% m..
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
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 cu^ 
 
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 SELECTED POEMS
 
 Uniform with SELECTED POEIMS from 
 THE Works of the Hon. RODEN NOEL 
 
 MY SEA, AND OTHER POEMS. By the 
 
 late Hon. Poden Kof.L. With an introduction by 
 Stanley ADDLESHAW. Vignette and cover design 
 by Charles G. Harper. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 Mr. Addleshaw thinks that NOEL will rank with 
 the greatest of his contemporaries as a nature poet. 
 But perhaps it was the sea which inspired him with 
 his finest thoughts, and besides the opening poem, 
 several of the pieces in this volume treat of that 
 subject. Noel was also an admirer and a singer of 
 deeds of daring, and of that there is evidence m a 
 poem given here under the title, " Isandula." .... 
 
 "The name of the title-poem will arouse eager 
 expectations; for the ocean, with its wonder, its 
 mystery, its buoyant turbulence, was one of the two 
 themes in the celebration of which the poet's inspira- 
 tion knew no obstacle or check. Perhaps no verse- 
 man of our time and I do not forget certain lyrics 
 of Mr. Swinburne's, or certain passages in Browning — 
 has been more successful than Mr. NOEL in rendering 
 the lif« and passion of nature as that life and passion 
 are manifested in the eternal activity of ' the uupiumbed 
 salt, estranging sea.' .... Mr. NOEL had much of 
 the emotional force of his kinsman. Lord Byron, as 
 well as of the insight into the spiritual meaning of 
 nature to which Byron could make no claim." 
 
 Mr. A. E. Fletcher. 
 
 London: ELKIN MATHEWS, Vigo Street.
 
 
 % 
 
 m 
 
 FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY HOLLVER 
 
 OF THE DRAWING BY RICHMOND.
 
 Selected Poems 
 
 FROM THE WORKS OF 
 
 THE HON. RODEN NOEL 
 
 WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL 
 AND CRITICAL ESSAY 
 BY PERCY ADDLESHAW 
 
 WITH TWO PORTRAITS 
 
 LONDON: ELKIN MATHEWS 
 MDCCCXCVII
 
 All Rights Reserved
 
 
 To 
 The lady \'ICT0RIA BUXTON 
 
 I DEDICATE 
 
 MY SHARE IN THIS VOLUME 
 
 UNDERTAKEN AT HER REQUEST 
 
 8G6730
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE- Xi 
 
 AT HIS GRAVE 45 
 
 LAMENT 48 
 
 DARK SPRING 50 
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 52 
 
 A TOMB AT PALMYRA 56 
 
 DEAD 58 
 
 THE KING AND THE PEASA:.'T .... 62 
 
 "A MILK-WHITE BLOOMED ACACIA TREE" . . 64 
 
 MOUNTAIN LYRIC 65 
 
 EARLY PRIMROSE 67 
 
 SLEEP 69 
 
 IN THE CORSICAN HIGHLANDS . . . . 7 1 
 
 ONLY A LITTLE CHILD 78 
 
 god's CHILD 82 
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 84 
 
 NATURE AND THE DEAD 95 
 
 THE TOY CROSS lOI 
 
 AZRAEL 102 
 
 vii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A SOUTHERN SPRING CAROL Io8 
 
 ALL SAINTS, AND ALL SOULS II 5 
 
 VISION OF THE NIGHT II 8 
 
 IN LONDON 119 
 
 DEATH 124 
 
 &uardian angels of children . . . . 1 27 
 last victims from the wreck of the 
 
 "princess alice" 1 32 
 
 children and the woods 137 
 
 bead me where the lily blows . . . i40 
 
 "that they all may be one". . . . 1 43 
 
 christmas eve 1 45 
 
 "the cloud may sail there" . , . . 1 48 
 
 "the desert shall blossom as the rose" . 15o 
 
 flower to flowter 1 53 
 
 vale! 156 
 
 the water-nymph and the boy . . . i58 
 
 a vision of the desert 1 68 
 
 suspiria 180 
 
 wild love on the sea 193 
 
 nocturne 196 
 
 "ah! love YE ONE ANOTHER WELL ! " . . 1 98 
 
 VUl
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PORTRAIT OF RODEN NOEL FROM A PHOTOGRAPH 
 
 BY HOLLYER OF THE DRAWING 
 
 BY RICHMOND 
 
 DITTO, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MENDELSSOHN
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It is related of Christian that as he drew near 
 to the House Beautiful "he entered into a very 
 narrow passage .... and looking very narrowly 
 before him as he went, he espied two lions in 
 the way." Fortunately, as he pondered the ad- 
 visability of retreating, he was reassured by Watch- 
 ful crying out that the beasts were chained. I 
 venture on the task of writing a preface to this 
 collection of lyrics with feelings much the same as 
 Christian's wh en the supposed danger first threatened 
 him ; but I know the two lions that eye my path 
 are neither chained nor easily avoided. To speak 
 plainly, it is over difficult to write concerning the 
 
 xi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 work of a friend in such a manner as to be at 
 once critical and just. There is for instance a 
 temptation to overpraise, especially if the work 
 noticed lack its full share of popularity. And it 
 often happens that readers led on by the critic's 
 enthusiasm are apt to become disgusted when the 
 high hopes raised are not realized, to ignore real 
 merit if it seem to fall short of the most exalted 
 standard. Thus is a grave injustice done to 
 him and them. But if this error be avoided 
 there is yet another and more fatal one. The 
 attempt to be sternly moderate, to allow all 
 objections more than their due weight, may 
 perhaps lead students to draw the conclusion 
 that the poet or essayist is after all of no great 
 importance. Thus again, and this time more 
 seriously, because more permanently, is a great 
 injustice done to him and them. I do not pretend 
 to have avoided the difficulties that I have so 
 keenly feared . Sins of omission and commission are 
 mine ; but I have striven zealously andean only hope, 
 now, that I have been in some measure successful. 
 For Roden Noel was a man to whom I owed 
 much, a man whom no one could meet without 
 
 xii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 being in some degree his debtor. The digiiity, 
 courtesy, and charm of his manner were delightful 
 and unusual ; his conversation was always interesting, 
 learned, and thoughtful, yet never dogmatic or 
 patronising. In a word he was the best of teachers 
 because he was the most gentle and appreciative of 
 listeners. His faults were those of a child, perhaps 
 a spoilt child, but the nobility of his character 
 made it an easy matter to forgive the defects, 
 such as they were. Indeed, they were often only 
 a cause for amusement among his friends, and 
 Noel himself had the spirit to join in and en- 
 courage the laughter. Though his writings are 
 surprisingly destitute of humour, his talk was 
 sparkling enough, and he could tell an anecdote 
 with real dramatic effect. As a reader too, he 
 had a strange power over his hearers. His was 
 the Siddons tradition, and through Lord Gains- 
 borough he had caught the " great " style as a 
 reciter of verse. These early lessons in reading 
 from his father had an effect on his own work. 
 He tested its rhythm by its speaking qualities 
 and would read a poem aloud several times, 
 noting where the voice failed to sustain the 
 
 xiii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 music designed, and altering those defects his ear 
 detected in the spoken sounds. He could move 
 a large audience by the recitation of a few lines 
 of verse in a way many an experienced actor 
 might envy. I shall not readily forget hearing 
 him read one summer night " Wild Love on the 
 Sea", a poem written while he was the guest of 
 my brother and myself at a tiny cottage on the 
 south coast of Cornwall. His voice seemed to 
 have caught the very thunder and hiss of the 
 waves that we heard dashing on the rocks below 
 the cliffs. Even now, looking at the printed page, 
 I can still hear him declaiming the triumphant 
 boast of the demon-lover: 
 
 " Ho, with storm to the windward, and breakers to lee, 
 They go swimming with Death who go swimming with me." 
 
 Much of Noel's poetry may have a magic for 
 me, and others of his friends, that it can never 
 possess for those who were strangers to the man 
 himself. What may seem rugged, uncouth, to 
 them is melodious, significant, to us who still hear 
 in many a stanza the wonderful music of that 
 voice now, alas, silent. 
 
 Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel was the third 
 
 xiv
 
 PREFACE 
 
 son of the Earl of Gainsborough. His mother 
 was a daughter of the Earl of Roden, an ardent 
 Protestant, and Head of the Orange-men in Ire- 
 land. He was bom in 1834 and was educated 
 at Harrow and Trinity, Cambridge, graduating 
 M.A. 1858. He was intended for the church 
 and it was expected that he would succeed to a 
 living in the family gift. On leaving the University 
 he still acceded to this plan. But the two years 
 he spent in Egypt and Palestine turned his 
 thoughts in other directions, and, greatly to the 
 regret of his family, he abandoned all idea of 
 taking holy orders. While lying dangerously ill 
 at Beyrout, he was nursed by Madame de Broe, 
 whose daughter he afterwards married. It was 
 necessary to do something for a living, and for 
 a time he worked at a business in the city. As 
 a business man he was ludicrously incapable, 
 lacking both the training and qualifications that 
 command success. By the influence of his mother, 
 who was lady-in-waiting to the Queen from the 
 time of Her Majesty's accession till 1873, he 
 became a groom of the Privy Chamber, an office 
 he held for some years. But conscientious scru- 
 
 XV
 
 PREFACE 
 
 pies again came between him and his worldly 
 comfort, his leanings towards radical and, later 
 on, even socialistic teachings grew more pronounced . 
 Though his reverent affection for, and loyalty to, 
 the Queen never wavered, he felt that he must 
 resign. Noel was a man, though, who faced dif- 
 ficulties with courage, swerved not at all from 
 that which to him was right and honourable. For 
 the rest his days were passed quietly, unevent- 
 fully, in England, Italy, and the Riviera. Latterly 
 he lived at Brighton. The real events of his 
 life, as he would have considered them, were his 
 gradual changes of opinion on religious and social- 
 istic questions, his literary work, and the weaning 
 of himself from prejudices, the inevitable outcome 
 of his aristocratic training and position. This last 
 was a hard and often bitter task, as he frequently 
 confessed. 
 
 His writings were in great part a commentary 
 on his own life. He did not believe in simulating 
 emotions, inventing experiences in order that he 
 might compose elegant or passionate verses about 
 them. He had a horror of " merely got up sub- 
 jects". Although delighting in a purely intellec- 
 
 xvi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 tual life, he often declared that " to live is above 
 writing about it " . He was conscious of the dangers 
 that threatened in the studies he ardently pursued. 
 Browning's work suffered, as he confessed, owing 
 to the " omnivorous learning " of the poet of 
 " Pippa " : a learning not always " subordinate to 
 poetic ends ". Unfortunately he entangled himself 
 in a similar snare more than once, so that a good 
 deal of his poetry was strangled at its birth. It 
 might have been expected that his two years in 
 the East would have given him a clearer utter- 
 ance as well as a larger vocabulary. His oriental 
 poems, it is true, are richly coloured, full of de- 
 scriptions accurate and brilliant. One of their 
 most ardent admirers was Tennyson, who declared 
 of " Azrael " that it was " very lovely " and wrote 
 of the "Vision of the Desert," "It is one of the 
 finest things I have ever read." Tennyson sent 
 for Noel after he had read these eastern poems, 
 and gave the younger writer much advice and 
 encouragement. " You don't mind my saying all 
 this?" he asked at the end of the interview — "I 
 should not do it if I did not think it worth while. 
 Coleridge did exactly the same for me when I 
 B xvii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 was beginning." Years after, not long before his 
 death, Tennyson wrote " you are no minor poet . . . 
 Your book is full of true poetry, not concentration 
 enough perhaps." The fault thus noted by the 
 greater poet was certainly fostered by Noel's eastern 
 voyages. 
 
 The splendour of the East seemed to demand 
 a magnificence of language which Noel endeavoured 
 to attain by means not altogether fortunate. A 
 long review of Beatrice in the Pall Mall Gazette 
 of Feb. 9th 1869, while praising cordially such 
 poems as " Ganymede " and " Palmyra ", which are 
 ranked among the highest poetry, lays due stress 
 on the danger he ran from his " agglutinative use 
 of epithets." The criticism was deserved, it was 
 only in his very latest work that he managed to 
 shake off the trick. But on the other hand Noel 
 gained much by his travels. Both thought and 
 vocabulary were perceptibly enlarged. It needed 
 just this contact with men of other creeds, this 
 sight of other lands and customs to destroy the 
 narrow Calvinistic creed that would have crushed, 
 inevitably, much of his best poetry; would have 
 condemned and stifled the inspiration that gave 
 
 xviii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 birth to " Mancheres" or " The Water- Nymph and 
 the Boy." What the intellectual life at Cambridge 
 had failed to do, his wanderings accomplished, and 
 the result was a great literary gain, though from 
 a spiritual aspect the change for the better was 
 not quite so evident at first. Here it is enough 
 to show that for good or evil his eastern ex- 
 periences gave him a direct impetus, a peculiar 
 manner, which he never got rid of, nor indeed 
 wished to get rid of. Henceforth the " mere joy 
 of living " was a real healthy delight to him. The 
 first step towards true happiness and knowledge 
 was thus gained : the rest was to come later. 
 
 From 1867 to 1871 Noel was a groom of the 
 Privy Chamber, and was probably better off, 
 materially, than at any time of his life. His 
 duties, if not altogether to his taste, even from 
 the first, were light, and left him plenty of time 
 for literary work. The letters he wrote at this 
 period were full of discussions on books, philos- 
 ophies, and political events. Gradually he became 
 more and more advanced in his political opinions. 
 The Franco-German war, the terrible events in 
 Paris that followed it, rivetted his attention. As 
 
 xix
 
 PREFACE 
 
 one who had known the Emperor he was interested 
 in the fortunes of the third Napoleon, but it was 
 the sufferings of the mob that called most for 
 his sympathy. One result of his study was to 
 spur him to a minute inspection of the London 
 streets; the terrible condition of the poor preyed 
 heavily on his mind. He deserted Palmyra to 
 discover Whitechapel. Pity for the misery that 
 jogged elbows with so much useless luxury, in- 
 dignation at the frequent injustices made in the 
 name of a sham freedom, stirred his wrath . He 
 published at this time The Red Flag, a bitter 
 satire with the refrain : 
 
 "There is Peace in London." 
 
 From this period his interest on the toiling 
 masses and above all in the children, became one 
 of the chief concerns of his life. Henceforth 
 much of his poetry is indignant satire or tender 
 appealings for the oppressed poor. The great 
 lesson he learned from the war may be summed 
 up in his grim commentary on England's boasted 
 happiness and freedom. 
 
 "The lonely toiler, gasping for some air, 
 Listens in shadowy poison of the stair, 
 XX
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Listens, a wounded beast within his lair 
 .... And there is Peace in London." 
 
 Now and henceforth the sorrows and burdens 
 of the poor cast a great shadow over his own 
 life, as all who knew him can testify. The proper, 
 though necessarily rather selfish, impulse to earn 
 a name for himself, common to all young writers, 
 was changed into the desire to use what powers 
 he had at his command for the furtherance of 
 the well-being of those unfortunates on whom the 
 cruelty of the world told most terribly. Nor was 
 he content to write; he worked zealously to ad- 
 vance his ends, often beyond his strength. Never 
 a rich man, he could give little but his labour, 
 and that he gave willingly. The result was not 
 altogether good for his literary work, because he 
 subjugated his art too severely to his moral code. 
 He gave up, for example, a long cherished plan 
 of writing " A Triumph of Bacchus," as ill-befitting 
 his new mission. No day now passed without 
 the pushing forward of some scheme for the 
 benefit of others. The tone and manner of his 
 work reflected his fierce and militant sympathy. 
 His writing was never divorced from his every- 
 
 xxi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 day life; the building of a cabman's shelter at 
 Penge, the carrying of toys to a children's 
 hospital, the founding of a branch of the S.P.C.A. 
 at San Remo, were as important as the completion 
 of a poem or essay. His written work indeed 
 was the record of the life he tried bravely with 
 all his strength to live. Once in a letter to a 
 friend he wrote " Definite vision and intense 
 emotion seem to me the first requisites of a poet. " 
 He had seized now his definite vision ; the intense 
 emotion told on his health. He wrote with his 
 life's blood, and, whatever its faults, work so 
 written has a great value. He answered, with 
 anger even, a correspondent who had suggested 
 that " A Poor People's Christmas " could not, 
 because of its subject matter, be considered poetry. 
 A curious result of his newly-stirred sympathies 
 was the forgetting, or wilful ignoring, of much of 
 his nicely reasoned philosophy. Whereas he had 
 been wont to state reasons and draw vague con- 
 clusions, he now stuck to facts and declared 
 them to be a disgrace to the national character, 
 evils that ruined the nation's health. If his own 
 remedies were not faultless his personal endeavours 
 
 xxii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 were honest, unwearied, unselfish: his own life 
 was the nobler for his devotion and zeal. It did 
 not occur to him that some of the misery in the 
 world was the direct result of folly and crime. 
 He chose rather, to blame our modern civilization 
 for all the squalor he saw around him ; the greed 
 of kings and nobles, the avarice, folly and self- 
 ishness of society in general. So he launched a 
 series of satirical poems, savage, courageous, ter- 
 rible. He was determined that some one should 
 be whipped for the wrongs inflicted on the weak. 
 His abuse was indiscriminate, his invectives unjust. 
 Indeed, owing to their exceeding vehemence his 
 satires lost not a little of their force. He struck 
 always with a bludgeon, forgetting that the rapier 
 is the deadlier weapon. Yet one admires the 
 writer, though it is not at these moments one likes 
 him best. At the same time it is but justice to add 
 that he sometimes managed to slay his enemy with 
 admirable dexterity. If he could not emulate 
 Pope he proved more than once an apt pupil of 
 Dryden. Those in need of vigorous and terse 
 epigrams will find plenty to their hand in some 
 of Noel's stinging couplets. Once read they have 
 
 xxiii
 
 PREFACE 
 the buiT-like quality of sticking. Very slight 
 efforts of memory are required to bring them into 
 play. This is a further, and unanswerable, sign 
 that they possess real merit and distinction. What 
 could be happier than this couplet on the doc- 
 trines of Malthus, Mill, and other economists, 
 parodying that famous old panegyric on his own 
 class ? 
 
 " Perish the human race to verify 
 Our pet political economy." 
 
 And though the Church of England has been 
 busy setting her house in order these latter days, 
 there is still some timely truth and a good deal 
 of rough literary merit in these lines. 
 
 "Now 'tis a Dean who, as he ambles by, 
 Raises a question of church milUnery, 
 Or, in allusion to the squalid street, 
 Observes that, howsoever God may mete 
 The lot of each, all shoiild be docile; which 
 One may name ' Gospel according to the rich.' 
 If there were no starvation for the mean, 
 SuppUes might fail us for a portly Dean." 
 
 Here it always seems to me we have an excel- 
 lent commentar}^ on Sidney Smith's assertion that 
 
 xxiv
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ours is a " country where poverty is infamous". 
 A doctrine firmly believed by most of us, and 
 one Noel was often at pains to combat. Of 
 course, however brilliant and poignant satire may 
 be, there is no form of literary expression that 
 dies more quickly. Notable exceptions may be 
 quoted readily enough, but I think my proposition 
 is practically unchallenged. Nor, indeed, could 
 we well expect any other fate for the majority 
 of poems that attack and quiz a state of things 
 that will be altered by time, a fashion that is 
 fleeting, an abuse remedied by age. So it is 
 that men of even rare ability, such as Churchill, 
 have now a plentiful lack of readers. One regrets, 
 now and again, that Noel wrote so much in this 
 form. The idea comes to us that he might 
 better have employed the time so spent in polish- 
 ing and strengthening his poems of philosophy, 
 nature and imagination. 
 
