POEMS BY SARAH PIATT VOL. I LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST i6TH STREET 1894 [A II rights reserved^ These two volumes comprise all of the Author s poems hitherto published in this country, with the exception of those referring to her residence in Ireland entitled "An Enchanted Castle and Other Poems." Many additional pieces, however, are also included. MY NEAREST NEIGHBOUR. Loved as myself and more ! This book is yours, not mine, to give or take. Vour hand, not mine, lias sent it from your door. My heart goes with it only for your sake. 013 CONTENTS PAGE DEDICATION, ...... iii NARRATIVE PIECES : A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles, . . 3 "Folded Hands," . .10 The Longest Death-Watch, . . 12 Two Veils, . .17 Tradition of Conquest, . .19 The Black Princess, . .21 Aunt Annie, ..... 24 Life or Love, . 27 Two Blush-Roses, . .29 The Gift of Empty Hands, . 31 The King s Memento Mori, . . 33 The Brother s Hand, . . 34 The Last Angel, . .51 DRAMATIC PERSONS AND MOODS : The Fancy Ball, . .55 Twelve Hours Apart, . . 56 A Lily of the Nile, f . 58 There was a Rose, . , 60 If I were a Queen, . . . .62 vi CONTENTS. Sometime, The Order for her Portrait. The Clothes of a Ghost, . Flight, Marble or Dust ? . Their Lost Picture, The Palace-Burner, A Masked Ball, . A Doubt, . A Woman s Birthday, Comfort By a Coffin, We Two, . Enchanted, The Altar at Athens, Her Cross and Mine, Two in Two Worlds, Caprice at Home, A Wall Between, A Lesson in a Picture, From Two Windows, Denied, After the Quarrel, The Descent of the Angel, Double Quatrains, IN COMPANY WITH CHILDREN : After Wings, Baby or Bird ? My Babes in the Wood, . My Ghost, CONTENTS. vii PAGE The End of the Rainbow, . . .131 The Highest Mountain, . . . .132 Playing Beggars, . . . 133 A Child s First Sight of Snow, . . 136 Last Words, ..... 136 My Artist, ..... 138 The Sad Story of a Little Girl, . . .141 At Hans Andersen s Funeral, . . . 143 A Coat-of-Arms, . . .. . .146 Hiding the Baby, . . . .150 The Little Boy I Dreamed about, . . 153 Calling the Dead, . . . .156 The Lamb in the Sky, . . . .157 " I Want it Yesterday, ". . . .158 Into the World and Out, . . 158 The Baby s Brother, . 159 Child s-Faith, . . . . . 160 The Funeral of a Doll, . . . .161 One Year Old, . . . . .163 About a Magician, .... 164 Forgiveness, . . . . .165 Everything, . . . . .166 Little Christian s Trouble, . . .167 Midsummer -Night Fairies, . . . 168 MISCELLANEOUS : Hearing the Battle, . . . .171 To-day, . . ^ . . 172 Shapes of a Soul, . 174 Stone for a Statue, .... 175 Vlll CONTENTS. PAGE "I wish that I could go," . . .176 Counting the Graves, .... 179 A Dead Man s Friends, . . . .181 His Share and Mine, .... 182 The Bird in the Brain, . . . .184 A Prettier Book, . . . . .186 Asking for Tears, . . . 188 "A Letter from To-morrow," . .189 The Dead Book, ... .192 SONGS : Reproof to a Rose, . . . .195 When the Full Moon s Light is Burning, . 196 The Song no Bird should Sing in Vain, . . 197 Come, Wailing Winds ; come, Birds of Night . 198 Sad Spring-Song, . . . 199 Say the Sweet Words, . . 200 Fulfilment, . 201 Good-bye, . 202 Life and Death, . 203 Making Peace, . . 204 NARRATIVE PIECES. A VOYAGE TO THE FOETUNATE ISLES. THE FABLE OF A HOUSEHOLD. " YES, but I fear to leave the shore, So fierce, so shadowy, so cold, Deserts of water lie before Whose secrets night has never told, Save in close whispers to the dead. I fear," one vaguely said. One answered : " Will you waver here 1 As wild and lonesome as the things Which hold their wet nests, year by year, In these poor rocks, are we. Their wings Grow restless wherefore not our feet ? That which is strange is sweet." " That which we know is sweeter yet. Do we not love the near Earth more A VOYAGE TO THE FORTUNATE ISLES. Than the far Heaven 1 Does not Eegret Walk with us, always, from the door That shuts behind us, though we leave Not much to make us grieve ? " " Why fret me longer, when you know Our hands with thorny toil are torn 1 Scant bread and bitter, heat and snow, Kude garments, souls too blind and worn To climb to Christ for comfort : these Are here. And there the Seas. "True, our great Lord will let us drink At some wild springs, and even take A few slight dew-flowers. But, I think, He cares not how our hearts may ache, He comes not to the peasant s hut To learn the door is shut. " Oh, He is an hard Master. Still In His rough fields, for piteous hire, To break dry clods is not my will. I thank Him that my arms can tire. Let thistles henceforth grow like grain, To mock His sun and rain. A VOYAGE TO THE FORTUNATE ISLES. " Others He lifts to high estate- Others, no peers of yours or mine. He folds them in a silken fate, Casts pearls before them oh, the swine ! Drugs them with wine, veils them with lace ; And gives us this mean place." "Well. May there not be butterflies That lift with weary wings the air ; That loathe the foreign sun, which lies On all their colours like despair That glitter, home-sick for the form And lost sleep of the worm ? " " Hush see the ship. It comes at last," She whispered, through forlornest smiles : 11 How brave it is ! It sails so fast. It takes us to the Fortunate Isles. Come." Then the heart s great silence drew Like Death around the Two. Death-like it was through pain and doubt, To leave their world at once and go, Pale, mute, and even unconscious, out Through dimness toward some distant Glow, A VOYAGE TO THE FORTUNATE ISLES. That might be but Illusion caught In the fine net of Thought. As ghosts, led by a ghostly sleep- Followed by Life, a breathless dream- Out in eternal dusk, that keep Their way somewhere, these Two did seem, Till the sea-moon climbed to her place And looked in each still face. "The worm," she waking said, "must long To put on beauty and to fly, But " coming toward them sad and strong, There was a little double cry. " What hurts the children ? They should rest, In such a floating nest." " Oh, Mother, look we all are gone. Our house is swimming in the sea. It will not stop. It keeps right on. How far away we all must be ! The wind has blown it from the cliff. It rocks us like a skiff. " We all will drown but Baby. He Is in his pretty grave so far. A VOYAGE TO THE FORTUNATE ISLES. He has to sleep till Judgment. We Must sink where all the sailors are, Who used to die, when storms would come, Away off from their home." " Lie still, you foolish yellow heads. This is a ship. We re sailing." " Where ?" " Go nestle in your little beds. Be quiet. We shall soon be there." " Where ?" " Why, it is not many miles." " Where ? " " To the Fortunate Isles." " Home is the best. Oh, what a light ! God must be looking in the sea. It is His glass. He makes it bright All over with His face. And He Is angry. He is talking loud Out of that broken cloud. " The men all hear Him, in the ropes : He s telling them the ship must go. They d better climb to Him." Pale Hopes Looked from each wretched breast, to know If somewhere, through the shattered night, One sail could be in sight. A VOYAGE TO THE FORTUNATE ISLES. And Two, who waited, dying slow, Said, clinging to their desperate calm : " We had not thought such wind could blow Out of the warm leaves of the palm. Strange, with the Fortunate Isles so nigh Strange, cruel, thus to die. " "The Fortunate Isles ?" one other cried; " You knew we were not sailing there 1 They lie far back across the tide. Their cliffs are grey and wet and bare ; And quiet people in their soil Are still content to toil. " Toward shining snakes, toward fair dumb birds, Toward Fever hiding in the spice, We voyaged." But his tropic words Dropped icy upon hearts of ice. The lonesome gulf to which they passed Had shown the Truth at last. That wavering glare the drowning see, With phantoms of their life therein, Flashed on them both. Yet mostly she Felt all her sorrow, all her sin, A VOYAGE TO THE FORTUNATE ISLES. And learned, most bitterly, how dear Their crags and valleys were. Their home, whose dim wet windows stared Through drops of brine, like eyes through tears The blue ground-blossoms that had cared To creep about their feet for years ; And their one grave so deep, so small Sinking, they saw them all ! To leave the Fortunate Isles, away On the other side of the world, and sail Still further from them, day by day, Dreaming to find them ; and to fail In knowing, till the very last, They held one s own sweet Past : Such lot was theirs. Such lot will be, Ah, much I fear me, yours and mine. Because our air is cold, and we See Summer in some mirage shine, We leave the Fortunate Isles behind, The Fortunate Isles to find. "FOLDED HANDS." THE STORY OF A PICTURE. MADONNA eyes looked at him from the air, But never from the picture. Still he painted. The hovering halo would not touch the hair ; The patient saint still stared at him unsainted. Day after day flashed by in flower and frost ; Night after night, how fast the stars kept burning His little light away, till all was lost ! All, save the bitter sweetness of his yearning. Slowly he saw his work : it was not good. Ah, hopeless hope ! Ah, fiercely-dying passion ! " I am no painter," moaned he as he stood, With folded hands in death s unconscious fashion. "Stand as you are, an instant !" some one cried. He felt the voice of a diviner brother. The man who was a painter, at his side, Showed how his folded hands could serve another. FOLDED HANDS. 1 1 Ah, strange, sad world, where Albert Diirer takes The hands that Albert Diirer s friend has folded, And with their helpless help such triumph makes ! Strange, since both men of kindred dust were moulded. THE LONGEST DEATH-WATCH. 1 THE woman is a picture now. The Spanish suns have touched her face ; The coil of gold upon her brow Shines back on an Imperial race With most forlorn and bitter grace. Old palace-lamps behind her burn, The ermine moulders on her train. Her ever-constant eyes still yearn For one who came not back to Spain ; And dim and hollow is her brain. One only thing she knew in life, Four hundred ghostly years ago That she was Flemish Philip s wife. Nor much beyond she cared to know ; Without a voice she tells me so. 1 Joanna, the wife of Philip the Handsome, was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, sister of Catherine of Aragon, and mother of the Emperor Charles v. THE LONGEST DEATH-WATCH. 13 Philip the Beautiful whose eyes Might win a woman s heart, I fear, Even from his grave ! " He will arise," The monks had murmured by his bier, " And reign once more among us here." She heard their whisper, and forgot Castile and Aragon, and all Save Philip, who had loved her not ; The cruel darkness of his pall Seemed on an empty world to fall. She took the dead man to her sight A prince in death s disguise, as fair As when his wayward smile could light The throne he wedded her to share And followed, hardly knowing where. Almost as dumb as he, she fled, Pallid and wasted, toward the place Where he, the priestly promise said, Must wait the hour when God s sweet grace Should breathe into his breathless face. B 14 THE LONGEST DEATH-WATCH. Once, when the night was weird with rain, She sought a convent s shelter. When The tapers showed a veiled train Of nuns, instead of cowled men, She stole into the night again : " These women, sainted though they be," She moaned through all her jealous mind, " Are women still, and shall not see Philip the Fair though he is blind ! Favour with him I yet shall find." Then, with her piteous yearning wild : " Unclose his coffin quick, I pray." Fiercely the sudden lightning smiled When they had laid the lid away Like scorn, upon the regal clay. She kissed the dead of many days, As though he were an hour asleep. Dark men with swords to guard her way Wept for her but she did not weep ; She had her vigil still to keep. THE LONGEST DEATH-WATCH. 15 They reached the appointed cloister. While The heart of Philip withering lay, She, without moan, or tear, or smile, Watched from her window, legends say Watched seven-and-forty years away ! Winds blew the blossoms to and fro, Into the world and out again : " He will come back to me, I know" Poor whisper of a wandering brain To peerless patience, peerless pain ! . . . Ah, longest, loneliest, saddest tryst Was ever kept on earth ! And yet Had he arisen would he have kissed The grey wan woman he had met, Or taught her how the dead forget ? Could she have won, discrowned and old, The love she could not win, in sooth, When queenly purple, fold on fold, And all the subtle grace of youth, Helped her to hide a hapless truth ? 16 THE LONGEST DEATH-WATCH. Did she not fancy should she see That coffin, watched so long, unclose The royal tenant there would be Still young, still fair, when he arose, Beside her withered leaves and snows 1 He would have laughed to breathe the tale Of this crazed stranger s love, I fear, To moon and rose and nightingale, With courtly jewels glimmering near, Into some lovely lady s ear. TWO VEILS. FROM the nun s wan life a buried passion Blossomed like a grave-rose in her face ; " Sweet, my child," she said, "in what fair fashion Do you mean to wear this lovely lace 1 "Thus 1 " and, with a feverish hand and shaken, Eound her head the precious veil she wound. "Faith in man," she said, " I have forsaken; Faith in God most surely I have found. " Yet with music in the dewy distance, And the whole world flowering at my feet, Through this convent-garment s dark resistance Backward I can hear my fierce heart beat. " Tropic eyes too full of light and languor, Northern soul too grey with Northern frost : Ashes ashes after fires of anger ! Love and beauty what a world I lost !" 18 TWO VEILS. 11 Sister," laughed the girl with girlish laughter, "Sister, do you envy me my veil?" You may come to ask for mine hereafter," Answered very piteous lips and pale. " No, for your black cross is heavy bearing ; Tiresome counting these stone beads must be. Oh, but there are jewels worth the wearing Waiting in the sunny world for me ! ..." Sister, have a care you are forgetting. Do not broider thorns among my flowers Only buds and leaves : your tears are wetting All my bridal lace." They fell in showers. After years and years, beside the grating, (Oh, that saddest sight, young hair grown grey !) With dry boughs and empty winds awaiting At the cloister door, came one to pray. "Sister, see my bride-veil ! there was never Thorn so sharp as those within its lace. Sister, give me yours to wear for ever ; Give me yours, and let me hide my face." TEADITION OF CONQUEST. His Grace of Maryborough, legends say, Though battle-lightnings proved his worth, Was scathed like others, in his day, By fiercer fires at his own hearth. The patient chief, thus sadly tried- Madam, the Duchess, was so fair In Blenheim s honours felt less pride Than in the lady s lovely hair. Once, (shorn, she had coiled it there to wound Her lord when he should pass, tis said,) Shining across his path he found The glory of the woman s head. No sudden word, nor sullen look, In all his after days, confessed He missed the charm whose absence took A scar s pale shape within his breast 20 TRADITION OF CONQUEST. I think she longed to have him blame, And soothe him with imperious tears : As if her beauty were the same, He praised her through his courteous years. But, when the soldier s arm was dust, Among the dead man s treasures, where He laid it as from moth and rust, They found his wayward wife s sweet hair. THE BLACK PEINCESS. A TRUE FABLE OF MY OLD KENTUCKY NURSE. I KNEW a Princess : she was old, Crisp-haired, flat-featured, with a look Such as no dainty pen of gold Would write of in a Fairy Book. So bent she almost crouched, her face Was like the Sphinx s face, to me, Touched with vast patience, desert grace, And lonesome, brooding mystery. What wonder that a faith so strong As hers, so sorrowful, so still, Should watch in bitter sands so long, Obedient to a burdening will ! This Princess was a Slave like one I read of in a painted tale ; Yet free enough to see the sun, And all the flowers, without a veil. 22 THE BLACK PRINCESS. Not of the Lamp, not of the King, The helpless, powerful Slave was she, But of a subtler, fiercer Thing : She was the Slave of Slavery. Court-lace nor jewels had she seen : She wore a precious smile, so rare That at her side the whitest queen Were dark her darkness was so fair. Nothing of loveliest loveliness This strange, sad Princess seemed to lack ; Majestic with her calm distress She was, and beautiful though black : Black, but enchanted black, and shut In some vague Giant s tower of air, Built higher than her hope was. But The True Knight came and found her there. The Knight of the Pale Horse, he laid His shadowy lance against the spell That hid her Self : as if afraid, The cruel blackness shrank and fell. THE BLACK PRINCESS. 