UC-NRLF 
 

 
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$g i\t game giut^or. 
 A LIFE DRAMA, AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 1 vol. 16mo. 50 cents. 
 
CITY POEMS. 
 
CITY POEMS. 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER SMITH, 
 
 ACTHOR OF "A LIFE DRAMA, AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TICK NOR AND FIELDS. 
 
 M DCCC LVII. 
 
-A. TJT HOIK S E ID I T I O JXT. 
 
 Stereotyped by 
 HOBART ft BOBBINS, 
 
 New England Type and Stereotjpe Foundery, 
 BOSTON 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 HORTON, 6 
 
 GLASGOW, 41 
 
 
 
 SQUIRE MAURICE, 47 
 
 THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING ; OR, TEN YEARS AFTER, 71 
 
 A BOY S POEM, 77 
 
 THE CHANGE, . .134 
 
CITY POEMS. 
 
 IIORTOX. 
 
 THE other night I lay within my bed, 
 Watching my dying fire : it mouldered out. 
 I listened to the strange nocturnal cries : 
 A ballad-singer neath my window stood, 
 And sung hoarse songs ; she went away, and then 
 An oyster-man came crying through the streets ; 
 And straight, as if I stood on dusky shores, 
 I saw the tremulous silver of the sea 
 Set to some coast beneath the mighty moon. 
 He passed into the silence. Wafts of song 
 From arm-linked youths, as they meandered home, 
 Came to my ears ; the town grew still ; and then, 
 Just when my soul was sinking into dream, 
 Alarm of " Fire ! " ran through the startled street, 
 And windows were thrown up as it went past. 
 A hasty engine tore along, and trailed 
 A lengthening crowd behind. "Ah, ha ! " I thought, 
 
6 CITY POEMS. 
 
 * rf i . 
 
 " That maniac, Fire, is loose ; who was so tame, 
 
 Wfreivlktie- fihjldren looked into his face, 
 
 He laughed and blinked within his prison-grate. 
 
 His fit is on ; the merry winking elf 
 
 Has rushed into a hungry crimson fiend : 
 
 Now he will seize a house, crush in the roof, 
 
 And leap and dance above his prey, and throw 
 
 His roaring flickering arms across the sky 
 
 May he be bound again ! " The tumult scared 
 
 Soft-plumaged Silence, and, when it was gone, 
 
 She settled down again with outspread wings 
 
 Upon the place she left. That angel Sleep, 
 
 Who blunts the edge of pain, who brings from heaven 
 
 The dead ones to us, took my hand in his, 
 
 And led me down unto the under-world. 
 
 We stood beside a drowsy-creeping stream 
 Which ever through a land of twilight stole 
 Unrippled, smooth as oil. It slipped tween cliffs 
 Gloomy with pines that ne er were vexed with wind. 
 The cliffs stood deep in dream. The stream slid on, 
 Nor murmured in its sleep. There was no noise ; 
 The winds were folded o er that drowsy place ; 
 The poppies hung unstirred. I asked its name. 
 Sleep murmured Lethe." " Drink of it," I thought, 
 " And all my past shall be washed out at once." 
 I knelt, arid lifted pale, beseeching hands 
 
HORTON. 7 
 
 " I have drunk poison, and can sleep no more ; 
 
 Give me this water, for I would forget." 
 
 But Sleep stood silent, and his eyes were closed. 
 
 " Give me this water, for I would forget ; 
 
 Give me this precious water, that I may 
 
 Bear to my brothers in the upper-world, 
 
 And they shall call me happy/ Sent of God/ 
 
 And Earth shall rest." Sleep answered, "Every 
 
 night, 
 
 When I am sitting neath the lonely stars, 
 The world within my lap, I hear it mourn 
 Like a sick child ; something afflicts it sore ; 
 I cannot give it rest." Upon these words 
 I hid my face a while, then cried aloud, 
 " No one can give forgetfulness ; not one. 
 No one can tell me who can give it me. 
 I asked of Joy, as he went laughing past, 
 Crushing a bunch of grapes against his lips, 
 And suddenly the light forsook his face, 
 His orbs were blind with tears he could not tell. 
 I asked of Grief, as with red eyes he came 
 From a sweet infant s bier ; and at the sound 
 lie started, shook his head, with quick hand drew 
 His mantle o er his face, and turned away 
 Mong the blue twilight-mists." Sleep did not raise 
 His heavy lids, but in a drowsy voice, 
 Like murmur of a leafy sycamore 
 
8 CITY POEMS. 
 
 When bees are swarming in the glimmering leaves, 
 
 Said, " I ; ve a younger brother, very wise, 
 
 Silent and still, who ever dwells alone 
 
 His name is Death : seek him, and he may know." 
 
 I cried, " angel, is there no one else ? " 
 
 But Sleep stood silent, and his eyes were closed. 
 
 Me thought, when I awoke, " We have two lives ; 
 The soul of man is like the rolling world, 
 One half in day, the other dipt in night ; 
 The one has music and the flying cloud ; 
 The other, silence and the wakeful stars." 
 I drew my window-curtains, and, instead 
 Of the used yesterday, there laughing stood 
 A new-born morning from the Infinite 
 Before my very face ; my heart leaped up. 
 Inexorable Labor called me forth ; 
 And, as I hurried through the busy streets, 
 There was a sense of envy in my heart 
 Of lazy lengths of rivers in the sun, 
 Larks soaring up the ever-soaring sky, 
 And mild kine couched in fields of uncrushed dew. 
 
 f 
 
 With earnest faces bent above their tasks, 
 Some ten or twelve sat with me in the room. 
 He at my right hand ever dwelt alone : 
 A moat of dulness fenced him from the world. 
 
HORTON. 9 
 
 My left-hand neighbor was all flame and air, 
 
 A restless spirit veering like the wind : 
 
 And what a lover ! what an amorous heart ! 
 
 In the pure fire and fervency of love, 
 
 Leander, like the image of a star 
 
 Within the thrilling sea, was scarce his match. 
 
 His love for each new Hero of a week 
 
 No Hellespont could cool. Among the rest, 
 
 Sat one with visage red with sun and wind 
 
 As the last hip upon the frosted brier 
 
 When the blithe huntsman snuffs the hoary morn. 
 
 He poached at night in every stream for miles ; 
 
 Knew nests in every wood. Much did he love 
 
 To gather fragments of the broken past : 
 
 Swords from old fields ; carvings from hollow towers 
 
 The wind inhabits ; heath from martyrs graves 
 
 Asleep in sunshine on warm summer moors ; 
 
 And one rude splinter did he cherish much, 
 
 Struck from the stone that with unwearied hand 
 
 Held up the exulting banner of the Bruce, 
 
 Which all that proud day laughed with glorious scorn 
 
 Upon its baffled foes. And there was one 
 
 Who strove most valiantly to be a man, 
 
 Who smoked and still got sick, drank hard and woke 
 
 Each morn with headache ; his poor timorous voice 
 
 Trembled beneath the burden of the oaths 
 
 His bold heart made it bear. He sneered at love, 
 
10 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Was not so weak as to believe the sex 
 Cumbered with virtue. 0, he knew ! he knew ! 
 He had himself adventured in that sea, 
 Coulcl tell, sir, if he would yet never dared 
 Speak to a lady in his life without 
 Blushing hot to the ears. Mong these I sat. 
 f 
 
 The clouds flew from the east unto the west ; 
 St. Stephen, from his airy coronet, 
 In music told the quarters and the hours. 
 We talked of all this tangled dance of Deaths, 
 Wild-haired and naked Pleasures, Satyrs, Drolls, 
 Which men call Life ; of early Love, which makes 
 A dusty street a sunbeam, daily meals 
 Enchanted tables spread by angel hands, 
 And rough serge glistering gold ; of the strange light, 
 The incredible bliss, summed in the word " beloved/ 7 
 When the poor heart, bewildered with its joy, 
 Half fears that it is fooled ; this Pantomime, 
 In which the speckled Clown wins every trick ; 
 Astonished Pantaloon, the kicks and jeers ; 
 Rich Harlequin, the glittering Columbine, 
 Brave dress, enjoyment, universal power ; 
 A single slap of his enchanted sword, 
 Grim caverns open into trees of gold 
 At which, mayhap, an angel andience sits, 
 Mingling strange comment with its wildness. Then 
 
nORTON. 11 
 
 "We talked about the painter, him who dwelt 
 
 Within the white house on the moor, alone, 
 
 No wife to love or hate, no human bud 
 
 To burst in flower beneath his loving eye. 
 
 An empire s fall was less in his regard 
 
 Than sunshine pouring from the rifted clouds 
 
 On an old roof-tree furred with emerald moss ; 
 
 A wide gray windy sea bespecked with foam, 
 
 A ship beneath bare poles against the rain ; 
 
 Or thunder steeping all the sunny waste 
 
 In ominous light. One keen clear autumn day 
 
 The place was filled with silent sabled men 
 
 Standing in whispering knots. Within an hour 
 
 The empty house was left to whistling winds 
 
 In which the curlew sailed with wavering cry, 
 
 And flying sunny gleams a dark red mound 
 
 Six paces on the moor. Nature he loved, 
 
 Death was the priest that wed them ; he is hers 
 
 Henceforward now forever. Then I heard 
 
 How Charles stood mid the roses in the porch ; 
 
 Within, his Cousin watched the earliest star, 
 
 With white hands fluttering o er the keys, fair 
 
 hands 
 
 By lingering music kissed I A step she turned, 
 Their eyes met, and that swift flash made them one 
 Forever in all worlds. A voice then told 
 How, on a certain night, Wat, James, and John, 
 
12 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Saw in the moonlight park three giddy girls 
 Mingling with their own shadows in the dance : 
 John gave a cry, each darted like a bird, 
 Leaving a wake of laughter as she flew. 
 Flushed with the chase, mid laughter-smothered 
 
 shrieks, 
 
 Wat robbed a ruffled struggler of a kiss. 
 Poor Wat once proud as Chanticleer that struts 
 Among his dames ; faint challenged, claps his wings 
 And crows defiance to the distant farms 
 Now meekly sits beneath a shrewish voice, 
 With children round his knee. We spoke of him 
 Who drew sweet Mary Hawthorne into shame : 
 We could remember that for many years, 
 With her blithe smile and gleam of golden hair, 
 She like a candle lit her father s hearth, 
 Making the old man glad. Now long rank grass 
 Hides a neglected grave. Then all at once 
 Discourse burst from its melancholy weeds, 
 As brilliant as a spangled dancing-girl : 
 Each pelted each with quip and raillery ; 
 And when from laughing lips a jest broke loose, 
 The pack of wits opened in loud pursuit, 
 And ran it to the death. Uprose my Dream 
 From its dim lair for somehow, in my mind, 
 As the deserted East with mournful eyes 
 Stands far back, gazing on the glowing West, 
 
HORTON. 13 
 
 Death ever looks on joy. " Ere long," I thought, 
 
 " Great Death will hallow all these flippant lips, 
 
 And make each poor face awful. Truest tears 
 
 Will not seem wasted when they fall on them. 
 
 Father, what is Death ? We sport at eve, 
 
 A playmate s lips grow pale, the game stands still, 
 
 He goes away in silence ; as we gaze, 
 
 A trembling sigh is loosened from our lips, 
 
 Like to the long vibration in the air 
 
 After a spire has struck the hour of one. 
 
 We sit together at a rich man s feast, 
 
 When, as if beckoned by an unseen hand, 
 
 The man whose laugh is loudest in his cups 
 
 Rises with a wild face, and goes away 
 
 From mirth into a shroud without a word. 
 
 With what pale faces, and how still, they go ! 
 
 What visions see they, and what voices hear ? 
 
 We only know this buried root of life 
 
 Holds still, it knows not why, within its heart 
 
 A vague tradition of an upper light, 
 
 To which it strives, and, dying, spent and foiled, 
 
 It feebly feels it should have borne a flower 
 
 Neath some propitious heaven. Fools, we dwell 
 
 Within bleak walls of death, and when we hide 
 
 Them with this wretched tapestry of life, 
 
 We dream that they are not." A hand was laid 
 
14 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Upon my shoulder ; Harry s laughing face, 
 Filled with his mischievous and merry eyes, 
 Was thrust in mine. He slapped me "Rouse 
 
 thee, man ! 
 
 The hour is striking, and your dinner waits. 
 What is the precious subject of your thoughts ? " 
 " My thoughts ? The charitable snow which cools 
 A hot volcano s lips ; the nurse that takes 
 Alike the crying and the crowing babe, 
 And stills them with a kiss. 77 We all arose ; 
 The emptying warehouses had filled the street 
 With a broad stream ; from passage, lane, and court, 
 Gushed tributary rills. We struggled out, 
 And soon were lost and mingled in the tide ; 
 Within an hour the streets again were brimmed 
 With the returning flow. 
 
 Again we sat, 
 
 When bright-eyed Harry cried, " How Time doth fly ! 
 March blustered yesterday, to-day the winds 
 Are ruffling July s roses, ere the morn 
 October smites the forests into gold. 
 Yet there is something good in every time : 
 Winter with breath like incense, glittering beard 
 Of icicles, enwrapt in sheet of snow, 
 Is warm at heart, as in the harvest-fields 
 Bare Autumn, red with sun. 
 
HORTON. 15 
 
 CHARLES. 
 
 And kindlier, too : 
 
 Hear his great fires, see how his bleak old face 
 Glows ruddy through the steam of fragrant punch. 
 Can pensive Spring, a snowdrop in his hand, 
 A solitary lark above his head, 
 Laugh like the jovial sinner in his cups ? 
 I vote for Winter ! Why, you know the " Crown," 
 The rows of pewter winking in the light, 
 The mighty egg-flip at the sanded bar, 
 The nine-pins, skittles, silent dominos, 
 The bellied landlord with his purple head, 
 Like a red cabbage on December morn 
 Crusted with snow. His buxom daughter Bess 
 A dahlia, not a rosebud she who bears 
 The foaming porter to the guests, and laughs 
 The loudest at their wit. Can any Summer 
 Build you a nest like that ? 
 
 JAMES. 
 
 Oft at night, 
 
 Weary with beating the black Calder streams, 
 I dropped into your cosey paradise. 
 Last week poor Horton died, who sat therein 
 As constant as a saint within his niche. 
 I saw him often, heard his glorious talk, 
 But ere the midnight grew into the morn, 
 
16 CITY POEMS. 
 
 He seemed a mighty angel sent from God 
 Standing before us drunk ; a sinful song 
 Staining his radiant lips. I often sat 
 At those wild drinking bouts, which seemed divine 
 In a great flash of wit and rose next morn, 
 Throat like the parched Sahara, and each ear 
 Loud as a cotton-mill. The o er-spurred jade 
 Fell neath the rider, and, like all the world, 
 I found too late the price of loud delights 
 Honey in which the bees have left their stings. 
 
 MAX. 
 
 Ah ! he was brightest at the noon of night. 
 His mind by day was like a common dell, 
 Through which the clown goes whistling with his 
 
 cart; 
 
 You looked around, but could see nothing more 
 Than in a thousand places that you knew : 
 But with the night, there stole from every leaf, 
 Where they lay coiled in sleep, dim troops of sylphs, 
 Fays, and all frolic shapes, and neath the moon 
 Stood Queen Titania and her fairy court. 
 It is the proudest memory of my youth, 
 That I was his familiar, and beloved, 
 And knew his stream of life from fount to sea. 
 Hope flew before him like a setting sun ; 
 And as he smiled on realms of rosy gold, 
 
IIORTON. 17 
 
 From out the heaven there fell a desolate night, 
 Filled with the welter of the lonely sea, 
 "With wind and spray in his unsheltered hair. 
 I kept the key of his locked heart for years 
 Could ope it when I chose. He loved not Song 
 With that most pure and undivided love 
 Which only wins her. Song fled on before ; 
 He followed. Pleasure, naked to the waist, 
 With high-flushed cheeks and loose dishevelled hair, 
 Flung herself cross his path ; she clasped his knees ; 
 He saw her beauty, and he was undone 
 His strong heart melted. It was never his, 
 That terriblest of virtues, Truthfulness ; 
 That pure, high Constancy which flies right on, 
 As swerveless as a bullet to its mark ; 
 Patience, that with a weary smile can bear 
 A load that crushes weak complaint to earth 
 Patience, that eats the ripened ears, while Haste 
 Battens upon the green. Yet worth he had, 
 And strove, as far as in him lay, to turn 
 This smoke of life to clear poetic flame ; 
 To put a something of celestial light 
 Round the familiar face of every-day. 
 He plunged from off this crumbling shoal of Time, 
 Struck for the coast of Fame with stiffened limbs 
 Went down in sight of land. 
 2 
 
18 CITY POEMS. 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 I saw him once, 
 
 And, by my faith, he talked us all asleep. 
 The only things that struck me were his eyes, 
 That with their brightness held you from his face ; 
 The thought stood in them ere t was spoken ; Wit 
 Laughed on you from the windows ere she danced 
 Out on you from the door. 
 
 HARRY. 
 
 I Ve heard men speak 
 Of Horton with such pity in their tones, 
 That I conceived he had been cruelly hurt 
 By fortune in his youth. 
 
 MAX. 
 
 As I have said, 
 
 I knew him as myself, and loved him more, 
 And so my knowledge is more intimate 
 Than yours, or yours, or any s in the world. 
 Love will dwell daily with Indifference, 
 Sleep in. one room and at one table sit, 
 And never speak. Love is but known to Love. 
 For years his heart was darkened like a grave 
 By a sepulchral yew. While yet a child, 
 He had a playmate in his sunny sports ; 
 Inseparable they were as sun and shade 
 
nORTON. 19 
 
 From childhood s tender sheath there burst at once 
 
 A lily-woman sweetly grave with thoughts 
 
 Till now unknown ; made silent by a heart 
 
 So full and strange, that at a passing tone, 
 
 The noiseless falling of an autumn leaf, 
 
 It trembled into tears. I often thought, 
 
 In the prophetic sorrow of her face, 
 
 Her wan pathetic smiles, more sad than tears, 
 
 I gazed upon the countenance which awed 
 
 The herdsman on the dark Judean hills 
 
 When Jephtha s daughter passed. And so she walked 
 
 Vestured in silence ; wheresoe er she went 
 
 Loud voices drooped, her beauty carried peace 
 
 Into rude Discord s heart and had she bent 
 
 Above a soldier from the bloody trench, 
 
 The fleeting spirit would have left a smile 
 
 Behind it, on the face. 
 
 One summer day 
 
 He lay upon a tower in leafy Kent 
 Watching a lazy river ; glorious leagues 
 Of woods yet gleaming with a falling shower, 
 O er which a rainbow strode ; a red- tiled town 
 Set in a tender film of azure smoke, 
 And here and there upon the little heights 
 A windmill turning its preposterous arms 
 Within the silent noon ; the line of sea 
 That closed the whole. Upon the wall he lay, 
 
20 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Without a wish or trouble in the world. 
 
 Her presence filled the universe like light, 
 
 And, like an indolent emperor, he lolled 
 
 Upon a couch of happiness and love. 
 