 I expect, though, that Noel's satires are the 
 proper complement of his tenderer verses in praise 
 of heroism, faith, and kindness among the humble. 
 The man who grows most angry at an abuse is 
 likely to proclaim a merit the more eagerly. He 
 
 XXV
 
 PREFACE 
 
 who attacks an enemy without fear is ever the 
 best lover and friend. 
 
 It was that he might more honourably attack 
 the enemy that he had resigned his position at 
 Court. Lady Gainsborough in vain endeavoured 
 to dissuade him : and it hurt him keenly to dis- 
 tress the mother whom he loved so passionately. 
 A weaker man would have hesitated, but his 
 determination was fixed. He decided that it was 
 his duty not only to direct his pen towards the 
 nobler uses he dreamed of, but as he colloqui- 
 ally put it " to find most of the butter for his 
 bread". Regrets, fortunately, he had none, he 
 was content to risk being poorer if he could 
 make others happier. 
 
 I well remember his telling me about the whole 
 matter one hot day in August in Cornwall. We 
 were resting near the cliffs looking over the blue 
 sea he loved, and we could hear the waves dashing 
 on the grim rocks below us. It was not many 
 months before his death, and he had confessed 
 already to certain signs that warned him he was 
 near his end. Therefore he spoke solemnly but 
 with full confidence in the rightness of his conduct 
 
 xxvi
 
 PREF AC E 
 
 and a little sorrowfully of unaccomplished things, 
 blaming himself severely for many failures that 
 to the less eager had seemed inevitable from the 
 first. The very words he spoke to me are almost 
 identical with a passage in a letter of his written 
 to Professor Sidgwick in 1863. A man does not 
 readily change the expression of an article of his 
 faith. " Intellect is not the most divine element 
 in my creed, it is love. Therefore Christ and not 
 Goethe is the ideal of humanity, the point where 
 the divine most fully saturates the human — i.e. 
 the Son of God to whom we shall strive to be 
 conformed. But to Him all that was human was 
 sacred .... It is plain that if Goethism is right 
 we should have a series of isolated, well-cultivated 
 human units, only working for society where it is 
 clearly seen to be to their interest, but self being 
 the end of all. If Christ's spirit is right, Love 
 and universal sympathy with all good would 
 actuate each and unite each to all by an indis- 
 soluble bond .... That one may be fitted to 
 be the instrument of good one must cultivate 
 oneself. And one must have that genuine sym- 
 pathy which prompts us to put ourselves in their 
 
 xxvii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 position, to share their infirmities, put up with 
 their imperfections, and oppose only their want 
 of love." 
 
 Among all democrats the name of Roden Noel 
 should be worthily esteemed. He gave up much 
 that brings credit and comfort, to help such as 
 needed help. Whether he always spoke and 
 acted discreetly is a small matter: he had at any 
 rate gained the right to speak and act. As he 
 said of Livingstone, he too 
 
 " Lent a large heart to small perplexities 
 And simple tales of hourly human woe." 
 
 An almost Quixotic desire to destroy the 
 world's evils grew stronger with each of his 
 remaining twenty years. He had made no empty 
 and high-sounding vow, he was not content with 
 words of good courage. He tried by zealous 
 work, often at useful objects scorned of the 
 noisier philanthropist, to leave the world better 
 than he found it. His intellectual studies were of 
 the hardest. The list of books he read is enormous 
 and strangely varied. So he soon realized, though 
 probably tutored by his heart quite as much as 
 
 xxviii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 by his head, that the only method of reclaiming 
 the world with any prospect of permanent success 
 was by protecting, educating, and caring for the 
 children. He had long laboured actively among 
 the children of the lower classes, had bidden 
 successfully for their love. Now his pen was to 
 work for them too with such .skill and eloquence 
 as he could command. His sympathy with all 
 sufferers, his anxiety concerning the welfare of 
 the elder poor did not diminish. Only he had 
 come to half understand that the terrible curse 
 weighing upon them could not be lifted by human 
 hands. The little ones, "God's litde ones", 
 whom he once called, with an arrogance surely 
 noble, "my little ones", seemed well within hu- 
 man power to aid. Therefore he ministered to 
 them assiduously, visiting their hospitals and play- 
 grounds, pleading for them in speech and poem. 
 It is a curious fact that most of his child poems 
 date from the time when he resigned his court 
 appointment. Henceforth his tenderest ambition 
 was to see his children's children, 
 
 "Play like a last dear dawn around his age". 
 
 There is about all his poems of child-life a 
 
 xxix
 
 PREPACK 
 
 curiously bald simplicity, unconsciously almost 
 humorous, yet pathetic despite, or may be because 
 of the humour, that gives them a conspicuous 
 value. Moreover in them the critic cannot dub 
 the poet wayward and difficult to understand. 
 Their charm once realized they remain with one 
 always, not easy to forget ; to some of us forget- 
 fulness were not only difficult but impossible. 
 One of the most haunting of these poems occurs 
 in Book 3. of ^ Moderii Faust. It strikes the 
 note of his attitude towards the future of the 
 world. He knew no pleasanter, cheerier sound 
 than that of " the younger generation knocking at 
 the door." The tenderness and gentleness, that 
 endeared him to his friends, are emphasized in 
 his prophecy that hereafter the children shall 
 greet even the cruel " with forgiving kiss ". 
 
 To a man of Noel's character and training, 
 religion and philosophy concerned him greatly. 
 Bred in the stern school of Calvin, even in his 
 later years, when he cherished other and kindlier 
 dogmas, he could still declare " I have never got 
 over my Calvinistic education which taught me 
 to disbelieve in " free-will ", as it is usually defined 
 
 XXX
 
 PREFACE 
 
 by philosophers. " Man only becomes free when 
 he realises his divine sonship and becomes an 
 unerring law and impulse to himself." His love 
 of children above all else brought him to a 
 healthier attitude than that in which he was 
 reared. He pinned his faith to the maxim that 
 man must have a religion, and the uncompro- 
 mising hostility to religion was the only reason, he 
 said, that alienated his sympathies from the 
 Commune. Yet he too lost his hold on any 
 tangible faith, regarding Christ as one to be 
 revered because of the beauty of his life, but 
 never prayed to, as He had gone the way of all 
 flesh. The misery he saw in the world was for 
 a time a masterful argument, with him, against 
 all creeds. But he returned to his belief in 
 Christianity, led by the hand of a little dead 
 child: out of evil came good, the great grief was, 
 as he recognised at last, the great blessing. But 
 his little son's death was a blow under which 
 he staggered for long. Faithless, hopeless, believ- 
 ing that his "little Eric was put out altogether," 
 he felt as if he were going mad. " For more 
 than a year I cared for nothing, not literature, 
 
 xxxi
 
 PREF AC E 
 
 not even nature; yet Nature was something to 
 me even then, I suppose, for I went alone to 
 Sark and swam a great deal in the sea among 
 the wonderful caves." During this weary year 
 he turned again to the philosophers seeking 
 comfort, and found it " unwittingly " in the New 
 Testament. It was at this time he wrote the 
 series of poems called A Little Child's Monu- 
 ment, his most enduring title to remembrance. 
 The early poems are despairing, the latter gravely 
 glad. There is in the volume none of that full 
 flood of words, that often turgid eloquence, that 
 involved meaning, noticeable in his other books. 
 Each poem of the series is simple, poignant, 
 eloquent. There are pages in it hard to read 
 aloud with a steady voice, pages that hurt one 
 with the anguish they portray : others that console 
 and cause the unthinking to reflect. The style 
 is stronger, because of its simplicity. The poems 
 which had won the approval of Saint Beuve, 
 with all their beauties, their descriptions of na- 
 ture and arguments on philosophies and systems, 
 lacked the moving sincerity of these memorial 
 verses. It is possible, as an able critic has said, 
 
 xxxii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 that their strange merit, their unique beauty " may 
 easily miss us at first, but it is no less true that 
 these quaHties inevitably find us out at last, in 
 virtue of the ver}^ straightness and sureness of 
 their imaginative aim." 
 
 Naturally comparison was provoked with Tenny- 
 son's great memorial poem. Nor has A Little 
 Child's Monument, save by a few, been ranked 
 on a level with the elder poet's tribute to the 
 dead. The comparison is not of my seeking, 
 for comparisons are more often than not mislead- 
 ing. Nor does there seem any valid reason 
 why they should have been compared. Beyond 
 the fact that both are lamentations they have 
 nothing in common. The grace, the ease, the 
 subtle harmony of Tennyson were denied to 
 Noel. But there is more of sincerity, a more 
 spontaneous outpouring of grief in A Little Child's 
 Momiment than we find in the late laureate's 
 work. Tennyson gives one the idea of having 
 nursed his sorrow so assiduously that it became 
 a positive luxury. He twisted his sentences, 
 polished his lines, wove his graceful melodies 
 with a dainty care repugnant to poignant grief. 
 C xxxiii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Though we know how well Tennyson loved his 
 friend, though we admire the beauty of his poem, 
 we read it with dry eyes. We admire it for 
 its exquisite fancies, its clever epithets and happy 
 phrases: but as an expression of grief it fails 
 to move us. On the other hand Noel's work 
 truly voices his woe, and perchance for that very 
 reason is at times almost inarticulate. 
 
 "Nature was something to me even then, I 
 suppose". Clearly nature was much to him, more 
 than she had ever been before. In no other 
 poems of his are there finer descriptions of 
 mountain, cloud, and sea : in no other poems so 
 clear a perception of nature's mystery and laws. 
 The frank gushing enthusiasm of early years that 
 " rapture of strong youth's acclaim", gives place 
 to a tender reverence for, a worshipful solem- 
 nity in the presence of, such a sight as 
 
 "Monte d'Oro, 
 His spirit robes far floating, a dim grey, 
 Sombre with forests, pallid with the moon, 
 His kingly crest snow-gleaming to the stars." 
 
 The religious side of Noel's character, always 
 active, dominated in his later years all other 
 
 xxxiv
 
 P REF ACE 
 
 feelings and sentiments. He was at one with 
 Dr. Johnson in believing " that there must be 
 either a natural or a moral stupidity if one lives 
 in neglect of so very important a concern." He 
 could now look the world fully in the face, for- 
 tified by the new knowledge so hardly earned. 
 Of course how far poetry may be regarded as a 
 fit vehicle for philosophic and religious expression 
 is a moot point. But it cannot be shirked by 
 anyone trying to estimate the value of Noel's 
 output. Much of it indubitably suffers heavily. 
 There certainly ought to be an appearance of 
 spontaneity about poetry that is difficult of attain- 
 ment when the accurate reasoning of the logician 
 is attempted: both verse and logic are likely to 
 be of the poorest. But there is no doubt that 
 the deeper emotions and those profound truths 
 that cannot be argued about, only asserted and 
 felt, are fit subjects for poetry. Indeed poetry 
 alone should touch them. And I think that Noel 
 at his best understood this theory and accepted 
 it. There is not so much reasoning as affirmation 
 about the verities his study of the sea, the moun- 
 tains, human nature, compelled him to proclaim. 
 
 XXXV
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It was with conclusions only that his later poems 
 chiefly concerned themselves, he was content to 
 reason in prose. And those conclusions he stated 
 emphatically in that form which he conceived to 
 be the highest and most enduring type of human 
 speech. Concerning his philosophy and his poetry 
 a wise and famous critic has written as follows: 
 "The philosophy which distinguished Mr. Noel 
 among his brother poets is better adapted, I think, 
 to the medium of verse than prose exposition, 
 and in A Modem Faust it reaches final expression. 
 To characterise it by any single term is difficult. 
 One might venture to call it uncompromising 
 idealism. The Universe appears to Mr. Noel, 
 as to Giordano Bruno, a God— penetrated unity. 
 Nothing is real except spirit, and all is spirit. 
 No one has felt the world-pain, the agony of sin, 
 the cruel curse of evil more acutely. No pessi- 
 mist, not Leopardi nor James Thomson, has 
 depicted what men and women suffer, with such 
 poignant realism, such tender sympathy. Unlike 
 metaphysicians he deals with no mere abstractions. 
 His grasp upon the concrete is even more remark- 
 able than his habit of looking beyond and through. 
 
 xxxvi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 the concrete to its substratum. In like manner 
 his familiarity with speculative problems does not 
 make him a mere visionary. The poet's eye for col- 
 our, shape, all things of sense, remains undimmed. 
 To some tastes, indeed, his descriptions of natural 
 joy, his appreciation of the voluptuous and gorge- 
 ous will appear extravagant . . . With the same 
 keen sense of reality he feels the pure, the tender, 
 the pathetic, the holy things of life; the heroism 
 of brave men and martyrs, the sublime beauty 
 of the loving, suffering Christ, the saintliness of 
 noble women, the saving innocence of children. 
 What constitutes this poet incommensurable is 
 the extraordinary range of his sympathies, the 
 justice of his touch upon so many diverse aspects 
 of the outer and inner world, his combination of 
 idealistic philosophy with artistic realism. It is 
 easier to describe disorder than order in the 
 world, when we are dealing, not with its physical 
 laws but with its moral aspects. Yet the ethical 
 value of Mr. Noel's work consists in the fact 
 that he holds firmly to the belief that the 
 everlasting No is illusion, the everlasting Yea 
 reality; and he contrives by the force of his 
 
 xxxvii
 
 PREFACE 
 utterance to bring this belief home to our intel- 
 
 hgence. 
 
 I can do no good by repeating, less ably, so 
 complete and condensed a criticism of the ethical 
 value of Noel's verse. There is a couplet at the 
 close of one of the noblest poems Noel ever 
 wrote which sums up in brief all his beliefs and 
 hopes. It is the key-note of his later thoughts 
 and speculations. 
 
 "We lie within the tomb of our dead selves 
 Waiting till one command us to arise." 
 
 But with the last line of the paragraph we 
 come to the question of the poet's style, and it 
 cannot be dismissed in the words " force of his 
 utterance ". That he was an artist is unfortunately 
 not nearly so certain. Matter is possibly more 
 than manner, but manner is of vast importance ; 
 and many of his obscurities had been clear enough 
 with defter handling. But however hard a man's 
 work may be to grasp, however alien from our 
 sympathies his methods, if he strive seriously and 
 honestly he is entitled to careful study on the 
 part of such as would play the critic. Refusing 
 
 xxxviii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 to bestow the required attention is to put one- 
 self out of court. This is surely common sense, 
 decently just; yet it is a rule often honoured in 
 the breach. To declare that Noel did not care 
 about style would be to betray oneself impetuous, 
 unobservant. He cared a great deal for, and sought 
 patiently after, adequate expression. True, the 
 result is often unsatisfactory, a nice ear is some- 
 times worried by painful discords. Noel never 
 quite understood the exact value of style; he 
 never tried to attain, because he never realized 
 the necessity of a style that should give his poems 
 distinction quite apart from what they professed 
 to say or teach. He made many sacrifices to 
 obtain a good manner as he understood it, but 
 he was always ignorant of the vital niceties that 
 rejoice the punctilious. So he was placed at a 
 disadvantage in addressing an audience that has 
 come to regard the mere phraseology as of 
 supreme importance. Though it cannot be said 
 that the bulk of modern verse, if inspired at all, 
 is greatly inspired, technically it is generally of 
 surprising merit. Delicate turns of expression, 
 intricate and fanciful measures, hitherto considered 
 
 xxxix
 
 PREFACE 
 
 a part of the Frenchman's heritage, have at last 
 become native to omselves. As a matter of fact 
 verse-writers to-day are so full of dexterity that 
 skill in metre and rhyme is no peculiar distinction. 
 We have reason, doubtless, to congratulate our- 
 selves. Have we not also something to regret? 
 The average reader is not stirred to think by the 
 average poet: neatness of touch has supplanted 
 strength of imagination. And this, not because a 
 fine feeling for words is an enemy to excellence 
 of matter, but because the particular measures 
 most favoured are fitted only for the most trivial 
 themes. A triolet is a flippant answer to the 
 riddle of human life. These newer fashions told 
 hardly against a man of Noel's temperament. 
 For him the matter was always greater than 
 the manner. And he saw that the graces which 
 lured the applause of the critics concealed a 
 poverty of mind, a lack of knowledge. The poet 
 should be not only minstrel but seer, in his eyes. 
 "I cannot agree with you," he once wrote to 
 Professor Sidgwick, "that sense and sentiment 
 ought to be subordinate to sound in poetry." 
 He always affirmed that there could be no high 
 
 xl
 
 PREFACE 
 
 thought, deep feeling, fine image, without more 
 or less adequate expression being simultaneously- 
 born. It is true that he was too often content 
 with the " less adequate". A bad style, he con- 
 tended, was an obtrusive, over elaborated style, 
 taking the first place instead of the second. 
 " You say it is not the thought but the expres- 
 sion that influences men. In part, yes — but you 
 need the substance more and you rarely get it." 
 The picture was to be as well framed as possible, 
 but only because the painting was worthy. He 
 deliberately contended that over-minuteness and 
 finish in cases where tenderness of human pathos 
 is concerned, where overwhelming scorn and 
 passion are portrayed, was a grave blunder. In 
 the process the feeling evaporated, the result 
 became shadowy, the image however lovely was 
 lifeless. He declared himself the pupil of Shake- 
 speare, Webster, Hugo, in style as in much else. 
 The plea is no bad one, it carries weight. How 
 far he was justified in his theories time alone 
 can show. It was not unimportant that he 
 justified himself, for it dowered his work with 
 the first and most permanent quality, sincerity. 
 
 xli
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I think he put too complete a confidence in his the- 
 ories, and much that he wrote, otherwise admira- 
 ble, will suffer and disappear in consequence. 
 But whatever view one may take there is poetry 
 of a good quality and a simple manner from 
 his hand. 
 
 Apart from his poems for children, it is in those 
 dealing with nature that his most enduring work 
 will be found. He loved the hills and woods, 
 the sea and the rivers with the love that only a 
 man who understands nature thoroughly is per- 
 mitted to acquire. For him there were silent voices 
 in the world that the elect, and none but they, may 
 hear. If, as their interpreter, he sometimes failed 
 to convince, it is equally true that he often 
 succeeded. After all is said he may fairly claim 
 a place among our poets, for his great contem- 
 poraries hailed him gladly. Individual preference 
 must contrive its own class lists. But he should pass 
 honourably who won, through his verse, the praises 
 of Saint Beuve, in France, of Tennyson and 
 Browning at home. I, for one, am content to abide 
 by their verdict, as Noel himself would have been. 
 
 This only remains to be said. When Noel 
 
 xlii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 died a rare and beautiful spirit passed from among 
 us. Those who loved the man loved his poems 
 because they were his work. But it is incon- 
 ceivable to us that others should not love them 
 too. Some of his charm must surely hover around 
 them, or we are greatly deceived. Believing this, 
 the present volume has been compiled at the 
 request of his family and friends. Ancient and 
 honourable is our authority for believing that 
 " The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious." 
 
 PERCY ADDLESHAW 
 
 xliii
 
 -<nI|.Ji.,tiAl-M Br Mt
 
 AT HIS GRAVE 
 
 AT HIS GRAVE 
 
 If death were an eternal sleep, 
 I would lay me down by him, 
 Never to wound more, nor to weep, 
 Nor grope aweary, maimed and dim, 
 Inflict no injury, no pain, 
 Nor ache with this dull doubt again! 
 While the birken shadows pass 
 O'er the marble and the grass, 
 I lean upon thy cross and weep; 
 Very sweet were sleep, 
 With ne'er a tear. 
 Nor hope nor fear! 
 If thou behold me from thy bowers 
 Smile on my offering of flowers, 
 And help me, dear! 
 Thou hast entered into life, 
 While we rave in mortal strife: 
 Love receive the offering 
 
 45
 
 AT HIS GRAVE 
 
 Of unworthy words I bring! 
 Lo ! I lay them on thy tomb ; 
 May they a Httle Hghten gloom 
 Soothe an aching void and bless 
 In love's distress! 
 