23 Then, lifting slow her pleasant sleep, He took her with him through the night, And swam a River cold and deep, And vanished up an awful Height. And, in her Father s House beyond, They gave her beauty robe and crown : On me, I think, far, faint, and fond, Her eyes to-day look, yearning, down. AUNT ANNIE. THE old house has, for being sweet, Some sweeter reason than the rose Which, red or white, about the feet Of many a nested home-bird grows. And sadder reason than the rain On the quaint porch, for being sad, (Oh, human pity, human pain !) The old house, in its shadows, had. I sat within it as a guest, I who went from it as a wife ; The young days there, though not the best, Had been the fairest of my life : For love itself must ever seem More precious, to our restless youth, When hovering subtly in its dream Than when we touch its nestling truth. AUNT ANNIE. 25 I sat there as a guest, I said Holding the loveliest boy on earth, With his fair, sleepy, yellow head Close to the pleasant shining hearth. He laughed out in his sleep, and I Laughed too, and kissed him when I heard A wise and very cautious sigh ; And once again the dimples stirred. Aunt Annie looked at him awhile ; Then shook her head at her own fears, With more of sorrow in her smile Than I could ever put in tears. " He is a pretty boy I know The prettiest in the world ? Ah, me ! One other, fifty years ago, Was quite as pretty, dear, as he. " Now I am eighty. Twenty-five Are gone since last we heard from James. I sometimes think he is alive." She hushed, and looked into the flames. 26 AUNT ANNIE. "He used to tell me, when a child, Of far, strange countries, where they say The flowers bloom all the year "she smiled " I can t believe it, to this day ! " And still I think he may have crossed The sea and stayed the other side. His letters may have all been lost Who knows ? Who knows ? The world is wide. " I often think, if you could know How much he makes me think of him, You d guess why I love Victor so." Again the troubled eyes were dim. " If your child, such a night, were out Lost in this dark and snow and sleet, You would go wild, I do not doubt." I almost heard her own heart beat. " Yet long, on stormier nights than this, Mine has been out why should I care How many a winter now it is ? Mine has been out and He knows where." LIFE OR LOVE. " OH, world so beautiful, could we hide Somewhere in your flowers from death ! " A wandering voice in a palace sighed, Where the East-rose draws her breath. " Ah, jewels have passed through yon fires of mine, Worth Persia ten times told ; And the essence that makes our dust divine Is here in this cup of gold :" And the Master knelt with a beard that rushed To his feet like a storm of snow. But Youth in his bosom yearned and flushed, And Youth in his voice spake low. Yet the queen lay dark on the gorgeous floor, With her eyes hid in her hair. " Should she lift her face from the dust any more/ They moaned, "it will not be fair : " All night, with the moon, she watches and weeps ; No song in her ear is sweet. 28 LIFE OR LOVE. All day, like the dead king s shadow, she keeps Her place at the dead king s feet." " Your beauty is worth all other things The insolent gods have seen. It should not fade for a thousand kings. You shall be for ever the queen." And closer the Master held the charm : " It is Life, queen, that I bring." She reached the cup with a wandering arm : "Is it Life for my lord, the king ?" " Nay, the king will not drink wine to-day. There is one drop here for you. Oh, listen, and keep your beauty, I pray, While the sweet world keeps the dew. " For you, new lovers shall always rise ; " And the lords and the princes near, With the sunrise-light in their Persian eyes, Stood, jewelled and still, to hear. " Oh, what were Life to the lonely what ? It is Love I would have you bring, And Love in this widowed world is not. Let me go to my lord, the king." TWO BLUSH-ROSES. A BLUSH-ROSE lay in the summer ; There were golden lights in the sky, And a woman saw the blossom, As she stood with her lover nigh. A band in the flowering distance Played a dreamy Italian air, Like a memory changed to music, And it drifted everywhere. Twas an exiled love of its Southland, That air, and its delicate wails Were only the wandering echoes Of the songs of nightingales. " I love you," he tenderly whispered ; "I love you," she answered as low : And the music grew sweeter and sweeter, Because it had listened, I know, c 30 TWO BLUSH-ROSES. But she looked at the rose in the summer, And said, with a tremulous tear, " The love that now beats in my bosom Will bloom in a blush-rose next year." A blush-rose lay in the summer ; There were golden lights in the sky, And a woman saw the blossom, As she stood with her lover nigh . The band in the flowering distance Played the dreamy Italian air, Like a memory changed to music. And it drifted everywhere. " I love you," he tenderly whispered ; "I love you," she timidly said : And the music grew sadder and sadder, And the blush-rose before them dropped dead, Then he knew that the music remembered. And knew the love that had beat Last year in her beautiful bosom Lay dead in the rose at his feet. THE GIFT OF EMPTY HANDS. A FAIRY TALE. THEY were two princes doomed to death ; Each loved his beauty and his breath : " Leave us our life, and we will bring Fair gifts unto our lord, the King." They went together. In the dew A charmed bird before them flew. Through sun and thorn one followed it ; Upon the other s arm it lit. A rose, whose faintest flush was worth All buds that ever blew on earth, One climbed the rocks to reach ; ah ! well, Into the other s breast it fell. Weird jewels, such as fairies wear, When moons go out, to light their hair, One tried to touch on ghostly ground ; Gems of quick fire the other found. 32 THE GIFT OF EMPTY HANDS. One with the dragon fought, to gain The enchanted fruit, and fought in vain ; The other breathed the garden s air, And gathered precious apples there. Backward to the imperial gate One took his fortune, one his fate ; One showed sweet gifts from sweetest lands The other torn and empty hands. At bird, and rose, and gem, and fruit, The King was sad, the King was mute. At last he slowly said : " My son True treasure is not lightly won. " Your brother s hands, wherein you see Only these scars, show more to me Than if a kingdom s price I found In place of each forgotten wound." THE KING S MEMENTO MOEL INTO the regal face the risen sun Laughed, and he whispered in dismay : "How is it, Victor of the World, that none Kemind you what you are, to-day 1 " Your sword shall teach the slave, who could forget That men are mortal, what they are ! How dared he sleep, he has not warned me yet, After that last, loth, lagging star ? " . . . Across his palace threshold, wan and still, His morning herald, wet with dew, Stared at him with fixed eyes that well might chill The vanity of earth clean through. " Good-morrow, King," he heard the dead lips say, " See what is man. When did I tell My bitter message to my lord, I pray, So reverently and so well ? " THE BROTHER S HAND, [TIME : THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1868.] HERE, see what I have brought you from the hill A brier-rose lingering late into July. Oh, it may tell you, if it can and will, In its small way, so pink and timid, why It waited after all its mates were dead, And wore for mourning-garments only red While its step-mother month was fierce and dry. There is no flower with look and bloom and breath, I fondly fancy, like the faint brier-rose ; No flower so fair for life, so sweet for death, That in the dew or in the darkness grows ; No flower that has so faerily heard and seen What faery things the hum and honey mean, When in the wind the bee about it blows. THE BROTHER S HAND. 35 Far offj by black-grey stone, in shattered heaps, The beautiful, familiar, sad home-grace, Like love itself made palpable, it keeps Through all the sorrowful forsaken place. Nor can you find the scented presence there, On the green ground or in the pensive air, Of any other of the blossoming race. A very lovely woman loved to wear Its cluster of blushes once upon her breast. She brought it from the woods and set it where She always loved to be, herself, the best. The very flowers we think so frail outstay Our frailer selves and she is gone away : Away and, therefore, as we think, to rest. On the seventh birthday of her fair twin-boys, She gave the two a boat, as they were one, (For until then each owned the other s toys) ; But when they saw it floating in the sun, With sails of stained silk so prettily blown, Each felt that he was now himself alone : The golden chain that bound them was undone. 36 THE BROTHER S HAND. " No, it is mine," each to the other said, And one raised up an angry arm and made A quick wide wound, that looked so strange and red Each of the other dimly felt afraid. Then a child-Cain in shadowy terror stood, And, crying from the ground, his brother s blood Rose from the pleasant shore where they had played. That sharp, swift cut had cleft the two apart. And, under his light, lovely hair, one wore A strange-shaped scar. And in the other s heart, A heart that had been very sweet before, The snake-like passions started from their sleep And over it began to writhe and creep. And so the two were two for evermora As they grew older, he who wore the scar Saw it was like a hand his brother s hand, It seemed, against him. Then he went afar With a kind kinsman to a colder land, After he heard the dust begin to fall On his young mother s coffin. She was all He had dear. And she was what the shadows are. THE BROTHER S HAND. 37 Blue-eyed and stately, with a bright, brave scorn Of wrong, he in a calmer climate grew. The other, tropic-nursed as tropic-born, Was fierce and swarthy, and imperious too, And restless as the wind that bloweth where It listeth : so he wandered here and there. And neither of the other clearly knew. At last there came a heavy hail of lead Out of the Northern sky, that Southward fell The fields were blasted and the men lay dead ; The women moaned ; and flying shapes of shell Their ways from roof to hearth-stone madly tore, And opened suddenly the deserted door, By the brier-roses guarded once so well. And Ruin glided up the weedy path, And crossed the mouldy threshold and went in, And sat there, with a sort of a sullen wrath, Gathering about her all that once had been Dear and familiar save the rose, beside The crumbling porch, from which she vainly tried, Tearing her hands with thorns, the flowers to win. 38 THE BROTHER S HAND. And once, when a great ghastly Sight close by Was terrible in the stillness of the moon, A tall, slight soldier, with a smothered cry. Crept close and broke some buds and vanished soon But, with an almost human joy-in-grief, The desolate rose-tree thrilled from root to leaf When he said wearily : "Yes it is I." A whole year more, when summer flushed again, Near to the same place, in the glitter of heat, (The ea,rth was red, the sky was smoky then,) One lay in agony. Against his feet A gashed and gory flag from its shot staff Fluttered and fell. There was a cruel laugh From one he had not feared again to meet ; And a swift horse, deep-black, with foaming mouth And angry eyes full of wild wonder, sprung From its light rider one who loved the South With his whole bitter soul. And, as he flung The reins away and stood in tears beside The dying creature, gentle, till it died, He showed that he was desperate, dark, and young. THE BROTHER S HAND. 39 There was a beautiful and dreadful charm About that youthful captain, as he stood Bare-headed, swordless, with his dead right arm Loose at his side, his left, whose strength was good, About his horse forgetting his own wound, Forgetting all the horrible things around Calling it all the tender names he could. But when his horse was gone, he turned away And stamped the fallen flag and cursed, and shook The tall, slight soldier in whose blood it lay, Till he half-raised himself with a dim look, That made the other loose his hateful hold And tremble for an instant and grow cold, As if his thought some deadly trouble took. Then he crept closer to the wounded youth And lifted, vaguely, his light lovely hair, And that strange scar the brother s hand, in truth Against him as in distant days was there. But now that brother looked at his distress With a remorse that changed to tenderness, And tried to raise him with a timid care. 40 THE BROTHER S HAND. And watched him many a moaning after-night, Through which the shine of spectral steel would go, Through which lost armies would rise up and fight Lost battles, in the air then waver slow And haze-like down, and whiten toward the dust, Leaving behind a little blood and rust And glory. Glory ? Why, I do not know. At last the War s fierce music left the wind, And they who answered to its infinite cries With their whole breath were gone where God can find Them, when He searches land and sea and skies And Peace remained a beautiful white veil, Wrought by hurt hands that dropped off thin and pale, To hide the tears in wan, wet, restless eyes. And the twin-brothers one just from his wound Talked of their brier-rose that would blossom yet, Talked of the river with its far-back sound, Talked of their mother with a still regret, And of the fairy boat she gave them both : And then a sudden silence showed them loth To talk of what they did not quite forget. THE BROTHER S HAND. 41 Just then it happened that a pretty flash Of small Spring-lightning made their window bright : They saw a fluttering dress, a bright-plaid sash, A wide straw-hat, and loose hair falling quite Half-way to eager feet. And so they guessed, Each in a shy half-dreaming way, the rest : They thought the girl was lovely 1 They were right. Her face in glimpses came to haunt the two, Her voice was not what common voices are ; And soon the twin-born rivals darkly knew The old feud was not dead. They saw the scar Out of its dreary quiet rise again : The brother s hand was terrible and plain Against the brother, as in years afar. She loved them both. Which most 1 I think that she At least not yet nor any other knew. Sometimes she walked with Frederick by the sea, Sometimes she sung a tremulous song to Hugh, And in a while, no doubt, began to know That he was handsome, or she thought him so, And that his eyes, perhaps, were frankly blue. 42 THE BROTHER S HAND. Out with the darker brother once, a storm Broke sharply down the twilight. For a time She clung to him. But, dry again and warm, Among their lamps she sung a sobbing rhyme To her piano and the gold-haired man Whose desolate music ended and began With a far, subtle, creeping, sea-like chime. Then hushed and went half-tearful to her room, Asking herself but this : "Which shall I choose 1 Have I the saddest need of light or gloom ? The fair one surely is too fair to lose : Without him half the world were empty, and Without his brother if I understand, The dark one is too dark to quite refuse. 