Her palace towers, and scatter while the rays
Of new-made light upon the valleys pour;
While flocks awake and graze,
And shepherds sing and the new star adore:
But she, beholding, prays.
XVIII
The seer of seers stands forth, he takes her hands;
He cries, ‘Thy star is come! Be it to thee
A rich reward and to these teeming lands;
The lord, who made thee free,
Now in his earthly place before thee stands,
Thy guiding-star to be.’
XIX
She looks at heaven; afar the cloud-vane drifts;
Her face is pale, he comes, the lord is found:
She kneels, once more his slave; the stranger lifts
The virgin from the ground,
And offers up for sacred wedding gifts
The chains her heart had bound.
FAREWELL TO NATURE
Vain love for Nature! How these heartaches rust
Into the soul as we return to dust!
Hope’s shadow only masks our eventide,
Feigning to lead us to its brighter side,
While yet the mellowing skies that wondrous grow,
Seem left in waiting for the dead below.
But those tranced sunsets,—little they avail,
None travel hence in their alluring trail;
All is a dream, an ancient dream, the same
From the first mortal to the last that came.
Yet could we but for once our eyes unclose
When through the distant days the pageant goes!
Familiar vision, and so soon to be
Entombed within the dead eternity.
Doth Nature know our dream, or is the mind
A passing breath her beauty leaves behind?
Ah! not for this our grateful souls have wrought
Around her sphere a universe of thought.
’Tis she inspires our dreams, but no reply
Vouchsafes the loving hearts that for her die,
Who only pray, when life’s surprise is o’er,
They may partake a glimpse of her once more.
Is it too late? She sees not to the end;
What she hath done she never can amend:
Yet once by us beloved, once only known,
She seems from all the past to be our own.
Last wish of age! How sweet one glance would be
Even from the sod the olden haunts to see;
To watch the long-drawn wavelets as they reach
The silent plains of the deserted beach;
To look where light once was, if but to know
Of its faint struggle through the winnowed snow.
Ah! whence this dream that like the cuckoo-guest
Pleads in such winning accents for a nest,
And with its cloud-note ever on us calls,
And though it passes the fond heart enthralls?
Little it seems, this wish, when oft our sight
Tires of the world, yet what a fresh delight
Were it sometimes in death those scenes to view,
The olden scenes that to our youth were new,
To linger o’er a sound whose murmurs swell
Upon the heart,—the tinkling village bell,—
To find that all was safe, all gliding on
In beauty’s leisure ways though we were gone;
To see brave Nature in her perilous scheme
Advance without our help, without our dream.
At least ’twould hold ajar death’s open door
To think our love was honoured evermore,—
In dying, on the forward thought to dwell
That it was not our very last farewell.
Could hope unveil and not its mystic fire
Be lost among the embers of desire!
Ill though desponding hearts their burden bear,
Is not the soul the master of despair?
Is this great life, hard won, achieved in vain,
Is good once found to never be again?
Ask of the worlds if they their path forget,
Ask hope that never ends, its time to set.
One deep desire throughout all being cries,
And this is hope, our future in disguise.
O living lamp, O Hope, the only Seer;
Of Nature’s after-time the pioneer,
Keep in advance across our starless way,
Be the new morrow of our orphan day!
THE POET’S FEAST
The golden feast for jovial souls prepare
Whose wants the wants of nature far exceed;
The nectar of the sun such palates need;
To them the fatted calf is vulgar fare.
Earth’s dripping fruits may wandering Arabs share
Pleased with the pulp and juice whereon they feed;
And bread alone is still the poor man’s meed,
Though milk abound and honey be to spare.
So dreams the Poet, with his crust content:
The crumbs that from the rich man’s table fall
To him are sorry signs of merriment
To show the world has food enough for all.
At festive boards he has but little part—
To him ’twas given to feed on his own heart.
THE EXILE
I
They bore her to the northern snows
Whose floods down ice-domed caverns run,
From lands where that calm river flows
Whose depths decoy the vagrant sun,
Where palms o’er latticed shadows rise
With boughs that web the sultry skies.