 Thou should have laid me in my quiet 
 grave, 
 Sorrowing calm ; 
 And I with folded palm. 
 But now, above thine own, behold I rave! 
 With all thy life before thee so to die, 
 Unseasonably ! 
 
 " Whom the gods love die young ; " 
 To that sweet saying then, I clung. 
 
 Ghastly Doubt and chilling Fear 
 The Wan Ages Quest is here, 
 Trembling Hope and faltering Faith, 
 Intent on what God whispereth. 
 It was thy leaving me that shook 
 Content in this deluding nook 
 Of rainbow life that seems upbuoyed 
 A moment in a rayless void; 
 So I sought for firmer ground. 
 And tell to others what I found. 
 
 46
 
 AT HIS GRAVE 
 
 I would embalm thee in my verse : 
 To loving souls it shall rehearse 
 Thy loveliness when I am cold, 
 And fragrant with it, may enfold 
 For other hearts in misery 
 Faint solace; words were sweet to me 
 From hearts who mourned what seemed to be 
 Dear, like thee; 
 
 These are thy swathings of rare spice 
 A golden shrine with gems of price, 
 A monument of my device. 
 
 47
 
 LAMENT 
 
 LAMENT 
 
 I AM lying in the tomb, love, 
 
 Lying in the tomb, 
 
 Tho' I move within the gloom, love. 
 
 Breathe within the gloom! 
 
 Men deem life not fled, dear, 
 
 Deem my life not fled, 
 
 Tho' I with thee am dead, dear, 
 
 I with thee am dead, 
 
 O my Httle child! 
 
 What is the grey world, darling, 
 What is the grey world 
 Where the worm is curled, darling, 
 The deathworm is curled? 
 They tell me of the spring, dear! 
 Do I want the spring? 
 Will she waft upon her wing, dear, 
 
 48
 
 LAMENT 
 
 The joy-pulse of her wing, 
 Thy songs, thy blossoming, 
 O my little child! 
 
 For the hallowing of thy smile, love, 
 The rainbow of thy smile, 
 Gleaming for a while, love, 
 Gleaming to beguile ! 
 Replunged me in the cold, dear. 
 Leaves me in the cold, 
 And I feel so very old, dear, 
 Very, very old ! 
 
 Would they put me out of pain, dear, 
 Out of all my pain, 
 Since I may not live again, dear, 
 Never live again ! 
 
 I am lying in the grave, love, 
 In thy little grave. 
 Yet I hear the wind rave, love, 
 And the wild wave! 
 I would lie asleep, darling, 
 With thee lie asleep, 
 Unhearing the world weep, darling, 
 Little children weep! 
 O my little child! 
 D 49
 
 DARK SPRING 
 
 DARK SPRING 
 
 Now the mavis and the merle 
 Lavish their full hearts in song; 
 Peach and almond boughs unfurl 
 White and purple bloom along 
 A blue and burning air, 
 All is very fair: 
 
 But ah ! the silence and the sorrow ! 
 I may not borrow 
 Any anodyne for grief 
 From the joy of flower or leaf, 
 No healing to allay my pain ; 
 From the cool of air or rain; 
 Every sweet sound grew still. 
 Every fair colour pale. 
 When his life began to wane! 
 They may never live again ! 
 A child's voice and visage will 
 Evermore about me fail; 
 
 50
 
 DARK SPRING 
 
 And my weary feet will go 
 Labouring as in deep snow: 
 Though the year with glowing wine 
 Fill the living veins of vine, 
 While a faint moon hangs between 
 Broidery of a leafy screen; 
 And Night hear her Philomel, 
 While sweet lemon blossom breathes 
 And fair sun his falchion wreathes 
 With rich dependent golden fruit, 
 Or crimson roses at his foot, 
 All is desolate and mute! 
 Dark to-day and dark to-morrow! 
 Ah! the silence and the sorrow! 
 
 51
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 
 
 Suggested by Chopin's Funeral March 
 
 I 
 
 In the grey cathedral 
 In the aisles of twilight, 
 Wails an awful music, 
 Whelming my drowned spirit 
 Fathom deep in woe. 
 The hoar stone of ages 
 Palpitates disaster, 
 Breathes aware with sorrow. 
 Weighs me down to death ! 
 All the immense wan spaces 
 Pregnant with dead faces, 
 Cold, carven forms arise! 
 And grey walls bring forth! 
 Vasty vans of darkness, 
 Swordsweeps of desolation, 
 52
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 
 
 Hound me to dim death! 
 Born from the deep ocean 
 Of sounding mystery, 
 In the ghostly forest 
 Of colossal pillars 
 Grows a dread procession : 
 Tramp ! tramp ! tramp ! 
 Phantoms vast, sepulchral, 
 With dim downward eyes, 
 Move where yawns a dreary 
 Fathomless abyss. 
 
 What do they bear? They bear him, 
 
 My All, my Heart, my Heaven! 
 
 They let him fall therein! 
 
 Fall! fall! fall! 
 
 Fall ever in the abyss ! 
 
 And my soul w^ails over, 
 
 Yearns to him in vain ! 
 
 Cruel world! O cruel spirit 
 
 Of the world with ne'er a heart! 
 
 All in vain I moan imploring: 
 
 Sleep! sleep! sleep! 
 
 53
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 
 
 II 
 
 In the grey cathedral 
 
 Dawn red rays of morning, 
 
 And a low sweet music 
 
 Lifts me from the grave. 
 
 My dead pulses flutter, 
 
 As in spring the leaflet 
 
 Or young flower awaking 
 
 Wooed by the warm South . . . 
 
 ... A calm saint on a pinnacle 
 
 Smiles in the day-dawn; 
 
 Monumental marble 
 
 With warm life-blood glows, 
 
 Sweet small singers warble 
 
 " Live ! live! live!" 
 
 And lo! a rush of angels, 
 
 A cloud of spirits bright 
 
 From soft sun-rays of opal, 
 
 Woven to nests of light, 
 
 54
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 
 
 Among celestial branchings 
 
 Of the embowered height, 
 
 Bear me back my darHng, 
 
 Smiling, rosed, alive, 
 
 Alive! alive! alive! 
 
 They only meant to scare me, 
 
 All was but in play ; 
 
 The dismal shades were angels 
 
 From my Father's day; 
 
 Our Father knows why we must weep ; 
 
 He wipes our tears away. 
 
 But if a hair might perish 
 
 From his sweet tendrilled head, 
 
 God would be the devil, 
 
 Love and Truth were dead, 
 
 Man a maniac mooning 
 
 A moment plausibly, 
 
 Joy an idiot fooling. 
 
 And life Death's leprosy! 
 
 No ! no ! no ! n 
 
 An Eye rules the wild sea ' 
 
 Of human misery ! 
 
 55
 
 A TOMB AT PALMYRA 
 
 A TOMB AT PALMYRA 
 
 B'ULL twenty years ! and still I seem to stand 
 As then, aloft in the tall tower tomb 
 So far within the expanse of Syrian sand, 
 Alone, where long, long ages in the gloom 
 Of yon stone shelves a human dust hath lain, 
 That once breathed, brooded, dared, hoped, 
 
 hated, loved! 
 Awhile o'erwept, and worshipped with fond 
 
 pain, 
 How stealthily the memory removed 
 From hearts who dreamed that never it 
 
 could wane! 
 Later, the men who built the tomb dispersed, 
 Their conquerors were heedless of the dead : 
 Race following race, remembrance of the 
 
 first. 
 Like some fair pageant of the cloud, is fled ; 
 They, and the memory of them all erased, 
 
 56
 
 A TOMB AT PALMYRA 
 
 Faint characters an idle mood hath traced 
 In sands of yonder ever-wandering waste. 
 The shelves are void ; an alien spoiler soon 
 The dear embalmed remains hath lightly 
 
 strewn 
 Upon these raving winds that roam the wild, 
 For ever to be scattered, whirled or piled 
 AVith dust that loved, scorned, knew not that 
 
 they were. 
 For ever to be heaped and hounded there 
 With never-animate dust of the dun sea . . . 
 . . . Anarchic spirits of the desert blast 
 Celebrate all the ruin of the past! 
 Shadowy Murder's dismal dialogue. 
 Conspiring, ere she leap to disembogue 
 Annihilating vials on my head, 
 Who dare to stand alive among the dead. 
 Carousals, wails from hoUow hearts resound, 
 Long agony of maniac souls around, 
 Low moaning, shrieking, fading in a swound, 
 Thundering exultant through the rifted tomb, 
 And bearing down my heart with swoop 
 
 of doom ; 
 " Cease ! cease from trouble ! hope thou or 
 
 despair ; 
 " Wait but a little, thou too shalt be there ! " 
 
 57
 
 DEAD 
 
 DEAD 
 
 Where the child's joy-carol 
 
 Rang sweeter than the spheres, 
 
 There, centre of deep silence, 
 
 Darkness and tears, 
 
 On his bed 
 
 The child lay dead.
 
 DEAD 
 
 II 
 
 There a man sat stolid, 
 
 Stupefied and cold 
 
 Save when the lamp's flicker 
 
 To poor love told 
 
 Some mocking lie 
 
 Of quivering eye, 
 
 Or Hp that said, 
 
 " He is not dead. " 
 
 59
 
 DEAD 
 
 III 
 
 Weary Night went weeping-, 
 Moaning long and low, 
 Till dim Dawn, awaking, 
 Found them so — 
 The heart that bled, 
 And his dim dead. 
 
 60
 
 DEAD 
 
 IV 
 
 ** Measure htm for his coffi.n''' 
 He heard a stranger say ; 
 And then he broke to laughing, 
 " God ! measure my poor clay, 
 And shut me in my coffin, 
 A soul gone grey! 
 For hope lies dead. 
 Life is fled. " 
 
 6i
 
 THE KING AND THE PEASANT 
 
 THE KING AND THE PEASANT 
 
 World-wide possessions, populous lands 
 The Monarch doth inherit, 
 And lordlier kingdoms he commands, 
 F"air realms within the spirit. 
 The monarch had a little son, 
 A child of five years old, 
 The loveliest earth e'er looked upon; 
 And he is lying cold. 
 The king is in the olive grove, 
 A hind sings in the tree; 
 Below, the infant of his love 
 Is babbling merrily. 
 The father beats the boughs, and while 
 Dark oval olives fly. 
 The boy with many a laugh and smile 
 Pursues them far and nigh. 
 Blue sea between the grey-green leaves 
 Twinkles, and the sun 
 
 62
 
 THE KING AND THE PEASANT 
 
 Through them a playful chequer weaves 
 
 Over the little one. 
 
 The monarch gazes all unseen, 
 
 Tears burning his wan eyes; 
 
 Tenderly his love doth lean 
 
 To bless their Paradise, 
 
 As through black bars that foul the day, 
 
 And shut him out from joy: 
 
 Hear the world-envied monarch say, 
 
 " Perish my bauble crown, my toy, 
 
 All the science, all the sway, 
 
 Power to mould the world my way, 
 
 Persuade to beauty the dull clay ! 
 
 Take all; but leave, ah! leave my boy, 
 
 Give me back my Hfe, my joy! 
 
 This poor rude peasant I would be, 
 
 Yet dare not breathe the wish that he 
 
 Were as I am, a king of misery ! " 
 
 63
 
 "A MILK-WHITE BLOOMED ACACIA TREE" 
 
 "A MILK-WHITE BLOOMED 
 ACACIA TREE" 
 
 A MILK-WHITE bloomed acacia tree, 
 
 A flowery fair lawn, 
 Lark-song upsoaring from the lea, 
 
 In a rosy dawn; 
 A little child who while he sings. 
 Gives light and joy to aU, and song, and 
 sunny wings ! 
 
 The green acacia still blooms. 
 
 And all the fairy flowers. 
 Song thrills the chorister's light plumes 
 
 In blue celestial bowers; 
 Darkling I wander in the wild. 
 Looking for my little child; 
 I cannot hear his happy voice, 
 Bidding all the world be lovely and rejoice. 
 
 64
 
 MOUNTAIN LYRIC 
 
 MOUNTAIN LYRIC 
 
 A MOUNTAIN spake to a sunny cloud, 
 " Whither, my child, away ? " 
 " Father, the winds are calling loud 
 To fields of air for play! 
 Away ! away ! 
 
 Father, O father, solemn browed! 
 Fly thou with me for play ! " 
 Nestled half in a sunny snow, 
 And half in azure air. 
 The cloudlet, pausing, loth to go 
 And leave the mountain bare, 
 With hazy hair 
 
 And misty feet in a sunny snow, 
 May not Hnger there ; 
 Lithely curled in a merry breeze, 
 With look still turned to earth, 
 Wafted on viewless presences 
 From the mystic mount of birth, 
 E 65
 
 ■ MOUNTAIN LYRIC 
 
 With a merry mirth, 
 
 Summoning fondly as he flees, 
 
 " O father, leave your earth ! " 
 
 Floating fair into sunny sky, 
 
 Evanishing away, 
 
 Praying the pine-veiled heights to fly; 
 
 Dark furrowed heights of grey; 
 
 " Away ! away ! " 
 
 "Our roots are deep, we may not die," 
 
 Stern crags responded wearily; 
 
 " Fly thou away, 
 
 O child of day! 
 
 The hallowing of thy sunny smile, 
 
 Thy fingers of cool mist, 
 Soothed my weary soul erewhile, 
 And since thy lips have kissed, 
 Lightning, blast, nor lashing rain, 
 Snows nor howling hurricane 
 Mar my deep rest. 
 Remembering thy heavenly smile; 
 Fade thou away! 
 And leave me grey!" 
 
 66
 
 EARLY PRIMROSE 
 
 EARLY PRIMROSE 
 
 There was a paly primrose, 
 Budding very early 
 In the little garden, 
 When he lay so ill. 
 " Do you think I may be 
 Well enough to go there 
 When the flower opens, 
 Papa?" he asked of me. 
 But only a day after 
 Our little Sunshine left us. 
 And the primrose opened 
 The very day he died. 
 I wonder if he saw it, 
 Saw the flower open, 
 Went to pay the visit 
 Yonder after all ! 
 I know we laid the flower 
 On a stilly bosom 
 67
 
 EARLY PRIMROSE 
 
 Of an ivory image; 
 But I want to know 
 K indeed he wandered 
 In the little garden, 
 Or noted on the bosom 
 Of his fading form 
 The paly primrose open; 
 How I want to know! 
 
 68
 
 SLEEP 
 
 SLEEP 
 
 Airily the leaves are playing- 
 
 In blue summer light, 
 Fugitive soft, shadow laying 
 
 Lovingly o'er marble white 
 Where he lies asleep. 
 
 Lilies of the valley bending 
 
 Lowly bells amid the green; 
 
 Sweet moss roses meekly lending 
 Their soft beauty to the scene 
 Of his quiet sleep. 
 
 All around him heather glowing 
 
 Purple in the sun ; 
 Sound of bees and bird o'erflowing 
 Lull my lost, my little one, 
 Lying there asleep. 
 69
 
 SLEEP 
 
 Harsher sight or sound be banished. 
 For my child is gone to rest; 
 
 These are telling of my vanished 
 In the language of the blest, 
 Wake him not from sleep!.
 
 IN THE CORSICAN HIGHLANDS 
 
 IN THE CORSICAN HIGHLANDS 
 
 Cloud-chaos surges o'er a crest sublime, 
 That seems forked lightning' spellbound 
 
 into stone; 
 Abruptly steep flame-pointed precipices, 
 Dark as the night, dissolve to opaline 
 In phantom foldings of circumfluent sea. 
 Their natures blend confused; the mists 
 
 assume 
 A semblance of impenetrable rock; 
 Stem rock relents to luminous faint cloud. 
 
 Their banners rent as in uproarious war, 
 Behold! the vaporous battalions 
 Unclose, dispelled and routed of loud winds, 
 That drive them scared and scattered; so 
 
 Jehovah 
 Clove that astounded sea for Israel. 
 Yonder beneath me, the enormous crag
 
 IN THE CORSICAN HIGHLANDS 
 
 Reveals, between grey ghostly robes of them, 
 Solid and rude and perpendicular, 
 A mighty front of Titans grandly piled, 
 Umber and gory red and pallid green, 
 Reared in some alien world beyond the cloud, 
 Stronghold stupendous of immortal gods. 
 
 The rude, immense, straight pillars of grey 
 pine 
 
 Scale heaven, sustaining tempest writhen 
 roofs 
 
 Of scant, green, level umbrage; they are 
 
 built 
 Athwart yon vaporous and vastly walls 
 Of far off mountain; over them arise 
 Ruinous tower, fantastic pinnacle, 
 And icy spire in a blue burning air. 
 They over-hang deep forest-filled ravines 
 Wandering sea-ward ; whose dim serpentine 
 Night ever hears a solemn utterance 
 Of torrents, with deep monotone attuned 
 To these wind-oracles of ancient pine. 
 Yonder a gaunt trunk-vSkeleton upbraids 
 With blasted arms the Bolt that shattered it. 
 Tusky black monsters reign within the gloom 
 Of forest and dead waters desolate: 
 
 72
 
 IN THE CORSICAN HIGHLANDS 
 
 Dim mists drive blindly through portentous 
 
 trees, 
 While a weird Sun blinks dwarfed within 
 
 the drift: 
 Legions of shadowy shaggy ilex climb 
 Yon narrow-cloven hollows of the crag. 
 
 Now evening falls: an aromatic breath 
 Of amber oozing from a dun red bark, 
 And mountain herb and many a mountain 
 
 flower 
 Pervades the air slow clearing from the 
 
 cloud : 
 A vase-like cleft between two snowy peaks 
 Glowingly fills with a pale violet : 
 Beneath appears fair Ocean's purple line, 
 Far away from far portals of the pass. 
 Lower, a surge of huge dun purple rock 
 Tumultuously contorted, rolls a rude 
 And shadowy chaos interposed between 
 Dark peaks and me : Night's ever-deepening 
 
 gloom 
 Engulfs the gorges: All is mighty Music, 
 Phantasmal symphony of ghostly Form, 
 A visionary Chorus with no sound. 
 
 73
 
 IN THE CORSICAN HIGHLANDS 
 
 Stern- visaged Isle ! upon thy rocky breast 
 Two sons were nurtured, heritors of fame. 
 The one drew pride and ruin from thy veins, 
 Towering portentous, terrible, alone, 
 A scourge of God: Napoleon drew power 
 To desolate the world; while Paoli 
 Drank from dark fountains of thy resolute 
 
 blood 
 The patriot's unshamed integrity. 
 
 Behold I stand within a place of graves: 
 
 Low wooden crosses o'er the lonely dead. 
 
 Within the wondrous amphitheatre 
 
 Of mountains overshadowing they rest; 
 
 Watched, warded in those awful arms they lie. 
 
 Ah ! Nature here hath roused herself to robe 
 
 Her oft unheeded royalty in robes 
 
 Of godlike splendour, that our eyes may see ; 
 
 Hath sounded as with trumpet blast of doom 
 
 That our dull ears may slumber not but 
 
 hear! 
 Brands with fierce fire upon the heedless 
 
 heart 
 Her names of wonder ! yea, I know ye now : 
 I bow my head in worship : yea I feel 
 Your majesty of godlike Presences; 
 
 74
 
 IN THE CORSICAN HIGHLANDS 
 
 Stand here abashed with mortal head bowed 
 
 low 
 Before you, Angels, Demons of the Lord ! 
 
