
LLANSTEPHAN. 365 
 
 LLANSTEPHAN. 
 
 SLOWLY upon the glowing evening skies 
 The orange cloudlets fade in lifeless gray, 
 
 While from these broken towers my yearning eyes 
 O'er western seas pursue the dying day, 
 
 Till where the sinking sunbeams late would burn, 
 
 Fringed with cold fires, the deepening waters churn. 
 
 No sound arises save the sea-bird's cry ; 
 
 Where drowned beneath his stars the Day- God lies 
 But hark ! like some weird whisper of a sigh 
 
 The dim mysterious ocean-voices rise, 
 The beat of hidden pulses from afar ; 
 The never-silent moaning of the bar. 
 
 Here let me lie and trace in Fancy's glass 
 Again the sea-tales strange of classic eld, 
 
 Watch with wreathed horns the floating Tritons pass, 
 And sea-nymphs last of Pagan eyes beheld, 
 
 Fair Nereids sporting on the moonlit sand, 
 
 And Sirens calling from the enchanted land. 
 
 There breathes no breath across the heaving plain, 
 No phantom sail awakes the slumbering sea ; 
 
 Here will I muse and watch, a Greek again, 
 The spume-flecked currents drifting silently, 
 
 And people half-hid coves and shadowy capes 
 
 With gliding presences and elfin shapes. 
 
 Even thus the old sea spake, nor otherwise, 
 To Homer's dreaming fantasy of yore ; 
 
 But ah ! our duller brains and dimmer eyes 
 The primal glory fled from sea and shore 
 
366 IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 No more may we discern the visions fair 
 Which lit our youngling planet everywhere. 
 
 Nay, nay, the old grace fades not ; land and sea 
 Enchanted are, as erst when Man was young ; 
 
 Dull knowledge flouts not all their mystery, 
 
 Not all fair dreams are dreamt, or sweet songs sung. 
 
 Still, still, while youth and spring-tide come to birth, 
 
 These fair fantastic visions light the earth. 
 
 Here let me dream, and for a while forget, 
 Beneath the magic moonlight's ghostly smile, 
 
 Life's rude tumultuous waves, the toil, the fret, 
 The strifes, the jealous hates, the wrong, the guile, 
 
 And wake from Nature's arms, with new-purged sense, 
 
 To that immortal Pagan innocence. 
 
 AN ODE ON THE INSTALLATION OF 
 THE PRINCE OF WALES AS CHAN. 
 CELL OR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 WALES, JUNE 26, 1896. 
 
 THIS is our joyous hour, 
 
 The Dawn expected long ; 
 
 Break, " Sea of music," in a surge of song ! 
 
 The long, long night of ignorance is done, 
 
 Triumphant o'er our land the Orient sun 
 
 Shines with renascent power ; 
 
 Our little Wales that lay asleep 
 
 In secular slumbers deep 
 
 Awakes for whatsoe'er of nobler fate, 
 
 What ampler, happier fortunes fair, 
 
 The hidden years prepare. 
 
INSTALLATION ODE. 367 
 
 Here on the sounding margin of the sea, 
 
 Whence the shy Mountain-Spirit dwells not far, 
 
 We who of hills and sea the children are 
 
 Unite to-day in joyous pageantry, 
 
 To-day rejoice ! On this auspicious morn, 
 
 From Strife to Peace re-born 
 
 Our lost Llywelyn seems again to come, 
 
 For love of learning to his ancient home ; 
 
 While with her fair-grown daughters twain 
 
 Our gracious Royal Lady smiles again ! 
 
 Rejoice ! it is a joyous day ; 
 
 The dawn of Knowledge drives the night away; 
 
 Young Summer comes, the skies and seas are blue; 
 
 Lo, a new spirit breathing, maketh all things new ! 
 
 Brief are our lives upon the labouring earth, 
 
 Our tasks of little worth ; 
 
 Ere half is done, a cold voice calls, and then, 
 
 Beyond the ways of men, 
 
 We know no more the joy of emulous strife, 
 
 The toils, the victories of life. 
 
 A little while we are, and then ere long 
 
 Still is the busy brain, and hushed the voice of song. 
 
 Men sow, but others reap, 
 
 While in oblivion deep, 
 
 Far off, we know not where, the toilers lie asleep. 
 
 Already round our new-built Temple fair, 
 
 The fragrant memories of the faithful Dead 
 
 Bloom frequent everywhere. 
 
 Already ere its walls completed stand, 
 
 Or its consummate spires assail the skies, 
 
 There waits without the gate a noble band 
 
 Of patient ghosts who gaze with yearning eyes. 
 