II
Where roses climb the scent-steeped hills
And channelled leaves with dew-drops flash,
Bending beneath the trickled rills
That fall and the pink clusters splash;
Where aloe-flowers, all flaming red,
Like watch-fires o’er the summit spread.
III
They bore her to a desert plain
Where the dry, creviced mosses cling,
Sand-sprinkled as by drizzling rain;
Where dark and ragged pine-boughs swing,
And the free cygnet in its flight
Darts with a meteor’s wingèd light.
IV
Her father, last of mighty lords
Whose deeds the war-like peasants tell,
Fearless had met the northern hordes
And in the battle’s frenzy fell.
Full-armed he sleeps, and still the brave
Salute him as they pass his grave.
V
Now young, she thinks not of her race
But feels its glory and its pride.
She still recalls her mother’s face
Who in her stately sorrow died,
And those large eyes her image keep,
And dream beside it in love’s sleep.
VI
Eyes that are of the sultry zone—
That ofttimes in their musing moods
See rosy banks that seem their own
Where lies the waste: her olive-woods,
Her sky with cypress-skirted folds,
All that she loves, her heart remoulds.
VII
As in a desert one red rose
Seems like a garden full of bloom,
She charms the wilderness, and throws
Her own bright colours o’er its gloom;
Then at the falling cone’s rebound
Pomegranates gild the enchanted ground.
VIII
And lest when dear illusions come
They melt o’er-fast, she hides her eyes,
And feigns to see her native home,
And shouts in play her soul’s surprise.
So while the southern glory burns
The haunting vision still returns.
IX
When spring bursts o’er the wintry plain
And violet skies dissolve in spray,
And marsh-pools echo drops of rain
That o’er the bud’s new secret play,
Her soul seems darting from her eyes
To snatch at nature’s rhapsodies.
X
The serf who toils upon the road
From waste to waste with back that bears
Across the steppes another’s load,—
With eyes that homeward gaze in tears,—
Chills not for long a heart that glows
In its own fire ’mid northern snows.
XI
Where plough may delve or harrow graze,
She tramps beside the sluggish team
As fain to urge its tardy pace:
And when she drifts into some dream
Her laugh, her look of childish glee,
Is still the joy of memory.
XII
But fears flash o’er her mellow eyes
When gaunt sand-fountains, side by side,
Like giants in the distance rise,
Pass slowly by and onward glide,
Like shadows from her father’s land
That seek some rumoured icy strand.
XIII
Then day breaks through a sullen sky;
The keen air shivers;—doth she know
The blackened clouds now sailing by
Are freighted with the virgin snow?
Dark ships of winter that unload
The widespread famine they forbode.
XIV
The snow-flakes build a prison-wall
That slants high o’er her window sill;
She watches while they slowly fall,
Till heaven appears a sinking hill,
And darkness gathers o’er her mind:
Home is too far for hope to find.
XV
In new despair she sees heaven’s sand
Has drifted o’er her cottage gate!
She fears that now her native land
Is like the desert desolate.
The snow still falls and still it clings,
Soft dropped like insects’ broken wings.
XVI
Through the strange dusk she hears the shriek
Of trees snapped by the dreaded wind;
The casements shake, the rafters creak;
Ah! could she now her mother find!
With timid wings too weak for flight
She hangs upon the edge of night.
XVII
A wind’s moan utters, ‘Stir and go’:
Upon its gust she seems to glide
Towards lands beyond the falling snow
But reaches not its further side.
She drops on the cold hilly steeps
And in her distant reverie sleeps.
XVIII
No longer now the large-eyed child,
Who draws her charm so fresh from heaven,
Gives up its beauty to the wild;
The spell of infant faith is riven:
Where the sun’s tender rays were sown
Stones have sprung up and ice-fields grown.
XIX
The spring still comes, when shallow snows
Melt o’er a crisping flame of green
Wherein the nestled herbage glows
Through its white shell,—but there is seen
A heart that still unthawed remains;
An exile of the loveless plains.