 Yet with no rapture of strong youth's acclaim 
 I hail you as a lowlier brother may 
 Hail a liege lord, a hero or a kingv 
 But I have come into your awful courts, 
 A poor blind broken pilgrim from afar, 
 Who faltering chances upon some august 
 Assembly of dread princes, and bows low. 
 Yet only craves to learn if haply he, 
 Who used to lead his poor blind footsteps on 
 With such clear-seeing love, a little child 
 Who has been lost to him, alas! for long, 
 And whom he vainly seeks about the world. 
 About the dreary, barren world, be here? 
 But meeting no response to his demand 
 He can but idly weep a moment ere 
 He grope his weary way abroad again. 
 
 These are but void and ruined courts to me 
 Of faded splendour, unremembered Power ! 
 I cannot see aright, I cannot feel. 
 And while men prate of knowing all the laws. 
 The mortal cold possessing human hearts 
 
 75
 
 \ 
 
 IN THE CORSICAN HIGHLANDS 
 
 Weighs down their eyes in deep sepulchral 
 
 gloom. 
 But if some Angel's sword from forth the night 
 With vasty voice of Doom, by human tongues 
 Called thunder, leapt, and smote me out of all 
 These evil dreams named Hving, might I find 
 My little child, and with him find the Lord ? 
 
 We journey ever higher, through a grove 
 Of moon-lit chestnut, where a babbling stream. 
 At intervals, in open forest glades. 
 Flashes with ruffled, wandering, pale flame. 
 The air is richly laden with sweet spoil 
 From fragrant flower and foliage faint-green ; 
 Shadowy-folded hills and dells involved 
 Whisper of verdure lush, luxuriant. 
 Known to fair elves, or rills who tinkling glide 
 Telhng sweet secrets, haunted of shy beams, 
 Whene'er the whims of leafy Ariels 
 And cloudy gossamer aloft allow 
 Their gentle wandering; tall asphodel 
 And flowery fennel, either side our way 
 Often we dim discern ; but where the woods 
 No longer in their colonnades of gloom 
 Involve our path, beyond the precipice, 
 Behold ! how all the regions of the north, 
 
 76
 
 IN THE CORSICAN HIGHLANDS 
 
 Height, depth and breadth are held, filled, 
 
 dominated 
 By one supreme pale presence, Monte d'Oro ! 
 His spirit robes far floating, a dim grey, 
 Sombre with forest, pallid with the moon. 
 His kingly crest snow-gleaming to the stars. 
 
 Pan is not dead ! He lives ! He Hves for ever 1 
 These awful demiurgic Powers named Nature 
 Nourish, involve, a half-alive blind soul, 
 A human soul who fondly deems them dead. 
 Surely the Lord is making us alive ! 
 Mine aching wound shall heal ; for I shall find 
 My lost for whom I long ; from thee my friend. 
 The weary burden of thy doubt shall pass. 
 Sorrow and wrong are pangs of a new birth : 
 All we who suffer bleed for one another; 
 No life may live alone, but all in all; 
 We lie within the tomb of our dead selves. 
 Waiting till One command us to arise. 
 
 77
 
 ONLY A LITTLE CHILD 
 
 ONLY A LITTLE CHILD 
 
 A Voice. 
 
 Only a little child! 
 
 Stone cold upon a bed! 
 s it for him you wail so wild, 
 As though the very world were dead? 
 Arise, arise! 
 Threaten not the tranquil skies! 
 
 Do not all things die? 
 
 'Tis but a faded flower! 
 Dear lives exhale perpetually 
 With every fleeting hour, 
 Rachel for ever weeps her Uttle ones; 
 For ever Rizpah mourneth her slain sons. 
 Arise, Arise! 
 Threaten not the tranquil skies ! 
 
 78
 
 ONLY A LITTLE CHILD 
 
 Only a little child! 
 
 Long generations pass: 
 Behold them flash a moment wild 
 
 With stormlight. a pale headlong mass 
 Of foam, into unfathomable gloom; 
 Worlds and dead leaves have all one doom. 
 Arise, arise! 
 
 Threaten not the tranquil skies. 
 
 Should Earth's tremendous Shade 
 
 Spare only you and yours? 
 Who regardeth empires fade 
 
 Untroubled, who impassive pours 
 Human joy, a mere spilt water, 
 Revels red with human slaughter! 
 Arise, arise ! 
 
 Threaten not the tranquil skies, 
 
 Another Voice. 
 , . . Only a little child! 
 
 He was the world to me. 
 Pierced to the heart, insane, defiled, 
 
 All holiest hope! foul mockery, 
 Childhood's innocent mirth and rest; 
 Man's brief life a brutal jest. 
 There is no God; 
 Earth is Love's sepulchral sod ! 
 
 79
 
 ONLY A LITTLE CHILD 
 
 Another Voice. 
 Only a little child 
 
 Ah! then, who brought him here? 
 Who made him loving fair and mild 
 
 And to your soul so dear? 
 His lowly spirit seemed divine, 
 Burning in a heavenly shrine. 
 Arise, arise ! 
 
 With pardon for the tranquil skies. 
 
 Only a little child! 
 
 Who sleeps upon God's heart! 
 Jesus blessed our undefiled, 
 
 Whom no power avails to part 
 From the life of Him Who died 
 And liveth, whatsoe'er betide! 
 Whose are eyes 
 
 Tranquiller than starlit skies! 
 
 Only a httle child! 
 
 For whom all things are: 
 Spring and summer, winter wild. 
 
 Sea and earth, and every star, 
 Time, the void, pleasure and pain, 
 
 Hell and Heaven, loss and gain! 
 Life and death are his, and he 
 
 80
 
 ONLY A LITTLE CHILD 
 
 Rests in God's eternity. 
 Arise, arise! 
 Love is holy, true, and wise. 
 Mirrored in the tranquil skies. 
 
 8i
 
 god's child 
 
 GOD'S CHILD 
 
 He wanders round the garden wild, 
 
 I hear him singing sweet; 
 I know it is my fairy child, 
 
 I hear his dancing feet. 
 
 Birds low warble in the nest. 
 
 Leaves murmur merrily; 
 My boy is leaning on the breast 
 
 Of God most tranquilly. 
 
 He gazes in deep eyes Divine 
 
 With innocent clear eyes; 
 He is God's baby more than mine; 
 
 The Father is all-wise. 
 
 Carol, my darhng! laugh and leap! 
 
 For art thou not God's own? 
 . , . Ah! wildly, wildly must I weep 
 . . . God hath destroyed His son! 
 
 82
 
 god's child 
 
 Stabbed with a sudden traitor thrust 
 
 The heart so unafraid! 
 Then flung him down into the dust, 
 
 To perish on the blade! 
 
 Earth felt, and, staggered with the blow, 
 
 Reeled shuddering under me! 
 Dead worlds, like shrivelled leaves, fell low 
 
 From Life's uprooted tree! 
 
 How shall I name Thee, Thou Supreme? 
 
 Hate, Treachery or Crime? 
 - . . When may we rise from our dark dream 
 
 Beyond the bounds of Time. 
 
 He is but folded closer still 
 
 Within the Father's bosom, 
 Lest our earth airs may work him ill, 
 
 My baby boy, my blossom! 
 
 83
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 An organ player comes rarely round 
 To our lone moorland place ; 
 My darling at the welcome sound 
 Runs with laughter in his face 
 To the nursery window, hailing, 
 With melodious mirth unfailing, 
 The sun-burnt, black-bearded man, 
 Who greets him in Italian. 
 Then he brings and sets a chair, 
 Humming over every air, 
 Feigns to turn a handle deftly, 
 Feigns to talk Italian swiftly, 
 Fair in little blouse of blue. 
 Sweet of heart and form and hue. 
 
 84
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 II 
 
 Pale my love, with dews of anguish 
 From the night beneath his curls, 
 Lies asleep; and while we languish 
 In despair, behold! there purls 
 A riU of music from afar: 
 Can the favourite organ jar 
 So upon our hearts? w^e fear 
 Lest it waken him; yet hear 
 Him, waking, pray for it to come 
 Under the window of his room. 
 Asking that his friend, the player, 
 May have food; we grant the prayer. 
 Then he Hsts to every tune, 
 Growing very weary soon. 
 
 85
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 III 
 
 Baby lies upon the bed, 
 And our hearts with him lie dead. 
 Baby lies with fair white blossom 
 In his hair and hand and bosom: 
 
 Only he is lovelier far 
 Than earth's fairest flowers are! 
 And while we cower, smitten low 
 By our baby boy's death-blow, 
 Draws again the organ near . . . 
 Ah! Baby never more may hear. 
 
 86
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 IV 
 
 When the Httle child was going, 
 
 From his hps came softly flowing, 
 
 Flowing dreamily the tune 
 
 Of a hymn that asks a boon 
 
 In childish accents of the Saviour 
 
 Who, by the love in his behaviour 
 
 Showed God cherishes a child; 
 
 And whensoe'er pain made him wild, 
 
 His mother sang it; then released, 
 
 The child himself sang on, nor ceased 
 
 On earth till he commenced in Heaven. 
 
 For I think that fatal even, 
 
 While upon death's wave he drifted 
 
 While the mist of life was lifted, 
 
 On our earth-shore he heard his mother, 
 
 And pure angels on the other; 
 
 We and they hearing the low voice of him 
 
 who travelled 
 Between us, darkling, a wee pilgrim who 
 
 the mystery unravelled! 
 
 87
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 Even so she sang to him, 
 
 While his lovely eyes grew dim 
 
 In fair former eves, while he 
 
 Loosed waifs of singing dreamily, 
 
 Till he floated into sleep. 
 
 Now it is more strange and deep. 
 
 " Jesu " he murmured, hearing the Lord call: 
 
 " Fear not. My darling, on My heart to fall ! " 
 
 88
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 V 
 
 Then in the depth of our despair, 
 
 A vision found me lying- there. 
 
 She and I were cowering 
 
 Before the swoop of Death's dark wing, 
 
 That sweeping him to nothingness, 
 
 Plunged our souls in the abyss, 
 
 Stone-eyed to stare upon the gloom, 
 
 Frantic to challenge the deaf tomb. 
 
 Beating upon its iron door 
 
 For him who shall return no more ! 
 
 Death echoing from his au^ul vault 
 
 In ghastly mockery of our assault! 
 
 Wanderers ever, wanting only one. 
 
 Calling upon the name of our lost little son ! 
 
 But I dreamt that she and I 
 Were gazing very mournfully 
 On the organ, as we deemed 
 Disused and broken. Then it seemed 
 That his dear nurse, who loved him well, 
 
 89
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 And cherished more than I can tell, 
 
 Came unaware, and on her breast 
 
 She bore him whom we laid to rest. 
 
 Our darling, glorious, health-rosed, 
 
 Whose dark dewy eyes reposed 
 
 On some far-off, enrapturing vision 
 
 Of the children's realm elysian ! 
 
 Ah ! with what transport we kissed him ! 
 
 Not dead ! not dead ! howe'er we missed him ! 
 
 Heaven too vouchsafes another token ; 
 
 The little organ was not broken! 
 
 Lo! baby turns it round and round. 
 
 Rejoicing in the wonted sound. 
 
 Yea, singing in his blouse of blue. 
 
 Lovelier than we ever knew. 
 
 qo
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 VI 
 
 While he lay nightly racked with pain, 
 
 Wept and shrieked the hurricane. 
 
 Yea, on that terrible night he died, 
 
 The clamour of fell fiends, beside 
 
 Themselves with hell's blaspheming anger, 
 
 Exultant in his god-wept languor. 
 
 Seemed to hound him on to death. 
 
 Hungry for his innocent breath! 
 
 But now what raves it for, and howls 
 
 Around with moan of drifted souls ! 
 
 Are ye not satiate with such 
 
 A pure white victim to your clutch 
 
 Yielded by the Powers above, 
 
 Who yet we dare to dream are Love? 
 
 The loveliest, most heavenly-hearted 
 
 Child ever by themselves imparted 
 
 To this poor earth of ours! 
 
 So moaning 
 In fierce despair amid the groaning 
 Of those evil blasts I heard 
 
 91
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 A still small voice as of a bird. 
 Nay, bird had ne'er so sweet a voice, 
 Nor ever bird may so rejoice; 
 No spring that babbles in the summer 
 Nor flower-enamoured fairy hummer! 
 What is it, Lord? can it be human 
 Song of child or song of woman? 
 Some loving Ariel doth toy 
 In self-abandonment of joy; 
 Like, yet unlike our vanished angel! 
 I know I deem it an evangel 
 From my darling hovering 
 In the very storm to sing 
 Near my yearning soul, to tell 
 What seems the blasphemy of hell 
 Is love, to him who loveth well! 
 
 ... In bluest air the melody 
 On silver wings appears to fly; 
 And lo! in live germander blue 
 A threefold flower-cluster flew, 
 Child-seraphim, arrayed in white, 
 Fair with dewy eyes of light; 
 As when two swallows on the wing, 
 Circle each other dallying; 
 In playful love we hear them cleaving 
 
 92
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 Blue air with dances they are weaving ; 
 
 So on tender pulsing pinion 
 
 Audibly the heaven's dominion 
 
 Many a threefold flower-band 
 
 Of children clove, while in their bland 
 
 Spirit wreathing, when one passed, 
 
 Shadow delicate fell fast 
 
 From him upon a sister child, 
 
 Softening to mood more mild 
 
 Her raptured whiteness undefiled. 
 
 93
 
 MUSIC AND THE CHILD 
 
 VII 
 
 When the jubilant hymnals roam, 
 Buoy ant- winged as sunny foam, 
 High-flung, wind-wafted, in the dome 
 Or solemn branched cathedral aisle, 
 From pure boy-bosoms, all the while 
 To me it seems my darling mingles 
 With the sound that burns and tingles, 
 Floating calm in the calm sea 
 Of all unshadowed harmony. 
 Holy, Holy, Holy! mount 
 Arrowy song-flight from the fount 
 Of our earth music ! that descending 
 Erst from Heaven will be blending 
 Now with his full songs of joy 
 Who, lark-like sings where no alloy 
 Of earth a gentle soul may trouble 
 In her perennial sweet bubble. 
 Whose lily petal ever fair 
 Reposes feeding in live air. 
 
 94
 
 NATURE AND THE DEAD 
 
 NATURE AND THE DEAD 
 
 ("He is made one with nature." — Shelley) 
 
 I 
 
 I MUSED below dark everlasting rocks, 
 
 Hearing the circUng happy seamew cry; 
 
 I hstened to the gentle water-shocks 
 
 Of cool clear emerald, how peacefully 
 
 Wandering through cavern, hall, or labyrinth 
 
 Worn in the CHff s heart ! flowering seathrift 
 
 Sang to blithe bees and breezes; theredpHnth 
 
 Of ocean-palace pillar in a lift 
 
 And fall of playful sunny wavelets glowed ; 
 
 Until I fl.oated on the hyahne 
 
 Into a mystic ocean fay's abode, 
 
 Hung with pale sea-grape, walled with 
 
 coralUne, 
 Gemmed with live jade and garnet, or adorning 
 Of gleaming opal-hearted passion-flowers. 
 Living, blue, crimson as a radiant morning ; 
 
 95
 
 NATURE AND THE DEAD 
 
 While wavelight all the rocky temple dowers, 
 Golden, blood-jasper, grey, with woven smiles 
 Quavering musical, 'mid velvet piles 
 Wine-dark, fern-tufted ; I am afloat in froth, 
 That seethes and sparkles on a heaving clear 
 Sunned chrysoprase ; hued like a burnet-moth 
 Here the cliff shows, shell crusted wholly here 
 With shells, bathing their lucid filaments 
 In lapsing crystal; among twilit grots. 
 Fulfilling strange mysterious intents, 
 I hear far waters commune in dim spots 
 With weird rock comrade, monsters, fish or 
 
 seal 
 Or slumberous anemones that feel. 
 Through yon chaotic arch of vasty height, 
 Of grand proportion, hewn by Titan hand 
 Of turbulent tempest, flying in blue light 
 Appear white sails, and capes of basking land, 
 Rich hazy brown ; here towering dread forms 
 Of silent crag brood awful and alone : 
 These have absorbed all terror of the storms. 
 That wear, combat, caress their writhen stone. 
 
 96
 
 NATURE AND THE DEAD 
 
 II 
 
 My soul then said to Earth and Air 
 "How can I deem that ye would dare 
 To smile and dally if ye did 
 The deed of darkness? holding hid 
 My stolen child, my withered blossom, 
 Plucked, trampled, dead in your dark bosom ] 
 If at the heart of your mad glee 
 My living child lay lifelessly ! 
 And all your horrible vampire life 
 With his precious blood were rife ! 
 If your false innocence but rave 
 Over a murdered infant's grave ! 
 And all his wondrous soul blown out, 
 Your idiot salt billows flout 
 My child's pale corpse within your cave! 
 And this the end of him who lent 
 Blue heaven to my dull firmament! 
 Of him whose holy opening flower 
 Claimed eternity for dower! 
 Who from our green lowly sod 
 G 97
 
 NATURE AND THE DEAD 
 
 With wee white hands reached up to God, 
 
 Yea, talked famiharly with Him 
 
 As with myself, ere earth grew dim 
 
 With his strange silence, and the loss 
 
 That stole from beauty all her gloss 
 
 And charm for ever! left the world 
 
 A faded mouldering banner furled, 
 
 Onc3 thundering glorious, impearled, 
 
 Aflame with morning! Mockery! 
 
 Curse your fair bodies with no heart! 
 
 Ah me! Alas! When I depart, 
 
 Shattered upon your iron rocks, 
 
 Stifled in wild water shocks, 
 
 Shall I not find within the gloom, 
 
 There in the darkness of my doom, 
 
 A dewy dawn of one who left 
 
 Me moaning when my heart was cleft? 
 
 A sweet auroral rising of my sun. 
 
 Who went out unaware, before his course 
 
 was run, 
 And I lay darkling ere my day was well 
 
 begun?" 
 
 98
 
 NATURE AND THE DEAD 
 
 III 
 
 But in a tone remonstrant, mild, 
 Like one who soothes a fevered child, 
 Methought fair Earth and Sky and Sea 
 Responded very quietly: 
 " Do you, then, our poor brother, ask 
 If all we wear the traitor's mask 
 On this our festival of gladness? 
 We pity, pardoning, j^our madness! 
 He is not dead whom you so cherish! 
 How may a human spirit perish? 
 Spirits! ye dream a lovely dream, 
 And call it what we only seem ! 
 Ye call us Nature: we are angels, 
 Who reveal profound evangels. 
 Though you may fathom not their glory 
 Beholding as in sacred story, 
 Men like trees walking: so God gives 
 Maturing sense to all that lives. 
 But once ye dwelt in Eden — then 
 We were gods who dwelt with men; 
 
 99
 
 NATURE AND THE DEAD 
 
 Your antenatal sphere remember; 
 Clear the earth-ash from the ember! 
 Spirits immortal ! all we live and move 
 In One Whose name is the Eternal Love. 
 Yea, with flame-clasp of suffering 
 Christ's own divine embraces cling! 
 Your little one is only gone up higher, 
 Burns now, and glows with more seraphic 
 
 fire: 
 For this we bound him to the funeral pyre ! 
 Yea, folded closer, closer to our breast. 
 His accents reach you from our radiant rest. 
 Mingling with ours! Ah! with sweet sur- 
 prise 
 Awake! and hear! believe! and recognize!" 
 
 Sark. 
 
 lOO
 
 THE TOY CROSS 
 
 THE TOY CROSS 
 
 My little boy at Christmas-tide 
 
 Made me a toy cross; 
 Two sticks he did, in boyish pride, 
 
 With brazen nail emboss. 
 
 Ah me! how soon, on either side 
 
 His dying bed's true cross. 
 She and I were crucified, 
 
 Bemoaning our life-loss! 
 
 But He Whose arms in death spread wide 
 
 Upon the holy tree, 
 Were clasped about him when he died — 
 
 Clasped for eternity! 
 
 lOI
 
 AZRAEL 
 
 AZRAEL 
 
 I WAS bending o'er my treasured infant, 
 
 O'er his infernal bed of pain ; 
 
 All my spirit cloven to its foundations, 
 
 Echoing his cries again, 
 
 They went crashing through my brain. 
 