4 And sometimes if I only glance at him, His richer, fiercer colour seems to me To make his stiller brother look as dim As a star looks by lightning. Let me be, My star, with the white constant light you shed ; Fade out, my lightning, or else strike me dead. For star and lightning can but ill agree." THE BROTHER S HAND. 43 But something startled her brown window-bird, Nested below in perfume. As it flew She heard her own name spoken, and she heard, Out in the wind, one ask : " Which of us two ? It is not well that both of us should stay. Let her decide." In a bewildered way, Not knowing what she did, she whispered, "Hugh." They heard below, and Frederick seemed to laugh, And said : " My boy, our paths again divide. Your joy is great. If you could give me half, Enough were left. Good-bye. The world is wide, But all too narrow to hold you and me. Good-bye and shall we let the Future be ? Upon my faith you have a charming bride." Next morning he was gone. And then, somehow, Hugh chanced in his vexed dreamy way to throw The yellow hair from his unquiet brow, And started from a glass which seemed to show That fearful scar, looking more deadly-white, More like his brother s hand, too, since last night ; Then scarlet suddenly it seemed to grow. 44 THE BROTHER S HAND. She saw it : " Ah, you have a scar/ she said. "How strange it is and how much like a hand." " It is a hand," he answered. " See how red It threatens now. It cut the gentle band Between us while we yet were children," " Who ?" " We twins that called each other Fred and Hugh, And played beside a river in the sand." A troubled paleness fell upon her face. She looked at him an instant. "HI may ?" She said, and, bird-like, fluttered from her place, And flushed and doubted, and I must not say She kissed the scar. But I can say it grew Yet deeper scarlet, and looked darker too, And seemed to move motioning her away. . . . The leaf -bloom of the Autumn lit the woods (The next day was to be their wedding-day). A cruel rain whirled down in pitiless floods And fretted the poor leaves that tried to stay And wear their splendour for a little yet. The butterflies were faded out and wet, Or else the wind had blown them all away. 45 The crimson-curtained, pleasant parlour glowed With ferns and asters, and a sparkling fire ; The next-day s bride before the mirror showed The trailing mistiness of a bride s attire. And Hugh looked at her, smiling from his dream : He was not happy, quite, nor did he seem ; Yet such sweet vanity he must admire. She turned to take a letter that came in, And read it, and looked at him as she read, And threw it at his feet, " And be your sin," She hoarsely whispered, " upon your own head." "My sin T " See there, and say it is not true." " I will not. All I say is this : if you Believe it let to-morrow not begin !" Then there were angry words, and " Let us part," She moaned, and reached to him her frightened hand, Thinking that he would hold it to his heart And kiss her pain away, as she had planned : For she forgave him what he had not done. He answered: " As you please." And there was none To come between them, or to understand. D 46 THE BROTHER S HAND. What then 1 The thistles blew across the rain, The grey, wet thorn-tree glimmered once and shook. She thought : "If one should never come again Should never come after a bitter look ? And the dry asters from the mantel fell : She brought no fresh ones for the vases. Well ? And silence settled in his favourite book. She did not thin her beauty with her tears, But was she tearless ? Doubtless she was not. But all the outward gladness of her years Was not because of one great grief forgot. Loose hair and laughter, singing quick and sweet, Followed about the green home-grass her feet, And quieted all wordless, kindly fears. She had no mother. But her father said : " You are too hasty, little girl, I fear. Hugh is a manly fellow ; as for Fred The villain ! Hugh will come again, my dear, Before the fashion of your dress shall change, And we shall have our wedding." Was it strange 1 The dress grew quaint. And Hugh did not appear. THE BROTHER S HAND. 47 Once at the sea-side, in an evening dance. She felt and, fluttering, tried to fly away The bird-like terror of the snake-like glance. Poor, charm6d little thing and must it stay 1 "Frederick?" "Well yes." "Where is your brother, Hugh 1 " " Am I my brother s keeper ? Doubtless you Who wounded and deserted him, can say." Hurt and bewildered, then she brokenly tried The secret of his letter to recall. His letter 1 With feigned anger he denied That he had written anything at all ! " What a mysterious piece of villainy ! Hugh never could have thought so ill of me. He did not read it ? " Then he heard her fall. ... It was the crowded room, and they must go Into the wide moonlighted air apart. Where was his brother, then ? He said, to know He would give up the last throb of his heart ; It was two years or more since he had heard Of Hugh one word, one single precious word : Then broke into a cry that made her start. 48 THE BROTHER S HAND. By dim degrees he made himself grow dear, By seeming everything his brother was. Whatever in the other had been clear, In him she saw darkly as in a glass. At last, in some weird, subtle way, he grew The shadow, or the very self, of Hugh. And well, the Summer withered from the grass. What then 1 The asters in the vases glowed Again ; the parlour held the shining fire Again ; the mirror, three years older, showed The trailing mistiness of a bride s attire ; And, this time, Frederick watched her from his dream. He was not happy, quite, nor did he seem, Yet such fair vanity he must admire. Once more the thistles blew across the rain, The grey, wet thorn-tree glimmered once and shook ; And then she thought : "If one should come again Or should not come after a bitter look ! " And then a sudden voice, familiar-low, And phantom-sweet, but heavily-bent and slow, Kead out the silence of the favourite book. THE BROTHER S HAND. 49 No matter. In a wedded year or two, In a far Western land a cottage rose, With sand and sea and sea-shell shining through Its many windows so the story goes. Frederick was happy there. But his late bride Had backward-yearning eyes, and sometimes sighed A little as all women may 1 Who knows 1 Once bitterly he asked : " What makes you sad ?" She answered languidly : " Perhaps the sea. I sometimes think it surely has gone mad : It foams and mutters till it frightens me. Sometimes when it looks only golden, and All things look golden in this Golden Land, Blackly below it threatens things to be," And, as her childish words failed at her lip, From silks and spices and a foreign sail, She saw a man drop from a landing ship As heavily as he had been a bale Of precious merchant-freight. With the great light Of the great evening smitten, he was bright - But all who looked at him were dull and pale. 50 THE BROTHER S HAND. A lifeboat brought him strangling to the coast. He motioned them, in a despairing way, To drown his body. For his soul was lost, He said : it shook him off and plunged away From the dark deck into the gulfs below, For utter loneliness. And he must go And find it, somewhere for the Judgment Day. Then he died smiling. . . . Frederick and his wife Looked at him and each other, and then wound Their arms about him. What was calm or strife To him or them ? What had they lost and found ? What thing was near 1 What things were gone afar ? With tears, and without words, they kissed the scar His brother s hand against him all his life. THE LAST ANGEL. A STORY TOLD OF CORREGGIO. THE monks had shut his picture in, and, yearning For one more last look, one, and yet one more, Heavily laden, with the hollows burning In his dusk cheek, he left the convent door. Through the South sun he wandered homeward, moaning : " His Christ for silver gave the Jew of old ; Have I not sinned like him beyond atoning ? My Christ for copper I to-day have sold." Alone he walked, afraid to meet the faces He loved the most on earth Ah, bitter fate ! His beautiful starving children, with hot traces Of tears on cheeks, were crowded at the gate. 52 THE LAST ANGEL. But one, the youngest, spent with innocent weeping Touched by the weird moon with a tender beam, Among the shadows in the straw lay sleeping, Forgetting all, and laughing at her dream. Her father looked at her and lifted slowly His dying hand : " Give me my brush," he said. When his Last Angel, radiant and holy, Looked at him with his child s eyes, he was dead. DRAMATIC PERSONS AND MOODS. THE FANCY BALL. As Morning you d have me rise On that shining world of art ; You forget : I have too much dark in my eyes And too much dark in my heart. " Then go as the Night in June : Pass, dreamily, by the crowd, With jewels to mock the stars and moon, And shadowy robes like cloud. "Or as Spring, with a spray in your hair Of blossoms as yet unblown ; It will suit you well, for our youth should wear The bloom in the bud alone. " Or drift from the outer gloom With the soft white silence of Snow :" I should melt myself with the warm, close room Or my own life s burning. No. 56 TWELVE HOURS APART. " Then fly through the glitter and mirth As a Bird of Paradise : " Nay, the waters I drink have touched the earth I breathe no summer of spice. Then " Hush : if I go at all, (It will make them stare and shrink, It will look so strange at a Fancy Ball) I will go as Myself, I think ! TWELVE HOUKS APAET. HE loved me. But he loved, likewise, This morning s world in bloom and wings ; Ah, does he love the world that lies In dampness, whispering shadowy things, Under this little band of moon ? He loves me 1 Will he fail to see A phantom hand has touched my hair (And wavered, withering, over me) To leave a subtle greyness there, Below the outer shine of June ? TWELVE HOURS APART. 57 He loves me *? Would he call it fair, The flushed half-flower he left me, say 1 For it has passed beneath the glare And from my bosom drops away, Shaken into the grass with pain 1 He loves me ? Well, I do not know. A song in plumage crossed the hill At sunrise when I felt him go And song and plumage now are still. He could not praise the bird again. He loves me *? Veiled in mist I stand, My veins less high with life than when To-day s thin dew was in the land, Vaguely less beautiful than then Myself a dimness with the dim. He loves me ? I am faint with fear. He never saw me quite so old ; I never met him quite so near My grave, nor quite so pale and cold Nor quite so sweet, he says, to him ! A LILY OF THE NILE. WHO was the beautiful woman whose lover Once left her this dead old flower, did you say? Well, perhaps that is she in the picture over The vase with the flowers which you gathered to-day. The one with the deep strange dress, that is flowing All purple and pearls through each stiffened fold, And the band on her forehead, whose dusk-red glowing Shoots into great sharp thorns of gold. Never mind the light. You will see, to-morrow, That, with eyes raised darkly and lips close- prest, She is giving away her awful sorrow To the snake she keeps at her breast ! A LILY OF THE NILE. 59 " And who was her lover ? " Why, that may be he, there, In the other picture glimmering nigh Yes, the handsome and wretched man you see there. Falling against his sword to die. Will he die for her, do you say ? (Ah, will he V) No doubt he has often told her so ! "Did it bloom far away, this crumbling lily T Very far and so long ago. And who gave it to me ? So the withered story I ve dreamed by the twilight all this while, For some vanished blossom s day of glory, Is your truth, my Lily of the Nile. For the beautiful woman is slowly dying Of a snake as plain as this to my sight ; And her lover who gave her this flower is lying On the edge of a sword to-night. THEEE WAS A EOSE. " THERE was a rose," she said, " Like other roses, perhaps, to you. Nine years ago it was faint and red, Away in the cold dark dew, On the dwarf bush where it grew. " Never any rose before Was like that rose, very well I know ; Never another rose any more Will blow as that rose did blow, When the wet wind shook it so. " What do I want ? Ah, what ? Why, I want that rose, that wee one rose, Only that rose. And that rose is not Anywhere just now ? . . . God knows Where all the old sweetness goes. THERE WAS A ROSE. 61 " I want that rose so much ; I would take the world back there to the night "Where I saw it blush in the grass, to touch It once in that Autumn light, And only once, if I might. " But a million marching men From the North and the South would arise, And the dead would have to die again 1 And the women s widowed cries Would trouble anew the skies 1 " No matter. I would not care ; Were it not better that this should be 1 The sorrow of many the many bear, Mine is too heavy for me. And I want that rose, you see ! " WASHINGTON, D. C., 1870. IF I WERE A QUEEN. " BUT if you were a Queen ? " you said. Well, then I think my favourite page Should have a yellow, restless head, And be just your own pretty age. So sweet in violet velvet, he Should tend my butterflies in herds, Or help that belted knight, the bee, Win honey, or make little birds Some little songs to sing for me If I were a Queen. A Queen you saw one sitting by A tall man in a picture 1 Well. He had a harp ? You need not try Her name is one you can not tell. And so you wonder if I could Be Isolt, then 1 Not she, I fear, To save Sir Tristram of the Wood And all his tripping silver deer ; For it were better to be good, If I were a Queen. IF I WERE A QUEEN. 63 Nor Guinevere You ask, would I Be Queen Elizabeth ? Oh ! no ; For, then, should I not have to die And leave, all hanging in a row, Two thousand dresses 2 Could I bear To sit, majestic, cross, and grey, With red paint on my nose, or wear, Down in my grave till Judgment Day, The ring of Essex burning there, If I were a Queen ? Now let me ask myself awhile. Mary of Scotland, then ? since she Haunts her grey castle with a smile That one man may have died to see ; She, fairest in Romance s light ; She, saddest-storied of them all ; She but it would not please me quite To climb a scaffold, or to fall Beside my lovely head to-night, If I were a Queen. Then she of Egypt with the asp To drain my deadly beauty dry 1 64 IF I WERE A QUEEN. To see my Roman lover clasp His sword with surer love, and die Closer to it than me 1 Not so. No desert-snake with nursing grace Should draw my fierce heart s fiercest glow ; No coward of my conqueror s race Should offer me his blood, I know If I were a Queen. Boadicea 1 I were afraid To see her scythed chariots shine ! Nor Vashti ; for she disobeyed Her lord, the king in kingly wine ! Then she, the Queen of the East, who found The Wisest not so well arrayed, In all his glory, as the ground Arrays its lilies 1 Would I fade Into some shrunken Bible mound, If I were a Queen 1 Semiramis ? Were it not sweet To have a palace mirror show l How mad Assyria at my feet Might lie down like a lamb ? And oh ! 1 Allusion to a celebrated painting of Semiramis. IF I WERE A QUEEN. 65 To stand defiant, in the glare Of rising war, and softly say : "My Beauty will subdue them ! " Rare And royal bloom must drop away ; Nor would I as a ghost look fair, If I were a Queen. Penelope" 1 No, on my word : Vexed grievously with suitors, while Much-wandering Ulysses heard Fine singing at the sirens isle, Too small were Ithaca for me ! Then she whose gold hair glitters high With stars caught in its tangles 1 l See, How beautiful it is ! But I Should choose my hair on Earth to be, If I were a Queen ! Nor slight, blonde Marie Antoinette ? Nor she the Austrians called their King ? Nor any Blanche, or Margaret ? Nor Russia s Catharine ? Would I bring The Spanish woman s loth heart, then, From Aragon to England s throne ? 1 Berenice s hair. 66 IF I WERE A QUEEN. Or be the Italian, widowed, when She, in a garret at Cologne, Starved, a grey exile, shunned of men, If I were a Queen 1 What Queen 1 Titania since it seems A woman never quite can tire Of kissing long, fair ears ! In dreams My Gentle Joy I will admire, And but there is no Fairyland Left in the crowded world, no room For dew, for anything but sand. Put out the moonshine, fold the bloom. My feet could find no space to stand, If I were a Queen. Ah ! still I ask myself, what Queen ? Well, one whose days were almost done, Who felt her grave-grass turning green, Who saw the low light of the sun Shrink from her palace windows, while Her whole court watched beside her bed, Ready to say, without a smile : "We loved the Queen. The Queen is dead." Then they should grieve a little while, If I were a Queen. IF I WERE A QUEEN. 67 And my whole court, I think, should show Three little heads of lightest gold, Two others of a darker glow ; And One bent low enough to hold Between pale, quivering hands. And then Some Silence should receive my soul, My name should fade from lips of men, My pleasant funeral-bells should toll This hour, and dust be dust again If I were a Queen. SOMETIME. WELL, either you or I, After whatever is to say is said, Must see the other die, Or hear, through distance, of the other dead, Sometime. And you or I must hide Poor empty eyes and faces, wan and wet With Life s great grief, beside The other s coffin, sealed with silence, yet, Sometime. And you or I must look Into the other s grave, or far or near, And read, as in a book, Writ in the dust, words we made bitter here, Sometime. Then, through what paths of dew, What flush of flowers, what glory in the grass, Only one of us two, Even as a shadow walking, blind may pass, Sometime ! SOMETIME. 69 And, if the nestling song Break irom the bosom of the bird for love, No more to listen long One shall be deaf below, one deaf above, Sometime. For both must lose the way Wherein we walk together, very soon : One in the dusk shall stay, The other first shall see the rising moon, Sometime. Oh ! fast, fast friend of mine ! Lift up the voice I love so much, and warn ; To wring faint hands and pine, Tell me I may be left forlorn, forlorn, Sometime. Say I may kiss through tears, For ever falling and for ever cold, One ribbon from sweet years, One dear dead leaf, one precious ring of gold, Sometime. Say you may think with pain Of some slight grace, some timid wish to please Some eager look half vain Into your heart, some broken sobs like these, Sometime ! THE OEDEE FOE HEE POETEAIT. I SAY what Cromwell said, (Smile, grey-haired sceptic, if you think me bold) And that Italian count whose hair was red, His great will would not have it painted gold. No, I am brave, not vain ; Braver than he of Macedon, since I For Vanity s slight sake would hardly stain Art and the awful future with a lie : You know that hand whose pride Within its hollow held one world, afar Eeaching for others, raised itself to hide On pictured brows the glory of a scar. But paint me as I am, Whatever shape or colour you may see ; And do not fold the white fleece of the lamb About the yellow lioness, for me. Ay, as I am. And then, No matter what you on your canvas find, It shall not shrink before the eyes of men ; It shall be truth unless your soul be blind ! THE CLOTHES OF A GHOST. [The Spirit of a beautiful and vain Woman speaks.