Blows through that open door,
The sound of wind-borne bells, more sweet and low
And sadder than of yore.
It comes afar, from that belovèd place,
And that belovèd hour, 10
When life hung ripening in love’s golden grace,
Like grapes above a bower.
A spring goes singing through its reedy grass,
A lark sings o’er my head,
Drowned in the sky--O pass, ye visions, pass, 15
I would that I were dead!--
Why hast thou opened that forbidden door
From which I ever flee?
O vanished Joy! O Love that art no more,
Let my vexed spirit be! 20
O violet! thy odour through my brain
Hath searched, and stung to grief
This sunny day, as if a curse did stain
Thy velvet leaf.
_William W. Story._
CCLXIX
_JOY._
Sweet order hath its draught of bliss
Graced with the pearl of God’s consent,
Ten times ecstatic in that ’tis
Considerate and innocent.
In vain disorder grasps the cup; 5
The pleasure’s not enjoyed, but spilt;
And, if he stoops to lick it up,
It only tastes of earth and guilt;
His sorry raptures rest destroys;
To live, like comets they must roam; 10
On settled poles turn solid joys,
And sun-like pleasures shine at home.
_Coventry Patmore._
CCLXX
_THE HAPPY HUSBAND._
He safely walks in darkest ways,
Whose youth is lighted from above,
Where through the senses’ silvery haze
Dawns the veiled moon of nuptial love.
Who is the happy husband? He, 5
Who scanning his unwedded life,
Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free,
’Twas faithful to his future wife.
_Coventry Patmore._
CCLXXI
_THEN._
I give thee treasures hour by hour,
That old-time princes asked in vain,
And pined for in their useless power,
Or died of passion’s eager pain.
I give thee love as God gives light, 5
Aside from merit, or from prayer,
Rejoicing in its own delight,
And freer than the lavish air.
I give thee prayers, like jewels strung
On golden threads of hope and fear; 10
And tenderer thoughts than ever hung
In a sad angel’s pitying tear.
As earth pours freely to the sea
Her thousand streams of wealth untold,
So flows my silent life to thee, 15
Glad that its very sands are gold.
What care I for thy carelessness?
I give from depths that overflow,
Regardless that their power to bless
Thy spirit cannot sound or know. 20
Far lingering on a distant dawn
My triumph shines, more sweet than late;
When from these mortal mists withdrawn,
Thy heart shall know me--I can wait.
_Rose Terry._
CCLXXII
_THE PRINCE OF ORANGE IN 1672._
If the base violence of wicked men
Prevail at last; if Charles, to please his lord,
And Louis, for his glory much concerned,
Must needs snatch from us our sea-rescued plains,
Which soon the tides will make their own again, 5
When once the strenuous freemen shall have fled,
At whose command they ebbed with angry bark;
If France must needs prevail and we must yield,
Then we will yield our lands, but not ourselves.
Ships we have left that will contain, I judge, 10
Two hundred thousand steadfast Hollanders;
And ’twixt the realms where our oppressors live
A heaving highway lies, to Dutchmen known,
And to be known hereafter in all lands--
The highway of the exodus of freedom! 15
Prepare then for departure, citizens;
And for the little space that yet remains,
Make much of home and of your fatherland;
Visit your fathers’ graves, take note of all
The furniture of your ancestral homes, 20
And let your hearts take the impression off
To furnish dreams beside the Southern sea;
Fetch home at once your children from the school,
And in the garden turn them loose to play,
Nor let them want for marbles, hoops, and balls, 25
That in their old age they may tell their boys
Their home in the cold North was not unsweet.
If any skilful painter be among you,
At some resplendent noontide let him sit,
And paint the busiest street in Amsterdam; 30
Nor let him slur one stain upon a brick,
Nor smoke-dulled slip of greenery in a window;
And every old cathedral let him paint,
The columns ranged as in some grove of pines,
And windows richer than the sunset clouds, 35
Wherein the Christ for centuries has smiled,
And rich-robed haloed saints regarded Him;
The Colleges of Leyden and Utrecht,
The solemn libraries, with portraits hung
Of Gerard and à Kempis, let him paint, 40
And let him paint the Liberator’s grave:
The artist that preserves our Holland for us
Shall be much honoured in our Southern home.