 Till there came a hollow, hollow knocking 
 
 At my darling's lowly chamber door, 
 
 And my tortured heart sank fainting in me, 
 
 For I knew who stood before. 
 
 Then I beheld a dumb and dreadful Presence, 
 
 Shrouded in long rigid folds of grey, 
 
 Never daring to unveil its awful visage 
 
 Before the blessed day. 
 
 I, confronting barred the lowly entrance; 
 
 Yea, I flung my bleeding soul athwart. 
 
 I swore, " Thy touch shall ne'er pollute my 
 
 holy one 
 Till thou tread upon my heart! 
 
 102
 
 A Z R A E L 
 
 Swift-souled he is and pure and fair and happy, 
 
 All his life yet jjausing in the bud; 
 
 He is mine eyes, the pulse of all my being. 
 
 Vital warmth and dancing blood! 
 
 I have looked along the flowery vistas 
 
 Of his lovely paradisal spring ; 
 
 I have mused and seen myself beholding 
 
 His innocence upon the wing, 
 
 Flying in the freshly lilied alleys, 
 
 Blithely singing ever a sweet rhyme. 
 
 Wilt thou strike him dead before me? wilt 
 
 thou leave me 
 In blind silence for all time? 
 I shall look for long upon his opening beauty. 
 See the sail fill of his gallant youth, 
 Fair unsheathing of a generous keen spirit 
 Flashing eager for the Truth! 
 He shall defend us and delight us, old and 
 
 weary, 
 His poor weeping mother there and me! 
 Will it melt thee pondering how long and 
 
 dreary 
 Without him all our way will be? 
 How we longed and prayed and waited 
 
 for him! 
 And when, fairer than fond Hope could claim 
 
 103
 
 AZRAEL 
 
 He arrived among us, how our hearts leaped 
 Blessing, loving as he came ! " 
 
 Falling prone, I grovelling entreated, 
 " Dreadful Deity ! for once be kind ! " 
 But, implacable, It icily swept o'er me 
 A mig-hty moaning wind ; 
 And I saw my baby in its drear embraces, 
 Rigid, cold and silent, smitten dead. 
 Yet while I lay and impotently cursed It, 
 Methought, before It fled, 
 In place of Azrael, the awful angel. 
 When a fold fell from the countenance, 
 Methought I saw, O miracle; the Saviour, 
 With a world's love in His glance! 
 I beheld divinely human eyes of Jesus. 
 Unfathomable seas of sorrowing; 
 I saw like flame upon the riven forehead 
 His martyr-crown of King! 
 " Pardon, Lord ! " I cried, " O take my 
 
 darHng ! " 
 Looking in His Face methought He smiled. 
 Ere they vanished, in the empty chamber 
 
 kneeling, 
 I yielded him my child. 
 
 104
 
 AZRAEL 
 
 And I felt a little babe may on a stranger 
 For a while a fondling joy confer, 
 Yet if he hear the low tone of his mother, 
 He will bound away to her. 
 Were we high and pure enough to be the 
 
 guardians 
 Of a heavenly soul so pure and high? 
 God, Who lent our bird out of His bosom 
 Recalls him to the sky! 
 If He brought him to us. He can keep him 
 Safer than our foolish feeble care ; 
 It is very blind of us to weep him 
 Removed from our sad air, 
 Moved to where the holy ones are telling 
 In pure white lilies the Lord's love 
 Where amaranth and asphodel a dwelling 
 Weave around our dove, 
 Full of wisdom, full of love! 
 
 Was it very, very lonely, O my darling! 
 
 Very lonely for a little child. 
 
 Whom we cherished so, and guarded in his 
 
 goings. 
 Carried from us to the wild. 
 When thy dear bewildered eyes looked back 
 
 upon us, 
 
 105
 
 AZRAEL 
 
 And we longed in vain to keep thee or to 
 
 follow, 
 Longed for glimpses of thee disappearing 
 In the gloomy, guilty hollow? 
 Ah ! if we had seen thee, with companions 
 Coming forth to meet thee with a smile, 
 For there are to whom the beatific vision 
 Hath been granted otherwhile, 
 While they weeping stood deserted on the 
 
 desert. 
 And love was borne o'er wan waves far 
 
 away! 
 Yet the Lord of life and death is ever near us, 
 If we go or if we stay. 
 Lo ! the same mild moon upon the wanderer 
 Looks, and on the dweller by the hearth; 
 So the mild large Eye of the All-Father 
 Wards all worlds and earth, 
 Raining a sweet influence of spirits. 
 For no malignant ray can harm the pure : 
 It was Jesus, and the gentle saints departed 
 Who came his wound to cure; 
 On their gentle bosom how secure! 
 
 If I only knew how I shall behold him. 
 When and where and in what happy guise ! 
 
 io6
 
 AZRAEL 
 
 Will he be a child when I enfold him ? 
 Or will the form change as he grows more 
 
 wise 
 He will ever be a child in his sweet spirit ! 
 And I deem the very form will never die ; 
 But Ah! the soul slides where she holds 
 
 no image ! 
 Reels nor grasps reality ! 
 If I were only sure of his well being, 
 Sure as I am of anguish here, 
 Could I wish him in our foul, infected prison, 
 Away from his pure air. 
 
 Ah ! Thy merciless stern mercy hath chas- 
 tised us. 
 Goading us along the narrow road; 
 Thy bird who warmed and dazzled us a 
 
 moment, 
 Hath returned to Thine abode, 
 Lord when we are purged within the furnace, 
 May we have our little child again? 
 All Thine anguish by the olives in the Garden , 
 All Thy life and death are vain. 
 If Thou yield us not our own again ! 
 
 107
 
 A SOUTHERN SPRING CAROL 
 
 A SOUTHERN SPRING CAROL 
 
 O Spring ! O Spring ! O Southern Spring ! 
 What a triumphal song you sing! 
 All the valley sings! 
 Nor only warblers who have wings; 
 All the peach and almond blossom 
 Seems young carol from their bosom 
 In the form of flowers, 
 Wandering every way 
 On many a spray, 
 PJlls in the blue day, 
 Very bird-notes in a spray 
 Filling all the valley. 
 And I deem that, as they dally 
 In the summer light intense, 
 In the deep Italian blue, 
 A subtle spirit influence 
 May re-enchant them to a dew 
 Of melody pure-hearted, 
 
 io8
 
 A SOUTHERN SPRING CAROL 
 
 Hither and thither paited 
 From the bosom of the birds, 
 From the gaily feathered herds, 
 And they would be songs again, 
 One rich rain ! 
 
 A peach petal flutters down, 
 A white moth hath softly flown, 
 And we hardly know sweet note 
 From fair vision as they float. 
 All the valley sings! 
 An angel kindles when he dips 
 The fig's candelabra tips 
 To chrysolite, while many a vine 
 Amorously will incline 
 O'er vistas of a golden trellis 
 Where a cool and shadowy well is. 
 All overgrown with mosses wet 
 And maiden-hair and violet. 
 O'er many a shrine 
 Roses twine! 
 
 Light green fountains of the palm 
 Fall in a blue crystal calm ; 
 Delicate flushing lady tulips 
 Close their lanceolate dim dew-lips, 
 Their soft satiny repose 
 By a light hand flecked with rose; 
 
 109
 
 A SOUTHERN SPRING CAROL 
 
 Golden jonquils, white narcissus, 
 Whisper softly, " Come and kiss us ! 
 Part us not from the sweet brood 
 Of our companions in the wood!" 
 Earth's fair features, every one 
 Instinct with spirit of the sun, 
 Radiate well-married hues, 
 Blent with air and ocean blues. 
 Verily I seem to stand 
 In a realm of fairyland. 
 Or I take my dazzled station 
 In some intense illumination 
 Of a missal mediaeval 
 Yonder on the hill's upheaval 
 Where we hear the convent chime. 
 Wrought by monk of olden time, 
 Whom the cloister heard intone, 
 And many a sun-bleached river stone, 
 Or the darkling C3'press cone. 
 Cool grey clouds of oHve fill 
 All the foldings of the hill, 
 While fair dawn-empetalled peaches 
 Gleam athwart the bloomy reaches 
 Of quiet hare-bell mantled mountain 
 Gemmed with rivulet or fountain. 
 Shadowy evening robes whose hem 
 
 I lO
 
 A SOUTHERN SPRING CAROL 
 
 Shines with many a water gem: 
 While rich oranges all golden, 
 In a darkling foliage holden, 
 Are a foil to the pale gleaming 
 Of oval lemon, and the beaming 
 Ampler cherry trees, one snow 
 Of blossom in the fading glow! 
 In pale blue evening, 
 Ah! the cherry seems to sing, 
 With a fairy bridal dower! 
 Pure white chaHces of flower, 
 Pendent in a pale blue sky. 
 Shadowy blossom with soft eye 1 
 Dimlit amber mysteries 
 We faint surmise 
 Where bees hover 
 And a soft moth lover! 
 Oh, I would that I might know 
 The secret of your bridal snow, 
 Soul of the pure ecstasy 
 Softly haunting a grey sky. 
 With such a grace 
 Of spirit-lace ! 
 
 For it seems a happy ghost 
 From the seraph host! 
 Never bride dissolved in love, 
 
 III ~
 
 A SOUTHERN SPRING CAROL 
 
 Never saint in realms above, 
 
 Nor lark on his own music tost 
 
 Hath more joy than this, embossed, 
 
 Shadowy, rare, 
 
 On pale blue air; 
 
 White cloud a-flower, 
 
 A very shower 
 
 Of still rapture unalloyed. 
 
 Too overjoyed 
 
 For sound of singing! 
 
 All the valley sings! 
 
 A clear rivulet is flinging 
 
 Warbled song to the pure air. 
 
 Laughing, a young infant fair, 
 
 Ruffling softly, swiftly passes 
 
 Green-illumined among grasses. 
 
 Or red anemone to wander, 
 
 Where are violet, germander; 
 
 Child pursued in play, to ramble. 
 
 After such a sweet preamble 
 
 Among myrtle bowers and bramble. 
 
 Green-pennoned cane-brakes in the river 
 
 All around grey arches quiver; 
 
 While westering Apollo dulls 
 
 Delved loam and vivid pulse, 
 
 A swart red-vestured toiler waters 
 
 112
 
 A SOUTHERN SPRING CAROL 
 
 From rills, who are the river's daughters. 
 All the valley sings! 
 And rings, and rings ! 
 All! Nature never would have power 
 To breathe such ecstasy of flower, 
 Vernal songs of happy birds, 
 The young rill's delicious words. 
 No iris hues might bring to birth, 
 No heart were hers for any mirth, 
 If he were turned to common earth ! 
 If a child so fair, so good. 
 Were a waif on Lethe's flood. 
 If a soul-source of feeling, seeing. 
 Were blotted from the realms of being ! 
 She from all dehght would start. 
 With such a horror at her heart, 
 She would reel dissolved, and faint 
 With deep dishonour of the taint! 
 The very girders of her hall 
 Crushed, her stately floor would fall. 
 Ourselves are the foundation stone; 
 If thought fail, the world is gone ; 
 All were ruined, wanting one. 
 But all the valley sings! 
 Nature rises on immortal wings! 
 And soaring, lo ! she sings! she sings! 
 H 113
 
 A SOUTHERN SPRING CAROL 
 
 There is no death! 
 
 She saith. 
 O Spring ! O Spring ! O Southern Spring ! 
 What a triumphal song you sing! 
 
 Valley of Taggia, 1880. 
 
 114
 
 ALL SAINTS, AND ALL SOULS 
 
 ALL SAINTS, AND ALL SOULS 
 
 Thy birthday is All Saints' Day, my sweet 
 
 treasure. 
 
 Ah! well it may be! 
 For on us there descended in fuU measure 
 All saints in one celestial pleasure, 
 With thee, dear baby! 
 For thou wert open, loyal, fearless, 
 
 Ah me ! forsaken ! 
 Radiant soul in raiment peerless, 
 A private joy to thee how cheerless. 
 
 Until partaken ! 
 It is All Saints' Day; on the morrow. 
 
 With flowers offered. 
 Sons and daughters of dark sorrow 
 Some faint ray of peace may borrow 
 
 From flowers proffered 
 On green mounds of the departed. 
 
 Meekly saying 
 
 lis
 
 ALL SAINTS, AND ALL SOULS 
 
 To sweet souls of the true-hearted, 
 " May we not for long be parted, 
 
 Here delaying ! " 
 There a friend, a sister, mother, 
 
 Fondly kneeling. 
 Sobs and tears are fain to smother. 
 Unto the dear sundered other 
 
 Self appeahng, 
 " Leave me not alone, O lover ! 
 
 Child I cherish!" 
 " May the reign of love be over ? 
 Death is only sent to prove her! 
 
 May she perish?" 
 In warm-breathing blue ethereal 
 
 White tapers kindled 
 Shyly waver, souls aerial, 
 In all-beholding strength imperial 
 
 Of Day dwindled. 
 Like our lives in the universal 
 
 Sun of spirit ; 
 Hark how ocean makes rehearsal 
 Of a life without reversal 
 
 All inherit! 
 An eternal child, blue Ocean, 
 
 Rhythmic breathing 
 O'er the dead, with grand emotion, 
 
 ii6
 
 ALL SAINTS, AND ALL SOULS 
 
 And blue hills with deep devotion 
 
 Hearts are wreathing. 
 "We are sure they are not sleeping 
 
 Beneath our blossom, 
 By white marble we may, weeping, 
 Plant for memory, but keeping 
 
 Near our bosom 
 Life's own vigil o'er us, even 
 
 As in dreaming 
 O'er what seems their sleep, bereaven, 
 We hold our vigil ; they in heaven 
 
 Know no seeming! 
 
 San Remo. 
 
 ii;
 
 VISION OF THE NIGHT 
 
 VISION OF THE NIGHT 
 
 A SOFT young moon among the trees 
 
 Nor lights the valley-side, nor these 
 
 Only faint illumes a hill 
 
 Far over me, where pale and stiU 
 
 A fane mid habitations fair, 
 
 Gemmed with mild fires, inhabits air 
 
 Of clear May midnight; nightingales 
 
 Lull the lonely-lying vales; 
 
 Living stars above are set, 
 
 As in adoration met. 
 
 Yon hill appears a holy hope. 
 
 Far beyond our earthly scope, 
 
 Ghostly gleaming in the cope 
 
 Of heaven, revealed, anon withdrawn. 
 
 But I have felt the vision dawn, 
 
 Hallowing my lowly lawn. 
 
 So I may wait, tho' all be gloom, 
 
 Till the eternal day illume. 
 
 Ceriana. 
 
 Ii8
 
 IN LONDON 
 
 IN LONDON 
 
 The mighty towers of Westminster 
 
 Loom beneath me in murk air, 
 
 While a vast expanse of street 
 
 Echoes to loud hurrying feet 
 
 Of men and horses and swift wheels, 
 
 Where a clanging steeple peals, 
 
 Where he who with deep feeling cons 
 
 The souls of animals, in bronze 
 
 Wrought majestic lion forms. 
 
 Brooding, slumbering, dark storms. 
 
 Symbols of our England's power, 
 
 Wliose dread lightnings brood and glower, 
 
 Like those fulvous eyes ; their claws 
 
 Are death, hid sheathed in vasty paws. 
 
 On the lion a child gazes; 
 
 Grave brown wondering eyes he raises 
 
 To the form : compelled to leave, 
 
 With all my sight to him I cleave
 
 IN LONDON 
 In departing; often since 
 As from a sickening stroke I wince, 
 Journeying by the very place 
 Where I beheld his little face 
 Pondering on the mighty beast, 
 More than all to me, though least, 
 Seeing now through tear suffusion 
 Without him all the loud confusion! 
 
 Once again the living creatures, 
 With their weary sullen features, 
 I behold behind the bars 
 Where the den's dull limit mars 
 All wild splendour of their pride, 
 Abates the grandeur of their stride. 
 Bondage tames the fervid eyes. 
 As night doth the torrid skies. 
 To a lurid sultriness, 
 Clouded o'er with vague distress; 
 Emblems of our human race 
 Fallen from their lofty place. 
 Blind, bewildered, bound within 
 By the manacles of sin ! 
 
 With a glad and grave surprise 
 The terror of their gleaming eyes 
 
 1 20
 
 IN LONDON 
 
 He considers, mirthful mime 
 Of them in a little time. 
 Again I view the elephant, 
 Slow-pacing in his wonted haunt, 
 On whose tall, broad, howdah'd back 
 The child and I along the track 
 Three years ago swung, full of glee — 
 Now the child is not with me ! 
 
 When our wild praying seemed to stir 
 
 God's awful executioner. 
 
 Whose blank, set countenance faint quavered 
 
 Whose dull resolve a moment wavered, 
 
 And when sweet life seemed to repel 
 
 Death's white horror, it befell 
 
 That when he would descend the stair. 
 
 Patient he paused for one to bear 
 
 l£im feeble, and I filled the want; 
 
 So he named me his elephant. 
 
 Passing through the gay ancade 
 Where toys for children are displayed, 
 Anon I pause before a toy, 
 Dreaming how a little boy 
 Will lighten mirth from his dear face 
 If I buy it — for a space 
 
 121
 
 IN LONDON 
 
 Unremembering my home 
 
 Without him is but bHnd and dumb! 
 
 His sacred toys he idle now ; 
 
 O'er them the pale anguished brow 
 
 Of Love's forlorn despair we bend, 
 
 Hoping life's dull pain may end; 
 
 Till anon some organ sounds 
 
 In the street, but no glad bounds 
 
 Of a child's light feet we note 
 
 Run to hear the music float, 
 
 Climb upon a chair to see 
 
 Dancing dolls, bedizened glee, 
 
 Or the monkey's mimicry. 
 
 What shall I do? . . . Full many others, 
 
 Little ones who seem his brothers. 
 
 Take delight in things like these ! 
 
 Do they ail, or doth, the breeze 
 
 Of pleasure ripple o'er their faces, 
 
 I will contemplate their graces ; 
 
 I will be a minister 
 
 The fountain of their joy to stir 
 
 In such resorts, and by such measures 
 
 As were wont to yield him pleasures; 
 
 Or where little hearts may ail, 
 
 Love's a yoke-fellow, I will not fail, 
 
 122
 
 IN LONDON 
 
 Where are tears and visage pale, 
 
 To quell the tyranny of Fate 
 
 Or man that renders desolate: 
 
 And I deem he will approve 
 
 In the bowers of holy Love, 
 
 Near and nearer to me move. 
 
 Ours, how weak soe'er be strife, 
 
 On the holy side of life! 
 
 How loud soe'er the world may roar, 
 
 We know Love will be conqueror! 
 
 123
 
 DEATH 
 
 DEATtI 
 
 Death is very beautiful, 
 Solemn, pure and calm, 
 As in a shadowy cloister cool, 
 A lowly murmured psalm, 
 After some fierce battle cry 
 In the windy glare hard by. 
 Nay, very terrible is death! 
 A cold white shape of fear; 
 By it we talk with bated breath. 
 As if the thing could hear. 
 So hke, and so unlike the face! 
 Ah ! why borrow their dear grace ? 
 Nay! thou cold mockery of life! 
 Death take any other guise I 
 If they with living joy be rife. 
 Why looks their image on this wise? 
 Why make us deem they turn to this 
 Who were the pulse of all our bliss? 
 