} THEY were shut from me in a costly chest, Though I, in a woman s slight, sad way, Of the lovely things that I loved the best, Held none, I fear me, so sweet as they For I was daintily dressed. A precious glimmer of gold was mine, To coil and charm on my bosom then ; And two great jewels whose restless shine Troubled the foolish hearts of men, Who fancied their light divine. These thin hands wore on their tremulous grace Such fair little gloves as soft as snows ; And softly laid on this dim, fixed face Were calm, clear colours of white and rose, In another time and place. 72 THE CLOTHES OF A GHOST. There J s a withering, weird half -picture of me No, of my clothes on a shadowy wall : A wonderful painter, they said, was he, Who studied my drapery, that was all, Not guessing what I might be. Yet he followed me, in my far, flushed day, And thought he knew me, and held me dear ; And now, should I waver across his way, He would grow as ghastly as I am, with fear, Though he is so wise and grey ! But my beautiful clothes were his despair They were so well-cut, so charmingly made. It is best that they were not worn threadbare ; It is best that I did not feel them fade ; It is best did he ever care ? I, a thing too fearfully fine to show, Or stain the starlight wherein I pass, Must still have the old, fierce vanity grow, Must yearn by the water, as by a glass, For a glimpse of nothing, I know ! Oh, my lovely clothes that I still admire ! They were only fashioned for moth and rust ; FLIGHT. 73 Yet I, their wearer, though scarred by fire, Shall sit with the gentle ghosts, I trust, Who once wore meaner attire ! For, had I been less like the lilies arrayed They of the field that toil not nor spin I had thought of my Father s work, nor stayed In empty glory, in shining sin, Far into the final shade. FLIGHT. THROUGH field and flood and fire I go, Wherefore and where I do not know. Through field, my tangled path is crossed With winds and stinging spears of frost. Through field, the stones rise up and wound My fearful feet, that stain the ground. Through field, sometimes one rose forlorn Gives me its flush, without its thorn. 74 FLIGHT. Through flood, the wide rains beat my brow The world is only water now. Through flood, wave after wave there is : Wave after wave, what else but this ? Through flood, one sea another meets ; See Arctic ice in tropic heats ! Through flood, there is one ship in sight : If I might reach it, if I might ! Through fire, what flames and flames there be ! The world is only fire to me. Through fire, how palace spire and wall Put shining garments on and fall ! Through fire, I hear the last voice cry, " The world is ashes." But am 1 1 Calm on the awful element, I turn and say, " I am content." MAEBLE OE DUST? A CHILD, beside a statue, said to me, With pretty wisdom very sadly just, " That man is Mr, Lincoln, Mama. He Was made of marble ; we are made of dust." One flash of passionate sorrow trembled through The dust of which I had been dimly made, One fierce, quick wish to be of marble too Not something meaner, that must fall and fade. "To be for ever fair and still and cold," I faintly thought, with faint tears in my sight ; "To stand thus face to face with Time, and hold Between us that uncrumbling charm of white : " To see the creatures formed of slighter stun 7 Waver in little dead-leaf whirls away, Yet know that I could wait and have enough Of frost and dew, enough of dark and day. 76 . MARBLE OR DUST ? . . . "I would be marble 1 ? Wherefore 1 ? Just to miss The tremors of glad pain that dust must know 1 The grief that settles after some dead kiss 1 The frown that was a smile not long ago 1 " Do I forget the stone s long loneliness ? The dumb impatience all wan watching brings 1 The looking with blind eyes, in vague distress, For Christ s slow Coming and the End of Things ? " No, boy of mine, with your young yellow hair, Better the dust you scatter with your feet Than marble, which can see not you are fair Than marble, which can feel not you are sweet. " Ay, or than marble which must meet the years Without my light relief of murmurous breath ; Without the bitter sweetness of my tears Without the love which dust must have for Death." THEIR LOST PICTURE. " No, it was nothing old and grand : Only a child, out in the sun, Choking a kitten with one hand, And crushing pretty flowers with one. " Some rosebuds, sweet as buds could be, Were blown against the blowing hair ; The clear eyes watched a cedar-tree, That held a red-bird flaming there. "The frame around was dark and small. Just opposite the open door, One morning, on our cottage wall It hung, when we were young and poor. " This little piece of light and bloom Was more, a thousand times, to me Than all you have seen in great church-gloom, Or palace-gallery light, could be. You do not understand, I say. We saw the picture in the glass, In our first home so far away, When our dead child played in the grass " F THE PALACE-BURNER. [PARIS, 1871.] A Picture in a Newspaper. SHE has been burning palaces. " To see The sparks look pretty in the wind ?" Well, yes And something more. But women brave as she Leave much for cowards, such as I, to guess. But this is old, so old that everything Is ashes here the woman and the rest. Two years are oh ! so long. Now you may bring Some newer pictures. You like this one best ? You wish that you had lived in Paris then ? You would have loved to burn a palace, too ? But they had guns in France, and Christian men Shot wicked little Communists like you. You would have burned the palace 1 Just because You did not live in it yourself ! Oh ! why Have I not taught you to respect the laws ? You would have burned the palace would not I? THE PALACE-BURNER. 79 Would I? ... Go to your play. . . . Would I, indeed ? / ? Does the boy not know my soul to be Languid and worldly, with a dainty need For light and music 1 Yet he questions me. Can he have seen my soul more near than 1 1 Ah ! in the dusk and distance sweet she seems, With lips to kiss away a baby s cry, Hands fit for flowers, and eyes for tears and dreams. Can he have seen my soul 1 And could she wear Such utter life upon a dying face : Such unappealing, beautiful despair : Such garments soon to be a shroud with grace 1 Would / burn palaces 1 The child has seen In this fierce creature of the Commune here, So bright with bitterness and so serene, A being finer than my soul, I fear. A MASKED BALL. THERE, in the music strangely met, From lands and ages wide apart, They came, like ghosts remembering yet The old sweet yearning of the heart. What sad and shining names were heard ! What stories swept the dust, like trains ! What minster-buried echoes stirred ! What backward splendours, backward stains ! Still two by two, as moved by fate, They came from silence and from song ; The tyranny of love or hate With that mock-pageant passed along. There kings and cardinals long gone Forgot their feuds, and joined the dance. His Holiness himself looked on, With something merry in his glance. There, priestly, yet not loth to please, Stood Abelard ; by some sad whim, In convent coif, poor Heloi se Was near, confessing what 1 to him. A MASKED BALL. 81 There, with forlornest beauty wan, Young Amy Bobsart walked unseen, While my Lord Leicester s looks were on Elizabeth, his gracious queen. There though the blonde Rowena gazed, Gold-haired and stately, with surprise Jewelled and dark, Rebecca raised The Saxon knight half-wistful eyes. And there, despite his inky cloak, The melancholy Dane seemed gay, And to Polonius daughter spoke Things Shakespeare does not have him say. " I think," he said, " I know you by That mosb fantastic wreath you wear." She, with a little languid sigh, Asked if his father s ghost were there. " That voice though veiled, it can not hide. One trifling favour I would ask : Give me Yourself." "No, no," she cried; "You are a stranger in a mask." 82 A DOUBT. What more ? Ah, well ! Ophelia fled From Hamlet when his mask was raised. " I was mistaken," Hamlet said, As in Ophelia s face he gazed. Ah, in the world, as at the ball, There is a mask that lovers wear ; We call it Youth. But let it fall, Then, Hamlet and Ophelia stare. A DOUBT. IT is subtle, and weary, and wide ; It measures the world at my side ; It touches the stars and the sun ; It creeps with the dew to my feet ; It broods on the blossoms, and none, Because of its brooding, are sweet ; It slides as a snake in the grass, Whenever, wherever I pass. A DOUBT. 83 It is blown to the South with the bird ; At the North, through the snow, it is heard ; With the moon from the chasms of night It rises, forlorn and afraid ; If I turn to the left or the right I can not forget or evade ; When it shakes at my sleep as a dream, If I shudder, it stifles my scream. It smiles from the cradle ; it lies On the dust of the grave, and it cries In the winds and the waters ; it slips In the flush of the leaf to the ground ; It troubles the kiss at my lips ; It lends to my laughter a sound ; It makes of the picture but paint ; It unhaloes the brow of the saint. The ermine and crown of the king, The sword of the soldier, the ring Of the bride, and the robe of the priest, The gods in their prisons of stone, The angels that sang in the East Yea, the cross of my Lord, it has known ; And wings there are none that can fly From its shadow with me, till I die ! A WOMAN S BIRTHDAY. [IN AUGUST.] IT is the Summer s great last heat, It is the Fall s first chill : they meet. Dust in the grass, dust in the air, Dust in the grave and everywhere ! Ah, late rose, eaten to the heart : Ah, bird, whose southward yearnings start : The one may fall, the other fly. Why may not I ? Why may not 1 1 \ Oh, Life ! that gave me for my dower The hushing song, the worm-gnawed flower, Let drop the rose from your shrunk breast And blow the bird to some warm nest ; Flush out your dying colours fast : The last dead leaf will be the last. No ? Must I wear your piteous smile A little while, a little while ? A WOMAN S BIRTHDAY. 85 The withering world accepts her fate Of mist and moaning, soon or late ; She had the dew, the scent, the spring And upward rapture of the wing ; Their time is gone, and with it they. And am I wooing Youth to stay In these dry days, that still would be Not fair to me, not fair to me ? If Time has stained with gold the hair, Should he not gather greyness there 1 Whatever gifts he chose to make, If he has given, shall he not take 1 His hollow hand has room for all The beauty of the world to fall Therein. I give my little part With aching heart, with aching heart. COMFOET BY A COFFIN. AH, friend of mine, The old enchanted story ! Oh, I cannot hear a word ! Tell some poor child who loved a bird, And knows he holds it stained and still, " It flies in Fairyland ! Its nest is in a palm-tree, on a hill ; Go, catch it if you will ! " Ah, friend of mine, The music (which ear hath not heard 1) At best wails from the skies, Somehow, into our funeral cries ! The flowers (eye hath not seen ?) still fail To hide the coffin lid ; Against this face, so pitiless now and pale, Can the high heavens avail ? Ah, friend of mine, I think you mean to mean it all 1 But then an angel s wing Is a remote and subtle thing, COMFORT BY A COFFIN. 87 (If you could show me any such In air that I can breathe !) And surely Death s cold hand has much, so much, About it we can touch ! Ah, friend of mine, Say nothing of the thorns and then Say nothing of the snow. God s will ? It is that thorns must grow, Despite our bare and troubled feet, To crown Christ on the cross : The snow keeps white watch on the unrisen wheat; And yet the world is sweet. Ah, friend of mine, I know, I know all you can know ! All you can say is this : " It is the last time you can kiss This only one of all the dead, Knowing it is the last ; These are the last tears you can ever shed On this fair fallen head." WE TWO. GOD S will is the bud of the rose for your hair, The ring for your hand and the pearl for your breast ; God s will is the mirror that makes you look fair. No wonder you whisper : " God s will is the best." But what if God s will were the famine, the flood ? And were God s will the coffin shut down in your face ? And were God s will the worm in the fold of the bud, Instead of the picture, the light, and the lace ? Were God s will the arrow that flieth by night, Were God s will the pestilence walking by day, The clod in the valley, the rock on the height I fancy " God s will " would be harder to say. God s will is your own will. What honour have you For having your own will, awake or asleep ? Who praises the lily for keeping the dew, When the dew is so sweet for the lily to keep , 7 ENCHANTED. 89 God s will unto me is not music or wine. With helpless reproaching, with desolate tears, God s will I resist, for God s will is divine j And I shall be dust to the end of my years. God s will is not mine. Yet one night I shall lie Very still at his feet, where the stars may not shine. " Lo ! I am well pleased," I shall hear from the sky ; Because it is God s will I do, and not mine. ENCHANTED. She sat in a piteous hut, In a wood where poisons grew. Withered was every leaf, And her face was withered too. Like a sword the sharp wind cut Her worn heart through and through. Away, and so far away, She looked for a light and a sign : " Oh, he has not forgotten me ! What should I care for to-day, When all to-morrow is mine ? I am content to stay." 90 ENCHANTED. On the heights the hail would beat, In the thorns would sink the snow, And the chasms were weird with sound Yet the years would come and go : " Somewhere there is something sweet, And some time I shall know. " There is a land close by, A land in reach of my arm ; It is mine from shore to sea ; There the nightingales do fly, There the flush of the rose is warm : I shall take it by and by. " But the shape that guards the gate, Where my mirror waits to show How beautiful I am, Oh, he makes me loth to go. I wait, and I wait, and I wait, Through fear of him, I know. " But who breaks this charm of breath Enchantment himself must wear. Two from each other shrink In the freezing dark, and stare : . . , Your kiss for my kiss, Death ! Each makes the other fair." THE ALTAR AT ATHENS. [" TO THE UNKNOWN GOD."] BECAUSE my life was hollow with a pain As old as death : because my eyes were dry As the fierce tropics after months of rain : Because my restless voice said "Why?" and "Why?" Wounded and worn, I knelt within the night, As blind as darkness Praying ? And toWhom ? When yon cold crescent cut my folded sight, And showed a phantom Altar in my room. It was the Altar Paul at Athens saw. The Greek bowed there, but not the Greek alone ; The ghosts of nations gathered, wan with awe, And laid their offerings on that shadowy stone. The Egyptian worshipped there the crocodile, There they of Nineveh the bull with wings ; The Persian there, with swart sun-lifted smile, Felt in his soul the writhing fire s bright stings. 92 HER CROSS AND MINE. There the weird Druid held his mistletoe ; There for the scorched son of the sand, coiled bright, The torrid snake was hissing sharp and low ; And there the Atlantic savage paid his rite. "Allah ! " the Moslem darkly muttered there ; " Brahma ! " the jewelled Indies of the East Sighed through their spices, with a languid prayer ; " Christ ? " faintly questioned many a paler priest. And still the Athenian Altar s glimmering Doubt On all religions evermore the same. What tears shall wash its sad inscription out ? What Hand shall write thereon His other name ? HEE CEOSS AND MINK " THIS is my cross here, Sister, see : The only one I have to bear." A flash of gold fell over me, And precious lights were everywhere. HER CROSS AND MINE. 93 She was a lovely, restless thing, With time in blossom at her feet, And on her hand the enchanted ring Whose promise always is so sweet. I was a nun. My fearless eyes Had looked their last on youth. I guessed At something quiet in the skies, And veiled my face against the rest. My cross was dark and darkly stained, Even from the heart of one who died : Invisible drops of blood had rained Thereon, when love was crucified. That laughing girl could pity me, Because she fancied from my cross The world had fallen. Such as she Still think to lose the world is loss ! Yet, heavier is her cross than mine, For in the fatal jewels there (Oh, will she ask for help divine ?) I know she has the world to bear. TWO IN TWO WOELDS. A PEASANT girl sat in the grass, With just a peasant s eyes to see The king s fair son when he should pass ; From farthest Fairyland was he, " He cannot love me but he might, If this or that had chanced to be. It breaks my heart to know how slight The things that hold him high from me. " Had I been born in yonder tower, With just a jewel for my hair, Not half so sweet as this one flower, He would have climbed to reach me there. " Just for some fairness in my face ; Some ermine on a train of state ; Some poor, dead name that he could trace To royal tombs I were his mate ! TWO IN TWO WORLDS. 