So, bearing with us all that can be moved,
We will weigh anchor to the sound of psalms, 45
And winds from heaven shall waft us to the west,
Between the shores of tyranny on the left,
And the pale cliffs of falsehood on the right;
While looking towards the north, our captains tell
To wondering maidens and exulting boys, 50
How through the helpless Medway’s mouth they sailed,
And saw the towering Keep of Rochester;
While looking towards the south, another group
Hangs on the lips of some book-learnèd man,
Who tells the tale of Egmont and St. Quentin: 55
Till the low-lying shores recede from sight,
And ancient Europe hide herself in foam,
Mother of heroes, nurse of beauteous arts,
Of serious letters and high Christian truth,
Rich bower of beauty, garden fenced with men, 60
And gorgeous with all blooms of womanhood,
Temple inviolate of faith and truth
And liberty--until the iron time.
She for a while shall seem to us far off,
A speck of dimness on the sunbright shield, 65
A roughness on the fine encircling thread,
Until the horizon show a perfect ring,
And the free nation ride on vaster waves,
Plunge onward into more transparent seas,
Under more deep ambrosial domes of night, 70
Into that second Holland like the first,
But glad with fuller harvests, richer fruits,
Where neither Frenchmen nor rude seas encroach.
_John Robertson._
CCLXXIII
_THE PRIVATE OF THE BUFFS._
_Last night_, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaffed, and swore;
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.
_To-day_, beneath the foeman’s frown, 5
He stands in Elgin’s place,
Ambassador from Britain’s crown,
And type of all her race.
Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
Bewildered, and alone, 10
A heart, with English instinct fraught,
He yet can call his own.
Ay, tear his body limb from limb,
Bring cord, or axe, or flame:
He only knows, that not through _him_ 15
Shall England come to shame.
Far Kentish hop-fields round him seemed,
Like dreams, to come and go;
Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleamed,
One sheet of living snow; 20
The smoke, above his father’s door,
In gray soft eddyings hung:
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doomed by himself, so young?
Yes, honour calls!--with strength like steel 25
He put the vision by;
Let dusky Indians whine and kneel;
An English lad must die.
And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
With knee to man unbent, 30
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
To his red grave he went.
Vain, mightiest fleets, of iron framed;
Vain, those all-shattering guns;
Unless proud England keep, untamed, 35
The strong heart of her sons.
So, let his name through Europe ring--
A man of mean estate,
Who died, as firm as Sparta’s king,
Because his soul was great. 40
_Sir Francis Hastings Doyle._
CCLXXIV
_ON A PICTURE BY TURNER._
See how the small concentrate fiery force
Is grappling with the glory of the main,
That follows like some grave heroic corse,
Dragged by a sutler from the heap of slain.
Thy solemn presence brings us more than pain,-- 5
Something which Fancy moulds into remorse,
That we, who of thine honour held the gain,
Should from its dignity thy form divorce.
Yet will we read in thy high vaunting name,
How Britain _did_ what France could only _dare_, 10
And, while the sunset gilds the darkening air,
We will fill up thy shadowy lines with fame;
And, tomb or temple, hail thee still the same,
Home of great thoughts, memorial Téméraire.
_Lord Houghton._
CCLXXV
_THE RHODORA_:
ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook;
The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 5
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky, 10
Dear, tell them that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew;
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
_Ralph Waldo Emerson._
CCLXXVI
_THE GOOD PART THAT SHALL NOT BE TAKEN AWAY._
She dwells by Great Kenhawa’s side,
In valleys green and cool,
And all her hope and all her pride
Are in the village school.
Her soul, like the transparent air 5
That robes the hills above,
Though not of earth, encircles there
All things with arms of love.
And thus she walks among her girls
With praise and mild rebukes; 10
Subduing e’en rude village churls
By her angelic looks.
