To think that a heart in humanity clad
Should make, like the brute, such a desolate end,
And depart from the light without leaving a friend!
_Bear soft his bones over the stones!
Though a pauper, he's one whom his Maker yet owns!_
THOMAS NOEL.
UNSEEN SPIRITS.
The shadows lay along Broadway,
'T was near the twilight-tide,
And slowly there a lady fair
Was walking in her pride.
Alone walked she; but, viewlessly,
Walked spirits at her side.
Peace charmed the street beneath her feet,
And Honor charmed the air;
And all astir looked kind on her,
And called her good as fair,--
For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.
She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true,
For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo,--
But honored well are charms to sell
If priests the selling do.
Now walking there was one more fair,--
A slight girl, lily-pale;
And she had unseen company
To make the spirit quail,--
'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn,
And nothing could avail.
No mercy now can clear her brow
For this world's peace to pray;
For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,
Her woman's heart gave way!--
But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven
By man is cursed alway!
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.
BEAUTIFUL SNOW.
O the snow, the beautiful snow,
Filling the sky and the earth below!
Over the house-tops, over the street,
Over the heads of the people you meet,
Dancing,
Flirting,
Skimming along.
Beautiful snow! it can do nothing wrong.
Flying to kiss a fair lady's cheek;
Clinging to lips in a frolicsome freak;
Beautiful snow, from the heavens above,
Pure as an angel and fickle as love!
O the snow, the beautiful snow!
How the flakes gather and laugh as they go!
Whirling about in its maddening fun,
It plays in its glee with every one.
Chasing,
Laughing,
Hurrying by,
It lights up the face and it sparkles the eye;
And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound,
Snap at the crystals that eddy around.
The town is alive, and its heart in a glow,
To welcome the coming of beautiful snow.
How the wild crowd go swaying along,
Hailing each other with humor and song!
How the gay sledges like meteors flash by,--
Bright for the moment, then lost to the eye!
Ringing,
Swinging,
Dashing they go
Over the crest of the beautiful snow:
Snow so pure when it falls from the sky,
To be trampled in mud by the crowd rushing by;
To be trampled and tracked by the thousands of feet
Till it blends with the horrible filth in the street.
Once I was pure as the snows,--but I fell:
Fell, like the snow-flakes, from heaven--to hell:
Fell, to be tramped as the filth of the street:
Fell, to be scoffed, to be spit on, and beat.
Pleading,
Cursing,
Dreading to die,
Selling my soul to whoever would buy,
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread,
Hating the living and fearing the dead.
Merciful God! have I fallen so low?
And yet I was once like this beautiful snow!
Once I was fair as the beautiful snow,
With an eye like its crystals, a heart like its glow;
Once I was loved for my innocent grace,--
Flattered and sought for the charm of my face.
Father,
Mother,
Sisters all,
God, and myself, I have lost by my fall.
The veriest wretch that goes shivering by
Will take a wide sweep, lest I wander too nigh;
For all that is on or about me, I know
There is nothing that's pure but the beautiful snow.
How strange it should be that this beautiful snow
Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go!
How strange it would be, when the night comes again,
If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain!
Fainting,
Freezing,
Dying alone,
Too wicked for prayer, too weak for my moan
To be heard in the crash of the crazy town,
Gone mad in its joy at the snow's coming down;
To lie and to die in my terrible woe,
With a bed and a shroud of the beautiful snow!
JAMES W. WATSON.
LONDON CHURCHES.
I stood, one Sunday morning,
Before a large church door,
The congregation gathered,
And carriages a score,--
From one out stepped a lady
I oft had seen before.
Her hand was on a prayer-book,
And held a vinaigrette;
The sign of man's redemption
Clear on the book was set,--
But above the cross there glistened
A golden Coronet.
For her the obsequious beadle
The inner door flung wide;
Lightly, as up a ball-room,
Her footsteps seemed to glide,--
There might be good thoughts in her,
For all her evil pride.
But after her a woman
Peeped wistfully within,
On whose wan face was graven
Life's hardest discipline,--
The trace of the sad trinity
Of weakness, pain, and sin.
The few free-seats were crowded
Where she could rest and pray;
With her worn garb contrasted
Each side in fair array,--
"God's house holds no poor sinners,"
She sighed, and crept away.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES (LORD HOUGHTON.)
THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.
"Drowned! drowned!"--HAMLET.
One more unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care!