XX
When winter’s sun through summer shines,
The joys are banished that she brought:
For home, not dreams of home, she pines;
Thought is the food of famished thought.
It is her heart-corroding hour:
The rose-tree is without a flower.
XXI
She feeds in broken reveries
On her chilled soul: within the light
Of those black lashes, those dark eyes,
The paling cheek seems over-bright,
With lips, like hanging fruit, whose hue
Is ruby ’neath a bloom of blue.
XXII
The friends who love her as their own
Stir self-upbraidings in her breast,
For in their midst she is alone
And in their peace is without rest.
Is there some home by them forgot?
Exiles they seem and suffer not.
XXIII
Their native games to her impart
A fitful joy, that sad appears,
Only because her eyes and heart
Are vacant, and have room for tears.
She knows not yet ’tis love’s first throe:
The snowdrop breaking through the snow.
XXIV
At length comes one whose love ere told
Seems wafted o’er a flowery plain,
And brings her back that charm of old:
The days of childhood live again;
Griefs softened into joys return;
In love’s new-kindled incense burn.
XXV
In silver-crimson trappings gay,
His tinkling barbs with billowy manes
Toss their strong necks before his sleigh—
And he has crossed the snowy plains.
She hails him, and, with heart aflame,
She wonders how such passion came.
XXVI
Beauty and man’s strong soul are his.
Be the earth bare, paved o’er with ice,
’Tis full even to its dome in bliss:
The desert is her paradise,
Where now the hourly deepening sky
Rains down on her love’s mystery.
XXVII
She hears his love and hears no more.
As waves might cease to beat, as winds
Might drop away on some charmed shore,
The word a soul-deep echo finds—
All her fond life is without breath,
And sinks away in rapturous death.
XXVIII
New paths to home are overlaid
With such deep sunshine, not a tree
In densest woods can cast a shade.
Her glorious soul again is free,—
Free in those bonds of love that wind
In bliss about the heart they bind.
XXIX
Warmer than in its childhood’s flush
Her cheek in this new passion glows;
Not softer is the fitful blush
Of lily ’neath the swaying rose.
Her head droops not as when she pined,
Now bowed in love’s own southern wind.
XXX
A sun of passion is above;
Her home is here,—in cloudless eyes
She sees the birth-place of her love,
And snows dissolve in burning skies.
Palm-leaves above her seem to bow
When bridal roses wreathe her brow.
THE SIBYL
I
A maid who mindful of her playful time
Steps to her summer, bearing childhood on
To woman’s beauty, heedless of her prime:
The early day but not the pastime gone:
She is the Sibyl, uttering a doom
Out of her spotless bloom.
II
She is the Sibyl; seek not, then, her voice;—
A laugh, a song, a sorrow, but thy share,
With woes at hand for many who rejoice
That she shall utter; that shall many hear;
That warn all hearts who seek of her their fates,
Her love but one awaits.
III
She is the Sibyl; days that distant lie
Bend to the promise that her word shall give;
Already hath she eyes that prophesy,
For of her beauty shall all beauty live:
Unknown to her, in her slow opening bloom,
She turns the leaves of doom.
THE PAINTER
I
‘Summer has done her work,’ the painter cries,
And saunters down his garden by the shore.
‘The fig is cracked and dry; upon it lies,
In crystals, the sweet oozing of its core.
The peach melts in its dusk and yellow bloom,
Grapes cluster to the earth in diadems
Of dripping purple; from their slender stems,
’Mid paler leaves, the dark-green citrons loom.
II
‘Summer has done her work; she, lingering, sees
Her shady places glare: yet cooler grow
The breezes as they stir the sunny trees
Whose shaking twigs their ruby berries sow.
Ripe is the fairy-grass, we breathe its seeds,
But, hanging o’er the rocks that belt the shore,
Safe from the sea, above its bustling roar,
Here ripen, still, the blossom-swinging weeds.
III
‘Pale cressets on the summer waters shine,
No ripple there but flings its jet of fire.
Rich amber wrack still bronzing in the brine
Is tossed ashore in daylight to expire.