 So when the sun sank flaming in the west, 
 
 He wrote, with a fond smile upon his lips 
 
 (His marriage-day was laughing in his face), 
 
 " The third night hence I start, that summer night 
 
 When you are wakened by an ache of bliss 
 
 To some great happiness, and know not what 
 
 Until the truth leaps up, think, dearest, think 
 
 That I am flying to you through the night 
 
 At sixty miles an hour and that my heart 
 
 Outflies the flying train." 
 
 The fatal sun 
 
 Sucked vapors from the marsh. From morn till eve 
 The streets were huddled in a yellow fog, 
 Through which the lamps burned beamlessly and dim. 
 Mid household duties sat she hour by hour 
 With eyes that fed on something far away ; 
 A half-smile hovering round her happy lips 
 Like a bright butterfly around a flower, 
 Touching, yet settling not. The hour drew near 
 Her bliss disturbed her as she sat alone 
 She sought relief in friends, and rose at last 
 With fond and hurried heart. They went with her. 
 " Don t take the river, Cousin, tis so dark." 
 
HORTON. 21 
 
 "It is the shortest way good-night, good-night. " 
 
 They plead, she broke from them, they called to her, 
 
 She tossed a laughing answer from the dark. 
 
 The girls returned through thick mist-blinded streets, 
 
 And sat mid music in delighted rooms, 
 
 While she groped weeping in night s foggy heart 
 
 Her father, mother, and the new-arrived, 
 
 Sat in a happy knot. His coming stirred 
 
 The constant fire of love within their hearts, 
 
 Which crackled and blazed higher. Much he talked 
 
 Of London, of its streets, its bridges, crowds ; 
 
 St. Paul s, the broad moon sailing o er the dome ; 
 
 The rich-carved Abbey with its thousand frets 
 
 And pinnacles, religious with the dead ; 
 
 Of the brave spirits who go up to woo 
 
 That terrible city whose neglect is death, 
 
 Whose smile is fame ; the prosperous one who sits 
 
 Sole in the summer sun, the crowd who die 
 
 Unmentioned, as a wave which forms and breaks 
 
 On undiscovered shores. Hour passed on hour, 
 
 And gradual each apprehensive lip 
 
 Grew silent with concern ; then, as they sat, 
 
 Like fern-leaves troubled by a sudden wind, 
 
 Their hearts were shaken by a speechless fear ; 
 
 Each read the terror in the other s face. 
 
22 CITY POEMS. 
 
 They searched with lights, they madly called her 
 
 name 
 
 Night heard, and, conscience-stricken, held its breath, 
 And listened wild. At last in the bleared morn, 
 They saw a something white within the stream 
 He raised his drowned bride in distracted arms 
 
 A boat with a sweet freight of singing girls, 
 
 At rosy eve, when oars are still, will pause, 
 
 Then float down with the stream. His merriest talk 
 
 Flagged oft, and, unpropelled, would ever turn 
 
 Into the current of his soul which set 
 
 Constant toward his grief. One afternoon 
 
 We wandered forth toward the Haven s Hill, 
 
 Whence we might watch the sunset fill the vale. 
 
 A silent sea of plenty laved its feet ; 
 
 We climbed with laughter up its pleasant sides ; 
 
 But, when we reached its lone and heathy head, 
 
 We found it haunted by a querulous bird, 
 
 Aye wheeling round and round. 
 
 Gloom, like a curtain, dropped from brow to chin. 
 
 We saw the tawny valley, here and there 
 
 Sheaf-dotted fields ; a silent string of carts 
 
 Creeping along the whitened country road ; 
 
 Contented cottage smoke ; a shot, and, lo ! 
 
 Into the sunset the disturbed rooks 
 
 Arose in noisy clouds from trees that kept 
 
IIORTON. 23 
 
 A great man s house a secret. He did not speak ; 
 I felt that something hung upon his heart. 
 When the great sunset burned itself away, 
 There lay within the sleepy evening sky 
 Dark purple slips of cloud, and shallow pools 
 Of drowsy and most melancholy light. 
 We sauntered homeward by the clacking mill 
 Back from the road we saw the ragged wall, 
 The broken windows in the haunted house, 
 And the old rooks nests in the ruined elms : 
 Silence grew pain. Sudden the harvest moon 
 Stood at our backs, and threw long spears of light 
 Before us mong the shades ; at that he drew 
 The sluice of silence, and his life rushed forth 
 Its grief, despair, anguish, and clinging hope. 
 Eis heart was not, as men conceived, a fair 
 Oi clowns and jugglers, gongs and blaring brass, 
 Bu-, a lone place of tombs and cypresses, 
 Asleep in silence neath the moon of death. 
 He was a broken and time-crumbled tower, 
 With sere grass sighing in the evening wind, 
 Eound which a pale ghost flits. 
 
 JAMES. 
 
 And then his song 
 You used to like it, Harry : give it now. 
 
24 CITY POEMS. 
 
 HARRY. 
 
 On the Sabbath-day, 
 
 Through the church-yard old and gray, 
 
 Over the crisp and yellow leaves, I held my rustling 
 
 way; 
 And amid the words of mercy, falling on my soul 
 
 like balms, 
 Mid the gorgeous storms of music in the mellow 
 
 organ-calms, 
 ; Mid the upward-streaming prayers, and the rich and 
 
 solemn psalms, 
 I stood careless, Barbara. 
 
 My heart was otherwhere 
 
 While the organ shook the air, 
 
 And the priest, with outspread hands, blessed the 
 
 people with a prayer ; 
 But, when rising to go homeward, with a mild and 
 
 saint-like shine 
 Gleamed a face of airy beauty with its heaveily 
 
 eyes on mine 
 Gleamed and vanished in a moment 0, that face 
 
 was surely thine 
 Out of heaven, Barbara ! 
 
 0, pallid, pallid face ! 
 0, earnest eyes of grace ! 
 
HORTON. 25 
 
 When last I saw thee, dearest, it was in another 
 place. 
 
 You came running forth to meet me with my love- 
 gift on your wrist : 
 
 The flutter of a long white dress, then all was lost 
 in mist 
 
 A purple stain of agony was on the mouth I kissed, 
 
 That wild morning, Barbara ! 
 
 I searched, in my despair, 
 Sunny noon and midnight air ; 
 
 I could not drive away the thought that you were 
 lingering there. 
 
 many and many a winter night I sat when you 
 
 were gone, 
 My worn face buried in my hands, beside the fire 
 
 alone 
 Within the dripping church-yard, the rain plashing 
 
 on your stone, 
 You were sleeping, Barbara I 
 
 ; Mong angels, do you think 
 Of the precious golden link 
 
 1 clasped around your happy arm while sitting by 
 
 yon brink ? 
 
 Or when that night of gliding dance, of laughter and 
 guitars, 
 
26 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Was emptied of its music, and we watched, through 
 
 latticed bars, 
 The silent midnight heaven creeping o er us with its 
 
 stars, 
 Till the day broke, Barbara ? 
 
 In the years I ve changed ; 
 
 Wild and far my heart hath ranged, 
 
 And many sins and errors now have been on me 
 
 avenged ; 
 But to you I have been faithful, whatsoever good I 
 
 lacked : 
 I loved you, and above my life still hangs that love 
 
 intact 
 Your love the trembling rainbow, I the reckless 
 
 cataract 
 Still I love you, Barbara ! 
 
 Yet, love, I am unblest ; 
 
 With many doubts opprest, 
 
 I wander like a desert wind, without a place of rest. 
 
 Could I but win you for an hour from off that starry 
 
 shore, 
 The hunger of my soul were stilled, for Death hath 
 
 told you more 
 Than the melancholy world doth know ; things deeper 
 
 than all lore 
 You could teach me, Barbara 1 
 
HORTON. 27 
 
 In vain, in vain, in vain ! 
 
 You will never come again ! 
 
 There droops upon the dreary hills a mournful friage 
 
 of rain ; 
 The gloaming closes slowly round, loud winds are in 
 
 the tree, 
 Round selfish shores forever moans the hurt and 
 
 wounded sea, 
 There is no rest upon the earth, peace is with Death 
 
 and thee, 
 Barbara ! 
 
 MAX. 
 
 I thank you for your silence for his sake. 
 
 CHARLES. 
 Why, he has told his story in his song ! 
 
 MAX. 
 
 Better than I can. Through that window look 
 Into the ruined house. 
 
 CHARLES. 
 
 I picture Art 
 
 As some great captive in a gloomy cell, 
 Who strives in vain to satisfy himself, 
 By carving every inch of wall and roof 
 With images of former state, and shapes 
 
28 CITY POEMS. 
 
 That haunt him with their beauty ; and, unsought, 
 There starts beneath his chisel saddening all, 
 Freezing the lovely groups of singing girls, 
 Bursting through every bunch of leaf and flower 
 Strange images of grief. 
 
 JAMES. 
 
 Love, hope, and joy, 
 Familiar things enough to you and me, 
 Take a strange glory from the poet s mind : 
 The white and common daylight, streaming through 
 A rich cathedral window dim with saints, 
 Falls on the clasped hands of a stony knight 
 In palpitating crimson ; and the gust 
 That rudely smites the ^Eolian harp departs 
 In melancholy music. Life is the soil, 
 And song the flower which 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 Stop, for Heaven s sake, 
 
 All that has been said a hundred thousand times, 
 And will be said as often when you re dead. 
 Now, when we cannot do a noble deed, 
 Let us be silent. In larger-hearted times 
 Men stood with Nature face to face, and wrought 
 Such <ove and passion in each fervid stroke 
 Their glory, our despair. To us are left 
 
HORTON. 29 
 
 But empty wonder, admiration vain. 
 
 Eternal Nature in her pomp goes past ; 
 
 These giants stand up in the very front, 
 
 And hide her from us ; we but guess the sight 
 
 From their adoring murmurs. We live on them, 
 
 Feed on their thoughts ; each of us strives to speak 
 
 The finest words about them. Poor fungi of a day 
 
 On trunks of greatness ! To our graves we walk 
 
 In the thick footprints of departed men. 
 
 Life s fire, however high or low it burns, 
 
 To cheer a cottage, or to fright a realm, 
 
 Goes out in worthless ashes at the last. 
 
 I villanous Custom makes the muse s song 
 
 Stale as the common highway ; steals the gold 
 
 From Julia s tresses, which once lit the world ; 
 
 Makes dear friends, smiling in each other s face, 
 
 Deem each a tiresome fool ; the preacher crying 
 
 Of death and judgment, from which we are divided 
 
 But by this thin partition of a breath, 
 
 A pleasant buzzing in a drowsy ear 
 
 In a soft-cushioned pew. 
 
 HARRY. 
 
 I 11 prophesy 
 
 Who 11 say me nay ? that in the next Review, 
 As far off from his subject as he can, 
 Running a mile that he may leap a yard, 
 
SO CITY POEMS. 
 
 Your critic starts off thus : " T is not to sing 
 The dance of stars, the lovely year of flowers, 
 From the pure snow-drop peeping from the mould 
 Yet wet with wintry rains, to tiger-lilies 
 Fierce in their beauty, and tall hollyhocks 
 On fire through all their length, the poet comes. 
 They say that song is laid in Byron s grave ! 
 As long as lightning glimmers on the hills, 
 Song shall be heard ; as long as fields are green, 
 And^skies are blue, and woman s face is fair." 
 Now, there is nothing very new in this ; 
 As well remind a man with cheek and nose 
 Blue with the east wind, that the day is cold. 
 But lo ! he rises to a higher mood : 
 " Life is enriched and multiplied by song : 
 Song re-creates the people of the past ; 
 For one immortal moment we are they, 
 And one blood beats in all. How dear to man 
 Is aught of man ! Old Time, who frets to dust 
 The princely circumstance and cloth of gold, 
 Can never filch the blush from Juliet s cheek, 
 Or stale the rapture of bold Romeo s kiss 
 We touch her lips with him. The workman toils 
 At his rude craft, goes to his low-roofed home, 
 Sits at his evening meal ; the poet enters, 
 Clothed in the strange, sweet light which is his gift 
 The poor man starts ; he has lived all his days 
 
HORTON. 31 
 
 With beauty, and with grandeur, and with power, 
 Unrecognized till now." Bald talk like this 
 (Though, I confess it, not so neatly said) 
 Besets us everywhere ; if well for once 
 Repeated, ; t is as if we supped with Jones, 
 Next eve with Brown, and found the self-same roast 
 Gracing both tables, which it sometimes does, 
 Hired from the butcher in the other street. 
 
 CHARLES. 
 
 With what a will these fellows cuff, maltreat, 
 And pound the innocent air ! 
 
 JAMES. 
 
 Is it not strange 
 
 That Horton, filled with purifying sorrow, 
 Should err so far ? 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 Most wondrous in a world 
 Where every sleek and purple-visaged priest 
 Declaims gainst luxury, and dexterous men 
 Change but their vices, and are virtuous ! 
 He t is the common fashion of his kind 
 Put what he had of goodness in his verse, 
 And left none for his life. He knew his game : 
 Stuff your shop-window thickly with your goods ; 
 
32 CITY POEMS. 
 
 The world ne er marks the empty shelves behind. 
 Grief proudlier dwells in sounding lines than in 
 A faithful heart. What beauty would not choose 
 To sit and smile within a balcony, 
 Full in the seeing of the public eye, 
 Rather than in a hut ? 
 
 MAX. 
 
 You do him wrong ; 
 His errors rose from no ill-biassed soul, 
 Nor appetite depraved. The finer nerve, 
 The mournful wisdom gathered by an eye 
 That saw the withered autumn in the fruit 
 Glowing upon the bough, were more to blame. 
 Death looked upon him through the eyes of Love ; 
 No mercy veiled for him those dreadful orbs ; 
 And often, to escape their silent gaze, 
 He hid in Riot s arms. We often see 
 Powers left unused, or in their uses lost. 
 The ponderous axe leans gainst the idle wall 
 Till rust consumes it ; and the invisible edge, 
 That could divide the weightless gossamer, 
 Nor shake a trembling dew-drop from its threads, 
 Must hew the rock. Whene er Apollo draws 
 The arrow thirsting for the Python s blood 
 Home to the quivering head, his flashing limbs 
 Are palsied by a touch. The heavens seem 
 
IIORTON. 33 
 
 To mar as wilfully their creature man 
 As one who limns a face, on which the world 
 Could stand at gaze cheated of pain and time, 
 Then lets, before the smiling hues are dry, 
 His careless sleeve slur all as off he goes. 
 Nature, who makes the perfect rose and bird, 
 Has never made the full and perfect man. 
 In every worthiness there is a flaw, 
 That, like a crack across a mirror s face, 
 Impairs its value. Cunningly, she lets 
 Nothing have knowledge of its own defect : 
 To keep us living she must cozen us. 
 The dun toad panting in the cool of eve, 
 The eagle bathing in the bursting dawn, 
 Are each content alike. Without these toys, 
 Ambition, pleasure, wealth, opinion, love, 
 Which fill our eyes, and hide us from ourselves, 
 Like lonely children we should die with fright 
 At utter nothingness. His muse had breath, 
 And loved so well this old familiar earth, 
 She ne er desired to walk in other stars, 
 Nor dwell neath ampler seasons ; and his verse, 
 Like a rich marriage with its minstrelsy, 
 Or Neptune with a sound of weltering waves, 
 Had still a lordly march. Had he but lived 
 Yet, very vain and fruitless is the wish ! 
 Death holds up in his hand the lamp by which 
 3 
 
34 CITY POEMS. 
 
 We note the prostrate strength, and guess what all 
 
 At strain could reach. He stood so high, there seemed 
 
 Between his footing and the immortal mount 
 
 A single step : however slight the space, 
 
 It was to him a gulf impassable, 
 
 And wide as death. Yet tis a loving thought, 
 
 Had Fate not so untimely reaped the field, 
 
 Its hasty crop of poppies had been drowned 
 
 In heavy ears of wheat. 
 
 ARTHUR. 
 
 A friend of mine, 
 
 At whose rich table Horton often sat, 
 When fond men dreamed they saw around his head 
 The apparition of the future light, 
 Told me he was in spirit hot and quick, 
 Weak as a flower that sways with every wind ; 
 That, like the sensitive leaf, his vanity 
 Shrank from the slightest touch ; and that he turned 
 From those who loved him, and reproved him, too, 
 And found his heaven in a tavern s laugh. 
 
 MAX. 
 
 With their own cotton may your friends be choked ! 
 0, tis the crowning baseness of the fiend 
 To taunt the fallen Eve ! They gave him wine ; 
 They pampered, flattered him ; they struck the light 
 
HORTON. 35 
 
 In that combustible and tinder house ; 
 
 And, when t was sheeted in devouring flame, 
 
 They, in the fashion of our dearest friends, 
 
 Cried " Fire ! " to all the world. You have a friend : 
 
 Touch your friend s heart with a poor orphan s cry, 
 
 He sips his wine unmoved ; touch now his purse 
 
 Look, how he winces ! He is vital there. 
 
 0, rare to hear this Cotton-bag, with soul 
 
 Scarce saucer-deep, rate Horton for his faults ! 
 
 Had he his heart one hour, within his life 
 
 T were like the famous tear that Xerxes shed 
 
 The one thing worth remembering. So they judge 
 
 This larger spirit, fresh from Nature s heart 
 
 As a volcano ; compound perilous 
 
 Of hell and heaven, wrath and woman s tears I 
 
 He sank beneath them in his passionate sins ; 
 
 His goodness sang a skylark o er their heads, 
 
 And Heaven stood to hear. 
 
 His silent grave 
 
 Rebukes these words. But let us ne er forget 
 His errors darkened in the very blaze 
 And sunlight of his virtues. A slur of mire 
 Sits more conspicuous on the captain s steel 
 Than on the battle-worn and dinted mail 
 Of the rude man-at-arms. His sin of sins 
 Was ne er to be the master of himself. 
 His heart, which should have constant been to song, 
 
36 CITY POEMS. 
 
 True, as the monsoon breathing day and night 
 
 To China and the Isles, was drawn aside 
 
 By pomps and pleasures dancing upon graves 
 
 To Vanity s soft pipe. When erring man 
 
 Strays from his duty, Heaven ever strives 
 
 To bring him back. T is writ, when Moses fled, 
 
 And drowned remembrance of the groaning tribes 
 
 In the sweet bleating of the Midian flocks, 
 
 The hand which should break Egypt, sound asleep 
 
 Mid Zipporah s long tresses, God appeared 
 
 Within the burning bush. Alas for him 
 
 Who cannot hear the voice I he turns from Hope, 
 
 And gives his hand to Ruin. The Muse disdains 
 
 A lukewarm lover. He who could not sit 
 
 And sing contented in a desert isle, 
 
 His audience, the mute trees and wandering winds, 
 
 His joy, the grace and beauty of his song, 
 
 Should never lift his voice mong mortal men. 
 
 The noble artist finds enough reward, 
 
 While the pure nymph is growing from the stone, 
 
 In the sweet smile with which she blesses him 
 
 For loveliness and immortality. 
 