She reads to them at eventide
Of One who came to save;
To cast the captives’ chains aside, 15
And liberate the slave.
And oft the blessèd time foretells
When all men shall be free;
And musical as silver bells,
Their falling chains shall be. 20
And following her belovèd Lord
In decent poverty,
She makes her life one sweet record
And deed of charity.
For she was rich, and gave up all 25
To break the iron bands
Of those who waited in her hall,
And laboured in her lands.
Long since beyond the Southern Sea
Their outbound sails have sped, 30
While she in meek humility,
Now earns her daily bread.
It is their prayers which never cease,
That clothe her with such grace:
Their blessing is the light of peace, 35
That shines upon her face.
_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow._
CCLXXVII
_IN WAR TIME._
The flags of war like storm-birds fly,
The charging trumpets blow;
Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,
No earthquake strives below.
And, calm and patient, Nature keeps 5
Her ancient promise well,
Though o’er her bloom and greenness sweeps
The battle’s breath of hell.
And still she walks in golden hours
Through harvest-happy farms, 10
And still she wears her fruits and flowers
Like jewels on her arms.
What mean the gladness of the plain,
This joy of eve and morn,
The mirth that shakes the beard of grain 15
And yellow locks of corn?
Ah! eyes may well be full of tears,
And hearts with hate are hot;
But even-paced come round the years,
And Nature changes not. 20
She meets with smiles our bitter grief,
With songs our groans of pain;
She mocks with tint of flower and leaf
The war-field’s crimson stain.
Still, in the cannon’s pause we hear 25
Her sweet thanksgiving psalm;
Too near to God for doubt or fear,
She shares the eternal calm.
She knows the seed lies safe below
The fires that blast and burn; 30
For all the tears of blood we sow
She waits the rich return.
She sees with clearer eye than ours
The good of suffering born,--
The hearts that blossom like her flowers, 35
And ripen like her corn.
O, give to us, in times like these,
The vision of her eyes;
And make her fields and fruited trees
Our golden prophecies! 40
O, give to us her finer ear!
Above this stormy din,
We too would hear the bells of cheer
Ring peace and freedom in!
_John George Whittier._
CCLXXVIII
_COME UP FROM THE FIELDS, FATHER._
Come up from the fields, father; here’s a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door, mother; here’s a letter from thy dear son.
Lo, ’tis autumn;
Lo where the fields, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages, with leaves fluttering in the
moderate wind; 5
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellised vines
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo! the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain and with
wondrous clouds;
Below too all calm, all vital and beautiful--and the farm prospers
well. 10
Down in the fields all prospers well;
But now from the fields come, father--come at the daughter’s call;
And come to the entry, mother--to the front door come, right away.
Fast as she can she hurries--something ominous--her steps trembling;
She does not tarry to smooth her white hair, nor adjust her cap. 15
Open the envelope quickly;
Oh this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is signed.
Oh a strange hand writes for our dear son--oh stricken mother’s soul!
All swims before her eyes--flashes with black--she catches the main
words only;
Sentences broken--_gunshot wound in the breast_--_cavalry skirmish,
taken to hospital, 20
At present low, but will soon be better_.
Ah! now the single figure to me
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans. 25
_Grieve not so, dear mother_ (the just grown daughter speaks
through her sobs;
The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismayed).
_See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better._
Alas, poor boy, he will never be better (nor, may be, needs to
be better, that brave and simple soul).
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already, 30
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better;
She, with thin form, presently drest in black;
By day her meals untouched--then at night fitfully sleeping,
often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing, 35
Oh, that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life, escape
and withdraw
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.
_Walt Whitman._
CCLXXIX
_SONNET._
Through the night, through the night,
In the saddest unrest,
Wrapt in white, all in white,
With her babe on her breast,
Walks the mother so pale, 5
Staring out on the gale
Through the night!
Through the night, through the night,
Where the sea lifts the wreck,
Land in sight, close in sight! 10
On the surf-flooded deck
Stands the father so brave,
Drawing on to his grave
Through the night!