Here wallowing waves the rocky shoal enwreathe,
And in loose spray, cascades of bubbles fall,
And steeps of watery, coral-mantled wall
Drink of the billow, and the sunshine breathe.
IV
‘Summer has done her work, but mine remains.
How shall I shape these ever-murmuring waves,
How interweave these rumours and refrains,
These wind-tossed echoes of the listening caves?
The restless rocky roar, the billow’s splash,
And the all-hushing shingle—hark! it blends,
In open melody that never ends,
The drone, the cavern-whisper, and the clash.
V
‘And this wide ruin of a once new shore
Scooped by new waves to waves of solid rock,
Dark-shelving, white-veined, as if marbled o’er
By the fresh surf still trickling block to block!
O worn-out waves of night, long set aside—
The moulded storm in dead, contending rage,—
Like monster-breakers of a by-gone age!
And now the gentle waters o’er you ride.
VI
‘Can my hand darken in swift rings of flight
The air-path cut by the black sea-bird’s wings,
Then fill the dubious track with influent light,
While to my eyes the vanished vision clings?
While at their sudden whirr the billows start,
Can my hand hush the cymbal-sounding sea,
That breaks with louder roar its reverie
As those fast pinions into silence dart?
VII
‘Press on, ye summer waves, still gently swell,—
The rainbow’s parent-waters overrun!
Can my poor brush your snaky greenness tell,
Raising your sidelong bellies to the sun?
What touch can pour you in yon pool of blue
Circled with surging froth of liquid snow,
Which now dissolves to emerald, now below
Glazes the sunken rocks with umber hue?
VIII
‘Summer has done her work; dare I begin—
Painting a desert, though my pencil craves
To intertwine all tints with heaven akin?
Nature has flung her palette to the waves!
Then bid my eyes on cloudy landscape dwell,—
Not revel in thy blaze, O beauteous scene!
Between thy art and mine is nature’s screen,—
Transparent only to the soul,—farewell!
IX
‘Oh! could I paint thee with these ravished eyes,—
Catch in my hollow palm thy overflow,
Who broadcast fling’st away thy witcheries!
Yet would I not desponding turn and go.
Be it a feeble hand to thee I raise,
’Tis still the worship of the soul within:
Summer has done her work,—let mine begin,
Though as the grass it wither in thy blaze.’
THE SUN-WORSHIPPER
I
As a wild comet through the night she hies,
Her face bent towards the temple of the sun,
With golden hair that on the darkness lies
Like break of dawn when daylight, scarce begun,
Meanders into flame whose flashes run
Along the lower skies.
II
Soon as the sun lifts up the morning haze
She rushes towards him; sinks unto the ground
And, clasping the all-shining Presence, prays
In his first beams: again her god is found;
The startled shadows that her heart surround
Are dizzy in his rays.
III
‘Thee I adore, O Sun! this heart is thine!
The youth who blindly claims its ecstasy
Seeks not thy temple, honours not thy shrine;
He kneels not, utters not his vows to thee,
Who all the worlds beyond this world canst see,
And mak’st all things divine.’
IV
The sunflowers turn to heaven as still she kneels;
Shall then her heart its coming vow deplore?
Not uttered yet, all utterance it reveals,
And she restrains her ecstasy no more:
Her burning lips the hasty vow outpour
Which her heart-trouble seals.
V
‘Never, O Sun! till sinking in the west
Thou risest where thy wondrous setting spreads,
While all who love thee slumber in thy rest,
Shall he, who proudly in thy presence treads,
Enthrall me in the light his beauty sheds,
Or wed me to his breast!’
VI
Silence has tongues; she hears a sister say,
‘List to the voice of thy companion-mind!
Thy love is still the same as yesterday;
It has not passed, it only lags behind,
And thou art lonely as the wistful wind
Thou meet’st upon the way.’
VII
Yet she repeats her vow, her heart in pain,
To draw some love from heaven, as from the well
Whose radiant springs she once craved not in vain:
But ebbing hope allures her by its spell
To past despair, on other days to dwell,—
And suffer them again.