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
Look at her garments
Clinging like cerements,
Whilst the wave constantly
Drips from her clothing;
Take her up instantly,
Loving, not loathing!
Touch her not scornfully!
Think of her mournfully,
Gently and humanly,--
Not of the stains of her;
All that remains of her
Now is pure womanly.
Make no deep scrutiny
Into her mutiny,
Rash and undutiful;
Past all dishonor,
Death has left on her
Only the beautiful.
Still, for all slips of hers,--
One of Eve's family,--
Wipe those poor lips of hers,
Oozing so clammily.
Loop up her tresses
Escaped from the comb,--
Her fair auburn tresses,--
Whilst wonderment guesses
Where was her home?
Who was her father?
Who was her mother?
Had she a sister?
Had she a brother?
Or was there a dearer one
Still, and a nearer one
Yet, than all other?
Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!
O, it was pitiful!
Near a whole city full,
Home she had none.
Sisterly, brotherly,
Fatherly, motherly
Feelings had changed,--
Love, by harsh evidence,
Thrown from its eminence;
Even God's providence
Seeming estranged.
Where the lamps quiver
So far in the river,
With many a light
From window and casement,
From garret to basement,
She stood, with amazement,
Houseless by night.
The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver;
But not the dark arch,
Or the black floating river;
Mad from life's history,
Glad to death's mystery,
Swift to be hurled--
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world!
In she plunged boldly,--
No matter how coldly
The rough river ran--
Over the brink of it!
Picture it--think of it,
Dissolute man!
Lave in it, drink of it,
Then, if you can!
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care!
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
Ere her limbs, frigidly,
Stiffen too rigidly,
Decently, kindly!
Smooth and compose them;
And her eyes, close them,
Staring so blindly!
Dreadfully staring
Through muddy impurity,
As when with the daring
Last look of despairing
Fixed on futurity.
Perishing gloomily,
Spurred by contumely,
Cold inhumanity,
Burning insanity,
Into her rest!
Cross her hands humbly,
As if praying dumbly,
Over her breast!
Owning her weakness,
Her evil behavior,
And leaving, with meekness,
Her sins to her Saviour!
THOMAS HOOD.
GUILTY, OR NOT GUILTY?
She stood at the bar of justice,
A creature wan and wild,
In form too small for a woman,
In feature too old for a child.
For a look so worn and pathetic
Was stamped on her pale young face,
It seemed long years of suffering
Must have left that silent trace.
"Your name," said the judge, as he eyed her
With kindly look, yet keen,
"Is--?" "Mary McGuire, if you please, sir."
"And your age?" "I am turned fifteen."
"Well, Mary--" And then from a paper
He slowly and gravely read,
"You are charged here--I am sorry to say it--
With stealing three loaves of bread.
"You look not like an offender,
And I hope that you can show
The charge to be false. Now, tell me,
Are you guilty of this, or no?"
A passionate burst of weeping
Was at first her sole reply;
But she dried her tears in a moment,
And looked in the judge's eye.
"I will tell you just how it was, sir;
My father and mother are dead,
And my little brothers and sisters
Were hungry, and asked me for bread.
At first I earned it for them
By working hard all day,
But somehow the times were hard, sir,
And the work all fell away.
"I could get no more employment;
The weather was bitter cold;
The young ones cried and shivered
(Little Johnnie's but four years old).
So what was I to do, sir?
I am guilty, but do not condemn;
I _took_--oh, was it _stealing_?--
The bread to give to them."
Every man in the court-room--
Graybeard and thoughtless youth--
Knew, as he looked upon her,
That the prisoner spake the truth.
Out from their pockets came kerchiefs,
Out from their eyes sprang tears,
And out from the old faded wallets
Treasures hoarded for years.
The judge's face was a study,
The strangest you ever saw,
As he cleared his throat and murmured
_Something_ about the _law_.
For one so learned in such matters,
So wise in dealing with men,
He seemed on a simple question
Sorely puzzled just then.
But no one blamed him, or wondered,
When at last these words they heard,
"The sentence of this young prisoner
Is for the present deferred."
And no one blamed him, or wondered,
When he went to her and smiled,
And tenderly led from the court-room,
Himself, the "guilty" child.
ANONYMOUS.
THE FEMALE CONVICT.