 He coveted the Muse s smile ; but more 
 
 Earth s praise ; for Fame s consummate fruit, which 
 
 ne er 
 
 Has cooled the fever of a living lip, 
 Which ripens slowly through laborious years, 
 
HORTON. 37 
 
 Then, heavy with its sweetness and its bloom, 
 
 Falls on a grave, he could not wait ; so plucked 
 
 Crude Reputation s green and bastard crab, 
 
 Which set his teeth on edge. This error soured 
 
 ITis native goodness. Slow he fell from light, 
 
 And year by year the heavens seemed further off, 
 
 And human faces less divine. He died 
 
 With a wild jest ; t was the last flash of Fame 
 
 Upon the blackened brand. Was this ship stored 
 
 And sent forth glorious only to enrich 
 
 The wasteful waves ? 0, surely to advance 
 
 The far result which Heaven shapes from out 
 
 The multitudinous clash and roar of things, 
 
 This man might have been used not thrown aside, 
 
 As in a loud and clanging tournament, 
 
 A splintered lance. But Heaven darkly works ; 
 
 A pale man bears about a martyr s heart, 
 
 And never finds his fire ; while one burns high 
 
 With a recanting soul. The patriot s head 
 
 Wastes on a pole above a gate of slaves 
 
 In sun and rain, while he who only sought 
 
 The awful glitter of the diadem 
 
 Stands crowned, with acclamations of the free 
 
 Rising like incense round him. On the sands 
 
 Jove lolls, and listens to the sleepy surge, 
 
 His right arm boltless, and that brow, whose frown 
 
 Could shake Olympus, naked as the peak 
 
38 CITY POEMS. 
 
 That fronts the sunset ; while a baby-hand 
 Clutches the thunder. Yet through all we know 
 This tangled skein is in the hands of One 
 Who sees the end from the beginning : He 
 Shall yet unravel all. 
 
 Our stream of talk 
 
 Here split in petty rills, which ran to waste 
 And sank in silence. When that swallows haunt, 
 St. Stephen s, with its showers of silvery chimes, 
 Stood black against the red, dilated sun, 
 Labor laid down his tools and went away. 
 The park was loud with games ; clear laughter, 
 
 shrieks, 
 
 Came from the rings of girls amid the trees ; 
 The cricketers were eager at their play ; 
 The stream was dotted with the swimmers heads ; 
 Gay boats flashed up and down. The level sun 
 Poured o er the sward a farewell gush of light, 
 And Sport transfigured stood ! I hurried on, 
 Through all the mirth, to where the river ran, 
 In the gray evening, tween the hanging woods, 
 With a soul-soothing murmur. Seated there, 
 The darkness closing round me, I could see 
 A lonely angler like a heron stand, 
 And hear the blackbird piping to the eve, 
 
HORTON. 39 
 
 And smell the wild-rose on the dewy air. 
 I reached the park hours later, what a change ! 
 The full-moon filled the universal night ; 
 The stream ran white with lustre ; walks and trees 
 Threw their long shadows ; a few kine lay dark 
 In lanes and squares of moonlight ; far away 
 The pallid rim of night was touched with fires ; 
 Stillness was deep as death. " The noisy day 
 Wheels into silence ; and this wave of life, 
 Crowned with its fretting foam, subsides at last 
 On shores without a sound. And this our Time 
 With thrones tyrannic girt by seas of steel ; 
 Wild nations starting up from sleep to chase 
 A dream of liberty through blood and fire ; 
 White faces down in dungeons cursing kings ; 
 Battle, and wintry siege, and frozen hosts 
 Will sink and lose itself in utter peace 
 Like water spilt on sand. And History, 
 A mournful follower in the track of man, 
 Whose path is over ruin and the grave, 
 May linger for a moment in this place 
 Beside a worn inscription, and be sad." 
 
 Across the moonlight spaces and the shades 
 I walked in silence, through pale silver streets, 
 Athwart a desolate and moon-bleached square, 
 
40 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Over a white and solitary bridge, 
 Until I reached my home. I oped the door, 
 And ere it closed, I heard a distant spire 
 Start in its sleep, and murmur of an hour. 
 
GLASGOW. 
 
 SING, Poet, t is a merry world ; 
 
 That cottage smoke is rolled and curled 
 
 In sport, that every moss 
 Is happy, every inch of soil ; 
 Before me runs a road of toil 
 
 With my grave cut across. 
 Sing, trailing showers and breezy downs 
 / know the tragic hearts of towns. 
 
 City ! I am true son of thine ; 
 
 Ne er dwelt I where great mornings shine 
 
 Around the bleating pens ; 
 Ne er by the rivulets I strayed, 
 And ne er upon my childhood weighed 
 
 The silence of the glens. 
 Instead of shores where ocean beats, 
 I hear the ebb and flow of streets. 
 
 Black Labor draws his weary waves 
 Into their secret-moaning caves ; 
 But, with the morning light, 
 
42 CITY POEMS. 
 
 That sea again will overflow 
 With a long, weary sound of woe, 
 
 Again to faint in night. 
 Wave am I in that sea of woes, 
 Which, night and morning, ebbs and flows. 
 
 I dwelt within a gloomy court, 
 Wherein did never sunbeam sport ; 
 
 Yet there my heart was stirred 
 My very blood did dance and thrill, 
 When on my narrow window-sill 
 
 Spring lighted like a bird. 
 Poor flowers I I watched them pine for weeks, 
 With leaves as pale as human cheeks. 
 
 Afar, one summer, I was borne ; 
 Through golden vapors of the morn 
 
 I heard the hills of sheep : 
 I trod with a wild ecstasy 
 The bright fringe of the living sea : 
 
 And on a ruined keep 
 I sat, and watched an endless plain 
 Blacken beneath the gloom of rain. 
 
 0, fair the lightly-sprinkled waste, 
 O er which a laughing shower has raced ! 
 0, fair the April shoots I 
 
GLASGOW. 43 
 
 0, fair the woods on summer days, 
 While a blue hyacinthine haze 
 
 Is dreaming round the roots I 
 In thee, City I I discern 
 Another beauty, sad and stern. 
 
 Draw thy fierce streams of blinding ore, 
 Smite on a thousand anvils, roar 
 
 Down to the harbor-bars ; 
 Smoulder in smoky sunsets, flare 
 On rainy nights, with street and square 
 
 Lie empty to the stars. 
 From terrace proud to alley base 
 I know thee as my mother s face. 
 
 When sunset bathes thee in his gold, 
 In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled, 
 
 Thy smoke is dusky fire ; 
 And, from the glory round thee poured, 
 A sunbeam like an angel s sword 
 
 Shivers upon a spire. 
 
 Thus have I watched thee, Terror ! Dream ! 
 While the blue Night crept up the stream. 
 
 The wild train plunges in the hills, 
 lie shrieks across the midnight rills ; 
 Streams through the shifting glare, 
 
44 CITY POEMS. 
 
 The roar and flap of foundry fires, 
 
 That shake with light the sleeping shires ; 
 
 And on the moorlands bare 
 He sees afar a crown of light 
 Hang o er thee in the hollow night. 
 
 At midnight, when thy suburbs lie 
 As silent as a noonday sky 
 
 When larks with heat are mute, 
 I love to linger on thy bridge, 
 All lonely as a mountain ridge, 
 
 Disturbed but by my foot ; 
 While the black lazy stream beneath 
 Steals from its far-off wilds of heath. 
 
 And through thy heart, as through a dream, 
 Flows on that black disdainful stream ; 
 
 All scornfully it flows, 
 Between the huddled gloom of masts, 
 Silent as pines unvexed by blasts 
 
 Tween lamps in streaming rows. 
 0, wondrous sight I 0, stream of dread I 
 0, long, dark river of the dead ! 
 
 Afar, the banner of the year 
 Unfurls : but dimly prisoned here, 
 ; T is only when I greet 
 
GLASGOW. 45 
 
 A dropt rose lying in my way, 
 A butterfly that flutters gay 
 
 Athwart the noisy street, 
 I know the happy Summer smiles 
 Around thy suburbs, miles on miles. 
 
 T were neither paean now, nor dirge, 
 The flash and thunder of the surge 
 
 On flat sands wide and bare ; 
 No haunting joy or anguish dwells 
 In the green light of sunny dells, 
 
 Or in the starry air. 
 Alike to me the desert flower, 
 The rainbow laughing o er the shower. 
 
 While o er thy walls the darkness sails, 
 I lean against the churchyard rails ; 
 
 Up in the midnight towers 
 The belfried spire, the street is dead, 
 I hear in silence over head 
 
 The clang of iron hours : 
 It moves me not I know her tomb 
 Is yonder in the shapeless gloom. 
 
 All raptures of this mortal breath, 
 Solemnities of life and death, 
 Dwell in thy noise alone : 
 
46 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Of me thou hast become a part 
 Some kindred with my human heart 
 
 Lives in thy streets of stone ; 
 For we have been familiar more 
 Than galley-slave and weary oar. 
 
 The beech is dipped in wine ; the shower 
 Is burnished ; on the swinging flower 
 
 The latest bee doth sit. 
 The low sun stares through dust of gold, 
 And o er the darkening heath and wold 
 
 The large ghost-moth doth flit. 
 In every orchard Autumn stands, 
 With apples in his golden hands. 
 
 But all these sights and sounds are strange ; 
 Then wherefore from thee should I range ? 
 
 Thou hast my kith and kin ; 
 My childhood, youth, and manhood brave ; 
 Thou hast that unforgotten grave 
 
 Within thy central din. 
 A sacredness of love and death 
 Dwells in thy noise and smoky breath. 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 
 
 I THREW from off me yesterday 
 The dull life I am doomed to wear 
 A worn-out garment dim and bare, 
 And left it in my chambers gray : 
 The salt breeze wanders in my hair 
 Beside the splendor of the main : 
 Ere on the deep three sunsets burn, 
 To the old chambers I return, 
 And put it on again. 
 An old coat, worn for many a year, 
 No wonder it is something dear ! 
 
 Ah, year by year life s fire burns out, 
 And year by year life s stream runs dry : 
 The wild deer dies within the blood, 
 The falcon in the eye. 
 And Hope, who sang miraculous songs 
 Of what should be, like one inspired, 
 How she should right the ancient wrongs, 
 (The generous fool !) grows hoarse and tired ; 
 And turns from visions of a world renewed, 
 
48 CITY POEMS. 
 
 To dream of tripled rents, fair miles of stream and 
 
 wood. 
 
 The savage horse, that leads 
 His tameless herd across the endless plain, 
 Is taught at last, with sullen heart, to strain 
 Beneath his load, nor quiver when he bleeds. 
 We cheat ourselves with our own lying eyes, 
 We chase a fleeting mirage o er the sand, 
 Across a grave the smiling phantom flies, 
 O er which we fall with a vain-clutching hand. 
 What matter if we heave laborious breath, 
 And crack our hearts and sinews, groan and weep, 
 The pain of life but sweetens death, 
 The hardest labor brings the soundest sleep. 
 
 On bank and brae how thick they grow, 
 The self-same clumps, the self-same dyes, 
 The primroses of long ago 
 But ah ! the altered eyes ! 
 I dream they are the very flowers, 
 Warm with the sun, wet with the showers, 
 Which, years ago, I used to pull 
 Returning from the murmuring school. 
 Sweet Nature is a mother ever more ; 
 A thousand tribes are breathing on the shore ; 
 The pansy blows beside the rock, 
 The globe-flower where the eddy swirls ; 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 49 
 
 And on this withered human stock 
 
 Burst rosy boys and girls. 
 
 Sets Nature little store 
 
 On that which once she bore ? 
 
 Does she forget the old, in rapture bear the new ? 
 
 Are ye the flowers that grew 
 
 In other seasons ? Do they e er return, 
 
 The men who build the cities on the plain ? 
 
 Or must my tearless eyeballs burn 
 
 Forever o er that early urn, 
 
 Ne er to be cooled by a delicious dew ? 
 
 Let me take back my pain 
 
 Unto my heart again ; 
 
 Before I can recover that I lack 
 
 The world must be rolled back. 
 
 Inland I wander slow, 
 
 Mute with the power the earth and heaven wield : 
 A black spot sails across the golden field, 
 And through the air a crow. 
 Before me wavers spring s first butterfly ; 
 From out the sunny noon there starts the cuckoo s 
 
 cry; 
 
 The daisied meads are musical with lambs ; 
 Some play, some feed, some, white as snow-flakes, lie 
 In the deep sunshine, by their silent dams. 
 The road grows wide and level to the feet ; 
 4 
 
50 CITY POEMS. 
 
 The wandering woodbine through the hedge is 
 
 drawn, 
 
 Unblown its streaky bugles dim and sweet ; 
 Knee-deep in fern stand startled doe and fawn, 
 And lo ! there gleams upon a spacious lawn 
 An Earl s marine retreat. 
 A little foot-path quivers up the height, 
 And what a vision for a townsman s sight I 
 A village, peeping from its orchard bloom, 
 With lowly roofs of thatch, blue threads of smoke, 
 Overlooking all, a parsonage of white. 
 I hear the smithy s hammer, stroke on stroke ; 
 A steed is at the door ; the rustics talk, 
 Proud of the notice of the gaitered groom ; 
 A shallow river breaks o er shallow falls. 
 Beside the ancient sluice that turns the mill 
 The lusty miller bawls ; 
 The parson listens in his garden-walk, 
 The red-cloaked woman pauses on the hill. 
 This is a place, you say, exempt from ill, 
 A paradise, where, all the loitering day, 
 Enamored pigeons coo upon the roof, 
 Where children ever play. - 
 Alas ! Time s webs are rotten, warp and woof; 
 Rotten his cloth of gold, his coarsest wear, 
 Here, black-eyed Richard ruins red-cheeked Moll, 
 Indifferent as a lord to her despair. 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 51 
 
 The broken barrow hates the prosperous dray ; 
 And, for a padded pew in which to pray, 
 The grocer sells his soul. 
 
 This cosey hostelry a visit craves ; 
 
 Here will I sit a while, 
 
 And watch the heavenly sunshine smile 
 
 Upon the village graves. 
 
 Strange is this little room in which I wait, 
 
 With its old table, rough with rustic names. 
 
 ; Tis summer now ; instead of blinking flames, 
 
 Sweet-srnelling ferns are hanging o er the grate. 
 
 With curious eyes I pore 
 
 Upon the mantel-piece, its precious wares, 
 
 Glazed Scripture prints in black lugubrious frames, 
 
 Filled with old Bible lore : 
 
 The whale is casting Jonah on the shore ; 
 
 Pharaoh is drowning in the curly wave ; 
 
 And to Elijah sitting at his cave 
 
 The hospitable ravens fly in pairs, 
 
 Celestial food within their horny beaks ; 
 
 On a slim David, with great pinky cheeks, 
 
 A towered Goliath stares. 
 
 Here will I sit at peace : 
 
 While, piercing through the window s ivy-veil, 
 
 A slip of sunshine smites the amber ale ; 
 
 And, as the wreaths of fragrant smoke increase, 
 
52 CITY POEMS. 
 
 I 11 read the letter which came down to-day. 
 
 Ah, happy Maurice ! while in chambers dun 
 
 I pore o er deeds and parchments growing gray, 
 
 Each glowing realm that spreads beneath the sun 
 
 Is but a paradise where you may play. 
 
 I am a bonded workman, you are free ; 
 
 In your blood s hey-day mine is early cold. 
 
 Life is rude furze at best ; the sea-breeze wrings 
 
 And eats my branches on the bitter lea ; 
 
 But you have root in dingle fat and old, 
 
 Fat with decayings of a hundred springs, 
 
 And blaze all splendid in your points of gold, 
 
 And in your heart a linnet sits and sings. 
 
 " Unstable as the wind, infirm as foam, 
 I envy, Charles, your calmness and your peace ; 
 The eye that marks its quarry from afar, 
 The heart that stoops on it and smites it down. 
 I, struggling in a dim and obscure net, 
 Am but enmeshed the more. When you were here 
 My spirit often burned to tell you all ; 
 I urged the horse up to the leap, it shied 
 At something in the hedge. This must not last ; 
 In shame and sorrow, ere I sleep to-night, 
 I 11 shrive my inmost soul. 
 
 I have knelt, and sworn 
 By the sweet heavens I have madly prayed 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 53 
 
 To be by them forsaken, when I forsake 
 A girl whose lot should be to sleep content 
 Upon a peasant s breast, and toil all day 
 Mong flaxen-headed children. She sits to-night, 
 When all the little town is lost in dream, 
 Her lax hands sunk in her neglected work, 
 Thinking of me. Smile not, my man of law, 
 Who, with a peering candle, walkest through 
 Black places in men s hearts, which only hear 
 The foot of conscience at the dead of night ! 
 Iler name might slip into my holiest prayer ; 
 Her breath has come and gone upon my cheek, 
 Yet I dare stand before my mother s face, 
 Dare look into the heavenly eyes that yearn 
 Forever through a mist of golden hair, 
 With no shame on my brow. T is not that way 
 My trouble looks. Yet, friend, in simple truth, 
 Could this thing be obliterated quite, 
 Expunged forever, like a useless cloak 
 I d fling off my possessions, and go forth, 
 My roof the weeping heaven. 
 
 Though I would die 
 
 Rather than give her pain, I grimly smile 
 To think, were I, assured this horrid dream, 
 Which poisons day to me, would only prove 
 A breath upon the mirror of her mind 
 A moment dim, then gone (an issue which 
 
54 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Could /have blotted out all memory, 
 
 Would let me freely breathe) this love would turn 
 
 To bitterest gall of hate. Vanity, 
 
 Thou god, who on the altar thou hast built 
 
 Pilest myrrh and frankincense, appliest the flame, 
 
 Then snufFst the smoky incense, high and calm ! 
 
 Thou nimble Proteus of all human shapes ! 
 
 Malvolio, cross-gartered in the sun, 
 
 The dying martyr, gazing from his fire 
 
 Upon the opened heavens, filled with crowds 
 
 Of glorious angel-faces : thou art all 
 
 We smile at, all we hymn ! For thee we blush, 
 
 For thee shed noble tears ! The glowing coal, 
 
 O er which the frozen beggar spreads his hands, 
 
 Is of one essence with the diamond 
 
 That on the haughty forehead of a queen 
 
 Trembles with dewy light. Could /, through pain, 
 
 Give back the peace I stole, my heart would leap ; 
 
 Could she forget me and regain content 
 
 How deeply I am wronged ! 
 
 " Is it the ancient trouble of my house 
 That makes the hours so terrible ? Other men 
 Live to more purpose than those monstrous weeds 
 That drink a breadth of sunshine, and give back 
 Nor hue nor fragrance ; but my spirit droops, 
 A dead and idle banner from its staff, 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 55 
 
 Unstirred by any wind. Within a cell, 
 
 Without a straw to play with, or a nail 
 
 To carve my sorrow on the gloomy stone, 
 
 I sit and watch, from stagnant day to day, 
 
 The bloated spider hanging on its thread, 
 
 The dull fly on the wall. The blessed sleep 
 
 For which none are too poor ; the sleep that comes 
 
 So sweetly to the weary laboring man, 
 
 The march-worn soldier on the naked ground, 
 
 The martyr in the pauses of the rack, 
 
 Drives me through forests full of dreadful eyes, 
 
 Flings me o er precipices, makes me kneel, 
 
 A sentenced man, before the dark platoon, 
 
 Or lays me helpless in the dim embrace 
 
 Of formless horror. Long ago, two foes 
 
 Lay in the yellow evening in their gore : 
 
 Like a malignant fury, that wild hour 
 
 Threw madness in the river of our blood : 
 
 Though it has run for thrice a century, 
 
 Been sweetened all the way by mothers tears, 
 
 ; T is poisoned until now. 
 