95 " So brief the distance then between Palace and hut, need I be sad 1 Almost he loves me. Ay, a queen I were if but a crown I had ! " Ah me, unhappy in my place ! What matter, since they are apart, Whether one rose-leaf or all space Divide divided heart and heart ? " ... It was a thousand years ago. To-night Time tells the tale anew : I am that peasant girl, I know ; And, sir, the king s fair son are you ! CAPEICE AT HOME. No, I will not say good-bye Not good-bye, nor anything. He is gone. ... I wonder why Lilacs are not sweet this spring. How that tiresome bird will sing ! I might follow him and say Just that he forgot to kiss Baby, when he went away. Everything I want I miss. Oh, a precious world is this ! . . . What if night came and not he ? Something might mislead his feet. Does the moon rise late 1 Ah me ! There are things that he might meet. Now the rain begins to beat : CAPRICE AT HOME. 97 So it will be dark. The bell ? Some one some one loves is dead. Were it he ! I cannot tell Half the fretful words I said, Half the fretful tears I shed. Dead 1 And but to think of death ! Men might bring him through the gate : Lips that have not any breath, Eyes that stare And I must wait ! Is it time, or is it late ? I was wrong, and wrong, and wrong ; I will tell him, oh, be sure ! If the heavens are builded strong, Love shall therein be secure ; Love like mine shall there endure. . . . Listen, listen that is he ! I ; 11 not speak to him, I say. If he choose to say to me, " I was all to blame to-day ; Sweet, forgive me," why I may! A WALL BETWEEN. [A piteous thing, you know, Half hinted, at the edge of the earth, my friend: Clinging to its last clod, She whispers low, Not knowing He has listened till the end. A woman s tale (of wrong and grief), And, therefore, none too brief. He who could leave her heart, Spite of youth s passionate promises, to break ( While through their children s home he walked, apart, Dumb as the dead), must, for her soul s sweet sake, Come, at the last, in priest-disguise To help her to the skies /] THEN, do I doubt ? Not so. Though the stars wander without any Guide Out there in loneliest dark, almost I know I do believe that He was crucified. Arisen and ascended to The Heaven 1 Oh, priest, I do. Still, you were kind to come. Only to tell me, then, that I must die 1 I knew as much. Ah me, the mouth was dumb A WALL BETWEEN. 99 That told me first (let bygone things go by), The young sad mouth, without a breath, Yes, I believe in death. (A crucifix to kiss 1) Another world may light your lifted eyes, But, by my heart that breaks, I am of this. Are you quite sure those palms of Paradise Do shelter for me one sweet head 2 Or, are the dead the dead ? It is a vain world ? Oh, It is a goodly world, a world wherein We hear the doves (that moan?) the winds (that blow The buds away ?) It is a world of sin, And therefore sorrow ? Was it, then, Fashioned and formed of men 1 Pray, would you give one rood Of your dark, certain soil, where olives grow, For all those shining heights on heights, where brood The wings you babble of that shame the snow ? Why, what new song 1 But I have heard In our own trees a bird. 100 A WALL BETWEEN. (Oh, call it what you will !) Light, hollow, brief, and bitter 1 Yes, I know. With cruel seas and sands? Yes, yes, and still And fire and famine following where we go ? And still I leave it at my feet, Moaning, "The world is sweet." Why, it was here that I Had youth and all that only youth can bring. Fair sir, if you would help a woman die, Show me a glass. There ! that one look will wring My heart, I think, out of its place ; The earth may take my face. Think of the bless6d skies 1 If in the cheek one have no rose to wear, If nights all full of tears have changed the eyes, Why, would one be immortal and not fair 1 With faded hair, one would not quite Contrast an aureole s light. You talk of things unseen With all the pretty arrogance of a boy. Why, one could laugh at what you think you mean. A WALL BETWEEN. 101 You see the bud upon the bough with joy, You look through summer toward the fruit The worm is at the root 1 Well if it is. You see, Your feet are set among our pleasant dews ; Therefore, that crown of phantom stars for me, In distance most divine, you kindly choose, Content to leave your own unwon, And shine here with the sun. Hush ! Wait ! Somehow I know. You do remind me tenderly of yes, Of him, your kinsman (long, so long ago), But for these sacred garments. I confess, Oh, father, I cannot forget The world where he stays yet ! Quick ! will you look away ? Too cruelly like him in the dusk you grow, This awful dusk that ends it all, I say. You pity us when we are young, you know, And lose a lover. Surely then There may be other men. 102 A WALL BETWEEN. But when the hand we bind So that it cannot reach out anywhere, Then find, or, sadder, fancy that we find, The ring is not true gold, you do not care ; These tragedies writ in wedding rings Are common, tiresome things. On earth there was one man, There were no men. They all had faded through His shadow. Surely, where our grief began, In that old garden, he, that one of two, Looked not to Eve, before the Fall, So much the lord of all. And yet he said 1 crave Your patience. I will not forget to die. And there is no remembrance in the grave ; That comforts one. Better it is to lie Not knowing thistles grow above, Than to remember love. . . . Now you may call my friends, Ah, my sweet friends. They whispered just a word Or two last night here by me. To what ends A WALL BETWEEN. 103 They look through tears ! I thank them that I heard. " A charming chance," one lightly said ; The other s cheek burned red. The blush I could not see I felt, like fire. Then they both laughed, and this Beside the dying. He, they said, would be Handsome and lonely. Lonely 1 Will he miss The flower they bury in my breast, Up here with all the rest ? Yes, we have many a year, And then we have one hour and he away ! Why, there was something only he should hear. ... He wore his cloak 1 it is so cold for May. If he would come (the lamp looks dim), I d leave the world to him. Then tell him, priest, if he Tell him, I pray you, this ah, yet he said- Then only tell him nothing sweet for me. Tell him I have not tasted once his bread Since then. Tell him I die too proud To take of him a shroud. 104 A WALL BETWEEN. I, with the raven s trust For food, the lily s trust for raiment, found Who feeds the one and clothes the other must Eemember me. My hands, through many a wound, That which they had were glad to earn. He gave what I 11 return. Ask him if I forgot One household care. If I, in such poor ways As I could know, through piteous things have not Tried still to please him, lo, these many days ; Ah, bitter task, self -set and vain ! 1 hear the wind and rain. I fear he will be wet, And not afraid but, somehow, something might Trouble him in the dark. You know he met Strange men, somewhere, he said, one lonesome night. If anything should hurt him, I Yes, I forgot could die. I have not seen his face Since then. We lived a wall apart, we two, While dark and void between us was all space. A WALL BETWEEN. 105 Sometimes I hid, and watched his shadow through Too wistful eyes, as it would pass, Ghost-like, from off the grass. Tell him, beneath his roof I felt I had not where to lay my head, Yet could not dare the saintly world s reproof, And withered under my own scorn instead ; Still whispering, " For the children s sake," I let my slow heart break. The children ] Let them sleep To waken motherless. Could I put by Their arms, and lie like snow, and have them weep, With my own eyes so empty and so dry ? I Ve left some pretty things, you see, To comfort them for me, Sweet dresses, curious toys But, after all, what will the baby do 1 . . . Hush ! Here he is, waked by the wind s wild noise. Let mother count the dimples, one and two. Whose baby has the goldenest head ? I dreamed once he was dead. 106 A WALL BETWEEN. Dead, and for many a year 1 Can a dead baby laugh and babble so ? Do you not see me kiss and kiss him here, And hold death from me still to kiss him ? No 1 Yet I did dream white blossoms grew Do cruel dreams come true 1 ... As the tree falls, one says, So shall it lie. It falls, remembering The sun and stillness of its leaf-green days, The moons it held, the nested bird s warm wing, The promise of the buds it wore, The fruit it never bore. So, take my cross, and go. Where my Lord Christ descended I descend. Shall I ascend like Him 1 I do not know. I loved the world ; the world is at an end. Therefore, I pray you, shut your book, And take away that look That look of his ! You stay. Then, say I loved him bitterly to the last ! Who loves one sweetly loves not much, I say. A WALL BETWEEN. 107 Love s blush by moonlight will fade out full fast. Love s lightning scar at least we keep. Now, let me go to sleep. . . . His voice, too, in disguise ! It is in pity, no ! Yes, it is he ! With tears of memory in his steadfast eyes, Mock-priest, how sharply you have shriven me ! Your cousin s righteous robes 1 fear You had somewhat to hear. Ah 1 Had you said but this A year ago. Now, let my chill hand fall ; It gives you back your youth. But you will miss My shadow from your sunshine. That is all Yet if some lovelier life shall dawn And I should love you on ? Good-bye. Was it well done ? You know that Eastern tale, where gifts of gold And glory as a king s comfort came to one Who, having starved, went out with courtesy cold To meet and waive that bitter state, Dumbly, through his own gate. A LESSON IN A PICTURE. So it is whispered here and there, That you are rather pretty 1 Well 1 (Here s matter for a bird of the air To drop down from the dusk and tell.) Let s have no lights, my child. Somehow, The shadow suits your blushes now. The blonde young man who called to-day (He only rang to leave a book 1 Yes, and a flower or two, I say !) Was handsome, look you. Will you look You did not know his eyes were fine ? You did not ! Can you look in mine 1 What is it in this picture here, That you should suddenly watch it so ? A maiden leaning half in fear, From her far casement ; and, below, In cap and plumes (or cap and bells 1) Some fairy tale her lover tells. A LESSON IN A PICTURE. 109 Suppose this lonesome night could be Some night a thousand springs ago, Dim round that tower ; and you were she, And your shy friend her lover (Oh !), And I her mother ! And suppose I knew just why she wore that rose. Do you think I d kiss my girl, and say : " Make haste to bid the wedding guest, And make the wedding garment gay, You could not find in East or West So brave a bridegroom ; I rejoice That you have made so sweet a choice " 1 Or say, " To look for ever fair, Just keep this turret moonlight wound About your face ; stay in mid-air ; Eope-ladders lead one to the ground, Where all things take the touch of tears, And nothing lasts a thousand years " 1 M FEOM TWO WINDOWS. HE was young and he saw the South : The bird and the rose were there, And the god with the lifted look And the laurel in his hair. Before him a palace stood ; A shy wind moved the lace, And showed by the light of a dream A woman s wonderful face. He was old and he saw the North : The mountains were fierce and bare, And pitiless swords of ice Were thrust at him from the air. A ruin blackened the moon ; And in that forlornest place, Wasted with famine and tears, Lo, a woman s dreadful face ! DENIED. I. [THE LADY S THOUGHT.] IT may have been Who knows, who knows 1 It was too dark for me to see. The wind that spared this very rose Its few last leaves could hardly be Sadder of voice than he. A foreign Prince here in disguise, Who asked a shelter from the rain : (The country that he came from lies Above the clouds.) He asked in vain And will not come again. If I had known that it was He Who had not where to lay His head : " But my Lord Christ, it cannot be ; My guest-room has too white a bed For wayside dust," I had said. 112 DENIED. II. [THE MOTHER S THOUGHT.] IT was my own sweet child the one Whose baby mouth breathes at my breast. (A fairer and a brighter none, Save His own Mother, ever prest Into diviner rest.) He had escaped my arms and strayed Into the pitiless world that night. With wounded feet and faith betrayed, Charmed backward by a glimmer of light, Almost he stood in sight. Oh, I had let him ask in vain, (Vague, lonesome, shadowy years ahead,) My roof to hide him from the rain, My lamp to comfort him, my bread, Who came as from the dead ! AFTER THE QUARREL. HUSH, my pretty one. Not yet. Wait a little, only wait. Other blue flowers are as wet As your eyes, outside the gate He has shut for ever. But Is the gate for ever shut 1 Just a young man in the rain Saying (the last time ?) "good-night !" Should he never come again Would the world be ended quite ? Where would all these rosebuds go 1 All these robins ? Do you know ? But he will not come ? Why, then, Is no other within call ? There are men, and men, and men And these men are brothers all ! Each sweet fault of his you 11 find Just as sweet in all his kind. 114 AFTER THE QUARREL. None with eyes like his 1 Oh oh ! In diviner ones did I Look, perhaps, an hour ago. Whose ? Indeed (you must not cry) Those I thought of are not free To laugh down your tears, you see. Voice like his was never heard ? No but better ones, I vow ; Did you ever hear a bird 1 Listen, one is singing now ! And his gloves ? His gloves ? Ah, well, There are gloves like his to sell. At the play to-night you 11 see, In mock-velvet cloaks, mock earls With mock-jewelled swords, that he Were a clown by ! Now, those curls Are the barber s pride, I say ; Do not cry for them, I pray. If no one should love you ? Why, You can love some other still : Philip Sidney, Shakespeare, ay, Good King Arthur, if you will ; Eaphael he was handsome too. Love them one and all. I do. THE DESCENT OF THE ANGEL. " THIS is the house. Come, take the keys, Romance and Travel here must end." Out of the clouds, not quite at ease, I saw the pretty bride descend ; With satin sandals, fit alone To glide in air, she touched the stone. A thing to fade through wedding lace, From silk and scents, with priest and ring, Floated across that earthly place Where life must be an earthly thing. An earthly voice was in her ears, Her eyes awoke to earthly tears. DOUBLE QUATKAINS. HEART-ACHE and heart-break always that or this. Sometimes it rains just when the sun should shine ; Sometimes a glove or ribbon goes amiss ; Sometimes, in youth, your lover should be mine. Still madam frets at life, through pearls and lace (A breath can break her pale heart s measured beat), And still demands the maid who paints her face Shall find the world for ever smooth and sweet. II. WORD OF COUNSEL. OTHERS will kiss you while your mouth is red. Beauty is brief. Of all the guests who come While the lamp shines on flowers, and wine, and bread, In time of famine who will spare a crumb 1 DOUBLE QUATRAINS. 117 Therefore, oh, next to God, I pray you keep Yourself as your own friend, the tried, the true. Sit your own watch others will surely sleep. Weep your own tears. Ask none to die with you. IIL BROKEN PROMISE. AFTER strange stars, inscrutable, on high ; After strange seas beneath his floating feet ; After the glare in many a brooding eye, I wonder if the cry of " Land " was sweet 1 Or did the Atlantic gold, the Atlantic palm, The Atlantic bird and flower, seem poor, at best, To the grey Admiral under sun and calm, After the passionate doubt and faith of quest ? IV. UTTER DARKNESS. IF I should have void darkness in my eyes While there were violets in the sun to see ; If I should fail to hear my child s sweet cries, Or any bird s voice in our threshold tree ; 118 DOUBLE QUATRAINS. If I should cease to answer love or wit : Blind, deaf, or dumb, how bitter each must be ! Blind, deaf, or dumb I will not think of it ! . . . Yet the night comes when I shall be all three. v. THE HAPPIER GIFT. DIVINEST words that ever singer said Would hardly lend your mouth a sweeter red ; Her aureole, even hers whose book you hold, Could give your head no goldener charm of gold. Ah me ! you have the only gift on earth That to a woman can be surely worth Breathing the breath of life for. Keep your place Even she had given her fame to have your face. VI IN DOUBT. THROUGH dream and dusk a frightened whisper said : "Lay down the world : the one you love is dead." In the near waters, without any cry I sank, therefore glad, oh so glad, to die ! DOUBLE QUATRAINS. 