 Not upon earth 'twas theirs to see 
 
 The bright ideal of their life-long dream, 
 
 Our native Academe ; 
 
368 IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 But we who on their labours enter, we, 
 Shall we forget to give the honour due 
 To those whose provident thought our country's need 
 
 foreknew, 
 
 Those unrewarded spirits now at rest 
 Who laboured for the Best ? 
 
 Blest patriots of our long-drawn centuries, 
 
 And ye but lately vanished from our eyes, 
 
 Rejoice ! If echo of our fortunes here 
 
 Can reach and wake the spiritual ear, 
 
 Henceforth our well-loved Cymric land 
 
 Shall 'mid her sisters stand, 
 
 Dowered not alone with what of precious lore 
 
 The dead Past holds in store, 
 
 But the fair harvests of the days to be, 
 
 The hidden treasures, more than gems or gold, 
 
 More precious far than old Philosophy, 
 
 Which Science boasts to hold. 
 
 The New Age calls, and we upon the verge 
 
 Hear the weird thunders of the magic surge ; 
 
 New thoughts, new gains, the imminent Future brings, 
 
 Fairer than ever in his cloistered cell 
 
 The visionary searcher wondering saw : 
 
 Forces unknown subdued ; rich fields of Ordered Law, 
 
 Where sown with Ruin trackless deserts awe ; 
 
 Enchanted forests, caverns, pitiless seas, 
 
 And further, dimmer, darker still than these, 
 
 The Secret through the ages guarded well, 
 
 Of Life, of Death, Good, Evil, Heaven and Hell. 
 
 Rise Thou, dear land, on Learning's even wings, 
 Rise in Heaven's face, and, soaring, leave behind 
 Thy sordid outworn robe of lower Things ; 
 The eye by grosser mists grown blind ; 
 The earthy soul ; the unawakened mind ; 
 
C2V1TAS DEI. 369 
 
 All jealous hates, all faithless fears, 
 And low delights more pitiful than tears. 
 Awake ! advance ! arise ! ascend at length 
 Thro' wider knowledge to a fuller strength, 
 To loftier heights, and nobler ends complete. 
 Purge throughly from thy late-enfranchised sight 
 The clouds, the glooms of Time's departed Night, 
 Soar, higher, higher, with the increasing light 
 Where throned, with clouds beneath her shining feet, 
 Sits Wisdom crowned with Right ! 
 
 CIV2TAS DEL 
 
 OH splendours unattainable ! 
 
 Oh heights unclimbed of thought ! 
 
 Oh hidden secrets of the skies, 
 
 By lifted hands and straining eyes, 
 
 Through dim, unnumbered centuries 
 
 Unprofitably sought. 
 
 Yet must our hopeless vision scan 
 
 The immeasurable plan. 
 
 The earth with Spring's first flowers grows glad, 
 
 The skies, the seas are blue, 
 
 But still shall finer spirits turn 
 
 With hearts that long, and souls that burn, 
 
 And for some ghostly whiteness yearn, 
 
 Some glimpses of the True ; 
 
 Chasing some fair ideal sweet, 
 
 Breathless with bleeding feet. 
 
 High Summer comes with warmth and light. 
 The populous cities teem ; 
 
 2 B 
 
370 IDYLLS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Through statue-decked perspectives, long, 
 Aglow with painting, lit with song, 
 Surges the busy, world-worn throng. 
 But, ah ! not these their dream, 
 Not these, like that white ghost allure, 
 August, celestial, pure. 
 
 Crowning the cloud-based ramparts, shines 
 
 The City of their love ; 
 
 Now soft with fair reflected light, 
 
 And now intolerably bright, 
 
 Dazzling the feeble, struggling sight, 
 
 It beckons from above. 
 
 It gleams above the untrodden snows, 
 
 Flushed by the dawn's weird rose. 
 
 It gleams, it grows, it sinks, it fades, 
 
 While up the perilous height, 
 
 From the safe, cloistered walls of home, 
 
 Low cot, or aery palace dome 
 
 The faithful pilgrims boldly come. 
 
 Though Heaven be veiled in night, 
 
 They come, they climb, they dare not stay, 
 
 Whose feet forerun the Day. 
 
 And some through midnight darkness fall 
 
 Missing the illumined sky ; 
 
 And some with cleansed heart and mind, 
 
 And soul to lower splendours blind 
 
 The city of their longing find, 
 
 Clear to the mortal eye. 
 
 By all, or here, or leagues beyond the Sun, 
 
 At last the Height is won. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 
OF CALIFORNIA LIBRAE* 
 BEBKELET 
 
 demand may be renewed if aiSfiir 7 '- Boo 8 not in 
 expiration of loan period apphcatlon made before 
 
 tJe'53HK 
 MAY 2 9 1953 U 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 
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