 124
 
 DEATH 
 
 Death is Satan's cruel jest, 
 His blaspheming parody ! 
 " Lo ! I give your darling rest ; 
 Come and see him by-and-by! 
 Kiss the unanswering icy stone, 
 And know thyself alone, alone! 
 My repose is long and deep 
 Not a passing earthly sleep. " 
 
 Nay! this hath some inner sense; 
 I would resolve the mystery 
 'Tis but a symbol of intense 
 Unwearying life for these who die. 
 Lord ! may we wake to see Thy face 
 And our beloved in Thine embrace? 
 We dream a dream of cold white death, 
 And all our being shuddereth. 
 Ah ! when may we interpret, Lord, 
 The meaning of Thy mystic Word? 
 
 Death is very pitiful. 
 Death for a dear child ! 
 A pure white bud some wanton pull 
 Scatters on the wild ! 
 And yet woe may deeper move. 
 The dying and the death of Love! 
 
 125
 
 DEATH 
 
 He seemed so amiable, so fair, 
 
 All holy, a perennial youth ! 
 
 Dumb and stark he lieth there; 
 
 God Himself may weep for ruth. 
 
 " Dear Love, perchance may not be dead, 
 
 Only sleeping", some one said. 
 
 Ah! death is very beautiful 
 
 Solemn, pure, and calm. 
 
 As in a shadowy cloister cool, 
 
 A holy chanted psalm, 
 
 After some fierce battle cry 
 
 In the windy glare hard by, 
 
 Singing, " We are saved from evil. 
 
 From the wandering waves' upheaval, 
 
 Folded far from very death. 
 
 Wherein the spirit withereth. " 
 
 126
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS OF CHILDREN 
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS OF 
 CHILDREN 
 
 Verily their angels 
 Ever behold the face 
 Of our eternal Father 
 Sunned in His full grace. 
 Yet in the stormless sunshine 
 They do not love to dwell; 
 There is no place in Heaven 
 They love half so well 
 As the lowly chamber 
 Of a little child, 
 Dearer to them the breathing 
 Of his bosom mild 
 Than are aU the paeans 
 Round about the throne, 
 Scorning the cold splendour 
 Of an idle crown. 
 Love rears her radiant palace 
 127
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS OF CHILDREN 
 
 In our shadow-world of fears, 
 
 She mourns by our dark ocean 
 
 Of tempestuous tears ! 
 
 Angels tend the children 
 
 Waking or asleep, 
 
 They rebuke the evil 
 
 "Who have made them weep. 
 
 Heaven's crystal glory gloweth 
 
 Rainbowed as they fly 
 
 To where earth's night illumined 
 
 In their sweet charity, 
 
 Dawneth silently! 
 
 In the lordly castle 
 In the dungeon deep, 
 In the lonely hovel, 
 Love-vigil they keep. 
 Fair be the children, cherished, 
 Sweethearted, rosed with health. 
 Or poor and starved and wanting 
 The soul's holier wealth, 
 Inheritors of sorrow, 
 By leaguering ills deformed. 
 Plague-smitten soul and body. 
 Poor hearts love never warmed, 
 With aU the angels tarry; 
 128
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS OF CHILDREN 
 
 And though the fire be low, 
 
 They will fan the ember 
 
 To a living glow; 
 
 Inhabiting our sorrow, 
 
 Our chilled heart of wrong, 
 
 Until it yield and mellow 
 
 Bloom to a sweet song. 
 
 They, knowing our mortal fever 
 
 Soon will pass away, 
 
 Through long nights of sorrow 
 
 Calm await the Day. 
 
 Asleep they lead the lambkins 
 
 To meadows of sweet dream 
 
 In gentle arms they bear them 
 
 By many a cooling stream ; 
 
 Where the sunbeams cherish 
 
 White and yellow flowers, 
 
 They may sail on silver 
 
 Among fairy bowers. 
 
 Losing all the terror 
 
 Of our Vv^aking world, 
 
 Sails of their frail shallop 
 
 In flowery havens furled. 
 
 A poor boy rides the pony 
 So wistfully admired, 
 I 129
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS OF CHILDREN 
 
 While a poor maiden nurses 
 The doll richly attired; 
 They feel no more so tired! 
 Pains and griefs no longer 
 Vex the innocent breast, 
 Now dear angels lull them 
 Into such deep rest. 
 Cruel faces vanish 
 And all the loveless waste, 
 In a fair home they find them 
 Tenderly embraced. 
 
 And when we deem them dying, 
 More life the Lord imparts, 
 Their faint, frail breath subsideth 
 On warm ang-el hearts; 
 Like a wavelet failing 
 On a sand so fair: 
 Ah ! then the angels welcome 
 Heaven's cloudless crystal air! 
 Because of the frail snow-flake 
 Their kind bosoms wear. 
 The snowflake melts in glory, 
 The little child aw^akes; 
 Under the smiles of Jesus, 
 Death-frozen for our sakes 
 130
 
 GUARDIAN ANGELS OF CHILDREN 
 
 There are no more snow-flakes! 
 With our snows bejewelled 
 How the angels shine, 
 Earth's frozen flower a sunlet 
 Pulsing light divine! 
 
 Dear babes, help one another! 
 All the saints help you: 
 We are with them in heaven, 
 Doing as they do. 
 Every cross of sorrow 
 Is a blessed pain ; 
 The Lord Jesus bore it. 
 Proving it pure gain. 
 
 131
 
 LAST VICTIMS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 LAST VICTIMS FROM THE WRECK 
 OF THE " PRINCESS ALICE" 
 
 Two little bodies, from the tide 
 Last gathered, lie alone; 
 No father maddens by the side 
 Of Love turned into stone 
 No mother weeps here for her pride. 
 Her joy for ever flown. 
 They were all innocence and mirth, 
 Warm light of loving eyes ; 
 They are defiled and ruined earth, 
 The passing stranger flies. 
 The twain who watched them warmly curled. 
 Asleep with locks of gold, 
 Felt that for them the whole wide world 
 Nestled there aureoled. 
 And now they lie unknown, unnamed, 
 
 132
 
 OF THE "PRINCESS ALICE" 
 
 In London's awful roar; 
 
 Over them piteous, unclaimed, 
 
 Oblivion's dust will pour, 
 
 Love's eyes look never more ! 
 
 There is no silver sound, no speech, 
 
 Although they rest so nigh 
 
 No rosy dimpled hands impleach 
 
 In slumber tranquilly. 
 
 From the close clasp of loving arms, 
 
 From heedless holiday, 
 
 Hurled upon death's dire alarms. 
 
 And to uncared for clay! 
 
 133
 
 LAST VICTIMS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 II 
 
 Are they indeed unknown, unnamed? 
 
 Is any life spilt water? 
 
 In the lone universe unclaimed ! 
 
 Souls for mad chance to slaughter! 
 
 Have they no mother and no father? 
 
 In all the worlds no friend? 
 
 Are they a dim grey dust? — or rather. 
 
 Did our Eternal Parent send 
 
 Fair shining cohorts of His grace, 
 
 .Strong children of His Love 
 
 Who minister before His face. 
 
 Swift thronging from above, 
 
 To gather them from forth the gloom. 
 
 Long ere men found their forms? 
 
 To shield them in the shock of doom. 
 
 While heavenliest ardour warms 
 
 With emulation every breast ! 
 
 AH wiU be first to hold, 
 
 To lull the frightened babes to rest 
 
 In their maternal fold ! 
 
 134
 
 OF "THE PRINCESS ALICE" 
 
 There leaned both sire and mother lost, 
 
 Dawning on the dim gaze; 
 
 And many sealed in death's deep frost, 
 
 Fathers of former days, 
 
 Thronged all the approaches of God's throne, 
 
 "WTiile Christ arose above. 
 
 Smiling a welcome to His own 
 
 Babe brethren of His love. 
 
 . . . Yet ah! the hideous prospect whirls; 
 
 Death-slumber seems profound ; 
 
 With ghastly gleams the river swirls 
 
 Blindly above the drowned! 
 
 . . . Nay, but the children are awake. 
 
 Although we hear them not; 
 
 Our dear ones their sweet prattle make 
 
 In some fair far cot. 
 
 I deem our life is a red flame 
 
 Of purgatorial fire ; 
 
 And Death, God's calm white angel came 
 
 From the Eternal Sire, 
 
 To lay cool hands before their eyes, 
 
 Shadowing from the glare, 
 
 And in profound tranquillities 
 
 To hide from our despair. 
 
 One pure white Light is over all, 
 One Spirit-Pulse serene, 
 
 135
 
 LAST VICTIMS FROM THE WRECK, ETC. 
 
 Vi''ho when we rise and when we fall, 
 
 Unmoved approves the scene. 
 
 For Love is Lord from Heaven to Hell, 
 
 Walks our red waves of sorrow; 
 
 Love weeps beside us ; all is well ; 
 
 Day will dawn to-morrow. 
 
 Love weeps beside us, and within 
 
 Love moaneth for our lot; 
 
 Behold! his vassals Death and Sin, 
 
 Chained to His Chariot! 
 
 Love sleeps not, throned indifferent 
 
 Upon a lordly scorn; 
 
 He is the Man Whose brows are rent 
 
 With sorrow's crown of thorn. 
 
 God is the God-forsaken Man; 
 
 He is the Little Child ; 
 
 His eyes with human woes are wan; 
 
 And all is reconciled! 
 
 136
 
 CHILDREN AND THE WOODS 
 
 CHILDREN AND THE WOODS 
 
 I LOVE the beautiful green woodland, 
 
 \Vliere shy singing fairies flit ; 
 
 In the twilight of their foodland 
 
 I hear a tapping while I sit, 
 
 And deem it is the woodpecker, 
 
 Yet know not other elfin noises 
 
 That waking near me softly stir, 
 
 While a shadowy bough faint poises. 
 
 Dreamily athwart the beryl 
 
 Of sensitive sun-lighted leaves; 
 
 And breathlessly as in play-peril, 
 
 The laughing rillet swiftly cleaves 
 
 A way through trees and flowers who love 
 
 him. 
 Waving green arms while he flows. 
 With touch light hindering above him, 
 As they would kiss him while he goes, 
 But he merrily from them flows, 
 
 137
 
 CHILDREN AND THE WOODS 
 
 Blessing the green twilit heart, 
 As erst to mine my Httle one would songful 
 light impart ! 
 
 Ah ! now my fairy brock is dry ; 
 "Where are the playful gleamings of his eye, 
 Or songs of his sweet innocent revelry? 
 But while I love the gentle woodland, 
 And fragrant pines that stir and sing 
 Hushfully in upland valleys, 
 Blue lakes and every living thing, 
 I love the little human children 
 Better than all woods and flowers. 
 The music of their innocent gambols 
 More than springs and summer showers. 
 And my heart is never lonely 
 If in roving I may meet 
 A few little children only 
 With their merrily flying feet, 
 In the play-field fresh from school, 
 Or among glades of woodland cool. 
 They are fair meanings of the daylight, 
 Clear fulfilment of meek flowers. 
 All a shyly wandering faylight 
 Would say among her leafy bowers. 
 In their sweet, shy, side-long glances, 
 
 138
 
 CHILDREN AND THE WOODS 
 
 And every lisping word that wells, 
 
 In their light aerial dances, 
 
 As of wind-waved lily-bells . . . 
 
 I think I hear his very tone, 
 
 I feel his very Uving smile; 
 
 Yea, one would says he lends his own 
 
 To these fair children for a while. 
 
 Dear Father, these are very fair; 
 
 Lovely in all their ways, 
 
 Whose every breathing is a prayer, 
 
 And all their motion praise. 
 
 Then a gleam steals o'er the snow 
 
 Of my low-responding breast. 
 
 Even as a faint after glow 
 
 Dawns in the ever-faded west. 
 
 And so God gives all babes to me, 
 
 In place of Baby who is gone ; 
 
 Yet ah! the whole fair human family 
 
 Weighs lighter than my Uttle one ! 
 
 139
 
 LEAD ME WHERE THE LILY BLOWS 
 
 LEAD ME WHERE THE LILY 
 BLOWS 
 
 Friend you tell me of a valley 
 
 Where the pure white lily blows, 
 In a shadowy woodland alley 
 Lead me to their summer snows! 
 
 Oh, lead me where the lily blows! 
 I would wear it in my life, 
 Weary of world-soil and strife, 
 Lead me where the lily blows. 
 
 Angels planted in my garden 
 
 A vain pleasance of ill weeds, 
 One white lily, and the Warden 
 
 With sweet air from heaven feeds. 
 Ah! one night my lily died. 
 
 And I mourned him night and day; 
 " For the bosom of My Bride, " 
 
 The Lord saith, " he was borne away. " 
 Then I wandered through the world 
 
 To find the flower de luce I lost, 
 
 140
 
 LEAD ME WHERE THE LILY BLOWS 
 
 And my wings will ne'er be furled, 
 
 Summer-poised, or tempest-tost, 
 Till my lily of the valley 
 
 Somewhen, somewhere, my spirit find, 
 In a sweet celestial alley. 
 
 Far from our lost human-kind ; 
 Ah ! my lily of the valley ! 
 
 Lead me vrhere the lily blows, 
 I would wear it in my life. 
 Weary of world-soil and strife 
 Oh, lead me where the lily blows! 
 
 I wander till I find my flower 
 
 Breathing a divine perfume ; 
 His white petals are a power 
 
 My lone spirit to illume: 
 And I will follow where the Lord 
 
 Wills my weary feet to go, 
 While ever in my soul I hoard 
 
 The glimpse allowed to me below 
 Of what belonged to Paradise 
 
 Allowed awhile on earth to beam. 
 Until my weary wandering eyes, 
 
 With patient use, more native seem 
 To shadowy regions of dim death; 
 
 Till I faint behold my blossom, 
 
 141
 
 LEAD ME WHERE THE LILY BLOWS 
 
 No more in the outer Court have breath, 
 Earth's outer Court of life and death, 
 As erst, but in my very bosom ! 
 In the Hohest of all 
 
 By mine Altar in the gloom 
 Behold my lily fair and tall. 
 Breathing in immortal bloom ! 
 
 Every lowly thing that feels. 
 All we misname inanimate, 
 From one Eternal Heart appeals 
 To every heart, as to a mate, 
 " Rejoice or weep, for our estate ! " 
 So, if we love the Father's will, 
 Embrace the world and help mankind, 
 
 Our lost lily-bell shall fill 
 With dewy morning soul and mind! 
 
 For if mine be the true Lily 
 Whence all lily forms have birth, 
 
 My holy child will blossom stilly 
 For me in his morning mirth. 
 
 Fairer than he bloomed on earth! 
 Lead me where the lily blows, 
 I would wear it in my life. 
 Weary of world-soil and strife, 
 Oh, lead me where the lily blows! 
 142
 
 "THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE" 
 
 " THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE " 
 
 Whene'er there comes a little child, 
 
 My darling comes with him; 
 
 Whene'er I hear a birdie wild 
 
 Who sings his merry whim, 
 
 Mine sings with him : 
 
 If a low strain of music sails 
 
 Among melodious hiUs and dales, 
 
 When a white lamb or kitten leaps. 
 
 Or star or vernal flower peeps, 
 
 When rainbow dews are pulsing joy, 
 
 Or sunny waves or leaflets toy, 
 
 Then he who sleeps 
 
 Softly wakes within my heart: 
 
 With a kiss from him I start; 
 
 He lays his head upon my breast, 
 
 Tho' I may not see my guest. 
 
 Dear bosom guest! 
 
 In all that's pure and fair and good, 
 
 143
 
 "THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE" 
 
 I feel the spring-time of thy blood, 
 
 Hear thy whispered accents flow 
 
 To lighten woe, 
 
 Feel them blend, 
 
 Although I fail to comprehend. 
 
 And if one woundeth with harsh word, 
 
 Or deed, a child or beast or bird, 
 
 It seems to strike weak Innocence 
 
 Through him who hath for his defence 
 
 Thunder of the AU-loving Sire, 
 
 And mine to whom He gave the fire. 
 
 144
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE 
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE 
 
 Shimmer of laughter 
 
 Glimmer of play 
 
 Flown in a wafture, 
 
 Blown in a spray, 
 
 From blithe floor and rafter 
 
 Over the way 
 
 I know it is feast-day, a 
 
 Mirth-day for all; 
 
 Oh, to the least may a 
 
 Birthday befaU; 
 
 And the high priest play 
 
 There in the hall! 
 
 Play with his treasures; 
 
 He is a child, 
 
 Swaying their pleasures, 
 
 Being so mild; 
 
 The Holy One measures 
 
 Mirth for a child. 
 
 J H5
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE 
 
 Weep we less wildly! 
 
 Sleeping is well; 
 
 The Lord hath laid on him 
 
 A wonderful spell. 
 
 Flower-band childly 
 
 Call away fear! 
 
 Our hand mildly 
 
 Tender you cheer! 
 
 How I muse of him 
 Gambolling so, 
 With all these who love him 
 A brief while ago, 
 Heaven's joy above him, 
 Our joy below! 
 
 Ah! may you be merry 
 
 While one is lost. 
 
 In his dear bosom the 
 
 Terrible frost? 
 
 Smile we who bury 
 
 All we love most? 
 
 Or is he hiding 
 Here in the hall. 
 And will he come gliding 
 146
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE 
 
 Swift when we call? 
 Yea! I have found him, 
 Nor ever we part, 
 Love hath enwound him 
 Deep down in my heart! 
 
 h:
 
 THE CLOUD MAY SAIL THERE 
 
 THE CLOUD MAY SAIL THERE" 
 
 The cloud may sail there 
 Day flow and fail there, 
 And the eagle fly, 
 Haze overshadow 
 A smooth snow meadow. 
 And gleams of silver 
 Fleeting fly 
 From yon cloud delver 
 Of gleaming eye! 
 The moon may tarry with 
 Her pale bow, 
 And moonrise marry with 
 Virgin snow. 
 Blue heavens abide, 
 Or solemn-eyed 
 
 Stars by night, who gaze and go: 
 Ah! ne'er pollute 
 With a mortal foot 
 148
 
 "THE CLOUD MAY SAIL THERE" 
 
 Yon realms of spirits aerial; 
 
 All but the lute 
 
 Of air be mute 
 
 From rosy morn to evening fall, 
 
 While flowerets blue 
 
 Fair with dew, 
 
 Laugh to the azure over all; 
 
 Let a music mazy 
 
 Bom of tlie hazy 
 
 Play of a tender light and shade. 
 
 On hallowed ground 
 
 Dance with the sound 
 
 Fairy horns have faintly made; 
 
 A cloud of snow 
 
 Softly blow 
 
 Delicate verge of the form so white. 
 
 In a windy whirl; 
 
 But man, be far from the holy height 
 
 Soil no fair fields of frosty light! 
 
 149
 
 "THE DESERT SHALL BLOSSOM 
 
 ^'THE DESERT SHALL BLOSSOM 
 AS THE ROSE" 
 
 The desert way is dreary, 
 
 All empty is the wild, 
 
 My feet are very weary, 
 
 I cannot find my child. 
 
 The infinite blank spaces 
 
 Are weighing on my soul, 
 
 Gloom reigns in their dumb faces, 
 
 And there is no goal! 
 
 My hand is on the hoUow 
 
 Where I dreamed a heart; 
 
 The world is dead; I follow. 
 
 Darling, where thou art! 
 
 But while my hope was swooning. 
 
 And Earth and Heaven reeled, 
 
 I heard an infant moaning. 
 
 Who to my love appealed: 
 
 So then I prayed for power, 
 
 150
 
 AS THJi rose" 
 
 And laid him on my breast ; 
 
 The little human flower 
 
 Sank trustfully to rest — 
 
 But in the self-same hour 
 
 My form the cold earth pressed. . . 
 
 . . . An orbed luminous haze-lily, 
 
 For pistil the Moon-pearl ! 
 
 Ringed round with daffadowndilly, 
 
 A halo of brown curl, 
 
 As of young angels kneeling, 
 
 A reverent band aloof! 
 