119 Far on the shore, with sun, and dove, and dew, And apple-flowers, I suddenly saw you. Then was it kind or cruel that the sea Held back my hands, and kissed and clung to me ? VII. A LOOK INTO THE GRAVE. I LOOK, through tears, into the dust to find What manner of rest man s only rest may be. The darkness rises up and smites me blind. The darkness is there nothing more to see ? Oh, after flood, and fire, and famine, and The hollow watches we are made to keep In our forced marches over sea and land I wish we had a sweeter place to sleep. VIII. ETIQUETTE. IN some old Spanish court there chanced to be No one whose office was to save the king From death by fire. The king himself ? Not he ;- Could royal hands have done so mean a thing ? 120 DOUBLE QUATRAINS. My boy, through life think how this king of Spain (Whose name none knows and so you ll not forget !) Caught by his palace hearth-flames, not in vain To ashes burned for sake of Etiquette ! IX. SEPTEMBER. SEND back these lonesome lights to Fairyland, 1 Whose wing6d glimmer of gold lured childish feet, Borrowed (with bud and bird), you understand, To keep while moons were warm and dews were sweet. Hush, we may have them for a little yet Before the weird leaf-gathering frost creeps on. Ah, loveliest time ! wherein we may regret The fair things going, not the sweet things gone. 1 Fireflies. DOUBLE QUATRAINS. 121 X. FOR ANOTHER S SAKE. SWEET, sweet ? My child, some sweeter word than sweet, Some lovelier word than love, I want for you. Who says the world is bitter, while your feet Are left among the lilies and the dew ? ... Ah ^ So some other has, this night, to fold Such hands as his, and drop some precious head From off her breast as full of baby-gold ? I, for her grief, will not be comforted. IN COMPANY WITH CHILDREN. AFTER WINGS. THIS was your butterfly, you see. His fine wings made him vain ? The caterpillars crawl, but he Passed them in rich disdain 1 My pretty boy says, " Let him be Only a worm again ? " Oh child, when things have learned to wear Wings once, they must be fain To keep them always high and fair. Think of the creeping pain Which even a butterfly must bear To be a worm again ! BABY OR BIED ? "BUT is he a Baby or a Bird ?" Sometimes I fancy I do not know ; His voice is as sweet as I ever heard Far up where the light leaves blow. Then his lovely eyes, I think, would see As clear as a Bird s in the upper air ; And his red-brown head, it seems to me, Would do for a Bird to bear. " If he were a Bird," you wisely say, "He would have some wings to know him by : Ah, he has wings, that are flying away For ever how fast they fly ! They are flying with him, by day, by night ; Under suns and stars, over storm and snow, These fair, fine wings, that elude the sight, In softest silence they go. Come, kiss him as often as you may > Hush, never talk of this time next year, For the same small Bird that we pet to-day, To-morrow is never here ! MY BABES IN THE WOOD. I KNOW a story, fairer, dimmer, sadder, Than any story painted in your books. You are so glad ? It will not make you gladder ; Yet listen, with your pretty restless looks. " Is it a Fairy Story r Well, half fairy At least it dates far back as fairies do, And seems to me as beautiful and airy ; Yet half, perhaps the fairy half, is true. You had a baby sister and a brother, (Two very dainty people, rosily white, Each sweeter than all things except the other !) Older yet younger gone from human sight ! And I, who loved them, and shall love them ever, And think with yearning tears how each light hand Crept toward bright bloom or berries I shall never Know how I lost them. Do you understand 1 128 MY BABES IN THE WOOD. Poor slightly golden heads ! I think I missed them First, in some dreamy, piteous, doubtful way ; But when and where with lingering lips I kissed them, My gradual parting, I can never say. Sometimes I fancy that they may have perished In shadowy quiet of wet rocks and moss, Near paths whose very pebbles I have cherished, For their small sakes, since my most lovely loss. I fancy, too, that they were softly covered By robins, out of apple-flowers they knew, Whose nursing wings in far home sunshine hovered, Before the timid world had dropped the dew. Their names were what yours are! At this you wonder. Their pictures are your own, as you have seen ; And my bird-buried darlings, hidden under Lost leaves why, it is your dead selves I mean ! MY GHOST. [A STORY TOLD TO MY LITTLE COUSIN KATE.] YES, Katie, I think you are very sweet, Now that the tangles are out of your hair, And you sing as well as the birds you meet, That are playing, like you, in the blossoms there. But now you are coming to kiss me, you say : Well, what is it for 1 Shall I tie your shoe, Or loop your sleeve in a prettier way 1 Do I know about ghosts ? Indeed I do. Have I seen one 1 Yes : last evening, you know, We were taking a walk that you had to miss, (I think you were naughty and cried to go, But, surely, you 11 stay at home after this !) And, away in the twilight lonesomely (" What is the twilight ? " It s getting late !) I was thinking of things that were sad to me There, hush ! you know nothing about them, Kate Well, we had to go through the rocky lane, Close to that bridge where the water roars 130 MY GHOST. By a still, red house, where the dark and rain Go in when they will at the open doors ; And the moon, that had just waked up, looked through The broken old windows and seemed afraid, And the wild bats flew and the thistles grew Where once in the roses the children played. Just across the road by the cherry-trees Some fallen white stones had been lying so long, Half hid in the grass, and under these There were people dead. I could hear the song Of a very sleepy dove, as I passed The graveyard near, and the cricket that cried ; And I looked (ah ! the Ghost is coming at last !) And something was walking at my side. It seemed to be wrapped in a great dark shawl, (For the night was a little cold, you know). It would not speak. It was black and tall ; And it walked so proudly and very slow. Then it mocked me everything I could do : Now it caught at the lightning-flies like me ; Now it stopped where the elder-blossoms grew ; Now it tore the thorns from a grey bent tree. THE END OF THE RAINBOW. 131 Still it followed me under the yellow moon, Looking back to the graveyard now and then, Where the winds were playing the night a tune But, Kate, a Ghost does n t care for men, And your papa could n t have done it harm ! . . . Ah, dark-eyed darling, what is it you see 1 There, you need n t hide in your dimpled arm It was only my Shadow that walked with me ! THE END OF THE RAINBOW. MAY you go to find it ? You must, I fear ; Ah, lighted young eyes, could I show you how "Is it past those lilies that look so near ? " It is past all flowers. Will you listen, now ? The pretty new moons faded out of the sky, The bees and butterflies out of the air, And sweet wild songs would flutter and fly Into wet dark leaves and the snow s white glare. There were winds and shells full of lonesome cries, There were lightnings and mists along the way, And the deserts would glitter against my eyes, Where the beautiful phantom-fountains play. 132 THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN. At last, in a place very dusty and bare, Some little dead birds I had petted to sing, Some little dead flowers I had gathered to wear, Some withered thorns and an empty ring, Lay scattered. My fairy story is told. (It does not please her : she has not smiled.) What is it you say ? Did I find the gold 1 Why, I found the End of the Rainbow, child ! THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN. I KNOW of a higher Mountain. Well ? " Do the flowers grow on it ? " No, not one. " What is its name ? " But I cannot tell. " Where ? " Nowhere under the sun ! " Is it under the moon, then ? " No, the light Has never touched it, and never can ; It is fashioned and formed of night, of night Too dark for the eyes of man. Yet I sometimes think, if my Faith had proved As a grain of mustard seed to me, I could say to this Mountain : " Be thou removed, And be thou cast in the sea ! " PLAYING BEGGAKS. " LET us pretend we are two beggars." " No, For beggars are im something, something bad ; You know they are, because Papa says so, And Papa when he calls them that looks mad ; You should have seen him, how he frowned one day, When Mama gave his wedding-coat away." "Well, now he can t get married any more, Because he has no wedding-coat to wear. But that poor ragged soldier at the door Was starved to death in prison once somewhere, And shot dead somewhere else, and it was right To give him coats because he had to fight. "Now let s be beggars." "They re im posters. Yes, That s what they are, im postors ; and that means Rich people, for they all are rich, I guess Eicher than we are, rich as Jews or queens, And they re just playing beggars when they cry " " Then let us play like they do, you and I." 134 PLAYING BEGGARS. " Well, we 11 be rich and wear old naughty clothes." "But they re not rich. If they were rich they d buy All the fine horses at the fairs and shows To give to General Grant. I 11 tell you why : Once when the rebels wanted to kill all The men in this world lie let Richmond fall ! " That broke them up ! I like the rebels, though, Because they have the curliest kind of hair. One time, so many years and years ago, I saw one over in Kentucky there. It showed me such a shabby sword, and said It wanted to cut off Somebody s head ! " But do play beggar. You be one and, mind, Shut up one eye, and get all over dust, And say this : Lady, be so very kind As to give me some water. Well, I must Rest on your step, I think, ma am, for a while I ve walked full twenty if I ve walked one mile. " Lady, this is your little girl, I know : She is a beautiful child and just like you; PLAYING BEGGARS. 135 You look too young to be her mother, though. This handsome boy is like his father, too : The gentleman was he who passed this way And looked so cross ? so pleasant, I should say ! " But trouble, Lady, trouble puts me wrong. Lady, I m sure you 11 spare a dress or two You look so stylish. (Oh, if I was strong !) And shoes ? Yours are too small. I need them new. The money thank you ! Now you have some tea, And flour, and sugar, you 11 not miss, for me 1 " Ah, I forgot to tell you that my house Was burned last night. My baby has no bread, And I m as poor, ma am, as a cellar-mouse. My husband died once ; my grandmother s dead ShQ was a good soul (but she s gone, that s true You have some coffee, madam ?) so are you. " " Oh, it s too long. I can t say half of that ! I 11 not be an im poster, any how. (But I should like to give one my torn hat. So I could get a prettier one, just now.) They re worse than Christians, ghosts, or anything . 1 11 play that I m a great man or a king." 1866. A CHILD S FIRST SIGHT OF SNOW. OH, come and look at his blue, sweet eyes, As, through the window, they glance around And see the glittering white surprise The Night has laid on the ground ! This beautiful Mystery you have seen, So new to your life, and to mine so old, Little wordless Questioner " What does it mean ? Why, it means, I fear, that the world is cold. LAST WOEDS. OVER A LITTLE BED AT NIGHT. GOOD-NIGHT, pretty sleepers of mine I never shall see you again : Ah, never in shadow or shine ; Ah, never in dew or in rain ! LAST WORDS. 137 In your small dreaming-dresses of white, With the wild-bloom you gathered to-day In your quiet shut hands, from the light And the dark you will wander away. Though no graves in the bee-haunted grass, And no love in the beautiful sky, Shall take you as yet, you will pass, With this kiss, through these teardrops. Good bye ! With less gold and more gloom in their hair, When the buds near have faded to flowers, Three faces may wake here as fair But older than yours are, by hours ! Good-night, then, lost darlings of mine I never shall see you again : Ah, never in shadow or shine ; Ah, never in dew or in rain ! MY AETIST. [A. v. P. Nat. 1864.] So slight, and just a little vain Of eyes and amber-tinted hair Such as you will not see again To watch him at the window there, Why, you would not suspect, I say, The rising rival of Dor6. No sullen lord of foreign verse Such as great Dante yet he knows ; No wandering Jew s long legend-curse On his light hand its darkness throws ; Nor has the Bible suffered much, So far, from his irreverent touch. Yet, can his restless pencil lack A master Fancy, weird and strong In black-and-white but chiefly black ! When at its call such horrors throng 1 MY ARTIST. 139 What Fantasies of Fairyland More shadowy were ever planned ! But giants and enchantments make Not all the glory of his Art : His vast and varied power can take In real things a real part. His latest pictures here I see : Will you not look at some with me 1 First, "Alexander." From his wars, With arms of awful length he seems To reach some very-pointed stars, As if " more worlds " were in his dreams ! But, hush the Artist tells us why : " You read His hands could touch the sky. " 1 Here mark how marvellous, how new ! Above a drowning ship, at night, Close to the moon the sun shines, too, While lightnings show in streaks of white Still, should my eyes grow dim, ah, then Their tears will wet those sinking men ! 1 Line from a familiar child s poem in a school-book. 140 MY ARTIST. There in wild weather, quite forlorn, And queer of cloak, and grim of hat. With locks that might be better shorn, High on a steeple who is that ? " It is the man who I forget Stood on a tower in the wet." 1 His faults ? He yet is young, you know- Four with his last year s butterflies. But think what wonders books may show When the new Tennysons arise ! For fame that he might illustrate Let poets be content to wait ! 1 " I stood on a tower in the wet, And Old Year and New Year met. "TENNYSON. THE SAD STORY OF A LITTLE GIEL. OH, never mind her eyes and hair, (Though they were dark and it was gold.) That she was sweet is all I care To tell you till the rest is told. " But is the story old 1 " Hush. She was sweet Why do I cry ? Because her mother loved her so. I told you that she did not die ; But she is gone. " Where did she go ? Ah me, I do not know. " How old was she when she was sweet ? " Why, one year old, or two, or three. Here is her shoe what little feet ! And yet they walked away, you see. (I must not say, from me.) " Did Gypsies take her 3 " Surely, no. But something took her ; she is lost : No track of hers in dew or snow, K 142 THE SAD STORY OF A LITTLE GIRL. No heaps of wild buds backward tossed, To show what paths she crossed. " Did Fairies take her ? " It may be. For Fairies sometimes, I have read, Will climb the moonshine, secretly, To steal a baby from its bed, And leave an imp instead. This Changeling, German tales declare, Makes trouble in the house full soon : Cries at the tangles in its hair, Beats the piano out of tune, And wants to sleep till noon. And, while it keeps the lost one s face, It grows less lovely, year by year Yes, in that pretty baby s place There was a Changeling left, I fear. . . . My little maid, do you hear 2 AT HANS ANDERSEN S FUNERAL. WHY, all the children in all the world had listened around his knee, But the wonder-tales must end ; So, all the children in all the world came into the church to see The still face of their friend. "But were any fairies there?" Why, yes, little questioner of mine, For the fairies loved him. too ; And all the fairies in all the world, as far as the moon can shine, Sobbed, " Oh ! what shall we do ? " Well, the children who played with the North s white swans, away in the North s white snows. Made wreaths of fir for his head ; And the South s dark children scattered the scents of the South s red rose Down at the feet of the dead. 144 AT HANS ANDERSEN S FUNERAL. Yes, all the children in all the world were there with their tears that clay ; But the boy who loved him best, Alone in a damp and lonesome place (not far from his grave) he lay And sadder than all the rest. " Mother," he moaned, " never mind the king why, what if the king is there ? Never mind your faded shawl : The king may never see it ; for the king will hardly care To look at your clothes at all." So, close to his coffin she crouched, in the breath of the burial flowers, And begged for a bud or a leaf : " If I cannot have one, O sirs, to take to that poor little room of ours, My boy will die of his grief ! " My child, if the king was there, and I think he was (but then I forget), Why, that was a little thing. AT HANS ANDERSEN S FUNERAL. 