 See how I stand 
 
 Delaying on the brink, like one who fears 
 And yet would meet the chill ! When you were here 
 You saw a smoking-cap among my books ; 
 A fond and fluttering letter badly spelt, 
 Each sentence headed with a little i, 
 
56 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Came with it, read with a blush, tossed in the fire, 
 Nor answered yet. Can you not now detect 
 The snail s slime on the rose ? 
 
 This miserable thing 
 
 Grew round me like the ivy round the oak ; 
 Sweet were its early creeping rings, though now 
 I choke, from knotted root to highest bough. 
 In those too happy days I could not name 
 This strange new thing which came upon my youth, 
 But yielded to its sweetness. Fling it off? 
 Trample it down ? Bid me pluck out the eye 
 In which the sweet world dwells ! One night she 
 
 wept ; 
 
 It seemed so strange that / could make her weep : 
 Kisses may lie, but tears are surely true. 
 Then unbelief came back in solitude, 
 And Love grew cruel ; and to be assured 
 Cried out for tears, and with a shaking hand 
 And a wild heart that could have almost burst 
 With utter tenderness, yet would not spare, 
 lie clutched her heart, and at the starting tears 
 Grew soft with all remorse. For those mad hours 
 Remembrance frets my heart in solitude, 
 As the lone mouse when all the house is still 
 Gnaws at the wainscot. 
 
 T is a haunting face, 
 Yet oftentimes I think I love her not ; 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 57 
 
 Love s white hand flutters o er my spirit s keys 
 Unkissed by grateful music. Oft I think 
 The Lady Florence at the county ball, 
 Quenching the beauties as the lightning dims 
 The candles in a room, scarce smiles so sweet. 
 The one oppresses like a crown of gold, 
 The other gladdens like a beam in spring, 
 Stealing across a dim field, making blithe 
 Its daisies one by one. I deemed that I 
 Had broke my house of bondage, when one night 
 The memory of her face came back so sweet, 
 And stood between me and the printed page ; 
 And phantoms of a thousand happy looks 
 Smiled from the dark. It was the old weak tale 
 Which time has told from Adam till this hour : 
 The slave comes back, takes up his broken chain. 
 I rode through storm toward the little town ; 
 The minster, gleamed on by the flying moon, 
 Tolled midnight as I passed. I only sought 
 To see the line of light beneath her door, 
 The knowledge of her nearness was so sweet. 
 Hid in the darkness of the church, I watched 
 Her window like a shrine : a light came in, 
 And a soft shadow broke along the roof; 
 She raised the window and leaned forth awhile. 
 I could have fallen down and kissed her feet ; 
 The poor dear heart, I knew it could not rest ; 
 
58 CITY POEMS. 
 
 I stood between her and the light ray shade 
 Fell cross her silver sphere. The window closed. 
 When morn with cold bleak crimson laced the east, 
 Against a stream of raw and rainy wind 
 I rode back to the Hall. 
 
 The play-book tells 
 
 How Fortune s slippery wheel in Syracuse 
 Flung prosperous lordship to the chilly shades, 
 Heaved serfdom to the sun : in precious silks 
 Charwomen flounced, and scullions sat and laughed 
 In golden chairs, to see their fellows play 
 At football with a crown. Within my heart 
 In this old house, when all the fiends are here, 
 The story is renewed. Peace only comes 
 With a wild ride across the barren downs, 
 One look upon her face. She ne er complains 
 Of my long absences, my hasty speech, 
 Crumbs from thy table are enough for me. 
 She only asks to be allowed to lean 
 Her head against my breast a little while, 
 And she is paid for all. I choke with tears, 
 And think myself a devil from the pit 
 Loved by an angel. that she would change 
 This tenderness and drooping-lily look, 
 The flutter when I come, the unblaming voice, 
 Wet eyes held up to kiss I One flash of fire, 
 A moment s start of keen and crimson scorn, 
 
SQUIttE MAURICE. 59 
 
 Would make me hers forever I 
 
 I draw my birth 
 
 From a long line of gallant gentlemen, 
 Who only feared a lie but what is this ? 
 I dare not slight the daughter of a peer; 
 Her kindred could avenge. Yet I dare play 
 And palter with the pure soul of a girl 
 Without friend, who, smitten, speaks no word, 
 But with a helpless face sinks in the grave, 
 And takes her wrongs to God. Thou dark Sir Ralph, 
 Who lay with broken brand on Marston Moor, 
 What think you of this son ? 
 
 " This prison that I dwell in hath two doors, 
 Desertion, marriage ; both are shut by shame, 
 And barred by cowardice. A stronger man 
 Would screw his heart up to the bitter wrench, 
 And break through either and regain the air. 
 I cannot give myself or others pain. 
 I wear a conscience nice and scrupulous, 
 Which, while it hesitates to draw a tear, 
 Lets a heart break. Conscience should be clear-eyed, 
 And look through years : conscience is tenderest oft 
 When clad in sternness, when it smites to-day, 
 To stay the ruin which it hears afar 
 Upon the wind. Pure womanhood is meek 
 But which is nobler, the hysterical girl 
 
60 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Weeping o er flies huddling in slips of sun 
 
 On autumn sills, who has not heart enough 
 
 To crush a wounded grasshopper and end 
 
 Torture at once ; or she, with flashing eyes, 
 
 Among the cannon, a heroic foot 
 
 Upon a fallen breast ? My nerveless will 
 
 Is like a traitorous second, and deserts 
 
 My purpose in the very gap of need. 
 
 I groan beneath this cowardice of heart, 
 
 Which rolls the evil to be borne to-day 
 
 Upon to-morrow, loading it with gloom. 
 
 The man who clothes the stony moor with green, 
 
 In virtue of the beauty he creates, 
 
 Has there a right to dwell. And he who stands 
 
 Firm in this shifting sand and drift of things, 
 
 And rears from out the wasteful elements 
 
 An ordered home, in which the awful Gods, 
 
 The lighter Graces, serene Muses, dwell, 
 
 Holds in that masterdom the chartered right 
 
 To his demesne of Time. But I hold none ; 
 
 I live by sufferance, am weak and vain 
 
 As a shed leaf upon a turbid stream, 
 
 Or an abandoned boat which can but drift 
 
 Whither the currents draw to maelstrom, or 
 
 To green delicious shores. I should have had 
 
 My pendent cradle rocked by laughing winds 
 
 Within some innocent and idle isle 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 61 
 
 Where the sweet bread-fruit ripens and falls down, 
 Where the swollen pumpkin lolls upon the ground, 
 The lithe and slippery savage, drenched with oil, 
 Sleeps in the sun, and life is lazy ease. 
 But lamentation and complaint are vain : 
 The skies are stern and serious as doom ; 
 The avalanche is loosened by a laugh ; 
 And he who throws the dice of destiny, 
 Though with a sportive and unthinking hand, 
 Must bide the issue, be it life or death. 
 One path is clear before me. It may lead 
 O er perilous rock, cross sands without a well, 
 Through deep and difficult chasms ; but therein 
 The whiteness of the soul is kept, and that, 
 Not joy nor happiness, is victory. 
 
 " Ah, she is not the creature who I dreamed 
 Should one day walk beside me dearly loved : 
 No fair majestic woman, void of fear, 
 And unabashed from purity of heart ; 
 No girl with liquid eyes and shadowy hair, 
 To sing at twilight like a nightingale, 
 Or fill the silence with her glimmering smiles, 
 Deeper than speech or song. She has no birth, 
 No dowry, graces ; no accomplishments, 
 Save a pure cheek, a fearless, innocent brow, 
 And a true-beating heart. She is no bank 
 
62 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Of rare exotics which o ercome the sense 
 
 With perfumes only fresh uncultured soil 
 
 With a wild-violet grace and sweetness born 
 
 Of Nature s teeming foison. Is this not 
 
 Enough to sweeten life ? Could one not live 
 
 On brown bread, clearest water ? Is this love 
 
 (What idle poets feign in fabling songs) 
 
 An unseen god, whose voice is heard but once 
 
 In youth s green valleys, ever dead and mute 
 
 Mong manhood s iron hills ? A power that comes 
 
 On the instant, whelming, like the light that smote 
 
 Saul from his horse ; never a thing that draws 
 
 Its exquisite being from the light of smiles 
 
 And low sweet tones and fond companionship ? 
 
 Brothers and sisters grow up by our sides, 
 
 Unfelt and silently are knit to us, 
 
 And one flesh with our hearts ; would love not grow 
 
 In the communion of long- wedded years, 
 
 Sweet as the dawning light, the greening spring? 
 
 Would not an infant be the marriage priest, 
 
 To stand between us and unite our hands, 
 
 And bid us love and be obeyed ? its life, 
 
 A fountain, with a cooling fringe of green 
 
 Amid the arid sands, by which we twain 
 
 Could dwell in deep content ? My sunshine drew 
 
 This odorous blossom from the bough ; why then 
 
 With frosty fingers wither it, and seal up 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 63 
 
 Sun-ripened fruit within its barren rind, 
 Killing all sweet delights ? I drew it forth : 
 If there is suffering, let me bear it all. 
 
 " A very little goodness goes for much. 
 Walk inong my peasants, every urchin s face 
 Lights at my coming ; girls at cottage-doors 
 Rise from their work and curtsey as I pass, 
 And old men bless me with their silent tears ! 
 What have I done for this ? I m kind, they say, 
 Give coals in winter, cordials for the sick, 
 And once a fortnight stroke a curly head 
 Which hides half-frightened in a russet gown. 
 Tis easy for the sun to shine. My alms 
 Are to my riches like a beam to him. 
 They love me, these poor hinds, though I have ne er 
 Resigned a pleasure, let a whim be crossed, 
 Pinched for an hour the stomach of desire 
 For one of them. Good Heaven ! what am I 
 To be thus servitored ? Am I to range 
 Like the discourseless creatures of the wood, 
 Without the common dignity of pain, 
 Without a pale or limit ? To take up love 
 For its strange sweetness, and, whene er it tires, 
 Fling it aside as careless as I brush 
 A gnat from off my arm, and go my way 
 Untwinged with keen remorse ? All this must end. 
 
64 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Firm land at last begins to peer above 
 
 The ebbing waves of hesitance and doubt. 
 
 Throughout this deepening spring my purpose grows 
 
 To flee with her to those young morning lands 
 
 Australia, where the earth is gold, or where 
 
 The prairies roll toward the setting sun. 
 
 Not Lady Florence with her coronet, 
 
 Flinging white arms around me, murmuring 
 
 Husband ; upon my breast not even that 
 
 Could make me happy, if I left a grave 
 
 On which the shadow of the village spire 
 
 Should rest at eve. The pain, if pain there be, 
 
 I 11 keep locked up within my secret heart, 
 
 And wear what joy I have upon my face ; 
 
 And she shall live and laugh, and never know. 
 
 " Come, Brother, at your earliest, down to me. 
 To-morrow night I sleep at Ferny-Chase : 
 There, shadowed by the memory of the dead, 
 We 11 talk of this. My thought, mayhap, will take 
 A different hue, seen in your purer light, 
 Free from all stain of passion. Ere you come, 
 Break that false mirror of your ridicule, 
 Looking in which, the holiest saint beholds 
 A grinning Jackanapes, and hates himself. 
 More men have Laughter driven from the right 
 Than Terror clad with fire. You have been young, 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 05 
 
 And know the mystery, that when we love, 
 
 We love the thing, not only for itself, 
 
 But somewhat also for the love we give. 
 
 Think of the genial season of your youth, 
 
 When you dwelt here, and come with serious heart." 
 
 So, in that bitter quarter sits the wind : 
 The village fool could tell, unless it shifts, 
 T will bring the rain in fiercest flaws and drifts ! 
 How wise we are, yet blind, 
 Judging the wood s grain from the outer rind ; 
 Wrapt in the twilight of this prison dim, 
 He envies me, I envy him ! 
 
 The stream of my existence boils and leaps 
 Through broken rainbows rnong the purple fells, 
 And breaks its heart mid rocks, close-jammed, con 
 fined, 
 
 And plunges in a chasm black and blind, 
 To rage in hollow gulfs and iron hells, 
 And thence escaping, tamed and broken, creeps 
 Away in a wild sweat of beads and bells. 
 Though his slides lazy through the milky meads, 
 And once a week the sleepy slow-trailed barge 
 Rocks the broad water-lilies on its marge, 
 A dead face wavers from the oozy weeds. 
 It is but little matter where we dwell, 
 5 
 
66 CITY POEMS. 
 
 In fortune s centre, on her utter verge ; 
 
 Whither to death our weary steps we urge, 
 
 Or ride with rin-ging bridle, golden selle. 
 
 Life is one pattern wrought in different hues, 
 
 And there is naught to choose 
 
 Between its sad and gay tis but to groan 
 
 Upon a rainy common or a throne, 
 
 Bleed neath the purple or the peasants serge. 
 
 At his call I will go, 
 Though it is very little love can do ; 
 In spite of all affection tried and true, 
 Each man alone must struggle with his woe. 
 He pities her, for he has done her wrong, 
 And would repair the evil noble deed, 
 To flash and tingle in a minstrel s song, 
 To move the laughter of our modern breed I 
 And yet the world is wise ; each curve and round 
 Of custom s road is no result of chance ; 
 It curves but to avoid some treacherous ground, 
 Some quagmire in the wilds of circumstance ; 
 Nor safely left. The long-drawn caravan 
 Wavers through heat, then files o er Mecca s stones ; 
 Far in the blinding desert lie the bones 
 Of the proud-hearted solitary man. 
 He marries her, but ere the year has died, 
 ; T is an old tale, they wander to the grave 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 67 
 
 With hot revolting hearts, yet lashed and tied 
 
 Like galley-slave to slave. 
 
 Love should not stoop to Love, like prince to lord : 
 
 While o er their heads proud Cupid claps his wings, 
 
 Love should meet Love upon the marriage sward, 
 
 And kiss, like crowned kings. 
 
 If both are hurt, then let them bear the pain 
 
 Upon their separate paths ; twill die at last: 
 
 The deed of one rash moment may remain 
 
 To darken all the future with the past. 
 
 And yet I cannot tell, the beam that kills 
 
 The gypsy s fire, kindles the desert flower ; 
 
 Where he plucks blessings I may gather ills, 
 
 And in his sweetest sweet find sourest sour. 
 
 If what of wisdom and experience 
 
 My years have brought be either guide or aid, 
 
 They shall be his, though to my mournful sense 
 
 The lights will steal away from wood and glade ; 
 
 The garden will be sad with all its glows, 
 
 And I shall hear the glistening laurels talk 
 
 Of her, as I pass under in the walk, 
 
 And my light step will thrill each conscious rose. 
 
 The lark hangs high o er Ferny-Chase 
 In slant of sun, in twinkle of rain ; 
 Though loud and clear, the song I hear 
 Is half of joy, and half of pain. 
 
68 CITY POEMS. 
 
 I know by heart the dear old place, 
 
 The place where Spring and Summer meet 
 
 By heart, like those old ballad rhymes, 
 
 O er which I brood a million times, 
 
 And sink from sweet to deeper sweet. 
 
 I know the changes of the idle skies, 
 
 The idle shapes in which the clouds are blown ; 
 
 The dear old place is now before my eyes, 
 
 Yea, to the daisy s shadow on the stone. 
 
 When through the golden furnace of the heat 
 
 The far-off landscape seems to shake and beat, 
 
 Within the lake I see old Hodge s cows 
 
 Stand in their shadows in a tranquil drowse, 
 
 While o er them hangs a restless steam of flies. 
 
 I see the clustered chimneys of the Hall 
 
 Stretch o er the lawn toward the blazing lake ; 
 
 And in the dewy even-fall 
 
 I hear the mellow thrushes call 
 
 From tree to tree, from brake to brake. 
 
 Ah ! when I thither go 
 
 I know that my joy-emptied eyes shall see 
 
 A white Ghost wandering where the lilies blow, 
 
 A Sorrow sitting by the try sting-tree. 
 
 I kiss this soft curl of her living hair, 
 
 Tis full of light as when she did unbind 
 
 Her sudden ringlets, making bright the wind : 
 
 ; T is here, but she is where ? 
 
SQUIRE MAURICE. 69 
 
 Why do I, like a child impatient, weep ? 
 Delight dies like a wreath of frosted breath ; 
 Though here I toil upon the barren deep, 
 I see the sunshine yonder lie asleep 
 Upon the calm and beauteous shores of Death. 
 Ah, Maurice, let thy human heart decide, 
 The first best pilot through distracting jars. 
 The lowliest roof of love at least will hide 
 The desolation of the lonely stars. 
 Stretched on the painful rack of forty years, 
 I ve learned at last the sad philosophy 
 Of the unhoping heart, unshrinking eye 
 God knows ; my icy wisdom and my sneers 
 Are frozen tears I 
 
 The day wears, and I go. 
 Farewell, Elijah I may you heartily dine I 
 I cannot, David, see your fingers twine 
 In the long hair of your foe. 
 Housewife, adieu, Heaven keep your ample form ; 
 May custom never fail ; 
 
 And may your heart, as sound as your own ale, 
 Be soured by never a storm ! 
 
 Though I have travelled now for twice an hour, 
 I have not heard a bird or seen a flower. 
 This wild road has a little mountain rill 
 
70 CITY POEMS. 
 
 To sing to it, ah ! happier than I. 
 
 How desolate the region, and how still 
 
 The idle earth looks on the idle sky I 
 
 I trace the river by its wandering green ; 
 
 The vale contracts to a steep pass of fear, 
 
 And through the midnight of the pines I hear 
 
 The torrent raging down the long ravine. 
 
 At last I ve reached the summit high and bare ; 
 
 I fling myself on heather dry and brown : 
 
 As silent as a picture lies the town, 
 
 Its peaceful smokes are curling in the air ; 
 
 The bay is one delicious sheet of rose, 
 
 And round the far point of the tinted cliffs 
 
 I see the long strings of the fishing skiffs 
 
 Come home to roost like lines of evening crows. 
 
 I can be idle only one day more 
 
 As the nets drying on the sunny shore ; 
 
 Thereafter, chambers, still mid thronged resorts, 
 
 Strewn books and littered parchments, naught to see, 
 
 Save a charwoman s face, a dingy tree, 
 
 A fountain plashing in the empty courts. 
 
 But let me hasten down this shepherd s track, 
 The Night is at my back. 
 
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING; 
 
 OR, 
 
 TEN YEARS AFTER. 
 
 THE country ways are full of mire, 
 
 The boughs toss in the fading light, 
 The winds blow out the sunset s fire, 
 
 And sudden droppeth down the night. 
 I sit in this familiar room, 
 
 Where mud-splashed hunting squires resort ; 
 My sole companion in the gloom 
 
 This slowly dying pint of port. 
 
 7 Mong all the joys my soul hath known, 
 
 Mong errors over which it grieves, 
 I sit at this dark hour alone, 
 
 Like Autumn mid his withered leaves. 
 This is a night of wild farewells 
 
 To all the past, the good, the fair ; 
 To-morrow, and my wedding bells 
 
 Will make a music in the air. 
 