She shrank from all, and her silent mood
Made her wish only for solitude:
Her eye sought the ground, as it could not brook,
For innermost shame, on another's to look;
And the cheerings of comfort fell on her ear
Like deadliest words, that were curses to hear!--
She still was young, and she had been fair;
But weather-stains, hunger, toil, and care,
That frost and fever that wear the heart,
Had made the colors of youth depart
From the sallow cheek, save over it came
The burning flush of the spirit's shame.
They were sailing over the salt sea-foam,
Far from her country, far from her home;
And all she had left for her friends to keep
Was a name to hide and a memory to weep!
And her future held forth but the felon's lot,--
To live forsaken, to die forgot!
She could not weep, and she could not pray,
But she wasted and withered from day to day,
Till you might have counted each sunken vein,
When her wrist was prest by the iron chain;
And sometimes I thought her large dark eye
Had the glisten of red insanity.
She called me once to her sleeping-place,
A strange, wild look was upon her face,
Her eye flashed over her cheek so white,
Like a gravestone seen in the pale moonlight,
And she spoke in a low, unearthly tone,--
The sound from mine ear hath never gone!--
"I had last night the loveliest dream:
My own land shone in the summer beam,
I saw the fields of the golden grain,
I heard the reaper's harvest strain;
There stood on the hills the green pine-tree,
And the thrush and the lark sang merrily.
A long and a weary way I had come;
But I stopped, methought, by mine own sweet home.
I stood by the hearth, and my father sat there,
With pale, thin face, and snow-white hair!
The Bible lay open upon his knee,
But he closed the book to welcome me.
He led me next where my mother lay,
And together we knelt by her grave to pray,
And heard a hymn it was heaven to hear,
For it echoed one to my young days dear.
This dream has waked feelings long, long since fled,
And hopes which I deemed in my heart were dead!
--We have not spoken, but still I have hung
On the Northern accents that dwell on thy tongue.
To me they are music, to me they recall
The things long hidden by Memory's pall!
Take this long curl of yellow hair,
And give it my father, and tell him my prayer,
My dying prayer, was for him." ...
Next day
Upon the deck a coffin lay;
They raised it up, and like a dirge
The heavy gale swept over the surge;
The corpse was cast to the wind and wave,--
The convict has found in the green sea a grave.
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON.
HOPELESS GRIEF.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless,--
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upwards to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death;
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet--
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
* * * * *
IV. COMFORT AND CHEER.
TO MYSELF.
Let nothing make thee sad or fretful,
Or too regretful;
Be still;
What God hath ordered must be right;
Then find in it thine own delight,
My will.
Why shouldst thou fill to-day with sorrow
About to-morrow.
My heart?
_One_ watches all with care most true;
Doubt not that he will give thee too
Thy part.
Only be steadfast; never waver,
Nor seek earth's favor,
But rest:
Thou knowest what God wills must be
For all his creatures, so for thee,
The best.
From the German of PAUL FLEMING.
Translation of CATHERINE WINKWORTH.
THE FLOWER.
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickning, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an houre;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
We say amisse
This or that is:
Thy word is all, if we could spell.
O that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Off'ring at heav'n, growing and groning thither;
Nor doth my flower
Want a spring-showre,
My sinnes and I joining together.
But, while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone
Where all things burn,
When thou dost turn,
And the least frown of thine is shown?
And now in age I bud again;
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night!
These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
Which when we once can finde and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their paradise by their pride.
GEORGE HERBERT.
SONNET.
TO CYRIACK SKINNER.
Cyriack, this three years' day, these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot:
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or stars, throughout the year,
Or man or woman, yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In Liberty's defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,
Content, though blind, had I no better guide.
MILTON.
INVICTUS.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud;
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY.
AFAR IN THE DESERT.
Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the present, I cling to the past;
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;
And shadows of things that have long since fled
Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead,--
Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon;
Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood's noon;
Attachments by fate or falsehood reft;
Companions of early days lost or left;
And my native land, whose magical name
Thrills to the heart like electric flame;
The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime;
All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time
When the feelings were young, and the world was new,
Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view;
All, all now forsaken, forgotten, foregone!
And I, a lone exile remembered of none,
My high aims abandoned, my good acts undone,
Aweary of all that is under the sun,
With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan,
I fly to the desert afar from man.
Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side!
When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,
With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife,
The proud man's frown, and the base man's fear,
The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear,
And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly,
Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy;
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high,
And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh,--
O, then there is freedom, and joy, and pride,
Afar in the desert alone to ride!