_Richard Henry Stoddard._
CCLXXX
_A DEDICATION TO CHARLES DICKENS OF THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH._
Genius and its rewards are briefly told
A liberal nature and a niggard doom,
A difficult journey to a splendid tomb.
New writ, nor lightly weighed that story old
In gentle Goldsmith’s life I here unfold: 5
Through other than lone wild or desert gloom,
In its mere joy and pain, its blight and bloom,
Adventurous. Come with me and behold,
O friend with heart as gentle for distress,
As resolute with wise true thoughts to bind 10
The happiest to the unhappiest of our kind,
That there is fiercer crowded misery
In garret toil and London loneliness
Than in cruel islands mid the far-off sea.
_John Forster._
CCLXXXI
_SONNET._
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-- 5
But tares, self-sown, have over-topped the wheat;
Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing--
And still, oh still, their dying breath is sweet;
And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us
Of that which made our childhood sweeter still; 10
And sweet is middle life, for it hath left us
A newer 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 De Vere._
CCLXXXII
_THE UGLY PRINCESS._
My parents bow, and lead them forth,
For all the crowd to see--
Ah well! the people might not care
To cheer a dwarf like me.
They little know how I could love, 5
How I could plan and toil,
To swell those drudges’ scanty gains,
Their mites of rye and oil.
They little know what dreams have been
My playmates, night and day, 10
Of equal kindness, helpful care,
A mother’s perfect sway.
Now earth to earth in convent walls,
To earth in churchyard sod:
I was not good enough for man, 15
And so am given to God.
_Charles Kingsley._
CCLXXXIII
_WEARINESS._
O little feet! that such long years
Must wander on through hopes and fears,
Must ache and bleed beneath your load;
I, nearer to the wayside inn
Where toil shall cease and rest begin,
Am weary, thinking of your road!
O little hands! that, weak or strong,
Have still to serve or rule so long,
Have still so long to give or ask;
I, who so much with book and pen 10
Have toiled among my fellow-men,
Am weary, thinking of your task.
O little hearts! that throb and beat
With such impatient feverish heat,
Such limitless and strong desires; 15
Mine that so long has glowed and burned
With passions into ashes turned,
Now covers and conceals its fires.
O little souls! as pure and white
And crystalline as rays of light 20
Direct from Heaven, their source divine;
Refracted through the mist of years,
How red my setting sun appears,
How lurid looks this soul of mine!
_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow._
CCLXXXIV
_SONG._
‘O lady, thy lover is dead,’ they cried;
‘He is dead, but hath slain the foe;
He hath left his name to be magnified
In a song of wonder and woe.’
‘Alas! I am well repaid,’ said she, 5
‘With a pain that stings like joy;
For I feared, from his tenderness to me,
That he was but a feeble boy.
‘Now I shall hold my head on high,
The queen among my kind. 10
If ye hear a sound, ’tis only a sigh
For a glory left behind.’
_George MacDonald._
CCLXXXV
_SONNET._
A hundred wings are dropt as soft as one;
Now ye are lighted--lovely to my sight
The fearful circle of your gentle flight,
Rapid and mute, and drawing homeward soon:
And then the sober chiding of your tone, 5
As ye sit there from your own roofs arraigning
My trespass on your haunts, so boldly done,
Sounds like a solemn and a just complaining!
O happy, happy race! for though there clings
A feeble fear about your timid clan, 10
Yet are ye blest! with not a thought that brings
Disquietude, while proud and sorrowing man,
An eagle weary of his mighty wings,
With anxious inquest fills his little span.
_Charles Tennyson._
CCLXXXVI
_SONNET._
The Ocean at the bidding of the Moon
For ever changes with his restless tide:
Flung shoreward now, to be regathered soon
With kingly pauses of reluctant pride,
And semblance of return. Anon from home 5
He issues forth anew, high-ridged and free--
The gentlest murmur of his seething foam
Like armies whispering where great echoes be.