 Like a wet fisher tempest-tost, 
 
 Who sees throughout the weltering night 
 
72 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Afar on some low-lying coast 
 
 The streaming of a rainy light, 
 I saw this hour, and now t is come ; 
 
 The rooms are lit, the feast is set ; 
 Within the twilight I am dumb, 
 
 My heart filled with a vague regret. 
 
 I cannot say, in Eastern style, 
 
 Where er she treads the pansy blows ; 
 Nor call her eyes twin-stars, her smile 
 
 A sunbeam, and her mouth a rose. 
 Nor can I, as your bridegrooms do, 
 
 Talk of my raptures. 0, how sore 
 The fond romance of twenty-two 
 
 Is parodied ere thirty-four ! 
 
 To-night I shake hands with the past, 
 
 Familiar years, adieu, adieu ! 
 An unknown door is open cast, 
 
 An empty future wide and new 
 Stands waiting. ye naked rooms, 
 
 Void, desolate, without a charm ! 
 Will Love s smile chase your lonely glooms, 
 
 And drape your walls, and make them warm ? 
 
 The man who knew, while he was young, 
 Some soft and soul-subduing air, 
 
THE NIGIIT BEFORE THE WEDDING. 73 
 
 Melts when again he hears it sung, 
 
 Although t is only half so fair. 
 So love I thee, and love is sweet 
 
 (My Florence, tis the cruel truth) 
 Because it can to age repeat 
 
 That long-lost passion of my youth. 
 
 0, often did my spirit melt, 
 
 Blurred letters, o er your artless rhymes ! 
 Fair tress, in which the sunshine dwelt, 
 
 I ve kissed thee many a million times I 
 And now tis done. My passionate tears, 
 
 Mad pleadings with an iron fate, 
 And all the sweetness of my years, 
 
 Are blackened ashes in the grate. 
 
 Then ring in the wind, my wedding chimes ; 
 
 Smile, villagers, at every door ; 
 Old churchyard, stuffed with buried crimes, 
 
 Be clad in sunshine o er and o er ; 
 And youthful maidens, white and sweet, 
 
 Scatter your blossoms far and wide ; 
 And with a bridal chorus greet 
 
 This happy bridegroom and his bride. 
 
 " This happy bridegroom ! " there is sin 
 At bottom of my thankless mood : 
 
74 CITY POEMS. 
 
 What if desert alone could win 
 
 For me life s chiefest grace and good? 
 
 Love gives itself; and if not given, 
 No genius, beauty, state, or wit, 
 
 No gold of earth, no gem of heaven, 
 Is rich enough to purchase it. 
 
 It may be, Florence, loving thee, 
 
 My heart will its old memories keep ; 
 Like some worn sea-shell from the sea, 
 
 Filled with the music of the deep. 
 And you may watch, on nights of rain, 
 
 A shadow on my brow encroach ; 
 Be startled by my sudden pain, 
 
 And tenderness of self-reproach. 
 
 It may be that your loving wiles 
 
 Will call a sigh from far-off years ; 
 It may be that your happiest smiles 
 
 Will brim my eyes with hopeless tears ; 
 It may be that my sleeping breath 
 
 Will shake, with painful visions wrung ; 
 And, in the awful trance of death, 
 
 A stranger s name be on my tongue. 
 
 Ye phantoms, born of bitter blood, 
 Ye ghosts of passion, lean and worn, 
 
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING. 75 
 
 Ye terrors of a lonely mood, 
 
 What do you here on a wedding morn ? 
 For, as the dawning sweet and fast 
 
 Through all the heaven spreads and flows, 
 Within life s discord rude and vast, 
 
 Love s subtle music grows and grows. 
 
 And lightened is the heavy curse, 
 
 And clearer is the weary road ; 
 The very worm the sea-weeds nurse 
 
 Is cared for by the Eternal God. 
 My love, pale blossom of the snow, 
 
 lias pierced earth wet with wintry showers, 
 may it drink the sun, and blow, 
 
 And be followed by all the year of flowers I 
 
 Black Bayard from the stable bring ; 
 
 The rain is o er, the wind is down, 
 Round stirring farms the birds will sing, 
 
 The dawn stand in the sleeping town, 
 Within an hour. This is her gate, 
 
 Her sodden roses droop in night, 
 And emblem of my happy fate 
 
 In one dear window there is light. 
 
 The dawn is oozing pale and cold 
 
 Through the damp east for many a mile ; 
 
76 CITY POEMS. 
 
 When half my tale of life is told 
 Grim-featured Time begins to smile. 
 
 Last star of night that lingerest yet 
 In that long rift of rainy gray, 
 
 Gather thy wasted splendors, set, 
 And die into my wedding-day. 
 
A BOY S POEM. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 WE have been parted now for twenty years ; 
 
 Oft messages and gratulations kind 
 
 Have flown across the sea, and you have fell 
 
 A hand from England touch you neath the Palm ; 
 
 At every little gift from you it seemed 
 
 As if my senses had been visited 
 
 By India s fragrant wind. With love like ours 
 
 These things are certain, as that in the spring 
 
 The rapture of the lark will fill the air, 
 
 The wind-flower light the woods. How strange 
 
 will be 
 
 Our meeting, long expected, ere we die ! 
 Both will be changed. The boat that forty years 
 Has heaved and labored in the mounded brine, 
 Is cracked by sun-fire, bent by rainy squalls, 
 Eaten by restless foam. We will peruse 
 Each other s faces, read the matter there, 
 In our grim northern silence and all be told 
 In one long passionate wring of clasped hands. 
 
78 CITY POEMS. 
 
 You can remember how we, in our youth, 
 Looked forward to the years that were to come. 
 We stood upon the verge of a great sea ; 
 An airy rumor of its mighty capes, 
 Its isles of summer, its lone peaks of fire, 
 Unknown Americas that lay asleep, 
 Charmed our fond ears ; forthwith we launched from 
 
 shore, 
 
 The wind sang in the hollows of our sails, 
 And wonder rose on wonder as we went. 
 We now have voyaged many a foamy league, 
 Sailed far beyond the curtain of the sky 
 Which mocked our vision gazing from the strand. 
 Have we secured a haven of repose 
 Where we may moulder plank by plank in peace ? 
 Or with our shrivelled canvas, battered hall, 
 Must we steer onward through the waste of waves, 
 Beneath the closing night ? 
 
 The streams that burst, 
 Companions, from the misty mountain top, 
 And hear each other s music for a while, 
 Are far divided ere they meet the sea. 
 Shut from the blinding sun-bath of the noon 
 I see you stretched ; the only living sound 
 Within the tingling silence of the heat, 
 The long wave s drowsy tumble on the bar ; 
 And in your heart you hear another shore ; 
 
A BOY S POEM. 79 
 
 Then, like a charger by the trumpet pricked, 
 You start erect, a flash upon your face 
 A spirt of smoke, the thunder of a gun, 
 A ship from England I 
 
 With much care and toil, 
 
 With something of the forethought of the squirrel, 
 And laboring bee that ever works and sings, 
 I ve laid up store, ere life became to me 
 Bare as a stubble-field. I ve built a home 
 Beside the river which we used to love. 
 The murmur of the city reaches here, 
 And makes the silence more divinely still, 
 And the remembered turmoils of my youth 
 Sweeten this deep tranquillity of age. 
 If in a world that changes like a cloud, 
 A man may, in pure humbleness of heart, 
 Say he is happy, I am surely he. 
 Time unto me hath been the dearest friend ; 
 For Time is like the peacefulness of grass, 
 Which clothes, as if with silence and deep sleep, 
 Deserted plains that once were loud with strife ; 
 Which hides the marks of earthquake and of fire ; 
 Which makes the rigid and the clay-cold grave 
 Smooth as a billow, tender with green light. 
 The world and I are friends. When I depart, 
 Upon the threshold I 11 shake hands with Life 
 As with a generous and a cheerful host 
 
80 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Who gave me ample welcome neath his roof. 
 
 Now, in the sober evening of my days, 
 
 I do resemble in contentedness 
 
 An ancient grange half hid in harvest-home : 
 
 Though there is little warmth within my sky, 
 
 Though streaks of rain fall on the yellow woods, 
 
 Though wild winds clash my vanes yet I have 
 
 stored 
 
 A summer s sunshine in my crowds of stacks : 
 Although hoar frost at morn is on the brier, 
 With oil, and roaring logs, I can make blithe 
 The long long winter-night. I ve suffered much, 
 And known the deepest sorrow man can know. 
 That pain has fled upon the troubled years : 
 Although the world is darker than before, 
 There is a pathos round the daisy s head : 
 The common sunshine in the common fields, 
 The runnel by the road, the clouds that grow 
 Out of tho blue abysses of the air, 
 Do not as in my earlier days, oppress 
 Me with their beauty ; for the grief that dims 
 The eye and cheek, hath touched them too, and made 
 Them dearer to me, being more akin. 
 Death weaves the subtle mystery of joy ; 
 He gives a trembling preciousness to love, 
 Makes stern eyes dim above a sleeping face 
 Half-hidden in its cloud of golden curls. 
 
A BOY*8 POEM. 81 
 
 Death is a greater poet far than Love ; 
 The summer light is sweeter for his shade. 
 
 The past is very tender at my heart ; 
 Full, as the memory of an ancient friend 
 When once again we stand beside his grave. 
 Raking amongst old papers thrown in haste 
 Mid useless lumber, unawares I came 
 On a forgotten poem of my youth. 
 I went aside and read each faded page 
 Warm with dead passion, sweet with buried Junes, 
 Filled with the light of suns that are no more. 
 I stood like one who finds a golden tress 
 Given by loving hands no more on earth, 
 And starts, beholding how the dust of years, 
 Which dims all else, has never touched its light. 
 I stood before the grave-door of the past, 
 And to these eyes my yet unmouldered youth 
 Came forth like Lazarus. Thou swallow, Love, 
 Which thus revisit st thine accustomed eaves, 
 Return, return to climes beyond the sea I 
 This ruined nest can never nurse thy young ; 
 Thy twitter, and thy silver-flashing breast, 
 But mock me with the days that are no more. 
 
 I have been bold enough to send you this, 
 Though little of the Poet s shaping art 
 6 
 
82 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Is in these sheets, and nothing more was sought 
 
 Than that most sweet relief which dwells in verse 
 
 To a new spirit o er which tyrannized, 
 
 Like a musician o er an instrument, 
 
 The sights and sounds of the majestic world. 
 
 You knew me when my fond and ignorant youth 
 
 Was an unwihdowed chamber of delight, 
 
 Deaf to all noise, sweet as a rose s heart : 
 
 A sudden earthquake rent it to the base, 
 
 And through the rifts of ruin sternly gleamed 
 
 An apparition of gray windy crag, 
 
 Black leagues of forest roaring like a sea, 
 
 And far lands dim with rain. There was my world 
 
 And place for evermore. When forth I went 
 
 I took my gods with me, and set them up 
 
 Within my foreign home. What love I had, 
 
 What admiration and keen sense of joy 
 
 Unspent in verse, has been to me a stream 
 
 Feeding the roots of being ; living sap 
 
 That dwelt within the myriad boughs of life, 
 
 And kept the leaves of feeling fresh and green. 
 
 Instead of sounding in the heads of fools, 
 
 Like wind within a ruin, it became 
 
 A pious benediction and a smile 
 
 On all the goings on of human life ; 
 
 An incommunicable joy in day, 
 
 In lone waste places, and the light of stars. 
 
A BOY S POEM. 83 
 
 Now, as the years wear on, I hunger more 
 To see your face again before I die. 
 Last night I dreamed I saw a mighty ship 
 Through a great sea of moonlight bearing on, 
 Its coil of smoke dissolving into mist 
 Beyond its shining track ; and in my dream 
 I felt you on your way. May this be true 1 
 Sometimes, in looking back upon my life, 
 I fear I have mistaken ill for good. 
 There are no children s voices in my house. 
 If I have never ventured from the strand, 
 Been spared the peril of the storm and rock, 
 I never have returned with merchandise. 
 I know that She has melted from your sight, 
 And that a colony of little graves 
 Makes that far earth as sacred as the sky. 
 Alone like me your solitude is not 
 Empty like mine : lost faces come and go ; 
 I have but thoughts. It may be that you weep, 
 But I have not a sorrow worth a tear : 
 Methinks to-night mine seems the harder fate. 
 The fire I kindled warmed myself alone, 
 And now, when it is sinking red and low 
 Within the solemn gloom, there is no hand 
 To heap on fuel. Therefore let it sink. 
 Life cannot bring me more than it has brought. 
 The oft-repeated tale has lost its charm. 
 
84 CITY POEMS. 
 
 I would not linger on to age, and have 
 The gold of life beat out to thinnest leaf. 
 
 Like winds that in the crimson autumn eves 
 Pipe of the winter snow, my prescient thoughts 
 Are touched with sadness. Ay, the leaf must fall 
 And rot in the long rain. The stage is bare, 
 The actor and the critic have retired, 
 And through the empty house a hand I know 
 Is putting out the lights ; t will soon be dark. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THERE was an awful silence in the house 
 
 Where my dead father lay. When years had passed, 
 
 That silence lay upon my mother s face, 
 
 And mingled with her motions and her speech. 
 
 We lived alone alone save one stern guest 
 
 Who sat beside our hearth and made it cold : 
 
 By many a hearth he sits. Yet never came 
 
 A murmur or complaint from her thin lips. 
 
 When but a trembling wind-flower of a child, 
 They set me in a large and crowded school. 
 The pale preceptor clad in rusty black, 
 The reading classes, and the murmuring forms 
 Were torture ; and the ringing play-ground, hell. 
 
A BOY S POEM. 85 
 
 I shrank from crowds of loud and boisterous boys. 
 The pain and forfeit of each game was mine ; 
 Contempt, and scorn, and taunts, were rained on 
 
 me ; 
 
 I wept within my little bed at night, 
 And wished that I were happy in my grave. 
 From out this depth of sorrow slowly grew 
 A kindred and strange sympathy with eve, 
 With the unhoused and outcast winds, and with 
 The rain which I had heard so often weep 
 Alone, within the middle of the night, 
 Like a poor, beaten, and despised child 
 That has been thrust forth from its father s door. 
 And often, when the burning sun went down, 
 I sat and wept unseen. The dark ning earth, 
 The void deserted sky, were like myself; 
 They seemed unhappy, sad, forsaken things ; 
 My childish sorrows made me kin with them ; 
 Orphans we sat together. Sitting there, 
 What joy, when o er the huddled chimney-tops 
 Rose the great yellow moon ! Since then I ve seen 
 Her rise o er mountain brows, droop large with bliss 
 O er steaming autumn meads, touch lochs that 
 
 spread 
 
 A hundred branching arms among the hills, 
 With leagues of throbbing silver never more 
 With the delight of these remembered nights. 
 
86 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Tears dried upon my proud and burning cheeks ; 
 When a tormentor struck me, to the soul 
 I stung him with a taunt. My new-found power 
 Made the world brighter ; and to feel him wince 
 Was solitary joy a fresh green turf 
 On which the caged lark sang. On autumn nights 
 My school-mates loved to gather at a forge, 
 And tell their stories round the furnace mouth. 
 I read strange legends in its crimson heart ; 
 As I rehearsed the secrets of the fire, 
 I felt them grow towards me, drank the looks 
 They cast round to the dark and frowning night 
 That stood back from the glare. And these were they 
 Who hustled me at school, who drove me mad, 
 Who pelted me with names I The cowards shook, 
 And I smiled proudly in my secret heart : 
 I saw them tremble, and I struck them home. 
 
 Upon a day of wind and heavy rain 
 A crowd was huddled in the porch at school : 
 As I came up I heard a voice cry out, 
 "Ho, ho I here comes the lad that talks with ghosts 
 Sitting upon the graves." They laughed and jeered, 
 And gathered round me in a mocking ring, 
 And hurt me with their faces and their eyes. 
 With bitter words I smote them in my hate, 
 As with a weapon. A sudden blow, and wrath 
 
A BOY S POEM. 87 
 
 Sprang upward like a flame. I struck, and blood, 
 
 Brighter than rubies, gleamed upon my band ; 
 
 And at the beauteous sight, from head to heel 
 
 A tiger s joy ran tingling through my veins, 
 
 And every finger hungered for a throat. 
 
 I burst the broken ring, and darted off 
 
 With my blood boiling, and my pulses mad. 
 
 I did not feel the rain upon my face ; 
 
 With burning mouth I drank the cooling wind ; 
 
 And then, as if my limbs were touched by death, 
 
 A shudder shook me, all the rage that sprang 
 
 Like sudden fire in a deserted house, 
 
 Making the windows fierce, had passed away ; 
 
 And the cold rain beat heavy on me now ; 
 
 The winds went through me. 
 
 At the dead of night 
 Fever beset me with a troop of fiends ; 
 They hid in every crevice of the house, 
 And called me with the voices of my mates, 
 And mocked me when I came. They made me blind, 
 And led me out to stumble among pits, 
 And smote me in my blackness. Oft they hung 
 Me o er the edges of the dizzy steeps, 
 And laughed to see me swinging in the wind ; 
 And then a blast would whirl me like a leaf, 
 From my frail hold out to the peopled air, 
 Where dark hands plucked at me and dragged me 
 down. 
 
CITY POEMS. 
 
 I lay in darkness neath a weight of chains, 
 A burst of day, and lo ! a mighty sea 
 
 Of upturned faces murmured, heaved, and swayed 
 Around to see me die. Methought I fled 
 Along the road of death. Methought I heard 
 My mother calling from the life I left, 
 
 II Come back, come back, come back unto my love ! " 
 " Whistle the scaped bird from the summer woods 
 Back to the spoiler s hand," I thought, and laughed, 
 And every cry grew fainter as I ran. 
 
 I paused upon a drear bewildered road, 
 
 Lined with dark trees, or ghosts, which only seemed 
 
 A darker gloom in gloom, and, far away, 
 
 A glare went up as of a sunken fire. 
 
 " This is the land of death, and that is hell," 
 
 I cried, as I went on toward the glare. 
 
 I climbed a bank of gloom, and there I saw 
 
 A burning sea upon a burning shore, 
 
 A lone man sitting black against the light, 
 
 His long black shadow stretching o er the sands, 
 
 Long as earth s sunset shades. Then all at once, 
 
 Like landscapes in the red heart of a fire, 
 
 The vision crumbled, and methought I stood 
 
 Beside an ancient and unused canal, 
 
 Choked with great stems and monstrous leaves, and 
 
 filled 
 With olive-colored water thick as oil. 
 
A BOY S POEM. 89 
 
 All here and there t was patched and skinned with 
 
 green, 
 
 The cream of idle years. Upon the green, 
 There blushed and glowed a dewy crimson rose, 
 Some hand had thrown it scarce an hour ago. 
 I hurried on, that I might overtake 
 Whoe er had passed that way. I stood in fear 
 As a stream flows forever past a tree, 
 A line of sable shapes came winding by 
 With downcast eyes and cloaked from head to foot. 
 Methought I stood for weeks, and months, and years, 
 And still the shapes came past. My horror grew 
 Until I burst the silence with a cry ; 
 Then, as a trail of smoke is torn by winds, 
 The long line wavered, broke, and disappeared. 
 