VIII
Across the hills of heliotrope she creeps,
Or winds within the many-shadowed wolds,
Till once again the sun her pathway sweeps,
And from her weary feet the way withholds;
The sacred flowers embrace her in their folds;
From dawn to dawn she sleeps.
IX
She sleeps; so still, not even her shadow veers,
Save when from side to side the moonflood roves;
But in sky-dreams the sun to her appears,
Yet with the visage of the one she loves;—
All through her sleep in phantom light he moves,
And still that face he bears.
X
She sleeps, and with the beaming of a bride
Beholds that face; ah! never to be wed!
Yet why a tear, no sorrow shall betide:
Though distant borne, his rays on her are shed;
Her soul, along his way of glory sped,
Shall in his light abide.
XI
She wakes up with the sun, but in his rise
Sees the rich twilight of her love-dream wane:
Day seems to sink in the deserted skies,
Whose broken, many-coloured beams remain
As of her dream whose night comes back again;
’Twas dawn had closed her eyes.
XII
The cloud-slopes blossom still, but cold and lone;
Down them she floated in those heavenly dreams,
And still the veil that o’er her slumbers shone
Hangs gold-wrought in the fervour of those beams.
She kneels while watching the last fading gleams
O’er the grey twilight thrown.
XIII
With speechless lips she questions the chill blaze:
Behold the sun returns; that brighter flush
Were surely day? Yet she mistrusts her gaze
Though the light widens and with lordly rush
The sun bursts forth in morning’s youthful blush
And floods the heaven with rays.
XIV
Trembling she sees the paleness of her face
In those white clouds which now the sun surround,
Who doth in heaven his spectral way retrace.
Behold, the days brought back, the hours unwound,
The angry sun unto the zenith bound
And the pale moon replace!
XV
Perplexed, all lost, she staggers to the height
Where the twelve pillars in their beauty shine,
The temple circling in the blessed light;
There prostrate doth she o’er her vow repine;
But fears to meet the arbiter divine
Who banishes the night.
XVI
From the lone steps at length she looks above:
Behold, the face is there that filled her dreams;
The youth adored, triumphant o’er her love,
There radiant shines amid descending beams;
His lustrous hair in the rich sunshine streams,
With golden lights inwove.
XVII
She lifts her arms, she falls upon the face
She loved in heaven; her yearning heart, too blest,
Doth in deep sobs its erring way retrace.
All passion weeps, while gathers in her breast
A bliss that bears her spirit to its rest
In that divine embrace.
THE INSCRUTABLE
I
Dread under-life whose dreams
Along the midnight rush,
Poured out like cavern-streams
That from the darkness gush,
A murderous thought has issued forth to flood
A maiden’s sleep in blood.
II
He that hath swum the heaven
Of woman’s loving eyes—
To him a dream is given,
As helplessly he lies,
A dream that never nigh his thought had passed,
Till in that slumber cast.
III
He loves her and she loves,
But stern her father’s heart
That every passion moves
Their holy hope to thwart.
Can they, meek sleepers, on dream-demons call
To burst the iron thrall?
IV
That night in dreams that sway
The soul to shedding blood,
One hears his own voice say
In sleep’s half-weary mood,
‘Take down your father’s sword and quickly slide
The blade into his side.
V
‘Disguise the seeming guilt,
And bend his fingers round,
And put them on the hilt,
And leave him to his wound.’
In that strange dream until the break of day,
Asleep the lover lay.
VI
He wakes, aghast; he strives
To get the vision hence
That into morning lives,
And fastens on his sense.
’Tis but a dream, but should her hand fulfil
His will within her will!
VII
She comes up wild and pale,
She wrings her hands in pain,
She utters with a wail—
‘Who hath my father slain!
My anguished heart sobbed all night in its sleep;
I felt it sob and weep.
VIII
‘I saw you while I slept,
And to my dream you spoke;
All night your words I kept,
I heard them when I woke:
“Take down your father’s sword and quickly slide
The blade into his side.”