 Earth smiles in the revealing 
 
 Of heaven's aery woof. 
 
 The stranger child I lifted 
 
 Wan lieth where he fell; 
 
 His scanty raiment rifted. 
 
 And woe-worn features tell 
 
 Of a life-long famine, 
 
 Of cruelty and pain: 
 
 And now while I examine 
 
 The piteous face again, 
 
 Meseems there dawns a kindred 
 
 To a long lost face; 
 
 While wakening unhindered 
 
 Wings of filmy grace 
 
 From the poor frayed swatliings 
 
 151
 
 "the desert shall blossom, etc. 
 
 Of his soiled garments break. 
 
 And delicate soft bathings 
 
 In the moon-sphere make. 
 
 Behold! they turn to flowers. 
 
 And settle in his hair 
 
 All over him in showers; 
 
 He hath grown so fair! 
 
 Christ in him overpowers 
 Dull strength of my despair: 
 
 While some sweet kindred gathers 
 
 To one fair face I love : 
 
 Ye divine it, fathers, 
 
 Who have a child above! 
 
 . . , Lo ! an eyelid fluttered ; 
 
 I know the bosom heaved! 
 
 . . . Now his own arms have uttered 
 
 All I disbelieved! 
 
 Dear eyes long held in durance,. 
 
 For ever open wide, 
 
 To yield my soul assurance 
 
 Of all she hath denied! 
 
 152
 
 FLOWER TO FLOWER 
 
 FLOWER TO FLOWER 
 
 EUCHARIS lilies. 
 
 Roses red. 
 
 Lie on the form of the 
 
 Early dead; 
 
 Eucharis lilies 
 
 Roses white 
 
 Lie on the shrine of a 
 
 Jewel of Light! 
 
 Tho' the jewel be flown, o, the 
 
 Shrine is fair; 
 
 Flowers are breathing 
 
 Everywhere, 
 
 Within his bosom and 
 
 Wavy hair; 
 
 Flowers for emblem. 
 
 Flowers for faith, 
 
 Sweet mortal words 
 
 The Immortal saith! 
 
 153
 
 FLO AVER TO FLOWER 
 
 Beautiful souls 
 
 Akin to his, 
 
 Who seem to be born 
 
 Out of all he is, 
 
 Who love to be born 
 
 And to die for this. 
 
 Flowers for rememberance 
 
 Flowers for truth ; 
 
 Thouglits of the angel of 
 
 Innocent youth ; 
 
 Dews of the morning 
 
 Over their mirth 
 
 Softly awaking 
 
 From sleep in earth; 
 
 Sweet resurrection, 
 
 A holy birth! 
 
 Red for renouncement, 
 
 Green is for hope, 
 
 White for humility, 
 
 Flowers who droop; 
 
 Pale for his purity 
 
 Fair they link, 
 
 Leaning a hand to us, 
 
 Ere we sink. 
 
 Azure for infinite 
 
 Heaven's embrace, 
 
 154
 
 FLOWER TO FLOWER 
 
 Tender and true 
 
 Celestial grace; 
 
 Red for the heart's blood 
 
 Of Christ our Lord; 
 
 Blue for His Love, who will 
 
 Keep His Word. 
 
 Pansy and violet, 
 
 Primrose pale, 
 
 Lil}^ of the valley, 
 
 Folded frail, 
 
 And water-lily 
 
 Fulfil the tale. 
 
 Pansy and violet, 
 
 Lilies white, 
 
 All for the form of a 
 
 Lily of Light. 
 
 155
 
 vale! 
 
 VALE ! 
 
 O TENDER dove, sweet circling in the blue, 
 Whom now a delicate cloud receives from view 
 A cool, soft, delicate cloud, we name dim 
 
 Death! 
 O pure white lamb-lily, inhaling breath 
 From spiritual ether among bowers 
 Of evergreen in the everliving flowers. 
 Yonder aloft upon the airy height. 
 Mine eyes may scarce arrive at thy still light ! 
 Wandering ever higher, oh, farewell! 
 Wilt thou the dear God tell 
 We loved thee well. 
 While He would lend thee ? Why may we 
 
 not follow? 
 Do thou remember us in our dim hollow! 
 Farewell, love, oh! farewell, farewell, fare- 
 well ! 
 We wave to thee, as when of old 
 
 *5f>
 
 VALE* 
 
 Thou waved and we waved, heart of gold ! 
 
 Parting- for a little while ! 
 
 And is all parting only for a while? 
 
 O faint perfume from realms beyond the sky }• 
 
 Waft of a low celestial melody! 
 
 O pure live water from our earthly well, 
 
 Whom Love changed to a heavenly cenomel 
 
 The while he kissed the bowl with longing lip, 
 
 And drew the soul therein to fellowship ! 
 
 Shimmer of white wings ere ye vanish! 
 
 Glimmer of white robes, ere ve banish 
 
 With your full glory, mortal eyes 
 
 From Paradise! 
 
 So far. so far, 
 
 Little star ! 
 
 Unless thine own dear happiness it mar, 
 
 Remember us in our low dell, 
 
 Who love thee well! 
 
 Farewell ! 
 
 '57
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AND THE BOY 
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AND THE 
 
 BOY 
 
 I LIVE in the heart of a limpid pool, 
 In the living limpid heart of a pool: 
 I lie in a flow of crystalline, 
 Where silvery fish with jewelled eyne 
 Float silent and the ripple-gleam 
 With many a delicate water-dream 
 Moves the face of flowers to quaver, 
 Hanging where the wavelets waver; 
 Daffodil, hyacinth, spring flowers 
 Who slumber veiled from sunny showers, 
 That only trickle feebly through 
 Forest foHage from the blue. 
 My streamlet sparkles in the pines, 
 And here in lambent flame declines; 
 For the sun has burst his leafy thrall, 
 Kissing it passionate in the fall. 
 I love to feel the water plash 
 
 158
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AND THE BOY 
 
 Merrily into ray pool, 
 With a swift reverberating flash 
 Of soft foam beautiful. 
 One brilliant surface shrines the sky, 
 Another young lit leaves on high, 
 While yet another shadowed o'er 
 Below deep emerald, my floor 
 Reveals, all wavering below 
 My water's everlasting flow. 
 O the beautiful butterflies 
 That flutter where the runnel flies! 
 Silverly glistening over stones 
 Where yonder nightingale intones 
 Where he flutes the livelong day 
 Learning the water's liquid lay; 
 A lovelier rendering is heard 
 Fresh from the genius of a bird; 
 While emulous water vainly tries 
 To glisten like the glistening eyes 
 Of nightingales in vernal leaves, 
 Where yon rosebower softly heaves: 
 Soon will their melhfluent strain 
 Woo the rose to life again ! 
 But surely there are lovelier things 
 Than these are with their cinnamon wings ! 
 Whose grace hath more compelling spells 
 
 159
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AND THE BOY 
 
 Than all mine azure damozels ] 
 
 For as I lay in my pool one day, 
 
 A cloud released a gleam, 
 
 And the jewel heart of my home grew gay 
 
 With a glorifying beam. 
 
 There came a rustle in the trees: 
 
 I deemed a silver doe 
 
 Would sip the ripple of the breeze 
 
 Wandering to and fro; 
 
 Listless I watched until he should 
 
 Arrive here from the shadowy wood. 
 It was no deer; it was a boy 
 Assailed and took my heart with joy I 
 Stealthily, daintily he came, 
 Flooding all my sense with flame. 
 
 He was clad in a ruby dress 
 
 That clung to his breathing loveliness, 
 
 While hose of opalescent silk 
 
 Revealed his delicate limbs of milk. 
 Shyly, timid as a doe. 
 He glanced if aught were near or no, 
 Then sought him out a pleasant spot 
 With clustering forget-me-not. 
 And leisurely upon the brink, 
 His jewelled raiment to unlink 
 Began; that yielding made a way 
 
 1 60
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AND THE BOY 
 
 For hungering eyes of mine to stray 
 In his fair bosom, velvet fine 
 Flushing it warmly as with wine, 
 Velvet and cambric lingering loth 
 To leave him, yet to faintness both 
 With warm white satiate, from whence 
 Stole overpowering my sense 
 Smooth boy bosom, whose are twin 
 Rosebuds in a silky skin. 
 
 By slender fingers, where the pale 
 ]\Ioon rises in a rosy nail 
 Cleared from all the lordly dress, 
 He shone with native loveliness! 
 Then pressed the grass with slirinking foot, 
 Strawberry blooms that promise fruit, 
 Windflower, violet and moss, 
 And taller flowers that love the loss 
 Of all their living gold upon 
 Those limbs unheeding any one: 
 And yet anon, 
 
 As he long blades of grassy gloss 
 Perplexed daintily disjoins, 
 A locust leaps upon liis loins! 
 Now finding near a shelving rock. 
 Behold ! he cowers before the shock ; 
 
 K l6l
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AND THE BOY 
 
 Yet heated how he longs to lave 
 
 His beauty in my cooling wave! 
 
 His rounded ivory arms have met 
 
 Over locks of glossy jet: 
 
 Gracefully curls the form so fair 
 
 Now upon my yielding air; 
 
 Cleaves my laughter-flashing wave, 
 
 Delighted one so soft and suave 
 
 To gulf within her glassy grave. 
 
 Lo! many a clear aerial bubble 
 
 Tells the water-heart's sweet trouble! 
 
 He lips the ripple, pants and flushes. 
 
 Thrusts out white buoyant limbs, and pushes 
 
 With turning palm, a snowy swan 
 
 Lavishing his bosom upon 
 
 My mantling water in the sun I 
 
 Now hath he climbed beside the stone, 
 
 With filmy Hchen overgrown. 
 
 Where small swift globes of water twinkle : 
 
 There among the periwinkle 
 
 Creeping, sidles with a shoulder 
 
 Pressed upon the verdured boulder. 
 
 Along a narrow ledge to wet 
 
 His shining head within the jet 
 
 Of foam that skirts my clear cascade, 
 
 Leaning under, half afraid. 
 
 l63
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AND THE BOY 
 
 All my close clinging vision grew 
 Over him leaping forth anew; 
 He dives; he rises; I refrain; 
 He floats upon the shine again. 
 Luxuriant he lies afloat. 
 Half his form and half his throat, 
 Clear from crystalline that sways 
 Him gently with alluring haze 
 Veiling some of him from sight, 
 Filming less or more of white 
 Wrist or shoulder, as he moves 
 Fair on wavering water-groves. 
 Hearing a long sweet croon of doves, 
 Flying pansies, butterflies, 
 Moths aflame with crimson dyes, 
 Haunt his vague and violet eyes: 
 Odorous shadow of the trees, 
 Drowsy with the hum of bees. 
 Amorous nightingales enkindling 
 At intervals the air and dwindling, 
 Slim grey waterfall in plashing. 
 On my stone the wave in washing. 
 Sweetest music never ending 
 Blending, never ending 
 Lulls him in his water-wending. 
 
 163
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AND THE BOY 
 
 Why, boy -lover, tell mc why 
 
 I was doomed to see thee lie, 
 
 I was doomed to see thee die, 
 
 Tell me why 
 
 Even I 
 
 Am singing now thy lullaby! 
 
 Hear my waiter sing tliee now 
 
 A lullabyl 
 In thy jasmine throat meander 
 Tender lines of dimple. 
 And 'tis haunted where they wander 
 While the waters wimple. 
 With a shy blue as from veins, 
 Where soft throat subsiding wanes 
 Into billowy bosom dreaming 
 Faintly of the roses; 
 Whose dim dream a bud discloses 
 In the gleaming 
 Undulating almond skin, 
 Roses nascent soft therein. 
 Ah! the quiet music of thy beauties un- 
 dulating ; 
 Ah! to feel, to feel, th)^ gentle warmth of 
 
 bosom palpitating: 
 What breath from heaven was breathing 
 behind the fairy flower, 
 1C4
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AND THE BOY 
 
 Whose, ample one white petal thy body had 
 
 for dower, 
 Blowing so unerringly to mould thee as 
 
 tliou tirt. 
 Even so waving waist and limb, and the 
 
 snow about thy heart? 
 And, if my hands were ne'er to thrill, my 
 
 beautiful, my boy 
 As they filled them with thy bosom, the 
 
 treasure and the joy, 
 Why along the ideal limit heaved thy delicate 
 
 form. 
 So, nor any otherwise, languid, white and 
 
 warm ? 
 
 I flung me round him, 
 I drew him under : 
 I clung", I drowned him. 
 My own white wonder! . . 
 
 Father and mother 
 Weeping and wild 
 Came to the forest. 
 Calling the child, 
 Came from the palace 
 Down to the pool, 
 165
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AND THE BOY 
 
 Calling my darling, 
 My beautiful! 
 
 Under the water, 
 
 Cold and so pale! 
 
 Could it be love made 
 
 Beauty to fail? 
 
 Ah! me for mortals: 
 
 In a few moons, 
 
 If I had left him. 
 
 After some Junes 
 
 He would have faded 
 
 Faded away, 
 
 He the young monarch, whom 
 
 All would obey. 
 
 Fairer than day; 
 
 Alien to spring-time, 
 
 Joyless and grey, 
 
 He would have faded, 
 
 Faded away, 
 
 Moving a mockery. 
 
 Scorned of the day ! 
 
 Now I have taken him 
 
 All in his prime. 
 
 Saved from slow poisoning 
 
 Pitiless Time, 
 
 1 66
 
 THE WATER-NYMPH AMD THE BOY 
 
 Filled with liis happiness, 
 One with the prime, 
 Saved from the cruel 
 Dishonour of Time. 
 Laid him, my beautiful. 
 Laid him to rest 
 Loving adorable, 
 Softly to rest 
 Here in my crystalline. 
 Here in my breast ! 
 
 167
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 Methought I saw the morning bloom 
 A solemn wilderness illume^ 
 Desert sand and empty air : 
 Yet in a moment I was aware 
 Of One who grew from forth the East, 
 Mounted upon a vasty Beast 
 It s\\T.mg with silent equal stride, 
 With a mighty shadow by the side: 
 Tlie tawny tufted hair was frayed; 
 The long protruding snout was laid 
 Level before it; looking calm away 
 From tliat imperial rising" of the Day. 
 Methought a very awful One 
 Towered speechless thereupon : 
 AU the figure like a cloud 
 An ample mantle did enshroud, 
 Folding heavily dark and white, 
 Concealing all the face from sight, 
 
 1 68
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 Save where through storm-like rifts there came 
 A terrible gleam of eyes like flame. 
 
 Then I beheld how on his arm 
 A child was lying without alarm. 
 Witli innocent rest it lay asleep; 
 Awakening soon to laugh and leap ; 
 Yet well I knew, whatever passed^ 
 The arm that held would hold it fast. 
 Nor ever then it sought to know 
 Whose tender strength encircled so, 
 Living incuriously wise 
 Under the terrible flame of eyes. 
 In those sweet early morning hours 
 It played with dewy wreathing flowers. 
 Drinking oft from a little flask 
 Under the mantle: I heard it ask: 
 Yea, and at other times the cooling cup 
 Gentle and merciful He tilted up. 
 
 But when the sun beg^an to burn, 
 I saw the child more restless turn,. 
 Seeking to \'iew the silent One : 
 Then, growing" graver thereupon. 
 It whispered " Father ! " but I never heard 
 If any lips in answer stirred.
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 Yet if no answer reached the child, 
 I know not why he lay and smiled, 
 Raising his little arms on high 
 In a solemn rapture quietly! 
 
 The shadow moved, and growing less., 
 A blue blaze ruled the wilderness. 
 The child alert with life and fire 
 Gazed all around with infinite desire. 
 Erect he sat, contented now no more 
 To nestle and feed upon the homely store: 
 He searched the lessening distance whence 
 
 they came 
 He peered into the clear casrulean flame 
 His hand would mingle with the shaggy 
 
 hair 
 Of that enomious Living" Thing which bare. 
 Whose feet were planted in the powdery 
 
 ground 
 With ne'er a pause, with ne'er a sound. 
 Yon fascinating, wondrous Infinite 
 His clear young eyes explored with keen 
 
 delight : 
 He gazed into the muffled Countenance 
 Undazzled with the rifted radiance: 
 Then giving names to all that he espied, 
 
 J 70
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 He murmured with a bright triumphant pride, 
 "I hold their secret: lo! I am satisfied." 
 Oh! it was rare to see the lovely child> 
 As with a gaze ecstatical he smiled, 
 Follownng with eager, splendour-beaming 
 
 eyes 
 A bird magnificent who sailed the skies 
 On vast expanded plumes of sanguine white, 
 Enamoured of transcendant azure light, 
 Higher and higher soaring to the sun-; 
 Claiming a share in his dominion ; 
 Elate with ardour, like unwearying youth, 
 Imperially at home in awfiil realms of Truth? 
 
 But ah I the sun beat fierce and merciless 
 Upon the boundless, barren wilderness, 
 Then soon, responsive to a slakeless thirst. 
 Behold upon his ravished sight there burst 
 A vision of a far off lake most fair. 
 Where many a palm was dallying with air. 
 And soft mimosa: how alluringly 
 Smiled the sweet water in a blinding sky? 
 Can he not hear a gentle turtle coo 
 Among light leaves, yea, very wavelets blue 
 Lapping among green reeds upon the shore, 
 Calling him to abide for evermore?
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 Ah! how doth he impetuous entreat, 
 And chide the silent, never-lingering feet! 
 Yet was it strange, for as the feet advanced 
 The lake receded and the waters danced 
 An eerie dance with all the belts of trees, 
 And mingled with them till the sand with these 
 On the horizon made a marge that wavered 
 And all blew sidelong, thin white flame that 
 
 quavered — 
 Then one low whispered,— " 'Tis the De\'irs 
 
 water I " 
 While in his ear there nealed cruel un- 
 
 earthly laughter. 
 On this the child fell ill with fever,^ 
 Made many a vain yet wild endeavour 
 To fling himself from forth the grasp 
 That held with ne'er relaxing clasp, 
 Murmuring, " None holds me fast ; 
 I aim a plaything of the blast." 
 But the Rider from the girdled store 
 Ministered to him as before. 
 
 And while the shadow \'eered by stealth. 
 A measure of his primal health 
 The boy resumed: an air that fanned 
 Blew veritably o'er the sand; 
 
 172
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 And little birds before them Hew 
 
 Vested in a sober hue, 
 
 A paly brown, to suit the home 
 
 Where 'tis their destiny to roam. 
 
 Yet I am sure that ne'er a bird 
 
 Fluting- more soft and sweet was heard 
 
 Among- the lawns of Paradise, 
 
 Than these in such a humble guise, 
 
 AVho, without any rest or haste 
 
 Travel warbling- o'er the waste. 
 
 Moreover in the sterile soil 
 
 Some spots of verdure, while the travellers toil, 
 
 Arise; yea, even the sweet oases 
 
 That vanished with the feigning-, undulating 
 
 graces. 
 Were fair and real delight, however fleeing. 
 With law distinct of transitory being; 
 Only illusion for deluding eyes. 
 That yearn for u'hat nor waste nor world 
 
 supplies 
 Some dim ideal of the soul, 
 That ever loves and grows toward the 
 
 illimitable whole. 
 
 But ever as they two solitary range, 
 And as the immeasurable horizons change,
 
 A VISION OF tHE DESERT 
 
 Upon the child more burdensome doth lie 
 Sense of impenetrable mystery. 
 Erst he imagined that he chose to go; 
 But now he feels, whether he will or no 
 One carries him: he joyed to be in life 
 For possibilities of boundless strife, 
 Wresting resplendent secrets bold from all : 
 Now the unmasked immensities appal, 
 Weighing incumbent on the sense and 
 
 thought, 
 As on a dwindling grain of dust, as on a 
 
 thing of nought! 
 A moment looking toward the shrouded P"ace 
 Now is he fain his timid eyes to abase: 
 " Father, unveil ! " he tremulously cries, 
 Fearing he asks impossibilities. 
 