 At length, amid the phantoms of my brain, 
 A kind white face was mixed. It came and went. 
 Sometimes it slowly stole across the gloom, 
 And paused to gaze on me, then died away ; 
 And sometimes it would lean above my couch, 
 And look into my eyes. As once it came 
 And hung above me for a silent hour, 
 I raised my wasted hand and touched its cheek : 
 It did not frown on me ; next, bolder grown, 
 I wandered o er its brow, its mouth, its hair, 
 And then methought it smiled. I shrunk in fear, 
 
90 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Then touched the cheek again ; and, wondering, 
 
 said, 
 
 " Surely this should be my own mother s face ! " 
 And dimly felt as if enclosed in arms, 
 As if an eager mouth were pressed to mine. 
 Delirium slid from off me like the flood 
 From off the world, and slowly I awoke 
 To the full knowledge of my mother s love : 
 " God hath returned thee from the gates of death, 
 My poor tormented child ! " That hour of joy I 
 That welcome back to life I I was as one 
 Drawn sorely wounded from his bed of blood 
 Mong the war-horses hoofs ; as one redeemed 
 From the sea s foamy mouth, or arms of fire. 
 And in the progress of the weary days 
 My mother sat beside my bed, and told 
 How the long battle swayed tween life and death ; 
 And how she tended me, and how, one night, 
 The life was wavering tween my parted lips, 
 Loose as the film that flutters on the grate ; 
 And how, at twelve, she thought that all was o er. 
 I stood within the street one April day, 
 Wan as a healthless primrose, which a leaf 
 Had shaded, that it could not drink the sun. 
 I lay down on a night of stormy rain ; 
 The snow had fallen, and the world was dumb. 
 Now, showers of melody from unseen larks 
 
A BOY S POEJI. 91 
 
 Fell the long day upon the golden fields, 
 
 And the bare woods were putting on their green. 
 
 In those dark days I was surprised with joy 
 The deepest I have found upon the earth. 
 One night, when my weak limbs were drawing 
 
 strength 
 
 From meats and drinks, and long delicious sleep, 
 I raised a book to kill the tedious hours 
 The glorious Dreamer s he whose walls enclosed 
 An emperor s state ; upon whose lonely sleep 
 The secret heavens opened, peopled thick 
 With angels, as the beam with swirling motes. 
 I was like one who at his girdle wears 
 An idle key, and with it, purposeless, 
 In the mere impulse of a wayward mood, 
 Opes a familiar door, and stands amazed, 
 Blind with the prisoned splendor which escapes, 
 Filling his dusky home. From earth s rude noise 
 I wandered through the quiet land of thought, 
 Where all was peaceful as the happy fields 
 Wherein the shades are silent with deep bliss, 
 And not a sound doth jar the golden air. 
 For me no more existed space or time, 
 Nor in my narrow being did I live ; 
 That miser Death, whose lean and covetous hand 
 Hoards up the pomps and glories of the world, 
 
92 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Gave up his treasures, and Experience 
 
 Was like a fenceless common over which 
 
 I ranged at will. And so I have the noise 
 
 Of armies round me, wear the monarch s crown, 
 
 Die in the martyr s fire. Whatever joy 
 
 Or sorrow man has tasted, that I share ; 
 
 Nor can my life be measured by my years. 
 
 The summer had been cold, the harvest wet, 
 And the reaped corn lay rotting in the fields. 
 Men who at morning stood as prosperous 
 As bearded autumn, were, ere sunset, poor 
 As a worn scarecrow fluttering dingy rags 
 Within the feeble wind. Each mouth, the boom 
 Of a great battle travelled on the wind, 
 Smiting the hearers pale. Down came the snow. 
 7 T is said, the blown and desperate forester, 
 Chased by a lean and hunger-pinched bear, 
 Drops, one by one, his garments in his flight, 
 To make the monster pause. In those dark months, 
 My weary mother, chased by poverty, 
 Gave, one by one, her treasures precious things 
 Hallowed by love and death ; yet all in vain : 
 The terror followed on our flying heels. 
 So, on a summer morning, I was led 
 Into a square of warehouses, and left 
 Mong faces merciless as engine-wheels. 
 
The right hand learns its cunning, and the feet 
 That tread upon the rough ways of the world 
 Grow mercifully callous. Months crept past ; 
 If they brought bitterness, why then complain ? 
 Will Fate relax his stern and iron brows 
 For a boy s foolish tears ? In this grim world 
 The beggar tosses on his straw, the king 
 Upon his velvet bed. Yet a few steps, 
 And Death will lift the load the heavens gave 
 From off the burdened back. I now can look 
 Upon those distant years with calmer eyes 
 And melancholy pleasure. Then it was 
 Love oped the dusky volume of my life, 
 And wrote, with his own hot and hurrying hand, 
 A chapter in fierce splendors. Then it was 
 I built an altar raised a flame to Love ; 
 And a strong whirlwind threw the altar down, 
 And strewed its sparks on darkness. 
 
 In a room, 
 
 Quiet, mid that building full of groaning wheels, 
 She sat, and sang as merry as a lark 
 Whose cage is shining in the sunny beam ; 
 Laughed, like a happy fountain in a cave 
 Brightening the gloomy rocks. O er costly gauze 
 Her busy twinkling fingers moved, like Spring s, 
 Flowers grew beneath their touch. How I began 
 To love her first is now to me unknown 
 
94 CITY POEMS. 
 
 As how I came from nothingness to life. 
 Her frequent duties led her through our room ; 
 I thrilled, when through the noises of the day 
 I caught her door, the rustle of her dress, 
 Her coming footstep. ! that little foot 
 Did more imperiously stir my blood 
 Than the heart-shaking trumpets of a king 
 Heard through the rolling, ever-deepening shout, 
 When houses, peopled to the chimney-tops, 
 Lean forward, eager for the coming sight. 
 She flew across our room with sudden gleam, 
 Like bird of Paradise. Sometimes she paused, 
 And tossed amongst us a few crumbs of speech, 
 Or pelted us in sport with saucy words, 
 Then vanished, like a star into a cloud. 
 Love s magic finger touched my ear and eye ; 
 And music, which before was but a sound, 
 Now something far more passionate than myself 
 Spake trembling of her beauty ; and the world 
 Folded around me fragrant as a rose. 
 
 ; T was prime of May ; and every square became 
 A murmuring camp of Summer. Now and then 
 A dizzy and bewildered butterfly 
 Fluttered through noisy streets. A week was mine, 
 To wander uncontrolled as cloud or breeze. 
 The eve before I went, there came a thirst 
 
A BOY S POEM. 95 
 
 Upon me for her presence. Long I stood, 
 
 My hand upon her door, my fearful heart 
 
 Loud in my ears. I heard her sweet " Come in," 
 
 And entered. She was standing in the light, 
 
 Upgathering, in the bondage of the comb, 
 
 Her glorious waves of hair. She welcomed me 
 
 With dazzling laughter: " 0, I m glad you ve 
 
 come ! 
 
 See this rich present sleeping in its folds I 
 Do tell me how I look." The crimson scarf 
 She wreathed around her shoulders and her head, 
 Till her sweet face was set and framed in silk ; 
 And then, a very sunbeam in my eyes, 
 She stood and smiled ; soon with a sullen lip 
 She stripped the glowing silk from neck and head, 
 And threw it down ; then clapped her tiny hands, 
 And, round me standing in a marsh of doubt, 
 She danced like elfin fire. " In dream " (I spoke, 
 Bewildered by her sunshine and her shade), 
 " I saw a rose of such a breadth and glow, 
 It seemed as it had sucked into its heart 
 All fragrance, sun, and color, and had left 
 Its poor defrauded sisterhood to hang 
 Their pale heads scentless in the careless wind ; 
 But ere, with happy hand, I plucked the rose 
 A summer in itself and brought it thee, 
 I woke to barren midnight." "Bah I " She turned, 
 
96 CITY POEMS. 
 
 And froze my speech to silence with a look. 
 " In dreamland you have very vast estates, 
 Not worth an ear of corn. 7 At her disdain 
 Laughing outright, I said, " The scornful flag 
 That flouts by day and night besieging foes, 
 Falls in their hands. I came to say good-by." 
 "Well." 
 
 " I leave the city for some days ; and thought 
 That you might like " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " To see me ere I went." 
 
 " I wish to heaven that Harry, Charles, and you, 
 Would go and ne er return. I m sure your backs 
 Are fairer than your faces." 
 
 "Poor little god! 
 
 Weary of incense ; most unhappy rose, 
 Plagued with enamored bees too innocent 
 To blame its own sweet breath ! A lover slay, 
 And hang him up within your beauty s field, 
 As the gruff husbandman hangs up a crow 
 To warn his brethren off." 
 
 The sunlight flashed 
 Into her face. She heaved a little sigh, 
 And dropped her eyelids down upon her cheek, 
 Though all the while the rogues laughed neath their 
 shades, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 97 
 
 And a smile played and flickered round her mouth 
 So rosily demure. 
 
 " ; T were little use. 
 
 Tis very hard to know which way to turn. 
 A lover is as stupid as the fish 
 That, with a broken barb within its gills, 
 Leaps at another bait. Where are you going ? " 
 
 " Down the long river, past the fortressed rock 
 To that fair island in the sparkling sea, 
 Across whose face through all the scented hours 
 Change melts in finer change, from clear green light 
 To purple thunder-gloom. She s courted, too 
 For when she smiles the proud and dimpled sea 
 Fawns on her fringe of flowers ; and when she frowns 
 Gone are his flickering waves and miles of light, 
 Gray is his only wear." 
 
 " And when return ? " 
 " On Saturday." 
 
 " I 11 look for flowers. Could not 
 You come on Friday ? " 
 
 " Wherefore do you ask ? " 
 
 " 0, nothing, nothing ; but I know you will. 
 Now won t you say you 11 come ? " 
 
 " And my reward ? " 
 7 
 
98 CITY POEMS. 
 
 " Ah, must I buy your favors ? Then I 11 let 
 You place the fairest rose of all your wreath 
 Amid my hair." 
 
 " Where it will deeper glow 
 With pride, than when it sat upon its stem, 
 And drank ambrosial air." 
 
 " Thou mocker I " 
 
 As I went, 
 She laughed and called me back. " True flowers, 
 
 you know ; 
 
 Not those pale moonlight things that grow so thick 
 In gardens of your dreams ; which might be given 
 By ghost to ghost, in some serene farewell, 
 For a love-token and remembrancer 
 To look on in the shades. True flowers I want 
 To blush in mortal hair." I left her light, 
 As happy as a serf who leaves his king 
 Ennobled, and possessed of broader lands 
 Than the great rain-cloud trailing from the fens 
 Can blacken with his shadow. 
 
 PART H. 
 
 THE morn rose blue and glorious o er the world ; 
 The steamer left the black and oozy wharves, 
 And floated down between dark ranks of masts. 
 We heard the swarming streets, the noisy mills ; 
 
A BOY S POEM. 99 
 
 Saw sooty foundries full of glare and gloom, 
 
 Great bellied chimneys tipped by tongues of flame, 
 
 Quiver in smoky heat. We slowly passed 
 
 Loud building-yards, where every slip contained 
 
 A mighty vessel with a hundred men 
 
 Battering its iron sides. A cheer ! a ship 
 
 In a gay flutter of innumerous flags 
 
 Slid gayly to her home. At length the stream 
 
 Broadened tween banks of daisies, and afar 
 
 The shadows flew upon the sunny hills ; 
 
 And down the river, gainst the pale blue sky, 
 
 A town sat in its smoke. Look backward now ! 
 
 Distance has stilled three hundred thousand hearts, 
 
 Drowned the loud roar of commerce, changed the 
 
 proud 
 
 Metropolis, which turns all things to gold, 
 To a thick vapor o er which stands a staff 
 With smoky pennon streaming on the air. 
 Blotting the azure too, we floated on, 
 Leaving a long and weltering wake behind. 
 And now the grand and solitary hills 
 That never knew the toil and stress of man, 
 Dappled with sun and cloud, rose far away. 
 My heart stood up to greet the distant land 
 Within the hollows of whose mountains lochs 
 Moan in their restless sleep ; around whose peaks, 
 And craggy islands ever dim with rain, 
 
100 CITY POEMS. 
 
 The lonely eagle flies. The ample stream 
 
 Widened into a sea. The boundless day 
 
 Was full of sunshine and divinest light, 
 
 And far above the region of the wind 
 
 The barred and rippled cirrus slept serene, 
 
 With combed and winnowed streaks of faintest cloud 
 
 Melting into the blue. A sudden veil 
 
 Of rain dimmed all ; and when the shade drew off, 
 
 Before us, out toward the mighty sun, 
 
 The firth was throbbing with glad flakes of light. 
 
 The mountains from their solitary pines 
 
 Ran down in bleating pastures to the sea ; 
 
 And round and round the yellow coasts I saw 
 
 Each curve and bend of the delightful shore 
 
 Hemmed with a line of villas white as foam. 
 
 Far off, the village smiled amid the light ; 
 
 And on the level sands the merriest troops 
 
 Of children sported with the laughing waves, 
 
 The sunshine glancing on their naked limbs. 
 
 White cottages, half smothered in rose-blooms, 
 
 Peeped at us as we passed. We reached the pier, 
 
 Whence girls in fluttering dresses, shady hats, 
 
 Smiled rosy welcome. An impatient roar 
 
 Of hasty steam ; from the broad paddles rushed 
 
 A flood of pale green foam, that hissed and freathed 
 
 Ere it subsided in the quiet sea. 
 
 With a glad foot I leapt upon the shore, 
 
A BOY S POEM. (/, KJl 
 
 And, as I went, the frank and lavish winds 
 Told me about the lilac s mass of bloom, 
 The slim laburnum showering golden tears, 
 The roses of the gardens where they played. 
 
 At eve I lay in utter indolence 
 Upon a crag s high heather-purpled head. 
 The sun hung o er a sea of wrinkled gold, 
 And o er him fleecy vapor, rack of cloud, 
 And thin suspended mists hung tremulous 
 In fiery ecstasy ; while high in heaven, 
 Discerned afar between the crimson streaks, 
 And melting away toward the lucid east, 
 Like clouds of cherubs tiny cloudlets slept 
 In soft and tender rose. When I returned, 
 The air was heavy with the breath of flowers, 
 And from the houses of the rich, there came 
 Low-breathing music through the balmy gloom : 
 Linked lovers passed me, lost in murmurous talk : 
 That fragrant night of happiness and love 
 My soul closed o er its secret like a rose 
 That sates itself with its own heart of bliss. 
 That fragrant night of happiness and love 
 She seemed to lie within my heart and smile. 
 The village lights were sprinkled on the hill ; 
 And on the dim and solitary loch 
 Our oar-blades stirred the sea to phantom light, 
 
;;.,;,-. CITY roEais. 
 
 A hoary track ran glimmering from the keel. 
 
 Like scattered embers of a dying fire, 
 
 The village lights had burnt out one by one ; 
 
 I lay awake, and heard at intervals 
 
 A drowsy wave break helpless on the shore, 
 
 Trailing the rattling pebbles as it washed 
 
 Back to the heaving gloom. " Come, blessed Sleep, 
 
 And with thy fingers of forgetfulness 
 
 Tie up my senses till the day we meet, 
 
 And kill this gap of time." By sweet degrees 
 
 My slumberous being closed its weary leaves 
 
 In drowsy bliss, and slowly sank in dream, 
 
 As sinks the water-lily ; neath the wave. 
 
 Next morning I rose early and looked forth : 
 The quiet sky was veiled with dewy haze, ; 
 Beneath it slept the dull and beamless sea ; 
 The flowers hung dim and sodden in the dew ; 
 Strange birds fed in the walks, and one unseen 
 Sang from the apple-tree. I dressed in haste ; 
 And when the proud sun fired the dripping pines 
 I wandered forth, and drank with thirsty eyes 
 The coolness of the sun-illumined brooks 
 In which the quick trout played. The speckless light, 
 The beauty of the morning, drew me on 
 Into a gloomy glen. The heavy mists 
 Crept up the mountain sides : I heard the streams ; 
 
A BOY S POEM. 103 
 
 The place was saddened with the bleat of sheep. 
 " T is surely in such lonely scenes as these 
 Mythologies are bred. The rolling storms 
 The mountains standing black in mist and rain, 
 With long white lines of torrents down their sides 
 The ominous thunder creeping up the sky 
 The homeless voices at the dead of night 
 Wandering among the glens the ghost-like clouds 
 Stealing beneath the moon are but as stuff 
 Whence the awe-stricken herdsman could create 
 Gods for his worship. Then, as from a cup, 
 Morn spilt warm sunshine down the mountain-side. 
 Cuckoo ! cuckoo ! woke somewhere in the light ; 
 I started at the sound, and cried, " Voice ! 
 I ve heard you often in the poet s page 
 Now, in your stony wilds and I have read 
 Of white arms clinging round a sentenced neck 
 Upon a morn of death ; of bitter wrong 
 Freezing sweet love to hate ; of fond ambition 
 Which plaits and wears a wretched crown of straw, 
 And dreams itself a king ; of inward shame, 
 To which a lingering and long-drawn death 
 Were bed of roses, incense, and a smile. 
 With anxious heart I hear my distant hours 
 Gather like far-off thunder. Canst thou tell 
 What things await me on my road of life 
 As did your floating voice ? " Behold the sea I 
 
104 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Far flash its glittering leagues, and neath the sun 
 
 There gleams from coast to coast a narrow line 
 
 Of blinding and intolerable light. 
 
 I lay beneath a glimmering sycamore 
 
 Drowsy with murmuring bees. As 9*er my limbs 
 
 There palpitated countless lights and shades, 
 
 I heard the quiet music of the waves, 
 
 And saw the great hills standing dim in heat. 
 
 At height of noon a gloomy fleece of rain 
 Was hanging o er the zenith. On it crept, 
 Drinking the sunlight from a hundred glens ; 
 Blackening hill by hill ; smiting the sea s 
 Bright face to deadly pallor ; till at last 
 It drowned the world from verge to verge in gloom, 
 A sky-wide blinding glare the thunder burst 
 Again heaven opened in a gape of flame ; 
 Heavy as lead came down the loosened rain 
 I heard it hissing in the smoking sea ; 
 It slackened soon, the sun blazed through, and then 
 The fragment of a rainbow in the gloom 
 Burned on the rainy sea a full-sailed ship 
 Apparent stood within the glorious light 
 From hull to highest spar. The tempest trailed 
 His shadowy length across the distant hills : 
 The birds from hiding-places came and sang, 
 And ocean laughed for miles beneath the sun. 
 