145 Did a dead man ever lift his head from its place in the coffin yet, Do you think, to bow to the king ? But could he not see him up in Heaven ? " I never was there, you know ; But Heaven is too far, I fear, For the ermine, and purple, and gold, that make up the king, to show So bravely as they do here. But he saw the tears of the peasant-child, by the beautiful light he took From the earth in his close-shut eyes ; For tears are the sweetest of all the things we shall see, when we come to look From the windows of the skies. A COAT-OF-AEMS. EOSE says her family is so old Older than yours, perhaps ? Ah, me ! . . . (How wise she is ! Who could have told So much to such a child as she 1 If these sweet sisters teach her this, Their veils are vanity, I fear.) . . . Pray, what comes next, my lovely miss 1 You want a coat-of-arms, my dear ! Ah ! other people have such things ? Eose had ancestors, too an earl ? Tell Eose you have the blood of kings, And show it when you blush, my girl ! I am not jesting; I could name, Among the greatest, one or two Who have the right (divine) to claim Eemote relationship with you. A COAT-OF-ARMS. 147 Alfred who never burned a cake ! Arthur who had no Table Eound, Nor knight like Launcelot of the Lake, Nor ruled one rood of British ground ! Lear, who outraved the storm at most The crown is straw that crowns old age ; And Hamlet s father he s a ghost ? A real ghost, though on the stage ! Edwards and Henrys and of these Old Bluebeard Hal, from whom you take Your own bluff manners, if you please ! Let s love him, for Queen Catherine s sake ! Eichard from Holy Land, who heard Or did not hear poor Blondel s song ; That other Eichard, too, the Third, Whom Shakespeare does a grievous wrong ; But still he murdered in the Tower The pretty princes 1 Charles, whose head, At Cromwell s breath, fell as a flower Falls at the frost as I have read. 148 A COAT-OF-ARMS. Another Charles, who had the crown Of Spain and Germany to hold, But at a cloister laid it down, And kept two hollow hands to fold. Philip the Handsome, who will rise From his old grave, the legends say, And show the sun those Flemish eyes That yes, I mean at Judgment Day, Louis the Grand Madam is so Like some one at his court, you hear ( t These Washington reporters, though, Were never at his court, I fear ! Great Frederick, with his snuff (I may Say something of great Peter, too), And one who made kings out of clay, And lost the world at Waterloo ! Of others, more than I could write, In some still cave scarce known to men One sleeps, in his long beard s red light, A hundred years then sleeps again ; A COAT-OF-ARMS. 149 One who with all his peerage fell By Fontarabia sat forlorn In jewelled death at Aix ah ! well, Who listens now for Eoland s horn ? One who was half a god, they say, Cried for the stars and died of wine ; One pushed the crown of Rome away And Antony s speech was very fine ! . . . The Shah of Persia, too ? Why, yes, He and his overcoat, no doubt. Oh, the Khedive will send, I guess, Half Egypt l when he finds you out ! Victor of Italy, the Czar, Franz-Joseph, the sweet Spanish youth, And Prussian William, these are all Your kinsmen, child, in very truth. Your coat-of-arms, then 1 forgot Some kings, the oldest, wisest, best ; Take Jason s golden fleece, why not 1 ? Put Solomon s seal upon your crest. 1 Allusion to the Khedive s present to an American lady, 1875. 150 HIDING THE BABY. There I can prove your Family s ties Bind you to all the great, I trust : Its Founder lived in Paradise ; And his ancestor was the Dust. Can Rose say more ? . . . Your ancient Tree Must hold a sword of fire (its root Down in the very grave must be) With serpent and Forbidden Fruit. HIDING THE BABY. HOLD him close, and closer hold him. (Ah, but this is time to cry !) Bring his pretty cloak and fold him From the Old Man going by. What Old Man 1 you cannot guess ? Not the Old Man of the Sea, Nor the Mountains, I confess, Can be half so old as ha HIDING THE BABY. 151 Could we only catch and bind him, To some prison, shutting low, Where the sun could never find him, This Old Man should surely go. We would steal his scythe away, (Grass should grow about our feet,) And he should not take to-day From us while to-day was sweet. Gypsy ways he has, most surely, (Gypsy ways are hardly right ;) Wandering, stealing, yet securely Keeping somehow out of sight. From our trees the fruit he shakes ; Silver, lace, or silk we miss From our houses ; this he takes This, and other things than this. Here he comes with buds that wither ; Here he comes with birds that fly ; Pretty playthings he brings hither, Just to take them by and by. He could find you in the night, Though you should put out the moon He can see without a light, He will take the Baby soon. 152 HIDING THE BABY. Head with gold enough about it Just to light this whole world through ; Ah, what shall we do without it 1 Children, say, what shall we do 1 Tell me, is there any place We can hide the Baby 1 Say. Can we cover up his face While the Old Man goes this way ? There is one place, one place only, We can hide him if we must Very still and low and lonely ; We can cover him with dust Shut a wild rose in his hand ; Set a wild rose at his head ; This Old Man, you understand, Cannot take from us the dead. THE LITTLE BOY I DBEAMED ABOUT. [TO ANOTHER LITTLE BOY.] THIS is the only world I know It is in this same world, no doubt. Ah me, but I could love him so, If I could only find him out, The Little Boy I dreamed about ! This Little Boy, who never takes The prettiest orange he can see, The reddest apple, all the cakes (When there are twice enough for three,) Where can the darling ever be ? lie does not tease and storm and pout To climb the roof, in rain or sun, And pull the pigeon s feathers out To see how it will look with none, Or fight with hornets one to one ! 154 THE LITTLE BOY I DREAMED ABOUT. He does not hide, and cut his hair, And wind the watches wrong, and cry To throw the kitten down the stair And see how often it can die. (It ; s strange that you can wonder why !) He never wakes too late to know A bird is singing near his bed : He tells the tired moon : " You may go To sleep yourself." He never said, When told to do a thing, " Tell Fred ! " If I say "Go," he will not stay To lose his hat, or break a toy ; Then hurry like the wind away, And whistle like the wind for joy, To please himself this Little Boy. Let any stranger come who can, He will not say though it be true- " Old Lady " (or " Old Gentleman "), " I wish you would go home, I do ; I think my mama wants you to ! " THE LITTLE BOY I DREAMED ABOUT. 155 No, Fairyland is far and dim : He does not play in silver sand ; But if I could believe in him I could believe in Fairyland, Because -you do not understand. Dead dead 1 Somehow I do not know. The sweetest children die. We may Miss some poor footprint from the snow, That was his very own to-day " God s will " is what good Christians say. Like you, or you, or you can be When you are good, he looks, no doubt. I d give the goldenest star I see In all the dark to find him out, The Little Boy I dreamed about ! CALLING THE DEAD. MY little child, so sweet a voice might wake So sweet a sleeper for so sweet a sake ; Calling your buried brother back to you You laugh and listen till I listen too. . . . Why does he listen 3 It may be to hear Sounds too divine to reach my troubled ear ; Why does he laugh 1 It may be he can see The face that only tears can hide from me. Poor baby faith, so foolish or so wise : The name I shape out of forlornest cries He speaks as with a bird s or blossom s breath. How fair the knowledge is that knows not Death ! . . . Ah, fools and blind ! through all the piteous years Searchers of stars and graves how many seers. Calling the dead, and seeking for a sign, Have laughed and listened, like this child of mine ? THE LAMB IN THE SKY. " THERE is a lamb," the children said ; Sweet in the grass they saw it lie. But the Baby lifted his golden head, And looked for the lamb in the sky. Then the children laughed as they saw him look At the high white clouds, but I know not why 3 - For (have I not read in a beautiful Book ?) There is a Lamb in the sky. "I WANT IT YESTEKDAY." " COME, take the flower it is not dead ; J Twas kept in dew the soft night through." "I will not have it now," he said : "I want it yesterday, I do." " It is as red, it is as sweet " With angry tears he turned away, Then flung it fiercely at his feet, And said, " I want it yesterday ! " INTO THE WOELD AND OUT. INTO the world he looked with sweet surprise. The children laughed so when they saw his eyes. Into the world a rosy hand in doubt He reached ; a pale hand took one rosebud out. " And that was all ? " quite all, it may be. ... But The children cried so when his eyes were shut. THE BABY S BROTHER. THE Baby is brought for the lady to see : " Was ever a lily-bud nicer than he ?" But the door opens fiercely on cooing and kiss, And what merry outlaw from the greenwood is this 1 ? His brother 1 who laughs at himself in my face : This picturesque vagabond, graceless with grace, Whose head, like a king s come to grief, is dis crowned Ah, the kitten was wicked, and so she is drowned 1 All flushed with the butterfly chase, how he stands, With a nestful of birds in his pitiless hands, Which he mildly assures me were torn from the tree, Or they d trouble their mother as Baby does me ! " Well, if Baby is sweet, you must love him right fast, Because don t you know 1 ? Why, because he ll not last ! For I was a baby, too, some of these days, And just look at me now!" he unsparingly says. CHILD S-FAITH. THESE beautiful tcales, I trust, are true. But here is a grave in the moss, And there is the sky. And the buds are blue, And a butterfly blows across. Yes, here is the grave and there is the sky ; To the one or the other we go. And between them wavers the butterfly, Like a soul that does not know, Somewhere ? Nowhere ? Too-golden head, And lips that I miss and miss, You would tell me the secret of the dead Could I find you with a kiss ! . . . Come here, I say, little child of mine, Come with your bloom and breath. (If he should believe in the life divine, I will not believe in death !) " Where is your brother 1" I question low, And wait for his wise reply. Does he say, "Down there in the grave ?" Ah, no ;- He says, with a laugh, "In the sky ! J THE FUNERAL OF A DOLL. THEY used to call her Little Nell, In memory of that lovely child Whose story each had learned to tell. She, too t was slight and still and mild, Blue-eyed and sweet ; she always smiled, And never troubled any one Until her pretty life was done. And so they tolled a tiny bell That made a wailing fine and faint, As fairies ring, and all was well. Then she became a waxen saint. Her funeral it was small and sad. Some birds sang bird-hymns in the air. The humming-bee seemed hardly glad, Spite of the honey everywhere. The very sunshine seemed to wear Some thought of death, caught in its gold That made it waver wan and cold. Then, with what broken voice he had, The preacher slowly murmured on (With many warnings to the bad) The virtues of the darling gone. 162 THE FUNERAL OF A DOLL. A paper coffin rosily-lined Had Little Nell. There, drest in white, With buds about her, she reclined, A very fair and piteous sight Enough to make one sorry, quite. And, when at last the lid was shut Under white flowers, I fancied but No matter. When I heard the wind Scatter Spring-rain that night across The doll s wee grave, with tears half-blind One child s heart felt a grievous loss. " It was a funeral, Mama. Oh, Poor Little Nell is dead, is dead ! How dark ! and do you hear it blow 1 She is afraid." And as she said These sobbing words, she laid her head Between her hands, and whispered : " Here Her bed is made, the precious dear She cannot sleep in it, I know. And there is no one left to wear Her pretty clothes. Where did she go 1 . , . See, this poor ribbon tied her hair 1 " ONE YEAE OLD. So, now he has seen the sun and the moon, The flower and the falling leaf on the tree (Ah ! the world is a picture that s looked at soon), Is there anything more to see ? He has learned (let me kiss from his eyes that tear), As the children tell me, to creep and to fall ; Then life is a lesson that s taught in a year, For the Baby knows it all. ABOUT A MAGICIAN. OH, there is a magician that I know, As strange as Hermann is " But he can wring A white bird s neck off in the market, though, Then put it on and tell the bird to sing And fly like anything I " What can he do ?" Just wait and see him pass. And you shall see, I think, what you shall see. The pretty baby, creeping in the grass, Will be a naughty boy, and climb a tree, If he goes by ah, me ! Why, men and women in his path will rise Yes, of the dust, or nothing, they are made. We see them in the sun with real eyes, And, while we look at them, he makes them fade To ghosts You are afraid ? Then, he can pass the guards in any light, And take the palace and the king away. He has not gone to sleep a single night, For many million years some people say, Nor rested for a day ! FORGIVENESS. 165 We cannot kill him though we sometimes try ; He kills us all yes, and the soldiers, too ! Seas are not deep enough to drown him. I Have heard that fire is what he passes through Look, he is changing you ! Why, in a little while you will not be Yourself. And then What will he change you to, Poor, yellow-headed child, here at my knee Waiting to hear a foolish story through ? Ah, Fred, what if we knew ! FORGIVENESS. Go, show the bee that stung your hand The sweetest flower in all the land ; Then, from its bosom, she will bring The honey that will cure the sting. EVERYTHING. [A FAIRY TALE.] You D call his room a pleasant place : Satin and rose-wood, lights and lace, And fruits and wines were there. (Ah, well !) And yet the rich man rang his bell, When lo ! he saw a fairy flit From outside dusk to answer it. Her flower-like eyes, so faint and blue, Looked at him through her veil of dew ; Though every gracious thing he had, His face was fretful, tired, and sad : " Pray, sir," she whispered, " did you ring 1 " He said : " Yes, I want everything 1 " The fairy laughed and walked away. Eagged and rosy at his play, A boy who had the grass, the dew, Birds, bees, the sun, the stars, like you, She met : " What do you want ? " sighed she. " Oh, I have everything ! " said he. LITTLE CHRISTIAN S TROUBLE. His wet checks looked as they had worn, Each, with its rose, a thorn, Set there (my boy, you understand ?) By his own brother s hand : " Look at my cheek. What shall I do 1 You know I have but two ! " His mother answered, as she read What my Lord Christ had said, (While tears began to drop like rain :) " Go, turn the two again." MIDSUMMER-NIGHT FAIRIES. (THE FIREFLIES.) LET s see : We believe in wings, We believe in the grass and dew, We believe in the moon and other things That may be true. But are there any ? Talk low ; (Look ! what is that eerie spark 1) If there are any, why, there they go, Out in the dark ! MISCELLANEOUS. HEAKING THE BATTLE. [JULY 21, 1861.] ONE day in the dreamy summer, On the Sabbath hills, from afar We heard the solemn echoes Of the first fierce words of war. Ah, tell me, thou veiled Watcher Of the storm and the calm to come, How long by the sun or shadow Till these noises again are dumb. And soon in a hush and glimmer We thought of the dark, strange fight, Whose close in a ghastly quiet Lay dim in the beautiful night. Then we talked of coldness and pallor, And of things with blinded eyes That stared at the golden stillness Of the moon in those lighted skies ; 172 TO-DAY. And of souls; at morning wrestling In the dust with passion and moan, So far away at evening In the silence of worlds unknown. But a delicate wind beside us Was rustling the dusky hours, As it gathered the dewy odours Of the snowy jessamine-flowers. And I gave you a spray of the blossoms, And said : "I shall never know How the hearts in the land are breaking, My dearest, unless you go." WASHINGTON, D. C. TO-DAY. AH, real thing of bloom and breath, I cannot love you while you stay. Put on the dim, still charm of death, Fade to a phantom, float away, And let me call you Yesterday ! TO-DAY. 173 Let empty flower-dust at my feet Remind me of the buds you wear ; Let the bird s quiet show how sweet The far-off singing made the air ; And let your dew through frost look fair. In mourning you I shall rejoice. Go : for the bitter word may be A music in the vanished voice ; And on the dead face I may see How bright its frown has been to me. Then in the haunted grass I 11 sit, Half tearful in your withered place, And watch your lovely shadow flit Across To-morrow s sunny face, And vex her with your perfect grace. So, real thing of bloom and breath, I weary of you while you stay. Put on the dim, still charm of death, Fade to a phantom, float away, And let me call you Yesterday ! u SHAPES OF A SOUL. WHITE with the starlight folded in its wings, And nestling timidly against your love, At this soft time of hushed and glimmering things, You call my soul a dove, a snowy dove. If I shall ask you in some shining hour, When bees and odours through the clear air pass You 11 say my soul buds as a small flushed flower, Far off, half-hiding, in the old home-grass. Ah, pretty names for pretty moods ; and you, Who love me, such sweet shapes as these can see But, take it from its sphere of bloom and dew, And where will then your bird or blossom be ? Could you but see it, by life s torrid light, Crouch in its sands and glare with fire-red wrath, My soul would seem a tiger, fierce and bright Among the trembling passions in its path. STONE FOR A STATUE. t 175 And, could you sometimes watch it coil and slide, And drag its colours through the dust a while, And hiss its poison under-foot, and hide, My soul would seem a snake Ah, do not smile ! Yet fiercer forms and darker it can wear ; No matter, though, when these are of the Past, If as a lamb in the Good Shepherd s care By the still waters it lie down at last. STONE FOE A STATUE. TO A SCULPTOR. LEAVE what is white for whiter use. For such a purpose as your own Would be a dreary jest, a coarse abuse, A bitter wrong to snowy stone. Let the pure marble s silence hold Its unshaped gods, and do not break Those hidden images divine and old, To-day, for one mean man s small sake ! "I WISH THAT I COULD GO." THEY who look backward always look through tears. So, very dimly, somewhere, I do see A door that opens into lonesome years, Furnished with dust and silence ! What can be Sadder than absence of fair household sights, Beloved pictures, warm and pleasant lights, In empty rooms where Does it call to me, That first child-voice which taught my life to know What music meant ? 