O leave me here upon this beach to rove,
Mute listener to that sound so grand and lone; 10
A glorious sound, deep drawn, and strongly thrown,
And reaching those on mountain heights above,
To British ears, (as who shall scorn to own?)
A tutelar fond voice, a saviour tone of love.
_Charles Tennyson._
CCLXXXVII
_ALMOND BLOSSOM._
Blossom of the almond trees,
April’s gift to April’s bees,
Birthday ornament of spring,
Flora’s fairest daughterling;
Coming when no flowerets dare 5
Trust the cruel outer air;
When the royal kingcup bold
Dares not don his coat of gold;
And the sturdy black-thorn spray
Keeps his silver for the May;-- 10
Coming when no flowerets would,
Save thy lowly sisterhood,
Early violets, blue and white,
Dying for their love of light.
Almond blossom, sent to teach us 15
That the spring-days soon will reach us,
Lest, with longing over-tried,
We die as the violets died--
Blossom, clouding all the tree
With thy crimson broidery, 20
Long before a leaf of green
O’er the bravest bough is seen;
Ah! when winter winds are swinging
All thy red bells into ringing,
With a bee in every bell, 25
Almond bloom, we greet thee well.
_Edwin Arnold._
CCLXXXVIII
_HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD._
Oh to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf 5
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough,
In England, now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds and all the swallows! 10
Hark where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field, and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray’s edge--
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture 15
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups--the little children’s dower,--
Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower. 20
_Robert Browning._
CCLXXXIX
_HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA._
Nobly, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the North-west died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North-east distance, dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;
‘Here and here did England help me; how can I help England?’ say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
_Robert Browning._
CCXC
_JAMES AND JOHN._
Two brothers freely cast their lot
With David’s royal Son;
The cost of conquest counting not,
They deem the battle won.
Brothers in heart, they hope to gain 5
An undivided joy;
That man may one with man remain,
As boy was one with boy.
Christ heard; and willed that James should fall,
First prey of Satan’s rage; 10
John linger out his fellows all,
And die in bloodless age.
Now they join hands once more above,
Before the Conqueror’s throne;
Thus God grants prayer, but in his love 15
Makes times and ways his own.
_John Henry Newman._
CCXCI
_IN MEMORIAM._
Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur’s loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o’er.
So draw him home to those that mourn 5
In vain; a favourable speed
Ruffle thy mirrored mast, and lead
Through prosperous floods his holy urn.
All night no ruder air perplex
Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright 10
As our pure love, through early light
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.
Sphere all your lights around, above;
Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;
Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, 15
My friend, the brother of my love.
My Arthur! whom I shall not see
Till all my widowed race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me. 20
_Alfred Tennyson._
CCXCII
_IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE HON. EDWARD ERNEST VILLIERS._
A grace though melancholy, manly too,
Moulded his being; pensive, grave, serene,
O’er his habitual bearing and his mien
Unceasing pain, by patience tempered, threw
A shade of sweet austerity. But seen 5
In happier hours and by the friendly few,
That curtain of the spirit was withdrawn,
And fancy light and playful as a fawn,
And reason imped with inquisition keen,
Knowledge long sought with ardour ever new, 10
And wit love-kindled, showed in colours true
What genial joys with sufferings can consist;
Then did all sternness melt as melts a mist
Touched by the brightness of the golden dawn,
Aërial heights disclosing, valleys green, 15
And sunlights thrown the woodland tufts between,
And flowers and spangles of the dewy lawn.
And even the stranger, though he saw not these,
Saw what would not be willingly passed by.
In his deportment, even when cold and shy, 20
Was seen a clear collectedness and ease,
A simple grace and gentle dignity,
That failed not at the first accost to please;
And as reserve relented by degrees,
So winning was his aspect and address, 25
His smile so rich in sad felicities,
Accordant to a voice which charmed no less,
That who but saw him once remembered long,
And some in whom such images are strong
Have hoarded the impression in their heart, 30
Fancy’s fond dreams and memory’s joys among,
Like some loved relic of romantic song,
Or cherished masterpiece of ancient art.