A BOY S POEM. 105 
 
 I and my cousins started in the morn 
 To wander o er the mountains and the moors. 
 How different from the hot and stony streets ! 
 The dark red springy turf was neath our feet, 
 Our walls the blue horizon, and our roof 
 The boundless sky ; a perfect summer-day 
 We walked mid unaccustomed sights and sounds ; 
 Fair apparitions of the elements 
 That lived a moment on the .air, then passed 
 To the eternal world of memory. 
 O er rude unthrifty wastes we held our way 
 Whence never lark rose upward with a song, 
 Where no flower lit the marsh : the only sights, 
 The passage of a cloud a thin blue smoke 
 Far on the idle heath now caught, now lost, 
 The pink road wavering to the distant sky. 
 At noon we rested near a mighty hill, 
 That from our morning hut slept far away 
 Azure and soft as air. Upon its sides 
 The shepherds shouted mid a noise of dogs ; 
 A stream of sheep came slowly trickling down, 
 Spread to a pool, then poured itself in haste. 
 The sun sunk o er a crimson fringe of hills : 
 The violet evening filled the lower plain, 
 From which it upward crept and quenched the lights. 
 A while the last peak burned ia lingering rose, 
 And then went out. We toiled at dead of night 
 
106 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Through a deep glen, the while the lonely stars 
 Trembled above the ridges of the hills ; 
 And in the utter hush the ear was filled 
 With low sweet voices of a thousand streams, 
 Some near, some far remote faint trickling sounds 
 That dwelt in the great solitude of night 
 Upon the edge of silence. A sinking moon 
 Hung on one side, and filled the shattered place 
 With gulfs of gloom, with floating shades, and threw 
 A ghostly glimmer on wet rock and pool. 
 
 Then came a day of deep and blissful peace, 
 In which familiar thoughts and images 
 By which we know and recognize ourselves 
 Fell from me, and I felt as new and strange 
 As a free spirit which has shaken off 
 The wrappings of this life. Upon a stair, 
 The remnant of the tower, I sat and watched 
 Tumultuous piles of cloud upon the hills, 
 The sea-mew sweeping silent as a dream, 
 The black rocks ringed with white, the creeping sail, 
 The wandering greens and purples of the sea. 
 We heard the people singing in the hay, 
 A single girl-voice leading, all the field 
 Bursting in chorus ; a little off, the Laird, 
 Upon his shaggy pony of the isles, 
 Drew rein and heard the legend of his house. 
 
A BOY S POEM. 107 
 
 At eventime the mighty barn was cleared, 
 The torches lit, the lads and lasses came, 
 And to the yelling pipes, in loop and chain, 
 And whirling circles, spun the maddened reels. 
 
 Tradition murmured of a sullen lake 
 Imprisoned in the solitary hills 
 Far off. We talked of it around the fire, 
 Arranged our plans, and with the rising sun 
 Our boat was half-way o er the narrow loch. 
 How pure the morning on the tremulous deep ! 
 Far to the east two crimson islands burned 
 Like pointed flames. The sea was clad with birds, 
 The air was resonant with mingled cries, 
 And oft a dark and glutted cormorant 
 Flapped cross our path. As silent as a ghost 
 A whale arose and sunned his glistening sides, 
 Then sank as still. We hung above the bow, 
 And through the pale green water clear as air, 
 The mighty army of the herrings passed 
 In silvery flash on flash. The glorious main 
 That flowed and dimpled round the morning isles, 
 Laughed with as huge a joy as on that morn 
 When God said to it, " Live ! " 
 
 The gloomy lake, 
 
 Unvisited by sunbeam or by breeze, 
 Slept on the ruined shore. High up in heaven, 
 
108 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Rose splintered summits, visited alone 
 By the loud blackness of the drowning storms, 
 The momentary meteors of the air, 
 The solitary stars on windless nights, 
 Sailing across the chasms : there they stood 
 In stony silence in the sunny noon, 
 Crushed by the tread of earthquake, split by fire, 
 Horrid with grisly clefts in which the Spring 
 Dared never laugh in green. A weary cloud, 
 Half down, had lost its way ; an eagle hung, 
 A black speck in the sun. We raised a shout, 
 A sullen echo then were heard the sweet 
 And skiey tones of spirits mid the peaks, 
 Faint voice to faint voice shouting ; dim halloos 
 From unseen cliff and ledge ; and answers came 
 From some remoter region far withdrawn 
 Within the pale blue sky. 
 
 On our return, 
 
 Upon a shoulder of the mountain streamed 
 The sun s last gush of gold : above our heads 
 The arch of heaven blushed with rippled rose 
 Back to the gates of morning, and beneath, 
 Each lazy undulation of the deep 
 Changed like a pigeon s neck. Afar, the house 
 Sat like a white shell on the low green shore, 
 And storm-worn cliffs, though inland many a mile, 
 Came out above its head. As on we sailed, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 109 
 
 And as the azure night, which gathered fast . 
 In glen and hollow, cooled the burning sky, 
 Stole the sleek splendor from the indolent wave, 
 Drew o er the world a veil of dewy gray, 
 The boatmen sang the music of the land ; 
 And, in its sad and low monotony, 
 There lived the desolation of the waste, 
 The bitter outcry of the sweeping blast, 
 The sob of ocean round the iron shores. 
 
 Next morning we came early cross the moors , 
 And reached again the village by the sea. 
 
 There was a ruined chapel on the coast, 
 And by it lay a little grassy grave 
 Still as a couching lamb. The people told 
 How, years ago, a gray-haired, childless man 
 (His name is still remembered by the world), 
 Came to these shores, and lay down there to rest 
 Till the last trumpet s cry. Near it I sat 
 On my last afternoon ; and while the wind 
 Chequered my page with shadows of the grass, 
 I wrote this love-song sitting by the grave, 
 Nor smiled to think that so ran on the world. 
 
 " Mary, Mary, sweetest name I 
 Linked with many a poet s fame. 
 
110 CITY POEMS. 
 
 A Mary, with meek eyes of blue, 
 And low sweet answers, gently drew 
 The weary Christ to Bethany, 
 When no home on earth had He. 
 
 " When first I saw your tender face, 
 
 Saw you, loved you from afar, 
 My soul was like forlornest space 
 
 Made sudden happy by a star. 
 I heard the lark go up to meet the dawn, 
 
 The sun is sinking in the splendid sea ; 
 Through this long day hast thou had one, but one 
 
 Poor thought of me ? 
 
 " happiest of isles I 
 
 In every garden blows 
 
 The large voluptuous-bosomed rose 
 For musky miles and miles. 
 I wander round this garden coast ; 
 
 I see the glad blue waters run ; 
 In the light of Thy beauty I am lost, 
 
 As the lark is lost in the sun. 
 
 " heart ! H was thine own happiness that gave 
 The beauty which has been upon the earth, 
 The glory stretching from day s golden birth 
 Unto his crimson grave. 
 
A BOY S POEM. HI 
 
 From thee is every sight ; 
 
 From thee the splendor of the firth, 
 The banquet of the morning light. 
 
 11 Yet, Love, thy very happiness alarms I 
 
 To be beloved is something so divine, 
 
 I dare not hope it can be mine. 
 My heart is stirring like a nest with young 
 
 I know that many and many a former brood 
 Were robbed by cruel fate, and never sung 
 
 Within a summer wood. 
 Something forbodes me pain ; 
 
 The image of my fear 
 A maypole standing in the mocking rain 
 
 With garlands torn and sere 1 
 
 11 To-day I chanced to pass 
 A church-yard covered with forgetful grass ; 
 And as one puts the hair from off a face, 
 
 I put aside the grass ; and, on the stones, 
 
 Saw roses wreathing bones : 
 And, in the rankest corner of the place, 
 Set in a ghastly scroll of skulls and flowers, 
 And belts of serpents twined and curled, 
 
 I traced a crowned and mantled Death, 
 Asleep upon a World. 
 How grim the carver s style 
 
112 CITY POEMS. 
 
 The tarnished coffins, rotten palls, 
 The weeping of the charnel walls, 
 
 When one is lord of happy hours, 
 
 When one is breathing priceless breath 
 
 Made happy by a smile I 
 
 " The sheep they leap in golden parks ; 
 
 My blood is bliss, my heart is pleasure ; 
 Then let my song flow like a lark s 
 
 Above his nested treasure. 
 What care I for the circling cup ? 
 
 What care I for applausive breath ? 
 For the stern secret folded up 
 
 In the closed hand of Death ? 
 Bring me Love s honeyed nightshade ; fill it high ; 
 
 I know its madness, all its wild deceit ; 
 I know the anguish of the morning sky 
 
 When brain and eyeballs beat. 
 I cannot throw it down and fly 
 
 The poison is so sweet 
 That I must drink and drink, although I die." 
 
 The thought of the to-morrow was a goad 
 That urged me forth along the lonely shore : 
 Alone I wandered through the breathless gloom, 
 Feeding upon the honey of my heart 
 With a strange thrill of fear. While on I walked, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 113 
 
 As if the sea would fain delay my steps, 
 
 Out of the darkness rushed a ghostly fringe 
 
 Wailing, and licked my feet, and then withdrew. 
 
 What wouldst thou with me, melancholy one ? 
 
 What prophecy is in thy voice to-night ? 
 
 What evil dost thou bode ? Then, o er my head, 
 
 To a low breathing wind the darkness cracked, 
 
 Rolled to a crescent shore of vapor, washed 
 
 By a blue bay of midnight keen with stars. 
 
 The moon came late, and quivered on the waves ; 
 
 And, far away, tween dim horizons, beds 
 
 Of restless silver shifted on the sea. 
 
 Home by the margin of the deep I went, 
 
 And sought repose ; and all the night a surge 
 
 Mourned bodefully around the shores of sleep. 
 
 I plucked my flowers before the dawn. I heard 
 A loud bell ringing on the dewy pier, 
 And went on board. Away the vessel sped, 
 Leaving a foamy track upon the sea, 
 A smoky trail in air. We touched, half-way, 
 A melancholy town, that sat and pined 
 Hong weedy docks and quays. Thence went the train; 
 It shook the sunny suburbs with a scream ; 
 Skimmed milk-white orchards, walls and mossy trees 
 One sheet of blossom ; flew through living rocks, 
 Adown whose maimed and patient faces tears 
 8 
 
114 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Trickle forever ; plunged in howling- gloom ; 
 
 Burst into blinding day ; afar was seen 
 
 The river gleaming gainst a wall of rain, 
 
 A moment and no more ; for suddenly 
 
 Upflew the envious and earthen banks, 
 
 And shut all out, until the engine slacked. 
 
 Arnid the fiery forges and the smoke 
 
 I reached the warehouse. At the accustomed hour 
 
 Of rest at noon I stole toward her room ; 
 
 I listened, but I could not hear a sound 
 
 For my loud beating heart. With troubled hand, 
 
 I rested on the door, which stood, like death, 
 
 Between my soul and bliss. It oped at last 
 
 On a bare room that struck me with a chill. 
 
 I came back to my task ; I dared not ask 
 
 A casual question ; for I feared each one, 
 
 By only turning on me his calm eyes, 
 
 Would read my secret. 
 
 On that afternoon, 
 
 I bore a message to the upper flats : 
 When I returned, the stairs were black as night : 
 I heard two girls come slowly up the steps, 
 Bearing their water-loads : they laid them down, 
 And thus I heard them talking in the dark. 
 
 " Again to work so late ! The second time 
 We have been treated so within the month, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 115 
 
 And now the nights are fine. I hate that wretch, 
 Stealing up stairs in india-rubber shoes, 
 Creeping from room to room, till, ere you know, 
 lie is beside you ; in each corner poking 
 With his white weasel face. He cooks his meals 
 Within his empty house ; his sole companion 
 A wretched cat that on his bounty starves 
 A shadow, like himself. " 
 
 " His brother, too, 
 
 The upper and the nether millstone they, 
 And we are ground between. Last pay, because 
 I was one morning some ten minutes late 
 (Aunt Martha had been more than usual ill) 
 He mulct me of an hour a glass of port, 
 To redden in his nose ! As there he sat, 
 Steaming from dinner, and struck off the pence, 
 If I had only pricked him with my needle, 
 Old Red-gills had bled wine." 
 
 " Both the same stuff. 
 We are the bees that labor in the hive ; 
 They eat the honey. At this very hour, 
 Mary will ope the ball. Would I were there ! 
 To-night she wears the scarf that Morris gave. 
 How fond she seems of him 1 " 
 
 " At dinner-time, 
 
 She bade me come and see her in her dress. 
 Joy stood like candles in her mother s eyes. 
 
116 CITY POEMS. 
 
 She rose up in her robe of snowy lace, 
 Her coal-black hair, which all the men admire, 
 Rolled up with pearls, and looked, by all the world, 
 Like a white waterfall. Each thing she wore, 
 From her rich head-dress to her satin foot, 
 Was given to her by him. She said she meant 
 To dress her head with living flowers ; what fun, 
 To use the roses, by one lover brought, 
 To turn the other s brain I " 
 
 "What is he like 1" 
 
 " As yellow as a guinea. Rich, she says ; 
 His father died abroad. He is so mad, 
 I verily believe, to please a whim, 
 He d deck her out in richest cloth of gold, 
 And slipper her with silver." 
 
 "I only hope 
 
 That all may prove as pleasant as it seems. 
 I wish I were among them standing up, 
 To glide off to the music. Something stirs I " 
 
 "Let us slip in." 
 
 Hope s door closed with a clang. * * I rose up calm, 
 Calm as a country when the storm is o er, 
 And broken boughs are hanging from the trees, 
 And swollen streams have crept within their banks, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 117 
 
 Leaving a mighty marge of wreck and sand 
 
 Along the soppy fields. When I went home, 
 
 My mother dwelling in the empty house 
 
 With sorrow for a husband, like reproach 
 
 Struck through my selfish rage. She crept to bed, 
 
 And, from the barren desert of the night, 
 
 Prayer, like a choir of angels, bore her up 
 
 To heaven, where she talked alone with God. 
 
 I ground between my teeth, " The day has come 
 
 That progressed like a monarch with his court ; 
 
 Of whose approach each courier hour that passed 
 
 Brought sweetest tidings, like gay winds that sing 
 
 In the delighted ears of sunny May, 
 
 Sitting among the golden buttercups. 
 
 June, drowned with roses, comes ; to which my 
 
 thoughts 
 
 Arose, as from the earth a thousand larks, 
 In salutation to the dawn. And now 
 I sit degraded. Palaces of dream 
 Shivered around ; uncounted wealth that stuffed, 
 This morn, the coffers of my heart, all false 
 And base as forgers coin. 
 
 " A merchant with his fortune on the deep 
 A mother- with her brave and precious boy 
 Flung where the wave of battle breaks in death 
 Ventures no more than we do when we love. 
 
118 CITY POEMS. 
 
 What sweet enchantments hover round Love s name ! 
 
 Far out to sea, from off her syren isles, 
 
 Steal wandering melodies, and lie in wait 
 
 To lure the sailor to her fatal shores 
 
 Within the crimson sunset. ; T is our doom 
 
 To sit unhappy in the round of self. 
 
 From our necessities of love arise 
 
 Our keenest heartaches and our miseries. 
 
 When death and change are flying in the sky, 
 
 Our spirits tremble like a nest of doves 
 
 Beneath the falcon s wing. Each time we love, 
 
 We turn a nearer and a broader mark 
 
 To that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes. 
 
 that the heart could, like a housewife, sit 
 
 By its own fire, and let the world go by 
 
 Unheeded as the stream before the door ! 
 
 Love cannot look upon a dingy cloud, 
 
 But straightway there s a rainbow ; and we walk 
 
 Blind with a fond delusion in our eyes, 
 
 Which paints each gray crag, rose. Whene er we 
 
 meet 
 
 A giddy girl a mountain beck that sings 
 And sparkles from its shallowness, ourselves 
 Its glorifying sun, her heart an inn, 
 Or caravanserai amid the sands, 
 With new guests every night, to Love she gleams 
 A daughter of the dawn. She flings, in sport, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 119 
 
 The jewel of our happiness away : 
 
 To her, each bubble blown by Idleness, 
 
 Lolling with peacock s feather in the sun, 
 
 An ever-radiant wonder, naught. To us, 
 
 The change between bright Spring s exuberant lark, 
 
 And Autumn s shy and solitary bird ; 
 
 Instead of dancing to our graves in sheen, 
 
 Walking in sober gray. 
 
 " A growing wind 
 
 Flutters my sails, and my impatient prow 
 Is plunging like a fiery steed reined in ; 
 It hears the glee of billows. Blow, thou wind, 
 And let me out upon my seething way, 
 Crushing the waves to foam ! My cooped-up life 
 Is pained by fulness, and would seek relief 
 In reckless effort. When the heart is jarred, 
 T is vain to sit and feed a slothful grief; 
 Out of ourselves, as an infected house, 
 We come ; then Nature heals she is our guide. 
 By her eternal dial, which keeps time 
 With the invariable and dread advance 
 Of midnight s starry armies, must we set 
 Our foolish wandering hours. Each child believes 
 That by the burning nettle ever grows 
 A cool assuaging leaf. Faith, fair and true 
 A man is stung by sorrow, and his cure 
 Is the next man he meets. By simple love, 
 
120 CITY POEMS. 
 
 He sits down at his feast, tastes all his joys, 
 Yet leaves him none the less. 
 
 "Love, unreturned, 
 
 Hath gracious uses ; the keen pang departs, 
 The sweetness never. Sorrow s touch doth ope 
 A mingled fount of sweet and bitter tears, 
 No summer s heat can dry, no winter s cold 
 Lock up in ice. When music grieves, the past 
 Returns in tears. The red and setting sun 
 Is beauty indescribable, and leads 
 The heart mong graves. The old man shuts the 
 
 door 
 
 Of his still soul, and, in the inmost room, 
 Sits days with memory. Gray Adam, roofed 
 With smoky rafters how unlike the blue 
 That bent o er Eden ! forgets Eve s faded face 
 His wandering boy his eyes are far away ; 
 And, in his heart, remembrance sad and sweet, 
 Of Paradise long lost. 
 
 " As a wild mother, when her child is dead, 
 Flings herself down on the unheeding face, 
 And pours more passionate kisses on the lips 
 Than when they kissed again, and then starts up, 
 And, in a dreamy luxury of grief, 
 Strews the white corse with flowers ; I 11 lay thee 
 out, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 121 
 
 My poor dead love, and fondlier gaze on thee 
 Than when thou smiled amid thy golden hair, 
 And sang more sweet than Hope. No tears ; for 
 
 Death 
 
 Saw thee when loveliest, and his icy touch 
 Preserves thy look forever. It is well : 
 The only things that change not are the dead. 
 Now thou art safe from Time s defacing hand, 
 From staling custom, and, sadder far than all, 
 From human fickleness. In after years, 
 It might be, I would scarce have followed thee, 
 A mourner to thy grave. Thou art so fair, 
 That, gazing on thee, clamorous grief becomes, 
 For very reverence, mute. If mighty Death 
 Made our rude human faces by his touch 
 Divinely fair as thine, 0, never more 
 Would strong hearts break o er biers ! There sleeps 
 
 to-night 
 
 A sacred sweetness on thy silent lips, 
 A solemn light upon thine ample brow, 
 That I can never, never hope to find 
 Upon a living face. Within thy grave 
 I 11 lay thee ; and above will memory hang 
 An ever-mourning willow ! ; J 
 
122 CITY POEMS. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 A DARK hour came, and left us desolate : 
 
 Then, as a beggar thrust by menial hands 
 
 From comfortable doors, doth wrap his rags 
 
 Around him, ere he face the whistling wind 
 
 And flying showers that travel through the night, 
 
 We gathered what we had ; and she and I 
 
 Went forth together to the cruel world. 
 
 0, we were bare and naked as the trees 
 
 That stand up silent in the freezing air, 
 
 With black boughs motionless against the sky, 
 
 While midnight holds her lonely starry sway ! 
 