 Yet hearken ! voices musical 
 Like dew upon the desert fall, 
 Rising and falling. 
 Calling, calling! 
 Very plaintive, sweet and low, 
 As the lonely pilgrims go: 
 Are they spirits of the wild. 
 Calling, answering low and mild? 
 Is it a voice of one departed, 
 
 *74.
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 Plaining gentle, unquiet-hearted, 
 Vainly hungering to enfold 
 His beloved as of old? 
 Severed from our living kind, 
 In a feeble wandering wind 
 Wandering ever? none can tell 
 Whence the mystic murmurs well: 
 But oft an Arab roaming far 
 Over sands of Sahara 
 Hears the sweet mysterious measure 
 With a solemn-hearted pleasure^ 
 Saying, " No wind among the stones 
 Breathes the rare unearthly tones ! " 
 And howsoe'er it be they tell 
 The soul of things ineffable. 
 Of a life beyond our death or birth, 
 Of a -universe beyond the earth ! 
 Monotonously weary seemed the way, 
 While hght declining faded slowly away 
 Some haze obscured a gradual westering sun 
 And all the oppressive firmament was wan. 
 In it voluminous appears to form 
 From the horizon a continent of storm, 
 A ponderous bulk of gathering indigo, 
 Tinged in its formidable overflow 
 With hues of livid purple poison flowers. 
 
 175
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 In ghastlier whiteness for the night that 
 
 lowers 
 Strewing forlorn the desolate desert pale, 
 Some grinning- skeletons of men assail 
 My vision ; while a monstrous bird of prey 
 From a putrescent corpse rends fierce away 
 The clinging flesh with horrid sound of 
 
 tearing, 
 Its beak abruptly, pulling, baring; 
 Bald-headed, hideous neck low crouched 
 
 betwixt 
 The pressure of strong talons curved, infixed : 
 Now the proud brain, like fearful Madness 
 
 mangling, 
 Like Sin now with the reeking^ bosom 
 
 wrangHng : 
 ]Jke ignorance, disease, war, tyranny, star- 
 vation. 
 Eating the vitals of a noble fallen nation! 
 This creature, as they pass, a moment glaring 
 Voracious-eyed, with vasty vans that cover 
 A little further on obscene doth hover 
 A grey hyena, and he laughs a peal 
 Of beastly laughter, scraping up a meal 
 Loathsome from forth the sand: there is a 
 
 howl 
 
 176
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 Dolefully borne from where the lean wolves 
 
 prowl ! 
 Then silence falls upon the deepening gloom, 
 And sultry air forebodes the smothering 
 
 Simoom. 
 Looking towards the child with deep dismay, 
 I noticed his fair ringlets turned to grey, 
 And sparse like withered bents upon his 
 
 head: 
 His pale, worn countenance was drawm with 
 
 dread ; 
 Yet in his eyes there burned a grand resolve, 
 No sights of terror lightly might dissolve. 
 And now I heard him murmur, " Mighty 
 
 Father ! 
 I trust thee ; yea, to thee I cling the rather. 
 Albeit I may not see thine awful face ! " 
 Then I was sure he felt the strong embrace 
 Tighten around him, though a Skeleton 
 Came stalking from the night to lead them on : 
 A far-off murmur swelled into a wildering 
 
 roar; 
 A hurricane of flame and sand whirled like 
 
 a conqueror! 
 And when the o'erwhelming terrible death- 
 tempest on them broke, 
 I. 177
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 The shrinking child crept nestling close 
 under the Father's cloak. 
 
 Then darkness swallowed the portentous 
 
 plain. 
 When faint it dawned upon my eyes again, 
 Lo! there was moonlight in a sky serene; 
 AU lay at peace beneath the melancholy 
 
 sheen. 
 No voice was heard, no living thing was 
 
 seen. 
 Yet ere I was aware, that awful Apparition 
 Once more emerged upon my mortal vision — 
 The shrouded, dim, unutterable Form, 
 With eyes that flame as through the rifts 
 
 of storm, 
 Mounted on that colossal Living Thing, 
 Bearing the child now softly slumbering — 
 While all confused immeasurable shadow 
 
 fling- 
 Peacefully lay the boy's pale silent head: 
 
 And looking long, I knew that he was dead. 
 
 Then all my wildered anguish forced a way 
 
 Through my wild lips: "Reveal, O lord, I 
 
 pray. 
 
 Whither thou earnest him ! " I cried aloud : 
 
 178
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT 
 
 No voice responded from the shadowy shroud ; 
 Only methought that something like a hand 
 Was raised to point athwart the shadowy 
 
 land; 
 And while afar the dwindling twain were 
 
 borne, 
 I, gazing all around with eyes forlorn, 
 Divined the bloom of some unearthly morn ! 
 
 Where was he carried? to an isle of calm, 
 Lulled with sweet water and the pensile 
 
 palm? 
 Vanishing havens on the pilgrimage 
 Surely some more abiding home presage! 
 Or must the Sire attain always alone 
 The happy Land with never a living son? 
 
 O! awful, silent, everlasting One! 
 If thou must roam those islands of the west. 
 Ever with some dead child upon thy breast. 
 Who would have hailed the glory being blest, 
 Eternity were one long moan for rest! 
 For do we not behold thee morn by morn, 
 Issuing from the East with one new-born. 
 Carrying him silently, none knoweth whither. 
 Knowing only all we travel swiftly thither. 
 
 179
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 Lines addressed to H. F. B. 
 
 Do you remember the billowy roar of tu- 
 multuous ocean 
 Darkling, emerald, eager under vaults of 
 the cave 
 Shattered to simmer of foam on a boulder 
 of delicate lilac 
 Disenchantless youth of the clear immortal 
 wave ? 
 Labyrinths begemmed with fairy lives of 
 the water, 
 Sea-sounding palace halls far statelier than 
 a King's 
 Seethe of illumined floor with a never wea- 
 rying motion, 
 Oozy enchased live walls where a sea- 
 music rings? 
 
 1 80
 
 SUSPIRI A 
 
 Do you remember the battle our brown- 
 winged arrowy vessel 
 Wag-ed with wind and tide, a foaming 
 billowy night, 
 To a sound as of minute guns, when gloomy 
 hearts of the hollows 
 With sullen pride rebuffed invading 
 Ocean's might? 
 
 Do you remember the Altarlet towers that 
 front the Cathedral 
 Dark and scarred sheer crag, flashed o'er 
 by the wild sea-mews? 
 How they wheel aloft lamenting, souls of 
 the ululant tempest! 
 And the lightning billows clash in the 
 welter Odin brews ! 
 
 A sinister livid glare from under brows of 
 the storm-Sun! 
 Brows of piled-up cloud, threatening grim 
 Brechou, 
 Bleaching to ghastly pale the turbulent 
 trouble of water, 
 While the ineffable burden of grey world 
 
 o'er me grew! 
 
 i8,
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 Yea, all the weary waste of cloud confused 
 with the ocean 
 Fell full-charged with Doom on a founder- 
 ing human heart; 
 Our souls were moved asunder, away to an 
 infinite distance, 
 While all the love that warmed me waned 
 and will depart. 
 Fiends of the whirlwind howl for a wild 
 carousal of slaughter 
 Of all that is holy and fair, so shrills the 
 demon wail; 
 Ruin of love and youth with aU we have 
 deemed immortal! 
 My child lies dead in the dark, and I 
 begin to fail! 
 Wonderful visions wane, tall towers of phan- 
 tasy tumble; 
 I shrink from the frown without me, there 
 is no smile within 
 I cower by the fireless hearth of an un- 
 inhabited chamber. 
 Alone with Desolation and the dumb ghost 
 of my sin. 
 
 lS2
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 I have conversed with the aged; once their 
 souls were a furnace 
 Now they are gleams in mouldered vaults 
 of the memory: 
 All the long sound of the Human wanes to 
 wails of a shipwreck, 
 Drowned in the terrible roar of violent 
 
 sons of the sea! 
 In the immense stonn-chaunt of winds 
 waves of the sea! 
 And if we have won some way in our weary 
 toil to the summit 
 Do we not sHdder ever back to the mouth 
 of the pit? 
 When I behold the random doom that en- 
 gulfs the creature, 
 I wonder is the irony of God perchance 
 in it? 
 'Tis a liideous spectacle to shake the sides 
 off fiends with laughter 
 Where in the amphitheatre of our red 
 world they sit! 
 Yea, and the rosiest Love in a songful 
 heart of a lover, 
 Child of Affinity, Joy, Occasion, beautiful 
 May, 
 
 '83
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 May sour to a wrinkled Hate, may wear 
 and wane to Indifference 
 Ah! Love, an 'thou be mortal, all will 
 soon go grey! 
 O when our all on earth is wrecked on 
 reefs of disaster, 
 May the loud Night that whelms be found 
 indeed God's Day! 
 
 Our aims but half our own, we are drifted 
 
 hither and thither 
 The quarry so fiercely hunted rests un- 
 heeded now; 
 And if we seized our bauble, it is fallen 
 into ashes, 
 But a fresh illusion haunts the ever aching 
 brow, 
 Is the world a welter of dream, with ne'er 
 an end nor an issue, 
 Or doth One weave Dark Night, with 
 
 Morning's golden strand. 
 To a Harmony with sure hand? 
 All I for a vision of God ! for a mighty grasp 
 of the real. 
 Feet firm based on granite in place of 
 crumbling sand! 
 
 184
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 O to be face to face, and heart to heart 
 with our dearest, 
 Lost in mortal mists of the unreveaUng 
 land! 
 Oh ! were we disenthralled from casual moods 
 of the outward, 
 Slaves to the smile or frown of tyrant, 
 mutable Time! 
 Might we abide unmoved in central deeps 
 of the Spirit, 
 Where the mystic jewel Calm glows ever- 
 more sublime ! 
 The dizzying shows of the world that fall 
 and tumble to chaos, 
 Dwell irradiate there in everlasting prime. 
 But the innermost spirit of man who is 
 one with the Universal, 
 Yearns to exhaust, to prove, the Immense 
 of Experience, 
 Explores, recedes, makes way, distils a food 
 from a poison, 
 From strife with Death wring^s power, 
 and seasoned confidence 
 O'er the awakening infant, drowsing eld 
 and the mindless,
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 Their individual Spirit glows enthroned 
 
 in Heaven, 
 Albeit at dawn or even or from confusion 
 
 of cloudland, 
 Earth of their full radiance may remain 
 
 bereaven : 
 Yea, under God's grand eyes all souls lie 
 
 pure and shriven. 
 
 Nay! friend beloved! remember purple 
 
 robes of the cavern, 
 And all the wonderful dyes in dusky 
 
 halls of the sea, 
 When a lucid lapse of the water lent thrills 
 
 of exquisite pleasure, 
 A tangle of living lights all over us 
 
 tenderly, 
 When our stilly bark lay floating, or we 
 
 were lipping the water 
 Breast to breast with the glowing, ardent 
 
 heart of the deep 
 That was a lovelier hour, whispering hope 
 
 to the spirit, 
 Breathing a halcyon calm, that lulled 
 
 despair to sleep; 
 
 i86
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 Fairy flowers of the ocean, opening inner- 
 most wonder, 
 Kindle a rosy morn impearled in the 
 waterways, 
 
 A myriad tiny diamond founts arise in the 
 coralline, 
 
 Anemones love to be laved in the life of 
 the chrysoprase 
 
 The happy heart of the water in many un- 
 known recesses 
 Childly babbled, and freely to glad com- 
 panions : 
 
 We will be patient, friend, through all the 
 moods of the terror 
 Waiting in solemn hope resurrection of 
 our suns! 
 
 Cherish loves that are left, pathetic stars 
 
 in the gloamings 
 Howe'er they may wax and wane, they 
 
 are with us to the end, 
 The Past is all secure, the happy hours and 
 
 the mournful 
 Involved i' the very truth of God Himself, 
 
 my friend ! 
 
 187
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 It is well to wait in the darkness for the 
 Deliverer's moment, 
 With a hand in the hand of God, strong 
 Sire of the Universe; 
 It is well to work our work, with cheering 
 tones for a brother 
 Whose poor bowed soul, like ours, the 
 horrible gulfs immerse ; 
 Then dare all gods to the battle! Who of 
 them all may shame us? 
 The very shows of the world have fleeting 
 form from thee: 
 Discover but thy task, embrace it firm with 
 a purpose; 
 Find, and hold by Love, for Love is 
 Eternit}', 
 
 Sark, 1 88 1. 
 
 to be sure for ever! weary of hopes 
 and guesses, 
 
 1 would the film might fall that veils our 
 orbs in night! 
 
 At eve grey phantom armies guard the 
 mighty mountain. 
 Denying free approach to wistful wonder- 
 ing sight: 
 
 i88
 
 SUSPIRI A 
 
 A Presence dim divined through blind, impal- 
 pable motion, 
 An awful formless Form, i' the core of 
 change unmoved, 
 No more was ours, until the grand invin- 
 cible Angel 
 The clear-eyed North blew bare Heaven's 
 azure heights and proved 
 Hope's heavenliest flight weak-winged ; his 
 breath with clamorous challenge 
 Dissolved the cloud-battalions, withering 
 shamed away: 
 Behold in sunrise dyed, a wondrous vision 
 of high crag, 
 Spires of leaping flame arrested in mid- 
 play; 
 Peak, rock-tower and dome ; huge peals of 
 an ocean of thunder 
 Assumed a bodily form in yonder wild 
 array! 
 And the long continuous roll of cloudy storm 
 subsiding 
 Was tranced to awful slopes of smooth 
 grey precipice. 
 While over all up-soared, retiring into the 
 heavens, 
 
 189
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 Ever higher and higher, snows and gleam- 
 ing ice! 
 Plain beyond plain, the strophes of a glori- 
 ous poem, 
 
 Voyaging stately and calm to heights of 
 the argument. . . . 
 How to be sure for ever ? deepening all our 
 being, 
 
 And emptying self of self, with Truth we 
 shall be blent. 
 
 Yon hierarchy sublime of calm ethereal 
 
 mountain 
 Was born of earth's fierce passion, world- 
 confounding throes 
 Fire and battle and gloom ; the livid demon 
 of lightning 
 Flashed his zigzag blaze to be a norm 
 for those; 
 Birth and deatli, monotonous toil in deeps 
 of the ocean, 
 Co-operant blind to fashion a far-off repose. 
 Whose brief earth-hour may taste ripe future 
 fruit of the ages? 
 Guage with a life's one pace the march 
 of the armies of God? 
 190
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 Forestall results of time, flash all the sun 
 from a dew-drop? 
 But where the Sire hath willed, there 
 every footstep trod. 
 
 'Tis only a little we know; but ah! the 
 
 Saviour knoweth; 
 I will lay the head of a passionate child 
 
 on His gentle broest, 
 I poured out with the wave, He founded 
 
 firm with the mountain ; 
 In the calm of His infinite eyes I have 
 
 sought and found my rest. 
 O to be still on the heart of the God we 
 
 know in the Saviour, 
 Feeling Him more than all the noblest 
 
 gifts He gave ! 
 To be is more than to know, we near the 
 
 Holy of Holies 
 In coming home to Love ; we shall know 
 
 beyond the grave. 
 
 Ah! the peace of the beautiful realm,^ 
 like dew, sinks into my spirit; 
 
 True and tender friend, I love to be here 
 with thee. 
 
 191
 
 SUSPIRIA 
 
 The pines, tall fragrant columns of a mag- 
 nificent temple, 
 Are ranged before the ethereal mountain 
 majesty ; 
 While a dove-coloured lapse of the water 
 merrily murmurs a confidence 
 Into a quiet ear of twilit beautiful bowers ; 
 Sweet breath of the pyrola woos us, white 
 waxen elf of the woodland. 
 And two tired hearts may play awhile 
 with the innocent flowers. 
 
 San Martino 1882. 
 
 192
 
 WILD LOVE ON THE SEA 
 
 WILD LOVE ON THE SEA 
 
 " O SING to me, sing to me, foam of the 
 
 Sea, 
 Sing while we sail, to my darling and me, 
 While we heel to the wind, the foam flies 
 
 from the bow. 
 My love laughs, we were never so happy 
 
 as now! 
 
 We rush through the water, we scatter the 
 
 spray, 
 The foam-bubbles leap in the blue light away, 
 My sails are less white than your bosom or 
 
 hand. 
 We will sail on for ever afar from the land. 
 
 O dotards may mumble their winterly talk. 
 But the young joy of living their age may 
 not baulk, 
 M 193
 
 WILD LOVE ON THE SEA 
 
 We shall soon be bey ond their bleak Northerly 
 
 Clime, 
 Who fain would persuade us that love is a 
 crime. 
 
 Never fear, never fear, nestle closer to me, 
 O we joy to bound over wild waves and be 
 
 free! 
 For our bridal sing, winds ! and blithe billows, 
 
 your song 
 Breathe into your clarion loudly and long! 
 
 Winds whistle and fill the full-bellying sail ; 
 Yea, what if they rise and blow shrill to a 
 
 gale? 
 My boat is a rare one, she swims like a bird — 
 Ha ! what if the roar on the reefs may be 
 
 heard ? 
 
 You're the loveliest lady that ever was known, 
 My rival I slew, and my bride is my own ; 
 Warm bosom to bosom, hot mouth unto mouth, 
 We are flying to lovelier lands of the 
 South . . . ." 
 
 " Nay the sky's growing darker, I fain would 
 return — " 
 
 194
 
 WILD LOVE ON THE SEA 
 
 " Your doubts are too late, love, your scruples 
 
 I spurn ; " 
 " I fear thee, I fear thee, fierce lover of mine ; 
 "Thy lips are the wild wave, thy breasts 
 
 are the brine! " 
 
 " Ho ! with storm to the windward, and 
 
 breakers to lee, 
 " They go swimming with Death, who go 
 
 sailing with me! " 
 
 195
 
 NOCTURNE 
 
 NOCTURNE 
 
 At the close of a day in December 
 I went by the winter sea, 
 And my soul was a fading ember 
 In abysms of immensity. 
 
 Then God spake out of the gloaming 
 Where the wave gave over strife, 
 And fell, wan, feeble, and foaming, 
 'Man what hast thou done with life?' 
 
 I was ware of a mournful throbbing, 
 Of a sea-pulse on the shore, 
 And I heard in it women sobbing, 
 Whom I loved and who loved me of yore. 
 
 In a rift of the cloudy distance 
 Lay blood from the fallen sun, 
 
 196
 
 NOCTURNE 
 
 While the wind with a low insistance, 
 Like a breaking heart moaned on. 
 
 O blithely the sun ascended 
 With carol of bird and breeze! 
 And now, his career being ended, 
 He fell through the leafless trees. 
 Amid sighing sounds of seas. 
 
 Do the life and the work fail wholly 
 For a man who hath lived and loved ? 
 Through the joy and the melancholy 
 With finishing hand God moved, 
 
 197
 
 " AH ! LOVE YE ONE ANOTHER WELL ! " 
 
 "AH! LOVE YE ONE ANOTHER 
 WELL ! " 
 
 Ah! love ye one another well, 
 
 For the hour will come 
 
 When one of you is lying dumb ; 
 
 Ye would give worlds then for a word, 
 
 That never may be heard; 
 
 Ye would give worlds then for a glance 
 
 That may be yours by ne'er a chance; 
 
 Ah I love ye one another well ! 
 
 For if ye wrung a tear 
 
 Like molten iron it will sear; 
 
 The look that proved you were unkind 
 
 With hot remorse will be blind; 
 
 And though you pray to be forgiven, 
 
 How will ye know that ye are shriven? 
 
 Ah! love ye one another well! 
 
 198
 
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