IX
‘“Disguise the seeming guilt,
And bend his fingers round,
And put them on the hilt,
And leave him to his wound.”
O the false voice, that it so true should seem
In that unthought-of dream!
X
‘I hurried to the bed,
I saw that he was slain,
I saw the blood was shed,
I saw the deep,—deep stain.
His sword was in his side,—thrust,—to the hilt,—
His fingers took the guilt.’
THE WEDDING RING
LADY
‘Give me a ring, good jeweller,
By no one worn before,
And you shall boast you gave it her
Who wears it evermore.’
JEWELLER
‘Then it shall be a ruby ring,
With hoop of richest gold,
And it shall be my offering
For benefits of old.’
LADY
‘A ruby ring it must not be,
Which is a thing to shine;
An iron ring is best for me,
No other can be mine.’
JEWELLER
‘But surely such a ring ’twere sad
To see a lady wear
Among her guests in jewels clad,
And she so young and fair.’
LADY
‘An iron ring is all I crave
Upon my wedding night,
For I must wear it in the grave,
Where it is out of sight.’
JEWELLER
‘Is it to be a ring to bind
Your heart in wedlock’s bond,
Or but to link the day behind
And days that are beyond?’
LADY
‘It is to link me to his peace
Who is not far away;
And when her lonely term may cease,
The bride shall with him stay.’
JEWELLER
‘Who is this bridegroom you would wed,
And yet for ever mourn,
As though you would espouse the dead,
Who never can return?’
LADY
‘It is the dead I would espouse,
With him lie side by side;
There is a chamber in his house
He furnished for his bride.’
LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR DEAD
LUKE ix. 60
Where marshes venom-steeped the life-breeze taint
And fitful meteors lap the watery wild,
A moon sinks in the cloud-mire, dazed and faint,
Its pearly flush defiled,
Halo’d in sallow vapours like a saint
Through paths impure beguiled.
But worse the gloom within the castle walls
Where moans the lord whom pestilence devours:
The serfs awe-stricken flee his festering halls,
The plague-star o’er him lowers,
On his glazed eyes the fatal glimmer falls
While night weighs down his towers.
A crescent moon whose advent stays the pest
Embalms the dead with heavenly obsequies,
But there are none to bear him to his rest,
His body shroudless lies;
Anointed not, by pious rites unblest,
Unto the grave he cries.
A great half-moon now dominates the dome,
With stern upbraidings yet not less benign:
But the blank gazers to his final home
The dead dare not consign,
Lured on by sullen spectres of the gloam
Who their own dead enshrine.
Again the drowsy marshes pillow night
And darkness severs sky and earth in two,
But with a rush of cloud dispersing might
A full moon hurries through;
The corpse is shrouded as in living light,
The castle walls look new.
The heaven is one blue wave; it seems to break
While lucid spray with dreamlight floods the air:
The coffins in the quickened graveyards quake,
The bones know they are there,
And ghostly shades their buried depths forsake
To gather in the glare.
As dusk descends, by its scared rays illumed,
A soul-procession dense and denser grows:
Hearse after hearse night-horsed and sable-plumed
A mirage heavenward throws:
The newly dead is by the dead entombed
And nature has repose.
THE GOLDEN WEDDING
The day but not the bride is come,
As in her blossom-time;
But golden lights sustain the home
She cherished in her prime.
May we not call upon the band?
May we not ask the priest?
Our golden wedding is at hand,
And we shall hold a feast.
But where is he in snow-white stole
Who the old service read,
That made us one in heart and soul?
Long, long has he been dead.
The bridesmaids clad in silken fold
Who waited on the bride,
Where are they now? Their tale is told:
Long, long ago they died.
Where is the groomsman, chosen friend,
The true, the well-beloved;
His term, alas! is at an end;
Too soon was he removed.
Where is the bride, ah! such a bride
As every joy foretells?
I see her walking by my side,
I hear the wedding-bells.
Where is she now? That we should say
She did not live to know
How passed her silver wedding-day,
So many years ago!