 We crept into a half-forgotten street 
 Of frail and tumbling houses propt by beams, 
 And ruined courts which, centuries before, 
 Rung oft to iron heels, which palfreys pawed, 
 As down the mighty steps the Lady came 
 Bright as the summer morning, peopled now 
 By outcasts, sullen men, bold girls who sat 
 Pounding sand in the sun. The day we came 
 The windows from which beauty leant and smiled 
 Were stuffed with rags, or held a withered stick 
 Whence foul clothes hung to dry. Beneath an arch 
 Two long-haired women fought ; while high above, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 123 
 
 Ilcads thrust through broken panes, two shrill-voiced 
 
 crones 
 
 Scolded each other. Hell-fire burst at night 
 Through the thin rind of earth ; the place was laud 
 With drunken strife, hoarse curses ; then the cry 
 Of a lost woman by a ruffian felled 
 Made the blood stop. Ah ! different from the dream 
 That keeps my memory fragrant sunny air, 
 Stirred into drowsy music by the bees ; 
 Hollyhocks glowing at the open door ; 
 ( A dark, grave, loving face ; a step and voice 
 That faded in that time ! We dwelt alone : 
 Red Autumn died unseen along the waste, 
 The soundless snow came down in thickening flakes, 
 And Poverty, who sat beside our hearth, 
 Blew out the feeble fire, and all was dark. 
 
 It was the closing evening of the year, 
 The night that I was born. I laughed, and said, 
 " The old year brought me in his dying arms, 
 And laid me in your breast ; his last task done, 
 He went away through whirls of blinding snow." 
 She murmured, " Tis the first time in these years 
 We cannot hold your birth-night as our wont, 
 With feast, and smiling friends, and quiet mirth 
 O ershadowed by the memory of the dead 
 Until tis almost sad. T is sixteen years, 
 
124 CITY POEMS. 
 
 And every night I ve looked upon your sleep 
 
 Although you knew it not. Of those who were 
 
 Dear to me on the night that you were born, 
 
 You only now remain." I knew her thoughts, 
 
 "He wearies for us in the happy fields ; 
 
 His bliss is incomplete till we are there." 
 
 My mother spoke with heart far, far away. 
 
 " I count the years, as eagerly as one 
 
 Long separated from the friends he loves 
 
 Counts the slow milestones as he travels home. 
 
 Your life is all before you with its joy ; 
 
 The only thing I covet is the grave." 
 
 She kissed me, put her withered hand in mine. 
 
 Its touch brought tears. I thought of all the pain, 
 
 The sorrow which had grown up in her life 
 
 Through her long years of widowhood, like grass 
 
 In a deserted street. Then all at once 
 
 A hundred church-bells struck the hour of twelve ; 
 
 A mighty shout went up, " The year is dead ! " 
 
 There were glad footsteps on a thousand stairs, 
 
 And happy greetings in a thousand homes ; 
 
 None said, God bless us. Bitterly I cried, 
 
 " What great unpardoned sin is on our race 
 
 That we are so accursed ? Where er we go, 
 
 Calamity glides ever in our track, 
 
 A ghost implacable. Were I to die 
 
 On this great night when Christendom is glad, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 125 
 
 I would be all unpitied and unknown, 
 
 As a forgotten captive, or a worm 
 
 That dies unheard of underneath the ground. " 
 
 But she reproached me with her silent eyes. 
 
 The sun burst forth ; neath sheltering cliff and 
 
 bank 
 
 Lay melting wreaths, which, in its swift retreat, 
 The army of the snow had left. Whene er 
 The gloomy Winter round him called his showers, 
 Legions of howling winds, and with a cry 
 Fled to the icy north, the timid Spring 
 Arose in snowdrops, and the days grew long. 
 Spring touched the black pots on my window-sill, 
 And, though begrimed and foul with dust and soot, 
 The blind plants felt it in their withered veins, 
 And smiled a sickly green. One Sabbath day, 
 I left my mother s dwelling in the morn 
 Behind ; the pleading and the scolding bells 
 Disturbed the peaceful air. " T is ever so 
 Religion s pure serene is vexed and torn 
 By raging sectaries. In every street 
 The brave streams of the proud and gaudy world 
 Flow to the house of God. My mother sits 
 With vanished shapes and faces of the dead, 
 And little pattering footsteps : why should she, 
 A broken heart wrapt up in faded silk, 
 
126 CITY POEMS. 
 
 Mix with the prosperous ? T is very well ; 
 
 Let the white faces creep into their graves, 
 
 And leave pomp in the sun." The shining day 
 
 Spread out before me, and I wandered on 
 
 Free as those vagrant children of the waste, 
 
 Shadow and sunshine. By the sandy banks 
 
 Of a sunk stream, that in unnumbered rills 
 
 Tinkled tween pebbles and hot glistening stones, 
 
 Two green kingfishers played. A travelling shower 
 
 Overtook me on my way ; I stood and heard 
 
 The skylarks singing in the sunny rain, 
 
 With a dim recognition in my heart, 
 
 As if I knew the meaning of the song 
 
 In some forgotten life. I reached a height 
 
 Which lay from fairy fern to stately tree 
 
 Asleep in sunshine. From its crown I saw 
 
 The country fade into the distant sky, 
 
 With happy hamlets drowned in apple-bloom, 
 
 And ivy-muffled churches still with graves, 
 
 And restless fires subdued and tamed by day, 
 
 And scattered towns whence came at intervals 
 
 Upon the wind a sweet clear sound of bells ; 
 
 Through all, a river, like a stream of haze, 
 
 Drew its slow length until twas lost in woods. 
 
 Still as a lichened stone I lay and watched 
 
 The lights and shadows on the landscape s face, 
 
 The moving cloud that quenched the shining fields, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 127 
 
 The gliding sunbeam, the gray trailing shower, 
 And all the commerce of the earth and sky. 
 With weary limbs at sunset I returned ; 
 And in the dingy fringes of the town, 
 The helpless languor of the Sabbath-eve, 
 The listless groups that stood around the doors, 
 The silent children, and the smoke that rose 
 Lazy and spiritless into the air, 
 Told the world s sinews had been overwrought 
 And now hung lax and loose. My spirits fell, 
 Sheer as a skylark when his song is o er ; 
 I crept into my little twilight room, 
 And there my day of glory set in tears. 
 
 Next morn the bells awoke me to my toil ; 
 And what a pageant of divinest sights 
 Passed by me on my daily round of life ! 
 I bore a message, and upon my way 
 The streets were swept by the impetuous rain, 
 The lightning fluttered in my dazzled eyes, 
 And thunder like a sea broke overhead. 
 A fleece of thunder hung before the sun 
 With a wild blazing fringe, while scattered shreds 
 Burned on the marble sky. Black strings of ships 
 Sat on the angry mirror of the stream 
 Keen with the splendor, till the gusty rain 
 Drowned the red sunset and the winds were loud. 
 
128 CITY POEMS. 
 
 For years and years continually were mine 
 The long dull roar of traffic, and at night 
 The mighty pathos of the empty streets. 
 I leant at midnight o er the lonely bridge, 
 And heard the water slipping neath the arch : 
 " Man flies from solitude and dwells in noise, 
 Like one who has a pale wronged face at home 
 On which he dares not look ; to calm his heart 
 The world must roar with traffic, brawl with war. 
 What need to strive for wealth, opinion, praise, 
 Wherewith to drug our spirits and forget ? 
 Thou bearest in thy heart, black glittering stream, 
 A deeper rest for the unfortunate 
 Than Pluto s gold can buy. Ah ! Pleasure, Fame, 
 But crown pale mortals with an envied pain ; 
 Death pities, and gives sleep. A thousand years 
 This river wandered through an empty waste 
 Where no man s voice was heard, and mournful 
 
 winds 
 
 Shook sighing sedges as they swept along, 
 And blurred the silver of the lonely moon. 
 Huts rose upon its banks, then sank in flame, 
 And rose from ashes. Slow the city grew, 
 Like coral reef on which the builders die 
 Until it stands complete in pain and death. 
 Great bridges with their coronets of lamps 
 Light the black stream beneath ; rude ocean s flock, 
 
A BOY S POEM. 129 
 
 Ships from all climes, are folded in its docks ; 
 
 And every heart from its great central dome 
 
 To farthest suburb is a darkened stage 
 
 On which Grief walks alone. A thousand years ! 
 
 The idle Summer will amuse herself 
 
 Dressing the front where merchants congregate, 
 
 And where the mighty war-horse snorts in bronze, 
 
 With clasping flowers ; where now the evening 
 
 street 
 
 Rolls gay with life, in silence and the dew 
 The hamadryad issues from the tree, 
 Like music from an instrument. " How strange 
 When the chill morn was breaking in the east 
 Looked the familiar streets ! In pallid squares 
 I stood awe-struck, like a bewildered soul 
 In the great dawn of death. Each house was 
 
 blind, 
 
 Closed gainst the light, and slow it filled the street, 
 Unsoiled by smoke, unscared by any sound ; 
 It entered trembling rude and haggard lanes 
 Where riot but an hour before had brawled 
 Himself to rest. St. Stephen s golden vane 
 Burned in the early beam, which glimmered down, 
 Making the old spire gay. The swallows woke, 
 And jerked and twittered in the shining air ; 
 Broad Labor turned and muttered in his sleep ; 
 And the first morning cart began to roll. 
 
130 CITY POEMS. 
 
 I saw a son weep o er a mother s grave : 
 " Ay, weep, poor boy weep thy most bitter tears 
 That thou shalt smile so soon. We bury Love, 
 Forgetfulness grows over it like grass ; 
 That is a thing to weep for, not the dead." 
 The weeks flew on and beautified my grief: 
 I stood within a torrent s drenching spray, 
 Up rose the sun, with happy eyes I saw 
 The sounding chasm struck with precious light, 
 The boiling wreaths transformed to sunny mist 
 On which an iris played. A little child, 
 Watching the fringe of radiance o er the hill, 
 Stops on its way and with suspended breath 
 Awaits the golden moon ; so did my life 
 Await some unknown joy. A haunting face 
 Disturbed me with its beauty, and at night 
 It looked upon me through the roof of dreams ; 
 My heart like a touched harp-string thrilled, and bliss 
 Crept through my veins like that which stirs a tree 
 From knotted root up to its slenderest spray 
 Touched by the hand of Spring. One night alone 
 I sat beside the dull and covered fire, 
 And gave myself up to the phantom joy : 
 Methought I heard a sound, methought it came 
 From my poor mother s room ; I softly crept, 
 And listened ; in the middle of the night 
 I heard her talk with God. " Thou knowest well 
 
A BOY S POEM 131 
 
 That Sorrow has been with me like a babe 
 
 In my great solitude, till I have come 
 
 To love its smileless face. Thou, Love, who wrapt 
 
 Thyself in flesh, and sat a while disguised 
 
 At the rude feast of our Humanity, 
 
 And tasted every sweet and bitter there, 
 
 Then rose and unsuspected went away ; 
 
 Who loved the humble ones at Bethany ; 
 
 Who wept o er Lazarus, and with thy tears 
 
 Comforted all the family of grief 
 
 In every time, in every far-off land ; 
 
 Thou, infinite Tenderness, wilt pardon me 
 
 If my heart murmured when my lips were still. 
 
 Our life is noble, Thou hast breathed its air ; 
 
 Death sweet, for Thou hast died. On Thy way home 
 
 One night thou slept st within the dreadful grave, 
 
 And took away its fear. 0, smile on me ! 
 
 The world and I have done : with humble heart 
 
 I sit down at thy glorious gates and wait 
 
 Till death shall lead me in. But chiefly bless 
 
 My poor boy left alone in this ill world : 
 
 I never more may look upon his face, 
 
 May never hear his voice. Thou know st him well, 
 
 For every morning, long before the lurk 
 
 Sang at Thy shining doors, my prayer arose 
 
 To crave Thy blessing on his restless youth. 
 
 It is the evening of my day of life, 
 
132 CITY POEMS. 
 
 I have been working from the early dawn, 
 Am sore and weary ; let me go to sleep, 
 Let me stretch out my limbs and be at rest 
 In the untroubled silence of the grave." 
 My heart swelled like a man s, who after years 
 Wasted in riot neath a tropic sky, 
 Eeturns, and wandering on a Sabbath-eve 
 Bursts into tears beside a twilight church, 
 Filled with a psalm which he knew long ago 
 When his heart too was pure. 
 
 When thunder blots the sun, 
 And lays a hand of terror on the herds, 
 That stills the bleating on a hundred hills, 
 There is a silence over all the land 
 Waiting the fluttering fire. So did I wait, 
 And swift as lightning fell the blow on me. 
 Reason had left her throne, and busy dreams 
 Made a wild medley of the day, as when 
 Some great event has happened in the tower, 
 After the lord and lady have retired 
 The rude domestics give it strangest shapes, 
 Talking around the fire, and suddenly, 
 With an affrighted heart I lay awake, 
 And listened eager as alarmed air 
 Which has been traversed by a sudden cry. 
 A moment told me all ; I ran to her, 
 But she had sunk in swoon, and there I stood 
 
A BOY S POEM. 133 
 
 Like one too late upon a brink, who sees 
 
 The water closing over all he loves. 
 
 I knelt down by the bed. " Come, Margery I 
 
 The sea is glittering in the sunny bay, 
 
 The fisher s nets are drying on the shore, 
 
 And let us gather silver purple shells 
 
 For necklaces. You have been in the woods ; 
 
 Your lips are black with berries. 0, the boats, 
 
 The bonny, bonny boats ! List, the fishers sing I " 
 
 " 0, mother, mother ! " 
 
 " They have left me here, 
 Upon this dark and dreadful, dreadful road ; 
 I cannot hear a voice or touch a hand ; 
 Father, take me home ! " She sobbed and wept 
 As if she were a little wandered child. 
 Her Father took her home. I stooped to catch 
 Her feeble breath ; a change came o er her look, 
 A flutter in her throat, and all was peace. 
 Then slowly I grew conscious that the dawn 
 Filled the square window with his hateful face, 
 Staring into the chamber of the dead, 
 And with affrighted eyes I gazed on him. 
 
THE CHANGE. 
 
 " OH ! never, never can I call 
 
 Another morning to my day, 
 And now through shade to shade I fall 
 
 From afternoon to evening gray." 
 In bitterness these words I said, 
 
 And lo 1 when I expected least, 
 For day was gone, a moonrise spread 
 
 Its emerald radiance up the east. 
 
 By passion s gaudy candle-lights, 
 
 I sat and watched the world s brave play ; 
 Blown out, how poor the trains and sights 
 
 Looked in the cruel light of day 1 
 I cursed Man for his spaniel heart, 
 
 His bounded brain, his lust of pelf 
 Alas ! each crime of field and mart 
 
 Lived in a dark disease of self. 
 
 I saw the smiles and mean salaams 
 Of slavish hearts ; I heard the cry 
 
 Of maddened people s throwing palms 
 Befoie each cheered and timbreled lie. 
 
THE CHANGE. 135 
 
 I loathed the brazen front and brag 
 
 Of bloated time ; in self-defence 
 Withdrew I to my lonely crag, 
 
 And fortress of indifference. 
 
 But Nature is revenged on those 
 
 Who turn from her to lonely days : 
 Contentmejit, like the speedwell, blows 
 
 Along the common-beaten ways. 
 The dead and thick green-mantled moats 
 
 That gird my house resembled me, 
 Or some long-weeded hull that rots 
 
 Upon a glazing tropic sea. 
 
 And madness ever round us lies, 
 
 The final bourne and end of thought ; 
 And Pleasure shuts her glorious eyes 
 
 At one cold glance and melts to naught ; 
 And Nature cannot hear us moan ; 
 
 She smiles in sunshine, raves in rain 
 The music breathed by Love alone 
 
 Can ease the world s immortal pain. 
 
 The sun forever hastes sublime, 
 Waved onward by Orion s lance ; 
 
 Obedient to the spheral chime, 
 
 Across the world the seasons dance ; 
 
136 CITY POEMS. 
 
 The flaming elements ne er bewail 
 Their iron bounds, their less or more ; 
 
 The sea can drown a thousand sail, 
 Yet rounds the pebbles on the shore. 
 
 I looked with pride on what 1 d done, 
 
 I counted merits o er anew, 
 In presence of the burning sun, 
 
 Which drinks me like a drop of dew. 
 A lofty scorn I dared to shed 
 
 On human passions, hopes, and jars, 
 I standing on the countless dead, 
 
 And pitied by the countless stars. 
 
 But mine is now a humbled heart, 
 
 My lonely pride is weak as tears ; 
 No more I seek to stand apart, 
 
 A mocker of the rolling years. 
 Imprisoned in this wintry clime, 
 
 I ve found enough, Lord of breath, 
 Enough to plume the feet of time, 
 
 Enough to hide the eyes of death. 
 
NOTICES OF ALEXANDER SMITH, 
 
 FROM THE LONDON PRESS. 
 
 SINCE Tennyson, no poet has come before the public with the same promise as 
 
 the author of this volume There are many lines and sentences in 
 
 these poems which must become familiar on the lips of lovers of poetry. Lit 
 erary Gazette. 
 
 Most abundant in beauties. Our extracts, which have been chosen chiefly to 
 illustrate our account of the poem, have scarcely shown the poet at his best. 
 Everywhere his poem has lines and phrases revealing a wealth of poetical 
 thought and expression. Athenaeum. 
 
 It is to the earlier works of Keats and Shelley alone that we can look for a 
 counterpart, in richness of fancy and force of expression The ex 
 tracts will induce every lover of true poetry to read the volume for himself 5 we 
 do not think that, after such reading, any one will be disposed to doubt that 
 Alexander Smith promises to be a greater poet than any emergent genius of the 
 lost few years. Spectator. 
 
 The most striking characteristic of these poems is their abundant imagery, 
 fresh, vivid, concrete images actually present to the poet s mind, and thrown out 
 with a distinctiveness and a delicacy only poets can achieve. There is not a page 
 of this volume on which we cannot find some novel image, some Shaksperian 
 felicity of expression, or some striking simile. Westminster Review. 
 
 Mr. Smith has given noble proof of possessing some of the best attributes of 
 the true poet. Oae of his special characteristics is a luxuriant imagination, 
 
138 NOTICES FROM THE LONDON PRESS. 
 
 * 
 
 which continually suggests poetical images, and is happily allied to a singular 
 mastery of language in one so young, which enables him to apply them with 
 almost intuitive felicity. Nearly every page Is studded with striking metaphors. 
 Sunday Times. 
 
 It is seldom that a new book is met with which furnishes such incontestable 
 evidence of the possession of great powers by the author as the present. It is 
 Impossible to read three consecutive pages without feeling in the presence of a 
 spirit moved with a profound sense of all forms of spiritual beauty. Mr. Smith s 
 language is, in the purest sense of the word, poetic, that is, it is not only the 
 very best for the expression of the idea, but is suggestive, it summons up 
 all the accessories to the idea. It is strong and splendid, like golden armor. 
 Daily News. 
 
 We have quoted enough, and yet we have not quoted a third of the fine pas 
 sages our pencil has marked. Having read these extracts, turn to any poet you 
 will, and compare the texture of the composition, it is a severe test, but you 
 will find that Alexander Smith bears it well. Leader. 
 
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