There is rapture to vault on the champing steed,
And to bound away with the eagle's speed,
With the death-fraught firelock in my hand,--
The only law of the Desert Land!
Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side,
Away, away from the dwellings of men,
By the wild deer's haunt, by the buffalo's glen;
By valleys remote where the oribi plays,
Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartèbeest graze,
And the kudu and eland unhunted recline
By the skirts of gray forest o'erhung with wild vine;
Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood,
And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood,
And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will
In the fen where the wild ass is drinking his fill.
Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side,
O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry
Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively;
And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh
Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray;
Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane.
With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste,
Hieing away to the home of her rest,
Where she and her mate have scooped their nest,
Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view
In the pathless depths of the parched karroo.
Afar in the desert I love to ride.
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side,
Away, away, in the wilderness vast
Where the white man's foot hath never passed,
And the quivered Coranna or Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan,--
A region of emptiness, howling and drear,
Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear;
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot;
And the bitter-melon, for food and drink,
Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt lake's brink;
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;
Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount,
Appears, to refresh the aching eye;
But the barren earth and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon, round and round,
Spread,--void of living sight or sound.
And here, while the night-winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
As I sit apart by the desert stone,
Like Elijah at Horeb's cave, alone,
"A still small voice" comes through the wild
(Like a father consoling his fretful child),
Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear,
Saying,--Man is distant, but God is near!
THOMAS PRINGLE.
SAD IS OUR YOUTH, FOR IT IS EVER GOING.
Sad is our youth, for it is ever going,
Crumbling away beneath our very feet;
Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing
In current unperceived, because so fleet;
Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing,--
But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat;
Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing,
And still, O, still their dying breath is sweet;
And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us
Of that which made our childhood sweeter still;
And sweet is middle life, for it hath left us
A nearer good to cure an older ill;
And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them,
Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them!
AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE.
MY WIFE AND CHILD.[5]
The tattoo beats,--the lights are gone,
The camp around in slumber lies,
The night with solemn pace moves on,
The shadows thicken o'er the skies;
But sleep my weary eyes hath flown,
And sad, uneasy thoughts arise.
I think of thee, O darling one,
Whose love my early life hath blest--
Of thee and him--our baby son--
Who slumbers on thy gentle breast.
God of the tender, frail, and lone,
O, guard the tender sleeper's rest!
And hover gently, hover near
To her whose watchful eye is wet,--
To mother, wife,--the doubly dear,
In whose young heart have freshly met
Two streams of love so deep and clear,
And cheer her drooping spirits yet.
Now, while she kneels before thy throne,
O, teach her, Ruler of the skies,
That, while by thy behest alone
Earth's mightiest powers fall and rise,
No tear is wept to thee unknown,
No hair is lost, no sparrow dies!
That thou canst stay the ruthless hands
Of dark disease, and soothe its pain;
That only by thy stern commands
The battle's lost, the soldier's slain;
That from the distant sea or land
Thou bring'st the wanderer home again.
And when upon her pillow lone
Her tear-wet cheek is sadly pressed,
May happier visions beam upon
The brightened current of her breast,
No frowning look or angry tone
Disturb the Sabbath of her rest!
Whatever fate these forms may show,
Loved with a passion almost wild,
By day, by night, in joy or woe,
By fears oppressed, or hopes beguiled,
From every danger, every foe,
O God, protect my wife and child!
HENRY R. JACKSON.
[5] Written in the year 1846, in Mexico, the writer being at that time
Colonel of the 1st regiment of Georgia Volunteers.
THE RAINY DAY.
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
TIMES GO BY TURNS.
The lopped tree in time may grow again;
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorest wight may find release of pain,
The driest soil suck in some moist'ning shower;
Times go by turns and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.
The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favors to the lowest ebb;
Her time hath equal times to come and go,
Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web;
No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard but may in fine amend.
Not always fall of leaf nor ever spring,
No endless night yet not eternal day;
The saddest birds a season find to sing,
The roughest storm a calm may soon allay;
Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise yet fear to fall.
A chance may win that by mischance was lost;
The well that holds no great, takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are crossed,
Few all they need, but none have all they wish;
Unmeddled joys here to no man befall,
Who least hath some, who most hath never all.
ROBERT SOUTHWELL.
COMPENSATION.
Tears wash away the atoms in the eye
That smarted for a day;
Rain-clouds that spoiled the splendors of the sky
The fields with flowers array.