11 1 wish that I could go." I turned and kissed her " You had better stay." She heard the wood-bells ring among the herds : "I want to see so many lambs to-day," She answered in her little piteous words, Sweetly half-said and tenderly half-guessed ; " You said there was one robin with a nest Up in the apple-flowers. I love the birds " I WISH THAT I COULD GO." 177 Ever so many times and you could show Me where they sleep. I wish that I could go." " It is too far. And here are butterflies j Look one two three. Go, catch them if you will." "I ve seen all these too much they hurt my eyes ! They re naughty things they never can be still ! I would not try to catch another one Here, in the yard, to save its life ! I d run After some pretty new ones on the hill Away off almost to the skies ! And, oh ! I d be so sweet. I wish that I could go." Nor was it only toward the clear white light, Led subtly on by many a violet, She would have followed me. The great fierce Night Might lie beside our cottage, black and wet, And make mad hungry noises. Still, if I Thought fit to pass it, her appealing cry (The same that haunts me, sorrowfully, yet) Was with me always most forlorn and slow : "If it is dark, I wish that I could go." 178 "I WISH THAT I COULD GO." " If it is dark ?" what was the Dark ? She knew. Just a brief bridge which others must have passed With a slight shiver, it might be into A glitter of lamps : a life whose heart beat fast Under sweet colours, jewels, music, all The showers of fairy gifts that, faerily, fall On some Strange City, where Oh ! faint and vast, Time lies behind, yet nearer seems to grow That eager sound : " I wish that I could go." It is in my own soul. Myself a child, Some ghostly doorway with my grief I fill ; Eager for blossoms beautiful and wild Just out of reach : eager to climb some hill, So far away and almost to the skies, And (tired of old ones) find new butterflies. Some One seems gone whom I would follow still. Across the Dark I see your charmed glow, Strange City, shine " I wish that I could go." COUNTING THE GKAVES. " How many graves are in this world ?" " Oh, child," His mother answered, " surely there are two." Archly he shook his pretty head and smiled : "I mean in this whole world, you know I do." " Well, then, in this whole world : in East and West In North and South, in dew and sand and snow, In all sad places where the dead may rest : There are two graves yes, there are two, I know." " But graves have been here for a thousand years, Or, for ten thousand ? Soldiers die, and kings ; And Christians die sometimes." "My own poor tears Have never yet been troubled by these things. . . . "More graves within the hollow ground, in sooth, Than there are stars in all the pleasant sky ? Where did you ever learn such dreary truth, Oh, wiser and less selfish far than 1 1 " 180 COUNTING THE GRAVES. " I did not know, I who had light and breath : Something to touch, to look at, if no more. Fair earth to live in, who believes in death, Till, dumb and blind, he lies at one s own door 1 ... "I did not know I may have heard or read Of more; but should I search the wide grass through, Lift every flower and every thorn," she said, " From every grave oh, I should see but two ! " A DEAD MAN S FRIENDS. [IN A HOUSE AT WASHINGTON.] GATHERED from many lands, A company still and strange, In the shadow of velvet and oak Not one to another spoke ; With faces that did not change, Weird with the night and dim, They were looking their last on him If ever men were wise, If ever women were fair, If ever glory was dust In a world of moth and rust, Why, this and these were there ; Guests of the great, ah, me, How cold is your courtesy ! Does the loveliest lady of all Drop Titian s light from her hair, Down into his darkened eyes, His, who in his coffin lies 1 182 HIS SHARE AND MINE. Does that crouching Venus care That he must forget the charm Of her broken beautiful arm 1 Yet these were the dead man s friends,- Wooed in his passionate youth, And won when his head was grey ; Look at them close, I pray. Ah, these he has loved, in sooth, Yet among them all, I fear, Is nothing so sweet as a tear ! HIS SHAKE AND MINE. HE went from me so softly and so soon, His sweet hands rest at morning and at noon ; The only task God gave them was to hold A few faint rosebuds and be white and cold. His share of flowers he took with him away ; No more will blossom here so fair as they. His share of thorns he left and, if they tear My hands instead of his, I do riot care. HIS SHARE AND MINE. 183 His sweet eyes were so clear and lovely, but To look into the world s wild light and shut : Down in the dust they have their share of sleep ; Their share of tears is left for me to weep. His sweet mouth had its share of kisses Oh ! What love, what anguish, will he ever know 1 Its share of thirst, and murmuring, and moan, And cries unsatisfied, shall be my own. He had his share of summer. Bird and dew Were here with him with him they vanished, too. His share of dying leaves, and rains, and frost, I take, with every dreary thing he lost. The phantom of the cloud he did not see For evermore shall overshadow me. He, in return, with small, still, snowy feet, Touched the Dim Path, and made its twilight sweet. THE BIRD IN THE BRAIN. IN a legend of the East there sits A bird with never a mate : Out of the dead man s brain it flits, Too late for a prayer, too late, Repeating all the sin Which the beating heart shut in. Little child of mine, that I kiss and fold, With your flower-like hand at my breast, Already within this head all gold That bird is building a nest ! May it give but one brief cry, Sweet, when you come to die. My lord, the king, that shadowy bird Broods under your crown, I fear ; Take care, sir priest, lest you whisper a word That Heaven were loth to hear : Ermine nor lawn will it spare ; Ah, king, ah, priest, take care ! THE BIRD IN THE BRAIN. 185 Oh, half-saint sister, so cloister-pale, That bird will be at your bier. Though you count your beads, though you wear your veil, Though you hold your cross right dear, When your funeral tapers come Will the weird of wing be dumb 1 Poor lover, beware of the bud of the rose In the maiden s hand at your side : She has some secret, the dark bird knows, Which her youth s fair hair can hide , Turn, maid, from your lover, too The bird knows more than you ! A PEETTIEE BOOK " HE has a prettier book than this/ 1 With many a sob between, he said ; Then left untouched the night s last kiss, And, sweet with sorrow, went to bed. A prettier book his brother had 1 Yet wonder-pictures were in each. The different colours made him sad ; The equal value could I teach ? Ah, who is wiser ? . . . Here we sit, Around the world s great hearth, and look, While Life s fire-shadows flash and flit, Each wistful in another s book. I see, through fierce and feverish tears, Only a darkened hut in mine ; Yet in my brother s book appears A palace where the torches shine. A PRETTIER BOOK. 187 A peasant, seeking bitter bread From the unwilling earth to wring, Is in my book ; the wine is red, There in my brother s, for the king. A wedding, where each wedding-guest Has wedding garments on, in his, In mine one face in awful rest, One coffin never shut, there is ! In his, on many a bridge of beams Between the faint moon and the grass, Dressed daintily in dews and dreams, The fleet midsummer fairies pass ; In mine unearthly mountains rise, Unearthly waters foam and roll, And stared at by its deathless eyes The master sells the fiend a soul ! . . . Put out the lights. We will not look At pictures any more. We weep, " My brother has a prettier book," And, after tears, we go to sleep. ASKING FOR TEARS. OH, let me come to Thee in this wild way, Fierce with a grief that will not sleep, to pray Of all Thy treasures, Father, only one, After which I may say Thy will be done. Nay, fear not Thou to make my time too sweet. I nurse a Sorrow, kiss its hands and feet, Call it all piteous, precious names, and try, Awake at night, to hush its helpless cry. The sand is at my moaning lip, the glare Of the uplifted desert fills the air ; My eyes are blind and burning, and the years Stretch on before me. Therefore, give me Tears ! "A LETTER FROM TO-MORROW." [THE WORDS OF A CHILD.] THE child stood sweet and shy : " Now listen, do not cry : 1 A Letter from To-morrow " he piteously said ; Then wavered, frowned, and blushed, And looked away and hushed The elfin voice that spoke through lips of human red. " I cannot read the rest," He prettily confessed, "Because it is not plain!" Ah, would I hear it read? Poor little hands, to hold A thing so dim and cold, So full of sad shorn hair and last words of the dead ! Let it go where it will, There must be news of ill Send it to that great house across the shining street: N 190 To-night, in lights and lace, There Madam holds her place, Brief as the foreign flowers that drop dead at her feet. Madonna-hair and eyes Remind one of the skies, (No other picture there more subtly hides its paint). Divinely of the earth ! That last dear dress from Worth Is too Parisian, perhaps, to fit a saint. This Letter s shadowy date, " To-morrow," folds her fate (Reach for it, eager arm, so beautiful and bare !) She reads : "Your hair is grey, And men forget the day Can you remember it 1 ? the day when you were fair ! He reads her stately lord, Out-glittering some chance sword, Or right new gold, perhaps, wherewith his name was made: " Taken as in a snare ! Called by a bird of the air To justice, go and give and take it, O betrayed !" " A LETTER FROM TO-MORROW." 191 Still keep the Letter there : His boy, the gracious heir To beauty, love, and hope a brave enough estate, Lets fall his toys and reads, "Wounded to death ! " and heeds. A coffin for white flowers stands ready at the gate. Give her the Letter see How fairy-sweet is she, His girl in her first youth ! She droops her flower- like head, To read no charmed tale Of bridal buds and veil ; But finds a broken ring and leave to earn her bread. Take, now, the Letter where There s music in the air, And let the poet read : " The worm likes well your book." Painter, if you are he, Master that is to be, Your name is not in all this Letter, only look ! Some scented page will bring This Letter to the king ; To-morrow will be smooth with him and loyal-sweet : 192 THE DEAD BOOK. " Your throne is shaken, sire Your palace lost in fire ; Your prince must hide with sand the far tracks of his feet !" Shut close your Letter, child. The wind is weird and wild I give it to the wind to bury in the sea, Full fathom five, and pray That till the Judgment Day No fisherman may bring such treasure up to me ! THE DEAD BOOK. AH, from the yellow pages Time has torn The wonder-pictures seen by clearer eyes, And from the withered words the soul is worn ! . . . Kiss the Dead Book, and leave it where it lies. Kiss the Dead Book, and leave it in its place Youth s breathless bloom and dusty dreams among. I read, where shining poems show no grace, This dreary line, " You are no longer young." SONGS. REPROOF TO A ROSE. SAD rose, foolish rose, Fading on the floor, Will he love you while he knows There are many more At the very door ? Sad rose, foolish rose, One among the rest : Each is lovely each that blows ; It must be confest None is loveliest. Sad rose, foolish rose, Had you known to wait, And with dead leaves or with snow Come alone and late Sweet had been your fate ! 196 WHEN THE FULL MOON S LIGHT IS BURNING. Sad rose, foolish rose, If no other grew In the wide world, I suppose My own lover, too, Would love only you I WHEN THE FULL MOON S LIGHT IS BUENING. WHEN the full moon s light is burning At its brightest, it is pleasant, Sometimes, blindly to sit yearning For the slightness of the crescent ; When the finished rose is shining In the sun with flushed completeness, For the vanished bud repining, Wilfully to miss its sweetness. THE SONG NO BIED SHOULD SING IN VAIN. THE song no bird should sing in vain, The song no bird will sing again, I did not hear until the fleet Air-singer lost it at my feet. The wind that blew the enchanted scent From some divine still continent, Beat long against my window, but It found and left my window shut. The king s fair son, who came in state, With my lost slipper, for its mate, I only saw through my regret Oh, I am in the ashes yet ! COME, WAILING WINDS; COME, BIEDS OF NIGHT. COME, wailing winds ; come, birds of night ; Come, Time, and bring the ivy vine To wind in constant clasp and bright This desolated pride of mine ; Come with your mildew and your mould For these rich draperies, these fair halls ; Come with your mosses, and enfold These humbled towers, these broken walls ! SAD SPEING-SONG. BLUSH and blow, blush and blow, Wind and wild-rose, if you will ; You are sweet enough, I know You are sweet enough, but, oh ! Lying lonely, lying low, There is something sweeter still Come and go, come and go, Suns of morning, moons of night ; You are fair enough, I know You are fair enough, but oh 1 Hidden darkly, hidden low, Lies the light that gave you light. SAY THE SWEET WOEDS. SAY the sweet words, say them soon You have said the bitter, Changed to tears, by this still moon You may see them glitter. Say the sweet words soon, I pray Mine is piteous pleading : Haste to draw the steel away, Though the wound keep bleeding. FULFILMENT. HE who can sing a song more sweet Than skylarks learn in finest air, Hears subtler music at his feet Hum in the grass at his despair. He who has found a sudden star, With new, quick halos for his head, Sighs for some brighter one afar, That sits for ever veiled, instead. He who has dared, though half-afraid, To make such beauty of the stone As God from dust has never made, At last looks on it with a moan. And she who wears such threads of lace As fairies might from moonshine spin, Will find, if any flower she trace, The loveliest leaf was not put in. 202 GOOD-BYE. Yet holds this world one perfect thing, That leaves no room to weep or pine ; You gave it to me with a ring, To be for ever only mine GOOD-BYE. [A WOMAN S SONG.] GOOD-BYE, if it please you, sir, good-bye. This is a world where the wild-swans fly. This is a world where the thorn hangs on When the rose, its twin, is gone, is gone. Good-bye good-bye good-bye. Good-bye, if it please you, sir, good-bye. You are here and away I care not why. This is a world where a man has his will, A world where a woman had best be still. Good-bye good-bye good-bye. LIFE AND DEATH. IF I had chosen, my tears had all been dews ; I would have drawn a bird s or blossom s breath, Nor outmoaned yonder dove. I did not choose And here is Life for me, and there is Death. Ay, here is Life. Bloom for me, violet ; Whisper me, Love, all things that are not true ; Sing, nightingale and lark, till I forget For here is Life, and I have need of you. So, there is Death. Fade, violet, from the land ; Cease from your singing, nightingale and lark ; Forsake me, Love, for I without your hand Can find my way more surely to the dark. MAKING PEACE. AFTER this feud of yours and mine The sun will shine ; After we both forget, forget, The sun will set. I pray you think how warm and sweet The heart can beat ; I pray you think how soon the rose From grave-dust grows. SStxi&erst tg T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY. 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